Tech investor Marc Andreessen took the stage Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO – For tech entrepreneurs, these are both the best of times and the gnarliest of times. But only standout ideas with either unique intellectual property or quantifiable traction are likely to benefit in the form of investments or acquisitions from this buoyant climate. "Only strong companies are getting acquired," Greylock Ventures' Josh Elman told attendees at TechCrunch Disrupt Tuesday, citing the 1 billion price tags paid for self-driving car startup Cruise Automation (General Motors) and Dollar Shave Club (Unilever). Elman might have added another recent purchase to the list, Microsoft's 26 billion spend for professional networking site LinkedIn, founded by Elman's fellow Greylock colleague and panelist, Reid Hoffman.

Suzanne Dworak-Peck, an internationally recognized leader in social work and a USC alumna, has donated 60 million to the USC School of Social Work, the university announced Wednesday. The gift is the largest donation from an individual to a social work school, according to USC, and changes the school's name to the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. "Today is about recognizing and celebrating social work -- as a focus for learning and research, as a profession and as an investment in the future of humanity," said Dworak-Peck, who has served as president of the National Assn. of Social Workers and is known for forging partnerships in the field around the world. "Our school will always be a destination for learning, where future generations of students will feel that we value and are invested in empowering their goals and their creativity and their growth. This is the feeling I took from USC and internalized throughout my career, and I really want to share that exceptional experience with others."

Narrative Science, winner of Qlik's 2016 Innovative Partner of the Year Award, and Bardess Group, winner of Qlik's 2016 Global Solution Provider of the Year Award, are joining forces to bring even more innovative products to our clients. Narrative Science is the leader in advanced natural language generation for the enterprise. Its QuillTM platform, an intelligent system, analyzes data from disparate sources, understands what is interesting and important to the end user, and then automatically generates perfectly written narratives for any intended audience, at unlimited scale. A diverse range of companies such as USAA, American Century Investments, MasterCard, and the U.S. intelligence community utilize Quill to increase efficiency through the elimination of time-consuming, manual processes related to analyzing data and communicating insights, freeing employees to focus on high-value activities and better serving their customers. Together, our solutions and experience will allow business professionals in any industry the capability to gain clear and natural insight into their data.

DETROIT -- Michigan is seeking to retain its leadership as the heart of the nation's auto industry in a new tech-driven age. But Google isn't happy with legislation aimed at fostering the development of self-driving cars. The California tech giant is contesting legislation the Michigan Senate passed last week aimed at making the state a hub for autonomous car research. Google sees some of the language as excluding companies like Google that are newcomers to making cars. In a letter, John Krafcik, head of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, took issue with two provisions and asked that they be amended: "One interpretation of that definition would exclude companies, like Google, that manufactures autonomous vehicles but do not currently sell them," Krafcik wrote. "That could be interpreted to exclude vehicles supplied by a vehicle manufacturer that another company, like Google, modifies with automated driving systems," Krafcik said.

Earlier this month, tens of millions of Indian workers staged a one-day general strike that unions billed as the biggest work stoppage in human history. By the unions' count, 180 million workers stayed home to demand a slew of changes to labor laws, including establishing a 270 monthly minimum wage for unskilled laborers and ensuring social security for every worker. The 24-hour strike cost the Indian economy up to 2.7 billion, by one estimate, and affected electricity, mining, telecommunications, banking and insurance operations in several states. It was the latest salvo in an escalating battle between India's leading public-sector trade unions and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which they accuse of pursuing a pro-business agenda while ignoring workers' rights. The unions represent several million workers in a country of 1.25 billion people.

It's weird to hear a politician own up to a gaffe. At a rally in Manhattan on Saturday, Gary Johnson began his speech with 16 startling words: "I want to start out with an apology to all of you," the Libertarian Party presidential nominee told a crowd of 500 or so supporters. Politicians aren't supposed to apologize -- unless it's one of those sorry-not-sorry deals that precede yet another rant about why the opposing candidate is a dangerous cretin. Johnson, though, can't shut his yap about saying "What's Aleppo?" Thursday on MSNBC when asked about the war-ravaged Syrian city. He apologized in a statement, told "The View" he had "no excuse," and when I saw him at an event in Philadelphia on Monday, he said to me, "Well, at least you know how to find Aleppo on a map!"

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres' condition was showing slight improvements after he suffered a major stroke, with his physicians saying Wednesday that he had regained consciousness and squeezed his doctor's hand, while the nation rallied in prayer and support for the 93-year-old elder statesman and Nobel Peace laureate. Dr. Yitzhak Kreiss, director of the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, said Peres' condition remained serious Wednesday afternoon, 24 hours after the stroke. But he said Peres' neurological signs were improving. He said that Peres, who had been placed in and out of a medically induced coma, was regaining consciousness from time to time and reacting to stimulation. Peres remained on mild sedatives and a respirator, Kreiss said.

Moving to crack down on scam artists, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to require immigration consultants working in unincorporated areas of the county to be licensed. The consultants, sometimes referred to as "notarios," are not attorneys. But some offer legal services and charge high rates. Because notary publics in Latin America are roughly equivalent to lawyers, immigrants often do not realize that in the United States they are only authorized to witness signatures and authenticate documents, said Supervisor Hilda Solis, who proposed the enforcement program along with Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. "I've spoken with numerous families who have been for years paying dollar after dollar without making any progress on their immigration matters," Solis said.

BEIJING – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earned unusual praise from Chinese netizens Wednesday -- but for the quality of his calligraphy, rather than his diplomacy. Beijing and Tokyo are at loggerheads over disputed islands and wartime history, and Abe has raised hackles with his criticism of his neighbor's assertiveness in the South China Sea. But the Japanese leader was lauded after he purportedly left a hand-written note in Chinese thanking a cleaner at the hotel he stayed in for the G-20 summit in Hangzhou last week. It gave Abe's name, title and the date, adding: "Thanks." It was posted on China's Twitter-like Weibo last week by a journalist who founded what is said to be Japan's largest Chinese-language news website, and had been reposted more than 700 times by Wednesday.

The sale of artificial intelligence-based platforms to business started off as a multi-million dollar pitch targeted toward the CEO, according to Nova Spivack, the founder and CEO of Bottlenose. The Los Angeles-based startup is looking to automate the application of AI to business intelligence, as well as much of the work of data scientists, currently in scarce supply. That should lower the price, a lot. In recent years, AI-driven applications have been targeted toward the CIO. In the future, Mr. Spivack says, they well may be sold directly to business leaders, and the price will drop to thousands or even hundreds of dollars per user, he told CIO Journal.