Leak has shown how Africa’s richest woman built her empire, but how did it happen?
Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola, claims to be a self-made businesswoman, but a cache of documents investigated by the Guardian and partners appears to tell a different story.
The Luanda Leaks are a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts that help explain how Dos Santos built a business empire worth an estimated $2bn.
Continue reading...Sars-like virus has infected nearly 50 people in China, killing two, with cases also detected in Japan and Thailand
Australia’s top health official says there is “no current need” to enhance existing airport screening measures to target an unknown Sars-like virus that has infected nearly 50 people in China and killed two since it was reported on New Year’s Eve.
Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, said authorities in Australia were “watching developments very closely” but had not issued a travel warning.
Continue reading...Kristalina Georgieva compares today with “roaring 1920s” and criticises UK wealth gap
The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy risks a return of the Great Depression, driven by inequality and financial sector instability.
Speaking at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington, Kristalina Georgieva said new IMF research, which compares the current economy to the “roaring 1920s” that culminated in the great market crash of 1929, revealed that a similar trend was already under way.
Continue reading...Downgrading of Auberge du Pont de Collonges to two-star establishment prompts fury
The world of French fine dining has become embroiled in yet another ratings row due to the removal of the three-star Michelin ranking from renowned chef Paul Bocuse’s restaurant, almost two years after his death.
The Auberge du Pont de Collonges, situated near the gastronomic capital of Lyon in south-east France, was the oldest three-starred restaurant in the world, having held the ranking without interruption since 1965.
Continue reading...£395m trade boost is aimed at countering China’s spending on the continent
Britain has unveiled plans to channel part of the £14bn aid budget through the City as it seeks to exploit the global reach of the finance sector to boost investment in Africa.
Details of the £395m package were announced by the international development secretary, Alok Sharma, ahead of a high-level UK-Africa investment summit next Monday.
Continue reading...The film business used to run on hunches. Now, data analytics is far more effective than humans at predicting hits and eliminating flops. Is this a brave new world – or the death knell of creativity?
If Sunspring is anything to go by, artificial intelligence in film-making has some way to go. This short film, made as an entry to Sci-Fi London’s 48-hour film-making competition in 2016, was written entirely by an AI. The director, Oscar Sharp, fed a few hundred sci-fi screenplays into a long short-term memory recurrent neural network (the type of software behind predictive text in a smartphone), then told it to write its own. The result was almost, but not quite, incoherent nonsense, riddled with cryptic nonsequiturs, bizarre turns of phrase and unfathomable stage directions such as “he is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor”. All of which Sharp and his actors filmed with sincere commitment.
“In a future with mass unemployment, young people are forced to sell blood,” says a man in a shiny gold jacket. “You should see the boy and shut up. I was the one who was going to be a hundred years old,” replies a woman fiddling with some electronics. The man vomits up an eyeball. A second man says: “Well, I have to go to the skull.” And so forth. An unwitting viewer might be unsure whether they were watching meaningless nonsense or a lost Tarkovsky script.
Continue reading...Jeff Bezos pledges funds to help digitise small businesses as anti-Amazon protests spread
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has pledged to invest $1bn (£776m) in small businesses in India, despite a growing backlash against the online retailer by the country’s powerful local traders.
During a three-day visit to India, where Amazon has its sights set on dominating the burgeoning e-commerce market, Bezos laid out his ambitious plans for Amazon’s investment in India over the next five years, including helping to digitise millions of small businesses.
Continue reading...President signs first phase of new agreement with China, hours after Democrats named team that will prosecute him in Senate
Donald Trump has signed the first phase of a new trade agreement with China after two years of tension between the two superpowers that have rattled economies around the world.
Related: Trump vaunts his China trade pact – but some say it’s too little, too late
Continue reading...It was five decades after crisps were invented that flavouring was applied: cheese and onion. Now you can buy varieties from bratwurst to spiced cola. But what inspired this explosion?
When she was a little girl in Essex in the 50s, Linda Miller would go over to her neighbour Barbara’s house every Friday night and together they would sit on the front step eating crisps. There was only one flavour widely available back then – Smith’s plain potato crisps, which came with a small blue sachet of salt that could be sprinkled over them. One Friday night, the two friends struck upon an idea. “We thought we’d invented a new crisp,” says 68-year-old Miller. Inspired by their weekly fish and chip takeaway, the pair “saturated” their plain crisps with a bottle of vinegar. “It was lovely, lovely – very tasty,” Miller says. “When salt and vinegar crisps came out, I remember thinking: ‘They’re not as good as what we do.’”
Crisps were first mass-produced in the early 20th century, but the first flavoured crisp was released only in the late 50s, after Joe “Spud” Murphy, the owner of the Irish company Tayto, developed a technique to add cheese and onion seasoning during production. Salt and vinegar crisps were launched throughout the UK a decade later, in 1967, when Miller was 16.
Continue reading...Commissioner says Europe will seek fishery access and UK will want concessions for City
The EU’s trade commissioner has suggested there could be a last-minute trade-off with Brussels offering the City of London access to European markets in return for European fleets retaining their fishing rights in British waters.
The UK’s financial services sector will lose its automatic right to serve Europe-based clients at the end of the transition period and the EU will need to negotiate access to UK waters for its fishing boats.
Continue reading...Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenković, hinted at move to ensure level playing field
The EU will be unashamedly “political” and block the City of London’s access to European markets if Boris Johnson tries to exempt the UK from its laws.
Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenković, whose country is taking over the presidency of the EU, made the bloc’s intentions clear after the prime minister insisted the UK would not be aligned to the bloc’s regulations.
Continue reading...Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, ousted amid the worst crisis in the company’s history, will depart with stock and pension awards worth more than $60m, the company announced on Friday.
Related: Boeing: internal emails reveal chaos and incompetence at 737 Max factory
Continue reading...Congo-Brazzaville and Chad among hardest hit as campaigners warn spiralling repayments could trigger disaster
Poorer countries are cutting public spending in response to a “growing debt crisis”, campaigners have warned.
Debt in some countries has trebled according to new figures that calculate debt reimbursements, and their impact on government expenditure, in 60 countries.
Continue reading...Communications from April 2017 show employees saying plane ‘designed by clowns who are supervised by monkeys’
Boeing on Thursday released hundreds of internal messages that raise serious questions about its development of simulators and the 737 Max that was grounded in March after two fatal crashes, prompting outrage from US lawmakers.
In an April 2017 exchange of instant messages, two employees expressed complaints about the Max following references to issues with the plane’s flight management computer. “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” one unnamed employee wrote.
Continue reading...Experts say debris fragments and sudden loss of fail-safe systems point to missile
To civil aviation professionals, including pilots, engineers and former crash investigators, there was something immediately puzzling about the crash of the Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet that fell burning out of the sky minutes after takeoff from Tehran.
Conversation on forums, and in a risk assessment that was rapidly produced by the organisations OpsGroup, pointed to the sudden and catastrophic nature of the event, including the loss of both communications and tracking systems.
Continue reading...Japan hits back at former Nissan boss after fugitive attacks its controversial justice system
Japan has hit back at Carlos Ghosn after the former Nissan boss’s criticisms of the country’s justice system after his dramatic escape to Lebanon, as Beirut prosecutors issued a travel ban for the fugitive.
Masako Mori, Japan’s justice minister, on Thursday accused Ghosn of making “abstract, unclear or baseless assertions” about the Japanese criminal justice system, and said his flight was unjustified.
Continue reading...East Gippsland and Victoria’s north-east told to evacuate as NSW braces for heatwave and firefighters battle Kangaroo Island blaze
Residents in large areas of Victoria have again been advised to leave their homes before a day of “extreme” fire conditions throughout south-eastern Australia that could see the merging of at least two major fires.
At least 5% of Victoria has already burned. Authorities sent a text message to East Gippsland and the north-east region on Thursday advising people within the at-risk area, which extends from the New South Wales border to the coast, to evacuate before “heat spike” conditions on Friday.
Continue reading...Two high-ranking African Americans allege that discrimination at fast-food company worsened under former CEO Steve Easterbrook
McDonald’s is being sued by two African American executives who allege they suffered “systematic but covert” racial discrimination at the fast-food giant.
Vicki Guster-Hines and Domineca Neal, senior directors working for McDonald’s in Dallas, allege that discrimination at the company worsened under the former chief executive Steve Easterbrook, who took over the company in 2015.
Continue reading...Rumors of Middle East war used to inevitably lead to soaring gas prices but fracking revolution has changed the market landscape
For many older Americans the thought of war in the Middle East will trigger memories of soaring gas prices and long lines at the pumps. But as US relations with Iran sink to a new low there is, as yet, no sign of panic.
Related: By killing Qassem Suleimani, Trump has achieved the impossible: uniting Iran | Dina Esfandiary
Continue reading...Fires will cripple consumer confidence and harm industries such as farming and tourism, Moody’s says
The economic damage from the bushfires devastating Australia’s eastern seaboard is likely to exceed the record $4.4bn set by 2009’s Black Saturday blazes, Moody’s Analytics has said.
The Moody’s economist Katrina Ell said the fires would further cripple Australia’s already anaemic consumer confidence, increasing the chances of a rate cut next month, as well as causing damage to the economy through increased air pollution and direct harm to industries such as farming and tourism.
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