position:chief executive officer

  • The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News | The New Yorker
    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-urgent-quest-for-slower-better-news

    In 2008, the Columbia Journalism Review published an article with the headline “Overload!,” which examined news fatigue in “an age of too much information.” When “Overload!” was published, Blackberrys still dominated the smartphone market, push notifications hadn’t yet to come to the iPhone, retweets weren’t built into Twitter, and BuzzFeed News did not exist. Looking back, the idea of suffering from information overload in 2008 seems almost quaint. Now, more than a decade later, a fresh reckoning seems to be upon us. Last year, Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, unveiled a new iPhone feature, Screen Time, which allows users to track their phone activity. During an interview at a Fortune conference, Cook said that he was monitoring his own usage and had “slashed” the number of notifications he receives. “I think it has become clear to all of us that some of us are spending too much time on our devices,” Cook said.

    It is worth considering how news organizations have contributed to the problems Newport and Cook describe. Media outlets have been reduced to fighting over a shrinking share of our attention online; as Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms have come to monopolize our digital lives, news organizations have had to assume a subsidiary role, relying on those sites for traffic. That dependence exerts a powerful influence on which stories that are pursued, how they’re presented, and the speed and volume at which they’re turned out. In “World Without Mind: the Existential Threat of Big Tech,” published in 2017, Franklin Foer, the former editor-in-chief of The New Republic, writes about “a mad, shameless chase to gain clicks through Facebook” and “a relentless effort to game Google’s algorithms.” Newspapers and magazines have long sought to command large readerships, but these efforts used to be primarily the province of circulation departments; newsrooms were insulated from these pressures, with little sense of what readers actually read. Nowadays, at both legacy news organizations and those that were born online, audience metrics are everywhere. At the Times, everyone in the newsroom has access to an internal, custom-built analytics tool that shows how many people are reading each story, where those people are coming from, what devices they are using, how the stories are being promoted, and so on. Additional, commercially built audience tools, such as Chartbeat and Google Analytics, are also widely available. As the editor of newyorker.com, I keep a browser tab open to Parse.ly, an application that shows me, in real time, various readership numbers for the stories on our Web site.

    Even at news organizations committed to insuring that editorial values—and not commercial interests—determine coverage, it can be difficult for editors to decide how much attention should be paid to these metrics. In “Breaking News: the Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters,” Alan Rusbridger, the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, recounts the gradual introduction of metrics into his newspaper’s decision-making processes. The goal, he writes, is to have “a data-informed newsroom, not a data-led one.” But it’s hard to know when the former crosses over into being the latter.

    For digital-media organizations sustained by advertising, the temptations are almost irresistible. Each time a reader comes to a news site from a social-media or search platform, the visit, no matter how brief, brings in some amount of revenue. Foer calls this phenomenon “drive-by traffic.” As Facebook and Google have grown, they have pushed down advertising prices, and revenue-per-click from drive-by traffic has shrunk; even so, it continues to provide an incentive for any number of depressing modern media trends, including clickbait headlines, the proliferation of hastily written “hot takes,” and increasingly homogeneous coverage as everyone chases the same trending news stories, so as not to miss out on the traffic they will bring. Any content that is cheap to produce and has the potential to generate clicks on Facebook or Google is now a revenue-generating “audience opportunity.”

    Among Boczkowski’s areas of research is how young people interact with the news today. Most do not go online seeking the news; instead, they encounter it incidentally, on social media. They might get on their phones or computers to check for updates or messages from their friends, and, along the way, encounter a post from a news site. Few people sit down in the morning to read the print newspaper or make a point of watching the T.V. news in the evening. Instead, they are constantly “being touched, rubbed by the news,” Bockzkowski said. “It’s part of the environment.”

    A central purpose of journalism is the creation of an informed citizenry. And yet––especially in an environment of free-floating, ambient news––it’s not entirely clear what it means to be informed. In his book “The Good Citizen,” from 1998, Michael Schudson, a sociologist who now teaches at Columbia’s journalism school, argues that the ideal of the “informed citizen”––a person with the time, discipline, and expertise needed to steep him- or herself in politics and become fully engaged in our civic life––has always been an unrealistic one. The founders, he writes, expected citizens to possess relatively little political knowledge; the ideal of the informed citizen didn’t take hold until more than a century later, when Progressive-era reformers sought to rein in the party machines and empower individual voters to make thoughtful decisions. (It was also during this period that the independent press began to emerge as a commercial phenomenon, and the press corps became increasingly professionalized.)

    Schudson proposes a model for citizenship that he believes to be more true to life: the “monitorial citizen”—a person who is watchful of what’s going on in politics but isn’t always fully engaged. “The monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than information-gathering,” he writes. “Picture parents watching small children at the community pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on the scene. They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required.” Schudson contends that monitorial citizens might even be “better informed than citizens of the past in that, somewhere in their heads, they have more bits of information.” When the time is right, they will deploy this information––to vote a corrupt lawmaker out of office, say, or to approve an important ballot measure.

    #Journalisme #Médias #Economie_attention

  • Exclusive: OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Exploring Bankruptcy - Sources | Investing News | US News
    https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2019-03-04/exclusive-oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-exploring-bankruptcy-sources
    https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/a731fff/2147483647/thumbnail/970x647/quality/85/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcom-usnews-beam-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2F36%2F18d09dd2aa95

    By Mike Spector, Jessica DiNapoli and Nate Raymond

    (Reuters) - OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP is exploring filing for bankruptcy to address potentially significant liabilities from roughly 2,000 lawsuits alleging the drugmaker contributed to the deadly opioid crisis sweeping the United States, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

    The potential move shows how Purdue and its wealthy owners, the Sackler family, are under pressure to respond to mounting litigation accusing the company of misleading doctors and patients about risks associated with prolonged use of its prescription opioids.

    Purdue denies the allegations, arguing that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved labels for its opioids carried warnings about the risk of abuse and misuse associated with the pain treatments.

    Filing for Chapter 11 protection would halt the lawsuits and allow Purdue to negotiate legal claims with plaintiffs under the supervision of a U.S. bankruptcy judge, the sources said.

    Shares of Endo International Plc and Insys Therapeutics Inc, two companies that like Purdue have been named in lawsuits related to the U.S. opioid epidemic, closed down 17 percent and more than 2 percent, respectively, on Monday.

    More than 1,600 lawsuits accusing Purdue and other opioid manufacturers of using deceptive practices to push addictive drugs that led to fatal overdoses are consolidated in an Ohio federal court. Purdue has held discussions to resolve the litigation with plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have often compared the cases to widespread lawsuits against the tobacco industry that resulted in a $246 billion settlement in 1998.

    “We will oppose any attempt to avoid our claims, and will continue to vigorously and aggressively pursue our claims against Purdue and the Sackler family,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said. Connecticut has a case against Purdue and the Sacklers.

    BANKRUPTCY FILING NOT CERTAIN

    A Purdue bankruptcy filing is not certain, the sources said. The Stamford, Connecticut-based company has not made any final decisions and could instead continue fighting the lawsuits, they said.

    “As a privately-held company, it has been Purdue Pharma’s longstanding policy not to comment on our financial or legal strategy,” Purdue said in a statement.

    “We are, however, committed to ensuring that our business remains strong and sustainable. We have ample liquidity and remain committed to meeting our obligations to the patients who benefit from our medicines, our suppliers and other business partners.”

    Purdue faces a May trial in a case brought by Oklahoma’s attorney general that, like others, accuses the company of contributing to a wave of fatal overdoses by flooding the market with highly addictive opioids while falsely claiming the drugs were safe.

    Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump also said he would like to sue drug companies over the nation’s opioid crisis.

    Opioids, including prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017, a sixfold increase from 1999, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Purdue hired law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP for restructuring advice, Reuters reported in August, fueling concerns among litigants, including Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, that the company might seek bankruptcy protection before the trial.

    Companies facing widespread lawsuits sometimes seek bankruptcy protection to address liabilities in one court even when their financial condition is not dire. California utility PG&E Corp filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after deadly wildfires raised the prospect of large legal bills even though its stock remained worth billions of dollars.

    DECEPTIVE MARKETING

    Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in June became the first attorney general to sue not just Purdue but Sackler family members. Records in her case, which Purdue has asked a judge to dismiss, accused Sackler family members of directing deceptive marketing of opioids for years while enriching themselves to the tune of $4.2 billion.

    Some other states have since also sued the Sacklers. The Sacklers are currently discussing creating a nonprofit backed by family financial contributions to combat addiction and drug abuse, a person familiar with their deliberations said.

    The drugmaker downplayed the possibility of a bankruptcy filing in a Feb. 22 court filing in the Oklahoma case. “Purdue is still here - ready, willing and eager to prove in this Court that the State’s claims are baseless,” the company said in court papers.

    Sales of OxyContin and other opioids have fallen amid public concern about their addictive nature, and as restrictions on opioid prescribing have been enacted. OxyContin generated $1.74 billion in sales in 2017, down from $2.6 billion five years earlier, according to the most recent data compiled by Symphony Health Solutions.

    Purdue Chief Executive Officer Craig Landau has cut hundreds of jobs, stopped marketing opioids to physicians and moved the company toward developing medications for sleep disorders and cancer since taking the helm in 2017.

    In July, Purdue appointed a new board chairman, Steve Miller, a restructuring veteran who previously held leadership positions at troubled companies including auto-parts giant Delphi and the once-teetering insurer American International Group Inc.

    Mortimer D.A. Sackler no longer sits on Purdue’s board, according to a filing the company made with the Connecticut secretary of state late Monday.

    The Oklahoma case and other lawsuits seek damages from Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis. In addition to lawsuits consolidated in an Ohio federal court, more than 300 cases are pending in state courts, and dozens of state attorneys general have sued manufacturers, including Purdue.

    Settlement discussions have not yet resulted in a deal.

    Purdue and three executives in 2007 pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin and agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million in penalties, according to court records.

    (Reporting by Mike Spector and Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

    Copyright 2019 Thomson Reuters.

    #Opioides #Sackler #Bankruptcy

  • Toronto’s Next Billionaire Wants Every Hand to Control a New Reality
    https://hackernoon.com/torontos-next-billionaire-wants-every-hand-to-control-a-new-reality-9fb3

    https://medium.com/media/5378f4b4f2423ec6e98ccdba72eb3db3/hrefTucked away from the humid, subtropical climate of the Nanshan district in Shenzhen, Martin LaBrecque is quietly becoming Toronto’s next billionaire.He’s in the right place. Shenzhen is the premiere incubator for aspiring billionaires in China. Why? It’s where the country’s most elite PhDs choose to manufacture 90% of the world’s electronics.After all, when you’re just 15 minutes away from Hong Kong’s aquarium of savvy VC’s, validated prototypes can become full-fledged products in no time.https://medium.com/media/aa1cf2e94894ffa09422cf4ecb719b02/hrefSo what is the chief executive officer of Breqlabs up (...)

    #gaming #ar #ai #virtual-reality #nuclear-energy

  • Instagram founders quit amid suspected clash with Zuckerberg
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/25/instagram-founders-quit-amid-suspected-clash-with-zuckerberg

    Tension with Facebook may have prompted Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger to leave The co-founders of Instagram have announced their resignation from the company, amid reports that their departure might be due to an increase in meddling by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the site’s parent company, Facebook. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger did not say why they were leaving their positions as chief executive officer and chief technical officer, respectively, of the photo-sharing service, just that they (...)

    #Facebook #Instagram #Messenger #WhatsApp #bénéfices #BigData #concurrence #profiling (...)

    ##cryptage
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f6b087db5863ca401cb0f417bae07f1fe170c3fc/0_0_3000_1799/master/3000.jpg

  • Amazon Will Consider Opening Up to 3,000 Cashierless Stores by 2021
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/amazon-is-said-to-plan-up-to-3-000-cashierless-stores-by-2021

    Amazon.com Inc. is considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new AmazonGo cashierless stores in the next few years, according to people familiar with matter, an aggressive and costly expansion that would threaten convenience chains like 7-Eleven Inc., quick-service sandwich shops like Subway and Panera Bread, and mom-and-pop pizzerias and taco trucks. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos sees eliminating meal-time logjams in busy cities as the best way for Amazon to reinvent the (...)

    #Amazon #CCTV #reconnaissance #facial #surveillance #vidéo-surveillance

  • U.S. Will Lose From Trade War as Flows Shift, Top Miner Says - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/mining-giant-bhp-hits-out-at-trade-curbs-as-trump-takes-on-china

    • Mackenzie expects ‘dampening effect’ on growth from the curbs
    • Top miner says U.S. steel users now paying ‘considerably more’

    The U.S. risks losing out from its curbs on trade as rival nations including China will seek to do more business with each other, BHP Billiton Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mackenzie warned as the head of the world’s largest miner stepped up his criticism of rising protectionism.

    There’s a lot of countries in the world that want to trade more with each other, now that it looks like the U.S. wants to trade less with them,” Mackenzie said in a Bloomberg Television interview, citing discussions with global trade ministers. “China will absolutely look to walk in that area and look to find exports with other people,” he said after BHP reported earnings.

  • YouTube’s Plan to Clean Up the Mess That Made It Rich
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-26/youtube-may-be-a-horror-show-but-no-one-can-stop-watching

    Extremist propaganda, dangerous hoaxes, videos of tasered rats—the company is having its worst year ever. Except financially. Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive officer of YouTube, was in a meeting on the second floor of her company’s headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., when she heard the first gunshot. It came from outside ; more followed. Some of her employees ran for the exits ; others barricaded themselves in conference rooms. Those eating lunch on the outdoor patio hid under the tables. (...)

    #Google #YouTube #algorithme #manipulation #bénéfices #marketing

  • Abu Dhabi Ports Signs 30-Year Deal with MSC to Build Terminal – gCaptain
    http://gcaptain.com/abu-dhabi-ports-signs-30-year-deal-with-msc-to-build-terminal

    Abu Dhabi Ports has signed a 30-year concession agreement with Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) to build a new container terminal at its Khalifa Port.

    Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has spent billions developing the port, which opened in 2012, as part of ongoing efforts to diversify its oil-rich economy.

    Khalifa Port is on a man-made island roughly half-way between the centres of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and about 60 kilometres (37 miles) south from Dubai’s huge Jebel Ali port.

    Construction of the new terminal will include deepening berths to make Khalifa Port capable of handling the world’s biggest bulk cargo vessels, state-owned Abu Dhabi Ports said in a statement on Monday.

    Swiss-based MSC will invest 4 billion dirhams ($1.1 billion) over the life of the concession in operational equipment which will include increasing the number of ship-to-shore cranes from 12 to 25, it said.

    We are confident that with this investment we will continue to ensure a high level of service for our customers and have the capacity to grow the scale of our operations in the UAE,” MSC’s President and Chief Executive Officer Diego Aponte said.

    Abu Dhabi Ports expects the overall capacity of Khalifa Port to increase to 8.5 million TEUs from 2.5 million TEUs in five years. ($1 = 3.6728 dirham)

  • What’s at Stake for Oil as Trump Appoints Another Iran Hawk? - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/what-s-at-stake-for-oil-as-trump-appoints-another-iran-hawk

    Iran is trying to attract more than $100 billion from international oil companies to boost crude and condensate output by about 25 percent to more than 5 million barrels a day. Without new investment from international companies production will stagnate.

    Trump’s disdain for the nuclear deal has already deterred investors from the country, the third-biggest producer in OPEC. Of the Western energy majors, only France’s Total SA has returned, and its gas venture is proceeding slowly. Iranian officials are already complaining that western oil companies are too cautious to return to the country and there are signs that Russian companies are stepping in to fill the vacuum.

    Total has the biggest financial stake of any international energy major, having pledged to invest $1 billion in the first phase of an offshore natural gas project. Overall investment in the project could reach $5 billion, and while the company is determined to press ahead, Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne has promised to review the legal consequences of any new U.S. restrictions.
    […]
    Three years ago, in a New York Times op-ed titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” Bolton argued that the only way to prevent Tehran obtaining nuclear weapons was a military strike. He cited Israel’s preemptive strike in 1981 on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor as an example of effective action.

    Bolton downplayed the significance of his past public statements in an interview with Fox News shortly after the appointment was announced, saying he would defer to the president’s judgment.

    I’ve never been shy about what my views are,” Bolton said. But, he added, that “now is behind me, at least effective April 9, and the important thing is what the president says and what advice I give him.

    Bolton’s appointment has lots of implications beyond just Iran, Ian Bremmer, president of consultant Eurasia Group, said on Twitter. It also makes Trump’s scheduled talks with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un riskier, he said.

    Thursday was “probably the worst/biggest single day for geopolitical risk since I started Eurasia Group in 1998,” Bremmer said on Twitter.

  • Et comme ça met en cause la «  sécurité nationale  », les 14 Mds $ pour protéger l’industrie chimique (privée) doivent nécessairement être publics…

    Gulf Coast Needs $14 Billion Storm Barrier, Chemical Makers Say - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-05/gulf-coast-needs-14-billion-storm-barrier-chemical-makers-say

    Chemical companies are pressing federal officials to spend billions of dollars on a coastal flood control system near Houston to protect petrochemical plants, oil refineries and shipping infrastructure from the next hurricane.

    The coastal spine, as the project is called, is among the most important infrastructure investments needed to mitigate damage from major storms, Bob Patel, chief executive officer of LyondellBasell Industries NV, said Monday at an industry conference to discuss lessons learned from Hurricane Harvey.

    The proposed system of seawalls, levies and flood gates in the Galveston, Texas, area would cost an estimated $14 billion, and would be designed to reduce flood damage similar to that seen by Hurricane Ike’s storm surge in 2008.

  • Et encore un projet de #cryptomonnaie dans le transport…

    Commodities Shipper Seeks $150 Million to Start Digital Coin - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/commodities-shipper-seeks-150-million-to-start-cryptocurrency

    The shipping agency that struck the first freight deal settled in #Bitcoin is now seeking $150 million to launch its own cryptocurrency. 

    #Prime_Shipping_Foundation, a partnership between Gibraltar-based Quorum Capital Ltd. and ship broker Interchart LLC, is looking to raise the funds by midyear in a so-called initial coin offering. Using its own cryptocurrency would ease conversions into and out of traditional currencies, speeding settlement, according to Chief Executive Officer Ivan Vikulov.

    The company was the first to execute a freight deal in Bitcoin, shipping 3,000 tons of Russian wheat to Turkey at the end of last year. While the freight charges were billed in the cryptocurrency, using digital coins to pay for the actual commodities has proven to be difficult. That’s because their lack of liquidity makes it harder to convert higher-value deals quickly into fiat currencies, he said.

    The conversion in and out of Bitcoin can sometimes take one or two days, and that’s not fast enough,” Vikulov said. “Ours will take a few seconds.

    • Pour l’instant, on est dans le #vrac

      Prime Shipping Foundation piloted blockchain payment system for the #bulk shipping industry, announcing ICO for mid-2018.
      http://www.prweb.com/releases/2018/01/prweb15121362.htm

      Prime Shipping Foundation is developing an own payment ecosystem to disrupt the way payments are handled in the shipping industry, has already executed freight in cryptocurrency. The venture is currently in their pre-ICO, announced to head for ICO in mid-2018.
      […]
      The Prime Crypto Bank will become the interface between the online world and the real world, allowing a gradual adoption for the shipping industry, without compromising the benefits the new era brings

  • The World’s Biggest Container Shipping Line Is Now Worried About #Amazon and #Alibaba - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/amazon-threat-has-maersk-racing-to-stop-clients-becoming-rivals

    The world’s biggest container shipping line is trying to stop customers like Amazon.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. from becoming competitors in just a few years’ time.

    Amazon is a threat if we don’t do a good job for them,” Soren Skou, the Chief Executive Officer of A.P. Moller Maersk A/S, said in a phone interview. “If we don’t do our job well, then there’s no doubt that big, strong companies like Amazon will look into whether they can do better themselves.

  • The Panama Canal Is Now a Major Problem for U.S. Shale - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/u-s-shale-has-a-panama-canal-problem-that-s-got-no-easy-fix

    Just as the Panama Canal was unveiling a new, fatter set of locks, U.S. shale drillers were readying their very first exports of liquefied natural gas. While the wide-body tankers that transport LNG would’ve had no chance of squeaking through the original steel locks built a century ago, they could easily traverse the bigger channel and shave 11 days off the trip to primary markets in Asia.

    But 17 months in, it’s not quite working out as planned. Only a single LNG tanker has a guaranteed passage each day. The natural-gas industry blames the Panama Canal Authority for holdups, and the canal authority blames the industry for being lackadaisical about transit timetables.
    […]
    What rankles LNG companies is that they’ve been awarded just the single reserved slot, with the rest going to container ships that carry consumer goods from sneakers to refrigerators. One position isn’t sufficient now and will be wholly inadequate once all the new export terminals under construction go on line, said Octavio Simoes, president of Sempra LNG & Midstream, at a conference in October. He caused a ruckus when he warned that canal holdups could crimp sales and cost traders serious money.

    Jorge Quijano, chief executive officer of the canal authority, fired back, saying there are no plans to boost reservations for LNG tankers — and suggested there won’t be until they prove themselves worthy.

    We can focus on giving them a second slot when they start to behave with a more contract-like pattern with their suppliers and buyers,” Quijano said from his office in Panama City. With container ships, “if they request a transit tomorrow, they’ll be there tomorrow.” LNG tankers, he said, “are a maybe.

  • How to Launder $1 Billion of Iranian Oil - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-08/how-to-launder-1-billion-of-iranian-oil

    It wasn’t until he appeared in court on Nov. 29 that the full story surfaced. The FBI had removed him from jail to protect him from threats, keeping him under guard at an undisclosed location. By then, Zarrab had secretly pleaded guilty to all the charges against him and agreed to help the U.S. government. As part of his deal, prosecutors offered him and his family witness protection.

    Over more than a week on the witness stand, Zarrab spun a stunning tale of corruption and double-dealing that reached the highest levels of the Turkish government, all the way up to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The case has further soured Washington and Ankara’s already strained relationship, revealing how America’s longtime ally may have helped Iran undermine sanctions even as Turkey received millions of dollars in U.S. aid. Nine people have been charged, including Turkey’s former economy minister and past chief executive officer of Halkbank, a major Turkish bank owned by the government. Of them, only one—a senior Halkbank executive named Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Zarrab’s former co-defendant—is on trial. The others have all avoided U.S. arrest.

    In court, Zarrab laid out how he paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to Turkish government officials and banking executives to win their assistance—and cover—for the money laundering operation. He dropped a bombshell on his second day of testimony, when he implicated Erdogan as part of the scheme, saying he was told Turkey’s president gave orders that two Turkish banks be included in the plot.

    #Turquie #Iran

  • What Was Once Hailed as First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Is No More - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/cape-wind-developer-terminates-project-opposed-by-kennedys-koch

    Cape Wind, the offshore wind project off the coast of Massachusetts that drew the ire of the Kennedy and Koch families, is officially dead.

    Energy Management Inc. has ceased efforts to build what was once expected to become the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., according to an emailed statement from Chief Executive Officer Jim Gordon. The project’s Boston-based developer has already notified the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has terminatsed the offshore wind development lease it received in 2010.

    Cape Wind suffered a slow death. Efforts to develop the 468-megawatt offshore farm, proposed to supply power to Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, began in 2001 but came up against relentless opposition from a mix of strange bedfellows including the Kennedy family and billionaire industrialist William Koch. While Energy Management won several court battles, the project couldn’t survive the 2015 cancellation of contracts to sell its power to local utilities.
    […]
    Several of the developers have said they learned a key lesson from Cape Wind: don’t try to build within sight of shore.

    [where wealthy people live…]

  • Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/uber-concealed-cyberattack-that-exposed-57-million-people-s-data

    Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers.

    Compromised data from the October 2016 attack included names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders around the world, the company told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The personal information of about 7 million drivers was accessed as well, including some 600,000 U.S. driver’s license numbers. No Social Security numbers, credit card information, trip location details or other data were taken, Uber said.

    “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it.”
    At the time of the incident, Uber was negotiating with U.S. regulators investigating separate claims of privacy violations. Uber now says it had a legal obligation to report the hack to regulators and to drivers whose license numbers were taken. Instead, the company paid hackers to delete the data and keep the breach quiet. Uber said it believes the information was never used but declined to disclose the identities of the attackers.

    Dara KhosrowshahiPhotographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg
    “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over as chief executive officer in September, said in an emailed statement. “We are changing the way we do business.”

    After Uber’s disclosure Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation into the hack, his spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick said. The company was also sued for negligence over the breach by a customer seeking class-action status.

    Hackers have successfully infiltrated numerous companies in recent years. The Uber breach, while large, is dwarfed by those at Yahoo, MySpace, Target Corp., Anthem Inc. and Equifax Inc. What’s more alarming are the extreme measures Uber took to hide the attack. The breach is the latest scandal Khosrowshahi inherits from his predecessor, Travis Kalanick.

    Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and former CEO, learned of the hack in November 2016, a month after it took place, the company said. Uber had just settled a lawsuit with the New York attorney general over data security disclosures and was in the process of negotiating with the Federal Trade Commission over the handling of consumer data. Kalanick declined to comment on the hack.

    Joe Sullivan, the outgoing security chief, spearheaded the response to the hack last year, a spokesman told Bloomberg. Sullivan, a onetime federal prosecutor who joined Uber in 2015 from Facebook Inc., has been at the center of much of the decision-making that has come back to bite Uber this year. Bloomberg reported last month that the board commissioned an investigation into the activities of Sullivan’s security team. This project, conducted by an outside law firm, discovered the hack and the failure to disclose, Uber said.

    Here’s how the hack went down: Two attackers accessed a private GitHub coding site used by Uber software engineers and then used login credentials they obtained there to access data stored on an Amazon Web Services account that handled computing tasks for the company. From there, the hackers discovered an archive of rider and driver information. Later, they emailed Uber asking for money, according to the company.

    A patchwork of state and federal laws require companies to alert people and government agencies when sensitive data breaches occur. Uber said it was obligated to report the hack of driver’s license information and failed to do so.

    “At the time of the incident, we took immediate steps to secure the data and shut down further unauthorized access by the individuals,” Khosrowshahi said. “We also implemented security measures to restrict access to and strengthen controls on our cloud-based storage accounts.”

    Uber has earned a reputation for flouting regulations in areas where it has operated since its founding in 2009. The U.S. has opened at least five criminal probes into possible bribes, illicit software, questionable pricing schemes and theft of a competitor’s intellectual property, people familiar with the matters have said. The San Francisco-based company also faces dozens of civil suits.

    U.K. regulators including the National Crime Agency are also looking into the scale of the breach. London and other governments have previously taken steps toward banning the service, citing what they say is reckless behavior by Uber.

    In January 2016, the New York attorney general fined Uber $20,000 for failing to promptly disclose an earlier data breach in 2014. After last year’s cyberattack, the company was negotiating with the FTC on a privacy settlement even as it haggled with the hackers on containing the breach, Uber said. The company finally agreed to the FTC settlement three months ago, without admitting wrongdoing and before telling the agency about last year’s attack.

    The new CEO said his goal is to change Uber’s ways. Uber said it informed New York’s attorney general and the FTC about the October 2016 hack for the first time on Tuesday. Khosrowshahi asked for the resignation of Sullivan and fired Craig Clark, a senior lawyer who reported to Sullivan. The men didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Khosrowshahi said in his emailed statement: “While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes.”

    The company said its investigation found that Salle Yoo, the outgoing chief legal officer who has been scrutinized for her responses to other matters, hadn’t been told about the incident. Her replacement, Tony West, will start at Uber on Wednesday and has been briefed on the cyberattack.

    Kalanick was ousted as CEO in June under pressure from investors, who said he put the company at legal risk. He remains on the board and recently filled two seats he controlled.

    Uber said it has hired Matt Olsen, a former general counsel at the National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, as an adviser. He will help the company restructure its security teams. Uber hired Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm owned by FireEye Inc., to investigate the hack.

    The company plans to release a statement to customers saying it has seen “no evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident.” Uber said it will provide drivers whose licenses were compromised with free credit protection monitoring and identity theft protection.

    #Uber #USA

  • Qatar Seeks to Retain Its LNG Crown Despite Saudi-Led Boycott - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-04/qatar-petroleum-to-boost-lng-output-by-30-percent-on-north-field

    Qatar’s message to the rest of the LNG world is, “‘We are going to take a huge chunk of the incremental market,”’ Jonathan Stern, chairman and senior research fellow at the Natural Gas Research Programme of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said by phone. Qatar is also throwing down the gauntlet to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter. “Basically what it’s saying is, ‘We are going to promote LNG as a substitute for oil,”’ he said. “That’s a very confrontational thing to say.

    Qatar seeks to produce 100 million tons of LNG, or about 40 percent of last year’s global supply, up from its current level of 77 million tons, Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, chief executive officer of the state-run producer, told reporters on Tuesday in Doha.

  • American Health Care Tragedies Are Taking Over Crowdfunding
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-12/america-s-health-care-crisis-is-a-gold-mine-for-crowdfunding

    “Whether it’s Obamacare or Trumpcare, the weight of health-care costs on consumers will only increase,” said Dan Saper, chief executive officer of YouCaring. “It will drive more people to try and figure out how to pay health-care needs, and #crowdfunding is in its early days as a way to help those people.”

    #santé #Etats-Unis

  • Hanjin Fall Is Lehman Moment for Shipping, Seaspan CEO Says - Bloomberg
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-13/hanjin-s-fall-is-lehman-moment-for-shipping-seaspan-ceo-says

    The fall of South Korea’s biggest container line Hanjin Shipping Co. is similar to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and has materially impacted the shipping industry, Seaspan Corp. Chief Executive Officer Gerry Wang said.
    […]
    The South Korean government estimates Hanjin Shipping needs at least 600 billion won [530 million USD] to cover unpaid costs like fuel and cargo handling.
    […]
    At the end of the day, the [shipping] industry has been money losing,” Wang said. “For like any industry, for long term, it’s just not sustainable.

  • airBaltic achieves fastest growth in passenger numbers in Baltics
    Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: «We thank our customers for choosing to fly with airBaltic during the busiest travel season. As a result, we have achieved the fastest growth across all of the Baltic markets, and now outpace the largest carriers operating in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.»

    As previously informed, airBaltic has improved its offering in Tallinn and Vilnius by opening additional direct services. As part of its Horizon 2021 plan, airBaltic will operate 11 direct routes out of Tallinn and Vilnius in the next five years, in combination with convenient transfers via Riga.
    http://bnn-news.com/airbaltic-achieves-fastest-growth-in-passenger-numbers-in-baltics-150258

    #Latvia #airBaltic #Economics #Martins_Gauss

  • Here’s How the New Teslas Stack Up Against Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Ferrari - Bloomberg
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-24/here-s-how-the-new-teslas-stack-up-against-bugatti-lamborghini-and-ferrar

    On Tuesday, Tesla announced new versions of its luxury cars that break major barriers for electric vehicles. But are the upgrades, as Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk claims, enough to hand Tesla the title of fastest car in the world? 
    The P100D Model S with Ludicrous mode will propel the car to 60 miles per hour in just 2.5 seconds. Tesla’s Model X sport utility vehicle will get there in 2.9 seconds. The bigger, 100-kilowatt-hour batteries also provide the first official U.S. Environmental Protection Agency range of more than 300 miles on a charge. 
    These speeds are crazy fast, matched only by sold-out supercars with tiny production runs: Ferrari’s $1.4 million LaFerrari, Porsche’s $845,000 918 Spyder, and Bugatti’s $2.3 million Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse. Tesla’s new Model S, at $134,500, is just as quick as any vehicle on the road. Even its seven-seat SUV beats the McLaren 675LT.

  • I piloti disobbediscono ai rimpatri forzati

    La disobbedienza civile di alcuni comandanti di #Lufthansa, #Air_Berlin e #Germanwings. Sono oltre 330 le deportazioni fallite nel 2016 perché il personale di volo ha preferito seguire le regole sulla libertà del «passeggero»

    http://www.osservatoriorepressione.info/piloti-disobbediscono-ai-rimpatri-forzati
    #désobéissance #résistance #pilotes #avions #asile #migrations #renvois #réfugiés #renvois_forcés #désobéissance_civile
    cc @reka @albertocampiphoto

  • Mercedes Is About to Unveil an Entire Fleet of Electric Vehicles - Bloomberg
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-05/mercedes-to-challenge-bmw-tesla-with-four-car-electric-lineup

    Mercedes-Benz is planning its own distinct line of electric vehicles, challenging BMW and Tesla Motors Inc. in a bet that alternative-fuel cars have the potential to become profitable.
    Mercedes will add two electric sport utility vehicles and two sedans, according to two people familiar with the plan, who asked not to be named because the details haven’t been disclosed. Mercedes will create a new sub-brand for the cars, though a name hasn’t been chosen yet, one of the people said. Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche said in June that the company planned to unveil an electric car at the Paris motor show in September.

  • Aristotle at the Gigafactory: Why Physics Is a Philosophy - Facts So Romantic
    http://nautil.us/blog/aristotle-at-the-gigafactory-why-physics-is-a-philosophy

    On Friday, in Storey County, Nevada, a woman at Tesla’s Gigafactory inauguration hollered, “Beam me up, Elon!” Elon Musk, the electric car company’s chief executive officer, had just taken the stage along with J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer. “Okay, we’re working on that one,” Musk gamely replied before saying: “Alright—welcome everyone to the Gigafactory launch party! I hope you’re having a good time.” They were. The party’s attendees were almost exclusively Tesla devotees. “To be there in person,” according to Recode, “you would have to be a Tesla owner who referred five other buyers or just be a very important person of some sort.” Musk didn’t disappoint them. After being coached to “smile a lot” and to remember that “everything is awesome,” Musk and Straubel regaled everyone with a (...)