nonewslimitdotcom

[nonewslimitdotcom]

© Nintendo Life

Tetris on the Game Boy is one of the best multiplayer titles of all time, even if it did exist in a period when wireless local play was the stuff of a madman’s dreams. Instead, players would have to connect their consoles using the (easily lost) link cable – and it’s this primitive method of connectivity that has allowed a hacker to create the ‘perfect’ game of Tetris, where only long, straight pieces are dropped in the play zone.

Twitter user stacksmashing / ghidraninja – the same user who hacked the Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch and used the Game Boy to mine Bitcoin – has created a hack that exploits the way the two competing Game Boy consoles ‘talk’ to one another.

After reverse-engineering the link-up process, stacksmashing discovered that the Game Boy which initiates the multiplayer connection sends over all of the random pieces to the rival console to ensure that both players have the same experience. By inserting a piece of custom hardware in the middle of the connection, stacksmashing was able to create a program that only sends straight-line pieces (or “tetrominoes”, if you prefer) in the multiplayer mode – all without hacking or modifying the original game in any way.

The Tetris random number generator you always wanted

pic.twitter.com/7p9qma3tQX— stacksmashing (@ghidraninja) April 16, 2021

The end result? The least challenging game of Tetris ever, but boy, does it feel good to see all of those elusive straight-line pieces fill up the screen.

As is so often the case, this discovery has more far-reaching consequences. The aim is to better understand how link cable software works and eventually allow players to connect their old Game Boy units to the internet and play link cable games online – a noble idea, especially when you consider how difficult it is these days to find a worthy opponent locally.

dgpConsent.can('targeting',function () { !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script','https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');fbq('init', '2325732614399478'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); });

The post Random: Hacker Creates The Game Boy Tetris Of Your Dreams appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/3o0RJvE

[nonewslimitdotcom]

2/2 © Reuters. Arizona copper fight reflects tough choices as America tries to go green 2/2

By Ernest Scheyder

SUPERIOR, Ariz. (Reuters) – Early last year, Darrin Lewis paid $800,000 for a hardware store in a tiny Arizona town where mining giant Rio Tinto (NYSE:) Plc hopes to build one of the world’s largest underground mines.

Rio buys materials from Lewis’s Superior Hardware & Lumber for its Resolution mine site, accounting for a third of the store’s sales and helping to keep it afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

But U.S. President Joe Biden put the mining project on hold last month in response to the concerns of Native Americans who say it will destroy sacred land and of environmentalists who worry it will gobble up water in a drought-stricken state.

That’s fueled anxiety among Lewis and others here in Superior, Arizona, who want to reap the economic benefits of a mine that would harvest more than 40 billion pounds of copper.

“I sunk everything I have into this place,” said Lewis, surrounded by hammer drills, wrenches and other goods in his store. “It would absolutely devastate us if this mine doesn’t open.”

In halting the project, Biden reversed a decision by predecessor Donald Trump that would have given Rio land for the mine. Biden ordered more government analysis of the project.

The ongoing fight pits conservationists and Native Americans against local officials and residents who support its economic benefits. The complex debate is a harbinger of battles to come as the U.S. aims to build more electric vehicles, which use twice as much copper as those with internal combustion engines. The Resolution mine could fill about 25% of the demand for U.S. cooper.

The Arizona dispute centers on Oak Flat Campground, which some Apache (NASDAQ:) consider home to deities known as Ga’an. Religious ceremonies are held at the site, near the San Carlos Apache Reservation, to celebrate teenage girls coming of age. Many Apache have ancestors buried under the volcanic rock.

In 2014, the Obama administration and Congress set in motion a complex process intended to give Rio 3,000 acres of federally-owned land, including the campground, in exchange for 4,500 acres that Rio owns nearby. Biden has paused that transfer.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“If Rio gets this place, then the mine will kill the angels and the deities that live here,” said Wendsler Nosie, a San Carlos Apache tribe member who has led a protest camp for 18 months at the site. A sign there describes the land, known as Chi’chil Bildagoteel in the Western Apache language, as the physical embodiment of the earth’s spirit.

Nosie has marshaled widespread support for his cause, helped by rising global attention to the rights of indigenous peoples. Rio itself fueled that cause last year when it blew up culturally significant Aboriginal rock shelters in Australia.

If the land swap is approved, Rio has said it would keep the campground open for the next few decades before the underground mine causes a crater that would swallow the site. The company has also said it would seek tribal consent for the project and study ways to avoid causing the crater.

“The land exchange gives us the opportunity to collect more data, then we can refine our plans and look for ways that we can do further avoidance and minimization” of site damage, said Vicky Peacey, a senior permitting manager for the Rio project.

Rio, which is based in Australia and the United Kingdom, has also promised to preserve other cultural sites including Apache Leap, a rock cliff that overlooks Superior and where Apaches jumped to their deaths to avoid capture by U.S. troops in the late 19th century.

‘AMERICAN COPPER’

Politicians in Superior – a town of 3,000 residents that voted nearly two-to-one for Democrat Biden last November in a majority-Republican county – are now prodding the president to change his mind.

The land swap, if Biden approves, would also let the town of Superior buy more than 600 acres that officials say is crucial to diversifying the local economy by expanding the airport, developing an industrial park and building affordable housing.

“President Biden is going to have to make some courageous decisions,” said Mayor Mila Besich, a Democrat.

Mining is essential to accomplishing Biden’s goal of expanding EV production, she said. “We’re going to need more American copper,” she said.

While the region has long been popular with hikers and campers, it is better known as the “Copper Corridor,” with mines from Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:) Inc and others.

The closure of the Magma copper mine in 1996 devastated Superior’s economy. Officials have pinned their hopes now on Resolution. Since the copper deposit was first discoved in 1995, Rio and minority partner BHP Group (NYSE:) Plc have spent more than $2 billion to dig an exploratory mine shaft and dismantle an old Magma smelter. They have yet to produce any copper. BHP declined to comment.

More than half of the buildings in Superior’s downtown sit empty. Several Tesla (NASDAQ:) Inc charging stations hint at the town’s aspirations to be part of the EV boom. Nikola Corp and Lucid Motors are building their own EV plants less than 50 miles (80 km) away.

Rio has promised to hire 1,400 full-time workers at an average annual salary of more than $100,000. That’s nearly half the population in a town whose median income is a third below the national average.

“What’s sacred to my community is that people have a job and have a home,” said Besich, the mayor.

The mine would boost state, local and federal tax coffers by $280 million annually and add $1 billion to the state’s economy, Arizona’s governor said.

Besich pushed back when studies showed Rio would only pay the town $350,000 a year in taxes, far below the $1 million would need annually for increased police, firefighting and road maintenance.

Rio agreed to pay the town more, to guarantee Superior’s water supply and to donate $1.2 million to the school district. Superintendent Steve Estatico said without Rio’s support the district’s schools – where enrollment has dropped 13 percent since 2016 – may close.

“Rio’s had to learn over the last few years that it cannot take host communities for granted,” Besich said.

STALLED NEGOTIATIONS

The San Carlos Apache – one of the first Native American tribes to endorse Biden’s presidential bid – have not negotiated with Rio because its tribal council favors direct talks with the U.S. government, said Chairman Terry Rambler.

Rio’s copper chief, Bold Baatar, said he hopes to negotiate directly with the tribe when he visits Arizona as early as June, once pandemic restrictions allow.

“We are hearing the concerns from everyone,” Baatar told Reuters. “There will not be a mine until we achieve maximum effort to seek consent.”

Not all local Native Americans oppose the mine. Some members of the White Mountain Apache tribe, whose reservation is just north of the San Carlos Apache’s, say they do not consider the campground a sacred site.

“The belief that the site is religious, that’s news to me,” said Alvena Bush, a White Mountain Apache councilwoman who supports the project.

WATER WORRIES

Rio has dug a mine shaft nearly 7,000 feet (2 km) underground on land it owns near the campground. The bottom of the shaft has become a staging ground for future mining operations.

The miner is draining water from the nearby copper deposit to make it easier to extract. More than 600 gallons of water are pumped each minute to treatment plants on the surface for use in local farming.

Rio plans to mine the copper using a technique known as block caving. It involves carving a cave out of a large section of rock, which then collapses under the weight of the rock above, creating a crater 2 miles (3 km) wide and 1,000 (304 m) feet deep.

This method would damage aquifers that feed two local springs, according to an environmental study from the U.S. Forest Service. The entire mine would reduce available groundwater in the area, which has been in a drought since the late 1990s, the report said.

“This land is going to be worthless if there’s no water to go with it,” said Henry Munoz, who leads a group of retired Superior miners opposed to the project.

Biden is expected to decide later this spring on whether to give Rio the land for the mine. Lewis, the hardware store owner, hopes his plight will be considered among all the competing interests.

“If I had one thing to say to President Biden, it would be: ‘Let the mine open,'” he said.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '751110881643258'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

The post Arizona mining fight pits economy, EVs against conservation, culture By Reuters appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

Yogita Khatri / The Block: The Bank of England and the UK Treasury jointly create a taskforce to explore a potential central bank digital currency  —  Quick Take  — The Bank of England and HM Treasury have jointly created a CBDC taskforce.  — They will explore a potential digital currency in the U.K.

The post The Bank of England and the UK Treasury jointly create a taskforce to explore a potential central bank digital currency (Yogita Khatri/The Block) appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/hZAXDR

[nonewslimitdotcom]

MOSCOW — The Russian prison authorities moved the gravely ill opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to a hospital on Monday for what was described as treatment with vitamins.

The Russian penitentiary system released a statement saying that a commission of government doctors had decided on the move for Mr. Navalny, who is now nearly three weeks into a hunger strike. Mr. Navalny’s personal doctors have reported that he is suffering from a range of severe symptoms that they call life threatening.

There was no immediate response from Mr. Navalny’s political allies or personal doctors about the recommendation for treatment with vitamins. Over the weekend, they said that Mr. Navalny’s blood tests had showed a risk of imminent heart or kidney failure.

His potassium levels were elevated, and tests showed other signs of possible kidney ailments, his doctors said. But starvation is only one issue in his declining health. Mr. Navalny’s lawyers say he may also be suffering from the lingering effects of a near-fatal poisoning with a military nerve agent last summer.

Mr. Navalny was treated in Germany after the apparent poisoning, but upon his return to Russia, he was arrested on a parole violation for a conviction that he and his allies dismissed as politically motivated. He is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence.

The United States and European governments issued statements demanding adequate treatment for Mr. Navalny, and the American national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the Russian government would face “consequences if Mr. Navalny dies.”

The transfer to a hospital in a high security prison east of Moscow could indicate a worsening of Mr. Navalny’s condition. But the statement from the prison authorities suggested that the goal was closer medical observation. “Presently, the health of A. Navalny is evaluated as satisfactory,” the statement noted. It added that he was being observed daily by a doctor and that he had agreed to begin a course of “vitamin therapy.”

The post Aleksei Navalny Is Transferred to Hospital After Long Hunger Strike appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

2/2 © Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A Teva Pharmaceutical Industries building is seen in Jerusalem 2/2

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – Four drugmakers are set to face trial on Monday in a lawsuit by several large counties in California that are seeking more than $50 billion over claims the companies helped fuel an opioid epidemic by deceptively marketing addictive painkillers.

The case against Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE:) Ltd, Endo International (NASDAQ:) PLC and AbbVie (NYSE:)’s Allergan (NYSE:) unit is one of the thousands of lawsuits by states and local governments seeking to hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for the drug crisis.

Opioids have resulted in the overdose deaths of nearly 500,000 people from 1999 to 2019 in the United States, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The populous Santa Clara, Los Angeles and Orange counties and the city of Oakland accuse the companies of deceptively marketing painkillers in ways that downplayed their addictive risks. The drugmakers argue they acted appropriately and that they did not cause the epidemic.

If Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson finds the companies liable following a non-jury trial, the counties say the companies should have to pay $50 billion to cover the costs of abating the public nuisance they created plus penalties.

More than 3,400 similar lawsuits are pending nationally over the opioid epidemic. The only other case to go to trial in the opioid litigation resulted in the state of Oklahoma in 2019 winning a $465 million judgment against J&J, which is appealing.

Other cases are slated to go to trial in the coming months, creating new pressure for the companies to reach settlements.

The nation’s three largest drug distributors – McKesson Corp (NYSE:), AmerisourceBergen (NYSE:) Corp and Cardinal Health Inc (NYSE:) – and J&J have proposed paying a combined $26 billion to resolve the cases against them. The proposed deal has not been finalized.

Disclaimer: Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. All CFDs (stocks, indexes, futures) and Forex prices are not provided by exchanges but rather by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual market price, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Therefore Fusion Media doesn`t bear any responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using this data.

Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '751110881643258'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

The post J&J, other drugmakers to face trial in California over claims they fueled opioid epidemic By Reuters appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

Thanks to the launch of Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO, a new book that pulls together various Iwata Asks interviews and touching words from Iwata’s colleagues at Nintendo, fans are discovering (and rediscovering) all sorts of fascinating facts about the company.

Over the past couple of days, one topic which seems to be doing the rounds on social media is the Wii’s infamous ‘Why not take a break? screen. As anyone who owned the console will likely remember, this screen used to appear pretty frequently when playing games like Wii Sports; Nintendo clearly thought that players should be reminded to relax after their strenuous tennis playing, even though we dare say the majority stayed firmly seated on their sofa while waving their hand about.

The new book reveals that this screen was actually inspired by a similar feature found inside Earthbound, or ‘Mother’ as it’s known in Japan, and judging by the traction this tweet’s gained, it seems the info is new to a lot of players.

I was reading the Ask Iwata book, and I had no idea, but the Wii’s “Why not take a break?” screens were directly inspired by Earthbound, where Ness’s dad would ask him if he wanted to take a break periodically pic.twitter.com/9aFlbFwn7O— Andrew (Beta64) (@Beta64Official) April 17, 2021

In actual fact, this was first revealed by Iwata back in 2011 in a discussion with Shigesato Itoi and Yasuhiro Nagata. Here’s a quick translation courtesy of EarthBound Central:

IWATA: Also, there’s the “Two-hour Dad”.

ITOI: Yes, yes, there was that too.

NAGATA: Your dad calls you when you play for over two hours straight. He says, “Don’t you think you should take a break now?”

IWATA: I was dumbfounded when I heard you were putting that into the game. I was like, “What are you thinking?!” Here we have a player who’s fully immersed in the game, and then we say, “Hey, why don’t you quit?”

NAGATA: But then you added a similar feature to the Wii later on.

IWATA: That’s right. (laughs) Mr. Itoi’s idea of adding a “Two-hour Dad” had at some point taken hold of me, and I wound up adding something similar to the Wii.

So, we hand it over to you. Did you already know this little console generation-spanning fact, or is this completely new to you? Either way, it’s pretty cool to see that EarthBound inspired a system feature so many years down the line.

dgpConsent.can('targeting',function () { !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script','https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');fbq('init', '2325732614399478'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); });

The post Random: Did You Know Wii’s ‘Why Not Take A Break’ Screen Was Inspired By EarthBound? appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Firefighters in Cape Town on Monday were battling a wildfire that had engulfed the slopes of the city’s famed Table Mountain and destroyed parts of the University of Cape Town’s archival library.

Helicopters dumped water on the area in an effort to contain the blaze, which began on Sunday and was most likely caused by an abandoned campfire, according to South African National Parks officials. But as wind picked up strength overnight — fanning the flames — the fire spread to neighborhoods in the foothills of the mountain and forced some homes to be evacuated on Monday morning.

Anton Bredell, the minister in charge of environmental affairs and development planning for the Western Cape region, said in a statement, “The wind speed is expected to increase during the day which may impact on the deployment of aerial firefighting.”

“The helicopters cannot fly if the wind is too strong and the visibility too poor, but the situation will be fully assessed,” he added. “It is going to be a very tough day.”

The wildfire began around 9 a.m. Sunday on the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak, one of the rugged hills in Table Mountain National Park that overlooks central Cape Town. Fanned by gusts of wind, the fire engulfed and destroyed a hillside restaurant and a mill before moving down to the university campus, which is largely built on the slopes of the mountain.

Several buildings, including the school’s library, which houses important archives and book collections, were soon alight, and billows of thick white smoke rolled across the city. So far, there have been no reported fatalities, but five firefighters have suffered injuries, according to officials.

Around 4,000 students were evacuated from campus residence halls on Sunday, according to a university spokeswoman. The university announced on Sunday that it would suspend its operations until at least Tuesday.

Videos on social media showed scores of students, some clutching small bags, rushing from residence buildings as the fire engulfed the nearby hillside. Busisiwe Mtsweni, an undergraduate studying finance and accounting, was on the university’s upper campus at around noon, when “everyone got into panic mode,” she said in a telephone call.

Sparks from the mountain set off smaller fires among the buildings, and billows of smoke made it difficult to breathe, she said. When Ms. Mtsweni and her friends made a dash to their residence to grab their belongings, they came across a student suffering what appeared to be an asthma attack and led her, coughing, away from the smoke-filled part of the campus, she added. Ms. Mtsweni was later evacuated from the campus by bus and spent the night in a hotel.

By Sunday evening, a special-collections reading room at the university’s library had been gutted by the blaze, according to university officials. The reading room housed parts of the university’s African Studies Collection — which includes works on Africa and South Africa printed before 1925, hard-to-find volumes in European and African languages, and other rare books — as well as a treasured film archive, according to Niklas Zimmer, a library manager at the university.

While the university had recently begun a huge effort to digitize the school’s collections, only a “wafer thin” proportion of the special-collections archive had been transferred, according to Mr. Zimmer, who has led that program. Still, university officials said they were hopeful that the bulk of the archive — which is housed in two basement layers beneath the library and protected by a system of fire doors — may have been be spared.

Ujala Satgoor, executive director of libraries at the University of Cape Town, said in a statement, “Some of our valuable collections have been lost, however a full assessment can only be done once the building has been declared safe.”

The post Firefighters Battle Wildfire on Cape Town’s Table Mountain appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

The buy now, pay later model, popularized by companies like Klarn and Affirm has been one of the big e-commerce winners in the last year, giving consumers who might be stretched financially another option to pay for things when they buy them online. While that has prompted the UK financial authority to re-examine how it regulates the space, an enterprise taking a slightly different approach is announcing some funding as it prepares to expand to the US.

Zilch, a London startup that has built an “over the top” buy now, pay later (BNPL) business out of cutting deals directly with consumers — bypassing the need for integrating anything new into an e-commerce site’s check-out process, as many of the leading providers have done — has raised $80 million, an all-equity Series B that values the company at over $500 million.

The funding is coming from Gauss Ventures and M&F Fund, among other unnamed investors. The startup has up to now opted to raise from individuals and smaller firms, CEO and founder Philip Belamant said in an interview, although that may change in future rounds as it looks both to bring in a tier-one debt line, not just to fuel growth in its current market of the UK but to expand to more countries, including the United States.

For now, Zilch has financed usage of its service off its own balance sheet: it has more than 500,000 users, Belamant said, and is seeing sign-ups of around 4,000 a day on its app.

BNPL is a payment scheme that has been around as long as stores themselves, but its emergence online has been more a later arrival. It’s proven to be a very popular one. A recent report from Worldpay estimated that in the UK, which is the world’s third-biggest e-commerce market in its estimation (£192 billion, or $266 billion, transacted in 2020), BNPL will account for 10% of all sales by 2024, when the overall e-commerce market will be worth £264 billion ($366 billion).

Most schemes today are run by third parties — Klarna and Affirm being two of the biggest — who ink deals with e-commerce companies and integrate in the check-out alongside other options for payment. Zilch’s key differentiation has been that it’s cut a deal with only one other company — Mastercard — and created a payment card with it so that when a person wants to pay using Zilch, they use the Mastercard number in the checkout, which then triggers the option to them to either pay in installments or pay as you would with a normal credit card.

As with other BNPL schemes, Zilch doesn’t charge fees on its service, and instead makes a cut in the transaction from the retailer (part of the fee retailers pay to card companies in card transactions: the deals are all predicated on the idea that these alternatives to paying everything up front increases conversions, and that ‘convenience’ is what retailers are paying to have as an option). Its approach is pretty straightforward: it offers installments for paying back that start with 25% up front (so not exactly “zilch”) and paying for the item in full in 25% installments over 6 weeks. For those who miss a payment, they are stopped from using the service again until this gets cleared but Zilch doesn’t charge late fees.

The prospect of bypassing the retailer means that Zilch has been able to scale by making its service more applicable to more payment scenarios, a model that Belamant said was inspired by another killer disaggregator.

“If you look at when Amazon started, many commented on it being a phenomenal bookstore, but they built an infrastructure to sell everything. They could have built that covering different booksellers one by one but Amazon went direct to the consumer and said it would ship any book in a day. How profitable is not your problem,” he said. “We didn’t want to be beholden to the retailer and wanted the relationship with consumer. We go to them and say, pay over time, and use us anywhere you like. We built this technology plugging them in on one side and plugging retailers on the other. We can now build up any way to play and can use it anywhere they like without being restricted by retailers.”

Conversely, this has also helped Zilch fend off competition from bigger BNPL players, at least up to now: “Their main customers are retailers, and they have pre-existing arrangements with those retailers,” Belamant said of the Affirms and Klarnas of the world. Offering a model similar to Zilch’s, he said, “would have to circumvent those services, and that’s a massive cannibalization. Can they do that? Well, it’s naive to say they can’t. But will they? I’m not sure.”

Zilch’s approach of riding the rails of Mastercard — which may well soon to be augmented by other providers like Visa — means that it can quickly distribute a recognized payment method, but as Belamant describes it, it’s Zilch that is still building the algorithms to make the credit evaluations for individual consumers.

Using what Belamant described to me as “soft credit checks” alongside Open Banking data — a system used in the UK and Europe that taps into using APIs to share and integrate data from one financial service with another (in this case a way to easily check a person’s credit and financial history by way of their bank details as they are applying for a new financial service) — people sign up and automatically get assessed for their suitability for a BNPL scheme.

This has helped the company, as it says, become the first BNPL provider to be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the financial services regulator in the UK that has run an investigation of BNPL companies and appears to be preparing tighter regulation around how they can work, to stave off people inadvertently walking into spending money that they don’t have and may never be able to repay. Zilch was officially authorized as a consumer credit provider in 2020.

This is not to say that others in the space will not be able to also get the same certification for their models, incidentally, but it might mean more regulatory hoops, possibly slower growth, and perhaps also more consumer wariness as the situation continues to get more publicity. (The UK in particular has a pretty sordid history with other schemes to provide people with financing, specifically around the murky practices associated with payday loan schemes, and that has left a bad taste in many consumers’ mouths.)

One specific advantage also of linking up with a card company is that, in this world of “everything will soon be virtual”, it gives Zilch users access to a card, which they can in turn use to also shop using BNPL in brick-and-mortar stores. Tap and Pay-over-time, as it’s called, means users can integrate the card number into a digital wallet to and use it as they would their handsets to pay with Apple or Android-based payment schemes. Zilch said it’s the first BNPL do make this leap. (To be clear, for now there is no physical ‘card’ although it seems they are considering how and if to offer it.)

The post UK’s Zilch raises $80M at a $500M+ valuation for its direct-to-consumer buy now, pay later service – TechCrunch appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

It’s time for our latest episode of ‘why must Japan get all the cool things?’, as Sega looks to be launching a new arcade game based on the Pokémon franchise.

According to Arcade Heroes, Sega has unveiled ‘Pokémon Cologalina’, a new medal game which will have cabinets set up in arcades across Japan. If you’re unaware, medal games are essentially like those coin-pushing things we have in the west where you pop a coin in, watch it fall down, and hope that it pushes other coins out for a big cash prize (or a useless toy dinosaur, or whatever happens to be sitting on the coins inside).

Here’s what it’ll look like:

Japan’s had other Pokémon medal games in the past, too, such as Pokémon Medal World. This one launched in the region back in 2012 in support of Pokémon Black and White, and was made by Bandai Namco.

We’d say it’s extremely unlikely that Sega’s new machine will make it over to any western arcades, as these funky medal games tend to remain exclusive to Japan. Still, if you ever happen to visit Japan in the future, perhaps to check out Super Nintendo World, it might be worth keeping an eye out for Pokémon Cologalina while you’re there.

Thanks to Toy_Link for the tip!

dgpConsent.can('targeting',function () { !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script','https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');fbq('init', '2325732614399478'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); });

The post Sega Reportedly Launching A New Pokémon Arcade Game appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

At the same time, with the virus resurgent, public health experts are warning Americans not to let their guards down. The United States is averaging more than 67,000 new cases a day over the past seven days, up from over 54,000 a month ago, according to a New York Times database.

“Seventy thousand cases a day is not acceptable. We have to get that down,” said Barry Bloom, a research professor and former dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He said more vaccinations would help, but people must remain vigilant about wearing masks and social distancing.

What You Need to Know About the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Pause in the U.S.

On April 13, 2021, U.S. health agencies called for an immediate pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine after six recipients in the United States developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within one to three weeks of vaccination.

All 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico temporarily halted or recommended providers pause the use of the vaccine. The U.S. military, federally run vaccination sites and a host of private companies, including CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart and Publix, also paused the injections.

Fewer than one in a million Johnson & Johnson vaccinations are now under investigation. If there is indeed a risk of blood clots from the vaccine — which has yet to be determined — that risk is extremely low. The risk of getting Covid-19 in the United States is far higher.

The pause could complicate the nation’s vaccination efforts at a time when many states are confronting a surge in new cases and seeking to address vaccine hesitancy.

Johnson & Johnson has also decided to delay the rollout of its vaccine in Europe amid concerns over rare blood clots, dealing another blow to Europe’s inoculation push. South Africa, devastated by a more contagious virus variant that emerged there, suspended use of the vaccine as well. Australia announced it would not purchase any doses.

At its current pace, the United States will vaccinate 70 percent of its population by mid-June. But vaccine hesitancy could slow progress toward herd immunity, which will also depend on vaccinating children.

Pfizer announced this month that it had applied for an emergency use authorization to make children ages 12 to 15 eligible for its vaccine. Moderna is expected to release results from its trial in young teenagers soon, and vaccinations in this age group could begin before school starts in the fall.

Trials in younger children are underway. Dr. Fauci also said on Sunday that he expected children of all ages to be eligible for vaccination in the first quarter of 2022.

Although vaccinations have picked up in the United States, many countries still face dire vaccine shortages. About 83 percent of Covid-19 vaccinations have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries, while only 0.2 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries, according to a New York Times vaccine tracker.

Dr. Funmi Olopade, the director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Chicago, said it was crucial for the United States to step up its role in the global vaccination campaign as supply increases. The virus, left to spread around the world, could continue to mutate and threaten the nation’s economic recovery, she said.

It is in everybody’s “self-interest to provide whatever we can in the way of excess vaccines to low- and middle-income countries,” Dr. Bloom said.

The post Adults in all U.S. states are now eligible for vaccination, hitting Biden’s target. Half have had at least one dose. appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

© Reuters. Logos are on display outside a branch of VTB bank in Moscow

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s second-largest bank VTB more than doubled its net profit in the first quarter compared with a year ago as it cut provisions against non-performing loans, the state-run lender said on Monday.

VTB’s financial performance took a hit in 2020 from the need to increase provisions against bad loans but this year could bring some respite after the central bank said it did not see any debt-related problems in the Russian banking system.

VTB said it made 85.1 billion roubles ($1.12 billion) in first quarter net profit compared with 39.8 billion roubles in the same period a year ago.

The increase took place as VTB set aside 22.6 billion roubles in loan loss provisions in January-March, down from 45.1 billion roubles in the same period of 2020.

VTB’s shares underperformed the market after the results were published, falling 1.2% on the day, compared with a 0.2% decline in the benchmark MOEX index.

First-quarter results reflect VTB’s “robust operating performance as well as the post-pandemic economic recovery,” said Dmitry Pianov, the bank’s chief financial officer.

“These results fully confirm our guidance for the full year and put VTB firmly on track to deliver a solid return on equity going forward.”

VTB aims for a record income in 2021 of 250-270 billion roubles in 2021 after reporting a 63% decline in net profit last year as the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a hike in provisions against bad loans.

VTB’s cost of risk for the first three months of 2021 amounted to 0.7%, an 80 basis points decline compared to the same period of 2020.

VTB’s net interest income rose 21.6% year on year to 145.6 billion roubles in the first quarter.

($1 = 76.2400 roubles)

Disclaimer: Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. All CFDs (stocks, indexes, futures) and Forex prices are not provided by exchanges but rather by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual market price, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Therefore Fusion Media doesn`t bear any responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using this data.

Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '751110881643258'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

The post Russia’s VTB more than doubles first quarter net profit on lower provisions By Reuters appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

As the autonomous driving race in China heats up, Didi is rushing to expand its car fleets by picking Swedish automaker Volvo, an old partner of Uber, as its ally.

Didi said on Monday it will be using the XC90 SUVs of Volvo, which has been owned by Chinese auto company Geely since 2010, for its network of robotaxis in the long term. Didi created a subsidiary dedicated to autonomous driving last year and the unit has since raised about $800 million from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund and IDG Capital. The subsidiary now has over 500 employees.

Didi started out as a ride-share app in 2012 and gobbled up Uber China in 2016. It now offers a range of mobility services including taxi hailing, ride-hailing, carpooling, shared bikes and scooters, as well as financial services for drivers. The company is seeking a valution north of $100 billion in an initial public offering, Reuters reported last month.

Didi’s autonomous driving arm has been testing robotaxis for the past two years in China and the United States, but Volvo’s XC90 model will be the first to adopt Didi’s freshly minted self-driving hardware system called Gemini, which contains sensors like short, mid and long-range lidars, radars, cameras, a thermal imager; a fallback system; and remote assistance through 5G networks.

Didi said that its Gemini platform, coupled with Volvo’s backup functions including steering, braking and electric power, will eventually allow its robotaxis to remove safety drivers. If any of the primary systems fails during a ride, Volvo’s backup systems can act to bring the vehicle to a safe stop.

Didi is competing against a clutch of well-funded robotaxi startups in China, such as Pony.ai and WeRide, which are busy tesing in major Chinese cities and California while splurging on R&D expenses to reach Level 4 driving. AutoX, another Chinese robotaxi company, announced last week that it will be using Honda’s Accord and Inspire sedans for its test drives in China. The edge of Didi, some suggest, is the mountains of driving data accumulated from its ride-hailing business spanning Asia, Latin America, Africa and Russia.

Rising electric automakers like Nio and Xpeng have also joined in the race to automate vehicles, making bold claims that they, too, will be able to remove safety drivers soon. Meanwhile, traditional car manufacturers don’t want to fall behind. BAIC, a state-owned enterprise, for instance, is adding Huawei’s advanced automation system and smart cockpit to its new electric passenger cars.

The post Volvo to supply Chinese ride hailing giant Didi with autonomous driving cars – TechCrunch appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

© Reuters. Super Bowl LV – Tampa Bay Buccaneers v Kansas City Chiefs

(Reuters) – Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady said he is making good progress following a minor knee operation and is eager to get back on the training field.

The 43-year-old played through most of the 2020 season with discomfort in his knee but still managed to guide the Bucs to their second Super Bowl title with a win over the Kansas City Chiefs in February.

Brady, who picked up his seventh championship ring and was named Super Bowl MVP for a fifth time with the win over the Chiefs, agreed a deal to extend his contract through the 2022 season, the team had said last month.

“It’s good progress. It’s rehab. None of that is fun, but looking forward to getting back to real training and stuff, which is hopefully here pretty soon,” Brady was quoted as saying by ESPN.

“I feel pretty good. I don’t know if I could go this week, but, we’ll see how things play out … I’m definitely feeling a lot better than I did six or seven weeks ago.”

The Buccaneers are among a number of NFL teams to opt out of in-person voluntary workouts in the off-season citing concerns over COVID-19.

Training camps are expected to begin the last week of July.

Disclaimer: Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. All CFDs (stocks, indexes, futures) and Forex prices are not provided by exchanges but rather by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual market price, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Therefore Fusion Media doesn`t bear any responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using this data.

Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '751110881643258'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

The post Bucs’ Brady making ‘good progress’ after knee op By Reuters appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

More than a year after the pandemic began, remote work shows no signs of going away. While it has its cons, it remains top of mind for potential employees around the world before joining a new company.

But while most people in Africa still go to physical offices, despite the pandemic, a few companies have nevertheless embraced this concept. Andela, a New York-based startup that helps tech companies build remote engineering teams from Africa, was one of the first to publicly announce it was going remote on the continent.

Today, it is doubling down on this effort by announcing the global expansion of its engineering talent. Over the past six months, the company has seen a 750% increase in applicants outside Africa. More than 30% of Andela’s inbound engineer applications also came from outside the continent in March alone. Half this number came from Latin America while Africa saw a 500% increase in applications, as well.

When Andela launched in 2014, it built hubs in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to source, vet and train engineers to be part of remote teams for international companies. It also tested satellite models in Egypt and Ghana as substitutes to physical hubs.

The company would issue a call for applications, select a few (less than 1%), pay them a salary for the first six months and provide them with housing and food. It also helped developers improve their skills via training and mentorship. Over 100,000 engineers have taken part in the company’s learning network and community, and, as of 2019, Andela had more than 1,500 engineers on its payroll.

However, after noticing that this model wasn’t sustainable, it began to make changes.

In September 2019, it let go of 420 junior engineers across Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. Nine months later, citing the pandemic, it laid off 135 employees while introducing salary cuts for senior staff. But despite the layoffs, the pandemic provided some form of clarity to how Andela wanted to operate — which was remote, judging by the success of the satellite models.

“In the very beginning, a developer had to be in Lagos to work with Andela. Then it became living in Nigeria. Then Kenya. Then Uganda, Rwanda,” CEO Jeremy Johnson told TechCrunch. “Before the pandemic, Andela was opening applications in country after country. The pandemic came and changed that as we opened up to the entire continent.”

Shutting down its existing physical campuses and going remote also helped the company focus on getting engineers with more experience to meet its clients’ requirements. That experiment, which the company conducted in less than a year, is also part of its mission to be a global company.

“That went so well and we thought ‘what if we accelerated it now that we’re remote and just enable applicants from anywhere?’ because it was always the plan to become a global company. That was clear, but the timing was the question. We did that and it’s been an amazing experiment,” Johnson added.

Now with its global expansion, its clients can tap into regional expertise to support international growth.

According to a statement released by the firm, it currently has engineers from 37 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe.

Johnson didn’t go into details about how many of these engineers are getting jobs from Andela, or even its total developer count. He’s more interested in helping its clients solve the diversity issues that have plagued many Western corporations.

Andela is currently working with eight companies that have hired its engineers in Latin America and Africa. In addition to the diversity play, the CEO says that means Andela engineers get to prove themselves on a global playing field in a way the company has “always wanted to see.”

Andela serves more than 200 customers, including GitHub, ViacomCBS, Pluralsight, Seismic, Cloudflare, Coursera and InVision. GitHub is one company that seems to be benefitting from Andela’s new offerings. The company’s VP of Engineering, Dana Lawson, in a statement said, “As a business in the developer tool space, a lot of us are trying to enter those areas of the world (Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa) where the emergent developers are coming so we can better understand their needs. Having a local presence there with amazing talent is super valuable to building a global product.”

Image Credits: Andela

In its quest to become a global company, going up against competition is unavoidable for the seven-year-old company. But since most of these companies are horizontal marketplaces (providing a wide range of expertise), whereas Andela is vertical, Johson believes there’s enough market share to be acquired by the company.

“We are focused on building digital products, and because of that, we’re able to do more, essentially, for our customers… That’s where our focus is — [building long-term relationships] and around building great digital products.”

The company was founded by Jeremy Johnson, Christina Sass, Nadayar Enegesi, Ian Carnevale, Brice Nkengsa and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji. It has raised more than $180 million (up to Series D) from firms like Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Generation Investment Management, Google Ventures and Spark Capital, at a valuation of about $700 million.

While announcing the layoffs last year, Andela said it was on an annual revenue run rate of $50 million. But when asked how this number has changed over the past year, Johnson said the company is “growing at a healthier pace as we’ve ever had.”

The future of remote work is global and Johnson believes Andela provides the vital link to talent wherever it is found. The company’s head of talent operations, Martin Chikilian, echoes similar sentiments.

“We’ve seen exponential growth and interest from engineers from across Africa who want to work with some of the world’s most exciting technology-focused companies,” he said. “Growing our network of talent from Africa to include more markets is a unique proposition and we continue to match talent with opportunity beyond geographical boundaries.”

The post Andela begins global expansion in 37 countries months after going remote across Africa – TechCrunch appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

Over the past few years, as the Trump administration imposed stringent sanctions on Cuba and the tourism industry was decimated by the pandemic, Cubans have seen their country’s economy plummet once again, with many waiting for hours in bread lines. The country’s lauded health care system is frayed. And the number of Cubans trying to leave the island is going up, though it is still far from the exoduses of the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Communist Party lives off the achievements of a long time ago, from when they began,” said Claudia Genlui, an activist with the San Isidro political movement, a collective of artists who have protested against the Communist Party in recent months. Although the group is small, it has surprised the nation with its continued defiance.

“The party does not represent my generation, it does not represent me,” Ms. Genlui said, adding that “there is a lack of generational connection, of interests, of priorities, and all of that somehow drives us away.”

Mr. Castro, to some extent, would agree.

Although Fidel held fast to his rallying cry of “socialism or death” until he died in 2016, the younger Mr. Castro grew to realize that reform was necessary to quell growing discontent and began opening up the country’s economy.

After Fidel formally resigned from the presidency in 2008, Raúl Castro prioritized recruiting younger Cubans into the Communist Party and putting younger members into top government positions.

That has sat well with some Cubans.

“I think we’ve got to move on to a new generation, younger people with new ideas,” said Osvaldo Reyes, 55, a taxi driver in Havana, while voicing his support for Mr. Castro and the Communist Party. “A revolution should keep transforming, keep doing the best for people.”

The post A Cuba Without a Castro? A Country Steps Into the Unknown. appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

2/2 © Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Logo of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen in Zurich 2/2

By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi

ZURICH (Reuters) – While Wall Street rivals feast off a boom in trading and deals, Credit Suisse (SIX:) is stuck in limbo.

The collapse of Archegos, a U.S. investment fund, has left the Swiss bank nursing an anticipated pretax loss of nearly $1 billion for the first quarter. That, plus the demise of another client, Greensill Capital, have triggered internal and external probes and the ousting of a swathe of executives.

Investors seeking clarity on what next for Credit Suisse’s investment bank, at the heart of the Archegos debacle, and its asset management division, which ran $10 billion in funds linked to Greensill, are unlikely to get final answers on Thursday, when the bank publishes first quarter results.

Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein has said that Credit Suisse’s incoming chairman, former Lloyd’s boss Antonio Horta-Osorio, will likely undertake a strategic review of the bank when he joins next month.

Buoyed by a boom in capital raising and deals, Credit Suisse was on the cusp of a bumper start to 2021 before a 4.4 billion franc ($4.77 billion) loss from Archegos.

Credit Suisse has emerged as the bank hardest-hit from its exposure to Archegos, which collapsed when it couldn’t meet margin calls. Analysts at JPMorgan (NYSE:) say Credit Suisse may face another loss of around $400 million this quarter from unwinding Archegos-linked stocks.

Credit Suisse has declined to comment on the estimate.

Stripping out the 4.4 billion franc charge, the implied underlying pre-tax profit of around 3.5 billion francs would have represented the bank’s best quarter operationally in at least a decade.

U.S. rivals, some of which were quicker to exit trading positions as Archegos collapsed, produced forecast-beating profits. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:)’ first quarter net income rose nearly sixfold. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:) reported a 150% jump in profit despite disclosing an almost $1 billion loss from Archegos.

Credit Suisse shareholders, meanwhile, are facing a slashed dividend, halted share buybacks and a share price down 15% so far this year.

The bank has said further buybacks will have to wait until it returns capital to target ratios and is able to restore its dividend.

The Financial Times reported last week the group had slashed costs through bonus cuts and other one-off items.

While the move helped bolster capital it could hurt the bank’s franchise.

Widespread departures are a real worry for management, one source familiar with the bank’s operations told Reuters.

“You have many areas which likely performed exceptionally well in the first quarter, and bankers expect to be paid for exceptional performance. So this becomes a major issue for staff retention,” Vontobel analyst Andreas Venditti said. “The options are limited: either they face the risk of losing staff, or they have to make up for this gap with higher accruals in the remaining three quarters.”

Credit Suisse declined to comment.

It had previously aimed for a common equity tier 1 ratio of at least 12.5% for the first half of 2021, but now expects a first quarter ratio of at least 12%.

“The big question Credit Suisse will have to discuss this week is: what will FINMA impose in terms of stricter capital requirements, as they did in 2011 with UBS?” Venditti said.

FINMA, Switzerland’s financial supervisor, declined comment.

In 2011, when rival UBS suffered a $2.3 billion loss over rogue trades executed by a London-based employee, FINMA imposed capital restrictions and requested UBS bulk up on capital to back its operational risks.

Venditti said he expected to see an RWA inflation at Credit Suisse from the second quarter.

That would give the bank less room for manoeuvre in its handling of disgruntled fund investors seeking payout after the Greensill debacle, he said, while also posing a potential drag to future earnings during a period of record deal-making and roaring trading.

Credit Suisse still faces questions over how it will address $2.3 billion at-risk funds that it is seeking to return to investors following the collapse of its Greensill-linked supply chain finance funds.

It has, so far, distributed $4.8 billion to clients.

($1 = 0.9234 Swiss francs)

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '751110881643258'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

The post Credit Suisse serves investors thin gruel as Wall Street feasts on deals By Reuters appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[nonewslimitdotcom]

SEOUL — Pride and jealousy have driven North and South Korea to engage in propaganda shouting matches and compete over who could build a taller flagpole on their border. Now that one-upmanship is intensifying a much more dangerous side of their rivalry: the arms race.

Earlier this month, South Korea’s dream of building its own supersonic fighter jet was realized when it unveiled the KF-21, developed at a cost of $7.8 billion. The country also recently revealed plans to acquire dozens of new American combat helicopters. When President Moon Jae-in visited the Defense Ministry’s Agency for Defense Development last year, he said South Korea had “developed a short-range ballistic missile with one of the largest warheads in the world.”

Unlike North Korea, the South lacks nuclear weapons. But in recent years the country has revved up its military spending, procuring American stealth jets and building increasingly powerful conventional missiles capable of targeting North Korean missile facilities and war bunkers.

The impoverished North has used those moves to justify expanding its own arsenal, and has threatened to tip its short-range missiles with nuclear warheads and make them harder to intercept. Experts warn that the ensuing arms race between the two countries is jeopardizing the delicate balance of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

“As both sides act and react through arms buildups in the name of national defense, it will create a vicious cycle that will eventually undermine their defense and deepen their security dilemma,” said Jang Cheol-wun, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded research group.

The two Koreas have long been locked in a perpetual arms race. But Pyongyang’s growing nuclear capabilities, coupled with the fear of a withdrawal of American troops from South Korea under President Donald J. Trump, added to those tensions.

While in office, Mr. Moon has increased South Korea’s annual military spending by an average of 7 percent, compared with the 4.1 percent average of his predecessor. After diplomacy failed to eliminate the North’s nuclear arsenal, Mr. Moon had to reassure South Koreans that their country was not a “sitting duck,” said Yoon Suk-joon, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs.

Soon after Mr. Moon’s visit to the Agency for Defense Development, South Korean media reported that the weapon he referred to was the Hyunmoo-4, a missile tested last year. According to missile experts, the Hyunmoo-4 can fly 497 miles, enough to target all of North Korea. Its two-ton payload — unusually large for a short-range missile — could destroy the North’s underground missile bases.

Whether it could destroy the deep bunkers into which Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, would retreat in wartime depends on how deeply they are buried. According to missile experts, though, South Korea would likely need earth-penetrating nuclear weapons from the United States to destroy such prized targets.

Not to be outdone, on March 25 North Korea launched a new ballistic missile of its own and said the weapon flew 372 miles with a 2.5-ton warhead. The test prompted Mr. Moon to claim the following day that South Korea had “world-class missile capabilities, enough to defend ourselves while abiding by our commitment to make the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons.”

Washington has tried to prevent missile proliferation on the Korean Peninsula for decades. Under guidelines first adopted between Washington and Seoul in 1979, South Korea was barred from developing ballistic missiles with a range of more than 187 miles and a payload of more than 1,100 pounds. After North Korea attacked a South Korean island with a rocket barrage in 2010, South Korea demanded that Washington ease the restrictions so it could build more powerful missiles.

“We hinted that we might scrap the missile guidelines unilaterally,” said Chun Yung-woo, the national security adviser at the time. “We told the Americans that if we didn’t address concern over the North’s growing nuclear and missile threat, more and more South Koreans would call for building nuclear bombs for ourselves.”

In 2012, Washington agreed to let South Korea deploy ballistic missiles with a range of up to 497 miles as long as it abided by the 1,100-pound warhead limit. It also said South Korea could exceed the payload limit by several times on missiles with shorter ranges.

South Korea has since tested missiles with growing ranges and bigger warheads, including the Hyunmoo-2A, Hyunmoo-2B and Hyunmoo-2C. Once North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile in 2017, Mr. Trump lifted the payload limit entirely, making way for the Hyunmoo-4.

Ever since taking power a decade ago, Mr. Kim has tried to build ICBMs capable of reaching the United States. But he has also threatened to tip the missile balance against South Korea.

In January, he indicated that his country had already built short-range nuclear missiles aimed at South Korea and vowed to improve them by making the warheads “smaller, lighter and tactical.” South Korea’s strategy of deterrence has been based on the belief that the best chance it has against the North without nuclear weapons of its own is to build up a conventional missile defense and deploy ever more powerful “bunker busters” to make Mr. Kim fear for his life.

When North Korea tested its intercontinental ballistic missile in 2017, the United States and South Korea responded by launching their own ballistic missiles to demonstrate their “deep-strike precision” capabilities. In his book “Rage,” the journalist Bob Woodward wrote that the American missile traveled the exact distance between its launching point and the location from which Mr. Kim watched his I.C.B.M. launch.

Mr. Kim halted all missile tests in 2018, the year of the first of his two summit meetings with Mr. Trump. After their talks collapsed, North Korea resumed tests in 2019, rolling out three short-range ballistic missiles that were designed to counter the allies’ antimissile capabilities.

North Korea’s old fleet of Scud and Rodong missiles used liquid fuel and lacked precision. The country’s new generation of missiles uses solid propellants, making them quicker to launch, easier to transport and more difficult to target. They also have greater accuracy and evasive maneuvering power that could confound the South’s missile defense systems.

The new solid-fuel ballistic missile North Korea tested in March likely evaded the allies’ radar during its low-altitude maneuvering, leading the South Korean military to estimate its range at 280 miles, not the 372 miles the North claimed, said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at Korea Aerospace University. Mr. Chang said the missile could also likely increase range and warhead weight because it was powered by “the largest solid-fuel rocket motor developed and tested in North Korea so far.”

The North’s ICBMs still use liquid fuel, which takes hours to load before launching, making them vulnerable to American pre-emptive strikes. But in his January speech, Mr. Kim vowed to build solid-fuel ICBMs, presenting an even bigger challenge for American missile defenses. Such prospects deepen the fear among some South Koreans that Washington would be less likely to intervene if it, too, faced a possible North Korean nuclear attack.

The post A Quiet Arms Race Is Rapidly Heating Up Between the Two Koreas appeared first on Nonewslimit.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J