Category: 3. Business

After three decades of teaching, mentoring, and pioneering academic and research programs at RIT, Professor Stephen Jacobs is retiring.

Jacobs worked as an adjunct faculty member in English and computing before becoming a full-time professor in 1995. As a video game expert, he taught courses in game programming and game design/narrative. Together with former faculty members Andy Phelps and Jeff Lasky, Jacobs wrote the proposal for RIT’s master’s degree in game design and development. Today, RIT’s games degrees are regularly ranked among the top 10 in the country.

With RIT’s MAGIC Spell Studios, Jacobs served as one of the original associate directors—focusing on industry relations. He collaborated to produce MAGIC’s first game on the Nintendo Switch platform, called The Original Mobile Games—a partnership with The Strong National Museum of Play and Second Avenue Learning.

Jacobs has also served as a steward for all things FOSS (free and open source software) at RIT. He helped create courses and programs on the subject and served as director of the Open@RIT research center.

“I’m not a traditional academic,” said Jacobs. “It’s been a pleasure to spend the last 30 years as an RIT professor.”

Below, Jacobs shares reflections from his time at RIT.

What has your long-term partnership with The Strong National Museum of Play meant to you?

I’ve been a Scholar-in-Residence since 2007. In that role, I’ve been able to serve as a member of exhibit design teams, co-create an online course in game design history that was nominated by students for an edX award as a best course, and help bring conferences to Rochester—like the upcoming 2025 Conference on BIPOC Games Studies. That kind of work, over the years, led to a Tourism Achievement Award from Visit Rochester.

We also enjoy bringing classes to The Strong every year. This year the “final exam” for my History and Design of Pinball class was to demo their analog and digital games at The Strong as part of a museum-wide pinball day we co-organized. I’ve also been working with them around my research on the Jewish History of the Toy and Games Industries in Germany and the U.S, which we’re developing into an exhibit for 2026.

Why do you champion open source for social good?

I was attracted to this world through the One Laptop Per Child initiative. They were providing low-cost laptops to children in developing countries. In 2009, I created an honors seminar for our students to make educational games for the One Laptop Per Child community.

Over 16 years that initial course grew into an immersion focusing on humanitarian open software development and an interdisciplinary minor—the only one of its kind in the world. It also led to our Open@RIT center to support faculty, staff, and students’ Open research and work. That center had us lead several workshops, join the Linux Foundation, and receive more than $1 million in awards to support its work over four years.  I received the Provost’s Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award in 2019-2020 (in part for this work) and the PI Millionaire award in 2023 for grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

How have you encouraged students to make lifelong connections outside the classroom?

Video games are an international industry, and it’s important to have international experiences on your résumé.

I began teaching travel-enhanced courses—ones that meet on-campus for a semester with international travel before or after the on-campus work—in 2014.  These courses established a model of spending a week in one town (in Paderborn, Germany for this one), holding a game jam over the weekend with the German students (a weekend-long, video game creating marathon), and then traveling elsewhere in country for a week to visit cultural sites and game studios. I taught this again in 2017 and 2019.

In 2018, I replicated the Germany model in Japan. We worked with Ritsumeikan University and the Kyoto Computer Gakuin, a long-time partner with RIT in international education. This year, in addition to the course’s regular visits to the CyberConnect2 video game studio and Hiroshima, we were able to attend World Expo in Osaka. As a result of this course, the vice president of CyberConnect2 and the global section chief of human resources for the company will be visiting RIT and The Strong to recruit our upcoming graduates to work in Japan and to explore the exhibits and research assets at The Strong.

CORK, Ireland, July 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson Controls International plc (NYSE: JCI), the global leader for smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, announces the following webcast: 

What: Johnson Controls Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call

When: Tuesday, July 29, 2025, at 8:30 a.m. ET

How: The conference call for investors can be accessed in the following ways:

• Live via webcast at http://investors.johnsoncontrols.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations Note: A slide presentation will be available that morning for downloading.
• Live via telephone (for "listen-only" participants and those who would like to ask a question) by dialing 855-979-6654 (in the United States) or +1-646-233-4753 (outside the United States) along with passcode 330296.

Replay: The replay can be accessed in the following ways:

• Replay via webcast – if you are unable to participate during the live webcast, the call will be archived at http://investors.johnsoncontrols.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations.
• Replay via telephone – by dialing 855-762-8306 (in the United States) or +1-845-709-8569 (outside the United States), passcode 949453, from 10:30 a.m. (ET) on July 29, 2025, until 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Aug. 12, 2025.

About Johnson Controls 
At Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI), we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. As the global leader in smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, our mission is to reimagine the performance of buildings to serve people, places and the planet. 

Building on a proud history of 140 years of innovation, we deliver the blueprint of the future for industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing and beyond through OpenBlue, our comprehensive digital offering. 

Today, Johnson Controls offers the world`s largest portfolio of building technology and software as well as service solutions from some of the most trusted names in the industry. 

Visit www.johnsoncontrols.com for more information and follow @Johnson Controls on social platforms. 

SOURCE Johnson Controls International plc

By Joy Wiltermuth

U.S. government bonds were under pressure for a fifth straight session on Tuesday after President Donald Trump threatened to apply higher tariffs on a group of trading partners in less than a month.

Trump said Monday that goods from Japan and South Korea would be hit with 25% tariffs on Aug. 1, while the rate on imports from Myanmar and Laos will rise to 40%. That’s up from a 10% baseline tariff since April.

Stocks recently touched record highs after an ugly selloff sparked by Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, which were paused three months ago but now are back on the table.

“It seems like every time the equity market loses steam, there’s a tendency for bond yields to rise,” said Tom di Galoma, a managing director at Mischler Financial Group, in a phone interview. “The old relationship, the flight to quality, just isn’t there anymore.”

Stocks were looking at a mixed open after the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA on Monday fell 0.9% to 44,345, logging its worst daily decline in roughly three weeks, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The S&P 500 index SPX shed 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP fell 0.9%.

Treasurys were under pressure early Tuesday, sending the 10-year yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y up 4 basis points to 4.42% and the 30-year yield BX:TMUBMUSD30Y 4 basis points higher to 4.96%. Bond yields and prices move opposite each other.

Yet all three stock indexes were less than 1.5% off their record levels, while bond yields have yet to ease back to their April lows as investors have been demanding higher yields to offset concerns about tariffs, inflation and U.S. debt and deficit levels.

Specifically, longer-duration Treasury yields were climbing for a fifth straight trading session, with the 30-year rate edging closer to its recent 5.089% peak on May 21.

Foreign investors remain a crucial part of the Treasury market. They held a record $9 trillion of Treasury debt, or 32% of the total, in the first quarter, according to Oxford Economics, using data from the Financial Accounts of the U.S. The eurozone was the biggest single group of owners among foreigners, followed by Japan, China and the U.K.

“Treasury yields today are selling off, as market participants continue to digest the stronger labor market report last Thursday,” said John Madziyire, head of U.S. Treasurys and TIPS at Vanguard, pointing to the monthly jobs report, which reflected more jobs being created than anticipated in June, but also that jobs aren’t easy to get.

See: The June jobs report is grimy under the hood. Here’s a few key numbers that tell us why.

Madziyire also said significant Treasury supply was poised to hit the market in the coming days, with the Treasury gearing up to issue $58 billion of 3-year paper on Tuesday, $39 billion of 10-year notes on Wednesday and $22 billion of 30-year bonds on Thursday.

Demand for longer-duration Treasurys has improved at recent auctions since peak “sell America” fears were gripping markets in April, he said.

Still, Madziyire said long-end Treasury auctions were again “critically important, not just as funding mechanisms but as sentiment barometers for the markets” in the wake of the Republican tax-and-spending bill becoming law.

The GOP bill makes corporate tax cuts permanent, temporarily reduces taxes on tips for some workers and cuts social programs like Medicaid, while increasing the U.S. debt ceiling by $5 trillion and adding an estimated $3.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

Read: Here’s when no taxes on overtime and tips, and other parts of Trump’s big bill, will kick in.

Robert Pavlik, a senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth Management, said that after April’s shock investors still were paying attention to new Trump tariff announcements but also viewing them as part of ongoing negotiations.

“It’s all up in the air,” Pavlik said. “What I’m not doing is making dramatic changes to my portfolio because of this.”

-Joy Wiltermuth

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Chiltern Vital Berkeley

The Rupee on Tuesday depreciated by 15 paisa against the US Dollar in the interbank trading and closed at Rs 284.36 against the previous day’s closing of Rs 284.21.

However, according to the Forex Association of Pakistan (FAP), the buying and selling rates of the dollar in the open market stood at Rs 285.7 and Rs 286.85 respectively.

The price of the Euro increased by Rs 0.48 to close at Rs 334.29 against the last day’s closing of Rs 333.81, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

The Japanese yen depreciated by 01 paisa and was traded at Rs1.94 against Rs.1.95, whereas an increase of Rs 1.06 was witnessed in the exchange rate of the British Pound, which was traded at Rs 387.71 as compared to the last day’s closing of Rs 386.65.

The exchange rates of the Emirates Dirham and the Saudi Riyal increased by 04 paisa and 05 paisa to close at Rs 77.41 and Rs 75.82 respectively.

Reporter: Ashraf Khan

Baker McKenzie client H2O America announced that its Texas water and wastewater utility subsidiaries, The Texas Water Company, Inc. (TWC) and Texas Water Operation Services, LLC (TWOS), have entered into respective agreements to acquire substantially all of the assets of Quadvest, a water and wastewater utility operating in the Houston metro area.

Led by M&A Partners Leif King and Justin Bryant, the core Baker McKenzie team includes:

• M&A – Leif King, Justin Bryant and Nick Woo
• Real Estate – Brian Zurawski, Sarah Swain and Francesca Gottardi
• Environment – Jessica Wicha
• Tax – Kai Kramer, Ross Staine and Joseph Chung
• Intellectual Property – Cynthia Cole and Richard Yang
• Employment & Benefits – Amanda Cohen, Camille Bagnall, Tom Asmar and M’Alyssa Mecenas

Learn more about the deal here: H2O America Significantly Expands Texas Footprint with Texas Subsidiary’s Acquisition of Quadvest

A transactional powerhouse with more than 2,500 deal lawyers in more than 40 jurisdictions, Baker McKenzie offers pragmatic counsel in the areas most critical for business. The team has advised on over USD 600 billion in M&A transactions in the last five years (Refinitiv; 2020-2024).

By Jules Rimmer

With thin liquidity and lots of market players absent, the third quarter can often be accompanied by market turmoil.

Historically, the summer months tend to witness the sharpest spikes in volatility and since the global financial crisis there have been multiple incidents of severe market disruption at this time of year. A note published by Deutsche Bank strategist Henry Allen investigates the possibility of another market shock in 2025.

Examples of previous summer crises, or at least third quarter, are legion: in 2024, the sudden unwind of the yen-carry trade trade triggered a major sell-off around the world and VIX VIX touched 65; in 2022, Fed chair Jerome Powell gave a hawkish speech and the Fed made their third consecutive 75 basis point hike to ward off inflation; 2015’s upheaval was sparked by a 43% slump in China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite CN:SHCOMP and fears of a Greek exit from the eurozone provoked chaos across European bourses; the global financial crisis of 2008 was catalyzed by Lehman’s bankruptcy, and the prequel to this crash was the bank run on Northern Rock and BNP Paribas’ freeze on funds owing to the subprime mortgage emergency in the summer of 2007.

Deutsche Bank’s Allen posted the most likely cause of a calamity this summer.

Chief among them, unsurprisingly, is the threat of trade war escalation. Trump has set another deadline now of Aug. 1 for the imposition of punitive tariffs on trading partners but markets have become accustomed to offers of compromise and worst-case scenarios being averted. This may not necessarily be the case this time given the policy unpredictability.

Allen also identifies the potential for inflation to start trending higher owing to the lagging impact of the tariffs already set. Bond and stock markets are discounting several Fed rate cuts in the second half of 2025 and malign CPI releases could price those out. On the flipside, weak economic data could also upset market sentiment and reawaken recessionary concerns.

Another source of developing tension is the fiscal dilemma facing not just the U.S. but several other G10 governments. Already this year, rising term risk premia – the extra return sought by investors for longer-duration instruments – has forced long bond yields higher in the U.S. BX:TMUBMUSD30Y , Japan BX:TMBMKJP-30Y and the U.K. BX:TMBMKGB-30Y Rising yields provide an immediate transmission mechanism for worries about funding high deficits.

Geopolitics have been a constant preoccupation of markets since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and their propensity to upset markets has been demonstrated by adverse reactions to conflicts in the Middle East and the sub-continent. Geopolitics are a major source of volatility at present and any number of conflicts threaten to erupt into something calamitous.

While none of the shocks to which markets have been subjected this year has seriously derailed risky assets, this has been in part because of the ability of policymakers to adapt and create an adequate response. Something from left field that can’t be addressed so easily is the unknown, unquantifiable threat.

-Jules Rimmer

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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