WORD ON THE STREET 

• Hand Over The Twitter Account And Nobody Gets Hurt – A judge fined X $350,000 for not complying with a deadline to give the Justice Department records related to former president Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Twitter had appealed the finding and said that it was protected by the First Amendment. The US Court of Appeals rejected this argument 3-0.

• DIS Gains In After-Hours Trading – Disney+ shed 300,000 subscribers in North America in the most recent quarter, even as the price for the streaming service is soon to increase. Onetime costs gave the company a net loss for the quarter, though excluding those, the company exceeded earnings per share expectations. DIS was up about 2.8% in after-hours trading.

• New Job Plan – Work For UPS – UPS drivers will enjoy an average salary of $170,000 plus benefits after a new deal negotiated with the company and the Teamsters Union. About 340,000 workers at the company are covered by the tentative agreement and are voting on it now.  

• Tilray And Anheuser-Busch Reach Deal On 8 Brands – Cannabis company Tilray will gain control of some popular drink brands including Redhook Brewery, HiBall Energy, and Square Mile Cider Company. The deal is worth an estimated $85 million. Tilray will soon become the fifth-largest American craft-beer business.

HOT SPOTS: What’s Going on in Geopolitics

• China Goes Into Deflation – According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the Consumer Price Index is down by 0.3% year-over-year – the first decline since February 2021. The Producer Price Index has declined for the 10th consecutive month, falling more quickly than anticipated. China’s dip into deflation territory raises big questions for whether the global economy can ever pull out of the economic slump created by the COVID pandemic.
  

• World Bank Cuts Off Uganda – The World Bank will not give any new loans to Uganda over the country’s anti-homosexuality law. “Our goal is to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination and exclusion in the projects we finance,” it said. “These measures are currently under discussion with the authorities.”

• At Least Six Dead In Maui – Raging wildfires have killed at least six people in Maui, as residents evacuated both Maui and Big Island. Hurricane Dora’s strong winds are exacerbating wildfires, with one on Big Island consuming about 1,800 acres.

CUTTING EDGE: What‘s Happening In Tech

• Proterra Goes Bust – Another EV company has bit the dust. Proterra, which hoped to build battery systems for buses and other large electric vehicles, has filed for bankruptcy. The company is hoping that Chapter 11 protection will allow it to keep operating while it “maximizes the value of each independent business line.” For now, the company has been unable to overcome supply chain constraints and the challenges of working with transit agencies.

• Chinese Companies Buy NVIDIA Chips While They Can – Baidu, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered about 100,000 A800 processors from Nvidia that don’t run afoul of American export controls. Billions of dollars worth of orders are outstanding for 2024 as Nvidia has warned the American government against additional controls, saying it would “result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry.”

• SEC Will Appeal Ripple Ruling – It’s either all or nothing for the SEC. Though it won part of a recent ruling on Ripple’s XRP token, the SEC will appeal the part that it lost. The case could have a huge impact on crypto – the SEC argues that when Ripple sold XRP told the public, it was a security, not a currency, and thus it fell under the SEC’s control.

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