Saturday, October 21, 2017

Australia's automobile meltdown; China on track to hit growth target; Alphabet balloon provides internet

1 Australia’s automobile meltdown (Hywel Griffith on BBC) Australia's final locally made car left the production line on Friday when Holden stopped manufacturing in the nation. It is considered the end of an era after similar exits by Ford and Toyota.

"We love football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars." The chorus to Holden's 1970s TV advert tells you everything you need to know about the company that gave Australia its first homegrown, mass-produced motorcar. Or almost everything - since 1931, this all-Aussie brand has in fact been owned by the American giant General Motors.

It is Holden's position in the global market that is key to understanding the rise and fall of car manufacturing in Australia. Holden started off as an Adelaide saddle-maker before adapting to the arrival of motorbikes and cars by supplying upholstery and vehicle bodies.

Following World War Two, it got the backing of the Australian government, which wanted to kickstart domestic car manufacturing and give the nation some global status. The birth of the first Holden 48-215 in 1948 began the public's love affair with "Australia's own car", which would blossom over the decades.

But by 2013, with decades of government subsidies drying up, the writing was on the wall and Holden announced it could no longer afford to manufacture cars in Australia. With Ford and Toyota already having ceased production in Australia, Holden said its vehicles would also be built abroad. For now, the story of "Australia's own car" seems to be at the end of the road.


2 China on track to hit growth target (Dawn) China’s economy is on track to meet its official growth target for 2017, the head of the state planning agency has said, despite a punishing war on pollution which is expected to slash industrial output over the winter months.

China has forced 28 cities in smog-prone northern regions to reduce emissions of airborne particles known as PM2.5 by at least 15 per cent from October to March 2017. But officials with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said the world’s second-largest economy will remain on track.

“We expect to achieve the full-year growth target of about 6.5pc,” He Lifeng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a briefing on the sidelines of China’s Communist Party Congress.

Most economists believe China’s actual growth should easily beat the target. The economy grew 6.8pc in the third quarter of the year, and 6.9pc in the first half. Last year’s growth rate of 6.7pc was a 26-year low.

China’s economy has surprised global markets and investors with robust growth so far this year, driven by a renaissance in its long-ailing “smokestack” industries such as steel and stronger demand from Europe and the US.


3 Alphabet balloon provides internet (Khaleej Times) Experimental communications balloons provided by Alphabet in collaboration with AT&T will allow some of the carrier's customers in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico to send texts and access critical information on the internet.

Alphabet said the "Project Loon" balloon project would deliver limited internet connectivity to LTE enabled phones in the hardest-hit areas of Puerto Rico. The island's wireless and broadband communications networks were devastated after Hurricane Maria made landfall last month.

This month, the US Federal Communications Commission approved Alphabet's application to provide emergency cellular service to Puerto Rico using up to 30 balloons. The company said it does not expect to use that many since each balloon can provide internet service to an area of roughly 5,000 square kilometres, or 1,930 square miles. Puerto Rico's area is 3,515 square miles.

Alphabet said this was "the first time we have used our new machine learning powered algorithms to keep balloons clustered over Puerto Rico, so we're still learning how best to do this. As we get more familiar with the constantly shifting winds in this region, we hope to keep the balloons over areas where connectivity is needed for as long as possible."


Friday, October 13, 2017

After record profit, Samsung CEO quits; Dream run for bitcoins; Twitter 'crawling with bots'

1 After record profit, Samsung CEO quits (Straits Times) Samsung Electronics said that its chief executive officer and vice-chairman Kwon Oh Hyun plans to step down from management, deepening concerns over a leadership vacuum at the technology giant after group scion Lee Jae Yong was jailed for bribery.

The surprise resignation of Samsung's chip and display head came as he was expected to take a bigger role following Lee's arrest in February and the departures of other key executives in the wake of the bribery scandal.

The move came on the same day the South Korean smartphone-maker forecast record third-quarter operating profit on the back of the memory chip business, which Mr Kwon was instrumental in building into the world leader.

Mr Kwon, 64, is seen as Samsung Group's No. 2. As well as being chairman of the board and a board director, he heads the components business - including memory chips - and the display business. In a statement, the man known as "Mr Chip" said the time had come to "start anew with new spirit and young leadership".

The world's biggest maker of memory chips, smartphones and TVs is set to smash its annual profit record this year, thanks partly to soaring demand for memory chips. Semiconductors were Samsung's top earner in the three months through June, bringing in a record eight trillion won.


2 Dream run for bitcoins (Khaleej Times) Bitcoin may be in for a sustained record run as it overcomes key obstacles, experts said after the cryptocurrency set a new record high. Even bitcoin fans were plagued by doubts over the summer when Chinese regulators cracked down on exchanges trading the virtual currency and a dispute among developers gave birth to a new version, splitting the market of the budding currency.

In September, banking regulators in Beijing and Shanghai ordered local cryptocurrency exchanges to shut down. But observers say they are now detecting a rethink by the Chinese authorities, causing bitcoin to surge past the $5,800 level for the first time since its launch eight years ago.

Should rumours reported in state media be confirmed, then what is by far the most well-known and traded of more than 1,000 so-called cryptocurrencies could soar to even greater heights, experts predict. "There has been a period of uncertainty but that has not lasted. China represents more than 60 percent of trading.

The virtual currency is created through blockchain technology, which publicly records transaction details including the unique alphanumeric strings that identify buyers and sellers - technology which is gaining increasing currency among banks and companies.


3 Twitter ‘crawling with bots’ (Selina Wang in San Francisco Chronicle) One day last week, the exterior of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters bore an eerie message: “Ban Russian Bots.” 

Someone — the company doesn’t know who — projected the demand onto the side of its building.
Bots, or automated software programs, can be programmed to periodically send out messages on the Internet. Now Twitter is scrambling to explain how bots controlled by Russian meddlers may have been used to impact the 2016 president election.

Twitter was designed to be friendly to bots. They can help advertisers quickly spread their messages and respond to customer service complaints. Research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University shows that 9 to 15 percent of active Twitter accounts are bots. Many innocuously tweet headlines, the weather or Netflix releases.

Teaching Twitter’s algorithms to find malicious tweeters is challenging. Russian meddlers in particular are complementing their networks of bots with human laborers who are paid to tweet coordinated messages at the same time. It can be difficult for Twitter’s algorithms to detect the difference, according to a person familiar with the matter.

And cracking down on bots puts Twitter in a vulnerable position with Wall Street. Investors have penalized the company for failing to get more users. The more that Twitter cracks down on fake accounts and bots, the lower the monthly active user base, the metric most closely watched by Wall Street.


Sunday, October 1, 2017

Catalonia edges towards statehood; Saudi Arabia back in recession; Japan business mood at decade's high

1 Catalonia edges towards statehood (BBC) Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont says the Spanish region has won the right to statehood following a contentious referendum that was marred by violence. He said the door had been opened to a unilateral declaration of independence.

Catalan officials later said 90% of those who voted backed independence in Sunday's vote. The turnout was 42.3%. Spain's constitutional court had declared the poll illegal and hundreds of people were injured as police used force to try to block voting.

Officers seized ballot papers and boxes at polling stations. Mr Puigdemont said the European Union could no longer "continue to look the other way". In another development, more than 40 trade unions and Catalan associations called a region-wide strike on Tuesday due to "the grave violation of rights and freedoms".

Earlier, as voting ended, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Catalans had been fooled into taking part in an illegal vote. He called it a "mockery" of democracy.


2 Saudi Arabia back in recession (Khaleej Times) Saudi Arabia's economy has slipped back into recession as the oil sector stagnates and the government sector is hit by austerity policies designed to curb a state budget deficit caused by low oil prices, official data has shown.

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, shrank 2.3 per cent from the previous quarter in the April-June period, after dropping 3.8 per cent in the first quarter. Economists generally define a recession as two straight quarters of shrinking GDP, measured by quarter-on-quarter rates. Saudi Arabia was last in recession in early 2016.

A price-supporting agreement among global oil producers caused Saudi Arabia to reduce its oil output early this year, pulling down GDP. The oil sector shrank 1.8 per cent from a year ago in the second quarter after a 2.3 per cent fall in the first.

The government has said it plans a stimulus package in the fourth quarter of the year. The size of the package is not clear, and fresh austerity steps to eliminate the budget deficit by 2020 are likely to weigh on growth. Saudi Arabia plans to introduce a 5 per cent value-added tax on many goods in January, and authorities are considering a rise in domestic fuel prices.


3 Japan business mood at decade's high (Straits Times) Big manufacturers have more confidence in Japan's business conditions than they have had for a decade as global demand adds momentum to economic recovery, a closely watched central bank survey shows.

The upbeat data supports Bank of Japan policymakers' hopes that a sustained economic recovery will boost wages and household spending, helping to accelerate inflation towards the central bank's ambitious 2 per cent target.

The Bank of Japan "tankan" survey could also help premier Shinzo Abe as he tries to convince voters in an Oct 22 election that his "Abenomics" stimulus policies have improved their livelihoods, analysts say.

Japan's economy expanded at an annualised 2.5 per cent in the second quarter on robust consumer and corporate spending, heightening hopes of a sustained recovery. While slowing down from the second quarter's exceptionally fast growth, the economy is likely to have expanded 1.1 per cent in the July-September period, according to a Reuters poll.