Bloomberg In recent months, Audible, the audiobook service owned by Amazon.com Inc., has been meeting with talent agencies and producers to discuss acquiring potential new podcast projects—or, in the terminology that Audible prefers, “Audible Originals.” Audible is offering anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million dollars per show, more than every competitor except Spotify Technology SA. ...

Bloomberg On the outskirts of a small town less than 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, a 720,000 square foot electric vehicle factory is arising in the desert. If all goes as planned, a luxurious new battery-electric sedan will roll off its production line by year’s end. Lucid Motors, a US startup, is building the factory and slated to start manufacturing ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. plans to hire more remote workers in areas where the company doesn’t have an office, and let some current employees work from home permanently if they’d like to. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the firm plans to “aggressively open up remote hiring” starting immediately with the US, particularly for engineering talent. Based on internal employee surveys, ...

DUBAI / WAM Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) said that the bonuses distributed to Emirati owners of Dubai taxi plates over the past 10 years under the orders of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai have exceeded AED1.5 billion. Mattar Mohammed Al Tayer, Director General ...

Bloomberg Beijing is accelerating its bid for global leadership in key technologies, planning to pump more than a trillion dollars into the economy through the rollout of everything from wireless networks to artificial intelligence. In the masterplan backed by President Xi Jinping himself, China will invest an estimated $1.4 trillion over six years to 2025, calling on urban governments and ...

LONDON / WAM Biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, said on Thursday it had received the first agreements to supply at least 400 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford, reported Reuters. The British drugmaker said it has a total capacity sourced for one billion doses through 2020 and into 2021, and continues to increase capacity ...

Bloomberg Oil was headed for its longest run of daily gains since February 2019 after a drop in US crude stockpiles added to signs that the market is starting to balance. West Texas Intermediate futures rose for a sixth day in New York to near $34 a barrel. American inventories fell for a second week, and there was a record ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) joined the Arab Coordination Group (ACG) Institutions’ $10 billion commitment to help developing countries respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and help their economic recovery. The support, agreed at a virtual ACG meeting, will initially focus on helping developing countries obtain the medical supplies and protective equipment they need. It will ...

DUBAI / Emirates Business Emirates has unveiled multi-faceted measures for employee and customer care at every step of the travel journey, redefining safety and hygiene standards on board and on the ground. The new measures took effect, with the resumption of regularly scheduled passenger flights to nine destinations. “Emirates is implementing a comprehensive set of measures at every step of ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Abu Dhabi Waste Management Centre (Tadweer) announced the operation of three mobile medical waste incinerators in Abu Dhabi to support the precautionary measures taken by various healthcare entities to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus outbreak. The incinerators are operated at Al Mafraq Hospital and the recently launched field hospitals in Abu Dhabi including the field hospital ...