Author: admin@primenews

Banks across Japan began stocking their ATMs on Wednesday with shiny new yen notes sourced from an unlikely location – vibrant yellow flowering paperbush shrubs that grow on craggy Himalayan mountains in Nepal. Before entering the wallets of Japanese consumers, the yen notes had a long, complex journey involving months of labor and transport by land and air across thousands of kilometers. And this process has offered a potential new source of income to communities in one of the world’s poorest countries, by providing cash for one of its richest. Though Japan has pushed for more digital payments in recent…

Tesla sales, hit by a significant slump earlier this year, may be showing signs of revival. Elon Musk’s electric car-maker delivered nearly 444,000 vehicles in the three months ended 30 June, up more than 14% from the prior quarter. That was far more than most analysts had expected – though still down nearly 5% from the same period in 2023. Tesla has been navigating a slowdown in demand, as high borrowing costs weigh on buyers and competition increases. It has slashed prices repeatedly to try to win back shoppers, while also introducing low-cost borrowing plans. But its success in this…

 Good luck getting a late-morning McMuffin in Australia. McDonald’s has cut breakfast service timings by 90 minutes, the company said, after a shortage of eggs caused by bird flu outbreaks that have led to the slaughter of about 1.5 million chickens. “Like many retailers, we are carefully managing supply of eggs due to current industry challenges,” McDonald’s said on Facebook, adding that from Tuesday it would stop serving breakfast at 10:30 a.m. instead of the usual time of midday. “We are working hard with our Aussie farmers and suppliers to return this back to normal as soon as possible,” the fast food…

When BP struck oil in the North Sea in 1970, Aberdeen struck gold. The discovery of the giant Forties Field was the beginning of a boom which brought jobs for the city, profits for energy giants, and taxes for the Treasury. It fuelled the rise of nationalism too, with the UK government privately acknowledging that oil had the potential to make an independent Scotland one of the richest nations in Europe. But North Sea production peaked 25 years ago and in this general election the focus is on managing a shift to renewable energy including wind, wave and solar. The UK’s…

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation is entering the UK’s highly competitive free, ad-supported video streaming market. Tubi will compete with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, ITVX and Channel 4’s streaming platform as well as the BBC iPlayer. The platform has been quickly gaining market share in the US where, according to Fox, it has almost 80 million monthly active users. In the UK, Tubi says it will launch with more than 20,000 films and TV series, including content from Disney, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The platform will also include a selection of British,Indian and Nigerian content. UK viewers will…

The US government has given Moderna $176m (£139m) to develop a messenger-ribonucleic-acid-based (mRNA) pandemic influenza vaccine that would work against bird flu. It says it wants to be “better prepared” for public-health crises, having learned lessons from Covid. Bird flu is not a big threat to people, despite outbreaks in poultry and cattle. But experts want a working vaccine that could be quickly rolled out, in case the virus mutates and becomes a problem. Vaccines using mRNA technology – which the Moderna’s Covid jab is also based on – can be produced more quickly. And the US government says adding…

A remote controlled car modelled on Michael Schumacher’s 2002 world championship Ferrari and signed by the F1 legend could fetch between £150,000 and £200,000 at auction. The piece, which is set to go under the hammer at Silverstone, is a 1:3 scale replica, weighs 32kg (71lb) and took three years and more than 1,000 hours to build. The winning bidder could race the car “in excess of 80km/h (50mph)”, Graham Budd Auctions said, but they would need “a full training session” before using it. Adam Gascoigne, the auction house’s chief executive, said the item was “as close to a genuine Formula 1…

Life comes at you fast. Last month, AI chip giant Nvidia briefly became the world’s richest company, overtaking Microsoft, which had in turn risen above Apple. When this news was mentioned on stage at a tech industry event I attended in Copenhagen, there was spontaneous applause from the audience. As I write, Nvidia is now back in second place, after a fall in its share price took its combined value down to $3tn (£2.4tn) compared with $3.4tn for Microsoft. Two things have propelled these two US tech titans to such a dizzying pinnacle: AI and foresight. Microsoft started investing in…

Twelve former Biden administration officials who resigned over policy on Israel and the Gaza war say the government’s actions have endangered US national security. The policies have further destabilised the region and “put a target on America’s back”, they say in a joint statement. One of the 12 resigned only on Tuesday from the US Department of the Interior. The US Department of State has previously denied such claims, pointing to its criticism of civilian casualties in Gaza and its efforts to boost humanitarian aid. The joint statement by the former officials says: “America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow…

A desperate search is under way in northern Australia for a child feared to have been taken by a crocodile. The 12-year-old was last seen around dusk on Tuesday, swimming near the remote town of Palumpa – about a 7-hour drive south west of Darwin in the Northern Territory (NT). Police say a specialist search and rescue team has been deployed after “initial reports stated the child had been attacked by a crocodile”. The NT is home to an estimated 100,000 saltwater crocodiles, more than anywhere else in the world, but attacks are uncommon. Members of the community in Palumpa…