
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>An elderly man has become the first person to die after contracting Alaskapox, health officials <a href="https://epi.alaska.gov/bulletins/docs/b2024_02.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">confirmed</a>, urging doctors to stay alert for signs of the recently discovered virus that is closely related to other dangerous human pathogens like smallpox and mpox.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>The man, who was from Alaska’s remote Kenai Peninsula, is one of only seven people known to have contracted <a href="https://health.alaska.gov/dph/Epi/id/Pages/Alaskapox.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alaskapox virus</a> since its discovery in a patient in Fairbanks in 2015.</p>



<p>Infection with the virus, also known as AKPV, has historically caused mild illness that resolves itself with symptoms including skin lesions, swollen lymph nodes, and joint or muscle pain, though severe disease is more likely in people with compromised immune systems.</p>



<p>Officials from Alaska’s health department said the man likely suffered more serious disease as he was immunocompromised following treatment for cancer and previous patients have not required hospital treatment.</p>



<p>Scientists are not yet certain on how the Alaskapox virus spreads but say evidence suggests it is zoonotic—a disease that jumps from animals into humans—as it is primarily found in small mammals like red-backed voles and shrews.</p>



<p>Officials said it was “unclear” how the man was infected but said he reported caring for a stray cat at his home that “regularly hunted small mammals and frequently scratched” him, which could have transmitted the virus.</p>



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<p>By signing up, you accept and agree to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/terms-and-conditions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Service</a>&nbsp;(including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and you acknowledge our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Privacy Statement</a>.</p>



<p>While no human-to-human transmission of AKVP has been documented, officials suggested people should cover any skin lesions potentially caused by the virus as contact with these is known to spread similar orthopoxviruses like mpox and smallpox.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-do-about-alaskapox">WHAT TO DO ABOUT ALASKAPOX?</h2>



<p>The first fatal Alaskapox infection is also the first infection reported outside of the state’s Fairbanks region. As the man lived alone in a forested area and reported no recent travel or close contacts with similar illness or travel, this suggests the virus is more widely distributed in animals than previously thought, scientists from the state’s health department said. The incident “warrants increased statewide awareness among clinicians” but otherwise does not give cause for alarm. The scientists issued nine recommendations in their report on the death, including keeping lesions covered, maintaining hygiene practices and possibly prescribing antiviral drugs to patients with the virus who have compromised immune systems.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Alaskapox is part of a family of viruses known as orthopoxviruses, several of which are known to infect and cause disease in humans. The most well known of these is variola, or smallpox, a frequently fatal scourge that is one of the deadliest diseases in human history and is still the only human disease to have ever been eradicated. Other <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/diseases.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">orthopoxvirus</a> species include vaccinia (used for the smallpox vaccine), cowpox, camelpox, horsepox, volepox and mpox. The latter virus, formerly known as monkeypox, exploded onto the global scene two years ago and, through a previously unknown form of transmission, spread primarily among sexual networks of men who have sex with men. Experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/07/18/struggling-to-find-a-monkeypox-shot-severe-shortages-and-technical-mishaps-are-slowing-down-rollouts/?sh=56d74a5ae018">recommend</a> routine vaccination against the virus among at-risk adults and while the virus has dimmed in wealthy countries it is still <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/12/08/more-infectious-mpox-sparks-fears-of-new-global-spread---what-to-know-about-the-deadly-virus/?sh=6f164e6c59d5">driving</a> worrying <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/monkeypox-mpox-outbreak-democratic-republic-of-congo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">outbreaks</a> in parts of Africa, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo.</p>


Monkeypox and Covid Tests Processing at AEGIS Labs

What To Know About Alaskapox After Officials Confirm First Death From Recently Discovered Virus


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>The Oscars are adding a new award in 2026—the Academy Award for Achievement in Casting— marking the first new category added to the movie awards show since 2001.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>The award, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/coming-2026-oscars-add-academy-award-casting-directors-107068249#:~:text=%E2%80%9CCasting%20directors%20play%20an%20essential,said%20in%20a%20joint%20statement." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multiple</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2024/02/motion-picture-academy-creates-casting-category-first-new-competitive-oscar-since-2001-1235819319/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>, will make its debut at the 98th Academy Awards in 2026, when movies from 2025 will be eligible for the recognition, the Academy said in a statement to the Associated Press and other outlets.</p>



<p>The creation of the award is a win for the Academy Casting Directors branch, which was created in 2013 and currently has nearly 160 members,&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2024/02/motion-picture-academy-creates-casting-category-first-new-competitive-oscar-since-2001-1235819319/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Deadline</a>&nbsp;reported.</p>



<p>The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film was the last award added to the awards show, debuting in 2001.</p>



<p>Eligibility rules and voting for the casting award will be issued in 2025.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Awards for casting have been given out by several other arts organizations including the Emmys, Spirits and the BAFTAs. Carmen Cuba, the casting director of shows like “Stranger Things” and “Mr. &amp; Mrs. Smith,” has been vocal about the need for a casting category at the Oscars. In a 2021 interview with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-04-06/casting-directors-call-to-be-included-in-the-oscars" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>, Cuba said casting directors are the first people hired and are dealt full plates of work when kicking off a movie or TV show. “If 23 categories are eligible, we should be too,” she told the Times. The power of casting was well on display for this year’s Best Picture nominees. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” was lauded for its expansive and talented cast, boasting the likes of Best Actor nominee Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor nominee Robert Downey Jr. and Best Supporting Actress nominee Emily Blunt.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-04-06/casting-directors-call-to-be-included-in-the-oscars" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Casting directors call to be included in the Oscars</a> (Los Angeles Times)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/01/22/oscars-2024-these-are-the-most-hotly-contested-categories-with-oppenheimer-expected-to-lead/?sh=845c41245ad7">Oscars 2024: These Are The Most Hotly Contested Categories—With ‘Oppenheimer’ Expected To Lead</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>


96th Oscars Nominations Announcement

Oscars Introduces First New Category In Decades: Best Casting


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>Erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a Wednesday study found, a breakthrough researchers say is needed to help prevent and delay Alzheimer’s diagnoses.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>Participants who were prescribed erectile dysfunction drugs were 18% less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s compared to participants who weren’t, according to a study published Wednesday in the American Academy of Neurology’s journal Neurology.</p>



<p>The study followed 269,725 men with an average age of 59 for five years who had no previous diagnosis of dementia or cognitive confusion; 55% of the participants were prescribed erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra and Cialis, while 45% weren’t.</p>



<p>The types of drugs used in the study are called phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitors (PDE5Is), which are a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK549843/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">class of drugs</a>&nbsp;used to treat hypertension and erectile dysfunction.</p>



<p>The researchers believe PDE5Is reduce Alzheimer’s risk because some forms of these drugs can improve brain health by increasing blood flow to the brain and reducing the amount of energy neurons consumed in the brain.</p>



<p>A previous 2021 <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35572351/'" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>—backed by the National Institute of Aging—looked at insurance claim data and found Viagra was associated with a 69% lower risk of Alzheimer’s developing in older men with diabetes or high blood pressure.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



<p>“Although we’re making progress with the new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease that work… for people with early stages of the disease, we desperately need treatments that can prevent or delay the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” study author and lecturer at the University College London Ruth Brauer said in a statement.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



<p>A 2022 National Institute of Health-backed&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-dream-study-finds-viagra-cialis-do-not-reduce-risk-alzheimer-s-related-dementias" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;used insurance claim data over a span of five months to follow two groups of people with a form of hypertension: those treated with Viagra and Cialis, and those treated with a different type of hypertension drug. The study’s results found there was not a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s or other dementia-related illnesses in either group. The reason the NIH study results differ could be because “five months may have been too short for the outcome of interest to occur,” the researchers of the Neurology study said in a statement.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



<p>6.7 million. That’s how many Americans aged 65 years or older had Alzheimer’s in 2023,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/facts-figures#:~:text=More%20than%206%20million%20Americans%20of%20all%20ages%20have%20Alzheimer%27s,older%20(10.7%25)%20has%20Alzheimer%27s." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the Alzheimer’s Association. Around one in nine people aged 65 and older have Alzheimer’s.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>There isn’t a cure for Alzheimer’s, but there are several&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/alzheimers-treatment/how-alzheimers-disease-treated" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FDA-approved</a>&nbsp;treatments for early- and middle-stage Alzheimer’s like the drugs lecanemab and aducanumab. Other drugs that treat different illnesses have been found to potentially reduce Alzheimer’s risk. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis taking a certain type of arthritis drug called biologics or targeted synthetic DMARDs developed dementia 19% less than those taking another type of arthritis drug, according to a 2022&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049017222001342?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>. Lifetime use of oral birth control is associated with a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer’s, while patients with depression who took postmenopausal therapy had a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, a separate 2022 study&nbsp;<a href="https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-022-01026-3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">found</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



<p>Nose-picking may lead to an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s, according to an October <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2218-273X/13/11/1568" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>. Chronic nose-picking introduces germs and other pathogens into the nose via dirty fingers. Beta-amyloid, a protein believed to be a <a href="https://www.alz.org/documents/national/topicsheet_betaamyloid.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cause</a> of Alzheimer’s, is produced in the brain in response to nose-picking introducing these pathogens into the nose, according to the study. The researchers encouraged “incurable nose-picker[s]” to wash their hands frequently, citing the Covid pandemic as an example of how infection can spread due to dirty hands touching surfaces. “It is essential to note that the temporary relief obtained from nose picking is not a substitute for proper nasal hygiene, which involves regular cleaning and maintenance of the nasal passages through gentle methods such as saline nasal rinses or blowing the nose,” the study said.</p>


Two blue pills viagra in male hand. Medicine concept of men health, medication for erection, treatment of erectile dysfunction

Erectile Dysfunction Drugs Like Viagra May Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk, Study Finds


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>ESPN, Fox Corporation and Warner Bros. are coming together to create a new sports streaming service,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-06/espn-fox-and-warner-bros-join-forces-for-sports-streaming-site?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=bd&amp;cmpId=google" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multiple</a><a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/fox-warner-bros-discovery-and-disney-create-new-sports-streaming-venture-c9836792" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;outlets</a>&nbsp;reported Tuesday—in a move that will add another platform in the already-crowded streaming wars.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>ESPN, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery are teaming up on the new platform that will include major college and professional sporting events, including NFL, NBA, MLB, College Sports, UFC, the FIFA World Cup and more,&nbsp;<a href="https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2024/02/espn-fox-and-warner-bros-discovery-forming-joint-venture-to-launch-streaming-sports-service-in-the-u-s/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to a press release.</p>



<p>The new service will be available to subscribers of ESPN+, Hulu and Max, and each of the three companies will own one-third of the entity.</p>



<p>The new platform—which doesn’t yet have a name or pricing structure—is expected to&nbsp;<a href="https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2024/02/espn-fox-and-warner-bros-discovery-forming-joint-venture-to-launch-streaming-sports-service-in-the-u-s/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launch</a>&nbsp;in fall 2024 and will combine each company’s sports offerings, making them available in one place and working to give “a new and differentiated experience to serve sports fans, particularly those outside of the traditional pay TV bundle.”</p>



<p>Forbes has reached out to the three media companies for comment.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Sports have been migrating to the streaming world in recent months as cable television viewership continues to drop. Amazon spent an estimated $1 billion in March 2021 to partner with the NFL, for example, for the streaming rights to Thursday Night Football games. In an effort to be “the most complete streaming service,” Discovery got the rights to stream the MLB playoffs, some NBA and NHL games and more on Max last year, CNN&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/media/max-sports/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Disney CEO Bob Iger has said in the past that they’re working to move ESPN from its role in linear TV to “the preeminent digital sports platform,” the Hollywood Reporter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nfl-mlb-nba-streaming-tv-sports-1235756577/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;late last year.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



<p>Earlier this week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2024/02/06/roger-goodell-addresses-streaming-only-super-bowl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> people won’t see a streaming-only Super Bowl in his time. When asked if one could happen in the future, he said “one of the secrets of our success is we are really committed to broadcast television,” adding 90% of NFL games are on broadcast, Sports Illustrated reported.</p>


Golden State Warriors v Brooklyn Nets

ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery Launching New Sports Streaming Platform


<p><strong>ChatGPT and other generative AI are being widely used in higher education in school admissions. But now, students who’ve turned to AI for writing are turning back to people to make that work sound more human—and schools can’t possibly keep up.</strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p><strong><em>“Tapestry.” “Beacon.” “Comprehensive curriculum.” “Esteemed faculty.” “Vibrant academic community.”</em></strong></p>



<p>They’re among the laundry list of colorful words, flowery phrases and stale syntax that are likely to tip off admissions committees to applicants who’ve used AI to help write their college or graduate school essays this year, according to essay consultants who students are hiring en masse to un-ChatGPT, and add a “human touch” to, their submissions.</p>



<p>“Tapestry” in particular is a major red flag in this year’s pool, several essay consultants on the platform Fiverr told&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>. Mike, an Ivy League alum and former editor-in-chief of the Cornell Business Journal who now edits hundreds of grad school applications each cycle through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fiverr.com/capitoleditors" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Capitol Editors</a>, said it’s appeared repeatedly in drafts from at least 20 of his clients in recent months. (He requested anonymity to protect their privacy.)</p>



<p>&#8220;I no longer believe there&#8217;s a way to innocently use the word &#8216;tapestry&#8217; in an essay; if the word &#8216;tapestry&#8217; appears, it was generated by ChatGPT,” he told&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>. Though many such words, on their own, could have come from a human, when a trained eye sees them used over and over again in the same cadence across multiple essays, “it’s just a real telltale sign.”</p>



<p>“There will be a reckoning,” Mike added. “There are going to be a ton of students who unwittingly use the word &#8216;tapestry&#8217; or other words in their essay that [may] not be admitted this cycle.”</p>



<p>This winter and spring mark the first full admissions season since the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2023/12/27/how-chatgpt-and-billions-in-investment-helped-ai-go-mainstream-in-2023/?sh=c63166e7176e">explosion and broad adoption of ChatGPT</a>&nbsp;and other generative AI, and in the education world, the fast-growing use cases for the technology have far outpaced school policies. Some educators are trying to fend off the tech with “zero tolerance” policies, while others are actively embracing it in their classrooms (Arizona State University, for example, is&nbsp;<a href="https://news.asu.edu/20240118-university-news-new-collaboration-openai-charts-future-ai-higher-education" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">partnering with OpenAI</a>&nbsp;to use ChatGPT Enterprise for tutoring and coursework). But short of cohesive, consistent rules for how AI can be used in the application process, if at all—and without tools that can reliably detect whether it has been—many students have turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its rivals for help. The uptake has given rise to a cottage industry of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fiverr.com/categories/writing-translation/proofreading-editing/ai-content-editing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">freelance consultants</a>&nbsp;who specialize in plucking out suspicious AI jargon and making essays sound authentic.</p>



<p>Forbes asked more than 20 public and private colleges of varied sizes across the United States, from Arizona State and Georgia Tech to Princeton and Harvard, about trends in the use of AI or ChatGPT among applications and how they are handling candidates likely to have relied on it. Many schools declined to comment or did not respond; Emory spokesperson Sylvia Carson said “it&#8217;s too soon for our admissions folks to offer any clear observations.”</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“I no longer believe there&#8217;s a way to innocently use the word &#8216;tapestry&#8217; in an essay; if the word &#8216;tapestry&#8217; appears, it was generated by ChatGPT.”Mike, essay consultant and former editor-in-chief of Cornell Business Journal</p>
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p>But editing consultants told&nbsp;<em>Forbes&nbsp;</em>that if they were able to spot suspected AI use having read just dozens or hundreds of essays, admissions committees reviewing many multiples more could have an even easier time picking up on these patterns. Ben Toll, the dean of undergraduate admissions at George Washington University, explained just how easy it is for admissions officers to sniff out AI-written applications.</p>



<p>“When you&#8217;ve read thousands of essays over the years, AI-influenced essays stick out,” Toll told&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>. “They may not raise flags to the casual reader, but from the standpoint of an admissions application review, they are often ineffective and a missed opportunity by the student.”</p>



<p>In fact, GWU’s admissions staff trained this year on sample essays that included one penned with the assistance of ChatGPT, Toll said—and it took less than a minute for a committee member to spot it.</p>



<p>The words were “thin, hollow, and flat,” he said. “While the essay filled the page and responded to the prompt, it didn&#8217;t give the admissions team any information to help move the application towards an admit decision.”&nbsp;<em>(Disclosure: One of the article’s authors, Alexandra, has occasionally shared feedback with college applicants on their essays.)</em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-demand-for-human-vibes"><strong>A demand for “human vibes”</strong></h2>



<p>In December 2023, an unusual request popped up on Indiana Pejic’s Fiverr account: “Could you edit and proofread my personal statement, 1,000 words? I partly wrote it with ChatGPT and would appreciate it if you could make it sound less robotic.” The request was from a Korean student applying for a PhD in Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge.</p>



<p>Pejic—a freelancer in Serbia who has three master’s degrees and one PhD—has edited roughly 100 personal statements and college essays through Fiverr. Though she initially feared her business would take a hit with the onset of ChatGPT, the reality has been quite the opposite: the AI boom has fueled unprecedented demand for editors adept at making computer-generated writing sound like the real thing. “ChatGPT is extremely wordy,” she said, and “there are many abstract words that don&#8217;t really connect well.” Today, she charges up to $100 to add “<a href="https://www.fiverr.com/indyomo/manually-edit-rewrite-and-humanize-ai-chatgpt-content?context_referrer=search_gigs&amp;source=top-bar&amp;ref_ctx_id=01d2d30f7d31403ab370b9c53cce4dc0&amp;pckg_id=1&amp;pos=2&amp;ad_key=2a7efde7-d2f5-4994-9e60-2f924d873cfa&amp;context_type=auto&amp;funnel=01d2d30f7d31403ab370b9c53cce4dc0&amp;seller_online=true&amp;imp_id=92806632-babb-46aa-8a8b-fb5fc7b31dfd" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">human vibes</a>” to AI-written essays. (Others offering similar services through Fiverr charge anywhere from $10 to $150 depending on the length.)</p>



<p>Lara Cantos, an editor and translator in Mexico, said she has seen so many repetitive groups of words and sentence constructions that she’s made a glossary of terms that set off AI alarms. “It’s specific terminology and sentence structure that starts repeating itself, and the use of the same adjectives again and again,” she said. (“Tapestry,” she noted, also makes recurring appearances.)</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“I partly wrote it with ChatGPT and would appreciate it if you could make it sound less robotic.”A student applying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge</p>
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p>Mike, from Capitol Editors, says he, too, has kept a running list. It includes describing something that “aligns seamlessly with my aspirations” or “stems from a deep-seated passion,” or references one’s “leadership prowess,” “entrepreneurial/educational journey” and “commitment to continuous improvement and innovation.” (One structure that’s a giveaway, he added, is “not merely X, but Y,” or “not just X, but Y.”)</p>



<p>All the consultants&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;spoke to said that AI tools are fairly popular among international students applying for admission abroad who turn to the likes of ChatGPT because English isn’t their first language. In some cases, they’ll feed the AI ideas or prompts in their native speech to get started with a first draft; in others, they’ll rely more heavily on the tech. “I just received an order from a student in Switzerland applying for the U.S. with a ChatGPT-generated essay,” Cantos told&nbsp;<em>Forbes. “</em>Some of the AI-written content sounds like literal translations.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-higher-ed-wild-west"><strong>A Higher-ed Wild West</strong></h2>



<p>While AI tools that can write and refine large blocks of text continue to develop at a breakneck speed—becoming both&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45644-9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">better at writing</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/use-of-ai-is-seeping-into-academic-journals-and-its-proving-difficult-to-detect/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">harder to detect</a>—schools are struggling to keep up and reach consensus on how to address them in applications. And students, in the meantime, are both seeking out clearer policies (and pushing the limits) on what they can and cannot do with these tools.</p>



<p>“I don&#8217;t think there is anything even approaching a consistent approach to the problem,” said Chris Reed, executive director of admissions at Texas A&amp;M.</p>



<p>Each admissions office has different rules on AI use in applications—ranging from the University of Southern California’s stringent “zero-tolerance” policy, to Georgia Tech’s position that students are allowed to use AI as a “helpful collaborator,” to Texas A&amp;M’s stance that applicants can submit AI-generated content because the university has moved away from using the standard college essay as a writing sample. (In fact, one of the prompts for Texas A&amp;M’s honors program is to use an AI platform like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard to write an essay, and then&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/superamit/status/1740149257422913940" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">critique</a>&nbsp;how well it was able to present an argument.)</p>



<p>“So much of it just depends on the individual institution and how they&#8217;re using essays in their process,” said Reed from Texas A&amp;M, noting that some 30% of the admissions essays they now receive use AI in some capacity according to AI detection tool GPTZero.</p>



<p>Other universities are less flexible. At the University of California, which has 10 campuses across the state, prospective students may use AI for brainstorming and creating an outline but the final draft must be “independently written”—and answers that include an “unedited AI response” (such as a direct copy-paste from ChatGPT) could be flagged as plagiarism, spokesperson Rachel Zaentz told&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;in an email. “It would be more work for [applicants] to try building a strong ChatGPT prompt than it would be to develop their own original responses to the questions,” she added.</p>



<p>The Common Application, used by more than a million students each year to apply to over 1,000 academic institutions, also considers “the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform” a form of plagiarism under its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commonapp.org/files/Common-App-Fraud-Policy.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fraud policy</a>. Common App president Jenny Rickard told&nbsp;<em>Forbes&nbsp;</em>“we investigate all fraud allegations, and if they are substantiated, we take appropriate disciplinary steps.” She did not say how, exactly, possible instances of AI-related plagiarism are investigated, though she noted the Common App does not use AI detection tools. The consequences, however, can be severe, and the disciplinary actions include reporting the findings to all member colleges on a student’s “My Colleges” list.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-detection-an-imperfect-science"><strong>Detection, an imperfect science</strong></h2>



<p>It’s no wonder Common App isn’t relying on tools that promise to weed out AI-generated content: it’s still&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/14/prove-false-positive-ai-detection-turnitin-gptzero/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">notoriously inaccurate</a>, so much so that OpenAI shuttered&nbsp;<a href="https://openai.com/blog/new-ai-classifier-for-indicating-ai-written-text" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its own AI detection software.</a>&nbsp;Leaders in the space like GPTZero have changed course, now offering schools high-level analysis of how AI is being used in applications rather than pinpointing problematic essays. Other creators of detection software have warned against the use of the technology in admissions altogether.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>Disciplinary actions for using AI on The Common Application&nbsp;include reporting the findings to all member colleges on a student’s “My Colleges” list.Jenny Rickard, CEO and President of Common App</p>
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p>Eric Mitchell, a PhD student at Stanford who built&nbsp;<a href="https://ericmitchell.ai/detectgpt/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DetectGPT</a>, called it “a total minefield,” cautioning that while research into detection software is worthwhile, the resulting tools are simply not ready for primetime in higher ed. College admissions is such a critical moment in a person’s life, he said in an interview, and “the cost of falsely condemning someone&#8217;s essay is just so high, [that] I&#8217;m not sure we can accept a 2% false positive rate.” It’s unclear how widely schools are using this software in admissions, but both Mitchell and GPTZero’s CEO Edward Tian said educators have expressed interest.</p>



<p>Like a majority of the schools&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;contacted for this story, GWU’s dean of undergrad admissions did not say whether AI detection tools are part of its review process. But he did make a case for aspiring attendees to avoid ChatGPT and its peers altogether.</p>



<p>“By the time a student is filling out their application, most of the materials will have already been solidified. The applicants can&#8217;t change their grades. They can&#8217;t go back in time and change the activities they&#8217;ve been involved in,” Toll said. “But the essay is the one place they remain in control until the minute they press submit on the application. I want students to understand how much we value getting to know them through their writing and how tools like generative AI end up stripping their voice from their admission application.”</p>


Chatbot ChatGPT

Did You Use ChatGPT On Your School Applications? These Words May Tip Off Admissions


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>French soccer star Kylian Mbappé has reportedly decided to join Real Madrid this summer after his contract with Paris Saint-Germain expires, ending months of speculation that the Spanish club could land the 25-year-old superstar.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>French newspaper Le Parisien first reported the news, with ESPN further&nbsp;<a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39451576/kylian-mbappe-join-real-madrid-psg-summer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">confirming</a>&nbsp;Saturday, citing unnamed sources.</p>



<p>Sources told ESPN Mbappé has not informed PSG or Real Madrid, but his decision has been made and a decision could be announced next week.</p>



<p>Mbappé has been with PSG since 2017, when he first joined the club on loan from Monaco—PSG fully assumed his contract rights the next year.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Mbappé is widely considered one of the best players of his generation. He won a World Cup with France at age 19 in 2018 and was named the best young player of the tournament. At the 2022 World Cup, he was top scorer with eight goals as France made another run to the final, ultimately falling to Lionel Messi-led Argentina in penalty kicks. At the club level, he has been the top or co-lead scorer in France’s Ligue 1 for the past five seasons. He is again top scorer for this season so far with 20 goals—twice as many as the next-leading scorer. Mbappé’s tenure with PSG has long been accompanied by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/06/12/mbapp-reportedly-leaving-paris-saint-germain-by-next-summer-after-earning-120-million-over-last-year/?sh=64edb7f4e232">rumors</a>&nbsp;of potential departures—and Real Madrid has been the top rumored landing place. In 2022, Real Madrid made a big-ticket offer to lure Mbappé away, but PSG was able to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/sports/soccer/mbappe-psg-real-madrid.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">secure him</a>&nbsp;to another two-year contract, which expires this August.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



<p>Mbappé is the third-highest paid athlete in the world, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/?sh=4a3e794e5b7e">according</a> to Forbes’ latest World’s Highest Paid Athletes list, with total earnings of $120 million. Mbappé trails only Lionel Messi, who left PSG last year for Inter Miami, and Cristiano Ronaldo, who played for Real Madrid from 2009 to 2018. Real Madrid is the most valuable soccer team in the world, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/soccer-valuations/?sh=6ba96cf198bb">Forbes estimates</a>, worth just over $6 billion.</p>


Sweden v France – UEFA Nations League

Kylian Mbappé Reportedly Joining Real Madrid This Summer


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>Apple’s Vision Pro headset will be released in the U.S. tomorrow starting at $3,500, bringing the highly anticipated and pricey product to market after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/01/19/apple-launches-pre-orders-for-3500-vision-pro-headset-requiring-head-scans-and-vision-prescriptions/?sh=3dd85cac19ad">more than a decade</a>&nbsp;of development.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>The mixed-reality headset’s cheapest version sports 256 GBs of storage for $3,500, while the 512 GB and 1 TB versions will respectively cost $3,700 and $3,900.</p>



<p>Buyers will be required to complete a headscan with their iPhones or iPads to produce a proper fit with the headset, which can also have readers and prescription inserts incorporated into it for $99 and $149, respectively.</p>



<p>Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who estimated that Apple sold 160,000 to 180,000 Vision Pro units during the first pre-order weekend, warned in a&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/vision-pro%E9%A6%96%E9%80%B1%E6%9C%AB%E9%A0%90%E8%B3%BC%E6%AA%A2%E8%A6%96-%E7%AC%A6%E5%90%88%E9%A0%90%E6%9C%9F%E4%BD%86%E9%9A%B1%E6%86%82%E6%B5%AE%E7%8F%BE-vision-pros-first-weekend-pre-order-review-expectations-in-line-0450c1effe66" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blog post</a>&nbsp;of waning demand for the headset after core fans and heavy users make their purchases.</p>



<p>The Vision Pro allows users to access entertainment, work and task-based apps that can be interacted with by wearers while still being able to see the physical space around them if they choose.</p>



<p>The headset’s display provides more pixels than a 4K TV for each eye, which can come in handy when using streaming apps like Disney+, Max and Amazon Prime Video—though the apps for Netflix, Spotify and YouTube won’t be supported at launch.</p>



<p>The Vision Pro’s battery pack lasts up to two hours and is attached to the headset by a woven USB-C cable.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



<p>The $3,500 price tag for the cheapest version of the Vision Pro costs more than three weeks worth of pay for the median American paycheck, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a>.</p>



<p>Forbes Daily: Get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential analysis of the day’s news in your inbox every weekday.Sign Up</p>



<p>By signing up, you accept and agree to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/terms-and-conditions" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Service</a>&nbsp;(including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and you acknowledge our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Privacy Statement</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



<p>The Vision Pro will directly compete with Meta’s line of Meta Quest headsets, which feature the Meta Quest Pro ($999) and the Meta Quest 3 ($499). Meta&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/v62-software-update-spatial-video-playback-gamepad-support-browswer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced Thursday</a>&nbsp;it’s adding Meta Quest support for spatial video playback—a feature boasted by the Vision Pro that will let users upload stereoscopic videos from their iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max for playback.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Apple has marketed its new headset as a “spatial computing” device giving users the ability to go between full virtual reality and augmented reality (virtual features seen over the real world). Announced last June, the Vision Pro opens up a new revenue stream for Apple as it contends with a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/01/30/apple-stock-slides-nearly-2-after-analyst-warns-of-potential-iphone-shipment-decrease/?sh=1530944519be">possible decrease</a>&nbsp;in iPhone shipments this year. UBS Group AG analyst David Vogt expects the tech giant to ship 300,000 to 400,000 units of the Vision Pro this year, generating up to $1.4 billion in revenue,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/when-do-apple-vision-pro-preorders-begin-8-a-m-eastern-5-a-m-pacific-jan-19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/01/19/apple-launches-pre-orders-for-3500-vision-pro-headset-requiring-head-scans-and-vision-prescriptions/?sh=3dd85cac19ad">Apple Launches Pre-Orders For $3,500 Vision Pro Headset—Requiring Head Scans And Vision Prescriptions</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/when-do-apple-vision-pro-preorders-begin-8-a-m-eastern-5-a-m-pacific-jan-19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple Vision Pro Deliveries Delayed to March in Sign of Early Demand</a> (Bloomberg)<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/"></a></p>


In this photo illustration, Apple Vision Pro logo and price

Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro Launches Today—What To Know About The Mixed-Reality Headset


<p><strong>A decision by a Delaware judge late Tuesday afternoon has multibillion-dollar implications regarding Musk’s fortune.</strong></p>



<p>Elon Musk ceded the title of world’s richest person to Frenchman Bernard Arnault of luxury conglomerate LVMH Tuesday evening, after a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/01/30/judge-voids-elon-musks-56-billion-pay-package-from-tesla/?sh=7ee4eb102756">Delaware judge</a>&nbsp;voided a hefty package of performance-based Tesla options&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2021/05/06/elon-musk-made-billions-in-2020-every-other-ceo-made-millions/?sh=39b88bdd6f93">awarded to Musk in 2018</a>. Those shares had been worth more than $50 billion.&nbsp;<em>Forbes&nbsp;</em>estimates that Musk is now worth $184.5 billion. He now trails Arnault (estimated net worth: $210.8 billion) but remains ahead of the world’s third richest person, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($179 billion).</p>



<p>In her ruling, Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick determined that Musk and his co-defendants, Tesla and certain of its board members, failed to prove that the process underlying the award of “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets” was fair due to conflicts of interest and Musk’s “control” over the board. Musk’s options were worth $50.9 billion (net of exercise cost) at Tuesday’s stock market close. Because of the ruling, he won’t be able to exercise or sell them. Given the high level of uncertainty about what comes next–including an appeal of the ruling,&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;has discounted Musk’s options by 50%, enough to knock his net worth down by $25.5 billion after the decision.</p>



<p>“[The ruling] will certainly be appealed and there is some chance of reversal or a different remedy,” says UCLA law professor Jim Park. “Chancellor McCormick is well regarded and known as careful, so I think there’s a good chance her decision will get some deference from the Delaware Supreme Court. On the other hand, perhaps the Supreme Court will worry that the decision will send a negative message to the business community and will thus reduce the award.”</p>



<p>There is also the possibility that Tesla could just grant Musk another pay package with a more rigorous process designed to withstand legal scrutiny. After all, Tesla shareholders, whose stock has appreciated more than sevenfold since 2018, haven’t exactly celebrated the decision by the Delaware court. Shares of Tesla were trading down 0.8% at 2:30 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday.</p>



<p>“If the pay package is struck down, Musk will demand another — and he&#8217;ll get it,” says Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard. “But [it’s] very hard to say how different that would be from this package.”</p>



<p>Musk had been clamoring for even more Tesla shares prior to the Delaware decision. In an X post on January 15 he wrote, “I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI &amp; robotics without having ~25% voting control.” If upheld on appeal, the judge&#8217;s decision to void Musk&#8217;s options pay package would drop his stake in Tesla from 22% to 13%.</p>


GERMANY-AUTOMOBILE-TESLA-MUSK

Elon Musk No Longer World’s Richest After Judge Voids $51 Billion Pay Package

Metaverse Concept in the real city,  Futuristic digital design for Smart city and technology in the future

Exposing The Myth Of Decentralization


<p><strong>The Middle East kingdom is on massive building spree—creating private islands, luxury hotels, theme parks, cruise ports, even a desert ski resort. The question remains: If they build it, who will come?</strong> </p>



<p>Whatever your preconceived notion of Saudi Arabia as a travel destination is, it’s about to be get a major renovation. Imagine Sindalah, for example, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/sindalah/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">7-star private-island resort</a>&nbsp;with three ultra-luxe resorts, 38 high-end restaurants and multiple superyacht marinas. Or Qiddiya, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/qiddiya/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">futuristic city</a>&nbsp;of 600,000 people rising from the desert floor, dedicated to e-sports and gaming. How about Trojena, a space-age&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/trojena/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ski resort</a>&nbsp;built above the high desert? Or The Red Sea, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/the-red-sea/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">vast waterscape</a>&nbsp;of 50 luxury resorts and 8,000 hotel rooms spread across 22 islands in a Maldives-style archipelago—powered entirely by wind and solar energy? Also in the works is The Rig, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/projects/the-rig/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$5-billion adventure theme park</a>&nbsp;built on an off-shore oil platform. In addition, Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cruisesaudi.com/about#block-ourbusiness" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cruise destination</a>, having recently bought a $300-million ship. Across the Kingdom, new roads, airports, golf courses and cruise terminals are rising from the sand. The map is literally being redrawn in real time.</p>



<p>Then there are all the new hotels, with their thousands of freshly built rooms. The world’s most iconic hospitality companies—Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, St. Regis, Fairmont, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and InterContinental—are falling over themselves to jump into a construction pipeline that’s churning faster than anywhere else in the world. Any one of these projects might momentarily pierce the travel industry’s fleeting attention span. But together, what’s going on in Saudi Arabia simply cannot be ignored.</p>



<p>Indeed, it can be often difficult to visualize the vastness of Saudi Arabia’s physical transformation. Some of the most notable ongoing projects—including Sindalah, the 7-star private island, and Trojena, the improbable desert ski resort—fall within NEOM, a $500-billion built-from-scratch region in northwest Saudi Arabia where the Kingdom is creating new cities, resorts and other developments. At 10,200 square miles and bounded by the Red Sea to the south and the Gulf of Aqaba to the west, it’s roughly the size of Albania.</p>



<p>Bankrolled mainly by the Kingdom’s $700-billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), the idea for NEOM was born out of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vision 2030</a>, Saudi Arabia’s grand plan to shake off its historic reliance on oil and diversify its economy. One the scheme’s pillars involves reinventing the country as a global tourism juggernaut. When first announced in 2016, the Kingdom’s tourism goals seemed fanciful: Attract 100 million foreign and domestic visitors to the country every year and grow tourism’s share of the economy from about 3% to 10%. Oh, and do it all in just 14 years.</p>



<p>That aspiration seemed all the more preposterous given that, in 2016, Saudi Arabia had not yet opened its doors to international leisure travelers. At the time, travel to the Kingdom was almost entirely restricted to three types of people: expatriate workers, those with business visas, and religious pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.</p>



<p>Then in 2019,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarabrittanysomerset/2019/09/27/saudi-arabia-opens-its-borders-to-tourists-but-not-cannabis/?sh=2823b4b36924">Saudi Arabia announce</a>d&nbsp;it would provide e-visas and visas on arrival to visitors from 49 countries, including the United States. Among other changes announced at the time: Female visitors would be exempted from wearing an abaya, the traditional and otherwise obligatory head-to-toe robe, in public places and would be allowed to travel without a male companion. Tourists would still be required to dress modestly and Mecca would remain off-limits to non-Muslims.</p>



<p>Since Saudi Arabia opened to the international travel market, the speed and spare-no-expense approach to its transformation has stunned even the most seasoned tourism analysts. “We’re seeing hugely ambitious plans, huge amounts of development,” says Caroline Bremner, head of travel and tourism research at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.euromonitor.com/travel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Euromonitor International</a>. “Billions, ultimately trillions, worth of dollars being invested in infrastructure and in diversifying their economy.” The World Travel &amp; Tourism Council (WTTC) estimated the Kingdom has already spent $800 billion, and that doesn’t include the massive amounts of foreign investments pouring in.</p>



<p>The pandemic delayed some projects, of course, but rather than scaling back expectations, the Saudis ratcheted up their goal to 150 million annual visitors by 2030. Here’s where semantics come into play. In tourism parlance, a “visitor” is defined as someone who visits a site within the country, which is very different from what Euromonitor deems an “arrival,” someone who makes an overnight stay. (Other organizations sometimes call the latter “tourists.”) Saudi Arabia had over 24 million foreign arrivals in 2023 and will welcome nearly 37 million in 2030, according to Euromonitor projections. “So if each of those 37 million overnight tourists visits three sites, you pretty much have got your 100 million visits,” Bremner says. “Then add on top of that your domestic tourists, and their own set targets are quite achievable.”</p>



<p>A more meaningful measure of success is how much foreigners are expected to spend while in Saudi Arabia. Euromonitor predicts that international tourists will spend $38 billion in 2030. But the total economic impact for Saudi Arabia will be far greater after adding in domestic travelers’ expenditures and the ripple effect of one million new tourism jobs. The WTTC projects that, by 2032, Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector could contribute nearly $169 billion to its GDP, representing 17.1% of the total Saudi economy.</p>



<p>“Remember, they’re building this destination on the ledger, essentially from scratch, for the international market, and they are bringing in the best of the best in terms of the quality of people they’re working with” says Bremner. “I can see that they’ve thought through every single aspect of tourism, from the staff to the product, the brand, the service, the connectivity, the sustainability. So it really does feel like they’re building something for the next century ahead.”</p>



<p>Preparing for the future also means recognizing the seismic shift in what the next generations of global travelers will want. Roughly 90% of young Chinese travelers and 70% of Gen Z travelers in the UK, Australia and India say they are looking to discover new destinations, according to data from&nbsp;<a href="https://research.skift.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Skift Research</a>. In that sense, being the new kid on the tourism block is an enormous plus.</p>



<p>“New generations have a lot more information through social media,” Billy Canellas, head of asset management at NEOM,&nbsp;<a href="https://skift.com/2023/12/22/skift-global-forum-east-video-building-sustainable-luxury-cities/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told conference-goers</a>&nbsp;at the Skift Global Forum East in December. “[Younger travelers] are very well educated about the effects of overtourism in traditional destinations,” he added, noting “a clear tendency towards the eco-friendly and sustainable destinations” and an eagerness to learn about a destination’s “culture and the traditions of diversity.”</p>



<p>“The luxury market is getting more diverse and younger, and it&#8217;s shifting to the emerging markets,” says Bremner, noting that the United Arab Emirates, India and China are all highly appealing to this demographic. “We have this fresh-faced luxury traveler, and it&#8217;s not the traditional older generation of travelers with lots of money. It’s the New World luxury traveler, highly digital, very environmentally conscious, and for whom social impact is important.”</p>



<p>“Make no mistake,” says Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, “what Saudi Arabia is doing is they’re identifying who are some of the most important travelers are—the people willing to spend a lot of money on experiences—and asking, How do we go get them?”</p>



<p>There are, of course, many ways for the Saudi grand vision to go sideways. First, there are enormous financial risks inherit in tackling so many giga projects all at once, even for a country with bottomless pockets. “The Saudis are running at 82% public debt compared to government revenue,” Bremner says, noting that official public debt as a percentage of GDP was 23.8% in 2023. Still, it’s all relative. The Kingdom’s debt-to-GDP ratio is nearly double what it was a decade ago, but still quite low compared to other countries. For example, Switzerland’s government debt is 41% of GDP. The U.S. and Canadian governments’ debt is 133% and 106% of GDP, respectively. The U.K.’s debt is 98% of GDP.</p>



<p>Bremner’s biggest concern is hotel overcapacity, which would ultimately suppress prices. “That luxury positioning is going to come under a little bit of erosion, because [the Saudis] are moving so quickly. With that level of supply, it is quite hard to balance,” she says, adding that Euromonitor International’s latest forecast model predicts that the average traveler’s spend will have already dropped by 2030. “Too many hotel rooms that aren’t being filled will drive prices down, so that’s a risk.”</p>



<p>In addition, Saudi Arabia has a persistent PR problem among many would-be travelers, especially those from the West. The Kingdom still has strict laws about drinking and severe restrictions for women, not to mention allegations of human rights abuses and attacks against journalists. In 2021, the U.S.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2021/02/25/the-white-house-is-releasing-a-bombshell-report-about-slain-washington-post-journalist-jamal-khashoggi/?sh=772fad154dcb">officially blamed</a>&nbsp;Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the 2018 murder of&nbsp;<em>Washington Post</em>&nbsp;journalist Jamal Khashoggi.</p>



<p>But any concerns about human rights haven’t stopped multinational corporations from investing in the Kingdom’s grand vision. “For some players, it will be a very important issue, perhaps a complete barrier to entry,” says Bremner. “However, we can see that the majority of luxury hotel brands have already shifted from China and the U.A.E. into Saudi Arabia.”</p>



<p>After all, the international travel market loves nothing more than a shiny, new destination in an emerging market and right now, the Middle East is having a moment. “You have the Middle East in the sort of perfect location,” says Bremner, “just like Turkey—within a five-hour flight of Asia and of Western Europe.”</p>



<p>Even with the start of the Israel-Hamas War last October, the Mideast was nevertheless the fastest-growing tourism region in 2023, with international arrivals 23% above pre-pandemic levels, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unwto.org/tourism-data/unwto-tourism-recovery-tracker" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UN World Tourism Organization’s Tourism Recovery Tracker</a>. That’s 35% above the global average, as the rest of the world’s tourism is, on average, still at a 12 point deficit compared to 2019 visitor volume.</p>



<p>While just over three million American tourists visited the region in 2023—making up 12.6% of total outbound U.S. tourists—that’s a massive 39% jump from 2019. And though the Middle East’s portion of American tourists was smaller than those of Europe (40%) and Asia (15.7%) last year, it was the only one of the three regions that has grown since the pandemic.</p>



<p>But Freeman isn’t concerned about Saudi Arabia’s ability to lure large numbers of American tourists. “I&#8217;m worried about them trying to attract Europeans, high-spending Middle Easterners, and Asians, who might have otherwise come and spent their money in the United States,” he says.</p>



<p>After all, Freeman says, international tourism is an increasingly competitive sport where one country’s gain is another’s loss: “What gives us pause,” he says, “is that other nations now realize that travel is a global competition to figure out who can attract the customer.”</p>


Traffic in Riyadh at sunset in Saudi Arabia capital city

Inside Saudi Arabia’s $800 Billion Tourism Moonshot


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>The head of the United Nations agency providing humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees on Saturday denounced a move by a growing number of countries to pull funding for the agency following allegations by Israel that some of its staffers participated in Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p><a href="https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/finland-to-suspend-its-funding-to-unrwa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Finland</a>, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/01/the-netherlands-halts-financial-support-for-unrwa/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Netherlands,</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/swiss-aid-payment-to-un-agency-for-palestinian-refugees-in-doubt-08d15150" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Switzerland</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-suspends-financing-unrwa-foreign-minister-tajani-2024-01-27/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Italy</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-on-allegations-about-unrwa-staff-and-7-october-attacks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the U.K.</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/germany-says-suspending-funding-to-un-agency-in-gaza-df4ea2be" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Germany</a>&nbsp;all announced suspensions of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Saturday.</p>



<p>Those announcements followed the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.state.gov/statement-on-unrwa-allegations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">U.S.</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorWong/status/1751103658509644035" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Australia&nbsp;</a>and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-suspends-cash-for-un-agency-serving-palestinians-amid-probe-into-hamas-attack-1.6744404" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Canada</a>, who suspended funding on Friday.</p>



<p>Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the agency,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa%E2%80%99s-lifesaving-aid-may-end-due-funding-suspension" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;it was “shocking” to see the suspension, especially since the agency took “immediate action” to terminate the contracts of the accused staffers and investigate the allegations.</p>



<p>Citing Friday’s&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-genocide-court-south-africa-27cf84e16082cde798395a95e9143c06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ruling</a>&nbsp;from the International Court of Justice that ordered Israel to take measures to enable humanitarian assistance for people in Gaza, Lazzarini said it would be “immensely irresponsible” to sanction the agency and those it serves “because of allegations of criminal acts against some individuals.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



<p>“I urge countries who have suspended their funding to re-consider their decisions before UNRWA is forced to suspend its humanitarian response,” Lazzarini said in his statement. “The lives of people in Gaza depend on this support and so does regional stability.&#8221;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Israel alleged on Friday that 12 UNRWA staffers were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel, where militants killed roughly 1,200 people and took more than 200 captive. UNRWA terminated the contracts of those employees and launched an investigation the same day, and the New York Times reported Friday that the employees are also<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/world/middleeast/un-aid-israel-oct-7-attacks.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;subject</a>&nbsp;to a criminal investigation. In a statement Friday, Lazzarini reiterated UNRWA’s condemnation of Oct. 7 “in the strongest possible terms” and called for the “unconditional release” of all Israeli hostages. But the U.S. led the charge in pulling back funding, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.state.gov/statement-on-unrwa-allegations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement&nbsp;</a>that the U.S. was “extremely troubled” by the allegations. On Friday, the International Court of Justice at the UN<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-world-court-decision-israei-genocide-case-2024-01-26/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;ordered</a>&nbsp;Israel to take steps to avoid continued casualties that would constitute a genocide in Gaza. UNRWA is the largest humanitarian actor in Gaza with 3,000 core staff on the ground, per Lazzarini’s statement. Israel has in the past&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/world/middleeast/unrwa-aid-israel-hamas-attack.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">accused</a>&nbsp;UNRWA of spreading pro-Hamas propaganda.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



<p>26,083. That’s the number of Palestinians that have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/health-ministry-in-hamas-run-gaza-says-war-death-toll-at-26-083-86a72a11" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according </a>to the health ministry in Gaza.</p>


UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in Gaza

Head Of UN Agency Denounces ‘Shocking’ Funding Cuts Amid Allegations Staffers Were Involved In Hamas’ Attack On Israel


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>The British Museum and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&amp;A) announced on Thursday that 32 gold and silver artifacts from Ghana, which were looted during the Anglo-Ashanti Wars in the 1800s, would return to the country for the first time in 150 years—but only for a limited amount of time.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>The artifacts include 17 items from the V&amp;A and 15 items from the British Museum, including dozens of gold items looted while the British Army raided the Ashanti royal palace that were auctioned off to the museums in April 1874.</p>



<p>The items will be displayed as part of the silver jubilee of Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the ceremonial king of the Ashanti people.</p>



<p>However, the exhibition will not permanently remain in Ghana—the pieces are only on loan for three years, and will return to the U.K. in 2027, the British Museum told Forbes in an email.</p>



<p>Several British laws also prevent the museums from outright returning these artifacts to Ghana: the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/British-Museum-Act-1963.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">British Museum Act of 1963</a>&nbsp;bans the museum from removing an artifact from its collection unless it is a duplicate, is damaged or is deemed “unfit” for the collection.</p>



<p>The National Heritage Act of 1983 prevents the V&amp;A from legally returning the artifacts as well, the museum told Forbes, and noted they have not received any formal requests for repatriation for the pieces being lent.</p>



<p>The Britsh Museum did not say if there were any plans to permanently return the artifacts in the works, but praised the loan agreement as “a way of working together with countries and communities within the realms of the law.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>The British Museum and other collections in Europe and North America are facing criticism and calls for the return of artwork, artifacts and human remains looted during wars or obtained in other ways while these nations ruled colonial empires across the world. Among these are the famous Benin Bronzes, a collection of bronze sculptures looted from the Kingdom of Benin in modern-day Nigeria. Other contentious collections include the Maqdala collection, taken from Ethiopia in the 1800s, as well as the human remains of more than 6,000 people, including Egyptian mummies.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



<p>One of the most contentious sets of artifacts displayed in the British Museum are the Parthenon Sculptures, a collection of 2,500-year-old marble sculptures a British diplomat personally removed from the famous temple in Athens in 1806. The sculptures have caused an ongoing diplomatic row between the U.K. and Greece, who contend they were looted. In November, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis canceled a meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after he ruled out changing a law that bans their return to Greece. After the Museum’s announcement on Thursday, Mitsotakis renewed calls to return the sculptures. “Only by being seen together, in situ, in the shadow of the Acropolis, can we truly appreciate their immense cultural importance,&#8221; Mitsotakis said in a statement, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greek-pm-repeats-call-return-parthenon-sculptures-athens-2024-01-25/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a> reported.</p>


Turkiye demands the return of artifacts in UK museums

British Museum Lends Ghana Looted Gold Artifacts—Here’s Why It Won’t Fully Return Them


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>The Federal Aviation Administration&nbsp;<a href="https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-halts-boeing-max-production-expansion-improve-quality-control-also-lays-out-extensive" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;Wednesday a pathway toward resumed flights for Boeing 737 Max 9 jets, but it won’t allow Boeing to expand production of the planes after a hole was blown into the side of an Alaska Airlines flight using one of the jets earlier this month, prompting temporary groundings and thorough inspections from the FAA.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>Boeing will be prohibited from expanding production of its Max jets, including the 737-9 Max model, under the order from the FAA on Wednesday.</p>



<p>The FAA also said it approved an inspection and maintenance process that will be performed on all of the 171 grounded Boeing 737-9 Max planes, which if successful, will make the aircraft eligible to return to service.</p>



<p>The inspection and maintenance process was approved after the FAA reviewed data collected from inspections on 40 grounded planes.</p>



<p>Maintenance performed on the aircraft will involve inspection of exit door plugs and parts associated with them, bolts, guide tracks and the correction of damage.</p>



<p>FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement that the extensive review of the planes wouldn’t mark a return to “business as usual for Boeing.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>The National Transportation Safety Board is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/09/investigators-will-probe-if-alaska-airlines-737-maxs-door-panel-was-securely-bolted/?sh=1f28f5fd6228">investigating</a>&nbsp;whether or not the door panel that blew off the Alaska Airlines flight was properly bolted before takeoff. Investigators have found the plane’s plug door but have yet to recover the bolts associated with it. The FAA recommended this week that airlines inspect door plugs on Boeing 737-900ER aircraft, a different model from the one involved in the Alaska Airlines incident. The agency, which said the 737-900ER’s door plugs “have an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/22/faa-asks-airlines-to-inspect-door-plugs-on-boeing-737-900er-planes/?sh=7222a8fafe91">identical door plug design</a>” to the Max 9, asked airlines to inspect four points where a bolt is used to secure the door to the airframe of the 737-900ER.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/22/faa-asks-airlines-to-inspect-door-plugs-on-boeing-737-900er-planes/?sh=7222a8fafe91">FAA Asks Airlines To Inspect Door Plugs On Boeing 737-900ER Planes</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>


British Airways Retires First Of Its Last 747 Jumbo Jets

FAA Clears Way For Boeing 737 Max 9s To Potentially Resume Flying—But Prohibits Increased Production


<p><strong>Two years ago, non-fungible tokens were sizzling hot, as art aficionados and speculators pushed blockchain-based images to $27 billion in value. Now that the market has crashed, a much less ambitious version of NFTs are finding a welcome home in the marketing departments of corporate America.</strong></p>



<p><strong><abbr>I</abbr>n the first week of October</strong>, non-fungible token (NFT) trading fell to its lowest weekly level since 2020, according to data from TheBlock, with only $50 million worth of digital collectibles exchanged on secondary markets. It was a bleak month for NFTs, whose trading volume plummeted from a record $3.2 billion a week in 2022 as prices slid to fractions of their crypto-boom highs.</p>



<p>The tepid activity came two weeks before Nike planned to sell more than 30,000 pairs of its popular Dunks sneakers in a collection linked to NFTs, with an increasingly popular twist that allowed non-blockchain buyers to get in on the action. Unlike virtually all of the previous efforts, buyers could pay by credit card instead of using cryptocurrency, snagging a custom-sized pair of Dunks in one of three color combinations, white and blue, black and purple and black and red.</p>



<p>Appealing to its traditional youthful buyers worked out for Nike, with the sale bringing in $7 million, or an average of about $230 a pair, and each Dunk owner would own a digital version of the sneaker on the ethereum blockchain. It’s a release model that has proven to be a useful marketing maneuver—in August 2022 Nike offered a 10-piece leisure apparel collection through its CloneX NFT line. The Beaverton, Oregon company, famous for its long relationship with Michael Jordan, has been selling NFT-related apparel since December 2022, when it released the auto-lacing CryptoKicks iRL collection of sneakers. Pieces from that inaugural offering that sold for about&nbsp;<a href="https://etherscan.io/tx/0x85e587dd74fa74b6b2e9fed91cf7be33b58ba79b6052db978c16e83d84af2bf6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$900&nbsp;</a>can now fetch up to $3,000 on sneaker resale sites like&nbsp;<a href="https://stockx.com/nike-rtfkt-cryptokicks-irl-ice" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">StockX</a>.</p>



<p>The Dunk Genesis collection “was a huge success,” says Steven Vasilev, co-founder of NFT studio RTFKT (pronounced “Artifact”), which was purchased by Nike in December 2021. “Even though the market is still down, our products are still bringing in new people.”</p>



<p>Non-fungible tokens are created, bought and sold on blockchains, like cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether. But while each currency’s tokens are alike, every NFT is unique and can be used to reward users with various perks or be linked to objects in the real world. They can also be traded on numerous secondary markets like OpenSea.</p>



<p>The NFT landscape has drastically shifted in the two years since the tokens became part of mainstream art and pop culture. Barely more than a year ago, CryptoPunks, a collection of thousands of pixelated head shots and the cartoon simians of Bored Ape Yacht Club commanded multi-million-dollar price tags at auction. Now, the most expensive rarely trade for over $100,000. NFTs selling for over $10 million disappeared last year and companies born out of NFT collections, like Rektguy and Bored Apes purveyor Yuga Labs, are struggling to pivot their business models away from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/09/17/requiem-for-royalties-nft-exchanges-abandon-recurring-compensation-for-artists/?sh=5574c80d65da">royalty payments&nbsp;</a>generated by secondary sales. The overall market shrank to $9.5 billion of revenue last year from $26.7 billion in 2022, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cryptoslam.io/nftglobal?headerPeriod=all&amp;timeFrame=year" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CryptoSlam.</a>&nbsp;Emerging from the aftermath of the NFT craze are major companies that are embracing the tokens as a cutting-edge marketing device, helping them get closer to existing customers and woo new ones.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wither-nfts">Wither NFTs</h2>



<p>Non-fungible token sales peaked in 2022 as digital images inscribed onto blockchains were at the center of pop culture. Two years later, sales are languishing.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p>“Where Nike serves athletes, we serve creators,” says Vasilev, who is a member of the Forbes 2023&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/steven-vasilev/?sh=754795392b81">30 Under 30 Retail and E-Commerce&nbsp;</a>list. “We don’t like the word NFT,” he adds, “We believe it&#8217;s too technical and confuses a lot of customers. So we prefer to call them ‘digital collectibles.’”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p>S<strong>neaker companies like</strong>&nbsp;Nike are at the forefront of NFTs’ second coming, but they are not alone.</p>



<p>While eking out meaningful revenue or profit is a long way off, Corporate America is finding useful ways to employ the unique blockchain-based tokens in their marketing arsenals.</p>



<p>Some companies like Nike are incorporating NFTs into their products, bringing virtual images to physical reality. Credit-card giant Mastercard, for example, partnered with crypto neobank Hi to allow NFT users to showcase their own NFTs on the plastic cards in their wallet.</p>



<p><strong>“</strong>The card designs and cards you use for payment are a reflection of who you are,” says Christian Rau, head of Mastercard’s crypto and fintech operations in Europe when the partnership launched in October 2022. Digital art on a credit card “basically allows consumers to display a physical manifestation of an NFT they really care about.”</p>



<p>Beyond physical branding, others have included blockchain elements into existing marketing strategies. Coca-Cola added NFTs to its global Masterpiece advertising campaign in June, in which the company’s iconic red-and-black bottles were passed around by animated versions of well-known artworks like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arles.” In August, the company launched a series of digital artworks on Coinbase’s Base blockchain that put combinations of the famous paintings and contemporary works onto its soda bottles in a series of digital images linked to NFTs. Coca-Cola’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola--masterpiece--collection-fetches-more-than--500-000-in" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">drop</a>&nbsp;brought in $543,000 from the sale of 80,000 tokens.</p>



<p>The virtual tactic taps into the existing markets of Coca-Cola superfans and vintage container collectors, some of whom are willing to spend up to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/history/collecting-coca-cola-bottles" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$4,000 at auction</a>&nbsp;for the rarest bottles. Coke’s NFTs, in comparison, allowed collectors the chance to buy in for $25 worth of ether to collect at the time of August 2023 sale.</p>



<p>There are also companies that are using NFTs to breathe new life into their loyalty programs. Starbucks, for example, launched a test version of its Odyssey loyalty program in December 2022, giving a select group of users access to online games and quests that generate NFT rewards. The tokens offer holders exclusive programs, including bonus Starbucks stars (the company’s loyalty points), access to specialty drinks, online cocktail-making classes and vacations.</p>



<p>Rewards are already coming in for existing Odyssey members. The top 20 points holders as of January 2024 will be invited to go on an all-expense paid trip to Costa Rica, where Starbucks owns its only coffee farm, according to a post on X by Odyssey executive&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/NFTbark/status/1740080645588889872?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Steve Kaczynski</a>.</p>



<p>Germany’s Lufthansa has taken a similar approach to loyalty, delivering commemorative NFTs for certain trips or destinations to users of the airline’s Uptrip platform, acting somewhat like digital stamps for passenger’s digital wallets. The service creates NFTs on the Polygon blockchain that can be&nbsp;<a href="https://lh-innovationhub.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/uptrip_pr_en.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">redeemed</a>&nbsp;for free in-flight WiFi, access to airport lounges and airline miles.</p>



<p>Technically, this kind of loyalty programs does not need to rely on blockchain technology to run, but using it could make the process cheaper, plus it gives Lufthansa&#8217;s customers the impression that the company embraces the latest tech. “Companies can have a lot of the tools of a loyalty program without having to build as much infrastructure,” says Paul Brody, global blockchain lead at consulting firm Ernst &amp; Young.</p>



<p>Because the goal of these collectibles is largely to keep users loyal to the issuing company, trading is discouraged, so you won&#8217;t see many of these NFTs racking up volume on marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur.</p>



<p>Still, Brody says, “it can turn out to be really great advertising…Your blockchain wallet is gonna become a bit like your public trophy case.”</p>



<p>The biggest hurdle companies may face in marketing– and expanding their markets–using NFTs may come from the nature of crypto assets. Getting hold of NFTs often includes adding browser extensions, obtaining a crypto wallet, creating lengthy passwords and transacting in digital currencies like ether, which can be daunting for the uninitiated.</p>



<p>That is part of the reason Nike’s Vasilev avoids the term NFT. It is also why RTFKT added an option to buy the physical sneaker first (without the NFT) using traditional credit card payment options instead of crypto. Doing so in the Dunk Genesis drop brought in new customers, Vasilev says, as 93% of buyers who bought the physical sneakers before the NFTs were first-time customers to RTFKT products. “We think this is a huge way to onboard new people,” he adds.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p>S<strong>neaker companies may</strong>&nbsp;represent the perfect marriage of NFT technology and brand marketing, in particular because top brands already cultivate young buyers via an active collectibles market. Following Nike, Adidas and Puma are launching their own blockchain-compatible collections.</p>



<p>German athleticwear giant Adidas has taken a combined physical and digital approach to using NFTs. In August, the company partnered with Japanese streetwear brand BAPE to release a limited 100-pair edition of virtual white sneakers that could be used to buy the physical counterpart. In partnership with MoonPay, a crypto payment platform, users bid on the 100 items for 72 hours, before collecting their digital pair. Each NFT was tradeable, but they could also be redeemed for Adidas’ Forum Low 84 sneakers in an exclusive Triple White color pattern for holders willing to burn, or destroy, the NFT. The highest bid for a single pair of sneakers was almost $4,000, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://etherscan.io/tx/0xce3e4c4da6d1835dd0730df56bba440843d2e68a56b43a6512f010d62d9cd378" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Etherscan</a>.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<p><strong><abbr>M</abbr>ost of Adidas’ NFT&nbsp;</strong>explorations have remained within the virtual walls of the metaverse, releasing goods on gaming platforms and participating in<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariagraciasantillanalinares/2023/04/02/as-a-list-designers-peddle-metaverse-merch-decentralands-fashion-week-makes-a-muted-return/">&nbsp;Metaverse Fashion Week&nbsp;</a>in 2023.</p>



<p>Puma has adapted strategies used by both of its rivals. After experimenting with made-to-order sneakers for physical versions of an NFT collection it released earlier in 2022, it pivoted to first selling tokens that could be redeemed for a limited editions version of an existing running shoe called Fast-RB. For now, however, it is focusing on uses for its Puma Pass, a token that gives users early access to more NFT collections and on digital wearables to be used on gaming platforms.</p>



<p>“Just creating a profile picture collection or a loyalty program is low-hanging fruit,” says Ivan Dashkov, head of emerging technologies at Puma, who sees creativity as the key to blockchain success. “You really need to think of new, novel ways to use [blockchain] technology to reach, to interact with your customer.”</p>



<p>The use of NFTs as a marketing tool is still in its infancy. Almost no existing corporate marketing program has taken steps to implement permanent NFT programs, says Brody.</p>



<p>The emphasis is on experimentation and consumer use and, as trading on once-sizzling hot marketplaces like OpenSea continues to languish, no one is talking about the secondary market for NFTs.</p>



<p>Says Brody, “We&#8217;re headed for a future that is more and more NFTs as souvenirs and as public trophies and not as transferrable financial assets.”</p>


BRITAIN-BLOCKCHAIN-NFT-TOKENS

Forget BoredApes And CryptoPunks, NFTs Are Making A Corporate Comeback


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



<p>Meta registered its highest-ever share price Friday, potentially completing the social media giant’s dramatic recovery amid Wall Street’s renewed faith in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has refocused the firm&#8217;s attention on improving bottom lines.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



<p>Shares of Meta climbed as much as 2.2% to $384.36 in Friday trading, eking out their prior intraday high of $384.33 set in September 2021.</p>



<p>Meta, which also broke its prior high closing share price of $382, capped a significant comeback from the stock’s 77% collapse from its 2021 peak to its November 2022 nadir.</p>



<p>The 2021-22 unraveling, though coming as worsening economic conditions and the threat of higher interest rates broadly weighed on technology stocks, notably coincided with Meta’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakim/2021/10/28/facebook-announces-new-name-meta/">name change</a>&nbsp;from Facebook to reflect the company’s shifting focus away from its core social media product and into Zuckerberg’s pet “metaverse” augmented and virtual reality passion project.</p>



<p>The metaverse push&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/07/26/metaverse-results-keep-getting-worse-at-meta/?sh=78e1c8672b24">proved</a>&nbsp;highly unpopular among investors, as the company’s augmented and virtual division reported $13.7 billion of operating losses in 2022.</p>



<p>But Meta shares came roaring back in 2023 as Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/03/14/meta-cuts-another-10000-jobs/?sh=1d164387725b">touted</a>&nbsp;the company’s “year of efficiency”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-lay-off-employees-metaverse-silicon-unit-wednesday-2023-10-03/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">marked</a>&nbsp;by more than 20,000 layoffs and a push to boost profits, an effort that began to bear fruit in Meta’s results as the company is fresh off of its most profitable quarter ever, generating $13.9 billion in cash during the quarter ending September 30, 2022.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



<p>Meta was the S&amp;P 500’s second-best performer of 2023, returning almost 200%. Its gains came during a broad rally for big tech stocks, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index rose more than 40% last year. Zuckerberg, who owns about 13% of the company, grew much richer as Meta stock soared. His $134 billion net worth Friday, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?sh=51ad6d243e06">as estimated</a> by Forbes, is the fifth-largest fortune in the world.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



<p>Meta is now within 2% of achieving a $1 trillion market capitalization for the first time in its history. Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia are the only companies in the world now valued at over $1 trillion. Meta’s roughly $985 billion market cap Friday made it the world’s seventh-most valuable company.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



<p>Meta will report fourth-quarter and full-year financial results February 1. Analysts expect Meta to report its most profitable year ever with a record $72.6 billion of projected EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), according to FactSet.</p>


Author: Forbes

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