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Volkswagen AG ( OTCMKTS:VWAGY – Get Free Report ) was the recipient of a large increase in short interest in December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totalling 463,400 shares, an increase of 24.7% from the November 30th total of 371,500 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 1,142,900 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 0.4 days. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Barclays raised Volkswagen to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday, September 23rd. Royal Bank of Canada lowered Volkswagen from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 6th. Finally, Dbs Bank raised shares of Volkswagen to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 1st. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Hold”. Get Our Latest Stock Report on VWAGY Volkswagen Price Performance Volkswagen ( OTCMKTS:VWAGY – Get Free Report ) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, October 30th. The company reported $0.27 earnings per share for the quarter. The firm had revenue of $86.25 billion during the quarter. Volkswagen had a net margin of 3.77% and a return on equity of 6.37%. As a group, equities analysts expect that Volkswagen will post 2.53 EPS for the current fiscal year. About Volkswagen ( Get Free Report ) Volkswagen AG manufactures and sells automobiles in Germany, other European countries, North America, South America, the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company operates through four segments: Passenger Cars and Light Commercial Vehicles, Commercial Vehicles, Power Engineering, and Financial Services. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for Volkswagen Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Volkswagen and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .
OpenAI's Sora has been a project shrouded in mystery and anticipation for many months, with tech enthusiasts eagerly awaiting its official debut. The AI assistant promises to revolutionize the way we interact with technology, offering a wide range of capabilities from natural language processing to personalized recommendations. As soon as OpenAI announced the launch of Sora, the interest was so intense that the official website buckled under the pressure, unable to handle the influx of visitors trying to learn more about this groundbreaking AI technology.Despite the doubts and criticisms surrounding Son Heung-min's recent form, it is clear that he remains a player of key importance for both Tottenham Hotspur and the South Korean national team. As Hong Myung-bo emphasizes, Son's talent, experience, and leadership qualities make him an invaluable asset for his teams. With his ability to impact games and make a difference on the field, Son Heung-min continues to be a player to watch and a source of pride for fans around the world. As he continues to strive for excellence and push himself to new heights, there is no doubt that Son has a bright future ahead of him in football.
In a recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, several locations in Syria have been targeted in a series of airstrikes carried out by Israel. The strikes, which reportedly targeted various military sites, have once again raised concerns about the volatile situation in the region and the potential for further conflict.
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As the international community watches closely and speculates about the implications of this provocative gesture, one thing is clear: the Syrian people continue to suffer, caught in the crossfire of a brutal civil war that shows no signs of abating. The hanging of opposition flags in Moscow may be a symbolic gesture, but the real work of building a peaceful and inclusive Syria remains to be done.In conclusion, the A-side and B-side of the Alibaba Flavor, represented by Jack Ma and Fan Luyuan, respectively, showcase the dynamic interplay between vision and execution, leadership and technical excellence, and creativity and efficiency. Together, they form a winning combination that has propelled Alibaba to the forefront of the global tech industry and cemented its status as a powerhouse of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Shares of industrial and transportation companies outperformed the broader market. Industrials and small caps tend to be economically sensitive, and traders are hoping both will benefit from positive business sentiment and looser regulations during the second Trump administration. Honeywell International has agreed to sell its personal-protective-equipment business to a private-equity firm's portfolio company for $1.33 billion in cash. The industrial conglomerate said it would sell the PPE unit to Protective Industrial Products, a portfolio company of Odyssey Investment Partners. An investment vehicle co-led by the head of Roadrunner Transportation Systems is buying most of activist Elliott Investment Management's stake and returning the trucker to the mergers and acquisitions game that hobbled it a decade ago. Write to Patrick Sullivan at patrick.sullivan@wsj.com
Analysis: Bengals keep confidence high with Steelers on tap in regular-season finale
The prospect of the United States withdrawing from NATO raises a number of concerns and questions about the future of the organization. Would other member countries follow suit? How would the security dynamics in the region change? What impact would it have on global stability and cooperation?
The Beijing Guoan Football Club, one of the most storied and successful clubs in Chinese football history, is hoping that the former Barcelona coach's arrival will help revitalize the team and position them as serious contenders in both the Chinese Super League and continental competitions. With a talented squad of players and a strong fan base, the club is optimistic about the future under their new manager's leadership.
Jones, Mellott help Montana State run over Montana 34-11
Together, Ma and Fan form a formidable partnership that has steered Alibaba through both turbulent waters and soaring heights. Their contrasting strengths and complementary skills have been instrumental in shaping Alibaba's corporate culture, innovation roadmap, and market positioning. While Ma inspires creativity, boldness, and risk-taking, Fan ensures that these ideas are executed flawlessly, efficiently, and securely.
The traditional narrative of the Middle East being a hotbed of anti-American sentiment and resistance to US presence is being slowly rewritten. The recent Abraham Accords, which saw the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have paved the way for a new era of diplomacy and cooperation in the region. This diplomatic breakthrough has not only solidified US alliances but also weakened the influence of its adversaries such as Iran and its proxies.Despite the initial concern surrounding these changes, Tencent Video's new membership plan still offers access to a wide range of exclusive content, popular TV shows, movies, and live sports events. Subscribers can continue to enjoy high-quality streaming services and entertainment options, albeit with the adjusted screen and device limitations.Doctored images have been around for decades. The term "Photoshopped" is part of everyday language. But in recent years, it has seemingly been replaced by a new word: deepfake. It's almost everywhere online, but you likely won't find it in your dictionary at home. What exactly is a deepfake, and how does the technology work? RELATED STORY | Scripps News Reports: Sex, Lies, and Deepfakes A deepfake is an image or video that has been generated by artificial intelligence to look real. Most deepfakes use a type of AI called a "diffusion model." In a nutshell, a diffusion model creates content by stripping away noise. "With diffusion models, they found a very clever way of taking an image and then constructing that procedure to go from here to there," said Lucas Hansen said. He and Siddharth Hiregowdara are cofounders of CivAI, a nonprofit educating the public on the potential — and dangers — of AI. How diffusion models work It can get complicated, so imagine the AI – or diffusion model – as a detective trying to catch a suspect. Like a detective, it relies on its experience and training. It recalls a previous case -– a sneaky cat on the run. Every day it added more and more disguises. On Monday, no disguise. Tuesday, it put on a little wig. Wednesday, it added some jewelry. By Sunday, it's unrecognizable and wearing a cheeseburger mask. The detective learned these changes can tell you what it wore and on what day. AI diffusion models do something similar with noise, learning what something looks like at each step. "The job of the diffusion model is to remove noise," Hiregowdara said. "You would give the model this picture, and then it will give you a slightly de-noised version of this picture." RELATED STORY | Scripps News got deepfaked to see how AI could impact elections When it's time to solve the case and generate a suspect, we give it a clue: the prompts we give when we create an AI-generated image. "We have been given the hint that this is supposed to look like a cat. So what catlike things can we see in here? Okay, we see this curve, maybe that's an ear," Hiregowdara said. The "detective" works backward, recalling its training. It sees a noisy image. Thanks to the clue, it is looking for a suspect — a cat. It subtracts disguises (noise) until it finds the new suspect. Case closed. Now imagine the "detective" living and solving crimes for years and years. It learns and studies everything — landscapes, objects, animals, people, anything at all. So when it needs to generate a suspect or an image, it remembers its training and creates an image. Deepfakes and faceswaps Many deepfake images and videos employ some type of face swapping technology. You've probably experienced this kind of technology already — faceswapping filters like on Snapchat, Instagram or Tiktok use technology similar to diffusion models, recognizing faces and replacing things in real time. "It will find the face in the image and then cut that out kind of, then take the face and convert it to its internal representation," Hansen said. The results are refined then repeated frame by frame. The future and becoming our own detectives As deepfakes become more and more realistic and tougher to detect, understanding how the technology works at a basic level can help us prepare for any dangers or misuse. Deepfakes have already been used to spread election disinformation, create fake explicit images of a teenager, even frame a principal with AI-created racist audio. "All the netizens on social media also have a role to play," Siwei Lyu said. Lyu is a SUNY Empire Innovation Professor at the University of Buffalo's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the director of the Media Forensics Lab. His team has created a tool to help spot deepfakes called "DeepFake-o-meter." "We do not know how to handle, how to deal, with these kinds of problems. It's very new. And also requires technical knowledge to understand some of the subtleties there," Lyu said. "The media, the government, can play a very active role to improve user awareness and education. Especially for vulnerable groups like seniors, the kids, who will start to understand the social media world and start to become exposed to AI technologies. They can easily fall for AI magic or start using AI without knowing the limits." RELATED STORY | AI voice cloning: How programs are learning to pick up on pitch and tone Both Lyu and CivAI believe in exposure and education to help combat any potential misuse of deepfake technology. "Our overall goal is that we think AI is going t impact pretty much everyone in a lot of different ways," Hansen said. "And we think that everyone should be aware of the ways that it's going to change them because it's going to impact everyone." "More than just general education — just knowing the facts and having heard what's going to happen," he added. "We want to give people a really intuitive experience of what's going on." Hansen goes on to explain CivAI's role in educating the public. "We try and make all of our demonstrations personalized as much as possible. What we're working on is making it so people can see it themselves. So they know it's real, and they feel that it's real," Hansen said. "And they can have a deep gut level feel for tthe impact that it's going to have." "A big part of the solution is essentially just going to be education and sort of cultural changes," he added. "A lot of this synthetic content is sort of like a new virus that is attacking society right now, and people need to become immune to it in some ways. They need to be more suspicious about what's real and what's not, and I think that will help a lot as well."Shortly after receiving the injections, the woman began experiencing symptoms such as muscle weakness, difficulty swallowing, and blurred vision. Recognizing that something was seriously wrong, she immediately sought medical help at a nearby hospital.
Last year, Vander Sa experienced a sudden and unexpected health scare when he suffered a stroke. As a robust 52-year-old man, he never imagined that such a medical emergency would befall him. The incident left him in shock and prompted him to reevaluate his lifestyle, priorities, and overall well-being.Carbon dioxide emissions from Big Ten football team travel for regular-season conference games more than tripled in 2024 compared to 2023 after after the addition of a quartet of West Coast schools , a Capital News Service analysis found. Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to global warming. It is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps heat in the planet’s atmosphere. Global air travel was estimated to be responsible for 2.5% of all carbon emissions and 4% of global warming, according to a study published by Our World in Data in April. “As the Big Ten grows and its carbon-intensive activities increase, they’re contributing to higher levels of carbon emissions, so they’re fueling the heating of the planet,” said Joseph Nevins, a professor of geography at Vassar College and one of the pioneers of Flying Less, a project aimed at reducing air travel in higher education. “They’re making contributions to increasing forest fires in the U.S. Southwest and Canada, growing levels of air pollution, which have direct impacts on people’s bodily well-being.” The Big Ten did not mention environmental impact as a consideration in making its football schedule. “Our priority in football scheduling is to balance geography and travel to create compelling matchups in a flexible format that maximize opportunities for Big Ten teams to access the expanded College Football Playoff and win National Championships,” the Big Ten said in a statement to CNS in August. In 2010, the Big Ten consisted of 11 schools: Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Penn State, Michigan, Northwestern, Purdue, Minnesota and Indiana. Nebraska joined the contingent of Midwest schools in 2011. Maryland and Rutgers officially became members in 2014, which allowed the Big Ten to expand its footprint to the East Coast. Carbon emissions from Big Ten travel rose 6% when Maryland and Rutgers joined the conference, per an Arizona State study published in May. In 2024, the Big Ten added USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, which brought its buffet of schools to 18 and expanded the conference’s geographic footprint across the country. USC and UCLA are more than 2,400 miles away from Rutgers. When UCLA football traveled to New Jersey to face Rutgers on Oct. 19, its travel emitted more than 150,000 kilograms of carbon. Six days later, the Scarlet Knights took their own cross-country trip to face USC for a nationally televised game that started at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. Those two trips emitted the most carbon dioxide of any Big Ten games. Each of the Big Ten’s new members is traveling at least twice as much this season as the year before, with UCLA and Washington traveling more than three times as much in 2024 for regular-season conference games as they did in their final Pac-12 seasons. Of the 18 Big Ten schools, 17 will see an increase in carbon emissions from last year. Purdue is the outlier, emitting nearly 14,000 less kilograms of carbon this year in comparison to 2023. The four West Coast schools are the Big Ten’s highest emitters. Washington is emitting more than 500,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide, the highest in the conference. USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon increased emissions of carbon dioxide by at least 250,000 kilograms in their first year in the Big Ten compared to their final year in the Pac-12. Penn State is projected to emit more 275,000 kilograms, Rutgers above 260,000, while Maryland is above 238,000 to take up the next three spots. “Is it necessary? Are there alternative ways of doing things that would not only radically cut our carbon emissions, but produce a more socially and environmentally just world?” asked Nevins, who got his doctoral degree from UCLA. The Seattle Seahawks of the NFL will travel an average of 3,227.62 miles round-trip for road games this season, the most in the league, according to Bill Speros of Bookies.com . The University of Washington football team, which plays its games less than seven miles from the Seahawks, will average 100 miles more per trip than its NFL neighbors. CNS calculated distances from nearby major airports to find the carbon emissions total. For example, UCLA’s Oct. 19 game against Rutgers, CNS used the distance from Los Angeles International Airport to Newark Liberty International Airport. For games where teams likely used bus travel, CNS used the distance between stadiums. CNS focused on football team travel for this analysis due to the sport’s once-a-week travel patterns. Most other sports play multiple times a week and may have less predictable travel schedules. In 2023, the conference announced that each Big Ten football program would face all other programs at least twice in a four-year span. Between 2024 and 2028, the Big Ten has scheduled 33 cross-country trips among the seven schools on the East and West Coast (Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland, Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA). “We develop our scheduling formats with input and feedback from school administrators, faculty representatives, medical professionals and head coaches looking at the potential impact on academics, health, safety, rest, recovery, and overall competitive equity,” the Big Ten stated in August. “We continue to evaluate our formats and evolve as needed.” Kerry Kenny, the chief operating officer of the Big Ten, told ESPN in 2023 that a divisional model restricted the regularity of compelling football games. Oregon and Penn State, the two teams who met in the Big Ten title game on Dec. 7, are scheduled to play each other three times in the next four seasons, which would not have been the case with East and West divisions. In its first season with the four new schools, the Big Ten had four teams qualify for the College Football Playoffs, the most of any conference. After an undefeated regular season and Big Ten title, Oregon is the top seed in the 12-team tournament. An Oct. 12 matchup between Oregon and Ohio State, two of the top three teams in the nation at the time, averaged 10.4 million viewers and peaked at 13.4 million in the final minutes of what was an eventual Oregon victory. It was the most-watched Big Ten primetime regular-season game since 2008, according to a press release from Comcast. Team travel for the game resulted in more than 125,000 kilograms of carbon being released. “The ultimate variable, in my opinion, is the games are better, the matchups are better, and certainly far more important,” said Tim Brando, a longtime broadcaster for Fox Sports. Included in Brando’s 2024 slate was a Sept. 27 matchup between the University of Washington and Rutgers. Washington emitted nearly 149,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide in its flight for the game. The Friday night matchup peaked at 2.5 million viewers as Rutgers, who made the game its annual blackout, escaped with a three-point victory. “That was probably the most intensity and the greatest crowd [Rutgers] had for a home game in Piscataway in years,” said Brando. “In large measure, it was because Washington was the opponent, a team that was playing for the National Championship just a year before.” What’s happening in the Big Ten is representative of the new age of college football. Division-less conferences are the new norm. The only FBS conference split into divisions this season was the Sun Belt Conference. “The only option to get to most of these competitions is to fly, which means that necessarily there are more flights,” said Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto and University of Minnesota graduate. “It’s a growth strategy, as opposed to a reductionist strategy and a climate strategy.” As awareness around the impact of air travel grows, more major sports teams and organizations are investing in carbon offsets. Carbon offsets have become a trendy way for major corporations to compensate for emissions. They do so by investing in efforts that lower gasses released into the atmosphere, essentially covering the carbon dioxide they emit. In 2019, the NHL purchased the equivalent of more than 3.8 million pounds (more than 1.72 million kilograms) of carbon offsets to counter its playoff travel. In the five years since then, the NFL’s Houston Texans, English soccer giant Manchester United and even the Australian national men’s and women’s soccer teams have bought offsets to make up for travel. “In order for that offset to work effectively, the offset has to immediately cancel out ... (those) emissions I’ve generated,” Nevins said. “You also have to be able to verify that it’s taking place and that the cut in emissions persists over time.” Most colleges and universities have sustainability departments that evaluate the schools’ practices and how to lessen their environmental impact. In the Big Ten, in addition to sustainability departments, schools such as the University of Illinois and Michigan have programs focused on sustainable aviation. The University of Maryland has a pledge to offset all air travel. While Maryland is offsetting all its travel, according to a school dashboard, the number of miles athletics traveled via commercial and chartered flights from 2021 to 2023 increased by 51%. The dashboard has not been updated for 2024, the first year that would include the West Coast teams in the Big Ten. “What we should be concerned with is: What are they teaching their students, right? What are they teaching the communities in the world?” Nevins asked. “They are normalizing a behavior that is counter to the direction you need to be heading, and they are opening themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy.” On Nov. 20, the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Studies released a paper looking at the impact of the school’s football travel. Paige Greenberg and Molly Russell, the authors, found conflict between the university’s messaging and the school’s athletics travel. “While U-M has positioned itself as a leader in sustainability within higher education, the recent Big Ten expansion contradicts this image and poses significant challenges to the University’s commitments,” the paper said. The 2024 season is the second of media contracts that the Big Ten has with CBS, Fox and NBC, which total more than $8 billion and will run through the 2030 season, according to the Sports Business Journal. In the 2023 fiscal year, the conference paid most of its members more than $60 million, a 3% increase from the previous year, according to USA Today. “That seems to fall into a larger pattern where, in general, more wealth leads to more emissions,” said Seth Wynes, a professor at the University of Waterloo who has published research on the relationship between sports and climate change. “Richer individuals produce more emissions than poorer individuals. The same is true generally for nations. So as leagues or teams become more affluent, it’s not a surprising result.” The immediate future of Big Ten football is set. Major media contracts have been signed, and games are scheduled through 2028. Multiple experts mentioned making college sports regionally organized again would alleviate some of the problem. In the Big Ten, doing so would place the four former Pac-12 schools in a West division. That would lean into the decades-long rivalries of these programs and lessen the environmental strain of travel. But re-implementing the East and West divisional format likely can’t be done until 2029 at the earliest, meaning the 2024 bump in emissions is likely to remain steady for the next four years. “We should be going in the direction of more regional, not less,” Orr said. “Let’s crunch this smaller, not let’s blow it up bigger.” Mekhi Abbott, Henry Brown, Keelin Brown, Shaela Foster, Alexa Henry, Steven Jacobs, Caroline Koutsos, Matthew Neus, Joshua Panepento, Brandon Schwartzberg, Laura Van Pate, and Matthew Weinsheimer contributed to the report. This article was first published by The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and Capital News Service. Get local news delivered to your inbox!