For people staying safely at home this holiday season, new virtual tours let anyone with an internet connection tour famous Christmas destinations around the world. Homebound travelers can book live interactive tours with local guides to learn about everything from the religious sites of Jerusalem to the department store displays of New York City. […] Read more
French and British officials are working to lift a ban on freight movement imposed by France amid continent-wide fear over a new coronavirus strain identified in the U.K. France activated the 48-hour border closure on Monday, and by Tuesday morning 1,500 trucks were stuck in Kent, unable to leave the U.K, British Home Secretary Priti […] Read more
SINGAPORE — Existing vaccines for Covid-19 will be effective in fighting off infection from new strains of the coronavirus. The comments came after the U.K. on Saturday said it identified a new mutation of the virus that can spread more quickly than previous variants. Countries including Italy, Germany, Canada and Israel have barred flights from the U.K. following […] Read more
Artificial intelligence (AI) lab DeepMind has shifted its focus from climate change to other areas of science and is pursuing its original mission of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is widely seen as the holy grail of the nascent technology, according to several people familiar with the matter. While DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014 for $600 […] Read more
LONDON — Sterling broke through the long-awaited $1.35 barrier on Wednesday morning after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said progress had been made toward a post-Brexit trade deal between the U.K. and the European Union. Addressing the European Parliament, von der Leyen said that while she could not say whether there would or would not […] Read more
Alphabet’s Google suffered a worldwide outage Monday that took several services including YouTube, Gmail and Google Drive offline. Service has since been restored, according to Google. The company’s Workspace Status Dashboard shows all of its services are now back up and running as normal. Several people on social media reported issues with the platforms Monday morning, with […] Read more
Fitch Ratings raised its forecast this week for China’s economic growth next year, based on increased domestic demand and expectations for coronavirus vaccine deployment. Fitch now expects China’s gross domestic product to expand 8% in 2021, up from the 7.7% rate forecast in September. “This would be well above our estimate of China’s long-term growth […] Read more
The current health and economic crisis has impacted both life and work in many ways. Chief among those impacts has been the stunning amount of business closures. Any crisis can potentially tank a local economy, causing serious financial and social distress for the members of that community. The ripple effects can impact consumers, other businesses and even local officials, causing even […] Read more
The U.K. government believes “significant differences” still remain with the EU, as the two sides make a final push to clinch a post-Brexit trade deal. Talks are ongoing in Brussels on Monday afternoon, but both sides remain divided over three issues: fisheries, competition rules and governance of their potential deal. They have been stuck on […] Read more
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a law to kick Chinese companies off U.S. stock exchanges if they do not fully comply with the country’s auditing rules, giving President Donald Trump one more tool to threaten Beijing with before leaving office. The measure passed the House by unanimous voice vote, after passing the Senate unanimously […] Read more
