The Light Phone 3 will begin shipping in January 2025.
Light
Light released a new "dumb" phone on Tuesday.
The new Light Phone 3 is designed for those who want a less a distracting device.
This version comes with a camera and video call capabilities — and for the price of an iPhone.
The phone designed to help you ditch your smartphone is getting more like a smartphone.
Light, a company that makes pared-down devices sometimes called "dumb" phones, launched the Light Phone 3 on Tuesday.
The Light Phone 2, which came out in 2018, could call and text. It also had navigation, music, podcasts, and a calendar, but no web browser. The newer model of the dumb phone comes with smarter features like fingerprint ID, rear- and front-facing cameras, and the potential to support a digital wallet, according to the company.
"Ultimately, we wanted to make going light even easier," the release read.
Those new perks will cost you, though, as the Light Phone 3 is $500 more expensive than the previous version. It has a retail price tag of $799 — the same price as a new iPhone 14 Plus.
Now that it has a camera, the Light Phone 3 has a shutter button on the side.
Light
Light said it added a rear camera in its "own way" by designing it after a classic point-and-shoot camera complete with a real shutter button to make it "genuinely fun."
With the front-facing camera, Light Phone 3 owners will be able to make video calls.
Quitting smartphones can be jarring, as previous reviews of the Light Phone 2 from Business Insider found, so a slightly smarter dumb phone could make the transition smoother.
There's still a demand, too. Over the past four years, some groups of Gen Zers have been trying to cut down on their screen time by using dumb phones without distracting apps. Meanwhile, parents have said that ditching their smartphones has made them more present with their children.
For some, that means buying a $40 flip phone, but Light phones are designed to have the capabilities of a smartphone — like the navigation, music, and podcasts — without the parts that might lead users to spend hours staring at a screen.
For a limited time, the Light Phone 3 is available for preorder at a reduced price of $399 until July 16. It will begin shipping in January 2025.
The company said it will continue to support and sell older devices, but "whether you daydream about a digital detox, want to pay more attention to your toddler, or are buying your very first phone, the Light Phone III is a tool for a better life," Light said.
Warren Buffett's piece of Apple is worth $169 billion or more than 450 of the S&P 500 companies.
Berkshire Hathaway pared its stake by 13% last quarter, or it would have been worth $194 billion.
Apple stock has surged by 25% in under three months to a record high, helped by AI buzz.
Warren Buffett's stake in Apple is worth more than 450 of the S&P 500 companies following a surge in the iPhone maker's stock over the past six weeks.
Buffett's conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, owned about 790 million Apple shares worth $135 billion at the end of March, company filings show.
Apple stock has soared by 25% since then to a record $214 at Thursday's close, valuing it at $3.29 trillion and just ahead of Microsoft. That means Berkshire's 5.1% stake is now worth $169 billion, assuming it's still intact.
The result is that Buffett's slice of Apple is worth more than all but the top 45 companies in the S&P 500, per MarketBeat data. In other words, if Berkshire's slice of the iPhone maker were a public company, it would be more valuable than Verizon ($167 billion), American Express ($160 billion), IBM ($155 billion), Uber ($148 billion), Nike ($142 billion), and many other blue-chip businesses.
Berkshire's position has jumped in value by about $34 billion this quarter. That reflects broader investor optimism about the stock market and economy, and fresh buzz around the tech titan following its embrace of AI tools like ChatGPT this week.
Yet it's worth noting that Buffett and his team pared their Apple wager last quarter by 13%. Their previous 905 million shares would have been worth $194 billion at Thursday's close — a figure larger than the market capitalizations of Accenture ($189 billion), Cisco ($184 billion), and both Disney and McDonald's ($183 billion each).
Buffett explained why he cut back on Apple during Berkshire's annual meeting in May. He wanted to realize some of his profits in anticipation of the US government raising taxes to tackle its ballooning debt. He added that holding cash wasn't the worst idea at a challenging time for the global economy.
The investor may also have been wary of relying too much on Apple. That single holding accounted for more than 40% of Berkshire's $336 billion stock portfolio at the end of March, and makes up nearly a fifth of Berkshire's $876 billion market cap.
Buffett likely left billions of dollars on the table by cashing out some Apple shares last quarter, but he won't mind too much. Berkshire's cost base for the holding was $31 billion at the end of 2021, its annual report for that year shows, suggesting the company's made more than five times its money on paper.
In a complaint filed earlier this month, the FAA asked the court to enforce payment of $81,950 in civil penalties as a result of the July 2021 incident.
The suit said Heather Wells was flying first class from Dallas/Fort Worth to Charlotte, North Carolina.
"After ordering a Jack Daniels (neat) during the beverage service, Defendant became increasingly agitated and 'wanted out' of the plane," it added.
The suit then claimed that she moved toward the back of the plane, kneeled in the aisle, and crawled around — before telling a flight attendant she would "hurt him" if he didn't get out of her way.
Wells then reached the front of the plane where she tried to open the cabin door in midair, the suit said. It added that she hit a flight attendant in the head as they tried to restrain her.
The suit said two flight attendants and a passenger used flex cuffs and duct tape to restrain Wells. But as she kept spitting and attempting to bite or headbutt people, they also duct taped her mouth, it added.
The FAA is asking for financial penalties consisting of up to $45,000 for aggressive behaviors toward the flight attendants, $27,950 for attempting to open the cabin door in-flight, and $9,000 for interfering with a crew member's duties.
Notably, 2021 was by far the worst year for unruly passenger incidents, with almost 6,000 cases per FAA data. Such incidents rose nearly five-fold immediately after the pandemic.
While the figures have since decreased, they remain roughly double pre-pandemic levels, prompting the government to remind fliers about potential fines.
Meanwhile, a handful of cities and towns around the country want people to move there — so much so that they're doling out cold, hard cash to some newcomers.
Ryann Cooke took Tulsa, Oklahoma, up on its $10,000 offer to movers.
Cooke, who is in her late 20s and works in social media, moved from Washington, DC, to Tulsa in June 2022. She told Business Insider the money is nice, but Oklahoma is also cheaper overall.
"I have a great apartment and I've never been able to afford living on my own before, but the cost of living is so much lower in Tulsa than in DC," Cooke said.
The programs, most popular in places in the Midwest and South, have similar goals: attract residents to boost their populations and inject their economies with talent and spending.
Read on to learn more about seven towns and cities that pay people cash to move there, presented in alphabetical order.
Columbus, a city of just over 200,000 people on the border between Georgia and Alabama, pays someremote workers $5,000 to move there.
To run the program, the city's chamber of commerce partners with Make My Move, a recruiting platform that helps communities promote themselves.
The $5,000 is earmarked for remote workers who move to Columbus from at least 75 miles outside city limits.
Candidates must be employed full-time remotely, make at least $75,000 a year, and make Muscogee County — where Columbus is located — their primary residence.
Once those requirements are fulfilled, new residents will receive $5,000 toward relocation costs, six months of membership to a coworking space, and an annual "community connection outing," like ziplining or rafting, among other perks.
Applicants are selected by a committee of local residents.
That bundle of goods must've been enough to get people excited as applications are closed for 2024 — but will reopen in January 2025, according to the program's website.
Lincoln County, Kansas
Lincoln County, Kansas.
Bob Weston/Getty Images
Lincoln County, Kansas — a rural area home to less than 3,000 people about 130 miles north of Wichita — is offering new residents $4,500 cash.
It's throwing in a $500 credit toward high-speed internet, a gym membership, and a monthly basket of farm-fresh eggs to sweeten the deal.
Participants must be remote workers making at least $50,000 annually who agree to live in Lincoln County for at least a year. They can also qualify for other perks, like a free plot of land to build a home and an additional $5,000 cash if their spouse or partner is hired for a job in the county.
Make My Move and Innovation Center, a Kansas-based economic assistance organization, administer the incentive program, which a Make My Move press release said has already been so successful that 23 other counties are interested in participating.
"The money is just the hook," Kelly Gourley, executive director of the Lincoln County Economic Development Foundation, said in a statement. "It won't make someone like where they live; it's what comes after that makes someone feel good about the move."
Mississippi County, Arkansas
A street in Blytheville, Arkansas.
Larry Braun Photography/Getty Images
A two-and-a-half hour drive from Little Rock, Mississippi County is offering new and existing residents up to $50,000 toward building or renovating their dream home.
Participants must be employees of participating companies — which include US Steel, Big River Steel, and more — and agree to live in Mississippi County for at least four years.
Since the program launched in fall 2022, the Arkansas county — an area near the Tennessee border that's home to cities including Blytheville and Osceola — has gained 80 new buyers, many of whom are first-generation homeowners.
Called Work Here, Live Here, the initiative is a collaboration between local industries, community groups, and financial institutions like Farmers Bank and Trust.
"Once we start having a population increase — and there's no reason we shouldn't with all the jobs we have created — then the quality of life will follow," Randy Scott, president of Farmers Bank and Trust, told Business Insider. "You'll get the restaurants, you'll get the retail shops, you'll get the amenities."
Newton, Iowa
Newton, Iowa.
Eddie Brady/Getty Images
Newton, Iowa, a city of just under 16,000 people about 30 minutes outside Des Moines, has a program that gives people $10,000 if they buy a home.
You can't buy just any home, though — it must be worth at least $240,000. Movers won't receive the funds until a certificate of occupancy is issued by building inspectors from the City of Newton.
After that, the funds can be used for anything, and people don't have to live in the house for a set amount of time.
"There are no 'term of residency' requirements; i.e., while you must take title to the home, you are not required to remain in the home for any specified length of time," Craig Armstrong, a development specialist for the city, told BI in an email.
Recipients also receive a "Get to Know Newton" welcome package, which includes gifts from local businesses and organizations and is valued at $2,500, according to the city's economic development arm.
The Shoals, Alabama
Florence, Alabama.
marekuliasz/Getty Images
A group of municipalities in northern Alabama is seeking remote workers to move there.
The Shoals area is near Alabama's border with Tennessee and Mississippi. Its four cities — Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia — are all under three-hour drives from big cities including Memphis, Nashville, and Birmingham.
The program, called Remote Shoals, will give remote workers $10,000 to move to the area. The first $2,500 is meant to help with moving costs. Another $2,500 is doled out after six months, and the last $5,000 is given after a full year.
Eligible applicants must be over 18 and able to move to the region within six months. They must also be employed outside the area and have a minimum annual income of $52,000.
The program gives eligible movers $10,000 that can be used toward purchasing or renting a home in Tulsa and $500 toward travel reimbursement. On top of that cash, it also will give potential movers a $150 Airbnb credit to familiarize themselves with the city before moving.
As of 2022, Tulsa Remote had moved more than 1,400 people to Oklahoma. Some participants chose Oklahoma over Texas or Georgia.
To qualify for the program, applicants must be over 18, live outside Oklahoma, have a consistent stream of income, be able to work remotely, and promise to commit to moving to and living in Tulsa for at least one year.
As of June 2024, the program said it has lured 295 residents to the state — called "ascenders" — plus 272 of their family members.
The program initially launched in Morgantown — a college town home to West Virginia University — and has since expanded to five total communities in West Virginia: New River Gorge, Greenbrier Valley, Eastern Panhandle, and Greater Elkins.
Participants receive $10,000 paid in monthly installments throughout the first year of moving, and the final $2,000 after the second year of living in West Virginia.
The package comes with other incentives like free access to coworking space, two years of free outdoor gear rental, and a year of free outdoor recreation — which is valued at over $2,500, according to Ascend WV.
Potential residents must be 18 years or older, able to verify their remote employment, and willing to move to West Virginia for two years to be eligible.
Gen Zers love customized meals, spicy food, and viral trends like menu hacks and mashups.
They're changing restaurant menus with their desire for bold flavors, international ingredients, and personalization options.
Trending dishes include Hawaiian musubi, birria ramen, and boba, as well as ingredients like yuzu, harissa, and za'atar.
Gen Zers have dining habits that set them apart from other generations.
They love to customize their food, they're suckers for a menu hack, and they crave spicy dishes, restaurant executives and experts say.
Gen Z, defined as the cohort of people born between 1997 and 2012, grew up with social media, ride-hailing apps, and Taylor Swift. They're changing fashion, celebrity culture, and the world of work. Here's how they're changing restaurant menus across the US.
They're adventurous eaters
Gen Zers generally crave big and bold flavors, executives told Business Insider.
They're accustomed to ingredients and flavor profiles "that generations in the past did not grow up with," Joe Labombardo, vice president of culinary at Chartwells Higher Education, which provides food services at around 320 colleges and universities, told Business Insider. "Profiles, ingredients, and recipes from all over the world are now part of their diets."
"They definitely have a bold palette," he said. "It's definitely not the blander palettes of yesteryear."
Gen Zers have much broader palettes than previous generations in the US.
Alessandro Biascioli/Getty Images
Younger diners want to try new things and are more likely to be attracted to limited-time offers at restaurants, Lizzy Freier, director of menu research and insights at restaurant analytics company Technomic, said during a panel at the National Restaurant Show in May.
Menu hacks fly on social media
Gen Zers are more inclined to try out menu hacks, creating new dishes using items already available on the menu. These can sometimes go viral on social media, where people share new combinations they've discovered.
Some chains are using these menu hacks to their advantage. Tom Boland, CMO of Bojangles, said during a panel at the National Restaurant Show that he'd noticed a spike in people ordering iced blueberry biscuits with a side of sausage on the weekends, particularly in areas with a high student population. It turned out that college kids were visiting after nights out and putting the sausage inside the biscuit for a sweet-savory snack.
Bojangles has now added the hack to its menu, served with the icing on top of the sausage rather than the biscuit to make it easier to eat. "This thing is flying off the shelves," Boland said.
They love to customize
Gen Zers want to feel like they're getting something exclusive. This includes ordering customized dishes. Younger customers, for example, have been known to embrace Starbucks' modifications to craft personalized drinks, while Chipotle, where diners can create their own burritos and bowls, was ranked as teens' third-favorite restaurant chain in a Piper Sandler survey.
Burritos and bowls at Chipotle are made to order.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
"Made-to-order, built-to-your-liking foods are almost the staple now," Labombardo said. "That is here to stay and Gen Z and the generation after that both grew up with it."
At Caribou Coffee, younger customers — Gen Alpha, Gen Zers, and younger millennials — are most likely to modify their drinks, CMO Erin Newkirk told BI. "It's like what makes you famous on TikTok, if you can unlock the TikTok customization."
Snacks don't have to be unhealthy
Gen Zers are less likely to stick to the typical breakfast-lunch-dinner meal pattern.
"Gen Z is more apt to have more, smaller meals throughout the day versus the standard three square meals," Labombardo said.
"With Gen Z we don't really see a pattern per se" in dining times, El Pollo Loco CMO Andy Rebhun previously told BI. "It's usually: 'When it's most convenient for me.' They will eat whenever they can fit it into their schedule."
But when they do choose to snack, it's not necessarily on unhealthy food.
Hummus is a popular choice of snack.
Marina Kuttig/Getty Images
While they may opt for cronuts or boba, Gen Zs also graze on a lot of cottage cheese, hummus, or vegetables with spicy ranch, Labombardo said.
Labombardo said that dishes with the North African paste harissa and the Thai jam nam prik pao were becoming increasingly popular.
"There's a lot more excitement around spicy flavors, but it's not just spice and pure heat," Labombardo said. "It's also recipes that compliment the heat." He said that they were also looking for ways to add a "spicy twist" to classic recipes, like spicy ranch, which he said is "extremely popular."
What they're ordering now: Chicken, mashups, and pickled food
Popular dishes among college students at the moment include Hawaiian musubi, a sushi-like dish made with spam and rice; shawarma; pickled foods; desserts with sweetened condensed milk, including in boba; and mochi doughnuts, Labombardo said. Flavors like za'atar and yuzu are also trending, he said.
Meanwhile, bacon pancakes, pickles wrapped in crispy fried cheese, Korean dishes including hot dogs, fried chicken, and chewy rice cakes with spicy sauce, known as tteokbokki, and Chinese tanghulu, a crunchy candied fruit, are flooding people's social-media feeds, Labombardo said.
Tanghulu is trending on US social media.
Thai Liang Lim/Getty Images
Chicken also appears to be Gen Z's protein of choice. In a 2022 poll by Morning Consult, US Gen Z respondents listed chicken as their second-favorite food overall, behind only pizza. Chicken-sandwich brand Chick-fil-A keeps topping Piper Sandler's survey of teens' restaurants, while chicken-finger chain Raising Cane's has shot to number four in the ranking.
Mashups like Nashville hot chicken bao buns and birria ramen are also popular and can perform well on social media, Labombardo said.
They have high expectations
Gen Zers grew up seeing food content on social media.
Visualspace/Getty Images
"This generation knows more about food than any generation in the past because of how they grew up," which includes shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and seeing food content on social media, Labombardo told BI.
"Gen Z is demanding and they're not going to compromise their values for taste or for convenience or anything else," Caribou's Newkirk said.
This image shows the planned design of 'The Line,' a 'vertical skyscraper' from the planned futuristic Saudi Arabian city of NEOM that cuts through the desert in the west of the country.
NEOM
The Line in Neom is a "completely ludicrous" project, one expert says.
The futuristic city is made up of two vertical mirrored skyscrapers positioned 656 feet apart.
Architects and planners have long questioned the project's practicality and sustainability.
The Line — a part of Neom contained between two vertically mirrored skyscrapers — is one of the most famous regions of the planned megacity.
Saudi Arabia's plans for the futuristic city have baffled architects and designers, including those who contributed to the original designs. The giant structures have faced criticism about their impact on wildlife, everyday appeal, and general usefulness.
Andreas Krieg, a Gulf specialist at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London, called plans for The Line "completely ludicrous."
"The Line is a project that is not sustainable; it's a completely ludicrous megaproject that was never realizable because of the sheer cost of it," he told Business Insider.
He said that while some of Neom's regions have clear aims, the central city "has no real purpose" or "benefit."
The megacity is also set to include an octagonal floating city with a sustainable port, a luxury island resort, and a ski and adventure mountain range.
"From a commercial statecraft strategy point of view, Neom is a very viable project and has a lot going for it," Krieg said. "But you need to have a plan of how it can be realized to attract investors, and the Saudis are still falling short of that."
Plans for the megacity have reportedly been scaled back in recent months.
The Line was originally planned to accommodate 9 million people by 2030. However, a recent report from Bloomberg said this estimate had been lowered to fewer than 300,000 people by that date.
The costs associated with the project have also worried planners.
Executives working on Neom reportedly have dismissed the official Suadi figure of $500 billion as unrealistically low. The first 1.5 miles of The Line alone is expected to cost more than $100 billion, two people familiar with the work told The Wall Street Journal.
"The world has never seen anything like The Line," Krieg said. "There hasn't been a single project that would have consumed so many resources and had no real purpose."
Krieg is far from the first to question the viability of the glossy city.
Last year, British architect Peter Cook, who is involved in the project, called the city an "amazing absurdity," adding that the proposed height was "a bit stupid and unreasonable" in comments reported by the Architects Journal.
Representatives for Neom did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made outside normal working hours.
AP Photo/Chris Carlson and Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Trump sat down with Logan Paul, and they talked about everything from Putin to aliens and Elon Musk.
Given Trump's need to appeal to younger voters, Paul isn't the worst option for him.
The "Impaulsive" interview also marks another instance of Trump's outreach to younger voters.
Logan Paul sitting down with former President Donald Trump was not on our bingo cards this week, but here we are.
Trump sat down with the controversial influencer for a close to an hourlong interview on X, which was released on Thursday. During the session, Paul and his co-host Mike Majlak talked to Trump about various topics, including Russian leader Putin, aliens, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
"Been looking forward to this all my life," Trump announced while walking on set to the "Impaulsive" podcast.
Dressing the interview set were Paul's Prime energy drink bottles in red, white, and blue packaging. And on the coffee table — signature red MAGA hats that Trump gifted the duo.
During the podcast, Trump ran through some of his greatest hits. Here are some of them:
Trump reiterated an old argument that he was "tough" on Russian leader Vladimir Putin but added that they still had a "very good" relationship. Trump also said he thought Russia's war on Ukraine "would never have happened" if he was president.
Trump also claimed that his felony conviction resulted in a bumper fundraising crop. He said it was "too bad" that he couldn't have raised "hundreds of millions" of dollars another way but celebrated the big bucks nonetheless. And Trump did draw in his fair share of donors, as his campaign site crashed when he asked for donations after his guilty verdict in his hush-money trial was announced in New York.
Trump also talked about aliens and UFOs, a long-standing interest of his. The former president described an occasion when he met a pilot — a man he described as "Tom Cruise, but taller." The pilot, Trump says, recounted how he'd spotted a UFO that was "round in form and going, like, four times faster than my superjet fighter plane." And Trump's always been interested in aliens — in 2020, he said on Fox News that he planned to "take a good, strong look at whether UFOs exist." However, Trump told Paul that he still "can't say" he's a believer in alien life.
Trump was also asked about Tesla chief Elon Musk. He launched into a spiel about how he couldn't figure out how Musk's rockets could land when they had "no wings." Then, he said Musk — who he's met in private, despite their previously frosty relationship — was a "spectacular guy."
For his part, Paul walked away with some Trump merchandise, including a shirt with Trump's mugshot printed on it and the slogan "NEVER SURRENDER."
"Is this your mugshot?" Paul asked Trump.
"Yeah, can you believe it?" Trump responded, smiling.
"You're a gangster," Paul said.
"This is what we're reduced to," Trump added before Paul and Majlak unfurled their matching shirts in front of the camera.
Trump's out to charm Gen Z, and that demographic might already be souring on Biden
Freshly convicted of 34 charges of falsifying business records, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee seems to have a new campaign strategy — appealing to younger Gen Z voters.
For one, Trump debuted his new TikTok account on June 1 with a video of himself at a UFC tournament.
At the point of writing, Trump's 6.2 million follower count has outstripped Biden's meager 376,000.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email to Business Insider's John L. Dorman on June 3: "We will leave no front undefended, and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content."
Trump's leaning into TikTok comes even after he tried to get the social media platform — the international version of the Bytedance-owned Douyin — banned. The former president signed an executive orderin August 2020that would have forced TikTok to sell to an American company.
Trump's second TikTok post, uploaded on Thursday, was a promotional clip of his freshly released interview with Paul.
Appealing to Gen Z could work for Trump, especially if one accounts for the "Trump amnesia" effect among Gen Zers. Now aged between 12 and 27 — some Gen Zers may have been too young during his presidency to be politically in tune with Trump-era policies.
And Gen Zers who vocally backed Biden during his 2020 run may also be souring on him in 2024.
For example, a coalition of social media content creators, which in 2020 was called "TikTok for Biden," has changed its name to "Gen Z for Change."
Aidan Kohn-Murphy, 20, the coalition's founder, told The Washington Post, said he thought Biden is now "out of step with young people on a number of key issues."
Representatives of Trump, Paul, and Biden didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
Rescuers help a woman, affected by the high temperature as she visit the Acropolis Hill, during a hot weather in Athens,, Greece on June 12, 2024.
Costas Baltas/Anadolu via Getty Images
Tourists are in for another summer of sweltering heat and extreme weather.
Greek authorities closed the Acropolis this week amid scorching mid-day temperatures.
Life-threatening temperatures are also set to scorch the US this week.
Summer travel is already under attack — and it's technically still only spring.
Record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events around the globe in recent days portend the promise of another blistering summer, even as the post-pandemic surge in travel continues to climb.
Greek authorities closed the Acropolis in Athens on Wednesday and Thursday during a sweltering mid-day heat wave. Temperatures soared above 104 degrees Fahrenheit across much of central and southern Greece this week, resulting in all archeological sites in the Greek capital going dormant from midday to 5 p.m. local time, according to The Associated Press.
The Acropolis, Greece's most popular tourist site, also closed last summer because of heat. But meteorologists said this week that this is the earliest heat wave recorded in Greek history, and the soaring temperatures have officials on high alert for potential wildfires.
Passengers stuck onboard a Qatar Airways flight in Athens on Monday resorted to stripping as they sat in 95-degree heat with no air conditioning.
In Cyprus — Europe's sunniest destination — a wave of heat-related wildfires has broken out near Paphos. The island draws scores of tourists each summer, eager to explore Cyprus' Roman ruins and beautiful beaches.
Further North, a holiday village in Turkey's Antalya Province was battered by flames as temperatures surpassed 102 degrees Fahrenheit, Euronews reported.
Meanwhile, torrential rains in parts of Spain wiped out crops in Murcia and grounded some flights on the popular tourist island of Mallorca, the outlet reported.
And the crisis is only likely to worsen as the summer drags on. Todd Crawford, vice president of meteorology at Atmospheric G2, told The New York Times last month that the firm expects 2024 temperatures across Europe to be on par with heat levels on the continent in 2022 — the hottest summer ever recorded on the continent.
Crawford said July and August, especially, will be blistering throughout the world's fastest-warming continent. But the perils of climate change haven't stopped people from flocking to places like Italy, Croatia, and Greece — all countries that were afflicted by scorching heat last summer.
Sweltering summers aren't a problem unique to Europe. The US is set to be smacked with life-threatening temperatures in the coming days, too.
Starting in the Southwest, potentially record-breaking heat is set to reach the East Coast by the end of the week. New York City is forecast to reach 90 degrees by Friday — just in time for the Big Apple's busiest tourist season.
Adobe, I-Hwa Cheng/AFP/Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
Jensen Huang has turned Nvidia into a company worth more than $3 trillion.
Business Insider spoke to eight current and former employees about what it's like to work for him.
The insiders revealed he often "grills" senior-level workers and has high expectations of them.
Jensen Huang has achieved rockstar status in Silicon Valley.
The AI boom and soaring demand for Nvidia GPUs have propelled the company's stock and earned the Nvidia CEO a reputation as a visionary. Even Mark Zuckerberg calls him the "Taylor Swift of tech."
People who have worked for Huang on Nvidia's journey to become a $3 trillion-plus company previously described how he can be a "demanding" boss.
Eight current and former Nvidia employees spoke to Business Insider about Huang's leadership style and what it's like to be grilled by him. These people asked not to be named as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
They describe his approach to leadership as a blend of high expectations, a demand for intellectual honesty, and a "relentless pursuit of perfection." Huang's approach has helped drive Nvidia's success and created a culture with a growth mindset, according to the people who spoke to BI.
'Crystallizing complex things'
Two former executives described Huang as the smartest person they've ever met.
"He is a master at crystallizing complex things with simple clarity; he's able to boil stuff down and has very broad, deep knowledge and can go as deep as you want to on pretty much any subject," one said.
Another insider revealed that Huang often asks questions he already knows the answers to as a way of assessing comprehension of a topic. They said it's a strategic tactic and reminiscent of the character Lieutenant Columbo in the TV drama "Columbo," who would feign ignorance to catch people off guard or get them to slip up.
As a leader, Hunag is incredibly hands-on and meticulous in his attention to detail, several people said.
"Jensen is deeply involved in everything, and he works tirelessly — I think work is his hobby," a current employee said.
Huang often reviews slide decks before presentations and, at times, suggests last-minute changes to ensure they meet his high standards, two people said.
Email style
He also favors a flat organizational structure, reflected in Nvidia's office layout in the 2000s, where even executives had cubicles. That was a way to avoid creating separation between rank-and-file staff and the leadership, a former senior-level employee said.
The company's house style for writing emails is another area where Huang's influence is felt. Employees are expected to send Huang and their department a list of their top five priorities each week. Huang even responds to some of these emails, according to three people, which they felt showed his engagement with every aspect of operations.
Intellectual honesty
Huang sets high expectations for his employees as well as himself.
"He's definitely a demanding leader; he's a bit like a sports coach in that he expects a lot of you because he wants you to achieve your potential for your own good and for the good of the team," one person said, adding that they saw it as a positive quality.
Admitting mistakes is crucial at Nvidia, as it's seen as a way to learn and improve. Huang fosters what the insiders called "intellectual honesty." That means owning up when you screw up, and you could be in trouble if you don't admit your mistakes, they said.
A former executive recalled a telling moment in 1999, after Nvidia launched its first GPU, when Huang asked about the launch event. Despite the positive feedback, Huang's only question was "What could you have done better?"
Three former senior-level employees said Huang's leadership style is based on this focus on continuous improvement and learning from mistakes.
Another former executive described this approach as a "relentless pursuit of perfection." He said he believes Huang thinks teaching people and pointing out learning opportunities is part of his job.
The 'Jensen grilling'
Senior-level employees often experience what some have referred to as a "Jensen grilling"— intense questioning by Huang.
Several people BI spoke to said they had felt the heat in meetings.
"Everybody gets asked tough questions; you're expected to know your business," a former executive said. "If you started to look like you didn't know, he'd start grilling you and finding what you didn't know as a way to tell you 'go get on top of this'."
One employee likened Huang's grilling to an attorney's interrogation, noting that he wouldn't back down until he'd made his point. "Some say if you don't get yelled at by Jensen, it's because he doesn't care about you."
Generosity
Huang is also known inside the company for his generosity and philanthropy. A former executive said he has opened his home in Hawaii to some staff and even made them breakfast as he likes to cook.
During the 2010s, Huang decided to ditch company Christmas parties in favor of employees doing charitable work. "We started helping schools in disrepair in the Bay Area, hiring people or volunteering ourselves," one employee said.
In 2011, when Japan was hit by an earthquake and tsunami, Huang quickly donated money and encouraged staff to do the same.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Do you work a Nvidia? Got insights to share? Contact the reporter atjmann@businessinsider.comor on Signal at jyotimann.11
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Sergey Bobylev/Pool/AFP/ Getty Images
Moscow adopted the yuan-to-ruble exchange rate as benchmark after the US expanded sanctions against it.
The US sanctions forced the Moscow Exchange to end dollar and euro trading, causing market confusion.
Russia's central bank reports yuan is now the main currency, accounting for 54% of trades.
Moscow is adopting the Chinese yuan-to-ruble exchange rate as its benchmark currency pair after the US expanded sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, the country's central bank said on Thursday.
The new restrictions target any global financial institution processing transactions with Russia. They also take aim at investments in Russian stock exchanges.
The new US sanctions prompted the Moscow Exchange to end dollar and euro trading on Thursday, causing confusion — since the exchange rate is now opaque. Some lenders in Russia stopped selling US dollars altogether, while the dollar-ruble rate spiked at some local banks.
Russia's central bank appeared to seek to calm the market in a statement on Thursday. It said the role of the dollar and the euro has declined "consistently" in the last two years, according to TASS, the state news agency.
The central bank added in its statement to Russia's RBC News that the yuan has become "the main currency" on the Moscow Exchange. The yuan accounted for 54% of currency trades in May. It will "set the trajectory for other currency pairs" and be the guideline for market participants, the central bank said.
Russia's use of 'friendly currencies' and the ruble for trade has risen
Russia has been seeking alternative trading partners and payment systems since the West hit the country with sweeping sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia's central bank said on Thursday that the currencies from "friendly countries" and the ruble now account for as much as 80% of Russia's foreign trade payments.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin himself doubled down on his call to phase out the use of the US dollar and other "toxic" currencies earlier this month.
Moscow is also working with the BRICS bloc of major emerging countries on a payment platform to bypass the use of the US dollar — the world's dominant reserve currency for decades.
Meanwhile, countries around the world are also diversifying their assets and chipping away at the dominance of king dollar over fears that — like Russia — they could be shut out of the dollar-based global financial system should sanctions hit.