(Bloomberg) — For years, the U.S. warned Germany of building up a dangerous energy dependence on Russia, the source of more than half of its fossil fuel imports. Now that the war in Ukraine has shocked Berlin into the same conclusion, the government is finding that changing course might be too late. Most Read from Bloomberg Europe’s largest economy is facing up to the prospect that the bulk of its natural gas and coal supplies could get choked off, ripping through its industrial base and… Source link

A self-described “doctor” has a lesson she’d like to teach investors about decentralized finance (DeFi), an increasingly popular lending sector that’s become a battleground against cryptocurrency-related fraud. Even the most experienced DeFi players can find themselves wrong-footed by hacks and fraud. Yet retail investors in the sector are hungry for basic fraud protection, giving rise to a new breed of “vigilantes” and startup businesses to address the demand. Over a year ago, one Silicon… Source link

Phoenix Mercury All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner has reportedly been detained in Russia on drug charges. The New York Times reported that the Russian Federal Customs Service detained an American basketball player at Sheremetyevo Airport near Moscow after finding hashish oil vape cartridges in her luggage. The Customs Service didn’t identify who was arrested, saying only that she’d won two Olympic gold medals. A Russian news service identified the player as the… Source link

(Bloomberg) — Italy’s Finance Police detained superyachts of sanctioned Russian billionaires, as authorities around the world ratchet up the pressure on the country’s elite following the invasion of Ukraine. Most Read from Bloomberg Gennady Timchenko’s Lena was seized in the coastal city of Sanremo in compliance with European Union sanctions, according to a statement from Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office on Saturday. A media adviser to Draghi said on Twitter on Friday that police… Source link

By Stuart A. Thompson, The New York Times Company On an episode of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast last year, he turned to a topic that has gripped right-wing communities and other Americans who feel skeptical about the pandemic: search engines. “If I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo,” Rogan said, referring to the small, privacy-focused search engine. “I wasn’t finding them on Google.” Praise for DuckDuckGo… Source link

In early 2020, an accounting scandal at Luckin Coffee blindsided its American stockholders as the coffeehouse chain’s stock price fell to the floor. Luckin Coffee highlighted a problem: American investors knew little of Chinese company financials while the stocks trade freely on U.S. exchanges. The incident sparked questions regarding whether other crises involving U.S.-listed Chinese companies lurked around the corner. Congress acted to stop the next Luckin by passing the Holding Foreign… Source link

Google Nowadays, Google Assistant is as well-known as Siri and Alexa, but it wasn’t Google’s first attempt at an assistant-like feature. The company’s first attempt was named “Google Now,” and it had some truly great ideas. Apple released the first version of Siri in 2011, but Google wasn’t far behind with the release of Google Now in 2012. However, the Google Assistant we know now is much more like Siri than Google Now. Back in 2012, Google was doing something very different.

For more business and finance explainers, check out our Yahoo U page. Economic sanctions on Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine have sent the Russian ruble for a tailspin. Following several measures from Western countries to isolate Russia’s economy, the ruble lost over 30% of its value against the U.S. dollar. A devaluing currency makes sense, given sanctions on Russia’s largest banks and the severance of other firms from the international banking system known as… Source link

The average New Yorker couldn’t give you directions to St. John’s Terminal, or tell you what it looks like. Originally three stories tall and three blocks long, it runs north to south along West Street, in lower Manhattan. Built in 1934 by the New York Central Railroad, it was designed to hold two hundred and twenty-seven fully laden freight cars, which arrived and departed thirty feet above the ground, at the end point of the elevated tracks that would eventually become known as the… Source link

The startup ecosystem in Africa has until now been dominated by Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt (‘the Big 4’), countries that continue to receive the bulk of venture capital and other forms of investment. However, the situation seems to be slowly changing as noteworthy startups begin to rise from other countries within the continent, and as investors scout for fresh opportunities to spread their risk outside the Big 4. Uganda is one of the countries creating ripples in… Source link