China to mark 115th birthday anniversary of Zhou Enlai
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
China to mark 115th birthday anniversary of Zhou Enlai
(Xinhua) 20:41, October 29, 2013
The ‘Two Pizza Rule’ Is Jeff Bezos’ Secret To Productive Meetings; Never have a meeting where two pizzas couldn’t feed the entire group. “[Bezos] wanted a decentralized, even disorganized company where independent ideas would prevail over groupthink
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
The ‘Two Pizza Rule’ Is Jeff Bezos’ Secret To Productive Meetings
VIVIAN GIANG OCT. 29, 2013, 6:17 PM 6,526 10
The more people there are, the less productive most meetings will be. The idea is that most attendees will end up agreeing with each other instead of voicing their own opinions and own ideas. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has a solution for this problem. He calls it the “two pizza rule”: Never have a meeting where two pizzas couldn’t feed the entire group. In fact, Bezos advises to only have meetings when absolutely necessary. “[Bezos] wanted a decentralized, even disorganized company where independent ideas would prevail over groupthink,” writes Richard Brandt at The Wall Street Journal. In The WSJ profile, Brandt interviews a former Amazon executive who recalls Bezos saying “communication is terrible!” during an offsite retreat. Birth of a Salesman
Behind the rise of Jeff Bezos and Amazon: Richard L. Brandt on the founder’s Texas roots, the site’s chaotic early days, why negative reviews are allowed and his increasing use of personal data. Read more of this post
This Video Of Chinese Street Food Made From ‘Gutter Oil’ Is The Most Disgusting Thing You Will See All Day
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
This Video Of Chinese Street Food Made From ‘Gutter Oil’ Is The Most Disgusting Thing You Will See All Day
MAMTA BADKAR OCT. 29, 2013, 12:43 PM 24,892 44
The next time you consider eating Chinese street food you might think twice. The use of gutter oil it turns out is pretty common. This refers to a process of pulling waste oil from sewers, grease traps, waste from slaughterhouses, reprocessing it and then selling it as cooking oil. These screenshots from a Radio Free Asia (RFA) video via Max Fisher at The Washington Post show a woman in Shenzhen pulling slop from a gutter. The slop then ends up in “processing” plants where it is processed with other animal fat through filtration or boiling. The oil eventually make its way to “street vendors and hole-in-the-wall restaurants” that use it as “recycled cooking oil.” Watch the entire video below: Gutter oil is reported to account for one-tenth of cooking oil in China, according to experts cited by RFA. Besides being downright disgusting, the oil is also said to contain carcinogens and other toxins. China has been fighting the practice for years. Earlier this month a man from China’s Jiangsu province was sentenced to life in prison for making and selling gutter oil. China has long battled food safety concerns. But in a country where cooking oil is at a premium, it will likely be a while before officials can effectively crack down on the practice.
Emerging markets necessitate a rethink of business ducation
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
October 29, 2013 3:15 pm
Emerging markets necessitate a rethink of business education
By Mike Bastin
A collaboration between academics and regional specialists will better prepare students
With the global economy still sluggish in the west much of the talk about business success is focused on emerging markets.But are business schools in the west really preparing students for business success in China and elsewhere in Asia? Are they allocating sufficient time and resources to the teaching and understanding of such culturally different and changing business environments? And are business school academics suitably knowledgeable and experienced in emerging markets such as China? Read more of this post
Too rich or too poor for success? A middle-income background is often an advantage for business founders
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
October 29, 2013 3:15 pm
Too rich or too poor for success?
By Jonathan Moules
Keith Wymer’s father was a “journeyman window cleaner” when he was born and his mother worked in a factory. Two years later, the family took an assisted-passage flight to Canada to take up unskilled manual work, trying to better themselves. By the time he was 11, in 1965, they were back in a freezing London flat with no television, telephone or car. The experience made young Keith determined to work his way out of it. Read more of this post
Never lose the start-up mentality; Act like a start-up, even if you’re a well established company,
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Never lose the start-up mentality
Act like a start-up, even if you’re a well established company, advises our entrepreneurial columnist.
Martin Luther King perhaps unwittingly captured the essence of the start-up spirit when he spoke of the “fierce urgency of now.” Photo: GETTY IMAGES
9:09AM GMT 29 Oct 2013
My team is thrilled. The Start-ups 100, the listing of the most inspiring early stage businesses in Britain, has just ranked us as No.11. It’s a landmark for us. Not least because from next year we will cease to “officially” be a start up; we will have moved on to the ranks of the grown-ups. Indeed, some of the feedback we have had on the ranking is that many never really considered our firm as a struggling start-up anyway. We did, still do, and this is why. Read more of this post
Donation of ideas is better than just cash; It is often better for a business founder to build their own social enterprise than join an existing one
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
October 29, 2013 3:26 pm
Donation of ideas is better than just cash
By Luke Johnson
It is often better for a business founder to build their own social enterprise than join an existing one
The intelligent way for business founders to give to charity is not simply to donate money. They could instead consider setting up their own non-profit organisation. In the past few weeks I have helped start two. The first was The Centre for Entrepreneurs, a think-tank devoted solely to entrepreneurship. I thought of this a few years ago but never got it off the ground. My belief that Britain needed such a group never wavered, so after meeting a backer recently, I decided to put my theories into action. Read more of this post
Doctors Use Euphemism for $2.4 Billion in Needless Stents
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Doctors Use Euphemism for $2.4 Billion in Needless Stents
The American College of Cardiology is changing its guidelines for when implanting coronary stents is appropriate — by banishing the term “inappropriate.” Next year, the main U.S. heart-doctor group will remove the word it has used since 2009 to describe cases where people don’t need the metal-mesh tubes in their blood vessels. The label has become a liability in treatment disputes with insurers and regulators, said Robert Hendel, who led the effort that updated the wording. “The term ‘inappropriate’ caused such a visceral response,” said Hendel, a cardiologist at the University of Miami. “A lot of regulators and payers were saying, ‘If it’s inappropriate, why should we pay for it, and why should it be done at all?’” The cardiology group replaced the “Inappropriate” label with “Rarely Appropriate.” Another category — cases in which there’s medical doubt — will switch from “Uncertain” to “May be Appropriate.” Read more of this post
China’s accounting industry matures with challenges
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
China’s accounting industry matures with challenges
(Xinhua) 20:51, October 29, 2013
China’s certified public accounting industry has grown to be worth over 50 billion yuansince the sector was re-established in the 1980s. Significant regulatory developments have accompanied its rapid progress. One regulatorystep China has taken ahead of Europe and the United States is mandatory rotation ofauditing irms.
The idea of forcing companies to change bookkeepers gained momentum after the 2008global financial crisis. Taxpayers were furious that some banks were given a clean bill ofhealth but later rescued using public cash. Read more of this post
China Baidu’s financial foray shows online finance rush; Baidu triggers alarm bells with launch of Baifa mutual funds
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
China: Baidu’s financial foray shows online finance rush
Oct 29, 2013 11:28am by Lydia Guo
Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, started its online financial service on Monday in an attempt to compete with rivals such as Alibaba, who have already pushed aggressively into Chinese financial sector. It wasn’t exactly smooth running. Baidu’s financial services platform made its debut on October 28, introducing a financial product in conjunction with China Asset Management, which was offering an 8 per cent annual return in its original promotional material. However, the ad fell foul of the financial regulator, and the site was overwhelmed with traffic. The missteps show how much of a rush the big internet companies are to get into online finance. The China Securities Regulatory Commission said on its official Weibo account that it is against the rules to estimate or promise the return of a fund. CSRC said it would verify whether Baidu has followed compliance rules based on written documents submitted by the company. Baidu has already pulled the 8 per cent advertisement and said it would “offer [a] better online financial service experience under the guidance of relevant regulators”. But many of Baidu customers were frustrated on the service’s first day. People hungry for the attractive yields couldn’t log into the platform for much of the morning, and those who managed to log in complained the complexity of process. Baidu said that the platform problem was because of too many visitors – hardly a good excuse from China’s biggest internet company. The service was back to normal in the aftern on, and with more than 120,000 users the Rbm1bn product was oversubscribed. Read more of this post
Tom Friedman Is Too Optimistic About China’s Schools
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Tom Friedman Is Too Optimistic About China’s Schools
By Adam Minter – Oct 29, 2013
The New York Times recently published “The Shanghai Secret,” a column by Thomas Friedman that explained how Shanghai’s students received the world’s top scores on the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment exams. Administered every three years (the 2012 results will be released Dec. 3), PISA is designed to assess how well 15-year-olds worldwide are prepared to apply their educations to real-world situations. Read more of this post
Click and clink: Amazon selling wine in China
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Click and clink: Amazon selling wine in China
Updated: 2013-10-30 07:21
By YU WEI in San Francisco (China Daily USA)
After launching its first shipment of directly imported US wines into China, Amazon China, Amazon.com’s branch there, said the wines have received a very good response in the country, especially in Shanghai. “The direct-sales model gives our wines quality assurance and more cost-effectiveness,” said Niu Yinghua, vice-president of Amazon China. “Consumers can easily have fine wines from thousands of miles away to by clicking Amazon.cn.” Read more of this post
Chinese President Xi Jinping and the six other top officials reportedly were at Tiananmen Square on Monday when a vehicle crashed and exploded nearby, leaving five dead
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
China leaders were nearby during apparent Tiananmen Square attack
By Barbara Demick
October 29, 2013, 5:07 a.m.
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping and the six other top officials reportedly were at Tiananmen Square on Monday when a vehicle crashed and exploded nearby, leaving five dead. Although there is no indication that the physical safety of the leaders, who were attending meetings inside the Great Hall of the People, was jeopardized, the apparent suicide attack so close to the epicenter of power rattled the Chinese government and has raised doubts about the effectiveness of its often-stifling security apparatus. Read more of this post
South Korea’s financial authorities will take disciplinary actions against banks for their negligence to be on the lookout for the default of conglomerates.
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Banks to face penalties over negligent lookout for default of conglomerates
2013.10.30 11:28:58
South Korea’s financial authorities will take disciplinary actions against banks for their negligence to be on the lookout for the default of conglomerates. The authorities will also increase the number of conglomerates who commit to improving financial structure to prevent another collapse of conglomerate as Tong Yang Group did. After Tong Yang Group’s subsidiaries filed for court receivership, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) decided to conduct a thorough evaluation of main creditor banks during its bank assessment to strengthen accountability of financial firms, said sources in the financial sector Wednesday. Read more of this post
Moody’s Discussed Stripping New Zealand of Last AAA Rating
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Moody’s Discussed Stripping New Zealand of Last AAA Rating
Moody’s Investors Service considered stripping New Zealand of its sole remaining top credit rating amid concern the nation’s current-account deficit is exacerbating its vulnerability to external shocks. New Zealand’s reliance on overseas investors means it can face difficulties when crises such as the Christchurch earthquakes and Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd.’s contaminated milk scare occur, Steven Hess, Senior Vice President at Moody’s in New York, said in an interview in Wellington today. The kiwi fell today to a four-week low. Read more of this post
Madoff Money to Japan Mob Ties Breed Banks’ Global Pains
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Madoff Money to Japan Mob Ties Breed Banks’ Global Pains
Japanese regulators said they’re looking for loans to gangsters by the nation’s three biggest banks. The 115-year-old Dutch lender Rabobank Groep was fined more than $1 billion for rigging interest rates. Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and UBS AG (UBSN), Germany and Switzerland’s biggest lenders, both said they’re facing investigations into currency manipulation. It was another day in global banking. Read more of this post
India equities enjoy stunning rebound
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
October 29, 2013 1:52 pm
India equities enjoy stunning rebound
By James Crabtree
“Crisis? What crisis?” This seems to be the new motto for Indian markets. Stocks have built on a startling recovery, shrugging off a period of currency freefall and capital flight that had threatened to turn into a full-fledged crisis. The buoyant mood seemed confirmed on Tuesday, as Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan’s decision to raise interest rates sent equities nearly 2 per cent higher. The benchmark Sensex index closed at 20,929, just a fraction below its all-time closing high, set last week. Read more of this post
‘We buy the best companies – and many of them happen to be Australian’
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
‘We buy the best companies – and many of them happen to be Australian’
Fund manager Jason Pidcock of Newton explains why he is optimistic about prospects down under
By Jason Pidcock
12:47PM GMT 29 Oct 2013
We maintain a constructive view on the Australian economy, market and currency. While we are more positive than most of our peers, who have been swayed by some excessive pessimism; it is worth pointing out that we do not have an aggressively large holding of Australian shares in our funds. As always, our aim is to look for the best companies, wherever they may be listed, and Australia happens to provide us with a lot of candidates, especially for the Income fund. The weighting of the portfolio to Australia is purely a function of that. Read more of this post
Will Starbucks’ push into tea hurt its coffee shops?
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
JUDGMENT CALL
October 30, 2013 12:07 am
Will Starbucks’ push into tea hurt its coffee shops?
The Teavana bar’s opening raises questions about how to avoid competing with the original business
THE PROBLEM
Starbucks opened its first Teavana bar in New York last week. CEO Howard Schultz said he was not worried about cannibalising the coffee chain because “most people who are tea drinkers are not crossing over to coffee”. When launching similar products, how do you avoid competing with your original business? Read more of this post
For Once-Mighty Sears, Pictures of Decay; “Every store has something fundamentally wrong with it.”
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
OCTOBER 29, 2013, 8:41 AM
For Once-Mighty Sears, Pictures of Decay
By DAVID GELLES
Updated, 8:46 p.m. | When Brian Sozzi, the chief executive of Belus Capital Advisors, visited Sears locations in New York and New Jersey this month, he said, he found barren shelves, haphazard displays and badly stained carpets. Also missing: customers. “It’s just badness throughout,” Mr. Sozzi said in an interview. “Every store has something fundamentally wrong with it.” Read more of this post
World is entering devastating chocolate crisis
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
2013-10-29 17:03
World is entering devastating chocolate crisis
By Doug Bandow
Attention in Washington remains focused on the government shutdown. But a far more important issue confronts America while the president and congressional leaders dither: rising chocolate prices. When will the government address this terrifying global crisis? Cocoa trees have been cultivated for thousands of years. The early Mesoamericans, including the Aztecs and Mayans, turned the beans into cocoa solids, liquid, and butter. These peoples were serious about their chocolate, offering cocoa beans as gifts for the gods and using cocoa drinks in sacred ceremonies. Read more of this post
‘Allergy-free’ milk firm reaches £1m sales, disrupting the traditional dairy market
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
‘Allergy-free’ milk firm reaches £1m sales
Milk producer a2 has chalked up £1m of sales in Britain and Ireland since its launch a year ago, despite a fire that razed its Droitwich dairy earlier this month.
By Anna White, Enterprise Correspondent
6:00AM GMT 29 Oct 2013
The Anglo-New Zealand business – a collaboration between the British company Müller Wiseman Dairies and Auckland – has disrupted the traditional dairy market, claiming to produce a type of milk that does not create lactose intolerances. The milk manufacturer, which now sells into 1,000 stores across the UK, markets milk containing the A2 protein. Read more of this post
Humble roadside stall blossoms into successful family business
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Humble roadside stall blossoms into successful family business
Wednesday, Oct 30, 2013
P. Aruna
The Star/Asia News Network
MALAYSIA – What had started as a roadside stall with the daily budget of RM15 (S$5.90) to buy some chicken and herbs, has today become a successful family business for Nurul Sakinah Abdullah. Currently, the 42-year-old earns at least RM4,000 each day and has hired seven permanent workers at her shop in Seremban. Her brand of “Ayam Panggang Kenyalang” or “Kenyalang roast chicken” has gained fame since she established the business there in 2004. She gets up to three big orders each week to cater food for wedding functions and also sells her marinade recipe to those who want to make their own versions of her famous roasted chicken. Read more of this post
Singapore’s Sky One share price collapse of over 90% in one day; “A lot of people lost a lot of money on these. What’s on the street right now is, ‘Oh gosh, what’s next?’ This needs to stop . . . Why don’t we just set everything back to zero, start all over again? Press the reset button.”
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 30, 2013
Brokers raise shields with Sky One falling
BY ANGELA TAN ANGELAT@SPH.COM.SG AND KENNETH LIM KENLIM@SPH.COM.SG
SGX has so far only queried Sky One, but not intervened in the trading of its shares – PHOTO: SPH
‘SGX might as well switch off its system at this rate. Its poor communication has killed what’s left of the penny stock market,’ a broker complained.
[SINGAPORE] Sky One Holdings’ collapse on Monday prompted a number of brokers to update their lists of restricted stocks this week, raising questions about why the Singapore Exchange (SGX) did not impose trading curbs as it had done with three other stocks a few weeks earlier. Trading in shares of Sky One, a logistics provider being targeted in a reverse takeover (RTO) by a coal- mining business, whose stock fell as much as 91 per cent early Monday before being halted, is currently restricted at several brokers, including AmFraser, CIMB, DMG, OCBC Securities and UOB Kay Hian, according to market sources and some of the brokers’ own websites. Read more of this post
A new space tourism company named World View unveiled its plans to loft passengers to the stratosphere as early as 2015, not by rocket but by giant balloon. Price: $75,000. (Drinks included.)
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
October 22, 2013
Balloon Ride to Offer Expansive View, for a Price
A rendering of the balloon, which would climb about 18.5 miles and stay up for a couple of hours before its promised gentle descent.
And now, a high-altitude adventure for the leisure class, people who do not want to be jostled as they sip Champagne and gaze down at Earth’s curved blue surface. A new space tourism company named World View unveiled its plans on Tuesday to loft passengers to the stratosphere as early as 2015, not by rocket but by giant balloon. Price: $75,000. (Drinks included.) World View is led by the same people involved in Inspiration Mars, a private endeavor to launch two people in 2018 to a flyby of the red planet. Read more of this post
Attack innovation the ‘special forces’ way
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Attack innovation the ‘special forces’ way
BY REGINA E DUGAN –
3 HOURS 55 MIN AGO
Over the past 50 years, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced an unparalleled number of breakthroughs. Arguably, it has the most consistent track record of radical invention in history. Its innovations include the Internet, stealth technology and unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. Though the United States military was the original customer for DARPA’s applications, the agency’s innovations have played a central role in creating a host of multi-billion-dollar industries. What makes DARPA’s long list of accomplishments even more impressive is the agency’s swiftness in developing breakthroughs, as well as its relatively tiny size and comparatively modest budget. Read more of this post
Sony’s Hirai Mixes Camera With Phone Geeks to Catch Apple
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Sony’s Hirai Mixes Camera With Phone Geeks to Catch Apple
For Kazuo Hirai, creating Sony Corp. (6758)’s flagship smartphone was too important to be left to the company’s mobile-phone experts. Taking aim at a $310 billion market dominated by Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy and Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone, Sony’s chief executive officer sent dozens of his company’s camera engineers to its phone division last year to give the Xperia Z handset advanced photography capabilities. It was a big change for a company whose units haven’t been used to collaborating on their thousands of consumer products. Read more of this post
Phantom Ships Expose Weakness in Vessel-Tracking System: Freight
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Phantom Ships Expose Weakness in Vessel-Tracking System: Freight
Shippers, traders and researchers monitoring global vessel traffic in the past six months might have seen an imaginary U.S. ferry sail to North Korea, a tugboat go from the Mississippi River to a Dallas lake in two minutes and the path of a fake Italian yacht spelling out PWNED — hacker slang for “defeated.” These false signals, orchestrated by Trend Micro Inc., a Tokyo-based Internet security company, were designed to expose vulnerabilities in the mandatory system used to track merchant vessels worldwide. With the network that was built to improve safety at sea unprotected against hackers, phony tracks could lead to collisions and other accidents, according to the International Chamber of Shipping, a trade association representing more than 80 percent of the fleet. Read more of this post
Motorola aims for do-it-yourself smartphones
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Motorola aims for do-it-yourself smartphones
3:56pm EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Motorola wants to let consumers design their own smarpthones. The Google-owned manufacturer has launched Project Ara to create a free, open and standardized platform to let people pick and choose the components they want in their phones, Motorola said in a blogpost this week. The goal is to create a standard endoskeleton, or frame, that can hold different modules, like extra-powerful processors, additional batteries or memory chips for storing more music, all based on the customer’s preferences. Read more of this post
Google+ rolls out movie-making features, claims 300 million users
October 30, 2013 Leave a comment
Google+ rolls out movie-making features, claims 300 million users
3:04pm EDT
(Reuters) – Google Inc on Tuesday unveiled new technology that creates polished movies, complete with music soundtracks, from collections of home videos and photos that users post on its fledgling Google+ social network. The new features mark Google’s latest move to try and differentiate its 2-year-old social network from Facebook, the world’s No. 1 online social network with 1.15 billion users. Read more of this post
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