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☆ 10 smart real-estate investing strategies to follow now as nationwide home prices begin falling, according to a housing industry guru and investor
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

BiggerPockets' Dave Meyer predicts a year ripe with uncertainty for the real estate sector. Real estate investor and expert Dave Meyer has good news: national home prices are due for a decline in 2023. But alongside the coming correction, Meyer warned investors that the real estate sector will also include its fair share of obstacles and volatility this year. What's more, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to real estate investing, since housing markets are highly diverged between regions. Homebuyers need to stay calmIn addition to those three pieces of advice, Meyer shared seven more real estate investing strategies to consider this year in his 2023 real estate market outlook report.

☆ Bayer says chemicals farmers use to fight insects are safe, but it's more complicated than that, says its ESG head
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Catherine Boudreau | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The European Union, also in 2018, banned some pesticides that Bayer makes because scientists and regulators linked them to deaths of bees. "It felt like we were on the grill at a barbecue," Kunz, Bayer's head of environmental, social, and governance strategy, told Insider. Beyond neonicotinoids, Kunz said Bayer's strategy to meet its environmental targets involved what he called a more systems-based approach. Bayer also makes digital tools that help farmers apply fertilizer and pesticides more precisely, which can dramatically reduce how much they're needed, Kunz said. Bayer's sustainability efforts are attracting at least some ESG investors and ratings firms.

☆ Shake Shack unveils fine dining-inspired white truffle menu: 'It's something nobody else could do the way we could'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Nicolas Vega | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

"We thought it was something that nobody else could do in the way we could do it," Shake Shack chief marketing officer Jay Livingston tells CNBC Make It. Starting Feb. 10, Shake Shack restaurants nationwide will be offering a trio of items made using white truffle: a beef burger, a mushroom burger and fries served with white truffle sauce. Shake Shack is no stranger to introducing limited edition menu items, but the burger chain's latest offering may be its most luxurious creation yet. The company worked with luxury food importer Regalis Foods to come up with a way to incorporate white truffle into its menus without asking customers to break the bank and also avoiding the artificial flavors that cheaper truffle oils use. Shake Shack will offer the menu for about three months, though Livingston noted that availability will ultimately be decided by customer demand.

☆ I thought my financial analyst job for a tech company was my dream career, but I hated it. Here are the 3 signs that told me it was time to quit
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-04 | by ( Dayana Sabatin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Dayana Sabatin left a six-figure tech job after six months because she was miserable. But it wasn't always this wayFive years ago, I was working as a financial analyst at a tech company, with a $100,000 salary. I saw what my life was going to look like in 20 to 30 years, and the thought terrified me. Here are a few signs you should pay attention to if you're trying to figure out if it's time to quit your job. It's okay that the job you thought you'd love isn't actually suited for you — and it's okay to start over.

☆ Sustainable Packaging Is Sometimes Doubling as Easier-to-Open Packaging
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Katie Deighton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Sarah Ryan Hudson found the Barbie’s Dr. Jane Goodall packaging to be a welcome departure from the hard-to-open versions of her youth. The costs involved in overhauling packaging systems also made them reluctant to change for the benefit of a less-finicky opening experience. To be sure, shifts toward more sustainable materials haven’t made packaging easier to use across the board, and campaigners for widely accessible packaging say companies aren’t moving to provide it quickly enough. The company’s Gillette razor brand in 2021 began selling some razors in cardboard packaging with a pulp tray, rather than in plastic blister packs and trays. Colgate-Palmolive Co. in 2019 introduced a recyclable Colgate toothpaste tube, using a high-density polyethylene material without aluminum, said Greg Corra, Colgate-Palmolive’s worldwide director of global packaging and sustainability.

The sharp contrast with Bolsonaro, who criticized environmental agents, was a relief to some scientists concerned that the retreating Amazon rainforest may be near a point of no return. Ibama's staffing and resources expanded in Lula's 2003-2010 presidency, when he managed to reduce Amazon deforestation by 72%. Rodrigo Agostinho, whom Lula tapped to run Ibama, told Reuters in an interview that the agency now has about 350 active field agents for all of Brazil. That is less than half what it had at the start of Bolsonaro's term and well below the 2,000 field agents at the peak of its powers, he added. Sidelining Ibama, Bolsonaro deployed the military to protect the Amazon, but their inexperience in conservation failed to lower deforestation while running up a massive bill.

REUTERS/Phil NobleCOVENTRY, England, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Developing fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) that can go everywhere has proven harder and more expensive than expected, but investors are continuing to fund startups that target simpler self-driving vehicle solutions far removed from pedestrians and other vehicles operated by unpredictable humans. Earlier promises made by robotaxi companies of operating fleets of vehicles by the early 2020s have fallen well short. BMW iVentures has also invested in AV truck technology firm Kodiak Robotics, which managing partner Sage said has adopted a simpler approach to areas like mapping. Construction and agricultural equipment - used off-road in low-traffic environments - has been another growth area for AV startups. U.S. agricultural equipment maker AGCO Corp (AGCO.N), for instance, is using the Palo Alto, California-based startup's software for an experimental automated electric planter.

☆ You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

Photo illustration by Bráulio Amado Talk You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction“People feel a kind of longing for a belonging to the natural world,” says the author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. I am deeply aware of the fact that my view of the natural world is colored by my home place. But I don’t think that’s the same as romanticizing nature. Of course the natural world is full of forces that are so-called destructive. The story that we have to illuminate is that we don’t have to be complicit with destruction.

☆ Myanmar army set to cement rule with tough new election criteria
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Richard Horsey, senior adviser to the International Crisis Group, who was based in Myanmar for 15 years, said the rules aimed to restore a political system the military can control. Who would fund a political party right now?" The junta says it is committed to democracy and seized power because of unaddressed violations in a 2020 election won in a landslide by the ruling NLD. The NLD in November described the election as "phoney" and said it would not acknowledge it. The election has also been dismissed as a sham by Western governments.

☆ 'Outright negative' on stocks: JPMorgan's Marko Kolanovic braces for correction, hard landing
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Stephanie Landsman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

JPMorgan's Marko Kolanovic is abstaining from the early 2023 rally. Instead, the Institutional Investor hall-of-famer is bracing for a 10% or more correction in the first half of this year, telling investors he's "outright negative" on the market. So, that has to clash at some point," the firm's chief market strategist and global research co-head told CNBC's "Fast Money" on Tuesday. "We think things first turn south, get much worse," said Kolanovic. Kolanovic believes they helped create a narrative the worse is behind us and a recession "somehow magically " happened last year.

But to reach its ultimate destination - supermarket shelves - cultivated meat faces big obstacles, five executives told Reuters. California-based cultivated meat company GOOD Meat already has an application pending with the FDA, which has not been previously reported. Regulatory approval is just the first hurdle for making cultivated meat accessible to a broad swath of consumers, executives at UPSIDE, Mosa Meat, Believer Meats, and GOOD Meat told Reuters. But it will take hundreds of millions of dollars for GOOD Meat, for example, to build bioreactors of the size needed to make its meat at scale, Tetrick said. But cultivated meat companies have the advantage that they can claim their product is real meat, Tetrick said.

☆ Retail CEO crisis: why the industry's top job is suddenly the hardest to fill
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Matthew Kish | Avery Hartmans | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

It's the surest sign yet of a crisis facing the retail industry. Supply chains got snarled, shoppers stopped visiting stores, and stimulus payments spiked demand, each making it difficult to measure how business was doing. Then stimulus payments sent demand for everything from sneakers to home goods spiking while supply chains snarled. And just when supply chains started to sort themselves out, inflation hit, and shoppers started to scale back spending. Retail CEOs need 'peripheral vision'Workers at Starbucks stores and Amazon warehouses across the country have pushed to unionize, with many calling out the pay disparity between front-line workers and top executives.

☆ Alabama’s Weekslong Landfill Fire Prompts Locals to Report Illnesses
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Arian Campo-Flores | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A blaze ignited in the landfill near Moody, Ala., in late November for reasons that authorities say remain unclear. A fire that has been burning for nearly two months in a landfill northeast of Birmingham, Ala., has drawn complaints of headaches and nosebleeds from many residents, some of whom say they have moved away temporarily. The Environmental Protection Agency stepped in last week at the request of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, or ADEM, to try to extinguish it. Kay Ivey declared a limited state of emergency on Wednesday.

☆ With Great Salt Lake at rock bottom, lawmakers aim for rescue
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Evan Bush | Evan Bush Is A Science Reporter For Nbc News. He Can Be Reached At Evan.Bush Nbcuni.Com. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Water volume on the Great Salt Lake has dropped by more than two-thirds since pioneers once settled the Salt Lake Valley. Much of the lake surface is now exposed. Photographs of empty marinas and the cracking crust of the lake’s surface often illustrate the lake’s decline. The rivers and streams that feed The Great Salt Lake are overallocated, which means farmers and other water users collectively have rights to more water than what typically flows through each year. Spencer Cox last November closed the Great Salt Lake basin to appropriations for new water uses, effectively capping the line of water users wanting to use what flows into the lake.

☆ Digital twins are set for rapid adoption in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Bob Violino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

This avatar is a personalised, hyper-realistic, 3D, #seriezero digital twin that they can use to interact on digital platforms and in the metaverse. In life sciences, digital twins are being used to create twins of human organs, enabling new approaches to medical research and care, Diana said. "We are going to see digital twins adopted rapidly in 2023, in many different industries," Diana said. Digital twins are gaining momentum in adoption and sophistication as more organizations see positive outcomes from the early adopters, Barrington said. "As more twins of critical assets and processes come online, leaders will leverage digital twins to not only model and simulate their supply chain, but to optimize and automate a dynamic and intelligent supply chain model — all orchestrated by digital twins," Barrington said.

☆ 'Toadzilla': Australian park rangers discover record-breaking cane toad
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Aina J. Khan | Aina Is A Freelance Reporter With Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: 1 min

In the wild rainforest of Australia’s north, park rangers have stumbled upon a predator so large they felt they had no choice but to dub it “Toadzilla.”The giant cane toad was discovered Thursday by rangers who were conducting track work in Conway National Park in the state of Queensland. A snake slithering across the track beside the Conway Circuit serendipitously forced the team to stop their vehicle, Ranger Kylee Gray recounted, leading her to step out, look down and gasp when she spotted the toad. “I reached down and grabbed the cane toad and couldn’t believe how big and heavy it was,” Gray said in a statement from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science. “We believe it’s a female due to the size, and female cane toads do grow bigger than males,” Gray added in the statement. Though not this big, usually.

[1/3] Cane toad dubbed "Toadzilla" and believed by Australian park rangers to be the world's biggest toad is held by Queensland Department of Environment and Science Ranger Kylee Gray, in Conway National Park, Queensland, Australia January 12, 2023. Queensland Department Of Environment and Science/Handout via REUTERSSYDNEY, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Australian park rangers believe they have stumbled upon a record-breaking giant toad deep in a rainforest. Dubbed "Toadzilla", the cane toad, an invasive species that poses a threat to Australia's ecosystem, was spotted by "shocked" park ranger Kylee Gray during a patrol in Conway National Park in Queensland state on Jan. 12. Gray’s colleague, senior park ranger Barry Nolan, told Reuters the animal was euthanised due to its “ecological impact” — the usual fate for the toads across Australia. “A female cane toad like potentially Toadzilla would lay up to 35,000 eggs.

Reuters exclusively accompanied raids led by environmental agency Ibama in the rainforest state of Para to stop loggers and ranchers illegally clearing the forest. The agency has also launched raids this week in the states of Roraima and Acre, Ibama environmental enforcement coordinator Tatiane Leite said. Lula on the campaign trail last year pledged to put Ibama back in charge of combating deforestation with beefed-up funding and personnel. But Ibama agents told Reuters that they already felt more empowered by Lula announcing environmental protection as a top priority. His government instituted a gag order forbidding Ibama agents from speaking to the press, which agents say has already been reversed under Lula.

☆ A Solution Is in Sight for the ESG Controversy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Vivek Ramaswamy | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Last year’s ESG backlash spawned a vigorous debate about the use of environmental, social and governance factors in capital allocation. I met with numerous state financial officers, pension-fund boards, policy makers and corporate leaders who solicited my perspectives and those of competing asset managers as they grappled with fiduciary questions relating to ESG. These discussions appear to have prompted the Big Three asset managers—BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard—to undertake small reforms, likely aimed at mitigating legal liability risk. Vanguard withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (though it remains affiliated with at least four similar associations); BlackRock and State Street announced new proxy voter choice programs (albeit only for a fraction of client assets and thus far limiting third-party alternatives to proxy advisory firms that also promote ESG); all three began to offer greater transparency to states about their proxy voting policies (although they are still opaque about the content of most shareholder engagements, which Vanguard defines as “direct contact with companies to discourage undesirable corporate behavior”).

☆ Goldman Sachs' bad quarter is the result of environmental factors, says Steve Weiss
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailGoldman Sachs' bad quarter is the result of environmental factors, says Steve WeissSteve Weiss, chief investment officer and managing partner of Short Hills Capital Partners LLC, joins 'Closing Bell Overtime' to discuss Goldman Sachs' earnings miss, the environmental factors impacting the company's margins and Moderna's RSV vaccine news.

☆ Market environment was one of the worst imaginable in 2022, insurer Allianz says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Sam Meredith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

The chief executive of Allianz on Tuesday said that the German insurer proved to be "very resilient" through what he described as one of the worst market environments imaginable in 2022. Bäte said that 2022 saw Allianz post record customer satisfaction levels and claimed its employee satisfaction was "beating almost every company in the world." Asked how difficult it is for the company to invest, Bäte replied, "2022 was one of the worst, in terms of environment, that you can imagine. "We are now benefitting tremendously from rates rising in the insurance business … but it has not been priced yet. It is recently that people have come to understand that the higher rates are really, really good for us as a life insurer," Bäte said.

☆ Tackling the threat of mudslides in soaked California
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

Matt Udkow / Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP fileWhy is California prone to mudslides? Since New Year’s Eve, the California Department of Conservation’s landslide mapping team has documented more than 300 landslides. Lancaster said California has dramatically increased its efforts to identify hotspots since the Montecito mudslides. After the 2018 mudslides hit Montecito, the Los Angeles Times reported that debris basins above the community were undersized and hadn’t been sufficiently emptied. The organization hired an engineering company to map the canyons and installed debris nets.

Issuance of bonds tied to environmental, social and governance (ESG) themes grossed $142 billion in Asia Pacific last year, barely below the record $144 billion of 2021, according to data from Refinitiv. Major EM ESG issuance Asia, Europe and USParticipants say the 2022 issuance in Asia was fuelled on the supply side by the gargantuan task of greening Asia's energy grid and by low yuan interest rates in top issuer China, where investment from domestic institutions supported prices. Chinese entities issued 59.3% of the ESG bonds in the Asia-Pacific region in 2022, with total proceeds totaling $84 billion, up about 6% from $80 billion in 2021. "Domestic capital markets in Asia have been developing over many years, and are quite deep today," he said. Major EM ESG issuance Major EM ESG issuanceGlobally, ESG issuance fell last year as debt markets became turbulent, while investors pulled cash from funds devoted to sustainable investment for the first time in more than a decade as soaring prices for fossil fuel stocks, which they exclude, hurt their relative performance.

☆ Conagra CFO Doesn’t See Need for Big Price Increases in Near Term
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Jennifer Williams-Alvarez | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

Photo: Conagra Brands“We won’t have any more significant price increases unless our cost, our inflation estimate, starts to go back up,” Mr. Marberger said. The reading comes amid moderating price increases after a peak of 9.1% in June. I never, ever remember that kind of a price increase,” Mr. Marberger said. “They are now turning the corner and from here are going to need less rapid price increases, unless some other price shocks occur.”Conagra’s sales volumes fell 8.4% for the quarter ended Nov. 27 as customers responded to the price increases, the company said. “And that plays well for us.”Overall, Conagra’s customers—which include retailers Walmart Inc. and Kroger Co. —have accepted the price increases, Mr. Marberger said.

☆ Walmart bans single-use bags in more stores
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

New York CNN —Walmart will eliminate single-use paper and plastic carryout bags at the register from stores in New York, Connecticut and Colorado this month. The company previously stopped giving out single-use plastic bags in New York and Connecticut and in some areas in Colorado. Plastic-bag bans reduce the number of these bags in stores and encourage customers to bring reusable bags or pay a small fee for paper bags. In New Jersey, a ban on single-use plastic and paper bags has meant grocery delivery services have switched to heavy-duty bags. Reusable bags — cloth totes or thicker, more durable plastic bags — aren’t a perfect solution, either, unless they are actually reused.

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