Global stocks sank Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with talks that are aimed at averting a trade war with China. Equities were also dented by poor eurozone economic data, and as Trump cast doubt on a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Trump (is) continuing to drive uncertainty over global trade,” said analyst Joshua Mahony at trading firm IG. “European markets are following their Asian counterparts lower, as a pessimistic tone from Trump is compounded by downbeat economic data,” he added. Markets had surged Monday after US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said they had agreed to pull back from imposing threatened tariffs on billions of dollars of goods, and continue talks on a variety of trade issues. However, Trump has declared that he was “not satisfied” with the status of the talks, fuelling worries that the world’s top two economies could still slug out an economically pain...
Spurred by concerns about climate change, governments and companies worldwide are making plans for a post-oil era. But, while there have been efforts to limit carbon emissions in the aviation industry by using biofuels, no solution is in sight to replace kerosene-burning commercial aircraft. And yet, as with the car industry, electrical propulsion looks to be the way forward for air travel . So why have things been going so slowly airside? Mainly, it seems, because innovators face a very large hurdle. Batteries vs jet fuel "Electric batteries pack much less energy per unit of weight than jet fuel," says Bjorn Fehrm, an independent industry aviation expert at Leeham News. About 40 times less, even if we consider the best batteries available. "Electric motors partly compensate this disadvantage by being more efficient in converting energy into power, but a huge gap remains." The result is that aircraft would need to carry very heavy batteries in orde...