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[1/4] Chairman Thomas Jordan of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) looks on as he attends a news conference in Bern, Switzerland December 15, 2022. Although Swiss inflation plateaued at 3% in November, it remains elevated by the country's own standards and outside the SNB's price stability goal of annual increases of 0-2%. The European Central Bank is expected to increase its deposit rate by half a percentage point later on Thursday, according to a Reuters poll, while the Bank of England is also forecast to add 50 basis points to its Bank Rate. In its latest forecast on Thursday, the SNB said it expected inflation rates of 2.9% in 2022, 2.4% in 2023 and 1.8% in 2024. Inflation was then expected to rise again, to 2.1% in the third quarter of 2025, the central bank said - above its price stability goal.

☆ Google uses 30th anniversary of SMS texting to pressure Apple over 'green vs. blue bubble' texting, says iPhones are 'stuck in the 1990s'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In a "happy birthday" post to SMS, Google called Apple out, saying it's time to switch to RCS. "But after 30 years of SMS texting, it's truly time." Unlike SMS, RCS supports more multimedia features and makes it easier to send GIFs and hi-resolution videos through texts. Texting between devices using RCS is a similar experience to iPhone users texting with Apple's proprietary iMessage system, according to The Verge. "Hopefully Apple can #GetTheMessage so we don't have to keep waiting to remove the whole 'green-versus-blue bubble' thing," Budhiraja wrote.

☆ Disney buys MLB's stake in streaming firm BAMTech for $900 mln
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 29 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) disclosed on Tuesday that it has taken full control of BAMTech, a video-streaming firm spun off from Major League Baseball's digital media company MLB Advanced Media. Disney earlier this month purchased the remaining stake in BAMTech from Major League Baseball for $900 million, the company said in a SEC filing. Previous to the transaction, streaming technology services provider BAMTech was owned 85% by Disney and 15% by Major League Baseball (MLB). BAMTech provides the streaming platform for such entities as Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment and Warner Bros Discovery Inc's HBO. Streaming service provider Hulu is owned 67% by Disney and 33% by NBC Universal (NBCU).

[1/2] Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei poses for a picture after an interview with Reuters in Montemor-O-Novo, Portugal, November, 28, 2022. REUTERS/Catarina DemonySummary Ai Weiwei says protests not likely to carry onPolice will use force to silence protestersMovement lacks organisation and leadershipMONTEMOR-O-NOVO, Portugal, Nov 28 (Reuters) - From his Portuguese home, Ai Weiwei, the high-profile Chinese dissident whose art has often criticized Beijing's policies, said the recent wave of protests would not shake Xi Jinping's government because the police would simply crush them into silence. "Even if something happens (on) the Hong Kong scale or 1989 scale it (still) won't shake the government," he added. The protests in China were triggered by a fire in the Xinjiang region last week that killed 10 people who were trapped in their apartments. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a regular briefing on Monday that China was not aware of any protests abroad calling for an end to its COVID policy.

'REFUGE FOR WINTER' AND BEYONDVisitors and more permanent residents are also arriving from Germany, which was highly dependent on Russian gas before the Ukraine war and is anxious about possible winter energy shortages. Airlines will increase by 31% the number of seats available to the Canary Islands, the regional tourism office said. Airbnb, the short-term rentals firm, said searches for winter stays in southern Europe tripled between April and June. "Even before the energy crisis, we would have liked to be in Portugal because of the weather," the 28-year-old said. "But with the energy crisis, (being in Portugal) gives us more security because of the climate."

LISBON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Saturday that fiscal responsibility was crucial but that spending to improve the country's economy and welfare was equally important. "We cannot spend more than we earn ... but we also know we can spend to do something profitable, to make the country grow, to improve (it)." Leftist Lula defeated right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a tight presidential runoff in October. Since last week, the president-elect has rattled financial markets with speeches in which he underscores the priority of social spending over fiscal responsibility. Lula said that although his party defeated Bolsonaro in last month's presidential race, far-right ideology was still very much alive in Brazil.

☆ TikTok is still hiring despite the tech downturn. Here's how much it pays for hundreds of engineering, marketing, and other US jobs.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Ashley Rodriguez | Dan Whateley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +42 min

Insider analyzed US work-visa data to gauge salary levels at TikTok and parent company ByteDance. The data show TikTok and ByteDance offered staffers on US work visas $30 an hour to $400,000 a year. And TikTok has begun to get into its stride with advertisers who are now taking it more seriously as a marketing platform. Based on the data, TikTok and ByteDance offered from late-2020 to mid-2022 base salaries ranging from $30 per hour to $400,000 per year for various roles. TikTok's median annual base salary was roughly $184,000 per year, based on data from 319 foreign-labor certification applications.

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Around 60% of Credit Suisse's wealth business is exposure to what it calls growth markets such as the Asia-Pacific region and emerging markets, and the other main part is business with ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs. De Ferrari said some of the best opportunities come in the "high net" business, clients who have $5-25 million to invest. Credit Suisse had been rocked in early October by wild market swings and a social media storm. "Everybody said we love Credit Suisse. Key to wealth management's success as a core business at Credit Suisse is focusing on its offerings and its top 20 markets and exiting from some others, he said.

☆ Shopee, the Amazon of Asia, has laid off around 7,000 employees in the last 6 months, after latest cuts: report
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Britney Toh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Shopee laid off around 100 employees on Monday, adding up to around 7,000 jobs cut in the last six months, per Bloomberg. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. On Monday, a number of Shopee employees in Singapore and China received marching orders via emails, Bloomberg said. Sources also told The Straits Times that the latest round of layoffs was more low-key compared to the layoffs that happened in September. Shopee parent Sea Limited — which employed more than 67,000 people at the end of 2021 — let go a low single-digit percentage of employees on September 19.

Holding banners and chanting slogans, protesters demanded climate action. "COPs are not designed to face climate change because it would need more participation from civil society, less participation from lobbyists from the fossil industry," said Pedro Franco, a 27-year-old student. Joao Duarte, 23, also pointed a finger at governments for favouring the "monetary interests" of big companies instead of putting climate change at the top of the political agenda. "What we do or do not do in this decade will have a great impact on climate security." Reporting by Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira and Pedro Nunes in Lisbon; Editing by Diane CraftOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The company will be a preferred long-term partner for Credit Suisse, the bank has said. Credit Suisse declined to comment beyond Lehmann's remarks Oct. 27 when the bank unveiled the restructuring. The investment bank spin-off and the sale of the securitized products unit to Apollo are key planks of the reorganization. Klein, a 59-year-old former Citigroup rainmaker who runs advisory boutique M. Klein & Co, has been a Credit Suisse board member since 2018. Klein and Credit Suisse also have discussed combining M. Klein & Co into CS First Boston, according to one source familiar with the discussions.

Insurers face potential losses of up to $60 billion from Hurricane Ian, which ravaged Florida and the Carolinas in September in what could be the second-largest natural catastrophe loss in U.S. history. Zurich sees its overall catastrophe loss ratio for the first nine months around two percentage points above long-term trends. Zurich holds an investor day next week when it will set out its 2023-2025 targets. Quinn said the targets will likely be tougher, after "robust premium increases" helped the insurer's recent performance. Zurich announced a 1.8 billion Swiss franc ($1.83 billion) share buyback programme at half-year results, which Quinn told an earlier media call would likely kick off in the fourth quarter.

[1/2] An Ukrainian start-up desk is seen at the Web Summit, Europe's largest technology conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 2, 2022. REUTERS/Pedro NunesLISBON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Ukrainian entrepreneurs brought a message of hope to this week's Web Summit in Lisbon, Europe's largest tech gathering that ended on Friday: the war has made them more resilient than ever. "Many more Ukrainians came to the Web Summit this time," he added, standing in front of the Ukrainian pavillion. Web Summit chief Paddy Cosgrave told Reuters last week 59 Ukrainian startups were at the 2022 event. "This is a good sign that the Ukrainian tech and startup ecosystem is developing even during a time of war," said Sobolenko.

☆ Hot startups like Miro and Canva are racing to dominate virtual whiteboards, an emerging category of workplace tools that sparked Adobe's $20 billion bid for Figma
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Virtual whiteboards are becoming essential workplace tools, as evidenced by Adobe's bid for Figma. The $20 billion price tag only further signaled the boom around virtual whiteboards, which allow users to collaborate visually and are quickly becoming essential tools alongside videoconferencing and workplace messaging. Besides Figma, Miro has gained momentum over the past two years, growing to 40 million users from 5 million users. But industry insiders think virtual whiteboards will become just one piece of a visual-collaboration arena. As a result, companies like Miro, Canva, and Lucid are on similar paths toward becoming larger visual-communications platforms.

LISBON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Ukraine trusts Elon Musk to continue providing internet access through his SpaceX rocket company's Starlink satellite system despite a wobble last month, but is also seeking additional providers, one of its deputy prime ministers said on Thursday. Mykhailo Fedorov, in Portugal for Europe's largest tech conference, the Lisbon Web Summit, said Ukraine had discussed Starlink directly with Musk and was confident the Tesla and Twitter boss would not shut the service down in Ukraine. Starlink has "worked, is working and will definitely work in Ukraine", Federov, who runs Ukraine's digital transformation ministry, told a news conference in response to a question about the service from Reuters. Fedorov spoke at a joint news conference with Microsoft President Brad Smith, who announced around 100 million dollars of additional technology aid for Ukraine throughout 2023. "This will enable the government and other organisations in Ukraine to continue to run their services and serve Ukraine citizens through the Microsft Cloud and our public data centres spread across Europe," Smith said.

LISBON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Portugal is likely to scrap its "golden visa" programme giving wealthy foreigners residence rights, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Wednesday, saying that the 10-year-old scheme had already fulfilled its role. Speaking at Lisbon's Web Summit, Europe's largest tech event, Costa said several visa schemes offered by Portugal were currently being re-evaluated and the golden visa was one of them. Costa said Portugal wanted to continue to be attractive, with one example being its recent law, enacted on Monday, that created the so-called digital nomads visa. It gives foreigners with high monthly income from remote work to live and work from Portugal for a year. read moreReporting by Catarina Demony; Additional reporting by Patricia Rua; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Angus MacSwanOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

LISBON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Plans by central banks to launch digital currencies are not a threat to other cryptocurrencies as they would validate blockchain technology and build trust among sceptics, the CEO of the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, said on Wednesday. Most major central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, are studying the potential launch of a digital version of their currencies, dubbed CBDC. read more"Is it (CBDC) a threat to Binance or other crypto-currencies? He said the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies should be available for CBDC and adopted by governments. Still, he said, recently cryptocurrency has been highly correlated with the stock market, with both assets correcting sharply as central banks hike interest rates to control record inflation.

"Number one is that we want to be extremely supportive of free speech," Zhao said at the opening event of Europe's largest tech conference, the Web Summit, in Lisbon, adding that Twitter is "where people express their opinions". "It is an important free speech platform - that's the number one reason," he added. Binance said last week it is creating a team to work on how blockchain and crypto could be helpful to Twitter. "I'm a heavy Twitter user," Zhao said, adding Binance planned to be a long-term investor in the platform. Asked about other ideas Musk has for the platform, Zhao said: "Elon Musk is a very hard guy to predict."

[1/2] Ukraine's First Lady, Olena Zelenska, attends the opening event of Europe's largest tech conference, the Web Summit, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 1, 2022. REUTERS/Pedro NunesLISBON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - In an emotional appeal, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska urged tech workers from around the world on Tuesday to create innovations to stop Russia and help save people in her war-torn country. Describing technology as a "battlefield" in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zelenska said that technological equipment such as drones and missiles were being used to "kill people," not to save them. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister who also runs the ministry of digital transformation, will also speak. Reporting by Catarina Demony, Sergio Goncalves and Pedro Nunes in Lisbon Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[1/5] A citizen of Brazil leaves a voting station after casting his vote for his country's election, in Lisbon, Portugal, October 30, 2022. Nearly 81,000 Brazilians in Portugal are eligible to vote, with more than half registered in Lisbon, according to consulate data. The queue to vote in Lisbon snaked around the city's law university, with divisions between voters on display. Several polls showed the race between them tightening in the final week, with Bolsonaro eroding a slight lead for Lula. Reporting by Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira and Pedro Nunes; Editing by Philippa FletcherOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The troubled Swiss bank outlined what its chairman Axel Lehmann dubbed a "blueprint for success", after racking up a 4 billion Swiss franc loss in the third quarter of the year and following torrid weeks for the group. Saudi National Bank, the Kingdom's biggest lender, committed to invest up to 1.5 billion francs in Credit Suisse to achieve a shareholding of up to 9.9%. The Swiss bank said it also aims to separate out its investment bank to create CS First Boston, focused on advisory and capital markets, and hopes to attract third-party capital and set up a partnership with the new Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse said it will create a capital release unit to wind down non-strategic, higher-risk businesses, while announcing the sale of a large part of its securitised products business. Credit Suisse needs to revamp after a series of costly and morale-sapping blunders that triggered a wholesale change of management, a halt in dividend payments and an urgent rethink about its future.

☆ New York Times pays as much as $300,000 in base salary to top talent. Here's pay data on US jobs in editorial, advertising, and more.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Colin Salao | Steven Perlberg | Ashley Rodriguez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The Times' news division has also expanded by hundreds in recent years and now employs about 1,700 journalists. The public data show how much the media company offered to pay foreign staffers it sought to hire in the US for jobs including editorial, data, engineering, and business-side positions. Editorial and some business employees at the Times are unionized, setting salary ranges for some positions at the company. Based on the data, the Times offered from late 2019 through the middle of 2022 annual base salaries ranging from $53,392 to $306,000 for various roles. In cases where the company submitted multiple applications for a particular job, such as a software engineer, we included the range of those wage rates.

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To make a group chat on iPhone, add multiple recipients to the address line of a new message. There's three types of group messages: group iMessage, group MMS, and group SMS. And if a group chat is getting to be too much, you can silence notifications or leave a group chat entirely. Types of group chats on iPhone There are three types of group chats you can create or participate in on an iPhone: Group iMessage. You can choose things like "Roommate Chat", "Family", or you can even add a photo icon to further customize the group chat.

☆ Google is giving Apple a dose of its own medicine. iPhones owners will now get annoying messages that an Android user 'reacted' to their text.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

iPhones exchange messages using iMessage, Apple's proprietary messaging system, but revert to SMS when texting an Android. Text messages sent with RCS would work like iMessages between iPhone users, according to The Verge. For example, like in iMessage, Google Messages users will be able to watch YouTube videos in the app, and can make a calendar event if a date or time is sent in a message. Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he doesn't get a lot of feedback from iPhone users that Apple needs to fix messaging between iPhones and Androids. In legal documents from a 2021 lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple, an Apple executive said "Moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us."

But nestled among rural homes with manicured gardens is a mansion covered entirely in cartoon-like doodles. Everything outside and inside the house is covered in black-and-white squiggles, a riot of video-game and comic-book inspired cutesy characters. The sofa, the stove, the fridge, the television and even the car parked outside have all been painted on. The six-bedroom property in England's Kent County is home to Sam Cox, 28, an artist who goes by the moniker “Mr. “So my dream was to have a doodle house and doodle over everything within that house,” he said, adding that he funded his current home through sales of his increasingly popular doodle art.

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