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☆ Italy's Eni, Esso offices raided in antitrust probe over fuel price breaches
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

MILAN, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Italy's antitrust authority said on Monday the offices of several oil companies, including Italy's Eni (ENI.MI) and Exxon Mobil Corp's (XOM.N) ESSO Italiana unit, have been searched over alleged fuel price violations. Eni, Esso, Italia Petroli, Kuwait Petroleum Italia and Tamoil allegedly failed to adopt appropriate measures "to prevent and counteract this unlawful conduct to the detriment of consumers," the competition watchdog said in a statement. Eni had no immediate comment, while the other companies involved were not immediately available for a comment. Fuel prices have taken centre stage in Italy after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's executive dropped a costly reduction in excise duties introduced by the previous government when the price of petrol exceeded 2 euros per litre. Reporting by Cristina Carlevaro, Francesca Landini, editing by Federico Maccioni and Valentina ZaOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Italian police arrest most wanted mafia boss Messina Denaro in Sicily
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Vladimiro Pantaleone | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

PALERMO, Italy, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Italian police said on Monday they had arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, the country's most wanted mafia boss who had been on the run for three decades, swooping on a private hospital in the Sicilian capital Palermo where he had gone for treatment. Prosecutors say Messina Denaro is a boss of Sicily's Cosa Nostra mafia. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as "a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the mafia". Messina Denaro, who comes from the small town of Castelvetrano near Trapani, is accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for numerous other murders in the 1990s. In 1993 he helped organise the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say.

☆ A proposed H-1B visa fee increase threatens to kneecap Silicon Valley's ability to hire the foreign talent it needs to compete
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The tech industry relies on skilled-work visas for foreign hires in a system critics say is broken. Now the USCIS is proposing fee hikes for visa applications, at a time when it's already challenging. It would be another hurdle on top of recent tech layoffs and scarce visa availability, experts say. While the proposed fee hikes are presented as a solution to end backlogs and address bureaucratic headaches, experts say they would make it more difficult to hire foreign talent. Are you an H-1B visa holder and have a story to share?

☆ Here are 3 money moves you should make at the start of the year, financial experts say
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Annie Nova | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

One of the revelations that will likely come in 2023 is that you're largely the same person as last year. Here are three of the most important actions to take now (and at the start of every year), financial experts say:1. Update your budget"The new year is a chance to reflect and start fresh," said Brian Bender, head of Schwab Retirement Plan Services. 2. Review your emergency savingsHaving a solid emergency savings account is one of the best ways to sleep soundly at night, said Cristina Guglielmetti, president of Future Perfect Planning in Brooklyn. watch nowShe recommends keeping the cash in a high-yield savings account.

☆ KeyBanc says former meme stock Bed Bath & Beyond will fall to 10 cents after bankruptcy warning
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Don't be surprised if beaten-down retail stock Bed Bath & Beyond falls even more from here, according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. "We do not see Bed Bath & Beyond as a strategic fit for any of the home furnishings retailers in our coverage group, but see interest from retailers in the company's Bed Bath & Beyond store leases, which are ~30,000 sq. ft. and generally in good locations," wrote analyst Cristina Fernández in a Friday note. "Over the past few months, management has stemmed the bleeding, improved liquidity, and improved relations with these two stakeholders," wrote analyst Christopher Horvers. Bed Bath & Beyond shares have experienced a roller-coaster ride in recent years, as smaller traders on Reddit piled into the heavily shorted retailer.

☆ Edison CEO denies EDF planning to sell Italian company - paper
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

MILAN, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Edison's (EDNn.MI) chief executive said on Thursday that rumours French power group EDF (EDF.PA) plans to sell its Italian arm are "groundless". There is not an Edison dossier at the moment", Nicola Monti was quoted as saying in an interview with Italian daily La Stampa. EDF denied an Italian media report last August that it was considering a sale of its Italian unit. Energy analysts have said a sale of Edison could help EDF reduce its debt and press ahead with an ambitious investment plan. Italian media reported in August that EDF planned to kick off a sale process for Edison in the first quarter of this year once the nationalisation process had been completed.

☆ When Does Life Begin?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Elizabeth Dias | Bethany Mollenkof | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +19 min

“It is not black and white.”America’s fight over abortion has long circled a question, one that is broad and without consensus:When does life begin? The question of when life begins has been so politicized it can be hard to thoughtfully engage. Ancient Egypt gave the power to create new human life almost entirely to men. The scientific revolution, from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to reproductive science, disrupted centuries of thought on human life. “When does the responsibility for a life begin and end?”

Below are the events, trends and topics investors expect to shape the outlook for emerging markets next year. "The economic downturns along with the aggressive monetary tightening and geopolitical and commodity shocks that induce them will be temporarily painful in financial and emerging markets," said David Folkerts-Landau, group chief economist at Deutsche Bank. Globally, the war has transformed energy markets and inflation pressures, food security and geopolitical risk perception - factors that are often more keenly felt in emerging economies. "There's not actually a lot of debt maturing next year," said Carmen Altenkirch, emerging markets sovereign analyst at Aviva Investors. 6/ TURKEY ELECTIONSPresident Tayyip Erdogan could face the biggest political challenge of his two decades in power as Turks head to the ballot box in the most high-profile vote in emerging markets.

☆ TikTok owner ByteDance reportedly confirmed employees in US and China accessed the user data of some US citizens, including 2 journalists
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

TikTok-owner ByteDance said workers accessed user data from US journalists and other private citizens, NYT reports. ByteDance said the data collection was part of an unsuccessful attempt to track down leaks, per the report. The revelation contradicts an earlier statement from TikTok that said the app had never been used to "target" journalists. ByteDance reportedly said it had restricted its audit and risk teams, now removing access to US data from that department moving forward. TikTok's parent company ByteDance did not immediately respond to comment from Insider.

ROME/PARIS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Italy's Vega rockets have been grounded and an investigation is under way after the latest model failed on its second mission, destroying two Earth-imaging satellites and further complicating Europe's access to space on top of the war in Ukraine. A spokesperson for Arianespace said both the Vega C and its Vega predecessor had been grounded pending the findings of an investigative commission co-chaired by technical officials from the European Space Agency and Arianespace itself. Italy's Vega C rocket is due to play an increasingly crucial role in Europe's access to space after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine forced Arianespace to stop using Russian Soyuz vehicles. But Arianespace has been forced to scrap plans to announce a Vega C launch schedule for 2023 in coming weeks. Analysts said only a few operational alternatives to Vega C exist, such as potential rideshares aboard U.S.-based SpaceX's bigger Falcon 9 or Firefly Aerospace's new Alpha launcher, which can loft roughly half the payload weight of Vega C.Other options, though somewhat larger than Vega C, include rockets from Japan and India.

☆ Youth in Spain see jobs gain after years of instability
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Belén Carreño | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Youth unemployment rates that reached more than 55% in the years after the financial crisis fell to 31% in the third quarter - against an overall unemployment rate of 12.6%, according to the National Statistics Office, INE. Youth unemployment is a chronic problem in southern European countries. Greece, whose rates of youth unemployment are similar to Spain's, wants to reduce its youth unemployment rate to 18% by 2030 and is introducing subsidies for pension and health fund costs to reduce labour costs, as well as special training programmes. Previously, employers used temporary contracts as a safety net in times of crisis. Before the labour reform, the rate of temporary contracts, which in the last decade has been around 25% of all jobs, resulted in a high turnover of jobs, inflating the overall unemployment rate.

☆ Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gave $438 million to charities through their foundations last year. Here's where the tech gurus' huge donations went.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Rob Price | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

In 2021, Google's cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, collectively gave away nearly half a billion dollars from their philanthropic foundations. 2 moguls, 2 different approaches to charitiesBrin's personal foundation, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, disbursed roughly $250 million in both 2020 and 2021. The Sergey Brin Family Foundation lists three key officers. Brin's and Page's philanthropic donations, while extensive, represent a fraction of their net worths. Brin donates directly to the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, while Page's contributions to the Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation are routed through a limited-liability company named Florida LLC.

☆ Talks over new job contracts at Italian auto groups to continue in January - union
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

MILAN, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Ongoing talks over new job contracts in Italy for Stellantis (STLA.MI), Ferrari (RACE.MI), CNH Industrial (CNHI.MI) and Iveco (IVG.MI) will be extended into January, a union representative said on Monday. Gianluca Ficco of UILM union told Reuters talks, which where initially scheduled to end this week, would "predictably" continue next month, when unions and the four companies deal with key issues, including proposed salary increases. Stellantis was not immediately available for comment. Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari, editing by Cristina CarlevaroOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández convicted, sentenced in $1B fraud case
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina— Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández was convicted and sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from holding public office for a fraud scheme that embezzled $1 billion through public works projects during her presidency. It was the first time an Argentine vice president has been convicted of a crime while in office. Argentina’s dominant leader this century, she was accused of improperly granting public works contracts to a construction magnate closely tied to her family. The panel also sentenced Báez and her public works secretary, José López, to six years. Fernández remains the singular leader of the leftist faction of the Peronist movement.

☆ Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Argentina's vice president sentenced to six years in prison for corruption, will not run for office
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Sahar Akbarzai Emilia Delfino | Sahar Akbarzai | Emilia Delfino | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —A court in Argentina on Tuesday sentenced the country’s vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, to six years in prison and disqualified her from holding public office again after finding her guilty of corruption during her earlier terms as President. Fernández de Kirchner has temporary immunity due to her current role so will not immediately go to jail, and can appeal. The former President awarded “80% of the national public road works in Santa Cruz in favor of Báez companies between 2003 and 2015,” according to Telam, Argentina’s state-run news agency. Baez was also sentenced to six years in prison, as were former secretary of public works, José López, and the former director of national roads, Néstor Periotti, for their involvement in the alleged scheme. Lopez and Periotti have also been disqualified from holding public office again, Telam reported.

☆ Argentina’s VP Fernández guilty in $1B fraud, gets 6 years
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

A three-judge panel found the Peronist leader guilty of fraud, but rejected a charge of running a criminal organization, for which the sentence could have been 12 years in prison. It was the first time an Argentine vice president has been convicted of a crime while in office. Fernández lashed out at the verdict, describing herself as the victim of a "judicial mafia." Argentina's dominant leader this century, she was accused of improperly granting public works contracts to a construction magnate closely tied to her family. The panel also sentenced Báez and her public works secretary, José López, to six years.

☆ Argentine Court Sentences Vice President Cristina Kirchner to Six Years in Prison
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Kejal Vyas | Silvina Frydlewsky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—A federal court on Tuesday convicted Vice President Cristina Kirchner of fraud charges and sentenced her to six years in prison for embezzling money through public-construction contracts, a blow for a leftist government grappling with soaring inflation and one of the worst economic crises in two decades. A three-judge panel said Mrs. Kirchner, along with several other former aides, would be permanently banned from holding public office, capping a long-running graft case against Argentina’s most prominent and polarizing politician. Mrs. Kirchner served as president for two terms from 2007 to 2015 before becoming the first vice president in the country to be tried and convicted on graft charges while in office.

☆ Argentine court sentences VP Fernandez de Kirchner to 6 years in prison in graft case
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 6 (Reuters) - An Argentine federal court on Tuesday found Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner guilty of corruption in a case related to public works in a highly-charged legal case that has rattled the country. The court convicted Fernandez de Kirchner to 6 years in prison, though she is unlikely to serve any prison time soon as she has immunity from her government roles and is expected to launch a lengthy appeals process that could take years. Reporting by Nicolas Misculin; Writing by Anthony EspositoOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Argentina court hands VP Cristina Kirchner 6-year jail term in graft case
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Nicolás Misculin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The powerful vice president will not face immediate prison time and is also expected to appeal the sentence, with the case likely to spend years winding through higher courts. Fernandez de Kirchner served as president for two terms between 2007 and 2015 and commands rock-star crowds of supporters. She faced charges of alleged corruption in the awarding of public works during her presidency. Defenders of the vice president maintain she was a victim of judicial persecution. Lawyers said that Fernandez de Kirchner would not go to jail any time soon because she has immunity while serving as vice president.

The nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization accused the city of Houston in a federal lawsuit of denying Latinos fair representation by allowing voters citywide to elect five council members. Elections in the city are deeply, racially polarized and Latinos' voting strength is diluted through the at-large election process, the lawsuit states. "Houston's the only major city in Texas where five council members are elected at large and in essence, disenfranchising the Latino community," Domingo Garcia, LULAC president, said in a phone interview. Houston only has one Latino on City Council." Since then, only 11 Latinos have been elected or appointed to a single member district and only two have been elected to an at-large district, according to the LULAC lawsuit.

☆ Italy's Cucinelli and EssilorLuxottica sign eyewear license accord
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Gabriel Araujo | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] Glasses manufactured by EssilorLuxottica, stand on display in their exhibition space at SILMO in Villepinte, near Paris, France September 24, 2022. REUTERS/Benoit TessierMILAN, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Brunello Cucinelli (BCU.MI) signed an exclusive license deal with French-Italian glasses maker EssilorLuxottica (ESLX.PA) for the design, manufacture and distribution of eyewear under the Italian luxury group's brand, the two companies said in a statement on Monday. The new ten-year agreement will be effective from next January, while the first collection of glasses will be launched in the first quarter of 2024. The deal is an extension of the current collaboration between the two firms that began in 2021, including a capsule collection signed by Brunello Cucinelli and EssilorLuxottica's exclusive brand Oliver Peoples, they added. Reporting by Cristina Carlevaro editing by Federico MaccioniOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Leader of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina dies at 93
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Hebe de Bonafini, who became a human rights campaigner when her two sons were arrested and disappeared under Argentina’s military dictatorship, died Sunday, her family and authorities reported. She became president two years later and led the more radical of two factions of the organization until her death. Both had been members of leftist militant groups, one of them armed, de Bonafini later said. But they began gathering every Thursday, walking counterclockwise around a clocktower in the center of the plaza. Her defense of Kirchner and his wife and successor, Cristina Fernández, sometimes led to friction with other human rights groups who had criticized some of the leftist administration’s policies.

☆ Hebe de Bonafini, the mother who defied Argentina's dictatorship, dies at 93
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-20 | by ( Hernan Nessi | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Hebe de Bonafini, the iconic co-founder of Argentina's Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and a staunch fighter against the human rights violations committed during the country's military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, died on Sunday at the age of 93. Bonafini became one of Argentina's most famous human rights activists when she and 13 other women began searching for their children who were kidnapped by security forces during the dictatorship. Argentina's Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner lamented Bonafini's passing on Twitter and the government called for three days of national mourning. "Dearest Hebe, Mother of Plaza de Mayo, you are a world symbol of the fight for Human Rights, and a pride of Argentina," Fernandez de Kirchner wrote. "As founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, she shed light in the middle of the dark night of the military dictatorship."

☆ More CMOs Are Investing in Their Personal Brands
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Patrick Coffee | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +8 min

Efforts can include carefully composed LinkedIn posts about everything from corporate leadership to their costumes at the company’s recent Halloween party. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CMO Today CMO Today delivers the most important news of the day for media and marketing professionals. “The best way to do that is for them to have their own strong personal brands,” said Ms. Pryor. Other marketing executives are getting help. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS Should your company’s executives be able to expense ghostwriters for their personal social-media posts?

Abortion, gun control and crime were some of the top issues that drove young Latino voters to the polls this year. Out of all young voters, Latinos were the most likely to name crime as the top issue that decided their vote. CIRCLE estimated that 27% of people ages 18 to 29 voted in the midterm election, making it the second-highest youth voter turnout, behind the 2018 midterm election, in almost three decades. The 2022 Midterm Election Voter Poll found inflation was the top issue motivating Latino voters in 11 battleground states. Rayes said young Latino candidates "are engaging the Latino community to come out and vote," pointing out Florida and California as examples.

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