1 US payrolls climb most this year (Gulf News) US employment
in October surged by the most this year, wage growth accelerated and the
jobless rate fell to 5 per cent, signs of labour-market durability Federal
Reserve policymakers are looking for as they consider a year-end boost in
borrowing costs.
The addition of 271,000 jobs exceeded all estimates
in a Bloomberg survey of economists and followed a revised 137,000 gain in
September, a Labor Department report showed. The median forecast called for a
185,000 advance. Average hourly earnings climbed from a year earlier by the
most since July 2009.
In the wake of sluggish job gains the prior two
months, October’s advance allays concerns that an abrupt hiring slowdown would
hinder the expansion’s progress as economies overseas strive to gain traction.
Further improvement in the job market is a precondition for Fed officials, who
last month held out the possibility of a December interest-rate increase.
The report also showed diminishing labour-market
slack. The number of Americans working part-time because of a weak economy fell
to 5.7 million in October, the lowest since June 2008. The unemployment rate,
which is derived from a separate Labor Department survey of households, is the
lowest since April 2008.
The underemployment rate — which includes part-time
workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want to work but have
given up looking — fell to 9.8 per cent, the lowest since May 2008. The
participation rate, which shows the share of working- age people in the labour
force, held at 62.4 per cent.
2 Toyota invests $1bn in artificial intelligence
(San Francisco Chronicle) Toyota is investing $1 billion in a research company
it's setting up in Silicon Valley to develop artificial intelligence and
robotics, underlining the Japanese automaker's determination to lead in
futuristic cars that drive themselves and apply the technology to other areas
of daily life.
Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda said the
company will start operating from January 2016, with 200 employees at a Silicon
Valley facility near Stanford University. A second facility will be established
near Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
The investment, which will be spread over five
years, comes on top of $50 million Toyota announced earlier for artificial
intelligence research at Stanford and MIT. Toyota said its interest extended
beyond autonomous driving, which is starting to be offered by some automakers
and being promised by almost all of them.
Toyota has already shown a robot designed to help
the elderly, the sick and people in wheelchairs by picking up and carrying
objects. The automaker has also shown human-shaped entertainment robots that
can converse and play musical instruments. As the world's top auto
manufacturer, Toyota already uses sophisticated robotic arms and computers in
auto production, including doing paint jobs and screwing in parts.
Toyota, which has gone through troubled times with
massive recalls and the 2011 tsunami in northeastern Japan, has the cash these
days to invest in the future. On Thursday, it kept its profit forecast for the
fiscal year through March 2016 unchanged at 2.25 trillion yen ($18.5 billion),
as profit rose on cost cuts and the benefits of a weak yen.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Toyota-invests-1-billion-in-artificial-6614237.php
3 Religious children found to be meaner (Harriet
Sherwood in The Guardian) Children from religious families are less kind and
more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new
study. Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian,
Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and
morality. They found that religious belief is a negative influence on
children’s altruism.
“Overall, our findings ... contradict the
commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are
more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative
Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the world,
published this week.
“More generally, they call into question whether
religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that
secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness – in fact, it
will do just the opposite.”
Almost 1,200 children, aged between five and 12, in
the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa participated in the
study. Almost 24% were Christian, 43% Muslim, and 27.6% non-religious. The
numbers of Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and other children were too small
to be statistically valid.
The study also found that “religiosity affects
children’s punitive tendencies”. Children from religious households “frequently
appear to be more judgmental of others’ actions”, it said. At the same time,
the report said that religious parents were more likely than others to consider
their children to be “more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of
others”.
The report pointed out that 5.8 billion humans,
representing 84% of the worldwide population, identify as religious. “While it
is generally accepted that religion contours people’s moral judgments and
pro-social behaviour, the relation between religion and morality is a
contentious one,” it said.
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