Bloomberg A handful of executives at SoftBank Group Corp are weighing the idea of an initial public offering for its Vision Fund, the $100 billion behemoth that has invested in technology companies ranging from Uber Technologies Inc to WeWork Cos. The idea is early stage, said a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because it ...
Read More »10m North Koreans face food shortages
Bloomberg About 10 million North Koreans — 40 percent of the population — are in urgent need of food assistance after heat and drought crippled last year’s harvest, according to the UN. The country collected about 4.9 million tonnes of food crops last year, the least in a decade, after a prolonged dry spell and limited agricultural inputs cut yields, ...
Read More »World’s top internet user taps fake news busters for polls
Bloomberg In the Philippines — where 76 million internet users stay online the longest in the world — just a handful of people spend a few hours each day to fight fake news about the upcoming midterm elections. The Commission on Elections has formed a team of 10 government workers to spot and report misleading online posts to Facebook, with ...
Read More »Trump confident N Korea’s Kim won’t break promise
Bloomberg President Donald Trump brushed off news of a possible weapons test by North Korea, vowing that leader Kim Jong-un “will do nothing to interfere†and that a denuclearisation deal with the US “will happen.†Saturday’s tweet, posted while Trump was in a motorcade to the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, was the president’s first response to news that ...
Read More »Gaza fires rockets as Israel kills 4 Palestinians
Bloomberg Almost 150 rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, with Israel returning the strikes, its military said. The flare-up marked the latest escalation between the two sides. Gaza’s barrage followed the killing of four Palestinians by Israel. Two of those who died were Hamas extremists killed in an airstrike and two were demonstrators taking part ...
Read More »Putin not ‘involved’ in Venezuela, says Trump
Bloomberg Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t seeking to “get involved†in the crisis in Venezuela, despite assertions by the American president’s top national security advisers that the Kremlin is offering critical support to Nicolas Maduro’s regime. “He is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen ...
Read More »Cyclone wreaks havoc as India, B’desh evacuate millions
Bloomberg Cyclone Fani barreled through the eastern parts of India on May 3, unleashing heavy rain and prompting authorities in the country and neighbouring Bangladesh to evacuate a total of more than 3.5 million people to shelters. At least 12 people were killed as the storm swamped towns and villages, the Press Trust of India reported, citing government officials it ...
Read More »Voters punish May, Corbyn in local polls
Bloomberg Voters in England punished both Theresa May’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition in local elections, piling pressure on the two party leaders to resolve the Brexit crisis paralysing British politics. Britain’s major parties interpreted their poor results as an angry demand from a frustrated population to deal with Brexit, which has locked Parliament in a stalemate for months. ...
Read More »Siri case: Italy’s Conte drops peacemaker role
Bloomberg The referee, it seems, has taken sides. After spending much of the last 10 months acting as a mediator between the feuding deputy premiers who hold the real power in Italy’s government, PM Giuseppe Conte appears to have sided with one of them: the Five Star Movement’s Luigi Di Maio. When Conte called for the resignation of a cabinet ...
Read More »Boeing 737 skids off runway into Florida river, no fatalities
Bloomberg Boeing Co said it’s helping to investigate how a 737-800 plane arriving from Cuba slipped into a river after skidding off a runway near Jacksonville, Florida. The chartered flight operated by Miami Air International Inc was carrying 136 passengers and seven crew when it left the runway at Naval Air Station Jacksonville on Friday evening, Boeing said in a ...
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