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Tag Archives: flow
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Dow Jones Futures: Tesla Falls As Gross Margins, Free Cash Flow Dive | Investor’s Business Daily – Investor’s Business Daily
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China denies Mark Mobius’ claims that its government is restricting capital flow – CNBC
- China denies Mark Mobius’ claims that its government is restricting capital flow CNBC
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Investments could flow back into China as companies avoid U.S. delisting
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba was one of the 100 over companies that had faced the risk of delisting in the U.S. in 2024 if their audit information was not made available to PCAOB inspectors.
Budrul Chukrut | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Investors could regain the confidence to put their money in Chinese tech stocks as these companies avoid delisting from U.S. stock exchanges and the Chinese government pledges policy support, according to one investment manager.
Last week, U.S. accounting watchdog the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said it gained full access to inspect and investigate Chinese companies for the first time, after China finally granted the U.S. access in August.
More than 100 Chinese tech companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com had faced the risk of delisting in the U.S. in 2024 if their audit information was not made available to PCAOB inspectors.
Investors often grapple with a lack of transparency into Chinese stocks.
“It will allow institutional investors to come back. Professional investors were very scared about this delisting risk which was why they have stayed on the sidelines,” Brendan Ahern, chief investment officer at U.S.-based investment manager KraneShares, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.
As of Sept. 30, there were 262 Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges with a total market capitalization of $775 billion, according to the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“With that risk going away based on the PCAOB announcement, you are going to see investment dollars flow back into these names,” said Ahern.
“These internet giants are really where investors want to invest when it comes to China,” said Ahern.
But he also caveated that it is still “early days, weeks, months to see that capital return back into the space.”
But he also noted policy support will help to boost growth for these companies. Last week, China pledged to raise domestic consumption next year, as the country moves toward boosting growth after exiting its zero-Covid policy.
“2023 is a year where we are going to have a lot of government policy support such as raising domestic consumption,” said Ahern. “About 25% of all retail sales goes through the companies.”
“The Chinese government actually needs these internet companies, which explains why we have seen a backing off on some of the regulatory scrutiny we experienced in 2021,” said Ahern.
Keystone Pipeline shuts down after oil leak, halting flow of 600,000 barrels a day
New York
CNN Business
—
The Keystone Pipeline has been shut down following a leak discovered near the border of Kansas and Nebraska.
The shutdown of the major oil pipeline that carries crude from Canada triggered volatility in the energy market on Thursday, with oil prices briefly surging as much as 5% before retreating.
Federal safety regulators are investigating the leak and have deployed to the site, a spokesperson for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration told CNN.
Canada’s TC Energy
(TRP) said it launched an emergency shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline System at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday after alarms were triggered and pressure dropped in the system. The company said the system remains shut as “our crews actively respond and work to contain and recover the oil.”
Calgary-based TC Energy said there has been a “confirmed release of oil” into a creek located about 20 miles south of Steele City, Nebraska. An estimated 14,000 barrels of oil have been discharged as of late Thursday, the company said.
The PHMSA, an arm of the Transportation Department charged with enforcing safety regulations for pipelines, said the leak is located near Washington, Kansas, which is near the border with Nebraska.
The spokesperson said the agency continues to investigate the cause of the leak.
US oil prices climbed as high as $75.44 a barrel on the news, before easing. In recent trading, oil was up 0.8% to $72.57 a barrel. The gains follow a steep selloff in recent days that left crude at levels unseen since December 2021.
No timetable has been given for restarting the Keystone Pipeline, a 2,700-mile system that delivers mostly Canadian oil to major refineries across America. The pipeline can transport more than 600,000 barrels of oil per day.
Matt Smith, an analyst at commodity data provider Kpler, said Canadian oil normally transported by Keystone can’t be easily replaced.
“We’re seeing a pop in prices because this will impact refiners that take this crude,” Smith said.
“Our primary focus right now is the health and safety of onsite staff and personnel, the surrounding community, and mitigating risk to the environment through the deployment of booms downstream as we work to contain and prevent further migration of the release,” TC Energy said in a statement.
The leak happened on an existing Keystone pipeline that is separate from Keystone XL, a controversial pipeline project that was terminated last year after President Joe Biden revoked the pipeline’s permit on his first day in office.
The Keystone Pipeline has experienced leaks in the past, including one in South Dakota in 2016 and another one in 2019 in North Dakota that impacted nearly five acres.
Immigration: Biden admin working on plan to manage flow of Venezuelan migrants, sources say
CNN
—
The Biden administration is considering a new program to have Venezuelan migrants apply to arrive at US ports of entry, like an airport, instead of unlawfully crossing the southern border, if they have a pre-existing tie in the US, according to four sources familiar with discussions.
The proposal comes amid an influx of migrants from those nationalities at the US-Mexico border, straining federal resources and border cities. In August, 55,333 migrants encountered at the border were from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua, a 175% increase from last August, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The plan is intended to serve as an expanded and more orderly process. If migrants meet the criteria and are approved, they’d then be paroled into the US at an airport with the ability to also work legally.
Mexico is also expected to take a number of Venezuelans under a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that allows authorities to turn away migrants at the US-Mexico border, according to two sources.
Administration officials have been grappling with mass migration throughout the Western Hemisphere for months, stressing the need for all countries to help alleviate the flow and create better conditions in country. The issue was a topic of discussion again last week at a meeting of foreign ministers in Lima, Peru.
The shift in demographics – with many of the migrants now from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – is uniquely difficult for the US given, in part, frosty relations with those nations that largely bar the administration from removing people from those countries.
The proposal that’s under consideration is an acknowledgment of the reality that Venezuelans are largely released in the US while they go through immigration proceedings, and in some cases, have family or friends they are joining in the country.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
The Biden administration took a similar approach as the one under consideration with Ukrainians fleeing their war-torn country, allowing them entry into the United States as well as the ability to work for a temporary period. That program was set up to avoid having Ukrainians to the US-Mexico border and come through an orderly process.
Poor economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to health care are increasingly pushing Venezuelans to leave – posing an urgent and steep challenge to the administration as thousands arrive at the US southern border.
More than 6 million Venezuelans have fled their country amid deteriorating conditions, matching Ukraine in the number of displaced people and surpassing Syria, according to the United Nations. More than 1,000 Venezuelans are apprehended along the US-Mexico border daily, according to a Homeland Security official.
Venezuelans apprehended at the US-Mexico border are generally paroled into the US and released under an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement program that monitors people using GPS ankle monitors, phones or an app while they go through their immigration proceedings. But the latest proposal is expected to take a more organized approach.
The jump in Venezuelans moving in the hemisphere came up during a meeting at the White House last month with 19 Western Hemisphere nations, a senior administration official previously told CNN.
“We do find that a lack of coordination leads to more migrants being exploited,” the senior administration official said. “There’s consensus that there’s value in us working more closely and trying to synchronize our policies.”
This story has been updated with additional information Tuesday.
Italy’s Eni working with Gazprom to resolve Russian gas flow halt
MILAN, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Italy’s Eni (ENI.MI) said it not would receive any of the gas it had requested from Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP.MM) for delivery on Saturday, but the firms said they were working to fix this.
Russian gas supplies through the Tarvisio entry point will be at zero for Oct. 1, Eni, the biggest importer of Russian gas in Italy, said in a statement on its website.
Moscow and several European countries, including Germany, have been at loggerheads over the supply of natural gas from Russia since the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
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The European Union says that Moscow is using the flow of gas needed for energy in the region as an economic weapon, something that Russia has consistently denied, blaming instead the impact of Western sanctions for any disruptions in supply.
Gazprom said in a statement on Telegram that the problem was the result of regulatory changes in Austria.
Russia’s state-owned energy giant said that gas transit through Austria had been suspended after the country’s grid operator refused to confirm transport nominations.
Austria’s gas grid operator was not immediately available for comment on Saturday to respond to Gazprom’s comments.
A spokesperson for Eni, however, said that Austria continued to receive gas on its border with Slovakia.
Italy has secured additional gas imports this year from alternative suppliers to make up for a fall in flows from Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine.
Russian gas now accounts for around 10% of Italian imports, down from around 40%, a source close to the matter said, while the share for Algeria and the Nordics has increased.
Elsewhere, Gazprom cut natural gas supplies to Moldova by around 30%, Vadim Ceban, director of gas firm Moldovagaz, said.
On Friday, Moldova’s deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spinu said Gazprom had warned it about the reduction.
Spinu said on Saturday that technical problems caused the reduction and Moldova would ask Gazprom to increase supplies.
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Reporting by Federico Maccioni and Francesca Landini in Milan, additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London, Michael Shields in Zurich and Alexander Tanas in Chisinau, editing by Gareth Jones, Kirsten Donovan and Alexander Smith
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Covid app that detects virus in your voice ‘more accurate than lateral flow tests’
An app that can detect coronavirus in your voice has been developed in a major scientific breakthrough.
The AI-powered technology is easier to use and more accurate than a lateral flow test, scientists say.
The mobile app takes less than a minute to flag positive cases and gives an accurate result 89 per cent of the time and negative cases 83 per cent of the time.
In contrast, the accuracy of lateral flow tests varies widely depending on the brand and the nose and throat swabs are less good at picking up infectious people without symptoms.
The new app could be used to very quickly screen people for the bug before they attend mass events such as concerts and big sports matches.
It could also be deployed in poorer countries where gold-standard PCR tests are very expensive and often difficult to distribute.
The Dutch researchers say coronavirus usually affects the upper respiratory tract and vocal chords, leading to changes in a person’s voice.
Users asked to record respiratory sounds
The team decided to investigate whether it was possible to detect the novel virus in people’s voices.
When developing it, they used data from the University of Cambridge’s crowdsourcing Covid-19 Sounds App, which contains 893 audio samples from 4,352 participants, 308 of whom had tested positive for the virus.
The app is installed on the user’s mobile phone and the participants report some basic details about demographics, medical history and smoking status.
They are then asked to record some respiratory sounds which include coughing three times, breathing deeply through their mouth three to five times and reading a short sentence on the screen three times.
The researchers used a voice analysis technique called Mel-spectrogram analysis, which identifies different voice features such as loudness, power and variation over time.
To distinguish the voices of Covid-19 patients from those who did not have the disease, the team built different artificial intelligence models and evaluated which one worked best at classifying positive cases.
One model called Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) outperformed the others.
It is based on neural networks, which mimic the way the human brain operates and recognise the underlying relationships in data.
It works with sequences, which makes it suitable for modelling signals collected over time, such as from the voice, because of its ability to store data in its memory.
Tests can be provided at no cost
Wafaa Aljbawi, a researcher from the University of Maastricht, said: “These promising results suggest that simple voice recordings and fine-tuned AI algorithms can potentially achieve high precision in determining which patients have Covid-19 infection.
“Such tests can be provided at no cost and are simple to interpret. Moreover, they enable remote, virtual testing and have a turnaround time of less than a minute.
“They could be used, for example, at the entry points for large gatherings, enabling rapid screening of the population.
“These results show a significant improvement in the accuracy of diagnosing Covid-19 compared to state-of-the-art tests such as the lateral flow test.
“The lateral flow test has a sensitivity of only 56 per cent, but a higher specificity rate of 99.5 per cent.
“This is important as it signifies that the lateral flow test is misclassifying infected people as Covid-19 negative more often than our test.
“In other words, with the AI LSTM model, we could miss 11 out 100 cases who would go on to spread the infection, while the lateral flow test would miss 44 out of 100 cases.
“The high specificity of the lateral flow test means that only one in 100 people would be wrongly told they were Covid-19 positive when, in fact, they were not infected, while the LSTM test would wrongly diagnose 17 in 100 non-infected people as positive.
“However, since this test is virtually free, it is possible to invite people for PCR tests if the LSTM tests show they are positive.”
Further research needed before app can be used
The team say further research with more participants needs to be done before the app can begin appearing on people’s phones.
Since the start of the project 53,449 audio samples from 36,116 participants have now been collected and can be used to improve and validate the accuracy of the model.
The team is also carrying out more analysis to understand which parameters in the voice are influencing the AI model.
The findings will be presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Russia’s Gazprom tightens squeeze on gas flow to Europe
MOSCOW, July 25 (Reuters) – Russia tightened its gas squeeze on Europe on Monday as Gazprom (GAZP.MM) said supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany would drop to just 20% of capacity.
Gazprom said flows would fall to 33 million cubic metres per day from 0400 GMT on Wednesday – a halving of the current, already reduced level – because it needed to halt the operation of a Siemens gas turbine at a compressor station on instructions from an industry watchdog.
Germany said it saw no technical reason for the latest reduction, which comes as Russia and the West exchange economic blows in response to what Moscow calls its special military operation in Ukraine.
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The Dutch front-month gas contract, the European benchmark, closed 9.95% higher on news of the latest blow to Nord Stream 1. The pipeline, which has a capacity of 55 billion cubic metres a year, is the single biggest Russian gas link to Europe.
The European Union has repeatedly accused Russia of resorting to energy blackmail, while the Kremlin says the shortfalls have been caused by maintenance issues and the effect of Western sanctions.
Politicians in Europe have said Russia could cut off gas flows this winter, which would thrust Germany into recession and lead to soaring prices for consumers already grappling with higher prices for food and energy.
Germany was forced last week to announce a $15 billion bailout of Uniper (UN01.DE), its biggest company importing gas from Russia. read more
PUTIN WARNING
President Vladimir Putin had foreshadowed the latest cut, warning the West this month that continued sanctions risked triggering catastrophic energy price rises for consumers around the world. read more
Russia had already cut flows through Nord Stream 1 to 40% of capacity in June, citing the delayed return of a turbine that was being serviced by Siemens Energy (ENR1n.DE) in Canada – an explanation that Germany rejected as spurious.
It then shut Nord Stream 1 altogether for 10 days of annual maintenance this month, restarting it last Thursday still at 40% of normal levels.
The servicing of that first turbine is still a matter of dispute as it makes its way back to Russia through a tangle of paperwork and conflicting statements.
Gazprom said on Monday it had received documents from Siemens Energy (ENR1n.DE) and Canada but “they do not remove the previously identified risks and raise additional questions”.
It said there were also still questions over EU and UK sanctions, “the resolution of which is important for the delivery of the engine to Russia and the urgent overhaul of other gas turbine engines for the Portovaya compressor station.”
Siemens Energy said the transport of the serviced turbine to Russia could start immediately, and the ball was in Gazprom’s court.
“The German authorities provided Siemens Energy with all the necessary documents for the export of the turbine to Russia at the beginning of last week. Gazprom is aware of this,” it said.
“What is missing, however, are the customs documents for import to Russia. Gazprom, as the customer, is required to provide those.”
The German company said it saw no link between the turbine issue and the gas cuts implemented or announced by Gazprom. Gazprom did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Kremlin said earlier that Moscow was not interested in a complete stoppage of Russian gas supplies to Europe, which is straining to fill its underground storage before the peak demand winter season.
The disruption has raised the risk of gas rationing on the continent, with the European Union proposing to member states last week that they cut gas use by 15% between August and March compared with the same period of previous years.
Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and the world’s largest exporter of natural gas. Europe imports about 40% of its gas and 30% of its oil from Russia.
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Reporting by Reuters in Moscow; additional reporting by Nina Chestney, Marwa Awad and Christoph Steitz; writing by Mark Trevelyan, editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Barbara Lewis and Tomasz Janowski
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.