Chicago’s ‘Reader’ To Return To A Weekly Print Schedule (mediapost.com)

The American Trucking Associations is calling on Congress to help resolve ongoing labor negotiations in the freight rail industry should the parties fail to reach a mutual agreement when the current cooling off period expires on September 16. The trucking industry is freight rail’s largest customer, and in a letter sent to Capitol Hill today, ATA is warning of dire consequences for the U.S. supply chain if a strike were to go into effect. “Idling all 7,000 long distance daily freight trains in the U.S. would require more than 460,000 additional long-haul trucks every day, which is not possible based on equipment availability and an existing shortage of 80,000 drivers,” said ATA President and CEO Chris Spear in the letter. “As such, any rail service disruption will create havoc in the supply chain and fuel inflationary pressures across the board.” The letter urges Congress to help implement a contract patterned on the recommendations outlined by the Presidential Emergency Board and cautions against merely extending the negotiation timeline further, which would push a potential strike deeper into the holiday season when the supply chain is already under added pressure.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Wiley announced the launch of Wiley AI Partnerships: A Co-Innovation Program. This initiative aims to develop new AI applications, assistants, and agents in partnership with innovative companies, to empower researchers and practitioners and help drive the pace, efficiency and accuracy of scientific discovery. A new Wiley survey revealed that 69% of researchers want to keep up with or be ahead of the curve in AI adoption in their field. At the same time, they require better tools to streamline their research and are looking for guidance and training about how to use AI responsibly and effectively. This new program is intended to help solve these challenges in collaboration with partner companies and researchers with the goal of improving the efficiency and caliber of research worldwide. “Researchers and practitioners are seeking more than generic AI tools – they need relevant applications that enhance and support their research endeavors. This new partnership program is designed to meet these needs by inviting collaboration with start-ups and scale-ups to deliver specialized AI solutions,” said Josh Jarrett, Senior Vice President and General Manager for AI Growth at Wiley. “Our goal is to accelerate AI tool development to unlock new discoveries, empower researchers to uncover hypotheses, run analyses at scale, simulate experiments before wet lab investment, connect findings to existing research, and enable global collaboration.”

WBA second quarter sales increased 3.3 percent from the year-ago quarter to $34.9 billion, an increase of 4.5 percent on a constant currency basis. Operating income was $0.2 billion in the second quarter compared to $1.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. Operating income in the quarter reflects a $306 million pre-tax charge for opioid-related claims and litigation, Summit Health acquisition costs and higher costs related to the Transformational Cost Management Program. Net earnings in the second quarter were $703 million compared to $883 million in the year-ago quarter. This decrease is driven by lower operating income partially offset by a $454 million after-tax gain from the partial sale of the Company's equity method investment in AmerisourceBergen. Net cash provided by operating activities was $745 million in the second quarter.