Pilot sacked over Covid-19 vaccine wins Employment Court case
Philip Tighe-Umbers was one of the most senior pilots for Jetconnect, which supplies crew to Qantas.
He was fired in April 2022 for not complying with the Covid-19 vaccination order.
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How Nvidia became Wall Street's most valuable company — again
Nvidia reached another milestone in its rise to becoming one of the world's most important companies: the first publicly traded company to reach a market value of US$4 trillion (NZ$6.67 trillion). Nvidia and other companies benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence have been a major reason the S&P 500 has recently climbed to a record. Their explosion of profits has helped to propel the market despite worries about possible pain coming for the US economy from tariffs and other policies of President Donald Trump. The company's journey to be one of the world's most prominent companies has produced some eye-popping numbers. Here's a look. US$4.009 trillion (NZ$6.68 trillion) Nvidia's total market value as of early Wednesday, tops in the S&P 500. It closed with a market value of $3.972 trillion (NZ$6.621 trillion). ADVERTISEMENT Nvidia took over the No. 1 spot from Microsoft (US$3.742 trillion) two weeks ago. Apple is the only other company with a market value above US$3 trillion. Nvidia's market value in July 2023 was around $1.050 trillion (NZ$1.75 trillion). 1000% The approximate gain in Nvidia's stock price since the start of 2023. A US$100,000 (NZ$167,000) investment in Nvidia two and a half years ago would now be worth more than US$1.1 million (NZ$1.8 million). The shares are up about 21% so far this year. The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, including a homicide arrest after a Hamilton manhunt, concern over a new Covid variant, and Red Bull sacks its Formula 1 team boss. (Source: 1News) US$45 billion (NZ$75 billion) Nvidia's estimate for overall revenue in the May-July quarter, roughly in line with Wall Street estimates. US$8 billion (NZ$13.3 billion) ADVERTISEMENT The estimated loss in sales for the quarter due to the US government's restrictions on Nvidia's chip sales to China. US$200 billion (NZ$333.4 billion) Analysts' estimate for Nvidia's revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January 2026, according to FactSet. That would be more than 50% above its revenue for fiscal 2025 and more than three times its receipts from the year before that. By comparison, Microsoft's revenue for its fiscal year ended in June is estimated by analysts at US$279 billion (NZ$465 billion). 4 billion The number of the latest iPhones one could buy with US$4 trillion (NZ$6.67 trillion).
1News
12 hours ago
- 1News
Chief executive of X resigns after two years at the helm
X chief executive Linda Yaccarino said she's stepping down after two bumpy years running Elon Musk's social media platform. Yaccarino posted a positive message about her tenure at the company formerly known as Twitter and said "the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter" with Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, maker of the chatbot Grok. She did not say why she is leaving. Musk responded to Yaccarino's announcement with his own 5-word statement on X: "Thank you for your contributions." "The only thing that's surprising about Linda Yaccarino's resignation is that it didn't come sooner," said Forrester research director Mike Proulx. "It was clear from the start that she was being set up to fail by a limited scope as the company's chief executive." ADVERTISEMENT In reality, Proulx added, Musk "is and always has been at the helm of X. And that made Linda X's chief executive in title only, which is a very tough position to be in, especially for someone of Linda's talents". The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, including a homicide arrest after a Hamilton manhunt, concern over a new Covid variant, and Red Bull sacks its Formula 1 team boss. (Source: 1News) Musk hired Yaccarino, a veteran ad executive, in May 2023 after buying Twitter for US$44 billion (NZ$73.3 billion) in late 2022 and cutting most of its staff. He said at the time that Yaccarino's role would be focused mainly on running the company's business operations, leaving him to focus on product design and new technology. Before announcing her hiring, Musk said whoever took over as the company's chief executive "must like pain a lot". In accepting the job, Yaccarino was taking on the challenge of getting big brands back to advertising on the social media platform after months of upheaval following Musk's takeover. She also had to work in a supporting role to Musk's outsized persona on and off of X as he loosened content moderation rules in the name of free speech and restored accounts previously banned by the social media platform. Elon Musk (Evan Vucci/AP) "Being the chief executive of X was always going to be a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted in the role longer than many expected. Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires," said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg. Yaccarino's future at X became unclear earlier this year after Musk merged the social media platform with his artificial intelligence company, xAI. And the advertising issues have not subsided. Since Musk's takeover, a number of companies had pulled back on ad spending — the platform's chief source of revenue — over concerns that Musk's thinning of content restrictions was enabling hateful and toxic speech to flourish. ADVERTISEMENT Most recently, an update to Grok led to a flood of antisemitic commentary from the chatbot this week that included praise of Adolf Hitler. "We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts," the Grok account posted on X, without being more specific. Some experts have tied Grok's behaviour to Musk's deliberate efforts to mould Grok as an alternative to chatbots he considers too "woke," such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. In late June, he invited X users to help train the chatbot on their commentary in a way that invited a flood of racist responses and conspiracy theories. "Please reply to this post with divisive facts for @Grok training," Musk said in the June 21 post. "By this I mean things that are politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true." A similar instruction was later baked into Grok's "prompts" that instruct it on how to respond, which told the chatbot to "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated". That part of the instructions was later deleted. "To me, this has all the fingerprints of Elon's involvement," said Talia Ringer, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Yaccarino has not publicly commented on the latest hate speech controversy. She has, at times, ardently defended Musk's approach, including in a lawsuit against liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America over a report that claimed leading advertisers' posts on X were appearing alongside neo-Nazi and white nationalist content. The report led some advertisers to pause their activity on X. ADVERTISEMENT A federal judge last year dismissed X's lawsuit against another non-profit, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which has documented the increase in hate speech on the site since it was acquired by Musk. X is also in an ongoing legal dispute with major advertisers — including CVS, Mars, Lego, Nestle, Shell and Tyson Foods — over what it has alleged was a "massive advertiser boycott" that deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws. Enberg said that, "to a degree, Yaccarino accomplished what she was hired to do". Emarketer expects X's ad business to return to growth in 2025 after more than halving between 2022 and 2023 following Musk's takeover. But, she added, "the reasons for X's ad recovery are complicated, and Yaccarino was unable to restore the platform's reputation among advertisers".
Otago Daily Times
12 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Listener, NZ Woman's Weekly for sale
Are Media, which publishes the Listener and New Zealand Woman's Weekly, is for sale. Photo: RNZ (file) New Zealand magazines including the Listener, Woman's Day and New Zealand Woman's Weekly are for sale after its publisher has been put on the market. Investment firm Mercury Capital is seeking a buyer for Are Media, which operated a range of titles in New Zealand and Australia. In a statement, a spokesperson said "further to recent speculation, and on the back of a number of market enquiries and approaches, we can confirm that a decision has been made to commence a sale process for Are Media, Australia's leading omnichannel content company for women." KPMG Corporate Finance had been engaged to run a formal sale process. Various media were reporting that staff were told the company was up for sale by email from Are Media chief executive Jane Huxley. Are Media was formed after German publisher Bauer Media pulled out of the magazine market in the region during the Covid-19 pandemic. In New Zealand, the magazines include some of the countries oldest and, at times, best read. The New Zealand Woman's Weekly was first published in 1932 with 7000 copies and its publisher said it was hoping to offer "usefulness, cheerfulness and happiness" to readers in the Depression. The New Zealand Listener was launched seven years later in 1939, as the journal of the National Broadcasting Service. With the introduction of television in June 1960, the Listener started publishing weekly TV listings, along with topical articles, editorials, letters to the editor and reviews. Its publicity material says it is at "forefront of the issues that matter". Area Media in New Zealand also publishes Your Home and Garden and the Air New Zealand in-flight magazine Kia Ora.
