Bloomberg Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening. Sometimes, someone is. Amazon.com Inc employs thousands of people around the world to help improve …

Bloomberg Vista Global Holding, which competes with Warren Buffett’s NetJets in the pay-by-the-hour private plane market, agreed to buy US-based JetSmarter, adding a service that sells empty seats on chartered aircraft. While the Uber-style model will extend the group’s product offering in the $11 billion on-demand corporate flights sector, JetSmarter is mainly attractive for industry-leading digital technology and an app …

Bloomberg A team of scientists, some of whom have worked for Elon Musk, outlined a way to rapidly implant electrical wiring into the brains of rats. The process, described in an unpublished academic paper, is an important step towards a potential system to plug human brains directly into computers. The paper’s five authors have been employed by or loosely associated …

Bloomberg Mubadala Investment Co opened an office in New York as the Abu Dhabi wealth fund builds on its presence in the United States. “Today we have offices in San Francisco, we have offices in Rio De Janeiro, we have offices in Moscow, we have an office in New York City which we just inaugurated, and Hong Kong by the …

Bloomberg Network International shares surged in London trading after the payments processor raised 1.1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) in an initial public offering that’s the biggest listing in Europe so far this year. Network International jumped 22 percent to 532.20 pence in London. The Dubai-based company sold 200 million shares for 435 pence each, according to a statement on Wednesday. …

SHARJAH / WAM Dana Gas has announced that its average production for Q1, 2019 has increased by 6 percent year-on-year to 68,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from 65,000 boepd in Q1 2018. The first quarter production increase was led by the KRI (Kurdistan Region of Iraq), which leapt to 32,750 boepd in Q1, 2019 from 26,300 boepd …

Bloomberg First Mexico’s president told oil drillers to produce more. Now he wants fuel stations to charge less. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is calling on fuels, liquid petroleum gas, and natural gas distributors to review their profit margins and pass on more tax savings to consumers in his latest crackdown on the private energy market. Mexico offers subsidies …

Bloomberg Canada housing starts rebounded in March from a sluggish performance a month earlier, returning to levels more in line with demographics and highlighting the buoyancy of the nation’s battered real estate market. Builders started an annualised 192,527 homes in March, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported. That’s up from 166,290 a month earlier, when excessively cold weather slowed …

Bloomberg US stocks edged higher, while Treasuries advanced as investors weighed key developments that continue to raise doubts about the strength of the global economy. The S&P 500 clung to a slight gain as an unexpectedly soft inflation reading potentially boosted the Federal Reserve’s new wait-and-see approach to rate hikes. Minutes from the central bank’s last policy meeting when it …

Bloomberg The bar is high for Asia’s most-popular destination of 2019 for overseas money even if Prime Minister Narendra Modi wins a second term in elections starting from Thursday. A survey of 21 global funds and strategists show most expect him to return, an outcome that may be baked into asset prices. With valuations already high, the disappointment if he …