Toyota, too, ending car production in Australia; Google is No 2 in market value; Writing off the unemployed; When drones start stalking us

1 Toyota, too, ending car production in Australia (BBC) Toyota is to end its vehicle and engine production in Australia by the end of 2017, effectively marking the end of the country's carmaking industry. The company said it might scale down the operations of its development and technical centre in Australia as well. Last year, Ford and General Motors' Holden unit also announced plans to stop producing cars in Australia. About 2,500 jobs are set to be lost as a result of Toyota's decision, which it attributed to high manufacturing costs.

"Various negative factors such as an extremely competitive market and a strong Australian dollar, together with forecasts of a reduction in the total scale of vehicle production in Australia, have forced us to make this painful decision", said Toyota president Akio Toyoda.

Vivek Vaidya, an automotive analyst at consultancy Frost & Sullivan, said he was not surprised by Toyota's decision. "Toyota was the last producer in Australia after exit of Mitsubishi, Ford and Holden. Labour cost in Australia is too high to be price competitive in production", he said. Mr Vaidya also said rival car-producing countries such as Thailand and the US were more attractive in terms of manufacturing costs.

Toyota's decision comes despite appeals from Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has been looking to keep the carmaker operating in the country. Car manufacturers have been pulling out of Australia as the rising cost of doing business in the country has hit profits. Last May, Ford said it would close its car lines in Australia in October 2016 with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs. General Motors' Holden unit has also announced plans to stop production in 2017, affecting nearly 3,000 jobs. Japan's Mitsubishi Motors sold its last Australian-made car in 2010.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26114894

2 Google is No 2 in market value (Straits Times) Google overtook US oil giant ExxonMobil on Monday to become the world's number two company when rated by market value, behind its high-tech rival Apple.

Google's market cap at the end of the trading day was $394 billion, compared to the $388 billion of ExxonMobil. Apple remained well ahead with a market capitalisation of $472 billion. Google briefly overtook Exxon during the trading session last Friday but Monday was the first time this was confirmed at the close of trade.

http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/money/story/google-becomes-number-two-market-value-20140211

3 Writing off the unemployed (Paul Krugman in The New York Times) What do we know about long-term unemployment in America? First, it’s still at near-record levels. Historically, the long-term unemployed — those out of work for 27 weeks or more — have usually been between 10 and 20 percent of total unemployment. Today the number is 35.8 percent. Yet extended unemployment benefits, which went into effect in 2008, have now been allowed to lapse. As a result, few of the long-term unemployed are receiving any kind of support.

Second, if you think the typical long-term unemployed American is one of Those People — nonwhite, poorly educated, etc. — you’re wrong, according to research by the Urban Institute’s Josh Mitchell. Half of the long-term unemployed are non-Hispanic whites. College graduates are less likely to lose their jobs than workers with less education, but once they do they are actually a bit more likely than others to join the ranks of the long-term unemployed. And workers over 45 are especially likely to spend a long time unemployed.

Third, in a weak job market long-term unemployment tends to be self-perpetuating, because employers in effect discriminate against the jobless. What all of this suggests is that the long-term unemployed are mainly victims of circumstances — ordinary American workers who had the bad luck to lose their jobs (which can happen to anyone) at a time of extraordinary labor market weakness, with three times as many people seeking jobs as there are job openings. Once that happened, the very fact of their unemployment made it very hard to find a new job.

If you follow debates over unemployment, it’s striking how hard it is to find anyone on the Republican side even hinting at sympathy for the long-term jobless. The result is that millions of Americans have in effect been written off — rejected by potential employers, abandoned by politicians whose fuzzy-mindedness is matched only by the hardness of their hearts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/opinion/krugman-writing-off-the-unemployed.html?_r=0

4 When the drones start stalking us (Jemima Kiss in The Guardian) We live in an age increasingly shaped by our attitudes to, and our definition of, privacy. Reviewing the privacy controversies of the last few years reveals how far our sense of acceptable "inversion of privacy" has shifted. Take Facebook,  its billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg wallowing in the glory of his first decade in charge of one of privacy's biggest agents of change. Users first revolted when the site introduced the newsfeed — yet now it feels rather benign in terms of its challenge to our sense of privacy, as well as being the main reason for visiting the site.

Google has navigated a galaxy of privacy scandals. At one end of the spectrum, its Street View cameras have inadvertently recorded public sex acts, nose-picking, and a naked man climbing in the boot of his car – and at the other end of the scale had to reassure consumers after a more prescient scandal about them sucking up personal information from unsecured wi-fi networks.

All these developments are framed by the biggest technology story of the decade – that our online lives are accessed, monitored and stored by the UK and US security services. Well, the next privacy scandal in waiting is the story of drones. Not military drones, but increasingly widespread use of drones for agriculture, disaster areas and emergencies, archaeology, forestry and property management, among others.

Drones are banned in London and can't be used below a certain height in residential areas. But how many uses could there be for a small, silent, fast, remote-controlled drone? How long before the first sunbathing politician is snapped on holiday? If the public is banned from a venue, or refused access to private land, or if a property is under siege from journalists, how long before a drone is used for high-quality aerial video? The next time you step outside and head off for some time alone, remember to look up.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/09/privacy-concerns-google-streetview-facebook-drones