French President Hollande Says He Won't Stand Again If Unemployment Doesn't Drop | ||
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Francois Hollande vowed Thursday he would not stand again for the French presidency in 2017 if he had not managed to live up to his promise to bring down unemployment by then. Referring to a failed pledge to "invert the trend" of unemployment, he said live on French television: "Do you think I can say to the French people, 'I didn't manage it for five years, but I promise I'll do it in the next five?' It doesn't work like that." "If I don't manage it before the end of my term, do you think I will go before the French people" in 2017? "The French people would be unyielding and they would be right." Hollande has said previously that he would not have the necessary credibility to stand for re-election in 2017 if he did not live up to his pledge to bring unemployment down. Unemployment has risen 27 months out of the 30 Hollande has been in charge and growth has ground to a halt. With an approval rating at a historic low of 13 percent and a staggering 97 percent believing he has failed on the economy, more than eight in 10 French people say they do not want Hollande to run for a second term. SEE ALSO: France's Hollande In Canada To Drum Up Trade Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Japan Scientists Make See-Through Mice | ||
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Invisibility may still be the stuff of fictional works like Harry Potter, but researchers in Japan have developed a way to make mice almost totally transparent. Using a method that almost completely removes colour from tissue — and kills the mouse in the process — researchers say they can now examine individual organs or even whole bodies without slicing into them, offering a "bigger picture" view of the problems they are working on. The techniques will give scientists a "new understanding of the 3D structure of organs and how certain genes are expressed in various tissues," said Kazuki Tainaka, the lead author of a research paper published in the US-based Cell magazine. "We were very surprised that the entire body of infant and adult mice could be made nearly transparent," he said in a statement issued by Japanese research institute RIKEN and its collaborators The work, which also involved the University of Tokyo and the Japan Science and Technology Agency, focuses on a compound called haem, the constituent that gives blood its red colour and is found in most tissues of the body. The process involves pumping a saline solution through the mouse's heart, pushing the blood out of its circulatory system and killing the creature. A reagent is then introduced, which works to divorce the haem from the haemoglobin that remains in the animal's organs. The dead mouse is skinned and soaked in the reagent for up to two weeks to complete the process. A sheet of laser light, which can be set to penetrate to a specific level, builds up a complete image of the body, much as a 3D printer creates physical objects in layers. "Microscopes have so far allowed us to look at things in minute detail, but that has also deprived us of the context of what we are looking at," Tainaka told AFP. The new method, which cannot be applied to living things, "will give us details while enabling us to grasp the bigger picture," he said. Hiroki Ueda, who led the research team, said in the statement that the method "could be used to study how embryos develop or how cancer and autoimmune diseases develop at the cellular level. It was hoped the method would lead "to a deeper understanding of such diseases and perhaps to new therapeutic strategies". "It could lead to the achievement of one of our great dreams: organism-level systems biology based on whole-body imaging at single-cell resolution." SEE ALSO: Scientists Have Changed Memories From Unhappy To Happy In Mice Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Mexico Suddenly Canceled Its Multi-Billion-Dollar Deal For A Bullet Train | ||
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Mexico City (AFP) - Mexico has abruptly withdrawn a multi-billion-dollar tender it had awarded to a Chinese-led consortium to build the country's first bullet train. President Enrique Pena Nieto decided "moments ago to revoke the November 3 ruling and restart" the bidding process, Transport Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza told the Televisa network. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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German industrial output rebounds in September | ||
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Frankfurt (AFP) - German industrial production bounced back in September, following a sharp drop the previous month, data showed on Friday. According to regular data compiled by the economy ministry, industrial output rose by 1.4 percent in September, after contracting by 3.1 percent in August. Manufacturing output increased by 1.7 percent and energy output was up by 2.4 percent while construction output declined by 1.2 percent, the ministry calculated. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Rebounding German exports boost trade surplus in September | ||
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Frankfurt (AFP) - A rebound in German exports caused the country's trade surplus to grow in September, nearly making up for a sharp drop the previous month, official data showed on Friday. Exports expanded by 5.5 percent in September, lifting the trade surplus, the balance between imports and exports, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement. In seasonally adjusted terms, Germany exported goods worth a total of 97.7 billion euros ($121 billion) in September, up from 92.6 billion euros in August, Destatis said. Imports climbed by almost as much, rising by 5.4 percent to 79.2 billion euros. That meant the seasonally adjusted trade surplus, grew to 18.5 billion euros in September from 17.5 billion euros in August. In unadjusted terms, the expansion was even more marked, with the trade surplus growing to 21.9 billion euros from 14.1 billion euros in August, Destatis said. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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European Markets Are Mixed | ||
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European stocks are mixed early Friday morning. Here's the scorecard: France's CAC 40 is up just 0.08% after opening down Germany's DAX is up 0.25% The UK's FTSE 100 is up 0.79% Italy's FTSE MIB is down 0.25% Spain's IBEX is down 0.16% US futures are up slightly: the S&P is 1.5 points higher and the Dow is up 15 points. It was a mixed session for Asian markets: Japan's Nikkei closed up 0.52% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed down 0.42%. The big economic news today comes from the US, with the jobs report out at 1.30 p.m. GMT. We'll get non-farm payrolls, earnings growth, and the unemployment rate, which analysts expect to stay at 5.9%. A bundle of senior central bankers are also talking at a conference at the Bank of France, so expect lines from Fed chair Janet Yellen, Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan, Bank of England governor Mark Carney, and Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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10 Things In Advertising You Need To Know Today | ||
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2. The era of TV’s advertising dominance will come to an end in 2016 — here’s the evidence. Forrester predicts 2016 is the year advertiser spend on digital media will overtake TV, and there have been lots of other signals (TV network quarterly results, surveys, lack of spend on upfronts etc.) pointing to the end of TV’s primacy too. 3. Wendy’s is refining its marketing strategy to try to lure high-end customers. Its third quarter same store sales were up 2%, but this was mostly due to an increase in its average per customer check amount, in part offset by a decrease in customer count. But at the same time, it is also increasing marketing support for its Right Price, Right Size value menu to ensure it doesn’t turn off customers at the low end of the price spectrum. 4. Victoria’s Secret has ditched a campaign dubbed “The Perfect ‘Body,” which featured a bunch of slim models. Critics said the campaign was “offensive” and “damaging” to women. The company has replaced the slogan on its website with a new one, “A Body For Every Body,” but the picture hasn’t changed. 5. Facebook board member Peter Thiel has explained his argument for why Facebook will be more valuable than Google. He says that Google thinks data is more important, while Facebook thinks people are more important — which is why Facebook will win out. 6. Someone has been running a mysterious classified ad for 10 years. The curious job offer is for a PA/research associate for “a busy executive” in New York City, with no further information about the employer. 7. Screen Junkies has bundled together all the fake ads in movies and, as Adweek reports, the results are fantastic. There are clips from Dodgeball, Anchor Man, Ghostbusters, Total Recall, Beetlejuice, The Wolf of Wall Street and many more. 8. Facebook has rolled out a site-wide algorithm change that causes some users to see posts by pages bundled together, Techcrunch reports. The News Feed tweak could be yet another blow to brands as some posts may be less visible, but if Facebook is showing the posts bundled rather than not at all, smaller Pages could actually see boosts in engagement. 9. Coca-Cola has finally revealed some details of its tech start-up network Coca-Cola Founders, Marketing Week reports. Speaking at Web Summit in Dublin, Coke’s VP of innovation explained how Coca-Cola founders operates in eight cities across the world and sees the company’s innovation and partnerships teams immerse themselves in local start-up communities. 10. Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired London-based mobile marketing agency Fetch for $48 million (£30 million), The Drum reports. Fetch was founded in 2009, counts eBay and Hotels.com among its clients and currently employs 96 people. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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1. The World Economic Forum Names The 10 Biggest Threats On Earth | ||
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked the top 10 threats to the global economy and international order in its latest outlook report released Friday. The WEF labels them "trends", however, they are all rather terrifying. This year, the WEF got Nobel Prize winner and former US vice president Al Gore to explain the list, reprinted below:
French economist Thomas Piketty's 700-page book on inequality seems to have had an impact, with inequality leaping into first place from second last year. The WEF reproduced a chart from the World Top Incomes Database, which Piketty has worked on:
There are a couple of other interesting visualisations in the report. Some Pew research shows that a growing number of people view China, rather than the United States, as the world's chief economic power:
And in Europe specifically, it looks like very few people are putting a lot of trust in the European Union:
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Sorry New York, But London Is Actually The World's Real Capital City | ||
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It's an endless debate, and a matter of great pride in both cities. Which of the world's two most financialised, globalisiation-cheering megacities can reasonably be described as the world's capital? One hundred and fifty years ago, the answer was indisputably London. Fifty years ago, the answer was indisputably New York. Now? Well it's not so clear. Here's Business Insider UK's best case that it's London, not New York, that deserves the crown. It's One Of The World's Financial CapitalsIn terms of stock exchanges, calling London the world's financial capital looks ludicrous. The London Stock Exchange isn't even the second-largest stock exchange in the world after the New York Stock Exchange. It's the fourth (after the NASDAQ and Tokyo). But this is totally unfair to London: the volume of equities trading done on the London Stock Exchange doesn’t capture at all equities trading done in any one place, just the ones local to that economy. So of course London’s stock exchange is smaller than New York’s: the UK’s economy is much smaller than the US’s. But we’re comparing the cities here, not the countries. So it's good to look at a more international measure of finance: currency markets. In terms of foreign exchange market turnover, the UK isn’t just the leader, it's still gaining ground, according to the Bank of International Settlements. In 1998, 32.6% of the world’s forex trading was done in the UK (almost all of which takes place in London), against 18.3% in the US. By 2013, the UK had grown to make up 40.9% of the global market, seeing a daily average of $2.73 trillion in turnover. Every day. Everyone Wants To Work In LondonWhen the Boston Consulting Group polled more than 200,000 people in 189 countries, London trounced the rest of the world when it came to where they would move to work. Unprompted, 16% of respondents said they’d move to the city, well clear of New York’s 12.2%.
What’s more, the eurozone’s dismal growth prospects and eye-watering youth unemployment rates mean this trend likely isn’t going to slow any time soon. There have been major increases in the number of people moving to the UK from the rest of Europe. In 2007-08, 15,400 Italians registered to work in the UK, a figure that was up to 44,110 by 2013. Europe’s young workforce is increasingly migrating to the UK (where they don’t need visas to live and work), and a huge number find their way to London. One of the most well-educated generations in history is streaming to London to live and work, and that's an enormous benefit to the city. And Everyone Wants To Live Here TooLondon reigns at the top of Knight Frank’s global wealth report in 2014. Endless anecdotes in the reports show exactly where the world's wealthiest people want to own homes, and the British capital comes out ahead of New York. The cost of buying and renting is something that makes Londoners want to weep: but it's a side effect of the city's incredible success. In 2012-13, 49% of buyers in London's prime central market were not British, illustrating the huge demand from abroad. And they're not just buying to hold property as an investment: only 28% of buyers live outside the UK, showing that a huge number of international buyers want to live in the city. It's The Capital Of Digital Media
The two biggest English-language newspaper websites in the world are London-based British organisations. The Daily Mail’s "Mail Online" and The Guardian's website have broken into first and second place, according to ComScore’s traffic figures. That's even accounting for the fact that New-York-based newspapers have a far bigger native American audience than London-based newspapers can find in the UK. A Deloitte survey puts London not only as the world's leader of highly skilled workers in media (particularly digital media), but as one of the areas where it's extending a lead over the others. Check out the chart above. The report suggests that although US cities take the lead in terms of film and TV, the London is way out ahead in terms of digital media. And The Capital of CultureAccording to Japan’s Institute for Urban Strategies, London takes a commanding lead over New York on cultural grounds (along with every other major city). That’s based on a blend of how trend-setting the city is, cultural resources, and facilities for visitors.
Part of this is down to a history that New York simply can’t match: in the 19th century, it became only the second city since the fall of the Roman empire to reach a population of over one million. Attractions like Westminster Hall (the great hall of the UK’s parliament) are almost twice as old as European colonization in the Americas, and four times older than the USA as a country. London has four UN world heritage sites, against New York’s one. It's not just British culture that's on offer. In GfK's survey of more than 5,000 people who visited some of the world's biggest cities, London ranks highest when visitors are asked whether they can "find people who appreciate my culture and with whom I could easily fit in." So sorry, New York. Sorry Seoul, sorry Paris, sorry Shanghai, sorry Singapore, Sorry Hong Kong. For now, London is the world's global capital. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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That’s not entirely surprising when you look at London’s demographic makeup. Three million of London’s eight million inhabitants were born outside of the UK. In fact, the non-UK born population makes up 105% of the city's population growth between the 2001 and 2011 census. (Why 105%? Because native Brits left, causing negative growth, and the immigrants more than eclipsed that.)
London-based media organizations dramatically outperform in Comscore’s English-language ratings.
