Far-left French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon said France will fall into recession if corporate leaders do not raise wages.

The Wall Street Journal reported Barret Zoph, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, will join Google as research vice president. Zoph previously served as Thinking Machines' chief technology officer and left in January after a dispute with CEO Mira Murati, joining OpenAI to lead enterprise AI sales. A Google spokesperson said: "We look forward to Barret returning to Google and bringing his expertise in reinforcement learning and fine-tuning to GEMINI." He departed Thinking Machines with co-founder Luke Metz and engineer Sam Schoenholz.

HIMINO, deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, said the BOJ will weigh possible scenarios and risks — including the Middle East conflict, AI-driven demand and foreign exchange effects — when deciding the pace and timing of future rate hikes.