Author: Press Room

NPR said Wednesday it will stop sharing content on Twitter after the social media company labeled NPR “state-affiliated media,” a term also used for Russia- and China-based propaganda outlets.The news outlet’s organizational accounts will no longer post new content on its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major U.S. news organization to do so since Elon Musk took over Twitter late last year.NPR was surprised by Twitter’s decision to label the company “state-affiliated media,” according to a report by the outlet. When pressed by an NPR reporter in an email exchange, Musk conceded that the label might not have…

Walmart plans to close half its stores in Chicago, a reversal of the retail giant’s high-profile commitment in 2020 to expand in the city as part of its corporate racial justice initiative in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police. Walmart announced Tuesday that next week it will close four poor-performing stores out of the eight it operates in Chicago. The locations are in Chicago’s South and West Side neighborhoods, which are predominantly minority and have long struggled with grocery and retail access. The announcement comes after Walmart highlighted its efforts in Chicago as a “critical part” of its…

Watch full video on YouTube

Tether, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin, has blacklisted a validator address responsible for draining $25 million from Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bots. The validator exploited a bug in the MEV-boost relay to bypass MEV bots by attempting to execute a sandwich trade, which processes an order immediately before another trade and then right after it. Essentially, this process simultaneously front-runs and back-runs an originating transaction, on the condition that its verification status is still pending.The validator, in this case, back-run the MEV’s transaction, leading to losses of nearly $25 million in various digital assets, making it the largest MEV exploit…

Watch full video on YouTube

At least nine people have left or are transitioning out of BlackRock’s communications group. Brian Beades, who joined the company in 1999 and is now a top PR executive, is exiting.   The departures come as the firm and CEO Larry Fink aim to counter tremendous criticism. In the last year eight people from BlackRock’s corporate communications team, including a speechwriter who guided Chief Executive Larry Fink’s messaging, have left the group, people familiar with the matter said. Another employee from the group, a top public-relations executive who years ago helped establish the firm’s investor relations and communications operations, is in…

Insider obtained UC Investments’ returns through a Public Records Act request. The returns show the university system has lost money on its venture holdings since 2000. Venture is a long game and UC’s venture holdings could still pay off in the future. UC Investments, which manages the University of California’s $152 billion in endowment and retirement accounts, has invested more than $3.4 billion since 2000 in venture capital funds managed by well-known firms such as Khosla Ventures, Insight Partners, and Lightspeed Partners. But through the middle of last year, UC Investments had only received $2.6 billion in distributions from these VC…

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) has staged one of the strongest recoveries in big tech this year, with its shares gaining close to 80% on a year-to-date basis and more than 140% from its November 2022 trough. The stock has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of this year’s tech rally as optimism grows on monetary policy easing in the second half, alongside a broad-based rotation back into big tech amid the banking sector turmoil. And specific to Meta, aggressive cost cutting initiatives implemented in recent months have also been crucial to restoring investor confidence, while evident enhancements to its previously-reeling advertising…

Joe Biden vowed the US would be a “partner for peace” in Northern Ireland, as he called on political leaders in the region to restore power-sharing at Stormont at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.Speaking at Ulster University in Belfast on Wednesday afternoon, the US president celebrated the 1998 accord, which ended three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland and established a power-sharing executive. “We forget how hard-earned, how astounding, that peace was at the moment. It shifted the political gravity of the world,” Biden said. “Peace was not inevitable. You can’t ever forget that.…

Nine national media organizations, including CNN, are suing for access to Capitol Hill surveillance tapes of January 6, 2021, that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has provided to Fox News but so far to no other press outlets. The lawsuit, filed in the federal court in DC against the FBI and US Attorney’s Offices at the Justice Department, argues that other media outlets should be given access to 44,000 hours of tapes now since they’ve been given to Tucker Carlson’s producers at Fox. “Plaintiffs here are among the many news organizations that have been denied access to the Capitol Surveillance Videos…