Once more history is being scripted in the US election. Eight years ago, an African American young Senator, Barrack Obama, cruised to the Oval House. Now Hillary Clinton claimed victory on Tuesday over rival Bernie Sanders in the Democratic White House nomination race. If she defeats Donald Trump in November, Clinton will become the first female president of America. ...
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How a data revolution can solve plane mysteries
Adam Minter When Air France Flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, it took two years and more than $25 million before investigators found it. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in 2014 and still hasn’t turned up. EgyptAir 804, lost on May 19, is somewhere on the bottom of the Mediterranean, but until investigators can dredge up ...
Read More »Trump’s wasting time trying to save factories
Listening to our political leaders, you’d think everyone on the planet works in a factory. Donald Trump wants to stop China and Mexico from “taking our jobs†by preventing factories from moving there — and he’s willing to launch a trade war to do so. Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, recently claimed that a ...
Read More »Staying afloat: The future of Melanesian economies
Securing long-term economic viability remains a challenge for the Melanesian states, with geographic isolation, climate change, natural disasters, and aid dependency presenting significant problems for these relatively young countries. Vanuatu has a population of 270,000 and a GDP of $771 million. Designing an economy that is capable of supporting some 83 islands who mainly practice subsistence farming is a ...
Read More »US tech has disrupted global tax systems
Greece, that hotbed of worst economic practices, has provided a perfect illustration of one of the biggest problems facing governments: In a world that’s increasingly unified by technology, the fiscal systems are still designed for 20th-century business models. The Sharing Economy A series of tax hikes went into effect on June 1 in Greece, including a one percentage point ...
Read More »Is the Japan-Russia honeymoon over before it even began?
Dmitry Filippov SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 6 was met with positive reactions from both countries and gave grounds for cautious optimism regarding going forward with the peace treaty negotiations and making progress on the Northern Territories dispute. As I wrote of Abe’s visit: [T]he ...
Read More »The (false) robot invasion
WASHINGTON The robots are coming — but not in numbers that would imperil most Americans’ jobs. Few subjects have inspired as much hype as robots. Consider some sample headlines: “Robots and Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs within the Next 20 years,†“Robots Could Put Humans Out of Work by 2045,†“Why the Highest-Paid Doctors Are the Most Vulnerable to ...
Read More »China must quell European pessimism
China, which has been a top business hub over the last two decades, is now experiencing slow growth amid increasing hostile business environment and lack of political will to accelerate structural reforms, triggering pessimism among European companies. Fifty-six per cent of European firms polled by the European Chamber of Commerce in China said they are finding it more difficult ...
Read More »Mongolia’s cybersecurity cooperation
Galbaatar Lkhagvasuren SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Mongolia has declared in its National Security Concept that it will develop friendly-neighbor relations and wide-ranging cooperation with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Yet individuals and other groups both in China and Russia have attempted cyber attacks on Mongolia numerous times, most of which have been reported to the ...
Read More »China’s shadow banks pose systemic risk
Of all the topics sure to be come up in Sino-U.S. economic talks this week — from the problem of excess capacity to currency controls — the health of China’s financial sector will no doubt feature high on the list. Especially worrying are the multiplying links between the country’s commercial and “shadow†banks — the name given to a broad ...
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