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☆ A Russian legislator called the drone attacks on Moscow the 'new reality' for Russian citizens
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Grace Eliza Goodwin | Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A Russian legislator said the drone attacks on Moscow are the "new reality" for Russian citizens. Alexander Khinshtein, a member of the Russian Parliament, called the attack "a new reality we will have to recognize," according to CNN. Russian officials said eight drones attacked Moscow on Tuesday, and three buildings were hit. Some other Russian sources reported far more drones involved in the attack, which Russia is blaming on Ukraine. Dr. Stephen Hall, a Russia expert at the University of Bath, said the drone attack "certainly has brought the war to the streets in Moscow like nothing else."

☆ Drone attacks that shook Moscow showed Russians they can no longer trust Putin to protect them, expert says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Drones hit residential buildings in Moscow for the first time in its war with Ukraine. An expert said it "brought the war to the streets" for Russians and may shake their faith in Putin. People shelter inside a subway station during an air raid alert, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 29, 2023. Other recent attacks on Russian soil — which Ukraine has also said were not its responsibility — have been closer to Ukrainian territory. Moscow is the capital of Russia, which perceives itself as a great country, rightly or wrongly."

☆ Here’s what the SEC will require under its strict new stock buyback disclosure rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Christina Wilkie | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The new disclosure rules will begin to apply when U.S. corporations report earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023, and to foreign issuers on a slightly longer timeline. The new rules "will increase the transparency and integrity" of corporate stock repurchasing overall, and allow investors "to better assess issuer buyback programs," SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement about the updated disclosures. The changes approved Wednesday represent a softening of the SEC's initial proposed disclosure rules, which would have required public companies to report trades by corporate insiders on a daily basis. Public interest groups, many of which have become increasingly critical of widespread corporate buybacks, applauded the new rules. On Capitol Hill, bipartisan support for stricter buyback disclosure rules has been apparent since the start of the SEC's rulemaking process, more than a year ago.

☆ Australia to reveal huge budget rebound, pledge restraint in response
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Wayne Cole | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has spent weeks using "restraint" and "responsible" to describe his second budget since coming to power in May last year. Instead, the aim is to bank any budget savings, and there are plenty to go around. As recently as October, Chalmers had forecast a deficit of almost A$37 billion ($24.47 billion) for the year to end June 2023. "To place the budget on a more sustainable footing over the medium-term will require an increase in revenue flow and/or more spending discipline." In short, Australia, like most developed economies with aging populations, is finding deficits are the new normal.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler was testifying in front of the House Financial Services Committee for the first time since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January. Gensler, who has helmed the SEC since April 2021, underscored the agency's rulemaking as "grounded in legal authorities granted by Congress." The SEC also levied record penalties in the last fiscal year and Republican lawmakers seized on the agency's nearly 50 enforcement actions against crypto firms, saying the agency was regulating by enforcement. Gensler maintained most cryptocurrencies are securities and crypto firms must comply with securities laws. Progressive lawmakers and investor advocates have praised the SEC and pushed Congress to give the agency more resources.

☆ Just Stop Oil protester disrupts World Snooker Championship
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Ben Church | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —A protester disrupted the World Snooker Championship on Monday by climbing onto the table and throwing a bag of orange powder paint over the playing surface. Video footage shows the man – who was wearing a ‘Just Stop Oil’ t-shirt – running from the crowd and leaping onto the table during the game between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry. “It’s scary, actually.”The World Snooker Tour, who organizes the tournament, tweeted on Monday: “This is the Crucible. The show will go on.”In addition to sporting events, Just Stop Oil activists have targeted art galleries. The World Snooker Championship is being played at the iconic Crucible Theater in Sheffield, UK, and is now the latest high-profile sporting event to be disrupted by activists.

☆ Take a look back at 24 Sussex Drive, the iconic residency of the Canadian PM now abandoned and overrun with rodents
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Bethany Dawson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

24 Sussex Drive, the official residence of the Canadian prime minister, is in total disrepair. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien meets with Premiers and Territorial leaders Chretien's residence in Ottawa, February 4, 2003. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin (L) holds a First Ministers' meeting at his official residence in Ottawa, January 30, 2004. Conservative leader and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper reacts in between songs while practicing with his band "Herringbone" at 24 Sussex Drive, Harper's official residence, in Ottawa April 22, 2011. Since taking his post as head of state, prime minister Trudeau has opted to live in Rideau Cottage, just less than a mile away from 24 Sussex Drive.

☆ Moderna expects to price its COVID vaccine at about $130 in the US
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Patrick Wingrove | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Hannah BeierMarch 20 (Reuters) - Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) expects to price its COVID-19 vaccine at around $130 per dose in the U.S. going forward as purchases move to the private sector from the government, the company’s president Stephen Hoge said in an interview on Monday. Hoge said the government's Medicare health plan for seniors pays $70 per dose for the seasonal influenza vaccine. Sanders, chair of the Senate’s powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has said Moderna should not raise the price of its vaccine because of the government funding it received. He plans to question Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel on the price increase at the hearing on Wednesday. Moderna in February forecast significantly declining 2023 COVID-19 vaccine sales, which reached $18.4 billion in 2022.

March 14 (Reuters) - Australia's economic health will be its central bank's compass for plotting the course of rate hikes, as stringent regulation insulates its banking sector from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) (SIVB.O), analysts at top domestic banks said. Analysts at three of the top four lenders - Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA.AX), National Australia Bank (NAB.AX), and ANZ Group Holdings (ANZ.AX) - continue to expect the RBA to deliver its 11th consecutive rate hike next month. 0#RBAWATCH"The Australian domestic fundamentals remain consistent with further tightening from the RBA," Adelaide Timbrell, senior economist at ANZ Research said. Australian banking sector, while not immune to the collapse of SVB, is in a "more insulated" position, Rodrigo Catril, senior FX strategist at NAB said. Globally, banking stocks have taken a hit from the collapse of SVB despite of assurances from U.S. authorities, prompting a reassessment of interest rate expectations.

☆ 'Our phones are ringing off the hook': Amid a global downturn, the finance world is chasing Middle Eastern money
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Natasha Turak | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The region's 10 largest sovereign wealth funds combined manage nearly $4 trillion, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. The regional investors, especially the sovereign funds but also the families, are now much more sophisticated than before. Follow the capitalAs oil prices made a roaring comeback in the last two years, the Gulf's public wealth funds went on a spending spree. It added that GCC sovereign wealth funds "played an important role in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and now again in 2022 during times of financial distress." Our phones are ringing off the hook," one manager from a UAE investment fund said, declining to be named due to professional restrictions.

☆ The UFO shoot-downs show the hardest part of discovering alien life may be announcing it. Here's how NASA might break the news.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-18 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Extraterrestrial life likely wouldn't show up as flying objects, but finding it could cause similar chaos. An illustration of the CoLD scale for determining confidence in a detection of alien life. The president or other countries could be involved in announcing extraterrestrial life existsPresident Joe Biden speaks at Delaware State University. Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesAnnouncing the existence of alien life would be an "administration-level" affair, Glaze said, referring to the US presidency. Needless to say, any discovery of alien life would likely lead to chaos — at least in public discourse.

☆ From Jeff Bezos to Jack Dorsey, here are 14 the world's wealthiest entrepreneurs trying to crack the code of living forever
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-29 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Mark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg, with a net worth of $56.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, once told physicist Stephen Hawking he wanted to know what would enable humans to live forever. Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesInsider's Cadie Thompson reported that in 2015, the late physicist Stephen Hawking asked Mark Zuckerberg about which big questions in science he sought answers to. Zuckerberg responded, "I'm most interested in questions about people. How does learning work and how we can empower humans to learn a million times more?" Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are among a small crop of Silicon Valley elite who founded the prize in 2012, and continue to back it.

☆ U.S. targets '08 crisis trader conflicts in new rule, decade after 1st try
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Douglas Gillison | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The rule is among the last to be adopted under the landmark Dodd Frank Wall Street reform legislation of 2010, according to SEC officials. An earlier version of the conflicts rule first proposed in 2011 was never finalized. SEC officials say it would provide exceptions for legitimate activities, such as hedging to mitigate risk, market-making and meeting liquidity commitments. Better Markets, an advocacy organization that promotes more strict financial sector regulation, welcomed Wednesday's rule proposal but vowed to study it. Without citing prominent recent examples of such conflicts of interest in the asset-backed securities market, SEC officials said the conflicts rule was needed to remove the opportunity and incentive for such conduct.

☆ Jury convicts Kansas man of threatening to kill congressman
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Jurors found Chase Neill, 32, of Lawrence, guilty of a single count of threatening a U.S. government official. The judge had Neill give his testimony Thursday as a narrative from the witness stand because he was representing himself. Neill admitted in court that he left the June 5 voicemail and others with more death threats the next day. Hunting told jurors that it was reasonable for LaTurner and his staff to take Neill’s words seriously as threats. “I’m really trying to explain how I interact with God, and it’s a difficult explanation,” Neill told jurors during his testimony Thursday.

RSV, which produces symptoms similar to a cold but can be fatal for young children and older adults, causes about 14,000 deaths annually in adults ages 65 and older. Moderna, Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and GSK Plc (GSK.L) are racing to get their RSV vaccines to market first. Pfizer's RSV vaccine was found to be 66.7% effective against two or more symptoms in late-stage trials. "It's very exciting to see progress in RSV vaccines in older adults, and I think both of those vaccines have shown pretty remarkable results as well," Hoge said. The RSV vaccine market could be worth more than $10 billion globally, half of which would come from the United States, according to Cowen analyst Tyler Van Buren.

Host and comedian Jerrod Carmichael opened his monologue with a blunt assessment: that he was there because "I'm Black." Carmichael recalled being called by Golden Globes producer Stephen Hill and being asked to host the awards. On the silver carpet, this year’s Golden Globe winner for best actress in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Michelle Yeoh and “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann also expressed the importance of celebrating all the talented people involved in Golden Globes. “I think it’s important because this is an international Golden Globe, right? Luhrmann echoed similar sentiments, saying, “I think the Golden Globes has really walked the walk, not just talked the talk.

Twitter on Saturday blocked searches for a series of hashtags and keywords used to promote the sale of child sex abuse material (CSAM) following an investigation by NBC News posted the day before. NBC News observed the hashtags over a period of several weeks, and counted dozens of users who collectively published hundreds of tweets daily. Irwin said in the last six weeks Twitter had been analyzing thousands of hashtags for a project that was scheduled for completion in the next few weeks. In a review of hashtags and tweets last week, NBC News confirmed that searches related to the file-sharing site Mega had been blocked. A former employee who asked to remain anonymous because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement said that many of the employees specifically tasked with child safety issues had departed the company.

☆ U.S. appeals court strikes down ban on bump stocks
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/George FreyJan 6 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday struck down a Trump administration rule banning bump stocks, which are devices that allow people to rapidly fire multiple rounds from semi-automatic guns. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said that despite "tremendous" public pressure to impose a ban, it was up to the U.S. Congress rather than the president to take action. Three other federal appeals courts have rejected challenges to the ban, and Friday's decision raises the prospect that the U.S. Supreme Court could eventually decide the issue. A bump stock lets a gun's stock, which rests against the shoulder, slide backward and forward, letting users take advantage of the gun's recoil to fire rapidly. Circuit Court of Appeals, No.

Twitter accounts that offer to trade or sell child sexual abuse material under thinly veiled terms and hashtags have remained online for months, even after CEO Elon Musk said he would combat child exploitation on the platform. The tweets reviewed by NBC News offer to sell or trade content that is commonly known as child pornography or child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The tweets do not show CSAM, and NBC News did not view any CSAM in the course of reporting this article. The problem has been pervasive enough to catch the attention of some Twitter users. In 25 tweets, users tagged Musk using at least one of the major hashtags to alert him to the content.

☆ A tiny biotech's experimental treatment for a silent disease that strikes millions just cleared a key hurdle and the stock is up more than 200%
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Sarah Braner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Madrigal Pharmaceuticals reported positive results in its phase 3 trial for a drug to treat NASH. NASH is a serious liver condition that does not have an FDA-approved treatment. Many people don't even know they have it, which is why some people call it a "silent" disease. In a trial of more than 950 patients, 26% of patients taking 80mg and 30% of patients taking 100mg of the drug showed that NASH activity like swelling had been reduced. Pharma hasn't found a way to treat NASH yetThe pharma industry has been watching NASH for a while.

Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, the longtime DJ on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, has died, according to his wife. Boss was pronounced dead just before 11:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday in Encino, the medical examiner said. Stephen 'tWitch' Boss in 2018. Holker Boss said her husband valued family, friends and community, adding that "leading with love and light was everything to him." Ellen DeGeneres said she was left “heartbroken” by news of Boss’ death, calling him "pure love and light."

☆ Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, Dancer and Executive Producer on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ Dies at 40
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Joseph Pisani | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Stephen “tWitch” Boss, a dancer and longtime sidekick on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” has died. He was 40 years old. “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to share my husband Stephen has left us,” his wife, Allison Holker Boss , said in a statement Wednesday. “Stephen, we love you, we miss you, and I will always save the last dance for you.”

☆ Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, DJ for ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ dead at 40
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Lisa Respers France | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the amiable DJ for “Ellen DeGeneres Show” and dancer who rose to fame on “So You Think You Can Dance,” has died, his wife, fellow dancer Allison Holker Boss, confirmed in a statement to CNN. “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to share my husband Stephen has left us,” Holker Boss said in a statement. “I have always been that type ‘Don’t tell me what I won’t do,’” Boss said. Literally, we danced and we were together holding hands the very next day,” Holker Boss added. Boss’ final Instagram post on Monday showed him and Holker Boss dancing in front of a Christmas tree.

☆ 11-year-old British boy beats Einstein and Hawking on Mensa IQ test
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Sakshi Venkatraman | Sakshi Venkatraman Is A Reporter For Nbc Asian America. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +1 min

His performance beats those of physicists Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, who were both estimated to have IQs around 160. Mensa, an international society open to high-IQ individuals, confirmed Shah's score to NBC News, saying he placed in the top 2% of the population and "has great potential." Shah's father, Irfan, told the Post that when his son was 7, he discovered a mathematical phenomenon that he couldn't explain. But Shah's parents said they're teaching him to nurture his work ethic and social life in addition to his natural abilities. “I still tell him that ‘your dad is still smarter than you,’” Shah's father told the Post.

Many users go to great lengths to secure their social media accounts — but one TikTok creator is showing people that their profiles aren’t as private as they seem. She responded with a stitched video — a video a TikTok creator combines another video on TikTok. His name wasn’t in his profile, and he uses different usernames across social media. Despite speculation by viewers that she pays for public records or uses computer programs to find people, she clarified that she uses only social media and Google. On Twitter, academics praised her for effectively illustrating gaps in social media privacy.

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