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BRUGES, Belgium, Aug 5, 2023 (AFP) – Inhabitants of Belgium’s cobblestone-and-canal city of Bruges are clear: summertime tourism has hit capacity. “It’s really reached a red line now,” says one, 55-year-old architect Arnout Goegebuer, as he sits inside a cafe, peering out a window across a packed outside terrace. “We don’t need more tourists anymore, it’s enough — maybe a little bit less” is needed, he says. It’s a sentiment reiterated by other residents of […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan’s Toyota said on Tuesday that net profit in its first quarter surged 78 percent as global production rebounded after severe supply disruptions a year ago. The world’s biggest automaker by sales said net profit in the three months to June was 1.31 trillion yen ($9.1 billion) on sales of 10.55 trillion yen, up 24.2 percent from a year ago. Toyota, including its Lexus brand, sold 2.538 million vehicles worldwide, up […]
WASHINGTON, July 28, 2023 (AFP) – WASHINGTON, July 28, 2023 (AFP) – A key indicator of US inflation cooled in June to the lowest annual rate in over two years, although this remains above the central bank’s target, according to government data released Friday. The Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, rose 3.0 percent last month from June 2022, down from a 3.8 percent jump in May, said […]
BERLIN, July 28, 2023 (AFP) – While France and Spain grew in the second quarter, the German economy flatlined, adding to worries the traditional manufacturing powerhouse could become a drag on the eurozone economy. Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) stagnated between April and June, while inflation remained high, according to data published by the federal statistics agency Destatis Friday. The growth figure was worse than expected by many observers, and left Germany facing the threat […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a more than 95 percent plunge in operating profits in the second quarter owing to weak demand for memory chips. The firm is the flagship subsidiary of South Korean giant Samsung Group, by far the largest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate business in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Operating profit from the April to June period was 668.5 billion won ($525.3 million), down from 14.1 trillion […]
NEW YORK, July 12, 2023 (AFP) – A startup led by OpenAI boss Sam Altman that is working on developing small nuclear fission reactors is going public with a valuation of $850 million. One of Silicon Valley’s leading figures since OpenAI released ChatGPT, Altman became an early backer of nuclear startup Oklo in 2015, and is also its chairman. Altman has explained that his investment in nuclear power is closely linked to the artificial intelligence […]
BRUSSELS, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – The European Commission said Monday it has adopted a new legal framework to protect Europeans’ personal data in exchanges with the United States — its third attempt to get past legal challenges. “Today we take an important step to provide trust to (EU) citizens that their data is safe, to deepen our economic ties between the EU and the US, and at the same time to reaffirm our shared […]
WASHINGTON, July 7, 2023 (AFP) – Twitter threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk. In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.” The letter accused Meta of hiring dozens […]
LONDON, July 3, 2023 (AFP) – Oil prices rose Monday after key producers Saudi Arabia and Russia further cut crude output in a bid to protect their precious revenues. Brent crude, the international benchmark, and US counterpart WTI jumped after Riyadh extended a voluntary oil production cut of one million barrels per day, while Moscow — whose invasion of Ukraine last year sparked oil market turmoil — said it was slashing exports by 500,000 bpd. […]
GENEVA, June 29, 2023 (AFP) – Flights at Geneva’s international airport will be grounded for four hours on Friday morning due to a workers’ strike, affecting thousands of passengers at the start of summer travel season. The strike was called after the airport’s board approved on Thursday a new wage policy contested by staff. There will be no flights between 6:00 am and 10:00 am (0400 GMT and 0800 GMT), affecting some 8,000 passengers, […]
PARIS, June 22, 2023 (AFP) – Tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are in a fierce business rivalry that has spilt over into a playground spat, with the two men offering to fight each other in a cage. Months after Musk took over Twitter, Zuckerberg’s Meta hinted it was planning to launch its own text-based social media platform — essentially a direct rival. Musk has trolled Zuckerberg ever since with messages on Twitter, telling […]
BEIJING, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Chinese imports of Russian oil last month hit their highest level since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, customs data showed Tuesday, as Beijing offers an economic lifeline to an increasingly isolated Kremlin. China is Russia’s largest economic partner, with trade between them reaching a record $190 billion last year. In May, China imported 9.71 million tonnes of oil from Russia, Beijing said, more than double the amount from […]
