Author: AP

Iran’s President warns US against pulling out of the nuclear deal

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Iran’s president is warning President Donald Trump that pulling America out of the nuclear deal with world powers would be a “historic regret.”

President Hassan Rouhani made the comments Sunday in the city of Sabzevar while on a tour of Iran’s Razavi Khorasan province.

Rouhani said: “If (the U.S.) opts to pull out of the nuclear deal, it will soon realize that this decision will become a historic regret for them.”

Rouhani also assured Iranians that “no change will occur in our lives next week” regardless of Trump’s decision.

Trump faces a self-imposed May 12 deadline over the 2015 nuclear deal, which he long has criticized.

Iran has faced economic trouble in recent weeks, with some analysts blaming the uncertainty surrounding the accord.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Exit from Iran nuclear deal will not be easy for Trump

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

It’s not as simple as just saying “we’re out” of the Iran nuclear deal.

If President Donald Trump follows through on his threat to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal on May 12, the rest of the world will be thrust into uncharted territory, forced to navigate a complex web of U.S. sanctions that were lifted under the landmark accord but would ostensibly be put back in place.

Would Trump re-impose sanctions on those who do business with Iran? How quickly? And would Europe follow suit? How would Iran respond? And what happens to Iran’s pre-existing obligations to allow nuclear inspections?

“It’s going to be very complicated,” said Ama Adams, who advises clients on international sanctions compliance at the law firm Ropes & Gray. “There are lots of opportunities to trip up and make mistakes. It’s going to be a period of a lot of activity and flurry.”

A look at possible scenarios for what stays and goes if Trump exits the accord:

U.S. SANCTIONS

Under the 2015 deal, the United States issued waivers to longstanding sanctions punishing Iran for its nuclear program. Iran, in turn, restricted its program and allowed more inspections.

Trump has essentially two options for re-imposing sanctions.

On May 12, he faces a deadline on whether to renew the waivers that eased one basket of sanctions: those on Iran’s central bank, intended to hit Iranian oil exports. Another basket of sanctions waivers are up for renewal on July 11, focusing on more than 400 specific Iranian companies, individuals and business sectors.

One of Trump’s options, being called “the nuclear option” by some experts, would re-impose all the sanctions at once — even those not scheduled for renewal until July. That would put the U.S. in immediate violation of the deal’s terms, which say sanctions remain lifted as long as Iran is complying with its terms. So far, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear monitoring agency, has said Iran is complying, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agrees.

A second option: re-imposing only the central bank sanctions. That would start a 180-day clock in which companies or countries would be expected to reduce their purchases of oil from Iran. Those that don’t would ultimately be penalized by Washington.

Why not restore all the sanctions at once? Proponents of doing it piece by piece say it would give the U.S. more leverage to bring about a “fix” to the deal so that Trump could stay in after all. Trump has long said the deal needed to be strengthened or abandoned, but efforts with European allies to strengthen it haven’t yet succeeded. With sanctions about to kick in again in 180 days, there might be enough pressure on the Iranians, the Europeans and other members of the deal to give in to Trump’s demands, proponents say.

But supporters of the nuclear deal say that’s not a viable option because the U.S., by starting the 180-day clock, would have already breached the deal. And as soon as Trump announces sanctions will be coming back, companies will immediately start shutting down their business with Iran. That means Iran would suffer from lost business and could decide to walk away from the deal itself.

Adams, the sanctions attorney, said some companies have already started winding down business in anticipation that Trump may re-impose sanctions.

THE REST OF THE WORLD

What would Europe do? Germany, France and the U.K. have suggested they have no intention of leaving the deal, even if the U.S. withdraws. But it might not matter much. The global financial system is so interconnected and so tied to New York that it would be almost impossible for anyone anywhere in the world to continue their business with Iran without risk of violating U.S. sanctions. For example, Europe businesses owned or controlled by American parent companies would breach the sanctions if they didn’t cut off Iran.

It’s a major dilemma for European businesses, made even more complicated if the European Union decides to invoke a measure put in place in the 1990s to counter the U.S. embargo on Cuba. The EU can use those regulations to prohibit European companies from complying with some U.S. sanctions. That puts businesses in the position of choosing whether to defy the United States or the EU.

IRAN’S RESPONSE

Iran’s leaders have been coy, although Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told The Associated Press last week Iran would “most likely” abandon the deal if Trump withdraws. Yet the key question is whether Iran would resume nuclear activities, such as enrichment and processing, beyond the limits that were imposed by the deal — and how aggressively.

How would the world even know? If the deal collapses, Iran would no longer be bound by the rigorous inspections regime by the IAEA that it agreed to in the deal. That regime included the so-called Additional Protocol, which expanded the IAEA’s access to sites in Iran, including giving inspectors insight into all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, access on short notice to all buildings at an acknowledged nuclear site, and the right to obtain samples from military sites.

Even without the nuclear deal, Iran would still be required to allow a more limited regime of inspections required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed. But it’s unclear how rigorously Iran would comply. After all, alleged cheating and delay tactics by Iran were a major concern prior to the 2015 deal. And Iranian officials haven’t explicitly ruled out the possibility that if Trump blows up the nuclear deal, Iran may also leave the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Then there’s the question of whether Iran, feeling swindled on a deal the U.S. itself brokered, would take other steps to retaliate — such as ballistic missile tests or more support for militant groups abroad.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

California, now the fifth largest economy in the world

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

California’s economy has surpassed that of the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest, according to new federal data made public Friday.

California’s gross domestic product rose by $127 billion from 2016 to 2017, surpassing $2.7 trillion, the data said. Meanwhile, the UK’s economic output slightly shrunk over that time when measured in U.S. dollars, due in part to exchange rate fluctuations.

The data demonstrate the sheer immensity of California’s economy, home to nearly 40 million people, a thriving technology sector in Silicon Valley, the world’s entertainment capital in Hollywood and the nation’s salad bowl in the Central Valley agricultural heartland. It also reflects a substantial turnaround since the Great Recession.

“We have the entrepreneurial spirit in the state, and that attracts a lot of talent and money,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University Channel Islands. “And that’s why, despite high taxes and cumbersome government regulations, more people are coming into the state to join the parade.”

All economic sectors except agriculture contributed to California’s higher GDP, said Irena Asmundson, chief economist at the California Department of Finance. Financial services and real estate led the pack at $26 billion in growth, followed by the information sector, which includes many technology companies, at $20 billion. Manufacturing was up $10 billion.

California last had the world’s fifth largest economy in 2002 but fell as low as 10th in 2012 following the Great Recession. Since then, the largest U.S. state has added 2 million jobs and grown its GDP by $700 billion.

California’s economic output is now surpassed only by the total GDP of the United States, China, Japan and Germany. The state has 12 percent of the U.S. population but contributed 16 percent of the country’s job growth between 2012 and 2017. Its share of the national economy also grew from 12.8 percent to 14.2 percent over that five-year period, according to state economists.

California’s strong economic performance relative to other industrialized economies is driven by worker productivity, said Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at University of California, Los Angeles and director of UCLA’s Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research. The United Kingdom has 25 million more people than California but now has a smaller GDP, he said.

California’s economic juggernaut is concentrated in coastal metropolises around San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

“The non-coastal areas of CA have not generated nearly as much economic growth as the coastal areas,” Ohanian said in an email.

The state calculates California’s economic ranking as if it were a country by comparing state-level GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce with global data from the International Monetary Fund.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Why Wall Street is concerned about Tesla

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Elon Musk’s track record for technological feats as chief of SpaceX has turned skeptics into believers in everything from his quest to open space travel to Mars to his desire to build a tunnel for high-speed travel between New York and Washington. As Tesla’s CEO, his ambitious vision for electric cars has also earned him a faithful following.

But now Wall Street is taking a more practical tone, increasingly questioning Musk’s assertions of when the company can turn profitable. Tesla may ultimately be forced to sell new shares of its stock or take on more debt to bolster diminishing cash.

Shares in the electric car company slumped 5.5 percent Thursday, a day after it reported its first-quarter results and Musk’s remarks during an analyst conference call that left many investors scratching their heads.

The stock recouped some of its losses Friday, closing up 3.4 percent at $294.09. Tesla shares are still up more than fourfold over the last five years. The S&P 500 has risen about 65 percent in the same period.

Concerns, however, remain. Here’s a look at some of the more pressing ones that Wall Street has laid out for the former darling of the investment world.

CASH BURN

Tesla is not turning a profit, which means it has to use cash to pay the bills. The big question from investors: Does Tesla have enough?

Tesla went through nearly $400 million during the first three months of the year to make its cars, pay its sales staff and cover the other costs of running its business. Another $656 million went to spending on equipment, facilities and other capital projects, for a total of slightly more than $1 billion.

Analysts call this situation “negative free cash flow,” and it helped cut Tesla’s cash balance to $2.7 billion at the end of March. If the company keeps burning through its cash at the same pace, it could run out within a year and be forced to sell more of its stock or borrow money.

Tesla says it won’t come to that. The company expects to take in more cash than it spends in the second half of this year. Some of that will likely be due to planned spending cuts on machinery, equipment and other capital expenses.

DEBT

Reining in spending will help, but Tesla still faces hefty debt payments over the next 12 months.

The company has to pay back $1.3 billion in debt that comes due later this year and in early 2019. And to do so, while covering its expenses, it will have to raise or borrow $2 billion, according to Moody’s analyst Bruce Clark.

Tesla’s spending and reliance on debt also has analysts at Morningstar concerned.

Last month, Morningstar Equity Strategist David Whiston wrote that it’s “nearly guaranteed” that Tesla will have to raise more cash.

“But if the capital markets close to them, then the recent plunge in the stock price will look trivial compared with what will happen then,” Whiston wrote.

PRODUCTION ISSUES

Tesla expects it will become profitable later this year. But that hinges on a big “if.” To do so, Tesla has to ramp up production of its Model 3 electric car to 5,000 units a week. The company says it may reach that level in about two months. Just prior to a planned shutdown in mid-April, Tesla was producing Model 3s at a rate of more than 2,000 a week.

To get there, Tesla will need to smooth out problems it’s encountered as it tries to make the production more automated, a process that it calls the “machine that builds the machine.”

Tesla acknowledged on Wednesday that it was overly ambitious in its efforts and that it “made a mistake by adding too much automation too quickly.” One example Musk gave was of a machine that placed fiberglass mats on top of battery packs. The company found that human hands are better than machines at picking up these pieces of fiberglass, which Musk said look like “fluff.”

In response, Tesla stopped using the “flufferbot” and dialed back automation in other areas, bring back some human workers. That raises costs, reducing how much profit Tesla can wring out of the cars.

INVESTOR CONFIDENCE

A big part of Tesla’s share price is investors’ faith in Musk.

They’ve poured dollars into Tesla stock on the belief that the CEO, who previously helped nurture PayPal and whose other company, SpaceX, launches rockets and spacecraft, can revolutionize the auto industry.

But some of that investor confidence may have been shaken following Musk’s behavior on a conference call with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday.

At one point, as analysts peppered Tesla executives with the usual litany of questions about the company’s operations, Musk dismissed the queries, saying “boring boneheaded questions are not cool.” He later cut off the “dry” questions from analysts, saying “they’re killing me.” He then went instead to a self-described “finance nerd” who runs a YouTube channel and was asking questions on behalf of retail investors.

Wall Street did not take too kindly to the remarks.

“Investor feedback is that the performance shook confidence, which we’d argue is an important piece of the Tesla story,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak wrote in a report.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas called it “arguably the most unusual call I have experienced in 20 years.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

UK probe goes on despite Cambridge Analytica bankruptcy

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

British authorities say the investigation into political consultancy Cambridge Analytica will continue even though the company is going out of business.

Cambridge Analytica announced Wednesday that it was filing for bankruptcy following allegations that it improperly harvested data from millions of Facebook users. The firm says bad publicity drove potential clients away.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which has been investigating the allegations, says it will continue to “pursue individuals and directors as appropriate.”

Damian Collins, chair of a Parliamentary committee that has been looking into the Facebook scandal, tweeted: “Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group cannot be allowed to delete their data history by closing. The investigations into their work are vital.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

US-China trade talks center on rivalry over technology

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

A high-powered US delegation arrived in Beijing on Thursday for talks with Chinese officials on defusing tensions that are propelling the world’s two largest economies toward a trade war.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is leading the group, which includes Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, was heading the Chinese side in the talks, which analysts say appear unlikely to yield a breakthrough given the two sides’ intensifying rivalry in strategic technologies.

President Donald Trump said he expected relations with Beijing to remain smooth.

“Our great financial team is in China trying to negotiate a level playing field on trade!” he said on Twitter late Wednesday. “I look forward to being with President Xi in the not too distant future. We will always have a good (great) relationship!”

Trump is seeking to cut the chronic US trade deficit by $100 billion and gain concessions over policies that foreign companies say force them to share technology with Chinese partners in order to gain market access.

His administration has threatened to impose new tariffs on roughly $150 billion in Chinese goods — prompting China to announce its own tariffs on US goods.

The dispute has deepened as China stepped up efforts to overtake western industry leaders in advanced technologies, especially for semiconductors, the silicon brains required to run smartphones, connected cars, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Under Xi, a program known as “Made in China 2025” aims to make China a tech superpower by advancing development of industries that in addition to semiconductors includes artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals and electric vehicles. The plan mostly involves subsidizing Chinese firms. But it also does require foreign companies to provide key details about their technologies to Chinese partners.

Beijing looks unlikely to cede any ground on that strategic blueprint.

“The Made in China 2025 industrial policy concerns China’s long-term development plan, so the overall direction won’t change at all,” said Yu Miaojie, professor at Peking University’s National School of Development. Yu says China would rather cut the trade deficit by importing high-tech products from the US that are currently tightly restricted.

Striking an adamant tone, the state-run Global Times newspaper said Thursday in a commentary that it’s “our sovereign right to develop high-tech industry and it is connected to the quality of rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It will not be abandoned due to external pressure.”

Both sides have shown a diversity of opinions, with China recently moving to loosen a restriction on foreign ownership of automakers to minority stakes.

But the rival views in Washington, reflected in the makeup of the US team, could undermine the US negotiating stance, the consulting firm Eurasia Group said in a research note.

“The US delegation headed to Beijing is too large and unwieldly to accomplish much; it is a reflection of inter-agency rivalry on the US side and this will produce more posturing than actual negotiations with the Chinese,” the firm said.

“The trip will produce few results and increases the risk that tariffs are adopted in the near future,” it added.

Washington’s recent decision to ban Chinese telecom gear maker ZTE from importing US components in a sanctions-related case drove home to Beijing its costly vulnerability to foreign sources for advanced microchips.

The “Made in China 2025” plan calls for domestic producers to supply 70% of the country’s chip demand.

The Trump administration’s efforts may actually spur China to ramp up efforts to develop its domestic industry as it strives to fulfill Xi’s vision, said Jian-Hong Lin, an analyst at research firm TrendForce.

China now consumes nearly 60% of the world’s semiconductors but supplies only about 16%, according to PWC. The country spends more than $200 billion a year on foreign-made semiconductors, which in 2015 surpassed crude oil as the country’s biggest import.

Experts say Chinese chipmakers are five years behind their US and Asian rivals and that increasingly high technological hurdles and a meager talent pool are hindering the effort to catch up with dominant US, Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers.

As Chinese researchers and chipmakers strive to catch up, the technology is evolving, with new materials transforming the future landscape of the electronics industry. The latest advanced chips are highly complex to make because of their increasingly tiny “nodes,” measured in nanometers, that make them faster and more power-efficient.

Beijing has been backing up its towering ambitions in the semiconductor sector with money and tax breaks. The government set up the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund in 2014, seeded with 140 billion yuan ($22 billion) in capital to invest in chip companies. A second round of fundraising for as much as 200 billion yuan is underway, Chinese media report.

The state-controlled Tsinghua Unigroup project, associated with Tsinghua University — China’s equivalent of MIT — has emerged as a national champion. It’s building two massive memory chip factories, including a $30 billion facility in Nanjing that will churn out 100,000 wafers a month and is expected to exert a “siphon effect,” drawing microchip industry suppliers and experts to the area.

It’s unclear how successful those efforts will be as foreign regulators push back against Beijing’s strategy of acquiring overseas chipmaking-related firms. Washington has scuppered multiple China-linked bids for semiconductor-related firms following a call from a White House advisory panel to do more to protect the US industry because of China’s industrial policies.

Market leaders like Samsung, Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing are investing aggressively as they fight for market share.

“Even though they’ve (the Chinese) committed a lot of money to the investment fund, the reality has sunk in that it’s harder than just throwing money at the problem. The Samsungs of the world, the TSMCs have a large head start,” said Alexander Wolf, an economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “Certain products, you can’t really reverse engineer.”

Companies like Huawei and ZTE are avidly pursuing advanced semiconductor technology, but experts say overall Chinese research and development spending is a fraction of the multibillion-dollar budgets of the big players. That’s one reason Beijing’s success is anything but a given.

“These things are built from thousands of engineers of different disciplines pulling it together,” said Christopher Thomas, a Beijing-based partner at consulting firm McKinsey, who estimates it will take a decade for China’s efforts to result in any meaningful shift. “You’ve got to solve all the complexity to catch up. You can’t just solve one thing.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Regulator says Samsung Biologics breaches accounting rules

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

South Korean regulator says Samsung Biologics Co. has breached accounting rules in a preliminary finding that could deal a big blow to the company and other Samsung affiliates if finalized.

Financial Supervisory Service said Wednesday it has wrapped up its one-year probe into Samsung Biologics and notified the company of the violation. It declined to confirm details of its interim conclusion pending a review at the Financial Services Commission. The notification gives Samsung Biologics a chance to defend itself.

Samsung Biologics is denying the accounting breaches.

Despite its defense, its stock price tanked, finishing 17.2% lower.

At stake is whether Samsung Biologics accurately evaluated the value of its affiliate Samsung Bioepis before its initial public offering in 2016.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Facebook developer conference kicks off amid scandal

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

A year ago , Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was dazzling thousands of software developers with the prospect of augmented reality features that could let people spruce up apartments with digital art.

This year, things might be different.

The company’s annual F8 conference kicks off Tuesday in San Jose, California, following a year of fake news, privacy scandals, congressional testimony, Russia investigations and apologies. Facing the startups, software developers and other tech folks who are normally some of Facebook’s biggest fans, Zuckerberg will have a chance both to apologize again for the company’s missteps — and to talk about where things go from here.

If his recent statements are any indication, Zuckerberg will probably mention that Facebook must take a “broader view” of its responsibility in the world, emphasize the value of the Facebook “community” and hint that Facebook’s efforts to fix things will be good for everyone — users, developers, Facebook itself, and even the world.

Zuckerberg also might recap some of the privacy-related changes Facebook has made in recent weeks, including new restrictions on user data apps can have access to. Facebook also might unveil additional changes.

It’s been six weeks since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, revealing that the political data-mining firm inappropriately accessed the information of as many as 87 million Facebook users. Facebook has been doing damage control ever since.

For Zuckerberg, that’s meant repeated apologies to users and lawmakers, two days of congressional questioning about whether and how the company protects its users’ privacy. For Facebook, it’s also meant further limiting the data developers can access and how long they can access it; several audits; and the suspension of apps suspected of violating Facebook’s rules around user privacy.

One such app maker, Cubeyou, says it was wrongfully suspended without warning and remains suspended despite having provided evidence that it didn’t sell or misuse people’s data.

The problem, Cubeyou CEO Federico Treu said, is that Facebook is “so big and so important” that it can cut off anyone from its service with no consequence. Cubeyou has about 30 employees; Facebook, nearly 28,000.

At F8 this year, Treu expects lots of questions about the future of Facebook’s relationship with developers. Instead of owning up to its faults, he said, Facebook is “trying to put the focus on bad developers, bad advertisers” and the Russians.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Cubeyou on Monday.

Zuckerberg is also likely to talk up new stuff, including AR and virtual reality. For instance, Facebook could use the conference to release a portable headset designed to turn the so far geeky realm of virtual reality into a mass phenomenon. Zuckerberg announced the $199 device, called the Oculus Go , six months ago without specifying when it would go on sale.

Oculus, a VR company Facebook acquired in 2014, already sells a more expensive VR headset called the Rift. But that device needs to be tethered to a personal computer. That restraint, coupled with a $399 price tag and the cost for a PC to power the device, is one of the reasons VR so far has mainly appealed to lovers of video games who want to play in three-dimensional artificial worlds.

Facebook is counting on the Oculus Go to widen the audience for VR. Last year, Zuckerberg described his strategy for using VR to reshape the way people interact and experience life, much as the company’s social network already has. His goal is to have 1 billion people immersed in VR on Oculus headsets at some indeterminate point in the future.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Disney, Twitter to create live content and advertisements across genres

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

The Walt Disney Company and Twitter say they will create live content and advertisements in sports, news and entertainment from the entire Disney portfolio.

This includes sports content from ESPN, as well as videos from ABC, the Disney Channel, Marvel and other Disney properties

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Live video is important to Twitter as it courts users to think of it as the place to check what’s happening at the moment.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

New Zealand plans ‘Amazon Tax’ for people buying online

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

New Zealand announced plans Tuesday to start taxing people who buy books, shoes and other small items online from abroad in a measure many people are calling the “Amazon Tax.”

Revenue Minister Stuart Nash said the government plans to close a loophole that allows people to buy low-cost items from abroad without paying the 15% tax imposed on goods sold in New Zealand stores. The new system would levy the same tax and must be approved by lawmakers. It would take effect from October 2019.

How to tax purchases from online companies like Amazon is a question vexing many countries. Australia plans to collect tax on low-cost items later this year while the European Union intends to start collecting such taxes by 2021.

“Small businesses such as bookshops have convincingly argued they are penalized by a system which is badly out of date,” Nash said. “It’s particularly difficult for very small shops outside the main centers.”

The current system allows consumers to buy goods worth up to 400 New Zealand dollars ($280) from international online retailers without having to pay tax. That was based on the idea that it would cost more for New Zealand agencies to collect small amounts of tax than it would generate in revenue.

But online sales have boomed, growing at an annual rate of about 18 percent in the past five years, which retailers say has taken a bite out of their businesses. Under the proposed plan, the onus would fall on companies like Amazon to impose and collect the tax.

New Zealand retailers have welcomed the plans.

Tilly Lloyd, the manager and co-owner of independent bookstore Unity Books Wellington, said customers who added life and vigor to the streets by shopping locally were effectively being penalized.

“It’s very symbolic for us, it’s a change that our street customers have been needing,” she said. “It’s an equity issue.”

New Zealand began charging a 15% tax on purchases of offshore digital services in 2016. Known as the “Netflix Tax,” the measure applies to things like music, films and e-books that are bought online and downloaded.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow