DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ How Strong Are Your Relationships?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( Jancee Dunn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The first step in the 7-Day Happiness Challenge is to assess your relationships. These 13 questions were designed in partnership with Dr. Robert Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to help you take stock of the range and strength of your many social ties. As you submit answers for each question, a visual representation of your dynamic social world will appear.

☆ More Americans are seeking help for their mental health. Here's how to talk to your boss if you're struggling with anxiety or depression.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Marguerite Ward | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Mental health experts shared tips for approaching your manager about your mental health. Thousands of cancelled flights during the holidays, inflation, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine are chipping away at Americans' mental health. A Gallup poll published in December found that the number of Americans reporting their mental health was "good" or "excellent" was at a record low, while the number of Americans seeking help for their mental health was up. Many are likely grappling with whether to talk to their manager about their mental health. "Beyond Happiness" author Lim suggested framing the conversation around improving your mental health as something that would help both you and your employer.

☆ 25 top PR hires of 2022, as companies like Activision and McDonald's grabbed executive talent to message around M&A and economic volatility
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Michael Kaminer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Public relations jobs were in hot demand as companies navigated an economic crises and M&A scrutiny. Top talent from places like the Biden administration, and the NFL became available in 2022.Insider tallied up the year's biggest executive hires in the public relations industry. The PR industry's talent wars raged on this year, agency owners and executives tell Insider, as firms push into content, production, and even management consulting. The right hires can affect business. A well-connected executive can reel in business from high-level contacts and leverage those connections on behalf of clients.

☆ Kids with 'bubble boy' disease could finally get access to a life-saving gene therapy, as a study starts back up at UCLA
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Andrew Dunn | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

UCLA researchers are restarting a study to give a gene therapy to kids with an ultra-rare disease. Without gene therapy, doctors treat kids with SCID using enzyme-replacement therapies, if they are ineligible for bone-marrow transplants. In an email to Insider, Kohn said he expects to be able to treat between three and six patients with his current funding. Drug companies have shown little interest in the treatments because the complexity of the treatments and tiny number of eligible patients limit potential profits. Drug companies have deprioritized or shelved gene-therapy programs to treat a range of rare diseases, including Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, MPS, Batten disease, chronic granulomatous disease, Rett syndrome, and Fabry disease.

But what could mark the end of zero-Covid may be just the beginning of China's pandemic problems. Not to mention there are doubts that China's economy will be able to make a swift recovery even as it moves away from zero-Covid. "Between companies that manufacture in China for China, they're not going anywhere," Jeff Moon, China Moon Strategies founder and former assistant U.S. trade representative for China, said in an interview. "But there are also companies that are manufacturing in China for export out of China, and those are the companies that are actually looking to at different locations." Watch the video to learn more about how China's stringent zero-Covid policies collapsed and the challenges the world's second-largest economy faces as it moves to reopen.

☆ More women are traveling alone. The hospitality industry is meeting demand with offerings like 'Alonemoons' — no partner required.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Mark Ellwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

When she started traveling alone, she said, the trend was less common and locals were often surprised to see her without a companion. The Solo Female Travelers Club, a 190,000-member social network and tour operator, surveys 5,000 women annually on their habits and opinions. A Gili Lankanfushi representative told Insider six women traveling alone had booked the package in the past 18 months. "I think it's a wonderful, life-affirming experience to be a woman traveling solo and experience the nurturing care you can get from strangers. Meg Jerrard, a cofounder of the Solo Female Travelers Club, recently started a consulting division of her company to help guide other businesses as they reevaluate their offerings and staff in light of growing demand from solo female travelers.

☆ Why tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos are all investing in biotech startups that want to link your computer directly to your brain
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Andrew Dunn | Hilary Brueck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Tech moguls like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates are investing in brain-implant startups. Through their venture-capital funds, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both recently backed the Brooklyn, New York, startup Synchron, which has tested its brain stent in seven humans. Peter Thiel, a billionaire cofounder of PayPal, invested last year in Utah's Blackrock Neurotech, an older BCI startup that has said it hopes to apply for Food and Drug Administration approval soon. That long-term potential has caught the attention of tech billionaires like Musk, Gates, and Bezos. No BCI startup has gone public, and most of their fundraising rounds have been modest compared with larger and more-mature biotechs.

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company negotiates directly with drugmakers. So far, that's been the strategy for the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. In October, Cost Plus Drug Company announced a partnership with Capital Blue Cross. Cuban said he wanted Cost Plus Drug Company to be as transparent as possible on pricing. Cost Plus Drug Company is considering a test program for insulin that would offer a 90-day supply of insulin, or a total of 12 vials, for $170.

☆ Jan. 6 committee highlights: Panel votes on criminal referrals for Trump and others
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Rebecca Shabad | Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Jonathan-Allen-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +48 min

“By the time President Trump was preparing to give his speech, he and his advisors knew enough to cancel the rally. “Some have suggested that President Trump gave an order to have 10,000 troops ready for January 6th. On far-right groups drawing inspiration from Trump: Trump has not denied that he helped inspire far-right groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, to violently attempt to obstruct the official certification proceedings on Jan. 6. "There is no question from all the evidence assembled that President Trump did have that intent." Share this -Link copiedInside the final Jan. 6 committee meeting The Jan. 6 committee met for what’s likely its final public meeting, with many of the usual faces present.

☆ 2022 in gender equality: Share of female Fortune 500 CEOs hits all-time high, but other progress stalls
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Morgan Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Women continue to face a significant wage gap that has hardly budged over the last 15 years, with women of color bearing the brunt of the disparity. The year "2022 really is a mixed bag when it comes to gender equality," says Melissa Boteach, the vice president for income security and child care/early learning at the National Women's Law Center. Aside from that victory, there has been little progress in closing the gender wage gap over the past decade. This year, the wage gap narrowed by one penny. The wage gap Black women face narrowed by about four cents in one year, while Latinas' wage gap didn't budge at all.

☆ Jan. 6 committee live updates: Panel votes on criminal referrals for Trump and others
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Summer Concepcion | Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Summer-Concepcion-Byline-Jm.Jpg | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +42 min

Committee details Trump allies' efforts to obstruct its investigation In its report summary, the committee detailed some of the efforts to obstruct its investigation. On far-right groups drawing inspiration from Trump: Trump has not denied that he helped inspire far-right groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, to violently attempt to obstruct the official certification proceedings on Jan. 6. "There is no question from all the evidence assembled that President Trump did have that intent." Share this -Link copiedInside the final Jan. 6 committee meeting The Jan. 6 committee met for what’s likely its final public meeting, with many of the usual faces present. The committee will likely reveal Eastman’s referrals during Monday’s meeting, in addition to expected criminal referrals for Trump.

☆ How a gene-editing breakthrough from a Harvard lab saved the life of a girl with leukemia
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Andrew Dunn | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

A 13-year-old girl was the world's first patient to get a cell therapy called base editing in May. Base editing is a new gene-editing technology that could lead to cures for many diseases. Alyssa, 13, was the first-ever patient to receive a base-edited cell therapy after enrolling in a clinical trial in May. Base editing allows scientists to make ultraprecise changes to single letters of DNA in cells. Alyssa, a teenager in Leicester, England, received a base-edited cell therapy to treat her leukemia.

Funding raised: $27 millionNumber of employees: 20Why it's set to take off next year: Provider burnout is getting worse, and it's exacerbating healthcare's staffing crisis. Nof said he expected Abridge's technology to be in demand next year as hospitals worked to reduce the administrative burdens on doctors. "They've reached a tipping point where people are desperate to gain efficiencies in their workday with all the physician burnout," he said. Abridge's technology takes the audio from doctor-patient interactions and automatically turns it into documentation for billing purposes or a summary of the visit for the patient. That means doctors are relieved of the "hours of pajama time in the evening that they previously spent doing clinical documentation," Cheatham said.

☆ It's no great surprise that the European Parliament has a corruption problem
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Luke Mcgee | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Belgian police said late last week that they had carried out raids and arrested four people in connection with an ongoing corruption probe into alleged payments and gifts from Qatar to members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and their staff. Kaili did not appear at a scheduled hearing on Wednesday, and was remanded in custody until she appears before a court on December 22, Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office said Wednesday. Federal prosecutors confirmed a “large-scale investigation” was conducted into the alleged criminal activity, corruption, and money laundering activities within the European Parliament on Wednesday. Kaili, who has spoken in defense of Qatar in the European Parliament, traveled to Qatar shortly before the start of the soccer World Cup. While this scandal has rocked Brussels, the allegations have come as no great surprise to those who know the European institutions, especially the Parliament.

☆ Moderna's CEO predicts how the biotech's work in cancer vaccines could transform healthcare, starting with your annual physical
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Andrew Dunn | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Personalized cancer vaccines could provide a new way to fight early cancer cases. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told Insider he thinks cancer vaccines can upend cancer care. In an interview, Bancel shared his vision on how these personalized cancer vaccines could transform cancer care. Based off the blood work, Moderna would design vaccines that target the genetic mutations in cancerous cells that stand out from healthy cells. The blood tests could find cancer before it grows too much, and mRNA vaccines could squash it.

☆ Meet 41-year old Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-nominated Floridian who will pick the special master to weed through the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Kimberly Leonard | Azmi Haroun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Judge Aileen Cannon recently reversed a big win that she had handed Trump's defense team. Judge Aileen Cannon gave her confirmation testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee over Zoom on July 29, 2020. There, she prosecuted cases involving narcotics, fraud, firearms, and immigration cases, according to her Senate confirmation document. Cannon during her confirmation hearing thanked Rubio as well as fellow Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida for their "continued support." "Judge Cannon is a great judge who I am very proud to have enthusiastically supported," Rubio told Insider through his office when asked about the connection.

☆ Moderna just used a personalized vaccine to treat cancer, and it could signal a major breakthrough in how we treat the disease
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Andrew Dunn | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Moderna's cancer vaccine lowered the risk of death or skin-cancer recurrence in a midstage study. Moderna's CEO Stéphane Bancel compared the cancer study results to the initial outbreak of COVID-19, when Moderna scrambled to respond and develop a vaccine. Bancel said Moderna and its partner, Merck, would launch multiple late-stage studies in 2023 to test the cancer vaccine in not just melanoma patients but other types of cancer. Merck paid $250 million earlier this year to jointly develop Moderna's vaccine, extending a partnership between the two drugmakers that began in 2016. Study results have yet to be presented at a conference or published in a journal.

☆ U.S. Justice Department reportedly split over charging Binance as crypto world falters
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +15 min

Justice Department regulations say that money laundering charges against a financial institution must be approved by the MLARS chief. Binance's defense attorneys at U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn have held meetings in recent months with Justice Department officials, the four people said. Faced with the Justice Department investigation, Binance hired an external lawyer from U.S. law firm Paul Weiss, Roberto Gonzalez, who was previously Treasury's deputy general counsel. The Justice Department appointed Eun Young Choi, previously Monaco's senior counsel, as NCET's first director. MLARS has a reputation in the Justice Department for moving slowly in reaching prosecution decisions, people familiar with its activities said.

Justice Department regulations say that money laundering charges against a financial institution must be approved by the MLARS chief. Binance's defense attorneys at U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn have held meetings in recent months with Justice Department officials, the four people said. Faced with the Justice Department investigation, Binance hired an external lawyer from U.S. law firm Paul Weiss, Roberto Gonzalez, who was previously Treasury's deputy general counsel. MLARS has a reputation in the Justice Department for moving slowly in reaching prosecution decisions, people familiar with its activities said. Day met with Justice officials in Washington in recent months, three of the people said.

☆ California invested an enormous amount of money into getting EVs on the road, but practically nothing when it comes to dealing with the waste: 'It's totally like the Wild West.'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-11 | by ( Hanna Kang | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

"It's totally like the Wild West," said Zora Chung, co-founder of ReJoule, Inc., a startup project based in Signal Hill that is exploring repurposing used batteries from EVs. However, there are no EV battery recycling plants that exist in California, nor tried-and-true recycling programs in place to deal with the fallout. Currently, the company has used batteries deployed at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, where solar panels feed electricity into the used battery storage units. Charging station for electric and hybrid cars using solar panels to generate electricity to charge car batteries. "Imagine if it just took you one full work week to qualify one used battery," Chung said.

☆ U.S. Diplomat’s Wife Gets Suspended Sentence for U.K. Car-Crash Death
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Max Colchester | David Luhnow | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A justice, watched by the victim’s family, sentenced Anne Sacoolas on Thursday in an artist’s rendition of the court hearing in London. A British court sentenced the wife of a U.S. diplomat to a suspended prison sentence Thursday for causing death by dangerous driving after she was involved in a 2019 car crash that killed a 19-year-old motorcyclist and fled the country. Harry Dunn died after a car driven by Anne Sacoolas , who was mistakenly going down the wrong side of the road, collided head on with his motorcycle near her husband’s workplace, an air force base in central England that is used for communications by the U.S. military.

Sacoolas pleaded guilty in October to causing death by careless driving, punishable by up to five years in prison. Speaking thought tears, Charles added: “There is an intense feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach without Harry around. “I didn’t lose just one son when Harry died, I lost Niall too. Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity claimed on her behalf and was able to leave the United Kingdom weeks after the accident. Cooper added that Sacoolas’ family was forced to relocate following Harry Dunn’s death after she received death threats via email and telephone.

☆ Anne Sacoolas given suspended jail term for fatal UK car crash
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Sam Tobin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The crash led to a diplomatic spat between London and Washington, with the British government backing the call for Sacoolas to be prosecuted. After agreeing to appear in a British court remotely, she pleaded guilty in October to causing death by dangerous driving. Sacoolas' lawyer Ben Cooper said she had not personally asked for diplomatic immunity and that her departure from Britain afterwards was "a decision taken by her government". They expressed fury that the U.S. government had told Sacoolas not to attend her sentencing in person. "We have learnt important lessons from this tragic incident, including improvements to the process around exemptions from diplomatic immunity," he said in a statement.

☆ Police officers to receive Congressional Gold Medals for Jan. 6
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

To recognize the hundreds of officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the medals will be placed in four locations — at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution. Awarding the medals will be among House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s last ceremonial acts as she prepares to step down from leadership. Officers suffered physical wounds, including brain injuries and other lifelong effects, and many struggled to work afterward because they were so traumatized. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that immediately followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after one of the rioters sprayed him with a chemical. The Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow, has been handed out by the legislative branch since 1776.

☆ U.S. diplomat's wife will not return to UK for sentencing over fatal car crash
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Sam Tobin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Sacoolas, whose husband worked as a U.S. intelligence officer at the base, left Britain shortly after the accident, claiming diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution and the United States refused to extradite her. In October, appearing at London's Old Bailey court by videolink from the United States, Sacoolas denied causing death by dangerous driving but admitted the less serious charge. The judge had previously directed that she attend the sentencing, due to take place on Thursday, in person. The Old Bailey said in a statement on Tuesday that an application for Sacoolas to take part and be sentenced via videolink had been renewed. The crash led to a diplomatic spat between London and Washington, with the British government backing the call for Sacoolas to be prosecuted.

Search resuls for: "" Dunn"

25 mentions found