To the extent that robots become a less expensive input than labor in the production process, multinationals will be encouraged to "onshore" output to move it closer to their customer bases. This would mark an unwind of the long-standing trade formula, which had the growth of global supply chains at its heart, and it is a net negative for global trade that would have far-reaching consequences. There are nascent signs that this process may be in the works, as emerging market nations in Asia have seen export volumes nose-dive despite continued growth among their major trading partners

How Technology Could Unwind a Decade-Long Trend in Global Trade - Bloomberg Business

Despite the plunge in stocks since the start of the year and worries over the economic outlook, the strength of dividends has raised the spirits of some investors as they struggle to deliver returns in a low yield world. Dividend payouts last year globally rose 9.9 per cent on an underlying basis — excluding one-off special dividends and the impact of currency movements — and are expected to rise again in 2016 although at slower pace of 3.3 per cent, according to data compiled by Henderson Global Investors.

Global dividend payouts jump almost 10% in 2015 - FT.com

On the outskirts of this sleepy commuter town just south of London, plans are underway to build the fastest cellphone network in the world. The work is being done at the University of Surrey, where a leafy campus is dotted with rundown brutalist-style buildings. Here, researchers and some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Samsung and Fujitsu, are collaborating to offer mobile Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than anything now available. Their work on so-called fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology is set to be completed in early 2018 and would, for example, let students download entire movies to smartphones or tablets in less than five seconds, compared with as much as eight minutes with current fourth-generation, or 4G, technology.

5G Is a New Frontier for Mobile Carriers and Tech Companies - The New York Times

Timing the market is hard. But John Stoltzfus at Oppenheimer may have found a reliable way to (sort of) time the market.  "Over the course of the last two years we have noticed the tendency for the S&P 500 to rally from selloffs when the market's trailing 12-month [price-to-earnings (P/E)] multiple falls to a level of around 16.5x," Stoltzfus wrote in a note to clients. Six times since 2014 the market has sold off until the its multiple hit this level and each time this marked a near- or short-term bottom for stocks. And to Stoltzfus, this isn't just a coincidence.

Best signal to buy stocks - Business Insider

At the upcoming Geneva Motor Show, Toyota plans to highlight its technology leadership in fuel cell drives: At the event, a concept car will showcase a concept car that definitively outlines the potential of this technology for car design. Plus, the vehicle is loaded with lots of electronic refinements.

Toyota takes pole position in fuel cell cars - Electronics Eetimes

More than that, though, is that investors are tiring of companies devoting so much money toward buybacks and dividends and comparatively small levels to capital spending. Dividends and buybacks combined in 2015 for a record $954.6 billion, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. In its latest Global Fund Manager Survey, Bank of America Merrill Lynch found that the level of market professionals who believe companies are spending too much on payouts — "fatigue with financial engineering," as the survey put it — has reached its highest level since the bull market began in March 2009.

Buyback fuel for the bull market is losing steam

Buybacks are becoming an increasingly inefficient way to boost share prices, with individual companies that devote a large share of buybacks underperforming their peers over the past year.Caterpillar, for instance, has been a company aggressively buying back shares but with little to show performance-wise. The company has spent more than $8 billion buying back shares over the past three years, a time during which its stock has declined more than 12 percent. More broadly, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the companies that commit the most to buybacks has performed poorly. The SPDR S&P 500 Buyback fund has lost about 9 percent over the past year, a time during which the S&P 500 index has been down about 1.2 percent.

Buyback fuel for the bull market is losing steam

Stimulus is building up. The bonanza from cheap oil – worth $1,000 a year for average households, says Mrs Yellen – is accumulating in bank accounts and has yet to be spent. The fiscal austerity of recent years is giving way to a net fiscal boost worth 0.5pc of GDP in 2016 as state and local governments stoke spending.

The Yellen Fed risks Faustian pact with inflation

The U.K. referendum on its membership of the European Union is the greatest risk facing the region, the vice-chair of financial services firm Allianz Global Investors told CNBC. Elizabeth Corley, the global CEO at Allianz Global Investors, said that it was a "very, very significant issue" regardless of the outcome of the vote on June 23.

THIS is biggest risk facing Europe: Allianz exec

The world economy is beset by feeble growth and a recovery that is “weak, uneven and in danger of stalling yet again,” according to the latest Brookings Institution-Financial Times tracking index.

Global recovery in danger of stallling

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he'd be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.

Swiss banker whistleblower: CIA behind Panama Papers

It is a little-known fact that EVs were the most popular type of vehicle at the dawn of the vehicle era, before the Model T came along. In 1899, more EVs were sold than gasoline-powered cars. Although the numbers were small (about 1,500 EVs were sold in that year), EVs were nonetheless the dominant technology for at least a decade in the very early era of the private automobile. But in the next decade, Mr. Ford came along with his Model T and ensured the ascendancy of petroleum-powered cars for the next century.

Why Tesla’s Model 3 Could Be the New Model T | Greentech Media

A pilot allowed an elderly couple to get off a plane moments before take-off so they could visit their dying grandson in hospital. They had boarded the Abu Dhabi-bound aircraft at Manchester Airport when they received a text message about their relative's condition. The flight, which had been taxiing towards the runway, returned to the gate so the couple could rush to their grandson's bedside. He died later on the same night.

Plane turned around for couple to visit dying grandson - BBC News

The profound impact of LSD on the brain has been laid bare by the first modern scans of people high on the drug. The images, taken from volunteers who agreed to take a trip in the name of science, have given researchers an unprecedented insight into the neural basis for effects produced by one of the most powerful drugs ever created.

LSD's impact on the brain revealed in groundbreaking images | Science | The Guardian

By 2050, 2.5 billion more people are projected to leave the countryside for the city; in the United States alone, urban land will more than double by 2100. Faced with what scientists call “the urban heat island effect,” cities around the world are encouraging the development of roof gardens. These blankets of wildflowers, grasses, and sometimes even vegetables reduce water runoff, absorb carbon dioxide, and lower temperatures. Chicago is home to the world’s largest rooftop farm: The two acres of land atop a soap factory supply a million pounds of vegetables a year.

Paradise Found | New Republic

The yen hit a 17-month high against the dollar on Monday in the currency market's latest warning sign to equity investors. The strength of the Japanese yen this year has been a bit of a surprise for many investors. The Japanese central bank has taken steps this year that could be expected to weaken the yen, most notably the move to negative interest rates. Yet the yen has risen 10 percent versus the U.S. dollar, a huge move for the currency market.

The yen may be sending investors a dire warning

Here's the puzzle. Outflows of international capital from emerging markets around the world played a key role in causing financial shocks and steep recessions all over the globe in the late 1990s, including the east Asian financial crisis affecting countries like Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia in 1997-98; Latin American countries like Brazil (1999) and Argentina (2001); along with an assortment of other places like Ukraine (1998) and Turkey (2000). But even larger outflows of  international capital from emerging markets have been occurring in the last few years, with much less dire economic consequences. What changed?

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Global Capital Flows: Why No Crisis (So Far) This Time?

Dubai is planning to build one of its most elaborate structures yet, with developers promising that it will dwarf Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. The new tower, based at the centre of a new development called Dubai Creek Harbour, is set to boast rotating balconies and landscaping inspired by the mythical hanging gardens of Babylon.

Dubai planning new world's tallest building - Business Insider

There's new research out today that shows the life expectancy gap between the rich and the poor in America is wide and growing — but not necessarily inevitable. For the study, published today in JAMA, a group of researchers led by Stanford University economist Raj Chetty analyzed income data for the US population from 1.4 billion tax records between 1999 and 2014. They then compared it with mortality data from Social Security Administration death records.

There’s a widening gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor - Vox

More than 20,000 housewives took their lives in India in 2014. This was the year when 5,650 farmers killed themselves in the country. So the number of suicides by housewives was over 250% more than the farmers. They also comprised 47% of the total female victims. Yet the high number of homemakers killing themselves doesn't make front page news in the way farmer suicides do, year after year. In fact, more than 20,000 housewives have been killing themselves in India every year since 1997, the earliest year for which we have information compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau based on occupation of the victim. In 2009, the grim statistic peaked at 25,092 deaths.

Why are India's housewives killing themselves? - BBC News

The rapper’s creditors had tipped her off to the Instagram account, according to the New York Times. Jackson’s response was as simple as it was unexpected. The piles of notes were “prop money”, he wrote in documents filed to the court. “Just because I am photographed in or next to a certain vehicle, wearing an article of clothing, holding a product, sitting next to what appears to be large sums of money or modelling expensive pieces of jewellery does not meant that I own everything in those photos.” The rapper is hardly the first person to prop up his public image with borrowed finery. It’s an open secret in Hollywood that much of the clothing and jewellery worn by celebrities has been “seeded”, or loaned, to them by fashion brands. And those lavish cars? They’re often leased (or even rented) from high-end dealers who specialise in working with athletes and stars.

BBC - Capital - The surprising benefits of living beyond your means

The Philippines and Vietnam boast the strongest outlook, with GDP set to climb over 6 percent in 2016, the report stated. Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, could expand 5.1 percent this year and 5.3 percent in 2017, depending on the success of President Joko Widodo's recent reforms and the implementation of a public investment program.

China slowdown will lower developing East Asia growth to 6.3 percent: World Bank

Peabody’s plan to export coal to China via huge coal terminals on the West Coast never materialized, because environmental groups and local governments opposed the terminals and coal use in China has fallen dramatically. The second play, so-called “clean coal,” has faltered because capturing the carbon dioxide from coal plant smokestacks and burying it far underground has proved stubbornly cost-prohibitive, particularly in an era of cheap natural gas.

Peabody Energy’s Bankruptcy Shows the Limits of “Clean Coal”

Real-world artificial-intelligence applications are popping up in unexpected places—and much sooner than you might think. While winning a game of Go might be impressive, machine intelligence is also evolving to the point where it can be used by more people to do more things. That's how four engineers with almost zero knowledge of Japanese were able to create software, in just a few months, that can decipher handwriting in the language... Artificial intelligence was once the exclusive playground of Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and other tech leaders. Now, any deep-learning startup can access cloud-based platforms, with Microsoft Corp., Nvidia Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. selling AI like a utility.

Artificial Intelligence for Everyday Use: Coming Soon - Bloomberg

The latest offering from the perma-bear community, delivered by Albert Edwards at SocGen, is, well, bearish. US corporate profits are suffering a "gut wrenching slump," Mr Edwards warns, adding "whole economy profits never normally fall this deeply without a recession unfolding. The economy will surely be swept away by a tidal wave of corporate default."

SocGen warns of ‘tidal wave of corporate default’

One of the most memorable lessons Cramer learned working at Goldman Sachs is that an investor only needs to get rich once. There is no point to taking the risk of owning stocks to make more money when you're already filthy rich. Those investors tend to buy bonds.

Cramer: Donald Trump is right, there's a bubble

“For Q1 2016, the estimated earnings decline is -9.1%,” FactSet’s John Butters said. “If the index reports a decline in earnings for Q1, it will mark the first time the index has seen four consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in earnings since Q4 2008 through Q3 2009.”

Earnings season will be awful — Here are 2 reasons why you shouldn't panic - Yahoo Finance

In around 1963, curators became aware of the presence of some kind of exotic spider in the museum. Following a sudden explosion of sightings in the winter of 1970, they decided to carry out a systematic search, which revealed an infestation on the whole ground floor of the building. There were spiders everywhere; in cupboards and drawers, on desks and shelves and behind pictures on the walls... Then he withdrew all food and water, testing their ability to withstand starvation. The males were the first to die. But 14 females survived total starvation for an average of 453 days. One spider – a female – lived without food or water for 755 days. That’s over two years.

BBC - Future - The museum filled with poisonous spiders that just won't die

One academic study found that tax dodging by major corporations costs the U.S. Treasury up to $111 billion a year. By my math, less than one-fifth of that annually would be more than enough to pay the additional costs of full-day prekindergarten for all 4-year-olds in America ($15 billion), prevent lead poisoning in tens of thousands of children ($2 billion), provide books and parent coaching for at-risk kids across the country ($1 billion) and end family homelessness ($2 billion). The Panama Papers should be a wake-up call, shining a light on dysfunctional tax codes around the world — but much of the problem has been staring us in the face. Among the 500 corporations in the S.&P. 500-stock index, 27 were both profitable in 2015 and paid no net income tax globally, according to an analysis by USA Today.

The Real Welfare Cheats - The New York Times

French police are questioning three schoolgirls in a Paris suburb suspected of torturing a younger girl, in a bullying ordeal that lasted months. The victim's father told Europe 1 radio the attackers had stubbed out cigarettes on the 12-year-old's face and arms, dislocated her jaw, slashed her with a knife and urinated on her. The gang in Creteil extorted money from her and tortured her after she had gone to steal from a grocer's, it is alleged. Police were alerted after that attack. The three schoolgirls detained by police are aged 13 to 15.

France bullying case: Creteil girls 'tortured 12-year-old' - BBC News

However, the new technologies Holt cited would not offer speed benefits over silicon transistors, suggesting that chips may stop getting faster at the pace that the technology industry has been used to. The new technologies would, however, improve the energy efficiency of chips, something important for many leading uses of computing today, such as cloud computing, mobile devices, and robotics.

Intel: Chips Will Have to Sacrifice Speed Gains for Energy Savings

They also remember each other. A 2013 study revealed that captive dolphins can remember the whistles for many years, sometimes decades. In one case, a female called Allie at Brookfield Zoo clearly responded to playbacks of Bermuda-based Bailey, even though they had not seen each other for over 20 years.

BBC - Earth - Cute and cuddly dolphins are secretly murderers

However, the pace of acceleration has increased since the end of the recession. This leads to two questions: why did it increase and why is it decreasing?  It started to rise for two reasons: women entered the labor force and the baby boomers hit their peak earnings years.  Why is it declining now?  Well, there's actually been a ton of research on the topic (done by people who actually have a background in econ). Interestingly enough, Ed has yet to link to any solid research on the topic. Invictus over at the Big Picture blog has got a great set of links on the topic here.Here's the general conclusion: At least 50% (and probably more) is caused by retiring baby boomers. Then there's the huge drop in working teenagers, largely because they're in school (which is a good thing -- y'know -- they're learning)

The Bonddad Blog: Ed Morrissey Should Really Stop Writing About Economics

While people have long waged war on this invasive mosquito, with repeated calls for its eradication, the recent development of "gene drive" technology raises the theoretical possibility of winning it. Unlike an ordinary gene, which is passed on to just half of all offspring, a gene drive construct could be passed on to virtually all offspring. It can be used to spread genes that destroy female mosquito chromosomes, prevent female mosquitoes from flying, or determine whether a mosquito becomes a male.

When Extinction Is a Humanitarian Cause

It can take just minutes to break through a foul mood if you know the right tricks. Here are some scientifically tested methods to help you beat the blues.

BBC - Future - A 7-day guide to the pursuit of happiness