Author: News Room

It has been another busy week for China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan, with the token finding new usage cases in the fields of housing aid public resource transactions.Xinhua Daily reported that the Jiangsu Provincial Government Affairs Office has begun using the CBDC in 10 new “application scenarios.”The same news agency reported that banks and local authorities in the city of Nanjing have begun the “integrated use of the digital yuan” in the housing provident fund sector.In China, the housing provident fund (HPF) system is a mandatory mutual aid platform.It was designed to help assist individuals with…

Tens of thousands of England’s trainee doctors have gone on strike this week over pay. For many, hourly pay falls below that of some baristas and fast-food workers. Junior doctors working in the country’s National Health Service (NHS) walked out Tuesday — the first of four days of strikes — demanding a 35% increase in annual salaries. The British Medical Association, the trade union and professional body for UK doctors, says junior doctors in England have suffered a 26% cut to their pay since 2008 once inflation is taken into account. Junior doctors in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are…

Concerns are mounting around the health of Europe’s commercial real estate market, with some investors questioning whether it could be the next sector to blow following last month’s banking crisis.Higher interest rates have increased the cost of borrowing and depressed valuations in the property sector, which in recent years reigned supreme amid low bond yields.related investing newsMeanwhile, the collapse in March of U.S.-based Silicon Valley Bank and the later emergency rescue of Credit Suisse prompted fears of a so-called “doom loop,” in which a potential bank run could trigger a property sector downturn.The European Central Bank earlier this month warned of…

Alcoa AA is expected to publish its Q1 2023 results on April 19 reporting on a quarter that saw aluminum prices face considerable volatility. We expect the company’s revenues to come in at about $2.76 billion, roughly in line with the consensus estimates. While this would mark a sequential increase of about 4%, it would translate into a year-over-year decline of around 16%. We estimate that earnings will stand at just $0.05 per share, slightly ahead of the consensus, although this would mark a decline from levels of around $2.49 in the year-ago period. So what are some of the…

(Reuters) -National Public Radio (NPR) will no longer post content to its 52 official Twitter feeds in protest against a label by the social media platform that implies government involvement in the U.S. organization’s editorial content. NPR said on Wednesday Twitter refused its repeated requests to remove the inaccurate label of “state-affiliated media”, now changed to “government-funded media,” which did not accurately capture its public media governance structure. British broadcaster BBC has also objected to the latest label, saying it’s misleading. “If we continued tweeting, every post would carry that misleading label,” NPR said. In an interview with BBC, Twitter’s…

By Dominique Patton BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s agriculture ministry issued a three-year action plan on Friday to reduce soymeal use in animal feed as it continues to try to reduce its heavy reliance on soybean imports. The new plan proposes that soymeal ratios in animal feed should be reduced to under 13% by 2025, down from 14.5% in 2022. Authorities in the world’s top soybean importer already issued guidelines in 2021 to its animal feed industry recommending lower soymeal ratios. The new plan would “guide the feed industry to reduce the amount of soybean meal, promote the saving and consumption reduction…

© Reuters. Waymo self-driving vehicles pull over in California due to fog By Michael Elkins Waymo, the self-driving technology segment of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:), said Wednesday that some of their vehicles in San Francisco encountered dense fog and briefly pulled over to the side of the road. The incident occurred around 6:00 Pacific time on Tuesday, impeding traffic before the cars moved out of the area as the fog began to clear, Waymo said. “We have software updates planned to improve our fog and parking performance to address such situations in the future,” the company said in a statement. Waymo…

The 2024 Kia EV9 is an all-electric 3-row midsize SUV. We expect pricing to start at about $55,000.The Kia EV9 is the newest entry in the Korean brand’s growing stable of electric vehicles. It fills a need in the current EV landscape: a midsize 3-row SUV from a non-luxury brand at a reasonable price point. There are few affordable options in EVs for families who need roomy 3-row seating, and the EV9 will be one of the first to solve that problem. It will arrive on the scene with few direct rivals, but the closest will be the Tesla Model Y,…

Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. stock slid 6.4% Thursday, after a news report cast uncertainty over the path to regulatory approval for the company’s SRP-9001 gene therapy for a rare genetic disorder. SRP-9001 is a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD, an inherited disorder of progressive muscular weakness that typically affects boys. Symptoms that appear in early childhood include frequent falls, difficulties getting up or running and learning disabilities, and patients have a life expectancy of about 27. About 20,000 children are diagnosed with DMD globally every year, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. In March, when Sarepta SRPT, -9.41% reported…

It isn’t what investors want to hear. Boeing (ticker: BA) has halted deliveries of its 737 MAX jet after the discovery of a parts compliance problem from a supplier. Boeing stock was down 4.8% in premarket trading Friday. Shares gained 0.6% in regular trading on Thursday while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.3% and 1.1%, respectively. “A supplier has notified us that a nonstandard manufacturing process was used during the installation of two fittings in the aft fuselage section of certain [737 MAX] airplanes, creating the potential for a nonconformance to required specifications,” said a Boeing…