The billionaire Chinese financier Zhang Lei was among the first to see the potential in homegrown internet companies. He talks about a career that began when he rented out comics at the age of seven

LUNCH WITH THE FT

June 20, 2014 11:59 am

Zhang Lei has Lunch with the FT

By Henny SenderAuthor alerts

The billionaire Chinese financier was among the first to see the potential in homegrown internet companies. He talks about a career that began when he rented out comics at the age of seven

It is a glorious spring Sunday, the day before commencement at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Among the many alumni returning to the campus is billionaire Chinese financier Zhang Lei, 41, who is a familiar figure here. In 2010 he announced a gift of the propitious amount of $8,888,888 to Yale School of Management, the largest donation made to the business school from one of its graduates. Read more of this post

E-books v paper? Which do our brains prefer? Research is forcing us to rethink how we respond to the written word

June 20, 2014 6:40 pm

E-books v paper?

By Julian Baggini

Which do our brains prefer? Research is forcing us to rethink how we respond to the written word

Choosing books to take on holiday has got more difficult in recent years. Now it is a question not just of what to read but how – on paper, tablet, e-reader, or perhaps even a phone – and people have strong opinions on which is best. But is there any more to the decision than cost and convenience? On this question, the answer suggested by numerous studies into the neuroscience and psychology of reading in different formats is an emphatic yes. Read more of this post

Shanxi plans big growth from ‘red tourism’

Shanxi plans big growth from ‘red tourism’

Xinhua

2014-06-21

“Red tourism” is gaining popularity in China as the government pumps money into developing sites related to the Chinese revolution.

Northern China’s Shanxi province in particular is trying to accentuate the historical credentials of its revolution-era bases so it can attract tourists and enjoy faster growth. Read more of this post

3D printing industry begins to boom in China

3D printing industry begins to boom in China

Xinhua

With products ranging from stem cells, shoes and mini-statues, 3D printing has started to boom in China amid the industry’s rapid development worldwide.

Qingdao Unique Products Develop Company announced that adipose-derived stem cells and corneal stromal cells exported via a biological 3D printer had survived for nine days. Read more of this post

The remarkable rise of reverse-engineered private-label coffee pods

The remarkable rise of reverse-engineered private-label coffee pods

By Max Nisen @MaxNisen June 20, 2014

The coffee roaster and single-serve coffee machine maker Keurig Green Mountain has been extremely successful over the last few years, becoming one of America’sdominant coffee brands. But it has been challenged by a rising number of K-Cup pirates—private label companies making much cheaper Keurig-compatible single-serving pods, without paying a dime to Keurig for licenses.

image001-14

To be clear, this “piracy” is not illegal, and in fact private labels are by far the fastest growing segment of the single-serve market, dramatically outstripping Keurig’s own brands and high-profile partner companies such as Starbucks. Private-label market share has grown to 9.3% of the total, according to a Credit Suisse research report. And private-label sales growth has been absolutely spectacular over the last year: Read more of this post

Mega Study, Korea’s largest online education service provider, said Friday its largest shareholders have dropped a plan to sell their stake because the offer from potential buyers failed to meet their expectations

Mega Study owners drop plan to sell stake

2014.06.20 16:57:42

Mega Study, Korea’s largest online education service provider, said Friday its largest shareholders have dropped a plan to sell their stake because the offer from potential buyers failed to meet their expectations.  Read more of this post

YPD Region in S. Korea emerges as the Mecca of global knitwear industry

Region in S. Korea emerges as the Mecca of global knitwear industry

2014.06.20 17:

“When buyers in Los Angeles order fabrics for knitwear, it takes about two months for Chinese companies to deliver them to their office. But companies in Yangju, Pocheon and Dongducheon (YPD) in South Korea can perform the job just in a month as both the process from the beginning to shipment and transportation take two weeks respectively,” said Gwon Byung-hee, chief of a textile exporter based in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
YPD is emerging as the heart of the global knitwear production, as the apparel consumption pattern is shifting from woven fabrics to more luxurious knitwear especially in developed countries. The success is believed to have stemmed from the fact that YPD has about 3,000 companies specializing in each phase of the textile production such as knitting, dyeing and post-processing and the firms’ cooperation system is working very well because they are located in one hour car-ride distance. As a result, large textile fashion companies such as LG Fashion and Kolon are flocking to YPD to set up knitwear production plants and research institutions.  Read more of this post

This Is Your Brain on Writing: For the first time, researchers have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of writers as they created fiction. The results have drawn strong reactions from other scientists

This Is Your Brain on Writing

JUNE 20, 2014

Carl Zimmer

A novelist scrawling away in a notebook in seclusion may not seem to have much in common with an NBA player doing a reverse layup on a basketball court before a screaming crowd. But if you could peer inside their heads, you might see some striking similarities in how their brains were churning.

That’s one of the implications of new research on the neuroscience of creative writing. For the first time, neuroscientists have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of both experienced and novice writers as they sat down — or, in this case, lay down — to turn out a piece of fiction. Read more of this post

Our Moral Tongue: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

Our Moral Tongue: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

JUNE 20, 2014

By BOAZ KEYSAR and ALBERT COSTA

ON June 20, 2003, employees of the Union Pacific Railroad faced a difficult decision as a runaway train headed toward downtown Los Angeles: Should they divert the train to a side track, knowing it would derail and hit homes in the less populated city of Commerce, Calif.? Did the moral imperative to minimize overall harm outweigh the moral imperative not to intentionally harm an innocent suburb? Read more of this post

Mahathir Thwarts Sultan’s Power Grab

Mahathir Thwarts Sultan’s Power Grab

Written by Our Correspondent

SAT,14 JUNE 2014

Intervention saves PM Najib’s political standing

Malaysia’s aging former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had to act earlier this week to save Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak from embarrassing legislation that would have given the Sultan of Johor executive powers to run the housing authority of the country’s second biggest state. Read more of this post

Content remains a giant mystery, but that hasn’t slowed the flood of VC cash

Content remains a giant mystery, but that hasn’t slowed the flood of VC cash

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON JUNE 20, 2014

Content marketers might actually have no idea which metrics translate into actual business results, but content marketing companies are seeing a huge uptick in venture financing, anyway.

Out this week from CB Insights is a report that content marketing startups raised $292 million dollars across 44 deals in the 12 months spanning the Q2 2013 to Q1 2014. This was a 47 percent bump in deal activity over the year prior, but a 125 percent spike in dollars, as latter-stage companies like Percolate, NewsCred and Contently rolled out big funding rounds. Read more of this post

With Efforts to Buy Shire, AbbVie Tries to Join Rush to Go Abroad

With Efforts to Buy Shire, AbbVie Tries to Join Rush to Go Abroad

By DAVID GELLES and CHAD BRAY

JUNE 20, 2014 5:43 AM Comment

Updated, 7:08 p.m. | At first it was a trickle. A few relatively unknown pharmaceutical companies acquired international competitors, and moved their headquarters abroad.

Then the pace picked up. Bigger health care companies, including Pfizer andMedtronic, also sought to relocate overseas, claiming that doing so would lower their tax rate and allow them to access trapped cash. Competitors felt pressure to match those financial advantages and began looking for deals of their own. Read more of this post

How big can BlackRock get? With more than US$4.4-trillion in assets under management, BlackRock is the largest money manager in the world by a wide margin

How big can BlackRock get?

Jonathan Ratner | June 19, 2014 7:50 AM ET
With more than US$4.4-trillion in assets under management, BlackRock Inc. is the largest money manager in the world by a wide margin, but that has some investors worried that its growth will inevitably slow down.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Eric Berg, however, is confident BlackRock is being very disciplined in launching new products that can help increase AUM over time and is targeting market leadership in key markets to help boost overall growth. Read more of this post

China’s Real-Estate Wrongs

YAO YANG

Yao Yang is Dean of the National School of Development and Director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University.

JUN 20, 2014

China’s Real-Estate Wrongs

BEIJING – China’s real-estate sector has been a source of serious concern for several years, with soaring property prices raising fears of overheating in the housing market. But, with price growth easing, it seems that the government’s campaign to rein in property risk is finally taking hold. The danger now is that the housing market will collapse – bringing China’s economic prospects down with it. Read more of this post

How ancient parasite wormed its way into human life

How ancient parasite wormed its way into human life

AP, AFP-JIJI

JUN 20, 2014

LONDON/PARIS – In a skeleton more than 6,200 years old, scientists have found the earliest known evidence of infection by a parasitic flatworm, revealing how human advancement enabled a creature resembling a tiny slug to spread. Today it afflicts more than 200 million people.

Archaeologists discovered the egg of the parasite near the pelvis of a child’s skeleton in northern Syria and say it dates back to a time when ancient societies first used irrigation systems to grow crops. Read more of this post

Hi, I’m a Tablet. I’ll Be Your Waiter Tonight.; Chains Like Panera Bread and Chili’s are using apps and tablets to improve food preparation, ordering and payment, and to entertain customers

Hi, Im a Tablet. Ill Be Your Waiter Tonight.

Panera and Chilis Turn to Tablets to Streamline Service

By STEPHANIE STROMJUNE 20, 2014

BRAINTREE, Mass.  An idea came to Ronald M. Shaich, the chief executive of Panera Bread, as he was driving his children to school about four years ago: What if everyone could order lunch the way he did?

The Shaich households morning routine included a call to the manager of the nearest Panera location to order lunch for Mr. Shaichs son (Asian sesame chicken salad with half the normal amount of chicken and twice the won ton strips) and daughter (various salads but with dressing on the side). Read more of this post

A Love-Hate Relationship: Why Guangdong’s Financial Health Is So Tied to Property

Jun 20, 2014

A Love-Hate Relationship: Why Guangdong’s Financial Health Is So Tied to Property

China’s southern province of Guangdong was the first beneficiary of Beijing’s policy of opening up the economy to the outside world, becoming an export powerhouse and a magnet for foreign investment. It was also among the first local governments given a chance to issue bonds on its own – without Beijing holding its hand – as part of the central government’s plan to expand the financing channels of better-managed provinces and cities. Read more of this post

Family, Corruption and Sage Words From a News Agency; The Chinese language is revealingly rich in mordant sayings about the nexus of family, officialdom and corruption

Family, Corruption and Sage Words From a News Agency

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

June 20, 2014

The Chinese language is revealingly rich in mordant sayings about the nexus of family, officialdom and corruption. When a man becomes an official, one saying goes, even his “chickens and dogs become immortals.” And a commentary by the state news agency Xinhua that appeared Friday, laced with similar phrases, was likely to be worrisome reading for Ling Jihua, once the powerful gatekeeper to the Communist Party’s leadership. Read more of this post

Qvod, the Chinese Video Service with a Special Business Model, was Pulled down, Thanks to Lawsuit Filed by Tencent

Qvod, the Chinese Video Service with a Special Business Model, was Pulled down, Thanks to Lawsuit Filed by Tencent

by Tracey Xiang – Jun 20, 2014

Qvod, or Kuaibo in Chinese, was recently sued for video rights infringement and is required to pay RMB260 million (roughly US$42mn) fine. What’s interesting is it turns out the lawsuit was filed by companies led by Tencent, the Chinese Internet giant based in the same city with Kuaibo, Shenzhen. Tencent is joined by Youku, LeTV and state-backed movie site m1905.com. Read more of this post

Nest co-founder Tony Fadell, a former acolyte of Steve Jobs, explains how he invented a new thermostat and how his role changed after leaving One Infinite Loop

Tony Fadell: In his own words

Adam Lashinsky

JUNE 20, 2014, 10:30 AM EDT

Nest co-founder Tony Fadell, a former acolyte of Steve Jobs, explains how he invented a new thermostat and how his role changed after leaving One Infinite Loop.

Tony Fadell, a former Apple  AAPL -1.03%  executive who went on to co-found Nest (which recently sold to Google  GOOG 0.26%  for $3.2 billion), has been likened to Steve Jobs and Larry Page for his innovative thinking and disruptive technology. Read more of this post

Google’s Chromecast may pose threat to smart TVs

Updated : 2014-06-20 19:27

Chromecast may pose threat to smart TVs

By Bahk Eun-ji

Google Chromecast, which made its debut here last month, is gaining popularity and favorable customer reviews.
Chromecast is an adapter ― about the size of a USB stick ― that plugs into a television and allows users to mirror content such as videos, music, photos and apps from a computer, tablet or smartphone onto a TV screen.
Google sold 2.7 million Chromecasts in the U.S. last year and about 200,000 in Korea over the last month. Amid its growing popularity, some experts believe Chromecast could threaten smart TVs because of additional functions they do not offer.  Read more of this post

Doubts about Amazon’s future overshadow Fire Phone launch

Doubts about Amazon’s future overshadow Fire Phone launch

As it unveils the latest in its line of smart devices, the tech company faces a growing number of challengers

Juliette Garside

The Guardian, Friday 20 June 2014 19.17 BST

The list of household names – Blackberry, Nokia, HTC, Motorola – that have almost bankrupted themselves trying to make a hit smartphone is long, but this week Amazon became the latest tech company to take on the challenge.

Jeff Bezos stepped on stage in Seattle on Wednesday to unveil his Fire Phone. With his mother in the audience, he presented the latest in a line-up of smart devices that already includes the Kindle Fire tablet and a Fire TV box. With a 3D screen, a scanner that will recognise – and try to sell you – anything from cereal bars to songs, and unlimited cloud storage for photos, Amazon’s smartphone is a technology light year away from its first black and white e-reader. However, few expect it to take sales away from the two brands that now dominate mobile: Apple and Samsung. Read more of this post

China quietly launches probe of foreign non-government outfits: media

China quietly launches probe of foreign non-government outfits: media

6:18am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has quietly begun a probe into the operations of foreign non-government bodies in the country, to prepare for tighter regulations in future, as part of a security drive ordered by a new national panel headed by President Xi Jinping.

Non-government organizations have mushroomed in China in recent years, and can have a confrontational relationship with the government, especially if they work with sensitive groups, such as sex workers or drug addicts. Read more of this post

Instinct Can Beat Analytical Thinking

Instinct Can Beat Analytical Thinking

by Justin Fox  |   1:00 PM June 20, 2014

Researchers have confronted us in recent years with example after example of how we humans get things wrong when it comes to making decisions. We misunderstand probability, we’re myopic, wepay attention to the wrong things, and we just generally mess up. This popular triumph of the “heuristics and biases” literature pioneered by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tverskyhas made us aware of flaws that economics long glossed over, and led to interesting innovations inretirement planning and government policy.

It is not, however, the only lens through which to view decision-making. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has spent his career focusing on the ways in which we get things right, or could at least learn to. In Gigerenzer’s view, using heuristics, rules of thumb, and other shortcuts often leads to better decisions than the models of “rational” decision-making developed by mathematicians and statisticians. At times this belief has led the managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin into pretty fierce debates with his intellectual opponents. It has also led to a growing body of fascinating research, and a growing library of books for lay readers, the latest of which, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions, is just out. Read more of this post

Apple’s Foe Is Margin Risk, Not Fire Phone

Apple’s Foe Is Margin Risk, Not Fire Phone

Amazon’s phone is limited to maintaining and expanding the Prime user base.

June 20, 2014 11:00 a.m. ET

Credit Suisse

Amazon.com launched a new smartphone, which they named the Fire Phone.

The Fire Phone has a rubberized frame, Gorilla Glass, and a 13 megapixel (MP) rear-facing camera. It also has a 4.7 inch liquid crystal display high-definition (LCD HD) display, a Qualcomm (ticker: QCOM ) Snapdragon chipset, and 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Read more of this post

Google’s Nest to buy home-monitoring camera startup Dropcam for $555 million: Report

Google’s Nest to buy home-monitoring camera startup Dropcam for $555 million: Report

Reuters
Jun 21, 2014 at 08:23am IST

Dropcam, the home-monitoring camera startup, will be bought by Google’s Nest Labs for about $555 million in cash, a technology news website reported on Friday.

The deal was signed on Friday and is yet to close, according to the report by Recode.net.

Nest confirmed the acquisition in a blog post on Friday, but did not specify the price tag. Neither Google nor Dropcam were immediately available for comment.t confirmed the acquisition in a blog post on Friday, but did not specify the price tag.

Dropcam plans to move from San Francisco to Nest’s offices in Palo Alto, California, Recode wrote.

Nest makes smart thermostat and smoke alarms and was bought by Google earlier this year for $3.2 billion.

 

Google and Microsoft plan to join Apple in offering theft-deterring “kill switches” in their smartphone operating systems, as part of an agreement with mayors and police agencies

Google, Microsoft to add smartphone ‘kill’ switches

Friday, June 20, 2014 – 21:46

AFP

WASHINGTON – Google and Microsoft plan to join Apple in offering theft-deterring “kill switches” in their smartphone operating systems, as part of an agreement with mayors and police agencies.

The announcement came in a report Thursday by the “Secure Our Smartphones Initiative” led by the New York state attorney general with officials from San Francisco and London. Read more of this post

Westports sets world record for container productivity

Updated: Friday June 20, 2014 MYT 5:35:57 PM

Westports sets world record for container productivity

KUALA LUMPUR: Westports Malaysia Sdn Bhd container operations team has scored another first when set a new world record for container terminal productivity, notching an impressive 793 moves in one hour.

This feat was achieved over the China Shipping container vessel, CSCL Le Havre (9572 TEU vessel), which operated on the AEX7 East service in the network linking Asia and Europe.  Read more of this post

THE booming presence of developers from China in Johor has not only ruffled feathers among local developers but also sparked concerns of the Singapore government due to the massive land reclamation works

Updated: Saturday June 21, 2014 MYT 6:55:54 AM

Stormy property landscape

BY NG BEI SHAN

THE booming presence of developers from China in Johor has not only ruffled feathers among local developers but also sparked concerns of the Singapore government due to the massive land reclamation works.

Following the high-profile entrance of Guangzhou-based Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd, which launched 9,000 units in Danga Bay at one-go in 2013, all eyes are now on other developers from China who are expected to adopt carpet bombing kind of development. Read more of this post

Palm oil industry needs to invest more in downstream activities

Updated: Saturday June 21, 2014 MYT 7:08:59 AM

Palm oil industry needs to invest more in downstream activities

BY DANIEL KHOO

Money to be made: Pemandu is pushing for the palm oil industry to capture the full potential of downstream activities, especially in the finished segments that generate high value income such as oleo-derivatives.

THE local palm oil sector which has been driven by the upstream segment in the past decades is set to change its course through increased contribution from the downstream segment in the coming years, according to the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu), and Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB). Read more of this post