FORGET the “resource curse”. Australia is blessed with the stuff. For more than a quarter of a century it has not had a recession, thanks largely to Chinese demand for its raw materials. It is only a few years since the end of one such China-led boom, in base metals such as iron ore. A […]
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“WE USED to be so dismissed,” says Jeremy Stoppelman, the boss of Yelp, an online-review site which has waged a six-year-long battle against Google over how the online giant ranks its search results. Now American regulators are taking concerns about Google more seriously. On November 13th, Josh Hawley, Missouri’s attorney-general, launched an investigation into the […]
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STEVE JOBS liked to describe computers as “bicycles for the mind”—tools that let humans do things faster and more efficiently than their bodies would allow. The internet-connected bikes flooding the streets of urban China could be called “computers for the road”. Networked, trackable and data-generating, they are ones and zeros in aluminium form. The cycles […]
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AT SHINTOMI nursing home in Tokyo, men and women sit in a circle following exercise instructions before singing along to a famous children’s song, “Yuyake Koyake” (“The Glowing Sunset”). They shout out and clap enthusiastically even though the activities are being led, not by a human fitness guru, but by Pepper, a big-eyed humanoid robot […]
Read moreCurrency, United States Finance
Investors should be prepared for relatively muted returns on major equities in 2018, according to strategists at investment bank Societe Generale. Robust earnings, subdued inflation, synchronized global growth and central banks looking to tighten monetary policy have all underpinned equities in 2017. However, the next calendar year does not likely to follow the same pattern, […]
Read moreRussia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that moves by Alphabet Inc.‘s Google to place articles from Russian news outlets Sputnik and Russia Today lower in search results would amount to censorship. Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking on stage at an international forum last Saturday, responded to a question about Sputnik articles appearing on Google […]
Read moreWorkers at Amazon‘s main distribution hub in Italy are planning their first ever strike for Friday, trade unions said, threatening to disrupt one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Like the rest of Europe, Italians in recent years have embraced the U.S. tradition of Black Friday, a day of heavy discounting by retailers […]
Read moreApple supplier Foxconn has stopped students from working illegal overtime at a factory in China. It comes after the Financial Times reported Tuesday that six high school students in Henan province would work 11-hour shifts to manufacture Apple’s iPhone X. The long hours breached Chinese laws which aim to prevent children from working more than […]
Read moreThe CEO of a cryptocurrency start-up that raised nearly $375,000 through an initial coin offering (ICO) and then disappeared, lied about his employment history on the company’s website, CNBC has learned. Confido billed itself as a blockchain start-up that was disrupting traditional escrow services and transactions. After it raised the money, all of its social […]
Read moreEuro zone business growth is roaring as the year draws to a close, a survey showed on Thursday, supporting the European Central Bank’s move last month to announce a throttling back of its monetary stimulus. Surveys covering both the services and manufacturing industries outshone even the most optimistic forecasters in Reuters polls – indicating growth […]
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