Ivanka’s millions and Facebook’s ‘news credibility specialists’

Planet Business: The time has come to bury yourself in balls

An attendee at the CeBIT tech fair in Hanover, Germany, buries himself in a ball pit at the IBM stand. Photograph: Kriztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
An attendee at the CeBIT tech fair in Hanover, Germany, buries himself in a ball pit at the IBM stand. Photograph: Kriztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

In numbers: Ivanka and Jared

$82 million

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner earned at least this much in outside income last year, their first as unpaid "advisers" to Donald.

$5 million

READ MORE

Sum the president’s daughter reportedly earned in 2017 from her personal brand alone.

$289,000

Sum she received as an advance for her book, Women Who Work. Subtitled "Rewriting the Rules for Success", it has a 2.6 rating on Goodreads.com.

Image of the week: Big blue balls

Not sure exactly why this attendee at the CeBIT tech fair in Hanover, Germany, has buried themselves in a ball pit at the IBM stand, but who can blame them? Apart from hanging out with robots, there can't really be too many better things to do at a "business festival" than jump into a sea of plastic balls.

Indeed, the word is that ball pits are, in fact, all the rage at such shindigs, with tech exhibitors suspiciously keen on the idea that visitors throw off the lanyards of corporate-dom and embrace their inner child. IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty was one of the highest-profile adults to speak at the event, which was home to some of the world's most human robots all week.

Photograph: Kriztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

The lexicon: News credibility specialists

Facebook is hiring. Its Menlo Park, California, headquarters is – or at least, it was – in the market for some "news credibility specialists", or people who can help it figure out real news, fake news and the many shades of authenticity in between. This unleashed a torrent of weary people concluding this is tech-talk for "editors", or, if you prefer, "journalists". The job listing has since been changed to "news publisher specialists" – but not "publisher", as Facebook insists it isn't one of those.

Getting to know: Fabrizio Melegari

As the editorial director of Panini, maker of the official World Cup licensed sticker album, Fabrizio Melegari is one of the few Italians not completely distraught about this Italy-less World Cup. Founded in 1961 in Modena, Italy, the publisher of comics, graphic novels, children's magazines and endless collectables has annual sales of more than €600 million, with even the Minecraft generation of kids devoting substantial pocket money and endless playground trading hours to album completion.

Of Italy’s absence, Melegari told Bloomberg that “the fan inside each of us got hit hard”, but then “there’s always one big team missing”.

The list: Wetherspoon's Brexit menu

Pub chain JD Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin is an ardent Brexiteer. And hard Brexit tariffs or no hard Brexit tariffs, the lights won’t be going out in Wetherspoon’s across Britain once the UK leaves the European Union. On the contrary, they will be brightly-lit shrines to Martin’s non-EU vision.

1: Denbies Whitedowns. One of the sparkling wines that will replace champagne in Wetherspoon's after a menu review.

2: Denbies Whitedowns Rosé. More English sparkling wine for the English, only this time it's pink.

3: Hardys Sparkling Pinot Chardonnay. Australian wines may yet be the true winners in this political menu exercise.

4: Blue Moon Belgian White. Blue Moon is not actually Belgian, but merely a "Belgian-style" drink owned by the safely North American Molson-Coors. Phew!

5: Alcohol-free Adnams Ghost Ship. The replacement for newly villainous alkoholfrei Erdinger, this English pale ale's name is inspired by a haunted pub and is definitely not a homage to post-Brexit Britain.