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All change in the briefing room, as White House holds space for influencers and content creators

Planet Business: French AI chatbot Lucie, Boeing’s new 737 targets and Roman Abramovich’s yacht scheme

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt fields questions during her first briefing in the role on Tuesday. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/Getty
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt fields questions during her first briefing in the role on Tuesday. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/Getty
Laura Slattery's picture
Laura Slattery
Sat Feb 01 2025 - 06:10

Image of the week: Leavitt’s debut

“America is back,” declared Karoline Leavitt, the first and presumably not the last person to serve as White House press secretary in the Trump 2.0 era. A preternaturally confident Leavitt held her first press briefing on Tuesday with an on-brand insistence that “the golden age of America has most definitely begun”, before going on to list some of the people Donald Trump’s administration has deported so far.

Leavitt (27) is the youngest White House press secretary “in history”, as she told a packed press briefing room, and as such she’s going to be putting a Gen Z spin on things. Simultaneously smiley and combative, the Trump loyalist cited a Gallup poll suggesting Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record low before announcing a grand plan to bring in “new media”.

Yes, this does mean influencers. As well as restoring the press passes of “the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration”. The White House has invited “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators” to apply for press credentials. Within days, it received 10,000 applications.

One chair at the front of the room has been christened the “new media” seat. Sadly, there’s no word on whether it will be fitted with an ejector button.

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In numbers: Boeing update

$11.8 billion

Annual loss recorded by troubled US aircraft manufacturer Boeing in 2024, its largest since 2020, as problems including crashes, the pandemic, a mid-flight panel blowout and a lengthy strike all piled up.

33

Number of aircraft delivered by Boeing in January, with the company expecting to soon be in a position to exceed a 737 production cap of 38 a month. This was imposed as a safety precaution by US regulators after the in-flight blowout.

42

Monthly production rate for 737 Max jets that Boeing hopes to reach later this year, assuming it receives regulatory approval. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, for his part, believes Donald Trump will be “much more supportive”.

An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in January last year. Photograph: M. Scott Brauer/The New York Times
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in January last year. Photograph: M. Scott Brauer/The New York Times

Getting to know: Lucie

DeepSeek hogged all of this week’s artificial intelligence (AI) headlines – that is to say, headlines about AI, not headlines written by AI – so spare a thought for French-language AI chatbot Lucie, backed by French president Emmanuel Macron as part of his France 2030 investment push. She, or it, has had to be taken offline after providing a string of answers that were nonsensical even by AI standards.

Linagora Group, a company belonging to the consortium developing Lucie, was obliged to clarify that Lucie was an “academic research project in its early stages”, that it had been released “prematurely” and that “we were carried away by our own enthusiasm”. A beta version will now be tested in private before a public relaunch. Bonne chance.

The list: Roman Abramovich’s yachts

Previous references to luxury yachts in this slot have triggered a tsunami of yacht-related inbox content and some unrealistic fantasies about buying one on a journalist’s salary.

Still, it would be a shame not to mention this week’s revelations from the Cyprus Confidential project suggesting Roman Abramovich tried to dodge tax on five of his.

Roman Abramovich was the owner of the Ecstasea, which had two helipads. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
Roman Abramovich was the owner of the Ecstasea, which had two helipads. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
  1. Eclipse: This was the biggest of the former Chelsea FC owner’s yachts on which he attempted to save tens of millions of VAT by leasing them to another company he owned. The cost of refuelling the 162.5-metre superyacht, if treated as a private yacht, would have triggered a VAT bill of as much as $400,000 (€384,000) each time.
  2. Pelorus: Reportedly lent to then Chelsea footballer John Terry for his honeymoon in 2007, Pelorus was also involved in the superyachts-for-hire scheme, according to an investigation by the Guardian, the BBC, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Der Spiegel and ZDF.
  3. Luna: This yacht, known for its 20m pool, was one of three that attracted the attention of Italian authorities concerned about allegedly unpaid refuelling duties in 2015. Charges were dropped after it was argued the yachts were being used for commercial purposes.
  4. Le Grand Bleu: This was another of Abramovich’s yachts involved in the commercial leasing operation, though he was later reported to have lost it in a bet to another Russian billionaire after an expensive game of poker.
  5. Ecstasea: Abramovich was the original owner of Ecstasea, which was also presented as being part of a commercial leasing operation. Like any self-respecting superyacht, it has two helipads.
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