NEW YORK (AP) ― Can a company that didn’t exist five years ago, an upstart with a knack for angering regulators who could close it down, really be worth $40 billion?That is the figure that had investors from Wall Street to Silicon Valley abuzz a day after Uber announced it had received more money from venture capitalists than any private company this year. The investment places a value on the car-service company that is higher than American Airlines or Kraft Foods ― a stunning vote of confidence

NEW YORK (AFP) ― Three years after the tech world mourned his passing, Apple mastermind Steve Jobs was back from the dead Friday giving posthumous testimony in a video at a U.S. antitrust trial.Jurors in an Oakland court have been submerged since the beginning of the week in a debate over whether consumers who bought Apple’s iPod between 2006 and 2009 were effectively forced to purchase their music from the California titan’s online iTunes store.Jobs’ testimony from a few months before his death

LIMA (AFP) ― Developing countries may need up to $500 billion per year by 2050 to adapt to the ravages of climate change, dwarfing previous estimates, a U.N. report said Friday.The figure was about 20 times today’s public spending on climate adaptation, according to the United Nations Environmental Program that warned of a “significant funding gap after 2020.”And the number could be further inflated if countries fail to meet the U.N. target of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius over

U.S. employers added 321,000 jobs in Nov., most in nearly 3 years

FRANKFURT (AFP) ― The European Central Bank on Thursday announced it was ready to act early next year should the euro area show signs of tipping into deflation and kept its key interest rates at record lows unchanged.At its final policy meeting of the year, the ECB held its main “refinancing” rate steady at 0.05 percent, and its two other rates ― the marginal lending and the deposit rates ― at 0.3 percent and minus 0.2 percent respectively.But the ECB’s decision to “substantially” downgrade its

MOSCOW (AP) ― Oyster Bar built a thriving business serving mollusks to well-heeled Muscovites. Then came Western sanctions, and the restaurant was forced to rechristen itself this fall. Today, it serves up burgers and pizza under a new name: No Oyster Bar.Coowner Ilya Sokhin said a Russian ban on European oyster imports hit hard, and the average check at his restaurant ― a sleek new building in the famous Gorky Park ― has more than halved.Russia’s economy has been battered this year by uncertain

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― A senior Takata Corp. executive on Wednesday defended the Japanese company’s rejection of a nationwide U.S. recall of its potentially deadly airbags, insisting that testing data did not back such an action.But the top U.S. auto safety official warned that Takata had not yet solved the reason for shrapnel-firing airbag eruptions thought to have killed five people, and said the company and car makers could face court action for their reticence to widen recalls. Hiroshi Shimizu,

SANTIAGO (AFP) ― Latin America’s economies, hit by falling investment, will grow just 1.1 percent in 2014 ― their lowest level in five years, a U.N. commission on the region said Tuesday.The poor performance of several of Latin America’s biggest economies dragged down growth across the region, found the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.Argentina’s economy will contract by 0.2 percent this year and Venezuela’s by 3 percent, it said. Regional giant Brazil’s wi

MOSCOW (AFP) ― The Russian economy ministry on Tuesday slashed its economic forecast for 2015, announcing a contraction of 0.8 percent because of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis combined with falling oil prices.The ministry cut its previous outlook of 1.2 percent growth by two percentage points, referring to worsening economic indicators and a “more conservative” assumption that Western sanctions will remain through 2015.Plunging oil prices also led to the revision, with a weakening ru

The sharp drop in oil prices will support U.S. growth by boosting spending, two top Federal Reserve officials said, playing down the risk that plunging energy costs could push inflation further below the Fed’s goal. Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and New York Fed President William C. Dudley, speaking at separate events Monday in New York, both stressed the positive impact on the U.S. economy from the steepest decline in oil prices for five years. “I’m not very worried,” Fischer told an audien