1 Climate change puts world in uncharted territory
(Damian Carrington in The Guardian) The record-breaking heat that made 2016 the
hottest year ever recorded has continued into 2017, pushing the world into
“truly uncharted territory”, according to the World Meteorological
Organisation.
Global warming is largely being driven by emissions
from human activities, but a strong El Niño – a natural climate cycle – added
to the heat in 2016. The El Niño is now waning, but the extremes continue to be
seen, with temperature records tumbling in the US in February and polar
heatwaves pushing ice cover to new lows.
“Even without a strong El Niño in 2017, we are
seeing other remarkable changes across the planet that are challenging the
limits of our understanding of the climate system. We are now in truly
uncharted territory,” said David Carlson, director of the WMO’s world climate
research programme.
“Earth is a planet in upheaval due to human-caused
changes in the atmosphere,” said Jeffrey Kargel, a glaciologist at the University
of Arizona in the US. “In general, drastically changing conditions do not help
civilisation, which thrives on stability.”
2016 saw the hottest global average among
thermometer measurements stretching back to 1880. But scientific research
indicates the world was last this warm about 115,000 years ago and that the
planet has not experienced such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
for 4m years.
Climate change harms people most directly by
increasing the risk of extreme weather events and the WMO report states that
these raised risks can increasingly be calculated. For example, the Arctic
heatwaves are made tens of times more likely and the soaring temperatures seen
in Australia in February were made twice as likely.
2 Gates tops Forbes
rich list (BBC) Microsoft founder Bill Gates again tops Forbes' list of the
world's richest people, in a year when the number of billionaires rose 13% to
2,043. According to the magazine's annual rich list, Mr Gates' fortune rose to
$86bn, from $75bn, followed by investor Warren Buffett, up $14.8bn to $75.6bn.
It was bad news for US
President Donald Trump, who slipped 220 spots to 544 and must now rub along on
just $3.5bn. Forbes said the $1bn fall in his wealth was due to the slow US
property market. There were 183 tech billionaires on the Forbes list, with a
combined $1tn in wealth. The list is dominated by US billionaires.
Others in the top 10
included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who moved up to number three with the
biggest gain of any person on the planet, a $27.6bn rise in his fortune of
$72.8bn. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was number five and Oracle co-founder
Larry Ellison was number seven.
The global population
of billionaires, now put at a record 2,043, marks the biggest annual increase
in the 31 years since the magazine began compiling the list. Forbes' top ten: Bill
Gates $86bn, Warren Buffett $75.6bn, Jeff Bezos $72.8bn, Amancio Ortega $71.3bn,
Mark Zuckerberg $56bn, Carlos Slim $54.5bn, Larry Ellison $52.2bn, Charles Koch
$48.3bn, David Koch $48.3bn and Michael Bloomberg $47.5bn.
3 Robo-advisor to give
investment advice (Straits Times) Goldman Sachs Group, known for advising the
world's richest and most powerful, is building a so-called robo-adviser geared
to mass affluent customers, according to a job listing on the bank's website.
A Goldman spokesman
declined to comment. The job posting for employees to help build the platform
comes as Goldman is looking at ways to broaden its customer base outside the
super wealthy, including making deeper inroads into new consumer-focused
businesses.
The bank last year
launched Marcus, its first major foray into consumer lending, as well as a
complementary deposit-taking platform after acquiring GE Capital's online bank.
The robo platform would sit within the bank's rapidly growing investment
management division.
The unit, which Goldman
has been trying to build out in recent years to diversify its revenue, posted a
record US$1.38 trillion in assets under supervision at the end of 2016. Goldman
has for years grappled with how to tap into the mass affluent segment, broadly
defined as those with less than $1 million in investable assets, according to
people familiar with the matter.
While the robo-advice
market was initially developed by startups such as Wealthfront and Betterment
with ambitions of upending the traditional financial advice sector, large firms
such as Charles Schwab Corp and Vanguard have launched similar services.
No comments:
Post a Comment