TechCrunch : 23andMe faces an uncertain future — so does your genetic data

23andMe faces an uncertain future — so does your genetic data

DNA and genetic testing firm 23andMe is in turmoil following a data breach last year and its ongoing financial decline. The once-pioneering giant now faces an uncertain future amid efforts to take the company private, intensifying concerns about what might happen to the genetic data of 23andMe’s some 15 million customers.

Best known for its saliva-based test kits that offer a glimpse into a person’s genetic ancestry, 23andMe has seen its value plummet more than 99% from its $6 billion peak since going public in early 2021 after failing to turn a profit.

That lack of profit was attributed to waning consumer interest in 23andMe’s use-once test kits and lackluster growth of its subscription services. The company was also floored by a huge months-long data breach that saw hackers steal the ancestry data of almost 7 million users throughout 2023. The company agreed in September to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit related to the breach.

Less than a week later, 23andMe founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki said she was “considering third-party takeover proposals” for the company. Wojcicki quickly walked back the statement, instead saying she planned to take the company private. But the damage was done, and all of the company’s independent board members resigned with immediate effect.

Where does that leave millions of people’s genetic data?

23andMe bound largely by its own rules
As evidenced by last year’s data breach, which saw hackers steal information such as users’ genetic predisposition and ancestry reports, 23andMe collects a ton of information on its users.

If you’re one of the many millions that have shipped your saliva to 23andMe to learn about your ancestry, you may have assumed that this data will remain private under law, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA, as it’s known, sets the standards for protecting sensitive health information from being disclosed without a person’s knowledge or consent.

However, 23andMe is not a company covered under HIPAA. As such, 23andMe is largely bound only by its own privacy policies, which it can change at any time.

Andy Kill, a spokesperson for 23andMe, told TechCrunch that the company believes this is a “more appropriate and transparent model for the data we handle, rather than the HIPAA model employed by the traditional healthcare industry.”

A lack of federal regulation and a cluttered mess of state privacy laws ultimately means that if 23andMe faces a sale, the data of millions of Americans is also on the table. The company’s privacy policy says that its customers’ personal information “may be accessed, sold or transferred” as part of a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale.

The fact that customer data is a saleable asset has also been made clear by Wojcicki, who reportedly told investors that 23andMe will no longer pursue its cost-intensive drug development programs and will instead focus on marketing its vast database of customer data to pharmaceutical companies and researchers.

23andMe maintains that its data privacy policies would not change in the event of a sale. These policies state that the company will never share users’ information with insurance companies, or with law enforcement without a warrant. The latter have increasingly turned to third-party DNA companies for genetic information, but 23andMe has so far resisted all U.S. law enforcement requests for such data, according to its long-running transparency report.

Potential buyers of 23andMe may have entirely different ideas about how to use the company’s potentially valuable trove of DNA data. Privacy advocates at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation have already urged 23andMe to resist a sale to any company with ties to law enforcement, warning that customers’ genetics data could be used by police to indiscriminately search for evidence of crimes.

“Our own commitment to apply the terms of our privacy policy to the personal information of our customers in the event of a sale or transfer is clear: the 23andMe Terms of Service and Privacy Statement would remain in place unless and until customers are presented with, and agree to, new terms and statements — and only after receiving appropriate notice of any new terms, under applicable data protection laws,” Kill told TechCrunch.

Proactively deleting your account
While 23andMe appears to be resisting a sale to a third-party company for now, Wojcicki’s recanted comments have already sounded alarm bells among privacy advocates, who are urging 23andMe customers to take action now to protect their data from being sold by requesting that 23andMe deletes their data.

Meredith Whittaker, the president of end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal, said in a post on X: “It’s not just you. If anyone in your family gave their DNA to [23andMe], for all of your sakes, close your/their account now.”

Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the EFF, also warned users to take action. “If you have a 23andMe account, today is a good day to login and request the deletion of your data,” said Galperin in a post on X.

Requesting the deletion of your data on 23andMe is relatively easy.

Log in to your 23andMe account and navigate to Settings > Account Information > Delete Your Account. 23andMe will prompt you to confirm your decision, warning that deleting your account is permanent and irreversible.

There is an important caveat. As noted in 23andMe’s privacy policy, account deletion is “subject to retention requirements and certain exceptions,” which means the company may hold on to some of your data for an unspecified amount of time.

For example, 23andMe will retain your genetic information, date of birth, and gender “as required for compliance” and will retain limited data related to your deletion request, “including but not limited to, your email address, account deletion request identifier, communications related to inquiries or complaints and legal agreements.”

Similarly, if you’ve already agreed to 23andMe sharing your data for research purposes, you can reverse that consent, but there’s no way for you to delete that information. Kill tells TechCrunch that around 80% of 23andMe customers — roughly 12 million people — consent to participate in its research program.

FT : UK government to launch HS2 review as costs spiral

UK government to launch HS2 review as costs spiral
Transport secretary Louise Haigh says delivery of rail link project has been ‘dire’

Louise Haigh, the UK transport secretary, has admitted that the cost of building the High Speed 2 rail line is still spiralling as she announced plans to get the project back under control through a new independent review. 

The headline price tag for creating the new rail line from London to Birmingham keeps on rising despite the scope of the controversial project having been cut in half last year to try to keep a lid on costs. Rishi Sunak, the former Tory prime minister, axed its entire northern stretch from Birmingham to Manchester. 

“It has long been clear that the costs of HS2 have been allowed to spiral out of control, but since becoming transport secretary I have seen up close the scale of failure in project delivery and it is dire,” Haigh said. “I have announced urgent measures to get a grip on HS2’s costs and ensure taxpayers’ money is put to good use.”

While the Department for Transport has estimated the remaining project cost at £45bn to £54bn in 2019 prices, the HS2 management has suggested a higher figure of £49bn to £57bn. 

In January Sir Jon Thompson, chair of HS2, told MPs that accounting for inflation would push that figure up by another £10bn to £67bn. 

Mark Wild, the incoming chief executive of the project — who was previously head of the Elizabeth Line — is expected to come up with an even higher estimate when he does a stocktake of the project. The number is expected to rise again as a result of inflation, previous alterations to the scheme and delays to parts of the project. 

Haigh confirmed she had asked James Stewart, an infrastructure industry veteran, to chair a new Major Transport Projects Governance and Assurance Review. Stewart is former chair of global infrastructure at advisory firm KPMG.

The review — which the Financial Times revealed last month — will investigate the oversight of major transport schemes including HS2. Its focus will be on “the effectiveness of forecasting and reporting of cost, schedule and benefits, as well as actions to deliver cost efficiencies,” the government said on Sunday. 

The review will lead to greater ministerial control of HS2. “The government is reinstating ministerial oversight of the project to ensure great accountability,” the transport department said.

At first, that will involve more regular meetings between ministers and the HS2 management. But in the long term the Stewart review will look at whether the DfT’s “sponsorship and oversight model” needs a wider overhaul to improve delivery. 

Haigh said: “It’s high time we make sure lessons are learnt and the mistakes of HS2 are never repeated again.”

HS2 is not expected to start running trains between Birmingham and Old Oak Common, a station in west London, until between 2029 and 2033, much later than originally planned.  

Haigh is expected to confirm this month that the service will continue for another 4.5 miles to Euston in north London. LBC, a radio station, reported last week that the government wanted to revive the northern leg of HS2 at least from Birmingham to Crewe. 

However, government figures said they had more limited plans to carry out an initial feasibility study into a new line in the region, which would not be high-speed. 

“The government has been clear it is not resurrecting phase 2 of HS2,” the DFT said on Sunday. “The government recognises concerns about connectivity between Birmingham and Manchester but its primary focus now is the safe delivery of HS2 between Birmingham and London at the lowest reasonable cost.”

Miss Tweed : Dior takes risks by venturing too far into sports

Dior takes risks by venturing too far into sports
By Fabio Becheri
18 October 2024
Dior’s love affair with sports keeps getting stronger. You wonder why. After a coldly received athleisure collection presented during Paris Fashion Week, the French brand on Oct. 14 unveiled a capsule collection designed by Kim Jones in collaboration with Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world Formula 1 champion. It was inspired by one of Hamilton's favorite pastimes: winter sports.

At first glance, the collection has potential and some items could become popular collectibles. You have a Dior 8 Backpack with a flap and Messenger Rider 2.0 in ultra-resistant materials. Footwear includes futuristic B44 sneakers that sell for €1,200, with some in limited editions. Organic or recycled textiles were used for many items and the technical clothing was produced by Japanese ski apparel maker Descente, which collaborated with Dior when it launched its ski capsule collection in 2020.

“Virtuosity, functionality, luxury” were some of the key words used to describe the new collection. You would expect the campaign to communicate these messages clearly. Think again.

The concept of the campaign revolved around snowboarding, one of Hamilton’s high-octane passions. It should have been a great opportunity to create a highly engaging narrative and story. However, judging by the images that have been released, the campaign feels flat and unimaginative. Hamilton is shot against a seemingly fake backdrop of a blue mountain range wearing a multitude of the collection’s pieces. The pictures look like pages of a commercial catalog and lack the energy you would expect from such a collection.

Louis Vuitton’s ad campaign, featuring tennis superstars Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal and shot in the Dolomites by Annie Leibovitz, was much more consistent with the brand’s story and conveyed its values far more clearly.

The fashion industry could benefit from expertise from sportswear specialists, but fashion creative talents tend to be self-centered, arrogant, haughty and omniscient when it comes to creating content. Without expertise in the field, the risk is to fall flat like the Hamilton x Dior campaign images. The collection also features a new dynamic logo – the word Dior is written in the same way as the Captcha letters you need to click to confirm you are a human on computers. However, it has not been used on communication tools such as ads posted on social media. Such lack of consistency dilutes the message.

To be fair, the way celebrities are used in campaigns by the fashion industry feels quite basic and unimaginative. Many think that a celebrity wearing a brand’s products and associated with a logo is enough to create desire. It’s rare to find campaigns with celebrities that are really integrated into the brand’s narrative and engage the consumer.

What’s surprising with this Dior campaign is that it was produced by a stellar cast. Rafael Pavarotti, a photographer celebrated by the young creative generation, shot the campaign. The art director was Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, wife of Conde Nast’s mogul Jonathan Newhouse and a long-time collaborator of Kim Jones. It also had input from Melanie Ward, the legendary style maker who has worked with many talents and shaped the iconic image of Helmut Lang in its heyday.

On paper, they form a dream team. The reality is that they are all specialized in fashion and have little experience with the dynamics of movement and energy that sports and athleisure photography should express.

As a matter of fact, the Hamilton campaign is complemented by a set of totally different images, focused exclusively on the shoes, shot by French experimental photographer Gabriel Boyer. While the mood of this additional content feels somewhat disconnected from the main campaign, the outcome is far more dynamic and better suited to communicate the energy that the collection wishes to convey.

Previously, Hamilton worked extensively with Tommy Hilfiger, arguably becoming synonymous with the all-American affordable luxury retailer. Hamilton is evidently trying to elevate his personal image. Next year, the Formula 1 racer will move from Mercedes to Ferrari.

His decision to collaborate with Dior seems a natural evolution. An in-store event with Hamilton and Jones was held at the London Dior store on October 10 to launch the collection.

LVMH AND SPORTS
Dior’s venture into sportswear has been irregular for some time. The French brand dressed Celine Dion and Lady Gaga for the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris. These were powerful moments and in line with the brand’s DNA. However, Maria Grazia Chiuri's inclusion of athleisure in her latest fashion show contributed to dampening her entire seasonal collection and generated a downpour of negative comments in social media.

In 2021, Dior signed a multiannual sponsorship with the Paris Saint-Germain football team to dress the team. From a product standpoint, the most successful sports collaboration was the Nike Jordan 1 x Dior limited 2019 edition sneaker. It was followed last year by the Nike Low Barons x Dior sneaker.

During the presentation of Chiuri’s 2022 cruise collection in Athens, the brand also introduced a separate “Dior Vibe” capsule collection of sporty bags and sneakers, as well as branded sports equipment in collaboration with the specialist Technogym. In 2023, Kim Jones created a limited collection for the Gran Turismo World Series Finals race that did not go on sale and was only distributed to attendees. Such capsule sports collections seem extremely short termed.

Dior’s parent LVMH has been investing vast sums in the sports universe recently. It was omnipresent during the Olympics, on which it spent €150 million. This month it announced an unprecedented 10-year global partnership with Formula 1 valued at a staggering $1 billion.

“The people, the quest for excellence and the passion for innovation are at the heart of the activity of our maisons and Formula 1,” LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault said in a statement about the deal. “Both in our workshops and on circuits around the world, it is this incessant search to break boundaries that inspires our vision, and this is the meaning that we want to bring to this great and unique partnership between Formula 1 and our group.”

On Thursday, Agache, the Arnault family investment company, said it was in exclusive talks to acquire a controlling stake in the Paris FC football club. “Our family has always been close to the world of sport, to sportsmen and women, and to the young women and men who seek to surpass even themselves,” Antoine Arnault, who is to sit on the Board of Directors of Paris FC, said in a statement released by LVMH.

Overall, Dior’s attempts to expand into sportswear and athleisure do not seem to follow a coherent brand extension plan. The result is a series of marketing initiatives that appear poorly coordinated and without a common objective. Obviously, the separation between Dior Homme by Kim Jones and Dior Femme by Maria Grazia Chiuri does not help.

Dior’s venture into sports and new product categories risks confusing consumers and damaging brand equity. Sport is not part of Dior’s heritage. The brand needs to find a more balanced and long-term approach on how to make these collections fit seamlessly with its story and rich heritage.

WSJ : Boeing’s CEO Is Shrinking the Jet Maker to Stop Its Crisis From Spiraling

Boeing’s CEO Is Shrinking the Jet Maker to Stop Its Crisis From Spiraling
A strike could end soon, but the company remains in a perilous financial position

The airline industry’s biggest names donned gowns and tuxedos and filed into a Manhattan ballroom Friday for a night of cocktails and fretting about the future of Boeing BA -0.20%decrease; red down pointing triangle.

One group was conspicuously absent.

After sponsoring six tables, Boeing scrapped plans to send its usual contingent to the annual Wings Club fundraising gala. The company gave away most of its gala tickets to customers.

The chief executives of Lufthansa and United Airlines were there. So was the chief executive of GE Aerospace, one of the world’s largest makers of commercial jet engines.

Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, wasn’t there. He was hammering out a labor deal to end a damaging strike. The tentative agreement reached Saturday between Boeing and leaders of its largest union would give machinists a 35% raise over four years.

Even if the deal is ratified on Wednesday and union members go back to work, the company remains in a perilous financial position. Industry insiders and analysts have begun to ponder something previously unthinkable: whether a breakup or bankruptcy is in Boeing’s future if it remains on its current trajectory.

Boeing is exploring asset sales that could bring in much-needed cash while shedding noncore or underperforming units, according to people familiar with the discussions. Days before the gala, the company’s board met at Boeing’s Arlington, Va., headquarters, where directors quizzed division heads and combed through reports on the state of each unit, mulling next steps for the beleaguered plane maker.

Boeing has spread itself too thin and must shrink, Ortberg wrote in a note to employees earlier this month. “We need to be clear-eyed about the work we face,” he wrote. “We also need to focus our resources on performing and innovating in the areas that are core to who we are.”

Ortberg has moved to raise at least $10 billion in cash and slash thousands of jobs to stem losses that have exacerbated Boeing’s manufacturing woes and damaged a complex supply chain.

Boeing has tried unsuccessfully to sell a rocket joint-venture it shares with Lockheed Martin, and remains saddled with U.S. government programs like a troubled military refueling tanker and Air Force One replacement jets. Last week, the company reached a deal to offload a small defense subsidiary that makes surveillance equipment for the U.S. military, people familiar with the deal said.

Ortberg took the helm of the company in August. He will make his first public comments as CEO on Wednesday, when the union is set to vote on the new contract and Boeing will detail its financial results for the period ended Sept. 30. The company has warned that it will book billions of dollars in charges and report a $6 billion quarterly loss.

Faulty planes, broken trust
Ortberg is tasked with revamping a manufacturing goliath that has shaken the public’s trust.

In January, a door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight after workers at Boeing’s factory failed to replace critical bolts. In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge that it misled air-safety regulators before two deadly 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019. And Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft now faces an uncertain future after technical issues left two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station.

Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, said he was pleased Ortberg aimed to raise equity to stabilize Boeing’s finances, a move which Kirby said was a change from past leaders who employed buybacks and other mechanisms to boost the stock price. “The old Boeing would never have done that,” Kirby said Friday night on the sidelines of the Wings Club gala.

The machinists strike, which began on Sept. 13, has halted production of most of Boeing’s airplanes. Credit-rating firms have warned that the company needs to preserve cash and could be downgraded to junk levels. Boeing was burning through cash before the union walkout. Analysts estimate the strike is costing the jet maker at least $1 billion a month.

Ortberg has spent recent weeks traversing the country, meeting with airlines, suppliers, federal regulators and his own lieutenants.

“I’m confident he’s on top of things,” said John Plueger, president of airplane lessor Air Lease Corp., who has spoken with Ortberg. “He has been listening globally to feedback good and bad” from customers, Plueger said.

In recent financial-performance meetings, Boeing’s CEO has asked heads of the company’s units to lay out the value of those units to the company, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ortberg, who moved to Seattle from Florida when he took over, is also pressing the company’s famously far-flung executives to follow suit and move closer to the units they run. Former CEO Dave Calhoun took heat for running Boeing largely from his homes in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Finance Chief Brian West lives in Connecticut.

“Restoring our company requires tough decisions, and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term,” Ortberg said in his note to employees.

Suppliers shrink, airlines wait
The trouble at Boeing is reverberating throughout the industry.

Legions of parts makers are saddled with idled workers and excess inventory. Boeing last month said it would cut back orders from suppliers for its 737, 767 and 777 jets. Fuselage maker Spirit AeroSystems on Friday said it would furlough 700 workers. A U.K.-based part maker, Senior, announced job cuts earlier this month, citing production problems at Boeing and its European rival, Airbus.

Other big suppliers are trying to avoid layoffs as long as possible because it could take a year to rehire and train new workers. This presents a risk for Boeing, which will need parts when its striking machinists go back to work and it restarts production.

Airlines, already short on planes they need to meet travel demand, face longer delays both on existing models and new models they have been counting on. Boeing said last week it would further delay the launch of the 777X, already years behind schedule.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, a three-decade industry veteran, expressed dismay at Boeing’s latest deferral of the plane, which the jet maker initially promised to deliver in 2021 and has now pushed back to 2026.

“And we need it,” Spohr said Wednesday at a press briefing in Brussels. “I’ve never seen anything like it in our industry.”

In a speech at the Wings Club gala Friday night, Spohr told the audience that Boeing’s survival was vital for the entire industry.

The crowd broke into loud applause.

FT : Big Tech’s dash for nuclear power

Big Tech’s dash for nuclear power
The take-off of AI will fuel a surge in demand for electricity

Big Tech is going nuclear. In the past week, Amazon agreed with utilities in Washington state to support development of four next-generation “small modular reactors”, with a similar deal in Virginia, and took a stake in X-energy, an SMR developer. Google agreed to buy power from SMRs to be built by a start-up, Kairos Power. And last month Microsoft agreed a 20-year power purchasing deal that will entail Constellation Energy reopening a unit at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania that was shuttered in 2019 (not the one closed in 1979 after a partial meltdown).

The tech industry’s dash for nuclear reflects in part the take-off of power-guzzling artificial intelligence; an AI query consumes up to 10 times the energy of a standard Google search. Goldman Sachs reckons power demand from data centres will grow 160 per cent by 2030. In the US, data needs on top of electrification of transport and a manufacturing revival sparked by “reshoring” efforts are forecast to at least double electricity demand growth in the next decade compared with the prior one.

In Europe, Goldman estimates power demand could grow by 40 per cent from 2023 to 2033. The International Energy Agency declared last week that, after the age of coal and age of oil, the world was entering the age of electricity.

Tech companies know that to get data centres built in countries such as the US, they will have to arrange much of their own power. Their net zero pledges require the sources to be green, and they have already invested heavily in wind and solar. Expanding their portfolios to nuclear energy is understandable, but something of a gamble.

Nuclear has a strong claim, in principle, to be part of the climate solution. It is low carbon, delivers lots of power for decades and doesn’t falter when wind or sunlight does. The trouble is large plants are cripplingly costly and time-consuming to build.

SMRs — reactors up to 300 megawatts, compared with 1,000MW for large nuclear plants — claim to offer a cheaper, faster alternative. Largely prefabricated to cookie-cutter designs, their small size in theory means they can be installed close to where power is needed, and on sites such as former coal plants already plugged into the grid.

But they may face similarly hefty costs to larger units to get designs approved by regulators, in a sector where safety is paramount. They might divert critical investment from proven solar, wind and batter power systems. SMRs also remain unproven. Based on the three SMR-style projects in operation and a fourth being built, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis calls them “still too expensive, too slow and too risky”.

Bringing in Big Tech’s financial clout and innovative flair may aid SMRs’ development, and accelerate the shift from largely government-led and financed nuclear development to private financing and initiative (look what Elon Musk has done to the economics of space). But finding ways to reopen or extend the life of existing nuclear stations might prove more feasible; as well as Three Mile Island, a plant in Michigan is being recommissioned.

Either way, the surge in AI-driven data demand even before 2030 means Big Tech will probably have to invest still more in wind and solar. Amid the competition for resources, regulators will have to ensure deep-pocketed tech companies do not lock up large parts of the new energy supply. One option might be to insist clean energy projects for data centres are made large enough also to supply the grid or other customers. There is also scope to use AI to improve energy efficiency in factories, offices and across grids. In the new age of electricity, AI must be not just another energy-hungry mouth to feed, but a central part of the green solution.

FT : Saudi broadcaster MBC under fire over ‘terrorist’ label for slain Hamas chi

Saudi broadcaster MBC under fire over ‘terrorist’ label for slain Hamas chief
Middle East’s biggest media group withdraws report on Yahya Sinwar after regional backlash

Saudi Arabia’s media regulator has ordered an investigation into officials from the Middle East’s largest media group after one of its television channels broadcast a report describing the slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as a “new face of terrorism”.

Without naming the channel, the General Authority for Media Regulation said in a statement on X that the report by Saudi-owned MBC, which sparked a strong backlash on social media from pro-Palestinians across the region, was “in violation of the kingdom’s regulations and media policy”.

The investigation into MBC, a conglomerate founded in London and now majority-owned by the government, highlights the delicate balance Riyadh is seeking to strike in the Middle East conflict: the Hamas and Hizbollah militants being pounded by Israel are its historical foes, but Saudi Arabia is also conscious of the outrage among Muslims and Arabs in the kingdom and across the region at the ferocity of Israel’s year-long assault on Gaza.

Saudi Arabia is worried that the war could further destabilise the region and has repeatedly condemned Israel’s conduct of its military offensive in Gaza since the latest conflict was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last October. At the same time, Riyadh has long considered Iran and the militant groups it backs, including Hamas and Hizbollah, to be malign forces in the region.

Riyadh has made no official public comment on Sinwar since Israeli forces killed him in southern Gaza last week. The MBC report was broadcast shortly after Israel confirmed his death.

In neighbouring Iraq, the country’s media regulator also said it has moved to suspend MBC’s licence over the same report after protesters stormed the MBC offices in Baghdad. Videos circulating online appeared to show the protesters filming themselves chanting anti-Israel and anti-Saudi slogans as they broke into the offices while smashing computers and other equipment on Friday night.

MBC, which is listed on the Saudi exchange and operates studios and offices across the region, aired a 15-minute long news report that described Sinwar, the architect of the attack on October 7 last year, as the latest in a long list of names that belong to political Islamist groups that Saudi Arabia designates as terrorist.

In addition to Sinwar, the MBC report mentioned Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda killed by the US; the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in an American air strike; and Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel last month.

Under Saudi law, it is illegal to express sympathy with designated terrorists. But in Iraq, which is dominated by political parties backed by Iran, people such as Soleimani and Nasrallah are revered and considered martyrs.

“Given the MBC satellite channel’s violation of media broadcasting regulations via its repeated violations and its attacks on the martyrs, leaders of victory, and heroic resistance leaders who are fighting the battle of honour against the usurping Zionist entity, we confirm taking all necessary legal measures and suspending it from operating in Iraq,” the Iraqi regulator said in a statement published by the state news agency.

Saudi Arabia was in advanced talks with the US over a potential deal to normalise relations with Israel before Hamas’s attack a year ago. But Riyadh has now insisted that Israel would have to end its war in Gaza and take irreversible steps towards the establishment of a Palestinian state before any agreement. It has also become increasingly frustrated with the conduct of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

MBC Group has a market capitalisation of more than $4bn. The channel, which did not respond to a request for comment, has since deleted the controversial report from its social media feeds.

FT : Top BBVA shareholder sells out over Sabadell hostile bid

Top BBVA shareholder sells out over Sabadell hostile bid
GQG Partners, which also holds stakes in Commerzbank and CaixaBank, sold shares during the summer

One of BBVA’s biggest shareholders has sold its entire stake over the Spanish bank’s decision to pursue a hostile bid for domestic rival Banco Sabadell.

GQG Partners, which is a big investor in several European banks, was a top-five shareholder in BBVA but sold out this summer after telling the bank’s management team it opposed their contentious attempt to buy Sabadell, according to people familiar with the conversations.

BBVA’s €10bn bid for Sabadell, which would be the largest European bank takeover for several years, has met with fierce resistance from the Sabadell board and the Spanish government. 

BBVA chair Carlos Torres has pressed ahead with the bid despite the prospect of a drawn-out process that would need to clear several regulatory hurdles.

In July, BBVA shareholders voted in favour of a €10bn share issue to facilitate the bid. But GQG had by that time decided to sell up, having told the bank’s management team that it believed the Sabadell bid would be too time-consuming and distracting, while also diluting its exposure to emerging markets.

“What we liked about BBVA was they actually had divested their US and some other Latin American assets,” said Brian Kersmanc, a portfolio manager at GQG. “They had come back to their core focus. They were really good in Mexico, Turkey and Spain.

“They are doing good enough on an organic basis, just outcompeting organically.”

Mexico, a fast-growing but unpredictable market, delivered 56 per cent of BBVA’s net profit in the first quarter of 2024.

BBVA did not comment on GQG’s disposal, but said: “The overwhelming support from our shareholders at [July’s] general meeting is the clearest signal of their endorsement of the Banco Sabadell transaction.

“We believe this is one of the most compelling projects in European banking.”

A combination between BBVA and Sabadell would create the second-biggest player in Spain’s loan market, leapfrogging Santander.

BBVA wants to make its formal tender offer to Sabadell shareholders before the end of this year. But despite BBVA winning investor support for the share issue, the bid faces other obstacles, including a crucial Spanish antitrust review and the opposition of Spain’s Socialist-led government, which has vowed to prevent BBVA from merging the banks even if it succeeds in acquiring Sabadell.

The deal also needs to be approved by Spain’s financial regulator, which has said BBVA must tell investors what would happen if the government blocks the merger. If the acquisition is a success, the earliest the transaction would be completed is the start of 2025, though it could drag in to the summer.

GQG, which is based in Florida and founded by former Vontobel star fund manager Rajiv Jain, bought a 3 per cent stake in BBVA three years ago, making it the bank’s third-biggest shareholder. As recently as June this year, GQG was still a top-five shareholder, according to S&P Capital IQ data.

GQG built up a top-10 position over the summer in Germany’s Commerzbank, which is the subject of a potential bid from Italian rival UniCredit. It is also a top-10 investor in CaixaBank, Spain’s biggest lender by loan market share.

FT : Meet the non-doms fighting Rachel Reeves’s tax raid

Meet the non-doms fighting Rachel Reeves’s tax raid
With chancellor planning tax shake-up in this month’s Budget, Foreign Investors for Britain is trying to affect debate

In April, Hungarian investor Gábor Futó attended an event in London hosted by a private bank. The theme of the gathering was the end of the UK’s non-dom tax regime and conversations with the cohort of 50 or so wealthy foreigners who also attended unfolded in a similar vein.

“Everyone was talking about where to go, how to go and what happens with a trust,” the co-founder of real estate developer Futureal Group recalls.

The previous month, Tory chancellor at the time Jeremy Hunt had attempted to wrongfoot the Labour party when he unexpectedly pledged to abolish Britain’s colonial era non-dom regime, which allows wealthy foreigners to avoid paying UK tax on overseas income. But Hunt made a number of concessions which his then opposition shadow Rachel Reeves shortly afterwards vowed to end. Crucially, Labour pledged to end the use of offshore trusts to avoid inheritance tax — levied at a standard rate of 40 per cent in the UK. 

Futó conducted a straw poll of the room, predominantly non-dom entrepreneurs and investors. He asked them if they would be willing to pay an annual fee of say £500k to remain in the UK and continue to enjoy the non-dom regime’s benefits. “Everyone raised their hands,” he said. 

Facing a big personal tax hit — or the unappealing prospect of leaving the country to avoid one — the episode persuaded Futó there was an opportunity to modernise the tax regime for foreigners that would allow the UK to hold its own against the sweeteners offered by nations like Italy, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates that are luring high earners. 

Futó is one of the protagonists in a group of entrepreneurs, investors and advisers who are attempting to shape the biggest overhaul of the UK’s taxation of wealthy foreigners since the regime was put in place in 1799, to shelter those with foreign property from wartime taxes.

Building on earlier work done by a group of law firms including Withers, Charles Russell Speechlys and Taylor Wessing, the campaign has crystallised into Foreign Investors for Britain, a lobby group set up after the July general election. While much of the country faces tax rises at the upcoming Budget, but has neither the means nor the connections to lobby the government, Foreign Investors for Britain received an initial £300,000 in funding from its founding members, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Its main ask is for the government to put in place a tiered tax regime that would exempt non-doms from inheritance tax on non-UK assets and free them from UK levies on foreign income, gains and certain UK investments for up to 15 years.

They would pay different levels of annual charge to achieve this, ranging from paying £200,000 on net wealth as high as £100mn to £2mn for net wealth more than £500mn. This would mirror similar regimes in the likes of Italy and Switzerland.

“We support Labour doing away with the non-dom regime, which is antiquated,” said Alex Algard, a founding member of Foreign Investors for Britain, who moved to London from Seattle eight years ago to open the international headquarters of his software company Hiya. “But we want to lessen the blow for this important segment to UK tax revenue. These people are highly mobile, and it would be costly to the UK economy to lose them.”

The lobby group initially set out “to make sure the government was making decisions on an informed basis, not on the back of guesswork, blind optimism or previous research which was deeply flawed”, said Dominic Lawrance, a partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys and one of its early members. He admits that “financial modelling has been the hardest thing” because of the paucity of comprehensive data on contributions from the UK’s non-dom contingent. 

It also wanted to dispel the idea that a 2023 report by academics at Warwick University and the London School of Economics was an appropriate basis for government policy. The report estimated that scrapping the tax perks enjoyed by the UK’s non-dom regime would net £3.6bn a year for the government. The findings suggested that there was only a “modest” risk of wealthy people leaving the country, something that anecdotal evidence from the lobby group’s members and their advisers contradicts.

Earlier this summer, Foreign Investors for Britain commissioned consultancy Oxford Economics to conduct a report on the proposed reforms, which it worked on throughout the summer holidays to complete. It set up a website and distributed an online survey to its network of non-doms and their advisers to establish the behavioural impact of any changes.

When the first phase of the OE report came out in September, it contradicted the academics’ figures, and those from the UK government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility. It estimated that, instead of raising additional tax revenues, the proposed reforms could cost the exchequer £0.9bn in 2029-30. It also found that 83 per cent of the 73 non-doms surveyed identified inheritance tax on worldwide assets as a key driver of their decisions. 

Leslie MacLeod-Miller, chief executive of Foreign Investors for Britain, met officials from the Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs in early September to present the findings. The group has not engaged directly with the OBR, the person familiar with the situation said.

By late September, Reeves had also been warned by Treasury officials that parts of her plan — notably imposing inheritance tax on the global assets of UK residents who say their domicile is overseas — could end up costing money by driving a large number of wealthy taxpayers overseas.

Faced with a £40bn funding gap, the government signalled that Reeves was likely to drop the inheritance tax element of her plan, although she is still expected to raise the tax take overall on non-doms.

“We have to close a big fiscal gap, but we will only make tax changes that are pragmatic and raise money,” said one ally of Reeves. “We are not being ideological.” Despite the timing of Labour’s retreat, a government insider insisted that Foreign Investors for Britain’s lobbying efforts had not been “particularly effective”.  

The second phase of the OE report, published last week, showed that its 95 non-dom respondents paid, on average, £800,000 of UK VAT in the 2023-24 tax year, and an average of £890,000 in UK stamp duty over the last five years. Wealthier non-doms paid substantially more of these levies, and respondents indicated they were already divesting significantly from UK assets, and pausing investment and philanthropy because they feared tax hikes.

Foreign Investors for Britain is expected to hold a call with Varun Chandra, Sir Keir Starmer’s business adviser, this week, and is updating the Treasury on any further data and research. 

Also this week, OE plans to publish the third phase of its research, which will cover the potential fiscal impact of a tiered tax regime. A separate report from the free-market Adam Smith Institute last week recommended introducing an annual flat fee of £150,000 for non-doms, valid for 15 years, which it said could potentially generate at least £12.45bn annually in direct revenue.

“This is not just something that affects the wealthy,” said MacLeod-Miller. “These funds will go to frontline service like schools and hospitals.”

But time is running out for Foreign Investors for Britain’s lobbying efforts. With the Budget less than two weeks away, the most it can realistically hope for is for Labour to drop the inheritance tax element of its non-dom reforms while it considers alternative proposals — such as tiered tax — that would take longer to implement. 

“The best thing the government could do would be on Budget day to say something to steel people’s nerves and stop the exodus,” said Lawrance at Charles Russell Speechlys. “But they don’t have the data they need to make a firm decision [on the tiered tax regime] . . . they haven’t had enough time to think it through yet.”

WSJ : Are the Amazon’s Trees Worth More Alive than Dead? A New Industry Thinks S

Are the Amazon’s Trees Worth More Alive than Dead? A New Industry Thinks So
Brazil is encouraging bioplastics, ecotourism and fishing businesses in the rainforest to replace illegal logging and mining

CARAJÁS, Brazil — Jefferson Sousa could have been eking out a living at the expense of the Amazon forest, working on a cattle ranch like his father.

“It was all I knew, it was what kept our family alive,” he said.

But now Sousa, who is in his mid-30s, spends his days cultivating jaborandi, a once-endangered shrub used in glaucoma medication and one of the Amazon’s most promising new sustainable industries.

In Brazil’s long-running battle between industries that exploit the rainforest’s riches and environmentalists trying to protect it, a middle way is emerging that fuses business interests to the Amazon’s survival and makes its 400 billion trees worth more money alive than dead.

The idea is to cultivate different sorts of industries—the so-called bioeconomy—to lure the Amazon’s 40 million inhabitants away from activities such as logging and mining. The forest becomes so valuable, the theory goes, that there is no economic sense in cutting it down.

The effort comes as the Amazon nears a tipping point when climate scientists say swaths of the forest will turn into savanna with catastrophic effects for global warming.

Some of Brazil’s biggest companies are involved, including the huge mining company, Vale, which runs Sousa’s nursery. As the owner of Carajás, the world’s largest iron-ore mine dug into the middle of the Amazon jungle, the company isn’t a natural beacon in the fight against the mass extraction of natural resources

As part of its pledge to regenerate mined areas and support local communities, however, the company has become one of Brazil’s biggest private-sector investors in the Amazon’s burgeoning green economy.

Here in the Brazilian state of Pará, an expanse of jungle almost twice the size of Texas that has seen some of the Amazon’s highest rates of deforestation over the past decade, politicians are turning to the bioeconomy to ensure its protection.

The new agenda is a shift from cattle ranching, which in the Amazon was the primary use of 90% of deforested land between 1985 and 2023, according to a study this month by MapBiomas, a nonprofit land-use research group.

“If you improve people’s living conditions, they are more likely to help monitor the forest,” said Claudomiro Gomes, mayor of Altamira, the state’s largest municipality. “It’s the best way, the only way to preserve the forest,” said Gomes, who is on a mission to turn the gritty, crime-ridden city into the world’s biggest producer of high-end chocolate.

Pará is Brazil’s biggest grower of cacao, which grows in the shade of native trees, and has long exported much of what it produces. But in a bid to squeeze more value—and jobs—out of the crop, the state last month hosted Latin America’s biggest chocolate festival, drawing some 800 producers from across the region.

Government organizations, private philanthropies and bilateral donors such as the U.S. Agency for International Development have poured money into sustainable agriculture and fishing, alongside activities such as the harvest of indigenous remedies and the use of seed oils for everything from lipstick to bioplastics. Other examples include nature-based tourism—from bird-watching to luxury cruises down the Amazon—to lure high-paying visitors to the forest with minimum impact.

In Belém, some 60 miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean on the Pará River, dozens of scientists working in Vale’s research laboratory carry out genetic studies of the flora and fauna of the forest surrounding Carajás. They alternately get excited about the possibilities held by the Amazon and despair over the other potentially valuable and yet unknown species being lost with every new square mile of forest razed.

“It’s a battle against time,” said Cecílio Caldeira, an agronomist at the lab who has been researching the jaborandi shrub. “We’re losing species faster than we can discover them.”

Used by indigenous tribes to treat fever and snake bites, jaborandi leaves are the only known natural source of pilocarpine, an important component used in eyedrops for glaucoma for decades. In addition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved pilocarpine last year for use against presbyopia, or near-vision loss, opening up more of the global eyedrops market that, according to Zion Market Research, is forecast to be worth $23 billion by 2030.

After attempts to grow jaborandi outside the Amazon produced plants with low concentrations of pilocarpine, Caldeira and his team set about sequencing its genome to understand how it produces the compound. Vale also has bought up disused cattle ranches near Carajás for experimental plantations of the shrub.

Centroflora, a São Paulo-based company that extracts some two-thirds of the pilocarpine for pharmaceutical companies, said it now counts on some 30,000 people to collect the leaves in the forest but expects that to grow with the FDA’s approval for presbyopia.

To get more companies involved, the Inter-American Development Bank along with some 20 development banks from South America have agreed to lend up to $20 billion to bioeconomy businesses in the Amazon by 2030 as part of the so-called Green Coalition launched last year. By 2030, the global bioeconomy market is expected to reach $7.7 trillion, according to a report in June by the bank.

Environmentalists warn, however, that developing new industries is no panacea. Their implementation relies on progress in other areas, namely laborious and politically fraught efforts by the government to determine who actually owns swaths of the Amazon.

The push for bioeconomies isn’t without its own risks, say its critics. Too small, and the alternative industries fail to compete with logging and mining. Too big, and the new activities can bring more people into the forest and inadvertently accelerate its destruction, said Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning in Venezuela and professor at Harvard Kennedy School.

Creating new industries in the forest means building more roads, extending the power grid, building schools and health clinics, all of which makes the surrounding land more valuable and susceptible to illegal logging, said Hausmann. “Suddenly you’ve brought economic activity to an area of nature that you supposedly wanted to protect.”

Time is running out. Taking office in January last year, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to end deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2030, launching an all-out attack on illegal loggers and miners in a bid to slow global warming.

Under da Silva, Brazil’s environmental-protection agency, Ibama, carried out more than 600 combat operations in indigenous lands across the Amazon last year, handing out twice as many fines as it did under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

The results were immediate. Brazil lost some 4,400 square miles of primary forest last year, a 36% reduction from 2022—the lowest level of deforestation since 2015. The decline represented the largest annual decrease for any country in the world, according to Global Forest Watch, a platform developed by researchers at the University of Maryland with Brazilian government data.

Vale’s scientists have also been studying ways to produce more, and better-tasting cacao, by improving pollination of the trees and fermentation of its seeds. They also have been genetically mapping the pirarucu, a valuable river fish, to make fishing more sustainable, advising fishermen on how much they can catch in certain areas without wiping out local populations.

Other bioeconomies have flourished across the Amazon, including sustainable timber, the production of biofuels from material such as palm husks, and the fast-growing market for açai, an Amazonian berry packed with antioxidants now widely popular in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Production of the berry reached 1.9 million tons in 2022, a near-50% increase since 2016, according to government figures.

State governments also have encouraged farmers to adopt agroforestry, the plantation of crops such as cacao and banana trees alongside native Amazonian trees in scorched wastelands that were once soybean plantations or cattle ranches. The native trees provide shade for the crops, but also help improve soil quality and retain water, encouraging the regeneration of deforested lands while providing a source of income, agronomists say.

The efforts are already paying off. Pará shipped some 74,000 tons of cacao to the country’s processing plants last year, a near-30% increase from the previous year, according to the Brazilian association for cacao processors.

But for Joel Luis Guerra, a banana and cacao producer some 30 miles deep into the jungle south of Altamira, that is still a distant dream.

After a recent drought left part of his 20-hectare plot (roughly 50 acres) unfit for planting, Guerra said he was preparing to clear another 5 hectares of the forest to make way for his next banana crop. While given the right by the government to settle in the area in 2006, Guerra still doesn’t have a deed to the land, meaning he can’t get a loan to buy fertilizer to reuse the land he already cleared.

“I get it, if we cut down all of this, the world stops breathing,” he said, pointing to the pristine forest surrounding his farm, part of which he is soon to raze. “But what can we do?”

>>> Barron's Weekend Summary

Cover:
-Millennials, born from 1981 to 1996, may be the most economically divided generation in America. Barron's simulated the projected net worth of four hypothetical millennials to illustrate financial ups and downs facing this generation. The simulations also highlighted the role of safety nets in giving some millennials a head start, such as assistance with college, early cash gifts or inheritance, or early access to an investment account. Millennials in the middle of the wealth spectrum held average assets of $103,021 in 2022, surpassing the $58,118 their boomer counterparts had held in 1992, adjusted for inflation. Much of that increase was driven by those with homes, 401(k) retirement plans, or brokerage accounts that benefited from a booming stock market. Covid-era assistance, like child-care tax credits and stimulus checks, helped others chip away at debt or shore up savings. The wealthiest 10% of millennial households saw a 140% increase over the wealth their boomer peers had in 1992, while the poorest 10% came out behind their boomer peers.

Interview:
-Wasatch Global Investors, a Salt Lake City-based asset-management firm, focuses on collaboration as the core of its investment strategy. The firm, which has $29.4B in assets, invests in 20 domestic and international small-cap growth strategies. Analysts and portfolio managers work together throughout the investment process, sharing ideas across strategies. This teamwork creates a deep bench of long-tenured employees. JB Taylor, CEO and portfolio manager at Wasatch, has helmed the Wasatch Core Growth fund since 2000, which has returned an annualized 13.9% in the past 15 years, outperforming the Russell 2000 Growth index's return of 10.9% and peers' return of 11.5%. The fund has an average fee level of 1.17%. The firm's approach to collaboration is based on the idea that multiple people working together will come up with better answers than a single, smart person.

Tech Trader:
-ASML's third-quarter earnings were leaked early, sparking an industrywide panic. The company's weak outlook was due to Moore's Law, a prediction made by semiconductor pioneer Gordon Moore in 1975 that the number of transistors that could be etched into silicon would double every two years. However, this prediction was challenged when tinier transistors ran up against the limits of ultraviolet light wavelengths used to etch them into silicon. ASML, a Dutch-based semiconductor lithography machine manufacturer, invested over six billion euros ($6.49B) in EUV research and development over 17 years. After several false starts, the company was able to harness the tiny wavelengths needed to manufacture high-performance chips used in smartphones, PCs, and data centers. ASML's EUV machines saved Moore's Law, as they generate extreme ultraviolet light using a CO2 laser that fires two separate laser pulses at a fast-moving drop of tin.

The Trader:
-The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 index have reached new highs, with analysts referring to the market as "animal spirits." The S&P 500 and Dow rose 0.9% and 1% respectively, marking their sixth consecutive week of gains. The Nasdaq Composite was up 0.8%. Bankers' third-quarter earnings have been primarily focused on investment banking and trading, with revenue up over 20% at big banks in the latest quarter. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Morgan Stanley Chief Financial Officer Sharon Yeshaya have predicted a multiyear capital markets recovery. Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial, notes that the tone of bank earnings calls has taken a positive turn, with the words "economic growth" and "soft landing" being more frequently used than "recession" and "economic slowdown." The latest economic data shows retail sales rising 0.4% in the latest month, and the Federal Reserve appears to be on track to cut interest rates again in November.
-Tech giants Google and Amazon have announced investments in new types of nuclear reactors, signaling a new phase where companies could build new nuclear reactors. This has lifted the stocks of companies that own reactors, including Vistra and Constellation Energy. A separate group of stocks has begun to rise, including Nuscale Power, Oklo, BWX Technologies, GE Vernova, Lightbridge, and Centrus Energy. Amazon will finance the construction of several small nuclear reactors in Washington state and invest in Maryland start-up X-energy. Google's deal with California-based Kairos Power supports the development and construction of several reactors, with financial terms not released. The tech giants are looking for ways to secure power for their data centers, which are consuming more electricity as artificial-intelligence usage grows. Nuclear plants don't emit carbon and operate continuously, unlike solar and wind. The biggest obstacles for nuclear adoption are the long construction time and high costs. The new kind of nuclear plants built by Kairos and X-energy are called small modular reactors (SMRs), which are cheaper and easier to construct.

Features:
-Amazon.com, the largest sponsor of H-1B work permits for skilled foreign workers, is facing an immigration crisis. The company would likely hire more if allowed, and is chronically short of warehouse workers. However, Amazon would face backlash if it pushed for more immigration, as public opinion has hardened on undocumented immigrants. The labor market remains tight, with 1.2 job openings per unemployed person, and immigration ranks as a top issue for voters. The next Congress and Trump or Harris will impact the country's economic growth, labor markets, and the U.S. fiscal deficit. Most companies express their view through groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has lobbied Congress to increase work permits for years. Expanding the labor pool with immigrants helps companies by giving them more choices of employees and potentially allowing them to pay less.
-Costco Wholesale has been a strong performer in 2024, with solid earnings and sales growth. The company's shares have gained 35% this year, outperforming the S&P 500's 23% rise. Evercore ISI analyst Greg Melich believes Costco's compounder characteristics should help maintain a premium at the higher end of its historical norm. Four main areas of growth for the company include steady membership growth, market share gains in discretionary categories, advertising, and international expansion. Costco's membership fees have been a steady source of income, helping to pad both its top and bottom lines. The latest fee hike went into effect in September, and the benefits will continue to trickle in over the remaining fiscal year as shoppers renew their memberships at the higher price. Costco's home delivery and haul-away logistics services are giving the retailer a leg-up, which could boost same-store sales growth in the long run. International expansion is another potential area for Costco, with net sales growth at its international warehouses outstripping that of its U.S. counterparts in fiscal 2024, up 9% year over year compared with 4%.

European Trader:
-The European Central Bank (ECB) has lowered interest rates for a second consecutive meeting, following the Federal Reserve's reduction of borrowing costs last month. The key deposit rate was lowered by a quarter point to 3.25%, marking the second time the ECB has cut rates since June. The ECB's decision follows the Federal Reserve's reduction of borrowing costs last month. The inflation rate in Europe has fallen below the ECB's 2% target, reaching its lowest since 2021. The ECB expects economic growth to slow in the second half and remain meager compared to the US rate of expansion. Deutsche Bank expects the ECB to continue lowering rates until about 2.25% in the first half of next year.

Emerging Markets:
-No update

Commodities:
-Oil prices are dropping after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, but this does not necessarily mean the war between Israel and Iran has ended. WTI crude oil futures have dropped 2.6% to $68.83, suggesting traders are pricing in an easing of the conflict between Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups. Brent futures were 2.5% lower at $72.61, while WBS00 crude oil futures dropped 2.6% to $68.83. However, the conflict seems to not be ready to end, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating the "war isn't over," Hezbollah escalating its attacks, and Hamas and Iran's statements indicating continued fighting. If oil prices are not falling due to the Middle East, it could be attributed to China's weaker third-quarter gross-domestic product, which could spill over into global energy markets. Currently, it is best to hope for peace in the Middle East, which could lower oil prices, but be prepared for more violence, which would send them higher.

Streetwise:-(Only in Podcast this week)
-Jack Hough discusses his minimalist investing philosophy, Financial Nudism, which suggests that a successful investor needs quality stocks and bonds, such as index funds. He also discusses the concept of dollar cost averaging, which involves spending regular amounts of money to buy shares in the stock market or index fund. This method helps lower average costs and is more reliable when considering longer time periods. However, Hough warns that investing all cash at once may not be the best option, as you are not a sample size and only have one shot at it. He believes that recovering from a stock market tumble may take an emotional toll, and that investing all cash at once may not be the best option for everyone.