SHANGHAI, China — Alibaba just made e-commerce history. With the company's massive Singles' Day celebration on 11/11 — November 11 — coming to a close, Alibaba reports that customers spent $30.8 billion online over the last 24 hours. That is a significant increase from the $25.3 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) Alibaba shoppers spent…
Image copyright Reuters Image caption "Yellow vest" protesters have blocked a route between Paris and Brussels A protester has died in an accident and there are also reports of injuries as demonstrators angry at rising fuel prices disrupt traffic across France.The female protester was struck after a driver surrounded by demonstrators panicked and accelerated, reports…
Enlarge / The position of Barnard's star relative to the Earth and its other neighbors. IEEC/Science-Wave/Guillem RamisaFrom the phenomenal success of the Kepler mission and a proliferation of ground-based telescopes, we now know that planets are common in our galaxy. But the methods we've used to detect most of them are biased toward finding large…
“WHO IS KILLING Tencent?” was the headline of an article on a Chinese business news site this autumn. Those sharing the link on WeChat, a social-media and payments service that is the crown jewel of the Chinese technology giant, see something else: “This title contains exaggerated and misleading information”. The swap is ostensibly the result…
The White House is in a bind following the CIA's reported assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Turkey last month. The crown prince was widely believed to have played a key role in carrying out the Khashoggi killing even before…
THE CAREER OF China’s biggest property tycoon can be divided into two stages. Xu Jiayin started slowly, focusing on Guangzhou, a southern city. Then came the global financial crisis and the government’s response, a giant economic stimulus, launched a decade ago this month. For Mr Xu it was a signal to become far bolder. His…
“THE DECLINE of the birth rate and the ageing of Japanese society is accelerating at unprecedented speed,” warns Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister. Given the scale of the problem, he told The Economist this week, the government must push for “impactful policies” to tackle it right away. He mentions a series of reforms, intended to…
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media captionWhy do Trump's Saudi job numbers keep growing? US President Donald Trump has been asked to ascertain whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played a role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.Republican and Democratic leaders of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday sent a…
THE FATE of the euro was always going to depend on Italy. With annual GDP of more than €1.6trn ($1.9trn), about 15% of euro-area output and debt of nearly €2.3trn, it poses a challenge to the single currency that Europe seems unable to manage but cannot avoid. Matters are now coming to a head, as…
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. logged 10 billion yuan ($1.44 billion) of sales volume in the opening minutes of its annual Singles’ Day extravaganza, outpacing last year’s start as shoppers around the world swarmed the e-commerce giant’s online bazaars. China’s largest company, which is trying to drum up business via a concurrent televised entertainment spectacle featuring…
