- US and Australia deepen military ties to counter China ABC News
- Australia to Fast-Track Missile Production for U.S. Exports The New York Times
- Australia “confident” of nuclear submarine deal despite US lawmakers’ concerns CNA
- Secretary Antony J. Blinken Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles, And Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong At a Joint Press Availability – United States Department of State Department of State
- US bolsters defence alliance with Australia despite Republican opposition Financial Times
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US and Australia deepen military ties to counter China – ABC News
- US and Australia deepen military ties to counter China ABC News
- Australia to Fast-Track Missile Production for U.S. Exports The New York Times
- Australia “confident” of nuclear submarine deal despite US lawmakers’ concerns CNA
- Secretary Antony J. Blinken Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles, And Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong At a Joint Press Availability – United States Department of State Department of State
- Australian, U.S. Leaders Say Alliance Is More Relevant Than Ever Department of Defense
Microsoft to Deepen OpenAI Partnership, Invest Billions in ChatGPT Creator
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT 0.98%
said Monday it is making a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, substantially bolstering its relationship with the startup behind the viral ChatGPT chatbot as the software giant looks to expand the use of artificial intelligence in its products.
Microsoft said the latest partnership builds upon the company’s 2019 and 2021 investments in OpenAI.
The companies didn’t disclose the financial terms of the partnership. Microsoft had been discussing investing as much as $10 billion in OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter. A representative for Microsoft declined to comment on the final number.
OpenAI was in talks this month to sell existing shares in a tender offer that would value the company at roughly $29 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, making it one of the most valuable U.S. startups on paper despite generating little revenue.
The investment shows the tremendous resources Microsoft is devoting toward incorporating artificial-intelligence software into its suite of products, ranging from its design app Microsoft Designer to search app Bing. It also will help bankroll the computing power OpenAI needs to run its various products on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
The strengthening relationship with OpenAI has bolstered Microsoft’s standing in a race with other big tech companies that also have been pouring resources into artificial intelligence to enhance existing products and develop new uses for businesses and consumers.
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google, in particular, has invested heavily in AI and infused the technology into its operations in various ways, from improving navigation recommendations in its maps tools to enhancing image recognition for photos to enabling wording suggestions in Gmail.
Google has its own sophisticated chatbot technology, known as LaMDA, which gained notice last year when one of the company’s engineers claimed the bot was sentient, a claim Google and outside experts dismissed. Google, though, hasn’t made that technology widely available like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, whose ability to churn out human-like, sophisticated responses to all manner of linguistic prompts has captured public attention.
Microsoft Chief Executive
Satya Nadella
said last week his company plans to incorporate artificial-intelligence tools into all of its products and make them available as platforms for other businesses to build on. Mr. Nadella said last week at a Wall Street Journal panel at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland. Mr. Nadella said that his company would move quickly to commercialize tools from OpenAI.
Analysts have said that OpenAI’s technology could one day threaten Google’s stranglehold on internet search, by providing quick, direct responses to queries rather than lists of links. Others have pointed out that the chatbot technology still suffers from inaccuracies and isn’t well-suited to certain types of queries.
“The viral launch of ChatGPT has caused some investors to question whether this poses a new disruption threat to Google Search,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note last month. “While we believe the near-term risk is limited—we believe the use case of search (and paid search) is different than AI-driven content creation—we are not dismissive of threats from new, unique consumer offerings.”
OpenAI, led by technology investor
Sam Altman,
began as a nonprofit in 2015 with $1 billion in pledges from
Tesla Inc.
CEO
Elon Musk,
LinkedIn co-founder
Reid Hoffman
and other backers. Its goal has long been to develop technology that can achieve what has been a holy grail for AI researchers: artificial general intelligence, where machines are able to learn and understand anything humans can.
Microsoft first invested in OpenAI in 2019, giving the company $1 billion to enhance its Azure cloud-computing platform. That gave OpenAI the computing resources it needed to train and improve its artificial-intelligence algorithms and led to a series of breakthroughs.
OpenAI has released a new suite of products in recent months that industry observers say represent a significant step toward that goal and could pave the way for a host of new AI-driven consumer applications.
In the fall, it launched Dall-E 2, a project that allowed users to generate art from strings of text, and then made ChatGPT public on Nov. 30. ChatGPT has become something of a sensation among the tech community given its ability to deliver immediate answers to questions ranging from “Who was George Washington Carver?” to “Write a movie script of a taco fighting a hot dog on the beach.”
Mr. Altman said the company’s tools could transform technology similar to the invention of the smartphone and tackle broader scientific challenges.
“They are incredibly embryonic right now, but as they develop, the creativity boost and new superpowers we get—none of us will want to go back,” Mr. Altman said in an interview in December.
Mr. Altman’s decision to create a for-profit arm of OpenAI garnered criticism from some in the artificial-intelligence community who said it represented a move away from OpenAI’s roots as a research lab that sought to benefit humanity over shareholders. OpenAI said it would cap profit at the company, diverting the remainder to the nonprofit group.
—Will Feuer contributed to this article.
Write to Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com and Miles Kruppa at miles.kruppa@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The design app Microsoft Designer was misidentified as Microsoft Design in an earlier version of this article. (Corrected on Jan. 23)
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Johnny Depp Verdict Chaos As Wrong Juror Claims Deepen From Amber Heard – Deadline
EXCLUSIVE: If there wasn’t enough drama swirling around Johnny Depp’s win last month over Amber Heard in his multimillion-dollar defamation suit, things have now turned judicially weird.
“Ms. Heard had a right to rely on the basic protection, as prescribed by the Virginia Code, that the jurors in this trial would be individuals who were actually summoned for jury duty,” says a new, partially redacted filing Friday by the Aquaman star’s legal team (read it here).
“In this case, it appears that Juror No. 15 was not, in fact, the same individual as listed on the jury panel,” attorney Elaine Bredehoft adds in language similar to a previous filing of June 24. “Ms. Heard’s due process was therefore compromised. Under these circumstances, a mistrial should be declared, and a new trial ordered.”
Unlike the previous motion and memorandum placed in the Fairfax County courthouse docket late last month to dismiss the June 1 verdict and get a new trial, today’s supplemental memo has a lot more details on what could snatch victory from Depp in his long legal battle with his ex-wife.
According to the redacted filing, the summons for jury duty was sent out to a Virginia resident in April of this year for the much delayed $15 million defamation action Depp had set off in March 2019 against Heard for a 2018 Washington Post op-ed she penned on being the “public face” of domestic abuse. However, also according to today’s filing, it seems that there are two individuals residing at the same address with, at the very least, “the same last name” — one a 77-year-old individual and another a 52-year-old individual.
The former was the one summoned, but it looks like the latter was the one who showed up. “Thus, the 52-year-old- (redacted) sitting on the jury for six weeks was never summoned for jury duty on April 11 and did not ‘appear in the list,’ as required,” Friday’s damning filing asserts.
Not noticed by officers or clerks of the court, the younger individual made it all the way to the jury without apparently ever being asked to produce any ID, or with perhaps fake ID, the filing implies. Additionally, it looks like someone filled out the required online information form either intentionally or accidentally to say that they were born in 1945.
Unaware of this at the time and during the media-frenzied trial, Heard’s defense team now wants an explanation and to see some consequences, which could take the shine off Team Depp:
As the Court no doubt agrees, it is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this. This was a high-profile case, where the fact and date of the jury trial were highly publicized prior to and after the issuance of the juror summonses. Virginia has in place statutory code provisions designed to ensure the person called for jury duty is the person arriving for jury duty.
Fairfax County’s Juror Questionnaire webpage furthers this goal by requiring all County residents to login using their 7-digit Juror number, Zip code, and “Birth Date.” Att. 5 (emphasis added). Those safeguards are in place and relied upon by the parties to verify the identity of the correct juror, to ensure due process and a fair trial for all litigants. When these safeguards are circumvented or not followed, as appears to be the case here, the right to a jury trial and due process are undermined and compromised
Neither reps for Heard or Depp responded to request for comment from Deadline on Friday’s filing. We are also attempting to contact the Virginia court for insight.
While the particulars are way out there, the gist of Heard’s move here is no surprise: Almost within a minute of the $10 million-plus verdict came down June 1 in favor of an absent Depp in Judge Penney Azcarate’s courtroom, Heard’s defense and $100 million countersuit team have promised to fight the ruling on appeal.
Facing having to put up am $8.3 million bond to move forward, Heard’s team may have chopped off the financial Gordian Knot with this apparent Keystone Kops-like incident.
Oil drops $6 as recession fears deepen demand concerns
A view of the Phillips 66 Company’s Los Angeles Refinery (foreground), which processes domestic & imported crude oil into gasoline, aviation and diesel fuels, and storage tanks for refined petroleum products at the Kinder Morgan Carson Terminal (background), at sunset in Carson, California, U.S., March 11, 2022. REUTERS/Bing Guan
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LONDON, July 5 (Reuters) – Oil prices dropped $6 on Tuesday as concerns about a possible global recession curtailing demand outweighed supply disruption fears, highlighted by an expected production cut in Norway.
Brent crude was down $6.65, or 5.9%, at $106.85 a barrel by 1344 GMT, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell $5.65, or 5.2%, to $102.78 a barrel from Friday’s close. There was no WTI settlement on Monday because of a U.S. holiday.
Investors are becoming more concerned as the latest surge in gas and fuel prices adds to worries about recession.
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“Oil is still struggling to break out from its current recessionary malaise as the market pivots away from inflation to economic despair,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management wrote.
In the euro zone, data showed business growth across the bloc slowed further last month, with forward-looking indicators suggesting the region could slip into decline this quarter as the cost of living crisis keeps consumers wary. read more
In South Korea, inflation hit a near 24-year high in June, adding to concerns about slowing economic growth and oil demand. read more
Supply concerns still linger, initially lifting WTI and Brent earlier in the session, amid worries about potential output disruption in Norway, where offshore workers began a strike. read more
The strike is expected to reduce oil and gas output by 89,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), of which gas output makes up 27,500 boepd, Norwegian producer Equinor (EQNR.OL) has said.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, raised August crude oil prices for Asian buyers to near record levels amid tight supply and robust demand. read more
Meanwhile, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday a reported proposal from Japan to cap the price of Russian oil at about half its current level would mean less oil on the market and could push prices above $300-$400 a barrel. read more
G7 leaders agreed last week to explore the feasibility of introducing temporary import price caps on Russian fossil fuels, including oil, in an attempt to limit resources to finance Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. read more
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Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London, Additioanl reporting by Florence Tan and Muyu Xu; Editing by Alexander Smith and Edmund Blair
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Russia and China open cross-border bridge as ties deepen
June 10 (Reuters) – Russia and China opened a new cross-border bridge in the far east on Friday which they hope will further boost trade as Moscow reels from sweeping Western sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine.
The bridge linking the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk to the Chinese city of Heihe across the Amur river – known in China as Heilongjiang – is just over one kilometre long and cost 19 billion roubles ($342 million), the RIA news agency reported.
Amid a firework display, freight trucks from both ends crossed the two-lane bridge that was festooned with flags in the colours of both countries, video footage of the opening showed.
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Russian authorities said the bridge would bring Moscow and Beijing closer together by boosting trade after they announced a “no limits” partnership in February, shortly before President Vladimir Putin sent his forces into Ukraine.
“In today’s divided world, the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge between Russia and China carries a special symbolic meaning,” said Yuri Trutnev, the Kremlin representative in the Russian Far East.
China wants to deepen practical cooperation with Russia in all areas, Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said at the opening.
Russia’s Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said the bridge would help boost bilateral annual trade to more than 1 million tonnes of goods.
CUTTING JOURNEY TIME
The bridge had been under construction since 2016 and was completed in May 2020 but its opening was delayed by cross-border COVID-19 restrictions, said BTS-MOST, the firm building the bridge on the Russian side.
BTS-MOST said freight traffic on the bridge would shorten the travel distance of Chinese goods to western Russia by 1,500 kilometres (930 miles). Vehicles crossing the bridge must pay a toll of 8,700 roubles ($150), a price that is expected to drop as toll fees begin to offset the cost of construction.
Russia said in April it expected commodity flows with China to grow, and trade with Beijing to reach $200 billion by 2024.
China is a major buyer of Russian natural resources and agricultural products.
China has declined to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine and has criticised the Western sanctions on Moscow.
($1 = 57.8000 roubles)
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Reporting by Reuters
Editing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
U.S. grocery shortages deepen as pandemic dries supplies
Jan 14 (Reuters) – High demand for groceries combined with soaring freight costs and Omicron-related labor shortages are creating a new round of backlogs at processed food and fresh produce companies, leading to empty supermarket shelves at major retailers across the United States.
Growers of perishable produce across the West Coast are paying nearly triple pre-pandemic trucking rates to ship things like lettuce and berries before they spoil. Shay Myers, CEO of Owyhee Produce, which grows onions, watermelons and asparagus along the border of Idaho and Oregon, said he has been holding off shipping onions to retail distributors until freight costs go down.
Myers said transportation disruptions in the last three weeks, caused by a lack of truck drivers and recent highway-blocking storms, have led to a doubling of freight costs for fruit and vegetable producers, on top of already-elevated pandemic prices. “We typically will ship, East Coast to West Coast – we used to do it for about $7,000,” he said. “Today it’s somewhere between $18,000 and $22,000.”
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Birds Eye frozen vegetables maker Conagra Brands’ (CAG.N) CEO Sean Connolly told investors last week that supplies from its U.S. plants could be constrained for at least the next month due to Omicron-related absences.
Earlier this week, Albertsons (ACI.N) CEO Vivek Sankaran said he expects the supermarket chain to confront more supply chain challenges over the next four to six weeks as Omicron has put a dent in its efforts to plug supply chain gaps.
Shoppers on social media complained of empty pasta and meat aisles at some Walmart (WMT.N) stores; a Meijer store in Indianapolis was swept bare of chicken; a Publix in Palm Beach, Florida was out of bath tissue and home hygiene products while Costco (COST.O) reinstated purchase limits on toilet paper at some stores in Washington state.
The situation is not expected to abate for at least a few more weeks, Katie Denis, vice president of communications and research at the Consumer Brands Association said, blaming the shortages on a scarcity of labor.
The consumer-packaged goods industry is missing around 120,000 workers out of which only 1,500 jobs were added last month, she said, while the National Grocer’s Association said that many of its grocery store members were operating with less than 50% of their workforce capacity.
U.S. retailers are now facing roughly 12% out of stock levels on food, beverages, household cleaning and personal hygiene products compared to 7-10% in regular times.
The problem is more acute with food products where out of stock levels are running at 15%, the Consumer Brands Association said.
SpartanNash, a U.S. grocery distributor, last week said it has become harder to get supplies from food manufacturers, especially processed items like cereal and soup.
Consumers have continued to stock up on groceries as they hunker down at home to curb the spread of the Omicron-variant. Denis said demand over the last five months has been as high or higher than it had been in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
Similar issues are being seen in other parts of the world.
In Australia, grocery chain operator Woolworths Group , said last week that more than 20% of employees at its distribution centers are off work because of COVID-19. In the stores, the virus has put at least 10% of staff out of action.
The company, on Thursday, reinstated a limit of two packs per customer across toilet paper and painkillers nationwide both in-store and online to deal with the staffing shortage.
In the U.S., recent snow and ice storms that snared traffic for hours along the East Coast also hampered food deliveries bound for grocery stores and distribution hubs. Those delays rippled across the country, delaying shipment on fruit and vegetables with a limited shelf life.
While growers with perishable produce are forced to pay inflated shipping rates to attract limited trucking supplies, producers like Myers are choosing to wait for backlogs to ease.
“The canned goods, the sodas, the chips – those things sat, because they weren’t willing to pay double, triple the freight, and their stuff doesn’t go bad in four days,” he said.
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Additional reporting by Praveen Paramasivam; Editing by Vanessa O’Connell and Diane Craft
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China property sector default woes deepen amid Evergrande uncertainty
Police officers and security personnel walk outside the headquarters of China Evergrande Group in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, September 30, 2021. REUTERS/Aly Song
HONG KONG, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Worries about rising debt defaults by Chinese property developers sapped investor sentiment on Tuesday amid fresh credit rating downgrades and uncertainty about the fate of China Evergrande Group as it scrambles to raise cash by selling assets.
Evergrande (3333.HK) is facing one of the country’s largest-ever defaults as it wrestles with more than $300 billion of debt. The company last month missed making coupon payments on two dollar bond tranches.
The possible collapse of one of China’s biggest borrowers has triggered worries about contagion risks to the property sector in the world’s second-largest economy, as its debt-laden peers are hit with rating downgrades on looming defaults.
Evergrande on Monday requested a halt in the trading of its shares pending an announcement about a major deal. Evergrande Property Services Group (6666.HK) also requested a halt referring to “a possible general offer” for company shares.
China’s state-backed Global Times said Hopson Development (0754.HK) was the buyer of a 51% stake in the property business for more than HK$40 billion ($5.1 billion), citing unspecified other media reports.
Evergrande declined to comment ahead of an official announcement, as trading in the company’s shares remained suspended on Tuesday.
While investors awaited confirmation of the Evergrande stake divestment, Chinese developer Sinic Holdings (2103.HK) became the latest to be downgraded by Fitch Ratings on uncertainty over the repayment of its $246 million bonds maturing Oct 18.
Sinic’s long-term issuer default rating was cut to ‘C’ from ‘CCC’, and came after the company announced that certain subsidiaries have missed interest payments on onshore financing arrangements, Fitch said in its report on Tuesday.
S&P Global Ratings also lowered its rating on the company, saying it had run into “severe liquidity problem and its debt-servicing ability has almost been depleted”. It said the company was likely to default on its notes due on Oct. 18.
Sinic declined to comment on the ratings downgrades.
“Since the Evergrande crisis, investors have become more worried and focused about Chinese developer’s repayment ability,” Thomas Kwok, head of equity business at Hong Kong brokerage CHIEF Securities.
The liquidity issues have increased as many developers were not able to issue fresh debt to refinance, and as their ability to raise cash from selling properties dropped because of new regulations, he said.
“This will be a vicious cycle for the developers that are not strong enough, because there is not enough liquidity in the market for everyone.”
MARKET IMPACT
The $5 billion Evergrande is likely to get from the reported unit stake sale would theoretically cover its near-term offshore bond payments. It has $500 million in bond coupons due by year-end, followed by a $2-billion dollar bond maturity in March.
Analysts have said the potential Evergrande deal signals the company was still working to meet its obligations. But any fire-sale of its assets would further amplify concerns about the rest of China’s property sector and the broader economy.
Chinese homebuilder Fantasia Holdings’ (1777.HK) dollar-denominated bonds lost nearly half their market value in a massive Monday selloff, after it said it had failed to make a $206 million international market debt payment on time.
In a statement, the property developer said it will assess the potential impact of the non-payment on the group’s financial conditions.
An index of China high-yield debt (.MERACYC), which is dominated by developer issuers, hit its lowest since the pandemic drawdown in 2020, and has lost almost 20% since May – while comparable U.S. and European indexes have rallied.
Asian markets fell for a third straight session on Thursday as Evergrande’s troubles added to broader investor worries about rising inflation and slowing world growth, while in Hong Kong the company’s developer peers were under renewed pressure.
An index tracking Hong Kong-listed mainland property stocks (.HSMPI) fell 2.95% on Tuesday, compared to a 0.3% gain in the local benchmark (.HIS).
Shares in Guangzhou R&F Properties (2777.HK) and Sunac China Holdings (1918.HK) each fell 8% while the offshore yuan was also under pressure. Shares in Evergrande’s electric vehicle unit eased after jumping on Monday.
Evergrande’s dollar bonds have firmed marginally over recent days, but remain at distressed levels below 30 cents on the dollar.
Reporting by Clare Jim, Tom Westbrrok and Alun John; Writing by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Shri Navaratnam
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