2024-05-08 20:34

MOSCOW, May 8 (Reuters) - Three of Russia's key grain-growing areas declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, citing May frosts that have caused severe damage to crops and will reduce this year's harvest. The central regions of Lipetsk, Voronezh and Tambov all imposed emergency measures. "The frosts that hit in early May led to catastrophic consequences," Igor Artamonov, the governor of the Lipetsk region, said on the Telegram messaging app before signing the emergency decree. "We must understand that this year's harvest will be much smaller than the previous one." In neighbouring Voronezh, the regional agriculture ministry wrote on Telegram: "According to preliminary data, the area of dead or severely damaged crops has exceeded 265,000 hectares," the regional agriculture ministry said on Telegram. In Tambov, further east, Governor Maksim Yegorov signed a similar order, with his administration citing "early May frosts that have killed crops and damaged perennial plantings". All three regions are part of Russia's fertile Black Earth region. Russia is one of the world's top grain producers and exporters. Besides grain, the regions produce crops such as potatoes, sunflowers, sugar beet and fruit. The statements did not make clear how each of these crops might be affected by the frost. The Voronezh ministry said the damage stemmed from frost on the nights of May 3-4 and May 4-5, when the air temperature had fallen to -4.6 Celsius (23.7 Fahrenheit) and the soil temperature to -5C (23F). It said declaring a state of emergency would enable farmers to "document the objective impossibility of achieving target indicators", which they are obliged to hit in order to receive subsidies, and also to apply for insurance payments. Authorities in Tambov said temperatures had dipped as low as -5 C on four nights. They said the regional agriculture ministry could apply to the government for subsidies. Industry analysts have noted frosts in a number of regions of central European Russia, the Volga and the south of the country. They say the regions are now facing a further wave of cold snaps that will affect the condition of crops after an early, warm spring. Analysts have already reduced their forecasts for the 2024 grain harvest because of dry weather in the south, but the impact of the frosts has not yet been included in forecasts. In mid-April, the Agriculture Ministry said the 2024 grain harvest may drop to 132 million metric tons from 144.9 million tons in 2023. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/three-russian-grain-regions-declare-emergency-over-cold-weather-frost-damage-2024-05-08/

2024-05-08 20:33

TSX ends down 0.1% at 22,259.16 Tech sector falls as Shopify tumbles 18.5% Financials rise 0.9% Energy adds 0.5%; oil settles up 0.8% May 8 (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell on Wednesday as Shopify's downbeat forecast for revenue growth hammered technology shares and investors took stock of recent gains for the market that had taken it within striking distance of a record high. The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index (.GSPTSE) New Tab, opens new tab ended down 31.46 points, or 0.1%, at 22,259.16. It had closed higher in the previous five sessions on rising optimism that the Federal Reserve's next move would be to cut interest rates. "It is just some rebalancing after the move higher over the last few days," said Elvis Picardo, portfolio manager at Luft Financial, iA Private Wealth. "Big picture, you are seeing individual stocks very much impacted by their earnings numbers. The bar's been set fairly high so for companies to beat you need to not just provide good numbers, you also have to give a rosy outlook." The information technology sector (.SPTTTK) New Tab, opens new tab dropped 4.2%, pulled down by an 18.5% decline in the shares of Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO) New Tab, opens new tab after the e-commerce company forecast its slowest quarterly revenue growth in two years. It was the biggest percentage decline for Shopify since going public in May 2015. Most other sectors ended higher, with heavily-weighted financials (.SPTTFS) New Tab, opens new tab rising 0.9% and energy (.SPTTEN) New Tab, opens new tab adding 0.5%. The price of oil settled up 0.8% at $78.99 a barrel after U.S. oil storage data showed a larger-than-expected draw in crude stockpiles. Stella-Jones Inc (SJ.TO) New Tab, opens new tab was one of the top performers. Its shares climbed 10.9% after the forestry firm reported first-quarter results that beat analysts' estimates. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/tsx-futures-muted-commodities-decline-offset-investor-optimism-2024-05-08/

2024-05-08 20:25

May 8 (Reuters) - Uber (UBER.N) New Tab, opens new tab posted a surprise quarterly loss and forecast gross bookings below Wall Street expectations, sending its shares down 9% and putting the ride-share and food delivery company on course to shed more than $10 billion in market value. Uber's disappointing forecast was in sharp contrast to an upbeat guidance late on Tuesday from smaller rival Lyft (LYFT.O) New Tab, opens new tab, which lifted its shares up 8%. Lyft posted strong quarterly results, leaning on an industry-wide pickup in demand, while Uber's results signaled growth slowing from 2023 in which it posted first annual profit by dominating the U.S. ride-share market and delivery business. Uber also missed Wall Street's expectations for first-quarter gross bookings, a key metric that indicates the total dollar value of transactions on the platform. CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah pointed to softer ride-share demand in Latin America and the impact from certain holidays shifting into the first quarter. Uber operates in about 70 countries and offers services including meal deliveries and freight booking. It had a 72% share of the U.S. ride-hailing market in the March quarter, up from 68% two years ago, according to YipitData. Lyft, a much smaller company, offers ride-hailing services only in the United States and parts of Canada. Uber reported a net loss of $654 million, driven by legal charges and provisions and those related to fair valuation of certain company investments. Analysts were expecting a net profit of $503.1 million. "We were already expecting a deceleration in average spending in several markets due to slower-than-expected economic activity in the US in Q1 and persistent consumer pressures. However, this is way above the base case," said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com. Lyft is trying to take market share from Uber in the North America market, especially since it hired David Risher as CEO last April. Besides aggressively cutting costs, Risher has managed to add users to Lyft with shorter wait times and competitive fares. Uber said it expects second-quarter gross bookings, or the total dollar value earned from its services, in the range of $38.75 billion to $40.25 billion, below estimates of $40.04 billion. In the quarter ended Mar. 31, gross bookings came in at $37.65 billion, closely missing expectations of $37.92 billion. Revenue rose 15% to $10.13 billion, narrowly beating the estimate of $10.11 billion. On an adjusted basis, Uber lost 32 cents per share, compared with expectations of 23 cent profit. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uber-forecasts-gross-bookings-second-quarter-below-expectations-2024-05-08/

2024-05-08 20:24

May 8 (Reuters) - Crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments' proposal for an exchange-traded fund tied to ether futures was withdrawn last week, according to a Tuesday notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. WHY IT'S IMPORTANT The decision by NYSE Arca -- the exchange where Grayscale's ETF would have been listed if approved -- to withdraw the application comes just weeks before the SEC is set to deliver a final decision on proposals for ETFs tied to the spot price of ether from VanEck and ARK Investments/21 Shares. Seven other firms, including Grayscale, have similar proposals pending. U.S. issuers and other firms expect the SEC to deny those applications and others, citing discouraging meetings with the regulator, Reuters reported. CONTEXT Several investment managers in October launched futures-based ETFs tied to the value of ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency -- the first such products in the United States. Grayscale filed its application in September, shortly before the other ether futures ETFs began trading, but the SEC delayed making a decision on its proposal. It was due to deliver a final decision May 30. Grayscale's proposal to convert its existing Grayscale Ethereum Trust into a spot ether ETF is still pending. In that application, Grayscale has argued that because the SEC approved ether futures ETFs, it should also approve ETFs tied to the cryptocurrency's spot price, since futures prices are derived from the spot market. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/grayscales-application-ethereum-futures-etf-withdrawn-2024-05-08/

2024-05-08 19:27

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is poised to open up a new front in its effort to safeguard U.S. AI from China and Russia with preliminary plans to place guardrails around the most advanced AI Models, the core software of artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, sources said. The Commerce Department is considering a new regulatory push to restrict the export of proprietary or closed source AI models, whose software and the data it is trained on are kept under wraps, three people familiar with the matter said. Any action would complement a series of measures put in place over the last two years to block the export of sophisticated AI chips to China in an effort to slow Beijing's development of the cutting edge technology for military purposes. Even so, it will be hard for regulators to keep pace with the industry's fast-moving developments. The Commerce Department declined to comment while the Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Chinese Embassy described the move as a "typical act of economic coercion and unilateral bullying, which China firmly opposes," adding that it would take "necessary measures" to protect its interests. Currently, nothing is stopping U.S. AI giants like Microsoft (MSFT.O) New Tab, opens new tab-backed OpenAI, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) New Tab, opens new tab Google DeepMind and rival Anthropic, which have developed some of the most powerful closed source AI models, from selling them to almost anyone in the world without government oversight. Government and private sector researchers worry U.S. adversaries could use the models, which mine vast amounts of text and images to summarize information and generate content, to wage aggressive cyber attacks or even create potent biological weapons. One of the sources said any new export control would likely target Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Microsoft said in a February report that it had tracked hacking groups affiliated with the Chinese and North Korean governments as well as Russian military intelligence, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as they tried to perfect their hacking campaigns using large language models. COMPUTING POWER To develop an export control on AI models, the sources said the U.S. may turn to a threshold contained in an AI executive order issued last October that is based on the amount of computing power it takes to train a model. When that level is reached, a developer must report its AI model development plans and provide test results to the Commerce Department. That computing power threshold could become the basis for determining what AI models would be subject to export restrictions, according to two U.S. officials and another source briefed on the discussions. They declined to be named because details have not been made public. If used, it would likely only restrict the export of models that have yet to be released, since none are thought to have reached the threshold yet, though Google's Gemini Ultra is seen as being close, according to EpochAI, a research institute tracking AI trends. The agency is far from finalizing a rule proposal, the sources stressed. But the fact that such a move is under consideration shows the U.S. government is seeking to close gaps in its effort to thwart Beijing's AI ambitions, despite serious challenges to imposing a muscular regulatory regime on the fast-evolving technology. As the Biden administration looks at competition with China and the dangers of sophisticated AI, AI models "are obviously one of the tools, one of the potential choke points that you need to think about here," said Peter Harrell, a former National Security Council official. "Whether you can, in fact, practically speaking, turn it into an export-controllable chokepoint remains to be seen," he added. BIOWEAPONS AND CYBER ATTACKS? The American intelligence community, think tanks and academics are increasingly concerned about risks posed by foreign bad actors gaining access to advanced AI capabilities. Researchers at Gryphon Scientific New Tab, opens new tab and Rand Corporation New Tab, opens new tab noted that advanced AI models can provide information that could help create biological weapons. The Department of Homeland Security said cyber actors would likely use AI to "develop new tools" to "enable larger-scale, faster, efficient, and more evasive cyber attacks" in its 2024 homeland threat assessment New Tab, opens new tab. "The potential explosion for [AI's] use and exploitation is radical and we're having actually a very hard time kind of following that," Brian Holmes, an official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said an export control gathering in March, flagging China's advancement as a particular concern. AI CRACKDOWN To address these concerns, the U.S. has taken measures to stem the flow of American AI chips and the tools to make them to China. It also proposed a rule to require U.S. cloud companies to tell the government when foreign customers use their services to train powerful AI models that could be used for cyber attacks. But so far it hasn't addressed the AI models themselves. Alan Estevez, who oversees U.S. export policy at the Department of Commerce, said in December that the agency was looking at options for regulating open source large language model (LLM) exports before seeking industry feedback. Tim Fist, an AI policy expert at Washington DC based think tank CNAS, says the threshold "is a good temporary measure until we develop better methods of measuring the capabilities and risks of new models." Jamil Jaffer, a former White House and Justice Department official, said the Biden administration should not use a computing power threshold but opt for a control based on the model's capabilities and intended use. "Focusing on the national security risk rather than the technology thresholds is the better play, because it is more lasting and focused on the threat," he said. The threshold is not set in stone. One of the sources said Commerce might end up with a lower floor, coupled with other factors, like the type of data or potential uses for the AI model, such as the ability to design proteins that could be used to make a biological weapon. Regardless of the threshold, AI model exports will be hard to control. Many models are open source, meaning they would remain beyond the purview of export controls under consideration. Even imposing controls on the more advanced proprietary models will prove challenging, as regulators will likely struggle to define the right criteria to determine which models should be controlled at all, Fist said, noting that China is likely only around two years behind the United States in developing its own AI software. The export control being considered would impact access to the backend software powering some consumer applications like ChatGPT, but not limit access to the downstream applications themselves. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-eyes-curbs-chinas-access-ai-software-behind-apps-like-chatgpt-2024-05-08/

2024-05-08 18:50

Loonie touches one-week low at 1.3762 Price of U.S. oil settles 0.8% higher Canadian bond yields rise across the curve TORONTO, May 8 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar steadied near an earlier one-week low against its U.S. counterpart on Wednesday as the greenback notched broad-based gains and ahead of domestic jobs data this week that could inform the timing of expected interest rate cuts. The loonie was trading nearly unchanged at 1.3725 to the U.S. dollar, or 72.86 U.S. cents, after touching its weakest intraday level since May 1 at 1.3762. "With no major macroeconomic data releases for traders to get their teeth into, the Canadian dollar is trading defensively against a still-strong greenback," said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay. "Friday's Canadian jobs number looms as the next potential volatility catalyst, but even there markets are well prepared for a print that confirms continued (economic) underperformance relative to the United States." Canada's employment report for April is expected to show the economy adding 18,000 jobs and the unemployment rate increasing to 6.2%. The U.S. dollar (.DXY) New Tab, opens new tab gained for a third straight day against a basket of major currencies as investors bet on the U.S. economy outperforming peers. More supportive of the loonie, the price of oil , one of Canada's major exports, settled 0.8% higher at $78.99 a barrel after U.S. oil storage data showed a larger-than-expected draw in crude stockpiles. Canadian government bond yields moved higher across the curve, tracking moves in U.S. Treasuries. The 10-year was up 3.6 basis points at 3.630%, rebounding after it touched a near four-week low during Tuesday's session at 3.555%. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/canadian-dollar-trades-defensively-jobs-data-looms-2024-05-08/