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With the start-up industry getting a boost in Indian markets, experienced professionals as well as students are switching their interests to the fresh players. A recent report published in Economic Times makes the picture clearer by explaining how and why and from where these young firms are getting manpower? 
 The report says that higher risk and potentiality to identify the higher return capability is leading Indian executives to make the shift. Apart from that, autonomy and potentially handsome returns is creating ways for experts to give up less demanding jobs in the corporate world and to enter the high-risk, high churn <keyword id="2958974" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="startup-workforce">startup workforce</keyword>. 
 
The report also points out the shift as a ‘tough decision’ as it's not any easier to decide on the best time to join a start-up as they come in all shapes and forms which, in no time, turn out into an organizational structure as soon as they start growing. 
 
As per the experts, what matters the most is the stage at which you are joining it, which depends on what you are looking for. The results came after industry insiders evaluated the start-ups for risk, reward, and the talent that you bring to it. 
 <keyword id="2905804" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Aneesh-Passi">Aneesh Passi</keyword>, <keyword id="170488" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="co-founder">co-founder</keyword> <keyword id="2905805" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Basil-Advisors">Basil Advisors</keyword>, which recruits C-level executives for new enterprises says, “Junior or mid-level employees might be interested in going to the bigger, established startups as a positive career move, but mid to senior-level executives are keen to join companies in the Series-A and B stage where they can build something bigger and meatier." 
 <keyword id="2958973" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="TaxiForSure-co-founder">TaxiForSure co-founder</keyword> Raghunandan G says that the proverbial garage exists only at the ideation stage, before the startup has garnered any recognition. "You have to be extremely ambitious and aspirational to join a startup at that stage," feels the IIM-A graduate, who assembled a great core team that left the company once it was sold to Ola to found their own companies or take up senior roles in other startups. "You will be shadowing the employer and learn a lot of things, and will be more likely to get promoted," he added. 
 
If you are a senior executive thinking of jumping into the startup bandwagon, it may be better to wait until startups have found their feet and are in need of experienced managerial guidance. 
 
Image: thinkstock

Planning to switch to a start-up? Read this to know the right time for it.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Ukraine has pushed Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea after two years of strikes.</li><li>But retaking the peninsula will be extremely hard, military experts told BI.</li></ul>Ukraine has dealt a massive blow to Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.Russia has retained control of Crimea since invading and annexing the peninsula in 2014 and secured Sevastopol as the headquarters for its Black Sea Fleet.But following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine has repeatedly struck back in the region, destroying or damaging around half of the Russian fleet's warships, including one submarine, according to <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/warships-in-russia-black-sea-fleet-that-ukraine-wiped-out-2024-2">publicly available information</a>.It has used aerial drones, <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sea-drones-change-naval-warfare-give-smaller-navies-edge-expert-2024-7">sea drones</a>, and anti-ship missiles against the fleet and the <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-no-longer-using-kerch-crimea-bridge-military-supply-molfar-2024-5">Kerch Bridge,</a> to often devastating effect. Ukraine's campaign even pushed Russian warships to <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-images-show-black-sea-fleet-running-away-crimea-ukraine-2024-6">withdraw</a> from Crimea to bases in the port cities of Feodosia, on the far side of Crimea, and Novorossiysk, in Russia.It is degrading the peninsula as a key logistics route to its occupying forces across southern Ukraine and tainting its attractiveness to Russians as a summertime beach destination. But if Ukraine hopes to follow through on its pledges to retake Crimea, it will need a huge assault force steeled for what's likely to be the hardest fight of a bloody war."Retaking Crimea would be extremely difficult because Crimea is essentially an island," Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps colonel who's a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI."An amphibious assault is impossible because Ukraine lacks ships to carry large numbers of troops and their heavy equipment," he said, adding: "Further, Russia still has long-range aircraft and submarines, which are essentially invulnerable at sea."Russia has a vast military infrastructure across Crimea that will have to be severely damaged in order for Ukraine to have a chance to seize it back, according to Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK.He said Ukraine "would first need to prepare the terrain by destroying or seriously degrading all of Russia's air, air defense, missile defense, communication, and electronic warfare equipment and capabilities in Crimea and perhaps the Kerch Bridge."<div type="image" title="The Crimea peninsula's geography poses unique risks for Ukraine to assault and challenges for Russian forces to try to hold." height="1500" width="2000" msid="112243721" hostid="261" sizebytes="269662"></div><h2 id="ec0fab4a-b338-4365-b533-ee4003786a22">A challenging location</h2>Reaching Crimea has proven challenging due to its location away from the front lines, Russia's heavily fortified defensive lines, and Ukraine's lack of manpower and airpower, military experts and analysts told BI."Crimea is deep inside Russian-occupied territory and far from the current front lines," Cancian said.And Russia has heavily <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fortifies-600-mile-front-line-with-trenches-mines-reports-2023-5">fortified</a> its 600-mile front line with anti-tank ditches, mazes of trenches, 'dragon's teeth' barricades, and minefields, with much of its defenses in northern Crimea."The Russians are heavily fortified and well-defended in these areas, and it will take time for the Ukrainians to break these defenses," said Mark Temnycky, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, who added that troops are proceeding with "extreme caution."Without the options to ferry a large assault force by air or water, Ukraine will be forced to attack through Russian defensive lines to approach Crimea. Furthermore, were Russia to lose its hold on Kherson, it could mine and concentrate firepower on the few land approaches to Crimea, using similar tactics to those that stopped Ukraine's 2023 <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-ukrainian-counteroffensive-ran-into-trouble-2023-11">counteroffensive</a>."Without an amphibious naval force to land in Crimea, how can Ukraine project enough troops onto the peninsula to claim its control?" said Germond of Lancaster University.Ukraine <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-missile-attack-naval-base-helps-make-crimea-untenable-russia-2023-9">has</a> <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-may-have-struck-tsiklon-russia-last-missile-carrier-crimea-2024-5">resorted</a> to <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-prized-s400-launchers-blasted-crimea-strike-ukraine-says-2024-4">hitting</a> Russia's air defenses in Crimea with missiles and long-range weapons, including US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS.Last month, war analysts from The Institute for the Study of War <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-strikes-russia-crimea-air-defenses-end-military-role-experts-2024-6">said</a> Ukraine's sustained attacks against Russia's air defenses could render Crimea untenable as a military staging ground.But they also <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-puts-military-near-civilians-crimea-deter-ukraine-strikes-isw-2024-6">noted</a> that Russia was likely placing military facilities near civilians to try to deter further Ukrainian strikes.Last month, Russian-installed Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://t.me/razvozhaev/6925">claimed</a> that a Ukrainian strike killed four people and injured 151 people."Millions of citizens live on the peninsula, and the Ukrainians do not want to harm the civilian population," Temnycky said.Any Crimea assault comes down to numbers. Russia aims to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/24/i-know-we-will-win-and-how-ukraines-top-general-on-turning-the-tables-against-russia">commit</a> 690,000 troops to the war by year's end, a large build-up that could bolster the Russian troops and Ukrainian conscripts on Crimea, a force perhaps 60,000- to 80,000-strong. It's likely Russia could commit well over 100,000 were Crimea to be threatened.To have the best chance to push through their defenses, Ukraine is likely to need a well-supplied force three to five times the size of the defenders — a guideline that would balloon any operation to many times the size of the 2023 counteroffensive.Benjamin Friedman, policy director at the Defense Priorities think tank, said that Ukraine lacks the manpower and air cover required to go on the offensive in a "major way.""Even with F-16s, I don't think Ukraine has the ability to provide its ground forces effective close air support, given Russian air defense capability," he told BI.<div type="image" title="An explosion in a field." height="729" width="1024" msid="112243722" hostid="261" sizebytes="38248"></div><h2 id="d2bc26cb-7fab-4d99-815d-d74106b0c0a6">Retaking Crimea</h2>Despite the battleground challenges Ukraine faces, some experts believe it could retake Crimea with enough weapons, troops and time.This would involve crossing the Isthmus of Pereko, separating Crimea from mainland Ukraine, or crossing the marshes to the east, called Sivash, to reach Crimea."That's what happened during World War II, when the Germans captured Crimea in 1942, and the Soviets recaptured it in 1944," Cancian said.However, to do this, Ukraine first needs to break through Russia's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-front-line-forces-fighting-through-russia-surovikin-line-2023-9">Suvorikin Line</a>, a complex system of defensive fortifications and obstacles across Russian-occupied territory in southern and eastern Ukraine that Ukraine has never pierced through. A force that advances through this also faces a high risk of becoming bottlenecked on the few land approaches and destroyed by the short- and long-range firepower Russia would almost be certain to bear.According to Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the German think tank European Resilience Initiative Center, the question now is "when Ukraine will accumulate so much firepower, not just artillery, but also air force, so they manage to push through these defensive lines and then reach the operative space" of Crimea.If and when Ukrainian soldiers do reach Crimea, Sumlenny said, they will be able to destroy the Kerch Bridge and the last ferry road over the Sea of Azov, cutting off all of Russia's supply lines to the peninsula and isolating Russian forces. Using long-range missiles to cut-off supply lines was a crucial element of Ukraine's grinding and successful liberation of the city of Kherson in late 2022.Sumlenny added that Crimea has historically been vulnerable to offensives."There is no case in history when anyone could defend Crimea from an attack," he said.In 1921, the Soviet Union's Red Army <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-russian-civil-war/">crushed</a> the White Russians and took control of the peninsula, and in 1941, the Axis powers <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/operation-barbarossa-and-germanys-failure-in-the-soviet-union">invaded</a> the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, with their land forces laying siege to Sevastopol.The Red Army launched a massive counter-attack in late 1943 with 2.6 million men that pushed the Germans back and weakened their hold on Crimea. After two and a half years of German occupation, a Soviet force of over 450,000 <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Crimea/History">regained</a> control of Crimea in 1944.It was <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give-away-crimea-sixty-years-ago">transferred</a> to Soviet Ukraine — one of the republics of the Soviet Union — in 1954, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence in 1991.Finally, in 2014, Russian forces invaded and occupied the peninsula before annexing it."If you look at all the cases when armies were clearly ready to fight and defend their positions, we can say that Crimea is practically an undefendable fortress," Sumlenny said."So, from my perspective, the moment the Ukrainian army will appear on the land bridge — the Isthmus of Pereko — between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, the Russians will face a very simple choice," he said, "either they retreat immediately from Crimea or get slaughtered or captured."Other experts, however, struck a more cautious tone.Temnycky said a full-scale invasion to try to retake Crimea is "very unlikely" due to the huge Ukrainian losses that would result.Friedman, meanwhile, said such an operation would require a "cataclysmic Russian collapse," which he said is "extremely unlikely though not impossible."Indeed, there have been <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-general-warns-russia-nuclear-weapon-stalemate-ukraine-war-2023-1">fears</a> that Russia would consider nuclear force if its troops were on the brink of losing Crimea.Cancian said that "because of its difficulty, retaking Crimea would be the last event of the war, not an intermediate event."

Ukraine pushed Russia's Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea but retaking the peninsula will be incredibly hard

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Divisions between <keyword id="473304" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Progressive">progressive</keyword> and moderate Democrats have boiled over following unexpected House losses and President-elect <keyword id="99719" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Joe-Biden">Joe Biden</keyword>'s win.</li><li>The public fight over congressional losses is just the first of what will likely be several flashpoints for Democrats in the coming months.</li><li>Democratic operatives across the ideological spectrum told Business Insider that the truce that progressives reached with more-moderate Democrats to unify behind Biden's candidacy was over.</li></ul>President-elect Joe Biden hadn't yet won the election when <keyword id="155982" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Democratic-Party">Democratic Party</keyword> divisions spilled into public view.During a House caucus call on Thursday, <keyword id="3745291" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="centrist">centrist</keyword> Democrats lashed out at their progressive colleagues, arguing that calls for democratic socialism and defunding law enforcement were to blame for the party's shocking loss of at least half a dozen swing-district House seats."We need to not ever use the word 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again ... We lost good members because of that," Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat who prevailed in a tough reelection race, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-democrats-pelosi-election/2020/11/05/1ddae5ca-1f6e-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html">said on the call</a>. "If we are classifying Tuesday as a success ... we will get f---ing torn apart in 2022."After the call was leaked to reporters, Rep. <keyword id="7018494" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</keyword> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-spars-with-centrist-democrats-after-unexpected-house-losses-2020-11">accused her more conservative colleagues</a> of "finger pointing" and failing to take responsibility for their own strategic shortcomings."It's irresponsible to pour gasoline on these already very delicate tensions in the party," Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/11/08/sotu-aoc-full.cnn">told CNN</a> on Sunday. In a Saturday <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/us/politics/aoc-biden-progressives.html">interview with The New York Times</a>, she described some vulnerable Democrats' underinvestment in Facebook ads and other digital efforts as "criminal" and "malpractice."Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/progressives-biden-administration-cabinet-sanders-warren-2020-11">30 top progressives ready to cajole the incoming Biden administration from its left flank</a>A few more moderate Democrats, including Rep. Conor Lamb, who won a competitive reelection race in western Pennsylvania, and Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, pushed back.Democratic operatives across the ideological spectrum told Business Insider that the truce that progressives reached with moderate Democrats to unify behind Biden's candidacy last spring had expired. They said they expected progressives and centrists to continue to butt heads over the House speakership, leadership of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Biden's Cabinet, and legislative priorities in the new year.<div type="image" title="House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer" height="750" width="1500" msid="79153109" hostid="261"></div><h2>Democratic flashpoints on the horizon</h2>Some on the left have argued that establishment and moderate Democrats should be taking cues from the left and, as Ocasio-Cortez has advocated, taking advantage of the messaging skills they've honed.Rebecca Katz, a progressive operative and former advisor to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, said centrist Democrats failed to deliver anything besides an anti-Trump message. She said the party needed a stronger proactive message on the economy and bringing down healthcare costs."You can't blame moderate losses on the left. That's just ridiculous," Katz told Business Insider. "When their incumbents went down in Democratic primaries, they never thought 'What is the left doing that we're not?'"Ian Russell, a former deputy executive director of the DCCC, said Democratic losses could likely be chalked up to damaging GOP attacks on left-wing talking points and to various tactical shortcomings. He called for an honest postmortem but said it was impossible to diagnose the problems without the relevant data."It's not going to be pleasant, but we need to hold ourselves accountable, and we need to be clear-eyed and cold-blooded in our analysis," Russell told Business Insider.Rep. Cheri Bustos announced on Monday that she would step down as head of the DCCC following the party's poor showing last week. Battles over leadership of the DCCC and discussions over whether House Speaker <keyword id="128640" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nancy-Pelosi">Nancy Pelosi</keyword> should serve another term are likely to further divide progressives and <keyword id="2391051" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="moderates">moderates</keyword>.Basil Smikle, a Democratic political consultant and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, predicted that Democrats' first "big test" of intraparty relations would come with the stimulus negotiations. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/11/06/pelosi-mcconnell-economic-stimulus/">have resumed talks</a> over an economic-relief bill, and Democrats would be forced to compromise to pass one during the postelection lame-duck period.Senate Republicans have been even less willing than the Trump administration to sign off on a multitrillion-dollar relief package."It's not likely that Democrats are going to get a lot of what they want," Smikle said. "I would imagine this is a moment that progressives are going to ask for a lot — it's not unwarranted ... but perhaps the speaker and Biden himself, who has articulated that he's going to work across the aisle, may not feel it's the time for it."There's a consensus that the party will be forced to reunite in 2021 to maintain its majority in the midterms. But left-wing voices outside Washington have urged progressives to be loud in their opposition to moderate Democrats' demands on all fronts."I hope the truce, to the extent there was one, is over, and I hope we start firing on all cylinders and firing shots across the bow," Corbin Trent, Ocasio-Cortez's former press secretary, told Business Insider, adding that the centrist Democrats "are as much our enemy.""They brought us Trump," Trent said. "They'll deliver us Tom Cotton."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressives' delicate truce with centrist Democrats is over, and the battle over the party's future is already heating up

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">AP Photo/Matt RourkeAn officer stand guard over a fraction of the cocaine seized from a ship at a Philadelphia port that was displayed at a news conference at the U.S. Custom House in Philadelphia, Friday, June 21, 2019.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>It's getting tougher to move drugs through land ports as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/trump">President Donald Trump</a> leads a crackdown on the southern US border.</li><li>That's forced smugglers to start moving drugs through ocean freighters, experts say.</li><li>2019 has seen multiple record-breaking drug busts on the massive ocean vessels at US ports. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul>As President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/29/border-patrol-struggling-to-hire-5000-agents-president-trump/3155869002/">attempts to bulk up enforcement</a> along the southern US border, the drug smugglers <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/5/18296656/trump-mexico-border-close-war-on-drugs">he's pledged to keep out</a> aren't quitting - they're just changing venues. The past few years have seen an uptick in drug busts on ocean freighters, industry experts said. The Coast Guard said it has seized about 225 tons of cocaine in 2017, up from 145 in 2015. The value of the drugs seized had jumped from $5.3 to $6.6 billion during that time. "Other venues to transport drugs, like over the US border, are getting tougher and therefore the drug dealer has to find alternatives," Basil Karatzas, chief executive of shipping finance advisory firm Karatzas Marine Advisors, told Business Insider. Federal agents and the shipping industry at large are directing their attention to ships coming from South America, where many of the drug-laden freighters originate. "There are more drug seizures now on ships than in the past," a drug-enforcement official <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-shippings-record-cocaine-bust-11563960604">told The Wall Street Journal</a>. The official added that "any vessel coming in from South America, can raise a red flag."See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ignition-transportation" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.businessinsider.com/ignition-transportation&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567799579195000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGZqPIdB7DECjQ9ew7gOeRU-BEsEQ">Apply here to attend IGNITION: Transportation, an event focused on the future of transportation, in San Francisco on October 22</a><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">REUTERS/Esam Omran Al-FetoriMore and more drugs are getting moved through ocean containers.</div></div></div>Maritime transport is the most common venue of international trade, with <a href="https://business.un.org/en/entities/13">more than 90% of all goods</a> moved by ship. Typically, those containers <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51478-Shipping-Containers-OneCol.pdf">aren't individually inspected</a> as that would slow down commerce. That volume and relative lack of oversight makes it an ideal way to smuggle illegal drugs."The container ship market is becoming the way to transport commodities internationally," Karatzas said. "Given that only a small portion of those containers, are actually inspected, it makes more sense for the drug dealers to try to use the shipping industry as a way to transport across borders and across continents." Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tariff-war-warehousing-tijuana-mexico-2019-6" data-analytics-position="15">Industry leaders are 'freaking out' about tariffs and clamoring for warehouses in this loophole-friendly Mexican border town</a>Drug-smuggling through ocean freighters isn't new, but it is increasing. "With more walled-off sections of the border, we've seen drug trafficking organizations literally go underground or offshore," University of San Diego associate professor David Shirk <a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/03/29/us-mexico-launch-major-maritime-drug-smuggling-crackdown/">told CBS San Francisco</a>.A Brookings report even noted that human-trafficking on ocean freighters is likely if Trump continues his border crackdown."Even if the land border were to become much more secure, that would only intensify the trend toward smuggling goods as well as people via boats that sail far to the north, where they land on the California coast," Brookings Senior Foreign Policy Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown <a href="https://brook.gs/2uWhRP4">wrote in a Aug. 2017 report</a>.<h2>Record-breaking busts are becoming the norm</h2>In June, federal authorities seized more than $1 billion of cocaine weighing nearly 20 tons at the Port of Philadelphia. Members of the crew admitted that more than a dozen smaller ships piled the freighter with cocaine by coming back and forth from Peru.It was one of the largest drug busts <a href="https://twitter.com/USAttyMcSwain/status/1141047079009226753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1141047079009226753&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inquirer.com%2Fnews%2Fcocaine-seized-philly-port-drug-bust-cargo-ship-customs-and-border-protection-20190618.html">on American soil ever</a>, and sent shockwaves in the industry after the Feds seized the massive ocean freighter, which was owned by JPMorgan and Chase, under a $40 million surety bond. Read more: <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/cocaine-ship-jpmorgan-owns-vessel-seized-by-us-cbp-2019-7-1028340025">US Customs just seized a ship owned by JPMorgan after authorities found $1 billion worth of drugs on it</a> <h2>Several other record-breaking seizures have occurred this year at American seaports:</h2><ul><li>At the Port of Baltimore this June, authorities seized <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/06/25/agents-seize-record-amount-cocaine-port-baltimore/">$10 million of cocaine</a>. That was the biggest bust in Baltimore in 12 years. </li><li>In March, federal agents <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-and-hsi-led-multi-agency-seaport-operation-nets-more-half-ton">found $38 million</a> worth of cocaine at another freighter at the Philadelphia seaport. It was, until the massive seizure in June, the largest bust ever conducted in Philadelphia.</li><li>The Port of New York/Newark saw its largest coke seizure in nearly 25 years in March, as well - finding 3,200 pounds of cocaine <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-hsi-dea-uscg-nysp-nypd-approximately-3200-pounds-cocaine-seized">worth nearly $77 million</a>. </li><li>In Feb., <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cocaine-seizure-port-hueneme-20190215-story.html">authorities announced</a> they had seized more than 220 pounds of cocaine at two ships in the Port Hueneme in Ventura County, California. That was the largest bust in 25 years.</li><li>Authorities seized some 3,810 pounds of methamphetamine, 56 pounds of cocaine and nearly 12 pounds of heroin at the the Los Angeles-Long Beach seaport <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cbp-meth-seizure-20190207-story.html">in Feb.</a></li><li>In Feb., <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-officers-port-savannah-intercept-shipment-cocaine-valued-over-19">federal officials announced they seized $19 million of cocaine</a> in an ocean freighter at Savannah, Georgia's seaport.</li></ul> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/self-driving-cars-fully-autonomous-vehicles-future-prediction-timeline-2019-8">Experts say we're decades away from fully-autonomous cars. Here's why.</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Drug-smugglers are circumventing Trump's border crackdown by stuffing ocean freighters with cocaine

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Democratic operatives are concerned about several nightmare scenarios during election week.</li><li>Among the issues Democrats fear are long lines at polling places, delayed vote counts, legal fights, and the president's efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election.</li><li>Business Insider talked to half a dozen Democratic strategists and pollsters about their fears for election week.</li></ul>Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/">is leading President Donald Trump</a> in both national and state polls and is favored to take the White House.While Democratic operatives are optimistic about Biden's chances, they're also sounding the alarm about a host of election-week issues such as long lines at polling places, delayed vote counts, legal fights, and the president's efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election.<h2>Challenges at the polls and delayed results</h2>Democratic activists and voting-rights advocates have condemned <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/elections/voting-lines-2020-election/">hours-long lines</a> to vote, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/18/924182086/early-voting-analysis-historic-turnout-drives-long-lines-administrative-errors">technical issues</a> at polling places, and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/politics/california-ballot-drop-boxes/index.html">partisan pranks</a> during early voting. They fear that these obstacles will continue through Election Day and suppress votes in key states.Basil Smikle, a Democratic political consultant and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, said that while the massive early-voting turnout was good news for Biden, the big numbers might not be enough to overcome systematic issues with voting."There's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and intensity in this race — if it's not pro-Biden then it's anti-Trump — and it suggests that the Democratic messaging around making a plan to vote and voting early has gotten through," Smikle said. "But it also suggests that there are substantial problems with our election infrastructure and there are significant concerns about the potential for those votes to not be counted because of suppression and intimidation."With the historic surge in mail-in ballots, several battleground states <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/when-do-presidential-election-results-come-in-swing-states-2020">expect that it will take days after Election Day to finish counting votes</a>.Just eight states have said they expect to have 98% of their ballots counted by noon next Wednesday, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/27/upshot/election-results-timing.html">The New York Times reported this week</a>. More than 20 states will continue to count ballots as they arrive after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked by Tuesday, November 3. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/27/usps-delays-election-day/">US Postal Service delays</a> could further complicate this counting process. The number of provisional ballots, which often take longer to verify and count, is also expected to rise.Election officials in <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/spl/pa-kathy-boockvar-precanvassing-republicans-gov-tom-wolf-20201019.html?cid=Philly.com+Twitter&amp;utm_campaign=Philly.com+Twitter+Account&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=t.co_source=t.co">Pennsylvania</a> and Michigan — both key battleground states — have said they expect to report their vote counts up to three days after Election Day. In Pennsylvania, election officials are permitted to begin counting mail-in ballots only once the polls have closed, and in Michigan, officials can begin verifying mail-in ballots only on the day before Election Day. Officials in Georgia, another key swing state with two Senate seats on the ballot, have also said it's likely to take a few days to tabulate all votes.Charlotte Swasey, the vice president of data and polling at the left-leaning group Data for Progress, said she was concerned that delayed ballot counting would cause confusion and allow misinformation to spread next week."I don't think anyone is braced for how long this is going to take," Swasey told Business Insider. "I'm just concerned that we're going to have this extended period of time where people are just exhausted and looking for certainty that isn't going to be there."Because of the sky-high number of mail-in ballots this year, experts have predicted that a handful of states will experience a so-called red mirage, in which a state sees in-person GOP votes misleadingly indicate it's leaning toward Trump but later experience a "blue shift" as disproportionately Democratic absentee ballots are counted.This phenomenon may be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-mirage-explainer/explainer-red-mirage-blue-mirage-beware-of-early-u-s-election-wins-idUSKBN2771CL">particularly apparent</a> in battleground Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin, which are expected to count their substantial mail-in ballots later. Meanwhile, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina may experience blue mirages.Trump has called to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election/trump-questions-counting-late-ballots-as-biden-preaches-unity-in-georgia-idUSKBN27C25G">cut off ballot-counting</a> at midnight on Election Day, which would violate many states' election laws and might help him in states with a red mirage.Ian Russell, a former deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, argued that Trump's underdog status would make it awkward for him to fight against vote counting."If you go in as the underdog, you say, 'We've got to count every vote, and we're going to be making sure every vote that was cast is counted fairly, and we're going to keep our options open,'" he told Business Insider.<div type="image" title="amy coney barrett" height="1000" width="2000" msid="78957371" hostid="261"></div><h2>Legal battles</h2>Activists on both sides of the aisle <a href="https://healthyelections-case-tracker.stanford.edu/">filed hundreds of lawsuits</a> challenging states' pandemic-related voting regulations in the months leading up to the election. Republicans have largely attempted to make it more difficult to vote, while Democrats have pushed to loosen restrictions on voting.Biden's campaign has drafted hundreds of lawyers, including top former Obama administration officials, to wage several fights related to ballot casting and vote counting.Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman Democrat from a purple Michigan district, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/26/elissa-slotkin-michigan-election-day-431853">recently told Politico</a> she thought the GOP would focus its legal efforts on challenging outcomes in individual counties in Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania."Legitimate or illegitimate, I think one of the president's strategies is going to be to protest the results in certain key counties in certain key states," she said.Democrats are desperate to keep election-related lawsuits out of the Supreme Court, which now has a conservative majority following Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation this week.The high court <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-ruling-on-wisconsin-holds-key-clues-for-future-cases-2020-10">has already hinted</a> that it would defer to Republican state officials and legislatures in determining how to run their elections, including when they decide to limit vote counting and throw out ballots. This week, it sided with Republicans in Wisconsin by overturning a federal court ruling allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day for up to six days after November 3."Everybody's goal is to keep this damn thing away from the Supreme Court so that there's no reason for them to intervene," Russell said.A solid Biden victory would likely discourage the court from intervening and ruling in Trump's favor — a move that could undermine its legitimacy.<h2>A refusal to concede?</h2>The president has for months claimed he can't legitimately lose the election and has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-refuses-to-commit-to-peaceful-transfer-of-power-2020-9">refused to commit</a> to a peaceful transfer of power. He's claimed that this year's election will be "the most corrupt election in the history of our country" and that mail-in voting will be "a fraud like you've never seen.""The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged," Trump said in August.Trump's allies have boosted those claims. Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son and top campaign surrogate, has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/politics/donald-trump-jr-baseless-rigged-election-fact-check/index.html">accused Democrats</a> of planning to "add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election."Democrats are raising alarms about how Trump might attempt to cling on to power or undermine the election outcome and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-fear-lame-duck-trump-biden-transition-midnight-rules-2020-10">the transition process</a> if he loses."Trump has shown a willingness to weaponize the federal government for his political purposes in a way never before seen," Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who served as a spokesman for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, told Business Insider. "What worries me in a week is, if he loses, it will ignite a revenge from him on the American people."While the president's attacks on the integrity of the election are relatively predictable, it's less clear how Republican leaders will handle election night and the following days.Russell argued that all eyes would be on GOP leaders in the House and Senate and whether they'd back up Trump's voter-fraud claims and push for the Supreme Court to take up any election disputes."The question really becomes … what does Mitch McConnell, what does Kevin McCarthy, what does the remaining Republican leadership do?" Russell said. "Do they really want to, first of all, cast doubts on the legitimacy of their own reelections? And do they want to go down with a ship that's already struck the iceberg and is flooding?"How state-level Republicans respond will also be crucial.Ed Sarpolus, a Michigan-based Democratic pollster and consultant, said he feared that Republicans would effectively suppress Black and Brown voters in Michigan with restrictions on mail-in voting, a ban on third parties <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/22/federal-appeals-panel-upholds-michigans-voter-transportation-ban/3726400001/">transporting voters to the polls</a>, and insufficient voting machines on election day."The bottom line is if Trump takes more interest in Michigan again, that increases the chances that there will be more threats and attempts to suppress the vote," he told Business Insider. "The question is what do his lieutenants do in Michigan?"<div type="image" title="The Boogaloo Boys stand on the steps of the Capitol Building during a rally on October 17, 2020 in Lansing, Michigan." height="639" width="1278" msid="78957373" hostid="261"></div><h2>Potential chaos in the streets</h2>Far-right provocateurs have fearmongered about violence breaking out between Trump and Biden supporters after Election Day. Roger Stone, a former Trump advisor whose prison sentence the president <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-commutes-roger-stone-sentence-longtime-ally-2020-7">controversially commuted</a> earlier this year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/13/roger-stone-to-donald-trump-bring-in-martial-law-if-you-lose-election">said Trump should impose martial law</a> and imprison his political opponents if he loses the election.Trump has said he would eagerly "<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-again-suggests-biden-used-drugs-debates">put down</a>" any left-wing protests after the election. And Trump Jr. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2640587549523836">has starred in Trump campaign ads</a> calling on "able-bodied" supporters to "enlist" in an "army for Trump's election security operation" to prevent fraud on Election Day.On Wednesday, the leader of the prominent right-wing militant group Oath Keepers <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/militia-leader-stewart-rhodes-says-his-group-will-be-polling-locations-and-ready-kill">told the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones</a> that he and fellow militants planned to "protect" Trump voters at polling places across the country on Election Day. The group's leader, Stewart Rhodes, said that there might be a civil war between the right and the left after the election and that his members were prepared to kill "radical left" "street soldiers."Christine Pelosi, a Democratic strategist and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said that violence over the election results would be the "worst-case scenario" next week."We can't afford to be drawn into the kinds of street demonstrations that Trump would like to see in order to justify some sort of martial-law idea," Pelosi said. "The worst-case scenario isn't that the voters make their choice and we lose — that would be terrible, but that's on us. The worst-case scenario is if we get goaded into some sort of national unrest."Pelosi said Democrats needed to avoid "getting drawn into the histrionics" and "cynicism" and stay focused on protecting the voting process.She argued that the "only antidote to all of my fears" is massive voter turnout.

Democrats say they fear election-week chaos, including vote-counting delays and violence in the streets

With a mounting number of consumer Internet companies in India, the latest hold-up, which is keeping the firms on their toes, is attrition. The top-most Internet firms are in a scuffle with the management executives who were recently hired from the <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword>. 
 Top <keyword id="436047" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ecommerce">eCommerce</keyword> firms, including <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword>, Zomato and <keyword id="6354720" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ola">Ola</keyword>, recently made headlines for their hiring spree and splurging millions of dollars on their executives, are now troubled due to heavy migration of skilled professionals. 
 Sunit Mehra, managing partner at <keyword id="3077520" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hunt-Partners-India">Hunt Partners India</keyword>, which is an executive recruitment company, says, Consumer Internet companies in India "are growing so rapidly that they haven't built the fundamental concept of retaining people, especially at the top-level." 
 Flipkart, one of India’s largest eCommerce firms, recently lost Srivals Kumar after he resigned as general counsel and legal head due to organisational restructuring. The firm, then, immediately hired Rajinder Sharma, former director and general counsel – South and West Asia, at <keyword id="10591" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Samsung">Samsung</keyword>. 
 Not just this, but around four other senior executives have quit Flipkart this year including Mekin Maheshwari (chief people officer), Ravi Vora (chief executive of strategic brands group), <keyword id="1937803" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amod-Malviya">Amod Malviya</keyword> (chief technology officer) and <keyword id="6518849" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sameer-Nigam">Sameer Nigam</keyword> (engineering head). 
 Flipkart, the firm which is valued at $15 billion, however, have been hiring a number of skilled professionals like it recently hires former <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> executive Punit Soni as chief product officer, as reported by The Economic Times. 
 
In a similar episode, Zomato’s Durga Raghunath too left the firm as senior vice-president after after a six-month stint to find an online publishing company. Hence, he also joined a list of senior executives who have quit the venture this year. 
 The former chief product officer <keyword id="513563" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Namita-Gupta">Namita Gupta</keyword> and former chief marketing officer <keyword id="3077519" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ramneet-Arora">Ramneet Arora</keyword> also quit the firm in less than a year’s time. 
 
Prateek Srivastava, founder and CEO of talent acquisition firm Basil Advisors, says, "A lot of the hiring (at Indian internet companies) is pushed by the investors, and while the companies have hired top-notch people from the Valley, the culture here is very different." 
 
Arvind Singhal, the former CEO of Ola’s TaxiForSure unit, also joined the listings along with Swaminathan Seetharaman, who resigned as vice-president for engineering. 
 
"(The resignations have) less to do with compensation. You can attract the best talent with money, but you're not going to always retain them with money," Srivastava added.

How eCommerce will retain the talent it is importing from Silicon Valley?

Experience counts. Indian start ups have realized the benefits of recruiting a seasoned executive in the team. The first three Indian startups with a valuation of $ 1 billion - Flipkart, Snapdeal and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Uber-testing-cash-on-deliverymodel-in-Hyderabad-May-roll-out-in-other-cities-soon/articleshow/47245769.cms">Ola</a> having become giants in terms of revenue are relying largely on seasoned executives in key roles, as per a news report by The Economic Times. 
 
Having brought Krishnendu Chaudhury and Ravi Garikipati on board from the Silicon Valley, Flipkart is aiming high in terms of employee’s satisfaction and ambition. 
 
Meanwhile, Peeyush Ranjan, Flipkart's new head of engineering, has started a programme called <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/This-is-where-Flipkart-is-transferring-hundreds-of-its-employees/articleshow/47655386.cms">F24 to fix any problem that engineers face within 24 hours</a>, be it malfunctioning laptops, access to libraries or whatever. "As the organisation gets bigger it has an inherent challenge to stay nimble, and not get bogged down," Ranjan who previously led the engineering group for Google's Android One project told ET. 
 
Aneesh Passi, cofounder of Basil Advisors, which hires for startups, said, "These people (seasoned executives) know massive distribution set ups. They have seen huge scale, managed huge turnovers... that's why companies want to hire them." 
 
Passi, added that the unicorn startups, which have joined $1 billion club, "have the funding now, so they have pressed the accelerator". Ola Cabs too is betting on experienced hands as it looks <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Uber-testing-cash-on-deliverymodel-in-Hyderabad-May-roll-out-in-other-cities-soon/articleshow/47245769.cms">to stay ahead of rival Uber that has started accepting cash payments</a> in certain cities and is making deeper forays into tier two cities, says the news report by the financial daily. 
 
To that end, Ola is relying on its head of new initiatives, Sundeep Sahni, to replicate his success in making Lazada the number one ecommerce portal in Indonesia in his previous stint. "Going deeper in existing markets and creating newer and wider use cases is going to be critical," said Sahni, who joined Ola in mid-July. 
 
"On the functional side, Ola has got its rough edges. Since we are in the business of on demand, if you can remove a fraction of the second, it makes a big difference," Singh, who joined the firm after his five-year-stint at travel portal Cleartrip.com told ET. 
Snapdeal has hired Jeyandran Venugopal, a former Yahoo India executive, to prepare its future technology roadmap and got on board experienced executives to head its strategy and product divisions. 
 
"In ecommerce, only small strides have been made. There is a lot that they can learn from other industries in terms of customer service," Jayant Sood of Snapdeal told the financial daily. "True focus is now coming into digital commerce. My mandate is to transform customer experience and aim to be the best in customer service across industries."

Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola drive up demand for ‘experienced’ executives in startups

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/77568040@N08/8484163384/">Flickr/Daniella Segura</a></div>A natural ingredient found in red <keyword id="4894" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="wine">wine</keyword>, resveratrol, can help fight off diseases associated with age, a new study shows.
Resveratrol, found in the skin of grapes, has long been touted for its anti-ageing properties. 
Researchers are studying this natural compound to help them design better anti-aging drugs.
They think it works by increasing the activity of sirtuins, a family of proteins found throughout the body, which are believed to combat diseases related to getting older, like type 2 diabetes, cancer or Alzheimer's. Specifically, resveratrol increases the activity of SIRT1, which acts to make our mitochondria — the cell part that turns food into energy in our cells — more efficient, the study says. 
The direct link between resveratrol and the SIRT1 protein has been made before, both by the lead author of this latest paper, Harvard genetics professor David Sinclair, and others. 
Sinclair <a href="http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/home">published a paper</a> in 2012 showing that mice that do not have the SIRT1 gene do not receive the benefits of resveratrol. He produced similar results in yeast in a 2003 study. The problem was that the proteins they used in the original test (in order to see the experiment working) do not naturally occur in animals or humans. And, they weren't able to figure out which part of the protein resveratrol binds to.
<div class="image-container float_left" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>David Sinclair, Harvard Medical SchoolOld yeast cells live longer when treated with resveratrol. The yeast cell is big and yellow.</div>
That's what they've found in the new study, published online Thursday, March 7, in the <a href="http://www.sciencexpress.org/#citgp-2013-03-07">journal Science</a>. This discovery conclusively proves that the interaction between resveratrol and SIRT1 is one of the ways red wine has its positive effects, the researchers claim. 
"There is no rational alternative explanation other than resveratrol directly activates SIRT1 in cells," Sinclair said in a statement. "Now that we know the exact location on SIRT1 where and how resveratrol works, we can engineer even better molecules that more precisely and effectively trigger the effects of resveratrol," which will then allow them to design better anti-aging drugs.
As a side note, Sinclair is a co-founder and scientific advisor of a company that's developing synthetic resveratrol molecules to treat diseases related to age, called Sitris Pharmaceuticals.
The researchers screened for SIRT1 mutant proteins and found one that had a change in its amino acid (the building blocks of a protein) sequence that made it not respond to resveratrol in a test tube experiment. In the next step, researchers tested how these mutated proteins reacted to resveratrol in muscle and skin cells of lab mice, compared to normal SIRT1 proteins. When given resveratrol, mitochondrial function was boosted in the cell with regular SIRT1 proteins but not those with the mutant protein. 
"We discovered a signature for activation that is in fact found in the cell and doesn't require these other synthetic groups," co-author Basil Hubbard said in a press release. "This was a critical result, which allowed us to bridge the gap between our biochemical and physiological findings." 
<a href="http://www.pathology.washington.edu/faculty/profile?id=585">Matt Kaeberlein,</a> a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved with the study, is cautious of the finding. "This is a nice mechanistic advance in our understanding of how resveratrol and other STACs (SIRT1 activating compounds) influence SIRT1 activity," he told us via e-mail. "It certainly does NOT provide conclusive evidence that resveratrol activates SIRT1 in animals, although it's consistent with that model. There is no data here regarding age-related diseases or whether sirtuins are good targets for drug development," he wrote. 
Researchers suggest that SIRT1 is not the only protein affected by resveratrol. The molecule may bind to other proteins that have positive effects on metabolism, which can aid its anti-ageing properties.

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