Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna’s chief executive and co-founder, was surprisingly upbeat after Apple announced it was entering the buy now, pay later arena where his company has been dominant. “It is a great win for consumers worldwide that Apple is now embracing a better form of consumer credit,” he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning. “Plagiarism…
Read more
California is diving into the prescription drug business, attempting to achieve what no other state has done: produce its own brand of generic insulin and sell it at below-market prices to people with diabetes like Sabrina Caudillo. Caudillo said she feels like a “prisoner” to the three major pharmaceutical companies that control the price of…
Read more
From out on the street, Otherworld looks like the headquarters of a futuristic cult. Nestled under a railway arch in Haggerston, east London, its unmarked entrance gives on to a neon-lit corridor flanked by circular white pods that resemble vertical sensory deprivation tanks. In fact, their function is the polar opposite — at this virtual…
Read more
Social media platforms say they have launched an effort to crack down on fake news and misinformation in Brazil ahead of elections in October that many expect to be turbulent. Fake news has proven to be a potent political tool in Latin America’s largest country and was wielded to dramatic effect in the 2018 election…
Read more
What type of policy approaches could be effective in addressing these product shortages? Nancy Foster: There’s no single policy that will resolve this situation. It will take a series of steps. The first one is diversifying and expanding sources of critical supplies. Another is looking at how supplies are transported and having some redundancy, so…
Read more
The writer is chief executive of Amundi Debate around European strategic autonomy is normally framed around geopolitics and security issues, and driven by politics only. That is odd, since it is more of an economic challenge, and a big one at that. The Covid-19 pandemic, the climate emergency and the war in Ukraine remind us of…
Read more
In 2020 Cambridge university announced that it would strip its £3.5bn endowment fund of all fossil fuel investments by 2030. Shedding its near-£100mn of exposure to the energy sector was necessary to align its investment strategy with climate science which showed the need to cut carbon emissions to net zero to avoid catastrophe, it explained.…
Read more
China has devised a new incentive to boost elderly vaccinations to levels that could finally allow the country to relax its zero-Covid strategy and revive the economy: insurance packages for people worried about jab-related side effects. Dozens of cities across the country have begun offering people aged 60 and older free insurance that pays out…
Read more
Xi Jinping’s administration has devised a new incentive to boost elderly vaccination rates to levels that could finally allow China to relax its strict zero-Covid strategy and revive the economy: insurance packages for people worried about possible vaccine-related side effects and illnesses. Dozens of cities across the country have begun offering people aged 60 and…
Read more
Indonesia’s biggest start-up GoTo is expanding its “buy now, pay later” loans as it pushes for profitability, despite growing regulatory pressure on companies offering similar services around the world. Patrick Cao, president of the tech group that offers everything from online shopping to ride-hailing, said GoTo would launch more lending products to capitalise on Indonesia’s…
Read more