Business, Financial & Legal - Page 51

China has a very itchy 'non-war' trigger finger for Taiwan, mostly to seize and take control of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) with its own "special military operation"... and no one will be able to condemn China if it launches the attack.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has signed a new directive that allows for the "non-war" use of its military, described as a "special military operation". It went into effect on Wednesday and could allow China to invade Taiwan -- and seize TSMC: which makes chips on Taiwanese soil for the biggest companies in the world (Apple, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and many more) -- without anyone being able to condemn China if it invades.

The directive will provide "provide 'the legal basis for troops to carry out military operations other than war", these include peacekeeping operations, disaster relief, humanitarian efforts, and more. Considering that US president Joe Biden has said that the US would military defend Taiwan if China attacked, if Jinping does launch an assault on Taiwan with a "special military operation", Biden would have to sit on his hands... along with NATO, the UN, and every other leader in every other country on the planet.

A London-based agency has performed a survey and found that Apple is ranked as the world's most valuable brand.

The new survey conducted by Kanter provides a list of the top 100 most valuable global brands based on their recent financial performance and consumer impact/research across 4 million users in 51 different markets. According to the survey, Apple is ranked 1st, with Google and Amazon following behind in second and third place, respectively.

Notably, Apple reached the top spot in the rankings with a valuation of $947 billion, which means that the brand is close to becoming the world's first trillion-dollar brand. Furthermore, Amazon actually lost a few places compared to previous years, with Jeff Bezos' online marketplace falling from 1st to 3rd in 2022. The survey states that Amazon's brand value grew by just 3%, while Google has risen a shocking 80% in brand value.

Elon Musk has been whipping his opponents as well as everyone who doesn't like him, into an absolute mental meltdown with his constant tweets... now throwing his support behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024.

In some new tweets over the last 24 hours or so, Musk said that he backed the successful Republican congressional candidate -- Mayra Flores -- during a special election in Texas on Tuesday. Musk said: "I voted for Mayra Flores - first time I ever voted Republican. Massive red wave in 2022".

Tesla Owners Silicon Valley tweeted, asking: "I assume republican for president 2?" to which Musk replied: "tbd" to which he was replied, asking "what are you leaning towards" which is when Musk dropped the big one: "DeSantis".

Court documents from Marion County in Indiana reveal that an Apple AirTag was used to facilitate a murder.

Twenty-six-year-old Gaylyn Morris was charged with murder after allegedly using an Apple AirTag to track her partner, 26-year-old Andre Smith, to Tilly's Pub, a shopping mall in Indianapolis, on June 3rd, 2022. According to an affidavit by Detective Gregory Shue, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) officers arrived at the scene around 12:32 a.m. to find Smith run over by Morris' blue Chevrolet Impala.

An eyewitness told the detective that she saw Morris arrive and asked them if they had seen "a guy with dreads," referring to Smith, enter the bar. Morris told the witness "that she had an AirTag on his car, and she knew his car was in the parking lot." After an altercation with someone accompanying Smith, both Smith and Morris ended up outside, where Morris got in her car and drove up the sidewalk to run Smith over, killing him.

Facebook is currently sending out settlement checks to its users, and these checks are close to $400. Here's how you may get one.

The free money from Facebook comes from a law in Illinois that is called the Biometric Privacy Act, which basically prevents companies from selling, storing, or collecting biometric data such as fingerprints or face scanning without obtaining consent from the user. As you can probably imagine, Facebook was sued over this law, which turned into a massive class-action lawsuit that resulted in the company creating a $650 million fund to compensate individuals that had been affected.

According to recent updates, the Settlement Administrator began sending out checks to recipients on May 9, 2022, and it will take two weeks to send out the entirety of the checks either via mail or electronic payments.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is considering craving out SpaceX's Starlink program and making it a publicly traded company.

The SpaceX CEO has previously been asked if he will ever decide to make Starlink a publicly traded company, and he said that he didn't know exactly when it would happen as he is concentrating on making Starlink financially stable before going ahead with an IPO (Initial Public Offering). Notably, an audio recording taken from a June 2 SpaceX meeting revealed that Musk might offer shares for Starlink in three to four years, depending on the financial stability of the project at the time.

Furthermore, Musk was asked back in March 2020 about Starlink eventually going public, where he replied that he was "thinking about that zero" and was more so concentrating on avoiding bankruptcies that almost every other satellite constellation company has suffered from. More recently, Musk revealed on Twitter in February 2021 that Starlink would go public once "we can predict cash flow reasonably well", and that "SpaceX needs to pass through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable."

TSMC has released two new renderings of its new office building in Phoenix, Arizona, USA -- which is still under construction -- but check it out:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is still building the chip-making facility on a large 1129 acres of land, with an even larger $12 billion investment. TSMC's new facility is near Interstate 17 and Loop 303, which the Taiwanese giant purchased back in December 2020.

According to TSMC representatives, the new facility in Arizona should be operational by 2024. According to AZcentral: "Structural construction of the fabrication facility, called the fab, is nearing completion, and the office building has about half of its glasswork completed. As of June, there are 38 cranes working on the massive site".

In what I'm sure most people thought were crazy "conspiracy theories" that China would invade Taiwan and take control of TSMC... well, now a senior Chinese economist at a "government-run research group" (a think tank) said that Chinese authorities should seize TSMC.

Why? Chinese authorities should seize TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) if the US slaps China with sanctions as they did against Russia. Chen Wenling, chief economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges said: "If the US and the West impose destructive sanctions on China like sanctions against Russia, we must recover Taiwan. Especially in the reconstruction of the industrial chain and supply chain, we must seize TSMC".

"They are speeding up the transfer to the US to build six factories there. We must not let all the goals of the transfer be achieved". The comments were made when Chen had a speech hosted by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University last month.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is currently investigating how many illegitimate Twitter accounts are present on the platform.

Musk is currently working his way through acquiring Twitter after the Tesla CEO announced the purchase for $44 billion. Now, Republican Attorney General (AG) of Texas, Ken Paxton, has released a new press statement that declares an investigation has been launched into Twitter to uncover the true number of bot accounts on the platform.

Twitter states in its regulatory filings that out of the platform's total number of users, fewer than 5% of them are bots. The attorney general of Texas, along with Elon Musk who is independently investigating, will attempt to find out the true number of bot accounts, which Paxton's press release states, "may, in fact, comprise as much as 20% or more" and "the difference could dramatically affect the cost to Texas consumers and businesses who transact with Twitter."

The Biden administration has just declared a state of emergency over electricity generating capacity: "Declaration of Emergency and Authorization for Temporary Extensions of Time and Duty-Free Importation of Solar Cells and Modules from Southeast Asia". You can read it here.

President Biden's new state of emergency is over electricity generating capacity, which you'd think in a country and government that pushes electric cars, has nuclear power, and more... wouldn't run out of electricity in 2022. But here we are, in what feels like (yet another) manufactured crisis (am I allowed to say that out loud?)

Biden is blaming Russia + Ukraine of course, as well as "climate change" as driving factors of the new state of emergency. The statement starts: "Electricity is an essential part of modern life that powers homes, business, and industry. It is critical to the function of major sectors of the economy, including hospitals, schools, public transportation systems, and the defense industrial base. Even isolated interruptions in electric service can have catastrophic health and economic consequences. A robust and reliable electric power system is therefore not only a basic human necessity, but is also critical to national security and national defense".

Elon Musk has made his acquisition of Twitter very public since day one, and now it continues: the SpaceX and Tesla CEO is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy the second-largest social networking site in the world.

Why? Because Twitter is refusing to give Elon any of the information on their spam bot accounts, and we all know why... especially Elon. In the SEC filing, Musk says that Twitter has refused to provide the necessary data for him to work out how many spam or fake accounts the social networking giant has.

"Based on Twitter's behavior to date, and the company's latest correspondence, in particular, Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights (and the company's corresponding obligations) under the merger agreement. This is a clear material breach of Twitter's obligations under the merger agreement".

A high-profile defamation case has concluded after a judge has ruled that Google must pay a politician $500,000 over videos not being removed from YouTube.

On Monday, Federal Court Justice Stephen Rares ruled that Australian politician and former deputy premier of New South Wales, John Barilaro, will be paid $515,000 by Google, which failed to remove two YouTube videos that "traumatized him significantly." Notably, the videos were originally posted in 2020 by political commentator Jordan Shanks, who runs the YouTube channel "Friendlyjordies".

Shanks apologized to Barilaro in a settlement case last year and paid him $71,000 in damages, however, the two videos remained on YouTube for public viewing. In the videos, Shanks accused Barilaro of corruption and theft, which led to a "relentless and vicious" cyberbullying campaign that resulted in Barilaro leaving his position. The judge found Shanks' claims to be false.

Elon Musk says that he has a "super bad feeling" about the economy, and that Tesla staffers will be laid off -- about 10% of salaried staff -- according to Reuters, that is.

The outlet reports that Elon said these things in emails seen by Reuters, and that a letter to executives on Thursday last week "laid out his concerns" and told them to "pause all hiring worldwide". The story continues, with Reuters reporting another email was flown out on Friday saying that Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10%, as it has become "overstaffed in many areas" but "hourly headcount will increase".

Elon continued in the email seen by Reuters: "Note, this does not apply to anyone actually building cars, battery packs or installing solar".

Elon Musk is back in the headlines with another controversial topic: "overpopulation" which is another thing that I fully agree with him on.

In a new article headlined "Demographers Warn of Impending Population Collapse" from The Epoch Times, Emel Akan shared it on Twitter, tweeting: "According to @elonmusk, the greatest challenge the world will face in 20 years is population collapse. This is an excellent article that explains the causes of population decline and why it is problematic".

Elon replied, tweeting: "Earth could sustain many times its current human population and the ecosystem would be fine. We definitely don't have 'too many people'".

If there's something I've been watching very closely, it has been Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as what the mainstream would call me would be a "conspiracy theorist".

Well, I guess I've got something in common with one of the smartest people -- and the richest man -- in the world: Elon Musk. In a new tweet, the SpaceX and Tesla boss shared a meme about "things I'll never see in my life" with a picture of a firebreathing dragon, a T-Rex, a unicorn, and then "The Epstein/Maxwell client list".

He said: "Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn't that seem odd?"

The relationship between the EU and Taiwan just got a little warmer, with Taiwan saying it will continue to be a trusted partner for the global chip industry, and help stabilize the global supply chain.

The news is coming from Taiwan Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua, who spoke with a senior European Union official are "rare high-level talks" on Thursday, according to Reuters, that Taipei described as a "big breakthrough". The difference between other meetings and now is that the Taiwan-EU meetings have shifted from the deputy level -- at previous meetings -- to a ministerial level, the ministry calling this a "major breakthrough in Taiwan-EU relations".

This is a continued push from the EU, which kicked off its "European Chips Act" in February 2022 -- at the time mentioning TSMC and other semiconductor companies -- with Taiwan being one of the "like-minded partners" that Europe wants to work with.

Jerome Pesenti, Meta's VP of AI is leaving the company... as there's a huge reorganization of the AI portion of the company taking place. Pesenti is leaving Meta barely 24 hours after Sheryl Sandberg announced she's leaving Meta as COO later this year.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth penned a new blog post on the Meta AI website, announcing a new "decentralized organizational structure for Meta AI". Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and an early pioneer in the field -- who leads the AI research team -- is jumping over to Bosworth's Reality Labs.

In the post, Bosworth explained: "More centralized approaches run into their limits when the last mile proves to be too far for downstream teams to close the gap. With this new team structure, we are excited to push the boundaries of what AI can do and use it to create new features and products for billions of people".

Elon Musk has given Tesla and SpaceX employees an ultimatum, either they come into work 40 hours a week, or they leave their position.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO recently sent out memos to both Tesla and SpaceX executives that state that employees who wish to work remotely will need to spend at least 40 hours a week in the office, or depart from the company/s. Notably, Musk says that if there are any "particularly exceptional" employees for whom this new ruling doesn't work for, he will review those exceptions personally to determine an outcome.

Furthermore, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO reiterated that the "office" is, in this instance, to be a main Tesla office and not a "remote branch office unrelated to the job duties." Musk goes on to give an example of an HR employee that is responsible for Fremont factory human relations having their office in another state.

In a shock announcement, chief operating officer of Facebook and its parent company Meta -- Sheryl Sandberg -- has said she's leaving the company after 14 years by Mark Zuckerberg's side.

Sandberg announced the news on her personal Facebook page, with the shock exit from one of the biggest and most influential companies of all time, where news broke just barely over a month ago that Sandberg asked the mainstream media to bury disturbing reports on her then-boyfriend and current Activision-Blizzard boss, Bobby Kotick.

And now... the Meta COO is stepping down from her company. I'm sure it has nothing to do with anything else, she just wants to do something else now.

Apple is moving production of its iPad out of China and into Vietnam according to the latest reports, with the pandemic lockdowns being blamed for the shift.

The company has also reportedly asked multiple component suppliers to build up their inventories, just in case more shortages or supply issues happen. Apple has built production lines in Vietnam and "could soon start to produce a small number of the iconic tablets there", with the help of China's BYD -- so China... is helping Apple make the facilities to build iPads in Vietnam -- cool.

Apple is already making their AirPods in Vietnam. But the iPad has many more components and complicated parts than the AirPods, so it won't be a case of Vietnam making tens of millions of iPads per year starting this year, but more so a case of Apple shifting reliance to Vietnam from China starting now.