Author: openjargon

• China's Xi Jinping met Germany's Olaf Scholz Tuesday. 
• Xi said he wanted to try and bring peace to Ukraine. 
• But analysts say China is secretly intensifying support for Russia. 

China's leader, Xi Jinping, played the role of Ukraine's peacemaker during talks on Tuesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

At the meeting in Beijing, Xi presented his German counterpart with four principles for peace in Ukraine, according to Chinese state media.

Nations must focus on "the upholding of peace and stability and refrain from seeking selfish gains," Xi said, as well as "cool down the situation and not add fuel to the fire."

He added that they must establish conditions for restoring peace while reducing the war's impact on the world's economy.

The principles are vague and similar to a Ukraine peace plan proposed by China last year. At the time, the US said the plan worked mostly in Russia's favor.

But despite these public statements, analysts say Xi's claims to be a peacemaker are a charade, and in reality, China is increasing support for Russia's military.

Last month, London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warned that Russia was increasing its cooperation with China in 5G and satellite technology.

And in recent weeks, US intelligence has claimed that China is increasing its equipment sales to Russia, as well as providing important technologies such as microelectronics, optics, machine tools, and missile propellants.

This is in addition to the diplomatic and economic support China has already given the Kremlin.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, on Tuesday, said that Xi was seeking to garner goodwill in Germany, a key trading partner for China but an ally of Ukraine.

 "Xi's generally vague signaling to Scholz vis a vis Ukraine over the backdrop of reportedly intensifying Chinese support for Russia is, therefore more likely an attempt to maintain China's access to European markets by garnering goodwill with Germany than to show actual interest in facilitating an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine," said its analysts.

Scholz is just the latest Western leader to try to persuade Xi to use his influence with Russia's President Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine invasion.

But China showed no signs of changing its position, reiterating claims that the West was to blame for the war by arming Ukraine, The Associated Press reported.

China has been balancing conflicting priorities in Ukraine, experts previously told Business Insider. While Xi sees a Russian victory in the war as a way of damaging the global power of Ukraine's main backers, he's also keen to retain access to Western markets and US investment.

In recent years, the Chinese economy has experienced a serious downturn caused by a property market bubble, and Xi has abruptly changed his tone with many Western leaders, offering a series of concessions to US President Joe Biden at a meeting last year in San Francisco.

So far, that shift in tone has not resulted in a substantive change in his position on Putin's war in Ukraine despite the best efforts of Western leaders to get him to intervene.

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• Americans' top concerns about buying an EV are finding chargers and "range anxiety."
• Google is updating in-car maps and its travel site with more information about EV chargers.
• Google's new tools come as EV sales are slower than analysts expected. 

Finding a charger is one of the top concerns about buying an electric vehicle, whether drivers are running errands or planning a longer road trip.

Google is trying to make that easier with several new updates to its maps and travel site.

In the next several months, vehicles with Google's built-in maps will start showing nearby chargers along the route with real-time information about port availability and speed.

For long trips, the maps will also suggest charging stops along the way based on a battery's charge level. Eight automakers, including Volvo and Honda, come with Google built-in and several more like Ford are expected to be compatible soon.

Two other updates will help all EV drivers — not just those with Google built-in technology. For those hard-to-find charging stations, like in multilevel parking garages, Google Maps will start showing AI-powered summaries to help drivers navigate to these locations. The information is based on millions of user reviews.

Google Travel also has a new EV filter so vacationers can see what hotels offer charging.

The updates come as EV sales hit record levels last year, but were slower than analysts expected. Tesla just reported its lowest quarterly deliveries since 2022 and legacy automakers like Ford are delaying the release of some EV models in favor of hybrids that are gas- and battery- powered.

Industry analysts have pointed to several factors, including insufficient charging infrastructure and not enough affordable EV options.

In an Ipsos survey of more than 1,000 Americans last fall, only 31% of respondents said it was likely their next vehicle purchase will be electric. The top concerns were lack of charging stations and driving range, as well as the overall cost compared to gas vehicles. Less than a third of those surveyed said they knew about federal tax breaks for EVs.

For its part, Google aims to help ease some of that "range anxiety" by building on several other tools for EV drivers.

Real-time charging availability is already searchable in Google Maps and users can filter them based on speed and plug type.

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• Summer internship season is almost here. Students are now looking for the most coveted opportunities.
• Glassdoor published a ranking Wednesday of the 25 best internships of 2024, based on interns' reviews.
• It's largely tech, finance, and consulting, and includes gigs with a reported pay of $9,000+ a month.

With summer internship season fast approaching, many students and recent grads will soon find themselves in prestigious internships — some of which could actually be pretty lucrative.

A new ranking from workplace review site Glassdoor lays out the best internships of the year, as determined by pay and career growth opportunities, based on reviews and ratings from interns themselves.

The list is dominated by industries like tech, finance, and consulting and includes several internships with reported pay exceeding $9,000 a month.

Companies had to have received at least 30 salary reports and at least 15 career opportunities ratings by US-based interns from April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024, to be considered for the list. The named companies didn't verify the reported compensation and might not be actively hiring for internships right now. But they still offer a glimpse into the most exclusive roles for students and recent grads.

Take a look at the best internships of 2024, according to Glassdoor:

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• It's a bad idea to view luxury watches like they're investments, the CEO of Rolex said.
• "This sends the wrong message and is dangerous," Jean-Frédéric Dufour told NZZ last week.
• Secondhand watch prices have tumbled since the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates.

If you think an expensive watch is akin to an investment that can offer stock market-style returns, you're doing it all wrong — according to the CEO of Rolex at least.

"I don't like it when people compare watches to stocks. It sends the wrong message and is dangerous. We make products, not investments," Jean-Frédéric Dufour told Swiss newspaper NZZ last week.

His comments as secondhand watch prices slide after spectacular pandemic-era growth.

WatchCharts' Overall Market Index, which tracks prices, spiked 72% between January 2021 and March 2022 as retail investors who got rich trading cryptocurrencies and meme stocks sought to diversify their portfolios.

Since that peak, the gauge has tumbled 38%, while the benchmark S&P 500 index of US stocks is up 13% over the same period.

Watch prices started dropping as the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates. Between May 2022 and July 2023, the central bank jacked up borrowing costs from near-zero to about 5%. When interest rates are higher, demand for big-ticket items tends to fall, because there's more incentive for consumers to save rather than spend.

Dufour, who's been Rolex CEO since 2015, also told NZZ he's expecting a "challenging" year. Luxury watch companies such as Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet can't necessarily cut prices to stimulate demand, he added.

"It marks the end of a phase in which all manufacturers have been doing well. In good times, production tends to be too high. When markets weaken, as is the case now, retailers come under pressure to cut prices. This is extremely problematic because discounts damage emotional products like ours," Dufour said.

A year ago Patek Philippe chairman Thierry Stern warned that the market for luxury watches was "slowing down."

His company makes the coveted Nautilus sports watch and only produces between 60,000 and 70,000 watches a year, which start at about $30,000.

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• Ukraine's ammo shortages are also affecting its US-made HIMARS, an American veteran told BI.
• Soldiers are now having to pass on targets they once would have hit, he said.
• Ukraine has had to get "more and more selective with their targets," giving Russia an edge.

Ukraine's insufficient supply of ammunition means its soldiers can't hit the targets they want with even their most effective weapons, a US veteran now fighting in Ukraine told Business Insider.

Such weapons include the US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), with soldiers unable to use it to hit the same targets that they could earlier in the war when they had more munitions available, the veteran, Jonathan Poquette, bold Business Insider.

He said his unit had good support from HIMARS — a long-range, high-precision rocket launcher that can hit targets 50 miles away — but its effectiveness was degraded as rockets ran low.

Poquette is a sniper with Chosen Company, part of Ukraine's 59th Motorized Brigade. Chosen Company is made up of international soldiers now fighting for Ukraine, and while it's technically a reconnaissance unit, it also does front-line assault operations and defensive work.

He said that when he was not on missions, he would look at satellite imagery on computers, "looking for targets, looking for batteries, artillery batteries that needed to get hit, looking for convoys, possible supply points of the Russians."

He would then bring those targets to the Ukrainian HIMARS operator, who would then start the military's verification process to confirm the target and see if it was worth a hit.

The next step would be to "send off a rocket and boom, boom, target eliminated, done."

That was earlier in the conflict though. The supply of rockets began to dry up in October when Russia launched a new offensive in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region and when Republicans in Congress started stalling billions of US aid.

Congress approved $300 million for Ukraine last month, which would have included HIMARS rockets. But the allocated money had been already spent, per recent reporting, meaning the money isn't available at the moment.

Not enough rockets

As the supply situation at the front worsened, Poquette was often told "we're not really interested in these type of targets right now" when he would present potential strike options. That shift, he explained, was "because we're running out of rockets."

The unit "started getting more and more selective with their targets," he explained.

For example, they stopped trying to hit Russian training areas. They were once a good target, as "that's where you generally have a collection of troops. And so for one missile that impacts, you might take out 30 guys. So at that point, it's really efficient."

But those were further away from the Ukrainians and often meant firing rockets over Russia's air defense systems.

That risk would be acceptable for Ukraine if it had more rockets. The solution would be to fire more, making it more likely for at least one to get through, but that just wasn't something they could do anymore.

The HIMARS were praised as the perfect weapon for Ukraine when they first arrived in 2022, and they have since been used to destroy Russian weaponry and hit Russian troops, repeatedly causing significant damage.

But officials say Ukraine needs more rockets. The Hudson Institute, a US think tank, said this month that Ukraine faces an "acute shortage."

Grave shortages

Ukraine is running critically low on supplies, including ammunition for artillery and air defenses as Republicans in the US have continuously stalled further aid for six months now.

Poquette, who has been recovering in Kyiv since January from an injury, said those lawmakers are "somewhat responsible for our lack of ability to hold ground."

Ukraine's soldiers say they have to ration supplies, meaning Russian targets they know could be hit are left untouched.

Poquette said that critical shortages of ammunition have hamstrung operations in other ways as well, noting that earlier in the war, they would take any opportunity to target and attempt to destroy advancing groups of Russian troops.

But the Ukrainians had to shift their mindset. If the group was small enough, "the Ukrainians would evaluate it and be like, well, it's only two or three guys, maybe four, is that really worth an artillery round or a mortar round?"

Instead, infantry might be sent in to eliminate the threat, putting Ukrainian lives at risk in a way that they might not have been using indirect fire.

Poquette said that the kind of marksmanship training they could do became increasingly limited, too. "After a while, we'd go out and they'd be like, 'Hey, go easy on the ammo guys. Don't waste so much ammo.'"

He said that Ukrainian soldiers are so "desperate" for ammunition that they would ask him for his grenades and bullets any time he was turning over his position to a new team.

Poquette said an issue with Western aid is that it comes in "tidbits," with long debates delaying decisions to send certain equipment and varying levels of support arriving at different times, making planning very hard for Ukraine.

Many experts and Western officials have said that the situation is dire for Ukraine and that it could lose the war to Russia if it does not receive sufficient support.

Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the head of US European Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, warned this week that Russia could quickly win the war if Ukraine does not get more aid and said most money approved for Ukraine would actually go to US companies.

Poquette urged the US to continue its support, saying the GOP's actions had shaken his long-standing loyalty to the party. He argued that Ukraine has more than demonstrated that with enough support it can fend off the Russians. All it needs is the unwavering support promised.

"How much more do they need to prove? Don't tie one of their hands behind their back," he said. "Support Ukraine, help us win this war."

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• Tim Cook discussed manufacturing in Indonesia with president Joko Widodo, Reuters reported.
• Such a move would help Apple reduce its reliance on manufacturing in China. 
• The Apple CEO also visited Vietnam, another of its manufacturing hubs, this week.

Apple has put Indonesia in the frame as it looks to reduce its reliance on manufacturing in China.

After meeting president Joko Widodo in Jakarta on Tuesday, CEO Tim Cook said the iPhone maker will "look at" Indonesia, Reuters reported.

"We talked about the president's desire to see manufacturing in the country, and it is something that we will look at," Cook said.

His comments come amid a broader push by Apple to diversify its production beyond China, more than two decades after it began manufacturing there.

Cook also posted photos on X with several content creators he met on his trip to Indonesia on Wednesday.

About 14% of its iPhone production came from India in the last financial year, Bloomberg recently reported. The company also opened retail stores in India last year.

Apple has also turned to Vietnam to help diversity its manufacturing. Foxconn, its major Chinese assembler, moved production of iPads and MacBooks there in 2020 following a request from Apple.

Cook visited Vietnam earlier this week. Apple said in a statement on its Vietnamese website that it plans to boost spending on suppliers in the country.

The tech giant's attempts to reduce its dependence on China come amid growing tension between the US and China. That's been sparked by issues including trade disputes, competition over chips used for AI and cars, as well as tough export controls.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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• Torrential rain and flash floods brought Dubai airport to a standstill on Tuesday.
• Dozens of cancellations left some passengers stranded with no way out of the airport. 
• Videos posted online showed dreamlike scenes of planes battling through flood waters.

Dubai Airport, the world's second busiest, was brought to a standstill on Tuesday after torrential rains and heavy flooding created chaos on the runways, and across the city.

All operations were suspended for 25 minutes in the afternoon, and inbound flights were diverted due to the intense storm, an airport spokesperson said.

In total, 21 outbound and 24 inbound flights were cancelled, and 3 flights were diverted, according to the latest update published around 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday.

Videos posted on social media showed lapping waters covering the tarmac and transforming the runway at Dubai Airport into more of a river than a safe airstrip.

In one post, a Boeing 737 operated by Flydubai can be seen battling through the high waters,

All arrivals at the airport were paused on Tuesday night

Passengers affected by the travel chaos were left stranded at the airport as sections of the surrounding roads remained impassable due to high floodwaters.

"It's challenging for departing guests to reach the airport and arrival guests to leave the terminals due to the significant flooding and road blockages have left limited transport options for arriving and departing guests," the airport said in a statement issued on Tuesday morning.

A couple at the airport said that the situation was "absolute carnage."

"You cannot get a taxi. There's people sleeping in the Metro station. There's people sleeping in the airport," they told an AP reporter.

Dubai International Airport, which was recently named the second busiest in the world, was still advising passengers to stay away on Wednesday morning.

"We advise you NOT to come to the airport, unless absolutely necessary. Flights continue to be delayed and diverted," the airport posted on X.

Dubai, the Middle East's financial hub, was brought to a standstill by the rainfall with schools closing and many people abandoning their vehicles in the streets as flash floods soaked the city.

Dubai's media office said the flooding was caused by the heaviest downpour the United Arab Emirates has experienced since records began in 1949.

Flooding also hit the neighboring countries of Bahrain and Oman over the weekend. In Oman, nine schoolchildren and their driver died on Sunday when their vehicle was washed away by floodwaters, Al Jazeera reported.

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• Mother and baby company, Frida, has opted to use a porn actress in its product explainer videos.
• It wants customers to have an uncensored view of how to use its pregnancy and postpartum care products.
• The company has previously had social media posts and TV adverts rejected due to nudity.

A mother and baby company, Frida, has given up on working around censorship on social media and is turning to a porn actress to showcase its products instead.

After it released its perineum massager, a device designed to stretch the area between the vagina and the rectum during pregnancy, the company was flooded with messages and Amazon reviews asking how to use it, Chelsea Hirschhorn, CEO of Frida, told The New York Times.

But the company struggled to find ways to share how to use Frida products without TV networks and social media censoring them.

"Our brand is no stranger to censorship when it comes to women's health. Almost all the mainstream media we've tried to advertise on: censored, censored, censored," Hirschhorn said in an Instagram post.

Instead of working around nudity rules on social media, it doubled down and hired porn actress, Asa Akira, to demonstrate the products on its new website, Frida Uncovered.

The age-gated website shares uncensored 'how-to" videos like: how to do an at-home insemination, how to do a prenatal perineal massage, and how to soothe engorged breasts.

Akira, a mother of two, was chosen to take part in the videos as her career in porn meant that she was comfortable showing her body and face on camera, the Times reported.

''We deserve to know about our bodies," Akira told the outlet.

Instagram users have expressed gratitude for the new website. One user commented on a post by Frida: "I wish I had this sooner! Could've saved me from many dead-end Google searches."

Another commented: "We need these kind of educational videos because it shows us how it's really done."

The website offers a way for users to learn about the products in explicit detail instead of the company using euphemistic props to bypass nudity guidelines.

In 2020, Frida was set to air an ad during the Oscars featuring a visibly pained mother using the bathroom after having a baby. But the network ABC rejected the ad from airing as it said it was "too graphic with partial nudity."

Likewise, Frida had posts taken down from Instagram for showing female breasts, despite the post pertaining to women's health.

An oversight board told Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, last year that: "The restrictions and exceptions to the rules on female nipples are extensive and confusing, particularly as they apply to transgender and non-binary people." 

The board is an advisory group of journalists, academics, and lawyers funded by Meta but which operates independently.

The board said that moderating internet nudity is "convoluted" and effectively "unworkable." Meta employs a mixture of human moderators and AI moderation to monitor posts, which can often get things wrong.

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• Elon Musk's mega pay packet will be taken back to Tesla shareholders for another vote.
• The $47 billion package, first approved in 2018, was voided by a Delaware court in January.
• A statement filed with the SEC Wednesday says Musk hasn't been paid for his work at Tesla in six years.

Tesla will ask shareholders to vote again on Elon Musk's enormous pay package, which was previously overturned by a court.

The carmaker announced its plans for another vote in a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

"Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value," the proxy statement reads.

It adds: "That strikes us — and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard — as fundamentally unfair, and inconsistent with the will of the stockholders who voted for it."

Tesla said that when 73% of shareholders voted for the pay package in 2018, it was a "big risk" targeting "unprecedented growth."

But in January, a Delaware judge sided with a Tesla shareholder who argued in a lawsuit that Musk's pay package was excessive.

The compensation involved Musk receiving stock options based on financial targets. It played a major role in the Tesla CEO's rise to becoming the world's richest person. He is now ranked third by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault.

When the package was voided in court, it was worth $55 billion — but The New York Times reports it is now valued at $47 billion.

The second shareholder vote is set to occur at the firm's annual meeting in June, per the proxy filing.

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• Russia is firing 10 times more artillery than Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
• Russia also has 30 times more aircraft, he said, in a worrying sign for the country.
• Ukraine is suffering critical shortages with US aid stalled, and has warned it may need to retreat.

Ukraine's president said that Russia is now firing 10 times more artillery shells than his country is able to, and has 30 times more aircraft, in a worrying sign for Ukraine's ability to sustain its military efforts.

"You need to be much stronger than your enemy. Today, our artillery shell ratio is 1-10. Can we hold our ground? No," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told PBS this week. "With these statistics, they will be pushing us back every day," he added.

Zelenskyy also said that Russian aircraft outnumber Ukraine's by 30:1. "How can you wage a war against Russia like this?"

He added that unless aid from the US resumes, "we will have no chance of winning."

The US is the single biggest donor to Ukraine, but billions in further aid to Ukraine is stalled in Congress. Republicans have pushed back against giving more, even though much of the money would go back into the US economy, via US defense manufacturers.

Zelenskyy made it clear that it was ammo that his country needed the most.

"We're not asking for missiles for 2,000 or 3,000 kilometers, nothing like that," he said. "And nobody is asking for 500 aircraft or 300, like Russia."

Ukraine is suffering from a critical shortage of ammunition and weaponry that soldiers and experts say is having a major impact on the battlefield.

While many European countries have increased their help for Ukraine, and total aid from EU countries has been higher than that of the US, it is still not enough to make up the deficit from stalled US support.

Many European countries have also warned that they don't have enough supplies in their arsenals to give Ukraine and that not enough new munitions are being produced to resolve this.

Soldiers in Ukraine have told BI that shortages mean they have to ration ammunition and not go after some of the same types of targets they would earlier in the war.

One American veteran, now a sniper in Ukraine, urged more US support.

"Ukraine has already defied the odds and beat the expectations within the first couple of months of the invasion. They've shown what they're capable of with limited resources," Jonathan Poquette said.

"How much more do they need to prove? Don't tie one of their hands behind their back. Support Ukraine, help us win this war," he added.

Ukraine is producing more of its own ammunition and weaponry, to make it less reliant on its allies, but Russia is also doing the same, and has a much larger population and more resources available.

Zelenskyy warned in March that Ukraine would have to start retreating if no new aid came from Congress.

"We are trying to find some way not to retreat," he said at the time.

The White House has been critical of Republicans blocking further aid, and has already attributed one major Russian victory to Ukrainian shortages.

Ukraine withdrew from the eastern town of Avdiivka in February after months of grueling fighting. The White House said Kyiv's troops were forced to withdraw due to a shortage of ammunition and supplies — which is said was a direct result of "congressional inaction."

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