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☆ BBC Staff Revolts Over Suspension of Sports Commentator for Political Tweets
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Max Colchester | David Luhnow | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

BBC sports commentator Gary Lineker was suspended after publishing tweets criticizing the U.K. government’s new policies on migrants. LONDON—The British Broadcasting Corp. has sparked one of its biggest crises in years by suspending its top sports commentator for criticizing the U.K. government on Twitter, leading to a staff rebellion and allegations that the state-funded broadcaster had compromised its independence by folding to government pressure. The venerable broadcaster yanked Gary Lineker, one of England’s most famous former football players and its highest paid presenter, from the country’s most watched football roundup show after he published tweets criticizing the government’s new policies on migrants, comparing them to Nazi Germany. The BBC said it considered Mr. Lineker’s “recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines” and said he “should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies.”

☆ Memphis approves police reforms after beating death of Tyre Nichols
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Daniel Trotta | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

March 7 (Reuters) - The Memphis City Council on Tuesday approved a series of police reforms in the wake of the death of Tyre Nichols following his beating by police during a Jan. 7 traffic stop, with more far-reaching measures under consideration. The death of Nichols, 29, an unarmed Black man, prompted outrage and calls for change. In the Nichols case, five officers, all Black, have been charged with second-degree murder. Some officers in the Nichols case drove unmarked cars and formed part of a special unit that has since been disbanded. A more far-reaching reform named the "Tyre Nichols Justice in Policing Ordinance" passed a first reading but needs to be heard by the council two more times to get approved.

☆ HelloFresh stops buying coconut milk from Thailand after videos show monkeys being forced to harvest the crop
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Joshua Zitser | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

HelloFresh will stop buying coconut milk sourced in Thailand, Axios reported. It revealed that monkeys on HelloFresh suppliers' coconut farms were being kept in poor conditions. PETA accused Suree and Aroy-D, HelloFresh's former coconut milk suppliers, of keeping monkeys chained on dirt patches with no protection from the elements. Major retailers, including Walmart, Target, and Costco, have already stopped selling coconut milk from certain Thai suppliers, but HelloFresh's move goes one step further, banning all coconut milk exports from the country. It's now calling on Whole Foods and other retailers to stop sourcing coconut milk from Thailand, it said in a press release.

☆ Biden's Education Secretary responds to student-loan borrowers with private debt who don't qualify for federal relief: 'We can control our loans. We can't control other loans'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Ayelet Sheffey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Miguel Cardona pushed back on opponents who say Biden's debt relief is unfair to those with private loans. He said the department "can't control other loans," responding to those with private debt. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments to the federal relief plan on Tuesday. He was asked what he would say to those who do not qualify for the federal relief, like borrowers with private loans. Shortly after Biden's debt relief was announced, the Education Department changed the eligibility requirements due to the rising legal challenges.

☆ Want the S&P 500 to gain 10% this year? A Super Bowl win by the Philadelphia Eagles may be your best bet
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-12 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs will face off in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday in Arizona. An analyst said historic data suggests a win by an NFC team will produce a 10% return for the S&P 500 this year. Maybe not," Detrick wrote about this year's Super Bowl. From that viewpoint, stock investors may want to see the Chiefs win their third Super Bowl. Before Sunday's game, the S&P 500 has risen about 6% in 2023, and there's been a rotation in market leadership since 2022's dismal end.

But unlike ICBC and its peers, Ant neither took deposits, nor piled risky loans onto its balance sheet. Free from the red tape that binds regular banks, the loans facilitated by Ant ballooned. Digital offerings accounted for half of overall consumer loans in China, Fitch Ratings calculated in 2021. Ant is set to become a licensed financial holding company, putting it under the close watch of China's main banking regulator. Beijing wants Chinese consumers to consume, so is likely to indulge controlled growth of consumer credit.

☆ Abuses Proliferate in Police Squads Like Memphis's Scorpion Unit
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Katherine Long | Jack Newsham | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +27 min

Street Crime Unit. Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesMemphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot.

☆ High yields have investors piling into money market funds. Here's what you need to know
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Michelle Fox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

High yields and a volatile stock market have investors piling into money market mutual funds. Yet for retail funds, inflows are still climbing — the week ended Jan. 18 saw a $4.97 billion increase into retail money market funds, to bring net assets to a total of $1.74 trillion. One thing to keep in mind is that a money market fund is not FDIC-insured, while a money market account at a bank is insured. "If your money market fund yield is lagging, you probably have a high expense money fund." The net asset value of money market funds is normally maintained at $1 share.

☆ Student who tracks Elon Musk's jet blasts sale of flight-tracking site he uses to keep tabs on aircraft
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Taylor Rains | Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Jet-tracking student Jack Sweeney is calling for people to boycott ADS-B Exchange. Sweeney uses the site to share flight data on celebrities, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Aviation data company JetNet said on Wednesday that it bought ADS-B Exchange, a free website that tracked thousands of commercial aircraft around the world. Sweeney uses ADS-B to follow certain aircraft, like those owned by Musk, Donald Trump, and Taylor Swift. He said he's looking for alternatives to ADS-B Exchange, like creating his own version or using another tracking websites, like Open Sky Network and airframe.io.

☆ Here's why employee-experience manager is one of the fastest-growing jobs in the US
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Employee-experience manager was fifth on LinkedIn's list of the fastest-growing jobs in the US. Insider spoke with Jack Lau, an employee-experience manager in the Bay Area, about what that's like. Behold: the employee-experience manager. I started five years ago as an office manager doing all the things office managers do. Is that when you became an employee-experience manager?

☆ Hedge fund industry lost $125 bln worth of assets in 2022 - HFR
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Nell Mackenzie | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Almost $125 billion worth of assets, from performance losses and asset flows, left the hedge fund industry in 2022, Hedge Fund Research (HFR) data showed on Friday in the latest sign of the havoc that volatility wreaked on the industry last year. Investors rethought putting their money into hedge funds, leading to a net outflow of $55 billion in assets, making it the largest capital flight from the industry since 2016, HFR said. A sharp change from 2021, when the industry saw a positive $15 billion of net inflows. The only kind of hedge fund strategy that saw an increase of investor money was the $4.3 billion that flew into event-driven mergers and acquisition and credit funds. The size of the hedge fund industry grew in the fourth quarter to $3.83 trillion, a quarterly increase of $44 billion, HFR said.

☆ Video shows man trying to grab barista through drive-thru window in kidnapping attempt, police say
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Minyvonne Burke | Minyvonne Burke Is A Senior Breaking News Reporter For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: 1 min

Disturbing video captured the moment a man tried to pull a barista through a drive-thru window in an alleged kidnapping attempt in Washington state. The Auburn Police Department posted the video on its Twitter page Monday and asked the public for help identifying the man. In the footage, the man grabs the woman's arm as she hands him what appears to be money. Police said the man "attempted to drag the victim through the window using a looped ziptie device." The woman yanked her arm back and the man drove off in a pickup truck.

☆ Apple gets its price target slashed by nearly 13% at Wedbush, but it says the tech giant's demand story still looks more resilient than Wall Street believes
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Apple's price target was cut by more than 12% to $175 at Wedbush Securities on Wednesday. Demand headwinds are creeping into Apple's growth story but the overall picture is more resilient than Wall Street is seeing, the firm said. It cut its price target on Apple by 12% to $175 from $200 and held onto its outperform rating. Meanwhile, Apple's underlying demand story still has more than 200 million iPhone units that haven't been upgraded in about four years. The new $175 price target reflects a more base-case valuation in an uncertain environment with some demand headwinds starting to creep into Apple's growth story, said Ives.

☆ What's next after a brutal year for tech? Market watchers share their views — and top stock picks
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Zavier Ong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

If you invested in tech stocks in 2022, chances are you're sitting on a loss right now. As they head into 2023, investors could be forgiven for thinking that the worst of the tech rout is over. Big Tech is 'not dead' Michael Yoshikami, founder and CEO of Destination Wealth Management, said Big Tech is "not dead," though it will take time to recover. Goldman Sachs and Citi also see pockets of opportunities within Big Tech, with both naming Amazon and Meta Platforms as their top picks for 2023. The sector has traditionally been viewed as a growth sector, but some analysts say tech stocks are now value stocks instead.

☆ Investors pulled a record $42 billion from stocks in the last week as they aim to cut their tax bill after grim 2022 losses, Bank of America says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Investors pulled a record $41.9 billion from equities last week to engage in tax-loss harvesting, Bank of America said Friday. Tax-loss harvesting is a strategy to lower investment taxes that involves selling securities at a loss to offset capital gains. BofA said investors in the past week also pulled out $10 billion from bonds. Under tax-loss harvesting, investors sell securities such as stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds at a loss and then use that loss to offset any capital gains. BofA said investors in the past week pulled out $10 billion from bonds.

Dec 20 (Reuters) - FedEx Corp (FDX.N) will slash an additional $1 billion in costs as recession threatens and the COVID-19 pandemic demand bubble deflates, the delivery company said on Tuesday. Shares rose 3.7% to $170.48 in extended trading after Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx also reported a bigger fiscal second-quarter profit than Wall street expected. The global delivery company angered investors and analysts in September when it yanked its forecast, triggering the biggest one-day stock drop in company history. FedEx warned in November that U.S. volume in the year-end quarter was below company projections as the pandemic-driven e-commerce bubble deflated. On Tuesday, FedEx said second-quarter adjusted profit fell to $815 million, or $3.18 per share, from $1.3 billion, or $4.83 per share, a year earlier.

☆ China steps up support for private sector to boost Covid-hit economy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Hong Kong CNN —Beijing has vowed to go all out next year to save its Covid-hit economy by boosting consumption and loosening control over private industry, including the struggling tech and property sectors. Covid infections are surging in China after leaders unexpectedly eased its restrictive Covid policy earlier this month. Stabilizing economic growth is the top priority for 2023, according to an official readout following the conclusion of the Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC), a key annual meeting of top leaders, which ended Friday. “We need to encourage and support the private sector economy and private enterprise in terms of policy and public opinion,” the statement said. A shopping mall is decorated with rabbit stickers to welcome the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Rabbit, on December 10, 2022 in Beijing, China.

When times are good, private debt investors do not need to sell, do not need the liquidity, and are comfortable with only periodic asset revaluations because the direction of travel is invariably upward. Within private markets, however, price discovery in debt is usually more regular and transparent. Analysts at UBS say private debt is typically valued on a monthly basis, compared with every quarter in private equity and up to once a year in REITs. EXIT DIFFICULTIESIn a high-inflation and rising interest rate environment, private debt offers relatively steady income because most products are floating rate. Equally, persistently high borrowing costs and Treasury yields puts a tighter squeeze on the economy, which would spell trouble for private debt.

☆ Big Tech workers who've been laid off finally get a vacation
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Jordan Parker Erb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

For some laid-off tech workers, that thought isn't confined to just daydreams — some employees told us that since they've been laid off, they've taken the opportunity to finally go on vacation. In Big Tech, getting laid off can mean taking a fancy vacation. While the typical US worker receives little to no severance pay when they get laid off, firms like Facebook, Snap, and Twitter have been relatively generous. Some laid-off tech workers have racked up few years of sky-high pay, frequent bonuses, generous stock awards, and now, decent severance — so some are thinking, "why not travel?" See where other "freed" tech workers are headed.

☆ Elon Musk says he's resolved a 'misunderstanding' with Tim Cook about Twitter potentially being yanked from Apple's App Store
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk said a "misunderstanding" over Twitter with Apple CEO Tim Cook was resolved on Wednesday. Cook was clear that Apple never considered removing Twitter from the App Store, Musk said. Musk claimed earlier this week that Apple had threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store. "Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store," Musk wrote in the tweet. Musk claimed on Monday the iPhone maker had threatened to remove Twitter from its App Store and "won't tell us why."

☆ Pence says he won't testify before the Jan. 6 panel because it would set a 'terrible precedent' for Congress to ask a vice president to remark on deliberations held at the White House
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-20 | by ( John L. Dorman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Mike Pence said he was "closing the door" on testifying before the House January 6 committee. On the CBS News show "Face the Nation," Pence argued that Congress had "no right" to his testimony. "We have a separation of powers under the Constitution of the United States. And I believe it would establish a terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a Vice President of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House." The former vice president then reaffirmed that he was "closing the door" on appearing before the panel.

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s 30-year-old founder, became the face of the company and, to some, crypto at large. The first red flagsNot long after Bankman-Fried started FTX, crypto began to boom. Venture capital money flooded into all things blockchain and crypto, and crypto platforms moved to attract customers beyond the technologists and blockchain evangelists that once fueled its rise. These digital tokens use blockchain technology, in which computers contribute to a shared ledger that can be used to track digital assets. Graeme Sloan / Sipa USA via APThe Wall Street Journal and CNBC, also citing anonymous sources, reported that Alameda had used FTX funds for trading.

☆ The Visions of Octavia Butler
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Lynell George | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +27 min

As a science fiction writer, Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. Mural with a portrait of Octavia Butler and her name, composed of dots of various densities in 3-D space. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. “‘Kindred’ was a story of ordinary people trapped in fantastic circumstances,” Butler wrote in a 1988 notebook. Her point of view was one not traditionally found in science fiction and, simply by writing, she demanded a larger world.

☆ The four-day workweek is new standard for 40% of companies, EY survey finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

A third of surveyed executives plan to implement or extend their childcare options for employees. The EY survey found that surveyed companies have begun to invest in in-office amenities to boost return-to-office rates and employee retention. According to the EY survey, however, only a third of surveyed executives plan to reduce investment in commercial real estate. Over half of those surveyed plan to improve or expand their existing portfolios. Elon Musk, on the other hand, shows no sign of following the executives EY surveyed.

☆ From Elon Musk to Sam Bankman-Fried, a bad week for market geniuses, but was it their fault?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-12 | by ( Barbara Collins | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

watch nowFrom the FTX bankruptcy and downfall of crypto "rock star" Sam Bankman-Fried to the chaos at Twitter, it has not been a good week for the geniuses of capitalism. "Without a doubt, Sam Bankman-Fried is a genius," said Yale School of Management leadership guru Jeffrey Sonnenfeld in an interview with CNBC's "Fast Money" on Thursday. "But what's hard is that somebody has to be able to put on the brakes on them and ask them questions. Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty ImagesBut boards are often unable to manage genius, Sonnenfeld said. Tesla shares have not been immune from Musk's Twitter takeover, with the stock plummeting this week after Musk told Twitter employees on Thursday he sold Tesla stock to "save" the social network.

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