News Corp slides into loss; Tim Cook says fake news killing people's minds; Ford bets $1bn on robotics startup

1 News Corp slides into loss (BBC) Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has reported a loss for the three months to December, amid a difficult environment for print advertising. The group made a loss of $219m compared with the same time last year when profits were $106m.

However, a growing demand for "accurate and timely journalism" was helping to lift subscriber numbers for some of its news outlets, it said. News Corp gets more than half its revenue from outside the US. The firm's chief executive Robert Thomson said The Wall Street Journal now had more than 2.1 million paid subscribers and that for the first time, more than 50% of those subscribers were digital.

The group reported strong performances at its book publisher Harper Collins and its digital estate agency division. Rapid expansion meant "digital real estate" was "well on the way to becoming the largest contributor to our profitability", said Mr Thomson. He said a reduction in the value of print-related fixed assets at the firm's Australian newspaper business had hurt income for the quarter, together with non-cash charges related to Foxtel.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38927316

2 Tim Cook says fake news killing people’s minds (Kevin Rawlinson in The Guardian) Fake news is “killing people’s minds”, Tim Cook, the head of Apple, has said. The technology boss said firms such as his own needed to create tools that would help stem the spread of falsehoods, without impinging on freedom of speech.

Cook also called for governments to lead information campaigns to crack down on fake news in an interview with a British national newspaper. The scourge of falsehoods in mainstream political discourse came to the fore during recent campaigns, during which supporters of each side were accused of promoting misinformation for political gain.

While instances were seen among supporters of both sides of the recent US election battle, Donald Trump’s campaign was seen by many as a particular beneficiary of fake news reports. And the US president’s team has been caught sending aides out to insist that a huge crowd had attended his inauguration, when the evidence showed a relatively modest audience was there.

Fake anti-Trump stories during the election included one in which it was falsely claimed that he had groped the drag queen and television presenter RuPaul. Hillary Clinton was scrutinised over her claim that there was “no evidence” her emails had been hacked because the FBI director, James Comey, had concluded it was likely they had been.

A study by economists at Stanford University and New York University published two months after November’s US presidential election found that in the run-up to the vote, fake anti-Clinton stories had been shared 30 million times on Facebook, while those favouring her were shared eight million times.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/11/fake-news-is-killing-peoples-minds-says-apple-boss-tim-cook

3 Ford bets $1bn on robotics startup (San Francisco Chronicle) Ford Motor is spending $1 billion to take over a budding robotics startup to acquire more expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021. The big bet comes just a few months after the Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of Carnegie Mellon University's robotics program, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander.

The alliance between Argo and Ford is the latest to combine the spunk and dexterity of a technologically savvy startup with the financial muscle and manufacturing knowhow of a major automaker in the race to develop autonomous vehicles. Last year rival General Motors paid $581 million to buy Cruise Automation, a 40-person software company that is testing vehicles in San Francisco.

The Argo deal marks the next step in Ford's journey toward building a vehicle without a steering wheel or brake pedal by 2021 — a vision that CEO Mark Fields laid out last summer. The big-ticket deal for the newly-minted company clearly was aimed at getting Salesky and Rande. Salesky formerly worked on self-driving cars at a high-profile project within Google — now known as Waymo — and Rander did the same kind of engineering at ride-hailing service Uber before the two men teamed to launch Argo late last year.

The two will develop the core technology of Ford's autonomous vehicle — the "virtual driver" system, which Nair described as the car's "brains, eyes, ears and senses." "This is likely a realization that Ford is behind relative to companies like GM, Audi, Volvo, Waymo and Uber, and is trying to catch up," said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor who leads the school's autonomous vehicle research.

Ford isn't just racing General Motors and other automakers to gain robotics experience. Uber bought autonomous trucking startup Otto for an estimated $680 million last summer primarily to get Otto's engineers on its team working on driverless vehicles. Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, another former Google engineer, is now overseeing Uber's testing of driverless cars in Pittsburgh and Arizona.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Ford-invests-1B-in-robotics-startup-in-10923894.php

Record trade surplus for Germany; More tourists in Dubai than New York, Rome; Instagram generation and food waste

1 Record trade surplus for Germany (BBC) Germany's trade surplus hit an all-time high last year as the country continued to export significantly more than it imported. German exports climbed 1.2% to 1.2 trillion euros in 2016, while imports rose 0.6% to 954.6bn euros. This left a surplus of 252.9bn euros, up from 244.3bn euros in 2015.

It comes days after Donald Trump's top trade advisor accused Germany of exploiting the euro to boost exports. Peter Navarro alleged the euro was a German currency in disguise, and this gave Germany an unfair advantage over the US and other nations. A low currency makes goods cheaper to sell abroad.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the claims, however, stressing it always been her country's policy that the European Central Bank should pursue an independent monetary policy. The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said that the euro was in fact too weak for Germany.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38918804

2 More tourists in Dubai than New York, Rome (Gulf News) Dubai attracted more than 14 million visitors in one year, making the city one of the most visited destinations in the world, according to data released by Euromonitor International.

The market research firm, which ranks cities according to international visitor arrivals, named Dubai as the seventh most popular city for travellers, with total guests reaching 14.2 million in 2015, up by 7.6 per cent from a year earlier.

Dubai is the only city from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region to feature in the top 10 or 20 rankings and is outperforming other tourist hotspots like New York, Rome and Miami. Hong Kong remained the top city destination in the world for the seventh consecutive year, with 26.7 million international visitors as measured in 2015.

Bangkok overtook London as the world’s second most visited city, with 10 per cent jump in international arrivals. London moved down to the third spot in the global ranking but remained the top European city destination.

Euromonitor said that the travel industry continued to face some challenges, including terrorist attacks, geopolitical conflicts and economic uncertainty, but the ten best performing cities remained resilient.

http://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/tourism/dubai-one-of-world-s-most-visited-cities-euromonitor-1.1975860

3 Instagram generation and food waste (Rebecca Smithers in The Guardian) A generation gap in attitudes towards cooking and eating is helping to fuel the UK’s food waste mountain, research reveals, driven by time-poor millennials who do not understand the value of the food on their plate.

In contrast to savvy older consumers familiar with post-war rationing, those aged 18 to 34 are preoccupied by the visual presentation of food to photograph and share on social media while failing to plan meals, buying too much and then throwing it away.

The UK churns out 15m tonnes of food waste a year – of which 7m tonnes come from households. The estimated retail value of this is a staggering £7.5bn, and the government’s waste advisory body, Wrap, calculates that a typical family wastes £700 of food a year.

A national supermarket study of the food waste patterns of 5,050 UK consumers reveals nearly two-fifths of those aged over 65 say they never waste food, compared with just 17% of those under 35. The research by Sainsbury’s found more than half (55%) of 18- to 34-year-olds had a “live to eat” attitude to food – more about pleasure than necessity but with higher shopping bills and more waste.

Older generations were more likely to “eat to live” with lower grocery bills and reduced waste. Millennials – those born in or after the mid-1980s – were also the most likely to try unusual recipes to create Instagram-friendly dishes, involving exotic ingredients that are harder to reuse.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/10/instagram-generation-fuelling-uk-food-waste-mountain-study-sainsburys

UK House passes Brexit bill; Young men earn less than previous generation; Oil falls on US inventories, low China demand

1 UK House passes Brexit bill (San Francisco Chronicle) Britain's House of Commons gave its final approval Wednesday to a bill authorizing the government to start exit talks with the European Union, despite fears by opposition lawmakers that the UK is setting out on the rocky path to Brexit with a sketchy roadmap.

As the votes were being tallied, a few pro-EU legislators whistled Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," the bloc's anthem. But the decisive 494-122 result was another big step on Britain's road to the EU exit door. The bill now goes to the House of Lords, which has the power to delay — but not to derail — the legislation; it should become law within weeks.

Pro-EU lawmakers had hoped to prevent an economy-shocking "hard Brexit," in which Britain loses full access to the EU's single market and faces restrictions or tariffs on trade. One amendment would have committed the government to continuing tariff-free trade with the EU; another sought to guarantee the residency rights of EU citizens already living in Britain; another called for a new referendum on the eventual divorce terms.

All were defeated, as pro-EU lawmakers from Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party backed the government despite their reservations. But the government appeared to bow to opposition pressure by promising lawmakers they will get to vote on an exit deal before it is finalized by the bloc.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/UK-s-House-of-Commons-set-to-pass-bill-10916768.php

2 Young men earn less than previous generation (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) Young men today will earn £12,500 less in their 20s than the generation before them, according to a thinktank, partly as a result of taking on low-paid jobs previously done by women.

Torsten Bell, the director of the Resolution Foundation, will argue that evidence showing Generation Y, also known as millennials, earn less than their Generation X predecessors in every year between 22 and 30 was a blow to the idea that each age group should be better off than the last.

In a lecture in Manchester on Thursday, Bell will show that women have adapted better to changes in the workplace brought on by automation in the past 25 years. Women have responded to the loss of secretarial jobs by moving into higher-skilled posts, whereas many of the men who lost manufacturing roles have ended up in lower-skilled and lower-paid occupations.

The foundation, which concentrates on issues affecting those on low and middle incomes, has set up an intergenerational commission to look at whether millennials, whom it defines as those born between 1981 and 2000, are getting a fair deal.

The thinktank’s research shows that millennial men are doing worse than those from Generation X, which it defines as those born between 1966 and 1980. The proportion of low-paid work done by young men increased by 45% between 1993 and 2015-16, in part a result of the number of young men in retail jobs rising from 85,000 to 165,000.

Women are still significantly more likely to work in retail than men, but the number of young women employed in the sector has fallen since the early 1990s. The number of young men working in bars and restaurants has gone up from 45,000 to 130,000 since 1993.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/09/men-earnings-20s-millennials-generation-x-resolution-foundation

3 Oil falls on US inventories, low China demand (Khaleej Times) Oil prices slid on Wednesday to extend falls from the previous session, as a big increase in US crude inventories and a slump in Chinese demand implied that global oil markets remain oversupplied despite Opec-led efforts to cut output.

International Brent crude futures were trading at $54.69 per barrel and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was at $51.69 a barrel. The declines came on the back of unexpectedly big increases in US fuel inventories, as reported by the American Petroleum Institute (API). Crude inventories rose by 14.2 million barrels in the week to February 3 to 503.6 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 2.5 million barrel increase.

Prices also came under pressure from signs of slowing demand from the world's biggest energy consumer. China's 2016 oil demand grew at its slowest pace in at least three years.

http://khaleejtimes.com/business/markets/oil-prices-fall-on-us-fuel-inventories-weak-china-demand

BP profits show recovery signs; Brexit may cost UK 30,000 finance jobs; Dubai sets record for visitor traffic

1 BP profits show recovery signs (BBC)  Oil giant BP saw profits double in the last three months of 2016 on the back of slightly higher oil prices and more cost-cutting. Underlying replacement cost profit - the company's preferred measure - was $400m, up from $196m a year earlier.

BP took another charge of $799m for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, bringing total charges to $62.6bn. "2016 was the year we made significant strides" for future growth, said chief executive Bob Dudley.

For the year as a whole, underlying replacement cost profit - which strips out fluctuations in the value of oil stocks - fell to $2.58bn, down from $5.90bn in 2015. The profit figures were, however, below some analysts' forecasts.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38890970

2 Brexit may cost UK 30,000 finance jobs (Jennifer Rankin in The Guardian) The UK could lose 30,000 finance sector jobs as a result of Brexit, but EU rivals need to act to avoid importing banking risk to the continent, according to an influential thinktank with close ties to the European commission.

The City of London stands to lose 10,000 banking jobs and 20,000 roles in accountancy, law and consulting, as EU clients move business worth €1.8tn (£1.6tn) to the continent after Brexit, according to Brussels-based Bruegel.

According to the economics thinktank’s model, Frankfurt would be the biggest winner, with Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin also making gains. But the researchers warn that having a more geographically diverse spread of financial institutions, without stronger oversight of banks, would heighten the risk of a banking meltdown in the event of an acute financial crisis.

These risks could be reduced and benefits shared more evenly, the authors argue, if the EU takes a common approach to investment banks rather than 27 national systems in a “regulatory race to the bottom” to steal London’s crown. The analysis is based on the assumption the UK will leave the single market, as set out in Theresa May’s Brexit speech last month.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/07/brexit-uk-finance-brussels-thinktank-city-banking-eu-bruegel

3 Dubai sets record for visitor traffic (Issac John in Khaleej Times) Overnight visitors to Dubai soared five per cent to 14.9 million in 2016, largely spurred by an upswing in traffic from the GCC, India, Pakistan, China, Britain and Russia.

Recording a four-year annual growth of eight per cent, which is twice the global travel industry growth, Dubai remained on course to hit a target of 20 million visitors by 2020, despite "a period of unforeseen macro-economic upheavals," Dubai's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) said.

The 2016 visitor traffic growth reflects a four-year CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of eight per cent at an impressive pace that is twice the global travel industry growth of four per cent.

Leading the list of traffic generators to Dubai in 2016, India brought in nearly 1.8 million overnight tourists, up 12 per cent, while Pakistan, which is among the top 10 markets, delivered 607,000 tourists at 18 per cent growth.

http://khaleejtimes.com/dubai-sets-new-record-in-visitor-traffic

More US tech firms oppose Trump travel ban; UK's electric vehicle sales boom; Queen Elizabeth's 65-year reign

1 More US tech firms oppose Trump travel ban (BBC) Thirty more US technology firms have signed a brief opposing President Trump's immigration ban, bringing the total number involved to 127. The new signatories include Tesla, Adobe, HP and Evernote.

They join 97 others who have filed a legal document stating the ban "inflicts significant harm" on their businesses and is unconstitutional. The amicus brief allows parties not directly involved in a case but who feel affected by it, to give a view. It was filed in Washington and also includes Apple, Facebook and Microsoft as signatories.

Mr Trump's executive order halted the entire US refugee programme for 120 days, indefinitely banned Syrian refugees and suspended permission to enter the US for all nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries. There is currently a nationwide temporary restraining order in place, which was issued by a federal judge in Washington.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38881873

2 UK’s electric vehicle boom (Rob Davies in The Guardian) The number of new cars registered in the UK hit a 12-year high in January, with electric vehicles taking a record share of the market, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

The industry body had warned of a slowdown in the motor trade in 2017 because of the impact of the weak pound, but there was no sign of deceleration in the first monthly numbers of the year. Drivers registered 174,564 cars in January, up 2.9% on last year, to reach the highest monthly level since 2005, the trade body said.

Alternative fuel vehicles, mainly electric cars, such as the Nissan Leaf, increased by a fifth to reach a record 4.2% share of new vehicle registrations, beating a previous high of 3.6% in November last year. Petrol cars were also up strongly, gaining 8.9%, with diesel car registrations down 4.3%, continuing the fall seen in December, amid suggestions of higher taxes to curb emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/06/new-uk-car-sales-electric-vehicle-drives-12-year-sales-high

3 Queen Elizabeth’s 65-year reign (San Francisco Chronicle) On Monday, Queen Elizabeth II marks her Sapphire Jubilee, becoming the first British monarch to reign for 65 years. It's just one of many milestones the queen has marked in her nine decades. Here are some other significant numbers about her record-breaking life and reign:

Elizabeth assumed the throne on the death of her father, King George VI, on Feb. 6, 1952. On September 9, 2015, she became Britain's longest-reigning monarch, passing her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.  She turned 90 on April 21, 2016, and has been the world's oldest monarch since the death of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in 2015.

She has had 13 British prime ministers serve during her reign, from Winston Churchill to Theresa May. She has met 12 US presidents, from Herbert Hoover (after he had left office) to Barack Obama — more than a quarter of all the US presidents since Independence. The only president during her reign that she did not meet was Lyndon B. Johnson. She is due to meet President Donald Trump when he comes to Britain for a controversial state visit later this year.

She has traveled more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) on official trips, visiting 106 of the 193 current official members of the United Nations. She has visited Canada 22 times — the largest number of trips to any nation.

She has four children, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. She has cut back on her official duties in the past few years, but Elizabeth still conducted 341 official engagements in 2015.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Queen-s-65-year-reign-a-milestone-in-a-10911003.php

Germany's surplus is on the wane; Middle East & North Africa growth accelerates; World's longest commercial flight starts operations

1 Germany’s surplus is on the wane (Gulf News) The Trump administration appears intent on escalating the long-standing US practice of attacking Germany’s current-account surplus. Good news for those on the receiving end: It has probably peaked.

As officials like National Trade Council director Peter Navarro rail against the trade imbalance that dominates the balance of payments between the two countries, pensioners, homebuyers and immigrants are quietly working to bring that $297 billion current-account surplus down.

According to research by Deutsche Bank, demographics and a housing boom are two factors that will drive the current account balance — the difference between what a country earns from abroad and what it spends — to its lowest level in seven years by 2020.

A rising share of pensioners in the German population, who normally have less money to save than people in jobs, will crimp household savings rates, while an increasing number of immigrants such as refugees will contribute to boosting German imports.

http://gulfnews.com/business/economy/attention-us-trade-warriors-germany-s-surplus-is-on-the-wane-1.1973335

2 Middle East & North Africa growth accelerates (Muzaffar Rizvi in Khaleej Times) Economic activity in the Middle East and North Africa showed surprising resilience in 2016 despite mounting political and economic headwinds in the region, says a report.

According to the latest Focus Economics Consensus forecast, the region's aggregate gross domestic product expanded 2.7 per cent in 2016, up from 2015's 2.6 per cent due to diverging economic trends within the Mena.

Another positive note for 2016 was Iraq's economic rebound following 2015's dismal performance. Accommodative monetary policies and improving external positions due to low oil prices prompted growth in most of the region's net oil importers to accelerate this year.

The report noted that GCC countries felt the brunt of the pain in 2016. The low oil price environment since mid-2015 forced GCC countries to implement harsh austerity measures in order to rein in their soaring budget deficits.

About the region's biggest economy Saudi Arabia, the report said kingdom is expected to perform below par, with an expansion rate of less than one per cent. On the rest of the major economies in the region, Egypt and Qatar will likely grow the fastest, with projected expansions of 3.4 per cent.

http://khaleejtimes.com/business/economy/mena-growth-accelerates-despite-subdued-performance-from-gcc

3 World’s longest commercial flight starts operations (The Guardian) The world’s longest commercial flight landed in New Zealand on Monday with the arrival of Qatar Airways’s 14,535km (9,032-mile) Doha-Auckland service.

The long-range Boeing 777-200LR crossed 10 time zones on its marathon flight. Qatar Airways noted the flight was longer than the entire “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies which were filmed in New Zealand.

There were four pilots on board as well as 15 cabin crew who served 1,100 cups of tea and coffee, 2,000 cold drinks and 1,036 meals during the flight. New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay said the estimated economic impact of the new service “will be well in excess” of $36m with the increased freight capacity provided.

In March last year, Emirates airline launched what was then thought to be the world’s longest non-stop scheduled commercial flight, with a service from Dubai to Auckland, spanning 14,200kms (8,824 miles). Air India’s Delhi-San Francisco flight claims the world’s longest by flying distance but when measured on the surface of the earth Doha and Auckland are further apart.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/06/worlds-longest-non-stop-commercial-flight-lands-new-zealand-doha

Solid 2017 start for Eurozone economy; US jobs growth surges in January; Anti-corruption stir rocks Romania

1 Solid 2017 start for Eurozone economy (San Francisco Chronicle) The economy of the 19 countries that use the euro got off to a strong start in 2017 even as inflation pressures continue to mount in the wake of the recent rise in oil prices, a closely watched survey showed.

Financial information company IHS Markit said its gauge of business activity across the manufacturing and services sectors held steady at a five-and-a-half-year high of 54.4 points in January, still way above the 50 threshold between expansion and contraction. Encouragingly, the index's gauge of job creation spiked to a near nine-year high.

The firm said the recovery remains broad-based across the eurozone, but that it was particularly strong in Ireland, Spain and France. The survey comes hot on the heels of figures showing the eurozone economy expanded by a healthy 0.5 percent quarterly tick in the final three months of the year and several other indicators pointing to a pick-up in activity.

The eurozone faces a number of political challenges this year that could potentially derail the economy's recovery. They include uncertainty over whether President Donald Trump ushers in a new age of trade protectionism, the start of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union and elections in Germany and France, among others.

Another potential headache for the eurozone economy relates to rising inflation pressures that are largely due to the pick-up in oil prices from multi-year lows. According to IHS Markit, input cost inflation accelerated again in January, taking the rate of increase to its highest since March 2012.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Eurozone-economic-momentum-continues-into-2017-10905429.php

2 US jobs growth surges in January (BBC) US businesses added 227,000 jobs in January, way above economists' forecasts of about 175,000. The figure, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compares with December's rise of 157,000, revised up slightly from last month's first estimate.

However, average pay barely rose, and the number of people working part-time but looking for full-time work rose. Even so, the jobs growth suggests that new president Donald Trump has inherited a stronger jobs market.

He has promised to to create 25 million jobs over 10 years to become "the greatest jobs president... ever". President Barack Obama's term from January 2009-17 saw the number of people with jobs increase by 11.25 million.

The number of unemployed people at 7.6 million was little changed. The unemployment rate edged up slightly to 4.8% from 4.7% in December, but this was due to more people looking for work. The percentage of adults working or looking for jobs increased to its highest level since September.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38853642

3 Anti-corruption stir rocks Romania (The Guardian) Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bucharest and other Romanian cities on Friday, blowing whistles, waving giant national flags and booing at giant puppets of politicians they hold responsible for a decree to dilute the country’s anti-corruption fight.

The demonstration came amid a deepening political crisis after two key government allies said that the emergency government decree passed early on Wednesday without input from parliament was not constitutional. The influential Romanian Orthodox church criticised the measure, which some say will allow corrupt politicians to escape punishment.

The general prosecutor Augustin Lazar asked the Bucharest court of appeal to suspend and cancel the government decree “in an emergency regime” before it formally becomes law on 9 February.

A parliamentary party that formally supports the government, the Union of Democratic Hungarians in Romania, also criticised the government, saying that criminal law should not be modified through emergency decrees, but through parliamentary debate. In another setback for the government, the Orthodox church, to which more than 85% of Romanians belong, said that the anti-corruption fight should continue and that those found guilty should be sanctioned.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/03/romania-crisis-deepens-as-anti-corruption-protest-enters-fourth-day