Comment on Monsanto Stays Upbeat Despite Crop-Protection Weakness

A federal appeals court on Friday left in place a mid-January deadline in a federal law requiring TikTok to be sold or face a ban in the United States, rejecting a request made by the company to halt enforcement until the Supreme Court reviews its challenge of the statute. Attorneys for TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. It’s unclear if the nation’s highest court will take up the case, though some legal experts have said they expect the justices to weigh in due to the types of novel questions it raises about social media, national security and the First Amendment.

Global credit ratings firm S&P rang the alarm on Chicago Public School finances last week, weighing in on the ongoing political gridlock between district leadership, the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Brandon Johnson with a warning: How the Board of Education opts to fund the CTU’s forthcoming contract will determine the financial health of the district for years to come. “Failure to sustain structural solutions by either increasing ongoing revenues or containing costs to offset the financial impact of a new CTU contract could mark a turning point in the board’s recent positive financial trend and jeopardize its fiscal stability,” according to S&P analyst Ying Huang. In other words, the board must identify a reliable source of new revenue or “scale down” CPS’ current $8.4 billion operating costs, according to S&P, one of three credit ratings firms whose determinations impact government agencies’ ability to issue bonds, which are often used to fund major one-time capital projects, such as new school buildings or fleets. Negative credit ratings result in higher interest rates, in which fine margins can make a big difference, of potentially millions over a bond term, which tends to match the lifetime of a project, such as a building expected to be in use for 30 years. If CPS wants to maintain its current “BB+/Stable” rating — which the district has strived for years to improve — neither drawing upon the $1 billion the district has in reserves, nor taking on new debt to fund the contract is an option, warned the S&P.  Huang’s note is a vindication by an authoritative third party of CEO Pedro Martinez’s refusal to take out a short-term, high-interest loan that the mayor, a close union ally, proposed in July. Martinez’s job at the helm of the district has been in a precarious position since, as tension surrounding the collective bargaining negotiations with CTU continues to mount. A vote on a budget amendment to in part, fund the contract is expected before the end of the school year.

A 7-year-old rivalry between tech leaders Elon Musk and Sam Altman over who should run OpenAI and prevent an artificial intelligence “dictatorship” is now heading to a federal judge as Musk seeks to halt the ChatGPT maker’s ongoing shift into a for-profit company. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a nonprofit research lab benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. Musk has since escalated the dispute, adding new claims and asking for a court order that would stop OpenAI’s plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully. The world’s richest man, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, last year started his own rival AI company, xAI.

A sophisticated and ongoing supply-chain attack operating for the past year has been stealing sensitive login credentials from both malicious and benevolent security personnel by infecting them with Trojanized versions of open source software from GitHub and NPM, researchers said. The campaign, first reported three weeks ago by security firm Checkmarx and again on Friday by Datadog Security Labs, uses multiple avenues to infect the devices of researchers in security and other technical fields.

Gov. JB Pritzker is calling on lawmakers to crack down on hemp products like delta-8 THC, saying they let minors get high on untested, mislabeled cannabis — but it’s a move hemp shop owners say would also close legitimate businesses. The governor came out Friday in support of legislation that would set a minimum age of 21 to buy such products.

SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing a swell of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week. Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said.