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In an exclusive CNBC interview, President Obama took aim at tax inversions. Watch the interview here.» Read More
Walt Disney reported higher profit that beat Wall Street expectations, boosted by the continued strength of its blockbuster animated film "Frozen."
First, the good news: These homes exist-and they're on the market. Now, the bad news: Fantasy homes don't come cheap.
Whether by friend or by foe, consumers should always report that a card has been lost or stolen.
Congressional investigators are examining whether CEO Mary Barra and other executives were more involved than formerly acknowledged.
Complacency by policymakers is one of the biggest risks to the world's economy, the head of the OECD told CNBC, as the organization cut its global growth forecast for 2014.
Just 46 percent of the people who strongly prefer a new home are willing to pay the 20 percent premium that new homes cost.
Several changes have been made to stabilize the market after the Dow dropped about 1,000 points four years ago today.
While these may not be the best of times for hedge funds, they're still pretty good for the best of the best.
The first-ever CNBC Millionaire Survey shows that nearly two-thirds support higher taxes on the wealthy to close the income gap in America.
Emergency rooms are no less crowded since Obamacare started, Trevor Fetter, CEO of hospital operator Tenet Healthcare, tells CNBC.
Bayer will acquire the consumer care business of U.S.-based Merck & Co for $14.2 billion in cash, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
The wealthy plan to put nearly half of their investment dollars into these sectors this year, the CNBC Millionaire Survey revealed.
Since the start of the Ukrainian conflict, Russia has increased its air activity over the Pacific Ocean, near California and the island of Guam.
The rich plan to spend more in 2014. On their wish list: Vacations, home improvement and cars. Fashion and collectibles are not as coveted.
Just because you retired abroad doesn't mean that you're exempt from U.S. income tax on withdrawals from a regular IRA.
Facebook looking to tap into the lucrative small business market to increase ad revenue.
U.S. appeals court rejected an industry challenge to the Obama administration's renewable fuel standards for 2013.
Large farms with over $1 million in sales account for only four percent of all farms, but 66 percent of all sales.
Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel's name has been added to the list of retail execs caught in a nasty game of musical chairs.
The havoc Target's data breach wreaked can be well told with a few numbers, according to Krebs on Security.
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Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel, has filed for divorce from his wife Anne Dias Griffin.
Recent stories have reported a coming worldwide kale shortage ... the truth is not quite the same.
Some CEOs read. Some play golf. Some attend charitable functions. Richard Branson takes a nice, long bath (rubber duckie not included).
Mad Money host Jim Cramer shares his final thoughts of the day.
Mad Money host Jim Cramer digs into the stock picks of legendary investor Leon Cooperman: Supervalu and Atlas Energy.
Facebook reported its daily active users for Q2 rose 19 percent year-over-year to 829 million. Mad Money host Jim Cramer discusses the potential for the company and the stock.


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PARIS — One of the defining characteristics of these nine days of Paris Fashion Week has been a heightened security presence at every show: bag checks, metal detectors, scanned invitations. The justifications varied: Some said it was the result of the Charlie Hebdo attack; others blamed President François Hollande’s decision to launch airstrikes against ISIS.
Whatever the reason, in the end, the incendiary news came from within. On Wednesday morning, just as the closing collections of the week kicked off with Louis Vuitton, Kering announced it had appointed Demna Gvasalia, founder of the in-your-face anti-fashion brand Vetements, as artistic director of Balenciaga.
The barbarian had been ushered into the ivory tower. Cue shock, horror (despite the fact it had been rumored all week, and my guess is that Mr. Gvasalia, who did a stint at Vuitton, is less aggressively “street” than the Vetements clothes might suggest) and an inability to focus on the shows at hand.
As fashion playground politics goes, it doesn’t get much more sand-in-the-face than that.
Louis Vuitton, after all, is now designed by Nicolas Ghesquière, who previously spent 15 years as artistic director of Balenciaga, and who was pretty much single-handedly responsible for the brand’s revival — not to mention the fact that Balenciaga eventually caught the eye of the Gucci Group, which bought it in 2001 for what is now Kering. In 2012, Mr. Ghesquière left Balenciaga and a public dispute ensued, in which Kering sued him after an interview he gave to System magazine accusing his former employers, essentially, of lacking culture.
Though a spokesperson for Kering said the timing was merely a coincidence, it is a suspicious one. And one that could not have escaped Kering’s notice.Continue reading the main story
What? There were clothes on the runway? Oh yeah.
And here’s the thing: They were fantastic.
In his best collection yet for Louis Vuitton, and one of the best collections of the season, Mr. Ghesquière took the brand’s focus on travel into the 22nd century. His subject was space, cyber and actual, as has been the case with many of his peers, but instead of catering to the digital age, he absorbed it and made it his own.
Pleated kilts scarified with flowering silver staples were paired with leather motorcycle jackets; fluid sleeveless washed-silk dresses in petal pink were topped by woven leather tank tops and sprinkled with sparkling barbed bouquets; and easy jumpsuits came printed with space shuttle imagery. A finale of holographic dresses made from tulle covered in celluloid sequins, hand-painted in oily stripes and then scrunched into sine waves, combined the artistry of the atelier with the attitude of the tough and unconfined.
That they were initially overshadowed by another announcement was irrelevant by the end, though it was representative of what has been a generally unfocused season.
Trends ranged from lingerie to shirt-dresses to track suits. Shoes were generally big and clumpy, and the It bag was a backpack. The most popular decoration was a strap or a ribbon or a fringe — some sort of weird stringy, binding thing. Tom Ford decided to skip showing altogether and produce a collection in the form of a quasi-music video, which was supposed to hit editors’ inboxes early Friday but ended up in the spam folders of quite a few; they had to watch it with the masses on his website. It was easy to get distracted.
Even faced with the freshness of Moncler Gamme Rouge, where the designer Giambattista Valli brought the brand far beyond its puffa jacket roots into a daisy and lilac romp of organza and eyelet-appliqued PVC, lightness and lace, all on a field of wildflowers.

domain: news


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Environmentalists seeking more government control like to paint themselves as constantly battling against industry, and the mainstream media typically go along, ignoring half the story.
For instance, see this AP story on the defeat of the bag tax in Virginia. The headline is "Industry helps defeat Va. plastic-bag tax bill," which is half-true. Plastic-bag makers don't like a tax on plastic bags. But the headline also could have read "Industry fails to pass Va. plastic-bag tax bill," because the grocery-store industry supports these bills. (It won't surprise any of my readers to learn that the liberal Center for American Progress also presents plastic-bag-tax opposition as the "pro-industry" position.)
This environmentalist website, to its credit, gets the story right regarding Seattle's plastic bag tax:
The law, which takes effect July 1, was supported not only by environmentalists wanting to protect Puget Sound marine life, but also by the Northwest Grocery Association, which represents Safeway, Fred Meyer, QFC and Albertsons.
The Portland Mercury drills deeper:
NWGA President Joe Gilliam explains that the idea that shoppers are handed a free bag in the checkout line is a myth.
"They're a cost of business that shows up in the price of milk and eggs," says Gilliam.
Gilliam's group has worked with politicians and environmentalists for three years to craft Portland's ban. Seattle learned the hard way what happens when cities try to ban the bag without strong business support: Seattle voters repealed their city's 20-cent bag tax in 2009.
"We're better off when more people bring in reusable bags, because we're able to lower our costs," says Gilliam, adding that paper bags cost groceries six to eight cents each. "We're aware that we're asking Oregonians to make a big behavioral change."
So good for grocery stores if they can profit while saving the environment. But why should government have to be involved. I understand why a store wouldn't unilaterally impose a bag tax, but if grocers really benefit from reducing bag use, why not share that benefit with consumers? If you bring your own bags, we give you a free candy bar.
Grocers would rather have government protect their cost-savings, though. Maybe most of the media will catch on.


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Tesla Giga Berlin will have to delay the start of Model Y production just a little more. Brandenburg’s State Office for the Environment decided to repeat the discussion procedure for Tesla’s final permit.
Tesla Giga Berlin will likely be delayed for another month as a result of these developments. Another round of discussions about the company’s final permit approval will start on November 2, 2021. According to Brandenburg’s Ministry of the Environment, the State Office of the Environment thought it would be best to repeat the procedure to ensure that Tesla’s final permit is legally sound.
The State Office of the Environment decided to start new discussions after criticism from local environment associations Naturschutzbund (Nabu) and the Brandenburg Green League. The environmental associations believed that the Office did not meet the requirements for announcing the schedule for online discussions about Tesla’s final permit.
Nabu and the Brandenburg Green League claimed that the State Office of the Environment did not announce the online discussion at least one week in advance as required. The new discussion will be announced on October 25, hopefully meeting the necessary requirements.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk shared his hopes to start Giga Berlin Model Y production by December during Giga Fest. The new discussion may delay Tesla’s final permit, cutting it very close to December.
At the recent TSLA earnings call, Tesla CFO Zack Kirkhorn stated that the company still aims to produce some cars in Giga Berlin and Giga Texas by the end of the year.
“You know, we’ve talked about this a bit, you know, the unknown unknowns, new factories, new vehicle designs, new technologies, new locations, new teams. So, you know, there is quite an execution journey ahead of us,” told Kirkhorn to Jed Dorsheimer from Canaccord Genuity.
“But that remains our target, and all of our plans are oriented around that. We — for — we should not expect for us to deliver cars by the end of 2021 from these factories even if we do produce them — so homologation, regulatory reasons,” he said.


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ALDI to open grocery store in Berlin
BERLIN, Md. — ALDI confirmed Wednesday that it has plans to open a grocery store in Berlin this year.
Details about the store are still limited, but Jeff Baehr, ALDI Frederick division vice president confirmed the grocery store will open in 2021.
The Berlin ALDI store will be located at 11328 Samuel Bowen Blvd., which is located along Route 50 just outside of Berlin.
Baehr also confirmed last week that it was also opening a store in Rehoboth Beach.
The Rehoboth Beach store will be located in the former Kmart building.
ALDI is a German grocery store that operates more than 2,000 stories in the U.S. and is known for its low prices.


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Connect with top gaming leaders in Los Angeles at GamesBeat Summit 2023 this May 22-23. Register here.
Meet Scribble, the company that apparently put a color picker app inside of a pen.
Scribble says its pen can scan any color around you and then immediately reproduce that color on paper via a built-in ink cartridge. Launching on Kickstarter soon, the pen can reputably hold “over 100,000 unique colors … and can reproduce over 16 million unique colors.” The company shares that the pen will ship with an app to “instantly sync every color you scan” onto your iPhone or Android smartphone.
If the Scribble Pen works as its creators claim, it certainly has the potential to be the next Kickstarter hit. Yet, without proof, it’s worth taking these claims with a grain of salt. The device looks impressive, but it currently falls into the believe-it-when-we-see-it category.
Scribble says it plans to launch two separate color picker pens (below): an ink cartridge-powered traditional pen, and a tablet stylus with an RGB color sensor.
The smart pen industry is — believe it or not — quite competitive, although it lacks the buzz of the smartwatch business. Adobe recently entered the space with its “Mighty” stylus, and Livescribe offers pens that essentially scan your words as you write. Even Apple is reportedly interested in smart pens.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings.


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Following the 1% Value Added Tax (VAT) increase earlier this year, the National Treasury is looking to expand on the 19 basic food items that are exempt from tax. For this, the Treasury appointed an independent panel to reassess the country’s current list of products taxed at a rate of 0% and draw up proposals on how government can ease the impact of the VAT-increase on poor and low-income households.
The reported move comes amid concern from labour unions and industry bodies that the poor are being punished for the government’s budget shortfall in the previous administration. Among those that were critical of the budget speech, were the Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development (CSID) Research Programme, which said that “raising the VAT rate would increase inequality. It would also make basic goods more expensive and necessitate a proportional increase in social grants and wages in order to maintain the buying power of the poor and workers.”
The panel has invited suggestions from the general public and different stakeholders from civil society organisations, organised labour and business. The team is expected to report back by 30 June 2018, with their results likely to be included in draft regulations being compiled in July 2018.
The basic food items that are currently zero-rated are: dried beans, samp, maize meal, rice, brown bread, vegetables, fruits, vegetable oil, mealie rice, pilchards in tins, edible legumes and pulses of leguminous plants, eggs, milk, dried mealies, dairy powder blend, lentils, cultured milk, milk powder, and brown wheaten meal.
One of the suggestions made by the CSID is that VAT should not be levied on the price of basic medicines. While the VAT increase may not affect consumers’ Medical Aid contributions this year, it has been pointed out that the increase will push up the cost of medical products and services, which could limit consumers’ ability to spend money on healthcare.
The CSID report further calls for white bread, poultry, flour, candles, soap, pay-as-you-go airtime and education-related goods to be exempt from VAT, and that a higher tax rate should be imposed on luxury goods such as yachts, expensive electronics and high-end cars.
In addition to reviewing the list of zero-rated items, the National Treasury will be looking at ways to improve specific expenditure programmes (e.g. National School Nutrition Programme, food stamps) to benefit poor and low-income households.


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Intel Atom based L inside
Lenovo has released a PC stick with an affordable price tag of $129.
Just like its users
Taiwan's top Apple analyst has released a prediction that the next iPhones will be thicker than the last—0.2 mm thicker.
Powersaving from Cortex-A7 architecture
Freescale has been showing off its two Linux-ready, 28nm i.MX7 SoCs.
Apple overlords are amateurs
When Fruity Cargo Cult Apple bought Beats headphones it was not clear how much of a marriage in hell the arrangement was. While Apple was famous for its obscenely high profit margins it was a bunch of amateurs in comparison to Dr Dre.
In the shops next month
Sony is going to release a 1TB PS4 next month -- at least in Japan..
SoftBank unveiled its new emotion sensing robot called Pepper and it finally was released in Japan. It turned out to be a bigger hit than expected and is already sold out.
Android TV MediaTek quad SoC inside
At CES Sony's range of incredibly skinny TVs, were attracting a lot of attention.
Opening the clamshell
Beancounters at Gartner have been consulting their tarot cards and are predicting that hybrid PC sales are to accelerate this year.
Needs to make money
As we have been warning, AMD is considering selling itself off as part of a consolidation which is happening in the chip industry.


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Today, Samsung has announced two new SSD stacks, the 970 EVO and 970 Pro. With the rise of popularity of NVMe solid-state drives, these new storage solutions are sure to be a hit for DIY prosumers and professionals alike. Both drives arrive on the scene with a M.2 form-factor designed to handle high-end content-focused work loads via the PCIe Gen 3×4 lane interface. More below.
There’s any number of reasons to reach for a SSD these days. Increased performance across the board is key on graphics-intensive work, which has become even more prevalent amongst consumers than ever before. Specifically, Samsung notes that it’s new 970 line is made for 3D, 4K graphics work, high-end games and data analytics.
“Samsung has led the NVMe SSD industry since its inception, and the company continues to define the latest standards of consumer storage with unprecedented performance of the 970 PRO and EVO SSDs,” said Un-Soo Kim, senior vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “The 970 series sets a new bar in all aspects for the NVMe SSD market.”
Samsung’s 970 EVO line will come in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. But the real spec of note here is the transfer speeds. If you’re at all familiar with how a SSD can impact performance, this comes as no surprise. The 970 EVO hits sequential read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 2,500 MB/s. That’s blazing fast transfer speeds in comparison to a traditional hard drive or even some SSDs.
Jumping to the 970 Pro will deliver similar read speeds, and a slightly better write performance at 2,700MB/s. The pro line will ship in 512GB and 1TB capacities.
Samsung is set to release its new line of solid-state drives on May 7th, with prices starting at $120 and $330, respectively. We expect to see listings pop up on Amazon any day now. Samsung includes an industry-leading five-year warranty with purchase.
Look for these new drives to be a hit with prosumers looking to upgrade their laptops. More and more these days we’re seeing at-home tinkerers willing to take on this type of project to increase performance on gaming machines and laptops in general.
Samsung Electronics Sets New Performance Standards for NVMe SSDs with 970 PRO and EVO
“Samsung has led the NVMe SSD industry since its inception, and the company continues to define the latest standards of consumer storage with unprecedented performance of the 970 PRO and EVO SSDs,” said Un-Soo Kim, senior vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “The 970 series sets a new bar in all aspects for the NVMe SSD market with groundbreaking performance, superior reliability and best-in-class capacity.”
The Samsung 970 PRO and EVO are designed based on the M.2 form factor standard and with the latest PCIe Gen 3×4 lane interface. The 970 series maximizes the potential of NVMe bandwidth, delivering unparalleled performance for processing large volumes of data, including 3D, 4K graphics work, high-end games and data analytics.
The 970 PRO enables sequential read speed of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write speed of up to 2,700 MB/s1, while the EVO features sequential read speed of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write speed of up to 2,500 MB/s2. The sequential write speeds represent an enhancement of up to 30 percent over the previous generation3, thanks to Samsung’s latest V-NAND technology and the newly designed Phoenix controller. The 970 EVO, in particular, utilizes the Intelligent TurboWrite technology, which uses a large buffer size of up to 78GB4 to enable faster write speeds.
In addition to the advancements in performance levels, the 970 PRO and EVO deliver exceptional endurance and reliability. Featuring a five-year warranty5, or up to 1,200 terabytes written6 – 50 percent higher than those provided for the previous generation7 – the 970 PRO and EVO are built to last. The Dynamic Thermal Guard technology safeguards against overheating by automatically monitoring and maintaining optimal operating temperatures, while a heat spreader and new nickel-coated controller further lower the SSD temperatures.
The 970 PRO and EVO also provide greater system design flexibility for the high-performance computing systems. Offering a variety of high capacity options in a compact M.2 form factor – including the single-sided 2TB EVO model – the 970 series enables convenient storage expansion across a wide range of computing devices.
The 970 EVO will be offered in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB8 capacities, and the 970 PRO in 512GB and 1TB capacities. The 970 PRO and EVO will be available for purchase worldwide starting May 7, 2018, with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $329.99 and $119.99 USD, respectively. For more information, including warranty details, please visit samsung.com.
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LONDON (MarketWatch) -- German retailer Metro AG on Wednesday said its annual profit nearly doubled, helped by selling a stake in a home-improvement chain, buying stores in its native country from Wal-Mart and selling goods outside of its domestic market.
Metro (725750) said its annual profit advanced to 1.06 billion euros ($1.41 billion), with sales up 7.5% to 59.88 billion euros.
Profit was boosted by 484 million euros from selling its stake in home-improvement retailer Praktiker (A0F6MD).
The operator of Metro Cash and Carry, hypermarket Real and consumer-electronics retailers MediaMarkt and Saturn said its operating profit rose 14.1% to 1.98 billion euros, or up 10% when excluding the acquisitions of Wal-Mart stores in Germany and Geant Poland.
Analysts were largely disappointed with the profit figures, which when excluding acquisitions fell short of operating profit forecasts by around 2%. Analysts from J.P. Morgan blamed a surprise decline in MediaMarkt margins despite a 6.4% jump in same-store sales, when German consumers bought high-ticket items ahead of a tax hike.
"We knew that the fourth quarter in Germany had been heavily promotional but this is quite a significant margin cost to get the top line moving," added James Collins, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.
Metro shares dropped 2% in Frankfurt. See Europe markets.
International sales boost
Metro's international sales drove growth -- German sales, adjusted for the Wal-Mart deal, rose just 0.3%, while international sales excluding the Geant deal improved 12%.
Metro has been aggressively expanding in Eastern Europe and Asia, and plans to open its first Metro Cash and Carry store in Pakistan and first MediaMarkt store in Turkey in 2007. Of its 2,378 stores worldwide, 1,529 are in Germany, 123 are in Italy, 107 are in Poland, 40 are in Russia and 33 are in China.
The company received two-thirds of its earnings and 56% of its sales outside of Germany.
In July, Metro agreed to buy Wal-Mart's WMT, -2.71% German stores in a 651 million-euro deal, effectively paid for by assuming the Arkansas-based retailer's debts. Metro has since integrated those stores into its Real network.
Though the current business of Wal-Mart Germany lost money for the firm, accounting adjustments -- or "badwill" -- led to a 44 million-euro benefit on 2006 accounts.
It's going to pay a dividend of 1.12 euros a share, up 10% from last year.
For 2007, sales are seen climbing 8% to 9% and its operating profit is seen up 6% to 8% excluding special items.
"Although the company is clearly being prudent, we believe this will be taken negatively by the market," the J.P. Morgan analysts said.
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KOBE, Japan (Aug. 16, 2005) — Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd.'s operating earnings grew 18.7 percent in the first half of 2005 while sales, led by the firm's tire division, improved 6.3 percent.
Sumitomo did not comment on the results, which showed sales outside of Japan growing 18.5 percent during the period, including 26.1-percent growth in North America.
Operating income for the six months rose to $186.4 million, while sales grew to $2.09 billion, raising the company's earnings/sales ratio nearly a full point to 8.9 percent. Net earnings nearly tripled to $108.5 million.
Sumitomo's Tire Business Staff Reported 44.8-percent higher operating income of $132.9 million on 9.8-percent higher sales of $1.58 billion.
The firm's sales in North America increased to $252.2 million. North America now represents 12.1 percent of the tire maker's global sales.