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-Azaleah

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New York City police have arrested a man who they say threw a woman onto subway tracks in an unprovoked attack over the weekend, officials said Tuesday.

Theodore Ellis, 30, was arrested Tuesday on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment, the police department said.

Surveillance video released by police captured the terrifying moments on elevated tracks at the Jackson Avenue Station in the Bronx about 4:40 p.m. Sunday.

The video showed a man in a white tank top, shorts, a backward baseball cap and a backpack appearing to grab the woman before he flings her onto the tracks.

The 52-year-old woman was taken to Lincoln Medical Center, where she was stable, police said.

The police department said a tip led to the arrest of Ellis, who lives in the Bronx.

It was not immediately clear whether Ellis had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. He was expected to be arraigned Tuesday night, a spokesman for the district attorney's office said.

Violence in New York's vast subway system has been a growing concern of residents and Mayor Eric Adams, who made public safety a focal point of his successful campaign last year.

A string of deadly or violent incidents on New York city rail lines in recent months have included:

Daniel Enriquez, 48, a Brooklyn resident and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employee, was gunned down May 22 as he rode a Manhattan-bound Q train. Suspect Andrew Abdullah, 25, was arrested and did not immediately enter a plea, officials said.

Ten people were shot and 13 others were injured April 12 as a man threw two smoke canisters and opened fire aboard an N train as it approached the 36th Street Station in Brooklyn during the morning rush hour, authorities said. A day later, police arrested Frank R. James, 62, who has pleaded not guilty to federal terrorism charges.

Michelle Go, 40, was struck and killed by a subway train on Jan. 15 after, authorities said, a homeless man pushed her into tracks in Times Square.

The string of high-profile subway incidents belies overall travel safety, a transit advocate said Tuesday.

"Millions of people ride the subway every day, and it's overwhelmingly without incident," said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director of the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group for New York City bus and train commuters.

"But that said, we're not at the point where everyone feels safe, welcomed and included in the subway."

Subway safety appears to be on the minds of many New York City residents as 85 percent of respondents to a Siena College poll, made public Tuesday, said they want more police officers on the rails.

Pollsters interviewed 1,000 New Yorkers over the phone from May 22 to Wednesday,with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Public safety could be taking a toll on the mayor's popularity, with 74 percent of respondents saying Adams is doing a fair or poor job fighting crime, while just 21 percent gave him good or excellent marks.

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Man arrested after woman seen being shoved onto New York City subway tracks

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New York City police have arrested a man who they say threw a woman onto subway tracks in an unprovoked attack over the weekend, officials said Tuesday. Theodore Ellis, 30, was arrested Tuesday on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment, the police department said.

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-Azaleah

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A California man carrying at least one weapon near Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland home has been taken into custody by police, after telling officers he wanted to kill the Supreme Court justice, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The individual, described as a man in his mid-20s, was found to be carrying at least one weapon and burglary tools, these people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Police were apparently notified that the person might pose a threat to the justice, but it was not immediately clear who provided the initial tip, these people said. The man apparently did not make it on to Kavanaugh's property in Montgomery County, but he was stopped on a nearby street, these people said.

Two people familiar with the investigation said the initial evidence indicates the man was angry about the leaked draft of an opinion by the Supreme Court signaling the court is preparing to overturn Roe. v. Wade, the 49-year-old decision that guaranteed a person's constitutional right to have an abortion. He was also angry over a recent spate of mass shootings, those people said.
The story is developing and will be updated. Robert Barnes and Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.

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California man taken into custody near Justice Kavanaugh's home with weapon

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Placeholder while article actions load A California man carrying at least one weapon near Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland home has been taken into custody by police, after telling officers he wanted to kill the Supreme Court justice, according to people familiar with the investigation.

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Electric jet engine startup backed by Y Combinator sets up HQ in Malta

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Electric jet engine startup backed by Y Combinator sets up HQ in Malta

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Roberto.D

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Wright Electric, a startup that's developing electric engines for commercial jets, is establishing a physical headquarters in the Capital Region.

The startup is now in the process of outfitting a 6,000-square-foot space inside a larger building in the Saratoga Technology + Energy Park (STEP) in Malta, according to Jeff Engler, founder and CEO of the company. The space has been designed to accommodate high power and high voltage for testing motors and motor controllers.

Wright Electric was founded in Boston in 2016. Then it moved to San Francisco, Los Angeles and then came to the Capital Region about two years ago.

"​​There's a ton of talent in Albany, all focused on very specialized motors and motor controllers - and in the aviation industry, specifically," Engler said. "There's a really good talent pool there, and some of our early engineers on our team had come from the Albany area, so we thought the best thing to do would be to build a team around them."

Wright has 15 people full time and 10 part time, and is hiring for several technical roles, particularly in power electronics. The group of employees includes several GE veterans, many of them in the Capital Region.

Patrick Biel, formerly of Tokyo Electron and GE Global Research, is director of power electronics, according to LinkedIn. The director of operations is Elizabeth Wallace, who recently moved to the Capital Region after 24 years in Washington, D.C., after holding leadership roles at KGO Project Management and the National Wildlife Federation.

The startup is focused on commercial plans with 100 seats that travel on flights of about one hour. Planes of that size and larger account for 95-98% of carbon emissions in the industry, he said.

"There's a lot of people working on smaller airplanes. We felt that if we were going to try to make a difference in the space, we had to focus on larger airplanes," Engler said.

Engler previously co-founded Massachusetts-based medical device startup Podimetrics, which has raised $75 million to date, including $45 million in a series C round earlier this year. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree from Columbia University.

He said he started Wright as a way to help mitigate the large carbon footprint that comes from commercial aviation.

"To give you a sense of scale, you would have to eat vegetarian for over a year to offset the carbon from even a single round trip flight from New York to Chicago," Engler said. "If you think about all the things that we do to make a difference - a single flight probably counteracts many of those things."

The majority of aircraft fuel savings come from more efficient engines, he said.

Wright's electric engines will go inside the four-engine BAe 146 aircraft, to be branded as Wright Spirit. The plan is to have the Wright-outfitted plane on the market by around 2026-27. There will be flight tests using one, two and four electric engines in 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively.

The Wright aviation engine is about 10 times more powerful than the electric engine inside a Tesla, Engler said, and has specializations like being very lightweight and highly efficient. And the design is meant to create a much quieter product, he said.

"We developed our own, from scratch, motor and motor controller, that's one of the most powerful and power dense in the world."

The startup is now testing its first prototype at an undisclosed temporary external location. The plan is to move that testing into the new Saratoga County facility later this year.

Engler said the Wright Electric is developing the product with support from a number of airlines around the world, including EasyJet in Europe and Viva Aerobus in Latin America. Alongside partners including Honeywell and EaglePitcher, Wright is still determining which of multiple energy sources will power the engines.

"When we think about competition, we generally think about the status quo," Engler said. "The easiest thing for an airline to do is just to use their existing airplanes. The opportunity here is to reduce dramatically the global warming impact of aviation, and also the noise impact of aviation."

The startup doesn't disclose total fundraising amounts, but it has raised about $10 million from government grants and contracts through agencies such as NASA, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E. The startup has also received a contract form the U.S. Air Force to turn the motor into an ultra lightweight generator.

Other funding has come from the Y Combinator startup accelerator, the Clean Energy Trust, venture funds and family offices.

The Y Combinator accelerator has helped launch more than 3,000 companies since 2005, including Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch and Reddit, according to its website.

"We're fully funded for our existing operations," Engler said.

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Electric jet engine startup backed by Y Combinator sets up HQ in Malta

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Wright Electric, a startup that's developing electric engines for commercial jets, is establishing a physical headquarters in the Capital Region. The startup is now in the process of outfitting a 6,000-square-foot space inside a larger building in the Saratoga Technology + Energy Park (STEP) in Malta, according to Jeff Engler, founder and CEO of the company.

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Winston-Salem cybersecurity startup Salem Cyber raises $250,000 in seed funding with plans to hire

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Winston-Salem cybersecurity startup Salem Cyber raises $250,000 in seed funding with plans to hire

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Roberto.D

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Salem Cyber, a Winston-Salem cybersecurity startup, has raised $250,000 in seed funding with plans to hire to expand its capabilities.

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Salem Cyber raised $225,000 from five investors. CEO Jon Bagg told WRAL TechWire that the company closed an additional $25,000 for a total of $250,000 in its seed round. Bagg said the startup is looking to hire to expand capabilities and meet product-market fit.

Last month, Salem Cyber also joined Triad incubator and accelerator Winston Starts.

Salem Cyber, founded in July of 2021 by Bagg, offers an artificial intelligence cybersecurity analysis product called Salem.

"It's designed to do a job similar to a cybersecurity analyst, not to replace people, but to empower people," Bagg said. "There's too much noise in the system, so what we're trying to do is give organizations a way to prioritize the areas of threat."

Salem works with a company's existing cybersecurity technology and investigates alerts that a cybersecurity worker may not get to and eliminates false positives, according to its website. It frees up a cybersecurity workforce's capacity to focus on the top threats and investigations.

"It's a capacity play," Bagg told WRAL TechWire. "One of the most important things to us is the recognition that the people who do this job right now are great, and the processes that they're using are good, but they're underwater right now, and that's the core challenge that we're hoping to solve."

Salem Cyber is currently offering the product in "private preview," according to Bagg, with hopes to begin a public preview this summer.

Bagg's experience includes five years at IT services company Booz Allen Hamilton and four years at Verizon, according to his LinkedIn.

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Winston-Salem cybersecurity startup Salem Cyber raises $250,000 in seed funding with plans to hire

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Salem Cyber, a Winston-Salem cybersecurity startup, has raised $250,000 in seed funding with plans to hire to expand its capabilities. According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Salem Cyber raised $225,000 from five investors. CEO Jon Bagg told WRAL TechWire that the company closed an additional $25,000 for a total of $250,000 in its seed round.

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Atlanta co-warehousing startup Saltbox plans Ohio fulfillment center

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Atlanta co-warehousing startup Saltbox plans Ohio fulfillment center

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Roberto.D

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An Atlanta-based cowarehousing developer is bringing its first-ever fulfillment center to Columbus.

The company, Saltbox, typically offers small warehouse, offices and other amenities to its clients, but because of growing client demand, the firm will be launching a fulfillment center at 7001 Discovery Blvd. in Dublin, Steve Sawicki, the firm's director of real estate, told Columbus Business First.

"It's essentially everything you'd need to run your business without having to worry about logistics," Sawicki said. "What Columbus will do, is our members from across the country... will have the opportunity to store their inventory in Columbus and we will handle the processing of those orders."

Sawicki said the firm chose Columbus because its proximity to a large portion of the nation's population would allow for faster and cheaper delivery options. Moving forward, he said Saltbox would consider expanding operations in Columbus, but it's currently focused on this fulfillment center.

The Dublin space is more than 80,000 square feet, according to a news release.

Saltbox is the latest out-of-state firm to get in on Central Ohio's industrial real estate market, which has seen a stream of record-low vacancy rates over the past year.

Atlanta-based Stonemont Financial Group recently bought a 1.09-million-square-foot West Jefferson industrial facility, a joint venture between Texas and Illinois-based companies will bring an Innovation Park containing a data center campus and speculative industrial facilities to New Albany, and in April a California-based cleaning services company bought an industrial site in Heath.

Saltbox has five other locations across the country, but Sawicki said its goal is to have around 12 total by the end of the year. Its markets currently include Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles, but the firm is planning to expand into markets such as Minneapolis, Miami and Phoenix.

"Our expansion into Columbus comes as we continue to grow our logistics network for innovative entrepreneurs, and growing e-commerce companies," Saltbox CEO Tyler Scriven said in the release. "Through our Columbus fulfillment center, these companies across the country will now be able to tap into nearly 70% of the U.S. market in just two days. This opportunity to fulfill orders easier and faster will allow our members to scale up their businesses to meet growing demand."

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Saltbox cowarehousing firm adding Columbus fulfillment center - Columbus Business First

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An Atlanta-based cowarehousing developer is bringing its first-ever fulfillment center to Columbus. The company, Saltbox, typically offers small warehouse, offices and other amenities to its clients, but because of growing client demand, the firm will be launching a fulfillment center at 7001 Discovery Blvd.

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Workplace mental health-focused startup sees future in Birmingham

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Workplace mental health-focused startup sees future in Birmingham

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Roberto.D

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Workplace mental health-focused startup sees future in Birmingham

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Mental health, something once considered taboo in the workplace, is gaining prevalence in workplace conversations as evidenced by Kaya, a startup that aims to be the next generation of mental health culture. Kaya, which launched in November, offers virtual mental health groups led by licensed clinicians that connect employees from the same companies or different companies based on shared experiences.

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He co-founded Life Storage. Now he’s bringing some lessons to a Buffalo startup

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He co-founded Life Storage. Now he’s bringing some lessons to a Buffalo startup

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Roberto.D

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He co-founded Life Storage. Now he’s bringing some lessons to a Buffalo startup

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Ellicottville Greens is using a strategy loosely based on the early days of Life Storage.

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Why the owner of Kaden Tower wants to invest in early-stage startups

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Why the owner of Kaden Tower wants to invest in early-stage startups

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Roberto.D

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Why the owner of Kaden Tower wants to invest in early-stage startups

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The firm behind this office tower will be offering up free office space, making equity investments and facilitating connections to help advance early-stage, scalable companies.

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VestLife, maker of app for developmentally disabled, gets Elk Grove startup grant

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VestLife, maker of app for developmentally disabled, gets Elk Grove startup grant

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Roberto.D

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VestLife, maker of app for developmentally disabled, gets Elk Grove startup grant

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Elk Grove has awarded one of its Startup Elk Grove Incentive Program grants to VestLife Inc., a 3-year-old startup whose cloud-based app helps track records for people with lifetime developmental disabilities.

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Chipotle and Kraft Heinz use this start-up to track and prove how green they are

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Chipotle and Kraft Heinz use this start-up to track and prove how green they are

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Roberto.D

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Consumers are now demanding environmental accountability in everything -- from the buildings they live in to the products they purchase. Food is a big one. While more and more food companies are claiming that their products are "sustainable," a Brooklyn, New York-based startup is asking how good that claim really is. The company is called HowGood.

HowGood analyses thousands of ingredients -- more than 33,000 so far, the company claims -- looking at factors like the product's greenhouse gas emissions, its water usage, land usage, soil biodiversity impact, potential deforestation, concern for animal welfare, and so on.

Every ingredient in every product has different environmental impacts, all of which change region to region. For each product analysis, HowGood takes in close to 250 different attributes from those ingredients and boils them all down to a rating, which companies can then use to improve their products.

"HowGood provides sustainability intelligence," said Alexander Gillett, HowGood's CEO. "The idea here is that we have the largest database in the world on food sustainability, and companies get to use it now to start making better decisions and to be more transparent."

"My friends like to say I can ruin any food group," Gillett joked.

But companies are hungry for the data, both to meet their sustainability goals, and because their customers increasingly demand it. Chipotle uses HowGood for its Foodprint, a measure of its carbon footprint. Kraft Heinz is a new client, now experimenting with some of its staples.

"We're already looking at some really favorable, interesting things with cheese, as well as plant-based alternatives inside that same category," said Jonah Smith, global head of environmental social governance at Kraft Heinz. "We're really excited about the possibility that HowGood can really help us, with their extensive catalogue, look at more carbon-friendly alternatives to sourcing as well as our other ESG metrics."

While companies like Kraft Heinz and Walmart are buying the deep data to assess their products, consumers can also use the HowGood app to check on the sustainability of products they're buying.

Gillett says the company is seeing, "inspiring" demand from product makers for the data, but he admits that a very small fraction of the millions of products in the HowGood database actually get a top rating. Less than 5%, he said.

"Most companies mainly complain that we rate them too harshly. And we're okay with that. We're okay with it being hard. It's a hard problem to solve, and I think the great thing is those companies say that, but then they trust it," Gillett said.

HowGood has a staff of about 40 now but expects to triple that in the coming year. Its backers include Titan Grove, Firstmark Capital, Serious Change, Danone Manifesto Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Astanor Ventures. The company has raised $26.5 million so far.

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Chipotle and Kraft use this start-up to track and prove how green they are

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Consumers are now demanding environmental accountability in everything -- from the buildings they live in to the products they purchase. Food is a big one. While more and more food companies are claiming that their products are "sustainable," a Brooklyn, New York-based startup is asking how good that claim really is.

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The Office Monsters Are Trying to Claw Their Way Back to 2019

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The Office Monsters Are Trying to Claw Their Way Back to 2019

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Roberto.D

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Some corporate leaders are grasping at whatever they can to get back to the way things were. But they might find themselves fighting a culture shift beyond their control.

Goldman Sachs is among the companies closely tracking the time workers spend in the office. Credit... An Rong Xu for The New York Times

The DealBook newsletter delves into a single topic or theme every weekend, providing reporting and analysis that offers a better understanding of an important issue in business. If you don't already receive the daily newsletter, sign up here.
As long as work has existed, employers have tried to size up their employees' commitment to their jobs. Are you on the fast track? The mommy track? The leadership track?

Now, if some corporate leaders have their way, there will be a new test for workplace devotion - and anyone who opts for remote work gets a failing grade. But can C.E.O.s really claw their way back to 2019?

This past week, Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to Tesla and SpaceX employees requiring them to return to the office for at least 40 hours per week - or lose their jobs. Mr. Musk, who is known for having camped out for weeks at Tesla factories, thinks remote work is an affront to productivity and personal commitment. Last month, he praised Chinese workers for "burning the 3 a.m. oil," comparing them with American workers who, he said, are "trying to avoid going to work at all."

Jamie Dimon said last month that working from home isn't for people who want "to hustle." The bank has been criticized for tracking employees' ID badge swipes to monitor how often they were coming to the office, along with similar policing by rivals like Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Dimon believes JPMorgan's work setup "will look just like it did before" by September or October. But he also admitted in a letter to shareholders that remote work "will become more permanent in American business."

"Although the pandemic changed the way we work in many ways, for the most part it only accelerated ongoing trends," Mr. Dimon wrote. As my colleague Lananh Nguyen reported, he didn't sound particularly happy about it, ticking off the "serious weaknesses" of virtual work, including slowed decision-making and a lack of "spontaneous learning and creativity."

The resistance to remote work has many facets, including the bottom line: Many organizations have made pricey investments in office real estate, which has led to the creation of vast economic systems that are ultimately reliant on having workers at their desks.

"I'm trying to fill up office buildings, and I'm telling JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, I'm telling all of them, 'Listen, I need your people back into office so we can build the ecosystem,'" Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said this week. The city, which is heavily reliant on tax revenue from massive Midtown offices, recently announced a strict policy of in-person work for city employees.

"How does that look that city employees are home while I'm telling everyone else it's time to get back to work?" Mr. Adams added. "City employees should be leading the charge of saying, 'New York can be back.'"

Beyond the bottom line, the back-to-office debate is about what kind of culture will prevail as the business world emerges from the pandemic. And for all of the power wielded by Mr. Musk, Mr. Dimon and Mr. Adams, they may be fighting a shift that is larger than any single company or city.

If the pandemic's two-plus years of remote work experimentation have taught us anything, it's that many people can be productive outside the office, and quite a few are happier doing so. That's especially true for people with young children or long commutes, minority workers who have a tougher time fitting in with the standard office culture, or those with other personal circumstances that made working in offices less attractive.

"We still are struggling to let go of the ideal worker stereotype - even though that person, for a lot of people and occupations and demographic groups in the U.S., never really existed," said Colleen Ammerman, the director of the Gender Initiative at Harvard Business School. "I think with remote work, and hybrid, we have the potential to truly move away from that and really rethink about what it means to be on a leadership track, what it means to be a high performer, and get away from that being associated with being in the office at all hours."

Even as the pandemic has changed course, there are signs that the work-from-home trend is actually accelerating. One recent survey published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that employers are now saying they will allow employees to work from home an average of 2.3 days per week, up from 1.5 days in the summer of 2020.

It's not just the office - it's also the commute. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that almost all of the major cities with the biggest drops in office occupancy during the pandemic had an average one-way commute of more than 30 minutes; and most cities with the smallest drops had shorter commutes.

And Americans are increasingly booking stays for longer than 30 days on Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com, according to Vered Raviv Schwarz, the president and chief operating officer of Guesty, a software management tool for short-term rentals. At first, industry experts thought the extended stays might be a pandemic blip. But it's gone on for long enough that it may signal workers with jobs that can be done remotely are doubling down on working outside of the normal commute-to-work patterns.

At its heart, the battle over remote work is a test of corporate America's definition of an ideal worker. For decades or even longer, that has been a person who prioritizes their job above all else and has no outside commitments.

It's "an incredibly powerful story," said Brigid Schulte, the director of the Better Life Lab program at the think tank New America. "It's part of our culture. It's part of our DNA."

It's probably not shocking that people who are lower on the org chart tend to be less enthusiastic about returning to the office than the senior leaders and executives who thrived in the in-person Before Times.

"For many C.E.O.s and managers, that's how they worked. That's how they succeeded and that's the only way they know," Ms. Schulte said. "All of this was completely false; it was totally a fake story we've been telling ourselves."

What do you think? Should companies go back to how things were before the pandemic? Let us know: dealbook@nytimes.com.

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The Office Monsters Are Trying to Claw Their Way Back to 2019

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Some corporate leaders are grasping at whatever they can to get back to the way things were. But they might find themselves fighting a culture shift beyond their control. The DealBook newsletter delves into a single topic or theme every weekend, providing reporting and analysis that offers a better understanding of an important issue in business.

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The blockchain startup Flowcarbon landed $70 million in its first round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division. Flowcarbon was co-founded by former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, but this time he’s looking to solve a more complicated problem than infusing all office water with fruit: managing carbon offsets.

Refresher: A carbon offset or credit represents a net reduction in CO2 emissions (for instance, planting trees that suck up the gas). And companies buy them to “offset” their own polluting behavior, such as General Motors purchasing carbon offsets to counter tailpipe emissions.

As it stands, carbon credits can be bought through private companies or through carbon exchanges. Flowcarbon wants to cut middlemen out of the process by turning carbon credits into tokens (its first is called GNT, for “goddess nature token”) that can be bought and sold on the blockchain. The goal: faster funding for projects, more transparency for buyers.

Zoom out: Startups are swarming into “regenerative finance” (ReFi), a Web3 movement attempting to use blockchain tech to bring about positive environmental and social outcomes. Two of them, JustCarbon and Likvidi, opened carbon-token marketplaces earlier this year.—JW

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Flowcarbon raises $70 million to tokenize carbon offsets

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Blockchain startups are swarming into regenerative finance.

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Anette Vera

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Manish Dave, senior vice president, business development and experienced advisor recruiting, Ameriprise Financial

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Op-ed: What financial advisors are demanding during the 'Great Resignation'

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Amid the "Great Resignation," financial advisors are taking stock of their careers and how they want to operate. Three themes have emerged in recent months.

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-joselyn granillo

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international relations and national security

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Elon Musk to buy Twitter in $44 billion deal | CNN Business

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Twitter said Monday it has agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk in a roughly $44 billion deal that has the potential to expand the billionaire's business empire and put the world's richest man in charge of one of the world's most influential social networks.

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Aileen cervantes

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American Express (AXP) - American Express rose 1.2% in the premarket after reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue for the first quarter. Amex reported a profit of $2.73 per share compared with the $2.44 consensus estimate, helped by increased spending by millennial and Gen-X consumers as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

Verizon (VZ) - Verizon earned an adjusted $1.35 per share for the first quarter, matching estimates, with revenue also essentially in line. Verizon lost 36,000 phone subscribers during the quarter, less than the 49,300 losses expected by analysts who were surveyed by FactSet. Verizon fell 1.4% in premarket trading.

Kimberly-Clark (KMB) - The consumer products company's shares jumped 3.8% in the premarket after reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue. Kimberly-Clark said it was able to deal with a "volatile and inflationary" environment and raised its full-year organic sales forecast.

Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) - The steel producer and mining company's stock rallied 3.5% in premarket trading after beating top and bottom-line estimates for the first quarter. Cleveland-Cliffs also raised its average selling price forecast for the full year.

Schlumberger (SLB) - The oilfield services producer beat estimates by a penny with an adjusted quarterly profit of 34 cents per share, and revenue also topped Wall Street forecasts. Schlumberger also raised its dividend by 40%, and its stock added 1.1% in premarket action.

Snap (SNAP) - Snap lost an adjusted 2 cents per share for its latest quarter, compared with consensus forecasts of a 1 cent per-share profit for the social media company. It also issued a conservative sales growth outlook for the current quarter, and the shares fell 1.1% in premarket trading.

Gap (GPS) - Gap cut its sales growth outlook amid increasing competition and more promotions. The company also announced that Old Navy President and CEO Nancy Green is departing. Gap stock tumbled 14.8% in the premarket.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) - AB InBev will sell its stake in its Russian joint venture and take a $1.1 billion impairment charge as a result. The beer brewer suspended sales of its Budweiser brand in Russia last month following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. AB InBev fell 1.8% in premarket action.

SAP (SAP) - SAP shares slid 4.1% in premarket trading after the German business software company said it would take a $300 million revenue hit due to its exit from the Russian market.

Boston Beer (SAM) - Boston Beer reported a quarterly loss of 16 cents per share, compared with analysts' expected profit of $1.97 per share. The beer brewer's revenue missed estimates as shipment volume declined more than 25% from a year earlier and gross margins fell as well. Shares were down 3.2% in the premarket.

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Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: American Express, Verizon, Kimberly-Clark and more

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American Express (AXP) - American Express rose 1.2% in the premarket after reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue for the first quarter. Amex reported a profit of $2.73 per share compared with the $2.44 consensus estimate, helped by increased spending by millennial and Gen-X consumers as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

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Aileen Cervantes

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April 25 (Reuters) - A wave of COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai presents the biggest test yet for investors, trading companies and logistics managers trying to follow China's economy after the government restricted firms from releasing real-time data.

As China's most populous city struggles to emerge from weeks of crippling coronavirus curbs, companies can no longer see how goods are moving in and out of the key port as a result of a recent data law that cracked down on data sharing.

Industrial barometers from crude oil inventories at import terminals to high-frequency container throughput at ports were widely available previously, offering a real-time window on the world's second-biggest economy unhampered by the delays and possible distortions of official economic data.

But since China's Personal Information Protection Law went into effect in November, crucial sources of information about the world's biggest exporting nation have gone dark.

Shipping companies and brokers have resorted to less accurate satellite-based tracking to monitor port delays. Traffic data to gauge truck shipping and commerce is no longer available. Traders track port activity by phone calls or even hand-counting ships.

That lack of visibility will affect every other link in China's globe-spanning supply chains as work gradually resumes, the flow of goods picks up and shippers seek to clear traffic jams off China's east coast.

"We are no longer able to obtain some of the high-frequency data, like daily cargo turnover at ports, railway and air traffic passenger data," said Dong Chen, head of Asia macroeconomic research at Pictet Wealth Management.

"Some of the data became monthly basis only," Chen said. "We just have to deal with what it is."

The Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Transport did not respond to requests for comment on the impacts of the data law.

IN THE DARK

The data law is the latest in what accountancy PwC calls "one of the most stringent regulatory regimes many multinationals will encounter." The measures limit how domestic and foreign organisations can collect and use data, affecting every company operating in China. read more

Organisations monitoring industrial or commercial activity in China must comply with strict rules on data classification, storage, cross-border transfers, transparency and user consent management before they may publish such data to clients. read more

As a result, some data providers have suspended or ceased publishing data or moved it behind pay walls.

"Everyone is writing and talking about the port congestion in China due to recent wave of COVID, but we cannot find much authentic data to assess the actual situation," said a Beijing-based oil trader.

Two years ago when COVID swept through China at the start of the pandemic, analysts, investors and journalists turned to traffic data by Dutch mapping firm TomTom to see how lockdowns stifled mobility across major cities in the world's most populous country.

Not now. Chinese cities are not available on the company's free international traffic congestion page, which continues to track data for dozens of other locations globally.

"We have made the business decision to discontinue the historical and live traffic feed for Chinese cities through our TomTom Move Portal and Traffic Index website, as Chinese law on the sharing and disclosing of GPS data has been tightened recently," TomTom spokesman Ivo Bokkerink said by email.

TomTom continues to provide data to subscribers in China, he said.

After shipping companies stopped publishing Automatic Identification System (AIS) feeds on ships in Chinese waters, traders and others who track ship movements have used satellite-based positioning data that can be less accurate than ship-to-shore AIS signals.

"I'd say last year we were talking to people a few times per month" to supplement data on supply chain developments, said Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research. "But the past few weeks it's been daily."

Others have gone more old school.

"Real-time data-driven decision making is at the heart of what we do for a living these days, especially with supply chain issues stoking inflation fires," said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management.

"Now we are reduced to relying on folks to manually count ships outside of Shanghai and Ningbo Ports again at 7 p.m. daily for reference points."

Reporting by Gavin Maguire in Singapore, Muyu Xu in Beijing and Xie Yu in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Sarah Wu in Taipei; Editing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Investors in the dark on China industrial transport as data curbs bite

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April 25 (Reuters) - A wave of COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai presents the biggest test yet for investors, trading companies and logistics managers trying to follow China's economy after the government restricted firms from releasing real-time data.

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Aileen Cervantes

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NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) for $44 billion cash on Monday in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person.

It is a seminal moment for the 16-year-old company, which emerged as one of the world's most influential public squares and now faces a string of challenges.

Musk, who calls himself a free speech absolutist, has criticized Twitter's moderation. He wants Twitter's algorithm for prioritizing tweets to be public and objects to giving too much power on the service to corporations that advertise.

Political activists expect that a Musk regime will mean less moderation and reinstatement of banned individuals including former President Donald Trump. read more Conservatives cheered the prospect of fewer controls while some human rights activists voiced fears of a rise in hate speech. read more

Musk has also advocated user-friendly tweaks to the service, such as an edit button and defeating "spam bots" that send overwhelming amounts of unwanted tweets.

Discussions over the deal, which last week appeared uncertain, accelerated over the weekend after Musk wooed Twitter shareholders with financing details of his offer.

Under pressure, Twitter started negotiating with Musk to buy the company at his proposed $54.20 per share price. read more

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in a statement.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey weighed in on the deal late on Monday with a series of tweets that thanked both Musk and current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal for "getting the company out of an impossible situation."

"Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step," he said.

Twitter shares rose 5.7% on Monday to finish at $51.70. The deal represents a near 40% premium to the closing price the day before Musk disclosed he had bought a more than 9% stake.

Even so, the offer is well below the $70 range where Twitter was trading last year.

"I think if the company were given enough time to transform, we would have made substantially more than what Musk is currently offering," said Jonathan Boyar, managing director at Boyar Value Group, which holds a stake in Twitter.

However, he added, "If the public markets do not properly value a company, an acquirer eventually will."

Musk's move continues a tradition of billionaires' buying control of influential media platforms, including Jeff Bezos' 2013 acquisition of the Washington Post.

Twitter said Musk secured $25.5 billion of debt and margin loan financing and is providing a $21 billion equity commitment.

Musk, who is worth $268 billion according to Forbes, has said he is not primarily concerned with the economics of Twitter.

"Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don't care about the economics at all," he said in a recent public talk.

OUTSIZED IMPORTANCE

Musk is chief executive of both electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and aerospace company SpaceX, and it is not clear how much time he will devote to Twitter or what he will do.

"Once the deal closes, we don't know which direction the platform will go," Agrawal told employees on Monday. read more

Edward Moya, an analyst at currency broker OANDA, said in an email to clients the deal was "great news for Twitter shareholders as it doesn't seem like the company was going to get things right anytime soon."

But he also said: "Tesla shareholders can't be happy that Musk will have to divert even more attention away from winning the EV (electric vehicle) race."

Still, Musk's 84 million-strong Twitter account is seen as an important, free public relations and marketing tool for Tesla.

The Twitter transaction was approved by the company's board and is now subject to a shareholder vote. No regulatory hurdles are expected, analysts said.

Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, said the company's board of directors had its back "against the wall" once Musk detailed his financing package and no other bidders emerged.

Although it is only about a 10th of the size of far larger social media platforms like Meta Platforms Inc's (FB.O) Facebook, Twitter has been credited with helping spawn the Arab Spring uprising and accused of playing a role in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.

After Twitter banned Trump over concerns around incitement of violence following the U.S. Capitol attack by his supporters, Musk tweeted: "A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech."

Trump, whose company is building a rival to Twitter called Truth Social, said in a Fox News interview on Monday that he will not return to Twitter.

The White House declined on Monday to comment on Musk's deal, but said President Joe Biden has long been concerned about the power of social media platforms.

"Our concerns are not new," said White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, adding that the platforms need to be held accountable. "The president has long talked about his concerns about the power of social media platforms, including Twitter and others, to spread misinformation."

Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Krystal Hu, Lewis Krauskopf and Megan Davies in New York, Noel Randewich in San Francisco, Sheila Dang in Dallas, Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Shivam Patel in Bengaluru; Writing by Peter Henderson; Editing by Anna Driver, Kenneth Li, Matthew Lewis and Edwina Gibbs

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Musk gets Twitter for $44 billion, to cheers and fears of 'free speech' plan

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Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc for $44 billion cash on Monday in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person.

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Aileen Cervantes

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Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world's largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers.

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UnitedHealth to sell Change Healthcare's claims business for $2.2 bln

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Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world's largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers.

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TOKYO (AP) - Asian shares declined Monday after U.S. stocks ended last week on a tumble as global markets' expectations for higher interest rates continued to set the tone.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 1.9% in morning trading to 26,583.70. South Korea's Kospi slipped 1.6% to 2,661.94. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 2.8% to 20,064.32, while the Shanghai Composite shed 2.4% to 3,012.93. Trading was closed in Australia for Anzac Day, a national holiday.

The news that Emmanuel Macron won the run-off French presidential election over the weekend, clinching a second term as was widely expected, reassured markets that France won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine.

But a significant show from contender Marine Le Pen, a populist and nationalist, served as a reminder of how fragile that situation might be, analysts said. Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the EU, NATO and Germany, and spoke out against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies.

Rising COVID-19 cases in China are setting off worries about more pandemic lockdowns that would crimp economic recoveries in the region. Other nations are also dealing with economic woes related to COVID-19, such as the absence of tourism revenue in Japan, where cases are still going up and down while it gradually opens its borders, but only to business travelers.

Investors are also watching profit reports from companies, including Japanese big names that are coming in weeks ahead. Several reports from U.S. companies, which have already been released, have been disappointing, contributing to the fall that ended last week on Wall Street.

What the U.S. Federal Reserve might do is high on investors' minds. The chair of the Federal Reserve has indicated the central bank may hike short-term interest rates by double the usual amount at upcoming meetings, starting in two weeks. The Fed has already raised its key overnight rate once, the first such increase since 2018.

The S&P 500 fell 2.8% Friday to 4,271.78, marking its third losing week in a row. The Dow dropped 2.8% to 33,811.40, its biggest drop in 18 months. The Nasdaq lost 2.6%, closing at 12,839.29. The Dow and Nasdaq also posted losses for the week.

Smaller company stocks also fell sharply. The Russell 2000 slid 2.6% to 1,940.66.

"Coming after the heavy sell-off in Wall Street to end last week, overall risk appetite in the region may come under pressure as well," said Yeap Jun Rong, market strategist at IG in Singapore.

Markets around the world are feeling similar pressure on rates and inflation, particularly in Europe as the war in Ukraine pushes up oil, gas and food costs.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude lost $2.91 to $99.16 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, fell $2.93 to $103.72 a barrel.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar edged down to 128.51 Japanese yen from 128.59 yen. The euro cost $1.0789, down from $1.0803.

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Asian shares fall amid interest rate, earnings worries

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TOKYO (AP) - Asian shares declined Monday after U.S. stocks ended last week on a tumble as global markets' expectations for higher interest rates continued to set the tone. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 1.9% in morning trading to 26,583.70.

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Stocks are dropping. What should you do?

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Stocks are dropping. What should you do?

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Esme M.A

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Stocks are dropping. What should you do?

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April has been an unhappy months for stocks. Here’s what to think about before selling, though.

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-Arlette

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Starting your own business is a lot like falling in love-equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. For every wonderful, magical thing that can happen in the course of getting your business off the ground, there is always something that threatens to derail your dream of being an entrepreneur.

Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company (and a man who knew a thing or two about failure) once said, "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

There is something about the ability to direct one's own fate that draws humans to entrepreneurship like moths to a flame. A University of Phoenix report indicates that 63 percent of adults under the age of 30 want to run their own business one day, and in the coming years there will certainly be more and more opportunities to do so.

Before you dive in your new entrepreneurial venture, you should know these 20 small business facts-even if they keep you up at night-because, as McDonald's founder Ray Kroc says: "If you're not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business."

So, some interesting small business facts . . .

1. A small business is defined as an enterprise that has fewer than 500 employees. So technically, that kid who opens his lemonade stand on the corner every summer is a small business owner. Except...

2. In order to be subject to federal income taxes, a small business must have annual business receipts of $1,000. So much for Billy's lemonade stand. However, rather than gnash your teeth every tax season, be glad you made enough income to file!

3. There are nearly 28 million small businesses in America. Of those 28 million, a full 22 million consists of one lone employee. Finally-a way to make money from being anti-social!

4. Over 50 percent of the 120 million Americans in the workforce works in a small business. That means that the plumber you called to fix your pipes last week who can't even afford a belt to hold his pants up is probably a small business owner.

5. In 2009 a small business filed for bankruptcy every eight minutes. You probably didn't notice, however, with the whole Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince craze that year.

6. Approximately 543,000 new businesses are started each month. Which means you're going to have to create something a lot more original than that bathroom finders app.

7. Contrary to the popular belief that 50 percent of startups fail within the first year and 95 percent close shop by the 5-year mark, the truth is: 70 percent of small businesses remain in operation for at least two years, 50 percent are still around in five years, 33 percent in 10 years, and 25 percent after 15 years.

8. With a small budget you may be wondering how to get the word out about your new business. In 2013, 52 percent of companies found new customers on Facebook. Which means that when people see you posting, liking, and commenting on silly animal videos, you can tell them you are doing market research.

9. The fastest growing sectors in the world of small businesses include auto repair shops, dry cleaners, and beauty salons. To really get a leg up on the small biz sector, try opening a service shop that frosts your tips and cleans your shirts while you wait for your car!

10. The average revenue for a small business is in the $44,000 bracket. Obviously, most small business owners derive their satisfaction from being their own boss rather than being rich.

11. It takes as little as five days to start a business in the U.S. That same business startup in Brazil would take 107 days. It's probably best to keep your South American trips to pleasure only.

12. Here's a scary fact: if a small company cannot resume business within 10 days of a natural disaster, it probably will not survive. Yikes. Now there's a subject for your next horror movie, David Fincher!

13. In 2011, the total revenue from all American small businesses reached $989.6 billion. Yes, that's a "b". Imagine what would happen to the U.S. economy if risk takers like you did not exist. In fact, Montana and Wyoming's economies are actually dependent upon small businesses.

14. If you're unemployed right now, don't worry: in 2011, 5.5 percent of self-employed people were out of a job the previous year. Steve Jobs, you'll be happy to know, was a college dropout living with his parents when he, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne started Apple.

15. Since 1990, large companies have eliminated 4 million jobs-but small businesses have added 8 million new ones. Way to go, small business owners!

16. If the 77 million small business employees in the U.S. were a country, it would be the 17th most populous country in the world, just behind Iran. We'd all secede except for the fact that we'd never decide which entrepreneur would run our new country.

17. It costs six times as much to start a small business in India as it does in the U.S. There is a reason people from around the world still believe in the American dream!

18. On a related note, 12.5 percent of small businesses are made up of immigrants from other countries. As this Forbes study reveals: diversity is essential for innovation in the workplace.

19. Small businesses inspire innovative ideas twice as much as big businesses, and tend to produce environmentally-friendly products. Like reusable chopsticks.

20. Small businesses generate 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting companies. Innovators are far less likely to want to patent an idea that is going to belong to their big-name employer than to hold that patent themselves.

What small business owners should keep in mind

If starting your own business feels like a gamble, you are probably right. There are no guarantees in life. But as Albert Einstein once said, "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." Entrepreneurs today have access to a host of resources (for example, online tools to create a quick invoice or customizable invoice templates) that earlier businesses could only dream of. So grab hold of those resources and dream more than others think is practical!

Sources:

Join thousands of business-savvy entrepreneurs on our mailing list.

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20 Small Business Facts That Will Keep You Up at Night

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Starting your own business is a lot like falling in love-equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. For every wonderful, magical thing that can happen in the course of getting your business off the ground, there is always something that threatens to derail your dream of being an entrepreneur.

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Bank Tests and Goldman's Checking Account

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Bank Tests and Goldman's Checking Account

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Regina Rangel

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Goldman Sachs' long-awaited checking account is one step closer to reality.

The bank is widening internal testing for the no-fee, interest-bearing account to all 20,000-plus of its U.S. employees, according to Stephanie Cohen, Goldman's global co-head of consumer and wealth management.

"This week we extended exclusive beta access to all of our U.S. employees," Cohen said in a statement provided to CNBC. "As beta participants, they have the opportunity to be the first to explore the new product, test select features and share feedback with us. ... This beta is only the beginning of what we hope will soon become the primary checking account for tens of millions of customers."

Goldman's play to manage Americans' primary transaction hub is one of the more significant steps it has taken to compete directly with retail giants such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Goldman first announced the account in January 2020, but its release has been delayed as the firm worked through its product roadmap. Beginning with savings and personal loans under the Marcus brand in 2016, it added the Apple Card as well as personal finance and investment tools via a smartphone app.

The bank is expected to release the account to the public later this year, CFO Denis Coleman told analysts this month.

Goldman declined to say what interest rate it will offer on the accounts, but a person with knowledge of the matter said it would likely be competitive with other online offers.

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Goldman's checking account for the masses nears as bank tests product with U.S. employees

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Goldman Sachs' long-awaited checking account is one step closer to reality. The bank is widening internal testing for the no-fee, interest-bearing account to all 20,000-plus of its U.S. employees, according to Stephanie Cohen, Goldman's global co-head of consumer and wealth management. "This week we extended exclusive beta access to all of our U.S.

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Aileen Cervantes

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BEIJING - China's first-quarter GDP grew faster than expected despite the impact of Covid lockdowns in parts of the country in March, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics Monday.

First-quarter GDP rose by 4.8%, topping expectations of a 4.4% increase from a year ago.

Fixed asset investment for the first quarter rose by 9.3% from a year ago, topping expectations for 8.5% growth. Investment in manufacturing rose by 15.6% in the first quarter from a year ago, and infrastructure saw an 8.5% increase over the same period.

Industrial production in March rose by 5%, beating the forecast for 4.5% growth.

However, retail sales in March fell by a more-than-expected 3.5% from a year earlier. Analysts polled by Reuters anticipated a 1.6% decline.

Beginning in March, the country has struggled to contain its worst Covid outbreak since the initial phase of the pandemic in 2020. Back then, lockdowns across more than half the country resulted in a 6.8% contraction in first quarter growth from a year earlier.

"We must be aware that with the domestic and international environment becoming increasingly complicated and uncertain, the economic development is facing significant difficulties and challenges," the bureau said in a statement.

Rising unemployment

The unemployment rate across 31 major Chinese cities rose from 5.4% in February to 6% in March - the highest on record according to official data going back to 2018.

"This indicates the unemployment problem in the large cities has become more severe than when the Covid Pandemic started in 2020," said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

"The Covid outbreaks only forced Shanghai and some other cities to enter lockdowns in late March and early April. Therefore the economic slowdown likely worsened in April," he said.

As Covid stretches into a third year, China again faces the challenge of ensuring a record high number of graduates find jobs. This year, the number of higher education graduates are expected to rise by 1.67 million from 2021 to 10.76 million.

In March, the unemployment rate for those from 16 to 24 years old remained far higher at 16% - the highest since August 2020.

Overall, the national urban unemployment rate ticked higher in March to 5.8%, up from 5.5% in February.

That rise "reflects greater difficulties for businesses' production and operations, and greater pressure on employment," Fu Linghui, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics, said at a briefing Monday in Chinese, according to a CNBC translation.

He noted that since March, some people have had a harder time finding jobs due to the impact of Covid domestically. That contrasts with a historical seasonal trend in which the unemployment rate tended to fall in March, after rising in January and February as workers changed jobs around the Spring Festival, Fu said.

Real estate's role

"To achieve this year's 5.5% economic growth target, consumption must not be dragged down by the pandemic, real estate investment must stop falling and stabilize as soon as possible, fiscal spending must be strong enough and imports and exports cannot contribute negatively," Bruce Pang, head of macro and strategy research at China Renaissance, said in Chinese, translated by CNBC.

Since retail sales and trade have a limited ability to contribute to growth, the market has greater expectations for real estate to play a role, he said.

Although [the] Chinese economy will come under near-term pressure because of pandemic controls, we remain confident in China economy's long-term resilience and vitality.

director of equities, Fidelity International

Real estate, which has struggled since Beijing's crackdown on developers' high use of debt, saw investment rise by 0.7% in the first quarter from a year ago. That's despite double-digit declines in the floor space and total sales of commercial buildings sold.

Although economic figures released for January and February beat expectations, figures for March have begun to reflect the impact of stay-home orders and travel restrictions around economic centers like the coastal metropolis of Shanghai.

Exports, a major driver of China's growth, rose by a more-than-expected 14.7% in March, but imports unexpectedly fell, down by 0.1% from a year ago, according to data released last week.

"We must coordinate the efforts of Covid-19 prevention and control and economic and social development, make economic stability our top priority and pursue progress while ensuring stability, and put the task of ensuring stable growth in an even more prominent position," the bureau said.

Retail sales grew by 3.3% in the first quarter from a year ago, but the apparel, autos and furniture subcategories still posted declines for the period.

Within retail sales, jewelry declined the most and was down by 17.9% in March from a year ago. It was followed by a 16.4% decline in catering and a 12.7% decline in clothing and shoes, the data showed.

"Although [the] Chinese economy will come under near-term pressure because of pandemic controls, we remain confident in China economy's long-term resilience and vitality," Monica Li, director of equities, at Fidelity International, said in a note.

Among signs of support for longer-term growth, Li noted how "the strong issuance of special local government bond since second half last year has set the stage for accelerating infrastructure investment in future."

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China's first-quarter GDP beats expectations to grow 4.8% year-on-year

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BEIJING - China's first-quarter GDP grew faster than expected despite the impact of Covid lockdowns in parts of the country in March, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics Monday. First-quarter GDP rose by 4.8%, topping expectations of a 4.4% increase from a year ago.

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Aileen Cervantes

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The market slump may be in its final innings.

According to Evercore ISI's Julian Emanuel, stocks should start grinding higher due to peaking inflation.

He cites a positive trend going back to the last time stocks and bonds fell together: 1994.

"The market just sort of digested it, and there was a lot of sideways chop," the firm's senior managing director told CNBC's " Fast Money" on Monday. "There was a lot of bearishness."

It paved the way for an epic market breakout over the next four years.

"At the end of the day, earnings carried the day," noted Emanuel. "That's what we see when we think about '22 and '23 because we don't think there's going to be a recession."

Emanuel sees the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note yield ending this year at 3.25%. The yield kicked off the week at 2.85%, touching the highest level since December 2018.

The market bull expects strong consumer spending to buoy the economy.

"Margins on balance haven't contracted because the pricing power has been there," said Emanuel.

Yet, Wall Street optimism is at a 30-year low.

Emanuel alludes to the latest AAII Investor Sentiment Survey. In the week ending April 13, bears outnumbered the bulls by about three to one. Emanuel sees the results as a key contrary indicator.

'It's a question of can you manage through what's already in the price from an asset market perspective," Emanuel said. "As difficult as the external circumstances have been abroad and certainly slowing down in China now, the U.S. consumer is still intact."

As the Street gets deeper into earnings season, he doubts corporate America will give inflation outlooks.

"You're not going to hear that from companies. They don't need to take that risk guidance-wise," Emanuel said. "We don't think they're going to be very, very cautionary because they really haven't seen the evidence concretely themselves."

Emanuel has a 4,800 year-end target on the S&P 500, a 9% jump from Monday's close.
Disclaimer

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Market will break out of slump due to peaking inflation, Evercore ISI predicts

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The market slump may be in its final innings. According to Evercore ISI's Julian Emanuel, stocks should start grinding higher due to peaking inflation. He cites a positive trend going back to the last time stocks and bonds fell together: 1994.

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-joselyn granillo

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland on Tuesday, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war.

After a Russian push to overrun the capital failed, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

If successful, that offensive would give President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of Ukraine and a badly needed victory in the now 7-week-old war that he could present to the Russian people amid mounting casualties and economic hardship caused by the West's sanctions.

It would also effectively slice Ukraine in two and deprive it of the main industrial assets concentrated in the east, including coal mines, metals plants and machine-building factories.

Ukraine's military said early Tuesday that a "new phase of war" began a day earlier when "the occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that "another phase of this operation is starting now."

Ukraine's president said that massive numbers of Russian troops were committed to the offensive, though some observers noted that an escalation has been underway there for some time.

Justin Crump, a former British tank commander, said the Ukrainian comments could, in part, be an attempt to persuade allies to send more weapons.

"What they're trying to do by positioning this, I think, is ... focus people's minds and effort by saying, 'Look, the conflict has begun in the Donbas,'" said Crump, of strategic advisory company Sibylline. "That partly puts pressure on NATO and EU suppliers to say, 'Guys, we're starting to fight now. We need this now.'"

European and American arms have been key to bolstering Ukraine's defense, helping the under-gunned country to hold off the Russian force. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday by phone that the Netherlands would send "heavier material" to Ukraine, including armored vehicles.

In what appeared to be an intensification of attacks, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that air-launched missiles destroyed 13 Ukrainian troop and weapons locations while the air force struck 60 other Ukrainian military facilities, including missile warhead storage depots. Russian artillery hit 1,260 Ukrainian military facilities and 1,214 troops concentrations over the last 24 hours. The claims could not be independently verified.

On Monday, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby cast the stepped-up campaign as "shaping operations" setting the stage for a broader offensive in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region.

The assaults began that day along a boomerang-shaped front that stretches more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from northeastern Ukraine to the country's southeast.

Russia said it struck several areas with missiles, including the northeastern city of Kharkiv as well as as areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas. Five civilians were killed in a barrage on Kharkiv, Gov. Oleh Synyehubov said Tuesday.

Moscow's troops seized control of one town in the Donbas on Monday, according to Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's national security council, said that the defensive line had held elsewhere.

The breakthrough in Kreminna takes the Russians one small step closer to their apparent goal of encircling Ukrainian troops in the region.

Retired British Gen. Richard Barrons told the BBC that "in this particular battle the Russians will be approaching the Ukrainians from the east, but also from the north and the south to try and get behind them, and so this is a more complex military problem for the Ukrainians."

The capture of Kreminna also takes the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, whose loss by the Russia-backed separatists represented a humiliating setback for Moscow in the early stages of the separatist conflict in 2014.

Key to the campaign to take the east is the capture of Mariupol, a port city in the region that the Russians have besieged since the early days of the war.

Shelling continued there and Russia issued a fresh ultimatum Tuesday to the Ukrainian troops holed up there to surrender, saying those who come out will "keep their lives." The Ukrainians have ignored previous such offers.

The Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, whose forces have taken part in the fighting in Mariupol, said on a messaging app that Russian forces would root out the Ukrainian resistance within hours and take full control of the steel mill on Tuesday.

Kadyrov, who is known for his bluster, has repeatedly predicted the city's fall in the past.

Securing Mariupol would free Russian troops up to move elsewhere in the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of a vital port, and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine from 2014.

Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard that is guarding the last known Ukrainian pocket of resistance in Mariupol, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.

Civilians are also believed to be sheltering at the plant, which covers the territory of about 11 square kilometers (over 4 square miles).

On Monday, Zelenskyy said in a video address that a "significant part of the entire Russian army" is now concentrated on the battle for the Donbas.

"No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight," Zelenskyy vowed. "We will defend ourselves."

___

Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine; Danica Kirka in London; and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report, as did other AP staff members around the world.

___

Follow the AP's coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Russia ratchets up battle for control of eastern Ukraine

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland on Tuesday, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war .

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Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires rankings tracks the daily ups and downs of the world's richest people. The wealth-tracking platform provides ongoing updates on the net worth and ranking of each individual confirmed by Forbes to be a billionaire.

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How college students can start investing - and making - money

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College is the perfect time for students to start learning about and investing their money. Here are a few tips to get started.

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Jose Jimenez

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The blockbuster merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia is expected to close as soon as Friday, putting many of the biggest names in movies, TV and news under one roof.

Credit... George Wylesol

Discovery, the medium-size media company that began as a small cable network in 1985, is on the brink of something once unthinkable: assuming ownership of a fabled Hollywood company that controls Batman, Harry Potter, "Sex and the City," "Game of Thrones,"CNN and March Madness.

Discovery Inc. and WarnerMedia are expected to complete their megamerger as soon as Friday afternoon, adding a new behemoth to the entertainment industry. The two companies will combine television, movie and news operations that draw revenue of nearly $50 billion, forming one of the biggest media companies in the country.

The decision by AT&T, WarnerMedia's parent company, to spin off its entertainment division and merge it with Discovery - in a deal announced in May - will be felt throughout the media world in the months to come. It could push smaller competitors to hunt for deals to beef up in size. And it means that rivals like Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple now have a new ferocious competitor for streaming dominance.

The job of making the merged company a success falls to David Zaslav, the garrulous 62-year-old veteran cable TV executive who has been running Discovery for 15 years. He will take over as chief executive of the new company, which will be called Warner Bros. Discovery in a nod to the Hollywood studio started nearly a century ago.

"Sex and the City," Batman, Harry Potter and Wolf Blitzer of CNN Credit... Clockwise from top left, HBO; Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.; Warner Bros.; and Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated Press

Mr. Zaslav's Discovery is no slouch. The company owns cable networks like Food Network, HGTV and TLC and has the rights to an enormous array of nonfiction programming ranging from the highbrow (natural history programming like "Serengeti") to low ("My 600-lb. Life" and "My Feet Are Killing Me").

But now Mr. Zaslav is entering a much bigger, and more rarefied, position in the entertainment world. Unlike his more understated predecessors at AT&T, he has been bursting with enthusiasm for the last year while coming closer to taking over a powerhouse that will include HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT and the huge film and TV studios of Warner Bros.

He will move from New York to Los Angeles, and has spent months holding court with Hollywood power players at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. He has been featured in a glossy photo spread inside the former home of Robert Evans, the Hollywood producer whose mansion Mr. Zaslav recently added to his already impressive portfolio of personal real estate. Mr. Zaslav, one of the highest-paid chief executives in media, earned a compensation package valued at $246.6 million last year.

"I believe we're going to be the best media company in the world," he said after the deal was announced, with characteristic showmanship.

The challenges, however, for Mr. Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery will be significant.

A zebra stampede from Discovery's "Serengeti." Credit... Geoff Bell/Discovery, via Associated Press

Upon the completion of the deal, Discovery will assume $55 billion in debt, a sum that the company will be under pressure to begin paying down immediately. Discovery has also vowed to find $3 billion worth of savings between the two companies, which will almost certainly wind up in layoffs, particularly for overlapping business functions.

And Discovery, which has a long tradition of making low-cost nonfiction programming, has indicated that it will not necessarily spend at the breakneck pace that has become de rigueur in entertainment.

"We plan on being careful and judicious," Mr. Zaslav told investors in February. "Our goal is to compete with the leading streaming services, not to win the spending war."

He pointed out that HBO's recent run of scripted dramas, including "Euphoria," "The Gilded Age" and "Succession," seemed more than sufficient for the network.

"Would HBO be doing a lot better if it had three more really successful scripted series at this moment?" Mr. Zaslav said in February. "It's not clear that they would be."

Mr. Zaslav, who is expected to convene a forum next week for Warner Bros. Discovery's roughly 40,000 employees, has already started to overhaul the company's leadership. Jason Kilar, the chief executive of WarnerMedia for all of two years, and the Warner Bros. chief, Ann Sarnoff, along with a number of corporate officers in charge of communications, revenue, human resources, technology, legal and finance, were on their way out ahead of Discovery's takeover.

Mr. Zaslav has tapped many of his longtime lieutenants for key positions in the new company, and has knocked away some reporting structures. WarnerMedia's key content executives, Casey Bloys of HBO and Toby Emmerich and Channing Dungey of Warner Bros., will all report directly to Mr. Zaslav.

The deal brings yet another leadership change at WarnerMedia, which has endured a major corporate restructuring in the last few years, and whipsawed through stormy ownerships in the last two decades, including one led by AOL in the 2000s, as well as AT&T, its most recent owner.

David Zaslav, center, the veteran cable TV executive who has been running Discovery for 15 years. Credit... Krista Schlueter for The New York Times

AT&T bought WarnerMedia (formerly Time Warner) in 2018 for $85.4 billion with promises to bring streaming video to millions of mobile phones. But under an enormous debt burden and facing intense competition in the wireless industry, AT&T quickly backtracked from its ill-fated foray into entertainment, and has vowed to pivot back to core businesses related to fiber and 5G.

"What an embarrassing chapter for what was once one of America's most storied companies," one analyst noted last year.

The new company could prompt changes among existing media companies, forcing smaller companies like Paramount to scramble to find a way to get bigger.

"There's Disney, HBO Max, Netflix, Amazon and Apple - that's five," said Michael Nathanson, a media analyst, pointing to the leading streaming services. "You don't want to be in position six, seven or eight. At some point, they'll say, 'We have to find a dance partner.'"

The biggest question will be what happens to HBO Max and Discovery+, the merging companies' streaming services. Initially, the two could be sold as a bundle, but over time they are likely to be brought together into one giant streaming service.

HBO and HBO Max, which consists of new television series and movies, as well as an impressive lineup from the Warner Bros. library, have more than 70 million subscribers; Discovery+ has more than 20 million.

Even brought together, that pales next to Netflix, which has more than 220 million paying subscribers, most of them outside the United States. HBO Max has only recently expanded into foreign territory, though Discovery has built a robust international business.

"A new giant is born when they prove they have international scale," Mr. Nathanson said of Warner Bros. Discovery. "I don't think Discovery content on HBO Max in the U.S. is a needle mover. But because international is such uncontested territory, they can have more impact outside the U.S."

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The blockbuster merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia is expected to close as soon as Friday, putting many of the biggest names in movies, TV and news under one roof.

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Inflation and the Effects on Financial Assets

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Inflation and the Effects on Financial Assets

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Regina R.

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There may be no escape from the bond market turmoil - even for stock investors.

Market researcher Jim Bianco warns critical Federal Reserve policies to control wild inflation will inflict widespread losses on Wall Street.

"Eventually, this is going to come back and hurt all financial assets," the Bianco Research president told CNBC " Fast Money" on Thursday.

Bianco turned bearish on stocks late last yea r, primarily due to inflation risks. He blames the Fed for waiting too long to end its pandemic easy money policies and lift interest rates.

"The call last year that inflation would be well-contained and transitory is arguably one of the worst forecasts in Federal Reserve history," said Bianco. "They are now stuck with this ultra-aggressive policy because they didn't start raising rates at a very leisurely pace a year ago."

He worries about the big catch-up's costs.

"They don't intend on creating a hard landing. But what they do intend on doing is reining in prices," Bianco said. " They want lower inflation, and they're going to raise rates til they get lower inflation. How are they going to do that? They're going to slow demand down."

According to Bianco, the Fed's only solution is to boot interest rates quickly and get wealthy people to stop spending. The bond market is already discounting the central bank's likely bold moves.

"The bond market gets it. The carnage is epic," he wrote in a recent Twitter thread. "This is not only the worst bond market in our career (total return) but might be the worst of our lifetime."

Bianco, who sees a 75% chance of inflation within the next two years, expects a 50 basis point hike at its next policy meeting on May 3 through May 4.

"It will be 50 [basis points] all the way through until the Fed basically raises rates too much and breaks something. And, then they'll be done. But, they're not going to go back to 25," he said. "If the stock market wants to go up, maybe they should be talking about 75 instead of 50."

Bianco contends the Fed is aware the stakes are high.

"They don't want to create the mistake in the other direction by being too timid right now. That's out the window now," Bianco said. "They don't want to create a broken market. They don't want to create a recession. But when you go down that path and you're that adamant about trying to rein in inflation, it makes it very likely that you will create a mistake."
Disclaimer

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Wild inflation will hurt all financial assets, market researcher Jim Bianco warns

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There may be no escape from the bond market turmoil - even for stock investors. Market researcher Jim Bianco warns critical Federal Reserve policies to control wild inflation will inflict widespread losses on Wall Street. "Eventually, this is going to come back and hurt all financial assets," the Bianco Research president told CNBC " Fast Money" on Thursday.

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Sarahritah

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rusal calls for investigation into bucha 'crime'  - cnn

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Russia's Rusal calls for an investigation into Bucha 'crime'

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Russian metals company Rusal has called for an investigation into the killing of civilians in Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

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https://www.typesof.net/a/types-of-finance-with-explanation
Evelyn Sanchez Blanco

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Evidence proved that the origin of finance is also old like human life on this earth. Originally, the word finance is a French word. In the eighteenth century, it was adopted by the English to mean "the management of money." Finance is the management of funds or money and involves activities such as budgeting, borrowing, forecasting, investing, lending and saving. In other words, finance is the study of managing funds and the process of acquiring the required funds.

Types of Finance

There are mainly two types of finance:

The other types of finance are

Each of the types is explained below with definition and explanation.

1. Debt Finance:

Basically, the cash which you acquire to maintain or run your business is known as debt finance. Debt finance does not provide ownership control to the moneylender; the borrower must repay the principal amount along with the agreed upon interest rate. Mostly, the interest rate is determined based on the loan amount, duration, the purpose for borrowing the specific type of finance and inflation rate.

Debt finance can be classified into three types:

Loans generally needed for a period of more than one to one hundred and eighty days is called short-term debt finance. These loans are borrowed for covering the shortage of finance and temporary or occasional requirements. Short-term finance is basically required for daily business activities such as paying wages to the staffs or getting raw materials. The amount of getting a short-term loan is dependent mostly on the other sources of income for repaying. The lines of credit from the business's suppliers are the most common forms of short-term debt finance.

Trade credit, credit cards, bill discounting, bank overdraft, working capital loans, small business loans, short-term loans from retail banks and advances from customers are some other forms of short-term finance.

Loans generally required for a period of more than one hundred and eighty to three hundred and sixty-five days is called medium-term debt finance. The way of utilizing the funds are mostly dependent on the type of business. The businesses generally, repay the loan from the sources of cash-flow of the businesses. Businesses choose this type of finance to purchase equipment, fixed assets and the like.

Sometimes small business owners or startups use medium-term debt finance for fulfilling the fund's rotation. Because new businesses must pay beforehand to suppliers for every required good such as buying equipment, machinery, inventories and the like. Hire purchase finance, lease finance, medium-term credits from commercial banks and issue of bonds/debentures are some examples of medium-term debt finance.

Loans generally required for a period of more than three hundred and sixty-five days is called long-term debt finance. This type of finance is mostly needed for buying plant, land, restructuring offices or buildings, etc. for a business. Long-term finance has a better interest rate than short-term finance. This debt finance usually has a repayment duration of five, ten or twenty years.

Car loans or home loans are two popular examples of long-term finance. Issue of bonds/debentures, Issue of preference shares, issue of equity shares, long-term loans from government, financial services institutions or investment banks, venture funding or funds from investors, are other examples of long-term debt finance.

2. Equity Finance:

Equity finance is a classic way of raising capital for businesses by issues or offering shares of the company. This is one of the major differences in equity finance from debt finance. This finance is generally applied for seed funding for start-ups and new businesses. Well-known companies apply this finance to raise additional capital for the expansion of their business.

Equity finance is generally raised by issues or offering equity shares of the business. Basically, each share is an owner's unit for that specific company. For instance, if the company has offered 10,000 equity shares to public investors. An investor buys 1000 equity shares of that company, means s/he holds 10% of ownership in the company.
The other types of finance are discussed below:
Public Finance:

Public finance deals with the study of the state's expenditure and income. It considers only the government's finances. The scope of public finance includes the fund's collection and its allocation among different sectors of state activities that are considered as essential functions or duties of the government.

Public finance can be classified into three types:

i. Public Expenditure:

Public expenditure means the expenses incurred by the government for its maintenance and for the welfare and preservation of the economy, society, and the nation.

ii. Public Revenues:

Broadly public revenues include all the receipts and income irrespective their nature and source, which the government acquires during any given period. It will also include the loans raised by the government. Narrowly, it will include only the income from revenue resources which include taxes, price, fees, penalties, fines, gifts, etc.

iii. Public Debt:

Public debt means the loans raised which is a source of public finance carrying with it the repayment obligation to the individuals and the interest.

Personal Finance:

Personal finance denotes the application of finance's principles to the monetary decisions of a family or an individual. It includes the ways in which families or individuals get, budget, spend and save monetary resources over a period, considering different future life events and financial risks. Financial position is focused on understanding the available personal resources by examining the household cash flows and net worth. Net worth is an individual's balance sheet, derived by summing up all assets under that individual's control, minus the household's all liabilities at a time.

Corporate Finance:

Corporate finance includes financial activities pertaining to running a corporation. It is a department or division which oversees the financial functions of a company. The primary concern of corporate finance is the maximization of shareholder value through short-term and long-term financial planning and different strategies' implementation.

Private Finance:

Private finance denotes an alternative method of corporate finance helping a company raise fund to avoid monetary problems with a limited time frame. Basically, this method helps a company which is not listed on a securities exchange or is incapable to obtain finance on such markets. A private financial plan can also be suitable for a nonprofit organization.

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Types of Finance with Explanation | Typesof.net

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Finance is the management of funds or money and involves activities such as budgeting, borrowing, forecasting, investing, lending and saving. There are mainly two types of finance: Debt Finance and Equity Finance. The other types of finance are Public Finance, Personal Finance, etc.

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-joselyn granillo

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What a real estate bubble would mean for homebuyers | CNN Business

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As if home prices in the US weren't high enough, now they're getting even more expensive.

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Oscar Luis

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The Federal Reserve said on Thursday it had barred a former Goldman Sachs executive, Joseph Jiampietro, from working in the banking industry over a scandal that involved one of his subordinates obtaining leaked regulatory documents.

Goldman Sachs paid a total of $86.3 million in penalties after the episode, which began in 2014 when Rohit Bansal, a junior employee, received confidential regulatory information from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he had previously worked.

When Goldman's compliance department investigated the matter, it found private documents from the New York Fed on Mr. Jiampietro's desk - although he told authorities he never read them.

Goldman fired Mr. Jiampietro and Mr. Bansal. Mr. Bansal and his source, Jason Gross, both pleaded guilty to stealing government property and were barred from the industry.

Mr. Jiampietro, who was a managing director at Goldman at the time of his firing, has not worked in banking since, and his lawyer, Adam Ford, said continuing to challenge the accusations was no longer worth it.

"He fought every day to clear his name, but given the lapse of time and his future plans the endless litigation no longer made sense," Mr. Ford said.

In a statement, the Fed said Mr. Jiampietro had agreed to the prohibition "stemming from his unauthorized use and disclosure of confidential supervisory information" such as bank examination reports and other private materials prepared by regulators.

The incident was embarrassing for both the Fed and Goldman, highlighting the dangers of the so-called revolving door between Wall Street and government.Goldman declined to comment on Thursday.

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Tesla Will Sell Its Long-Awaited Cybertruck Next Year, Elon Musk Says

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The Federal Reserve said on Thursday it had barred a former Goldman Sachs executive, Joseph Jiampietro, from working in the banking industry over a scandal that involved one of his subordinates obtaining leaked regulatory documents.

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CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian authorities say a rocket strike killed more than 30 people and wounded over 100 at a train station that was being used to evacuate civilians in eastern Ukraine.

The head of Ukraine's railways, Olexander Kamyshin, said on the messaging app Telegram that the strike happened on Friday in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region.

Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said thousands of people were at the train station at the time of the strike, preparing to evacuate to safer regions as Russia focuses its troops in eastern Ukraine.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.

CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian leaders predicted more gruesome discoveries would be made in coming days after retreating Russian forces left crushed buildings, streets strewn with destroyed cars and mounting civilian casualties that drew condemnation across the globe.

Kremlin forces devastated the northern city of Chernihiv as part of their attempt to sweep south toward the capital before retreating. In the aftermath, dozens of people lined up to receive bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted a photo as she was boarding a train Friday, accompanied by the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell, to head to Kyiv to show solidarity with Ukraine and meet with its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"Looking forward to Kyiv," Von der Leyen wrote on Twitter.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite Russia's pullback, the country remains vulnerable. Spurred by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital, NATO nations agreed to increase their supply of arms after he pleaded for weapons from the alliance and other sympathetic countries to help face down an expected offensive in the east.

The mayor of Bucha, near Kyiv, said investigators found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and some corpses with their hands tied were "dumped like firewood" into mass graves, including one at a children's camp.

Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 320 civilians were confirmed dead as of Wednesday, but he expected more as bodies are found in the city that was home to 50,000 people. Only 3,700 remain, he said.

In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said Bucha's horrors may be only the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Bucha, he warned of even more casualties, saying "there it is much more horrible."

Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital. Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up Thursday in Bucha.

In the seaport city of Mariupol, Ukranian authorities expect to find much the same. "The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes," Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscow's troops. The weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Germany's foreign intelligence agency intercepted radio messages among Russian soldiers discussing killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

In the 6-week-old war, Russian forces failed to take Ukraine's capital quickly and were unable to fulfill what Western countries said was Russian leader Vladimir Putin's initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. After that setback, amid heavy losses, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged Thursday that Russia has suffered major losses during its military operation.

"Yes, we have significant losses of troops and it is a huge tragedy for us," Peskov said.

Peskov also hinted the fighting might be over "in the foreseeable future," telling Sky that Russian troops were "doing their best to bring an end to that operation."

On Thursday, a day after Russian forces began shelling their village in the southern Mykolaiv region, Sergei Dubovienko, 52, drove north in his small blue Lada with his wife and mother-in-law to Bashtanka, where they sought shelter in a church.

"They started destroying the houses and everything" in Pavlo-Marianovka, he said. "Then the tanks appeared from the forest. We thought that in the morning there would be shelling again, so I decided to leave."

Hundreds of people have fled villages in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions that are either under attack or occupied by Russian forces.

Tatiana Vizavik, 50, fled Chernobaievka in the Kherson region with her son, daughter-in-law and six grandchildren.

When the Russian attack began, they moved to the basement of an apartment building and spent five nights there. "We had nothing to eat. We had no drinking water," Vizavik said. "We were frightened to go out. Then some volunteers starting helping us."

She said they don't know whether their house survived the shelling because they were too frightened to check before leaving town. They hoped to reach safety in the Czech Republic.

Marina Morozova and her husband fled from Kherson, the first major city to fall to the Russians.

"They are waiting for a big battle. We saw shells that did not explode. It was horrifying," she said.

Morozova, 69, said only Russian television and radio was available. The Russians handed out humanitarian aid, she said, and filmed the distribution.

Anxious to keep moving away from Russian troops, the couple and others boarded a van that would take them west. Some will try to leave the country, while others will remain in quieter parts of Ukraine.

The United Nations estimates the war has displaced at least 6.5 million people within the country.

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said that more than 4 million, half of them children, have left Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24 and sparked Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II.

The International Organization for Migration estimates more than 12 million people are stranded in areas of Ukraine under attack.

The United Nations' humanitarian chief told The Associated Press on Thursday that he's "not optimistic" about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, given the lack of trust between the sides. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraine's military status.

It's unclear how long withdrawing Russian forces will take to redeploy. Ukrainian officials have urged people in the east to leave before the fighting intensifies there.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish civilian evacuation routes Thursday from several areas in the Donbas.

Western nations have stepped up sanctions, and the Group of Seven major world powers warned that they will keep adding measures until Russian troops leave Ukraine.

The U.S. Congress voted Thursday to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban the importation of its oil, while the EU approved other new steps, including an embargo on coal imports. The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, voted to suspend Russia from the world organization's leading human rights body.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.N. vote demonstrated how "Putin's war has made Russia an international pariah." He called the images coming from Bucha "horrifying."

"The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed - in some cases having their bodies desecrated - are an outrage to our common humanity," Biden said.

___

Schreck reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

___

Follow the AP's coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Ukrainian leaders predict more gruesome discoveries ahead

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CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian authorities say a rocket strike killed more than 30 people and wounded over 100 at a train station that was being used to evacuate civilians in eastern Ukraine. The head of Ukraine's railways, Olexander Kamyshin, said on the messaging app Telegram that the strike happened on Friday in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region.

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Oscar Luis

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Stocks on Wall Street fell on Wednesday, notching a second day of losses, as the Federal Reserve released details of its March meeting that showed several central bank officials support plans to pull back on support for the economy quickly.

The minutes showed that central bankers were preparing to shrink their portfolio of bond holdings imminently while raising interest rates "expeditiously," two policies that will make money more expensive to borrow.

The S&P 500 was about 1.4 percent lower in afternoon trading, adding to a loss of about 1.3 percent on Tuesday.

In March, the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since it was slashed in early 2020, and projected six more increases this year.

But that outlook might already be changing. On Tuesday, Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor, suggested the Fed was willing to pull back its economic support even faster if the circumstances demand it.

"Currently, inflation is much too high and is subject to upside risks," Ms. Brainard said in a speech. "The committee is prepared to take stronger action if indicators of inflation and inflation expectations indicate that such action is warranted," she said, referring to the panel at the Fed that sets rates.

And the minutes released on Wednesday showed that "many" officials would have preferred an even bigger rate increase and were stalled only by uncertainty tied to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Fed is debating policy changes as consumer prices rise at their fastest pace in 40 years, with the latest inflation gauge indicating prices rose 6.4 percent over the past year in February.

The recent retreat in stocks has come as government bond yields, a proxy for investor expectations about interest rates, have jumped. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes is now at its highest level since early 2019, and on Wednesday climbed about five basis points, or 0.05 percentage points, to about 2.6 percent.

Oil prices fell after Bloomberg News reported that the International Energy Agency would join the United States in releasing oil from emergency reserves. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark crude, was down about 5.5 percent to about $96.40 a barrel.

In Europe, stock indexes fell sharply. The Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 1.5 percent. On Tuesday, the European Commission proposed banning coal imports from Russia, which account for 47 percent of coal coming into the European Union, as part of a new set of sanctions. European leaders met on Wednesday to discuss the proposal, and deliberations were extended by a day.

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Fed minutes showed 'many' officials in favor of a big rate increase.

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Stocks on Wall Street fell on Wednesday, notching a second day of losses, as the Federal Reserve released details of its March meeting that showed several central bank officials support plans to pull back on support for the economy quickly.

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Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of the biggest U.S. bank by assets, pointed to a potentially unprecedented combination of risks facing the country in his annual shareholder letter.

Three forces are likely to shape the world over the next several decades: a U.S. economy rebounding from the Covid pandemic; high inflation that will usher in an era of rising rates, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis now underway, according to Dimon.

"Each of these three factors mentioned above is unique in its own right: The dramatic stimulus-fueled recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the likely need for rapidly raising rates and the required reversal of QE, and the war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia," Dimon wrote.

"They present completely different circumstances than what we've experienced in the past - and their confluence may dramatically increase the risks ahead," he wrote. "While it is possible, and hopeful, that all of these events will have peaceful resolutions, we should prepare for the potential negative outcomes."

Dimon's letter, read widely in business circles because of the JPMorgan CEO's status as his industry's most prominent spokesman, took a more downcast tone from his missive just last year. While he wrote extensively about challenges facing the country, including economic inequality and political dysfunction, that letter broadcast his belief that the U.S. was in the midst of a boom that could "easily" run into 2023.

Now, however, the outbreak of the biggest European conflict since World War II has changed things, roiling markets, realigning alliances and restructuring global trade patterns, he wrote. That introduces both risks and opportunities for the U.S. and other democracies, according to Dimon.

"The war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia, at a minimum, will slow the global economy - and it could easily get worse," Dimon wrote. That's because of the uncertainty about how the conflict will conclude and its impact on supply chains, especially for those involving energy supplies.

Dimon added that for JPMorgan, management isn't worried about its direct exposure to Russia, though the bank could "still lose about $1 billion over time."

Here are excerpts from Dimon's letter.

"We expect the fallout from the war and resulting sanctions to reduce Russia's GDP by 12.5% by midyear (a decline worse than the 10% drop after the 1998 default). Our economists currently think that the euro area, highly dependent on Russia for oil and gas, will see GDP growth of roughly 2% in 2022, instead of the elevated 4.5% pace we had expected just six weeks ago. By contrast, they expect the U.S. economy to advance roughly 2.5% versus a previously estimated 3%. But I caution that these estimates are based upon a fairly static view of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions now in place."

"Many more sanctions could be added - which could dramatically, and unpredictably, increase their effect. Along with the unpredictability of war itself and the uncertainty surrounding global commodity supply chains, this makes for a potentially explosive situation. I speak later about the precarious nature of the global energy supply, but for now, simply, that supply is easy to disrupt."

"America must be ready for the possibility of an extended war in Ukraine with unpredictable outcomes. ... We must look at this as a wake-up call. We need to pursue short-term and long-term strategies with the goal of not only solving the current crisis but also maintaining the long-term unity of the newly strengthened democratic alliances. We need to make this a permanent, long-lasting stand for democratic ideals and against all forms of evil."

"Russian aggression is having another dramatic and important result: It is coalescing the democratic, Western world - across Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries to Australia, Japan and Korea. [...] The outcome of these two issues will transcend Russia and likely will affect geopolitics for decades, potentially leading to both a realignment of alliances and a restructuring of global trade. How the West comports itself, and whether the West can maintain its unity, will likely determine the future global order and shape America's (and its allies') important relationship with China."

"It also is clear that trade and supply chains, where they affect matters of national security, need to be restructured. You simply cannot rely on countries with different strategic interests for critical goods and services. Such reorganization does not need to be a disaster or decoupling. With thoughtful analysis and execution, it should be rational and orderly. This is in everyone's best interest."

"For any products or materials that are essential for national security (think rare earths, 5G and semiconductors), the U.S. supply chain must either be domestic or open only to completely friendly allies. We cannot and should not ever be reliant on processes that can and will be used against us, especially when we are most vulnerable. For similar national security reasons, activities (including investment activities) that help create a national security risk - i.e., sharing critical technology with potential adversaries - should be restricted."

"This restructuring will likely take place over time and does not need to be extraordinarily disruptive. There will be winners and losers - some of the main beneficiaries will be Brazil, Canada, Mexico and friendly Southeast Asian nations. Along with reconfiguring our supply chains, we must create new trading systems with our allies. As mentioned above, my preference would be to rejoin the TPP - it is the best geostrategic and trade arrangement possible with allied nations."

"The Federal Reserve and the government did the right thing by taking bold dramatic actions following the misfortune unleashed by the pandemic. In hindsight, it worked. But also in hindsight, the medicine (fiscal spending and QE) was probably too much and lasted too long."

"I do not envy the Fed for what it must do next: The stronger the recovery, the higher the rates that follow (I believe that this could be significantly higher than the markets expect) and the stronger the quantitative tightening (QT). If the Fed gets it just right, we can have years of growth, and inflation will eventually start to recede. In any event, this process will cause lots of consternation and very volatile markets. The Fed should not worry about volatile markets unless they affect the actual economy. A strong economy trumps market volatility."

"One thing the Fed should do, and seems to have done, is to exempt themselves - give themselves ultimate flexibility - from the pattern of raising rates by only 25 basis points and doing so on a regular schedule. And while they may announce how they intend to reduce the Fed balance sheet, they should be free to change this plan on a moment's notice in order to deal with actual events in the economy and the markets. A Fed that reacts strongly to data and events in real time will ultimately create more confidence. In any case, rates will need to go up substantially. The Fed has a hard job to do so let's all wish them the best."

"This year, we announced that the expenses related to investments would increase from $11.5 billion to $15 billion. I am going to try to describe the 'incremental investments' of $3.5 billion, though I can't review them all (and for competitive reasons I wouldn't). But we hope a few examples will give you comfort in our decision-making process.

Some investments have a fairly predictable time to cash flow positive and a good and predictable return on investment (ROI) however you measure it. These investments include branches and bankers, around the world, across all our businesses. They also include certain marketing expenses, which have a known and quantifiable return. This category combined will add $1 billion to our expenses in 2022.

"Over the last 18 months, we spent nearly $5 billion on acquisitions, which will increase 'incremental investment' expenses by approximately $700 million in 2022. We expect most of these acquisitions to produce positive returns and strong earnings within a few years, fully justifying their cost. In a few cases, these acquisitions earn money - plus, we believe, help stave off erosion in other parts of our business."

"Our international consumer expansion is an investment of a different nature. We believe the digital world gives us an opportunity to build a consumer bank outside the United States that, over time, can become very competitive - an option that does not exist in the physical world. We start with several advantages that we believe will get stronger over time. ... We have the talent and know-how to deliver these through cutting-edge technology, allowing us to harness the full range of these capabilities from all our businesses. We can apply what we have learned in our leading U.S. franchise and vice versa. We may be wrong on this one, but I like our hand."

"Despite the pandemic and talent retention challenges, we continue to boost our representation among women and people of color. ... More women were promoted to the position of managing director in 2021 than ever before; similarly, a record number of women were promoted to executive director. By year's end, based on employees that self-identified, women represented 49% of the firm's total workforce. Overall Hispanic representation was 20%, Asian representation grew to 17% and Black representation increased to 14%."

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Dimon says confluence of inflation, Ukraine war may 'dramatically increase risks ahead' for U.S.

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Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of the biggest U.S. bank by assets, pointed to a potentially unprecedented combination of risks facing the country in his annual shareholder letter. Three forces are likely to shape the world over the next several decades: a U.S.

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/05/investing/elon-musk-worlds-richest-person/index.html

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elon musk is worth more than twice warren buffett and has $100 billion on jeff bezos - cnn

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Elon Musk is worth more than twice Warren Buffett and has $100 billion on Jeff Bezos

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-joselyn granillo

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Big Oil CEOs refuse to commit to reduce buybacks and dividends

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Leading oil company CEOs declined on Wednesday to endorse a call from Democrats to reduce dividends and share buybacks and plow the money into ramping up production instead.

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-Isabella Ramirez

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This trio of Asian American twenty-somethings wants to teach Gen Z how to invest

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Allan Maman, Sonny Mo, and Sam Yang, cofounders of Bloom, all wish they had learned about smart ways to invest their money when they were even younger.

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Howard Schultz suspends Starbucks’s stock buyback program

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Starbucks planned to spend $20 billion on share buybacks over three years.

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Are upper middle class and affluent shoppers starting to feel the pinch from higher prices and geopolitical concerns? If so, what does that mean for the rest of American consumers?Stock market volatility, inflation and concerns about rising interest rates could soon slow all parts of the economy — even demand for luxury goods.Gary Friedman, the CEO of high end furniture retailer RH (RH), said in its earnings call last week that "we have experienced softening demand in the first quarter that coincided with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February and the market volatility that followed.""I don't think anybody really understands how high prices are going to go everywhere, in restaurants, in cars and everything," Friedman said, adding that those increases will hurt all consumers and that companies like his are going to be in a "tricky space."

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Are upper middle class and affluent shoppers starting to feel the pinch from higher prices and geopolitical concerns? If so, what does that mean for the rest of American consumers?Stock market volatility, inflation and concerns about rising interest rates could soon slow all parts of the economy — even demand for luxury goods.Gary Friedman, the CEO of high end furniture retailer RH (RH), said in its earnings call last week that "we have experienced softening demand in the first quarter that coincided with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February and the market volatility that followed.""I don't think anybody really understands how high prices are going to go everywhere, in restaurants, in cars and everything," Friedman said, adding that those increases will hurt all consumers and that companies like his are going to be in a "tricky space."

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shaira Esparza

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Juan Figueroa

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Newsela | How personal property taxes work

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Here is a breakdown of how personal property taxes work.

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Oscar Luis

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Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder.

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The Tesla chief executive, who has been critical of Twitter’s content moderation policies, purchased 9.2 percent of the social media company.

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-Isabella Ramirez

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The former finance director at a West Virginia children's charity had been ordered to pay back $4.7 million she stole from the nonprofit and used to buy a fleet of airplanes, a lakeshore house and a Corvette.

Ruth Marie Phillips, 69, pleaded guilty in September 2021 and was sentenced to seven years in prison in January for the scheme in which she steered the money from River Valley Child Development Services into an aviation business she ran on the side and into her own pockets.

Prosecutors said Phillips had worked for the charity, which provides child care services and food programs around West Virginia funded mostly by government grants, dating back to 1986. She eventually became the charity's director of business and finance, and began stealing the money in 2013 until she was fired in 2020.

During that time, prosecutors said Phillips directed $1.14 million into her own personal checking account and $3.4 million into the bank account of Attitude Aviation, a small aircraft charter and aviation services company she owned and operated at airports in Ohio and Huntington, West Virginia.

In one year, Phillips siphoned off nearly 16% of the $7.1 million in grants the nonprofit received, prosecutors said.

"Phillips did great harm to the children and families she should have been supporting," said Will Thompson, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of West Virginia. "I commend our law enforcement partners and my staff for their pursuit of justice in this case."

Phillips' attorney didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment. In a court filing, Phillips acknowledged she had stolen an exorbitant amount of money, but said she did it primarily to support the aviation business for her partner and her son.

She also said she had battled alcohol addiction for years after her husband - a Vietnam veteran who suffered from PTSD - committed suicide in the late 1990s.

Prosecutors said that as part of Phillips' restitution agreement, she had agreed to forfeit $602,000 from the sale of six airplanes, $305,000 from the sale of her house on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia and $170,000 from the sale of a home in West Virginia and another in Chesapeake, Ohio. She also was ordered to forfeit her Lexus RX and Chevrolet Corvette.

In court documents, prosecutors said the "reprehensible" theft caused families to not receive the aid they would have gotten had the money not been stolen and resulted in some employees of the charity losing their jobs.

"Her crime demonstrates a lack of empathy, as well as a cold willingness to take advantage of others when they were vulnerable and dependent on her," prosecutors argued in court papers.

A message left with officials at River Valley Child Development Services wasn't immediately returned.

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Ex-finance chief ordered to return $4.7 million she stole from children's charity to buy fleet of planes, houses and a Corvette

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The former finance director at a West Virginia children's charity had been ordered to pay back $4.7 million she stole from the nonprofit and used to buy a fleet of airplanes, a lakeshore house and a Corvette.

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Vanessa

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why amazon makes you click a box to redeem coupons - cnn

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Why Amazon makes you click a box to redeem coupons

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Amazon sometimes makes us check a box to save. Huh?

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eduardo

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Benson Hill capitalizing on current market conditions

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Conflict in Ukraine may lead buyers to shift where they source non-GMO soy.

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Americans, especially republicans, are getting more worried about inflation

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Americans, especially republicans, are getting more worried about inflation

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Aileen

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Diego miranda

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Right now, it is estimated that one person is dying of hunger every four seconds. Nearly 45 million people in 37 countries are projected to have so little to eat that they will be severely malnourished, at risk of death or already facing starvation and death.

There are four countries in Africa - Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan - as well as two countries in the Middle East - Afghanistan and Yemen - where there will be widespread starvation and death over the next few months unless action is taken now.

Save the Children is providing critical support in countries where extreme hunger threatens to claim thousands of children's lives-children who are facing a very real threat of starvation and death. However, the window of opportunity to avert widespread death and starvation is closing. We cannot wait for famine to be officially declared before acting. Children are already losing their lives. We must act now. There is no time to wait.

Children Facing Starvation in Africa and the Middle East Need Your Help Today

With hunger levels continuing to grow exponentially and thousands of people now on the brink of starvation, the situation has become critical.

Save the Children is providing critical support in countries where extreme hunger threatens to claim thousands of children's lives and futures over the next few months. We are providing food, cash, livelihood support and critical health and nutrition services to stop children from going hungry, either now, or in the future.

The world has alraedy seen the impact when we don't act or delay, when 260,000 people lost their lives in a devastating famine in the Horn of Africa in 2011. Half of them were young children. We must not let history repeat itself. The window of opportunity to avert widespread death and starvation is closing. Your support can make a difference.

Fawzia's mother travelled on foot for two days with her seven children from their rural farm to Baidoa in search of food, water and medical treatment.

Fawzia*Story: Screening Children in Africa for Malnutrition

Small measuring tapes like these are a crucial part of Save the Children's malnutrition screening programs, like the one that helped two-year old Fawzia. Fawzia received treatment for malnutrition at Save the Children's health clinic on the outskirts of Baidoa in Somalia.

Somalia is one of the three countries in the Horn of Africa where a catastrophic food crisis is unfolding.

Health workers used a MUAC band to determine Fawzia's level of malnutrition. MUAC (Mid-Upper Arm Circumference) tapes are very easy to use and can quickly deliver critical information. The bands are simply wrapped around the mid-point of the child's upper arm and, taking into account the child's ages, the circumference of their arm is measured against different colored zones on the band.

Green is normal, yellow is moderately malnourished and red is severely malnourished. If children in the red zone are not quickly treated, there is a very real risk the child could die or suffer from profound long-term health and development issues.

Our Impact Across Six Countries Facing Widespread Starvation Right Now

Right now, Save the Children is working in Africa, the Middle East and across the globe to save lives and prevent widespread hunger in the short-term, whilst also implementing long-term solutions and more resilient systems that better manage the risk of future crises.

Somalia
More than half of children aged under five in Somalia are facing acute malnutrition, with one in six suffering from the most deadly form as time to fend off famine starts to run out.

Save the Children has worked in Somalia since 1951. This year, we have reached more than 24,000 people through cash programming and treated more than 50,000 children for malnutrition. We are currently providing water trucking to more than 25,000 households and unconditional cash provisions to nearly 11,000 households in the worst-affected areas.

South Sudan
The hunger crisis in South Sudan is especially dire, as roughly half the population is without enough food. Some 1.7 million people are facing emergency levels of hunger, which is one step away from famine. Nearly one million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished.

Our teams are working hard to screen children for malnutrition and help prevent the deadly diseases they are more likely to contract and die from, including measles, malaria, diarrhea, cholera and pneumonia.

Ethiopia
Children are still feeling the impact from the worst drought to hit Ethiopia in more than 50 years. Millions of families dependent on rain to grow crops for food and income remain at risk of extreme hunger and malnutrition. Additionally, the country is home to one of the largest populations of refugees.

Save the Children has worked to improve nutrition among the poorest Ethiopian children. Working very closely with the government, our teams are devising a national nutrition plan and responding quickly and efficiently to save as many lives as possible. We are also working with communities to improve their knowledge so that they are better equipped to protect themselves and their children from the effects of hunger. Our mobile health teams provide assessment and treatment of children suffering malnutrition.

Nigeria
Right now, 1.9 million people require urgent humanitarian assistance, as conflict and displacement has left countless families without food or basic necessities.

We're distributing food to vulnerable families, running feeding and treatment centers, in addition to providing psychosocial support.

Afghanistan
Nearly 19 million people (45% of the population) across all 34 provinces of the Afghanistan, including nearly 10 million children, are expected to face crisis or worse (IPC 3+) levels of food insecurity. Nearly 6 million of those will be in emergency conditions (IPC 4), just one step away from famine.

Yemen
Over two-thirds of the population in Yemen is already need humanitarian assistance, and at least half of the population are food insecure.

Help Children Facing Starvation in Africa and Around the World

Donate
Support Save the Children's mission. Donate to help hungry children in Africa, and around the world, survive and thrive.

Browse the Gift Catalog
Give a unique and meaningful gift that will bring joy - and change lives. Find something for everyone on your list.

Sources:
[i] UNICEF Accessed 24 March 2018
[ii] In 2015, the infant mortality rate for American Indians was 8.2, compared to 5.9 for the United States as a whole. Source: National KIDS COUNT Data Center Accessed 25 March 2018
[iii]Stop the War on Children report
[iv]2019 Global Childhood Report

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Child Starvation in Africa and the Middle East

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Right now, it is estimated that one person is dying of hunger every four seconds. Nearly 45 million people in 37 countries are projected to have so little to eat that they will be severely malnourished, at risk of death or already facing starvation and death.

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Samira Coto

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A sharp increase in mortgage interest rates is taking its toll on loan demand, especially refinances. Total mortgage application volume fell 8.1% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's seasonally adjusted index.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($647,200 or less) increased to 4.50% from 4.27%, with points rising to 0.59 from 0.54 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment.

"The jump in rates comes as markets moved to price in a much faster pace of rate hikes, as well as expectations of fewer MBS purchases from the Federal Reserve," said Mike Fratantoni, the MBA's chief economist. "MBA's new March forecast expects mortgage rates to continue to trend higher through the course of 2022."

As a result, applications to refinance a home loan, which are highly sensitive to weekly rate moves, fell 14% from the previous week and were 54% lower than the same week one year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 44.8% of total applications from 48.4% the previous week.

"The number of high-quality refi candidates was already down more than 75% through last week - these latest jumps will likely cut that population even further," said Andy Walden, vice president of enterprise research at Black Knight. "But, while we are now seeing declines in overall lending activity, cash-out lock volumes continue to hold stronger than rate/term refis against rising rates. This will be an important market segment for lenders, particularly given the record $10 trillion in tappable equity available being padded even further by the still red-hot housing market."

Mortgage applications to purchase a home, which are less sensitive to weekly rate moves, fell 2% for the week and were 12% lower than the same week one year ago. Economists are starting to revise their home sales forecasts lower, due to rising rates. The housing market is already expensive, as a supply-demand imbalance puts upward pressure on prices. Rising rates are weakening affordability even further.

While overall purchase application volume was down slightly, there was a larger drop in FHA and VA loan demand. These loans are popular with lower-income homebuyers.

"First-time homebuyers, who rely on these government programs, are increasingly challenged by both the rapid increase in home prices and higher mortgage rates," added Fratantoni.

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Mortgage refinance demand plunges 14%, as interest rates spike higher

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A sharp increase in mortgage interest rates is taking its toll on loan demand, especially refinances. Total mortgage application volume fell 8.1% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's seasonally adjusted index.

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The United States is feeling the economic effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the form of soaring gasoline prices.

What's more, Americans will continue to experience surging prices for energy and wheat products, said two Virginia Commonwealth University economists.

With the rising prices, those in the U.S. can also expect to see a sharp increase in inflation, said Oleg Korenok, Ph.D., a professor in the VCU School of Business.

But the real economic blows will be felt by Russia itself.

"The Russian ruble has become almost worthless in the last couple of weeks," said Christopher M. Herrington, Ph.D., an associate professor. "Russia is facing a deep and prolonged economic depression that is only going to get worse the longer they remain isolated from the rest of the global economy."

Major corporations in the United States and Europe have halted their operations in Russia, which will have substantial devastating effects as well, said Korenok and Herrington, who spoke with VCU News about the economic fallout of the conflict.
How has the Russia-Ukraine conflict affected the global economy so far? How has it affected our national economy? How will the economy be affected as this conflict continues?
Korenok: On a global level we see relatively large increases in the prices of energy - oil and natural gas - and commodities - some metals and wheat. On a national level, most visible is the increase of gasoline prices via oil prices.

[How the economy will continue to be affected] depends on the extent of sanctions. We may see additional sanctions in the future. With the current level of sanctions, the economy will feel an increase in the price of oil via gasoline and diesel prices, which are likely to accelerate inflation.

Herrington: We have seen immediate negative impacts in global stock markets as people adjust their expectations to account for lower future economic growth prospects. Some of this is coming directly from lower current and future revenues of firms operating in Ukraine and Russia, but there are also spillover effects to other countries. We expect continued increases in energy and food prices, so even people in countries not directly affected by war may still adjust their buying decisions going forward in response to price changes, for example, or shortages of particular goods.

A couple of markets to keep an eye on are gas and oil, as well as wheat. Russia produces about 11% of the global oil supply, and if that production slows - or if customers are unwilling or unable to purchase Russian products - that will reduce the global supply and drive energy prices even higher. Similarly, Russia and Ukraine collectively account for about one-fourth of global wheat exports. We've seen wheat prices rise dramatically this week, and those effects are going to show up in higher food prices before too long.
Can you explain some of the economic sanctions the U.S. is imposing on Russia? (How do they work? What kind of hardship does this create for Russia? How effective are such sanctions?)
Korenok: Russia gets a lot of money by selling its oil. The U.S. used to buy some of it, about 8%. If the U.S. stops buying it, Russia will have to find another buyer. It is likely to be China, but China buys oil from Russia at a much lower price.

Oleg Korenok, Ph.D., professor of economics

To conduct transactions with the rest of the world, banks in Russia use SWIFT, an electronic system of transferring money. By not allowing Russia to use this system, payments will be harder to make and take longer.

As for effectiveness, sanctions did have an effect on Russia's currency; its ruble lost 40% of its value. Stocks of Russian companies lost their value on international markets and are not trading internally. Markets have been closed for two weeks. Inflation jumped by 9% in two weeks and is expected to be higher than 20%. Russian Central Bank increased its interest rate to 20%, which will make it harder to take loans. From an economic point of view, sanctions are very effective. From a political point of view, they had little effect on ongoing conflict.

Herrington: The sanctions, combined with voluntary decisions by many U.S. and European countries to discontinue business in Russia, are going to have a truly devastating effect on the Russian economy. The ruble has become almost worthless in the past couple of weeks, and Russian consumers are going to face extreme shortages and high inflation in the very near future. Real economic activity in Russia - that is, adjusted for inflation - is expected to decline 25% to 30% this year by some estimates. Russia is facing a deep and prolonged economic depression that is only going to get worse the longer they remain isolated from the rest of the global economy.

Hollywood and the music and sports industries have hit Russia with their own form of sanctions - barring concerts, movie festivals and more. Is this merely making a statement against the invasion or can it actually cause substantial damage to Russia's economy?

Korenok: Not just Hollywood. Many major companies are stopping or positioning their operations in Russia. This is a statement against invasion, but it will have substantial negative effects as well. Millions of people working for foreign companies may lose their jobs - for example, 62,000 people working in McDonald's in Russia. Another example, Russia has a lot of Boeing airplanes that will not be able to fly in two or three months without spare parts.

Herrington: Individually, each of these decisions is primarily symbolic - a statement of support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russian aggression. But collectively, these actions can have real impacts on the Russian economy and on the Russian people's support of the war and their government. As more and more foreign businesses cut off activity in Russia, and the country becomes increasingly isolated, consumers and businesses will face real shortages for things they need and want to purchase. They may not necessarily miss the concerts and sporting events, but I think they will feel the pain of economic isolation very soon when they are unable to find or afford real necessities.
The global supply chain has experienced an unprecedented disruption over the past two years. Has this positioned the U.S. to withstand any disruptions caused by the conflict?
Korenok: Russia is a big commodity supplier, but plays little role in the global supply chain. The conflict will have little effect on global supply chains, given the current state of sanctions.

The U.S. economy is growing at a healthy pace and is expected to continue its growth. It is in a very strong position to withstand the effects of conflicts. Inflation, on the other hand, is quite high in the U.S. and may go higher because of increases in energy prices. Price increases are unlikely to last long as oil production increases in response to higher prices.

Christopher M. Herrington, Ph.D., associate professor of economics

Herrington: One thing that comes to mind here, and it is actually unrelated to the pandemic, is the development of the U.S. shale oil industry. We've seen tremendous growth in U.S. shale oil over about the past decade, and those domestic supplies are going to help buffer U.S. energy prices somewhat from the loss of Russian oil and gas. If not for the supply of domestically produced shale oil, we would be seeing even larger energy price increases than we are now.

Unfortunately, however, we can't increase domestic oil production quickly or cheaply, so we're still going to feel some effects from the loss of the Russian oil supply. And I think a similar lesson applies more broadly, which is that many supply-chain adjustments across many industries are possible, but they would take a lot of time and significant investments. Generally speaking, becoming "self-reliant" isn't a great long-term strategy for economic growth or resilience. Rather, we want to work toward having robust global supply chains that are - to the greatest extent possible - protected and insulated against future shocks, whether pandemics, wars or otherwise.
What would you like to add?
Korenok: Most of what I said depends on the level of sanctions in the future. I assumed that the current level will continue for an extended period of time. While this conflict has an economic dimension, it is a secondary one. The main dimension is geo-political. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to rebuild the Russian empire, which used to include Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Poland. All these countries are NATO members, a military alliance which says that attack on one country means attack on all. If the U.S. and the European Union are not going to do all they can to help Ukraine now, they will have to face the same problem in a few years again with one of the NATO members.

I also hope that it is not hard for people in the U.S. to feel affinity for a young democracy defending itself against an empire.

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The United States is feeling the economic effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the form of soaring gasoline prices. What's more, Americans will continue to experience surging prices for energy and wheat products, said two Virginia Commonwealth University economists. With the rising prices, those in the U.S.

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: GameStop, Uber, Nielsen Holdings and more

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: GameStop, Uber, Nielsen Holdings and more

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-Nate N,

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: GameStop, Uber, Nielsen Holdings and more

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These are the stocks posting the largest moves in midday trading.

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Bill extending 401(k) withdrawals and boosting auto-enrollment in retirement accounts passes House

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Bill extending 401(k) withdrawals and boosting auto-enrollment in retirement accounts passes House

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aliyanna bernal

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Americans may have more help in the fight to save for retirement after the U.S. House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that aims to bolster workplace plan options.

The House passed the Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2022 in a vote of 414 to 5 on Tuesday. Known more colloquially as Secure 2.0, Tuesday's legislation builds off The Secure Act that passed on a bipartisan basis in late 2019 and provides a number of retirement reforms, including expanding auto-enrollment, helping those still paying student loans, assisting both small and large businesses offer more retirement savings options, and raising the age for required minimum distributions (RMDs) to tax deferred retirement accounts like 401(k)s.

"Passing SECURE 2.0 out of the House is a welcome step for Americans working toward their retirement," Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank, said in a statement Tuesday. "It's great that Congress is making further progress on this important issue, and we look forward to continuing our work with both parties in both chambers to get legislation to the president's desk for signature this year."

https://twitter.com/WaysandMeansGOP/status/1508924423671267342?s=20u0026t=W7iHnCLeGmyrM1jCOqziqA

Perhaps the biggest expansion included in the bill would require all but the smallest employers to offer auto-enrollment in retirement plans, a proven way to get more Americans participating in retirement savings. A 2021 survey found 84% of auto-enrolled employees appreciated the benefit and said it helped them get started at an earlier age. Participants would be automatically enrolled at a contribution rate of 3% of their pay initially and then unless workers opt out, the contribution rate would increase by 1% annually until it hits a maximum of 10%.

Small businesses would also be eligible for tax credits to help cover the startup costs of employer matching contributions, up to $1,000 per employee.

Tuesday's legislation would again push back the age Americans need to take RMDs from retirement accounts like 401(k)s from the current age of 72 to 73 in 2023, 74 in 2030 and 75 in 2033. This could help retirees who don't need their money immediately to keep more of their savings invested longer and defer paying taxes on this money longer. To help those playing catchup, Secure 2.0 also raises the maximum catch-up contribution level from $6,500 to $10,000 for Americans ages 62 to 64.

For those still paying student loans, Secure 2.0 provides a way for employers to incentivize saving for retirement at the same time by allowing companies to provide contributions to a worker's retirement plan that match their student loan payments.

Secure 2.0 also eases rules around older Americans making one-time charitable distributions and provides domestic abuse survivors a way to take a penalty-free withdrawal of up to $10,000 for up to a year following the abuse. The bill also increases Savers Credit for low-income Americans contributing to their retirement savings plans.

While Tuesday's vote marks a major milestone, the legislation still needs to pass the Senate.

"More than ever, employees are looking to their employers to help with all areas of financial wellness, including tackling student loan debt," retirement plan provider Fidelity tweeted on Tuesday in support of the bill's passage.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Bill extending 401(k) withdrawals and boosting auto-enrollment in retirement accounts passes House

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Americans may have more help in the fight to save for retirement after the U.S. House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that aims to bolster workplace plan options. The House passed the Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2022 in a vote of 414 to 5 on Tuesday.

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-Azaleah C

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Investor optimism over the possibility of federal cannabis legalization has contributed to a strong rally in beaten-down pot stocks.

The Alternative Harvest ETF has gained more than 10% in March, and its on pace for its best month since February 2021. The exchange-traded fund was just about flat year to date but down 50% over the past 12-months. The recent upswing in marijuana shares mirrors moves higher seen early last year on similar reform hopes.

On Wednesday, the House Rules Committee is set to hold a hearing on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, which would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level. The bill - better known as the MORE Act - would also create provisions for banking and consumer packaged goods sales. The measure is expected to head to the full House for a vote Friday.

"I've been very optimistic about the MORE Act passing the House." Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., told CNBC ahead of the hearing. The bill faces an uncertain future in the razor-thin Democratically controlled Senate.

Perlmutter, a member on the Rules panel a co-sponsor of the MORE Act, has long been a supporter of legalizing cannabis. He's also sponsor of the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act, a cannabis reform bill designed to provide multistate operators access to banking and other financial services. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in 2012.

"We're confident something is going to move this year," Perlmutter added. "It's much easier for banks and other financial institutions, insurance companies, credit unions, real estate companies to do business with cannabis businesses. It really would allow the industry to start moving forward."

The MORE Act passed the Democratic-controlled House in December 2020 in a 228-164 vote largely divided along party lines. But it went nowhere in the then-Republican majority Senate.

Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg calls Wednesday's House vote "symbolic" and estimates Democrats would need at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster and pass a cannabis bill. However, he said the House debate could prove insightful with midterm elections looming this November.

In a note last week, Seiberg said, "There is a high probability that Republicans will control the House next year. This debate will be a chance to see how many support legalization even if they object to the MORE Act. This would be especially relevant if the House goes Republican but Democrats manage to keep control of the Senate. It would mean there would be a path for cannabis legislation next year."

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., along with Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have sponsored the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA), which is among several marijuana bills floating around.

Canopy Growth CEO David Klein said federal legalization would be transformative for the Canada-based company in the eyes of investors. Canopy bought MSO Acreage for $3.4 billion in 2019, it sells the Martha Stewart's CBD line in the U.S.. and it acquired U.S. cannabis edible brand Wana in a $298 million deal in October 2021.

Canopy shares have gained roughly 13% in the past month. But they're dropped nearly 8% year to date, and they're down 74% in the past 12 months.

"For us, it would allow us to bring businesses like Wana and Acreage into our [profit and loss] and run it more like a consolidated enterprise, which would be super exciting for our investors. It would also show we already have a good mature, growing U.S. multistate presence," Klein told CNBC.

Constellation Brands, the spirits and beer giant, owns a 36% stake in Canopy. Stifel analyst Andrew Carter has forecasted that higher margin drinkable cannabis would see accelerated growth in 2022. According to data from Headset, drinkable cannabis currently makes up 1% of the U.S. market.

"We've always been really bullish on drinks," Klein said. "We are seeing that new consumers coming into the category like to enter the category through edibles and drinks. We think that as more people come into the category, the new comers to the category, will over index in edibles and drinks."

According to a note Tuesday from Bank of America, Schumer's CAOA bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate by late April.

Industry analysts generally see a murky path forward for all of the cannabis reform bills on Capitol Hill, but but they feel that meaningful steps towards legalization are expected to continue to spark interest in cannabis stocks.

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Cannabis stocks are hot ahead of a House panel hearing on a federal legalization bill

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Investor optimism over the possibility of federal cannabis legalization has contributed to a strong rally in beaten-down pot stocks. The Alternative Harvest ETF has gained more than 10% in March, and its on pace for its best month since February 2021. The exchange-traded fund was just about flat year to date but down 50% over the past 12-months.

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-Arlette P

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Elon Musk 's ties to China are causing unease in Washington, including among some Republican lawmakers who have been among the billionaire entrepreneur's ardent supporters.

The concerns center on the potential for China to gain access to the classified information possessed by Mr. Musk's closely held Space Exploration Technologies Corp., including through SpaceX's foreign suppliers that might have ties to Beijing.

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Elon Musk's Business Ties to China Create Unease in Washington

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Elon Musk 's ties to China are causing unease in Washington, including among some Republican lawmakers who have been among the billionaire entrepreneur's ardent supporters. The concerns center on the potential for China to gain access to the classified information possessed by Mr. Musk's closely held Space Exploration Technologies Corp., including through SpaceX's foreign suppliers that might have ties to Beijing.

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Alan Gonzalez-Cabrera

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Daily Business Briefing

Workers are steadily returning to the office, and staying there. Corporate travel spending is a third of what it was before the pandemic, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Some signs suggest that business travel will never return to prepandemic levels.

McKinsey is the latest company to confirm a permanent cut in business travel, the DealBook newsletter reports. The global consulting firm recently decided to reduce its travel by 25 percent from its prepandemic level, according to a company representative. Right now, its workers are not traveling as much as they did before, but as conditions return to normal, the firm has told employees, including senior management consultants and firm leaders, to spend less time on the road.

McKinsey says that less travel will foster collaboration and team building, especially as employees return to the office. Before the pandemic, McKinsey had the ninth-biggest travel budget in corporate America, spending an estimated $265 million on U.S.-booked airfares in 2019, according to Business Travel News.

Climate pledges are another factor that could permanently reduce corporate travel, according to a report released Tuesday by IdeaWorks, a corporate travel consulting firm. The report said because corporate travel represented a large portion of professional service firms' carbon footprints, many will not be able to meet their climate goals without a significant reduction in travel.

Jay Sorensen, the president of IdeaWorks, said that some business travel is "very durable," but that there are "a whole lot" of other trips that were once routine but may no longer be taken. "Airlines are planning for a future in which there are fewer business travelers," he said.

Fifty years after he founded the company, Frederick Smith announced on Monday that he will step down as FedEx's chief executive in June.

Raj Subramaniam, the current president and chief operating officer, will succeed Mr. Smith, according to a news release from FedEx.

"FedEx has changed the world by connecting people and possibilities for the last 50 years," Mr. Smith, 77, said in a statement on the company's website. "As we look toward what's next, I have a great sense of satisfaction."

A former Marine officer who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, Mr. Smith came up with the idea for FedEx from a term paper he wrote in 1965 while he was an undergraduate at Yale University. The paper, which explained how companies could deliver items faster if they changed their shipping strategies, was given a C grade because Mr. Smith's professor didn't think the strategy was viable, according to Entrepreneur magazine.

In its first 26 months of business, the company lost $29 million. Mr. Smith has recounted how he was able to keep the company afloat with money he won by gambling in Las Vegas. In one story told in a memoir by a former FedEx executive, Robert Frock, Mr. Smith took the company's last $5,000 to Vegas and brought back winnings of $27,000 - money that allowed FedEx to pay a fuel bill and keep the company afloat.

During his decades leading the company, Mr. Smith expanded FedEx into a billion-dollar business that revolutionized the air transport business. According to FedEx, the company operated 695 aircraft across 220 countries in 2022 and moves about 17 million packages per day. For the three months that ended in February, it reported profit of more than $1 billion on $23.6 billion of revenue.

Mr. Smith was an early advocate of the 2017 tax cuts advanced by President Donald J. Trump. The tax cuts allowed FedEx to avoid more than $1.5 billion in taxes, according to a November 2019 article in The New York Times. After the publication of the article, Mr. Smith challenged the publisher and the business editor of The Times to a debate. The debate did not occur, and Mr. Smith did not point to factual errors in The Times's coverage.

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Moments after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bill into law on Monday, Disney released a statement condemning it and saying that its "goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts." Disney employs roughly 80,000 people in the Orlando area.

Labeled by opponents as "Don't Say Gay," the law restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also gives parents an option to sue a school district if they think the policy has been violated.

This month, Disney was criticized by many of its employees for refusing to take a public stand against the legislation, leading to a series of moves from the company's chief executive, Bob Chapek. Mr. Chapek broke the company's silence and stated Disney's opposition; apologized repeatedly; paused political giving in Florida pending a review; and created a task force to develop an action plan for Disney to be a more positive force for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, including through its content for families. He is going on a listening tour at Disney workplaces, both domestically and overseas, this week.

On March 9, Mr. Chapek told shareholders at Disney's annual meeting that he had called Mr. DeSantis to "express our disappointment and concern" about the bill. "The governor heard our concerns, and agreed to meet with me and L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of our senior team in Florida as a way to address them," he said.

Mr. DeSantis responded with defiance, promptly deriding the company as "Woke Disney" in a fund-raising email to supporters. On Monday, as he signed the bill, Mr. DeSantis said: "I don't care what Hollywood says. I don't care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I'm not backing down."

The hosts of the Academy Awards on Sunday made fun of the legislation during their opening stand-up routine.

In its statement on Monday, Disney added that it was committed to the national and state organizations working to overturn the law. "We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of the Disney family," the company said, "as well as the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community in Florida and across the country."

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In his first extensive interview about his decision to leave Fox News, Chris Wallace told The New York Times that he "just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox."

"I'm fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion," Mr. Wallace said. "But when people start to question the truth - Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? - I found that unsustainable."

So he jumped to CNN. His daily interview show - "Who's Talking to Chris Wallace?" - starts Tuesday on the new CNN+ streaming service.

The anchor was eager to describe what attracted him to his new gig: excitement about CNN+ and the opportunity to expand beyond politics. In early episodes, he discusses space travel with the "Star Trek" actor William Shatner, asks the former Disney boss Bob Iger about meeting the pope and at one point sings a warbling duet with the songstress Judy Collins.

But Mr. Wallace also acknowledged that he felt a shift at Fox News in the months after Donald J. Trump's defeat in 2020 - a period when the channel ended its 7 p.m. newscast, fired the political editor who helped project a Trump loss in Arizona on election night and promoted hosts like Tucker Carlson who downplayed the Jan. 6 riot.

He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson's documentary "Patriot Purge" - which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a "false flag" operation intended to demonize conservatives - that he complained directly to Fox News management.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE →

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Business travel may never fully recover, as companies like McKinsey make permanent cuts to trips.

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Workers are steadily returning to the office, and staying there. Corporate travel spending is a third of what it was before the pandemic, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Some signs suggest that business travel will never return to prepandemic levels.

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oscar

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Oscars audience grew by 555,000 after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.

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But the largest audience of the night was tuned in earlier, during Troy Kotsur’s win for best supporting actor.

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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/29/business/economy-news-inflation-ukraine#sanctions-russia-military

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The U.S. and allies are preparing new sanctions on Russian supply chains.

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The sanctions will aim to erode Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine.

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London (CNN Business)As Wall Street regains its footing following the invasion of Ukraine, stocks have been staging a steady comeback. But the market for US government bonds remains tumultuous, flashing a recession signal that's historically caused investors to worry.

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London (CNN Business)As Wall Street regains its footing following the invasion of Ukraine, stocks have been staging a steady comeback. But the market for US government bonds remains tumultuous, flashing a recession signal that's historically caused investors to worry.

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shaira E.

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Business just don't read it.

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russian oil tankers are vanishing off the map - cnn

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Russian oil tankers are vanishing off the map

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine made the country a pariah in the global energy market. Since the war started, a de facto embargo on Russian oil has emerged, with oil companies, trading houses, shippers and banks backing away, all at the same time.

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CNN 10 is an on-demand digital news show ideal for explanation seekers on the go or in the classroom.

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Jesiah Lombrano

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More and more wealthy Chinese are worried about keeping their money on the mainland and some see Singapore as a safe haven.

Since protests disrupted Hong Kong's economy in 2019, affluent Chinese have looked for alternative places to store their wealth. Singapore proved attractive because of its large Mandarin Chinese-speaking community and, unlike many countries, it doesn't have a wealth tax.

The trend appeared to pick up last year after Beijing's sudden crackdown on the education industry and emphasis on "common prosperity" - moderate wealth for all, rather than just a few.

That's according to CNBC's interviews with firms in Singapore that are helping wealthy Chinese move their assets to the city-state via the family office structure.

A family office is a privately held company that handles investment and wealth management for an affluent family. In Singapore, setting up a family office typically requires at least $5 million in assets.

Over the last 12 months, inquiries about setting up a family office in Singapore have doubled at Jenga, a five-year-old accounting and corporate services firm, according to its founder Iris Xu. She said the majority of inquiries come from people in China or emigrants from the country.

[Wealthy Chinese] believe there are plenty of opportunities to make a fortune in China, but they are not sure whether it is safe for them to park money there.

About 50 of her clients have opened family offices in Singapore - each with at least $10 million in assets, Xu said.

China's rapid economic growth has minted hundreds of billionaires in just a few decades. Hundreds more joined their ranks their last year, according to Forbes.

That brought the total number of billionaires in China to 626, second only to the United States' 724 billionaires, the data showed.

But mainland China's tight capital controls - an official limit of $50,000 in overseas foreign exchange a year - limit these billionaires' options for investment and keeping their wealth secure.

Xu said her Chinese clients "believe there are plenty of opportunities to make a fortune in China, but they are not sure whether it is safe for them to park money there," according to a CNBC translation of the interview in Mandarin.

'Common prosperity' worries

New family office-related work is coming disproportionately from Chinese clients, said Ryan Lin, a director at Bayfront Law in Singapore. His firm also has clients from India, Indonesia and parts of Europe.

Although capital controls mean many Chinese clients are opening family offices with smaller amounts of capital, Lin said most own revenue-generating business outside the mainland.

Family office as a way to immigrate

Covid-related restrictions on international travel also accelerated the interest of wealthy Chinese in establishing family offices in Singapore, Xu said. The country has a global investor program that allows adults who invest at least 2.5 million Singapore dollars ($1.8 million) to apply for permanent residency.

Since the pandemic began, some Chinese citizens found that China's government could suspend passport issuing and renewal services on grounds of virus control.

In response to an online question in August about passport suspension, China's National Immigration Administration said it would issue such documents only to those with essential or emergency reasons for leaving the country.

Singapore's family office boom

Many billionaires worldwide have used family offices to manage their wealth. Another part of Singapore's appeal is that its location gives investors proximity to other investment opportunities in Asia.

Since late 2020, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have opened family offices in Singapore to take advantage of its friendly tax policy, according to Bloomberg reports.

How long can it last?

The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has brought uncertainty to Chinese citizens who want to open family offices in Singapore.

China has said it opposes sanctions. Beijing has also refused to call Russia's attack on Ukraine an invasion, and state media often blames the U.S. for the conflict.

In contrast to China's attempt to take a neutral stance on the war, Singapore joined the U.S. and the EU in imposing sanctions on Russia earlier this month, reportedly freezing local bank accounts held by sanctioned Russian individuals and entities.

Jenga's Xu said the news of the asset freeze gave some potential Chinese clients pause in their plans to open a family office in Singapore.

Nevertheless, Xu and Lin from Bayfront said inquiries from Chinese people looking to open family offices in Singapore have grown this year at a pace similar to that of 2021.

But it's not clear whether the interest in Singapore means the city has gained a significant edge in longstanding competition with Hong Kong as a financial center.
Singapore is considering a broader range of wealth taxes - including tax on capital gains, dividends and net wealth tax on individuals, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong told CNBC last month.
Xu said that Hong Kong financial professionals have a more established track record of managing money and some Hong Kong asset managers are going to Singapore in search of potential customers.

"If Singapore cannot catch up in providing [quality] wealth management services, Chinese assets will still be managed by professionals from Hong Kong. After all, family offices are not restricted in where they invest," she said.

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China's rich are moving their money to Singapore. Beijing's crackdown is one of the reasons.

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More and more wealthy Chinese are worried about keeping their money on the mainland and some see Singapore as a safe haven. Since protests disrupted Hong Kong's economy in 2019, affluent Chinese have looked for alternative places to store their wealth.

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Gaby

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Home prices rose 19.2% in January from last year

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Home prices rose 19.2% in January from last year

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Paola Rodriguez Manriquez

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home prices rose 19.2% in january from last year - cnn

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Home prices rose 19.2% in January from last year

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Home prices continued to surge higher in January.

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-Isabella Ramirez

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OTTAWA, March 29 (Reuters) - Canada's federal government will present its fiscal 2022-23 budget on April 7, which will be focused on growing the economy while making life more affordable for Canadians, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday.

"Our government was re-elected on a commitment to grow our economy, make life more affordable and to continue building a Canada where nobody gets left behind," Freeland said during question period in parliament.

"That is exactly what we are doing, and that is what we're going to continue to do in the budget that I will present to this house on April 7." (Reporting by Julie Gordon and Steve Scherer in Ottawa)

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monetary / fiscal policy / policy makers

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Canada to present its 2022 budget on April 7 - finance minister

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OTTAWA, March 29 (Reuters) - Canada's federal government will present its fiscal 2022-23 budget on April 7, which will be focused on growing the economy while making life more affordable for Canadians, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday.

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Oscar Luis

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Daily Business Briefing

Workers are steadily returning to the office, and staying there. Corporate travel spending is a third of what it was before the pandemic, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Some signs suggest that business travel will never return to prepandemic levels.

McKinsey is the latest company to confirm a permanent cut in business travel, the DealBook newsletter reports. The global consulting firm recently decided to reduce its travel by 25 percent from its prepandemic level, according to a company representative. Right now, its workers are not traveling as much as they did before, but as conditions return to normal, the firm has told employees, including senior management consultants and firm leaders, to spend less time on the road.

McKinsey says that less travel will foster collaboration and team building, especially as employees return to the office. Before the pandemic, McKinsey had the ninth-biggest travel budget in corporate America, spending an estimated $265 million on U.S.-booked airfares in 2019, according to Business Travel News.

Climate pledges are another factor that could permanently reduce corporate travel, according to a report released Tuesday by IdeaWorks, a corporate travel consulting firm. The report said because corporate travel represented a large portion of professional service firms' carbon footprints, many will not be able to meet their climate goals without a significant reduction in travel.

Jay Sorensen, the president of IdeaWorks, said that some business travel is "very durable," but that there are "a whole lot" of other trips that were once routine but may no longer be taken. "Airlines are planning for a future in which there are fewer business travelers," he said.

Fifty years after he founded the company, Frederick Smith announced on Monday that he will step down as FedEx's chief executive in June.

Raj Subramaniam, the current president and chief operating officer, will succeed Mr. Smith, according to a news release from FedEx.

"FedEx has changed the world by connecting people and possibilities for the last 50 years," Mr. Smith, 77, said in a statement on the company's website. "As we look toward what's next, I have a great sense of satisfaction."

A former Marine officer who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, Mr. Smith came up with the idea for FedEx from a term paper he wrote in 1965 while he was an undergraduate at Yale University. The paper, which explained how companies could deliver items faster if they changed their shipping strategies, was given a C grade because Mr. Smith's professor didn't think the strategy was viable, according to Entrepreneur magazine.

In its first 26 months of business, the company lost $29 million. Mr. Smith has recounted how he was able to keep the company afloat with money he won by gambling in Las Vegas. In one story told in a memoir by a former FedEx executive, Robert Frock, Mr. Smith took the company's last $5,000 to Vegas and brought back winnings of $27,000 - money that allowed FedEx to pay a fuel bill and keep the company afloat.

During his decades leading the company, Mr. Smith expanded FedEx into a billion-dollar business that revolutionized the air transport business. According to FedEx, the company operated 695 aircraft across 220 countries in 2022 and moves about 17 million packages per day. For the three months that ended in February, it reported profit of more than $1 billion on $23.6 billion of revenue.

Mr. Smith was an early advocate of the 2017 tax cuts advanced by President Donald J. Trump. The tax cuts allowed FedEx to avoid more than $1.5 billion in taxes, according to a November 2019 article in The New York Times. After the publication of the article, Mr. Smith challenged the publisher and the business editor of The Times to a debate. The debate did not occur, and Mr. Smith did not point to factual errors in The Times's coverage.

Show more

Moments after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bill into law on Monday, Disney released a statement condemning it and saying that its "goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts." Disney employs roughly 80,000 people in the Orlando area.

Labeled by opponents as "Don't Say Gay," the law restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also gives parents an option to sue a school district if they think the policy has been violated.

This month, Disney was criticized by many of its employees for refusing to take a public stand against the legislation, leading to a series of moves from the company's chief executive, Bob Chapek. Mr. Chapek broke the company's silence and stated Disney's opposition; apologized repeatedly; paused political giving in Florida pending a review; and created a task force to develop an action plan for Disney to be a more positive force for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, including through its content for families. He is going on a listening tour at Disney workplaces, both domestically and overseas, this week.

On March 9, Mr. Chapek told shareholders at Disney's annual meeting that he had called Mr. DeSantis to "express our disappointment and concern" about the bill. "The governor heard our concerns, and agreed to meet with me and L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of our senior team in Florida as a way to address them," he said.

Mr. DeSantis responded with defiance, promptly deriding the company as "Woke Disney" in a fund-raising email to supporters. On Monday, as he signed the bill, Mr. DeSantis said: "I don't care what Hollywood says. I don't care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I'm not backing down."

The hosts of the Academy Awards on Sunday made fun of the legislation during their opening stand-up routine.

In its statement on Monday, Disney added that it was committed to the national and state organizations working to overturn the law. "We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of the Disney family," the company said, "as well as the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community in Florida and across the country."

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In his first extensive interview about his decision to leave Fox News, Chris Wallace told The New York Times that he "just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox."

"I'm fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion," Mr. Wallace said. "But when people start to question the truth - Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? - I found that unsustainable."

So he jumped to CNN. His daily interview show - "Who's Talking to Chris Wallace?" - starts Tuesday on the new CNN+ streaming service.

The anchor was eager to describe what attracted him to his new gig: excitement about CNN+ and the opportunity to expand beyond politics. In early episodes, he discusses space travel with the "Star Trek" actor William Shatner, asks the former Disney boss Bob Iger about meeting the pope and at one point sings a warbling duet with the songstress Judy Collins.

But Mr. Wallace also acknowledged that he felt a shift at Fox News in the months after Donald J. Trump's defeat in 2020 - a period when the channel ended its 7 p.m. newscast, fired the political editor who helped project a Trump loss in Arizona on election night and promoted hosts like Tucker Carlson who downplayed the Jan. 6 riot.

He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson's documentary "Patriot Purge" - which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a "false flag" operation intended to demonize conservatives - that he complained directly to Fox News management.
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Business travel may never fully recover, as companies like McKinsey make permanent cuts to trips.

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Workers are steadily returning to the office, and staying there. Corporate travel spending is a third of what it was before the pandemic, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Some signs suggest that business travel will never return to prepandemic levels.

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Major Companies Causing Changes in the Stock Market

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Major Companies Causing Changes in the Stock Market

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Regina Rangel

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: GameStop, Uber, Nielsen Holdings and more

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These are the stocks posting the largest moves in midday trading.

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Illinois launches economic development campaign to find the next Rivian and draw business beyond Chicago

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Illinois launches economic development campaign to find the next Rivian and draw business beyond Chicago

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- Nelly Rendon Morales

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Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune.

Intersect Illinois, the state's public-private economic development arm, has launched a new $1 million digital marketing campaign, "Be in Illinois," aimed at luring companies to locate beyond the city limits of Chicago.

After six years of leadership changes, dwindling resources and a low profile, Intersect Illinois may have its work cut out for it.

"This is a bit of a new start for Illinois in this area," said Dan Seals, 50, a business and political veteran named CEO of Intersect Illinois in September. "We're going to be making a very targeted campaign toward companies to make the case for Illinois."

The goal is to get downstate Illinois in the conversation for putting down corporate roots, while building up the state's image as a breeding ground for unicorns such as Rivian, the EV startup that began production last year from a renovated plant in Normal.

"Illinois has a central location, a skilled workforce and an excellent infrastructure," Seals said. "That makes it a great place to do business."

But the victories have been few and far between since then-Gov. Bruce Rauner founded Intersect Illinois in 2016, following the lead of similar public-private economic development organizations in states such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. While Intersect Illinois claims it has brought 15,800 jobs and $4.7 billion in investment to the state, it has struggled to gain traction or private financial support, dwindling to a skeletal operation in recent years.

In 2020, Intersect Illinois had revenues of about $1.55 million, of which the state supplied 93%, according to the organization's most recent annual report. That's less than one-fifth of the typical annual budget at World Business Chicago, the city's public-private economic development arm.

A business executive perhaps best known for three failed bids as a Democratic candidate for the 10th Congressional District on the North Shore, Seals was appointed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to resurrect Intersect Illinois.

Loop Capital CEO Jim Reynolds, who has served on the Intersect Illinois board since its inception and was elevated to chairman by Pritzker, said the political impasse between Rauner and then-House Speaker Michael Madigan essentially "neutered" the nascent economic development effort, drying up public and private support.

"The fighting that was occurring in Springfield back then, when Intersect was launched, just put it so far in the hole that it just never was going to work," said Reynolds, 67. "But it's a different time now."

Reynolds, who is also a board member on World Business Chicago, said the city's economic development arm can be both a blueprint and a more active partner for Intersect Illinois.

Founded as a private enterprise in 1999, World Business Chicago merged the following year with the taxpayer-funded Chicago Partnership for Economic Development, building on its mission to draw new business to the city. The organization extended its recruitment efforts internationally under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago was recently named the top metro for corporate investment for the ninth consecutive year by Site Selection magazine, with a record 441 companies relocating to or expanding in the Chicago area during 2021. The corporate influx brought more than $2.8 billion in investments, 18,368 jobs and 59 million square feet of space to Chicago and the suburbs, according to Site Selection.

Reynolds wants to foster more cooperation and communication between the city and state organizations, working together to facilitate recruitment of businesses across municipal lines. He is encouraging Seals to meet with Michael Fassnacht, president and CEO of World Business Chicago, on a regular basis.

"It's a natural partnership that just never got off the ground before," Reynolds said. "And we're getting it off the ground now."

Hoping to stretch a relatively small marketing budget, Intersect Illinois has created a focused digital advertising campaign with the Chicago office of communications firm Edelman. If all goes right, most people in Illinois will never see it, Seals said.

"EVs are a great case in point," Seals said. "We've got a great ecosystem that we're building here in Illinois. And so we want to reach folks in the EV business nationwide with our marketing."

In November, Pritzker signed the Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois Act, which incentivizes EV manufacturers to locate in the state through tax credits, including up to 100% of income tax withheld for new jobs created. The legislation also allows local municipalities to abate property taxes for EV projects.

EVs are proving to be fertile ground for Illinois. In 2020, Intersect helped recruit Netherlands-based EVBox, a leading builder of charging stations, to open its North American headquarters in Libertyville. It also helped lure Canadian EV truck manufacturer Lion Electric to convert a Joliet warehouse into a factory to produce up to 20,000 electric trucks and buses a year, with production slated to begin later this year.

While Illinois is taking a targeted approach to economic development campaigns, other states have engaged in bigger, and sometimes more provocative efforts aimed at poaching business from Illinois.

Illinois has a 9.5% marginal corporate income tax rate - one of the highest in the nation - while Kentucky has a 5% corporate tax rate, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization.

Texas, which has no corporate income tax, has frequently taken aim at Illinois. In 2013, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry bought a slew of radio and newspaper ads in Chicago before heading to the city on a mission to recruit Illinois employers to pull up stakes and head to the Lone Star State. A delegation from the Texas Economic Development Corporation made a similar recruiting trip to Chicago in 2016.

"I think the whole billboard approach is great to get people talking. I think it is horrible to get businesses to relocate," Seals said. "It just doesn't make sense to place an ad where 99% plus of the people who see it actually aren't businesses who are interested in relocating."

A University of Chicago MBA who formerly was assistant director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Seals ticked off the selling points visitors to the "Be in Illinois" website will see: The fifth-largest economy in the U.S. More Fortune 500 companies than all but three states. More engineers produced annually by Illinois universities than MIT, Stanford and Caltech combined.

While Intersect's campaign will not target Illinois viewers, Seals encouraged them to visit the website, saying the state's self-image could use a boost, and the economic development efforts could use a few million more emissaries.

"I think there's a wide gap between our perception of ourselves as a place to do business and our reality of Illinois as a place to do business," Seals said. "There seems to be this lack of confidence in who we are. But our assets far outweigh our liabilities, and we shouldn't be shy about making the case for Illinois."

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Illinois launches economic development campaign to find the next Rivian and draw business beyond Chicago

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Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune. Intersect Illinois, the state's public-private economic development arm, has launched a new $1 million digital marketing campaign, "Be in Illinois," aimed at luring companies to locate beyond the city limits of Chicago.

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Consumers have saved more than $100 billion in health savings accounts

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Health savings accounts are growing rapidly. They are available to consumers with a high-deductible health insurance plan and have a triple tax advantage.

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-Isabella Ramirez

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Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) President Winston Smith says he intends to hold Finance and Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke to his pledge to pay teachers all their retroactive money by the end of this month.

The JTA boss told The Gleaner that he had been receiving calls since last week from the association's members at some ministry-paid schools who are yet to receive retroactive sums in keeping with the recently signed Heads of Agreement between the Ministry of Finance and the JTA.

"The minister of finance, I have him on tape, having said that every dollar will be paid by the end of the financial year," Smith said.

The 2021/22 financial year ends on Thursday.

"What is happening is that between the Government of Jamaica and the teachers we are now developing a high level of trust deficit where we can no longer take the Government at its word," Smith complained.

He said the failure of government to deliver on its promise would also impact his reputation.

"I cannot go to the teachers anymore and say 'let us do this' and the government will honour because the disappointment that the teachers are facing is just too much to bear," he charged.

The JTA president said he has had to be urging teachers to show up for schools as some have already warned that they might not turn up to work if they are not paid the retroactive sums.

Smith also chided the Government for failing to pay an estimated 200 to 300 teachers money owed to them for teaching during summer school last year.

"I want the Government to pay the teachers dem money."

He said the teachers made the sacrifice and provided the assistance in the interest of the country and in good faith.

Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com

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JTA boss warns Finance Minister to pay teachers retro by Thursday

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Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) President Winston Smith says he intends to hold Finance and Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke to his pledge to pay teachers all their retroactive money by the end of this month. The JTA boss told The...

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Bed Bath & Beyond Adds New Directors in Deal With Activist Ryan Cohen

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Bed Bath & Beyond Adds New Directors in Deal With Activist Ryan Cohen

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Paola Rodriguez Manriquez

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Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said it would add three new directors and explore options for its buybuy Baby business as part of an agreement with activist investor Ryan Cohen.

The agreement announced Friday comes after Mr. Cohen sent a letter to the company criticizing the retailer's turnaround strategy and calling for a separation of the buybuy Baby chain or a sale of the entire company. Mr. Cohen's firm, RC Ventures LLC, owns a roughly 9.8% stake in Bed Bath & Beyond.

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Bed Bath & Beyond Adds New Directors in Deal With Activist Ryan Cohen

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Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said it would add three new directors and explore options for its buybuy Baby business as part of an agreement with activist investor Ryan Cohen. The agreement announced Friday comes after Mr. Cohen sent a letter to the company criticizing the retailer's turnaround strategy and calling for a separation of the buybuy Baby chain or a sale of the entire company.

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Oscar Luis

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Daily Business Briefing

American and European Union leaders said on Friday that they had reached an "agreement in principle" to assure that it is legal to transfer personal data across the Atlantic, after a previous pact was struck down when a court found it did not do enough to shield Europeans from American surveillance programs.

President Biden said at a news conference in Brussels that the agreement included "unprecedented protections for data privacy and security for our citizens." But the details of the new agreement were not released. A European court invalidated the previous legal framework for data transfers in part because it did not give Europeans adequate means to complain if they believed their privacy rights have been violated.

Businesses that send European Union data to American servers have pushed hard for the governments to reach a new deal. Since the last pact was struck down more than 18 months ago, regulators in European countries have said that companies cannot use certain web services, like Google Analytics and MailChimp, because doing so could violate the privacy rights of Europeans.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said earlier this year it might shut down its services in Europe if the governments didn't resolve their differences. Google's top lawyer had urged "quick action to restore a practical framework that both protects privacy and promotes prosperity."

The Friday announcement is the latest development in a lengthy debate about how far governments and tech companies should go to protect users' privacy. Europe's top court twice struck down pacts governing trans-Atlantic data flows between the United States and the European Union over concerns that the data would be exposed to American surveillance programs.

"With concern growing about the global internet fragmenting, this agreement will help keep people connected and services running," said Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta. "It will provide invaluable certainty for American & European companies of all sizes, including Meta, who rely on transferring data quickly and safely."

But it was unclear if the new pact would be enough to satisfy the concerns of privacy campaigners. Max Schrems, an activist whose group Noyb (as in: "none of your business") has led efforts to invalidate the trans-Atlantic agreements, said in a statement he was skeptical of the deal and that his organization would carefully analyze the details.

"If it is not in line with E.U. law, we or another group will likely challenge it," he said.

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On Staten Island, Amazon supervisors often refer to them as "training." At an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, supervisors refer to them ambiguously as "meetings." Amazon says they're officially "small group meetings."

Whatever Amazon calls them, the anti-union sessions that the company has held for employees this year have been part of an effort to fend off unions in two contentious elections, Noam Scheiber reports for The Times.

Staten Island employees will vote Friday to Wednesday at their warehouse on whether to join the Amazon Labor Union, an independent union led by current and former workers. The National Labor Relations Board will announce the results in the days that follow. Employees at the warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are voting on whether to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Ballots in the mail-in election, which the labor board sent out in early February, are due Friday and will be counted shortly after.

A union win at either facility - each employs more than 5,000 workers - would be the first in Amazon's history in the United States.

Amazon has used the regular meetings, which typically include a few dozen employees and last roughly 30 minutes, to create a false impression of what unionizing would entail, according to union supporters at both warehouses. Companies are allowed to hold anti-union sessions, often known as "captive audience" meetings, until a prohibition takes effect shortly before mail-in ballots go out to workers or in-person voting begins. Amazon has typically held more than 20 meetings per day before those deadlines at the two warehouses.

Workers say the company has emphasized similar themes in its meetings this year. "If a union is voted in, everything is up for negotiation, and the Amazon Labor Union has never negotiated a contract," said a video shown to employees at the Staten Island warehouse. The video later added: "Under any of their proposals, you would pay hundreds of dollars a year in dues, and Amazon Labor Union would take millions. And remember the ALU has no experience managing this massive amount of money."

Workers said that Amazon supervisors sometimes appeared to avoid inviting workers to the meetings if they were outspoken in supporting the union, a way of potentially excluding those who might push back on the company's talking points.
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Instacart, the grocery delivery start-up, said on Thursday that it was slashing its valuation to about $24 billion from $39 billion, in a reflection of the poor market conditions for technology stocks.

"We are confident in the strength of our business, but we are not immune to the market turbulence that has impacted leading technology companies both public and private," the company said in a statement.

News of the adjusted valuation, a rare action by a private company that comes when an independent valuation evaluator reconsiders the worth of a company's stock, was reported earlier by Bloomberg. Instacart told employees about the lowered valuation earlier on Thursday, the company said.

The valuation change does present a potential benefit: Employees could be offered stock-based compensation that could have more upside over the long run, assuming market interest in Instacart rebounds.

The company pairs people at home ordering groceries on its app with shoppers who work as independent contractors for the company. The contractors pick someone's groceries and then deliver them. During the pandemic, with people stuck at home, the company's growth skyrocketed and it raised $265 million last year, more than doubling its valuation.

But grocery stores have complained that Instacart's fees make it hard for them to turn a profit, and the company has faced questions, along with other pandemic successes like Zoom, Peloton and DoorDash, about whether its business is sustainable when the world returns to a version of normal.

Instacart has also worked to broaden its offerings. On Wednesday, it announced several new products, including expanded advertising offerings and software analytics for grocery stores, along with a pilot program that would allow groceries to be delivered within 15 minutes by using miniature fulfillment centers.

Fidji Simo, a former Facebook executive who became Instacart's chief executive last year, said in an interview this week that she believed she was overseeing "the third act of the company."

But she will still have to contend with market realities. The company framed its new, lower valuation as a way to boost the value of equity awards for new and current employees, and said it had plenty of cash in the bank - more than $1 billion - and did not have to raise more anytime soon.

Instacart also argued that its flagging stock fortunes were part of a larger tech trend rather than an anomaly. Other companies in the advertising and delivery businesses, like Shopify, DoorDash and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, have also seen the value of their stock decline recently.

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Netflix said on Thursday that it was buying Boss Fight Entertainment, a small independent video game studio based in Allen, Texas, as the video streaming company pushes further into the lucrative video game market.

The acquisition of Boss Fight, a mobile game developer with 130 employees, is Netflix's third studio purchase since it set its sights on the gaming industry last summer. The company bought a studio called Night School in September, and this month it bought Next Games. Netflix would not say how much it paid for Boss Fight.

Netflix has far fewer development studios compared with companies like Microsoft and Sony, which produce gaming consoles and hit titles like Halo and Spider-Man. And its acquisitions have been narrower in scope.

But the deals point up Netflix's emerging strategy as it aims to catch up to its competitors. Even Google and Amazon, also big tech companies trying to break into the gaming world, have a head start on Netflix.

Mike Verdu, who was brought on to lead Netflix's gaming push after working at Facebook and Electronic Arts, said Netflix intended to distinguish itself using the brand appeal of its shows, which could be turned into games. A game based on a Netflix hit could interest gamers purely through name recognition, even if Netflix does not yet have a reputation for making popular game titles.

Netflix executives believe the company can offer a connection between its popular streaming shows and related games "and stories that they love in between seasons of a show or in between movies," Mr. Verdu said in an interview. He said Netflix would eventually create new, original games, rather than rely solely on buying games made by outside studios.

Other big tech companies had early failures in gaming. Amazon's first gaming offerings were widely criticized, and Google, after lofty promises, gave up on designing its own games last year.

Mr. Verdu said Netflix's expansion would be slow and careful. He compared it to the company's struggles before eventually finding breakthrough television series in the streaming business like "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black."

"It took a while for the company to reach the point," he said, where "these original shows just broke through and you saw the promise of original content and the promise of streaming come together in this magic moment."

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Professional athletes and performers working in and based in New York City will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said Thursday, linking the decision to the city's high rate of unemployment and the need to keep employees working.

"We're going to make sure we're healthy," he said at a news conference at Citi Field, home of the Mets, where he was joined by executives of the Mets and the Yankees. "And being healthy is not only physically healthy, it's economically healthy."

The policy change means that Kyrie Irving, the Nets' star point guard who has refused to get vaccinated, will be able to take the floor at Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the first time this season. It also applies to performers based in New York City.

The Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving, right, during Wednesday's game in Memphis. Credit... Brandon Dill/Associated Press

Mr. Adams, a Democrat who has been singularly focused on the city's recovery from the pandemic, had openly quarreled with Mr. Irving's supporters over the city's broad vaccine mandate for employees of private companies.

The new policy, which Mr. Adams said applied to a small number of people, takes effect on Thursday, according to a news release from the mayor's office, and expands the general exemption to the private employer mandate that was made for out-of-town performers and athletes on visiting teams. Dr. Mitchell Katz, the president and chief executive of the city's public hospital system, who attended the news conference, said that limiting the exemption to out-of-town workers had not made sense to him and did not "follow any science."

"We were treating our performers differently because they lived and played for home teams. It's not acceptable," Mr. Adams said, adding the mandate had put teams at a "competitive disadvantage."

Still, the mayor urged everyone to get their shots, regardless.

"I have said this and I will continue to say it: All of us should be vaccinated, even the players," he said.

Mr. Adams will keep in place vaccine mandates for municipal workers and other employees of private companies. Those policies were implemented by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, and were among some of the most strict local health measures in the United States.

The mayor, who took office in January, has ended other restrictions as cases dropped over the last month. He recently ended a mask mandate for schools and a proof-of-vaccination policy for restaurants and gyms.

Asked about more prospective changes at the news conference, Mr. Adams said "There's going to become a moment when we're going to continue to look at what we can peel back to bring back a level of normality to our city."

In a statement, Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council, said she was "worried about the increasingly ambiguous messages" New Yorkers were being sent about public health. She highlighted the contrast with city workers let go over the municipal employee vaccine mandate - a tiny fraction of the city's work force - and the need to closely monitor indicators of rising cases.

In recent weeks, several notable basketball figures had criticized the mandate as far as it applied to Mr. Irving, who said his refusal was a matter of personal freedom.

As a U.S. trend toward lifting Covid precautions gained steam, pressure on Mr. Adams mounted to let Mr. Irving play. When a heckler at a public event shouted at Mr. Adams about Mr. Irving, the mayor suggested a simple solution: "Kyrie can play tomorrow. Get vaccinated."

On Thursday, Mr. Adams reiterated the point.

"Kyrie, you should get vaccinated," the mayor said. "Nothing has changed. Get vaccinated."

Mr. Irving is one of the best N.B.A. players, and his team's struggles in his absences have left the Nets in danger of missing the playoffs.

Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist and health adviser to Mr. de Blasio, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the "Kyrie Carve Out," as he called it, could allow the city's vaccine mandates to be challenged in court as "arbitrary and capricious."

Mr. Adams rebutted that criticism on Thursday: "I would not be standing here today if I did not speak to the attorneys, and they said that this passes legal muster."

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U.S. and European leaders reach deal on trans-Atlantic data privacy.

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American and European Union leaders said on Friday that they had reached an "agreement in principle" to assure that it is legal to transfer personal data across the Atlantic, after a previous pact was struck down when a court found it did not do enough to shield Europeans from American surveillance programs. President Biden said at a news conference in Brussels that the agreement included "unprecedented protections for data privacy and security for our citizens."

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Oscar Luis

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Google has agreed to settle a National Labor Relations Board case filed by six former and current employees who said the company had illegally fired or disciplined them because of their unionization efforts.

As part of the settlement, which was agreed upon on Friday, the former and current Google employees also agreed to dismiss a related court case in California. The settlement terms are bound by a nondisclosure agreement, said Laurie M. Burgess, a lawyer representing the former and current employees.

The settlement was reached after a ruling in the labor board case forced Google to hand over more documents. The complaint, which the labor agency brought in December 2020, said the search giant had illegally dismissed or disciplined and surveilled employees who were active in labor organizing.

Google has repeatedly said that its actions had nothing to do with trying to combat unionization efforts and that the employees breached security protocols. A spokeswoman said on Monday that it was "pleased for all sides to avoid years of legal proceedings."

"We've always supported our employees' right to speak about working conditions, and we stand by our policies that protect the security of our systems," the spokeswoman added.

Ms. Burgess said the settlement was not a loss. Her clients had devoted two years to fighting Google and needed to move on with their lives, she said.

"My clients moved that process of exposing the underbelly of what Google has been doing in terms of trying to quell union and organizing activities farther than anyone else," Ms. Burgess said.

The case brought to light Google's extensive efforts to fend off a nascent unionization push. In documents pertaining to Google's hiring of IRI Consultants, a firm known for its anti-union work, a Google lawyer said he wanted the consultants to help convince employees that "unions suck."

In January, an administrative law judge ordered Google to hand over even more documents, which the company had withheld citing attorney-client privilege. In addition, Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, was scheduled to testify in the N.L.R.B. trial.

Four of the people who brought the case were dismissed by the company, and two others were disciplined but not dismissed. One of those two remains at Google. As part of the settlement, the four fired employees waived their requests to be reinstated.

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The U.S. scales back metal tariffs as Britain lifts duties on American whiskey and jeans.

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Google has agreed to settle a National Labor Relations Board case filed by six former and current employees who said the company had illegally fired or disciplined them because of their unionization efforts. As part of the settlement, which was agreed upon on Friday, the former and current Google employees also agreed to dismiss a related court case in California.

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Florida just became the largest state to mandate personal finance education in high school

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On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed bill SB 1054, which mandates personal finance education for high school graduation.

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Adobe - Shares for the computer software company tumbled 10% in midday trading. Adobe beat earnings, but reported a weak outlook. The company expects a $75 million hit to its business from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In the first quarter, Adobe beat estimates by 3 cents, reporting adjusted quarterly earnings of $3.37 per share.

General Mills - The food company's stock price jumped 2.5% in midday trading. General Mills reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings and raised its full-year outlook. The firm earned an adjusted 84 cents per share, 6 cents more than consensus estimates.

Poshmark - Shares of the online clothing marketplace rose 4.6% a day after the firm reported a slightly smaller-than-expected loss and beat on revenue in the recent quarter. Poshmark also reported weaker-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, which led shares to initially slide.

Winnebago - Shares for the recreational vehicle maker plummeted 10% in midday trading. Winnebago reported adjusted quarterly earnings of $3.14 per share, beating consensus estimates of $2.94 from analysts.

GameStop - The meme stock skyrocketed 13% in midday trading Wednesday after GameStop chairman Ryan Cohen on Tuesday bought another 100,000 shares. Cohen's stake in the video-game retailer expanded to 11.9%.

Tilray Brands, Aurora Cannabis - Cannabis stocks jumped in midday trading after two major acquisitions were reported in the industry. Cresco Labs will acquire Columbia Care in a $2 billion deal, according to Reuters. Aurora Cannabis said it is purchasing TerraFarma in a C$38 billion deal. Tilray spiked 3.5%, and Aurora Cannabis jumped 1%.

Okta - Shares of Okta fell more than 8% a day after the digital authentication company said it f ound no evidence of ongoing malicious activity following a hacker breach that affected 366 customers. Okta said hackers gained only limited access.

Boeing - The aerospace stock lost 2.4% on Wednesday, mostly erasing Tuesday's rebound, as investors continued to monitor the investigation of a plane crash in China. One of the two black boxes from the flight, which could reveal the reason for the crash, has been found, according to Chinese state media.

Mosaic Company - Shares for Mosaic Company popped 2.7% in midday trading. The fertilizer stock continues to enjoy popularity among investors who see huge gains ahead for the company following any shortages from Russia-Ukraine conflict.
- CNBC's Tanaya Macheel, Jesse Pound and Samantha Subin contributed reporting

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: GameStop, Adobe, General Mills and more

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Adobe - Shares for the computer software company tumbled 10% in midday trading. Adobe beat earnings, but reported a weak outlook. The company expects a $75 million hit to its business from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In the first quarter, Adobe beat estimates by 3 cents, reporting adjusted quarterly earnings of $3.37 per share.

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ARABI, La. (AP) - A tornado flipped cars, ripped off rooftops and deposited a house in the middle of a street in the New Orleans area, part of a storm front that caused damage in places as it blew from Texas to South Carolina. Two deaths were attributed to the weather.

Other tornadoes spawned by the same storm system had hit parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Monday, killing a woman north of Dallas and causing multiple injuries and widespread damage, before moving eastward.

The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes touched down Tuesday night in St. Bernard Parish, which borders New Orleans to the southeast, and in Lacombe, across Lake Pontchartrain from the city. Parish officials gave no details on how the person died; they said multiple other people were injured.

New Orleans television stations broadcast live images of the storm as it barreled across the metropolitan area. In the aftermath, rescue workers were searching through Arabi, just east of the city's Lower 9th Ward, where St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said the tornado caused significant damage in an area wrecked by Katrina.

Many residents also suffered damage just last year when Category 4 Hurricane Ida swept through. Stacey Mancuso's family just completed repairs to their home in Arabi after Ida ripped off the roof and caused extensive water damage. As Tuesday's tornado tore through their street, she huddled in the laundry room with her husband; two children, ages 16 and 11; and dogs as part of their new roof blew away.

"We're alive. That's what I can say at this point. We still have four walls and part of a roof. I consider myself lucky," said Mancuso. Still, the twister was the third time they've had major weather damage since Katrina in 2005.

In Arabi, there was a strong smell of natural gas in the air as residents and rescue personnel stood in the street and surveyed the damage. Some houses were destroyed while pieces of debris hung from electrical wires and trees. An aluminum fishing boat in front of one house was bent into the shape of a C with the motor across the street. Power poles were down or leaning over, forcing emergency workers to walk slowly through darkened neighborhoods checking for damage.

Michelle Malasovich lives in Arabi. Initially she had been worried about family to the north who were also getting hit by bad weather. She was texting with them when "all of a sudden the lights started flickering."

Her husband was out on the porch and saw the tornado coming.

"It just kept getting louder and louder," Malasovich said. After it passed, they came out to survey the damage - some columns were blown off their porch and the windows of her Jeep were blown out. Others fared worse: "Our neighbor's house is in the middle of the street right now."

The parish president said a young girl was on a ventilator in the home at the time.

"We had one rescue -- a home that was actually picked up and came down in the middle of the street. A young girl was on a ventilator, her father was looking for firefighters to come help, come help," McInnis said. "And they were already in there taking care of the young lady and she's doing fine."

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted late Tuesday that there were no reports of casualties or significant damage within the city and that the power utility was working to restore electricity. About 13,000 homes and businesses were reportedly without power in the three parishes around New Orleans. Entergy reported that about 3,500 remained without electricity early Wednesday morning.

As the storm front moved eastward, an apparent twister ripped apart a metal building and shattered windows east of Mobile Bay in Baldwin County, Alabama, and torrential downpours caused flash floods. The weather service reported more than 8 inches of rain fell in the central Alabama city of Sylacauga overnight, and the roofs of several homes were damaged in Toxey, Alabama, where tornado warnings were issued.

The wild weather waned as it moved into South Carolina early Wednesday, but the weather service warned that isolated tornadoes remained possible in southern Georgia.

Shelters were opened ahead of the severe weather, and many schools closed early or canceled after-school activities in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Louisiana's federal and state authorities reminded the more than 8,000 hurricane survivors living in government-provided mobile homes and recreational vehicle trailers to have an evacuation plan.

The vicious weather hit Texas on Monday, where several tornadoes were reported along the Interstate 35 corridor. In Elgin, broken trees lined the rural roads and pieces of metal - uprooted by strong winds hung from the branches. Residents stepped carefully to avoid downed power lines as they worked to clean the remnants of broken ceilings, torn down walls and damaged cars.

J.D. Harkins, 59, said he saw two tornadoes pass by his Elgin home.

"There used to be a barn there," Harkins said, pointing to an empty plot on his uncle's property covered with scattered debris. He said the building was empty when the first tornado hit, and that his family is thankful nobody was hurt.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a disaster in 16 hard-hit counties. Abbott said 10 people were injured by storms in the Crockett area, while more than a dozen were reportedly hurt elsewhere.

The Grayson County Emergency Management Office said a 73-year-old woman was killed in the community of Sherwood Shores, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Dallas, but provided no details.

___

Associated Press journalists Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Ken Miller in Oklahoma City; Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Terry Wallace in Dallas; Janet McConnaughy in New Orleans and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas contributed to this report.

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Tornado rips into New Orleans and its suburbs, killing 1

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ARABI, La. (AP) - A tornado flipped cars, ripped off rooftops and deposited a house in the middle of a street in the New Orleans area, part of a storm front that caused damage in places as it blew from Texas to South Carolina.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/18/why-high-gas-prices-fall-harder-on-lower-earners.html

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Why high gas prices fall harder on lower earners

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Lower-income households spend more of their budgets on transportation and other necessities relative to other income groups, according to economists.

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Biden's trip to Europe is one of highest-stakes presidential trips in recent memory. Here's why

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Adidas announces new network that will allow more than 50,000 student-athletes to be paid ambassadors

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Adidas announces new network that will allow more than 50,000 student-athletes to be paid ambassadors

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-Isabella Ramirez

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The Li Finance swap aggregator experienced a smart contract attack which led to around $600,000 lost from 29 users' wallets, a report said.

The attack happened at 2:51 a.m. UTC Sunday (about 11 p.m. EDT Saturday), according to Cointelegraph.

The attacker was able to exploit a bug in the contract to get various amounts of different tokens from wallets with "infinite approval" on the Li Finance protocol.

The stolen tokens included USD Coin, Polygon, Rocket Pool, Gnosis, Tether, Metaverse Index, Audius, AAVE, Jarvis Reward Token and DAI.

The report said the attack was discovered 12 hours later and all swapping functions were shut down. In a post mortem, the Li Finance team said the attacker swapped the stolen tokens for around 205 ether, which was valued at around $600,000. The ether hadn't been moved from the attacker's wallet.

The report says of the 29 wallets hit in the attack, 25 had been reimbursed from treasury funds for their losses, but that only amounted to $80,000, 13% of the total value lost.

The owners of the remaining four wallets, which lost $517,000 combined, have been contacted and offered an investor's stake to compensate them. The attacker has been contacted and offered a bug bounty.

PYMNTS wrote that the U.S. Department of Labor had recently warned retirement plan fiduciaries to exercise some caution before adding a crypto option to a 401(k) plan investment menu.
Read more: Labor Department Urges Caution on Crypto Retirement Plans
The report said the department had "serious concerns about the prudence of a fiduciary's decision to expose a 401(k) plan's participants to direct investments in cryptocurrencies, or other products whose value is tied to cryptocurrencies."

Because of this, the department's Employee Benefits Security Administration said it wants to look into plans offering crypto investments.

The department said the people in charge should look forward to being questioned with how they can square their actions with "duties of prudence and loyalty in light of the risks."

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Hacker Hits Li Finance Smart Contract for $600K

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The Li Finance swap aggregator experienced a smart contract attack which led to around $600,000 lost from 29 users' wallets, a report said. The attack happened at 2:51 a.m. UTC Sunday (about 11 p.m. EDT Saturday), according to Cointelegraph.

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Emilia

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Manuel Article

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Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike is stepping down as CEO of the company, he announced in a blog post on Monday. Executive chairman Brian Acton will serve as acting CEO until a replacement is found.

"Every day, I'm struck by how boundless Signal's potential looks, and I want to bring in someone with fresh energy and commitment to make the most of that," Marlinspike wrote. "I now feel very comfortable replacing myself as CEO based on the team we have."

The company has met with several CEO candidates "over the last few months," Marlinspike wrote, but the search remains ongoing.

Founded in 2014, Signal has grown into one of the most trusted and robust apps for encrypted messaging. The service has more than 40 million monthly users and is regularly recommended in security guides. Established as a nonprofit, the company is not supported by advertising or app sales, instead relying on donations and a recently launched sustainer program.

The app saw a rush of new users in early 2021 in response to a new privacy policy from its competitor WhatsApp - but the success wasn't without controversy. Workers within Signal raised concerns to The Verge that the company's refusal to maintain content policies could lead to potential misuse of the service. Signal's recent efforts to incorporate cryptocurrency payments through MobileCoin have only heightened those concerns.

Marlinspike gave no indication of his plans after leaving Signal, although he has published a number of satirical NFT experiments on his personal blog, including a derivatives market for NFTs and a token that turns into the poop emoji when viewed from a personal wallet.

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Moxie Marlinspike has stepped down as CEO of Signal

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Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike is stepping down as CEO of the company, he announced in a blog post on Monday. Executive chairman Brian Acton will serve as acting CEO until a replacement is found. "Every day, I'm struck by how boundless Signal's potential looks, and I want to bring in someone with fresh energy and commitment to make the most of that," Marlinspike wrote.

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Cann is shelved at the intersection of two booming trends: sober-curiosity and seltzer. The beverage startup's flagship product is a low-dose cannabis seltzer that "gets you a little bit high-a very mild sort of light, floaty head feeling that's engaging and social," co-founder Jake Bullock told us. Its second beverage, Unspiked, is alcohol-free, intended for anyone who wants to skip the buzz altogether.

We spoke with Bullock and co-founder Luke Anderson about their buzzy drinks.
Are there any myths about cannabis that bug you?
Luke: There are two that really bother me. One is that it's just for stoners. Despite more states legalizing cannabis and it being more socially accepted, there's still this difficult first step of going to actually purchase it and incorporate it in your routine that people report makes them feel like they're doing something illicit. We are trying to package up the product and use flavors and ingredients that are more aligned with what you see in a traditional retail beverage to try to break that down.

And unfortunately, I think hemp rebranding itself as CBD, and then a huge wave of CBD beverages getting sold in grocery stores a few years ago, created this bizarre stereotype that hemp drinks are cannabis beverages. We're still battling that consumer education burden on both the cannabis and the non-cannabis side, because so many people bought CBD drinks and then subsequently became tired of them.

So, in short, cannabis: It's not just for stoners, and no, it's not CBD either.
Do CBD products do something?
Luke: It's the "something" that is really up for debate. Like spirulina smoothies do "something," goji berries do "something." But it's like, "Will you feel a palpable impact from consuming a CBD beverage?" And Jake and I say no. But also if you take a sugar pill, sometimes you do get a little better, and we have to remember that the placebo effect does work. The power of positive thinking and consuming something often impacts how good you feel.
Is the seltzer market oversaturated?
Jake: I think that the future of seltzers is going to be in the direction of, "Well, how can we make these actually taste better?" People really liked zero-calorie, but would you have something that was 10 calories if it tasted much better? I think there's a real opportunity for natural products that don't use fake, artificial [ingredients].
Do you guys foresee a future where cannabis beverages are sold in bars, sports stadiums, etc.?
Luke: Yes, yes! We want to build that future. We think that there are over-the-counter versions of alcohol, like beer and wine, that are more accessible because they are less strong. And for some reason, cannabis, it's all the same. If it's 100 milligrams or a concentrated dab, you have the same access to it as you do a two-milligram THC beverage, which is so much less harmful than a beer. We believe that right next to hard kombucha one day, you'll see Canns.
That's like the quintessential story where someone's first and only cannabis experience is when they eat an entire brownie.
Luke: We also talk about the bad pot brownie experience so much, and it is that thing that makes somebody say, "Never again." But if Everclear were the only way to get alcohol, we would all have bad Everclear experiences and we'd probably be done with alcohol.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Icebreakers with...the cofounders of Cann, a cannabis beverage brand

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Cann is shelved at the intersection of two booming trends: sober-curiosity and seltzer. The beverage startup's flagship product is a low-dose cannabis seltzer that "gets you a little bit high-a very mild sort of light, floaty head feeling that's engaging and social," co-founder Jake Bullock told us.

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Companies partially pulling out of the country are under pressure to make a cleaner break.

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PepsiCo and McDonald's are among the companies rethinking their businesses in Russia. Credit... John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

As Western governments ratchet up their economic punishments against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, the corporate world has paused or pulled out of operations there. But as the list of companies quitting Russia grows by the day, differences in the degree of disconnection are spurring debate.

Companies that have paused operations or announced limited pullouts are coming under pressure to make a more definitive break: all or nothing, in or out. That has led some to rapidly revise their plans, raising questions about the long-term implications.

Some corporate withdrawals are partial. Procter & Gamble, for example, has "discontinued all new capital investments" in Russia. It is also "significantly reducing" its product portfolio there to focus on "basic health, hygiene and personal care items needed by the many Russian families who depend on them in their daily lives." Danone and PepsiCo made similar moves, halting new investments and stopping sales of some products, but continuing with dairy and baby products, arguing that those products serve essential needs.

Is that enough? "The point is that we're trying to starve the regime of their resources," said Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager who worked in Russia and has long campaigned against corruption there. Some companies that initially said that they would remain in Russia backtracked within days, including Deutsche Bank and the retailer Uniqlo. Others, like Shell, were pushed to go further than they originally announced.

Leaving Russia makes it difficult to return. Shutting down plants, offices and supply chains is complicated. There are also concerns about expropriation and I.P. theft. P&G's Gillette plant in St. Petersburg, for example, exports shaving products to more than 50 countries and accounts for 70 percent of the Russian shaving product market.

Some executives have argued that it's not up to companies to lead on the punishments that Russia faces. "I don't think businesses are supposed to decide how global trade works in the world," David Solomon of Goldman Sachs told Time magazine. "Government sets policy and then businesses follow that policy." (The bank said last week that it would wind down its business in Russia.)

How does this square with pledges to embrace broader stakeholder concerns? The days of companies saying that they serve only shareholders are long gone. And society's expectations for companies have changed since Coca-Cola sold drinks in Nazi Germany and Heineken brewed beer in Rwanda during the genocide there. (Both companies said that they would suspend their operations in Russia.) Corporations also spend big to lobby for public policy that puts them at the forefront of important social and environmental issues.

The precedent set by pulling out of Russia may test corporate policies about where to draw the line for doing business in places facing geopolitical or human rights concerns; in other words, it is becoming harder for boardrooms to see things in shades of gray.

Oil prices show signs of stabilizing. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell below $109 a barrel today, its lowest level since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Traders appear to be heartened by the apparent progress in talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Banks try to contain the nickel market crisis. JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered were among the lenders negotiating with the Chinese metal producer Tsingshan over extending credit lines to help it meet margin requirements, The Wall Street Journal reports. The talks come as nickel trading remains suspended, after a huge short squeeze hit Tsingshan with billions in paper losses.

Foxconn shuts factories in China amid a Covid outbreak. The tech manufacturing giant said it had stopped production in Shenzhen, a major tech hub, after the local authorities ordered all residents to stay home and nonessential businesses to stop production. It's the latest blow for Chinese tech companies, whose stocks have been tumbling.

Tencent reportedly faces big anti-money laundering fines. The Chinese internet giant may be punished for violations of "know your customer" regulations on its WePay payments network, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Tom Brady unretires. The N.F.L. quarterback said he would return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next season, six weeks after he announced his retirement. One question is whether Brady will restructure his contract - he's set to be paid $25 million - to help the team sign other players under the league's salary cap.

The trial in one of the largest international kleptocracy cases in history, the looting of billions of dollars from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, is in the final stretch. Roger Ng, a former banker at Goldman Sachs, is accused of assisting the scheme's mastermind, Jho Low.

The proceedings have turned into a "he said, he said" affair, The Times's Matt Goldstein reports, pitting Ng against another former Goldman banker, Tim Leissner, who has already pleaded guilty and who last week finished 10 days of testimony. Goldman, which made $600 million in fees to arrange bond deals for 1MDB, has also pleaded guilty on behalf of an Asian subsidiary and paid more than $5 billion in fines.

There are two more weeks scheduled in Ng's trial. Here's the latest:

A quick recap: Malaysia set up 1MDB in the late 2000s, with Low as an adviser. Starting in 2009, Goldman underwrote a series of bonds for the fund that raised $6.5 billion for economic development. Instead, much of the money was redirected by Low and others close to the Malaysian prime minister at the time, Najib Razak, who has since been convicted in his home country and sentenced to 12 years in jail. Low is believed to be living in China, beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors.

What Leissner says: Goldman's former top dealmaker in Asia said that Ng was Low's primary contact at the bank. Leissner said that Ng set up a key meeting with Low in which Low told the bankers whom to bribe in order for Goldman to land the bond deals.

What Ng says: Ng has not testified, but his lawyers have called Leissner a liar, with ample evidence. Among other things, Leissner admits to presenting bogus divorce papers to his now-estranged wife and admitted that he "lied a lot." Goldman also painted Leissner as a con man in its defense.

The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global Economy

Card 1 of 6

Experts' take: Leissner's deceptions complicate the Ng case, but don't kill it, said Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor and a professor at New York Law School who specializes in legal ethics. A bigger problem for the government's case, she said, could be that Leissner was Ng's boss.

- Diane Vukovic of Primal Survivor, an organization that helps consumers with disaster preparedness, on the growing number of people going off the grid. Northern California is at the vanguard of the movement.

When Congress approved a $1.5 trillion budget deal last week, it averted a government shutdown but didn't address an issue that Democrats had vowed to fix.

Since 2015, a budget rider has prohibited the S.E.C. from requiring companies to disclose details about their political spending. This constraint was highlighted after the Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol prompted a public reckoning about corporate donations, but it remains in place. That leaves the push for transparency on corporate political spending to investors and proxy proposals.

Activists see "continued momentum" on corporate political disclosure because of employee pressure, said Bruce Freed of the Center for Political Accountability, noting Disney workers' push for the company to oppose Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill. Last year, more boards agreed to political spending resolutions, and more proxy proposals on these issues passed by vote than ever. Freed's group is now working with 22 companies on similar resolutions. But " private ordering " of disclosure on a company-by-company basis won't suffice, some say.

"Standardized disclosure evens the playing field," the S.E.C. commissioner Allison Herren Lee told DealBook. While shareholder proposals help increase transparency around political spending and other environmental, social and governance (E.S.G.) issues, she said that relying on private actors resulted in "spotty disclosure and may advantage larger investors." Standardizing what companies report "lets investors put the whole picture together, getting consistent and comparable information across the market," she said.

Company reports would highlight contradictions between rhetoric and spending. Companies can make political donations that conflict with their public stances, which undermines their stated E.S.G. agenda and may even materially mislead investors. "Shareholders and the investing public understandably want to know whether their money is being spent to serve their interests or those of the executives who direct it," Lee said. As acting S.E.C. chair last year, she made E.S.G. disclosures a priority. The agency's current chair, Gary Gensler, has also called for more disclosure on political giving, but Congress has limited what he can do about it.
Deals

Steve Cohen's Point72 is reportedly planning to withdraw its remaining $750 million investment in Melvin Capital Management. ( Bloomberg)

The creators of Bored Apes Yacht Club will buy the CryptoPunks and Meebits brands from Larva Labs, as they seek to create an NFT empire. ( Bloomberg)

Didi Chuxing's stock has dropped sharply amid pushback from Chinese regulators, hitting major shareholders like SoftBank and Uber. ( CNBC)

Policy

U.S. officials said they won't negotiate exemptions for Russian sanctions to save efforts to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. ( WSJ)

California's expansive, expensive and long-delayed high-speed rail line is a major test of President Biden's infrastructure initiatives. ( NYT)

"First Amendment Scholars Want to See the Media Lose These Cases" ( NYT)

Best of the rest

Facebook's parent company, Meta, has cut back on some corporate perks, like free laundry services, as it prepares for a future of hybrid work. ( NYT)

A look the rise and fall of the Saudi-funded challenger to the P.G.A. ( WSJ)

An expansive profile of Ramesh Balwani, the former president of Theranos, notes that federal prosecutors are closely examining the 2018 sale of the house he shared with Elizabeth Holmes. ( The Information)

An ice-cream tech start-up is waging legal war on McDonald's. ( NYT)

We'd like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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Companies partially pulling out of the country are under pressure to make a cleaner break. As Western governments ratchet up their economic punishments against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, the corporate world has paused or pulled out of operations there.

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HEALTH AND SCIENCEWhite House says U.S. will run out of money to fight pandemic if Congress doesn’t pass Covid funding bill

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HEALTH AND SCIENCEWhite House says U.S. will run out of money to fight pandemic if Congress doesn’t pass Covid funding bill

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Paola Rodriguez Manriquez

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The White House on Tuesday warned that the U.S. won't have enough booster shots and life-saving Covid treatments for Americans if Congress fails to pass $22.5 billion in additional pandemic funding.

Senior Biden administration officials, in a call with reporters, said the U.S. could face another wave of Covid infection in the coming months, even as new cases and hospitalizations have dramatically declined from the peak of the unprecedented omicron surge in January. Infections are already on the rise again in major European nations, such as the U.K. and Germany. China is battling its worst outbreak since 2020.

The officials warned that the funding is urgently needed to get ahead of another Covid wave. House Democrats last week stripped $15 billion in Covid funding, which was already less than Biden requested, from a broader spending bill after failing to reach a bipartisan agreement with Republicans. The GOP has insisted that Congress offset new Covid money by cutting funds for state and local governments allocated for the spring, a demand many Democrats were unwilling to accept.

The senior administration officials told reporters the federal government will not be able to purchase enough boosters shots, vaccines that target specific variants or more antiviral pills beyond the 20 million already under order from Pfizer if more funding isn't approved.

There is also no more funding for additional monoclonal antibody treatments, including an order planned for March 25, the officials said. If more funding doesn't come through, the federal government will have to cut state allocations of monoclonal antibodies by more than 30% starting next week, they said.

The federal government will also not be able to maintain sufficient Covid testing capacity beyond June in the event of another Covid surge, the officials said. During the omicron wave, there was a run on at-home tests and in-person clinics, resulting in hours-long lines and empty pharmacy shelves.

Uninsured people will also no longer have coverage for Covid testing and treatments, according to the White House. The fund that covers them will stop accepting new claims a week from now, forcing health-care providers to either absorb the costs or turn patients away, the officials said. The fund will completely end in early April and the uninsured will no longer have coverage for vaccinations, they said.

Some investments made in surveillance of new Covid variants will also have to be wound down, the officials said, leaving the U.S. without the capabilities it needs to stay on top of how the virus is evolving. The emergence of the highly mutated omicron variant blindsided the U.S. and much of the world in November.

The White House said the money is also needed to fund the development of a vaccine that covers a range of Covid variants, and support the administration's efforts to help increase the vaccination rate in developing nations, increasing the risk that new variants could emerge. Omicron emerged in South Africa and Botswana, and the delta variant was first identified in India.

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White House says U.S. will run out of money to fight pandemic if Congress doesn't pass Covid funding bill

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The White House on Tuesday warned that the U.S. won't have enough booster shots and life-saving Covid treatments for Americans if Congress fails to pass $22.5 billion in additional pandemic funding. Senior Biden administration officials, in a call with reporters, said the U.S.

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-Isabella Ramirez

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American Bridge, a pro-Democratic super PAC, has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) alleging that former President Donald Trump is violating campaign finance laws by spending money from his PAC on events for himself while he hasn't yet officially stated whether he will be a presidential candidate in 2024.

Trump has both raised and spent over "well over" $5,000 in funds related to "advancing his own presidential campaign," while he hasn't submitted paperwork to be a candidate in 2024, the complaint alleges.
This is a developing story that will be updated as more information becomes available.

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Trump accused of violating campaign finance law by not declaring 2024 run

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American Bridge, a pro-Democratic super PAC, has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) alleging that former President Donald Trump is violating campaign finance laws by spending money from his PAC on events for himself while he hasn't yet officially stated whether he will be a presidential candidate in 2024.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-inflation-is-going-nowhere-but-up-morning-brief-090848522.html

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Housing inflation is going nowhere but up: Morning Brief

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Top news and what to watch in the markets on Tuesday, March 15, 2022.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia's relentless bombardment of Ukraine edged closer to central Kyiv on Tuesday, with a series of strikes hitting a residential neighborhood as the leaders of three European Union countries planned a bold visit to Ukraine's embattled capital in a show of support.

Shortly before dawn, large explosions thundered across Kyiv from what Ukrainian authorities said was artillery strikes. The shelling ignited a huge fire and a frantic rescue effort in a 15-story apartment building in a western district of the city. At least one person was killed in the blast.

Shockwaves from an explosion also damaged the entry to a downtown subway station that has been used as a bomb shelter. City authorities tweeted an image of the blown-out facade, saying trains would no longer stop at the station.

As Russia stepped up its assault on Kyiv, the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia announced they would travel to Ukraine's capital Tuesday on a European Union mission to show support for the country

"The aim of the visit is to express the European Union's unequivocal support for Ukraine and its freedom and independence," Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said in a tweet.

He will be joined by Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is Poland's deputy prime minister for security and the leader of the conservative ruling party.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators also planned to hold a second day of talks as Russia's invasion of Ukraine entered its 21st day. The Red Cross and the United Nations refugee agency say millions of people face food and medicine shortages along with the immediate conflict threats of shelling and air attacks.

Millions more have fled their homes, with more than 2.8 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries in what the U.N. has called Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

When Russia launched the war nearly three weeks ago, fear of an imminent invasion gripped the Ukrainian capital, and residents slept in subway stations or crammed onto trains to flee. But as the Russian offensive bogged down, Kyiv saw a relative lull.

Fighting has intensified on the city's outskirts in recent days, and sporadic air raid sirens ring out around the capital.

Tuesday's early morning artillery strikes hit the Svyatoshynskyi district of western Kyiv, adjacent to the suburb of Irpin, which has seen some of the worst battles of the war.

Flames shot out of the 15-story apartment building and smoke choked the air as firefighters climbed ladders to rescue people. The assault blackened several floors of the building, ripped a hole in the ground outside and blew out windows in neighboring apartment blocks.

A firefighter at the scene confirmed one person had died and that several had been rescued, but others remained inside as rescuers tried to reach them.

A 10-story apartment building in the Podilsky district of Kyiv, north of the government quarter, also was damaged by unspecified ammunition. Russian forces also stepped up strikes overnight on Irpin and the northwest Kyiv suburbs of Hostomel and Bucha, said the head of the capital region, Oleksiy Kuleba.

"Many streets (in those areas) have been turned into a mush of steel and concrete. People have been hiding for weeks in basements, and are afraid to go out even for evacuations," Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.

Russian forces also stepped up their attacks on Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv in the east, with more than 60 strikes overnight, according to regional administration chief Oleh Sinehubov.

"Fires are raging in the city, and there are not enough firefighters," he said.

The strikes hit the city's historical center, including the main marketplace and Gagarin Avenue, a major thoroughfare.

Rescuers have pulled out "dozens of bodies of civilian residents," from the ruins of destroyed apartment buildings, he said on Ukrainian television.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to extend martial law until April 24 and to require men ages 18 to 60 to stay in the country to fight. Zelenskyy submitted the extension in a bill to parliament, which is expected to vote on it this week.

Talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were due to resume Tuesday, after failing to make a break through - or to break down - on Monday. The two sides had expressed some optimism about the negotiations, which Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said would discuss "peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees."

Russia's military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine's, but its troops have faced stiffer-than-expected resistance, bolstered by arms supplied by the West.

U.S. officials said Russian troops made little progress on the ground in recent days and were still about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of Kyiv as of Monday. The Pentagon said Russian forces have launched more than 900 missiles but not taken control of the air above Ukraine.

U.S. administration officials alleged that China had signaled to Moscow that it would be willing to provide both military support in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off effects of Western sanctions.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned China against helping Russia during a meeting in Rome on Monday with a senior Chinese diplomat. The Kremlin denied asking China for military equipment to use in Ukraine.

With each day, the human cost of the grinding war continues to rise. The Ukrainian general prosecutor's office released details of two deadly Russian attacks that took place Monday: an artillery strike that hit a university and open-air market in the northern city of Chernihiv, killing 10, and the shooting of a 65-year-old woman on a bus that was evacuating civilians from a Kyiv suburb.

The number of people killed in a Russian rocket attack on a TV tower in western Ukraine on Monday rose to 19, authorities in the Rivne region said Tuesday. The Rivne regional government posted on its Facebook page that 19 people were killed and nine were injured in the strike on the TV tower in Antopol, a village that is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the border of NATO member Poland.

A Russian airstrike near a Ukrainian checkpoint caused extensive damage to a downtown Kyiv neighborhood, killing one person, Ukraine's emergency agency said.

Kateryna Lot said she was in her apartment as her child did homework when they heard a loud explosion and ran to take shelter.

"The child became hysterical. Our windows and the balcony were shattered. Part of the floor fell down," she said. "It was very, very scary."

In an area outside Kyiv, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was injured while reporting and was hospitalized, the network said.

There was a rare glimmer of hope in the encircled port city of Mariupol after a convoy of 160 civilian cars left along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported Monday. Over the past 10 days or so, the lethal siege has pulverized homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.

Previous attempts to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid to the southern city of 430,000 were thwarted by fighting.

Ukraine's military said it repelled an attempt Monday to take control of Mariupol by Russian forces, who were forced to retreat. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed fires burning across the city, with many high-rise apartment buildings heavily damaged or destroyed.

Ukraine claims its forces have killed 150 Russian troops and destroyed two Russian tanks in the battle for Mariupol.

The Kremlin-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya said on a messaging app that Chechen fighters were spearheading the offensive on Mariupol.

Elsewhere, the Russian military said 20 civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. The claim could not be independently verified.

In Russia, the live main evening news program on state television was briefly interrupted by a woman who walked into the studio holding a poster against the war. The OVD-Info website that monitors political arrests identified her as a Channel 1 employee and said she was taken into police custody.

The U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that it had recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher.

___

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and AP journalists from around the world contributed to this report.

___

Follow the AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Ukraine's capital under fire; 3 EU nation leaders to visit

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia's relentless bombardment of Ukraine edged closer to central Kyiv on Tuesday, with a series of strikes hitting a residential neighborhood as the leaders of three European Union countries planned a bold visit to Ukraine's embattled capital in a show of support.

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US oil prices tumbled below $100 a barrel on Monday, unwinding a significant chunk of the recent spike caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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Emilia Garcia

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Why are US gas prices soaring when America barely uses Russian oil? | CNN Business

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There’s pain at the pump for American drivers as US gas prices soar to record highs.

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Luis Flores

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Biden's executive order boosts prospects for cryptocurrency

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When President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at cryptocurrency this week, it marked a pivotal moment in the history of digital currencies, taking bitcoin, ethereum and other crypto tokens a big step closer to someday becoming a legitimate financial option for all Americans, one industry observer told CBS News.

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Alan Gonzalez-Cabrera

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Happy Friday, folks! Baseball is coming back, and Selection Sunday awaits. That's a great Friday indeed.

Let's get right to it.
This is the article version of the CBS Sports HQ AM morning newsletter. To sign up and get this in your inbox, fill out the information below.
Good morning to everyone but especially to...
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL Baseball is finally back.
It took a 99-day lockout, several missed "deadlines" that actually didn't matter and significant concessions from both sides, but on Thursday MLB and the MLBPA reached a Collective Bargaining Agreement and ensured all 162 games will be played this season. Players will report to Spring Training in the coming days, and Opening Day is April 7.

Here are the keys to the deal, which runs through 2026:

Minimum salaries are up from $575,500 last year to $700,000 this year. They will rise to $780,000 by the end of the deal.

There's a $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool. As our baseball expert R.J. Anderson writes: "It won't give them their market's value, or anything close, but it's a considerable boost for talent who would otherwise be drastically underpaid relative to their performance."

The Competitive Balance Tax threshold (explained here) starts at $230 million this year and rises to $244 million by 2026. There is also a new tier of penalties for teams $60 million over the threshold.

There's a six-team draft lottery, implemented to dissuade tanking.

There are draft pick rewards for not manipulating service time (aka bringing players up to the majors when they're ready, not when it's financially convenient).

Those are the major behind-the-scenes details. As for changes you'll see on the field...

A 12-team postseason (explained here)

Universal DH

No seven-inning doubleheaders

No runner on second base to start extra innings

Advertisements on uniforms and helmets (explained here)

The two sides tabled one sticking point -- the international draft -- and agreed to a July decision deadline there. While the quick turnaround is exciting news, there's much to accomplish in the upcoming days and weeks; we're only 27 days away from Opening Day, after all. Here's the to-do list, according to MLB reporter Mike Axisa:

Secure visas: "Roughly 30 percent of players on 40-man rosters were signed internationally and those players need work visas to return to the United States."

Establish COVID protocols: "MLB and the MLBPA can reup last year's COVID protocols, make any necessary tweaks, and call it a day."

Rule 5 Draft: "Canceling the Rule 5 Draft potentially takes big league opportunities away from players who have already spent too long in the minors. The lockout has essentially been leveraged into a way to keep more young and cheap players in the organization by eliminating the Rule 5 Draft."

Arbitration: "There are 197 unsigned arbitration-eligible players and the arbitration process usually takes place across several deadlines that are weeks apart each offseason."

Free agency and trades: You can keep up with all the action here.

Get everyone up to speed: "New coaches can begin to develop relationships, new players can meet their new teammates, the works. That kind of stuff happens every spring, but this year it will be a bit more intense."

Yes, there's a lot to do. No, it's not perfect. But based on their tweets, the players are ecstatic, and we should be, too. For the first time since early December, baseball is up and running.

Honorable mentions

And not such a good morning for...
THE BAYLOR BEARS
Losing in your conference tournament doesn't destroy your national championship hopes. Not at all. In fact, six of the last seven eventual champs did not win their conference tournament, a group that includes last year's champion, Baylor.

But if this year's Bears want to defend their title, they'll have to play much better than they did yesterday. The Big 12 regular-season co-champs fell to Oklahoma, 72-67. It wasn't pretty:

Oklahoma outscored Baylor 45-34 in the second half.

Baylor shot just 3-for-22 on 3-pointers. That's 13.6% -- its worst mark since 2018.

Leading scorer Adam Flagler had a game to forget: 2 points on 1-for-10 shooting, including 0-for-6 from 3.

But the real damage is the implications this loss could carry. Our Bracketologist Jerry Palm says that Baylor could fall to a 2 seed if teams such as Kentucky and Kansas win their respective conference tournaments. Our college basketball reporter Kevin Flaherty crunched the numbers:

Flaherty: "Gonzaga appears likely to land the No. 1 overall seed, and the Bulldogs are tied with Baylor with 10 Quad I victories. Auburn and Arizona also have strong cases to wind up with a No. 1 in a few days. But a Big 12 Tournament title would mean that Kansas would likely pass Baylor in Quad I wins and would have both a share of the Big 12 regular season title with the Bears and the conference tournament championship."

Not so honorable mentions

Nets annihilate 76ers in Philadelphia as Durant, Irving shine 🏀

As soon as the James Harden-for- Ben Simmons trade went down, everyone circled March 10 on their calendars. Nets-76ers. In Philly. But when last night came, only one team showed up.

Brooklyn stunned Philadelphia with a near-perfect, 40-point first quarter and never looked back, winning 129-100.

Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving combined for 47 points on 53% shooting.

Seth Curry added 24 points against his former team.

James Harden played by far his worst game as a 76er, going 3-for-17 from the floor (including 0-for-10 on 2-pointers). It was yet another confounding disappearance in a big game.

It was Philly's first loss with Harden.

This was all about one team's stars showing up and making a statement, writes our NBA expert Colin Ward-Henninger:

Ward-Henninger: "If people had forgotten about the Nets as a bona fide championship contender, they certainly reminded everyone on Thursday night. Even without Simmons, Brooklyn looked airtight on both ends of the floor, with Durant clearly the best player on a floor that featured multiple superstars. He got any shot that he wanted all night long, showcasing his versatility and ability to score from virtually any spot on the court."

Much was made of Simmons returning to Philadelphia for the first time, and, though he didn't play, he got plenty of boos pregame. Those jeers quickly subsided, and Durant took notice.

Durant: "It's hard for you to chant at Ben Simmons when you're losing by that much."

And he's exactly right. The normally raucous Philadelphia fans were quiet. The Nets' performance did all the talking.

Bears deal Khalil Mack to Chargers 🏈

Another day, another major NFL trade. This one involves a star on the defensive side of the ball:

Chargers receive: Khalil Mack

Bears receive: 2022 second-round pick (No. 48 overall), 2023 sixth-round pick

Mack played in just seven games last season due to a foot injury, but before that he had made six straight Pro Bowls and was the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year. Since 2015, Mack's 72.5 sacks rank fourth in the NFL.

The Chargers will take on the entire $84.9 million Mack is due over the next three seasons. But that didn't stop our NFL expert Cody Benjamin from giving thema B+ in his trade grades:

Benjamin: "There's a decent chance, even if Mack returns to full health opposite [Joey] Bosa, his days of Defensive Player of the Year-level dominance are behind him. ... But let's be honest: this is exactly the kind of move you make if you believe you're on the brink, and the Chargers, with an ascending franchise QB in Justin Herbert, rightfully do."

Another thing to remember is that while the Chargers are paying Mack a ton, they're also massively underpaying Herbert, a true star still on his rookie deal. I love that the Chargers are going all-in while Herbert is absurdly affordable.

What we're watching this weekend 📺

Disclaimer: There are too many important college basketball games to list. Instead, keep up with the latest schedules and updates from around the country here. We also have live blogs for the following conference tournaments:

As for everything else...

Saturday

🏒 Flyers at Hurricanes, 3 p.m. on ABC
🏀 Bucks at Warriors, 8:30 p.m. on ABC

Sunday

🏎 NASCAR Cup Series at Phoenix, 3:30 p.m. on FOX
🏀 Mavericks at Celtics, 3:30 p.m. on ABC
🏒 Maple Leafs at Sabres, 4 p.m. on TNT
🏀 Men's NCAA Tournament Selection Show, 6 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+
🏀 Women's NCAA Tournament Selection Show, 8 p.m. on ESPN
🏀 Lakers at Suns, 9 p.m. on ESPN

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MLB is back, and there are big changes coming, plus Nets make statement in Philly

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Happy Friday, folks! Baseball is coming back, and Selection Sunday awaits. That's a great Friday indeed. Let's get right to it. This is the article version of the CBS Sports HQ AM morning newsletter. To sign up and get this in your inbox, fill out the information below.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/business/dealbook/russia-businesses-withdrawal.html

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Companies partially pulling out of the country are under pressure to make a cleaner break.

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PepsiCo and McDonald's are among the companies rethinking their businesses in Russia. Credit... John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

As Western governments ratchet up their economic punishments against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, the corporate world has paused or pulled out of operations there. But as the list of companies quitting Russia grows by the day, differences in the degree of disconnection are spurring debate.

Companies that have paused operations or announced limited pullouts are coming under pressure to make a more definitive break: all or nothing, in or out. That has led some to rapidly revise their plans, raising questions about the long-term implications.

Some corporate withdrawals are partial. Procter & Gamble, for example, has "discontinued all new capital investments" in Russia. It is also "significantly reducing" its product portfolio there to focus on "basic health, hygiene and personal care items needed by the many Russian families who depend on them in their daily lives." Danone and PepsiCo made similar moves, halting new investments and stopping sales of some products, but continuing with dairy and baby products, arguing that those products serve essential needs.

Is that enough? "The point is that we're trying to starve the regime of their resources," said Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager who worked in Russia and has long campaigned against corruption there. Some companies that initially said that they would remain in Russia backtracked within days, including Deutsche Bank and the retailer Uniqlo. Others, like Shell, were pushed to go further than they originally announced.

Leaving Russia makes it difficult to return. Shutting down plants, offices and supply chains is complicated. There are also concerns about expropriation and I.P. theft. P&G's Gillette plant in St. Petersburg, for example, exports shaving products to more than 50 countries and accounts for 70 percent of the Russian shaving product market.

Some executives have argued that it's not up to companies to lead on the punishments that Russia faces. "I don't think businesses are supposed to decide how global trade works in the world," David Solomon of Goldman Sachs told Time magazine. "Government sets policy and then businesses follow that policy." (The bank said last week that it would wind down its business in Russia.)

How does this square with pledges to embrace broader stakeholder concerns? The days of companies saying that they serve only shareholders are long gone. And society's expectations for companies have changed since Coca-Cola sold drinks in Nazi Germany and Heineken brewed beer in Rwanda during the genocide there. (Both companies said that they would suspend their operations in Russia.) Corporations also spend big to lobby for public policy that puts them at the forefront of important social and environmental issues.

The precedent set by pulling out of Russia may test corporate policies about where to draw the line for doing business in places facing geopolitical or human rights concerns; in other words, it is becoming harder for boardrooms to see things in shades of gray.

Oil prices show signs of stabilizing. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell below $109 a barrel today, its lowest level since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Traders appear to be heartened by the apparent progress in talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Banks try to contain the nickel market crisis. JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered were among the lenders negotiating with the Chinese metal producer Tsingshan over extending credit lines to help it meet margin requirements, The Wall Street Journal reports. The talks come as nickel trading remains suspended, after a huge short squeeze hit Tsingshan with billions in paper losses.

Foxconn shuts factories in China amid a Covid outbreak. The tech manufacturing giant said it had stopped production in Shenzhen, a major tech hub, after the local authorities ordered all residents to stay home and nonessential businesses to stop production. It's the latest blow for Chinese tech companies, whose stocks have been tumbling.

Tencent reportedly faces big anti-money laundering fines. The Chinese internet giant may be punished for violations of "know your customer" regulations on its WePay payments network, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Tom Brady unretires. The N.F.L. quarterback said he would return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next season, six weeks after he announced his retirement. One question is whether Brady will restructure his contract - he's set to be paid $25 million - to help the team sign other players under the league's salary cap.

The trial in one of the largest international kleptocracy cases in history, the looting of billions of dollars from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, is in the final stretch. Roger Ng, a former banker at Goldman Sachs, is accused of assisting the scheme's mastermind, Jho Low.

The proceedings have turned into a "he said, he said" affair, The Times's Matt Goldstein reports, pitting Ng against another former Goldman banker, Tim Leissner, who has already pleaded guilty and who last week finished 10 days of testimony. Goldman, which made $600 million in fees to arrange bond deals for 1MDB, has also pleaded guilty on behalf of an Asian subsidiary and paid more than $5 billion in fines.

There are two more weeks scheduled in Ng's trial. Here's the latest:

A quick recap: Malaysia set up 1MDB in the late 2000s, with Low as an adviser. Starting in 2009, Goldman underwrote a series of bonds for the fund that raised $6.5 billion for economic development. Instead, much of the money was redirected by Low and others close to the Malaysian prime minister at the time, Najib Razak, who has since been convicted in his home country and sentenced to 12 years in jail. Low is believed to be living in China, beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors.

What Leissner says: Goldman's former top dealmaker in Asia said that Ng was Low's primary contact at the bank. Leissner said that Ng set up a key meeting with Low in which Low told the bankers whom to bribe in order for Goldman to land the bond deals.

What Ng says: Ng has not testified, but his lawyers have called Leissner a liar, with ample evidence. Among other things, Leissner admits to presenting bogus divorce papers to his now-estranged wife and admitted that he "lied a lot." Goldman also painted Leissner as a con man in its defense.

The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global Economy

Card 1 of 6

Experts' take: Leissner's deceptions complicate the Ng case, but don't kill it, said Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor and a professor at New York Law School who specializes in legal ethics. A bigger problem for the government's case, she said, could be that Leissner was Ng's boss.

- Diane Vukovic of Primal Survivor, an organization that helps consumers with disaster preparedness, on the growing number of people going off the grid. Northern California is at the vanguard of the movement.

When Congress approved a $1.5 trillion budget deal last week, it averted a government shutdown but didn't address an issue that Democrats had vowed to fix.

Since 2015, a budget rider has prohibited the S.E.C. from requiring companies to disclose details about their political spending. This constraint was highlighted after the Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol prompted a public reckoning about corporate donations, but it remains in place. That leaves the push for transparency on corporate political spending to investors and proxy proposals.

Activists see "continued momentum" on corporate political disclosure because of employee pressure, said Bruce Freed of the Center for Political Accountability, noting Disney workers' push for the company to oppose Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill. Last year, more boards agreed to political spending resolutions, and more proxy proposals on these issues passed by vote than ever. Freed's group is now working with 22 companies on similar resolutions. But " private ordering " of disclosure on a company-by-company basis won't suffice, some say.

"Standardized disclosure evens the playing field," the S.E.C. commissioner Allison Herren Lee told DealBook. While shareholder proposals help increase transparency around political spending and other environmental, social and governance (E.S.G.) issues, she said that relying on private actors resulted in "spotty disclosure and may advantage larger investors." Standardizing what companies report "lets investors put the whole picture together, getting consistent and comparable information across the market," she said.

Company reports would highlight contradictions between rhetoric and spending. Companies can make political donations that conflict with their public stances, which undermines their stated E.S.G. agenda and may even materially mislead investors. "Shareholders and the investing public understandably want to know whether their money is being spent to serve their interests or those of the executives who direct it," Lee said. As acting S.E.C. chair last year, she made E.S.G. disclosures a priority. The agency's current chair, Gary Gensler, has also called for more disclosure on political giving, but Congress has limited what he can do about it.
Deals

Steve Cohen's Point72 is reportedly planning to withdraw its remaining $750 million investment in Melvin Capital Management. ( Bloomberg)

The creators of Bored Apes Yacht Club will buy the CryptoPunks and Meebits brands from Larva Labs, as they seek to create an NFT empire. ( Bloomberg)

Didi Chuxing's stock has dropped sharply amid pushback from Chinese regulators, hitting major shareholders like SoftBank and Uber. ( CNBC)

Policy

U.S. officials said they won't negotiate exemptions for Russian sanctions to save efforts to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. ( WSJ)

California's expansive, expensive and long-delayed high-speed rail line is a major test of President Biden's infrastructure initiatives. ( NYT)

"First Amendment Scholars Want to See the Media Lose These Cases" ( NYT)

Best of the rest

Facebook's parent company, Meta, has cut back on some corporate perks, like free laundry services, as it prepares for a future of hybrid work. ( NYT)

A look the rise and fall of the Saudi-funded challenger to the P.G.A. ( WSJ)

An expansive profile of Ramesh Balwani, the former president of Theranos, notes that federal prosecutors are closely examining the 2018 sale of the house he shared with Elizabeth Holmes. ( The Information)

An ice-cream tech start-up is waging legal war on McDonald's. ( NYT)

We'd like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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Companies partially pulling out of the country are under pressure to make a cleaner break. As Western governments ratchet up their economic punishments against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, the corporate world has paused or pulled out of operations there.

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Isaac Brekken/Associated Press
Floyd Mayweather Jr. improved to 50-0 in his illustrious boxing career and handled Conor McGregor during Saturday's fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, but both men will reportedly take home plenty of cash.

Mayweather seized momentum in the middle of the match and ultimately earned a technical knockout in the 10th round as he overwhelmed McGregor near the end of the fight.

On Sunday, Luke Brown of The Independent reported, "The fight stands to become the most lucrative in the history of combat sports, with both men expected to earn over $100 [million] for agreeing to the bout."

While Brown acknowledged the purse estimates largely rest on how many pay-per-views were sold, he said total revenues were predicted to exceed $500 million, with a purse set at approximately $390 million.

"We know that Mayweather is getting more however, with estimates ranging in the 70-75 [percent] region," Brown wrote.

Dan Rafael of ESPN.com added more details Saturday, noting Mayweather's guaranteed purse was $100 million, while McGregor's minimum purse was $30 million. However, he clarified McGregor would likely make more than $100 million because of his portion of the promotion and said Mayweather could see "well in excess of $200 million" because of his share.

A major reason Mayweather and McGregor were able to land such a hefty payday was the cost of the pay-per-view. Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times reported the price would be $89.95, and fans had to cough up an additional $10 if they wanted it in high definition.

A price like that called for a spectacle, and UFC president Dana White called it "the biggest fight ever" during a pre-fight conference call, per Colin Ward-Henninger of CBS Sports.

McGregor was simply out of his element in the much-anticipated bout and couldn't handle Mayweather's speed, elusiveness and footwork, as well as the ability to avoid his opponent's best shot and land enough well-timed jabs to earn the victory every time he steps into the ring.

To McGregor's credit, he appeared to be the better boxer in the opening rounds, but Money eventually found his footing and took over as the fight progressed with the greatness fans are accustomed to seeing. Any list of the best boxers of all time has to feature Mayweather's name at this point, and he fought accordingly against a first-time professional boxer.

The 40-year-old Mayweather came out of retirement for this fight, and to no one's surprise, he announced after his victory that this would be his last bout ever, per Arash Markazi of ESPN.

It was a massive payday for McGregor as well, but he is just 29 years old and was in the middle of a successful UFC career before stepping into the boxing ring for this fight. He could look to continue his boxing venture and face a lower-quality opponent than an all-time great next time, or he may choose to re-enter the UFC as one of the sport's premier performers.

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Mayweather vs. McGregor Purse: Known Prize Money Payout Distribution

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Isaac Brekken/Associated Press Floyd Mayweather Jr. improved to 50-0 in his illustrious boxing career and handled Conor McGregor during Saturday's fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, but both men will reportedly take home plenty of cash.

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Disney CEO Makes It Clear a Big Price Increase Is Coming (Here's When)

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Disney CEO Makes It Clear a Big Price Increase Is Coming (Here's When)

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Aliyanna B

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Disney CEO Makes It Clear a Big Price Increase Is Coming (Here's When)

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The Mouse House has never been shy about charging more for any of its well-loved products, properties, and services.

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-Arlette P

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Tom Brady's retirement lasted 40 days.

After seemingly leaving the door cracked for a potential return since announcing his departure from the NFL on Feb. 1, Brady announced his return on social media Sunday.

These past two months I've realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come. But it's not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I'm coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. Unfinished business LFG pic.twitter.com/U0yhRKVKVm

- Tom Brady (@TomBrady) March 13, 2022

It's a consequential moment not only for Brady - who finished the 2021 season second in the league's MVP voting - but also for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who had been mulling over whether to pursue a Deshaun Watson trade this week. As recently as the NFL scouting combine last week, Tampa Bay was believed to be high on the list of preferred trade destinations for the embattled Houston Texans quarterback. So much so that one team that was also weighing a serious pursuit of Watson told Yahoo Sports that it believed the Buccaneers would be the leading contender if Brady remained in retirement and Tampa Bay ultimately opened trade talks with the Texans.
[Join the Yahoo Fantasy Tourney Pick'Em $25K Best Bracket Contest]
That's a moot point now, as Tampa Bay gets Brady back into the fold and begins the process of retooling parts of the roster around him. That will require at least some heavy lifting, including replacing Pro Bowl guard Ali Marpet, who recently retired, and working on a wide receiver depth chart that loses Antonio Brown and may not have Chris Godwin for the start of the regular season following surgery to repair a torn ACL.

Barring some contract restructures or signing Godwin to a long-term deal (he's currently franchise-tagged for a one-year salary of $19.1 million next season), the Bucs have work to do loosening up their salary. With Brady's return, they fell into negative salary-cap territory on the doorstep of the legal tampering period of free agency, which opens Monday.

Tampa Bay has a slew of free agents that appear likely to depart, although that could change with Brady's return. Among the key offensive players expected to hit the market are tight end Rob Gronkowski, running back Leonard Fournette and a few others. (Center Ryan Jensen, hours after Brady's announcement, is returning to Tampa on a three-year deal, his agent told the NFL Network.)

The Bucs are also poised to lose defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, cornerback Carlton Davis, defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh and safety Jordan Whitehead on defense.

But what they won't have to do is figure out how to fill a hole at quarterback that didn't appear to be an easy fix. Tampa Bay had spent the past several weeks doing its due diligence on multiple players who were either slated to hit free agency or could have potentially been trade targets. That included Watson, who avoided a grand jury indictment last week on allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.

A Harris County grand jury heard testimony from some of the women who leveled criminal complaints against Watson in relation to the 22 civil lawsuits he's currently facing. The jury also heard information gathered from a Houston Police Department investigation into the complaints, ultimately declining to indict Watson on any of the nine counts presented by the Harris County prosecutor's office.

That decision has now ramped up renewed interest in Watson's trade market, with teams seeking information about the state of the civil suits against him, as well as the status of the NFL's investigation into potential personal conduct violations.

A source familiar with Watson and the Texans said Tampa Bay had been taking a slower and more deliberate approach than others since Friday's grand jury decision. It now appears that Brady's status may have played a part in that, particularly after he visited with ownership while attending a Manchester United match over the weekend. The Glazer family owns both the Buccaneers and Manchester United.

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Tom Brady unretires and shakes up Deshaun Watson's trade market

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Tom Brady's retirement lasted 40 days. After seemingly leaving the door cracked for a potential return since announcing his departure from the NFL on Feb. 1, Brady announced his return on social media Sunday. These past two months I've realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands.