TOKYO (AP) -- Global shares mostly rose on Monday as investors weighed the prospects of more US economic stimulus and rising coronavirus cases across the world. US shares were set for a steady outset to the week, with Dow futures rising 0.1 percent and S&P 500 futures up nearly 0.6 percent. France's CAC 40 rose 0.8 percent to 4,985, while Germany's DAX rose 0.6 percent at 13,126. Britain's FTSE...

SEATTLE (AP) -- Amazon has introduced new palm reading technology in a pair of Seattle stores and sees broader uses in places like stadiums and offices. Customers at the stores near Amazon's campus in Washington can flash a palm for entry and to buy goods. The company chose palm recognition, according to Dilip Kumar, vice president of Physical Retail & Technology, because it's more private than...

Public attitudes about the economy have become bleaker as the coronavirus pandemic continues to weigh globally, according to a Pew Research Center survey released recently. Overall, a median of only 31 percent of adults across the surveyed nations assess their country’s current economic situation as good, while more than two-thirds say conditions are bad. In Germany, while the majority conti...

General Motors formed its second major electric vehicle partnership in less than a week, this time a $2 billion deal with startup Nikola. GM will take an 11 percent ownership stake in the Phoenix company and will engineer and build Nikola's Badger hydrogen fuel cell and electric pickup truck. The Badger is expected to be in production by the end of 2022. GM also will help with cost reductions f...

LG Chem became the largest supplier of electric vehicle batteries in the first seven months of this year, data showed. Based on the global usage of EV batteries, LG Chem’s market share stood at 25.1 percent in the January-July period, compared with 10.6 percent a year earlier, according to market tracker SNE Research. The data showed that 13.4 gigawatt-hours of energy from LG Chem’s EV batte...

FRANKFURT AM MAIN (AFP) -- Germany is in a V-shaped economic recovery and should avoid a new phase of lockdowns, the economy minister said Tuesday, despite a resurgence of coronavirus cases. German GDP is expected to fall 5.8 percent in 2020, a narrower recession than the 6.3 percent drop projected earlier, Peter Altmaier said, signalling that the country is emerging from the worst of the crisis...

DETROIT (AP) -- A day after its 5-for-1 stock split took effect, Tesla is announcing plans to sell up to $5 billion worth of common shares. The electric car and solar panel maker says in a filing with securities regulators that it intends to sell up to 10.03 million shares and use the proceeds for unspecified general corporate purposes. The sales would be made "from time to time" and Tesla says...

Samsung Electronics maintained its dominant status in the global DRAM market in the second quarter of the year, a report showed, as the pandemic drove demand for server chips. The South Korean tech giant’s market share in the global DRAM market stood at 43.5 percent in the April-June period, down 0.6 percentage point from three months earlier, while its revenue increased 13.8 percent to $7.4 b...

PCs, somewhat left behind in the mobile internet age, are making a comeback as people stuck at home due to the coronavirus rely on them for work, education and entertainment, industry watchers say. Gartner and International Data Corp. reports show shipments of desktop computers, laptops and workstations grew in the second quarter as pandemic-related disruptions to the supply chain were overcom...

Amazon has overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable brand, according to global market research conducted by Kantar. The report, titled 2019 Top BrandZ, claims the value of the e-commerce giant’s brand grew to $415 billion. Apple came second, valued at $352 billion, with Microsoft in third place at $326 billion South Korea’s Samsung had the 40th biggest value at almost $32 billion.

New orders of ships worldwide fell to a historic low in the first half of the year amid the coronavirus pandemic, industry sources said. In the January-June period, global new shipbuilding orders totaled 5.75 million compensated gross tons, or a total of 269 ships, according to data provided by global market researcher Clarkson Research Service. The tally is the lowest since 1996, when the m...

Samsung Electronics dominated the 5G smartphone market in the United States in the first quarter of the year, a report showed. Samsung’s Galaxy S20 series, which was unveiled in February, made up 94 percent of the US 5G smartphone market in the January-March period, according to market tracker Strategy Analytics, with the S20 Plus being the bestselling model. The midtier S20 Plus accounted f...

Lineage 2M, a mobile massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Korean online game maker NCSoft, was the highest grossing app on the Google Play Store during the first quarter of the year, industry data showed. The mobile version of mega-hit Lineage II was the most popular app in the world on Android platforms during the January-March period, partly on the back of the novel coronavirus ...

South Korea’s gross domestic product ranked 10th in the world in 2019, down two notches from the previous year, data showed. Asia’s fourth-largest economy registered $1.64 trillion in nominal GDP last year, according to the data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation. It marked South Korea’s first ranking drop since the 2008 global financial crisis. The OECD analyzed 38 advanced and ...

Spending on video games in the US jumped to a new April record as locked-down consumers sought refuge in playing games, industry figures showed. A total of $1.5 billion was spent on video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards, eclipsing a previous April high of $1.2 billion spent in the US in 2008, according to NPD analyst Mat Piscatella. April was the first full month of tight...