Author: Arabian Media staff

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Chinese economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.China’s consumer prices remained in deflation for the fourth straight month and producer prices fell at their fastest pace in nearly two years, piling pressure on policymakers as they try to boost domestic demand and negotiate trade tensions with the US. The country’s consumer price index fell 0.1 per cent year-on-year in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. Producer prices, which reflect the cost of goods at the factory gate, dropped 3.3 per cent, the fastest rate of decline…

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During Ocado’s most recent earnings call, chief executive Tim Steiner said the group’s advances in artificial intelligence and robotics had allowed it to fulfil online grocery shops at an ever faster pace.In 2012, it took 25 minutes of human labour to pick a 50-item order. That is now down to 10. But Ocado’s technological progress means the company requires 500 fewer workers this year, after it already announced 2,300 jobs would be at risk in 2023.The UK company’s move over many years to phase down human labour where feasible exemplifies workers’ fears about generative AI: it may boost productivity, efficiency…

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Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Currencies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.For the past month or more, overnight interest rates in Hong Kong have been stuck just above zero per cent. Since everyone got used to ultra-low interest rates during the last couple of decades, it may not be immediately obvious how bizarre, unexpected and potentially alarming that situation is — or how it illustrates everything from the dwindling appetite of Asian investors for US assets, to a modest revival of Hong Kong’s capital markets, to surprising limits on the risk-taking capacity of banks…

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Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning digital ID project is being rolled out in the UK, giving Britons access to verification services that the entrepreneur claims are essential for distinguishing between human and artificial intelligence.Altman’s World project has developed an orb “that confirms humanness” by scanning people’s eyes, generating a digital credential that can be used to access goods and services online, as well as the group’s own cryptocurrency, Worldcoin. This week, World is opening a number of locations in London where people can scan…

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This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters hereGood morning and welcome to FirstFT Asia. In today’s newsletter: Trump deploys troops in Los Angeles US deems China’s planned London embassy a security riskDuolingo’s CEO discusses AI plansWe start in the US, where National Guard troops were deployed on the streets of Los Angeles yesterday as the Trump administration took a hard line to quell protests against raids on suspected illegal immigrants. What happened: President…

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Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldDisney-owned ABC News suspended a senior journalist on Sunday after he called Donald Trump and a key adviser “world-class haters” on social media, potentially setting the world’s largest media group back into the line of fire of the US president.Senior ABC News correspondent Terry Moran posted on X just after midnight Saturday: “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred is only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification.” He also wrote that Trump aide…

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Coal India, the world’s largest coal-producing company, is reopening more than 30 mines and launching up to five more on greenfield sites this year, saying the country’s renewables sector is yet unable to meet its growing energy demand.“By the time renewable generation and battery storage systems become bigger, better and more efficient, then the share of coal can come down,” PM Prasad, chair of state-owned Coal India, told the Financial Times in an interview.Prasad said he was reopening 32 defunct coal mines…

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Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldDozens of executives from some of the world’s biggest companies will travel to Washington this week to push back against a plan to raise taxes on foreign investments in the US, warning it may hit millions of American jobs.The lobbying drive is targeting a provision in Donald Trump’s budget bill, which if approved by Congress would allow the US to impose additional taxes on companies and investors from countries that it deems to have punitive tax policies.Investors, US companies with…

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Net Present Value vs. Internal Rate of Return: An Overview Net present value (NPV) is the difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows over a period of time. By contrast, the internal rate of return (IRR) is a calculation used to estimate the profitability of potential investments. Both of these measurements are primarily used in capital budgeting, the process companies use to determine if a new investment or expansion opportunity is worthwhile. Given an investment opportunity, a firm needs to decide whether undertaking the investment will generate net economic profits or losses for the…

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