PARIS/MOSCOW, July 5 (Reuters) – France’s champagne industry group on Monday blasted a new Russian law forcing foreign champagne producers to add a “sparkling wine” reference to their bottles and called for champagne exports to Russia to be halted.
The law, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, requires all foreign producers of sparkling wine to describe their product as such on the label on the back of the bottle — though not on the front — while makers of Russian “shampanskoye” may continue to use that term alone.
The French champagne industry group called on its members to halt all shipments to Russia for the time being and said the name “champagne”, which refers to the region in France the drink comes from, had legal protection in 120 countries.
“The Champagne Committee deplores the fact that this legislation does not ensure that Russian consumers have clear and transparent information about the origins and characteristics of wine,” group co-presidents Maxime Toubart and Jean-Marie Barillere said in a statement.
French Trade Minister Franck Riester said he was tracking the new Russian law closely, in contact with the wine industry and France’s European partners.
“We will unfailingly support our producers and French excellence,” he said on Twitter.
Moet Hennessy, the LVMH-owned French maker of Veuve Clicquot and Dom Perignon champagnes, said on Sunday it would begin adding the designation “sparkling wine” to the back of bottles destined for Russia to comply with the law.
LVMH (LVMH.PA) shares were down around 0.2% on Monday afternoon, underperforming the Paris bourse, which was up 0.34%.
Shares in Russian sparkling wine maker Abrau-Durso (ABRD.MM) were up more than 3% after rising as much 7.77% in early trade.
Abrau-Durso president Pavel Titov told Radio France Internationale on Saturday his firm does not have sparkling wines that would be called “champagne” in its portfolio and said he hoped the issue would be resolved in favor of global norms and standards.
“It is very important to protect the Russian wines on our market. But the legislation must be reasonable and not contradict common sense … I have no doubts that the real champagne is made in the Champagne region of France,” he said.
Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Leigh Thomas in Paris and Alexander Marrow in Moscow;
Writing by Geert De Clercq
Editing by Alison Williams, Andrea Ricci and Catherine Evans
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday shared a dramatic Fourth of July video of himself toting an American flag while riding an electric surfboard across a lake — once again lighting the internet up as the social media crowd chimed in.
“Happy July 4th!” Zuckerberg, who’s worth an estimated $132 billion, wrote on the Instagram post of the video.
The Facebook founder appeared to be riding a $12,000 Efoil board, which allows users to glide above the water. Last year, Zuckerberg was pictured riding a similar board, caked in an obscene amount of sunscreen, off the coast of Hawaii.
In the video posted Sunday, the mega-billionaire deftly slices through the water on his board to the tune of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
“This is the worst thing that has ever existed,” one Twitter user commented on the video.
Mark Zuckerberg posted a video of himself on Instagram wakeboarding while holding an American flag and set to the music of the late John Denver singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
I saw it, so now you have to see it too. I’m sorry. I did not make the rules.
Happy #July4th pic.twitter.com/FiA9RDP29Z
— Leah McElrath 🏳️🌈 (@leahmcelrath) July 4, 2021
Fellow tech exec Aaron Levie, founder and CEO of enterprise cloud company Box, jousted, “Zuck really doing his part to make tech founders seem normal.”
But the video also drew comparisons to George Washington’s daring crossing of Delaware in 1776 to launch a surprise attack on unsuspecting British forces.
Meanwhile, a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation shared a photo of the video alongside a 2016 photo of Zuckerberg going for a jog in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
One user called Mark Zuckerberg’s Independence Day post “the worst thing that has ever existed.”Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images
“What a difference 5 years can make,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg’s 2016 jog through Beijing, despite hazardous levels of air pollution in the city at the time, was seen as a capitulation to the Chinese government in a bid to secure permission for Facebook to operate in the country.
In another comment on Zuckerberg’s Fourth of July video, one user said, “When you get your antitrust lawsuit thrown about by a judge. Let’s GOOOOO Zuck.”
That’s an apparent reference to last week’s decision by a federal judge to dismiss antitrust complaints filed by the US Federal Trade Commission and a parallel suit filed by a coalition of 48 states and districts against Facebook.
Facebook’s PR team spent years trying to craft Zuckerberg’s image, which is funny because the strategy now seems to be “let the dude let his freak flag fly” https://t.co/XwFKJuUeZS
— Ryan Mac🙃 (@RMac18) July 4, 2021
Some social media users also resurfaced a May article from The Information that said Facebook planned to repair its image by ramping up the founder’s own media profile.
Some pointed out the video may just be an effort to get a reaction from the internet and serve as easy publicity.
“Zuck tries to improve his public image by the only means possible. To out-do Fonzie jumping the shark,” wrote @frazer_haden.
BOSTON (AP) — In the past few weeks, ransomware criminals claimed as trophies at least three North American insurance brokerages that offer policies to help others survive the very network-paralyzing, data-pilfering extortion attacks they themselves apparently suffered.
Cybercriminals who hack into corporate and government networks to steal sensitive data for extortion routinely try to learn how much cyber insurance coverage the victims have. Knowing what victims can afford to pay can give them an edge in ransom negotiations. The cyber insurance industry, too, is a prime target for crooks seeking its customers’ identities and scope of coverage.
Before ransomware evolved into a full-scale global epidemic plaguing businesses, hospitals, schools and local governments, cyber insurance was a profitable niche industry. It was accused of fueling the criminal feeding frenzy by routinely recommending that victims pay up, but kept many from going bankrupt.
Now, the sector isn’t just in the criminals’ crosshairs. It’s teetering on the edge of profitability, upended by a more than 400% rise last year in ransomware cases and skyrocketing extortion demands. As a percentage of premiums collected, cyber insurance payouts now top 70%, the break-even point.
Read more on the Kaseya ransomware attack
Fabian Wosar, chief technical officer of Emsisoft, a cybersecurity firm specializing in ransomware, said the prevailing attitude among insurers is no longer: Pay the criminals. It’s likely to be cheaper for all involved.
“The ransomware groups got way too greedy too quickly. So the cost-benefit equation the insurers initially used to figure out whether or not they should pay a ransom — it’s just not there anymore,” he said.
It’s not clear how the single biggest ransomware attack on record, which began Friday, will impact insurers. But it can’t be good.
Pressure is building on the industry to stop reimbursing for ransoms.
In May, the major cyber insurer AXA decided to do so with all new policies in France. But it is so far apparently alone in the industry, and governments are not moving to outlaw reimbursement.
AXA is among major insurers that have suffered ransomware attacks, with operations in Thailand hard-hit. Chicago-based CNA Financial Corp., the seventh–ranked U.S. cybersecurity underwriter last year, saw its network crippled in March. Less than a week earlier, the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future published an interview with a member of the Russian-speaking ransomware gang, REvil, that is skilled in pre-attack intelligence-gathering and happens to be behind the current attack. He suggested it actively targets insurers for data on their clients.
CNA would not confirm a Bloomberg report that it paid a $40 million ransom, which would be the highest reported ransom on record. Nor would it say what or how much data was stolen. It said only that systems where most policyholder data was stored “were not impacted.”
In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, CNA also said that its losses might not be fully covered by its insurance and “future cybersecurity insurance coverage may be difficult to obtain or may only be available at significantly higher costs to us.”
Another major insurance player hit by ransomware was broker Gallagher. Although it was hit in September, only this past week (June 30) did it disclose that the attackers may have stolen highly detailed data from an unspecified number of customers — from passwords and Social Security numbers to credit card data and medical diagnoses. Company spokeswoman Kelli Murray would not say if any cyber insurance policy contracts were on compromised servers. Nor would she say whether Gallagher paid a ransom. The criminals, from the RagnarLocker gang, apparently never posted information about the attack on their dark web leak site, suggesting that Gallagher paid.
Of the three insurance brokers that ransomware gangs claimed to have attacked in recent weeks, posting stolen data on their dark web sites as evidence, two, in Montreal and Detroit, did not respond to phone calls and emails. The third, in southern California, acknowledged being hobbled for a week.
By the time the Colonial Pipeline and major meat processer JBS were hit by ransomware in May, insurers were already passing higher coverage costs to customers.
Cyber premiums jumped by 29% in January in the U.S. and Canada from the previous month, said Gregory Eskins, an analyst at top commercial insurance broker Marsh McLennan. In February, the month-to-month jump was 32%, in March it was 39%.
In a bid to turn back ransomware-related losses — Eskins said they amounted to about 40% of cyber insurance claims in North America last year — policy renewals are carrying new, stricter rules or lowered coverage limits.
“The price has to match the risk,” said Michael Phillips, chief claims officer at the San Francisco cyber insurance firm Resilience and a co-chair of the public-private Ransomware Task Force.
A policy might now specify that reimbursement for extortion payments can’t exceed one-third of overall coverage, which typically also encompasses recovery and lost income and can include payments to PR firms to mitigate reputational damage. Or an insurer may cut coverage in half, or introduce a deductible, said Brent Reith of the broker Aon.
While some smaller carriers have dropped coverage altogether, the big players are instead retooling.
Then there are hybrid insurers like Resilience and Boston-based Corvus. They don’t simply ask potential customers to fill out a questionnaire. They physically probe their cyber defenses and actively engage clients as cyber threats occur.
“We’re monitoring and making active recommendations not just once a year but throughout the year and dynamically,” said Corvus CEO Phil Edmundson.
But is the overall industry nimble enough to absorb the growing onslaught?
The Government Accountability Office warned in a May report that “the extent to which cyber insurance will continue to be generally available and affordable remains uncertain.” And the New York State Department of Finance said in a February circular that massive industry losses were possible.
Both insured and insurers, stingy about sharing experiences and data, shoulder the blame for that, the U.K. Royal United Services Institute said in a new report. Most ransomware attacks go unreported, and no central clearinghouse on them exists, though governments are beginning to pressure for mandatory industry reporting. As a business sector, insurers are not especially transparent. In the U.S. they are regulated not by the federal government but by the states.
And for now, cyber insurers are mostly resisting calls to halt reimbursements for ransoms paid.
In a May earnings call, the CEO of U.K.-based Beazley, Adrian Cox, said “generally speaking network security is not good enough at the moment.” He said it is up to government to decide whether payments are bad public policy. CEO Evan Greenberg of the leading U.S. cyber insurer, Chubb Limited, agreed in the company’s annual report in February that deciding on a ban is government’s purview. But he did endorse outlawing payments.
Jan Lemnitzer, a Copenhagen Business School lecturer, thinks cyber insurance should be compulsory for businesses large and small, just as everyone who drives must have car insurance and seat belts. The Royal United Services Institute study recommends it for all government suppliers and vendors.
While he considers banning ransom payments problematic, Lemnitzer says it would be a “no-brainer” to compel insurers to stop reimbursing for them.
Some have suggested imposing fines on ransom payments as a disincentive. Or the government could retain a percentage of any cryptocurrency recovered from ransomware criminals, the proceeds going to a federal ransomware defense fund.
Such measures could bite into criminal revenues, said attorney Stewart Baker of Steptoe and Johnson, a former NSA general counsel.
“In the long run, it probably means that resources that are currently going to Russia to pay for Ferraris in Moscow will instead go to improve cybersecurity in the United States.”
For the past 15 months, Wall Street and investors have enjoyed a historic bounce-back rally. The benchmark S&P 500 has gained more than 90% since hitting its bear-market bottom on March 23, 2020.
While a number of high-quality and innovative businesses have led this rally, it’s also allowed quite a few terrible companies to thrive. It’s my suggestion that the following five ultra-popular stocks be avoided like the plague in July.
Image source: Getty Images.
Coinbase Global
First up is cryptocurrency exchange and ecosystem Coinbase Global(NASDAQ:COIN). Coinbase is popular given how quickly its revenue and profits surged in the first quarter as investors piled into the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The problem is there are a trio of catalysts working against the Coinbase brokerage model.
To start with, there’s nothing that prevents competing exchanges from undercutting Coinbase Global’s fees. It might have the verified user advantage at the moment, but don’t underestimate the willingness of crypto investors to jump ship to save on transaction fees. We witnessed it among traditional brokerages, and the industry eventually wound up going commission-free.
Second, crypto has a history of boom-and-bust cycles. Bitcoin has had three separate instances over the last decade where it’s shed at least 80% of its value. This is an entirely momentum-based investment, and when upside momentum dries up, so does Coinbase’s trading revenue. Following a 2017 peak, Coinbase saw its revenue nearly halve in subsequent years.
And third, the past four weeks, through June 28, saw outflows from crypto of $257.3 million, according to CoinShares Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly. This is more evidence that interest in crypto is already dwindling with these assets well off their highs. Suffice it to say, Coinbase is not a stock you’re going to want to own moving forward.
Image source: Getty Images.
Cassava Sciences
Another ultra-popular company with a terrible risk-versus-reward ratio is clinical-stage biotech stock Cassava Sciences(NASDAQ:SAVA).
Cassava rightly made waves in February when it announced positive clinical data from an interim analysis of simufilam as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The open-label trial showed improvement in cognition and behavior at the six-month mark, and more recently allowed Cassava to outline its plans for a phase 3 trial involving its lead drug candidate.
I’d love for simufilam to be successful, but history has shown that Alzheimer’s is one of the toughest-to-treat diseases. With the exception of Biogen‘s Aduhelm, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but has been criticized heavily for its lack of clear benefit, every Alzheimer’s drug has failed in late-stage studies for more than a decade. All investors have to go on is early stage, open-label data from a trial that aimed to enroll 100 patients. It’s not been uncommon to see positive early or-mid-stage results get pulverized come a large phase 3 Alzheimer’s trial.
Although Cassava raised a good amount of cash to continue its research, history suggests that simufilam’s chance of success is very slim. That makes Cassava Sciences easily avoidable.
Image source: Getty Images.
GameStop
If you’ve been following the retail trade movement (i.e. Reddit stocks), whereby retail investors are seeking out heavily short-sold companies and attempting to effect a short squeeze, you probably know video game and accessories retailer GameStop(NYSE:GME).
On one hand, GameStop has been able to capitalize on its recent fame by selling stock to raise capital for its ongoing transformation to a digital gaming company. It’s a much-needed move after e-commerce sales jumped 191% in fiscal 2020 and more than quadrupled during the holiday season, from the prior-year period.
However, these capital raises don’t overlook the fact that the previous management team failed the company. For two decades, a brick-and-mortar gaming model worked well. However, sticking to this brick-and-mortar model when gaming was going digital left the company in a precarious position. Today, GameStop continues to lose money, even with rapid e-commerce growth, and saw its same-store sales decline by almost 10% last year. Digital sales may be growing, but total revenue is going nowhere as GameStop shutters its physical locations to lower costs.
GameStop is in no way a bankruptcy candidate, and I can actually see a path to profitability years down the road. But with that being said, the gains it’s seen make no sense given the long transformation and operating losses that lie ahead.
Image source: Getty Images.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals
Biotech stocks can offer ample opportunity, or in Inovio Pharmaceuticals‘ (NASDAQ:INO) case, suck the lifeblood out of long-term investors.
Inovio would appear to be an intriguing company based solely on paper. It has a pipeline that currently includes over a dozen clinical candidates to treat cancer, infectious diseases, and human papilloma virus. The most-promising looks to be INO-4800, the company’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine candidate that’s readying for phase 3 studies. But if you do any digging into Inovio’s clinical performance, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
For example, INO-4800 had been placed on partial clinical hold in the U.S. while regulators requested additional data on Inovio’s vaccine and its delivery system, Cellectra. More recently, INO-4800 had its late-stage funding pulled by the U.S. government, which is why it’s now seeking an international study for its COVID-19 candidate.
If you think I’m unfairly picking on Inovio for its COVID-19 struggles, pan out even further. In four decades, Inovio hasn’t managed to get a drug approved by the FDA. This isn’t me wishing bad things on Inovio — this is the reality that hope and results haven’t aligned with this company for a long time. Until Inovio proves itself in a late-stage clinical trial, it’s worth avoiding.
Image source: Getty Images.
AMC Entertainment
Finally, I can’t forget ongoing pump-and-dump scheme AMC Entertainment(NYSE:AMC). While retail investors were able to claim victory by effecting a short squeeze in January after AMC saved itself by issuing a bunch of shares and high-interest debt, the most recent run-up has nothing to do with a short squeeze. Rather, it’s based predominantly on hype, the purposeful obfuscation of concrete fundamental data on message boards, and broad-based, blatant misinformation.
AMC’s retail investors would like you to believe that fundamentals don’t matter — but try driving a car without an engine and see how far you get. AMC is dealing with a 19-year decline in industry ticket sales and is seeing some of its film exclusivity evaporate as movie studios lean on streaming. There will be a place for movie theaters, but AMC’s addressable market keeps shrinking with each passing year.
AMC’s retail investors would also have you believe the company is in great shape after raising $2 billion in capital. While it has put bankruptcy rumors in the near-term on the backburner, the 2027 bond price is nowhere near par. Why, you ask? Because bondholders aren’t convinced that AMC is going to escape bankruptcy.
I’ve seen enough pump-and-dump campaigns in my life to recognize them, and AMC checks all the boxes. My suggestion isn’t to short AMC. My suggestion is to avoid it completely. All pump-and-dump schemes eventually collapse, and AMC will be no exception.
This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the “official” recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. We’re motley! Questioning an investing thesis — even one of our own — helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.
SINGAPORE, July 5 (Reuters) – Senior foreign executives of major telecommunications firms in Myanmar have been told by the junta that they must not leave the country without permission, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.
A confidential order from Myanmar’s Posts and Telecommunications Department (PTD) in mid-June said senior executives, both foreigners and Myanmar nationals, must seek special authorisation to leave the country, the person said.
A week later, telecom companies were sent a second letter telling them they had until Monday July 5 to fully implement intercept technology they had previously been asked to install to let authorities spy on calls, messages and web traffic and to track users by themselves, the source said. Reuters has not seen the orders.
The directives follow pressure on the companies from the junta, which is facing daily protests from its opponents and a growing number of insurgencies to activate the spyware technology. read more
A spokesman for the military did not answer multiple requests for comment. The junta has never commented on the electronic surveillance effort, but announced soon after seizing power its aim to pass a cybersecurity bill that would require telecoms providers to provide data when requested and remove or block any content deemed to be disrupting “unity, stabilisation, and peace”. It also amended privacy laws to free security forces to intercept communications.
The travel ban comes after intensified pressure from military officials to finish the implementation of the surveillance equipment. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the ban was meant to pressure telecoms firms to finish activating the spyware technology, although the order itself does not specify a reason.
Soldiers stand next to military vehicles as people gather to protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar, February 15, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
Three other telecoms sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the authorities had stepped up pressure on the companies to implement the intercept, but declined to elaborate further. Two sources said companies had been warned repeatedly by junta officials not to speak publicly or to the media on the intercept.
Telenor declined to comment. There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Ooredoo, state-owned MPT and Mytel, a joint venture between Vietnam’s Viettel and a Myanmar military-owned conglomerate.
Months before the Feb. 1 coup, telecom and internet service providers were ordered to install intercept spyware to allow the army to eavesdrop on the communications of citizens, Reuters reported in May. read more
Reuters was not able to establish how broadly the surveillance technology has been installed and deployed, but four sources said Norway’s Telenor ASA (TEL.OL) and Qatar’s Ooredoo QPSC (ORDS.QA) had yet to comply in full.
Among the military’s first actions on Feb. 1 was to cut internet access and it has still not been fully re-established, with telecoms given regular lists of websites and activist phone numbers to block.
The moves have left the future unclear for Myanmar’s telecom sector, which had been one of the fastest-growing globally. Telenor said on Friday it is evaluating the future of its operations in the country, with a source telling Reuters it is eying a sale of its Myanmar unit. read more
Reporting by Fanny Potkin in Singapore; Additional reporting by Poppy McPherson in Bangkok; Editing by Matthew Tostevin, William Mallard and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
“This is not a car, this is different” is how Lynk & Co, a company spawned by Volvo and Geely, is positioning the launch of its 01 plug-in hybrid, a compact SUV built from the ground up to share. The more you share its digital key the less you pay each month, possibly even turning a profit.
It’s a bold experiment that I was able to preview in a test vehicle in Amsterdam, where Lynk & Co is staging its first salvo against a century of car ownership mentality.
Lynk & Co first announced its ambitious approach to car sharing five years ago in its home city of Gothenburg, Sweden, emboldened by studies that say cars sit unused 96 percent of the time. That’s valuable real estate that could otherwise be returned to people. So it’s with some anticipation that I set out for my week with a production 01 PHEV running pre-production sharing software.
A VW Up from Geenwheels next to the Lynk & Co 01 PHEV in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam was chosen as Lynk & Co’s launch city for a variety of reasons, chief among them is its multi-modal inhabitants’ intimacy with car-sharing services. My Dutch family, for example, has never owned a car, nor do most of my friends. Instead we use fleet sharing services like Greenwheels, Mywheels, or Share Now. Otherwise we use a personal car-sharing service like Snappcar when looking for something more interesting to drive. As much as we love our electric bicycles, a car is often needed when an e-scooter, taxi, bus, or train just won’t do.
After a week of testing I’ve come away increasingly optimistic about Lynk & Co’s chances, not only to achieve its revenue goals but also its broader societal goal of making people realize that traditional ideas of car ownership, especially in densely populated cities, are woefully outdated. My optimism is fueled by three things: the company’s early success in attracting members, driving the 01 for a few hundred kilometers, and testing an early beta version of the sharing service.
Memberships are off to an aggressive start.
A PROMISING START
You can buy a Lynk & Co 01 outright for €39,000, but most people are opting for memberships that cost €500 each month. That’s about what you’d pay each month on a four-year lease for a comparable Volvo XC40 which is built upon the same platform as the 01. Only with Lynk & Co you can cancel the agreement at any time. Better yet, you can divide the monthly fee with family and friends, or reduce it further by lending the car out to a general pool of neighbors and tourists at an hourly or daily rate, all of which Lynk & Co will facilitate (more on that later).
Membership includes 1,250km (777 miles) of driving per month with each extra kilometer costing €0.15, with unused kilometers carrying over to the next month. The €500/month fee covers insurance, warranty repairs, roadside assistance, and maintenance by Volvo’s dealer network. And because the 01 uses a digital key, Volvo can pick up your car, service it, and return it while you go about your activities. (You get a loaner vehicle if service needs more than a day.) The monthly fee doesn’t cover repairs out of warranty, fuel costs, charging fees, or any costs associated with parking.
Lynk & Co’s manager of press relations, Cecilia Hedlund, tells me that only about 10 percent of paying customers actually buy the car, with the rest signing up for the €500 monthly memberships. So far they’ve attracted almost double the number of paying month-to-month members as expected for all of 2021, and we’re only six months into the year. Of the 9,000 memberships expected, Hedlund says it already has 16,000 members signed up to pay monthly subscriptions for a car, with most residing in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Belgium. That number is important because Lynk & Co’s financial success stems from selling memberships, not from the small transaction fees it gets from facilitating each car share. The company is now busy ramping up deliveries with about 300 cars delivered so far.
Lynk & Co has sold a non-shareable 01 model in China since 2017. The 01 I’ve been testing has been thoroughly updated for Europe, both inside and out, with sharing made possible through the implementation of Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud.
The company has almost double the number of paying members expected.
THE CAR
I’m not a car guy, but I am a car sharing guy, having used a multitude of sharing services since at least 2014. The 01 is far nicer than any of the fleet cars available to share in Amsterdam, though I do wish it was fully electric. (An EV is coming, but not any time soon, I’m told.) The cars from fleet sharing services tend to be exceedingly boring base models like the VW Up! or Citroën C1 that come slathered in external advertising. Every 01 ships without ads and comes fully equipped to restore some dignity to using a shared vehicle. All 01s are the same — the only option for members is the choice of blue or black.
Because it’s Volvo, the 01 comes standard with most modern safety features like adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and forward collision warnings, automatic LED lights and rain sensors, driver alertness control, blind spot detection, a camera for backing up, security alarm, and more. Thankfully, sensors on the front, rear, and sides of the compact SUV enable a semi-autonomous parking feature which is very useful for the tiny parking spots available in dense European cities.
It’s also loaded with conveniences like a powered driver seat with memory presets, large panoramic sunroof, powered tailgate, heated seats, automatic AC with zone control, a punchy ten speaker Infinity sound system, and a built-in hands-free voice assistant named Frank (at least on my car).
The 01 is fitted with two large displays. There’s a 12.7 inch touchscreen display on the center console with support for both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. But the built-in turn-by-turn navigation provided by Here Technologies on the 12.3 inch instrument cluster in front of the driver proved superior to both Google and Apple Maps for navigating Dutch roads.
To keep your devices charged there’s a wireless charging pad between the driver and front-passenger seats. Otherwise, your devices can be juiced from any of four USB jacks (two front, two rear), or two 12V outlets (front and in the rear cargo area). You can also save on your phone’s data plan when connected to the car’s Wi-Fi hotspot thanks to Lynk & Co’s built-in 4G data. It’s limited to 5GB a month but that can be extended with a call to Lynk & Co’s engagement center under a fair-use policy (borrowers can not use the car’s hotspot). Hell, there’s even an integrated dashcam with 64GB of storage and a second in-car selfie camera for god knows what reason.
The interior surfaces look and feel good to the touch, including the eco-friendly textile coverings on the seats made from recycled fishing nets. The Econyl fabric easily withstood my dog’s claws and resisted the grime we tracked in while kitesurfing the muddy shores of Dutch waterways. The seats remained comfortable on chilly mornings and hot afternoons, even against bare thighs.
And because it’s built to share, the 01 has a number of useful remote monitoring features. For example, I could see the status of the climate control system, if the windows were up, or if a door was left open or unlocked from the comfort of my home. I could even lock or unlock the doors. The Lynk & Co app also informed me of the fuel remaining and charge on the battery, any service warnings, and current location of the vehicle.
It really was a joy to drive around in something so modern and high-spec after years of drudgery spent inside entry-level automobiles. The 261hp provided by the 01 was thrilling compared to the 60hp we’re used to from fleet sharing vehicles. And the 70km range on battery was enough to reach the beach and back, and for my wife to drive to work where she could easily charge the car from a standard power outlet before her journey home.
A preview of the Lynk & Co app shown here in beta.
SHARING
Lynk & Co’s sharing model allows paying members to lend their cars to free members who sign up just to borrow. Signing up isn’t exactly frictionless though, as you have to upload a valid driver’s license and photo, enter payment details, and pass both credit and identity checks. Standard stuff for car-sharing services and traditional rental car companies alike.
To be successful, car-sharing companies must maintain a magic ratio of vehicles-to-borrowers. Too many vehicles and expenses will outpace revenue. Not enough vehicles and frustrated borrowers will jump to a competitor. In my neighborhood alone, I have four Greenwheels sitting in dedicated city-allocated parking spots within a two-block radius, for example.
It’s hard to imagine Lynk & Co achieving that kind of density anytime soon. In fact, Lynk & Co’s head of car sharing, Adam Broadbent, tells me that the company won’t meet its target ratio of ten borrowers (free members) to every vehicle at launch of the sharing service in Q3. Nevertheless, it knows that most paying members are keen to become lenders in order to bring down their monthly payments and maximize vehicle use.
To compensate for this lack of borrower-to-lender density, later this year, but soon after launch, the company will add a friends and family lending option. Paying members will be able to share digital keys with a small group of trusted people who agree to share the monthly fee. One person, however, will still be on the hook to sign up and pay for the €500/month membership, I’m told. How Lynk & Co will facilitate this to ensure everyone is paying their fair share for usage is still unclear. The beta software I tested didn’t include a friends and family sharing option.
Lynk & Co let me preview a beta version of the Lynk & Co app launching in Q3. Sharing is straightforward, allowing lenders (paying members with cars) to set the time, location, price, and conditions of borrowing. Once shared, the car appears on a map showing its availability to free members. Members with cars can also initiate sharing from the car’s display, though I wasn’t able to test that.
Borrowing a car is as simple as agreeing to the terms set by the lender. Once agreed, a digital key is sent to the borrower which can be used to unlock the car via the Lynk & Co app (using Bluetooth). Lenders and borrowers have star ratings, and cars can be filtered by time and location, and any additional equipment like roof rack, tow hook, or child seat. Importantly, kilometers used by borrowers do not apply to the monthly cap of the lender.
The digital key exchange means the borrower and lender never have to meet in person. But Lynk & Co offers lenders some additional protection from creeps by withholding the exact location of the car until 30 minutes before the booking starts, giving the lender time to park the car within the advertised start / end locations, and as far away from their home or business as desired.
I was able to test a lender / borrower scenario using two developer phones (one setup as the lender, the other the borrower) provided by Lynk & Co. In my live test, the borrower phone connected to the lender’s car when I was about five feet (1.5 meters) from it, prompting me to submit a condition report, including five photos taken from around the car at various angles. Only after uploading the photos did the digital key become active on the borrower phone, allowing me to unlock the car. Once inside, the borrower can log into their profile on the center console to download all their preferences. Both the phone and in-car console apps will guide the borrower through the sharing experience, with a countdown timer and reminder to drop-off the lender’s car at the agreed upon time, fuel level, and destination area. I wasn’t able to test these borrower features, however.
When the lending period is over, the borrower must again upload five photos to confirm the external condition. Only then can the borrower complete the booking, notifying the lender that the car has been returned. (A booking can be extended by up to two additional hours with approval from the lender.) Lynk & Co checks the fuel level at the start and end of the booking and uses the delta to either add or take money off the final price. The car must also be at least as clean as the borrower found it, otherwise penalties could be incurred. Lynk & Co says it adds a €100 buffer to every reservation to cover costs of booking extensions, late returns, and fuel costs, and will provide lenders with all information needed to challenge any traffic tickets incurred by a borrower.
Lynk & Co’s Broadbent anticipates sharing prices to be around €5 to €10 per hour, and €50 to €100 to borrow it for a day. For comparison, owners of nearby Volvo SUVs on the Snappcar sharing service list their cars for between €65 and €110 per day. If you only need your Lynk & Co 01 during the week, for example, you can see how quickly sharing can offset that €500/mth membership fee. Broadbent says that a recommended pricing feature is coming to help members with cars maximize profits when sharing.
Right now there’s no ability for a lender to schedule a car’s availability only on weekends or a set number of days during the week in the beta app I tested, but that’s coming, says Broadbent. I work from home so I could easily share the car Monday through Friday and block it out for my personal use on weekends. In such a scenario, I could even turn a profit once enough borrowers were vying for my car.
Airport sharing is another feature that’s coming. Members with cars can drive to the airport and travelers flying in would get precise directions along with a digital key to use the car while you’re out of town. At the moment, Lynk & Co only accepts category B drivers licenses from a list of 30 European countries.
Sometimes a car is the only mode of transportation that will work.Photo by Nguyen Tran
For what it’s worth, I asked around my own social circle to see who’d be interested in sharing an 01. Two out of four of my friends already using sharing services responded positively with what I’d describe as keen interest, while the other two said it sounded promising but wanted more information. For example, how will friends and family sharing be facilitated, and how will monthly bills be calculated so that fuel / energy costs and usage are all factored in fairly? Understandably, the person who orders a Jack and Coke at the bar doesn’t want to subsidize someone else’s Pappy Van Winkle.
When I look at my own car-sharing bill for the last year, I see months where I’ve paid over €400 and others that cost me less than €50 (including the gas). It averages out to about €200/mth over the long term. While I’m willing to pay more for a more luxurious car that’s better suited to my active family of five (plus dog), and one that’s shared with a limited trusted group that won’t leave McDonalds bags in the footwells, I also think I’d want to share with at least two other parties to keep costs down.
“Owning” a Lynk & Co 01 really does have the potential to be different. The fact that I’m actively considering paying €500 a month to become a member says a lot about my experience with the car ahead of its official Q3 sharing launch.
All photos by Thomas Ricker / The Verge unless otherwise credited
A man types on a computer keyboard in Warsaw in this February 28, 2013 illustration file picture. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo
WASHINGTON, July 5 (Reuters) – Hackers suspected to be behind a mass extortion attack that affected hundreds of companies worldwide late on Sunday demanded $70 million to restore the data they are holding ransom, according to a posting on a dark web site.
The demand was posted on a blog typically used by the REvil cybercrime gang, a Russia-linked group that is counted among the cybercriminal world’s most prolific extortionists.
The gang has an affiliate structure, occasionally making it difficult to determine who speaks on the hackers’ behalf, but Allan Liska of cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said the message “almost certainly” came from REvil’s core leadership.
The group has not responded to an attempt by Reuters to reach it for comment.
REvil’s ransomware attack, which the group executed on Friday, was among the most dramatic in a series of increasingly attention-grabbing hacks.
The gang broke into Kaseya, a Miami-based information technology firm, and used their access to breach some of its clients’ clients, setting off a chain reaction that quickly paralyzed the computers of hundreds of firms worldwide.
An executive at Kaseya said the company was aware of the ransom demand but did not immediately return further messages seeking comment.
About a dozen different countries were affected, according to research published by cybersecurity firm ESET.
In at least one case, the disruption spilled out into the public domain when Swedish Coop grocery store chain had to close hundreds of stores on Saturday because its cash registers had been knocked offline as a consequence of the attack. read more .
Earlier on Sunday, the White House said it was reaching out to victims of the outbreak “to provide assistance based upon an assessment of national risk.” read more
The impact of the intrusion is still coming into focus.
Those hit included schools, small public-sector bodies, travel and leisure organizations, credit unions and accountants, said Ross McKerchar, chief information security officer at Sophos Group Plc (SOPH.L).
McKerchar’s company was one of several that had blamed REvil for the attack, but Sunday’s statement was the group’s first public acknowledgement that it was behind the campaign.
Ransom-seeking hackers have tended to favor more focused shakedowns against single, high-value targets like Brazilian meatpacker JBS (JBSS3.SA), whose production was disrupted last month when REvil attacked its systems. JBS said it ended up paying the hackers $11 million.
Liska said he believed the hackers had bitten off more than they could chew by scrambling the data of hundreds of companies at a time and that the $70 million demand was an effort to make the best of an awkward situation.
“For all of their big talk on their blog, I think this got way out of hand,” he said.
Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Kim Coghill, Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Amidst the massive supply-chain ransomware attack that triggered an infection chain compromising thousands of businesses on Friday, new details have emerged about how the notorious Russia-linked REvil cybercrime gang may have pulled off the unprecedented hack.
The Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) on Sunday revealed it had alerted Kaseya to a number of zero-day vulnerabilities in its VSA software (CVE-2021-30116) that it said were being exploited as a conduit to deploy ransomware. The non-profit entity said the company was in the process of resolving the issues as part of a coordinated vulnerability disclosure when the July 2 attacks took place.
More specifics about the flaws were not shared, but DIVD chair Victor Gevers hinted that the zero-days are trivial to exploit. At least 1,000 businesses are said to have been affected by the attacks, with victims identified in at least 17 countries, including the U.K., South Africa, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Kenya, according to ESET.
Kaseya VSA is a cloud-based IT management and remote monitoring solution for managed service providers (MSPs), offering a centralized console to monitor and manage endpoints, automate IT processes, deploy security patches, and control access via two-factor authentication.
REvil Demands $70 Million Ransom
Active since April 2019, REvil (aka Sodinokibi) is best known for extorting $11 million from the meat-processor JBS early last month, with the ransomware-as-a-service business accounting for about 4.6% of attacks on the public and private sectors in the first quarter of 2021.
The group is now asking for a $70 million ransom payment to publish a universal decryptor that can unlock all systems that have been crippled by file-encrypting ransomware.
“On Friday (02.07.2021) we launched an attack on MSP providers. More than a million systems were infected. If anyone wants to negotiate about universal decryptor – our price is 70,000,000$ in BTC and we will publish publicly decryptor that decrypts files of all victims, so everyone will be able to recover from attack in less than an hour,” the REvil group posted on their dark web data leak site.
Kaseya, which has enlisted the help of FireEye to help with its investigation into the incident, said it intends to “bring our SaaS data centers back online on a one-by-one basis starting with our E.U., U.K., and Asia-Pacific data centers followed by our North American data centers.”
On-premises VSA servers will require the installation of a patch prior to a restart, the company noted, adding it’s in the process of readying the fix for release on July 5.
CISA Issues Advisory
The development has prompted the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue an advisory, urging customers to download the Compromise Detection Tool that Kaseya has made available to identify any indicators of compromise (IoC), enable multi-factor authentication, limit communication with remote monitoring and management (RMM) capabilities to known IP address pairs, and Place administrative interfaces of RMM behind a virtual private network (VPN) or a firewall on a dedicated administrative network.
“Less than ten organizations [across our customer base] appear to have been affected, and the impact appears to have been restricted to systems running the Kaseya software,” said Barry Hensley, Chief Threat Intelligence Officer at Secureworks, told The Hacker News via email.
“We have not seen evidence of the threat actors attempting to move laterally or propagate the ransomware through compromised networks. That means that organizations with wide Kaseya VSA deployments are likely to be significantly more affected than those that only run it on one or two servers.”
By compromising a software supplier to target MSPs, who, in turn, provide infrastructure or device-centric maintenance and support to other small and medium businesses, the development once again underscores the importance of securing the software supply chain, while also highlighting how hostile agents continue to advance their financial motives by combining the twin threats of supply chain attacks and ransomware to strike hundreds of victims at once.
“MSPs are high-value targets — they have large attack surfaces, making them juicy targets to cybercriminals,” said Kevin Reed, the chief information security officer at Acronis. “One MSP can manage IT for dozens to a hundred companies: instead of compromising 100 different companies, the criminals only need to hack one MSP to get access to them all.”
Oil well pump jacks operated by Chevron Corp. in San Ardo, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 27, 2021.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Investors have high expectations for the global oil recovery because of the economic pick up in the U.S. — but those expectations could be “too optimistic,” according to energy analyst Vandana Hari.
“The U.S. rebound and the U.S. leaving behind all Covid restrictions almost … dramatically, starting in April and May, has taken the markets by surprise,” said Hari, founder and chief executive officer of Vanda Insights.
“But that has also set expectations on a slightly different, more optimistic path,” she told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Friday.
Multiple states in the U.S. have lifted Covid restrictions and a sense of normalcy has somewhat returned in the country.
“The U.S. macroeconomic indicators, the mobility indicators — are all going gangbusters,” she said.
A relatively high vaccination rate has been an important part of the U.S. reopening. As of July 3, more than half the population — or 54.45% — has received at least one vaccine doses, according to Our World in Data.
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Hari said the oil market appears to be using the U.S. as a model for what is going to unfold in the rest of the world.
“It may be too optimistic, but that’s what the market is factoring in,” she said.
Richer countries are leading the way when it comes to vaccinations and reopening, but Covid cases are still raging in many poorer nations that are unlikely to be able to follow the path of the U.S.
Oil price predictions
While she’s “constructive” about where oil prices may be headed, Hari said she was less of a “raging bull” than those calling for $80 in 2021 or even $100 oil in 2022.
Brent prices could stay close to where they are now — in the $70 to $75 range — at least for the summer months, she said.
Brent crude futures traded at $76.09 a barrel on Monday in Asia, lower by 0.11%. U.S. crude futures were also lower by about 0.12% at $75.07 ahead of another meeting of OPEC and its allies, referred to collectively as OPEC+. The group failed to reach an oil output agreement on Thursday and Friday but will reconvene again on Monday to try to hammer out a deal on its production policy.
International benchmark Brent is up more than 45% since the beginning of the year, while the Nymex is 55% higher year-to-date.
Still, Hari acknowledged downside risks to oil prices.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty still in the air with regard to the virus, the variants and how … countries manage,” she said.
Most of the world still won’t be close to mass immunity in the second half of 2021, she added.
IFM, QSuper, Global Infrastructure Partners behind offer
Cash offer at 42% premium to last closing price on Friday
Offer contingent on UniSuper reinvesting 15% equity stake
SYDNEY, July 5 (Reuters) – A group of infrastructure investors has proposed a $22.26 billion ($16.7 billion) buyout of Sydney Airport Holdings Pty Ltd (SYD.AX), the operator of Australia’s biggest airport, taking a longer-term view on the pandemic-battered travel sector.
Record-low interest rates have led pension funds and their investment managers to chase higher yields. The purchase, with an enterprise value of A$30 billion including debt, would allow them to reap financial benefits when borders reopen and travel demand rebounds.
If successful, the deal would be Australia’s biggest this year, eclipsing the $8.1 billion spin-off of Endeavour Group Ltd (EDV.AX) and Star Entertainment Group Ltd’s (SGR.AX) $7.3 billion bid for Crown Resorts Ltd (CWN.AX).
The Sydney Aviation Alliance – a consortium comprising IFM Investors, QSuper and Global Infrastructure Partners – has offered A$8.25 per Sydney Airport share, a 42% premium to the stock’s Friday close.
The news sent the stock up as much as 38% to A$8.04 in early Monday trade, though it later retreated to around A$7.55, indicating market uncertainty as to whether the deal will succeed.
Sydney Airport noted the offer was below its pre-pandemic share price and said it would review the proposal, which is contingent on granting due diligence and recommending it to shareholders in the absence of a superior offer.
The airport operator’s share price hit a record A$8.86 in January last year, before the novel coronavirus pandemic led to a collapse in travel demand.
The company is Australia’s only listed airport operator. A successful deal would bring its ownership in line with the country’s other major airports which are owned by consortia of infrastructure investors, primarily pension funds.
Australia’s mandatory retirement savings system, known as superannuation, has assets of A$3.1 trillion, according to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.
With record-low interest rates, funds are looking at infrastructure investments for higher yields.
“It’s the right timing to be looking at these assets which have got a 75-year life when conditions are arguably at the bottom,” said a Sydney Airport investor who declined to be named because the person’s firm was still assessing the proposal. “It’s opportunistic in that regard, but understandable.”
Australia’s international borders are widely expected to remain closed until at least the end of the year due partly to a slower vaccination programme than in most developed countries. read more
Domestic travel has also been disrupted by a two-week lockdown in Sydney during the normally busy school holiday period, after an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. Other states have closed borders to Sydney residents.
In May, Sydney Airport’s international traffic was down more than 93% versus the same month of 2019, while domestic traffic was down 39.2%. read more
The airport has long held a monopoly on traffic to and from Australia’s most populous city, but that is due to end in 2026 with the opening of Western Sydney Airport.
Sydney Aviation Alliance said it did not anticipate making substantive changes to the airport’s management, services, operations or target credit ratings.
The consortium said its members invest directly or indirectly on behalf of more than 6 million Australians and collectively have more than A$177 billion of infrastructure funds under management globally, including stakes in 20 airports.
IFM holds stakes in major airports in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. QSuper owns a stake in Britain’s Heathrow Airport whereas Global Infrastructure is invested in that country’s Gatwick and London City airports.
Their offer is contingent on UniSuper, Sydney Airport’s largest shareholder with a 15% stake, agreeing to reinvest its equity interest for an equivalent equity holding in the consortium’s vehicle.
UniSuper, which also holds stakes in Adelaide and Brisbane airports, said it was not a consortium partner nor privy to any details outside information disclosed publicly.
“UniSuper does however, in-principle, see merit in Sydney Airport being converted from a publicly listed company to an unlisted company. UniSuper also has a favourable view of the consortium partners,” the fund said.
($1 = 1.3294 Australian dollars)
Reporting by Jamie Freed in Sydney and Scott Murdoch in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney and Nikhil Kurian Nainan and Soumyajit Saha in Bengaluru; Editing Stephen Coates and Christopher Cushing
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
