AES

• Learn more at www.ceraweek.com
  HOUSTON, Feb. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The 42nd annual gathering of CERAWeek by S&P Global—the world's preeminent energy conference—will convene energy industry leaders, experts, government officials and policymakers, as well as leaders from the technology, financial and industrial communities, March 18-22 in Houston.
• "The increasing focus on energy transition following COP28 coincides with a growing realization of just how complex the road ahead will be," said Yergin.
• Meeting those challenges, and realizing the promise, of the new energy future will be the focus of the world's energy leaders at CERAWeek 2024 in Houston."
• The CERAWeek 2024 conference program will explore key themes related to:
  Energy Markets – How will supply and demand balance in a world of uncertainty?

• The real estate giant will relocate to Central Place Tower, a 560,000-square-foot office building in Arlington, Va. in late 2024.
• CoStar Group will occupy 175,000 square feet of commercial office space and employ 650 workers at the facility, located at 1201 Wilson Boulevard.
• CoStar Group joins additional businesses with headquarters of note in Arlington, including AES, Amazon, Boeing, Nestlé and RTX.
• CoStar Group will pay $13,951,900 to Arlington County to obtain sole use of the observation deck at 1201 Wilson Boulevard.

• Founded in 1975, Ecowas is one of eight regional economic communities recognised by the African Union to foster regional integration on the continent.
• Its main objective is to create a single, large trading bloc through economic cooperation.
• Intra-regional trade remains well below the levels of other regions and the west African economies still rely a lot on informal activities.
• These networks have encouraged the development of informal trade between west African countries and prevented the implementation of trade facilitation initiatives.

The integration conundrum

• Subject to constant climatic uncertainties, it includes some of the poorest and least developed countries in the world.
• Sahelian countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger depend more on regional trade than coastal countries, such as Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana or Nigeria.
• They tend to produce identical agricultural commodities, which they typically trade with other countries located on the Gulf of Guinea.
• Livestock trade between the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea is also highly dependent on free movement between west African countries.

The consequences

• Withdrawing from Ecowas is likely to have major consequences on the regional economy as a whole.
• Without free access to the ports of Cotonou, Lomé, Abidjan or Tema, Sahelian imports will be far more expensive.
• In addition, leaving Ecowas and its free movement protocol could have catastrophic consequences for millions of Sahelians who live in – or wish to migrate to – coastal cities.

Political motivations

• It is primarily motivated by the fact that the bloc’s approach to region-building is not confined to economic integration.
• Ecowas is also well-known for its robust involvement in peacekeeping and security operations to end conflict in the region.

Olivier Walther receives funding from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

• H2O.ai , the open source leader in Generative AI and machine learning, today announced a significant breakthrough in reducing the cost of inferencing through its integration with the Snowflake Data Cloud.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240129636509/en/
  The company's latest innovations, H2O.ai eScorer and its Snowflake Integration, enable organizations to deploy machine learning models directly into Snowflake as a user-defined function (UDF).
• "With H2O.ai scoring optimized for Snowflake, we are reducing the cost of inferencing by 3000%," said Sri Ambati, CEO and co-founder of H2O.ai.
• "With H2O.ai eScorer, we are confident that we can help organizations to improve their bottom line by reducing the cost of inferencing and improving efficiency."