Braving the bitter cold, Lebanese villagers have been patrolling a mountainside in the country's north, trying to protect trees from loggers who roll in under the cover of darkness. . Lebanon, whose flag bears a cedar tree, is known for its greenery, with forests covering 13 percent of the Middle Eastern country's territory, according to official data.
Most Asian markets bounced from two days of losses on Wednesday as traders tracked a Wall Street surge fuelled by data pointing to slowing US inflation and hopes the Federal Reserve's rate hike drive is coming to an end.. While they indicate the world's top economy is slowing, hope is building that the data will allow the central bank to wind down its rate hikes.
Creators of a ChatGPT bot causing a stir for its ability to mimic human writing on Tuesday released a tool designed to detect when written works are authored by artificial intelligence.. US-based OpenAI said in a blog post Tuesday that its detection tool has been trained "to distinguish between text written by a human and text written by AIs from a variety of providers."
Iraq's premier said Tuesday that new banking regulations had revealed fraudulent dollar transactions made from his country, as the fresh controls coincide with a drop in the local currency's value.. He said the new controls had been planned for two years, in accordance with an agreement between Iraq's central bank and US financial authorities, and deplored previous failures to put them in place.
Shares in Snapchat's parent company plunged more than 14 percent on Tuesday after it reported a loss in the final three months of last year on seemingly stalled revenue.. Facebook's parent Meta and Alphabet-owned Google, lions in the online ad market, are to report earnings this week.
Nathan Anderson sees himself as a scourge of corporate manipulation, but some investors and business leaders see short-sellers like him as engaging in tactics more akin to Wall Street gunslinging for profit. . Anderson heads the New York-based short-seller Hindenburg Research, which profits as its attacks on Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani gain steam.
Caterpillar reported a drop in profits Tuesday as higher costs and the drag from the strong dollar offset the lift from buoyant demand in industrial markets.. Caterpillar is looking for opportunities to pass on higher costs to consumers, while weighing what's feasible.
For opponents of France's pension reform, the proposed changes are about more than raising the retirement age: they're about an economic model seen as stacked in favour of the rich and a president viewed as too close to the wealthy.. The reform proposed by Macron would raise the retirement age for everyone to 64 from 62 and increase the number of years of work required to claim a full pension.
McDonald's reported Tuesday a jump in fourth-quarter profits following higher sales in most markets, scoring with consumers worried about inflation.. But Kempczinski said the company must stay "judicious" in terms of passing on higher operating costs to consumers.
The US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Tesla's driver-assistance features, the company said Tuesday in a financial document. . According to a report from Bloomberg, the Justice Department investigation has been opened for similar reasons.
