US Business

South Korea’s capital launched its first self-driving bus route on Friday, part of an experiment which engineers said aims to make people feel more comfortable with driverless vehicles on the roads.

The new vehicle does not look like a regular bus and has rounded edges along with large windows that make it appear more like a toy than a technological breakthrough.

This design is intentional, said Jeong Seong-gyun, head of autonomous driving at 42dot, the start-up responsible for the self-driving technology that is now owned by auto giant Hyundai.

“This is the future,” he told AFP, adding that the bus required “a considerable new type of design”.

The bus looks a bit “like Lego” and is made of composite parts to help keep costs down and make it easy to replicate, he said.

It uses cameras and lasers to navigate the way instead of expensive sensors, Seong-gyun added.

The company’s goal was to make the technology low-cost, safe and easily transferable to many types of vehicle in the future, for example delivery trucks.

For now — with a safety driver monitoring closely — the bus will drive itself around a small 3.4-kilometre (2.1-mile) circuit in downtown Seoul that takes around 20 minutes.

The public can board at two designated stops after booking a free seat through an app.

“I feel like I’ve just hopped into a time machine to visit the future,” said Kim Yi hae-ran, 68, after her 20-minute ride during the launch of the bus Friday.

“I thought it might make me dizzy from a sudden acceleration but I didn’t feel any of it.”

The ride felt “very smooth and safe”, which she said made her feel proud of the technological progress the South Korean company has made.

Nurses across most of Britain will next month hold the first strikes in their union’s 106-year history, joining a host of other UK workers taking industrial action over pay.

Staff in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — but not Scotland — will walk out on December 15 and 20, after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union said the government had turned down an offer of negotiations.

It will be the latest industrial action in Britain, where decades-high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis have prompted staff in various sectors to demand pay rises to keep up with spiralling prices.

RCN England director Patricia Marquis on Friday apologised to patients who would have operations or treatments cancelled, and said it was about “nurses standing up for themselves but also critically for patients”.

“We are sorry for any disruption that’s caused but actually, unless we do this, we don’t see any prospects of things changing any time soon,” she told Sky News. 

The nurses’ strike will be sandwiched between the first of a series of two-day walkouts by national railway workers, while postal service employees will stage fresh stoppages in the run-up to Christmas.

Numerous other public and private sector staff, from lawyers to airport ground personnel, have also held strikes this year.

“Nursing staff have had enough of being taken for granted, enough of low pay and unsafe staffing levels, enough of not being able to give our patients the care they deserve,” said RCN head Pat Cullen.

The union, which wants a pay rise significantly above inflation, announced earlier this month that a ballot of its more than 300,000 members had found a majority in favour of strikes.

“Ministers have had more than two weeks since we confirmed that our members felt such injustice that they would strike for the first time,” Cullen said, adding that an offer of formal negotiations was declined.

“They have the power and the means to stop this by opening serious talks that address our dispute.”

– ‘Challenging times ‘ –

Amid the waves of industrial action, British inflation has continued its recent surge, reaching a 41-year high of 11.1 percent in October on soaring energy and food bills.

Bosses in the NHS said in September that nurses were skipping meals to feed and clothe their children and struggling to afford rising transport costs.

One in four hospitals had set up foodbanks to support staff, according to NHS Providers, which represents hospital groups in England.

The government says it has accepted independent pay recommendations, and given over one million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 ($1,590) this year. 

That follows on from a three percent increase last year when public sector pay was frozen.

But the RCN says this leaves experienced nurses worse off by 20 percent in real terms due to successive below-inflation awards since 2010.

In Scotland, the union has paused announcing strike action after the devolved government in Edinburgh, which has responsibility for health policy, reopened pay talks.

UK health minister Steve Barclay said he was “hugely grateful for the hard work and dedication” of nurses and regretted the strikes.

The NHS has “tried and tested plans” to minimise disruption and ensure emergency services continue, he added.

“These are challenging times for everyone and the economic circumstances mean the RCN’s demands, which on current figures are a 19.2 percent pay rise, costing £10 billion a year, are not affordable,” he said.

His door remained open to the RCN to discuss “way we can improve nurses’ working lives”, he added in a tweet.

The RCN has questioned the UK government’s economic rationale, noting it spends billions of pounds on agency staff to plug workforce gaps.

It points to independent research it commissioned indicating that the finance ministry would recoup 81 percent of the initial outlay of a significant pay rise through higher tax receipts and savings on future recruitment and retention costs.

In the last year, 25,000 nursing staff left the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register, it said. 

Other UK health unions are also balloting workers for industrial action, while ambulance staff in Scotland are due to walk out on Monday.

Meanwhile, across the wider economy, numerous sectors look set to continue their strikes into the new year.

Asian markets were mixed on Friday at the end of a week in which hopes that the Fed will tone down its monetary tightening campaign were offset by fresh Covid lockdown fears in China.

With Wall Street closed for the Thanksgiving break, trading was light with few catalysts to drive action on trading floors and investors looking ahead to the release of US jobs data next week.

The mood across markets picked up this month as a series of indicators suggested the US economy, the world’s largest, was showing signs of weakness after the Federal Reserve ramped up interest rates.

The standout reports were consumer and wholesale inflation, which came in much lower than forecast and provided the central bank with room to row back on its hawkishness.

And while a selection of Fed officials lined up to warn there was more tightening to come, there is an expectation that the days of bumper 75 basis-point increases are gone.

That has slightly eased worries that the sharp rise in borrowing costs could tip the US economy into recession, though many observers still see a contraction coming.

SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes said there was a “market consensus bias to believe that US headline inflation will continue to ease substantially over the next month or two and that the tail risks around (more than five percent interest rates) have dropped sharply”.

“After all, a step down to 50 basis points in December would be an unambiguous signal that peak hawkishness has passed.”

Asian equities struggled at end of the week, however, with Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, Mumbai, Bangkok and Jakarta all down.

There were gains in Shanghai, Sydney, Wellington and Manila.

London rose at the open while Paris and Frankfurt were flat.

Regional sentiment was sapped by ongoing fears about the spike in Covid cases in China, which authorities are trying to contain with a series of targeted measures in big cities including Beijing and Shanghai, though they are short of full-on lockdowns.

Still, Innes said there appeared to be less concern about the government’s reaction as it looks to ease parts of its strict Covid-zero strategy.

“Stock and currency market investors are tentatively looking through the current lockdown regime while betting on the more optimistic interpretation that China is hitting the limits of ‘Covid-zero’ and the authorities’ efforts to loosen restrictions will continue,” he added.

Meanwhile, Jun Bei Liu, at Tribeca Investment Partners, was upbeat about the outlook for Chinese markets.

“In the next 12 months things will get better,” she told Bloomberg TV.

“We have seen this playbook before across other economies. We’ll begin to see outperformance very soon in the next few quarters.”

– Key figures around 0820 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.4 percent at 28,283.03 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.5 percent at 17,573.58 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 3,101.69 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 0.1 percent at 7,470.36

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0420 from $1.0411 on Thursday

Dollar/yen: UP at 138.65 yen from 138.39 yen

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2110 from $1.2131

Euro/pound: UP at 86.05 pence from 85.82 pence

West Texas Intermediate: UP 1.0 percent at $78.68 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.7 percent at $85.97 per barrel

New York – Dow: Closed for a holiday

Six million people were on Friday under Covid lockdown in a Chinese city home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, after clashes between police and workers furious over pay.

Authorities have ordered residents of eight districts in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, not to leave the area for the next five days, building barriers around “high-risk” apartment buildings and setting up checkpoints to restrict travel.

There have been only a handful of coronavirus cases in the city.

The orders follow protests by hundreds of employees over conditions and pay at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory on the outskirts of the city, with fresh images of rallies emerging Friday.

Video footage published on social media and geolocated by AFP showed a large group of people walking down a street in the east of the city, some holding signs.

“So many people,” a man can be heard saying. AFP was unable to verify precisely when the protests took place. 

And after scores of workers left the plant Thursday with payouts of 10,000 yuan ($1,400) from Foxconn, posts on Chinese short-video apps Douyin and Kuaishou said the Taiwanese tech giant was turning away many of the thousands of people that had answered its hiring ads after a raft of departures in October.

Many of those who have arrived to take up newly vacant posts at the factory are now stuck in quarantine hotels outside the plant, multiple workers told AFP.

“We are in a quarantine hotel, and have no way of going to the Foxconn campus,” one worker who asked to remain anonymous said.

Another employee said those turned away had been promised 10,000 yuan in compensation for being forced to quarantine, but received only a fraction of that amount.

“They are not letting us start the job and we cannot return home, Zhengzhou is under lockdown,” one worker forced to quarantine in nearby Ruzhou city, after being promised employment at Foxconn, told AFP.

He added that there were multiple small-scale protests in other Henan cities by Foxconn workers made to quarantine and unable to start work.

The unrest in Zhengzhou comes against the backdrop of mounting public frustration over the government’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid, which compels local authorities to impose gruelling lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing.

With China’s daily caseload at 33,000 on Friday — a record for the country of 1.4 billion — the unrelenting zero-Covid push has sparked sporadic protests and hit productivity in the world’s second-largest economy.

In the southeastern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou, millions of people have been ordered not to leave their homes without a negative virus test.

Social media footage published on Friday and geolocated by AFP showed residents of the city’s Haizhu district dismantling barricades and throwing objects at police in hazmat attire.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” one police officer holding a shield can be heard asking as he and his colleagues back away from the projectiles.

Is it a pipe dream or possibility? Elon Musk wants to diversify Twitter’s revenue stream beyond advertising, a feat none of the biggest social networks have yet pulled off.

Something of a gold standard, social media ads can be fine-tuned and tailored to individual users on a mass scale, and have been particularly lucrative for Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, as well as Google.

“Facebook pretty much set the standard for having an ad model for social networks,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence. “But that doesn’t necessarily have to be the way that social platforms monetize.”

Social networks are facing budget cuts from inflation-afflicted advertisers and increased regulations on the use of lucrative personal data, so it makes sense for them “to be exploring new, non-ad monetization techniques,” she said.

The issue is delicate for Twitter, whose turnover is 90 percent dependent on advertising. Advertisers, on the other hand, do not necessarily need Twitter and can turn to other social networks.

The advertising situation at Twitter has been particularly dire since Musk took over the company in late October.

In recent weeks, half of Twitter’s 100 top advertisers have announced they are suspending or have otherwise “seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter,” an analysis conducted by nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters found.

They fear being associated with toxic content as Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” advocates for laxer moderation.

– Alternate solutions –

Social media sites are testing two alternate solutions in particular: charging everyday users and charging content creators. 

The forum platform Reddit has deployed a hybrid model, making money via advertising, paid subscriptions and digital coins that allow users access to special privileges.

That said, “It’s always hard to charge for something that used to be free,” said Carolina Milanesi of research firm Creative Strategies. 

“Unless you give something different or create a different product, you can’t go from not charging to charging,” she said.

While Twitter has been offering a paid subscription with additional features since last year, Musk aimed to raise the price to $8 a month and include account verification in the plan’s perks. 

A partial launch was chaotic, however, and prompted the proliferation of so many fake accounts that the rollout of so-called Twitter Blue has now been paused.

“Figuring out a way to charge users for premium features and make money off of users is not a bad idea,” Enberg said.

But she said the benefits Twitter offered may not have been enticing enough, and that the verification aspect should be more of a security feature than a monetizable feature.

Finally, because paid subscribers — arguably the most active on the network — would see 50 percent less advertising than non-paying users, the plan would “dilute the quality and the size of the addressable audience for advertisers.”

Some newer platforms are trying to do without advertising altogether, with no guarantee of long-term viability.

For example, on Discord, a live-discussion social network, subscribers have access to more emoticons.

And on the fledgling photo-sharing app BeReal, users can escape ads with in-app purchases for extra features, according to the Financial Times.

– ‘Big-name influencers’ –

Twitter had some 230 million daily active users as of June, and Musk continues to congratulate himself on growing that number since taking over.

But increased users do not necessarily translate into dollars.

Snapchat, which also launched a paid version in June, has gained more and more users, but not necessarily money.

Faced with this reality, platforms are competing for content creators to attract and retain audiences — and either taking commission or making them pay for the promotion of their messages and videos.

This represents “a really big opportunity” for Twitter, Enberg said. 

Twitter “does have a lot of celebrities and big-name influencers, politicians and journalists” with whom it could form a mutually financially beneficial relationship, she said.

Milanesi added that while the network already offers some promotional tools, they are “quite expensive, and not very effective.”

Asian markets were mixed Friday at the end of a week that has seen hopes the Federal Reserve will tone down its monetary tightening campaign offset by fresh lockdown fears as Covid-19 cases surge in China.

With Wall Street closed for the Thanksgiving break, trading was light with few catalysts to drive action on trading floors and investors now looking ahead to the release of US jobs data next week.

The mood across markets has picked up this month as a series of indicators suggested the world’s top economy was showing signs of weakness after the Fed ramped up interest rates.

The standout reports were consumer and wholesale inflation, which came in much lower than forecast and provided the central bank with room to row back on its hawkishness. 

And while a selection of Fed officials lined up to warn there was more tightening to come, there is an expectation that the days of bumper 75-basis-point increases are gone.

That has slightly eased worries that the sharp rise in borrowing costs could tip the US economy into recession, though many observers still see a contraction coming.

Asian equities struggled to end the week on a positive note, however, with Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Manila and Jakarta all down. There were gains in Shanghai, Sydney, Wellington and Taipei.

Regional sentiment was being sapped by ongoing fears about the spike in Covid cases in China, which authorities are trying to contain with a series of targeted measures in big cities including Beijing and Shanghai, though they are short of full-on lockdowns.

Still, SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes said there appeared to be less concern about the government’s reaction as it looks to ease parts of its strict Covid-zero strategy.

“Investors are recognising it’s normal for cases to increase as the Chinese economy begins its long and winding road to normalcy,” he said in a commentary.

“So stock and currency market investors are tentatively looking through the current lockdown regime while betting on the more optimistic interpretation that China is hitting the limits of ‘Covid-zero’ and the authorities’ efforts to loosen restrictions will continue.”

– Key figures around 0230 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.3 percent at 28,286.94 (break)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.3 percent at 17,435.15

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.3 percent at 3,097.12

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0415 from $1.0411 on Thursday

Dollar/yen: UP at 138.75 yen from 138.39 yen

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2100 from $1.2131

Euro/pound: UP at 86.02 pence from 85.82 pence

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.4 percent at $78.26 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.1 percent at $85.46 per barrel

New York – Dow: Closed for a holiday

London – FTSE 100: FLAT at 7,466.60 (close)

Retailers braced for their biggest test of the year: Will US consumers open their wallets wide for the Black Friday sales that kick off the holiday shopping season?

Consumer confidence is precarious, rattled by soaring inflation in the world’s biggest economy, casting uncertainty on this festive shopping season that starts the day after Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday.

A year ago, retailers faced product shortfalls in the wake of shipping backlogs and Covid-19-related factory closures. To avert a repeat, the industry front-loaded its holiday imports this year, leaving it vulnerable to oversupply at a time when consumers are cutting back.

“Supply shortages was yesterday’s problem,” said Neil Saunders, managing director for GlobalData Retail, a consultancy. “Today’s problem is having too much stuff.”

Saunders said retailers have made progress in recent months in reducing excess inventories but that oversupply created banner conditions for bargain-hunters in many categories, including electronics, home improvement and apparel.

Juameelah Henderson always checks for sales, “but more so now,” she said while exiting an Old Navy store in New York with four bags of items.

The clothing chain’s prices were “pretty good,” she said. “If it’s not on sale, I really don’t need it.”

Higher costs for gasoline and household staples like meat and cereal are an economy-wide issue, but do not burden everyone equally.

“The lower incomes are definitely hit worst by the higher inflation,” said Claire Li, a senior analyst at Moody’s. “People have to spend on the essential items.” 

– Diminishing savings –

Leading forecasts from Deloitte and the National Retail Federation project a single-digit percentage increase, but it likely won’t exceed the inflation rate.

The consumer price index has been up about eight percent on an annual basis, which means that a similar size increase in holiday sales would equate with lower volumes.

European countries like Britain and France have been marking Black Friday for a few years now, too, and are also enduring sky high inflation. So merchants there face a similar dilemma.

“Retailers are desperate for some spending cheer but the worry is that it could turn out to be more of a Bleak Friday,” said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown, said in London.

US shoppers have remained resilient throughout the myriad stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, often spending more than expected, even when consumer sentiment surveys suggest they are in a gloomy mood.

Part of the reason has been the unusually robust state of savings, with many households banking government pandemic aid payments at a time of reduced consumption due to Covid-19 restrictions.

But that cushion is starting to whittle away. After hitting $2.5 trillion in excess savings in mid-2021, the benchmark fell to $1.7 trillion in the second quarter, according to Moody’s.

Consumers with incomes below $35,000 were affected the most, with their excess savings falling nearly 39 percent between the fourth quarter of 2021 and mid-2022, according to Moody’s.

Accompanying this drop has been a rise in credit card debt visible in Federal Reserve data and anecdotally described by chains that also report more purchases made with food stamps.

“We’re seeing continued pressure,” said Michael Witynski, chief executive of Dollar Tree, a discount retailer that has seen “shifts” in shoppers, “where they’re very consumable and needs-based focused to try and make that budget work and stretch it over the month.”

– Mixed picture –

Earnings reports from retailers in recent days have painted a mixed picture on consumer health.

Target stood on the downcast side of the ledger, pointing to a sharp decline in shopping activity in late October, potentially portending a weak holiday season.

The big-box chain expects a “very promotional” holiday season, said Chief Executive Brian Cornell.

“We’ve had a consumer who has been dealing with very stubborn inflation for quarter after quarter now,” Cornell said on a conference call with analysts. 

“They’re shopping very carefully on a budget, and I think they’re looking at discretionary categories and saying, ‘All right, if I’m going to buy, I’m looking for a great deal and a great value.'”

But Lowe’s, another big US chain specializing in home-improvement, offered a very different view, describing the same late-October period as “strong” and seeing no evidence of consumer deterioration.

“We are not seeing anything that feels or looks like a trade down or consumer pullback,” said Lowe’s Chief Executive Marvin Ellison.

Consumers like Charmaine Taylor, who checks airline websites frequently, are staying vigilant

Taylor thus far has been thwarted in her travel aspirations due to  exorbitant plane ticket prices. Taylor, who works in child care, isn’t sure how much she’ll be able to spend on family this year

“I’m trying to give them some little gifts,” Taylor said at a park in Harlem earlier this week. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to. Inflation is hitting pretty hard.”

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