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• Hemant Pandey shares the resume format that has helped him land several software engineering roles.
• He keeps work experiences short and includes points that make for good interview stories.
• Pandey emphasizes the growing importance of personal branding in the job market.

Hemant Pandey's software engineering career was off to a good start.

After an internship at Amazon during his graduate program, he anded a full-time software role at Tesla in 2018. The pay was "top notch," and it was a dream company.

Pandey, who grew up in India, even invited his family to visit him in California that summer.

Two weeks later after they visited, he was laid off.

"It was my first job and getting laid off meant having to build rapport all over again in just six months," he told Business Insider. "I needed to prove myself again."

He didn't feel comfortable telling people he was let go and worried companies might see him as a bad performer and reject him before interviews.

But he was proactive about looking for new roles and landed a job at SAP within a month.

After a year, Pandey switched to Salesforce, where he stayed for two years. In 2021, he applied to Meta after learning about the company's "crazy" pay packages on tech forums.

Here is the résumé format that Pandey has used since college. It got him a $500,000 senior software engineer role at Meta and offers from TikTok and LinkedIn at the same time. BI has verified his employment history and compensation, which includes cash and stock.

Making conscious résumé decisions

Looking back at his résumé two and a half years into his job at Meta, there are a couple of things Pandey said work well, which he would keep the same.

Limiting descriptions: When it comes to summarizing work experiences, "I like to keep it very ambiguous," Pandey said. In an interview, "if people ask me what I did at Salesforce, I can help them know more by explaining rather than writing a paragraph." He uses one to three bullet points for each role.

Including GPA: While his master's GPA is not very "impressive," Pandey chooses to include it and sees it as an opportunity to share a story during an interview. "I generally share how I bombed my first semester and was intimidated," he said about getting a low GPA and almost losing an internship he was offered. He talks about how he had to push himself to keep up with more experienced students and eventually scored better in the following semesters. "This makes a good growth and learning-from-failures story."

Ability to do basics: As engineers move to more senior roles, the job is less about coding and more focused on leading teams and delivering projects, he said. "But if I still interview for a startup, they don't really care about how I'm leading or shipping products. They care about if I can write code, if I'm tech savvy enough." To demonstrate his technical skills, Pandey lists projects and links to his past coding work.

There is only one change he would make if he were to revamp the résumé today.

Personal brand projects: "Your personal brand is now more and more important," he said. "I write actively on LinkedIn and have a newsletter with around 4,000 subscribers," which he would list on his résumé's projects section. He would also include that he mentors students. Those additions "will start to matter more than just my tech skills and certificates."

Pandey is part of a growing group of people, both corporate workers and business owners, embracing personal branding to boost their careers.

Quynh Mai, the founder of a digital creative agency, decided to embrace personal branding nearly 10 years after she began her business. Once Mai began promoting herself and her work via LinkedIn and media, and giving talks, she said potential customers trusted her experience more, she previously told BI.

"Building a personal brand connected to your business is more important than ever because people won't do business with anyone they don't trust," she said.

Those in 9-to-5 jobs have started adopting similar practices.

Sahil Dua, a senior machine learning engineer at Google in Zurich, told BI that personal branding projects have given him an edge in job interviews and have boosted his career.

"Tech speaking experience actually helped quite a lot in advancing my career and came up a lot in interview processes that I was going through at the time," Dua said.

If he were to revamp his résumé today, he said he would add his experience speaking at conferences and a book he wrote in 2020.

"I would change that section to make sure I highlight that I've given these TED talks to increase my credibility and to say: yeah, I know some stuff," Dua said.

Do you work in tech, finance, or consulting, and have a story to share about your personal résumé journey? Email this reporter at shubhangigoel@insider.com.

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• Kenneth Tan bought a three-bedroom house in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for 920,000 ringgit, or about $192,000.
• He spent six months transforming the old building into a sleek modern home with Japandi influences.
• "Sometimes if I go out, I kind of feel like I want to come home," Tan said. 

When the pandemic hit Malaysia in 2020, Kenneth Tan realized he needed his own space.

When his father and stepmom started working from home, their house began to feel crowded. "I felt like I had to hide in my room," Tan, who works in the F&B industry, told Business Insider.

He started scrolling real-estate platforms half-seriously, but as time passed, he became more invested in the idea of having his own house.

Although high property prices in major cities have made it difficult for many young Malaysians to buy their own homes, it's unclear what percentage of millennials still live with their parents in Malaysia. The Malaysia Population Research Hub did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BI.

In the US, based on the latest 2023 Census data, 19.7% of men and 12.3% of women between 25 and 34 years old still live with their parents.

"I thought, maybe I just need my own condo. A smaller space, or even a studio would be fine," Tan, 32, said.

Before making any purchases, Tan decided to rent a condo on Airbnb for a couple of weeks to see what it would feel like.

While Tan enjoyed the freedom that came with living alone, he realized he wasn't a fan of high-rise living.

In 2022, he ended up buying a corner terrace in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, for 920,000 Malaysian ringgit, or about $192,000.

"I wanted a swimming pool in my place, so I needed a house that had some land. But I also didn't want too much space — which was how I ended up with a single-story corner terrace," Tan said.

A quiet neighborhood

Tan's house is about 1,650 square feet and has three bedrooms. It's located in the township of Happy Garden, and about a 15-minute drive from both his parents' place and his workplace.

Tan estimates the house was built sometime in the 1960s or 70s.

What drew him to the property was its original condition — the previous owners had barely renovated the house in the decades that they lived there.

"You can clearly tell that the floors were original, the walls were original, the roof was original, everything was basically untouched in some way, and there was no renovation that was done anywhere in between," Tan said.

He also ended up liking the neighborhood a lot more than he expected to.

"It's very near to this neighboring commercial area called Kuchai Lama," Tan said. "So it's quite a busy place, not the kind of area that I thought I would like, but somehow the property sits in a pocket of houses that doesn't feel like it's congested at all."

The location made it convenient for him to get around while still allowing him to enjoy the peace and quiet.

"I could just walk to all these commercial areas," Tan said. "And going to the KL city center is like 15 minutes by car."

Tan's house is less than eight miles away from the Petronas Twin Towers.

A six-months long transformation

Tan started renovating his home in January 2023 and completed it in June, half a year later. He now lives in it with his girlfriend.

He describes the interior design of his home as having Japandi influences, thanks to the textures of the materials and the warm, earthy tones used in the house.

Tan said he worked with an interior designer to bring his vision to life.

"The designer just had to give their input and discuss whether it made sense," he said.

While he had some internal walls broken down to open up the space, Tan says he kept the original structure and layout of the home — including the open airwell.

"It's a very big part of the house, although it doesn't carry too much function per se, other than allowing some light in the center of the house as well as some cross ventilation," Tan said."It's a space that's not really used, but I like it because it makes the house unique."

He estimates that he spent about 1.3 million Malaysian ringgit, or about $271,000, on the renovation.

"There were compromises, but there were also things that I didn't need but ended up spending on because I wanted something nicer," Tan said.

For instance, he says he could have gotten cheaper floor tiles that were 20 ringgit a piece, but he chose the ones that cost 140 ringgit each because he liked them better.

"It's completely emotional because I know very well that the one that's cheaper could be equally as nice, but spending that extra money made it slightly better. I'm just happier because I picked the one that I wanted," Tan said.

Tan's favorite part of the house is his bedroom, which faces the swimming pool. Waking up to the view of the water every morning gives him a sense of peace and calm.

He also likes the arched doorways, which he included as a nod to the original design of the home.

"I actually added quite a lot of arches to it because the original house had them. The house that I used to live in also had them as well," Tan said.

Part of the reason Tan chose to renovate an old home was because he wanted to preserve the original structure — even though he was told it would probably cost just as much, if not more, than demolishing and building a new home.

"Obviously the construction methods back in the day versus today, it's very different," Tan said. "So I think buying the old house and redoing it, it definitely has more character."

Having a home of his own has given him a sense of comfort and security.

"This is something that I only realized after I'm living here, and it's that I'm so much more at ease. I have my own place to go back to," Tan said.

He even spends more time at home than he used to, he said.

"Sometimes if I go out, I kind of feel like I want to come home. Even on holidays sometimes, it's like I miss home. I don't mind being home as much," Tan said.

Have you recently built or renovated your dream home in Asia? If you've got a story to share, get in touch with me at agoh@businessinsider.com.

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• Kari Lake is hoping to flip the Arizona US Senate seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema.
• But a new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey shows that she's not consolidating the GOP base.
• The poll shows her likely Democratic opponent, Ruben Gallego, winning 15% of GOP voters.

In the fight to win Arizona's Senate seat this fall, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and GOP candidate Kari Lake are locked in a close race in what has become one of the nation's premier swing states.

A new survey released by Emerson College Polling/The Hill showed that Gallego, a Phoenix-area congressman, led Lake by 2.2 points (45.3% to 43.1%), with 11.6% of respondents indicating that they were undecided.

While the Senate primaries in Arizona won't be held until August, both Gallego and Lake are heavily favored to capture their respective party nominations to succeed retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

For Lake, who as the GOP gubernatorial nominee in 2022 ran a Trump-aligned candidacy that appealed to his most conservative acolytes, she's already made moves to expand her coalition in the fast-growing state.

But the latest survey showed the challenges that she still faces as she works to flip the key Senate seat for the GOP. And her biggest obstacle may be with members of her own party.

In the poll, Gallego was backed by 87.4% of Democrats and received support from 15% of GOP respondents — a sizable level of crossover support for the Democratic congressman.

Lake's numbers were softer, as she was only supported by roughly 80% of Republicans, while 6.5% of Democrats indicated that they would back her candidacy.

When Sinema — then a Democrat — defeated then-GOP Rep. Martha McSally in the 2018 Senate race, she won 97% of Democrats and 12% of Republicans en route to a roughly two-point (50%-48%) victory.

Lake in the past has notably tussled with leaders in Arizona's center-right Republican establishment, but in recent months, she's sought to unify the party around her candidacy. Still, that effort has hit some snags among some in the party who dislike that she endorsed Trump's debunked election fraud claims regarding the 2020 election.

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• Amazon said it delivered to its Prime members faster than ever in the first quarter of 2024.
• Its drivers delivered over 2 billion items "the same or next day" in Q1, the company reported.
• The e-commerce giant reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations on Tuesday.

If it seems like that Amazon Prime package you ordered showed up on your doorstep sooner than expected, it's probably not just your imagination.

The e-commerce giant announced that it delivered to Prime subscribers at its "fastest speed ever" in its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

Amazon reported that it delivered more than 2 billion items in a one-day window in the first three months of 2024. If it were to keep that pace, it would top 2023's numbers, which Amazon previously said totaled 7 billion units delivered on the same day or the next day during the yearlong period.

In March, the company said nearly 60% of the items ordered by Prime members in the top 60 US metro areas arrived the same day or the next. Major cities outside of the US, like London, Tokyo, and Toronto, saw three out of four of their items delivered in the same window.

Blake Droesch, a senior analyst at market research firm Emarketer, a sister company to Business Insider, praised Amazon for "strong Q1 growth" in its online store sales.

"Delighting customers with free and fast delivery through Amazon Prime will keep customers coming to the site, increasingly for CPG and other household items, which will continue to attract endemic advertisers," Droesch told BI.

An Amazon Prime subscription costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year, and students receive a discounted rate of $7.49 monthly or $69 per year.

Amazon is also kicking it up a notch in the grocery war being waged by retail titans. Prime members are now being offered free delivery on grocery orders over $35 from stores like Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, and more.

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• Changpeng Zhao, also known as "CZ," has been one of the wealthiest people in crypto.
• His rivalry with Sam Bankman-Fried nearly saw Binance save FTX from bankruptcy.
• But Binance had its own issues: Zhao has pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering charges, and was sentenced to 4 months in prison.

Sam Bankman-Fried isn't the only crypto king to experience a highly public fall from grace.

Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, was one of the wealthiest people in the industry as founder and CEO of crypto exchange Binance. In November, however, he stepped down from his role and pleaded guilty to charges that Binance violated US anti-money laundering requirements.

On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 4 months in prison.

Here's the story of Zhao's dramatic career rise and fall.

Changpeng Zhao is the founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Zhao — who's often known as CZ — is one of the most prominent people in cryptocurrency, and has been the wealthiest person in the industry.

With a net worth of $39.7 billion, he's listed as the 38th-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

But crypto winter has taken a toll across the industry, and Zhao is no exception. His real-time estimated net worth is a far cry from the peak of his personal wealth: His net worth peaked at $95.9 billion earlier in 2023, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows.

Zhao's interest in cryptocurrency began in 2013 when he first learned about Bitcoin, according to a 2018 Forbes report. His career in the up-and-coming digital currency industry started at Blockchain.info, where he served as the head of development.

Zhao founded Binance in 2017 and powered it to become the biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. The exchange handles some $76 billion in daily trading volume, Protocol previously reported. In 2021 alone, Binance generated over $20 billion in revenue, according to Bloomberg.

Editor's note: This story was first published in October 2022 and has been updated to reflect recent developments.

Zhao was born in a rural village in Jiangsu province in China in 1977 to a family of teachers.

Zhao, who is Chinese-Canadian, moved to Vancouver in the late 1980s with his family, according to Forbes.

Zhao's father, Shengkai, was a professor who was exiled to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution in China, according to the Maclean's report.

Zhao said in a September blog post that his family had to wait in line outside the Canadian embassy for three days to procure visas. He added that he was "lucky to have been able to leave at that time."

Shengkai immigrated to Canada to pursue a doctorate degree at the University of British Columbia, per Maclean's. After the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, Zhao and his family followed his father and moved to Vancouver. 

Zhao said he experienced food rationing growing up in rural China. "You get a ticket to buy meat," Zhao told Fortune in a March interview. Zhao told Maclean's that it wasn't until he moved to Canada that he ever drank fresh milk, because it was so rare to find it in China.

When Zhao moved to Canada, he held a number of part-time jobs, according to the Maclean's report.

He started working at McDonald's when he was 14 and worked there for two years, Dewi Mustajab, a spokesperson for Binance, told Business Insider.

Zhao also worked at a Chevron gas station and as a referee for volleyball games in his teens to earn money, per Maclean's.

Zhao said in the blog post that moving to Canada "changed my life forever." He added that he spent his "best years as a teenager" growing up in Vancouver.

Zhao is known to be frugal: He doesn't own cars, yachts, or luxury watches. Instead, he has digital watches like the Apple Watch, and he recently bought a Toyota Velfire van, Mustajab said.

Zhao studied computer science at McGill University in Montreal, the same school where his father worked as a visiting scholar.

Zhao's interest in technology was fueled by a $14,000 286 DOS computer that his father — "a math whiz and programmer" — bought when was Zhao was in his teens, per Maclean's. Before attending McGill, Zhao enrolled in programming classes in high school and started coding when he was just 16 years old, per Bloomberg.

After graduating from university, Zhao worked first on the Tokyo Exchange, and from 2001 to 2005, on Bloomberg's Tradebook, Mustajab said.

In 2005, Zhao quit the corporate life and moved to Shanghai to become a partner at the trading system company Fusion Systems. According to Zhao's LinkedIn page, he left the company in December 2013.

The vast majority of Zhao's multibillion-dollar wealth comes from his controlling stake in Binance Holdings, per Bloomberg.

While Bloomberg estimates Zhao is worth around $39.7 billion from his majority stake in the cryptocurrency platform, it's not a complete picture of his wealth. Bloomberg said it does not include cryptocurrency directly held by Zhao in his net worth, as the amount is not publicly available. 

Zhao has personal cryptocurrency holdings in Bitcoin and Binance Coin, per a September report by Bloomberg. In 2021, Binance had over 90 million users, Bloomberg reported, citing an estimate from Zhao.

Zhao is said to have a considerable amount of wealth from Bitcoin, having bought $1 million worth of the digital currency when it was just $600 a unit, per Maclean's.

Binance declined to confirm Zhao's net worth and the source of his wealth to Business Insider.

But Zhao's journey at Binance has been far from smooth sailing — the company has been embroiled in several controversies.

In October, some $570 million worth of cryptocurrency traded on Binance was stolen in a blockchain hack, according to the New York Times. Zhao told CNBC in an October interview that no users had lost money in the attack, and that "software code is never bug free." The Binance hack is one of the biggest cryptocurrency hacks of all time.

Binance said in a blog post that in the event of a hack in the future, its validators will decide if the hacked funds will be frozen. The decision would be made through a series of "on-chain governance votes" — the system that manages and implements changes to the blockchain. Binance added they would also consider implementing a "bug bounty reward system," so users are incentivized to report bugs.

"Nearly $570 million were minted and taken by the hacker, $100 million are unrecovered and moved off chain by the hacker. No users or users funds affected," Mustajab said.

Binance has also been criticized for its ties to China. Binance only delisted Chinese yuan-based trading pairs on the exchange in 2021, and served customers in China for several years, according to September article by Protos. Chinese authorities banned all crypto-related transactions in September 2021.

Zhao responded to these allegations in a blog post published in September, where he clarified that Binance was never incorporated in China and said it does not "operate like a Chinese company culturally." He added that he is "a Canadian citizen, period."

Binance also garnered controversy for enabling Iran-based users to trade cryptocurrencies on the exchange despite US-imposed sanctions, according to a July report by Reuters. Binance informed traders in Iran to liquidate their accounts in November 2018, but seven traders continued until September 2021 to use the account even after the ban. Binance did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment at the time.

Zhao was known for his rivalry with FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried. In 2022, Binance looked set to rescue SBF's firm from bankruptcy, before backing out of the deal.

Binance signed a non-binding agreement to acquire FTX, Zhao said in a Twitter post on November 8, 2022. At the time, FTX was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume after Binance and Coinbase, before filing for bankruptcy three days later.

It all started with a public spat on November 6, 2022, when Zhao announced on Twitter that Binance would be liquidating its FTT tokens, the cryptocurrency of FTX.

Anthony Scaramucci, who sold 30% of his business to FTX, told Business Insider in January 2023 that Bankman-Fried had been saying "nasty things" about Zhao during a fundraising tour in the Middle East – which may have prompted Binance to sell off its FTT holdings.

In a Twitter post, Bankman-Fried said that Zhao was "trying to go after us with false rumors," and that FTX and its assets "are fine."

But then Binance pulled out of the deal, and FTX filed for bankruptcy. SBF was later found guilty on multiple fraud charges and has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Binance then ran into legal troubles of its own, after the CFTC alleged it had violated trading rules.

In March 2023, the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission sued Zhao, Binance, and its former chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, for allegedly violating trading rules. 

It alleged a "willful evasion of federal law" because Binance ignored requirements to register the exchange, and helped customers to evade its "ineffective compliance program."

The CFTC said Binance didn't require customers to provide ID, and "failed to implement basic compliance procedures designed to prevent and detect terrorist financing and money laundering."

The filing shows officers discussing transactions from the Palestinian militant group Hamas. "Like come on. They are here for crime," Lim said in internal communications, per the filing. 

Zhao has split his time between Dubai and France. He was previously based in Singapore.

Zhao moved to Dubai in late 2021, where he leases an office to run what Bloomberg described as "a new phase" of Binance. Zhao also owns an apartment and a minivan in the city, the publication reported. 

"I have always liked placed with diverse cultures," Zhao told the Gulf News in an August 2022 interview. He described the city as "very pro-crypto," according to a 2021 interview with Bloomberg.

Previously, Zhao lived in Singapore from 2019 to 2021. The city-state spent hundreds of millions of dollars investing in the sector amidst a crackdown on the industry in the US, UK, and China.

In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering charges and stepped down from his role as CEO of Binance.

Binance will pay a $4.3 billion fine in response to the verdict.

Part of the fine will go toward settling the lawsuit brought by the CFTC earlier this year, which accused Binance and Zhao of failing to stop illegal trading activity on the crypto exchange. 

The crypto exchange is also pleading guilty to related charges, which could potentially put an end to a five-year Department of Justice investigation.

In April 2024, the Justice Department recommended Zhao be sentenced to three years in prison and have to pay a $50 million fine.

In response, Zhao's attorneys suggested he be sentenced to probation, arguing, "No defendant in a remotely similar [Bank Secrecy Act] case has ever been sentenced to incarceration. Mr. Zhao should not be the first."

A week later, Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in prison.

Binance will also pay a $4.3 billion fine in federal court, and Zhao has already paid a $50 million fine as part of his plea deal.

Zhao has reportedly kept busy in the months since pleading guilty, eyeing potential opportunities for his next act.

He and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were texting late last year, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.

Zhao separately said he was "looking for opportunities" to invest in data centers for AI, according to the report.

Last week, he said in a court filing that he'd spoken with biotech startups and would "like to help fund small research labs with the aim of curing diseases once and for all." He also tweeted last month that he was working on a digital learning platform called Giggle Academy involving free basic K-12 education that would be gamified.

"No revenue," he said.

He said he was hiring a small team and "looking for teacher(s) who can create digital content."

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• In 2023, Kristi Campbell moved into South Park Cottages, a micro-home community in Atlanta. 
• Campbell owns a 628-square-foot home with one bedroom and one bathroom, purchased for $235,000.
• Despite the home's small size, she finds it comfortable, and enjoys being part of the village's close-knit community.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kristi Campbell, a 28-year-old business consultant, who moved into micro-home community South Park Cottages in 2023. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2020, I left New York after living there for seven years, pursuing both my master's and bachelor's degrees, and working as a consultant. The city is all about hustling and bustling, and I realized it wasn't necessarily for me.

When the pandemic hit, I thought it was a great time to move back to East Atlanta and my parents' house where I was raised. The plan was to move out and buy my first home by November 2023. I had even saved up $10,000.

In 2022, my boyfriend sent me a link to South Park Cottages' website, a Black-owned tiny home village. I absolutely fell in love.

The village's homes are newly built with a modern aesthetic. It's also close to the airport and Main Street in downtown Atlanta, where there's a strip of black-owned restaurants and stores.

I put in an offer for a tiny home in November 2022 and officially closed in June 2023. I own a 628 square foot home that I purchased for $235,000 and have a 30-year fixed mortgage with a monthly payment of $2,150.

South Park Cottages afforded me the opportunity to buy my first home sooner than planned — it was the official stamp for adulthood.

It's nice to have a space of my own

When I applied, the community was still being developed (I saw my home's construction framing and trusted the developer). It gave me an opportunity to save up more money.

Before I was even considered for a home at South Park Cottages, I had to be pre-approved for the full loan amount of the home.

I chose South Park Cottages' preferred lender, along with a preferred closing attorney.

The lending process for the tiny home worked like a traditional mortgage, requiring the same paperwork: The lender wanted to see my income and bank statements from the past two years to make sure I had consistent work.

When I was approved, I put down a $17,500 deposit. It covered the builder's fee and an upgraded tech package for my home, which included a smart door lock, a doorbell camera, a smart refrigerator, and Bluetooth speakers.

When I got the keys to my home, I was overwhelmed — in a good way. I was elated to have something that I could create and that was mine.

I have a one bedroom and one bathroom, a patio, a balcony, as well as a multi-use loft space that I turned into an office.

I consider myself to be a maximalist, but when you move into a tiny home, you eventually realize that you actually don't need a lot of things.

I have a storage unit for equipment and other supplies, but I got rid of a lot of clothes, shoes, bags, and furniture.

Despite downsizing, I still think the home is pretty spacious. On my mom's birthday in January, my entire family came over to my house, and we fit about 20 people in here.

The community feels safe and welcoming

South Park Cottages is predominantly Black and millennial, but it's still very diverse.

For a few homeowners here, their tiny home is an investment property, while for others, it's a second vacation home.

A lot of us share similar stories and backgrounds — we're first-time homebuyers, and mostly born and raised in Atlanta, though I think there are two or three people from California. It's exciting to know I can learn from people around me who are going through similar life phases.

One of my favorite things about the village is that it's really community oriented; we're all very tight knit. Neighbors look out for neighbors.

We usually eat on our patios or in front of our homes and wave to each other. There's also communal areas in the village like a garden and a fire pit, where residents regularly have cookouts. And residents celebrate a lot of housewarmings as well.

When you look at the community, it's like something you've never seen before in Atlanta and I love that.

I plan to buy another home in the future

South Park Cottages in more ways than one way changed my life.

When I moved back to Georgia, getting an apartment was never going to be part of the plan; I was determined that my next step had to be homeownership.

But the home prices in Atlanta have increased dramatically over the past few years. When I was first looking for homes in the area, there were hardly any newly built ones that were affordable. The homes that were, weren't modern, and required a lot of work.

I believe this South Park Cottages has made homeownership more attainable for people like me, and has given me the opportunity to create a space of my own.

Right now, I think my tiny home is great for me, but I definitely see it as a stepping stone. I want to live here for another year and a half, and then purchase another home, especially because I plan to get married and have children someday.

I'm going to hold onto this tiny home and pass it onto them. It's amazing knowing that I've invested in something that will benefit me and future generations.

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• Protests have rocked Columbia University's campus.
• Demonstrators opposing the war in Gaza want the school to divest from Israel.
• In 1985, protesters had staged their divestment campaign — and it worked.

The unrest at Columbia University isn't showing signs of slowing down.

Student protests are escalating there and other college campuses over the Israel-Gaza war and schools' investments in Israeli entities, with demonstrators on Tuesday breaking into a Columbia campus building and occupying it.

It's a shockingly familiar scene.

In the 1980s, student protesters at Columbia took over the same building and called for divestment of the Ivy League school's investments over a different cause: South African apartheid.

But while that movement was a success, protesters today may find it harder to push the school into divesting.

Protests over Israel's war in Gaza rage

Student demonstrators are calling for the Ivy League institution to divest from Israel and accuse the Jewish nation of killing civilians in Gaza.

The protesters are specifically demanding the school sell off investments not just from Israeli companies but from those that have ties to Israel, including engineering firms Lockheed Martin and Boeing and tech giants like Alphabet and Amazon, according to NPR.

Students have also called on the school to boycott Israeli universities and institutions, protect pro-Palestinian students and faculty, and make a statement condemning the war in Gaza.

The protesters swarmed the campus and set up tents. Meanwhile, Jewish leaders on campus say some students were targeted with offensive rhetoric as the demonstrations escalated.

The protests, which have lasted nearly two weeks, took another turn on Monday when the school announced it wouldn't cut its investments from Israel and warned protesting students to leave or face suspension.

The deadline came and went, and hours later, demonstrators broke into Hamilton Hall on the campus and barricaded themselves inside early Tuesday morning.

A coalition group of dozens of organizations called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has helped organize the protests, said in a statement that students had renamed the building "Hind's Hall" after a Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza.

The controversial protest movement has drawn criticism and support from top political and financial figures. The White House said President Joe Biden supported the right to protest peacefully but condemned the takeover of Hamilton Hall.

"Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful — it is wrong," a White House spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans have called for the school's president to resign, alleging she's failed to protect Jewish students on campus.

The 1985 protests

The demonstrations are reminiscent of those in 1985, when protesters and civil rights leaders were outraged over the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In 1978, the school's governing body had recommended selectively selling stocks of companies that had holdings in South Africa, according to a New York Times article at the time. Three hundred students had protested outside the meeting, calling for all the stocks to be divested, the Times reported.

The school's 1978 recommendation didn't shut down the protests. In April 1985, the Coalition for a Free South Africa at the school organized a protest at Hamilton Hall, according to the Columbia Spectator.

The small demonstration quickly grew to thousands of supporters, the Spectator reported. Protesters there locked and chained the doors to Hamilton Hall — the same building now occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters — and demanded the school completely divest from South Africa.

The protests lasted on campus for 21 days before the students called the demonstrations off; the announcement came just minutes before a judge ordered the students to allow people access to Hamilton Hall, The New York Times reported.

Months later, Columbia's trustees voted to divest from South Africa completely.

A more fraught situation

On its website, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group likened itself to the protests from nearly 40 years ago.

"We are a continuation of the Vietnam anti-war movement and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa," the group wrote.

But despite the similarities between the movements' tactics, the situation in 2024 may make it harder for demonstrators to achieve their goals.

In the 70s and 80s, Columbia's leadership was sympathetic to the divestment cause; students were arguing that the school didn't go far enough.

The pro-Palestinian demonstrators also face a more hostile geopolitical environment.

In the 1980s, apartheid was broadly condemned by the US, and in the months after the protest, President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order preventing loans and technology from being sent to South Africa.

The US relationship with Israel now is far more complicated. The conflict in Gaza was sparked by Hamas' terror attacks in October 2023 that killed hundreds. Israeli authorities said Hamas fighters captured 253 people after the assault across the border.

As of now, 112 of the hostages were returned alive, but dozens are still suspected to be in captivity, Israeli officials say. The Israeli government responded to the attack with an assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel is an important ally of the US in the Middle East, and President Joe Biden has emphasized he's a strong supporter of the Jewish state.

But Biden is facing pressure from progressive and young voters, who blame him for sending weaponry to Israel as the civilian death toll rises by the thousands in Gaza. Biden's administration, in recent months, has pushed the Israeli government to allow more humanitarian aid into the region and take steps to avoid civilian casualties.

Israel's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has so far largely brushed off Biden's criticism and promised to launch an offensive into Rafah, a city in Gaza where over 1 million Palestinians are taking refuge. Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas completely.

Meanwhile, cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas have stalled.

So, too, has the prospect of divesting. Columbia president Nemat "Minouche" Shafik said school leaders and students weren't able to negotiate an end to the protest and flatly shot down the immediate divestment demands.

"While the University will not divest from Israel, the University offered to develop an expedited timeline for review of new proposals from the students by the Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers divestment matters," Shafik wrote on Monday.

Even then, it's unclear how effective divestment would be in changing the school's finances. The Ivy's massive $13.6 billion endowment would be challenging to sort through.

"The economy is so global now that even if a university decided that they were going to instruct their dominant management groups to divest from Israel, it would be almost impossible to disentangle," Nicholas Dirks, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, told CNN.

Divesting also means another investor would need to purchase those stocks, ultimately reallocating who supports the organizations in question.

But Christopher Marsicano, an assistant professor at North Carolina's Davidson College, told Al Jazeera that divestment drives may be more effective in incentivizing political — not economic — change.

"Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has already mentioned student protests at American universities publicly," Marsicano told the outlet. "It is clear that these protests have captured the attention of the Israeli government and are putting some pressure on stakeholders to support a cease-fire."

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• US border patrol agents have interrogated more than 30 ByteDance and TikTok employees, per Forbes.
• They're being asked about ties to the CCP, and the security of American user data.
• TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced similar questions during a hearing in January.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have interrogated more than 30 ByteDance and TikTok employees traveling to the US from China, according to a report by Forbes.

Employees are being asked a list of dedicated questions, including whether they have ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and what access ByteDance and TikTok have to American user data, Forbes reported, citing anonymous sources close to the matter.

Employees from various teams — many of whom are Chinese — are also being asked by CBP agents about Project Texas, per Forbes, which is TikTok's overarching security plan to wall off American data from China.

They're also being asked about their educations and political connections, according to the outlet.

"CBP is tasked with protecting our nation's borders as well as enforcing numerous laws at our nation's ports of entry on behalf of a variety of other government agencies, including state and local law enforcement," a spokesperson for the agency told Business Insider. "All international travelers attempting to enter the United States, including all US citizens, are subject to examination."

President Biden signed a bill into law last week requiring Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores unless ByteDance divests its US operations within 270 days. TikTok has vowed to fight the legislation in court, citing First Amendment violations.

Forbes noted that the inquiries by border patrol agents is similar to a line of questioning Sen. Tom Cotton posed to TikTok's CEO Shou Zi Chew during a congressional hearing in January. At the time, Chew reminded Cotton multiple times that he is Singaporean.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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• Biotech company Neoplants just released the first houseplant grown to reduce indoor air pollution.
• This plant, called Neo P1, gets its pollution-eating superpower from genetically engineered bacteria.
• Neo P1 can remove 30 times more VOC's, harmful indoor pollutants, than a typical houseplant. 

Looking at Neo P1, you'd never know that it was anything but a typical houseplant. But on a microscopic level, this plant is supercharged with billions of pollution-eating bacteria.

This week, the France-based biotech company Neoplants released the first houseplant bioengineered to remove harmful chemicals from indoor air. It targets volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are emitted by the everyday stuff in our homes: gas stoves, paints, even furniture.

Indoor air can be two to five times (and in extreme cases, up to 100 times) more polluted than outdoor air, according to the American Lung Association. This is, in part, driven by higher levels of VOCs indoors. Long-term exposure to these compounds can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches and dizziness, even liver damage and cancer.

The best ways to remove VOCs from your home are opening the windows and getting rid of their sources, Glenn Morrison, a University of North Carolina environmental science and engineering professor who studies indoor air pollution, told BI. Some types of mechanical air purifiers can remove them too, but many of them can produce other harmful chemicals like carbon monoxide, ozone, and formaldehyde.

But Neoplants co-founders Patrick Torbey and Lionel Mora weren't satisfied with these options. They argue that opening windows only temporarily reduces indoor pollution to outside levels, and not everyone can easily get rid of VOC sources in their homes. What's more, they believe existing VOC-removing technologies aren't worth their drawbacks.

So, they turned to biology to invent their own solution. The result, Neo P1, is 30 times more effective at removing indoor air pollution than the average houseplant, Torbey and Mora told Business Insider.

"What we care about is putting nature at the center of innovation again," Torbey said.

Harnessing the power of bacteria

Non-engineered houseplants are equipped with some natural air-purifying power, and some types are more effective than others. But research has shown that it would take hundreds of regular houseplants to purify the air inside a 1,500 square-foot home.

Torbey and Mora wanted to achieve air purification with a single houseplant. To do that, they hacked into the plant's microbiome.

They targeted a strain of bacteria called Pseudomonas putida, which have a particular appetite for three common VOCs: benzene, toluene, and xylene. There are tens of thousands of types of VOCs that can be present in homes, Morrison points out. But Neoplants chose to target these three because they are especially harmful and prevalent in indoor spaces, Mora said.

This species of bacteria can live off VOCs as their sole carbon source, metabolizing them into harmless sugars and amino acids, according to the Neoplants white paper.

What's more, these bacteria naturally occur in the soil around plant roots and form a mutually beneficial relationship with their host plants. If Torbey and Mora could figure out how to supercharge these VOC-eating bacteria, they'd create a natural air-purifying system.

Through directed evolution — the process of reproducing organisms in a lab to enhance a selected trait over time — they created a new version of Pseudomonas putida that is extremely effective at metabolizing VOCs.

"These are like tiny, tiny air purifying machines that build more air purifying machines the more pollution there is," Torbey said.

But keeping these bacteria abundant presented a challenge. Plant microbiomes are difficult to maintain, and their viability declines as soon as you ship that plant to someone, Jennifer Brophy, assistant professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, told MIT Tech Review.

To solve that problem, Neo P1 comes with "power drops," a solution of their engineered bacteria that can be used to replenish the plant's microbiome once a month and ensure that it's working at its maximum air-purifying capacity, similar to regularly replacing an air purifier's filter.

Limitations

UNC's Morrison thinks that there are other limitations to consider before purchasing Neo P1. "It doesn't really matter how much they modify the plant or modify the bacteria in the soil if they can't get the air into and through it," he said.

Neo P1 is potted in a biodegradable shell that's designed with vents to maximize airflow between the soil and the room, but Morrison argues that the airflow would still be too minimal to make a significant difference in air quality for the average home. "It might actually remove some VOCs, it just doesn't remove very much," he said.

But Torbey and Mora are confident in their product. "We know that phytoremediation (plants-based solution) is not an approach that most in the indoor air quality community believe in," Torbey told BI in a later email in response to Morrison's skepticism. He and his colleagues have built two VOC measurement rooms at their headquarters in Paris, which they will use to study the phytoremediation potential of their system.

"We will be publishing this data as soon as possible to help the world better understand the power of phytoremediation," he added.

Unpacking the Neo P1 system

The Neo P1 air purifying system comes with a marble queen pothos plant, popular species of houseplant which serves as the perfect host for their VOC-eating bacteria, Mora said.

Eventually, Mora and Torbey hope to expand Neoplants to include different types of plants, but for now, pothos is the only species available for purchase.

The Neo P1 package includes the biodegradable, vented shell, which also has a built-in self-watering system. "Even people who don't have a green thumb at all can very easily take care of this plant," Mora said.

This $119 package comes with a six-month supply of power drops. When they run out, customers can sign up to auto-replenish them for $39 every three months.

Striving for sustainability

For Mora and Torbey, the most exciting aspect of this new product is that it's made entirely in the US. Even the recycled plastic and agricultural waste used to make their self-watering shell comes from the US.

Achieving this proved challenging, Mora said, but he and Torbey wanted to manufacture their product as close to their main customer base as possible. To them, it didn't make sense to ship a product designed to clean the air across the world. And manufacturing Neo P1 in the US helped ensure their product was made responsibly.

"What we tried to do is build a product that is as sustainable as possible. So, you don't need to use any electricity, you don't need to replace filters that have a lot of pollution in them and throw them away," Mora said.

This sustainable model is part of Neoplants overarching goal: to drive progress towards solutions to even bigger environmental issues.

"If we project ourselves in five years from now, not only will we have this product family for indoor spaces that people can put in their homes, but we'll also start hitting some of the first fundamental technical milestones for climate change applications," Mora said.

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• Federal regulators are investigating Ford's BlueCruise system following two fatal crashes.
• The probe comes amid increased scrutiny of automated driving-assistance systems.
• Tesla's Autopilot is also under investigation after hundreds of collisions. 

Federal auto regulators are looking into Ford Motor's driver-assistance system following two fatal crashes that the safety agency linked to the automation technology.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into Ford's BlueCruise system, according to an agency filing made public Monday.

Both accidents involved a Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle crashing into a stationary car while on a freeway during lightning conditions at night, according to the agency. An initial agency review confirmed that BlueCruise was in use before both collisions.

One person died in a February collision in San Antonio, and two people died in a Philadelphia crash in March, The Associated Press reported.

A spokesperson for Ford told Business Insider the automaker was working with the NHTSA to support the investigation.

The investigation comes as the auto industry ramps up scrutiny of automated driving-assistance systems amid a boom in the new, imperfect technology.

Earlier this month, the NHTSA launched a second probe into Tesla's popular driving assistance software, Autopilot, after several accidents involving the system. The agency is investigating whether Tesla's December recall of 2 million vehicles installed with Autopilot had adequately addressed the safety risks.

In a recent report, the agency said it investigated 956 Tesla crashes between 2018 and 2023 in which the agency found Autopilot was involved, resulting in 29 fatalities.

Tesla has not publicly commented on the new probe. Tesla did not immedatiely respond to a request for comment from BI.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested 14 driving automation systems across nine manufacturers for a March study and found that the "hands-free" devices can create new safety risks by allowing drivers to become easily distracted. Nearly all of the systems, including Ford's, scored low marks.

Driving assistance systems aren't fully autonomous yet and typically monitor steering, braking, and acceleration on highways, though Ford and other car companies have stressed the importance of driver attention even while the software is in use.

The NHTSA investigation into BlueCruise will determine how well the software does various driving tasks and evaluate its camera-based monitoring system.

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