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Here’s what you need to know
Google’s AI chatbot Bard got off to a rough start. A mistake in an ad promoting the chatbot and an underwhelming demo event shaved $100 billion off Google parent company Alphabet’s share price. Meanwhile, former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor is jumping on the AI bandwagon.
Disney lost 2.4 million streaming subscribers. Comeback CEO Bob Iger promised cost-cutting measures at the company, including layoffs, even as its fourth-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations.
Uber reported its “strongest quarter ever.” The company benefited from increased spending on rides and food deliveries not just despite but because of high inflation.
JPMorgan announced a workforce shift. The bank is reportedly laying off hundreds of mortgage employees while looking to add 500 small-business roles in the next two years.
The US said China’s spy balloon is part of a global surveillance scheme. The devices are allegedly used to collect information about various countries’ military capabilities.
Brazil launched an operation against illegal miners in an Indigenous reserve. The country’s special forces have destroyed aircraft and seized weapons in the Amazon’s Yanomami territory.
What to watch for
PayPal posts its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2022 today (Feb. 9), and investors will be watching to see whether they should keep shares of the fintech company in their shopping carts.
The e-commerce company’s stock plunged 62% last year before slightly rebounding in the first month of 2023. Last August, PayPal announced a $15 billion share buyback program, and in a surprise move last week, cut roughly 7% of its workforce (2,000 jobs).
As the company tries to lower its operating costs amid recession fears, it’s just one pawn in the wild, wild west of mobile payment companies that are all trying to figure out if consumer spending will continue to hold relatively strong in the US. And even with a multiyear head start, PayPal is struggling to keep competitors Apple Pay and Zelle from closing in.
The Maersk x MSC ship is over
The world’s two largest shipping lines, Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Co., are breaking up.
They claim it’s mutual, something about different needs (Maersk has big dreams of becoming a one-stop shop for logistics, while MSC wants to aggressively expand its own fleet). But the split also represents different bets on the shape of global trade in the decades to come—and on the forces of economic decoupling that will reroute the international flows of goods.
There are a few forces that are shifting the tides:
🏠 Reshoring. Countries are increasingly bringing factories back home.
👯♀️ Friendshoring. Countries with like-minded values are collaborating on protecting their own supply chains.
🌊 New flows of trade. Historical manufacturing hubs are shifting away from China to countries like Vietnam and Mexico.
Advertisers are betting big on beer
One thing viewers can expect from Super Bowl LVII ads: less crypto, and more beer.
We’re confident if you’re into American football, you can guess which brewing goliath has spent more than half a billion dollars on its beer commercials over the past few decades. It’s the same company that, for the first time in more than three decades, is giving up the reins to its exclusive advertising rights for the game. Naturally, Heineken, Miller Lite, and Crown Royal Whisky are jumping on the opportunity.
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Surprising discoveries
No one bussed the table after a Neanderthal crab roast. Remains of a 90,000-year-old meal were found in a Portuguese cave.
Earth has more molten layers than originally thought. But unfortunately none are chocolate or caramel or even edible for that matter.
Orcas are all mama’s boys. Adult males in the species still rely on their mothers to hunt for food.
Most Egyptian cotton is probably fake. Many a yarn has been spun for silk, cotton, and recycled material fabrics, too.
Mary Queen of Scots’s cipher was cracked. It took a team of codebreakers to decrypt her cache of prison letters written from 1578 to 1584.
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