Discovering the origins of COVID-19 is a moral imperative and all hypotheses must be explored, the head of the World Health Organization said, in the clearest indication yet that the U.N. body remains committed to finding how the virus arose. A U.S. agency was reported by the Wall Street Journal to have assessed the pandemic had likely […]
Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco on Sunday reported a record annual net profit of $161.1 billion for 2022, up 46% from the previous year on higher energy prices, increased volumes sold and improved margins for refined products. The profits, which are around triple that of Exxon’s $56 billion, follow similar reports in February from international peers such […]
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman formally announced on Sunday the creation of a new national airline, Riyadh Air, with industry veteran Tony Douglas as its chief executive, as the kingdom moves to compete with regional transport and travel hubs. Riyadh Air will will serve more than 100 destinations around the world by 2030, […]
Cyclone Freddy pummeled Mozambique on Saturday, killing one person, ripping roofs off houses and triggering a lockdown in one port town, a resident and local media said, two weeks after 27 died when the storm first made landfall. Freddy, one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, started sweeping onshore by 10pm […]
Over the past 70 years, institutional investors’ ownership of publicly traded US companies has increased dramatically, leaving a large section of the US economy in the hands of a few asset management companies. This column questions the impact of these investors on political donations made by their portfolio firms. After the acquisition of a large […]
One of the segments of the US economy that was affected most by the Great Recession was consumption. This column use individual-level data to understand the channels through which the decline in house values affected consumption during the Great Recession. The authors find that household-level financial constraints, including those that may have existed previously as […]
Only a third of the massive fiscal interventions put in place by European governments 1 to shield consumers from rising energy prices have been targeted at vulnerable categories. This must change. Building on the ECB recommendations, a “Green triple-T” criterion for future interventions to be tailored, targeted and transition-proof should be established to help Europe become greener and […]
Inflation in the EU reached an all-time high of 10.6% in October 2022, declining to 8.5% in January 2023. The February 2023 CfM-CEPR survey asked its European panel whether inflation has peaked in the euro area and its implications for ECB policy. A large majority of the panel think that inflation has already passed its […]
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon.com Inc, said on Wednesday it plans to invest $6 billion in Malaysia over the next 14 years to strengthen its cloud services infrastructure in the country. This marks the company’s latest move in its plan to build AWS Infrastructure Regions across southeast Asia. The infrastructure […]
Alibaba Group Holding’s chip unit T-Head and Alipay, the payment service under Alibaba’s financial affiliate Ant Group, will release computing chips for secure payments based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture, the two entities said. The development comes as Chinese companies continue to invest heavily in chips, in the wake of U.S. export restrictions targeting China’s […]
