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☆ Europe wants to ban Russian diamond imports. What comes next?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Anna Cooban | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

“Russian diamonds are not forever,” European Council President Charles Michel said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday. Tatyana Makeyeva/ReutersA ban on Russian diamonds could inflate prices for European consumers, especially if diamond production elsewhere doesn’t ramp up. The biggest task facing Europe is how to design an air-tight ban that prevents Russian diamonds from arriving in the bloc through circuitous routes. “There are a lot of Russian diamonds that still get sold within the American economy,” he said. “If you really want to close loopholes, you need to find a system that prevents [Russian] diamonds going to the G7 market,” Neys said.

May 16 (Reuters) - French video game producer Ubisoft (UBIP.PA) posted the biggest operating loss in company's history on Tuesday but stuck to its guidance for the current financial year, citing a renewed focus on blockbuster titles. The maker of the hit "Rainbow Six" franchise posted a full-year non-IFRS operating loss of 500.2 million euros ($550.6 million), in line with a target announced in its January profit warning. The family-run firm has been dogged by game cancellations and delays in recent years, booking a writedown estimate of around 500 million euros in 2022 due to research and development expenses. The Paris-listed publisher confirmed its estimate for a full-year core profit of around 400 million euros, while forecasting first-quarter net bookings of around 240 million euros. ($1 = 0.9084 euros)Reporting by Victor Goury-Laffont and Enrico Sciacovelli; Editing by Jan HarveyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Opinion | We Could Easily Make Risky Virological Research Safer
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( David Wallace-Wells | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The 2007 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain was traced to a faulty drainage pipe at a research facility. In 2015 the Department of Defense discovered that a germ-warfare program in Utah had mistakenly mailed almost 200 samples of live anthrax over 12 years. Lab accidents happen, and they aren’t especially rare. In January the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity issued a series of draft recommendations for tightening regulation and oversight. And many of those who see the Covid pandemic as merely the sort of pathogenic disaster that lab accidents might cause agree that greater safety is needed.

Researchers have also sought to quantify fairness and bias in AI models through various socio-ethnic parameters. For example, Stanford University's artificial intelligence index report scores for bias across AI models. It found a "counterintuitive" correlation between fairness and bias: models that scored better on fairness metrics demonstrated stronger gender bias, and less gender-biased models were more toxic. Driving AI technology advancements — being a "key player or enabler across the AI ecosystem to make businesses and society better." Some investors believe AI itself can help investors monitor and track ESG efforts by companies.

May 8 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) agreed to pay $215 million to settle a class action alleging widespread bias against women in pay and promotions, ending one of the highest-profile lawsuits claiming unequal treatment of women on Wall Street. In a well-known 1990s case, Smith Barney settled charges that men harassed women in a space known as the "Boom-Boom Room." "This settlement will help the women I had in mind when I filed the case," Orlich said in a statement. The settlement also calls for Goldman to hire independent experts to analyze its gender pay gaps and performance evaluation processes. In 2020, the bank said it aimed for 40% of vice presidents to be women within five years.

☆ Wall Street is empowering its employees to build their own tech tools. But who is keeping track of all this stuff?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A story about training non-tech workers that has nothing to do with ChatGPT? Man Group, a $144 billion investment firm, has a popular training program to get non-tech workers up to speed on coding and data-science. Programs like <develop>, along with the rise of ChatGPT, speak to a wider trend across Wall Street of enabling employees to build their own tools despite not having a background in tech. Empowering people to build their own tools and apps to streamline their work seems great on paper. Read more about how Man Group teaches non-tech workers programming skills that help them save time.

And Ecuadorian authorities have struggled to tackle this public security crisis “efficiently because it is mired in (a) political crisis,” González says. Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso is at the center of this storm, and his popularity has tanked amid widespread discontent with spiraling crime rates. Before President Guillermo Lasso took office, Ecuador had already become a key transit hub for cocaine due to its location between Peru and Colombia. Lasso told Ecuador’s legislative commission investigating him that he had not evaded taxes and that his tax trajectory was legally supported. Members of unions and civil society groups march on International Workers' Day to demand that Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso, who is facing an impeachment process, leave office on May 1, 2023.

☆ European consumer sentiment becoming more positive, says Pandora CEO
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailEuropean consumer sentiment becoming more positive, says Pandora CEOAlexander Lacik, CEO at Pandora, discusses first-quarter earnings, and explains how the company is navigating uncertain macroeconomic conditions.

☆ Opinion | We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora’s Boxes
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Thomas L. Friedman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Well, if you are most worried about China beating America in A.I., you want to turbocharge our A.I. If you want to truly democratize A.I., you might want to open-source its code. systems will compound discrimination, privacy violations and other divisive societal harms, the way social networks do, you want regulations now. That last danger is real enough that on Monday Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneering designers of A.I. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton told The Times’s Cade Metz.

☆ 2023 layoff tracker: The latest on which companies have announced job cuts
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Jennifer Korn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +20 min

New York CNN —BuzzFeed, Lyft, Whole Foods and Deloitte all recently announced layoffs affecting thousands of US workers. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced in March, Meta’s headcount will fall to around 66,000 — a total reduction of about 25%. The company announced in January that it was eliminating some 18,000 positions as part of a major cost-cutting bid at the e-commerce giant. IndeedJob listing website Indeed.com announced cuts of approximately 2,200 employees, representing almost 15% of its total workforce, the company said in March. The cuts come after the company announced several rounds of job cuts throughout the pandemic due to falling demand, followed by rapid hiring last year.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts poses during a group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., October 7, 2022. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday invited Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to testify next month before the panel about ethics reform of the court. Last week, the same news outlet reported that Thomas failed to disclose that Crow had purchased property from Thomas and his relatives, which included a house where Thomas' mother still lives. In his letter Thursday to Roberts, Durbin wrote, "Your last significant discussion of how Supreme Court Justices address ethical issues was presented in your 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary." A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not immediately respond to CNBC when asked if Roberts would accept Durbin's invitation to appear before the committee.

☆ Universal Music Group calls AI music a ‘fraud,’ wants it banned from streaming platforms. Experts say it’s not that easy
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Vanessa Yurkevich | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

New York CNN —Universal Music Group — the music company representing superstars including Sting, The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande — has a new Goliath to contend with: artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, and specifically AI music, learns by either training on existing works on the internet or through a library of music given to the AI by humans. That could possibly threaten UMG’s deep library of music and artists that generate billions of dollars in revenue. “However, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music … begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on.”The company said AI that uses artists’ music violates UMG’s agreements and copyright law. Grammy-winning DJ and producer David Guetta proved in February just how easy it is to create new music using AI.

☆ Bosses hate work from home because 'home' is for women
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Aki Ito | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

And the old way was clear: The office is for work, and the home is for — well, for whatever unpaid stuff it is that women do while their men are at work. Skeptical that work — real work — could be done at home, bosses quietly penalized the women who opted for flexible schedules by sticking them with boring assignments and denying them promotions. Embracing remote work is a good start, but it comes with risks of its own. Since the pandemic hit, I've heard a few CEOs liken remote work to opening Pandora's box. Women working from home are no longer the aberration — tradition-bound executives are.

☆ House GOP's attempt to shut down Alvin Bragg is unlikely to save Trump but could serve despots in training, say oversight experts
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Warren Rojas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Donald Trump's formal arraignment in Manhattan criminal court sent House Republicans into a tizzy. Stretton wondered about House Republicans' attempt to defang state prosecutors they consider to be political persecutors. "It's hard to say what overstepping bounds are any more," Davis told Insider. "When you defend somebody before you've even seen the indictment, you're kind of hitching your wagon to all the investigations," Goldberg told Insider. He also warned that spotlight-chasing House Republicans risk drowning in unfinished business at the end of the term by floating new Biden-focused inquiries "every couple of weeks."

☆ Leaders like Elon Musk want to pause AI development, but the power of the free market means it's impossible to stop
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Elon Musk and other business leaders signed a letter urging a six-month pause in AI development. From the moment the public was allowed to start testing OpenAI's GPT-3 in November, there was no stopping the bullet train of generative AI development. And the power of market forces means that there's no stopping the pace of AI development, even if companies like OpenAI wanted to. The train has left the station, and there's no going backSince November, and arguably even before, generative AI has been the technology on everyone's lips. Even if we wanted to pause AI development, there's not a clear way to enforce itThere's also the problem of enforcement.

☆ Billionaire LeBron James is 'the cheapest guy in the NBA,' won't pay for Elon Musk's Twitter Blue
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Nicolas Vega | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The 38-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star on Friday tweeted that he has no plans to pay for Elon Musk's Twitter Blue subscription, even if it means he loses his blue verification check mark on Apr. "Welp guess my blue ✔ will be gone soon cause if you know me I ain't paying the 5," James tweeted to his 52.8 million followers. Twitter Blue will actually cost $8 per month, not $5, though the distinction probably doesn't mean much to James, who once agreed that he was "the cheapest guy in the NBA." "I don't know how long this could last," James says in the film when asked why he won't pick up the tab. 1 as he pushes users to sign up for Twitter Blue.

☆ The bank failures have opened up Pandora's box, and the huge hole in banks' balance sheets isn't going away, strategist says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The recent banking failures have opened up a Pandora's box, TD strategist Priya Misra warned. The gaping hole in banks' balance sheets will remain even as volatility fades, she said. "I think you opened a Pandora's box and massive unrealized losses sitting on banks' balance sheets," she said, adding that banks would likely need to sell their assets or raise capital. "The market will have to get used to a Fed that's not being responsive enough," Misra warned. Other Wall Street analysts have warned of a recession to strike this year, which could weigh heavily on stocks.

☆ Fact Check-Video shows zombie-themed event in Indonesia
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

A video showing passengers encountering zombies at a train station from a zombie-themed event called ‘Train to Apocalypse’ organized in Indonesia has been shared online with false captions saying it shows a “zombie virus” in China. “Zombie virus spotted in china!,” states a tweet with more than 200,000 views sharing the clip (here) (archive.is/IUcOf). “We can confirm that the video is one footage of our previous event, Train to Apocalypse, organized by LRT Jakarta and Pandora Box,” a spokesperson for LRT Jakarta told Reuters. Other footage from the event can be found on Pandora Box’s Instagram account (here). Videos shows zombie-themed event in Indonesia, not an actual zombie virus outbreak.

☆ Elon Musk is right: AI needs to slow down for the good of society
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and over 1,000 others signed a letter calling for a pause on new AI models. Wozniak, Musk, and more than 1,000 other business leaders signed a letter seeking guardrails and a pause on training AI models as the technology grows more powerful. The letter argues powerful AI models like OpenAI's GPT-4 "should only be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable." It's hard to develop responsibly when the free market demands moving quicklyTo be clear, AI, particularly generative AI like ChatGPT, is incredibly transformative technology. Releasing powerful AI models for the public to play with before it's ready isn't making the technology better.

Joe Tacopino is Trump's lawyer for the Manhattan DA's probe into a hush-money payment made to Stormy Daniels. He has previously said on CNN that the exchange poses a "real problem" for Trump. "If it leads back to the Trump campaign funding, that's a big problem," Tacopino said back on March 18, 2018. "This is a real problem," Tacopino said, according to the report. Tacopino's 2018 comments are a far cry from his more recent statements as a possible indictment hangs over Trump's head.

Ever since it first released in 2021, it's been one of our top picks for the best smart display. If you're in the market for an Alexa smart display, the Echo Show 8 should be your first buy. Amazon Echo Show 8 Amazon's mid-range and mid-size Echo Show 8 is the best smart display in its current lineup. Everyone in your home will likely use a smart display a little differently. The Amazon Echo Show 8 is larger than the Echo Show 5, making watching videos a more enjoyable experience.

WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - China is "very carefully" watching how Washington and the world respond to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but has not yet crossed the line of providing lethal aid to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. "The stakes in Ukraine go well beyond Ukraine. However, he said he did not believe that China has been providing lethal aid to Moscow. "As we speak today, we have not seen them cross that line," Blinken told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, the first of four times he will testify to congressional committees this week. "The post-Cold War world is over, and there is an intense competition under way to determine what comes next," Blinken said.

☆ Fed Action Could Have Prevented SVB’s Collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-18 | by ( Hal Scott | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The Silicon Valley Bank crisis appears to demonstrate the danger of the Federal Reserve not properly performing one of its central functions: acting as a lender of last resort during a run. Thanks to the fall-off from venture-capital firms—its principal clientele—the bank was attracting less deposit funding. And it was maintaining a portfolio of long-dated Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities matched against short-term deposits. From a credit-risk perspective, SVB was much less risky than a standard bank making loans. Its issue was interest-rate risk: After a year’s worth of rate hikes, the losses on SVB’s portfolios couldn’t be offset by decreasing the value of deposits.

☆ Kellogg is giving its Pringles and Cheez-It business a new name with classical Latin twist. It's the latest company name to incorporate the 'dead' language.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Kellogg is renaming its snack business "Kellanova" — a combo of Kellogg and a Latin word for "new." Kellogg is naming its snacking division "Kellanova," the latest step in breaking up the company, it said on Wednesday. The name draws inspiration from the Kellogg name and a common Latin word, Kellogg CEO Steve Cahillane said in a statement. Etsy and Mondelez are among other companies with Latin namesKellanova is hardly the first company rebrand to draw inspiration from Latin. Before that, cigarette maker Philip Morris said it would change its name to "Altria" in an allusion to the Latin word for "high," the Journal reported in 2001.

☆ Four days of panic: How startup execs navigated SVB's meltdown and prepared for the worst
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Ari Levy | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

A Silicon Valley Bank worker talks with people lining up outside of the bank office on March 13, 2023 in Santa Clara, California. Refreshing GoogleOtter.ai founder and CEO Sam Liang spent Monday driving to SVB branches in Silicon Valley to try and retrieve millions of dollars of his company's money. "I checked Google like 20 times an hour, watched [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen talking about not bailing out Silicon Valley Bank." Silicon Valley Bank customers listen as FDIC representatives, left, speak with them before the opening of a branch SVBs headquarters in Santa Clara, California on March 13, 2023. "But at the moment, as long as Silicon Valley Bridge Bank is 100% federally guaranteed, there's no need to diversify.

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