Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

[ad_1] London/Hong Kong CNN  —  Oil prices fell sharply Tuesday, returning to levels last seen before the Iran-Israel conflict, as investors cheered news of a ceasefire, albeit fragile, between the two countries. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading 4.4% lower on the day Tuesday mid-morning ET at $68.24 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude, the US oil benchmark, was also trading 4.7% down at $65.41 a barrel. These levels are broadly comparable to the closing prices before Israel launched an unprecedented attack on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 13. That assault triggered a 12-day conflict that has…

[ad_1] Investors should consider taking advantage of the recent pullback in shares of Mastercard and Visa , Wells Fargo said on Tuesday. The firm reiterated its overweight ratings on the two global payments technology names and kept its price target at $625 for Mastercard and $395 for Visa. Those targets each imply around 15% upside from Monday’s close. “We’re buyers of V/MA shares on the stablecoin weakness, as it is way overblown,” analyst Donald Fandetti wrote in a note to clients, adding that “there are many hurdles to this theoretical alternative to card payments.” Shares of Visa and Mastercard both…

[ad_1] Many couples go all-out for their wedding. But what exactly does it look like when the third-richest person in the world gets married in one of the most romantic cities in the world?We could soon find out as billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a newscaster turned helicopter pilot, are set to tie the knot in Venice this week.Business Insider asked luxury wedding planners, who were not involved in the Bezos and Sánchez nuptials, in Venice and elsewhere, to dish on what exactly goes into planning a high-profile wedding like this one.”Whoever you are, on your wedding…

[ad_1] As a senior software engineer at Google, Taalai Djumabaev, 37, was earning over $450,000 a year.He’d spent 15 years in tech — including over seven years at Deutsche Bank and over four years at Google — when he quit his job in September 2023.Now, he uses his career experience to run an educational platform for IT specialists that helps them improve their interview readiness and performance.Google was a grindDjumabaev had received several competing offers from Amazon, Reddit, GrubHub, and Coinbase before he accepted his Google role in 2019.Djumabaev chose the Google Ads domain and worked with Google Ad Manager,…

[ad_1] The clouds hanging over San Francisco since the pandemic appear to be finally lifting — leading to predictions of a real estate rebound.Following years of emptying office buildings and vacated storefronts, Fog City is buzzing again, thanks to return-to-office mandates at Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and more. This is good news for the city’s apartment buildings — and now some professional investors are taking notice.”San Francisco had become an unsavory city, but we believe we’re starting to see a real recovery and we think it’s a good time to buy,” said Tom Shapiro, the president and founder of GTIS, a…

[ad_1] As the Trump administration and Silicon Valley work hand-in-hand to integrate more tech into the military, Onebrief, which makes an AI-powered platform that helps military planners build and coordinate complex operational plans, is the latest startup to benefit from the defense tech boom.The Honolulu-based startup raised a $20 million Series C extension in June, led by Battery Ventures, bringing its total funding to over $120 million and pushing its valuation past $1 billion. That’s an over $400 million increase in valuation since January, when General Catalyst led a $50 million Series C round that valued Onebrief at $650 million.Onebrief’s…

[ad_1] When Jayant Tyagi, a Salesforce software engineer, wants quick answers from ChatGPT, he doesn’t bother opening the app or heading to his browser.Instead, he fires off a voice message to ChatGPT inside WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging service owned by Meta.”I’m already an avid WhatsApp user, so it makes sense to access ChatGPT right there instead of installing yet another app,” he told Business Insider. “It’s super quick.”Tyagi is far from alone. Lately, WhatsApp has quietly become the place where users around the world talk to and juggle multiple rival AI chatbots like those from OpenAI and Perplexity…

[ad_1] Chris deFaria, a former animation president at Warner Bros. and Comcast’s DreamWorks, is betting he can create the next Hollywood franchises with the help of AI — and just raised $11.6 million in venture capital to do it.His company, Chronicle Studios, is backed by Patron and Point72 Ventures, with participation from Z Ventures, Sands Capital, and others.DeFaria and his cofounder, Aaron Sisto, met a few years ago through mutual friends. Sisto is a partner at First Spark Ventures, a firm cofounded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The pair saw marketing and distribution as the best way to help creators…

[ad_1] Over the past 18 months, Evan Loveless has led seven rounds of layoffs, personally informing hundreds of his ad-agency colleagues that they were being let go.”It’s a chronic feeling of sadness because it’s so frequent for me,” said Loveless, a senior human-resources partner in St. Louis. “It’s like being stuck under a raincloud.”Loveless recalled a particularly soul-crushing layoff conversation with a worker who thought he was reaching out with news about a promotion.”Sometimes the person’s husband or wife also just lost their job,” he said. “You see their faces and then their faces haunt you a little bit.”Working in…

[ad_1] New York CNN  —  King’s Hawaiian, maker of sweet buns and rolls that come in distinct bright-orange packaging, is retooling its branding as part of its 75th anniversary. The company unveiled Tuesday a modernized logo and updated packaging for its products, which have grown in recent years to include snacks like pretzel bites and cinnamon rolls. King’s Hawaiian introduced the crown logo on its packaging in 2018, with a capital serif font. The new logo is softer and friendlier: The crown is now rounded, and the brand name is written in a hand-drawn font that is “cushier,” resembling its…