July, 2018

• 23 July

  AI startup Megvii to raise $600mn from Alibaba, Boyu

  

  Bloomberg Megvii Inc., the Chinese developer of facial recognition system Face++, is said to be raising at least $600 million from investors including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Boyu Capital, according to people familiar with the matter. The Beijing-based company, which already counts billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial and one of China’s largest state-backed venture funds as investors, will close ...

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• 23 July

  Duterte seeks laws to curb inflation

  

  Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called on lawmakers to pass legislation that will help cool the fastest inflation in five years and spread wealth and power beyond the capital region. In his annual address to Congress, Duterte asked both chambers to prioritise the measure that will remove caps on rice imports to augment supply and cut the price by as ...

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• 23 July

  As China’s skies clear, air purifier sales drop

  

  Bloomberg China’s battle to cut notorious air-pollution levels is hurting sales of air purifiers by Royal Philips NV. Revenue from the machines that capture harmful fine particles in homes dropped by a high-single-digit amount in China, in the second quarter, the Dutch maker of hospital scanners and medical gear said in a statement. That left distributors scrambling to adjust inventories. ...

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• 23 July

  Belt and Road initiative bolsters China’s Africa ties

  Bloomberg Senegal’s decision to become the first African country on the Atlantic coast to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative shows how quickly the transport network project connecting China by land and sea to Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa is expanding. Lending by China to Africa rose to about $12 billion in 2015 from little more ...

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• 23 July

  Power grids stretched as deadly heat wave scorches Asia

  

  Bloomberg A deadly heat wave across Asia is stretching electricity grids from southern China up to Tokyo and Seoul, sending prices to multiyear highs and sparking warnings of more power stress to come. Japan breached records above 41 degrees Celsius (106 Fahrenheit) as the heat that’s been blamed for at least 15 deaths this month pushed electricity rates to the ...

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• 23 July

  Trump warns Iran’s Rouhani ‘never, ever threaten the US’

  

  Bloomberg US President Donald Trump launched a new broadside against Iran, warning of unspecified “consequences” if Hassan Rouhani continues threatening America. In a Twitter post, Trump said, “To Iranian President Rouhani: Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. We are no longer a country ...

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• 23 July

  Ethiopia PM calls for a multiparty democracy

  

  Bloomberg Ethiopia has “no option” but to open up its politics for multiparty democracy in order to secure lasting progress, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said. Ahmed spoke while meeting in the capital of Addis Ababa with nearly 50 political parties, including four from overseas, “who demanded reform to include election laws,” Fitsum Arega, the prime minister’s chief of staff, said ...

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• 23 July

  Malaysian PM aims to lower voting age

  

  Bloomberg Malaysia’s youth are likely to get more power after backing 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad to topple a regime that ruled the Southeast Asian nation for six decades. Malaysia is “very serious” about reducing the voting age to 18 before the next elections due by 2023, Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, 25, told Bloomberg in an interview ...

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• 23 July

  UK says won’t blink first on Brexit, EU must back down

  

  Bloomberg British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the UK will not “blink” in Brexit negotiations, as he warned the European Union it risks forcing the country to crash out of the bloc with no deal. On his first trip to Berlin since he replaced Boris Johnson earlier this month, Hunt appealed for more flexibility from his European counterparts as time ...

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• 23 July

  ‘Immigration and the border’ are tough issues for Trudeau

  

  Bloomberg Justin Trudeau’s latest headache is unusual for a country bounded by three oceans and just one neighbour: the border. Canada has seen a steady flow of asylum seekers since Donald Trump’s election, with people who fear the US will deport them or reject their bids for asylum crossing the 4,000-mile undefended border and filing a claim. While the total ...

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