The Pima County Sheriff’s Department issued a warning Monday about a scam circulating online that uses a fraudulent QR code to solicit money in connection with the search for Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie who has now been missing for more than 164 days.

In a statement posted to social media, the department said it had become aware of posts about the Guthrie investigation that include a QR code requesting payment. “The Pima County Sheriff’s Department is aware of posts circulating about the Guthrie Investigation that include a QR code requesting money,” the statement, issued under Sheriff Chris Nanos, read. “PCSD will never ask for money related to this case, or any investigation. Please do not send money to people you do not know or scan QR codes requesting payment.” The department urged the public to ignore and report any such posts rather than engage with them, adding, “Stay alert and help spread the word.”

The scam warning marks the latest instance of fraudulent activity tied to Guthrie’s disappearance since she went missing from her Catalina Foothills home outside Tucson on the night of January 31. It follows a fake GoFundMe campaign flagged by authorities in March and the guilty plea earlier this month of a California man, Derrick Anthony Callella, who admitted to sending fabricated ransom messages to Guthrie’s daughter, Annie, and her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, in February. Callella was charged with two counts of harassment using a telecommunications device and is scheduled for sentencing in September. Nanos had also previously addressed a separate demand letter that circulated on social media last month, telling a Tucson radio station he believed it was likely fake, noting that “the FBI has done a number of arrests for false or fake ransom notes.”

Guthrie was reported missing on February 1 after a friend alerted her family that she had not shown up for a scheduled church service. Family members searched her property before contacting the Pima County Sheriff’s Department around noon that day, and Nanos later confirmed a shift in the investigation’s framing, telling reporters, “I believe she was abducted.” Investigators have pointed to a range of physical evidence recovered from the scene, including bloodstains outside her front door later confirmed to belong to Guthrie, signs of forced entry, and doorbell camera footage recovered from backend systems showing a masked, armed individual tampering with the camera the morning of her disappearance. All members of the Guthrie family, including spouses, have been formally cleared as suspects in the case.

The renewed scam warning comes amid ongoing scrutiny of both the investigation’s pace and Savannah Guthrie’s continued public role while her mother remains missing. Guthrie was again absent from her seat on Monday’s broadcast of “Today,” replaced by co-host Sheinelle Jones for the second time in as many weeks, according to reporting from Jubilee Cast. In late June, Guthrie made an emotional on-air appeal to viewers following reports that one of the ransom notes sent to her family had claimed her mother was dead. “I just want to take the opportunity to ask people, to really to beg people to come forward. Somebody knows something,” Guthrie said at the time. “This is a new story today that is on your radar, but this is the life that my sister lives, I live, my brother lives, our extended families live, our children live every day. We are in agony.” She continued, “We cannot be at peace no matter how much I try to come out here every day and smile and find that joy, and I will, I promise I will, this is the moment to tell you that we need your help. We’re begging for your help. I’m not going to miss that opportunity. And so please, if you’re watching, no matter how small the reward is there, you can tell us. It can be anonymous. Please do the right thing for us, for our family, for our children. We love our mom. We’ll never stop looking for her, never.”

More recently, Guthrie issued a statement to Tucson-based outlet KOLD 13 News marking five months since her mother’s disappearance. “It is five months of agony and unending trauma for our family,” she said. “There is not a moment that goes by that we aren’t actively trying to find our mom. We thank the people of Tucson for holding her in their hearts, as well as both the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Office for their tireless work on behalf of our family. Bring her home.”

Separately, a new TMZ report citing an unnamed FBI source claimed that whoever took Guthrie panicked following her death and subsequently retreated from earlier money demands, though that account has not been independently confirmed by law enforcement and remains part of an active, unresolved investigation. No suspects have been officially named in the case, and no arrests directly tied to Guthrie’s disappearance have been made more than five months after she was reported missing.

Nanos has previously described the investigation’s continued reliance on forensic genealogy and DNA analysis as a central piece of the ongoing effort to identify a suspect, telling KOLD 13 News, “Especially when you throw in genealogy — now, you’ve got… this may not be the bad guy, but this person might be the bad guy’s relative three times over. So, that has to be broken down to see if this might be someone of interest to us.” The FBI has separately increased its financial reward in the case from $50,000 to $100,000 for information leading to Guthrie’s location or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance, part of a combined reward from the FBI, 88-CRIME and the Guthrie family that now totals more than $1.2 million.

Anyone with information related to Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance is urged to contact the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4900 or 88-CRIME at 520-882-7463. Digital photos, video or doorbell-camera footage can be submitted directly to the FBI at fbi.gov/findguthrie. Authorities have continued to stress that no legitimate communication from investigators will ever request money, and have asked the public to report any posts, emails or messages claiming otherwise as the search for Nancy Guthrie continues.

SK Hynix’s newly listed American depositary shares surged 23.85%, or $36.33, to $188.68 in Tuesday afternoon trading, erasing much of the losses from Monday’s historic single-day plunge and pushing the stock to a fresh high since its Nasdaq debut just four days earlier.

Tuesday’s rally capped one of the more volatile stretches in recent memory for a newly public company. SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts opened trading Friday, July 10, at $170 and closed their debut session up nearly 13% at $168.01, part of a $26.5 billion offering that marked the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company. The stock then plunged Monday alongside a broader rout in Korean markets, with the underlying Seoul-listed shares falling 15.4% in the stock’s worst single-day decline on record, dragging the ADR down as much as 9% and triggering a market-wide trading halt on South Korea’s Kospi index. By Tuesday, the stock had reversed sharply higher, climbing well above its earlier debut levels.

Several factors converged to drive Tuesday’s rebound. A cooler-than-expected June consumer price index report in the United States helped fuel a broader risk-on mood across markets, with the Nasdaq 100 rising roughly 1% and lifting sentiment across the chip and memory sector generally. South Korea’s Kospi staged its own V-shaped recovery Tuesday, aided in part by comments from SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son at the annual SoftBank World conference in Tokyo, where he predicted the artificial intelligence sector would require $5 trillion in annual investment by 2040 and dismissed concerns about an AI bubble.

The more immediate catalyst behind Tuesday’s sharp move, according to multiple market analysts, was the launch of new leveraged, single-stock exchange-traded funds tied directly to SK Hynix. GraniteShares launched both a 2x Long SK hynix Daily ETF, trading under the ticker SKUU, and a corresponding 2x Short version, SKDD, while ProShares rolled out its own 2x long single-stock fund, ProShares Ultra SK hynix, trading as SKHU. The introduction of those geared products, combined with the start of options trading on SKHY shares on U.S. exchanges Tuesday, pulled in heavy trading volume that amplified the stock’s underlying moves in both directions.

Daniel Kirsch, head of options at Piper Sandler, said the newly available options market was likely to draw significant short-term speculative activity. “Traders are expected to aggressively position for short-term trades betting on further gains in SK Hynix ADR this week,” Kirsch said, adding that demand for short-dated call options was likely to heat up further, with contracts expiring this Friday potentially attracting a rapid influx of retail investors. The most actively traded options contract as of Tuesday afternoon was a $185 strike call, with volume around 2,900 contracts, followed closely by a $145 strike put, while August calls with a $200 strike price also drew significant interest, with volume exceeding 1,500 contracts.

Analysts at research firm TradingKey cautioned that Monday’s rout stemmed more from technical correction and liquidity dynamics than from any fundamental deterioration in SK Hynix’s underlying business. “SK Hynix’s current decline stems more from technical corrections and liquidity shocks following excessive earlier gains, and the medium-term supply-demand dynamics of HBM have not undergone any directional shift,” the firm wrote, referring to high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chip category that has powered much of SK Hynix’s recent growth as a key supplier to Nvidia and other artificial intelligence infrastructure customers. UBS reiterated a buy rating on the stock in early July, raising its price target on the Korean shares to 3.2 million won and projecting SK Hynix’s 2026 operating profit would reach 32.7 trillion won, roughly 27% above the broader market consensus.

Not every analyst has turned uniformly bullish following the recent volatility. A separate analysis from FX Leaders cautioned that the ADR remains technically vulnerable, noting that a sustained rebound would require SKHY to reclaim and hold above the $162 to $168 range to restore confidence in the post-listing rally, while a break below the $149 to $150 zone, near the original IPO price, could open the door to further declines toward $145 or $140 if broader chip-sector weakness resumes. “Until the ADR premium narrows or Q2 earnings confirm that expectations remain achievable, investors may continue treating rallies with caution,” the firm wrote.

That premium has become a notable point of focus among analysts tracking the stock. According to Bloomberg, the premium for SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts over their Korean-listed shares had swelled to nearly 50% just three days after the stock’s U.S. trading debut, a gap some market strategists attribute to the ADR’s smaller, thinner float relative to the much larger pool of shares traded in Seoul, along with strong U.S. retail demand for direct exposure to the AI memory theme.

Tuesday’s rally lifted sentiment across the broader memory chip sector. Micron Technology shares rose roughly 5%, extending a rally that had already pushed Micron stock up 229% year to date through Monday’s close, following the company’s fiscal third-quarter results, which showed revenue of $41.46 billion and adjusted earnings of $25.11 per share. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra pointed to the “strategic value of memory in the AI era” in describing the results. SanDisk shares rose about 4% and Western Digital gained roughly 1%, while the Roundhill Memory ETF, a sector-focused fund with heavy weightings in Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron, climbed about 6%.

Analysts have generally cautioned that the combination of a newly listed stock, a comparatively thin float and the sudden introduction of leveraged trading products creates conditions ripe for outsized volatility in either direction. Investors considering exposure to SK Hynix at current levels have been advised by several market commentators to treat the leveraged single-stock ETFs specifically as short-term speculative trading tools rather than buy-and-hold investments, given the compounding and volatility decay risks disclosed by the funds’ own issuers, which note that investors can lose money even if the underlying stock rises over periods longer than a single trading day, and that a full loss of principal is possible within one session.

With SK Hynix’s formal second-quarter earnings report still pending and major cloud providers including Microsoft scheduled to report their own results later this month, analysts said the coming weeks are likely to offer a clearer signal on whether Tuesday’s sharp rebound reflects renewed confidence in the underlying AI memory demand story or simply another leg of the extreme volatility that has characterized the stock since its record-setting Nasdaq debut just four trading days ago.

The coffee chain is tapping artificial intelligence to develop in-house alternatives to systems by Microsoft and IBM that track inventory and manage equipment, Bloomberg News reported last week, after reviewing an internal presentation. According to the article, the Seattle-based company has been working for several years to replace Oracle’s point-of-sale system.

This will be disturbing news in Bengaluru and Hyderabad: Maintaining these very technologies for large multinationals like Starbucks is the bread and butter for the 6 million coders employed by India’s outsourcing industry.

The AI adoption craze is looming over what’s promising to be another lackluster earnings season for IT services exporters. Last week, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., the biggest among them, reported 0.4% growth in revenue over the previous three months after stripping out currency fluctuations, the slowest expansion in a year. While the company has shed 3% of its workforce in the past year to about 594,000, the spending on third-party specialist contractors to bridge the firm’s own skills gaps ate into revenue. Net profit margin shrank.

At smaller rival HCL Technologies Ltd., sales in the three months to June slipped 0.5% quarter-on-quarter after holding exchange rates constant. The management kept its annual revenue growth guidance of 1% to 4% unchanged, but it still ended up shrinking its employee base by nearly 3,300 people — the sharpest contraction in close to two years. For HCL Tech, too, a rise in subcontractor costs mitigated the wage savings.

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For 25 years, India’s software services firms have locked global corporate clients into lucrative contracts to implement and maintain packaged software. Before the arrival of AI tools, it wouldn’t have been cost-effective for a firm like Starbucks, whose business is beverage, to take an IBM system out of its shrink wrap and map it to every piece of kitchen equipment, maintenance schedules, and local technicians across a labyrinthine network of 40,000-plus stores globally. That’s the kind of stuff around which Indian IT vendors have built a $250 billion exports powerhouse.
Similarly, making sure that a multinational can safely add a new local payment method — or correctly reflect a discount or tax change — has been a lucrative annuity for Indian programmers. They specialize in testing for various scenarios that could make the cash registers go down even for a minute. Largely hidden from public view, they keep global supply chains working 24×7 by managing the data pipelines that sync third-party inventory tools with an enterprise’s own resource planning software.To be sure, these long-term, multimillion-dollar orders haven’t completely dried up. TCS shares jumped Monday after the company disclosed that it would be expanding the role it has played in managing the infrastructure and applications for ABB. The new mandate is to design and run the Zurich-based engineering giant’s network as a modern, AI-driven service. HCL Technologies recently won a 5.5-year, $1.14 billion contract to build an AI-driven operating model for a large European engineering and manufacturing conglomerate it didn’t name.

Still, the pricing of large outsourcing deals in the age of AI remains under a question mark. After all, clients will fully expect their suppliers to use fewer humans — and more AI — to keep their tech infrastructure running smoothly. Accordingly, they will pay them less than before.

As for customers embedding artificial intelligence in their own workflows, they’ll probably pay the upfront cost of gathering the unstructured data scattered around their firms and labeling everything correctly. But after a quarter or two, AI agents will use the cleaned-up data to write their own code. The annuity business will have a slow fade, with lumpy AI-related work helping to mask the decline for some time.

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Worse, as clients like Starbucks open their own direct engineering hubs in places like Bengaluru and Nashville — using AI to let small, in-house teams do the work of large code-writing armies — the middleman’s markup becomes an obvious target for cost-cutters.

While the stock market is still giving a thumbs up to any order wins, the NSE IT Index finished June 10% lower than five years ago. Even during the worst of the Global Financial Crisis, pessimism didn’t run this deep. Maybe the gloom is overdone, and US clients will eventually curb their enthusiasm for AI. They may come to realize that even as their token budgets go through the roof, their corporate data and workflows are slipping out of their control and going to frontier AI labs.

However, it’s also possible that investors have read the tea leaves right, and it’s the outsourcing firms that are yet to wake up and smell the coffee.

China’s economic growth slowed sharply between the start of April and end of June as weak demand domestically and the impact of the Iran war on oil prices overshadowed the country’s strong exports.

Official gross domestic product (GDP) figures showed that the world’s second largest economy grew in the second quarter of the year by 4.3%, below Beijing’s annual target.

The announcement comes a day after government data showed that China’s exports jumped by 27% in June compared to a year earlier.

In March, China cut the target to a range of 4.5%-5%, its lowest economic expansion goal since 1991 – a move some analysts say gives officials more flexibility in managing the economy.

The figures mark the first full quarter of GDP data since the start of the Iran war on 28 February and comes after a rise of 5% in the first quarter.

Separate data released on Wednesday highlighted the economic challenges Beijing is facing at home – including a long-running property market slump and weak consumer spending.

New home prices contracted again, although the 0.1% fall in June was at a slightly slower pace than the previous month.

But retail sales rose by 1% in June, improving from a 0.6% decrease in May.

Customs data for June, which was released on Tuesday, showed that China’s tech exports were boosted by soaring global demand for semiconductors to power artificial intelligence (AI) data centres.

Surging demand for Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) also gave a major boost to China’s exports – with monthly car exports topping one million for the first time.