How motherhood affects the brain - Living Science

Changes the Brain
By Linda Thrasybule, MyHealthNewsDaily Contributor | May 11, 2012 04:04pm ET

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Credit: Crazy80frog | Dreamstime
Chocolate treats and sentimental cards may sweeten mom's belly and heart this Mother's Day, but it turns out motherhood also goes right to the noggin, with plenty of research showing how having kids, and even the process of childbirth, can change a mama's brain.
Recent research has revealed some of the changes that take place in women's brains during motherhood, and experts say that understanding how a mom’s brain works could help them figure out what motivates moms to care for their babies.
"With this research, we hope to better understand how to support moms who don't naturally experience a brain reward response when they interact with their baby," said Dr. Lane Strathearn, a developmental pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
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In the future, this field of study could lead to treatments that help women with mental illnesses or who lack certain types of normal brain responses. "We're currently researching whether giving moms oxytocin, a hormone that triggers a reward response in the brain, could influence their response to their child," Strathearn said.
After birth, the brain grows
The changes seem to begin the moment the baby is born. For instance, in a 2010 study, researchers looked at brain-scan images of 19 women before and after they gave birth and found that the size of mothers' brains increased shortly after childbirth.
"We observed small but significant increases in the volume of gray matter in the brain," said study co-author Pilyoung Kim, a developmental psychologist who performed the research at Yale University.
Kim and colleagues also found that moms who gushed over their babies a month after childbirth showed the greatest growth in parts of the brain, compared with moms who didn't respond as enthusiastically.
The period directly after childbirth is an important time for new moms. According to the researchers, moms develop sensitive mothering skills during this time, and changes to the brain may be linked with how these skills develop.
The researchers observed increases in gray matter in brain areas such as the hypothalamus, amygdala, parietal lobe and prefrontal cortex. These regions are responsible for emotion, reasoning and judgment, the senses and reward behavior.
Compared with the less-enthusiastic moms, the awestruck moms were more likely to develop bigger mid-brains, and saw growth in key regions linked to maternal motivation, rewards and the regulation of emotions, Kim's team found.
The researchers said this expansion in the brain's "motivation" area might lead to more nurturing, which in turn could help babies thrive. Still, "we don't know whether it's the experience that changes the brain, or the brain that changes the experience," said Kim, who is now with the National Institute of Mental Health.
While it remains unclear exactly why the brain grows, the researchers said it might be that an increase in hormones — including estrogen, oxytocin and prolactin — play a role.
Pleasure at the root of mommy behavior
Experts believe maternal behavior may be fostered by a pleasure system in the brain that involves areas such as the substantia nigra, which creates dopamine, a chemical messenger that interacts with certain brain cells and causes a "feel-good" high.
Once the brain receives these "feel-good" signals, moms, for instance, seek to repeat whatever actions triggered the bliss.
In Strathearn's 2008 study published in the journal Pediatrics, when mothers saw their babies’ smiling faces, their reward signals became activated.
"These are similar brain regions that are activated when a cocaine addict gets a shot of cocaine," said Strathearn said. "So for moms, it may be like having a natural high."
How a child’s brain develops may be influenced by mom
Motherhood doesn't just influence a mom's brain — her mothering behaviors may have a lasting impact on her child's brain.
In a 2009 study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers looked at two groups of mothers, dividing them based on how attached they felt to their own mothers.
They found both groups responded differently to their infant's faces.
"For mothers with 'secure' attachment, we found that both happy and sad infant faces produced a reward signal in their brain," Strathearn said.
But moms with an "insecure" attachment didn't show the same brain response. When they saw their baby cry, part of the brain that is linked with pain, unfairness or disgust became activated.
"Biologically, there seems to be a pattern that is repeated from one generation to the next," Strathearn said. "Early experiences we have in childhood play an important role in the pattern of brain development."
Strathearn said that in early infancy, "the brain is being sculpted in response to its social environment, like being rocked and touched." But he noted that many factors, including genetics and the environment, influence a child's development.
Ultimately, Strathearn said he hopes future research will help experts better understand the impact that early maternal care can have on child's social, emotional and physical development.
Pass it on: Motherhood changes the size of mom’s brain.
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Oil companies' performance in past decade - Economist

Hydrocarbons
Not-so-Big Oil
The supermajors are being forced to rethink their business model
May 7th 2016  


IT HAS been a grim decade for investors in international oil firms—among them, many of the world’s biggest pension funds. Even before oil prices started to fall in 2014, the supermajors threw money away on grandiose schemes: drilling in the Arctic and building giant gas terminals. Their returns have trailed those of other industry-leading firms by a huge margin since 2009.

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In the past 18 months things have gone from bad to worse. The Boston Consulting Group, a consultancy, calls it the industry’s “worst peacetime crisis”. That is evident in first-quarter results released in the past week by Exxon Mobil and Chevron of America, and European rivals, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total, which bear the scars of a collapse in oil prices to below $30 a barrel in mid-February (see chart).
Since then the oil price has rebounded to $45 a barrel; as a result of aggressive cost-cutting efforts, their earnings have mostly been better than expected. Miraculously, a bit of cheer has returned. The big firms’ share prices have outperformed America’s S&P 500 index by nine percentage points since the start of the year.
It is too soon to declare victory, though. Not only do the supermajors need to brace for the possibility of a renewed slide in oil prices in the short term; they must also prepare for a future in which oil demand is increasingly uncertain because of climate change, pollution and the emergence of alternative sources of energy. Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, argues that such “peak demand” is not imminent. There may be at least another 15-year growth cycle by oil firms before investors throw in the towel. But in the meantime companies need to develop a new business model built around a quest for returns rather than for reserves.
These returns are still woefully low, and debts unusually high. On May 4th Shell issued its first earnings report since acquiring BG, a smaller British rival, for $54 billion in February. Thanks mostly to decent sales and marketing performance, analysts considered it a fair outcome. But its returns on average capital employed, an industry benchmark, were a miserly 3.8%—well below its cost of capital. It also had net debt of $69 billion, a burden that should keep its executives awake at night if oil prices fall again. A few days earlier, Exxon Mobil reported its smallest quarterly profit since 1999, shortly after Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, had cut the triple-A rating that it had enjoyed for decades. (That left America with only two blue-chip firms, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft.)
Optimists, however, are starting to look beyond these shortcomings, for several reasons. First, cost discipline is becoming an industry-wide mantra. Shell, for instance, says it hopes to slash $30 billion from combined operating costs and capital spending by the end of this year, compared with 2014, despite the effort involved in swallowing BG.
Second, investment projects are being looked at more realistically than they were when it was blithely assumed that oil prices would remain above $100 a barrel for the foreseeable future. Third, the supermajors are less likely to embark on wasteful mega-mergers, as they did in the 1990s. The Shell/BG deal went ahead despite loud opposition from some shareholders. Elsewhere, competition authorities are baring their teeth. On May 2nd Halliburton, the world’s second-largest oil-service company, scrapped its $28 billion merger with Baker Hughes, the third-largest, after the Department of Justice opposed it on antitrust grounds.



INTERACTIVE: Explore how oil prices affect OPEC and non-OPEC production and viability
Some doubt that this zeal for capital discipline will last long if oil prices rise much higher. “This is a cyclical business and it always will be,” says Bernstein’s Teng Ben. Paul Spedding, a former head of oil research at HSBC, a bank, says it has been forced upon the supermajors by weak market conditions.
Two reports issued this week suggest that investors should strive to keep the spending straitjacket on oil companies even if prices improve further. One, by Carbon Tracker, an NGO, (and co-authored by Mr Spedding), seeks to show that pursuing new reserves at all costs would not only be bad for the environment, it would be bad business. It argues that even if climate-change policies severely constrain demand for oil, companies will still need to produce more of the black stuff. But if oil prices are anywhere below $120 a barrel, they would produce higher returns if they carry out selective drilling of low-cost wells rather than “business as usual”. Another report, by Paul Stevens of Chatham House, a think-tank, says the supermajors should consider selling assets and returning cash to shareholders because relentlessly pursuing reserves is a dead model.
Unsurprisingly, the oil companies reject the notion that they need to shrink. They say they are adapting their portfolio to changing demand for hydrocarbons. Shell and BP favour what they see as cleaner natural gas over oil. France’s Total is developing renewables as well as oil and gas. Their instinct is to assume that even as the world battles climate change, it will want more hydrocarbons—especially in fast-growing developing countries such as China and India. Investors may pressure them to think differently.

Tesla’s Elon Musk Just Doubled His Already Outrageous Goal - TIME

Tesla’s Elon Musk Just Doubled His Already Outrageous Goal Posted: 05 May 2016 05:20 AM PDT Sometimes, it seems like Tesla is not one company, but two. Right now is one of those times. The first Tesla is the game-changing company reinventing the car to be gas free, self-driving and packed full of as many software innovations as an app-jammed smartphone. The second Tesla is an overhyped, money-losing, debt-laden accident waiting to happen. We saw both companies Wednesday. Early on in the day, Tesla’s stock fell 4% on news that two top executives overseeing manufacturing and production were leaving. The moves came before the release of Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3 and after its SUV model suffered an 18-month delay, a recall and a glitch that affected its falcon-wing doors. The company insisted the executives were leaving for a “well-earned break.” Tesla has now lost five vice presidents in three months. Soon after, Jim Chanos, a hedge-fund legend after his bearish calls on Enron and Brazil’s Petrobras, took to CNBC to slam Tesla. “When a number of people leave over a short period of time, it’s a tipoff,” he said. “These people are needed for the Model 3, which is the real story.” The Model 3, cheaper than any of Tesla’s other vehicles, is seen as the company’s true shot at penetrating into the mainstream. Chanos also chided Tesla CEO Elon Musk for his poor record in forecasting vehicle deliveries. “This is a company that can’t even forecast deliveries one quarter out, and yet everyone is confident about what they will deliver in 2020.” He was referring to Musk’s earlier prediction that Tesla would ship 500,000 cars in 2020. Then came Musk’s time to speak. After the stock market closed, Tesla reported first quarter revenue that rose 45% year-over-year and a net loss of $.57, a penny better than estimates. The stock rallied 4%, bringing it roughly back to where it started the day. So it goes in the epic tug of war between Tesla bulls and bears. To Tesla bulls, it’s not about the company’s quarter-to-quarter performance. It’s about what it can do in, say, 2020. And here’s where things got interesting. In a conference call discussing earnings Wednesday, Musk said the company will be making around a million cars a year by then, doubling his earlier estimate. (By contrast, Tesla made fewer than 50,000 cars last year.) The 500,000 target was moved forward to 2018. In other words, Musk had already set a wildly ambitious production schedule by the auto industry’s standards — and he will now attempt to meet it twice as quickly. It won’t be easy or cheap. Tesla’s existing manufacturing facilities may not be enough, he said, and the company may build more plants in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Tesla expects that capital spending this year alone will total $2.25 billion, 50% more than originally planned. The company will finance as much of that as it can through core operations. But it’s likely to raise more money through both equity and debt, as the new plans mean burning through more cash. For Musk, all of this effort and spending is worth it. He sees Tesla as remaking manufacturing itself as much as it’s redesigning the automobile. “Tesla is really hell-bent on being the world’s best manufacturer,” said Musk. “Like, this is a big deal, and I think it’s the right thing to do. Because what were trying to do is get as many electric cars on the road as possible. What’s the limiting factor? Well, it’s production. We believe there is more potential for innovation in manufacturing than there is in the design of a car by a long shot.” At the end of the day, Musk had the last word. Asked what the company could do to win over naysayers like Chanos, he said: “That will basically be never. Like, what I find ironic about a lot of the naysayers is that the very same people will transition from saying it was impossible to saying was obvious. And I’m like, wait a second, is it obvious or impossible? It can’t be both.” It might be better to say that, rather than the last word, Musk had the latest word. Because the debate over Tesla’s future will rage on for some time.

Why Oil Prices Will Likely Drop Below $40 Soon - oilprce.com

Why Oil Prices Will Likely Drop Below $40 Soon Posted: 04 May 2016 11:44 AM PDT The 70 percent rise in crude oil prices from the lows of $27.1 per barrel to a high of above $46/b in a matter of three months is being driven by speculative activity—make no mistake about it. The speculators have latched on to every bit of rumor and news to bid prices higher, and this has nothing to do with the real fundamentals. However, speculation can boost prices only to a certain extent in the short-term. After this, the fundamentals take over. The extent of speculation is enormous, though the daily production of oil in the U.S. is around 9 million b/d, the WTI crude oil contract trades more than 100 times the produced quantity, as highlighted in this January 2016 post. The trading volume is generated by the algo traders, day traders, and scalpers who are in and out of their positions many times a day. Due to their enormous volume, they set the direction of prices in the short-term. However, these traders are neither involved in the production nor do they take physical delivery of oil; they are usually active only in the near-term contracts until expiry; after which the users of oil take deliveries. Oilprice.com: Lets Stop Pretending Nuclear Power Is Commercially Viable The oil producers have used the sharp rise to hedge part of their production for 2016 and 2017 as reported by The Wall Street Journal. However, Citi Research points out that the oil producers have hedged only 36 percent of their estimated production for 2016, compared to 50 percent in the previous years. If prices creep up further, the producers will not only hedge more, they are likely to increase production to mend their balance sheet. Pioneer Natural Resources has hedged 50 percent of its expected 2017 output and has conveyed its intention to add five to ten horizontal drilling rigs if prices recover to $50/b, with a positive outlook for oil fundamentals. Earlier on, too many U.S. shale oil drillers had indicated that they will be back at around $50/b levels. Oilprice.com: Oil Prices Fall Back as Rally Hits a Ceiling Though the bulls have latched on to the largest U.S. rig count drop in the past six weeks, their bullishness might be short-lived because if prices reach above $50/b, we might see anincrease in the oil rig count, reversing the current trend. Lithium prices have tripled over the last few years as the electric car boom starts to take hold. A number of companies are uniquely positioned to generate huge gains for early in investors. The short-term trend changed with the idea of a production freeze by Russia and OPEC, but the Doha meeting turned out to be a non-event. The chart below by Yardeni Research, a provider of independent investment and economics research, shows that in 2016, the oil inventories continue to rise, confirming that the supply glut continues. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) STEO report expects the supply glut to reduce in the second half of the year; however, if prices remain high, production might increase adding to the supply glut. Oilprice.com: Weak Data, Strong Dollar Pressure Crude Lower Though Nigeria, Kuwait, and Venezuela’s production has been hit hard due to various reasons, OPEC’s production of 32.64 million b/d is very close to its highest level of 32.65 million b/d recorded in January 2016, according to Reuters survey records since 1997. “The market is massively oversupplied,” said Eugen Weinberg, analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. “This rally doesn’t have strong legs,” reports Reuters. There isn’t much by way of fundamentals to rely upon for the rally to continue. Closer to $50/b, additional supply will start trickling in and buyers will be wary to buy at higher prices. With no excuses at hand, the speculators will find it difficult to prop prices higher. The short-term speculative pop in crude is about to end and the long-term fundamentals will take over. Prices should drop closer to $36 to $38/b in the near future. This article originally appeared on Oilprice.com

WiFi in flight - Economist

Air passengers are being offered more ways of getting online 

Feb 22nd 2016, 17:18 BY B.R.

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LAST week Icelandair unveiled what it described as Europe’s first “gate-to-gate” Wi-Fi service on most of its routes. It says onboard internet will now be switched on from the moment passengers board the plane to when it reaches the gate at the other end—including during takeoff and landing. 

It is the latest step in the unstoppable rise of connectivity in the clouds. At the same time that Icelandair was trumpeting its new service, American Airlines announced it is suing its onboad Wi-Fi provider, Gogo, because the service it offers is too slow. In this new frontier speed is of the essence. Meanwhile Lufthansa is to trial a service that allows flyers to connect to their 4G networks on their devices. If successful the technology will likely be taken up by other European carriers in 2017. Another system being developed jointly by Inmarsat, a satellite-maker that is also involved in the Lufthansa trial, and Deutsche Telekom, will allow phones to link to ground masts when at low altitude and to satellites when not.

All of which means that, whether over Wi-Fi or a 4G network, the air will soon be abuzz with people making and receiving calls. Ignoring e-mails will no longer be excused just because you are 30,000 feet above the ocean. And Instagram will be even more awash with pictures of passengers’ tepid airline food.

Many will see that as a great step forward. Others will lament that one of the last refuges from the tyranny of constant connection will have gone. That suggests a market opportunity. Some posh spas now offer to block mobile signals, ensuring that high-rolling guests who lack the willpower to use an off-switch get a chance at seclusion. Might, in the future, a far-sighted airline do the same? Call it Isolation Air, the internet- and chatter-free carrier. Then again, perhaps not: it would no doubt be impossible for business travellers to convince their firms of the benefit of severing ties with the office. Maybe at the very least, one of the less sadistic airlines will offer to turn off the signal when the lights are dimmed and passengers are trying to sleep. That doesn't seem too much to ask.

Apple to share " i phone " name with a small company in China - CNN

Apple has suffered a new setback in its efforts to take greater control over its iconic iPhone brand in China.
A Beijing court ruled recently that a small Chinese manufacturer can keep using the "iPhone" name on a variety of leather mobile accessories that it makes, such as phone cases and wallets.

Apple has been trying to stop the company, Xintong Tiandi Technology, from using the name since 2012 but without success.
Xintong Tiandi holds the trademark in China specifically to sell leather goods with the brand, while Apple holds one for phones, said the Chinese company's lawyer, Xiong Zhi.
It registered its trademark in 2007, roughly two years before Apple started selling iPhones in China. Apple also hasn't launched iPhone-branded products in China like the ones that Xintong Tiandi sells.
Related: Apple movies and iBooks shut down in China
Apple first tried to dispute this issue against Xintong Tiandi with the Chinese trademark authority in 2012, and later filed a lawsuit in 2013,. But it lost on both fronts, according to state media.
The Beijing court's ruling on March 31 upholds a decision from 2013 that Apple couldn't prove its "iPhone" brand was already well-known before Xintong Tiandi registered it, and that it couldn't demonstrate it was damaging the Apple brand in China, the state media publication Legal Daily reported.
An Apple spokeswoman said the company planned to issue a statement later on the matter.
This latest ruling is unlikely to affect iPhone sales or negatively impact Apple, though China remains an important market for the company.
In 2012, Apple paid $60 million to a Chinese company to settle a separate dispute over the "iPad" name.

Australian budget 2016 - The Age

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Budget 2016: long term faith required
Cuts to company tax are designed for long term benefit explains Fairfax's Peter Martin.
* Budget 2016: Full coverage
* Michael Gordon: Time for the great persuader to sell it
* Peter Hartcher: A Tony Abbott detox
* Budget winners and losers
* Your five minute guide to the budget
In the words of pop music legend George Michael: "You've got to have faith."
Morrison and Turnbull have delivered something of a Labor budget.
The Treasury and Reserve Bank are more gloomy than they were a year ago. They say the economy will grow by only 2.5 per cent in the coming financial year, down from 3.25 per cent expected last budget. Over four years, the budget outlook will be $22 billion worse.

Treasurer Scott Morrison is congratulated by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after he delivered his first budget. Photo: Andrew Meares
So what are Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull going to do? Scarcely anything when their measures are taken together. This financial year their revenue decisions (mainly tax cuts) have swelled the deficit by $1.7 billion. Their spending decisions have swelled it by a further $1.4 billion. That's $3.1 billion added to the deficit as a result of decisions in the six months since the December budget update.
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Over time they say the build-up of measures such as attacks on tax avoidance and tougher rules for superannuation will move things in the other direction. Over the four years to 2019-20 they say their measures will have shrunk the deficit by $1.7 billion, which is the equivalent of nothing much in the context of $44 billion of deficits.
But we've got to have faith. The new "Ten Year Enterprise plan" of immediate tax cuts for small businesses, followed by cuts for big businesses that eventually deliver a uniform tax rate of 25 per cent, along with very modest cuts for high earners will "boost new investment, create and support jobs and increase real wages".
It's the sort of thing an advertising agency would say. It's exactly what the advertising agency that prepared a series of leaked scripts did say: the budget will promote jobs and growth, and there's Treasury modelling to prove it.
Sponsored by NAB
The budget papers say the modelling finds the measures will "permanently increase the size of the economy by just over 1 per cent in the long term". It doesn't sound like much, and it's not. Treasury defines the long-term as two decades. That's a boost to the economy of less than 0.05 per cent a year, if the modelling is credible.
It's hard to tell. Bizarrely, the government directed Treasury not to release the modelling during the budget lock-up where it could be examined along with the other budget documents. It'll be released instead on the Treasury website later Tuesday night, meaning it'll be examined the day after the budget rather than on budget day.
Most of the boost is said to come from the cut in the standard company tax rate from 30 to 25 per cent. When the Centre for Policy Studies at Victoria University modelled the effects earlier this year, it found that while it would boost economic growth, it would cut national income, a more important measure. Many Australian companies don't really pay corporate tax anyway. Their shareholders get back the tax they've paid through dividend imputation.
The main beneficiaries of the company tax cut will be overseas-owned companies, and not all of them will increase their investment as a result. Some will simply pocket the gift. Those that are already here will get a reward for something they were going to do anyway. The government will have to make up the lost tax by collecting more from other people, or so the argument goes.
It'll be economic models at 50 paces. There are reasons for thinking we won't have faith. Two years ago, Morrison's predecessor claimed victory at the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane when he got his counterparts to agree to measures that would boost the global economy by 2 per cent. Since then global growth has shrunk. Modelling is inherently unreliable. It doesn't inspire faith.
Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan learnt two big lessons from their failed attempt to sell the mining tax in 2010. One was that modelling isn't enough. The other was that success depends on the persuasiveness of the seller. Neither Swan nor Morrison is particularly persuasive.
Morrison now presides over the highest budget deficit of any Coalition treasurer, in absolute terms ($37.1 billion over the year ahead) and as a proportion of GDP.
It's happening because his government is cautious, because of the coming election and because of the still fragile state of the Australian economy.
To their enormous credit, they haven't been cautious about superannuation. They're going to raise an extra $2.6 from Australia's highest earners (the top 4 per cent), give some of it back in super payments to the lowest earners (the bottom 28 per cent) and still come out in front. While they've only cut the threshold for paying the 30 per cent contributions tax from $300,000 to $250,000, the change will hit many more people than is widely realised.
It'll cut in not at $250,000 as it appears to, but at a figure of $250,000 calculated by lumping in salary with super contributions (typically 9.5 per cent of salary) and negating tax deductions including negative gearing. Yes, the Coalition supports negative gearing, but not when it is used by high earners to escape paying its extended super surtax. Some will be asking why.
Morrison and Turnbull have delivered something of a Labor budget. There's a Labor-style tax on tobacco, there's a (small) move against negative gearing, and an attack on super tax concessions for the rich. The biggest spending initiatives are measures that unwind parts of earlier Joe Hockey budgets – those that cut back projected payments to the states for hospitals and schools and restored funding to the Clean Energy Finance Corporate and the Australian Renewable Energy Authority.
If it all turns out like they think, we'll be grateful, but for now we'll need faith that the iron ore price will stay at or around $US55 a tonne for years. A few months ago it clipped $US38. We'll need faith that this time multinational technology giants will start paying tax, and we'll need faith that the Reserve Bank will keep cutting rates. The budget's factored that in.


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Creator of Bitcoin reveals himself ? - TIME

Bitcoin’s Creator Has Finally Unmasked Himself
* David Meyer / Fortune 4:30 AM ET
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“Satoshi Nakamoto” has offered up his cryptographic key as proof
The creator of the bitcoin virtual currency, who has long been known by the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto,” has come out of the shadows. His name is Craig Wright.
Wright, an Australian entrepreneur and prominent bitcoin backer, had previously been identified by Wired and Gizmodo, but their stories were met with some skepticism, as previous attempts at unmasking Nakamoto had not gone so well.
Now Wright has gone to the BBC, the Economist and GQwith proof that he says ties him to the identity of Nakamoto: He signed an encrypted message with the cryptographic key that was associated with the first bitcoin transaction.
“Some people will believe it, some people won’t, and to tell you the truth, I don’t really care,” Wright told the BBC, explaining that he was stepping into the light to stop people hounding him and people he cares about.

Jon Matonis, the founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation, is convinced that Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, and has written a blog post in which he says previous interactions with Wright .

How I Met Satoshi

Matonis sat in on a meeting in London where Wright demonstrated that he was Nakamoto.
“During the London proof sessions, I had the opportunity to review the relevant data along three distinct lines: cryptographic, social, and technical. Based on what I witnessed, it is my firm belief that Craig Steven Wright satisfies all three categories,” Matonis wrote.
Of course, not everyone’s sold on Wright’s claim just yet:

 For reasons, I'm exceedingly suspicious of the assertion that Craig Wright is Satoshi, and I remain so given the weakly validated evidence.

The Wired and Gizmodo stories in December were swiftly followed by a raid by the Australian tax authorities, though they claimed it had nothing to do with bitcoin. Wright now says he is cooperating with them on working out how much he needs to
If Wright has the million bitcoins that Nakamoto is believed to have amassed, that means he’s sitting on around $457 million.
“Satoshi Nakamoto” released the bitcoin system in 2009. It allows people to make peer-to-peer transactions without the aid of an intermediary such as a bank, by using a public ledger called a blockchain.
While bitcoin itself is no longer the hot property it was a couple years back, when speculation ran rampant, the blockchain mechanism itself is still of great interest to banks and others, such as those building new online voting systems — although bitcoin is famous for allowing its users to stay anonymous, the blockchain mechanism is terrific for reliably tracking the transactions themselves.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com
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Eurozone growth is bucking global trend - Wall Street Journal

What Slump? How Eurozone Growth is Bucking the Global Trend
Unusually, the eurozone is leading the way, strong first-quarter growth bodes well for the year

Economic growth in the eurozone in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter was 0.6%, or 2.2% annualized, exceeding estimates by analysts.
By RICHARD BARLEY
April 29, 2016 8:37 a.m. ET

The eurozone has provided investors with plenty of surprises in the past few years, most of them unpleasant. The economic data released Friday make for a refreshing change.
Eurozone growth in the first quarter versus the fourth came in at 0.6%, or 2.2% annualized. That was better than economists expected. It was also better than first-quarter growth in the U.S. and U.K., although the eurozone remains a laggard overall, with real gross domestic product only just above its precrisis peak. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to fall, reaching 10.2% in March, down 1 percentage point from a year ago. The only fly in the ointment was inflation, which dipped back into negative territory at an estimated minus 0.2% in April.
There is a caveat on growth: this is the first time Eurostat has released such an early estimate of first-quarter GDP, and as such it may be revised. Details are still missing, with no growth estimates publicly available for Germany and Italy in particular, which together account for 45% of the eurozone economy. However, the headline number does suggest decent performance. France and Spain posted strong numbers, with the former recording the biggest jump in household spending since the end of 2004. Domestic demand looks to be driving the recovery.,

The performance of the economy is in contrast to the nerves that infected European markets in the first quarter. The end of March saw the Stoxx Europe 600 down some 7.7% for the year, and 10-year German yields nearly half a percentage point lower than at the end of 2015. There was even a panic about eurozone banks, with violent swings in prices for subordinated bonds that count toward capital—although this was a crisis more about investors’ assumptions than the banks themselves.
True, growth may not be sustainable at the first quarter’s pace, as it appears to be well above trend. The European Commission, for instance, thinks potential annual growth is just 1% in 2016-2017. Even so, there could be upgrades of the eurozone’s prospects rather than downgrades: BNP Paribas, for instance, notes there are “upside risks” to its 1.3% full-year forecast.

The upshot should be a period of calm in monetary policy, too. The European Central Bank unveiled new measures in March and accompanied them with a plea to allow time for them to take effect. Friday’s data suggest that is the right approach to take. The eurozone, for now at least, is bucking the global gloom on growth.
Write to Richard Barley at richard.barley@wsj.c

Here’s How Snapchat Might Be Beating Facebook - Fortune

Here’s How Snapchat Might Be Beating Facebook Posted: 29 Apr 2016 08:40 AM PDT Snapchat users are gobbling up more and more new videos on the social media app every day, the company says. How many? Oh, just 10 billion a day, Snapchat tells Bloomberg. That’s an impressive growth streak for the company that started out as a simple way to share disappearing selfies with friends. Snapchat had less than half that video traffic a year ago: The company had about 4 billion video views a day in April of last year (as the Financial Timesreported), a number that jumped to 6 billion in November, and then 8 billion in February, matching Facebook’s latest video numbers. Apparently, the war for video-watching eyeballs is on. Facebook is also making a new push for more eyes-on-screens with its new livestreams, which debuted late last year. Snapchat is betting more on its “stories” feature to grab eyeballs. In stories, “snappers” can string a series of short 10-second-or-less video clips together. Stories can be watched for 24 hours on the app before they disappear (like most everything Snapchat). The company has also been using more of its video stories to publish short news bites: Snapchat debuted a new political show about this year’s presidential race, and the “discover” feature lets news outlets like CNN and Buzzfeed post their own short videos on the app. Though it certainly doesn’t have the more than a billion active users that Facebook does, Snapchat is arguably becoming the social media of choice for some of the youngest app users: The company says more than 60% of American smartphone users between the ages of 13 and 34 use the disappearing photo and video-sharing app. And among teenagers the app beats out every other social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But Snapchat’s latest video boast may still be a bit of a brag: Snapchat considers a video “viewed” as soon as someone starts watching. Facebook, on the other hand, counts a video as “viewed” after it’s been watched for three seconds, still just a flash compared to the 30 seconds required for an old-school YouTube video view. This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

True cost of living a long life - Fortune

How to fund extra years alive
Living longer is a blessing. But how to fund extra years has emerged as a global conundrum, one that will not be solved with the pension systems now in place. Life spans have stretched by more than a decade since 1970, making lifetime income too costly for governments or corporations to guarantee. If trends continue, the number of poor or nearly poor seniors will double to 4.3 million by 2022, according to one study. Here is a peek inside the financial labs where experts are trying to find solutions.
Social Security
This bedrock benefit lifts 15 million seniors in the U.S. out of poverty each year and is the sole source of income for nearly 1 in 4 recipients. It’s not going away. But by 2033, payroll taxes will be enough to pay only 77% of promised benefits. “There is more energy than you might think” for benefit cuts and tax increases that favor those of lesser means, says Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. One possibility is raising or removing the cap on annual earnings subject to Social Security tax ($118,500). There would be pushback against means testing. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is among those on board.

Guaranteed retirement accounts
Imagine a new account, above and beyond Social Security, 401(k)s and private pensions. It would be professionally managed, giving savers access to the lowest fees and broadest diversification. Contributions would be required of all workers and taken from your paycheck. The money would be invested conservatively, untouchable through loans or early distributions, and upon retirement paid out as an annuity. “The 401(k) is a failure,” says Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economics at the New School for Social Research. “We need a universal, mandated retirement-savings system.” She believes that these accounts could be a reality within a few years and that as workers came to value low fees and guaranteed income, these new accounts would either supplant 401(k) plans or force them to compete with lower costs and more guarantees.

401(K) annuities
The 401(k) may have life in it yet. The search is on for ways to seamlessly convert some or all of your 401(k) assets into guaranteed lifetime income without taking a lump sum and paying hefty fees to buy an immediate annuity. Treasury and the IRS recently cleared the way for target-date funds inside a 401(k) to make deferred annuities a default option. “But we are not yet where we need to be,” says Chip Castille, chief retirement strategist at BlackRock, which is pioneering 401(k) annuities. Look for remaining legal and other obstacles to phase out in the next few

Target income
Most investing is about maximizing returns. But an actively managed portfolio that over your entire working life seeks only to generate a reasonable target level of lifetime income upon retirement would hold more stable securities and shield you from what academics call sequence risk–the chance that you’ll suffer a big market hit at the worst time. Australian researcher Michael Drew has demonstrated that two identical savers with the same average annual returns can have vastly different wealth after 40 years–a spread of millions of dollars–just because one took their losses late in life when they had more to lose and little time to recover. Target-income funds “only take the amount of risk needed to reach the target, after which portfolio risk is lowered,” says Drew. Such a fund would naturally be light on stocks when the market is most volatile throughout your career–and have done its job, and be parked in safe securities, as you approach retirement and are most vulnerable.
Phased retirement
As we live longer, we should work longer. But you can start taking retirement-fund distributions before age 60 and collecting Social Security at 62. Normal retirement age, now 65 to 67, has risen much more slowly than life expectancies. Look for lawmakers to raise certain age thresholds, especially on the back end, like when you must start taking minimum distributions (70½) and stop accruing benefits by delaying Social Security (70). As barriers to working longer fall, formal programs that enable seniors to phase into retirement through part-time or less stressful jobs will take root. “There must be widespread resolve among employers and policymakers,” says Catherine Collinson, executive director at Aegon Center for Longevity and Retirement. Three-quarters of seniors want to keep working for reasons having nothing to do with financial concerns, and yet only a quarter say their employer has a program to help them retrain or downshift, the center found.

Brexit latest briefing - Wall Street Journal

4:02 AM EST APR 29, 2016


The past week has been dominated by the fallout from President Barack Obama’s intervention in the U.K. referendum debate. Mr. Obama stepped in on the side of those arguing for the U.K. to stay in the European Union, arguing the U.K. would go to “the back of the queue” when it came to negotiating a trade agreement with Washington.

More experts weighed in on the economic arguments about exit. With polls showing the economic issue tending to favor the Remain campaign, those urging Brexit were expected to try to switch the debate toward immigration, which polls suggest is a stronger issue for them. Home Secretary Teresa May stepped in to the debate on the side of Remain, saying the U.K. shouldn’t quit the EU but should leave the European Court of Human Rights.

Here, in a nutshell, are the issues that dominated the past week.
* Obama Drama
So he did it and came out for Bremain, saying “I don’t believe the EU moderates British influence in the world–it magnifies it.” He elaborated later that being at the back of the queue meant that a U.S.-U.K. trade deal could take as long as a decade to come into force. Some of the subsequent debate focused on whether a U.S. president would really say “queue” and whether that meant his talking points were written in Downing Street.
Before Mr. Obama spoke, London Mayor Boris Johnson suggested the president might be, as a part-Kenyan, influenced by his “ancestral dislike of the British empire.” That kicked off a whole storm of its own. Many people for Leave argued that the president had misunderstood the issue, which was about getting back British sovereignty.
The leading Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, backed the president. Republican contender Ted Cruz said the opposite of Mr. Obama, writing in The Times that the U.K. would be at “the front of the queue” for a trade deal. Here’s Simon Nixon’s take.

* May Courts Controversy
Home Secretary Theresa May spelled out her reasons for staying in the EU. It was her questioning of British membership of the European Court of Human Rights that drew the most headlines. The ECHR, based in Strasbourg, is not an EU court, and the U.K. is subject to it as a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights.
While many get the two mixed up, the EU’s top court is the European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, with which Ms. May has less of a problem.
There’s some irony here in the sense that the ECHR (unlike the EU) is a British creation dating back to 1950, born of the pan-European vision of Conservative Party icon Winston Churchill.
The speech revived the debate about whether the U.K. could leave the ECHR but not the EU. Here’s Stephen Booth’s fence-sitting response.


* Better Off Out: Economists
Most economists who have spoken out on the question say the U.K. is better off in the EU. But this week a group of eight British economistsput their case for leaving, saying growth will be faster outside than inside. The full report is here.
Their vision of a faster-growing post-Brexit Britain is one where the country has embraced the free market. The economists depict the EU as a protectionist bloc, and believe exit will allow the U.K. to lower tariffs on imports, making goods cheaper. Money saved from the contribution to the EU budget should be used to cut income taxes. There would be a bonfire of regulations.
Could such a vision come to pass? We asked this question a couple of weeks ago.


* Better Off In: Economists
The latest organization to say it would be damaging is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based club of industrialized countries. Its boss Angel Gurria said “Leaving Europe would impose a Brexit tax on generations to come,” saying the losses were already starting. The central scenario had a loss by 2030 of £3,200 a year for every household. Here’s the paper.


* No Easy Way Out
In this week’s Brussels Beat, we look at how legally the U.K. might go about leaving the EU. In broad terms, there are two ways: one is hard and the other is a nightmare.
Here for the pro-EU Centre for European Reform, Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska drills deeper into the questions that surround Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the clause that most likely would have to be used to negotiate the U.K.’s departure.
 



Eurozone economy back to pre-crisis level - Financial Times

Eurozone GDP returns to pre-crisis levels
Strong French performance helps single currency area beat growth expectations

The eurozone economy began the year in stronger fashion than expected, as gross domestic product finally surpassed pre-crisis levels and grew by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter, helped by a relatively robust performance by France.

The eurozone figure, released by Eurostat, the European Commission’s statistical arm, showed growth at the fastest rate since the beginning of 2015, as overall economic output reached its highest level, above the first quarter of 2008.
It is also the first time since the beginning of 2011 that growth in the single currency area has outpaced economic expansion in the broader EU and the UK, which recorded growth of 0.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively.


The British government, which is facing an In/Out referendum on EU membership on 23 June, until recently emphasised the UK’s status as the fastest growing economy in the G7.
Analysts had expected growth of about 0.4 per cent in the eurozone — only a slight improvement on the 0.3 per cent figure recorded for the final three months of 2015.
The initial eurozone and wide EU GDP figures do not provide a breakdown of performance by member states.
However, national data from France showed that the region’s second-largest economy fuelled some of the momentum for the improved recovery.
France’s economy grew 0.5 per cent, outstripping economists’ expectations and adding to a recent run of improving fortune for Socialist President François Hollandein the build-up to next year’s elections.

The Spanish economy also beat expectations, growing by 0.8 per cent in the first three months of the year, despite the lack of a government and the prolonged political uncertainty.
The growth rate was the same as in the previous two quarters, defying expectations of a slight weakening of growth this year. Spain’s central bank had predicted growth of 0.7 per cent in the first three months of 2016.
In depth
Eurozone economy

News and analysis of the single currency bloc’s fragile recovery as it attempts to regain competitiveness in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis and its struggles with austerity
Friday’s preliminary figure for France is above the 0.3 per cent growth that the country — the eurozone’s second-biggest economy — recorded during the past three months of 2015. It was boosted by the biggest increase in household spending since 2004, according to Insee, the official statistics bureau.
While the figures will increase confidence in the region’s recovery, difficulties remain — including inflation, which fell in the year to April to minus 0.2 per cent from zero the previous month.
Eurostat said the core measure of inflation, which excludes items with more volatile prices such as food and energy goods, also fell — dipping from 1 per cent in March to 0.8 per cent. Both the headline and core figures were the lowest since February this year.
Unemployment remains in double figures, although it fell from 10.4 per cent in February to 10.2 per cent in March.

Economists welcomed the French growth data, which they said would boost Mr Hollande’s standing. “There is a stronger situation in the labour market and that will create strong momentum this year,” said Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Natixis Asset Management.”
He added: “It’s perfect timing for Hollande.”
The latest data come as Mr Hollande, the least popular president in France’s modern history, according to recent surveys, is trying to claw back support as he and his party prepare for next year’s presidential contest.
This week data showed that French unemployment in March saw the biggest monthly fall in 15 years.
The figure, the sharpest fall since 2000, more than made up for an increase in the jobless numbers in February and brought about the first quarterly fall since well before Mr Hollande took office in 2012.

Why Apple Needs To Do Something Huge Soon - TIME

Why Apple Needs To Do Something Huge Soon Posted: 26 Apr 2016 06:32 AM PDT If Silicon Valley has anything resembling an action hero, it’s Apple. Between the summer of ’83 and the summer of ’85, the company that many credit with defining personal computing as we understand it today saw its stock fall 76%. That would be a death sentence for most emerging-tech companies. But Apple – like Bond, Bauer, or Bourne – had a few tricks up its sleeve. The Super Bowl Macintosh ad that has since become an icon of iconoclasm, for one. Sure enough, Apple had its revenge over enemies and doubters alike. The stock surged 881% in the following six years, while the Nasdaq rose a mere 69%. Every good action hero has his or her inevitable sequel. Apple was no exception. Between 1991 and 1997, Apple lost 80% of its stock value – and this during a time when the Nasdaq Composite came close to tripling. Any Apple fanboy worth his weight in bile knows what happened next: Apple bought NeXT Software, bringing Steve Jobs back into the fold. Then came the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and a mere 21,000% increase in Apple’s market cap between 1997 and its peak of $134.54, reached about a year ago. It marked the end of a historic run. And since then, Apple bulls and bears alike have since been wondering: Is this the end of that great run, or just a pause before the next one starts? The question has haunted Apple for years. Is there life after the iPhone? The iPad’s introduction in 2010, three years after the iPhone, was supposed to be a robust second act. But iPad sales are softening. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch, introduced last year, has yet to find a killer app to drive sales beyond hardcore fans and early adopters. So where does that leave Apple? In something of a twilight zone. By no means will it tumble the way it did in the 1980s. But there’s no guarantee it will see the surges it has in the past any time soon. Apple’s stock thrives after it has released a product that appeals to the mainstream. That could be the iPhone 7, due out this fall. But it won’t be a new iPad, or an Apple Watch, or the elusive rumors of something more than the existing Apple TV, or even a new Macbook Pro. All of these will add to Apple’s ever growing revenue and profits, but only incrementally so. These are like an action hero recounting old victories: Bond re-defeating Blofeld, say, or Bauer keeping Nina out of the loop. The analogies between Apple and action films die quickly because one exists in the realm of fantasy and the other in the very unforgiving world of investor expectations. But they also die hard (sorry) because Apple fanboys have fought so passionately for so long for the company’s over-achieving, underdog image. And because Apple in 2016 is, like any action hero worthy of a long life, in need of a new challenge. Apple has long been an underdog in tech, largely because of its insistence on manufacturing hardware, rather than being mainly software-driven like Facebook or Google. As an underdog, it has long been subject to low valuations. Apple’s stock is valued around 11 times its earnings this year. Google’s stock is valued at twice that, and Facebook’s forward price-to-earnings ratio is nearly three times as high. But unlike Google or Facebook, which can promise investors steady growth in both revenue and profit, Apple has a cyclical business. That is, its chief product — the iPhone — is released every two years. In the in-between years, Apple can only hope that incremental upgrades as well as sales in overseas markets like China will offset any cyclical lows.  Apple Revenue The chart above shows how Apple’s revenue growth slowed dramatically before the iPhone 6 was released. Thanks to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple’s revenue grew in established markets as well as emerging ones like China, a happy ending that boosted Apple’s stock to new highs. All Apple needed was the perfect sequel. And this brings us to the financial drama that has been playing out this quarter. A fifth of Apple’s market cap has been eaten away during the past year. China’s economy is slowing. And reports have emerged in recent weeks that iPhone sales fell in the first quarter of the year. The question is, just how far did they fall? And more importantly, what is Apple going to do for its next act of growth? It’s not the Apple Watch, which has proven to be a triumph of design over everyday utility. It’s probably not the iPhone, which, with every release, seems less revolutionary and more iterative. And it’s not something radical like a car, which remains years away, if we’ll see it at all. Apple CEO Tim Cook has hinted there are new products coming. If Apple’s earnings disappoint today, the sooner those new devices come, the better. Nobody begrudges an aging action hero a few gray hairs. It’s when you run out of tricks up your sleeve that the audience turns away. Right now, Apple’s stock is trading around $105 a share, not far from where it was four year ago. Now is as good a time as any to do something heroic.

China car sale up despite economic slow down - Economist

IF YOU believe that China’s economy is in trouble and that Chinese consumers are clinging tightly to their yuan, a visit to a local automobile dealership may make you think again. China has already roared past America to become the world’s biggest car market. In March sales of passenger cars zoomed again, by nearly 10% year on year. Shiny sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), the hottest items at this week’s biennial Beijing Auto Show (pictured), did even better: sales jumped by 46% in March from a year earlier. The car market is forecast to keep growing briskly for the rest of this decade (see chart, left).
The Chinese consumer is flashing his wallet elsewhere, too. China’s box-office revenues shot up by nearly 50% on a year earlier in 2015, to $6.8 billion. Cinema operators led by Wanda Group, an ambitious local conglomerate that recently bought Hollywood’s Legendary Entertainment, have poured money into expansion; the number of screens across China has been rising at 36% a year since 2011.
Related topics
* Asia

* China

After years of breakneck expansion, the smartphone market is peaking. Some firms still thrive: China’s Huawei, a telecoms giant, predicts that revenues from its consumer-devices division will rise by about 50% this year. But Xiaomi, an innovative electronics firm once seen as China’s answer to Apple, is losing steam. Apple’s own fortunes have dipped since a leap in revenues from greater China last year. As the market for devices matures, consumer spending is shifting to mobile services: data usage has grown at triple-digit rates since 2012.

The unrelenting march of e-commerce continues. In 2010, online shopping accounted for only 3% of total private consumption, but it now makes up 15%. Alibaba, which processes more sales on its ecommerce platforms than eBay and Amazon combined, saw annual Chinese revenues grow to 63 billion yuan ($9.7 billion) in 2015, a rise of nearly 40% compared with a year earlier. JD, its main local rival, saw revenues leap by nearly 58%.
The Chinese still are spending heavily abroad. International tax-free shopping by Chinese shot up 58% last year, according to a new report from Global Blue, a big operator of duty-free shops. Overall, Chinese tourists spent $215 billion on outbound travel last year, a rise of 53% on the previous year. Ctrip, a big online travel firm partly owned by Baidu, a Chinese internet search giant, saw its revenues jump by nearly half last year, to 10.9 billion yuan.
As with cars, screens and travel, so with consumption generally. All retail sales across the economy, adjusted for inflation, rose by 9.6% during the first quarter, compared with the same period a year ago. The services sector, which caters to the growing demands of the middle classes, has been rising by 8% a year in real terms since 2012 (see chart, right). Services made up 57% of economic output in the first quarter; electricity consumption in services rose by some 10%, but was flat for industry.
Not every market is as bouncy as it once was. A cooling economy and an official anti-corruption drive have squeezed luxury goods, sales of which fell by 2% year on year in 2015, to 113 billion yuan. But some firms are doing well. Rémy Cointreau, a premium liquor brand offering tamper-proof bottles on the mainland (they have “near field communications” tags that tell your smartphone if the booze has been diluted) saw global revenues rise nearly 10% last quarter and gave credit to “improving trends in greater China.” According to Bernard Arnault, the boss of LVMH, a French luxury goliath: “Analysts underestimate the Chinese economy…the fundamentals are good. Household spending is still increasing.”
The two Chinas
Can consumption remain resilient given the troubles of the country’s state-dominated industrial economy, ranging from vast overcapacity to record levels of debt? One temporary source of comfort is the fact that the state sector may now itself be stabilising, thanks to a massive, debt-fuelled government stimulus. But greater reassurance comes the fact that even a big shakeout in heavy industry would be unlikely to derail the Chinese consumer. By one estimate, if 30% of capacity is slashed across China’s most bloated state industries, perhaps 3m workers will lose their jobs over the next three years. But thanks largely to the private sector, the country created 64m jobs between 2011 and 2015, with more than 13m of them coming in the past year alone.
The dynamism of the mostly-private consumer sector comes not from stimulus, argues Andy Rothman of Matthews Asia, an investment firm, but from strong income growth and low household debt. (Chinese household debt stands at about 40% of GDP, roughly half the level seen in America.) Real urban incomes rose by 5.8% in the first quarter. Willis Towers Watson, a consultancy, estimates that white-collar salaries are now significantly higher in China than in southeast Asia. That fuels a bristling optimism. A recent study by McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 55% of consumers in China are confident that their incomes will rise significantly over the next five years.
Many big firms seem willing to look past current clouds over China’s economy to brighter days ahead. Pepsi, an American snack-food firm, opened its first Quaker Oats manufacturing plant on the mainland in October, and has launched oat-based dairy drinks to cater to local tastes. It even wants to introduce Pepsi-branded smartphones in China. McDonald’s, a huge American hamburger chain, wants 1,250 outlets in the mainland over the next five years on top of the 2,200 it operates already.
America’s Walt Disney, an entertainment colossus, is set to open Shanghai Disneyland, a $5.5 billion theme park that is its biggest investment outside Florida, in June. Keen to experience such novelties as Peking-duck-topped, Mickey-Mouse shaped pizza, Chinese families are now eagerly snapping up entry tickets online. Starbucks, an American coffee chain, plans to add 500 outlets this year in China, including one at the entrance of the new Disney park. Howard Schultz, its boss, predicts it will be “Starbucks’ highest-grossing retail store overnight.”
Firms such as these are betting on the continued rise of the affluent middle class. By 2020, the number of households earning above $24,000 per year is expected to double to 100m, making up 30% of all urban households. They are also betting on free-spending youth. Consumption is rising at 14% a year among under-35s, twice the level of oldies. But above all, they are betting on the law of large numbers. A joint study, by the Boston Consulting Group, another consultancy, and AliResearch, the research arm of Alibaba, predicts that even if economic growth falls to only 5.5% per year (well below official claims of nearly 7% a year now), China’s consumer economy will expand over the next five years by some $2.3 trillion. No matter what the deficiencies in economic forecasts, that incremental gain would be bigger than the entire consumer economy in Britain or Germany today.

Spain 5 months without a government - New York Times

MADRID — Belgium famously sealed a dubious notoriety five years ago when it spent 589 days without an elected government. While Spain is not quite Belgium yet, it is getting there.
Spain has started its fifth month without a government, but it is very likely to spend six months or more in political limbo, many analysts now predict, as the Spaniards give the Flemings and Walloons a run for their money in the political discord category.
One word that seems to come up a lot these days when discussing politics is circo (or circus).
After an election in December produced no clear winner, scattering votes among the four main parties, those parties have failed to negotiate a governing coalition. As the politicians squabble incessantly, about the only consensus is that the country has entered uncharted waters.
Mariano Rajoy, the former prime minister, is clinging to his office as acting prime minister after turning down an offer from the king to form a government. His government ministers refuse to recognize the Parliament that resulted from the election or even deal with its lawmakers. The new Parliament has taken the government to court for not recognizing its legitimacy, while not recognizing the legitimacy of Mr. Rajoy, either.
That is where things stand.
It was not supposed to be this way. A new generation of party leaders had promised that the December vote would usher in a period of change and constitutional reform.
Instead, Spain is verging on constitutional crisis. The order of the day is institutional sclerosis, a lot of posturing and “generally a moment of great confusion,” said Rubén Amón, a columnist for El País, a Spanish newspaper.
“Politicians have given a very bad image in which all party leaders have put their own personal survival ahead of the general interest,” Mr. Amón said.
It is not as if public perceptions of the politicians could sink much lower in a country where virtually every party has been caught up in corruption scandals in recent years. But the nearly complete undermining of the public’s faith in its political institutions may be about the only thing achieved since the start of the year.
This month’s parliamentary debating was a case point. The session on April 6 was supposed to give lawmakers an opportunity to challenge Mr. Rajoy on why his government had backed a controversial European Union agreement to have Turkey take back unwanted refugees.
But humanitarian considerations quickly gave way to far more personal tensions between the leaders of Spain’s two emerging parties — Albert Rivera of Ciudadanos, or Citizens, and Pablo Iglesias of the far-left Podemos.
The two men, in their 30s, have presented themselves as a new generation of Spanish politician. But the new generation looked every bit like the old one, as they hurled accusations of cronyism.
It was part of what Luis María Anson, a veteran journalist, called “a depressing show” since the December election. Spanish politics, he argued in a recent column in the newspaper El Mundo, has become “a circus ring in which every day acrobatic leaders make ridiculous pirouettes to the stupefaction of citizens.”
Manuel de la Rocha Vázquez, an adviser to the Socialist party, suggested that the flamboyant sparring had become unavoidable in an era of round-the-clock news coverage.

Why Intel Is Laying Off Thousands of Workers - TIME

Why Intel Is Laying Off Thousands of Workers Posted: 22 Apr 2016 06:51 AM PDT These days, it’s hard to conjure the sense of dread that the word “Wintel” inspired during the PC era. In the waning decades of the 20th Century, Wintel referred to the duopoly of Microsoft Windows and Intel’s x86 chips that, together, steamrolled competitors and dominated the tech landscape. Of course, the Wintel platform still dominates the PC sector. But PCs aren’t what they used to be. Global shipments of desktops and laptops peaked at 365 million units five years ago and fell to 289 million in 2015. Meanwhile, combined sales of tablets and smartphones surged to about 1.7 billion units last year. In that context, Wintel dominates the way a trunkless statue of Ozymandias presides over an arid desert. Microsoft and Intel saw the slowdown coming and tried to respond. Both companies watched their stocks trade sideways during the decade after the dot-com bust. Both struggled for years to find a foothold in the smartphone market. Both have named new CEOs over the past three years who vowed to upgrade their businesses to mine future areas of growth. To date, Microsoft has had a more successful transition. Under Satya Nadella, the Redmond, Wash.-based firm engineered a bold restructuring, laying off thousands of workers last year and repositioning the company around growing markets like cloud computing. That has helped Microsoft improve its stock price by 93% in the past three years. During that time, Intel’s stock has risen 47%, underperforming the Nasdaq Composite’s 50% gain. This isn’t to say that Intel is in trouble. But its transition from a dependence on an aging, still-profitable business of PC chips to more promising markets is taking longer than many had hoped. Intel has been pushing into growing areas like chips for data centers and the Internet of Things. And this week, CEO Brian Krzanich moved to speed up the transition by announcing 12,000 job cuts within the coming year. “These are not changes I take lightly. We are saying goodbye to colleagues who have played an important role in Intel’s success,” Krzanich said in an email he sent to Intel’s 107,300 employees. “Today’s announcement is about accelerating our growth strategy.” Krzanich describes that strategy as one that will “transform our company from a PC company to a company that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices.” In short, a transition echoing the one Microsoft is also navigating. Call it the Wintel playbook for surviving in the 21st Century. Sales of PC chips still make up more than half Intel’s revenue. Krzanich said that there are areas of the PC market Intel will continue to focus on, such as high-end laptops, gaming PCs and tablet/PC hybrids. For the past year or so, PC sales showed signs of stabilizing – that is, not growing, but not declining rapidly either. That changed this year, with shipments declining nearly 10% in the first three months. In hindsight, Intel could have moved beyond the PC-chip business earlier. That highlights one difference with Microsoft, which reacted relatively quickly a decade ago, moving into enterprise and server software and paving the way for an early entry into the cloud. Intel, by contrast, infamously passed on a chance to design the chips for Apple’s first iPhone, underestimating the potential of the smartphone market. Instead, chip designs from ARM Holdings became the standard. Some analysts believe a portion of the iPhone 7, expected this fall, may have Intel inside, although it may be too little too late. Global smartphone sales are also slowing as the market saturates. Under Krzanich, Intel has been working to position itself in markets that promise future growth. Its data-center group saw revenue rise 9% to $4 billion, while its Internet of Things group saw revenue grow by 22% to $651 million. Last year, Intel paid $16.7 billion for Altera to ensure a foothold in the growing market for programmable chips. On an interview with CNBC this week, Krzanich said Intel will probably make more acquisitions to expand further beyond PCs. The awkward transitions Intel and Microsoft are experiencing are almost a rite of passage for big tech companies as they age. IBM, Oracle and others have also had to embrace new cloud-based subscription models that are eating into their older businesses. And yet, true to the theory of disruptive innovation, they can’t abandon those old models too quickly, because they remain positive. The trick, if there is a trick, is timing the move from old to new just right. Following Intel’s announcement of layoffs, analysts debated whether Intel’s timing is coming too late. A report from Stifel Nicolaus said the “workforce adjustment may have been overdue.” Another from MKM Partners argued they could boost profits in PC chips and allow for more investments in newer areas. Still another from Bernstein believed that, the layoffs notwithstanding, “the fundamentals of the company continue to deteriorate.” Intel’s best hope may be Krzanich’s willingness to shake things up. A number of top executives who were Intel veterans have left the company this year, after Krzanich brought in an outsider – Murthy Renduchintala, who previously ran Qualcomm’s chip business – to oversee many of its products. On Tuesday, Krzanich said Renduchintala “is doing a complete review of all our products” to further the restructuring. That may echo another bold change made by Microsoft, which required a shift in corporate culture to move into the future, embracing ideas that were alien during its years of PC dominance. That’s fitting, as the era of Wintel is over. And the two companies behind it are each feeling their own way into the future

Cruze and Kasici to jointly stop Trump - Wall Street Journal

In an unprecedented last-ditch effort to stop Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, his two remaining rivals announced Sunday night they are divvying up the upcoming primary states to try to block the New York businessman’s path to the GOP nomination.
Top officials from the Ted Cruz and John Kasich campaigns announced the alliance in a pair of statements late Sunday night. The deal will keep Mr. Kasich, the Ohio governor, on the sidelines for Indiana’s May 3 primary, while Mr. Cruz, the Texas senator, won’t compete in contests in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7.
“Our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead,” Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said.
Mr. Kasich’s top strategist, John Weaver, made an explicit call for super PACs devoted to stopping Mr. Trump to follow the two campaigns’ lead.
“We will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon,” Mr. Weaver said. “We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns.”
The Cruz-Kasich alliance marks a phase both candidates have resisted for months. Both men have rejected calls that they ask supporters to strategically back other candidates in order to stop Mr. Trump, who is the lone Republican with a statistical chance of winning the party’s nomination on the first ballot at the GOP’s national convention, to be held in July in Cleveland.
The agreement comes as Mr. Trump is in the midst of a successful run of states. He won 89 of New York’s 95 delegates on Tuesday and stands to carry all five northeastern states due to vote this week.
If the arrangement is successful, it stands to benefit both men. Mr. Cruz’s campaign is now arranged around the idea that he can clinch the GOP nomination on a second or third ballot at the convention, once delegates bound to Mr. Trump on the first vote become free to vote how they wish. Mr. Kasich’s hope is that not only does Mr. Trump fall short, but Mr. Cruz does too, and eventually Republican delegates choose him as the most electable candidate.
Republican candidates need 1,237 delegates at the party convention to become the presidential nominee.
Mr. Trump responded on Twitter Sunday night Messrs. Cruz and Kasich “are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!”
Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The deal will also likely add fuel to Mr. Trump’s long-running argument that the presidential contest is “rigged” against him. Mr. Trump has for weeks claimed the GOP nominating rules are fixed to benefit other candidates.

Apple should pay more tax - Fortune

Posted: 22 Apr 2016 04:16 AM PDT



Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak thinks the company — and all other companies — should be paying a 50% tax rate.
Woz told the BBC that he doesn’t like the idea that Apple is not paying taxes the way he does as an individual, saying he was worried its tax practices may be “unfair.”
“I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50% of everything I make in taxes, and I believe that’s part of life and you should do it,” Wozniak said. Asked if Apple should be paying such a rate, he replied: “Every company in the world should.”



Not that Woz, who left Apple over three decades ago, can do anything about it.
“I would not have any power and I don’t think it would be right for me, Steve Wozniak, to try to influence how Apple handles it, and I would have no effect anyway,” he said. “They’re going to take the thing that saves the last little penny. Apple’s so huge they don’t have to give in to anything.”
Apple recently paid $348 millionto settle a dispute with the Italian tax authorities, over the way it funnelled Italian profits through an Irish subsidiary in order to minimize its taxes.
It could also face a bill for billions in back-taxes if the European Commission concludes that Ireland gave it preferential treatment with its tax deal there, in a way that amounted to illegal state aid.
The company (like others) has made use of complex arrangements involving Ireland and Bermuda to cut its tax bill.
However, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said the accusation that it was avoiding taxes was “total political crap” and the idea of bringing profits back to the U.S. was not “reasonable” because it would “cost me 40% to bring it home.” He also claimed Apple is already the biggest corporate tax payer in the U.S.
This article originally appeared on fortune.com