January, 2020

• 28 January

  France to use batteries for renewables

  

  Bloomberg France’s grid operator will test storing excess wind and solar power in batteries to reduce the need to build new transmission lines that involve heavy construction work and take longer to complete. Network operators across Europe are seeking ways to both minimise the cost and environmental impact of the energy transition. Reseau de Transport d’Electricite estimates that France will ...

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• 28 January

  FBI abused its powers with intrusive spying on Page

  

  As America weighs abuses of power in this season of impeachment and trial, it’s worth taking a careful second look at the FBI’s behaviour in its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016. Republicans are outraged by what happened, and Democrats should be, too. It’s not that the FBI’s misdeeds excuse those of Donald Trump’s. Quite the opposite: ...

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• 28 January

  Comcast’s bad omen for the AT&T

  

  Cord-cutting isn’t stopping. As it turns out, that’s not such bad news for cable giants like Comcast Corp. It is, however, for AT&T Inc. The streaming wars intensified in the fourth quarter amid Walt Disney Co.’s advertising blitz for its new Disney+ service that overtook billboards, shopping malls, public transit and Twitter feeds. At the same time, Apple Inc. began ...

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• 28 January

  Airfare transparency made free market freer

  Have you ever shopped online for something (say, a hotel room) and selected an option with an excellent price only to learn, at the time of checkout, that the price is much higher than originally advertised? That happens a lot. A key reason is that advertised prices often exclude taxes and fees. Even if there is some disclosure of that ...

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• 28 January

  Oil was sick even before China’s coronavirus hit

  Oil succumbed to the coronavirus because its immune system was compromised already. Amid headlines about quarantined Chinese cities and dozens of potential cases showing up in the US, Brent crude closed on January 24 at $60 and change, its lowest since Halloween. This is all the more remarkable when you consider January has seen several geopolitical shocks stretching from Libya ...

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• 28 January

  ‘Global warming’ was a better term than ‘climate change’

  

  As scientific terms go, “climate change” is lame. It sounds like something created by committee. And it’s hard to understand as a crisis when we also hear scientists talking about ice ages and other natural changes to the climate happening throughout earth’s history. “Global warming” is something people have worried about for years, though. It’s essentially another term for the ...

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• 28 January

  Intel can’t win another round in the chip fight

  

  Intel Inc. closed out 2019 learning the hard lesson that making cutting-edge semiconductors is truly difficult. Like a prizefighter who refuses to admit he just hit the mat, the world’s biggest chipmaker is coming out swinging. And it should, because how it gets through 2020 could decide the company’s fate. Once the most advanced supplier of semiconductors, Intel struggled last ...

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• 28 January

  A few thousand Teslas won’t fix China’s problems

  

  Tianqi Lithium Corp. had everything going for it: generous subsidies, Beijing’s blessing on the electric-vehicle industry it supplies, and the hype of Tesla Inc. getting its sedans off the production line in China. The only thing interrupting this nice fairy tale is the reality of demand and making money. Over the past few years, China has supported its electric-car industry ...

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• 28 January

  Stocks pull back as China bars travel to Hong Kong

  

  Bloomberg European stocks erased gains while US index futures trimmed an advance as China restricted travel to Hong Kong in the latest international effort to curb the Sars-like virus from spreading. The yuan fluctuated and Treasuries turned higher. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index gave up an early advance after Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said China will stop individual ...

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• 28 January

  South Korean stocks shattered over virus

  

  Bloomberg South Korean stocks bore the brunt of Asian stock declines tied to the new coronavirus on Tuesday as more markets opened after holidays and concerns spread from short-term consumerism to longer-term growth. The benchmark Kospi plunged as much as 3.6%, set for the biggest decline since October 2018. Companies that had benefited from Chinese tourism took bigger hits, with ...

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