September, 2019

• 29 September

  De Beers keeps special terms in place for ‘diamond sale’

  

  Bloomberg De Beers is continuing its policy of offering unprecedented flexibility to diamond buyers as the mining company works to fend off a slump in demand for the gems, according to people familiar with the situation. The Anglo American Plc unit extended the policy from its August sale to customers in Botswana, according to the people, who asked not to ...

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• 29 September

  Elon Musk unveils plan for SpaceX Mars ‘Starship’ rocket

  

  Bloomberg Elon Musk gave space fans an outline of plans for “Starship,” the next-generation vehicle his Space Exploration Technologies Corp expects to use to eventually take humans to Mars. The goal is to make “space travel like air travel,” Musk said on stage during a highly technical presentation from the company’s Boca Chica test site near Brownsville, Texas. “We’re really ...

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• 29 September

  Time is on Taiwan’s side, but it needs US support

  

  Now only 15 flags in the Foreign Ministry’s foyer represent the nations that have not yet succumbed to Beijing’s financial blandishments — targeted at governments and individual politicians — and other pressures to sever diplomatic relations with this island nation. There were 17 flags a few weeks ago. The last time many Americans thought of the Solomon Islands (population 650,000) ...

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• 29 September

  Future tech may solve climate change!

  

  On climate change, leaders have a tendency to make lofty long-term promises but take only baby steps to reach them. At the United Nations climate summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave an interesting explanation for why: They believe technology eventually will pick up the slack. This represents an ideological divide with environmental advocates, who don’t put much stock in the ...

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• 29 September

  EBay’s next CEO inherits a confounding puzzle

  EBay Inc. has been a resilient internet pioneer and also a confounding one. Now a new leader will have to solve the riddle. The company announced that Devin Wenig, the chief executive officer since 2015, had stepped down. The company’s chief financial officer, a longtime EBay employee, was named interim CEO while the company hunts for a permanent successor. Ebay ...

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• 29 September

  Zuckerberg struggles to keep Libra alive

  Mark Zuckerberg’scryptocurrency project, Libra, has become the regulatory equivalent of a pinata: Everyone is lining up to hit it with a stick. France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire calls it an assault on sovereignty and a risk to financial stability, an attack backed up by his German counterpart Olaf Scholz who dubbed it a “parallel currency.” You can see their ...

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• 29 September

  Modi-Trump event risks US divide on India policy

  

  Nobody could expect sophistication from an event titled “Howdy, Modi!” And the Indian prime minister’s rally in Houston — attended by 50,000 or so screaming Indian Americans, two dozen US congressmen and senators, and President Donald Trump — was every bit as cheesy as its title. In his five-plus years in power, Modi has made a habit of addressing stadiums ...

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• 29 September

  Another new nuclear blow-up of Hinkley

  

  Massive infrastructure projects are almost always delivered late and over budget. The bill for London’s Crossrail project has risen to 17.6 billion pounds ($21.9 billion), while the country’s north-south HS2 rail link may end up costing an unfathomable 88 billion pounds. Even so, there’s a place in budgetary hell reserved for new nuclear power plants, for whom financial commitments and ...

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• 29 September

  StanChart is pulling ahead of HSBC in Africa fintech

  

  From ATMs to credit cards and PayPal, the West’s dominance of innovation in consumer finance appears to have exhausted itself. At the top of the emergent new order is the fintech duo from China — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Next in line are Alphabet Inc. and Walmart Inc., whose highly localized smartphone payment rivalry is playing ...

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• 29 September

  Delta expands in S America with Latam deal

  

  Bloomberg Delta Air Lines Inc is dramatically expanding its South American footprint, agreeing to a $2.25 billion deal with Latam Airlines Group SA after a similar arrangement between the Chilean company and American Airlines Group Inc ran into legal trouble. The pact calls for Delta to pay $1.9 billion for a 20 percent stake in Latam, Latin America’s largest carrier, ...

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