1 Oil hits $40 amid commodities comeback (BBC) The
oil price has gone above $40 a barrel for the first time this year as
commodities continue to rally. Brent crude, used as an international benchmark,
rose more than 5% to trade at $40.83 a barrel.
Oil dropped below $28 in January, but has since
risen as part of a wider recovery in energy and metal prices. The price of iron
also shot up, rising 20% amid greater optimism about Chinese economic growth
and demand for the metal in the country's refineries.
The price of Brent crude has now gone up more than
40% from the low it reached in January, although it remains 70% below its peak
in the summer of 2014. The rise is being put down to talks taking place between
oil-producing countries in an effort to curb production.
Meanwhile, ratings agency Fitch said oil prices
would remain at an average of $35 a barrel this year. Iron ore rose 20%, its
biggest increase in eight months, on expectations that China was cutting
production. The slowing Chinese economy has led to a fall in demand for iron
ore, which has partly led to a global glut. China is one of the biggest
consumers of steel in the world.
2 Japan economy shrank 1.1% in Oct-Dec (San
Francisco Chronicle) Japan's GDP contracted at a 1.1 percent annualized pace in
the last quarter in further evidence the world's third-largest economy is
failing to gain traction despite unprecedented efforts by the central bank to
spur more growth.
The revised figures compared with a 1.4 percent
expansion in the July-September quarter. They showed a modest improvement over
the previous estimate of a 1.4 percent contraction in October-December.
But the latest data suggest Japan's growth has
remained tepid in early 2016, raising the likelihood of further government
action to help boost growth. That could include further moves by the Bank of
Japan to encourage lending, extra government spending and possibly a second
delay in a sales tax hike scheduled for April 2017. Japan's economy grew 0.5
percent in 2015 after flat-lining in 2014.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Latest-data-show-Japan-s-economy-shrank-1-1-pct-6875873.php
3 Chris Poole is Google’s latest hire (Julia Carrie
Wong in The Guardian) Google has hired Christopher Poole, the founder of the
notorious and controversial internet image-board 4chan. Poole announced the
move in a post on Tumblr, writing that he planned to “contribute my own
experience from a dozen years of building online communities” to the internet
behemoth.
Poole’s reference to “online communities”has led
many to speculate that Poole will help Google tackle social media, one of the
few areas of the internet where Google has failed to compete. In November 2015,
Google announced the latest redesign of its lackluster social network, one that
aimed to emulate Reddit and Pinterest more than social king Facebook. But the
site has remained an afterthought in the social conversation.
Whether Poole’s magic touch can change that is an
open question. Described by Rolling Stone as the “Mark Zuckerberg of the online
underground”, Poole founded 4chan in 2003 when he was just 15 years old. Today
the site claims to attract 22 million unique visitors per month.
The sprawling, anarchic community spawned some of
the internet’s most popular and creative memes – LOLcats and Rickrolling were
both born there. But 4chan has also gained a reputation as a breeding ground
for abuse, trolling and online harassment. The site was at the center of the
2014 hack of private photographs of more than 100 female celebrities.
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