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Tag: Mobile phones

  • Elon Musk reveals new ‘X’ logo to replace Twitter’s blue bird

    Elon Musk reveals new ‘X’ logo to replace Twitter’s blue bird

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    LONDON — Goodbye Twitter. Hello X.

    Elon Musk has unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

    The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the smartphone app. In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.

    It’s yet another change that Musk has made since acquiring Twitter that has alienated users and turned off advertisers, leaving the microblogging site vulnerable to new threats, including rival Meta’s new text-based app Threads that directly targets Twitter users.

    Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.” He replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

    “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

    The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

    “I can’t say I’m surprised, but I think it’s a very selfish decision,” said Hannah Thoreson of Baltimore, Maryland, who’s used Twitter since 2009 for work and personal posts.

    “There are so many small businesses and so many nonprofits and so many government agencies and things like that all around the world that have relied on Twitter for many years to push their message and reach people,” she said. “And they all have the Twitter icon on everything from their website to their business cards.”

    Changing all this costs time and money, she added, not to mention the confusion that comes with a previously unknown brand name.

    “I mean, do you want to get rid of the Coca-Cola brand if you’re Coca-Cola? Why would you do that?” said Thoreson, who now primarily uses Mastodon.

    Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter and had already renamed Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October.

    The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And he started an artificial intelligence company this month called xAI to compete with ChatGPT. In 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal.

    He also calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”

    Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an “ everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments. Musk has made a number of drastic changes since taking over Twitter, including a shift to focusing on paid subscriptions, but he doesn’t always follow through on his attention-grabbing new policy pronouncements.

    Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

    Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg called the rebranding “the end of an era.”

    “Twitter’s rebrand is a reminder that Elon Musk, not Threads or any other app, is and has always been the most likely ‘Twitter killer,’” she said.

    It’s clear, Enberg said, that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone.

    “Musk supporters will likely celebrate the rebrand, but it’s a gloomy day for many Twitter users and advertisers,” she said. “Even so, Twitter’s corporate brand is already heavily intertwined with Musk’s personal brand, with or without the name X, and much of Twitter’s established brand equity has already been lost among users and advertisers.”

    But Paolo Pescatore, a tech and media analyst and founder of PP Foresight, said the change could be a good idea.

    “People are now getting increasingly frustrated with a slew of apps, so driving usage all towards one destination will increase engagement and ultimately make it easier for them,” he said.

    Others predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following Musk’s other changes, including limiting the number of tweets users can read each day. The new threshold is part of an $8-per-month subscription service Musk rolled out earlier this year in an attempt to boost Twitter revenue.

    Wiping out Twitter’s brand name recognition that was built up over 15 years is an “extremely risky move,” because it means Musk is ”essentially starting over while its competition is afoot,” said Mike Proulx, a research director at global market research company Forrester.

    Twitter users pointed out that few people refer to Alphabet, Google’s parent company since 2015. Facebook renamed itself Meta in 2021, but its collection of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook — still retain their own brands and logos.

    But Pescatore said it might be the right time for the sweeping rebranding that Musk seems to have in mind.

    “The removal of Twitter from existence will be difficult for many users to understand,” Pescatore said. However, “maybe it is time for something new in light of the negative sentiment surrounding the company. A new start over this challenging period of major disruption and appeal to new audiences.”

    ___

    AP Technology Writers Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California and Matt O’Brien from Providence, Rhode Island contributed to this story.

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  • Avoid Roaming Costs for Life With This eSIM You Can Use in More Than 120 Countries | Entrepreneur

    Avoid Roaming Costs for Life With This eSIM You Can Use in More Than 120 Countries | Entrepreneur

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    Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

    For many entrepreneurs, travel is part of the job. Business Traveler reports that more than 1 million people fly for business daily, but they might be costing their company money by letting their phones accrue roaming fees. All it takes is the right eSIM and a little shopping to avoid roaming charges.

    aloSIM is an eSIM that connects to your phone for life. Once installed, you can load it with data plans to keep you connected worldwide. This is already a cost-effective alternative to collecting actual SIM cards, but you can also get aloSIM for life and a $50 credit for data plans for just $21.99 until July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

    Travel, but don’t roam.

    aloSIM keeps you connected, whether you’re traveling internationally to meet a new business partner, sealing the deal with a new client, or getting some much-needed rest. Using aloSIM is simple, but make sure to set it up before you board your plane.

    All you have to do is install the aloSIM app and search for your destination. There are more than 120 countries to choose from, and they’ll each have different data plans you can purchase with your $50 credit. Check the price, data speed, and time period for each plan. You’ll need to get a new plan if your data runs out. If your time runs out, the remaining data does not roll over.

    When you’re back in the States, you can revert your phone to its normal SIM card. aloSIM will be available on your phone for life, and you can always purchase more data plans once the $50 credit runs out.

    A highly rated eSIM for all your data needs.

    It’s no wonder aloSIM has rave reviews, with one verified purchaser writing, “Glad to find this app. Much cheaper travel data than going through my carrier. Easy to use and got what I needed at a good price.”

    Looking for a way to avoid extra travel fees?

    Get the aloSIM Mobile Data Traveler Lifetime eSIM Plan and $50 of data credits for just $21.99. This deal ends July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

    Prices subject to change.

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    Entrepreneur Store

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  • Pioneering hacker Kevin Mitnick, FBI-wanted felon turned security guru, dead at 59

    Pioneering hacker Kevin Mitnick, FBI-wanted felon turned security guru, dead at 59

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    Kevin Mitnick, whose pioneering antics tricking employees in the 1980s and 1990s into helping him steal software and services from big phone and tech companies made him the most celebrated U.S. hacker, has died at age 59.

    Mitnick died Sunday in Las Vegas after a 14-month battle with pancreatic cancer, said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of the security training firm KnowBe4, where Mitnick was chief hacking officer.

    His colorful career — from student tinkerer to FBI-hunted fugitive, imprisoned felon and finally respected cybersecurity professional, public speaker and author tapped for advice by U.S. lawmakers and global corporations — mirrors the evolution of society’s grasp of the nuances of computer hacking.

    Through Mitnick’s professional trajectory, and what many consider the misplaced prosecutorial zeal that put him behind bars for nearly five years until 2000, the public has learned how to better distinguish serious computer crime from the mischievious troublemaking of youths hellbent on proving their hacking prowess.

    “He never hacked for money,” said Sjouwerman, who became Mitnick’s business partner in 2011. He was mostly after trophies, chiefly cellphone code, he said.

    Much fanfare accompanied Mitnick’s high-profile arrest in 1995, three years after he’d skipped probation on a previous computer break-in charge. The government accused him of causing millions of dollars in damages to companies including Motorola, Novell, Nokia and Sun Microsystems by stealing software and altering computer code.

    But federal prosecutors had difficulty gathering evidence of major crimes, and after being jailed for nearly four years, Mitnick reached a plea agreement in 1999 that credited him for time served.

    Upon his January 2000 release from prison, Mitnick told reporters his “were simple crimes of trespass.” He said ”I wanted to know as much as I could find out about how phone networks worked.”

    He was initially barred for three years from using computers, modems, cell phones or anything else that could give him internet access — and from public speaking. Those requirements were gradually eased but he wasn’t allowed back online until December 2002.

    Mitnick’s forte was social engineering. He would impersonate company employees to obtain passwords and data, a technique known as pretexting that remains among the most effective in hacking and which typically requires considerable research to pull off successfully.

    “His ingenuity challenged systems, incited dialogues, and pushed boundaries in cybersecurity. He will remain a testament to the uncharted power of curiousity,” tweeted Chris Wysopal, who as a member of the white-hat hacking group L0pht testified before the U.S. Senate a few years before Mitnick did the same.

    “My hacking activity actually was a quest for knowledge, the intellectual challenge, the thrill and the escape from reality,” Mitnick said during a March 2000 congressional hearing in response to a question by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., about what motivated him.

    In his prepared testimony, Mitnick boasted that he had “successfully penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed.”

    Mitnick had first been arrested for computer crimes at age 17 for brazenly walking into a Pacific Bell office and taking a handful of computer manuals and codes to digital door locks. For that, he served a year in a rehabilitation center, deemed by a federal judge as being addicted to computer tampering.

    Mitnick had been raised in the bleak Los Angeles suburb of Panorama City by his mother, who divorced his father when he was 3. An overweight, lonely teenager, he dropped out of high school and found friends only when he stumbled into the world of phone phreaks – teens who used stolen phone codes to make free long-distance calls.

    Phones led to computers, and Mitnick showed himself to be a persistent, if not stellar, hacker. Enthralled by the possibility of using computers to gain access and power, Mitnick began breaking into voice mail and computer systems, rifling through private files and taunting those who crossed him.

    But another side of Mitnick became clear in his conversations with investigative journalist Jonathan Littman printed in in the mid-1990s in “The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick.” The hacker seems less a threat than a fearful, disturbed young man, more annoying than vindictive.b

    And though a computer file containing 20,000 credit card numbers copied from the internet service provider Netcom was found on Mitnick’s computer after a 1994 arrest, there is no evidence he ever used any of the accounts.

    Mitnick became a cause celebre for hackers who considered his 5-year prison term excessive. Some defaced websites to post messages demanding his release. Among the targets was The New York Times — which some sympathizers accused of exaggerating the societal danger Mitnick posed.

    Exaggerated stories of Mitnick’s exploits and abilities also made the rounds, sometimes fueling hysteria.

    One led prison officials to put him in solitary confinment for nine months, said Sjouwerman, because they feared he could start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone — emulating a modem “to hack NORAD and trigger a ballistic missile.”

    Mitnick is the author of “The Ghost in the Wires,” which recounts his adventures as a wanted hacker and three other books co-written with others including “The Art of Deception.”

    In addition to his work at KnowBe4, where Mitnick was not involved in day-to-day operations, he ran a separate penetration-testing business with his wife, the former Kimberely Barry.

    She is a native of Australia, where the two met.

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  • The wait for US passports is creating travel purgatory and snarling summer plans

    The wait for US passports is creating travel purgatory and snarling summer plans

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Seeking a valid U.S. passport for that 2023 trip? Buckle up, wishful traveler, for a very different journey before you step anywhere near an airport.

    A much-feared backup of U.S passport applications has smashed into a wall of government bureaucracy as worldwide travel rebounds toward record pre-pandemic levels — with too few humans to handle the load. The result, say aspiring travelers in the U.S. and around the world, is a maddening pre-travel purgatory defined, at best, by costly uncertainty.

    With family dreams and big money on the line, passport seekers describe a slow-motion agony of waiting, worrying, holding the line, refreshing the screen, complaining to Congress, paying extra fees and following incorrect directions. Some applicants are buying additional plane tickets to snag in-process passports where they sit — in other cities — in time to make the flights they booked in the first place.

    So grim is the outlook that U.S. officials aren’t even denying the problem or predicting when it will ease. They’re blaming the epic wait times on lingering pandemic -related staffing shortages and a pause of online processing this year. That’s left the passport agency flooded with a record-busting 500,000 applications a week. The deluge is on-track to top last year’s 22 million passports issued, the State Department says.

    Stories from applicants and interviews by The Associated Press depict a system of crisis management, in which the agencies are prioritizing urgent cases such as applicants traveling for reasons of “life or death” and those whose travel is only a few days off. For everyone else, the options are few and expensive.

    So, 2023 traveler, if you still need a valid U.S. passport, prepare for an unplanned excursion into the nightmare zone.

    ‘PLENTY OF TIME’ TO ‘WE’LL STILL BE OK’ TO BIG PROBLEMS

    It was early March when Dallas-area florist Ginger Collier applied for four passports ahead of a family vacation at the end of June. The clerk, she said, estimated wait times at eight to 11 weeks. They’d have their passports a month before they needed them. “Plenty of time,” Collier recalled thinking.

    Then the State Department upped the wait time for a regular passport to as much as 13 weeks. “We’ll still be okay,” she thought.

    At T-minus two weeks to travel, this was her assessment: “I can’t sleep.” This after months of calling, holding, pressing refresh on a website, trying her member of Congress — and stressing as the departure date loomed. Failure to obtain the family’s passports would mean losing $4,000, she said, as well as the chance to meet one of her sons in Italy after a study-abroad semester.

    “My nerves are shot, because I may not be able to get to him,” she said. She calls the toll-free number every day, holds for as much as 90 minutes to be told — at best — that she might be able to get a required appointment at passport offices in other states.

    “I can’t afford four more plane tickets anywhere in the United States to get a passport when I applied in plenty of time,” she said. “How about they just process my passports?”

    THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT HAS A CULPRIT: COVID

    By March, concerned travelers began asking for answers and then demanding help, including from their representatives in the House and Senate, who widely reported at hearings this year that they were receiving more complaints from constituents on passport delays than any other issue.

    The U.S. secretary of state had an answer, of a sort.

    “With COVID, the bottom basically dropped out of the system,” Antony Blinken told a House subcommittee March 23. When demand for travel all but disappeared during the pandemic, he said, the government let contractors go and reassigned staff that had been dedicated to handling passports.

    Around the same time, the government also halted an online renewal system “to make sure that we can fine tune it and improve it,” Blinken said. He said the department is hiring agents as quickly as possible, opening more appointments and trying to address the crisis in other ways.

    Passport applicants lit up social media groups, toll-free numbers and lawmakers’ phone lines with questions, appeals for advice and cries for help. Facebook and WhatsApp groups bristled with reports of bewilderment and fury. Reddit published eye-watering diaries, some more than 1,000 words long, of application dates, deposits submitted, contacts made, time on hold, money spent and appeals for advice.

    It was 1952 when a law required, for the first time, passports for every U.S. traveler abroad, even in peacetime. Now, passports are processed at centers around the country and printed at secure facilities in Washington, D.C. and Mississippi, according to the Government Printing Office.

    But the number of Americans holding valid U.S. passports has grown at roughly 10% faster than the population over the past three decades, according to Jay Zagorsky, an economist at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

    After passport delays derailed his own plans to travel to London earlier this year, Zagorsky found that the number of U.S. passports per American has soared from about three per 100 people in 1989 to nearly 46 per 100 people in 2022. Americans, it turns out, are on the move.

    “As a society gets richer,” says Zagorsky, “the people in that society say, ‘I want to visit the rest of the world.’”

    FOR AMERICANS AND OTHERS ABROAD, IT’S NO PICNIC EITHER

    At U.S. consulates overseas, the quest for U.S. visas and passports isn’t much brighter.

    On a day in June, people in New Delhi could expect to wait 451 days for a visa interview, according to the website. Those in Sao Paulo could plan on waiting more than 600 days. Aspiring travelers in Mexico City were waiting about 750 days; in Bogota, Colombia, it was 801 days.

    In Israel, the need is especially acute. More than 200,000 people with citizenship in both countries live in Israel. It’s one appointment per person, even for newborns, who must have both parents involved in the process, before traveling to the United States.

    Batsheva Gutterman started looking for three appointments immediately after she had a baby in December, with an eye toward attending a family celebration in July, in Raleigh, N.C.

    Her quest for three passports stretched from January to June, days before travel. And it only resolved after Gutterman paid a small fee to join a WhatsApp group that alerted her to new appointments, which stay available for only a few seconds. She ultimately got three appointments on three consecutive days — bureaucracy embodied.

    “We had to drive the entire family with three small children, an hour-and-a-half to Tel Aviv three days in a row, taking off work and school,” she said. “This makes me incredibly uneasy having a baby in Israel as an American citizen, knowing there is no way I can fly with that baby until we get lucky with an appointment.”

    Recently, there appeared to be some progress. The wait for an appointment for a renewed U.S. passport stood at 360 days on June 8. On July 2, the wait was down to 90 days, according to the web site.

    FRUSTRATING TALES EMERGE FROM THE TRENCHES

    Back in the U.S., Marni Larsen of Holladay, Utah, stood in line in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, in hopes of snagging her son’s passport. That way, she hoped, the pair could meet the rest of their family, who had already left as scheduled for Europe, for a long-planned vacation.

    She’d applied for her son’s passport two months earlier and spent weeks checking for updates online or through a frustrating call system. As the mid-June vacation loomed, Larsen reached out to Sen. Mitt Romney ’s office, where one of four people he says is assigned full-time to passport issues were able to track down the document in New Orleans.

    It was supposed to be shipped to Los Angeles, where she got an appointment to retrieve it. That meant Larsen had to buy new tickets for herself and her son to Los Angeles and reroute their trip from there to Rome. All on a bet that her son’s passport was indeed shipped as promised.

    “We are just waiting in this massive line of tons of people,” Larsen said. “It’s just been a nightmare.”

    They succeeded. But not everyone has been so lucky.

    Miranda Richter applied in person to renew passports for herself and her husband, as well as apply a new one on Feb. 9 for a trip with their neighbors to Croatia on June 6. She ended up canceling, losing more than $1,000.

    Her timeline went like this: Passports for her husband and daughter arrived in 11 weeks, while Richter’s photo was rejected. On May 4, she sent in a new one via priority mail. Then she paid a rush fee of $79, which was never charged to her credit card. Between May 30 and June 2, four days before travel, Richter and her husband spent more than 12 hours on the national passport line while also calling their congressman, senators and third-party couriers.

    Finally, she showed up in person at the federal building in downtown Houston, 30 minutes before the passport office opened. Richter said there were at least 100 people in line.

    “The security guard asked when is my appointment, and I burst out in tears,” she recalls. She couldn’t get one. “It didn’t work.”

    FINALLY: A HAPPY ENDING

    “I just got my passports!” Ginger Collier texts.

    She ended up showing up at the passport office in Dallas with her daughter-in-law at 6:30 a.m. and being sorted into groups and lined up against walls. Finally they were called to a window, where the agent was “super nice” and pulled all four of the family’s applications — paperwork that had been sitting in the office since March 17. More than seven hours later, the two left the office with directions to pick up their passports the next day.

    They did — with four days to spare.

    “What a ridiculous process,” Collier says. Nevertheless, the reunion with her son in Italy was sweet. She texted last week: “It was the best hug ever!”

    ___

    Kellman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Santana reported from Washington, and Koenig reported from Dallas. Follow Kellman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/APLaurie Kellman, Santana at http://twitter.com/russkygal and Koenig at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter.

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  • The wait for US passports is creating travel purgatory and snarling summer plans

    The wait for US passports is creating travel purgatory and snarling summer plans

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Seeking a valid U.S. passport for that 2023 trip? Buckle up, wishful traveler, for a very different journey before you step anywhere near an airport.

    A much-feared backup of U.S passport applications has smashed into a wall of government bureaucracy as worldwide travel rebounds toward record pre-pandemic levels — with too few humans to handle the load. The result, say aspiring travelers in the U.S. and around the world, is a maddening pre-travel purgatory defined, at best, by costly uncertainty.

    With family dreams and big money on the line, passport seekers describe a slow-motion agony of waiting, worrying, holding the line, refreshing the screen, complaining to Congress, paying extra fees and following incorrect directions. Some applicants are buying additional plane tickets to snag in-process passports where they sit — in other cities — in time to make the flights they booked in the first place.

    So grim is the outlook that U.S. officials aren’t even denying the problem or predicting when it will ease. They’re blaming the epic wait times on lingering pandemic -related staffing shortages and a pause of online processing this year. That’s left the passport agency flooded with a record-busting 500,000 applications a week. The deluge is on-track to top last year’s 22 million passports issued, the State Department says.

    Stories from applicants and interviews by The Associated Press depict a system of crisis management, in which the agencies are prioritizing urgent cases such as applicants traveling for reasons of “life or death” and those whose travel is only a few days off. For everyone else, the options are few and expensive.

    So, 2023 traveler, if you still need a valid U.S. passport, prepare for an unplanned excursion into the nightmare zone.

    ‘PLENTY OF TIME’ TO ‘WE’LL STILL BE OK’ TO BIG PROBLEMS

    It was early March when Dallas-area florist Ginger Collier applied for four passports ahead of a family vacation at the end of June. The clerk, she said, estimated wait times at eight to 11 weeks. They’d have their passports a month before they needed them. “Plenty of time,” Collier recalled thinking.

    Then the State Department upped the wait time for a regular passport to as much as 13 weeks. “We’ll still be okay,” she thought.

    At T-minus two weeks to travel, this was her assessment: “I can’t sleep.” This after months of calling, holding, pressing refresh on a website, trying her member of Congress — and stressing as the departure date loomed. Failure to obtain the family’s passports would mean losing $4,000, she said, as well as the chance to meet one of her sons in Italy after a study-abroad semester.

    “My nerves are shot, because I may not be able to get to him,” she said. She calls the toll-free number every day, holds for as much as 90 minutes to be told — at best — that she might be able to get a required appointment at passport offices in other states.

    “I can’t afford four more plane tickets anywhere in the United States to get a passport when I applied in plenty of time,” she said. “How about they just process my passports?”

    THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT HAS A CULPRIT: COVID

    By March, concerned travelers began asking for answers and then demanding help, including from their representatives in the House and Senate, who widely reported at hearings this year that they were receiving more complaints from constituents on passport delays than any other issue.

    The U.S. secretary of state had an answer, of a sort.

    “With COVID, the bottom basically dropped out of the system,” Antony Blinken told a House subcommittee March 23. When demand for travel all but disappeared during the pandemic, he said, the government let contractors go and reassigned staff that had been dedicated to handling passports.

    Around the same time, the government also halted an online renewal system “to make sure that we can fine tune it and improve it,” Blinken said. He said the department is hiring agents as quickly as possible, opening more appointments and trying to address the crisis in other ways.

    Passport applicants lit up social media groups, toll-free numbers and lawmakers’ phone lines with questions, appeals for advice and cries for help. Facebook and WhatsApp groups bristled with reports of bewilderment and fury. Reddit published eye-watering diaries, some more than 1,000 words long, of application dates, deposits submitted, contacts made, time on hold, money spent and appeals for advice.

    It was 1952 when a law required, for the first time, passports for every U.S. traveler abroad, even in peacetime. Now, passports are processed at centers around the country and printed at secure facilities in Washington, D.C. and Mississippi, according to the Government Printing Office.

    But the number of Americans holding valid U.S. passports has grown at roughly 10% faster than the population over the past three decades, according to Jay Zagorsky, an economist at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

    After passport delays derailed his own plans to travel to London earlier this year, Zagorsky found that the number of U.S. passports per American has soared from about three per 100 people in 1989 to nearly 46 per 100 people in 2022. Americans, it turns out, are on the move.

    “As a society gets richer,” says Zagorsky, “the people in that society say, ‘I want to visit the rest of the world.’”

    FOR AMERICANS AND OTHERS ABROAD, IT’S NO PICNIC EITHER

    At U.S. consulates overseas, the quest for U.S. visas and passports isn’t much brighter.

    On a day in June, people in New Delhi could expect to wait 451 days for a visa interview, according to the website. Those in Sao Paulo could plan on waiting more than 600 days. Aspiring travelers in Mexico City were waiting about 750 days; in Bogota, Colombia, it was 801 days.

    In Israel, the need is especially acute. More than 200,000 people with citizenship in both countries live in Israel. It’s one appointment per person, even for newborns, who must have both parents involved in the process, before traveling to the United States.

    Batsheva Gutterman started looking for three appointments immediately after she had a baby in December, with an eye toward attending a family celebration in July, in Raleigh, N.C.

    Her quest for three passports stretched from January to June, days before travel. And it only resolved after Gutterman payed a small fee to join a WhatsApp group that alerted her to new appointments, which stay available for only a few seconds. She ultimately got three appointments on three consecutive days — bureaucracy embodied.

    “We had to drive the entire family with three small children, an hour-and-a-half to Tel Aviv three days in a row, taking off work and school,” she said. “This makes me incredibly uneasy having a baby in Israel as an American citizen, knowing there is no way I can fly with that baby until we get lucky with an appointment.”

    Recently, there appeared to be some progress. The wait for an appointment for a renewed U.S. passport stood at 360 days on June 8. On July 2, the wait was down to 90 days, according to the web site.

    FRUSTRATING TALES EMERGE FROM THE TRENCHES

    Back in the U.S., Marni Larsen of Holladay, Utah, stood in line in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, in hopes of snagging her son’s passport. That way, she hoped, the pair could meet the rest of their family, who had already left as scheduled for Europe, for a long-planned vacation.

    She’d applied for her son’s passport two months earlier and spent weeks checking for updates online or through a frustrating call system. As the mid-June vacation loomed, Larsen reached out to Sen. Mitt Romney ’s office, where one of four people he says is assigned full-time to passport issues were able to track down the document in New Orleans.

    It was supposed to be shipped to Los Angeles, where she got an appointment to retrieve it. That meant Larsen had to buy new tickets for herself and her son to Los Angeles and reroute their trip from there to Rome. All on a bet that her son’s passport was indeed shipped as promised.

    “We are just waiting in this massive line of tons of people,” Larsen said. “It’s just been a nightmare.”

    They succeeded. But not everyone has been so lucky.

    Miranda Richter applied in person to renew passports for herself and her husband, as well as apply a new one on Feb. 9 for a trip with their neighbors to Croatia on June 6. She ended up canceling, losing more than $1,000.

    Her timeline went like this: Passports for her husband and daughter arrived in 11 weeks, while Richter’s photo was rejected. On May 4, she sent in a new one via priority mail. Then she paid a rush fee of $79, which was never charged to her credit card. Between May 30 and June 2, four days before travel, Richter and her husband spent more than 12 hours on the national passport line while also calling their congressman, senators and third-party couriers.

    Finally, she showed up in person at the federal building in downtown Houston, 30 minutes before the passport office opened. Richter said there were at least 100 people in line.

    “The security guard asked when is my appointment, and I burst out in tears,” she recalls. She couldn’t get one. “It didn’t work.”

    FINALLY: A HAPPY ENDING

    “I just got my passports!” Ginger Collier texts.

    She ended up showing up at the passport office in Dallas with her daughter-in-law at 6:30 a.m. and being sorted into groups and lined up against walls. Finally they were called to a window, where the agent was “super nice” and pulled all four of the family’s applications — paperwork that had been sitting in the office since March 17. More than seven hours later, the two left the office with directions to pick up their passports the next day.

    They did — with four days to spare.

    “What a ridiculous process,” Collier says. Nevertheless, the reunion with her son in Italy was sweet. She texted last week: “It was the best hug ever!”

    ___

    Kellman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Santana reported from Washington, and Koenig reported from Dallas. Follow Kellman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/APLaurie Kellman, Santana at http://twitter.com/russkygal and Koenig at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter.

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  • Micron CEO calls bottom in memory-chip market, but weak PC, smartphone forecasts cut into expected AI gains

    Micron CEO calls bottom in memory-chip market, but weak PC, smartphone forecasts cut into expected AI gains

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    Micron Technology Inc. shares rose in the extended session Wednesday after the memory-chip maker’s chief executive called the bottom on the sector, and quarterly results came in better than expected.

    Micron
    MU,
    +0.42%
    shares had jumped more than 5% after hours following the release of results, but by the end of the company’s conference call with analysts, the stock was up less than 2%. Shares finished Wednesday’s session with a 0.4% gain to close at $67.07, while the S&P 500 index
    SPX,
    -0.04%
    declined less than 0.1%.

    The Boise, Idaho-based company forecast an adjusted loss of $1.26 to $1.12 a share on revenue of $3.7 billion to $4.1 billion for the fourth quarter, while analysts surveyed by FactSet had estimated a loss of $1.07 a share on revenue of $3.88 billion for the fourth quarter, and a loss of $4.65 a share on revenue of $15.32 billion for the year.

    Read: Snowflake stock rallies as ‘blizzard’ of AI product announcements make Wall Street happy

    In the near term, Micron Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra told analysts on the call that while sales forecasts received a considerable boost from larger-than-expected AI sales, forecasts for PC, smartphone and standard server sales are looking worse than feared, and will eat into those gains. All told, however, the CEO told analysts that supply reductions are beginning to stabilize the market.

    Micron Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said the company took about $400 million in inventory write-downs in the third quarter, contributing to negative gross margins of 16%, an improvement of 15 percentage points sequentially. When Micron reported its worst loss ever a quarter ago, the company had taken a $1.4 billion inventory charge. When Micron started flashing signs of negative margins earlier in the year, many analysts saw that as signs of a bottom on the horizon.

    Read: Is Micron selling memory chips for less than they cost to make? That may mean the bottom is near.

    Micron makes two types of memory chips: DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, the type of memory commonly used in PCs and servers; and NAND, the flash memory chips used in smaller devices like smartphones and USB drives. After prices for memory soared early in the COVID-19 pandemic, companies overbought large stores of chips to avoid shortages, creating a glut.

    “As we have said before, AI servers have six to eight times the DRAM content of a regular server and three times the NAND content,” Mehrotra told analysts on the call. “In fact, some customers are deploying AI compute capability with substantially higher memory content.”

    For the third quarter, Micron reported third-quarter loss of $1.9 billion, or $1.73 a share, versus net income of $2.63 billion, or $2.34 a share, in the year-ago period.

    The adjusted loss, which excluded stock-based compensation expenses and other items, was $1.43 a share, versus net income of $2.59 a share in the year-ago period.

    Revenue dropped to $3.75 billion from $8.64 billion in the year-ago quarter, as a two-year shortage of chips, triggered by the COVID pandemic, flipped quickly, but unevenly, into a glut around this time last year. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast a loss of $1.61 a share on revenue of $3.65 billion.

    “We believe that the memory industry has passed its trough in revenue, and we expect margins to improve as industry supply-demand balance is gradually restored,” Mehrotra had said in an earlier statement.

    Read: Nvidia stock falls after CFO says no material impact from prospective wider ban on AI chip sales to China

    The CEO also called a recent order by the Chinese government to stop using Micron chips because of alleged serious, but unspecified, risks “a significant headwind that is impacting our outlook and slowing our recovery.”

    On the call with analysts, Mehrotra said he expects to see a “record total addressable market in calendar 2025 along with a return to more normalized levels of profitability.”

    Leading up to earnings, analysts had said that Micron is “at the bottom of this deep downturn,” but “China complicates the recovery plan.” For the year, Micron shares are up 34%, compared with the S&P 500’s 14% gain.

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  • Vodafone, Three to merge UK mobile phone operations to capitalize on 5G rollout

    Vodafone, Three to merge UK mobile phone operations to capitalize on 5G rollout

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    LONDON (AP) — Two of the U.K.’s four mobile phone operators agreed Wednesday to merge their businesses to capitalize on the rollout of next-generation 5G wireless technology in the country.

    The tie-up of Vodafone U.K. and Three U.K., which is owned by Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison, would create Britain’s biggest mobile phone player, with a combined 27 million customers. But the deal is likely to face stiff regulatory scrutiny because it will reduce the number of mobile networks down to three.

    Vodafone will account for 51% of the merged firm, with CK Hutchison owning the rest. Vodafone will have an option to buy out CK Hutchison’s stake after three years should the combined entity have a value of at least 16.5 billion pounds ($21 billion).

    The groups said the merger will help them compete with their rivals on 5G technology, which provides much faster connectivity and greater capacity that will potentially allow thousands of devices to be connected at the same time within a relatively small area.

    Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle described the deal as a “game-changer” for the company’s home market.

    “It’s transformative as it will create a best-in-class — indeed best-in-Europe — 5G network, offering customers a superior experience,” she said.

    Canning Fok, group co-managing director of C.K. Hutchison, said Three U.K. and Vodafone U.K. individually lack the necessary financial muscle for what’s needed.

    “This has long been a challenge for Three U.K.’s ability to invest and compete,” he said.

    The companies said they are aiming to complete the deal by the end of 2024.

    If it gets the go-ahead from regulators, Vodafone U.K. boss Ahmed Essam will be chief executive, with Three U.K. chief financial officer Darren Purkis taking on that role at the merged company.

    It expects cost savings of more than 700 million pounds within five years of the deal’s completion, through measures such as merging IT systems; combining marketing, sales, distribution and logistics activities; and general cost-cutting. The firms said it was too early to put a figure on the number of jobs that would be affected.

    Unite, Britain’s largest trade union, urged the government to “step in and stop this reckless merger,” arguing it would lead to job losses and push up prices for customers.

    The deal comes a month after Vodafone announced that it was laying off 11,000 workers globally as part of a major revamp aimed at cutting costs and boosting flagging financial performance.

    Vodafone U.K. and Three U.K. pledged to invest 11 billion pounds in Britain over the next 10 years to create one of Europe’s biggest 5G networks, promising that every school and hospital in the country will have access to standalone 5G by 2030.

    Given that the deal would reduce the number of mobile operators in the U.K. — EE and O2 being the other two — it will be scrutinized closely by the Competition and Markets Authority. Other smaller firms, such as Sky and Tesco, piggyback on the big four’s networks.

    Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy and consumer champion publication Which?, said the deal will require a thorough assessment from the regulator to ensure it is not harmful to consumers.

    “A good mobile connection is essential to everyday modern life, and this merger between Vodafone and Three will have a significant impact on the telecoms market,” she said.

    “Reducing the number of network providers from four to three risks reducing the choices available to consumers, raising prices and lowering the quality of services available,” she added.

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  • It’s almost time to resume student loan payments. Not doing so could cost you

    It’s almost time to resume student loan payments. Not doing so could cost you

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — After three years, the pandemic-era freeze on student loan payments will end soon. Student loan interest will start accruing on September 1 and https://studentaid.gov/ starting in October.

    It might seem tempting to just keep not making payments, but the consequences can be severe, including a hit to your credit score and exclusion from future aid and benefits.

    More than 40 million Americans will have to start making federal student loan payments again at the end of the summer under the terms of a debt ceiling deal approved by Congress.

    Millions are also waiting to find out whether the Supreme Court will allow President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan to go ahead. But payments will resume regardless of what justices decide.

    That means tough decisions for many borrowers, especially those in already-difficult financial situations.

    Experts say that delinquency and bankruptcy should be options of last resort, and that deferment and forbearance — which pause payments, though interest may continue to accrue — are often better in the short term.

    WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T MAKE STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS?

    Once the moratorium ends, borrowers who can’t or don’t pay risk delinquency and eventually default. That can badly hurt your credit rating and make you ineligible for additional aid and government benefits.

    If you’re struggling to pay, advisers first encourage you to check if you qualify for an income-driven repayment plan, which determines your payments by looking at your expenses. You can determine this by visiting the Federal Student Aid website. If you’ve worked for a government agency or a non-profit organization, you could also be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives student debt after 10 years.

    Carolina Rodriguez, Director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program at the Community Service Society of New York, emphasizes that anyone temporarily unemployed should be able to qualify for a $0 payment plan. And many others qualify based on income and family size.

    “The repercussions of falling into delinquency can be pretty severe,” Rodriguez said. “The federal government can administratively intercept tax refunds and garnish wages. And it can affect Social Security, retirement, and disability benefits. Does it make financial sense at that point? Probably not.”

    Rodriguez says her organization always advises against deferment or forbearance except once a borrower has exhausted all other options. In the long term, those financial choices offer little benefit, as some loans will continue to accrue interest while deferred.

    Abby Shafroth, senior attorney and director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, said that, of the two, deferment is generally a better option.

    That’s because interest generally does not accrue on Direct Subsidized Loans, the subsidized portion of Direct Consolidation Loans, Subsidized Federal Stafford Loans, the subsidized portion of FFEL Consolidation Loans, and Federal Perkins Loans. All other federal student loans that are deferred will continue to accrue interest.

    “Forbearance allows you to postpone payments without it being held against you, but interest does accrue. So you’re going to see your balance increase every month.”

    WHAT ABOUT DECLARING BANKRUPTCY?

    For most student loan borrowers, it’s still very difficult to have your loans discharged, or canceled, through bankruptcy. Borrowers must prove a very hard standard of financial circumstances, called “undue hardship.”

    “That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t look into it,” Rodriguez said. “But they may not be successful at discharging their loans.”

    For borrowers who show that level of financial strain, chances are they have other options, Rodriguez said.

    She advises that borrowers make sure they are speaking to a bankruptcy attorney who understands student loan bankruptcy, which requires a different proceeding than other types of bankruptcy.

    Shafroth, of the NCLC, says that new guidance on student loan bankruptcy has been coming out in recent years.

    “Though it is difficult to get your loans discharged through the bankruptcy process, an increasing number of borrowers are eligible to get their loans discharged that way,” she said. “A lot of people write that off as ‘there’s no way,’ it’s impossible.’ But it’s increasingly possible.”

    WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A LOAN GOES INTO DEFAULT?

    When you fall behind on a loan by 270 days — roughly 9 months — the loan appears on your credit report as being in default.

    “At that point, it’s not just behind, it’s in collections,” Shafroth said. “That’s when you become ineligible to take out new federal student aid. A lot of people go into default because they weren’t able to complete their degree the first time. This prevents them from going back to school.”

    Once a loan is in default, it’s subject to the collection processes mentioned above. That means the government can garnish wages (without a court order) to go towards paying back the loan, intercept tax refunds, and seize portions of Social Security checks and other benefit payments.

    WHAT ARE OTHER OPTIONS IF I CAN’T MAKE PAYMENTS?

    Shafroth said that many borrowers may still be eligible to have loans canceled via a patchwork of programs outside of the Biden administration’s proposed debt relief program.

    “If your school closed before you could complete your program, you’re eligible for relief. If your school lied to you or misrepresented the outcome of what your enrolling would be, you can file a borrower defense application, and request your loan be canceled on that basis,” she said. “If you have a disability, you can sometimes have your loans canceled on that basis.”

    Shafroth encourages borrowers to look at the Student Aid website to see what their options might be before missing payments.

    WHAT IF MY LOANS WERE IN DEFAULT BEFORE MARCH 2020?

    Under the Biden administration’s Fresh Start program, borrowers with federal student loans who were in default before the pause have a chance to become current.

    Borrowers who were in default will not be subject to collection processes or have wages garnished through about August 2024, or roughly one year after the payment freeze ends. These borrowers have also been granted permission to apply for federal student loans again, to complete degrees. Lastly, these defaulted loans are now being reported to credit bureaus as current.

    That said, borrowers must take action if they want to stay out of default after this year-long leniency period ends.

    To eliminate your record of default, you should contact the Education Department’s Default Resolution Group online, by phone, or by mail, and ask the group to take the loans out of default via the Fresh Start policy. In four to six weeks, any record of default will be removed from your credit report, and the loans will be placed with a loan servicer. This will also give you access to income-driven repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, if applicable.

    WHAT IF I WAS BEHIND ON PAYMENTS OR DELINQUENT BEFORE MARCH 2020?

    The Fresh Start program also applies to borrowers who were delinquent prior to the payment pause. Those accounts will be considered current, and borrowers will have the option to enroll in income-driven repayment plans that can lower bills to as little as $0, or to apply for deferment, forbearance or bankruptcy.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

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  • It might seem tempting to not pay your student loans. Here’s why that’s a bad idea

    It might seem tempting to not pay your student loans. Here’s why that’s a bad idea

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — After three years, the pandemic-era freeze on student loan payments will end in late August.

    It might seem tempting to just keep not making payments, but the consequences can be severe, including a hit to your credit score and exclusion from future aid and benefits.

    More than 40 million Americans will have to start making federal student loan payments again at the end of the summer under the terms of a debt ceiling deal approved by Congress.

    Millions are also waiting to find out whether the Supreme Court will allow President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan to go ahead. But payments will resume regardless of what justices decide.

    That means tough decisions for many borrowers, especially those in already-difficult financial situations.

    Experts say that delinquency and bankruptcy should be options of last resort, and that deferment and forbearance — which pause payments, though interest may continue to accrue — are often better in the short term.

    WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T MAKE STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS?

    Once the moratorium ends, borrowers who can’t or don’t pay risk delinquency and eventually default. That can badly hurt your credit rating and make you ineligible for additional aid and government benefits.

    If you’re struggling to pay, advisers first encourage you to check if you qualify for an income-driven repayment plan, which determines your payments by looking at your expenses. You can determine this by visiting the Federal Student Aid website. If you’ve worked for a government agency or a non-profit organization, you could also be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives student debt after 10 years.

    Carolina Rodriguez, Director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program at the Community Service Society of New York, emphasizes that anyone temporarily unemployed should be able to qualify for a $0 payment plan. And many others qualify based on income and family size.

    “The repercussions of falling into delinquency can be pretty severe,” Rodriguez said. “The federal government can administratively intercept tax refunds and garnish wages. And it can affect Social Security, retirement, and disability benefits. Does it make financial sense at that point? Probably not.”

    Rodriguez says her organization always advises against deferment or forbearance except once a borrower has exhausted all other options. In the long term, those financial choices offer little benefit, as some loans will continue to accrue interest while deferred.

    Abby Shafroth, senior attorney and director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, said that, of the two, deferment is generally a better option.

    That’s because interest generally does not accrue on Direct Subsidized Loans, the subsidized portion of Direct Consolidation Loans, Subsidized Federal Stafford Loans, the subsidized portion of FFEL Consolidation Loans, and Federal Perkins Loans. All other federal student loans that are deferred will continue to accrue interest.

    “Forbearance allows you to postpone payments without it being held against you, but interest does accrue. So you’re going to see your balance increase every month.”

    WHAT ABOUT DECLARING BANKRUPTCY?

    For most student loan borrowers, it’s still very difficult to have your loans discharged, or canceled, through bankruptcy. Borrowers must prove a very hard standard of financial circumstances, called “undue hardship.”

    “That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t look into it,” Rodriguez said. “But they may not be successful at discharging their loans.”

    For borrowers who show that level of financial strain, chances are they have other options, Rodriguez said.

    She advises that borrowers make sure they are speaking to a bankruptcy attorney who understands student loan bankruptcy, which requires a different proceeding than other types of bankruptcy.

    Shafroth, of the NCLC, says that new guidance on student loan bankruptcy has been coming out in recent years.

    “Though it is difficult to get your loans discharged through the bankruptcy process, an increasing number of borrowers are eligible to get their loans discharged that way,” she said. “A lot of people write that off as ‘there’s no way,’ it’s impossible.’ But it’s increasingly possible.”

    WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A LOAN GOES INTO DEFAULT?

    When you fall behind on a loan by 270 days — roughly 9 months — the loan appears on your credit report as being in default.

    “At that point, it’s not just behind, it’s in collections,” Shafroth said. “That’s when you become ineligible to take out new federal student aid. A lot of people go into default because they weren’t able to complete their degree the first time. This prevents them from going back to school.”

    Once a loan is in default, it’s subject to the collection processes mentioned above. That means the government can garnish wages (without a court order) to go towards paying back the loan, intercept tax refunds, and seize portions of Social Security checks and other benefit payments.

    WHAT ARE OTHER OPTIONS IF I CAN’T MAKE PAYMENTS?

    Shafroth said that many borrowers may still be eligible to have loans canceled via a patchwork of programs outside of the Biden administration’s proposed debt relief program.

    “If your school closed before you could complete your program, you’re eligible for relief. If your school lied to you or misrepresented the outcome of what your enrolling would be, you can file a borrower defense application, and request your loan be canceled on that basis,” she said. “If you have a disability, you can sometimes have your loans canceled on that basis.”

    Shafroth encourages borrowers to look at the Student Aid website to see what their options might be before missing payments.

    WHAT IF MY LOANS WERE IN DEFAULT BEFORE MARCH 2020?

    Under the Biden administration’s Fresh Start program, borrowers with federal student loans who were in default before the pause have a chance to become current.

    Borrowers who were in default will not be subject to collection processes or have wages garnished through about August 2024, or roughly one year after the payment freeze ends. These borrowers have also been granted permission to apply for federal student loans again, to complete degrees. Lastly, these defaulted loans are now being reported to credit bureaus as current.

    That said, borrowers must take action if they want to stay out of default after this year-long leniency period ends.

    To eliminate your record of default, you should contact the Education Department’s Default Resolution Group online, by phone, or by mail, and ask the group to take the loans out of default via the Fresh Start policy. In four to six weeks, any record of default will be removed from your credit report, and the loans will be placed with a loan servicer. This will also give you access to income-driven repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, if applicable.

    WHAT IF I WAS BEHIND ON PAYMENTS OR DELINQUENT BEFORE MARCH 2020?

    The Fresh Start program also applies to borrowers who were delinquent prior to the payment pause. Those accounts will be considered current, and borrowers will have the option to enroll in income-driven repayment plans that can lower bills to as little as $0, or to apply for deferment, forbearance or bankruptcy.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

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  • Here are all the new software features coming to Apple’s iPhone this year

    Here are all the new software features coming to Apple’s iPhone this year

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    Users of Apple Inc.’s iPhone will soon be able to more easily screen calls, check-in with loved ones and exchange contact information.

    Apple
    AAPL,
    +0.43%
    executives teased the elements of its forthcoming iOS17 software update at the keynote address of its WWDC event Monday, which also brought the introduction of new Macs.

    Consumers will gain the ability to choose how they come up when they call others through a new “poster” feature. Users will be able to customize posters with photographs and fonts, and have these appear in another person’s contacts app.

    The company is also changing up how calls work by adding a way for people to pick up calls while they’re in the middle of receiving a voice mail. A new on-device live-voicemail feature will show transcripts of a voice mail while it’s in progress, so people can determine that a call isn’t spam or is important enough to stop what they’re doing before they pick it up.

    Users will also gain the ability to leave a message when using FaceTime, Apple’s video-calling app.

    See also: Apple’s stock at all-time highs ahead of WWDC headset reveal

    Within iMessage, Apple will offer the ability for people to share their locations within a conversation and check in with loved ones. People will be able to set up a check-in option that can notify loved ones when they get home and offer alerts about battery, cell service, and location if they end up running late.

    Apple is also enhancing the Stickers feature within iMessage with the ability to create “live stickers” from photos. Further, it’s tucking iMessage apps like Stickers behind a menu so they don’t initially clutter the message screen.

    Within iMessage, Apple will make it easier for people to jump to the top of long group threads and swipe to reply to a given message.

    Apple is introducing a NameDrop feature that lets people share contact information just by tapping their phones together. It’s also augmenting AutoCorrect with in-line predictions that go beyond one word and the ability for people to teach autocorrect their preferences better.

    Read: Apple could be cooking up 3 more $10 billion-plus businesses, one analyst says

    The company is rolling out two new apps, including one for journaling. People will be able to collect photos, music, and written notes into moments. A new StandBy app will turn a locked iPhone into a smart display that users can customize based on their preferences and the time of day.

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  • Senegal’s government suspends mobile internet access amid days of deadly clashes

    Senegal’s government suspends mobile internet access amid days of deadly clashes

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    Senegal’s government has temporarily suspended mobile phone data as the country reels from days of deadly clashes between police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko

    BySAM MEDNICK Associated Press

    Police in riot gear stand guard during clashes with demonstrators in Dakar, Senegal, Saturday, June 3, 2023. The clashes first broke out, later this week, after opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was convicted of corrupting youth and sentenced to two years in prison. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

    The Associated Press

    DAKAR, Senegal — Senegal’s government temporarily suspended mobile phone data on Sunday as the country reels from days of deadly clashes between police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.

    The ministry of communication, telecommunications and digital economy said that because of the diffusion of “subversive messages in a context of public disorder in certain localities,” cellphone internet data would be suspended during certain time periods.

    The statement comes after days of deadly clashes throughout the West African nation between Sonko’s supporters and police. The official death toll is unclear. The government says that 15 people, including two members of the security forces, have been killed, while the opposition says 19 people have died.

    The clashes first broke out on Thursday, after Sonko was convicted of corrupting youth but acquitted on charges of raping a woman who worked at a massage parlor and making death threats against her. Sonko, who didn’t attend his trial in Dakar, was sentenced to two years in prison. His lawyer said that a warrant hadn’t yet been issued for his arrest.

    Sonko came third in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election and is popular with the country’s youth. His supporters maintain that his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

    Sonko is considered to be President Macky Sall’s main competition and has urged Sall to state publicly that he won’t seek a third term in office. Sonko hasn’t been seen or heard from since the verdict.

    The international community has called on Senegal’s government to resolve the tensions.

    The government had already suspended access to some social media sites, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, which it said was being used to incite violence.

    At a news conference on Saturday evening, the government said it would take all necessary measures to secure the country.

    “I would like to reassure the Senegalese people that whatever attacks we have, the state will face them,” Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome said. Around 500 people have been arrested across the country, including those belonging to political parties as well as those who are just trying to scare people, he said.

    Rights groups have condemned the government crackdown, which it says has included arbitrary arrests.

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  • Senegal’s government suspends mobile internet access amid days of deadly clashes

    Senegal’s government suspends mobile internet access amid days of deadly clashes

    [ad_1]

    Senegal’s government has temporarily suspended mobile phone data as the country reels from days of deadly clashes between police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko

    BySAM MEDNICK Associated Press

    Police in riot gear stand guard during clashes with demonstrators in Dakar, Senegal, Saturday, June 3, 2023. The clashes first broke out, later this week, after opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was convicted of corrupting youth and sentenced to two years in prison. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

    The Associated Press

    DAKAR, Senegal — Senegal’s government temporarily suspended mobile phone data on Sunday as the country reels from days of deadly clashes between police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.

    The ministry of communication, telecommunications and digital economy said that because of the diffusion of “subversive messages in a context of public disorder in certain localities,” cellphone internet data would be suspended during certain time periods.

    The statement comes after days of deadly clashes throughout the West African nation between Sonko’s supporters and police. The official death toll is unclear. The government says that 15 people, including two members of the security forces, have been killed, while the opposition says 19 people have died.

    The clashes first broke out on Thursday, after Sonko was convicted of corrupting youth but acquitted on charges of raping a woman who worked at a massage parlor and making death threats against her. Sonko, who didn’t attend his trial in Dakar, was sentenced to two years in prison. His lawyer said that a warrant hadn’t yet been issued for his arrest.

    Sonko came third in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election and is popular with the country’s youth. His supporters maintain that his legal troubles are part of a government effort to derail his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

    Sonko is considered to be President Macky Sall’s main competition and has urged Sall to state publicly that he won’t seek a third term in office. Sonko hasn’t been seen or heard from since the verdict.

    The international community has called on Senegal’s government to resolve the tensions.

    The government had already suspended access to some social media sites, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, which it said was being used to incite violence.

    At a news conference on Saturday evening, the government said it would take all necessary measures to secure the country.

    “I would like to reassure the Senegalese people that whatever attacks we have, the state will face them,” Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome said. Around 500 people have been arrested across the country, including those belonging to political parties as well as those who are just trying to scare people, he said.

    Rights groups have condemned the government crackdown, which it says has included arbitrary arrests.

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  • US expands slots for asylum app at land crossings as demand overwhelms supply

    US expands slots for asylum app at land crossings as demand overwhelms supply

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    HARLINGEN, Texas — U.S. authorities on Thursday expanded slots to seek asylum at land crossings with Mexico through a mobile app for the second time in less than a month, seeking to dispel doubts it isn’t a viable option.

    There are now 1,250 appointments at eight land crossings, up from 1,000 previously and 740 in early May.

    The increase “reflects our commitment to continue to expand lawful options for migrants,” said Blas Nuñez-Neto, the Homeland Security Department’s assistant secretary for border and immigration policy. “We’ll continue to expand appointments at the border as our operations allow in terms of capacity.”

    Nuñez-Neto called CBP One a “safe and orderly option” during a visit to Harlingen, Texas. He announced the expansion a week after Texas sued to end what the state government considers an illegal method of boosting immigration.

    Demand has far outstripped supply from the Jan. 12 start, prompting many to consider crossing the border illegally or giving up. Enrique Lucero, migrant affairs director for the city of Tijuana, said the latest increase would have little impact considering how many are waiting.

    “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It’s still very low and not enough for the pent-up demand.”

    After pandemic-related asylum restrictions ended May 11, the Biden administration continued its embrace of a carrot-and-stick approach to the border, introducing a general ban on asylum for people who travel through other countries, like Mexico, and enter the U.S. illegally.

    U.S. authorities are trying to funnel people to “legal pathways” like CBP One and parole for up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive by air.

    CBP One is for people of any nationality who apply in central and northern and northern Mexico and enter by land.

    The expansion on Thursday was met with with cautious optimism and mild indifference among some of the 150 people, mostly families with young children, camped on a sidewalk at a border crossing where Tijuana leads to San Diego, hoping U.S. officials admit them without a CBP One appointment.

    They said it appeared authorities were allowing about one family every several hours, enough to create a growing bottleneck over the last week as word spread it was an alternative.

    Carlos Vasquez, 25, reached southern Mexico from Honduras in January with his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old daughter and started trying daily on the app once he was in central Mexico. He became frustrated and, on Monday, began sleeping at the border camp, hoping U..S. officials would take mercy on his family.

    Vasquez said the increase to 1,250 a day was good news but not enough for a major impact.

    “We are many and there are few chosen,” he said.

    Sergio Hernandez, 35, scored an appointment on May 24 after more than five months of daily effort. The appointments are scheduled up to two weeks out.

    Hernandez, a Guatemalan who plans to seek asylum while living with a childhood friend in Kansas City, Missouri, said he had received countless “system error” messages before confirming a slot. He was once given a date on his phone screen but email confirmation never arrived.

    “They keep improving it little by little,” he said.

    Hernandez, who was traveling alone, said perceptions persist that larger families are at a disadvantage, which U.S. officials deny.

    Beatriz Melchor, 47, said she would wait to see if the latest increase has an impact. She has been trying the app for about six weeks with her husband and son and said changes announced in early May have produced no noticeable benefit.

    The changes included giving higher priority to asylum-seekers who have been trying the app longest and making appointments available throughout the day instead of all at once, which created mad rushes.

    “We have more than a month trying and there are people here nine days, four days, and they get their appointments,” she said.

    Melchor said returning to her hometown in the Mexican state of Guerrero wasn’t an option. Criminals blocked exits and entrances and she had to escape. If the mobile app doesn’t work, she is prepared to wait, though she said Tijuana is unsafe.

    ___

    Spagat reported from Tijuana, Mexico.

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  • Texas sues Biden administration over asylum rule, saying phone app encourages illegal immigration

    Texas sues Biden administration over asylum rule, saying phone app encourages illegal immigration

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    The state of Texas is suing the Biden administration to have a newly introduced asylum rule thrown out

    ByREBECCA SANTANA Associated Press

    FILE – Haitian migrants camp out at the Giordano Bruno plaza in Mexico City, May 18, 2023. The group was staying at a shelter in Mexico City on their way north but were forced to make camp at the park after the shelter closed. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

    The Associated Press

    The state of Texas is suing the Biden administration in an attempt to have a newly-introduced asylum rule thrown out, saying a phone app used by migrants to set up appointments at the border to seek entry into the United States is encouraging illegal immigration.

    The lawsuit filed Tuesday is the latest legal salvo attacking various aspects of the administration’s plan to manage migration in the aftermath of the end of a key pandemic-era immigration regulation called Title 42.

    In the lawsuit, Texas argues that the asylum rule encourages the use of a cellphone app — called CBP One — for migrants who don’t have proper documentation to make an appointments to come to a port of entry and seek entry into the United States.

    Texas argues the Biden administration is essentially encouraging people to come to the U.S. even though they don’t have legal basis to stay.

    “The Biden Administration deliberately conceived of this phone app with the goal of illegally pre-approving more foreign aliens to enter the country and go where they please once they arrive,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a news release.

    The complaint was filed in the Western District of Texas.

    While the lawsuit focuses on the phone app, it seeks to throw out the entire asylum rule, called the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways. The rule went into effect when Title 42 expired May 11. The rule makes it extremely difficult for migrants who travel to the southern border to get asylum if they don’t first seek protection in a country they passed through before reaching the U.S. or if they don’t apply online through the app.

    Use of the app is a core part of the administration’s plans to create a more orderly system at the border where migrants set up appointments ahead of time, but when the app was rolled out in January it was criticized for technological problems and because demand has far outstripped available spaces. Migrants can make appointments for specific ports of entry — five of which are in Texas.

    Texas argues that according to federal law, people entering the country illegally — with rare exceptions — should be expelled but that the app doesn’t verify whether the migrants seeking appointments would qualify for exceptions. Therefore, the state argues, the Biden administration’s use of the app essentially encourages people to come to the U.S. even if they don’t qualify. Texas also argues that it has to pay the financial burden of migrants coming to the U.S. through things like health care or education.

    The new asylum rule has also been attacked by rights groups who argue the U.S. has an obligation to offer asylum to those in desperate need. They’re suing to have the rule thrown out as well. Texas is also part of another lawsuit accusing the administration of overstepping its authority by allowing as many as 360,000 people a year from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S. under its humanitarian parole authority.

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  • ChatGPT makes its debut as a smartphone app on iPhones

    ChatGPT makes its debut as a smartphone app on iPhones

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    ChatGPT is now a smartphone app, which could be good news for people who like to use the artificial intelligence chatbot and bad news for all the clone apps that have tried to profit off the technology.

    The free app became available on iPhones and iPads in the U.S. on Thursday and will later be coming to Android devices. Unlike the desktop web version, the mobile version on Apple’s iOS operating system also enables users to speak to it using their voice.

    The company that makes it, OpenAI, said it will remain ad-free but “syncs your history across devices.”

    “We’re starting our rollout in the U.S. and will expand to additional countries in the coming weeks,” said a blog post announcing the new app, which is described in the App Store as the “official app” by OpenAI.

    It’s been more than five months since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, sparking excitement and alarm at its ability to generate convincingly human-like essays, poems, form letters and conversational answers to almost any question. But the San Francisco startup never seemed to be in a hurry to get it onto phones — where most people access the internet.

    “We’re not trying to get people to use it more and more,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told U.S. senators this week in a hearing over how to regulate AI systems such as those built by his company.

    The delay in getting the product on phones helped fuel a rise of clones built on similar technology, some of which the security firm Sophos described as “fleeceware” in a report this week because they push unsuspecting users toward enrolling in a free trial that converts into a recurring subscription, or use intrusive advertising techniques.

    Another privacy researcher, Simon Migliano, said the official ChatGPT app might eventually starve similar-sounding apps of new users, but that could take a while because many of those apps were given names deliberately intended to confuse people into thinking they already have the official app. They were also “hyper-optimized” to rank highly in Apple’s App Store search results, said Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN.com.

    “For many of those who have already downloaded a clone, it’s likely they will simply stick with the ChatGPT apps they already have and continue to have their personal data harvested and sold,” Migliano said.

    Altman told Congress this week that his company doesn’t try to maximize engagement because it doesn’t have an advertising-based business, and because it’s costly to train and run its AI models on computer chips known as graphics processing units.

    “In fact, we’re so short on GPUs, the less people use our products, the better,” Altman said.

    The new app does include an option to pay for a premium version of ChatGPT with additional features. Along with those subscriptions, the company makes money from developers and corporations that pay to integrate its AI models into their own apps and products.

    Its chief partner, Microsoft, has invested billions of dollars into the startup and has integrated ChatGPT-like technology into its own products, including a chatbot for its search engine Bing.

    The ChatGPT app will now compete for attention with the Bing chatbot already available on iPhones, and could eventually compete with a mobile version of rival Google’s chatbot, called Bard. Versions of OpenAI’s chatbot technology can also be found in other apps, such as the “My AI” feature on Snapchat.

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  • Tech-stock picks that are small and focused: This fund invests in unsung innovators. Here are 2 top choices.

    Tech-stock picks that are small and focused: This fund invests in unsung innovators. Here are 2 top choices.

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    When investors think of technology stocks, they might automatically gravitate toward “the next big thing,” or to the giant companies that dominate the S&P 500
    SPX,
    -0.40%    .
    But Robert Stimson, chief investment officer of Oak Associates Funds, makes a case for diversification through exposure to smaller innovators which he believes are “overlooked in this environment.”

    The River Oak Discovery Fund
    RIVSX,
    +0.98%
    invests in tech-oriented companies with market capitalizations of $5 billion or less, with an average of about $2 billion. It has a five-star rating, the highest, from Morningstar, despite having what the investment information firm considers “above average” annual expenses of 1.19% of assets under management. The fund is ranked in the 6th percentile among 546 funds in Morningstar’s “Small Blend” category for five-year performance and in the 13th percentile among 374 funds for 10-year performance. The performance comparisons are net of expenses.

    The Black Oak Emerging Technologies Fund
    BOGSX,
    +1.54%
    has more of a midcap focus, with some small-cap stocks and follows a similar strategy to that of RIVSX. But with no restriction on the size of companies this fund invests in, “we don’t have to sell stocks,” Stimpson said. So long-term holdings of this fund include Apple Inc.
    AAPL,
    -0.05%
    and Salesforce.com Inc.
    CRM,
    +0.69%    .
    This fund is rated three stars within Morningstar’s “Technology” category and has a lower expense ratio of 1.03%.

    Both funds are concentrated. The River Oak Discovery Fund held 34 stocks and the Black Oak Emerging Technologies Fund held 35 stocks as of March 31. Lists of both funds’ largest holdings are below.

    During an Interview, Stimpson, who co-manages both funds, said that when investing in the small-cap technology space, he and colleagues identify companies that are “focused on niches.

    “I want a company that knows who they are, what they do and do it well, rather than a small company trying to growing into the next Microsoft, Google or Salesforce,” he said.

    More about giant companies dominating stock indexes: This twist on a traditional S&P 500 stock fund can lower your risk and still beat the market overall

    Stimpson said Oak Associates pays close attention to what corporate management teams say during earnings calls and in presentations, preferring comments related to improving sales and operations with a market niche, rather than expressions of grand visions for exponential growth.

    That type of narrow focus can support higher valuations over time, Stimpson said. “They have better execution, a better ability to fend-off competition and they are quality acquisition candidates.”

    “ “I caution everyone that until there is revenue, earnings and a product, the hype can be more dangerous than an opportunity.” ”


    — Robert Stimpson, chief investment officer at Oak Funds, when discussing AI and ChatGPT.

    All of those factors can be important to investors, considering how easily tech giants such as Microsoft Corp.
    MSFT,
    +1.00%
    or Google holding company Alphabet Inc.
    GOOGL,
    +2.89%

    GOOG,
    +2.88%
    can begin to compete with smaller innovative companies because they can afford to make such large investments, he said.

    Simpson went further, saying that when running screens for “quality” metrics, such as improving free cash flow yields, the Oak Associates team also looks for “shareholder friendly practices.” For example, a company may be repurchasing shares. But are the buybacks lowering the share count significantly (which boosts earnings per share) or are they merely mitigating the dilution caused by the shoveling of new shares to executives as part of their compensation?

    Finally, Simpson cautioned investors not to get caught up in tech-focused hype.

    “When I talk to our clients, I get questions about AI and ChatGPT and how to play it. People get focused on a new great tech innovation,” he said. “You can replace ChatGPT with bitcoin, metaverse or 3-D printing.”

    “I caution everyone that until there is revenue, earnings and a product, the hype can be more dangerous than an opportunity.”

    Two examples

    These companies are held by theRiver Oak Discovery Fund and the Black Oak Emerging Technologies Fund.

    Cirrus Logic Inc.
    CRUS,
    -2.37%
    is the largest holding of the River Oak Discovery Fund. Stimpson calls the company “a derivative play on the success of Apple.”

    “They are focused on the chips that go into mobile and [vehicles],” as well as the needs of their customers, including Apple, “rather than problem areas of the chip sector, such as memory or PCs. They are not talking about chips for AI, for example,” Stimpson said.

    Cirrus focuses on systems and related software used in audio systems..

    Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc.
    KLIC,
    +1.92%
    makes equipment, tools and related software used by a variety of manufacturers of computer chips and integrated electronic devices.

    Stimpson likes the company as a long-term play on the worldwide disruption in semiconductor manufacturing and supply, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. “All chip companies learned that any supply disruption in Southeast Asia is a problem. Over time, the opportunities for semiconductor equipment makers are very good. There will be more plants in more locations, so more equipment,” he said.

    He said KLICK was in a “protected” position, with returns on equity of about 20% and free cash flow yields of about 10%.

    Top holdings of the funds

    Here are the largest 10 holdings of the River Oak Discovery Fund as of March 31:

    Company

    		 Ticker

    		 % of portfolio
    Cirrus Logic Inc.

    		 CRUS,
    -2.37%         		4.9%
    Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc.

    		 KLIC,
    +1.92%         		4.6%
    Advanced Energy Industries Inc.

    		 AEIS,
    +0.30%         		4.5%
    Cohu Inc.

    		 COHU,
    +1.45%         		3.7%
    Asbury Automotive Group Inc.

    		 ABG,
    -1.75%         		3.7%
    Korn Ferry

    		 KFY,
    -0.96%         		3.6%
    Kforce Inc.

    		 KFRC,
    -2.40%         		3.4%
    Ambarella Inc.

    		 AMBA,
    -0.50%         		3.3%
    Applied Industrial Technologies Inc.

    		 AIT,
    -1.71%         		3.3%
    Perficient Inc.

    		 PRFT,
    +0.72%         		3.2%

    Click on the tickers for more about each company.

    Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.

    Here are the largest 10 holdings of the Black Oak Emerging Technology Fund as of March 31:

    Company

    		 Ticker

    		 % of portfolio
    Apple Inc.

    		 AAPL,
    -0.05%         		5.7%
    KLA Corp.

    		 KLAC,
    +1.69%         		4.6%
    Advanced Energy Industries Inc.

    		 AEIS,
    +0.30%         		4.5%
    Cohu Inc.

    		 COHU,
    +1.45%         		4.1%
    SolarEdge Technologies Inc.

    		 SEDG,
    -3.76%         		3.9%
    Cirrus Logic Inc.

    		 CRUS,
    -2.37%         		3.9%
    Cohu Inc.

    		 COHU,
    +1.45%         		3.9%
    Ambarella Inc.

    		 AMBA,
    -0.50%         		3.4%
    Applied Industrial Technologies Inc.

    		 AIT,
    -1.71%         		3.4%
    Salesforce Inc.

    		 CRM,
    +0.69%         		3.3%

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  • Border crossings are off from last week’s highs as US pins hopes for order on mobile app

    Border crossings are off from last week’s highs as US pins hopes for order on mobile app

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    TIJUANA, Mexico — Pandemic-era limits on asylum known as Title 42 have been rarely discussed among many of tens of thousands of migrants massed on Mexico’s border with the United States.

    Their eyes were — and are — fixed instead on a new U.S. government mobile app that grants 1,000 people daily an appointment to cross the border and seek asylum while living in the U.S. With demand far outstripping available slots, the app has been an exercise in frustration for many — and a test of the Biden administration’s strategy of coupling new legal paths to entry with severe consequences for those who don’t.

    “You start to give up hope but it’s the only way,” Teresa Muñoz, 48, who abandoned her home in the Mexican state of Michoacan after a gang killed her husband and beat her. She has been trying for a month to gain entry through the app, called CBPOne, while staying in a Tijuana shelter with her two children and 2-year-old grandson.

    U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Border Patrol made 6,300 arrests on Friday — the first day after Title 42 expired — and 4,200 Saturday. That’s sharply below the 10,000-plus on three days last week as migrants rushed to get in before new policies to restrict asylum took effect.

    “It is still early,” Mayorkas said Sunday on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ “We are in day three, but we have been planning for this transition for months and months. And we have been executing on our plan. And we will continue to do so.”

    Despite the drop in recent days, authorities predict arrests will spike to between 12,000 and 14,000 a day, Matthew Hudak, deputy Border Patrol chief, said in a court filing Friday. And authorities cannot confidently estimate how many will cross, Hudak said, noting intelligence reports failed to quickly flag a “singular surge” of 18,000 predominantly Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021.

    More than 27,000 migrants were in custody along the border one day last week, a number that may top 45,000 by the end of May if authorities can’t release migrants without orders to appear in immigration court, Hudak said.

    The administration plans to ask an appeals court Monday for permission to release migrants without orders to appear in court. Authorities say it takes between 90 minutes and two hours to process a single adult for court — potentially choking Border Patrol holding facilities – and longer to process families. By contrast, it takes only 20 minutes to release someone with instructions to report to an immigration office in 60 days, a common practice since 2021 to ease overcrowding along the border.

    The Justice Department even raised the possibility of declining to take people into custody if it can’t quickly release migrants, calling that a “worst-case scenario.”

    The administration is touting new legal pathways in an effort to deter illegal crossings, including parole for 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans a month who apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport.

    Hundreds of predominantly Colombian migrants waited to be processed Saturday in searing heat near Jacumba, California, having slept for days in thatched tents east of San Diego and getting by on the Border Patrol’s limited supply of cookies and water. Several said they crossed illegally after trying the app without success or hearing tales of frustration from others.

    Ana Cuna, 27, said she and other Colombians paid $1,300 each to be guided across the border after reaching Tijuana. She said she touched foot on U.S. soil hours before Title 42 expired Thursday but, like others, was given a numbered wristband by the Border Patrol and, two days later, had not been processed.

    Under Title 42, a public-health rule, migrants were denied asylum more than 2.8 million times on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. When it expired, the administration launched a policy to deny asylum to people who travel through another country, like Mexico, to the U.S., with few exceptions.

    “We want to come according to the law and be welcomed,” said Cuna, whose thatched tent included Colombian women and families hoping to reach Chicago, San Antonio, Philadelphia and Spartanburg, South Carolina.

    Releasing migrants without court orders but with instructions to report an immigration office in 60 days became widespread in 2021. Directing that processing work to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices when migrants report to the agency’s offices created additional delays – with ICE offices in New York backed up until 2033 just to schedule an initial court appearance.

    U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell n Pensacola, Florida, ordered an end to the practice in March, which the administration had effectively stopped by then anyway. It chose not to appeal the ruling but reactivated the policy last week, calling it an emergency response. The state of Florida protested and Wetherell ordered the administration to avoid the quick releases for two weeks. He scheduled a hearing on Friday.

    Since CBPOne began Jan. 12 for asylum-seekers, it has exasperated many with error messages, difficulty capturing photos and a frantic daily ritual of racing thumbs on phone screens until slots run out within minutes.

    In Tijuana, Muñoz looked into being smuggled through the mountains east of San Diego but determined it would cost too much. She is still haunted by walking through the Arizona desert in the mid-2000s on a grueling one-week trek. After saving money working double shifts at a supermarket near Los Angeles, she returned to Mexico to raise her children.

    Last week, the administration increased the number of slots to 1,000 from 740, awarded on the app, began granting priority to those who try longest, and released slots gradually throughout the day instead of all at once, which had created mad rushes. So far, Muñoz said she is unconvinced.

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  • Apple earnings show surprise jump in iPhone sales and a 4% dividend hike

    Apple earnings show surprise jump in iPhone sales and a 4% dividend hike

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    Apple Inc. on Thursday revealed surprise growth in its iPhone business during the first three months of the year, overcoming a shortfall in Mac revenue as the company promised investors billions more in dividends and stock repurchases.

    Apple shares
    AAPL,
    -0.99%
    rose 2.5% in extended trading.

    The company reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $94.8 billion, down from $97.3 billion a year before, while analysts had been expecting $92.9 billion. Revenue for the iPhone category rose to $51.3 billion from $50.6 billion, with analysts surveyed by FactSet expecting a decline to $48.7 billion.

    Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said on the earnings call that the iPhone growth was driven by “strong performance in emerging markets from South Asia and India to Latin America and the Middle East.”

    The company recently opened its first two Apple stores in India, and Chief Executive Tim Cook noted opportunity in India.

    “What I do see in India is a lot of people entering the middle class, and I’m hopeful that we can convince some number of them to buy an iPhone,” he said.

    Apple logged net income of $24.2 billion, or $1.52 a share, compared with $25 billion, or $1.52 a share, in the year-prior quarter. Analysts were modeling $1.43 a share in earnings on average, according to FactSet.

    Apple’s results arrived amid concern about the state of consumer-electronics spending, given worrisome third-party data points and cautious signals from players like Qualcomm Inc.
    QCOM,
    -5.54%
    and DuPont de Nemours Inc.
    DD,
    -0.53%    .

    See also: Qualcomm stock falls as backed up Apple iPhone inventory contributes to weak outlook

    The company saw steep revenue declines in both the iPad and Mac categories. Sales of iPads fell to $6.7 billion from $7.6 billion a year ago and matched the FactSet consensus. Mac revenue sank to $7.2 billion from $10.4 billion, while analysts were looking for $7.8 billion.

    The Mac segment was up against tough comparisons to a year-ago period that saw the “incredibly successful rollout of our M1 chips,” Cook noted. It’s “facing some macroeconomic and foreign exchange headwinds as well.”

    Apple’s wearables, home and accessories category was essentially flat, with sales of $8.8 billion. The FactSet consensus called for $8.4 billion. The services segment showed growth, with revenue up to $20.9 billion from $19.8 billion, roughly in line with the FactSet consensus of $21.0 billion.

    Maestri noted that “certain services offerings, such as digital advertising and mobile gaming, continue to be affected by the current macroeconomic environment,” though advertising, Apple Care and video set revenue records for the March quarter.

    Executives shared some very big-picture views on recent financial-services initiatives, though without any financial specifics. Apple’s recently launched savings account, which has a 4.15% yield, has had an “incredible” initial response, while Apple Pay Later, a buy-now-pay-later product, has received “really good” feedback as well, they said.

    Read: Apple Card savings account has an attractive 4.15% interest rate, but beware of these pitfalls before signing

    Apple also announced Thursday that it was boosting its buyback program by $90 billion while upping its quarterly dividend by 4% to 24 cents a share. That compares to a $90 billion increase to the share-repurchase authorization and 5% dividend hike a year ago.

    While Apple stopped giving traditional guidance at the start of the pandemic, Maestri said on the call that he expects June-quarter revenue growth to be similar to what was seen in the March quarter on a year-over-year basis, assuming a stable macroeconomic climate.

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  • Qualcomm stock sinks as weak smartphone demand pushes inventory drawdown out to ‘at least the next couple quarters’

    Qualcomm stock sinks as weak smartphone demand pushes inventory drawdown out to ‘at least the next couple quarters’

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    Qualcomm Inc. shares fell in the extended session Wednesday after the chip maker said inventory issues will remain past June because of a downturn in handset demand and the company’s outlook disappointed.

    After declining 2.8% to close the regular session $112.83, Qualcomm
    QCOM,
    -2.82%
    shares started sliding after the release of the company’s results at Wednesday’s close, and sank to a deficit of more than 7% after hours by the time the executives’ call with analysts ended. Shares ended the extended trading session down 6.6%.

    On the conference call, Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon told analysts that the “evolving macroeconomic backdrop has resulted in further demand deterioration, particularly in handsets, at a magnitude greater than we previously forecasted.”

    Earlier, Qualcomm had forecast adjusted earnings of $1.70 to $1.90 a share on revenue of $8.1 billion to $8.9 billion for the fiscal third quarter. Analysts had estimated earnings of $2.17 a share on revenue of $9.13 billion for the third quarter.

    Qualcomm shares sank after hours Wednesday.


    FactSet

    Last quarter, Qualcomm said inventory issues would persist into June, and Wall Street pretty much accepted it. Qualcomm’s inventory problems go back to last year, when the company’s share price fell in November to lows not seen in more than two years after executives said there was up to 10 weeks of inventory in the channel, and forecast a $2 billion shortfall coming off record sales.

    A drop in handset demand, however, has extended the time frame of inventory drawdowns considerably past the previously forecast end of June, the company said. As its largest business segment, Qualcomm handset sales fell 17% to $6.11 billion from a year ago.

    “As a result, we’re operating under the assumption that inventory drawdown dynamics remain a significant factor for at least the next couple quarters,” Amon told analysts. “Additionally, while expectations are for a rebound in China demand in the second half of the calendar year, we have not seen evidence of meaningful recovery and are not incorporating improvements into our planning assumptions.”

    The company reported fiscal second-quarter net income of $1.7 billion, or $1.52 a share, compared with $2.93 billion, or $2.57 a share, in the year-ago period. The chip maker reported adjusted earnings, which exclude stock-based compensation expenses and other items, of $2.15 a share, compared with $3.21 a share in the year-ago period. Total revenue for the quarter fell to $9.28 billion from $11.16 billion in the year-ago period.

    Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast $2.15 a share on revenue of $9.09 billion, based on Qualcomm’s forecast of $2.05 to $2.25 a share on revenue of $8.7 billion to $9.5 billion.

    In Qualcomm’s other end-market segments, auto sales rose 20% to $447 million and Internet-of-Things sales fell 24% to $1.39 billion for the second quarter, the company said.

    Late Monday, auto chip supplier NXP Semiconductor NV
    NXPI,
    -2.30%
    topped Wall Street expectations, and shares rallied Tuesday, while last week, another big supplier to the auto market, Texas Instruments Inc. 
    TXN,
    -0.36%
    said that sales to the auto industry remained strong.

    Qualcomm shares already lag the broader chip sector and market, and were up only 3% year to date at Wednesday’s close. In comparison, the PHLX Semiconductor Index
    SOX,
    -1.32%
    has surged 17%, the S&P 500 index 
    SPX,
    -0.70%
    has gained 7%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index 
    COMP,
    -0.46%
    has grown 15%.

    In other chip earnings, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    -9.22%
    shares dropped 9.2% Wednesday after the chip maker’s optimism for the second half of the year late Tuesday did not rub off on analysts.

    Read: ‘AI for us is broader than cloud,’ AMD CEO tells analysts, but chip maker still needs PC recovery to improve margins

    And last week, Intel Corp.
    INTC,
    +2.96%
    reported its largest quarterly loss ever, but saw its shares rise because PC and data-center sales, while on the decline, had come in better than expected. Intel also lowered expectations on its forecast.

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  • Huawei 1Q revenue edges up, profit margin narrows

    Huawei 1Q revenue edges up, profit margin narrows

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    Chinese tech giant Huawei says its revenue edged up 0.8% from a year earlier in the first three months of 2023 and the company was profitable

    BEIJING — Chinese tech giant Huawei reported Friday that its revenue edged up 0.8% from a year earlier in the first three months of 2023 and the company was profitable.

    Revenue rose to 132.1 billion yuan ($19.1 billion), a company statement said. It said its net profit margin was 2.3%, down from 4.3% a year earlier.

    The company, headquartered in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, has responded to U.S. sanctions that devastated its smartphone brand by expanding into serving hospitals, ports and other industrial customers.

    It gave no breakdown of sales by global region or business line. It said spending on research and development increased but gave no details.

    Huawei Technologies Ltd., China’s first global tech brand, has struggled since then-President Donald Trump cut off access to U.S. processor chips and other technology in a feud with Beijing over technology and security. American officials say the company is a security risk and might facilitate Chinese spying, which Huawei denies.

    The company is the biggest global maker of network equipment for phone and internet companies. It sold its Honor smartphone brand in 2020 and switched its emphasis last year on selling technology to automakers, factories, mines and other industrial customers.

    Huawei reported earlier that its 2022 profit fell 70% to 35.6 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) while sales rose 0.9% to 642.3 billion yuan ($93.5 billion). The company reported an unusually large 2021 profit due to the sale of the Honor smartphone unit.

    Half of Huawei’s 207,000 employees work in research and development. The company says it has been able to develop replacement components for U.S. versions. Huawei says it has made breakthroughs in developing its own design tools for processor chips.

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