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A flicker of hope for the weed businessFor years, the dreams of the cannabis industry looked like they might go up in smoke, with the U.S. government classifying marijuana as a drug as dangerous as heroin. But the multibillion-dollar industry now has some hope that could change. The bet is that this will give the industry a new lease on life — though it shouldn’t expect big changes immediately. Shares in Tilray, a giant in the industry, jumped 39 percent on Tuesday, while those in Canopy Growth leaped nearly 79 percent. That’s welcome news for investors in both companies: Canopy Growth’s stock is down 97 percent over the past five years, while those in Tilray are down 95 percent.

Persons: Biden Organizations: U.S, Justice Locations: Tilray

Paramount’s cloudy futureThe boardroom intrigue at Paramount Global — the drama that has gripped the corporate world — just got messier. Bob Bakish is out as C.E.O., replaced by three subordinates who will form an “office of the C.E.O.” His departure caps a year of rising tension between him and Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, who is pushing for a deal with David Ellison’s Skydance. Bakish’s exit removed an executive who didn’t support that transaction, but it doesn’t resolve all of the big questions hanging over the company’s future. Why Bakish was pushed out: Redstone picked the low-profile company veteran to lead Paramount after years of internal strife, but they still ended up clashing.

Persons: Bob Bakish, ”, Shari Redstone, David Ellison’s Skydance, Bakish Organizations: Paramount Global, Redstone, Paramount

Why Elon Musk went to ChinaJust days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Beijing and warned China about unfair trade practices, Elon Musk landed in the Chinese capital. 2 official may have paid off: Musk reportedly cleared two obstacles to introducing a fully autonomous driving system in the world’s biggest car market. Musk is betting big on self-driving, and China is key. Tesla last week reported its worst quarter in two years as a price war hurts profit. Fully autonomous driving is also crucial.

Persons: Elon Musk, Antony Blinken, Tesla, China’s, they’ve, Musk, ” Organizations: Elon Locations: China, Beijing

☆ Singapore Airlines was ordered to pay a couple compensation for 'mental agony' after they complained their business-class seats didn't automatically recline
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-29 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Singapore Airlines was ordered to compensate a couple for their malfunctioning business-class seats. AdvertisementSingapore Airlines has been ordered to compensate a couple who said their business-class seats malfunctioned, according to local media reports. They paid 66,750 rupees (about $800) for each business-class seat, India Today, India's most widely read weekly magazine, reported. On Friday, April 26, local outlets reported that a consumer-disputes commission in Hyderabad ordered Singapore Airlines to compensate the Guptas. Singapore Airlines is one of the world's few five-star airlines, according to the Skytrax ranking.

Persons: Ravi, Anjali Gupta, —, Ravi Gupta Organizations: Singapore Airlines, Service, India Today, Business Insider, Qatar Airways, Emirates Locations: India, Singapore, Hyderabad, Deccan Chronicle, British, Indian, Telangana

☆ This state is one of the last strongholds for machine politics. That's about to change.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-28 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

At the end of March, a federal judge sided with Kim, blocking Democrats from using the so-called "county line" system in the state's upcoming June primaries. That's set to bring a stark change to the way ballots look — and potentially, a total overhaul in the state's political culture. AdvertisementHere's what to know about the "county line" and why it may be going away for good. A 2020 Democratic primary ballot in Mercer County, New Jersey. "I think you'll see a more candidate-centric politics," said Jersey City Councilman James Solomon, a longtime opponent of the county-line system.

Persons: —, Andy Kim, Kim, That's, Kim et, Hanlon, Sen, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Hanlon et al, Bob Menendez's, Democratic Sen, Bob Menendez, Menendez, Spencer Platt, Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, Zahid Quraishi, Tom Williams, Murphy, Rob Menendez —, Ravi Bhalla, James Solomon, They've, they've Organizations: Democratic, Service, Garden State, New York City, Getty, Democratic Gov, Jersey City Locations: New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware, Salem, Sussex, Mercer County , New Jersey, Hanlon et, New York, Hoboken, Jersey

Many business leaders have told me they are deeply concerned about incidents of harassment against Jewish students that have taken place at and around universities like Columbia and appear to be increasing. Inside corner offices, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about the most blatant examples, like antisemitic signs and chants or the assault of an Israeli student. But there has been little action from corporations, which have a synergistic relationship with the schools where they recruit employees. Some executives are privately pondering what they can do. The most common course of action so far has been to pull back on individual donations.

Persons: Robert Kraft Organizations: New England Patriots, Columbia University, ” Locations: Columbia

An effort to give Trump more say on ratesThis week, investors had planned to examine the latest inflation data, due out at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday, for clues about when the Fed would start cutting interest rates. The Wall Street Journal reports that allies of Donald Trump are devising ways of watering down the central bank’s independence if he is re-elected president. But it also raises questions about whether such a plan is possible — or whether Trump’s Wall Street supporters would back it. Among the most consequential would be asserting that Trump had the authority to oust Jay Powell as Fed chair before Powell’s term is up in 2025. While Trump gave Powell the job in 2017, he has since soured on his pick for raising rates, and has publicly said he wouldn’t give Powell a second term.

Persons: Donald Trump, Trump, Jay Powell, Powell, wouldn’t Organizations: Trump, Street Journal, Wall

Meta’s A.I. But for investors, that’s not enough — and that’s a warning to other tech giants set to announce their own financial results in the coming days. That makes clear that while Wall Street loves the opportunities that A.I. The company plans to spend $35 billion to $40 billion this year — much of that on the technology — up from a forecast of $30 billion to $37 billion. It also expects second-quarter revenue to come in at $36.5 billion to $39 billion, below analyst estimates.

Persons: Meta’s, Meta, that’s, Mark Zuckerberg Organizations: Facebook, Wall, Meta

The winners from the TikTok battleThe countdown to TikTok disappearing from the United States is about to start. The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation to force the divestment of the video app by its Chinese owner, ByteDance, within a year or be banned. Barring the app from U.S. shores could take months, or even years — if it actually happens. The road ahead is complicated, and any disruptions to the app could bolster its American rivals. Analysts at Bernstein have estimated that, should TikTok be banned, Meta could draw up to 60 percent of TikTok’s American ad revenue, while YouTube could take another 25 percent or so.

Persons: Biden, Bernstein Organizations: Google, Meta, YouTube Locations: United States

Campus unrest spreadsTop American colleges are in turmoil, with dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters having been arrested at N.Y.U. and Yale amid new worries about antisemitism on campus. The latest: Police were called in to break up pro-Palestinian protests at N.Y.U. Harvard shut Harvard Yard and Columbia will make classes at its main campus hybrid until next week. Encampments were growing at other schools, including M.I.T., the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley.

Organizations: Palestinian, Yale, University, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Police, Columbia, University of Michigan, University of California Locations: N.Y.U, Columbia, Berkeley

Tesla investors’ nerve-racking rideTesla has hardly been keeping quiet as it prepares to announce earnings on Tuesday. These developments are the latest signs that Tesla is confronting its toughest stretch in years — and many shareholders aren’t convinced that the company and its C.E.O., Elon Musk, are taking the right steps to address it. The latest: During the weekend, Tesla cut prices of several models in China, the U.S. and Europe. Those moves came a day after Tesla voluntarily recalled nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks over a faulty accelerator pedal that could get stuck. It’s all apparently keeping Musk so busy that he canceled a trip to India, during which he was expected to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announce plans to build a factory there.

Persons: Tesla, aren’t, Elon Musk, Narendra Modi Locations: China, U.S, Europe, India

☆ Rise of Hate Spending: Americans Detest High Prices but Keep Shopping
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-21 | by ( Emily Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

According to experts I talked to, the surge in hate spending can be attributed to various factors. They're aware prices aren't going back to 2019 levels, and given everything everyone's just been through, they may as well live it up. She told me that she often finds herself outraged by prices — and then ultimately succumbs to the forces of capitalism. It's easy to say you want to cut back on spending, given high prices, but when a friend asks whether you want to go shopping, it's hard to say no. Hart, the Illinois writer with a brand-new Stanley cup, sees some of her spending as a way to reclaim power.

Persons: Christ, Lydia Boussour, they're, everyone's, Jordan Hart, Hart, Boussour, —, they've, it's, acclimated, It's, Claire Tassin, Tassin, There's, Taylor Swift, jonesing, people's, Ravi Dhar, Dhar, he'd, he's, I've, she'd, she'll, Stanley Organizations: Retail, Consumers, Morning, Center, Yale School of Management Locations: America, Illinois, YOLO splurging, Europe, York

Labor painsAfter a “summer of strikes” last year that stretched from Detroit to Hollywood, unions are on a roll, flexing their growing might. Friday will bring a new test of that power as workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee vote on whether to join the United Automobile Workers. Victory there would mark perhaps the first time a foreign carmaker’s U.S. plant became unionized and form a beachhead for organized labor in the anti-union South. But it could also resonate well beyond the car industry as President Biden cultivates labor in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. A yes vote would be a big win for the U.A.W.

Persons: ”, Biden, Shawn Fain, they’ve Organizations: Volkswagen, United Automobile Workers, Big, Detroit carmakers, Toyota, Tesla, Automotive News Locations: Detroit, Hollywood, Tennessee, U.S, Michigan, Pennsylvania

He was a model to me of artistic labor and discipline, even if those early paintings were painfully amateurish. The painting followed me from Amherst to my first job in New York, and on to London and Delhi. IT WASN’T MY intention to start an essay about artistic beginnings with a story of artistic death. I’m especially moved by those first moments of validation by which an artist comes out to himself, as it were. It’s this, the inexorability of the correspondence between an artist and the world, that gives those first steps their magical quality.

Persons: Naipaul, Neil Shah, James Wood —, Zack, who’d, ”, Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna, Elders ”, I’m, ” Gustave Flaubert, “, ” Zack, it’s, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Gauguin, Salman Rushdie, Somerset Maugham, Kathryn Bigelow, Philip Glass, Arundhati Roy, Booker, Joseph Conrad, Conrad, Jacques, ” Conrad, brimming, ’, ’ ”, Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser, ” Lispector, Maugham, eludes, Jan van Kessel, Elder, — Pieter Bruegel, —, Rebecca West —, “ Black Lamb, J.R, Hammond, Wells, Rebecca West ”, sloughed, Henrik Ibsen’s, Rosmersholm ”, Karan Mahajan, Salman Toor, what’s, ” Hemingway, Anoushka Shankar, Ravi Shankar, Harold Bloom, Ravi, Uday, René Daumal, Rasa ”, ” Anoushka, Norah Jones, Norah, I’ve, “ Raphael, Rachel Cusk, Italy ”, Perugino, Raphael, Cusk, J.M, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Thomas Pynchon’s, James Joyce, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Marcel Proust’s, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Read, Emma Kehlbeck, Quinton Kamara Organizations: Amherst College, Elders, Fayerweather, ”, Google, Sunday Times, Somerset, Yugoslavia, The, “, . Locations: Delhi, ”, Massachusetts, Italian, Topeka, Kan, Amherst, New York, London, Patagonia, New Delhi, Torrens, Cambridge, Polish, Ukrainian, Brazil, Flemish, Victorian England, “ H.G, Fairfield, United States, “, East, Lahore, Europe, America, Texas, Side, Manhattan, India, Italy

The clock ticks for TikTokThe push to either split TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or ban it in the U.S. is gaining momentum thanks to a legislative maneuver by the House Speaker Mike Johnson. The bill’s progress comes as The Times reveals more details about the video platform’s origin story — and the central role played by the Chinese subsidiary of the trading firm of a Republican donor, Jeff Yass. Johnson has bundled the TikTok bill into a foreign aid package. The speaker said on Wednesday that he would put up for a vote this weekend a spending measure for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that includes a modified version of the TikTok divestment legislation. The move may force the Senate’s hand: The House overwhelmingly passed the bill last month, but the Senate hasn’t been in a rush to take it up.

Persons: Mike Johnson, Jeff Yass, Johnson, hasn’t Organizations: Times Locations: U.S, Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan

He was a model to me of artistic labor and discipline, even if those early paintings were painfully amateurish. IT WASN’T MY intention to start an essay about artistic beginnings with a story of artistic death. No one captured the massive cultural and economic disparities of my life in Delhi (and his in Lahore) like Toor. But quite unbeknown to me, Toor’s life in New York had opened up a new vein of material. Not everyone who sees a Michelangelo can go off and paint a Michelangelo.”THERE ARE SO many ways to begin.

☆ Long-time quant bigwig Neil Chriss is out at Paloma after just 11 months. It was a year of big hires, a restructuring, and new New York digs.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-17 | by ( Bradley Saacks | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Chriss — who joined the long-running quant-focused multi-strategy firm in May of 2023 — is "no longer with Paloma," according to a letter sent to the firm's investors Monday. Chriss had been at Millennium for five years prior to joining Paloma and founded his own hedge fund, Hutchin Hill, in 2007. Paloma declined to comment on the rationale for his departure, and Chriss did not respond to requests for comment. But it was not all growth for Paloma while Chriss was at the helm.

Persons: —, Neil Chriss's, Paloma, Chriss —, Chriss, Donald Sussman, Ravi Singh, Goldman Sachs, Chris LaSusa, LaSusa, Steve Cohen, Shaw, Ritter Organizations: Service, Paloma, Business, Industry, Intelligence, Goldman, KCL, D.E, Capital, Ritter Alpha Locations: Hill, Greenwich, New York, Manhattan, Minnesota

Tesla tries again on Musk’s record pay packageNearly three months ago, a Delaware court voided Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package that Tesla’s board — and most shareholders — had given him in 2018, contending that the process to decide it was “deeply flawed” and that the company didn’t properly disclose it to investors. On Wednesday, Tesla said that it would ask shareholders to vote again on that same pay package, now valued at about $47 billion, at its annual meeting on June 13. The company’s board is effectively asking shareholders, now armed with all of the information that was revealed about the negotiations in court, to make the court’s ruling moot. The vote is likely to set off a bitter battle among investors and governance experts over whether shareholders should provide Musk with the richest pay package in U.S. corporate history. It comes as Tesla faces new challenges, especially slumping sales that have erased billions off its market value in recent months.

Persons: Tesla, Elon Musk’s, — Locations: Delaware

deal as a diplomatic weaponA relatively small deal — by Microsoft’s standards, anyway — is leading to big geopolitical ripples on Tuesday. The tech giant is investing $1.5 billion in G42, an Emirati artificial intelligence company. On its face, that may appear to be just another effort by the tech giant to claim a foothold in a fast-growing A.I. The terms of the deal: G42 will be able to sell Microsoft services that use powerful A.I. chips; in return, it will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services for its A.I.

Persons: OpenAI, Biden Organizations: Microsoft Locations: Beijing, China

But the calm could be short lived, as world leaders and markets focus on Israel’s response. Military clashes don’t always sink the markets, as was the case when Hamas attacked Israel in October and Israel retaliated. “We may be entering one of the most treacherous geopolitical eras since World War II,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s C.E.O., warned last week. “Take the win,” President Biden reportedly told Israel’s embattled prime minister after the attack was rebuffed with American help. Iran has signaled that the attack was a one-and-done, but Israel’s war cabinet hasn’t indicated its next move.

Persons: Israel, ” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden, hasn’t, Helima Croft Organizations: JPMorgan, ”, RBC Capital Markets Locations: Israel, Ukraine, United States, Iran

Housing gloomThe higher-for-longer inflation predicament has hit the U.S. housing market like a thunderbolt. More economists are paring their bets that the Fed will cut rates after the latest Consumer Price Index report. They all argue that sticky inflation will force the Fed to keep borrowing costs higher for longer. The country is growing faster than many peers, but voters are zeroing in on inflation to explain their disapproval of President Biden’s handling of the economy. (Some DealBook readers in recent days have emailed to say that they’re strongly feeling the pain of housing inflation.)

Persons: Goldman Sachs, ” Lawrence Yun, Biden’s Organizations: Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, National Association of Realtors

The dollar spiked overnight and traders slashed their bets on when — or whether — the Fed would cut interest rates this year. Such uncertainty could last for months and complicate President Biden’s bid for a second term. Traders this morning were pricing in less than two rate cuts for 2024 — down from more than six at the start of the year — possibly starting in July. The growing view on Wall Street is that inflation will need to get closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target before the central bank makes a move. Some are going even further: Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and a critic of the Fed’s handling of inflation, told Bloomberg that a rate increase can’t be ruled out.

Persons: Biden’s, Larry Summers Organizations: Fed, Biden U.S, Treasury, Bloomberg

Deal making runs into presidential politicsPresident Biden holds talks on Wednesday for Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, part of a state visit designed to show the U.S.’s commitment to a staunch ally. Despite the pomp and ceremony, the presidential election will loom over the meetings, with Biden’s opposition to Nippon Steel’s bid for U.S. Steel showing how the chase for votes is affecting deal making and economic policy. The summit will be just the fifth state visit of his administration, and reflects a different approach to that of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Both Biden and Trump have courted union workers, notably during the auto industry strike last year. Biden is the first sitting president to visit a picket line.

Persons: Biden, Fumio, Donald Trump, It’s, Trump Organizations: Nippon, U.S, Steel, Nippon Steel’s, Pennsylvania, Biden Locations: U.S, Japan, China, South Korea, India, Europe, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh

What next on inflation and rate cuts? The mood music on rate cuts has changed again. All eyes now are focused on the upcoming Consumer Price Index data for clues on when the Fed might finally start cutting interest rates. Economists on Tuesday are forecasting higher growth but also higher-for-longer inflation and rates. Traders are penciling in fewer than three cuts this year — lower than the Fed’s own projection — with the first coming not before July.

Persons: That’s

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