Blame stimulus cheques, a shortage of new vehicles and rising demand for rental carsFIGURES RELEASED last month showed that American consumer-price inflation hit 4.2% year-on-year in April, the highest rate since 2008. Markets were spooked. Investors feared that higher inflation and interest rates could destroy asset values. Then, on June 10th, came worse news, or so it seemed. In May annual in...

We map the different ways in which the economic value that large companies create flows to households in OECD economies and examine what has changed in the past quarter-century.The role of companies in the economy and their responsibilities to stakeholders and society at large has become a major topic of debate. Yet there is little clarity or consensus about how the business activity of compani...

Transformers: Heavy Metal coming to mobile in 2021.Niantic, known best for its work on augmented reality games Pokémon Go, Ingress, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, is tackling the Transformers next. A new AR game called Transformers: Heavy Metal is coming to mobile devices later this year, Niantic and developer Very Very Spaceship announced Monday.In Transformers: Heavy Metal, players will jo...

The noise-canceling Los Angeles headphones release this summer.Urbanista’s new wireless noise-canceling Los Angeles headphones have a solar panel integrated into the length of the headband, allowing them to draw power from both indoor and outdoor light, Wired reports. Although its built-in 750mAh battery can be charged traditionally via USB-C and offers up to a respectable 50 hours of battery...

Consumers fundamentally shifted the way they spent money and time during the pandemic. While retailers continue to look for a fast recovery due to pent-up demand, additional stimulus checks, and accelerating vaccination rates, some shifts in the retail landscape will take years to normalize. Other shifts, however, are here to stay.Though India and Brazil continue to struggle with soaring COVID-...

U.S. patent application, US20210173447, discloses a stowable physical keyboard for a multi-display computing device.The keyboard includes a plurality of keys and a translucent backplate having a first side and a second side. A coating between the first side of the backplate and the plurality of keys passes light to illuminate the plurality of keys and obscures the plurality of keys when viewed...

Shiseido’s sales in China jumped to $600 million in Q1 2021 — trailing just behind the $687 million made in Japan — signaling a closing gap between the two markets.Chinese consumers have gravitated towards J-beauty as they’ve become more skincare educated, seeking sustainable results over trendy gimmicks. In 2020, imports of Japanese cosmetics to China grew more than 30 percent to $4.3 bill...

Apple kicked off its annual developers conference with a jam-packed keynote on Monday, introducing a slew of new features for its entire product range. Aside from a focus on health and and privacy, Apple put an emphasis on features that help people stay connected in the digital world, including SharePlay that enables users to watch video content or listen to music together via FaceTime.Speaking...

A new style of silent wind turbine doubles as an art installation that wants to overcome objections that turbines are ugly.The turbines are designed to resemble colourful tulips, and to run silently, eliminating many of the issues with their use in urban areas An often-voiced opposition to wind turbines is that they are unattractive and noisy. But what if wind turbines could be turned into sile...