Financial Markets and Economy
China Said to Intervene to Shore Up Stock Market Before Parade (Bloomberg)
China’s government intervened in the stock market on Thursday to end a $5 trillion rout, according to people familiar with the matter.
China wants to stabilize equities before a Sept. 3 military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the victory over Japan during World War II, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the move wasn’t publicly announced. The intervention is the latest measure to ensure nothing detracts from the parade, an event the government will use to demonstrate its rising military and political might.
Stocks set for more gains after global rebound (CNN)
U.S. stock futures were pushing higher, and global markets were bouncing as panic over China's stock market crash eased.
Why investors shouldn’t ride this steep market swell (Market Watch)
Triggering the biggest one-day point gain in seven years for Wall Street yesterday, Dudley did something right. The NY Fed President’s “less-compelling”-for-now comment on the potential of a September interest-rate hike has crushed the bear rebellion and perhaps that Bearmageddon. At least for now.
Money-market futures are pushing that first rate hike all the way out to 2016, says Ian Williams, economist at Peel Hunt. That, of course, could back the Fed into a corner pretty good, as a few out there are getting more and more comfortable batting the term “QE4” around.
China has officially ruined everything for everybody (Quartz)
We know China’s big. By some measures, China is now a bigger chunk of the global economy than the US.
China has tried 40 things to prop up its crumbling markets in the last 3 months — and only one of them has worked (Business Insider)
The dilligent analysts over at Bank of America Merrill Lynch have come up with a list of all the policy actions China has come up with to try and kickstart its roiling markets since stocks started unravelling in June.
There are lots of them (40 by our count) and they haven't really worked.
Things like rate cuts, loosening rules on pension fund investing, and banning short selling look more like the result of fear than carefully considered policy.
Asia's richest man buys Ironman for $650 million (CNN)
Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin has agreed to pay $650 million for World Triathlon Corporation, in the latest expansion of his growing sports empire. World Triathlon organizes Ironman events and controls the brand name.
The signature Ironman event includes a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bicycle ride and 26.2-mile run (that's a full marathon). After completing the grueling event, some participants choose to tattoo the Ironman brand logo on their bodies.
Mining Rout Costs Glencore More Than its Peers (Bloomberg)
Europe’s biggest miners, having lost 23 percent of their stock market value this year, bore the brunt of this week’s heavy sell-off amid concern about Chinese growth. Glencore is the worst of the bunch, with its stock trading at the biggest discount to its closest peers in the past two years, along with highest projected dividend yield.
Amazon scales back on developing consumer devices (Market Watch)
Amazon.com Inc. flamed out with critics and consumers last year in its first attempt at a smartphone. Now, rather than forge ahead, as it has with other projects, such as its Kindle tablets, the online retailer is retrenching.
In recent weeks Amazon AMZN, +2.47% has dismissed dozens of engineers who worked on its Fire phone at Lab126, its secretive hardware-development center in Silicon Valley, according to people familiar with the matter.
A trading firm that was frozen for over a month is doing much better than you'd think (Business Insider)
Stock betting firm Plus500 says it's on course to do better than forecast this year. That's despite a huge issue with the regulator that froze its business in May and tanked its share price.
The fall in earnings and profit were expected after the regulatory nightmare Plus500 had back in May.
European markets are absolutely jumping at the open (Business Insider)
After a rough start to the week, stocks are finally looking solid.
Amid the stock market volatility, turn to the stability of the marijuana market (Market Watch)
With the stock market volatility of the last week, it’s difficult to know which industries will weather the storm. However, there’s one potential way to stay in the green.
As marijuana shifts into the legal market state by state, analysts and industry professionals expect it to be mostly immune to economic downturns. With both medicinal and recreational uses, the cannabis market has been compared to alcohol, tobacco and coffee in terms of resilience to stock market recessions.
Volkswagen to Invest $340 Million in South African Car Business (Bloomberg)
Volkswagen AG, which is seeking to become the world’s largest automaker by 2018, is investing more than 4.5 billion rand ($340 million) in South Africa for new products and infrastructure.
The German manufacturer will spend about 3 billion rand on production facilities at Uitenhage, near Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape province, and 1.5 billion rand on improving the supply chain by 2017, the Wolfsburg-based company said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday.
Dollar steady against yen as risk sentiment improves (Market Watch)
The dollar was steady against the yen in Asia trade Thursday, with improvement in risk sentiment in stock markets prompting sales of the Japanese currency, which is often considered a safe haven.
The U.S. dollar USDJPY, +0.46% was at ¥119.97, compared with ¥119.95 late Wednesday in New York.
The greenback firmed against the yen from early Asian trade, tracking overnight its gain encouraged by a rebounding stock market on the Wall Street and upbeat U.S. durable manufactured goods orders.
Politics
Exactly What Kind Of Socialist Is Bernie Sanders? (NPR)
More Americans say they would vote for a Muslim or an atheist for president than they would for a socialist, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Yet "socialist" is now how Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has described himself throughout his career.
Sanders has not run from the term, even as he surges in his race for president.
His socialist tag line first reached a national audience in the 1980s when Sanders became mayor of Burlington.
Last week, two men in Boston allegedly beat a Hispanic homeless man. Afterward, one of the two brothers told the police, “Donald Trump was right, all of these illegals need to be deported.” Trump’s response? “I think that would be a shame,” he said, adding, “I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that."
Technology
An Icelandic Company Is Building Mind-Controlled Bionic Limbs (Bloomberg)
Össur describes its mission as the manufacture of non-invasive orthopedic equipment intended to improve mobility and quality of life for people who have injuries or disorders of the joints, bones or related muscles.
That aim has led the firm, based in Reykjavik, Iceland, to this: producing state-of-the-art bionic prosthetic lower limbs, which the wearer can control using his or her mind.
This Robot Tutor Will Make Personalizing Education Easy (Wired)
Personalizing education can change a kid’s life. It can keep the advanced ones from getting bored and the struggling ones from falling behind, because every kid, no matter their level of proficiency, is encouraged to move at his or her own pace.
But for the teachers tasked with implementing this increasingly popular pedagogy, it pretty much sucks. Personalizing a lesson means creating even more work than already time-strapped, under-resourced teachers can handle. It means drafting more lesson plans, digging up more reading materials, and creating more assessments than they would have to if they stuck to the old-fashioned, if imperfect, method of teaching to the middle…
Health and Life Sciences
Everything You Need to Know About Precision Medicine (Popular Science)
Tania Swain got bad news: her ovarian cancer had come back. This was in November 2013; almost three years before, Swain, who is herself a physician, had been surprised by the initial diagnosis. And despite the surgery that removed 30 pounds of liquid and tissue from her ovaries, spleen, and appendix, and the chemo drugs that were swished around the space they left, the cancer was back. She feared that this time the diagnosis was truly the “kiss of death.”
One man's poop is another's medicine (CNN)
It's the middle of the day for Eric, a 24-year-old research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and nature is calling.
Eric leaves his job and hops a train. Then a bus. Then he walks some more. He passes countless toilets, and he needs to use them, but he doesn't.
How Water Aerobics Can Keep You Fit As You Age (Forbes)
Summer’s ending. For recreational swimmers and toe-dippers in cooler climates, the season’s turn signals an end to swimming. But for people with access to indoor pools, and those who live in the south, water action continues year-round.
Among adults – including millions of baby boomers – water aerobics is becoming a popular way of keeping fit. For people of any age who’ve sustained joint injuries, have arthritic pains or osteoporosis, the water provides a space to continue or initiate low-impact but vigorous sports. For many, pool-based exercises offer a fun, social alternative to swimming in lanes.
Life on the Home Planet
The washing away of Cajun culture (BBC)
Louisiana's coastal wetlands are eroding – more than a football field of land is lost every hour. As the marsh erodes, homes, communities and the local Cajun culture are under threat.
Paul Chiquet is not your typical librarian. But then again, South Lafourche Public Library is not a typical library.
Warming seas and melting ice sheets (Phys)
We know this from basic physics. When water heats up, it expands. So when the ocean warms, sea level rises. When ice is exposed to heat, it melts. And when ice on land melts and water runs into the ocean, sea level rises.
For thousands of years, sea level has remained relatively stable and human communities have settled along the planet's coastlines. But now Earth's seas are rising. Globally, sea level has risen about eight inches (20 centimeters) since the beginning of the 20th century and more than two inches (5 centimeters) in the last 20 years alone.
