Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has finally agreed to pay $5.1 billion on Wednesday to resolve a seven years’ pending dispute over faulty mortgage securities. The penalty amount remains lower compared to those counted by other Wall Street competitors. Fourth quarter profit of the firm may be hit by the penalty counting. But investors welcome the settlement and its share price rises by 1.5% on Thursday.
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Drought leaves SA farmers owing $7.5 bln to banks
The debt burden of South African farmers reached to over Rand 125 billion ($7.5 billion). The total debt of farmers was up 14 percent in 2015 to Rand117 billion. Economists alert that the prevailing slump in commodities markets, tighter monetary, fiscal policy, drought conditions and drop in value of Rand will trigger higher than expected inflation rate.
African startups commence 2016 with $10mln investment
Technology startups in Africa may get $10 million funding in early 2016 as Silvertree Capital sees the rosy picture. Silvertree Internet Holdings is keen on scaling technology and commerce companies and has already invested $5 million in business building operations and acquisitions. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are favored the most among African countries.
Lower oil prices to check inflation in Kenya
The Kenyan government is hoping to control inflation rate with the support from lower oil prices. Lower oil prices are supporting the Kenya's economy as the growth rate is expected to be six percent in 2016 from 4.5 percent in 2015. Inflation rate breached the government's target band of 2.5 percent to 7.5 percent as it reached to eight percent.
Amazon.com Celebrates Golden Globe Win By Discounting Its Prime Membership
As a celebration for surprising Golden Globe win for "Mozart in the Jungle," Amazon prepares a special offer. Beside streaming the series for free this weekend, the company is also discounting subscription for Amazon Prime. .
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Hyundai Corp is expected to recall Elantra model vehicles from February 2016 onwards. It's noticed that the malfunctioning of electronic stability control system will suddenly result in reduction of engine power. The South Korean automobile major may recall over 150,000 Elantra vehicles to fix the stability control system in the vehicles.
Google’s product management VP, Clay Bavor, is appointed as the head of its newly created virtual reality (VR) computing division, showing that the tech company is now taking aggressive moves in the VR industry.
California Lottery Association announced Wednesday that the winning ticket for the $1.5 billion Powerball lottery is in Chino Hills in San Bernardino County.
Uber has changed its driver recruitment policy and advised the previously rejected applicant seeking for drivers’ job to take the benefit of proposition 47. This law allows nonviolent criminal offenders to downgrade their offence level to misdemeanor through submitting applications. Uber’s effort is believed to benefit the released inmates who aim to rebuild their lives.
GoPro Inc., Sun Mateo, California based company is going to cut 7% people out of its 1500 employees following poor sales revenue in Q4. Some technical issues have been blamed for sluggish sales during the fourth quarter from the action camera maker’s behalf. But the company axes over the employees to restructure expenses. However, analysts presume, the fall in sales revenue may not be up to that magnitude.
The United Nation released a report on Tuesday revealing that the migration rate has surge by 41 percent in 15 years. The report also shows that the United States is leading the ranking with the most migrants living in the country.
Amazon has recently updated its Echo Smart speaker. The added features include playing Jeopardy through voice commands. This trigger word makes the artificially intelligent in built smart speaker to respond and get engaged with question- answer phrases. The updated Echo smart speaker will be charged through docked stations instead of traditional plugging in system round the clock.
Unlike six other times, Barack Obama will face an interview for the last time as an incumbent President in YouTube on Friday. This time he will answer the selected questions of a trio, who combined remains ahead of the President himself by a huge margin in terms of subscriptions. During his entire 10 years in the office, he has used technology to publicize behind- the- scene photographs as token of his goodwill gesture.
John Legere has been witnessing a social media riot centering his F bomb blasting during a question- answer session in Twitter on Monday. One of T Mobile’s ‘Binge On’ has reportedly withdrawn itself from the platform. The embattled CEO has been compelled to seek apology but tries to make it conditional. T Mobile is accused of violating net neutrality through throttling by EFF and net neutrality advocates.
