Ten years ago this September Airbus's first A380 superjumbo, laden with passengers, took to the skies over Toulouse. Airbus's bosses said they hoped that the world's largest jetliner, the first with two full decks, would help the European planemaker get even with its American rival, Boeing. But problems quickly mounted.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a United Nations agency, has announced a framework for mandatory carbon-offsetting on all international flights. The agreement was backed by 65 countries, which between them account for 86.5 percent of international flight operations.
New York City has just begun its sacred rites of retail. For its fashion week, which started Sept. 7th, tents go up, guests emerge from black cars, models sulk down catwalks and the wealthy and celebrated clap in unison. The point of all this is for designers to declare what will be "in" next spring. But for much of fashion retail, it is increasingly clear that something is out of place.
As the world's biggest manufacturing power, China is well placed to lead the Internet of Things transition. Which is why this week GE, the world's biggest industrial company, opened what it calls a "digital foundry" in Shanghai. The centre will help Chinese companies develop and commercialise products for the industrial internet of things, which involves factory machines and industrial goods communicating with each other and their surroundings.
As an asset class, railways have a worrying history. Railway mania in Britain in the 1840s left plenty of unwary investors nursing hefty losses; that episode sits in most lists of history's biggest speculative bubbles. But the prices of shares and bonds are dauntingly high, which has stoked interest in all manner of outlandish "alternative" assets in recent years. That, along with legal changes making it easier to repossess collateral that goes clickety-clack, may soon have investors funnelling cash into locomotives, carriages and goods wagons again.
For some people, even to discuss the impact on an economy, let alone financial markets, of a tragedy such as the Paris attacks is poor taste. But one of the aims of terrorists is to cause economic and financial damage; hence the attacks on Wall Street on 9/11 or on tourists in Tunisia earlier this year. So the issue is worth considering.
Shares in Walmart, the American retailing behemoth, have dropped by a third so far this year. But those of Walmex, its separately listed Mexican arm, are up 30 percent. This shaft of sunlight is surprising, for the mood south of the border has generally been glum.
Six companies dominate the business of farm supplies. The interest of Monsanto, the world's biggest seed producer, in buying Syngenta, the largest agrochemicals firm, had threatened to whittle them down to five. That raised worries about whether the reduction in competition would mean less innovation - and thus slower improvements in crop yields - as well as higher costs for farmers.
Africa's second-largest iron-ore mine, in Tonkolili, Sierra Leone, was snapped up by China's state-owned Shandong Iron and Steel Group in April. In fact, Chinese firms, it seems, are buying into the market while stocks are cheap. Hebei Iron and Steel Group is building a massive steelworks in South Africa; last month it received approval to takeover the Swiss firm Duferco's African steel processing and sales network.
Uber's mission is to offer "transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone". And perhaps "everything": it has begun experimenting with local delivery services, with the aim of becoming as disruptive in logistics as it has been in the taxi business.
