By Greg Bensinger SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Amazon on Tuesday appeared to have prematurely alerted Amazon Web Services cloud-computing employees to layoffs planned for Wednesday morning by sending a commiseration email and team-wide meeting invitation hours early. Reuters reported on Friday that Amazon intended to lay off thousands of corporate employees starting this week. But the comp...
By Greg Bensinger SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Amazon on Tuesday appeared to have prematurely alerted Amazon Web Services cloud-computing employees to layoffs planned for Wednesday morning by sending a commiseration email and team-wide meeting invitation hours early. Reuters reported on Friday that Amazon intended to lay off thousands of corporate employees starting this week. But the company has not yet informed impacted employees, nor has it confirmed the layoff plan. The email sent on Tuesday signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, wrongly said that impacted employees in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica had already been informed they lost their jobs. In Slack messages viewed by Reuters, AWS employees who received the email said the Wednesday meeting was almost immediately canceled. Amazon referred in the email to the layoffs as "Project Dawn." "Changes like this are hard on everyone," Aubrey wrote in the email, reviewed by Reuters. "These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success." Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jobs in the company's units covering AWS, retail, Prime Video and human resources were slated to be affected, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, though the full scope of this week's layoffs was unclear. Amazon laid off about 14,000 people in October, part of a broader plan to reduce corporate staff by around 30,000, people familiar with the matter said at the time. The full 30,000 jobs would represent a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10% of the firm’s corporate workforce. On Tuesday, Amazon cut jobs in its Fresh grocery and Go market divisions as it plans to close existing brick-and-mortar stores and convert some of them to Whole Foods stores. Amazon tied the October job cuts to the increased use of artificial intelligence and efforts to reduce layers of bureauc...
(RTTNews) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) to pay a $40 million civil penalty after finding the company and three former executives engaged in accounting and disclosure fraud. Former executives Vince Macciocchi and Ray Young also agreed to pay disgorgement and penalties totaling nearly $1.2 million, while Macciocchi accepted a three-yea...
(RTTNews) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) to pay a $40 million civil penalty after finding the company and three former executives engaged in accounting and disclosure fraud. Former executives Vince Macciocchi and Ray Young also agreed to pay disgorgement and penalties totaling nearly $1.2 million, while Macciocchi accepted a three-year officer and director bar. According to the SEC, ADM's Nutrition segment performance was materially inflated through improper "adjustments" between 2019 and 2022, including retroactive rebates and price changes not offered to third-party customers. These adjustments were designed to make Nutrition appear to meet profit growth targets of 15-20% annually, misleading investors and overstating operating profits in multiple fiscal years. The SEC credited ADM for its cooperation and significant remediation, including conducting an internal investigation, voluntarily reporting findings, and strengthening internal accounting controls. A Fair Fund will be established to distribute monetary relief to harmed investors. The Commission also filed a litigated action against former executive Vikram Luthar, alleging he directed the improper adjustments and violated antifraud provisions. The complaint seeks injunctions, civil penalties, and reimbursement of executive compensation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market is notably lower on Monday, extending the losses in the previous two sessions, with the Nikkei 225 falling below the 27,000 mark, following the broadly negative cues from Wall Street on Friday, amid lingering geopolitical concerns due to the ongoing uncertainty created by fears that Russia will imminently invade Ukraine. Traders also remain concerned about the...
(RTTNews) - The Japanese stock market is notably lower on Monday, extending the losses in the previous two sessions, with the Nikkei 225 falling below the 27,000 mark, following the broadly negative cues from Wall Street on Friday, amid lingering geopolitical concerns due to the ongoing uncertainty created by fears that Russia will imminently invade Ukraine. Traders also remain concerned about the domestic coronavirus cases, though the daily new cases are off record highs. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is down 157.28 points or 0.58 percent at 26,964.79, after hitting a low of 26,549.00 earlier. Japanese shares ended modestly lower on Thursday. Market heavyweight SoftBank Group is losing more than 1 percent, while Uniqlo operator Fast Retailing is gaining more than 1 percent. Among automakers, Honda is losing almost 1 percent and Toyota is slipping more than 1 percent. In the tech space, Advantest is losing almost 2 percent, Tokyo Electron is declining more than 3 percent and Screen Holdings is down almost 3 percent. In the banking sector, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mizuho Financial are edging up 0.4 percent each, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is adding almost 2 percent. The major exporters are lower, with Panasonic losing 1.5 percent, Mitsubishi Electric down almost 1 percent, Sony is declining more than 1 percent and Canon is edging down 0.4 percent. Among the other major losers, Sharp is plunging almost 11 percent, while Sumitomo Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha are slipping more than 6 percent each. Sumco is sliding more than 5 percent, while Nikon and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines are down more than 4 percent each. Showa Denko K.K., Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma and Shin-Etsu Chemical are down almost 4 percent each. Conversely, Nexon is gaining more than 3 percent. In economic news, the manufacturing sector in Japan continued to expand in February, albeit at a slower pace, the latest survey from Markit Economics showed on Monday with a manufacturing PMI score o...
MSCI will pause certain index changes for Indonesian companies until regulators address concerns over the tightly held ownership of listed firms, marking the latest setback for Southeast Asia’s biggest market. The index compiler will immediately halt index additions to its gauges and freeze increases to the number of shares deemed available to investors, citing persistent “fundamental investabilit...
MSCI will pause certain index changes for Indonesian companies until regulators address concerns over the tightly held ownership of listed firms, marking the latest setback for Southeast Asia’s biggest market. The index compiler will immediately halt index additions to its gauges and freeze increases to the number of shares deemed available to investors, citing persistent “fundamental investability issues” and concerns over coordinated efforts to distort prices, it said in a statement . If Indonesia fails to make sufficient progress on transparency improvements by May, MSCI will reassess the country’s market accessibility status — a move that could lead to a reduction in weighting for all Indonesian companies in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and even a potential downgrade to frontier-market status.
'What if I just started shouting?' - when to worry about intrusive thoughts 12 minutes ago Share Save Yasmin Rufo BBC News Share Save Getty Images Research suggests most of us will have unsettling scenarios flash into our mind from time to time Have you ever sat in a boring meeting and wondered: "What if I just started shouting?" Or you're driving along and you think: "What if I crash?" These unse...
'What if I just started shouting?' - when to worry about intrusive thoughts 12 minutes ago Share Save Yasmin Rufo BBC News Share Save Getty Images Research suggests most of us will have unsettling scenarios flash into our mind from time to time Have you ever sat in a boring meeting and wondered: "What if I just started shouting?" Or you're driving along and you think: "What if I crash?" These unsettling scenarios are known as "intrusive thoughts" which the majority of us will experience from time to time and feel able to shrug off. But for some they can become overwhelming obsessions which lead to compulsive behaviours. When Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney was a child, she was convinced that unless she only had "good" thoughts the whole way home from school, her family would be harmed. "If I had an intrusive thought, I'd restart the walk from the bus stop," she says. "I was genuinely terrified that if I didn't redo it and something happened, it would be my fault". Nina was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) aged 10 and now works as a psychology researcher at the University of Oxford where she specialises in child and adolescent mental health. Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney Nina still lives with OCD but has learned how to manage it better "Obsessions are intrusive and unwanted thoughts, feelings and sensations while compulsions are repeated, ritualised acts that are done to neutralise or alleviate the anxiety caused by the obsessions," Nina tells the BBC's Complex podcast. Around 1- 4% of the population is thought to live with OCD but the number of 16-24 year olds in England reporting symptoms of it has more than tripled in a decade. The condition is now the second-most widespread mental health disorder for young adults, a major NHS England survey suggests. Intrusive thoughts can be extremely distressing and often focus on topics that feel completely at odds with a person's values or identity. "You might have thoughts about harm coming to loved ones," says Nina. "It c...