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☆ Colombia suspends ceasefire with Estado Mayor Central rebels in some areas
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Luis Jaime Acosta | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BOGOTA, May 22 (Reuters) - Colombia's government on Monday suspended a national ceasefire with the Estado Mayor Central (EMC) armed group in some provinces, following the murder of four Indigenous teenagers. The EMC was founded by dissident former members of the now-demobilized FARC rebels, who reject a 2016 peace deal signed by that group. "The current bilateral ceasefire with this armed group in the provinces of Meta, Caqueta, Guaviare and Putumayo is suspended and all offensive operations are reactivated," the government said in a statement. The EMC has an estimated 3,500 members, including nearly 2,200 combatants, and operates in 23 of Colombia's 32 provinces, according to security force documents. Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; editing by John StonestreetOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ China-Taiwan tensions could grip 2024 election as top business leaders sound alarms
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Kevin Breuninger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +12 min

China's policy regarding Taiwan, the world's leader in the semiconductor industry, could end up making it an even bigger focus. The cross-strait strife has already provoked commentary from some top contenders in the Republican presidential primary race who have stressed the need to deter a possible Chinese invasion invasion of the island. But I think ultimately what I think China respects is strength," DeSantis said. 'Like trying to separate conjoined twins'But the political will to defend Taiwan in a Chinese invasion may clash with economic forces. Some CEOs of America's biggest banks have said they would pull their business from China if directed to do so following an invasion of Taiwan.

☆ We got an inside look at a presentation showing the future of Microsoft's $20 billion health-tech acquisition. It revealed how new AI models could transform how we go to the doctor.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-11 | by ( Blake Dodge | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Microsoft bought Nuance in 2022 for nearly $20 billion to expand its reach in healthcare. CHICAGO — In 2022, Microsoft bought Nuance for nearly $20 billion to supercharge its growth in the healthcare industry. It's the first tool in Nuance's pipeline to combine the company's own AI models with that of OpenAI, ChatGPT's creator and a deep Microsoft partner. Even back in 2015, enthusiasm for the idea was palpable, Peter Durlach, Nuance's chief strategy officer, told Insider in April. In a conference presentation, Andrea Barrett, a physician assistant and Nuance consultant, demonstrates products using generative AI.

☆ A man took his Tesla on a road trip for the first time and tells EV owners to beware of the 'charging curve'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Last month, Ryan Shelton took his 2017 Tesla Model S on a road trip for the first time. Ryan Shelton bought his Tesla a year ago but hadn't taken it on a road trip until April. The terrain trapShelton's trip took so long because of the route's hilly terrain. "I was going through these canyons, so I'm going really, really high uphills and really up and down, up and down, up and down," he said. The terrain and camp mode forced Shelton to twice charge his Tesla, which took three hours each time.

☆ Obesity is a chronic disease. It's why treating it will be so profitable unless payers push back
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Christina Cheddar Berk | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Lilly manufactures tirzepatide, which is sold under the brand name Mounjaro as a type 2 diabetes treatment. It's the chronic nature of obesity that will make these drugs so profitable, analysts have said. Huynh increased his target due to higher expectations for Mounjaro sales this year. Huynh boosted his prediction for the drug's sales this year to $3.7 billion from an prior estimate of $2.7 billion. "$48 billion is a monster number," Holz said, referring to an annual sales estimate that Bank of America has floated for future Mounjaro sales.

☆ Meet Blake Resnick, a 23-year-old college dropout who went on to win a Peter Thiel-backed fellowship, supplies drones to Ukraine, and is now worth over $100 million
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Blake Resnick, the founder and CEO of Brinc Drones, is now worth $100 million, per Bloomberg. After the shooting, he cold-called the lieutenant in charge of the Las Vegas SWAT team to ask about technology that could've helped the police identify and stop an active shooter. Born in Las Vegas to a doctor and a special education teacher, Resnick's adventures with science began early on in his childhood. At 14, he built a nuclear fusion reaction in his parent's garage in Las Vegas, according to a bio on his website. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Resnick features among the Forbes 30 under 30 list of achievers in the age group in 2021 and 2022.

☆ A millennial who grew his net worth to $600,000 explains what it took to dig his way out of debt after overcoming a gambling addiction
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Jacob Zinkula | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Ambus Hunter, 36, said he almost went broke when he became addicted to gambling over a decade ago. His net worth is now about $600,000, and he works part time as a financial coach. Over the course of just four weeks, he said he lost roughly $10,000 — almost all his savings — playing roulette. Hunter said he'd had one major hiccup since he committed to quitting gambling but that he was able to get back on track. He said he set out to quickly replace the roughly $10,000 he'd lost.

☆ Why Paris is one of the few cities in the world banning rental e-scooters
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-09 | by ( Eliza Relman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Transportation experts say the Paris ban doesn't necessarily mean much for the growth of micromobility. The diverging approaches to rental e-scooters by major cities around the world reflects the technology's chaotic rollout over the last few years and an inability for cities to keep up with sufficient regulations, experts say. Either way, experts say the regulatory environment in Paris and many other places just hasn't been able to keep up. Transportation experts say Paris' ban isn't necessarily reflective of how the public in that city — or any — feels about e-scooters. Despite the setback in Paris, transportation experts say electric vehicles of all sorts, from e-scooters, to e-bikes, to electric buses, are the future of transport in cities around the world.

☆ Chip stocks posted their best quarter since 2020. What's next for the sector and why the rally may fade
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Chip stocks made a breathtaking comeback in the first quarter, but don't be surprised if the rally gives up some of its gains, investors warn. The semiconductor sector on Friday wrapped up its best quarter since 2020 as investors rotated back into the downtrodden industry, with names like Nvidia notching its best quarterly stretch since 2001. The recent tear in semiconductor stocks brings the sector into overbought territory versus non-financial cyclicals, said Credit Suisse's Andrew Garthwaite in a recent note. Like many investors, Niles views Nvidia as a dominant AI play despite its rich valuation . While the stock's given those gains, many investors viewed the print as a sign of a bottom.

☆ Google Bard is already behind in the AI wars with OpenAI and Microsoft
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Google Bard, the search firm's answer to ChatGPT, has underwhelmed early testers. Users in the US and UK trying out the AI chatbot find it pales in comparison to OpenAI's tech. The makers of the Twofer Goofer word puzzle found ChatGPT was much better at solving the brainteasers than Google's Bard. It's possible that the company does have a super impressive AI tool up its sleeve. Insider's Hugh Langley reported earlier in March that Google employees are testing a more intelligent version of Bard, nicknamed "Big Bard."

☆ About 250 Boeing employees were working on Air Force One planes with expired security clearance, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Boeing mistakenly allowed workers without the proper security clearance to fly on Air Force One. The company said it alerted the Air Force immediately about the issue and is working to fix it. A Boeing spokesperson said the company caught its mistake earlier this month and quickly reported it to the Air Force. As a result, the Air Force pulled the affected workers off the schedule until their clearances were back up to date. This isn't the first stumbling block Boeing has recently encountered in its work with Air Force One.

☆ Brands like Pepsi, Ally, Mondelēz, and Coty reveal how they've scored big returns by advertising in video games
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Ryan Joe | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

More than half the US population plays video games, and advertisers are pouring billions into the space. Brands as diverse as Pepsi, Ally, Mondelēz, and Coty have all been successfully using video games as an advertising medium to drive big results. Advertising in video games represents a big opportunity for brands to get in front of a large, engaged audience. Video game advertising requires a lot of collaborationOne of the biggest challenges brands face when advertising in video games is getting alignment across the company. Another difficulty brands face is developing a video game campaign that's not just a one-off.

☆ Credit Suisse blunders undermine CEO’s repair job
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Liam Proud | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Credit Suisse said on Thursday it would not publish its 2022 annual report on the day, as previously planned, prompting its shares to fall by roughly 5%. The scarcest commodity at Credit Suisse right now is confidence, among both its clients and investors. Follow @liamwardproud on TwitterCONTEXT NEWSCredit Suisse on March 9 said it would delay the publication of its 2022 annual report. In the same annual report, Credit Suisse also changed the way it accounted for past share-based compensation, certain non-cash exchange rate movements and hedges. Shares in Credit Suisse were down 4.9% to 2.55 Swiss francs as of 0956 GMT on March 9.

☆ Netflix's expected password-sharing crackdown puts college students on edge
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Noah Sheidlower | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Sam Figiel, a sophomore at Mercer University in Georgia, said access to Netflix is required for many of his peers' classes. Yet the gradual password-sharing changes have created uncertainty for college students who might not have, or want to spend, disposable income for their own subscriptions. People in the 18-to-34 age group, which accounts for 30% of all Netflix users, are more likely to exchange passwords than older viewers. "There are a lot, lot, lot of U.S. users that are not paying for it, and so I think they're very sensitive to the backlash that they're going to get when they institute this," Nollen said. Staying or leavingEven if the cost of a subscription could rise for borrowers, some college students think Netflix is too important to give up.

☆ SAP ends pointless M&A roundtrip with Qualtrics
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Karen Kwok | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

For SAP Chief Executive Christian Klein, an exit would cap a relatively pointless M&A roundtrip. In theory, SAP could have supercharged the groups’ combined revenue by offering its software to Qualtrics’ customers and vice versa. Silver Lake, a specialist in tech buyouts, is well-placed to keep that growing. One potential hiccup is that Qualtrics’ fairly paltry EBITDA limits how much debt Silver Lake can use. SAP paid $8 billion in cash for Qualtrics in 2018, and subsequently offloaded a minority stake through an initial public offering in 2021.

☆ SpaceX Cleared for Space-Station Crew Launch After Delay
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Micah Maidenberg | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Preparing for the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday. SpaceX is slated to launch a crew to the International Space Station early Thursday, a makeup date for a mission that the company and NASA scrubbed earlier this week due to a technical issue. The delay was a rare hiccup in SpaceX’s work handling high-profile human space flights for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Elon Musk-led rocket company has conducted six of those missions for NASA since 2020, when it blasted off the first astronauts from the U.S. in close to a decade.

☆ Boeing shares fall after new Dreamliner delivery halt
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Feb 24 (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) shares fell 3.2% in premarket trading on Friday after the U.S. planemaker temporarily halted deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner jets over a documentation issue related to a fuselage component. Some analysts said the latest hiccup in 787 deliveries should not result in any design changes and jets in service should continue to fly. Seifman said the brokerage believes this should not result in additional rework and that Boeing can produce the required documentation fairly quickly. Since the resumption of deliveries, production of the 787 has experienced some disruptions as the planemaker battles supply and labor shortages. Earlier this month, Spirit said the process of retrofitting stored fuselages for the 787 jets was taking longer than expected.

☆ Three Years Into Covid, We Still Don’t Know How to Talk About It
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Jon Mooallem | Photographs Ashley Gilbertson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +53 min

It will play out and reverberate for years or decades, Hagen told me. “The pathological normal,” Hagen calls it: a patchwork of homespun, bespoke realities, each one invested in a different story about what exactly happened when Covid ruptured the story of our lives. garb.”More than once, life seemed to be attaining “an uncanny resemblance to normal life,” as one man put it. But because we don’t totally understand where that experience has delivered us, we don’t know the right gloss to give it. “The days are strange,” one public-school teacher told Milstein toward the end of his first interview, in May 2020.

☆ Vietnam exporters fret over potential trade fallout of U.S. rules on Xinjiang
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Francesco Guarascio | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Vietnam posted a $116 billion trade surplus with the United States last year, led by shipments of goods such as electronics, clothing and footwear. The solar panel sector could be particularly at risk, as it greatly relies on polysilicon for solar cells, whose global production is concentrated in Xinjiang. Alongside other Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam accounts for about 80% of U.S. panel supplies, and Vietnam's panel exports to the United States were worth $3.4 billion in 2020. First Solar did not use polysilicon in its panels, but competitors in Vietnam did, he said, without identifying any companies. In addition to First Solar, the top solar panel makers in Vietnam are mostly Chinese companies, according to investment consultancy Dezan Shira.

☆ Morning Bid: Winging it
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Ahead of the match, one statistic that blew this Englishman's mind was the sheer volume of chicken wings that were set to be consumed over Super Bowl weekend. In a report released earlier this month, the National Chicken Council said Americans were expected to chow down on 1.45 billion chicken wings, an increase of 2% from last year, or the equivalent of 84 million wings. Well, if you're looking for deflation, chicken wings are the place to find it. The report is expected to show consumer prices rose at an annual pace of 6.2% in January, down from 6.5% in December and well below June's four-decade peak of 9.1%. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Tulsa couple finally receives a refund from Starbucks after being charged a $4,000 tip for two coffees
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

After contacting the company, Jesse O'Dell told Fox 23 News the first checks they received as a refund bounced. As of Friday morning, checks reissued by Starbucks have cleared, the couple told Fox 23 News. When a confused Deedee checked the account, she noticed the strange deduction, Fox 23 News reported. "For this to happen was just a real it was a real shock," Deedee O'Dell told Fox 23 News. Jesse O'Dell now has a Starbucks receipt depicting the $4,444 charge and encourages others to always "ask for a receipt" and check it.

☆ Twitter's San Francisco headquarters is reportedly filled with makeshift beds and 'the worst coffee vendors on Earth'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter employees at it SF headquarters said the company is a much less attractive place to work, Platform reports. But many employees of the company are not exactly happy with the changes Musk has brought — especially those who work at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, according to the Platformer newsletter. Breakfast and lunch were once free at the San Francisco headquarters. Added to that, the makeshift bedrooms Musk organized at the San Francisco headquarters are still there, and employees have to reserve them in advance, Platformer reported. The landlord of the company's San Francisco headquarters sued Twitter in January for failing to pay rent for two months.

Buying a Super Bowl can be a big risk because it's a big investment months ahead of the game. Diageo CEO Ivan Menezes said during the company's January earnings call that its brand Crown Royal will run its first Super Bowl ad this year. Anheuser-Busch's move is an indication that the sky-high price of running a Super Bowl ad is getting harder for companies to justify. Bookings typically happen in May, said one ad agency exec who's purchased many Super Bowl ads for clients, including this year. Super Bowl ad slots sold briskly for both Fox this year and NBC last year.

☆ Did the economy end 2022 with a bang or a whimper?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Paul R. La Monica | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

But the United States economy still seems to be chugging along just fine after experiencing a hiccup in the first half of 2022. Despite worries about weaker consumer spending during the holidays, economists are forecasting solid growth for the fourth quarter. Yearning for earningsMore blue chip companies will report fourth quarter results (and perhaps give guidance about the first quarter of 2023 and beyond) this week. But according to FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters, earnings for the tech sector are expected to fall nearly 10% in the fourth quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. Verizon (VZ), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Travelers (TRV), 3M (MMM), Boeing (BA), Dow (DOW), Visa (V), Chevron (CVX) and American Express (AXP).

☆ Alameda liquidators just lost $72,000 on a DeFi lending platform while trying to recover funds for creditors, analytics firm says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Alameda liquidators lost $72,000 worth of crypto while trying to recover funds, per a report from Arkham Intelligence. Essentially, liquidators have been trying to consolidate assets from Alameda into a single wallet to simplify managing its holdings. As the team was trying to move funds and exit positions, they accidentally liquidated themselves on Aave, a DeFi lending protocol. Around $1.4 million worth of tokens have been returned to the central wallet from various Alameda wallets over the past two weeks. The wallet holds around $19.6 million worth of ether and $140 million of various other cryptocurrencies, The Block reported Thursday.

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