Struggling electric van startup Canoo has placed its remaining employees on what it's calling a 'mandatory unpaid break' through at least the end of the year, according to an email obtained by TechCrunch. The email comes just a few days after the company announced it was furloughing nearly 100 employees and idling an assembly facility in Oklahoma due to lack of funding. It's unclear how many remained following those cuts. The company and CEO Tony Aquila did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Canoo is rounding out a rough year. It recently closed the Los Angeles office that used to serve as its headquarters. It has lost a lot of executives, including its chief technology officer, chief financial officer, and general counsel. The company reported in mid-November that it had just $700,000 in the bank....

In June 2020, protesters in Richmond used ropes to pull down the bronze statue of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis, splashed paint on its surface and slung a toilet paper noose around its neck. Charged discussions over what should become of it followed. This year I visited the Davis statue in its new home. I am traveling to each of the 113 communities that removed or relocated Confederate symbols between 2015 and 2023 during the national reckoning sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement. As a sociologist who studies legacies of historical conflict, my goal is to understand how those sites ' and the objects that for decades stood upon them ' are reshaping where and how the Confederacy bears upon the nation's current identity. Seven of the Confederate statues taken down over the past decade commemorated Jefferson Davis. A Mississippi congressman and U.S. secretary of war, Davis led the Confederacy between 1861 and the end of the Civil War four years later. Before it was damaged and pulled down by activists in 2020, Richmond's 8-foot bronze rendering of Jefferson Davis occupied a premier plot on the city's famed Monument Avenue. Standing in front of a 60-foot Doric column, the statue proclaimed the president of the Confederacy a heroic 'exponent of constitutional principles' and 'defender of the rights of state.'...

'Ukrainians don't care who will be president of the United States,' my boss, the editor in chief of one of the largest television stations in Ukraine, told me in 2012 as I headed overseas to cover the American election. I was at the Obama campaign's headquarters, in Chicago, when the president gave his victory speech that year'but back then, Ukrainian television didn't broadcast live at night, so my report didn't air until the next morning, local time. Covering the 2024 U.S. election for the Ukrainian media was an entirely different experience. People in Ukraine were following every turn. Multiple Ukrainian radio stations called me for reports from the rallies I'd attended in Saginaw, Michigan, and State College, Pennsylvania. Ukraine is at war, and the United States is its biggest provider of military aid; the future of that relationship was at stake. The contest's eventual winner, Donald Trump, had promised to end the war in 24 hours'which Ukrainians understood to mean that he intended to sell our country out to Russia....

An increasingly polarized and fragmented political landscape has overtaken inflation as the top risk factor for these institutions, find a new a survey by asset management company Invesco. The trends outlined in the Global Sovereign Asset Management Study 2024, reflect an ever more complex and uncertain world for central banks and sovereign wealth funds to navigate. Geopolitical tensions are seen as the main risk to global economic growth in the coming year for 83% of respondents, surpassing concerns about high inflation and monetary tightening (73%). Looking ahead to the next decade, 86% of participants identify rising geopolitical fragmentation and protectionism as the most significant long-term threat. The survey says ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, tensions between major powers including the US and China and the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of so many elections in 2024 are all driving this increased focus on geopolitical risks. In response to these challenges, central banks are bolstering and diversifying their reserves. Over half (53%) plan to increase the size of their reserves in the next two years, while 52% intend to further diversify their holdings. This strategy aims to create a buffer against potential shocks and ensure sufficient resources to intervene in case of market disruptions....