DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Tigers have personality traits similar to human extroverts and introverts, researchers say
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Alia Shoaib | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tigers have personality traits similar to extroversion and introversion in humans, researchers have found. Tigers that score higher on "majesty" eat more, have higher group status and mate more often. Tigers that scored for "majesty" were highly rated on words such as dignified, confident, and fierce and placed low on terms like withdrawn oterms feeble. "Steadiness" in tigers was associated with high ratings for words like friendly, gentle, and loving but ranked low for words such as aggressive or cruel. Abdellaoui told The Guardian that the words were all initially Chinese, and some of their meanings might be harder to translate.

Summary Russia to West: remove obstacles to agricultural exportsLavrov: West should take UN proposals seriouslyLavrov: Ukraine may have to use land/rivers for exportsLavrov: Russia may work around Black Sea grain dealMOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) - Russia warned the West on Friday that unless obstacles to its exports of grain and fertilisers were removed, then Ukraine would have to export grain over land and Moscow would work outside the UN-brokered landmark grain export deal. The Black Sea grain deal is an attempt by the United Nations to ease a food crisis that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but was made worse by the most deadly war in Europe since World War Two. The deal, first signed by Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN in July last year and twice extended, allows for the export of food and fertiliser, including ammonia from Ukraine's Black Sea ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhny/Pivdennyi. If the West continued to refuse to remove the obstacles to Russian exports, Moscow would work around the grain deal, Lavrov said beside his Turkish counterpart at a news conference in Ankara. Since its signing, the 120-day grain deal has been extended twice, once in November and a second time in March, though Russia said the March extension was only for 60 days.

Summary FSB charges Gershkovich with espionageGershkovich denies the chargesUnited States has demanded his releaseRussia says Gershkovich was caught red-handedMOSCOW, April 7 (Reuters) - Russian Federal Security Service investigators have formally charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage but the Wall Street Journal reporter denied the charges and said he was working as a journalist, domestic news agencies said on Friday. TASS reported that FSB investigators had formally charged Gershkovich with carrying out espionage in the interests of the United States, but that Gershkovich, 31, had denied the charge. Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told the United States that Gershkovich was caught red-handed while trying to obtain secrets. The United States has urged Russia to release Gershkovich and cast the Russian claims of espionage as ridiculous.

☆ CHART: We analyzed Apple's revenue per employee to show how it's avoided tech bloat and delayed layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Data shows its revenue per employee trumps the rest of Silicon Valley, a sign of its efficiency. Apple's comparative efficiency is visible through one particular metric that is back in vogue: Revenue per employee. Insider analyzed revenue per employee at major tech firms between 2018 and 2022. Revenue per employee is a get-back-to-basics measure of efficiency and productivity, assigning a hard dollar value to individual workers. Rabois also criticized tech firms, specifically Google and Meta, for "over-hiring" — a practice Apple avoided during tech's boom years.

☆ Trump's indictment serves democrats' interests, says political analyst
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | 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 EmailTrump's indictment serves democrats' interests, says political analystPeter Trubowitz, director of the Phelan US Centre at the London School of Economics, says independent voters are key to watch in uneven political field due to the indictment.

MOSCOW, April 4 (Reuters) - Russia's commissioner for children's rights on Tuesday dismissed International Criminal Court (ICC) allegations that she was responsible for unlawfully deporting children from Ukraine as false. The Hague-based ICC on March 17 issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Children's Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces. The ICC said it had information that hundreds of children had been taken from orphanages and children's care homes in areas of Ukraine claimed by Russia. CHILDRENSince the invasion, Ukraine has cast Russia as a brutal imperial aggressor that has committed war crimes, including the theft of children. Putin allies have cast the ICC, which countries including China and the United States do not recognise, as a "legal nonentity."

☆ It's really hard for foreign companies to break up with Russia — and there are 3 main reasons why
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, just 520 firms have fully exited Russia, per a Yale study. Quite simply, it's just not that straightforward for a company to get out of Russia right now — and there are three main reasons why. Companies have been trying to exit Russia in an orderly fashionMany companies were quick to announce their intent to leave the Russian market after it invaded Ukraine. Thus, companies that want to exit Russia are pressed to find buyers for their Russian operations who would continue running the business under a different brand. Multinational companies face operation challenges in their exitsBecause many foreign companies operating in Russia are multinationals, shutting operations in the country can have a domino effect on their businesses elsewhere.

☆ Russia is forcing Western companies exiting its market to make a donation to the country — and it's making it harder for them to leave
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Foreign investors exiting Russia must donate at least 10% of the sale proceeds of their assets to the state. Russia witnessed an exodus of companies it invaded Ukraine, but some have remained — either voluntarily or due to challenges in leaving the Russian market. About 550 foreign companies are still actively operating in the country, according to Yale's list. These options are not available to every company — especially since there would be fewer potential buyers in the first place due to sweeping sanctions against Russia, according to Estrin and Meyer. Over 2,000 companies are seeking approval to exit the Russian market, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing a person involved in an exit negotiation.

☆ 'The first bank crisis of the Twitter generation': The pressure on banks is very different from 2008
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Hannah Ward-Glenton | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

It is "unlikely" that European banks will undergo anything as serious as in 2008, according to economists. But a banking crisis today would look very different from 15 years ago thanks to social media, online banking, and huge shifts in regulation. This is "the first bank crisis of the Twitter generation," Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, told CNBC earlier this month, in reference to the collapse of Credit Suisse . watch nowRegulators shuttered Silicon Valley Bank on March 10 in what was the biggest U.S. bank collapse since the global financial crisis in 2008. Risk in the banking system today is significantly less than it has been at any time over the last 20 or 30 years.

☆ BoE's Bailey says rate-setters can put inflation before bank worries
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( William Schomberg | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) - Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey signalled on Monday that interest rate-setters would focus on fighting inflation and would not be swayed unduly by worries about the health of the global banking system. Some investors have argued that central banks should take into account the banking turmoil when setting interest rates. "With the Financial Policy Committee on the case of securing financial stability, the Monetary Policy Committee can focus on its own important job of returning inflation to target," Bailey said. As well as the BoE, the European Central Bank, U.S. Federal Reserve and Swiss National Bank have all raised interest rates this month, despite the high-profile bank failures including Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse. Bailey repeated the BoE's view that further monetary tightening would be required if signs of persistent inflationary pressure became evident.

☆ Can the U.S. See the Truth About China?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +14 min

Photo illustration by Bráulio Amado Talk Can the U.S. See the Truth About China? To see China solely as trying to displace the United States is only going to stoke more fears. The Chinese people believe that a substantially weakened Russia might not be in the interest of China, because if there were the sense that the United States needed to seek out an opponent, China would be next. And then also, the United States thinks that China wants to displace it. The industrial espionage stems from a lack of appreciation from the start of intellectual property, and the United States, by pushing China to do more intellectual-property protection, is actually good for China.

Kyiv and its Western allies fear tactical nuclear weapons could be used in battle after Putin and others warned Russia was prepared to use all its vast arsenal in defence. WHAT ARE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS? Academics and arms control negotiators have spent years arguing about how to define tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). The president is the ultimate decision maker when it comes to using Russian nuclear weapons, both strategic and non-strategic, according to Russia's nuclear doctrine. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed by the Soviet Union, says that no nuclear power can transfer nuclear weapons or technology to a non-nuclear power, but it does allow for the weapons to be deployed outside its borders but under its control - as with U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe.

March 25 (Reuters) - Russia's parliament speaker on Saturday proposed banning the activities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crimes. Vyacheslav Volodin, an ally of Putin's, said that Russian legislation should be amended to prohibit any activity of the ICC in Russia and to punish any who gave "assistance and support" to the ICC. Any assistance or support for the ICC inside Russia, he said, should be punishable under law. The ICC issued an arrest warrant earlier this month accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. The Kremlin says the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia.

[1/2] Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev speak before a meeting with members of the government in Moscow, Russia January 15, 2020. The ICC issued an arrest warrant on Friday, accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Any attempt to detain Putin, though, would be a declaration of war, said Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Putin's powerful security council. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes. "Ukraine is part of Russia," Medvedev said, adding that almost all of modern-day Ukraine had been part of the Russian empire.

Depleted uranium is a dense by-product left over when uranium is enriched for use in nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. The United States, Britain, Russia, China, France and Pakistan produce uranium weapons, which are not classified as nuclear weapons, according to the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons. Ingesting or inhaling quantities of uranium - even depleted uranium - is dangerous: it depresses renal function and raises the risk of developing a range of cancers. "It's worth making sure everyone understands that just because the word uranium is in the title of depleted uranium munitions, they are not nuclear munitions, they are purely conventional munitions," Cleverly said. A spokesperson from Britain's defence ministry said: "The British Army has used depleted uranium in its armour piercing shells for decades."

Credit Suisse staff had already been seeking to jump ship in recent weeks, sources told Reuters. "Many Credit Suisse bankers had already been talking to a lot of people for a while [about leaving the Swiss bank]. An executive at a rival London-based wealth manager said they had seen a steady flow of CVs coming in from Credit Suisse bankers. UBS told Credit Suisse wealth bankers on Monday that it was weighing financial sweeteners for them to stay, as it seeks to reassure key staff. Some experts have said Britain's financial services industry could ultimately benefit from recent bouts of turmoil in the United States and Switzerland.

Putin, who came to power on the last day of 1999 when Boris Yeltsin resigned, is the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin. "I know Russia will hold a presidential election," Xi told Putin in Mandarin. As Xi's words were translated into Russian, Putin looked Xi in the eye and smiled briefly. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov swiftly pointed out that Xi had not specifically said Putin would participate in next year's election but added that the Kremlin shared Xi's confidence in Russians' support for Putin. Xi called Putin his "dear friend", and Putin used the same term to his guest.

☆ Time and money for love: China brainstorms ways to boost birth rate
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Farah Master | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

China dug itself into a demographic hole largely through its one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015. Young people cite high childcare and education costs, low incomes, a feeble social safety net and gender inequalities, as discouraging factors. "But without any fertility encouragement policy then fertility will decline even further." China's birth rate last year fell to 6.77 births per 1,000 people, from 7.52 births in 2021, the lowest on record. Demographer Yi Fuxian remains sceptical whether any measures would have a significant impact by themselves, saying China needed a "paradigm revolution of its entire economy, society, politics and diplomacy to boost fertility."

☆ Harvard career expert: The No. 1 'desirable skill' that very few people have—especially men
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Heidi K. Gardner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

These people shouldn't just have different knowledge domains. A groundbreaking study by Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg found that workers, especially men, often take their professional networks for granted. Communities created through Slack and similar messaging tools are a great way to spur virtual forms of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and knowledge distribution. Previously, she was a professor at Harvard Business School. Heidi earned master's degree from the London School of Economics, and a second PhD from London Business School.

[1/2] Gas bubbles from the Nord Stream 2 leak reaching surface of the Baltic Sea in the area shows a disturbance of well over one kilometre in diameter near Bornholm, Denmark, September 27, 2022. "In an attempt to cover up the true people behind the crime, pro-government Anglo-Saxon media - on orders from above - have named a culprit - a group of Ukrainian terrorists," Patrushev told the Argumenti i Fakti newspaper. As a former Soviet spy who has known Putin since the 1970s, Patrushev is seen by diplomats as one of the major influences on Putin, who has accused the "Anglo-Saxons" of sabotaging Nord Stream in what he has called a terrorist attack. The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines have a joint annual capacity of 110 billion cubic metres - more than half of Russia's normal gas exports volumes. Sections of the 1,224-km (760-mile) long pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany, lie at a depth of around 80-110 metres.

"It seems to me that all the countries located around the Russian Federation should draw their own conclusions about how dangerous it is to take a path towards engagement with the United States' zone of responsibility, its zone of interests." Putin casts the war in Ukraine as an existential battle with the West over the future of both Russia and its former Soviet and imperial satellites which since 1991 have been courted by the United States, NATO, the EU, and China. Washington and the broader West, Lavrov said, wanted to punish Russia because it was perceived as "too independent a player" which challenged the hegemony of the United States. Lavrov, Putin's foreign minister since 2004, said that events in Georgia were orchestrated from outside and motivated by a Western attempt to claw away Russia's traditional allies. They say they simply did not agree with the proposed law and want a Western future which Russia, that fought a war against Georgia in 2008, does not offer.

Despite recent signs that Britain's economy may be holding up better than some economists had feared, Dhingra stuck to her view that the BoE risked harming the economy unnecessarily by raising rates too high. Along with Silvana Tenreyro, Dhingra voted last month to leave interest rates on hold at 3.5%, while the other seven members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted through an increase to 4%. Dhingra on Wednesday stressed that the risk of too-high interest rates were a larger threat than the risk of embedded inflation pressure. Dhingra said she did not think either wage growth or inflation expectations offered good evidence of persistent domestically generated inflation pressures. "Those who put too much weight on those numbers, I think should have that in mind as well," she said.

☆ What could Chinese artillery and ammunition mean for Putin's war in Ukraine?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Mithil Aggarwal | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

China is considering sending Moscow ammunition and artillery, according to U.S. officials, which could be particularly crucial as the war grinds into a second year with the front lines likely to be dominated by brutal artillery duels. Beijing has accused the United States of "disinformation" over the claims and said Washington should stay out of its relationship with Moscow. But it may be well equipped to support Russia's military should it choose to do so, experts said. Russia was firing about 20,000 artillery rounds a day, a senior U.S. official told NBC News in November. Even Russia's own mercenary force, the Wagner Group, has accused Moscow of starving them of shells.

☆ COVID showed the rich that they can't just go wherever they want, so now millionaires are rushing to get 2nd passports: report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Lockdowns shattered the wealthy's belief that their mobility was foolproof, per consultancy Knight Frank. As such, ultra-high-net-worth-individuals are now increasingly pursuing citizenships or residencies overseas, London-based consultancy Knight Frank said in its 2023 report released Wednesday. "US citizens have a 'good passport' with many travel privileges, but COVID threw these out the door," Surak wrote. "The result has been a huge increase in the number of Americans looking into investment migration options," she added. Many are looking at overseas homes where they can live for a few months per year, or places that offer good healthcare, Surak wrote.

☆ Brexit deal could resurface Britain's 'healthy fundamentals' if EU relations strengthen, analysts say
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Elliot Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Speaking at a news conference, Sunak described the new agreement — known as the Windsor Framework — as "the beginning of a new chapter" for the relationship between the U.K. and the EU. Dan Kitwood | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesLONDON — The new Brexit deal between the U.K. and the EU may help bring Britain's "healthy fundamentals" back to the fore, providing relations with Brussels continue to improve, analysts suggest. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday announced the agreement of the Windsor Framework, which aims to fix the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol. The Protocol had been a long-standing bugbear for unionist pro-Brexit parties in Northern Ireland, and had brought the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly to a standstill over the past year, after the Democratic Unionist Party resigned in protest. "If this comes to an end, we expect the U.K.'s healthy fundamentals — well capitalised banks, cash flush households and firms, and well-regulated markets — to re-assert themselves."

Search resuls for: "London School"

25 mentions found