G7 unity under stress as it wrestles with Iran, Amazon fires and trade

Current Affairs

G7 leaders close their summit on Monday with discussion of world problems including the fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest, but overshadowed by President Donald Trump's trade wars and questions over the group's unity.
The summit in Biarritz, a high-end surfers' paradise in southwestern France, saw a dramatic shift of focus Saturday when Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif flew in to discuss the diplomatic deadlock on Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.
Zarif's presence had not been expected and it represented a gamble by French host Emmanuel Macron who is seeking to soothe spiralling tensions between Iran and the United States.
The Iranian top diplomat didn't meet Trump, French diplomats said, but the presence of the two men in the same place at least sparked hopes of a detente. Just this July, the US government imposed heavy sanctions seeking to hamper Zarif's travel, and effectively banning him from the United States.
"Road ahead is difficult. But worth trying," the US-educated Zarif tweeted after meeting Macron and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, as well as British and German representatives.
French officials said Trump, who has imposed crippling sanctions on the Iranian economy over its nuclear programme, had been aware of the arrival.

 The sources suggested that the secretive visit had also been discussed during an impromptu two-hour lunch between the US president and Macron on Saturday."We work with full transparency with the Americans," one diplomat told reporters on condition of anonymity, despite US media reports that the White House had been taken by surprise...Read More

British insurer Aviva overhauls UK biz, plans to cut 1,800 jobs globally

Company News

British insurer Aviva will change the structure of its UK business and cut costs across the firm, with the loss of 1,800 jobs, it said on Thursday.
Aviva said it would make cost cuts of 300 million pounds ($380.22 million) over three years, in a statement ahead of its first investor day under new Chief Executive Maurice Tulloch.
The cost base in 2018 was four billion pounds, an Aviva spokeswoman said.
Following the departure of Andy Briggs, head of the life and general insurer's UK business and a contender for the top job, Aviva said it would review its UK life and general insurance businesses.
Its UK digital business, housed in a former garage in the City's tech district, will be incorporated into the general insurance business, Aviva said.
Angela Darlington has been appointed interim Chief Executive Officer of UK life and Colm Holmes CEO of general insurance across the group, including Britain.
"Today is the first step in our plan to make Aviva simpler, more competitive and more commercial," Tulloch said in the statement. "Reducing Aviva's costs is essential."
Aviva employs 30,000 people and its international markets include Canada, France, Ireland and Asia.

 Aviva said trading to date had been in line with 2018 and reiterated its commitment to a progressive dividend policy.

Now you can access 300 magazines with Apple News Plus subscription service

Technology News

Apple, a Cupertino, US-based technology giant, on March 25 announced the Apple News+ -- a news subscription service with content from over 300 magazines, newspapers and digital publishers. Available only in the US and Canada currently, the service is available via app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. The app will be available in UK and Australia from later this year.

Apple News+ subscribers can access current and past issues and individual articles from magazines such as The Atlantic, Better Homes & Gardens, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, ELLE, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN The Magazine, Esquire, Food & Wine, Good Housekeeping, GQ, Health, InStyle, Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, People, Real Simple, Rolling Stone, Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, TIME, Travel + Leisure, Vanity Fair, Vogue, WIRED and Woman’s Day.

In addition, Apple News+ includes The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper. Apple News+ also provides access to premium online publications such as theSkimm, The Highlight by Vox, New York Magazine’s sites Vulture, The Cut and Grub Street, and Extra Crunch from Verizon Media’s TechCrunch.

Pricing and availability

Apple News+ is currently available in the US for $9.99 a month and in Canada for $12.99 a month. Customers can sign up for a free one-month trial, and the plan automatically renews after the trial ends.


 To sign up for Apple News+, customers must update to iOS 12.2 or macOS 10.14.4. Through Family Sharing, up to six family members can share one Apple News+ subscription. Apple News+ will be available in the UK and Australia later this year.

Apple has News: Launches $10 monthly magazine, subscription service

Technology News
Apple Inc. presented its long-anticipated magazine subscription service on Monday, bundling access to selected glossy titles, websites, and newspapers for $10 a month.

The new service, called Apple News+, will be incorporated into the existing Apple News app that comes pre-installed on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, Roger Rosner, vice president of applications, said Monday at an event at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

More than 300 magazines will be part of the service, he said. It will also include The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, but not The Washington Post or The New York Times. Bloomberg Businessweek will be part of the magazine section. A demonstration showed that some magazines, like National Geographic, have dynamic, moving covers.

The service launches today for $9.99 a month, with the first month free. It will be available in the U.S. and Canada, with the U.K. and Australia coming later in the year.

The News+ service will be its own tab in the existing News app and won’t interrupt the free section, the demo showed. Magazines can be downloaded automatically for offline reading. The News+ tab features access to magazine cover stories, new issues, and individual articles. Magazine creators are tweaking their issues depending on whether the story is read on an iPhone or the bigger iPad screen.
The magazine bundle is part of a collection of new services Apple is rolling out as it seeks to boost revenue from sources other than the iPhone.


 The magazine service is based on an application called Texture, which Apple acquired about a year ago. Texture had agreements with more than 200 magazines...Read More

Smaller nations are the world's healthiest, Canada tops list

Current Affairs

There’s more to life than money, and economists know it. As new assessments of global living standards proliferate, attempting to gauge how healthy, happy and successful humans are depending on where they live, a pattern is slowly emerging.

While slight variations in data can throw up different winners, smaller countries are increasingly dominating the top of the lists while big countries with booming economies fall behind.

A new analysis, the Global Wellness Index published by investment firm LetterOne, ranks Canada as the best country out of the 151 nations evaluated. The US trails far behind, coming in at 37. In a tighter ranking of G-20 nations combined with the 20 most populous countries on the planet, South Africa comes in dead last, below Ukraine, Egypt and Iraq.

Based on a basket of metrics ranging from government healthcare spending to rates of depression, alcohol use, smoking, happiness and exercise, the new index is the latest attempt by economists to evaluate the world beyond economic growth. Last month, Bloomberg’s own research named Spain the world’s healthiest country.

A common thread in both surveys, and others like them, is that the top ranks are increasingly filled with smaller countries. This may be tied to researchers developing new metrics for the modern world, measures that don’t necessarily correlate economic health with actual health—let alone wellness—at the expense of other, more nuanced barometers.


 “The old concerns about growth—that it does not include every country, or every person in growing countries—are ever present,” said Richard Davies, a former Bank of England and UK Treasury economist who compiled the Global Wellness Index...Read More

Why China's 5G riches are outside the reach of international investors

International News:

How can investors profit from China’s race with the U.S. for 5G supremacy? Finding the answer is as tricky as figuring out the geopolitics.

The nation’s sleepy telecom stocks came back to life after Huawei Technologies Co. CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada in early December. While the official charge was that the company had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran, many in China interpreted the action as another attempt by the American government to thwart the country’s advance in 5G. Huawei leads the world in the number of declared essential patents for next-generation wireless technology, according to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

The Chinese equipment maker’s woes have only served to spark investor enthusiasm for anything 5G. On Dec. 7, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology awarded 5G spectrum licenses to its three telecom operators, allowing them to conduct final trials before widespread commercial rollout in 2020. A month later, the government said it will issue temporary licenses in some cities as early as this year. Unlike Europe and the U.S., China is wasting no time in moving ahead on 5G.


 Shares of wireless antenna makers and state-owned China Tower Corp. have been on fire. The monopoly operator of mobile-phone masts has gained more than 40 percent in Hong Kong since early December, bringing its market capitalization to $37 billion. On Monday, when Chinese traders returned after the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, the dozen or so mainland-listed companies that manufacture wireless antennas jumped 4.3 percent. Hong Kong-listed Comba Telecom Systems Holdings Ltd. has soared more than 70 percent.