U.S. President Donald Trump touted the use of U.S. tariffs on foreign small trucks Wednesday, saying their placement on other foreign vehicles would have prevented the closure of several General Motors plants and the loss of thousands of coveted manufacturing jobs. Trump noted on Twitter that brisk U.S. small truck sales in the country are due to a 25-percent tariff on small truck imports. The president reiterated on Twitter that “countries that send us cars have taken advantage of the U.S. for decades.” Trump added he has “great power on this issue,” which he said “is being studied now.” Trump has threatened to eliminate all federal subsidies to GM in response to the company’s planned closure of five plants and the elimination of 14,000 jobs in North America. Questions remain, though, about whether Trump has the authority to act against the automaker without congressional approval. Federal tax credits of up to $7,500 are available to those who buy GM electric vehicles. Killing the subsidies may have little financial impact on GM because it is on the cusp of reaching its subsidy limit. Many of the jobs would be eliminated in Midwestern U.S. states, a region where Trump has long promised a manufacturing rebirth. GM, which said it has invested more than $22 billion in U.S. operations since it came out of bankruptcy in 2009, has tried to appease the Trump administration while justifying its decisions. “We appreciate the actions this administration has taken on behalf of industry to improve the …
Powell: Fed’s Gradual Rate Hikes Balance Against Risks
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that while there was “a great deal to like” about U.S. prospects, the Fed’s gradual interest rate hikes are meant to balance risks as it tries to keep the economy on track. “We know that things often turn out to be quite different from even the most careful forecasts,” Powell said in a speech that comes in the wake of last week’s volatile market selloff. “Our gradual pace of raising interest rates has been an exercise in balancing risks.” Powell offered few clues on how much longer the U.S. central bank would raise interest rates in the face of a slowdown overseas and market volatility at home. Instead he highlighted a new financial stability report the Fed published earlier on Wednesday. “My own assessment is that, while risks are above normal in some areas and below normal in others, overall financial stability vulnerabilities are at a moderate level,” he said at an Economic Club of New York luncheon. …
Scientist Claiming Gene-edited Babies Reports 2nd Pregnancy
A Chinese researcher who claims to have helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies says a second pregnancy may be underway. The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, revealed the pregnancy Wednesday while making his first public comments about his controversial work at an international conference in Hong Kong. He claims to have altered the DNA of twin girls born earlier this month to try to make them resistant to infection with the AIDS virus. Mainstream scientists have condemned the experiment, and universities and government groups are investigating. The second pregnancy is in a very early stage and needs more time to be monitored to see if it will last, He said. Leading scientists said there are now even more reasons to worry, and more questions than answers, after He’s talk. The leader of the conference called the experiment “irresponsible” and evidence that the scientific community had failed to regulate itself to prevent premature efforts to alter DNA. Altering DNA before or at the time of conception is highly controversial because the changes can be inherited and might harm other genes. It’s banned in some countries including the United States except for lab research. He defended his choice of HIV, rather than a fatal inherited disease, as a test case for gene editing, and insisted the girls could benefit from it. “They need this protection since a vaccine is not available,” He said. Scientists weren’t buying it. “This is a truly unacceptable development,” said Jennifer Doudna, a University of California-Berkeley …
Ikea Moving Into City Centers to Adapt to Consumer Changes
An airport worker drops by Warsaw’s newest Ikea store during her lunch break to finish up plans for a home refurbishment. Around her, people drift in and out of the shop, placing small houseware items in big yellow bags as cafe tables fill up with people just stopping in for lunch. The store is not one of Ikea’s out-of-the-way, maze-like warehouses that require a car to visit, but a shop like any other in a city center shopping mall. The Swedish retailing giant plans to open 30 such smaller stores in major cities around the world as part of a broader transformation to adapt to changing consumer habits. Compared with just a decade ago, shoppers are more likely to be living in urban areas and not have a car, and often want a nearby location to look at goods like furniture in person before ordering things online. “I like the idea because you can come any time,” said 29-year-old Angelika Singh, the airport worker, as she finalized an order for a new kitchen. “Mostly when you go to Ikea you need to have a whole day free, or at least half a day free, because it’s far.” Warsaw’s store is located on two floors covering nearly 5,000 square meters (54,000 square feet), about one-fourth of a traditional big-box store. Similar stores have also opened in major cities like London and Madrid and more are expected, with one due next year in Paris, among other locations. Shoppers can buy cushions, curtains …
Chinese Scientist Faces Firestorm Over Genetic Editing
A Chinese researcher has publicly defended his claim he has created the world’s first genetically-edited babies. He Jiankui addressed a crowd of fellow scientists Wednesday at a biomedical conference in Hong Kong, two days after he posted a video online claiming to have used a gene-editing technology dubbed CRISPR to alter the DNA of twin girls born to an HIV-positive father to prevent them from contracting the virus that causes AIDS. Dr. He said he conducted his research in secret. His work has not been independently verified, and Dr. He has not submitted his report to any scientific journals where it could be examined by experts. But he told his colleagues that he felt “proud…proudest” of his achievement. His claims have set off a firestorm of skepticism and criticism. The Southern University of Science and Technology, the university in the southern Chinese city in Shenzhen that employs him, says he has been on unpaid leave since February. The school denounced his research for violating “academic ethics and codes of conduct,” and the Chinese government is urging local authorities to launch an investigation into He’s work. Shortly after He’s speech before the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, American biologist David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and a leader of the summit, called Dr. He’s work “irresponsible” and a “failure of self-regulation by the scientific community.” Genetic editing has the potential to remove inherited diseases from the gene pool, but scientists and ethicists worry it could be …
UN Report Says Fragile Climate Puts Food Security at Risk
Feeding a hungry planet is growing increasingly difficult as climate change and depletion of land and other resources undermine food systems, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization said Wednesday as it renewed appeals for better policies and technologies to reach “zero hunger.” Population growth requires supplies of more nutritious food at affordable prices, but increasing farm output is hard given the “fragility of the natural resource base” since humans have outstripped Earth’s carrying capacity in terms of land, water and climate change, the report said. About 820 million people are malnourished. The FAO and International Food Policy Research Institute released the report at the outset of a global conference aimed at speeding up efforts to achieve zero hunger around the world. “The call for action is very clear. It is possible in our lifetime and it is also realistic to end hunger and malnutrition,” Inonge Wina, vice president of Zambia, told the gathering. Food security remains tenuous for many millions of people who lack access to affordable, adequately nourishing diets for a variety of reasons, the most common being poverty. But it’s also endangered by civil strife and other conflicts. In Yemen, where thousands of civilians have died in airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition, the aid group Save the Children says 85,000 children under 5 may have died of hunger or disease in the civil war. In Afghanistan, severe drought and conflict have displaced more than 250,000 people, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee …
Ocean Shock: Building a Silicon Valley of the Sea
This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them. Norway has built the world’s biggest salmon-farming industry. But it wants to go bigger. With their lucrative oil fields now in decline, Norwegians have ambitious plans for aquaculture to power their economy far into the future. Climate change could make those dreams harder to realize. Salmon feed is based on fishmeal, produced by grinding up wild-caught fish. With warming waters and ocean acidification pushing underwater ecosystems to the breaking point, Big Aquaculture is seeking ways to feed fish that aren’t hostage to increasingly unpredictable seas. “Feed has a couple of bottlenecks: We’re still using marine resources, for example fishmeal and fish oil, to then put into fish. This is not necessarily sustainable in the long term,” said Georg Baunach, co-founder of Hatch, an accelerator focused on supporting aquaculture startups. “And that’s why we need innovation in feed.” Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and scientists are racing to identify alternatives, turning the Norwegian cities of Bergen and Stavanger into a Silicon Valley of the Sea. Spending on research and development in Norway’s aquaculture sector increased by 30 percent to 2.3 billion kroner, or $275 million, between 2013 and 2015, according to official data quoted by Hatch, as startups and research institutes raced to develop disruptive new technologies. The innovators aren’t short of ideas. At Norway’s biggest oil refinery, a startup called CO2Bio is harnessing greenhouse gases to culture algae that …
New Cases of HIV Rise in Eastern Europe, Decline in the West
More than 130,000 people were newly diagnosed with HIV last year in Eastern Europe, the highest rate ever for the region, while the number of new cases in Western Europe declined, global public health experts said on Wednesday. European Union and European Economic Area countries saw a reduction in 2017 rates, mainly driven by a 20 percent drop since 2015 among men who have sex with men. That left Europe’s overall increasing trend less steep than previously. All told, almost 160,000 people were diagnosed in Europe with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional office for Europe. “It’s hard to talk about good news in the face of another year of unacceptably high numbers of people infected with HIV,” said Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the WHO regional office. Calling on governments and health officials to recognize the seriousness of the situation, she urged them: “Scale up your response now.” The United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS warned in July that complacency was starting to stall the fight against the global epidemic, with the pace of progress not matching what is needed. Some 37 million people worldwide are infected with HIV. The WHO’s European Region is made up of 53 countries with a combined population of nearly 900 million. Around 508 million of those live in the 28 member states of the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The joint …
Report: Trump Says ‘Not Even a Little Bit Happy’ with Fed’s Powell
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday kept up his criticism of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, saying rising interest rates and other Fed policies were damaging the U.S. economy, the Washington Post said. “So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay,” the Post quoted Trump as saying in an interview, referring to the man he picked last year to lead the Fed. “Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.” In recent months, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed’s interest rate increases that he said was making it more expensive for his administration to finance its escalating deficits. Trump has called the Fed “crazy” and “ridiculous.” “I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump told the Post on Tuesday. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.” …
Global Trade at Stake as Trump and Xi Come Face to Face
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, he was made for a moment like this: A high-stakes face-off. A ticking clock. A cagey adversary. The man who calls himself a supreme dealmaker will have the opportunity this week to put himself to the test. The question is whether he can defuse a trade war with China that is shaking financial markets and threatening the global economy — and perhaps achieve something approximating a breakthrough. Trump is to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Friday and Saturday. Unless the two leaders can achieve a truce of sorts, their conflicts will likely escalate: On Jan. 1, the tariffs Trump has imposed on many Chinese goods are set to rise from 10 percent to 25 percent, and Beijing would likely retaliate. Most analysts have said they doubt Trump and Xi will reach any overarching deal that would settle the dispute for good. The optimistic view is that the two sides may agree to a cease-fire that would buy time for more substantive talks and postpone the scheduled escalation in U.S import taxes. Yet no one really knows. Each side seems prepared to wait out the other in a conflict that could persist indefinitely. In advance of the meeting, Trump has sounded his usual note of boastful confidence. Speaking to reporters on Thanksgiving Day, he said: “I’m very prepared. You know, it’s not like, ‘Oh, gee, …
UNICEF: Millions of Poor City Children Worse Off Than Rural Peers
Millions of poor urban children are more likely to die before their fifth birthday than those living in rural areas, according to a U.N. study released Tuesday that challenges popular assumptions behind the global urbanization trend. The UNICEF research found not all children in cities benefited from the so-called urban advantage — the idea that higher incomes, better infrastructure and proximity to services make for better lives. “For rural parents, at face-value, the reasons to migrate to cities seem obvious: better access to jobs, health care and education opportunities for their children,” said Laurence Chandy, UNICEF director of data, research and policy. “But not all urban children are benefiting equally; we find evidence of millions of children in urban areas who fare worse than their rural peers.” Although most urban children benefit from living in cities, the study identified 4.3 million globally who were more likely to die before age five than their rural counterparts, and said 13.4 million were less likely to complete primary school. “Children should be a focus of urban planning, yet in many cities they are forgotten, with millions of children cut off from social services in urban slums and informal settlements,” said Chandy in a statement. About 1 billion people are estimated to live in slums globally, hundreds of millions of them children, according to the U.N. children’s agency. A decade ago, the world officially became majority urban, and two-thirds of the global population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to …
Trump Threatens to Cut GM Subsidies in Retaliation for US Job Cuts
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to cut subsidies for General Motors after the largest U.S. automaker said it would halt production at five plants in North America and cut nearly 15,000 jobs. “The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including … for electric cars,” Trump said on Twitter. Trump has made boosting auto jobs a key priority during his almost two years in office and has often attacked automakers on Twitter for not doing enough to boost U.S. employment. GM electric vehicles are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit under federal law, but it is not clear how the administration could restrict those credits or if Trump had other subsidies in mind. GM shares extended earlier declines and were down 3.6 percent after Trump’s tweets. GM declined to immediately comment. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra spoke to Trump over the weekend to discuss the cuts and was at the White House on Monday to meet with economic adviser Larry Kudlow. Trump also criticized GM for not closing facilities in Mexico or China. “General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) – don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!” Trump wrote on Twitter. GM currently builds just one vehicle in China that it exports to the United States — the Buick Envision — and has sold about …
Russian Bank: We Assigned $12B ‘Loan’ to Poor African State by Mistake
The impoverished state of Central African Republic landed a windfall on Tuesday, at least on paper, when Russian state bank VTB reported it had lent the country $12 billion — but the bank then said it was a clerical error and there was no such loan. The loan was mentioned in a quarterly VTB financial report published by the Russian central bank. The report included a table listing the outstanding financial claims that VTB group had on dozens of countries as of Oct. 1 this year. In the table next to Central African Republic was the sum of $12 billion — more than six times the country’s annual economic output. When asked about the data by Reuters, the bank said the loan to the former French colony did not, in reality, exist. “VTB bank has no exposure of this size to CAR. Most likely, this is a case of an operational mistake in the system when the countries were being coded,” the lender said in a statement sent to Reuters. VTB did not say who was responsible for the mistake or how such a large figure could have been published without being spotted. CAR government spokesman Ange Maxime Kazagui, when asked about the Russian data, said: “I don’t have that information. But it doesn’t sound credible because $11 billion is beyond the debt capacity of CAR.” “We are members of the IMF (International Monetary Fund). When a member of the IMF wants to take on debt … it has to discuss …
Scientists: Mild El Nino Event Likely by Next February
There is a 75 to 80 percent probability of an El Nino weather phenomenon developing within the next three months, the World Meteorological Organization reports. Global seasonal climate data show precipitation patterns predicted for December to February resemble those normally associated with El Nino, WMO said, adding that it is not expected to be as powerful as the deadly event in 2015 and 2016, which caused droughts, flooding and coral bleaching around the world. While a weaker El Nino is expected to emerge, WMO scientists warn it still can have a significant impact on rainfall and temperature patterns. They say it could adversely affect agriculture and food security, the management of water resources, and public health. WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis tells VOA neutral weather conditions have prevailed for the past few months, with neither El Nino nor its opposite La Nina present. While they are associated with extreme weather events, she says they are not the only factors. “And we need to bear in mind, we have got climate change,” she said. “So, every El Nino, every La Nina, which takes place now is taking place against a background of the fact that we are living in a dramatically altered climate compared to even 50 years ago. So, the impacts, for instance, on heat waves are likely to be more pronounced than they were several decades ago.” El Nino and La Nina are phases of what is known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation cycle, or ENSO. This phenomenon involves fluctuations …
China Launches Probe Into ‘First’ Gene-Edited Babies
A Chinese researcher’s surprise claim that he is the first person in the world to successfully edit the genes of a pair of recently born twin girls, making them resistant to HIV, the AIDS virus, has been met with criticism, scorn and denial in China. Provincial health authorities in the southern province of Guangdong released a statement Tuesday announcing that an investigation into the experiment, which involved seven couples and one successful pregnancy, already is under way and being given utmost attention. “Results of the investigation will be promptly released to the public,” the statement said. Continuous denials China’s Ministry of Health said it was placing a high priority on the case and that it ordered the probe. Meanwhile, those who supposedly were involved in approving an ethical review of the experiment that He Jiankui said he conducted are distancing themselves. He is an associate professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology, but his employer has said that the researcher has been on leave without pay since February and that the school was not aware of the experiment. The Shenzhen Health and Family Planning Commission said it had not received an ethical assessment application for the study. According to a form posted online, the city’s science and innovation committee was listed as backing the experiment, something the panel denies. The Shenzhen Harmonicare Hospital was listed as having given ethical approval for He’s experiment, although the hospital is denying this. …
Банк «ВТБ» визнаний неплатоспроможним, вкладники отримають 942 мільйони гривень – НБУ
«ВТБ Банк» визнаний неплатоспроможним – таку заяву 27 листопада оприлюднив Національний банк України. Це рішення НБУ пояснює захистом інтересів вкладників і кредиторів банку. За інформацією НБУ, 97% вкладників «ВТБ», тобто понад 59 тисяч людей, отримають свої банківські внески в межах суми, гарантованої Фондом гарантування вкладів фізичних осіб. Сума виплат, за оцінками, складе 942,7 мільйони гривень. За даними регулятора, банк був віднесений до категорії проблемних 13 листопада, і власники не вжили заходів, щоб виправити ситуацію. «Зважаючи на відсутність реальних дій з боку власників АТ «ВТБ Банк» для запобігання неплатоспроможності, а також відсутність вжитих та реалістичних заходів для покращення ліквідності банку, та у зв’язку з тим, що діяльність АТ «ВТБ БАНК» не відповідала вимогам банківського законодавства і нормативно-правовим актам Національного банку України, сьогодні Правлінням Національного банку України прийнято рішення про віднесення АТ «ВТБ Банк» до категорії неплатоспроможних», – йдеться в заяві. НБУ не очікує, що визнання банка неплатоспроможним вплине на всю банківську систему Україну, тому що його частка становить 0,6% від активів платоспроможних банків. Читайте також: Росія відмовилася визнати рішення суду за позовом українського «Ощадбанку» У «ВТБ Банку» ще на початку листопада оприлюднили заяву після арешту його активів Апеляційним судом Києва. Прес-служба фінансової установи повідомила, що «ВТБ» змушений запровадити комісії та ліміти на зняття готівки через те, що суд заборонив йому продавати стягнені заставні активи й майно, аби поповнити власну ліквідність. Однак, згідно з заявою, менеджмент банку «робив усе можливе для розблокування діяльності банку в максимально стислі терміни». Згідно зі структурою власності «ВТБ», яку оприлюднив НБУ, 99% установи є власністю російського банку «ВТБ», …
UN: Climate Change Outpacing Efforts to Slow It
The United Nations says all countries must triple efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit an average global temperature increase to two degrees Celsius by 2030. The ninth annual U.N. Environmental Program Emissions Gap report released Tuesday says emissions in 2030 could be up to 15 billion tons higher than needed to prevent a more than two degree hike. The report said emissions in 2030 would need to be 55 percent lower than they were in 2017 to limit the average increase to a safer 1.5 degrees. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for limiting a temperature rise to between 1.5 and two degrees. The report said emissions reached a record high of 53.5 tons in 2017 after three years of decreases. The report also said the world’s 20 largest economies, the Group of Twenty, are not on track to meet their goals in 2030. The analysis follows a special report last month by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It concluded that two degrees of warming, once believed to be a safe threshold, would trigger more deadly extreme weather events. The report said limiting the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees would require countries to make rapid and unprecedented changes. “If the IPCC report represented a global fire alarm, this report is the arson investigation,” said UNEP deputy executive director Joyce Msuya. “The science is clear; for all the ambitious climate action we have seen, government’s need to move faster and with greater urgency. We are feeding this …
Указ про введення воєнного стану наразі не накладає обмежень на економічну діяльність в Україні – Мінекономрозвитку
Указ про введення в Україні воєнного стану наразі не накладає обмежень на економічну діяльність на всій території держави. Про це повідомили у міністерстві економічного розвитку і торгівлі. «Суб’єкти господарювання та громадяни можуть здійснювати економічні операції в звичайному режимі», – ідеться у повідомленні. У міністерстві обіцяють оперативно повідомляти про будь-які зміни в режимі здійснення економічної та зовнішньоекономічної діяльності. Водночас на тлі повідомлень про запровадження воєнного стану в Україні в обмінниках відбулося стрімке зростання курсу долара США – в середньому до 29 гривень за одну одиницю американської валюти. У НБУ 26 листопада завили, що ліквідність банківського сектору становить близько 75 мільярдів гривень, що є достатнім для його належного і безперебійного функціонування в разі запровадження воєнного стану. 25 листопада російські прикордонники у Керченській протоці відкрили вогонь по українських кораблях і захопили три кораблі. Шістьох українських військових поранено, двоє у важкому стані. (Росія заявляє, що надала медичну допомогу трьом пораненим, про інших трьох не згадувала). Свій осуд з приводу дій Росії висловили представники Польщі й Естонії, а також Канада і Грузія. В Євросоюзі і НАТО закликали до «стриманості і деескалації». 26 листопада, після подій у Керченській протоці Верховна Рада ухвалила запровадження з 28 листопада воєнного стану у низці областей України. …
Experts: African Fishing Communities Face ‘Extinction’ as Blue Economy Grows
Fishing communities along Africa’s coastline are at a greater risk of extinction as countries eye oceans for tourism, industrial fishing and exploration revenue to jumpstart their “blue economies,” U.N. experts and activists said on Monday. The continent’s 38 coastal and island states have in recent years moved to tap ocean resources through commercial fishing, marine tourism and sea-bed mining, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). “There is a great risk and a great danger that those communities will be marginalized,” said Joseph Zelasney, a fishery officer at U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The resources that they depend on will be decimated,” he added at a side event at the Blue Economy Conference organized by Kenya, Canada and Japan in Nairobi. The world’s poorest continent hosts a blue economy estimated at $1 trillion but loses $42 billion a year to illegal fishing and logging of mangroves along the coast, according to UNECA estimates. Seismic waves generated by prospectors to search for minerals, oil and gases along the ocean floor have scared away fish stocks, said Dawda Saine of the Confederation of African Artisanal Fishing in Gambia. “Noise and vibration drives fishes away, which means they (fishermen) have to go further to fish,” Saine said. Pollution from a vibrant tourism sector and foreign trawlers have reduced stocks along the Indian Ocean, Salim Mohamed, a fisherman from Malindi in Kenya, said. “We suffer as artisanal fishers but all local regulation just look at us as the polluter and …
175 People Dead of Cholera in Northern Nigeria, Up to 10,000 Cases Recorded
A humanitarian group working in northern Nigeria says it has recorded 10,000 cases of cholera there and that at least 175 people have died from the disease since the start of November. The Norwegian Refugee Council says most of the cases were found in camps for displaced people in Borno state, where thousands seek refuge from Boko Haram attacks. Timothy Obiezu reports from Maiduguri. …
Insight Lander Touches Down on Mars
NASA scientists were ecstatic Monday when they received word from 54 million kilometers away that their newest mission to Mars had arrived safely. The probe is called InSight and true to its name. Officials say it’s going to give scientists new insight into what’s inside the Red Planet. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …
Traditional Fisherman, Fish Shops Struggle on Kenyan Coast
Marine fisheries are one of the few economic activities present everywhere along the Kenyan coast – mostly using artisanal fishing methods in which non-motorized boats stay close to shore. In the coastal town of Malindi, thousands of households that depend on the fisheries resources face uncertainty over the sustainability of the industry. Rael Ombuor reports from Malindi. …
Apple to Tutor Women in Tech in Bid to Diversify Industry
Apple is launching a new program designed to address the technology industry’s scarcity of women in executive and computer programming jobs. Under the initiative announced Monday, female entrepreneurs and programmers will attend two-week tutorial sessions at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. The camps will be held every three months beginning in January. For each round, Apple will accept up to 20 app makers founded or led by a woman. The app maker must have at least one female programmer in its ranks to qualify. Apple will cover travel expenses for up to three workers from each accepted company. Like other major tech companies, Apple has been trying to lessen its dependence on men in high-paying programming jobs. Women filled just 23 percent of Apple’s technology jobs in 2017, according to the company’s latest breakdown. That’s only a slight improvement from 20 percent in 2014, despite the company’s pledge to diversify its workforce. The idea behind the new camp is to keep women interested and immersed in the field, said Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of world developer marketing. It’s not clear how much of a dent Apple’s new program will have. Google also offers training for girls and women pursuing careers in technology, but its program hasn’t done much to diversify the workforce so far. Women were hired for nearly 25 percent of Google’s technology jobs in 2017, up from nearly 21 percent in 2014, according to the company. Apple and other technology companies maintain that …
United Technologies Breaking Into 3 Independent Companies
United Technologies is breaking itself into three independent companies now that it has sealed its $23 billion acquisition of aviation electronics maker Rockwell Collins. The company’s announcement Monday was the latest by a sprawling industrial conglomerate deciding it will be more efficient and focused as smaller, separate entities. “Our decision to separate United Technologies is a pivotal moment in our history and will best position each independent company to drive sustained growth, lead its industry in innovation and customer focus, and maximize value creation,” said United Technologies CEO Gregory Hayes. The three companies will be United Technologies, which will house its aerospace and defense industry supplier businesses; Otis, the maker of elevators, escalators and moving walkways; and the Carrier air conditioning and building systems business. The separation is expected to be completed in 2020, United Technologies said. On Friday, United Technologies said it received final regulatory approval for its deal for Rockwell Collins, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based maker of flight deck avionics, cabin electronics and cabin interiors. The newly minted combined aerospace business would have had sales of about $39 billion last year, United Technologies said. Hayes will stay on as CEO of the aerospace business. The company did not name leaders for the separated Otis and Carrier businesses. Founded in 1934, United Technologies is based in Farmington, Connecticut, and currently employs about 205,000 people. It did not say if any jobs would be lost in the breakup. The company got embroiled in politics in 2016 when then-presidential candidate Donald …