South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed a slew of new deals covering areas including critical minerals and artificial intelligence, while pushing to expand bilateral cooperation during the South American leader’s first state visit to South Korea in 21 years. “Today will be recorded as a historic day, marking a new leap forward in our bilateral relations,”...
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed a slew of new deals covering areas including critical minerals and artificial intelligence, while pushing to expand bilateral cooperation during the South American leader’s first state visit to South Korea in 21 years. “Today will be recorded as a historic day, marking a new leap forward in our bilateral relations,” Lee said, speaking alongside Lula at a joint press announcement in Seoul on Monday. The two leaders agreed to upgrade their countries’ relationship to a “strategic partnership” and strengthen exchanges in areas including trade, cultural content and aviation. “Cooperation between the two countries will advance to a higher level going forward, including a joint development of next-generation civil aircraft,” Lee said. After the summit meeting, South Korea and Brazil signed 10 memorandum of understanding documents, covering areas such as critical minerals and artificial intelligence. Brazil is home to the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earths, while South Korean companies Samsung Electronics Ltd. and SK Hynix are two of the world’s biggest semiconductor manufacturers. Lula’s Seoul trip follows his visit to New Delhi where Brazil and India sealed a framework pact on critical minerals, agreeing to work closely on processing. The agreements come just days after the US Supreme Court struck down many of President Donald Trump tariffs, a decision that risks once again upending global trade flows and injecting fresh uncertainty into cross-border commerce. After the ruling, Trump announced plans for a 15% global rate, leaving the effective ceiling for Korean goods largely unchanged. Lee also urged Lula to swiftly resume talks for a trade agreement between South Korea and the Mercosur bloc — a South American regional trade bloc founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay to promote free trade and economic integration. Read more: South Korea’s Early Exports Sur...
Honeywell International Inc. secured an agreement to cut the price of its acquisition of Johnson Matthey Plc ’s Catalyst Technologies to salvage the deal, people familiar with the matter said. The industrials conglomerate, which was considering walking away from the transaction, reached a last-minute agreement to pay about £1.325 billion ($1.79 billion) for the business, according to the people, w...
Honeywell International Inc. secured an agreement to cut the price of its acquisition of Johnson Matthey Plc ’s Catalyst Technologies to salvage the deal, people familiar with the matter said. The industrials conglomerate, which was considering walking away from the transaction, reached a last-minute agreement to pay about £1.325 billion ($1.79 billion) for the business, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the information is private. The new price is down from £1.8 billion in cash that Honeywell had agreed in May to pay for the unit, which produces enzymes for industrial processes. The companies could announce the amended terms as early as Monday, the people said. They also agreed on extending the deal’s long stop date to this summer to accommodate any outstanding transaction requirements, the people added. Representatives for Honeywell and Johnson Matthey couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Honeywell had been considering walking away from the deal, Bloomberg News reported earlier , in what would’ve been a blow to Johnson Matthey’s efforts to turn around the business by focusing on clean air and platinum group metal chemicals. The British company’s shares soared after the deal was initially announced. They’re up by almost 60% over the last 12 months.
Berlin dentists entrusted €2.2 billion ($2.6 billion) in retirement savings to a group of colleagues with more experience filling cavities than managing money. Now half of it is gone. Headed by a committee of half a dozen dentists and oral surgeons, their pension fund plowed more than 70% of its assets into private loans, stakes in unlisted companies and property investments. Several struggled or ...
Berlin dentists entrusted €2.2 billion ($2.6 billion) in retirement savings to a group of colleagues with more experience filling cavities than managing money. Now half of it is gone. Headed by a committee of half a dozen dentists and oral surgeons, their pension fund plowed more than 70% of its assets into private loans, stakes in unlisted companies and property investments. Several struggled or went bust, from a California plastic recycler to a northern German shrimp farm and a Berlin insurance startup. In some cases, it poured good money after bad, enabling companies to pay interest on other debt, according to a court filing by the pension fund known by its German acronym VZB. In an effort to recover at least some losses, the Berlin-based fund has started legal proceedings against its former auditor, an adviser and elected members of its own governing bodies, including the former chairman of the administrative committee, Ingo Rellermeier. Ralph Wohltmann, a veteran director at VZB with a degree in public administration who played a key role in the investments, has departed. A lawyer for Rellermeier said his client rejects VZB’s allegations. A lawyer for Wohltmann declined to comment, citing a separate pending court case over his role in the matter. VZB’s deals contributed to an estimated €1.1 billion in losses, a spectacular collapse that has put a spotlight on the governance and controls at the country’s profession-based pension funds. Often overseen by people with little investing background, and with regulatory supervision fragmented along state lines, they have popped up as backers of many high-flying real estate developments and other investments that went bust when interest rates rose, denting their reputation as conservative stewards of retirement assets. Defenders of the industry says VZB is an extreme outlier and that the system overall is stable. Yet others, from a small pension fund for pharmacists in northern Germany to Munich-based BVK, the largest o...
South Korea’s export-driven economy is expected to post “significantly higher” growth this year compared to last, supported by a chip boom and a stronger-than-anticipated global backdrop, the central bank said. The Bank of Korea told parliament that the semiconductor market is exhibiting a more robust cycle than previous upswings and is likely to remain stronger than usual at least through this ye...
South Korea’s export-driven economy is expected to post “significantly higher” growth this year compared to last, supported by a chip boom and a stronger-than-anticipated global backdrop, the central bank said. The Bank of Korea told parliament that the semiconductor market is exhibiting a more robust cycle than previous upswings and is likely to remain stronger than usual at least through this year. The remarks come ahead of the BOK’s updated growth and inflation forecasts due Thursday. Analysts expect the bank to raise its 2026 GDP growth projection to around 2% from the 1.8% forecast in November. Policymakers are widely seen holding the benchmark interest rate steady at 2.5%. The BOK’s preliminary data showed that the South Korean economy grew 1% last year. Read More: Rampant AI Demand for Memory Is Fueling a Growing Chip Crisis The artificial intelligence boom has driven a surge in demand for semiconductors, giving a boost to the country’s economic slowdown. Early trade data released Monday showed chip shipments jumped 134% in the first 20 days of February, underscoring sustained momentum. Read More: South Korea’s Early Exports Surge as AI Boom Fuels Chip Demand Still, uncertainties remain elevated, including US tariff policy and the pace of AI investment, the BOK cautioned. Global trade concerns resurfaced after the US Supreme Court struck down most of President Donald Trump ’s levies, a ruling that risks once again disrupting global trade flows and adding fresh uncertainty to cross-border commerce. The central bank also pointed to the recent stability in financial markets, particularly the won, which has rebounded from recent lows amid active stabilization measures and improved risk sentiment. However, it warned that volatility could increase again as domestic and external conditions shift. The won has advanced more than 2% against the dollar since late December, when the government and the Bank of Korea jointly intervened in the market while announcing measur...
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Presented by DigitalOcean From refactoring codebases to debugging production code, AI agents are already proving their value. But scaling them in production remains the exception, not the rule. In DigitalOcean’s 2026 Currents research report , based on a survey of more than 1,100 developers, CTOs, and founders, 67% of organizations using agents report productivity gains. Meanwhile, 60% of responde...
Presented by DigitalOcean From refactoring codebases to debugging production code, AI agents are already proving their value. But scaling them in production remains the exception, not the rule. In DigitalOcean’s 2026 Currents research report , based on a survey of more than 1,100 developers, CTOs, and founders, 67% of organizations using agents report productivity gains. Meanwhile, 60% of respondents say applications and agents represent the greatest long-term value in the AI stack. Yet, only 10% are scaling agents in production. The top blocker? Forty-nine percent cite the high cost of inference . It's not just the price of a single API call. It's the compounding cost as agents chain tasks and run autonomously. Nearly half of respondents now spend 76–100% of their AI budget on inference alone. This is a problem DigitalOcean is working to solve. What's needed is infrastructure designed around inference economics: predictable performance, cost control under load, and fewer moving parts. That's how 2026 becomes the year agents graduate from pilot to product. 52% of companies are actively implementing AI solutions (including agents) Just a year ago when we ran this survey, only 35% of respondents were actively implementing AI solutions — most were still in exploration mode or running their first projects. Now it’s 52%. The shift from "let's see what this can do" to "let's put this into production" is well underway. There's an agent boom underneath these numbers. 46% of those respondents are specifically deploying AI agents, autonomous systems that execute tasks on their own rather than wait for instructions at every step. OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot and Clawdbot) is one recent example, an open-source assistant that connects to messaging apps, browses the web, executes shell commands, and runs tasks autonomously. Where are those agents going? Mostly into code and operations: 54% said code generation and refactoring, making it the clear frontrunner 49% are automating inte...
PM Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images The WisdomTree U.S. Quality Growth Fund ETF ( QGRW ) offers a portfolio with a strong technology tilt while exhibiting above-average profitability metrics due to a stock selection with a large weighting in big tech names. While the fund has not significantly changed its sector mix since my last review a year ago, the increased allocation to industrials and ...
PM Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images The WisdomTree U.S. Quality Growth Fund ETF ( QGRW ) offers a portfolio with a strong technology tilt while exhibiting above-average profitability metrics due to a stock selection with a large weighting in big tech names. While the fund has not significantly changed its sector mix since my last review a year ago, the increased allocation to industrials and communication services is consistent with the fund’s mandate, as industrials stocks and core holdings in communication services (Alphabet and Meta Platforms) are typically above-average growth players. From here, though the large technology exposure may be a concern at a time when many started to question the impact of AI and heavy investments on the bottom line, QGRW seems to benefit from a concentrated portfolio in big players like NVIDIA, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms, which I see as having healthier fundamentals than the sector in general, making this fund a good option for growth exposure. The coming sections will break down the fund’s holdings and compare valuation, performance, and volatility with other funds focused on quality and growth, as well as the broader equity market. ETF Description & Highlights QGRW is an ETF that offers exposure primarily to U.S. mid- and large-caps with an above-average growth profile and healthy fundamentals. The fund tracks the WisdomTree U.S. Quality Growth Index, managed by American Century Investment Management. Starting from an initial universe of the 1,000 largest U.S. companies, the index first screens for quality measures such as profitability, return on assets, return on equity, and momentum. The index then weights the selected companies according to a growth score, determined by the following metrics: sales, earnings, and cash flow growth, as well as valuation ratios, like P/E and P/B. The index is rebalanced monthly, which suggests a high turnover, and reconstituted quarterly. As of February 17, QGRW had $2.1 billion in assets...
The world’s No 9-ranked team, who have been largely absent from international competitions for over a decade, is reaping the benefits of state-sponsored investment In 1986, when Norwegian delegate Ellen Wille stood on stage at Fifa’s annual congress in Mexico and demanded the creation of a World Cup for women, it sparked support from one of the room’s unlikeliest allies. Delegates from North Korea...
The world’s No 9-ranked team, who have been largely absent from international competitions for over a decade, is reaping the benefits of state-sponsored investment In 1986, when Norwegian delegate Ellen Wille stood on stage at Fifa’s annual congress in Mexico and demanded the creation of a World Cup for women, it sparked support from one of the room’s unlikeliest allies. Delegates from North Korea, so the story goes, were inspired by Wille’s speech and returned to Pyongyang with a plan: to use women’s football as a tool to reassert their collapsing power on the world stage. The plan was simple: starting in the late 1980s, the government would invest heavily in the women’s game, inserting football programs into school curriculums, establishing women’s teams in the military where players trained full-time, creating youth talent identification pathways, and constructing brand-new facilities across the country. Continue reading...
FGE NexantECA Chairman Emeritus Fereidun Fesharaki believes an open conflict between the US and Iran could push prices into the $75-$90 per barrel range, depending on export disruptions. He speaks with Haslinda Amin on "Insight with Haslinda Amin." (Source: Bloomberg)
FGE NexantECA Chairman Emeritus Fereidun Fesharaki believes an open conflict between the US and Iran could push prices into the $75-$90 per barrel range, depending on export disruptions. He speaks with Haslinda Amin on "Insight with Haslinda Amin." (Source: Bloomberg)
Companies in the Philippines are stepping up efforts to limit foreign exchange risks as global uncertainty fuels sharp swings in the peso, according to Bank of America Corp . “A lot of them do hedging and it’s very helpful for them, especially with the peso becoming very volatile,” Vince Valdepenas , the bank’s country head, said in an interview on Friday. Firms have been actively using forwards, ...
Companies in the Philippines are stepping up efforts to limit foreign exchange risks as global uncertainty fuels sharp swings in the peso, according to Bank of America Corp . “A lot of them do hedging and it’s very helpful for them, especially with the peso becoming very volatile,” Vince Valdepenas , the bank’s country head, said in an interview on Friday. Firms have been actively using forwards, cross-currency swaps and offshore solutions offered by the bank, he said, with both local firms and multinationals increasing their activity amid currency turbulence. The pickup in hedging reflects how Philippine corporates are managing risks tied to global interest rate shifts and geopolitical tensions which have roiled emerging-market currencies. Fresh uncertainty over US tariff policies has now compounded existing market jitters, pushing companies to lock in exchange rates and protect margins against further volatility. Bank of America expects the peso to strengthen to 57 per dollar by the end of 2026, after the currency slid to a record low of 59.50 in January. It traded at 57.73 against the greenback at 12:35 p.m. in Manila on Monday. The US lender revived its foreign exchange business in the Philippines in 2024, reinforcing its presence in a market where it was among the first overseas banks to establish operations. The lender is also evaluating plans to broaden its bonds business onshore. Valdepenas “sees a gradual recovery story” for the Philippine economy this year. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is likely to keep its key interest rate steady for the rest of the year following its sixth consecutive rate cut last week, unless the US Federal Reserve moves to ease policy more aggressively, he added. BSP Says to Support Growth to Extent It Won’t Spur Inflation Why Is the Philippine Peso So Weak and Who Benefits?: QuickTake Philippine Peso Rally Seen Fading on Growth Risks, Rate-Cut Bets
A cash-heavy balance sheet is often a sign of strength, but not always. Some companies avoid debt because they have weak business models, limited expansion opportunities, or inconsistent cash flow.
A cash-heavy balance sheet is often a sign of strength, but not always. Some companies avoid debt because they have weak business models, limited expansion opportunities, or inconsistent cash flow.
Md Zakir Mahmud/iStock via Getty Images The NHS-Galleri Trial Results The NHS-Galleri trial was designed to answer the most important question facing multi-cancer early detection before it is widely commercially adopted: can annual blood-based screening reduce late-stage cancer diagnoses at the overall population level? It was a randomized, controlled trial of more than 140,000 asymptomatic indivi...
Md Zakir Mahmud/iStock via Getty Images The NHS-Galleri Trial Results The NHS-Galleri trial was designed to answer the most important question facing multi-cancer early detection before it is widely commercially adopted: can annual blood-based screening reduce late-stage cancer diagnoses at the overall population level? It was a randomized, controlled trial of more than 140,000 asymptomatic individuals aged 50 to 77 within England's National Health Service. Participants underwent three annual screening rounds. The primary endpoint was a statistically significant reduction in combined Stage III-IV cancers compared with standard-of-care screening alone. As reported by the GRAIL, Inc. ( GRAL ) in its latest Form 8-K filing, that primary endpoint was not met. That is to say, the trial did not prove, with data with statistically significant confidence, that Galleri tests lead to a significant reduction in risks of combined Stage III-IV cancers. When a study is designed around a specific endpoint, missing it fundamentally alters, if it does not foreclose, the regulatory pathway and the commercial prospect. This miss has been the headline because it is the bottom line. However, the data were not all negative in a clinical sense. In a pre-specified group of 12 deadly cancers that account for a large share of mortality, there was a meaningful reduction in Stage IV diagnoses, particularly in the second and third screening rounds, where reductions exceeded 20 percent. There was also a substantial increase in Stage I and Stage II detections, and overall cancer detection improved fourfold when Galleri was added to existing screening programs. No significant safety concerns emerged, which should not surprise anyone, as all that a patient needs to do is have their blood drawn in a clinic and wait for the testing results, which yours truly actually went through last year. Clinically, this suggests stage-shifting may well be occurring. Detecting more cancers earlier and fewer at met...
A Supreme Court ruling that gutted the legal foundation for much of US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime has left Asian trading partners scratching their heads about the future of trade deals struck with Washington over the past 12 months. America’s apex court ruled on Friday that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – which Trump had used to impose sweeping “reciprocal” ta...
A Supreme Court ruling that gutted the legal foundation for much of US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime has left Asian trading partners scratching their heads about the future of trade deals struck with Washington over the past 12 months. America’s apex court ruled on Friday that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – which Trump had used to impose sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs since his “Liberation Day” proclamation last April – did not grant the president the power to...
Twenty people were trapped inside a lift at Tokyo Skytree tower from Sunday night for more than five hours, the operator said, adding that the facility, which is Japan’s tallest broadcasting tower and a popular tourist spot, will be closed throughout Monday for safety checks. The passengers, including children, were stranded when the lift came to a sudden stop about 30 metres above street level, a...
Twenty people were trapped inside a lift at Tokyo Skytree tower from Sunday night for more than five hours, the operator said, adding that the facility, which is Japan’s tallest broadcasting tower and a popular tourist spot, will be closed throughout Monday for safety checks. The passengers, including children, were stranded when the lift came to a sudden stop about 30 metres above street level, according to police. They were all rescued and no one was injured. An emergency call was made at...
Some affected residents have continued to express reservations over a Hong Kong government plan to resettle survivors of the Tai Po fire, saying they prefer in situ development as they fear an “unfair” flat selection process will leave their families with smaller homes. The residents urged the government to provide more clarity on how the new homes will be allocated, a day after they were offered ...
Some affected residents have continued to express reservations over a Hong Kong government plan to resettle survivors of the Tai Po fire, saying they prefer in situ development as they fear an “unfair” flat selection process will leave their families with smaller homes. The residents urged the government to provide more clarity on how the new homes will be allocated, a day after they were offered an acquisition price of HK$8,000 or HK$10,500 per square foot, along with thousands of subsidised...
India's Richest Man, Mukesh Ambani, Is Taking On Elon Musk's Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta With Budget-Friendly Smart Glasses, Robots - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Benzinga
India's Richest Man, Mukesh Ambani, Is Taking On Elon Musk's Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta With Budget-Friendly Smart Glasses, Robots - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Benzinga