Apple's new headquarters has created 13,000 new construction jobs A common way to describe the history of the technology industry is by product cycles. The 1990s was the era of the PC; then came the internet and related services, followed by mobile; and now artificial intelligence looms. But there is a different way to think about tech: it is switching from an era of hoarding profits to one of r..
Not as much as people think The increasingly severe trade and other sanctions the UN has imposed on North Korea have the aim of getting its dictator, Kim Jong Un, to give up his nuclear weapons. That the sanctions were causing pain plausibly played some part in bringing Mr Kim to suspend his nuclear and missile testing, and to extend a hand first to South Korea and then to the United States, at ..
They are reshaping Wall Street's ecosystem "Sell in May and go away," say the denizens of Wall Street, and to the usual summer lethargy is added the excuse of a heatwave. But for those working in private equity, there is no let-up. The "shops", as private-equity funds like to call themselves, are stuffed with money and raising more: $1.1trn in "dry powder" ready to spend around the world, accord..
Worryingly, such weather events may not remain unusual Sodankyla, a town in Finnish Lapland just north of the Arctic Circle, boasts an average annual temperature a little below freezing. Residents eagerly await the brief spell in July when the region enjoys something akin to summer. This year they may have wished for a bit less of it. On July 18th thermometers showed 32.1°C (89.8°F), which is 12..
The "project of the century" may help some economies, but at a political cost Shunning all false modesty, China's leader, Xi Jinping, calls his idea the "project of the century". The country's fawning media hail it as a gift of "Chinese wisdom" to the world's development. As for the real meaning of the clumsy metaphor to describe it - the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - debate rages. The term i..
Fuxi (also romanized as Fu-hsi, is a culture hero in Chinese legend and mythology, credited (along with his sister Nüwa) with creating humanity and the invention of hunting, fishing and cooking as well as the Changjie system of writing Chinese characters c. 2,000 BCE. He was also also known as Paoxi, also romanized as Pao-hsi. Fuxi was counted as the first of the Three Sovereigns at the beginnin..
Nüwa or Nügua is the mother goddess of Chinese mythology, the sister and wife of Fuxi, the emperor-god. She is credited with creating mankind and repairing the Pillar of Heaven. Her reverential name is Wahuang ("Empress Wa"). DescriptionThe Huainanzi relates Nüwa to the time when Heaven and Earth were in disruption: "Going back to more ancient times, the four pillars were broken; the nine provin..
And its inventor has just stepped down In December 1989 Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer scientist, set himself a Christmas project. Irked by shortcomings in other programming languages, he wanted to build his own. His principle were simple. First, it should be easy to read. Rather than sprawling over line-endings and being broken up by a tangle of curly braces, each chunk would be surrounded ..
Nāga is the Sanskrit and Pali word for a deity or class of entity or being taking the form of a very great snake, specifically the king cobra, found in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Hinduism The mythological serpent race that took form as cobras often can be found in Hindu iconography. The nāgas are described as the powerful, splendid, wonderful and proud semidivine rac..
But America's online giants have not much more to fear from regulators"The making of a big tech reckoning," blared one typical headline earlier this year. "The case for breaking up Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google," touted another. Based on media coverage alone it might seem as if the tech titans are in trouble. Add in the news, on July 18th, of a record €4.3bn fine for Google by the European ..
The American-led trade order is in danger. But it may yet be saved The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO), on the banks of Lake Geneva, once belonged to the League of Nations. That ill-fated body was crippled by American isolationism. The building's occupant today is also at the mercy of decisions taken in Washington. President Donald Trump has circumvented the WTO to impose tari..
How Russian prosecuted its cyber-war on American democracy If all America can be said to have been under attack when hijackers turned four airliners on it in 2001, the assault Russian agents launched on American democracy in 2016 represented a full-blown war. The 12 fresh charges against Russian intelligence officers unveiled by the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, on July 13th, offered ..
The Irish border remains the biggest obstacle to a deal The reaction in the rest of the European Union to the Chequers proposals this week was muted, partly because of the political turmoil in Britain and partly because the EU was waiting to see the details in the government's Brexit white paper, which is due to be published on July 12th. But European negotiators are relieved that Theresa May se..
That should worry Europe, America and the world America did as much as any country to create post-war Europe. In the late 1940s and the 1950s it was midwife to the treaty that became the European Union and to NATO, the military alliance that won the cold war. The United States acted partly out of charity, but chiefly out of self-interest. Having been dragged into two world wars, it wanted to ban..
If he cannot arm-twist OPEC, he may unleash America's Special Petroleum Reserve It used to be said that America's shale producers were the new "swing factor" in global oil markets. It turns out that role is being taken by America's president. At a time when oil prices are at three-and-a-half-year highs, markets are being buffeted by three countervailing forces unleashed by President Donald Trump..