Revelations of slavery-like conditions for migrant workers in Malaysia manufacturing hospital supplies says much about how worker exploitation has extends across the supply chain through the pandemic.
Category: Economy
Casual Friday? Or Casual Monday-through-Friday? In Argentina and elsewhere, confinement completely upended work routines — and may lead to the end of “dressing up” to go in the office.
Amid post-pandemic trade distortions and changing consumer habits, Latin American countries seeking to boost coffee exports should eye a growing specialty market in prosperous Asian countries.
It is today a proven fraud, nailed by the French stock market watchdog: Air Next resorted to a full range of dubious practices to raise money for a blockchain-powered e-commerce app. But the simplest of errors exposed the scam and limited the damage to investors. A cautionary tale for the crypto economy.
Mark Zuckerberg boasted that his U.S. tech giant will begin a hiring spree in Europe to build his massive “Metaverse.” Touted as an opportunity for Europe, the plans could poach precious tech talent from European tech companies.
China’s global investment tentacles have reached South American railways, where Chinese firms are “silent” partners in expanding rail networks, through financing or sale of rolling stock.
The current economic recovery is unlike any other in the labor market. For companies in the United States and Europe, recruitment is particularly tough. Resignations are exploding on both sides of the Atlantic and productivity is declining in places like France. These are all paradoxes confounding economists.
Latin American businesses and governments are seeing the marketing and export potentials of an incipient liberalization of marijuana laws in the region. But to really cash in, it must be an investment in more than simple commodity crops.
The heroic fantasy universes of the 1990s have become a new focus of investment. One card in the mega-popular Magic series recenty sold for more than $500,000, and with the introduction of blockchain technology, the market looks to expand even more.
Winning a Nobel Prize can’t be the only criterion by which we measure a nation’s scientific achievement — but it is a matter of pride, like winning a gold at the Olympics. Lower funding on R&D alone doesn’t explain India’s abysmal show at the Nobel Prizes. Some key elements seem to be missing, beyond funding and infrastructure, vis-à-vis our scientists’ ability to produce path-breaking work.
Brexit has doubled the cost of studying in the UK for Europeans, which means many more students are heading to Dutch universities, which offer multiple programs in English. That’s caused hundreds to arrive at universities in the Netherlands this month without promised housing.
Across the region, entrepreneurs have been hailed for taking innovative ideas inspired elsewhere and applying them nationally or regionally. But the business and ethical dynamics involved are not so simple.
Both al-Qaeda and ISIS openly complain about the difficulty in finding new members ready to give everything for the cause.
As New Zealand grapples to bring a Delta outbreak under control and to accelerate the vaccination rollout, social cohesion is vital for a successful elimination strategy. Political consensus on elimination has endured so far. Unlike the anti-mask and anti-vaccination movements elsewhere, most New Zealanders continue to back the prime minister’s decision to place the country under the strictest lockdown. But strains on public consensus are beginning to show, with a less-than-ideal parliament, some pushback against lockdowns and agitation to “open up.” These debates will become more pressing as the government moves towards difficult discussions about an exit strategy and targets […]
Algae could bring solutions to major challenges such as carbon sequestration and world hunger, provided we succeed in building an industrial sector.
The fall of the Afghan national government may be a calamity for the Afghans but not for the world’s big-money interests, which prefer to deal with ruthless, incompetent regimes that will sell out their countries.
Welcome to Friday, where evacuation flights resume at Kabul airport after yesterday’s deadly attack, dozens of kidnapped Nigerian students are freed, and female hummingbirds evolve so that males get off their feathers. We also boldly explore the surprising crossroads between science fiction and real-life military strategy.
Anne-Claire Bennevault, founder of consulting firm BNVLT and think tank SPAK.fr, weighs in on the rise of the so-called “finfluencers”.
After years of letting overnight rail travel fade into oblivion, France and other European countries are rushing to reverse course. Doing so will be easier said than done, however.
The products originally of America’s tech industry, Bitcoin and other digital currencies have since been adopted around the world. Nigeria, Vietnam and the Philippines now have some of the highest rates of cryptocurrency use, and many local entrepreneurs and governments are trying to cash in by building their own domestic coins. Not all of these […]
The legendary soccer star of FC Barcelona has signed up with the Parisian club, owned by the Emirate since 2011…and just in time for the World Cup slated next year in Qatar.
Welcome to Friday, where China blocks the WHO on COVID origins, the Taliban capture Kandahar and a Russian politician makes a deadly bear error. We also have a Die Welt article on the tiny country that isn’t afraid to take on China.
Not your (hippy) Grandma’s dumpster diving…
A new high-end food retailer, Gourmet, is helping reshape Egypt’s supermarket industry.
The prices of oil, copper and aluminum are all on the rise, and on paper at least, that’s great news for Russia. Leading economists, nevertheless, predict stagnation, and say Putin’s system is to blame.
Since Agnès Varda, Louis Malle and Michel Gondry, trying one’s luck in Hollywood has become an obsession for some French filmmakers. But Netflix and friends are changing the formula.
MILAN — There were a few moments of silence when I told my girlfriend what I’d done. I’d kept the information from her for a few days, fearing her reaction and forced to explain: I had chucked a few hundred dollars at shares of the so-called “meme stock” extraordinaire GameStop on the New York Stock […]
The Northeast is the Chinese equivalent to Greece …
The Hass avocado, fast becoming one of Colombia’s big export earners, is threatening local ecosystems and causing water shortages.
The infamous (yet legal) Japanese criminal syndicate was already suffering under new laws when the pandemic hit. Now its business model is crumbling.
With new targets, the United States is trying to impose more of the same binary thinking that set the Middle East on fire.
Phony press releases are a big thorn in the sides of many multinational companies. These big shots may dominate the stock market, but they’re struggling to keep the fake news out of prestigious papers
Telework, telework, telework … The concept may seem like old hat at this point. And yet, there are also new elements to the phenomenon that keep cropping up — new words, shifting workplace relationships, evolving office spaces — as society continues to morph around this shifting reality. Fascinating innovations around our new work-life balance are […]
Despite local opposition, Chinese investors are pumping billions into the Chancay project, a massive port complex north of Lima that will boost trade between China and Latin America as a whole.
In remote — sometimes unmapped — regions of China, thousands of computers are ‘mining’ bitcoin, the queen of virtual currencies. The country may boast all the right conditions to dominate the cryptocurrency market today, but will its mining boom last?
Pummeled by the pandemic, the fragile economies of Latin America are desperate to recover. But is turning to China for loans and as a market for raw materials the best long-term solution?
Latin American firms are joining others around the world testing Virtual and Augmented Reality solutions in personnel recruitment and training.
Now that central banks are opening to the idea of digital currencies, there may no turning back. But it comes with real risks, especially with regards to China’s ambitions.
Volkswagen and other German car companies want to develop their own software systems and thus close the e-car technology gap with Tesla. But success will depend on a cultural change in the established auto sector.
The pandemic and subsequent closing of the border with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Morocco, put an end to the ‘atypical trade’ that sustained the Fnideq region.