Day: May 13, 2023

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ROSEN, A GLOBALLY RECOGNIZED FIRM, Encourages Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. Investors to Secure Counsel Before Important Deadline in Securities Class Action – TDS, TDSPrU, TDSPrV

NEW YORK, May 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of securities of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. (the “Company” or “TDS”) (NYSE: TDS, TDSPrU, TDSPrV) between May 6, 2022 and November 3, 2022, both dates inclusive (the “Class Period”), of the important July 3, 2023 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased TDS securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the TDS class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=15807 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than July 3, 2023. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs’ Bar. Many of the firm’s attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, the Company and its subsidiary, United States Cellular Corporation (“UScellular”), made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) defendants had no reason to believe UScellular’s “free upgrade” promotional activity, which was tested and trialed during the second quarter of 2022, was effective at reducing the Company’s postpaid churn rate as they represented to investors, as opposed to merely adding new postpaid subscribers, when its churn rate was actually increasing or remaining constant over most quarters in the class period; (2) UScellular was not making progress with respect to its churn rate, as it represented to investors; (3) UScellular was not in fact balancing its promotional activity and its profitability; (4) due to extreme competition among postpaid carriers, UScellular did not have the flexibility to offset the costs from widespread, expensive promotions with price increases; and (5) as a result of the Companies’ decision for UScellular to continue engaging in heavy promotions to address its postpaid subscriber churn rate despite any lack of positive impact on churn rate, UScellular’s profitability substantially declined. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

To join the TDS class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=15807 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor’s ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

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Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
Toll Free: (866) 767-3653
Fax: (212) 202-3827
lrosen@rosenlegal.com
pkim@rosenlegal.com
cases@rosenlegal.com
www.rosenlegal.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8838498

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Tri Ri Asset Management announces launch of Flagship VC fund

NERW YORK, May 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tri Ri Asset Management (“TRAM”) today announced the launch of their flagship venture capital fund, the TRAM Venture Fund (“TRAM VF”), with a target size of USD 125 million. TRAM VF will be focused on the MENA region, with a particular emphasis in Pakistan. Tri Ri Asset Impact Fund, with a commitment of USD 50 million, serves as the fund’s anchor. TRAM VF is dedicated to serving the later-stage tech company growth needs in Pakistan and MENA. The new fund’s deployment will focus on investing in innovative early-stage and growth-stage tech companies and enabling them to emerge into market leaders in GCC, South Asia, and North Africa.

TRAM VF will meet the needs of local startups and help them to become regional and global competitors. The local tech industry has recently seen substantial expansion; yet, funding is falling behind the quick speed of change and technological adoption. This has drawn global technology businesses as well as international venture capitalists to the region. TRAM VF will further accelerate the growth of the VC ecosystem in order to meet the increasing demand for technology products and services.

Adeel Hussain, General Partner of TRAM VF stated: “Following the successful launch of our PE Impact fund last year, we are pleased to announce the launch of our Flagship VC Fund TRAM VF and its initial closure of $92 million. A particular thanks to our anchor investor, as well as the LP a Swiss family office, whose commitment demonstrates how ripe the region is for VC investments.”

Asad Ali, Co-CIO & Principal added: “We look forward to deploying our first flagship VC fund in a region with such complex growth. Scaling from our roots in Real Estate our capital deployment strategy has always been the core of our rapid growth. We will be able to use the same strategies to assist early stage startups within the region to leverage and grow their business. Our investment strategy is defined by a data-driven approach, specialized sourcing capabilities, and an uncompromising commitment to meaningful collaboration with entrepreneurs. We are more than just investors; we are also builders, utilising our team’s market experience to propel firms more precisely than generalist organisations. Supporting entrepreneurs is a privilege that we never take for granted.”

TRAM VF will utilize its differentiated market expertise and metrics-driven evaluation process, to invests across Fintech, healthcare, consumer, education, food security, real estate, fintech, B2B, Artificial Intelligence across the region.

About Tri Ri Asset Management:
Tri Ri Asset Management, is a concentrated, research-intensive, fundamental value investor in the public markets. Since 2019, Tri Ri has executed an aggressive but disciplined growth strategy, building a balanced portfolio of public market and real estate holdings.
As of March 2023, Tri Ri’s portfolio composed of USD 850 million in assets under management along with USD 1.2 billion in Co-investments and 7 renowned properties with over 1500 rooms.

Richard Haig
Investor.relations@tririasset.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8838768

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Insilico Medicine Founder and CEO to Give Keynote on Disease Modeling with AI at PEGS Boston

Abu Dhabi, May 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Insilico Medicine, a generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, announced that Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of the Company, will attend the PEGS Boston Summit from May 15-19. He will deliver a keynote presentation on “The State of the Science in Disease Modeling Across Diverse Indications” on May 15 at 11AM at the Hynes Convention Center and join in an interactive discussion on May 15 at 12:45PM.

In his presentation, Dr. Zhavoronkov will make the first announcement of peptide-based drug design strategies and Generative Biologics, a new engine that belongs to the company’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform Pharma.AI that leverages hundreds of millions of biological data points, machine learning algorithms, and generative biology models to build and design polypeptides from scratch.

A team of expert scientists are developing Pharma.AI at the Insilico Medicine Generative Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing Research and Development Center in Abu Dhabi, the region’s largest AI-powered biotechnology research center.

“We are at an exciting moment in the history of generative AI in drug discovery,” says Zhavoronkov. “Thanks to years of accumulated data and technological advances in generative AI, we can find targets and design new small molecules for hard-to-treat diseases with incredible speed and efficiency working in close partnership with pharmaceutical companies. We look forward to using generative AI to explore diverse drug development strategies.”

Insilico Medicine was one of the first companies to use generative adversarial autoencoders for de-novo drug discovery. In 2016, the Company introduced the earliest iternation of its generative biology tool for identifying novel targets with a publication in Nature Communications. Another publication followed in Oncotarget, demonstrating how Insilico could employ generative algorithms with reinforcement learning to design novel small molecules with predefined and optimized properties. By 2018, Insilico integrated generative biology and chemistry approaches into the commercially available Pharma.AI platform that accelerates the process of lead discovery from years to days, and is currently being utilized by 11 of 20 top pharmaceutical companies.

The Company has also utilized the platform to develop its own robust pipeline of assets, including two drugs – for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and COVID-19 – currently in clinical trials and many potentially best-in-class and first-in-class assets in preclinical stages of development available for licensing. In total, Insilico has 31 programs across 29 targets, including in fibrosis, oncology, immunology, and central nervous system disorders.

Zhavoronkov says PEGS, the world’s largest gathering of protein engineering and biotherapeutics experts, is the perfect setting for announcing the latest developments to Insilico’s platform. “We were instrumental in the early development of generative biology and generative chemistry, and now we’re advancing AI-designed drugs into clinical trials. It is truly a pivotal moment.”

About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, is connecting biology, chemistry, and clinical trials analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. In early 2023, the Company opened the Insilico Medicine Generative Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing Research and Development Centre in Abu Dhabi, the region’s largest AI-powered biotechnology research center. The R&D hub brings together global talent in artificial intelligence and software development to expand the capabilities of Insilico’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform, Pharma.AI, explore aging research and sustainable chemistry, and support the digital transformation of healthcare in the region.

For more information, visit www.insilico.com

Attachment

Brita Belli
Insilico Medicine
475-225-0843
brita@insilico.com

GlobeNewswire Distribution ID 8838633

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US leading company to invest $200m in Pakistan Salt industry

An American leading company in import, manufacture and supply of sea salt Miracle Saltworks Collective Incorporation says it is planning to invest nearly 200 million dollars in curating, processing, distributing and importing Pink Himalayan Salt in Pakistan.

This was stated during a briefing by top leadership Miracle Saltworks Collective Inc. (MSCI) to Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Masood Khan in Washington.

It was informed that Pakistan, with its geographical monopoly of the resource, has a huge reserves of Pink Salt with a potential earning of 12 billion dollars annually.

The investment would be made in preparing feasibility, reserve report, upgradation of mining procedures and processes, construction of world class processing and packaging facility and community development programs. According an estimate, the country possesses approximately 22.22 billion tons of the natural resource, concentrated mostly in Salt Range areas of Kala Bagh, Warcha, Khewra and Bahadur Khel, with an immense potential of kick-starting massive economic activity.

The delegation include President and CEO Ahmed N. Khan, Vice President Tad M. Ballantyne, CCO Muhammad M. Khan, Director Jeffry Meilander, and others. It was informed that currently Pakistan was retaining 70 million dollars only in lieu of export of this unique natural resource due to lack of policy framework and adequate facilities for processing, packaging and world-wide distribution.

Ambassador Masood Khan welcomed MSCI’s interest in making investment and promoting Pink Salt industry in the country. He said the government is committed to provide every possible facilitations to international investors and business community intending to invest in traditional and non-traditional sectors of the economy. The Ambassador said that Pakistan due to its unique geostrategic location is poised to serve a vast market of Central and West Asia, Middle East and North Africa.

The Ambassador assured leadership of Miracle Saltworks Collective Inc. of every possible support of the Embassy in facilitating early finalization and implementation of their business plan in the country.

Source: Radio Pakistan

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Few thousand participated in PTI’s protests: Sanaullah

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has said that only forty to forty-five thousand people participated in the protests which took place in the last week.

Addressing a presser in Islamabad on Saturday, the interior minister said that the trained terrorists of PTI looted banks, and violated the law of the land. He said Imran Khan is a cult who has been training the youth for his nefarious designs against the country.

He said Imran Khan looted sixty billion rupees from the national exchequer. He said Imran Khan and his wife are the real trustees of the Al Qadir Trust. He said Imran Khan, his wife; Shehzad Akbar and Farah Gogi are involved in looting this money of the nation.

The Interior Minister while specifically condemning the attack on Radio Pakistan Peshawar building said that PBC Peshawar is the historic asset of the nation. He said there could be no justification of attacking Radio Pakistan.

Source: Radio Pakistan

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Chinese students ‘virtually kidnapped’ in Australia

So-called “virtual kidnapping” scams are on the rise in the Australian state of New South Wales, police warned on Friday. The scammers dupe Chinese students into thinking they have to pay to avoid deportation, before extorting lucrative ransoms from the victims’ families.

Four such fake kidnappings have been reported to New South Wales Police in the last month alone, the police said a press release. In each case, Chinese international students were targeted.

The scam begins when a Chinese student receives a phone call from someone speaking Mandarin and claiming to be an official from a Chinese embassy, consulate, or police department. The scammer tells the victim that they have been implicated in a crime, and must pay a large sum of money to avoid deportation and prosecution.

The conversation then moves to chat apps such as WhatsApp and WeChat, where the victims are told to hand over up to AU$280,000 (US$186,000). Those unable to pay the full amount are instructed to take photos faking their own kidnappings and send them to the scammers, who then contact the students’ families back in China and extort the ransom money from them.

The scammers will continue to make threats and ransom demands until the families are unable to pay any more money, at which point they often contact law enforcement in China, NSW Police explained.

In one of the four cases recorded over the last month, the family of a 23-year-old female student paid a fake ransom of AU$270,000 before the student was tracked down by NSW Police officers. One 22-year-old woman handed over AU$20,000 before she was contacted by police, while two other teenage victims were found before any money was paid.

Chinese embassy police liaison officer Zhang Zhengping told Australia’s ABC News that law enforcement in China is working to crack down on the crime networks behind these scams. Chinese officials assured families that no government agents or officials would ever call students looking for money.

Source: Russia Today

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Pakistan: Pro-Khan Violent Protesters to Face Terror Trials

Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership Saturday vowed to hunt down and bring to justice all those involved in acts of violence during this week’s protests sparked by the brief arrest of the country’s popular former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“I have given law enforcement apparatus a target of 72 hours to arrest all those involved in facilitating, abetting and perpetrating the disgraceful incidents of arson, ransacking, sabotage and damaging public and private properties,” incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.

“Bringing these people to justice is a test case for the government. Their cases will be tried by the anti-terrorism courts,” he noted.

Pakistan’s military chief, General Asim Munir, backed Sharif’s resolve in a separate statement Saturday.

“The armed forces will not tolerate any further attempt to violate the sanctity and security of its installations or vandalism and resolve to bring to justice all the planners, abetters, instigators, and executors of vandalism,” a military statement quoted Munir as saying.

The government announced the crackdown as police have already rounded up nearly 3,000 supporters of Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, for their alleged role in several days of nationwide protests.

Detention sparks protests

Lingering political tensions escalated Tuesday after Pakistani paramilitary forces dragged and arrested Khan in the capital, Islamabad, from outside a courtroom as he prepared to attend a hearing in a legal challenge against him.

The detention of the 70-year-old cricket star-turned-prime minister on corruption charges sparked protests across Pakistan, some of which turned violent.

The Supreme Court declared the arrest unlawful, however, and Thursday ordered Khan to be set free, effectively defusing the street agitation, which saw protesters allegedly torching vehicles and state property.

Protesters also stormed the main gate of the military’s general headquarters in Rawalpindi, while others broke into the residence of a regional army commander in the eastern city of Lahore. In the northwestern city of Peshawar, protesters set fire to the building which is the home of the state-run radio station.

The violence killed at least 10 people and wounded several hundred, including police officers. Khan alleged that ‘live fire’ by security forces had killed at least 40 protesters.

Court bars arrest of Khan

On Friday, a federal high court barred police from arresting Khan for two weeks, enabling him to leave Islamabad hours later for his home in his native Lahore. He has faced dozens of cases, ranging from corruption and treason to terrorism and murder, since a parliamentary vote of no-confidence removed him from office less than four years into his term.

Khan rejects all the allegations and has persistently accused the powerful military of being behind the legal challenges to get him disqualified to block his return to power and ban his PTI party, the country’s largest political force.

Military officials reject the charges, and Sharif’s government insists corruption cases against the deposed prime minister are “genuine” and alleges the judiciary is being soft on Khan.

“Nobody can eliminate a political party by force and put them in jail,” Khan said in a televised address Saturday. His speech was streamed live on social media, including YouTube, because the government has barred local television channels from airing Khan’s statements.

He rejected allegations that PTI supporters were responsible for acts of violence during the protests and accused pro-government “infiltrators” of the incidents of arson and riots. Khan demanded an impartial investigation into the events starting with his unlawful arrest.

After protests broke out Tuesday, the government blocked internet access to social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter across Pakistan and restored them partially late Friday. But the services again were inaccessible Saturday.

Source: Voice of America

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Here is Why China Can’t Save the Global Economy

As the rest of the world teeters on the brink of recession, the last thing Western policymakers want is for China, the biggest driver of global economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis, to have a lopsided recovery. But that is what is unfolding.

After abandoning its three-year zero-COVID policy in December, the world’s second-largest economy isn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

China’s imports contracted sharply in April by 7.9%, while exports grew at a slower pace of 8.5% compared to 14.8% in March. Consumer prices rose at the slowest pace in more than two years in April, while factory gate deflation, prices offered by China’s industrial wholesalers, deepened.

Meanwhile, new bank loans tumbled far more sharply than expected in April, with lenders extending 718.8 billion yuan ($104 billion) in new yuan loans in the month, less than a fifth of March’s tally.

Is China’s Golden Era Over?

“China’s economy is not about to implode but it is not roaring back to the golden decade of the 2010s when it grew at a double-digit level,” Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the London-based School of Oriental and African Studies, told DW.

A strong rebound from China would help offset an expected slowdown in other parts of the world, spurred by monetary tightening policies by central banks over the past 12-18 months.

China’s huge stimulus after the 2008/09 financial crisis helped the global economy recover, partly due to the Asian country’s insatiable appetite for imported raw materials for infrastructure projects.

China’s unsold properties are weighing on the housing market

But those past stimulus measures have left China mired in a mountain of debt. In March, the International Monetary Fund warned that Chinese local government debt alone has risen to a record 66 trillion yuan, equivalent to half the country’s GDP.

Tsang said those Western policymakers praying for China to revive their economies now will need to “look at the new political and economic realities without tainted glasses.”

Taiwan Threat Leaves China Isolated

China’s threat to invade Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own island, continues to antagonize the West. Beijing’s friendly ties with Moscow and neutrality over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are other contentious issues that have put global economic collaboration at risk.

“In terms of Taiwan, rising tensions or war would lead to a seismic shift,” Pushan Dutt, professor of economics at INSEAD business school in Singapore, told DW. “Multinational companies would exit China, its export markets will get closed off and sanctions will be put in place.”

Trump-era trade tensions between Beijing and Washington have also persisted through US President Joe Biden’s administration. Tit-for-tat tariffs led to US sanctions on several Chinese companies and officials. Washington has even restricted China’s access to its semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) technology on national security grounds.

Tsang noted:

The assertive foreign policy that Chinese President Xi Jinping has imposed caused the US and other Western countries to start to decouple or de-risk in their economic links with China, meaning that a key factor that had previously supported rapid growth in China is weakening,”

Western policymakers are increasingly seeing China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a threat to their interests. Often dubbed the New Silk Road, the initiative is an $840 billion investment in roads, bridges, ports, and hospitals in more than 150 nations.

Concerns are growing that the project has lured developing countries into debt traps with huge, unaffordable loans while weakening their ties with Western countries.

Last month, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde also lamented the possible fragmentation of the global economy into rival blocs led by China and the US, warning it would harm growth and increase inflation.

Beijing Prioritizes ‘Quality Growth’

Another’s reason for China’s less-than-stellar recovery is Beijing’s strategic plan to move the economy up the value chain, prioritizing quality rather than quantity of growth. These reforms, however, take time.

“China has been trying to engineer a shift from being a low-end manufacturer to becoming dominant in the industries of the future (artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, etc.),” said Dutt.

As it moves away from heavy industries dominated by state-owned companies toward innovation and domestic consumption, a slowdown in growth is a “natural corollary,” he added.

Xi Holding the Economy Back

Tsang told DW that while Xi clearly wanted the Chinese economy to become more dynamic, vibrant, strong, and innovative, “his policies often deliver the opposite effect.”

“With Xi tightening his hold on power and not admitting to mistakes, it is practically impossible for technocrats in China to make the necessary adjustments to revitalize the economy,” Tsang added.

At the same time, the IMF has predicted that China will continue to be the largest driver of global economic growth over the next five years, contributing some 22.6% of total world growth, compared with just 11.3% for the United States.

While slowing Western demand will continue to negatively impact Chinese exports, the domestic economy still has plenty to cheer about, especially due to the pent-up demand from three years of COVID lockdowns.

“Chinese consumers have accumulated $2.6 trillion of excess savings during the pandemic”, Dutt told DW. “So expect the services sector to pick up the slack in the short term.”

Source: Pro Pakistani