Financial Markets and Economy
Crude oil prices fall as major producers hint at output hike (Business Insider)
Crude prices fell early on Thursday as concerns over a global glut took center stage after Russia and Iran said they were ready to raise oil production further, while inventories in the United States climbed slightly.
China's economy is heading toward the train wreck Japan experienced in the late '80s (Business Insider)
If there’s one thing global investors have come to expect over recent years, it’s China’s ability to generate unbelievable rates of economic growth.
Silver `Spike' Seen Extending Best Start in Five Years: Chart (Bloomberg)
Silver, up 24 percent in the best start to a year since 2011, is still gaining steam, according to one technical indicator.
Japan exports, imports fall as economic doldrums persist (AP)
Japan's exports fell for a sixth straight month in March, sapped by weak shipments of machinery and chemicals, though a sharper decline in imports helped push the trade surplus to its highest level in more than five years.
What Makes Housing Too Expensive (Bloomberg View)
The U.S. has two big housing affordability problems. They’re related — and solving the first would go some way toward solving the second. But they’re not the same, and it’s important to understand that.
Yahoo Bids and Stock Lending (Bloomberg View)
There is a “well-defined, aggressive calendar” to push ahead, she said Tuesday on an earnings call with analysts. Yahoo reported first-quarter sales that topped estimates, but still declined sharply from a year earlier.
American Express beats big on earnings, shares jump (Business Insider)
American Express posted a big beat on first-quarter earnings and revenues after Wednesday's closing bell.
Tech Companies Face Greater Scrutiny for Paying Workers With Stock (NY Times)
For the last few years, LinkedIn, the professional social networking company, has doled out increasingly large amounts of stock to pay its workers.
The Big Flaw Few are Talking About in Fintech (Fortune)
Their business model may need to be changed.
Argentina Returns to Global Debt Markets With $16.5 Billion Bond Sale (Wall Street Journal)
Argentina barreled back into the bond market on Tuesday with the largest emerging-market debt sale on record, attracting intense investor interest after years as a financial pariah.
General Mills and 7-Eleven Join the Venture Capital Crowd (NY Times)
At first glance, the maker of Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs might not fit the image of a cutting-edge venture capital investor.
The Number of Publicy Traded Firms Has Halved (Marginal Revolution)
In the past twenty years [the] U.S. has lost almost 50% of its publicly traded firms. This decline has been so dramatic, that the number of firms these days is lower than it has been in the early 1970s, when the real gross domestic product in the U.S. was one third of what it is today. This phenomenon has been a general pattern that has affected over 90% of U.S. industries.
Mitsubishi Motors Finds Improprieties in Its Fuel-Economy Tests (Fox Business)
Mitsubishi Motors said Wednesday there were improprieties in its tests related to vehicles' fuel economy performance.
Shares in Mitsubishi Motors, Japan's sixth-biggest auto maker, plunged after the announcement, and closed down 15.2% at Yen733 ($6.74).
Politics
Trump and Clinton Gain More Than Delegates (Bloomberg View)
Tuesday night was an opportunity for Donald Trump to make up ground he needed to win the Republican nomination and, for once, he made the most of it. He even beat the polling projections for a change.
Ted Talks, But It Doesn't Mean Anything (The Atlantic)
Ted Cruz has a problem. Since he launched his campaign for president at Liberty University more than a year ago, he has aimed to consolidate the right. He has largely succeeded. He has vanquished Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Carly Fiorina, and now he enjoys the overwhelming support of movement conservatives. His problem is that he trails Donald Trump anyway.
Trump, Clinton Win Big In NY, Push Closer To Nomination (AP)
Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton swept to resounding victories in Tuesday's New York primary, with Trump bouncing back convincingly from a difficult stretch in his Republican campaign and Clinton pushing tantalizingly close to locking up the Democratic nomination.
Technology
Forget Flight, the Future of Delivery is a Six-Wheeled Bot (Bloomberg)
Starship, a company created by two of Skype's co-founders, has developed this six-wheeled delivery robot. It has already logged more than 1,900 miles in testing.
The robot's cargo hold is designed to carry up to 20 pounds and travel at up to four miles per hour. "“It’s basically designed to carry three good-sized bags of groceries,” says Allan Martinson, Starship's chief operating officer.
In One Chart: The rise and fall of the PC in one chart (Market Watch)
PCs have been declining since peaking in 2011, and to blame are all those smartphone apps your addicted to.
Health and Life Sciences
Misconceptions: Fancy Juice Doesn’t Cleanse the Body of Toxins (NY Times)
The practice of cleansing has become as ubiquitous as the use of hand sanitizer. Celebrities do it. Spas offer it. Fancy food stores sell pricey bottles of juice to accomplish it, and a $700 juicer will soon facilitate the process for those who are not satisfied with the current D.I.Y. options. But what is it that everybody is trying to remove from their bodies? Is there any science behind it?
First Blood Test For Parkinson’s Detects Disease Much Sooner (Popular Science)
For the 10 million people living with Parkinson’s disease around the world, diagnosis might have come too late. Today, a patient can only be diagnosed with the degenerative disease after receiving a a number of tests and ruling out all the other possible diseases, at which point many brain cells have already been lost. If the disease were diagnosed earlier, doctors might be able to intervene and slow the progression of the disease. Now researchers from La Trobe University in Australia have developed a diagnostic blood test for Parkinson’s, according to a press release.
Life on the Home Planet
Bleaching Hits 93 Percent of the Great Barrier Reef (Scientific American)
We knew coral bleaching was a serious issue in the Great Barrier Reef, but the scope of just how widespread it was has been unclear—until now.
Extensive aerial surveys and dives have revealed that 93 percent of the world’s largest reef has been devastated by coral bleaching.
High-energy neutrino nabbed by Antarctic detector (Cosmos Magazine)
Some 9.1 billion years ago, a giant galaxy burped a blast of neutrinos – the most energetic particles in the Universe. And today, an international team of scientists reports it caught one of the elusive particles in a massive cube of ice buried near the South Pole.
