Category: Business

Read time : 3 mins

Level : Advanced

By TOM KRISHER and LINDSEY BAHR Associated Press

Joe Rogan’s mouth has put Spotify in a tough spot, but the streaming giant is apparently not ready to part ways with the popular podcast host despite intense criticism over his anti-coronavirus vaccine comments and racial slurs.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a message to employees released Sunday that the company would not part ways with Rogan.

“While I strongly condemn what Joe has said and I agree with his decision to remove past episodes from our platform, I realize some will want more,” Ek said in the note. “And I want to make one point very clear – I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer.”

The letter is the clearest indication yet of where Spotify stands on Rogan’s fate with the company. It reportedly paid $100 million to exclusively host the podcast, so dropping Rogan threatens the bottom line but is also a key part of the company’s strategy to be a one-stop shop for audio.
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By THOMAS PEIPERT Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — The sight can be jarring during extreme drought: snowmaking guns lined up on a mountainside, blasting precious crystal flakes on a ski run while the rest of the land goes thirsty.

Snowpack in the U.S. West has decreased by about 20% in the last century, making man-made snow more vital each year to opening ski resorts and fueling ski town economies as they head into an uncertain future.

As the effects of drought and climate change increasingly hit home, the ski industry has invested millions of dollars in more efficient snowmaking systems amid questions about whether the practice is a wise use of energy and water.

“There are impacts. They’re regrettable. We’d rather not have to make snow,” said Auden Schendler, senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company in Colorado. “But our regional economy and the economies of all ski towns depend on your ski resort operating. And so this is a necessary evil.”
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By DIANE JEANTET Associated Press

CABO FRIO, Brazil (AP) — In April, Brazil’s federal police stormed the helipad of a boutique seaside hotel in Rio de Janeiro state, where they busted two men and a woman loading a chopper with 7 million reais ($1.3 million) in neatly packed bills.

The detainees told police they worked for G.A.S. Consulting & Technology, a cryptocurrency investment firm founded by a former waiter-turned-multimillionaire who is the central figure in what is alleged to be one of Brazil’s biggest-ever pyramid schemes.

Police say the company owned by 38-year-old Glaidson Acácio dos Santos had total transactions worth at least $7 billion ($38 billion reais) from 2015 through mid-2021 as part of a Bitcoin-based Ponzi scheme that promised investors 10% monthly returns.

In hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press, federal and state police and prosecutors accuse dos Santos and his associates of running a sophisticated racket defrauding thousands of small-scale investors who believed they were getting rich off Bitcoin’s steep appreciation. He is now in a Rio jail awaiting trial on charges including racketeering, financial crimes and ordering the murder and attempted murder of two business competitors. He remains under investigation in the attempted murder of a third competitor.
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By KELVIN CHAN AP Business Writer

LONDON (AP) — Inflation in the 19 countries that use the euro currency hit its highest level on record, led by surging food and energy costs, figures released Friday show.

Here’s a closer look at the data:

WHAT DO THE NUMBERS SAY?

Consumer prices in the eurozone, made up of European Union economies like France and Germany, rose 5% in December compared with the previous year, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office.

Energy prices led the increase, jumping 26% over the past year, slightly lower than the previous month. The boost in food prices picked up steam to 3.2%, from November’s 2.2% rate, and the price of goods rose at a faster pace of 2.9%.
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By DAVID McHUGH AP Business Writer

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank is celebrating the 20th anniversary of euro notes and coins as member countries wrestle with the pandemic’s impact on the economy and the European Union forges a new level of financial cooperation to help boost the recovery.

The event is being marked at midnight New Year’s Eve with a light display in blue and yellow, the colors of the EU, projected on its skyscraper headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.

The introduction of notes and coins in 12 countries on Jan. 1, 2002, was a massive logistical undertaking that followed up on the introduction of the euro for accounting purposes and electronic payments three years earlier, on Jan. 1, 1999. Today, the euro is used in 19 of 27 EU countries.
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By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writer

BEIJING (AP) — To help make China a self-reliant “technology superpower,” the ruling Communist Party is pushing the world’s biggest e-commerce company to take on the tricky, expensive business of designing its own processor chips — a business unlike anything Alibaba Group has done before.

Its 3-year-old chip unit, T-Head, unveiled its third processor in October, the Yitian 710 for Alibaba’s cloud computing business. Alibaba says for now, it has no plans to sell the chip to outsiders.

Other rookie chip developers including Tencent, a games and social media giant, and smartphone brand Xiaomi are pledging billions of dollars in line with official plans to create computing, clean energy and other technology that can build China’s wealth and global influence.

Processor chips play an increasingly critical role in products from smartphones and cars to medical devices and home appliances. Shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic are disrupting global manufacturing and adding to worries about supplies.
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By BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California official defending the state’s landmark law that mandates women be placed on corporate boards testified Thursday that it was essentially toothless and there are no plans to penalize companies for not complying.

Under the 2018 law, publicly held corporations based in California have to appoint up to three women to their boards of directors by January and could face hefty fines for not doing so or for failing to file the required paperwork.

But Betsy Bogart, a division chief testifying in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of her boss, the secretary of state, said the law is not enforced.

“It’s required but there’s no penalty, so it’s essentially voluntary,” Bogart said.
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By JUSTIN SPIKE, PAUL WISEMAN and VANESSA GERA Associated Press

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — From appliance stores in the United States to food markets in Hungary and gas stations in Poland, rising consumer prices fueled by high energy costs and supply chain disruptions are putting a pinch on households and businesses worldwide.

Rising inflation is leading to price increases for food, gas and other products and pushing many people to choose between digging deeper into their pockets or tightening their belts. In developing economies, it’s especially dire.

“We’ve noticed that we’re consuming less,” Gabor Pardi, a shopper at an open-air food market in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, said after buying a sack of fresh vegetables recently. “We try to shop for the cheapest and most economical things, even if they don’t look as good.”
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Level : Intermediate

By SYLVIE CORBET The Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Internet giants, including social media apps Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, joined several world leaders to issue a global call to better protect children online at a Paris summit on Thursday.

The call, initiated by France and the U.N. child protection agency UNICEF, acknowledges that “in the digital environment, children can come across harmful and violent content and manipulation of information. Just like adults, children have rights to privacy, which should be respected.”

The text also listed “threats amplified by technology” including cyber bullying, sexual abuse, prostitution, human trafficking, sexual and gender-based violence or violent online radicalization.

“We call upon all governments, online service providers and relevant organizations to stand up for children’s rights in the digital environment,” it said.
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By DAVID KOENIG AP Business Writer

Airbnb said Thursday that it earned $834 million on record revenue in the third quarter as more people got vaccinated and went back to traveling.

When companies closed offices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, that freed some employees to work remotely using video technology, and Airbnb said the result was a huge jump in rentals.

The San Francisco-based home-sharing company said in a letter to shareholders that it believes the trend of work flexibility will accelerate. Airbnb noted that major companies including Ford and Amazon have announced policies that will allow for more remote work, and it predicted others will do the same.
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