This article for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Farmers are “ordinary people but they feel treated like criminals. Everything farmers do is bad; poison sprayers, environmental polluters, mistreatment of animals,” says Caroline van der Plas, leader of the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement, which stormed onto the Dutch political scene in 2019. “They feel undervalued and have no space to expand or develop their business and are very worried about their future.
This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. shareholders endorsed a C$4.24 billion ($3.1 billion) takeover offer by Rio Tinto Group, paving the way for the London-based miner to gain control of one of the world’s largest copper mines.
About 60.5% of Turquoise Hill’s minority investors voted in favor of Rio’s C$43-a-share cash offer, the Canadian company said following a shareholders’ meeting in Montreal on Friday. The result clears the way for Rio Tinto to take over Turquoise Hill and gain majority ownership in its massive Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia, which is expected to become the world’s fourth-largest copper mine.
Shares of Turquoise Hill rose 0.9% to C$42.93 at 2:43 p.m. in Toronto. Rio shares closed almost 1% higher in London before the vote results were announced.
“This transaction will deliver significant benefits for all shareholders, and allow us to progress the Oyu Tolgoi project in partnership with the government of Mongolia with a simpler and more efficient governance and ownership structure,” Rio’s copper head Bold Baatar said in a statement.
This article from Investors Business Daily may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Amgen is years behind rivals Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in developing an obesity treatment, but the company says its experimental drug could prove superior. And investors seem to agree, as news of the drug helped Amgen stock go on a tear recently.
Shares of Amgen now are taking a breather after a run-up in late October and early November. Last week, the biotech giant unveiled another batch of official data, showing that its drug requires less-frequent injections and leads to faster weight loss.
Over three months, patients who received three high-dose shots of Amgen's drug lost 14.5% of their body weight. That beat out the 8% weight loss for Lilly's weekly injection over the same time period, according to one analyst.
Now, the question is how durable the weight loss will be for recipients of Amgen's AMG 133.
This article by Ben Thompson for his Stratechery letter may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
The difference is that ChatGPT is not actually running python and determining the first 10 prime numbers deterministically: every answer is a probabilistic result gleaned from the corpus of Internet data that makes up GPT-3; in other words, ChatGPT comes up with its best guess as to the result in 10 seconds, and that guess is so likely to be right that it feels like it is an actual computer executing the code in question.
This raises fascinating philosophical questions about the nature of knowledge; you can also simply ask ChatGPT for the first 10 prime numbers:
Those weren’t calculated, they were simply known; they were known, though, because they were written down somewhere on the Internet. In contrast, notice how ChatGPT messes up the far simpler equation I mentioned above:
For what it’s worth, I had to work a little harder to make ChatGPT fail at math: the base GPT-3 model gets basic three digit addition wrong most of the time, while ChatGPT does much better. Still, this obviously isn’t a calculator: it’s a pattern matcher — and sometimes the pattern gets screwy. The skill here is in catching it when it gets it wrong, whether that be with basic math or with basic political theory.
This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Late last month, Turkey announced that passing tankers would have to provide letters from their insurers proving they were covered to navigate the straits, through which almost 700 million barrels of crude flowed in the past year. Turkey’s move was a response to European Union sanctions against Russia that bar insurance of vessels if the oil they’re carrying costs above $60 a barrel.
‘Unacceptable’
US and UK officials have been pushing for Turkey to reconsider the proof-of-insurance requirement, especially given that cargoes from Kazakhstan are not subject to sanctions.
“We’ve been in touch with Turkey about how the price cap only applies to Russian oil, and explained that the cap doesn’t necessitate additional checks on ships passing through Turkish waters,” US Treasury spokesman Michael Gwin said. “Our understanding is that virtually all of the delayed tankers are not carrying oil from Russia and are not affected by the cap.”
Still, Turkey said it was “unacceptable” for protection and indemnity clubs that insure risks including collisions and spills not to provide confirmation letters to their commercial customers.
“This letter demanded by us is only about confirming that the ship’s insurance is valid during its passage through Straits,” the ministry said.
Turkey is working on a separate solution for ships without letters that were bound for Turkish refineries, the ministry said, citing “public good and national interest.”
This note from Bloomberg may be of interest. Here is a section:
China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world’s biggest maker of electric-car batteries, signs a global partnership agreement with Honda Motor, according to an exchange filing to Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
The Politburo on Wednesday signaled more stimulus could be on the cards next year, saying fiscal policy will be kept active with a focus on improving its efficiency, while monetary steps will be “targeted and forceful.” China will “push for overall improvement of the economy,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in a readout of the meeting.
Larry Hu, head of China economics at Macquarie Group Ltd., said the message from the Politburo meeting was “loud and clear: Zero-Covid is behind us, and growth would be the top priority for next year.” The signals suggest policymakers want to bring next year’s growth rate back to its potential of above 5%, he said.
The growth outlook for next year remains highly uncertain, given a likely surge in coronavirus infections and further disruption expected to the economy. The global economy is also at risk of falling into recession, and a recovery in China’s property market remains elusive.
