Author: The News
Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Chinese economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.China’s top economic officials said the country could do without American farm and energy imports as they vowed to achieve a 5 per cent GDP growth target for the year despite the trade war with the US. Zhao Chenxin, vice chair of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s state planner, said domestic farm and energy production, along with imports from non-US sources, would be more than enough to satisfy demand. “Even if we do not purchase feed grains and oilseeds from the United…
When the infamous Prohibition era began in the US on January 17, 1920, it didn’t just mark the rise of speakeasies and organized crime dealing in the illegal liquor trade, it also marked a time when many small businesses were forced to make massive changes to keep up with the times. While this dry era became well known for producing the likes of Elliot Ness and Al Capone, it also serves as a stark reminder of how quickly small businesses must adapt to changing times. Several changes came about due to prohibition that you may not even be aware of. Did…
CSE redefines sustainability by including more terms to support social and environmental projects in the country.Reinforce national goals, including poverty reduction, and access to education and healthcare.The largest stock exchange in Sri Lanka, the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), has launched a new system called the GSS+ Bonds Regulatory Framework in the Sri Lankan capital market.The new rules will guide special types of bonds that fund social and environmental projects.With the announcement of this system, the stock exchange, which previously had only referred to “sustainability bonds,” will now cover a wider range of bonds, such as Green, Blue, Social, Sustainability, and…
It’s been a busy year for TechCrunch events — and it’s about to get even bigger. StrictlyVC, our boutique, highly exclusive event series for VCs and startups, is crossing the Atlantic this May with stops in London and Athens! We’re bringing StrictlyVC’s insider conversations to Europe. On May 8, we’ll dive into Athens’ booming tech momentum with a special appearance by the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Then, on May 13, we’ll head to London to explore the investment and financial strategies shaping Europe’s tech ecosystem. If you’re thinking about expanding globally — or wondering how to start —…
How do Generation Z buy since the pandemic started? One of the measures adopted to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 was social distancing, which we still try to maintain today. During the pandemic, the Internet has been particularly important, as people have increased their online activity for multiple reasons, resulting in, among other things, an extreme growth of online shopping. Only in China (this work’s context) 70% of consumers increased their online purchases during the pandemic. The ease with which members of Generation Z make use of technologies is what has had the most impact on the e-commerce strategies of…
Prepping slides for macro, found these interesting correlations. First, how the strength of the dollar correlates with the Treasury 10 year yield, daily 2015-23 April 2025. Figure 1: Nominal dollar index vs. basket of major country currencies (blue circles), and OLS fit (blue line), and observations for 4/2/2025-4/15/2025 (red circles). Source: Fed and Treasury via FRED, and author’s calculations. In the two weeks around Liberation Day, Treasury 10 year yields rose as the dollar fell (red circles in Figure 1). One obvious place to look for a loss in credibility is in credit ratings; however, those are notoriously sticky. I…
Starting a business can feel overwhelming.With so many decisions, tasks, and unknowns, it’s no wonder aspiring entrepreneurs often say they’ll start a business “in three to five years.” It’s a safe timeline – far enough away that there’s no immediate action required, but close enough to keep the dream alive.But here’s the truth: the difference between staying stuck in dreaming and actually becoming a business owner comes down to one thing: Commitment.After speaking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed a clear pattern. Those who become successful business owners don’t wait for clarity or confidence to magically appear. Instead, they commit to…
United Airlines announced an investment in JetZero, a developer of a blended wing body (BWB) aircraft anticipated to improve fuel efficiency by up to 50% relative to current aircraft models. The investment includes conditional purchase agreement to order up to 100 airplanes, based on JetZero achieving development milestones including flight of a full-scale demonstrator in 2027, as well as an option for an additional 100 planes. Founded in 2021, California-based JetZero is designing a plane that integrates the wings and fuselage into a single smooth shape, reducing aerodynamic drag, and leading to lower fuel needs, emissions and operating costs. The…
LLM-based multi-agent systems characterized by planning, reasoning, tool use, and memory capabilities form the foundation of applications like chatbots, code generation, mathematics, and robotics. However, these systems face significant challenges as they are manually designed, leading to high human resource costs and limited scalability. Graph-based methods have attempted to automate workflow designs by formulating workflows as networks, but their structural complexity restricts scalability. State-of-the-art approaches represent multi-agent systems as programming code and use advanced LLMs as meta-agents to optimize workflows, but focus on task-level solutions that generate single task-specific systems. This one-size-fits-all approach lacks the capability for automatic adaptation to…
The below are my speaking notes for a presentation in the Innovative methodologies in behavioural science session at BI Connect 2024, hosted by the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA) in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The notes reflect many of the themes discussed in more detail in a previous post on megastudies. When BETA posts the video of the session, I will link here. I’m going to start with a story about a competition held by Netflix. They offered $1 million to the team that could develop an algorithm that could predict film ratings with…