Washington said a Russian fighter plane caused a US spy drone to crash into the Black Sea on Tuesday, marking the first direct encounter between US and Russian forces since Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.
Russia said the US drone intruded in an area declared off-limits and that fighter jets scrambled to intercept the drone but did not cause it to crash.

According to the Pentagon, two Russian Su-27 aircraft flew in front of the US MQ-9 Reaper drone, dumped fuel on it, and eventually one jet “struck the propeller” of the drone requiring US forces to bring it “down in international waters”.

Moscow says that due to “sharp” manoeuvres, “the US drone went into uncontrollable flight with a loss of altitude” and crashed.

Last week, SVB Financial Group, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, received a call from Moody's Investors Service Inc. The rating agency informed the bank that it was preparing to downgrade its credit rating, sending alarm bells ringing throughout the financial industry. The phone call was the beginning of the process that led to Friday's collapse of the startup-focused lender, which is now considered the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.

The collapse of SVB sent shockwaves through global markets and had a profound impact on banking stocks. The collapse has raised concerns that the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate increases aimed at combating inflation have exposed vulnerabilities in the financial system. The SVB collapse illustrates how quickly confidence in financial institutions can erode and how even the best-laid plans can backfire. The failure also sent shockwaves through California's startup economy, leaving many companies unsure about how much of their deposits they could recover and how they would pay their staff.

Moody's call came after the value of the bonds in which SVB had invested its money fell due to higher interest rates. SVB's management team became concerned that the downgrade would undermine the confidence of investors and clients in the bank's financial health. To mitigate the damage, SVB's Chief Executive Greg Becker's team sought advice from Goldman Sachs Group Inc bankers and flew to New York for meetings with Moody's and other rating firms.

The group of friends traveled from South Carolina so one of them — a mother of six — could undergo a medical procedure, two family members told CNN.

They were “placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men” in the border city of Matamoros, according to the FBI. Investigators believe a Mexican cartel likely mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, a US official said.

Germany, France and Britain want to use the promise of stronger ties between NATO and Ukraine as leverage to convince Kyiv to pursue peace talks with Moscow. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants NATO’s July summit to discuss an incentive in the form of an agreement that would give Kyiv much broader access to advanced military equipment, WSJ reported. French and German leaders told their Ukrainian counterpart during their meeting on Feb. 9 he needed to start considering peace talks. Emmanuel Macron also told Volodymyr Zelensky that he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to make difficult decisions. There are deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, according to WSJ.

Musk, the chief of companies including Tesla and Twitter, now has a net worth of $187.1 billion, according to Bloomberg. He bested LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, overtaking the head of the luxury brand conglomerate whose own net worth is $182 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Arnault had unseated Musk last year as Tesla shares fell in December. The Tesla stock price hit a low of $108.10 on Jan. 3, 2023, according to historical data on Yahoo Finance. The carmaker's stock closed at $207.63 on Monday.

After the tumult of last year, in which Musk purchased Twitter after some uncertainty about whether he'd follow through on the deal, and a lawsuit at the time by Tesla shareholders, Musk has had a better 2023 so far.

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As an AI language model, I don't have personal preferences or feelings, but I can tell you about some of the most popular and influential science fiction authors of all time.

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Robert A. Heinlein - known for Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Philip K. Dick - known for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the film Blade Runner) and The Man in the High Castle
Octavia Butler - known for Kindred and Parable of the Sower
Neal Stephenson - known for Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Anathem
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China’s “peace plan” for Ukraine, vague on how peace can be attained, sends clear signals that Beijing’s support for Moscow is neither univocal nor limitless. The very first of the plan’s 12 points declares, in a clear acknowledgement of the Ukrainian state’s fundamental rights, that the “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld.” In a nod to Moscow, the “Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis” avoids describing the war as a war and opposes “unilateral sanctions.” At the same time, the paper asserts that the “threat or use of nuclear weapons should be opposed” in a thinly-veiled reprimand of the Russian leadership’s regular rattling of the nuclear saber since the beginning of the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Putin did not inform Xi about his plans for the invasion when the two met on Feb. 4, 2022, to agree that the Russian-Chinese relationship had “no limits.” China has since dropped the “no limits” phrase from its official communications, according to FT’s James Kynge.