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European shares kicked off the week on a positive note on Monday, recouping the previous session’s losses, as markets heaved a sigh of relief after U.S. President Donald Trump delayed his threat to impose a 50% tariff on the region. The pan-European STOXX 600 index closed 1% higher. It had lost 0.9% on Friday after Trump unexpectedly called for sharp tariffs on goods from the European Union, saying that negotiations with the region were not moving fast enough. On Sunday, Trump extended the deadline for tariffs to July 9 from June 1, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the 27-nation bloc needed more time to produce a deal. The automobiles and parts index, sensitive to tariff-related pressures, led broader gains with a 1.8% rise. However, they were limited by a 3.3% decline in Porsche. Defence companies were among the biggest boosts to the STOXX 600 index, with Rheinmetall and Leonardo gaining over 3% each and the aerospace and defence index advancing 1.7%. The stocks also pulled up the industrial goods and services sector by 1.5%. The defence and auto sectors helped German stocks rise by 1.7%, near a record high. Luxury stocks, highly exposed to the U.S. market, also gained. Shares of Kering, LVMH and Richemont rose about 1% each, as did the broader index “While more time for EU-U.S. negotiations is good news, the speed of the rebound in stocks suggests that investors may have become too optimistic on the path for trade discussions,” said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management. The euro jumped along with other risk-sensitive currencies, while euro zone government bond yields were little changed, as Trump backtracked from his tariff threats. Rising concerns about the U.S. economic slowdown and fiscal woes, underscored by Moody’s credit rating downgrade on May 16, are pushing investors to limit their exposure to U.S. assets. “If you want to have a low-risk portfolio, the U.S. is where you would go first, but with the trade tensions and geopolitical tensions, this favourable sentiment has shifted,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior market analyst at Swissquote Bank. Trading volumes were lighter than usual due to public holidays in the U.S. and the UK markets. However, U.S. stock futures were up more than 1% each. Thyssenkrupp jumped 8.8% after a weekend report said the submarine and car parts maker plans to hold a shareholder meeting on August 8 to approve an expected spin-off of its warship division. Thyssenkrupp was not immediately available for comment. Zealand Pharma topped the STOXX 600 with a 10% advance. Nikhil Sharma and Purvi Agarwal, Reuters
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E-Commerce
A new study paints a promising picture for the ways that digital technology use affects the aging brain. Published in Nature Human Behavior last month, neuroscientists at Baylor University and the University of Texas at Austin conducted a meta-analysis drawing on 57 different studies and data from more than 400,000 participants over the age of 50. A digital brain boost The new study found that across the board, the use of everyday digital technology like computers, smartphones, and the internet is associated with lower measures of cognitive decline in middle-aged and older adults. The strength of that positive association was comparable to established protective factors for dementia like reduced blood pressure, cognitively engaging hobbies, and exercise. The results contradict assumptions that long-term technology use might lead to cognitive decline in old age. There was no credible evidence from the longitudinal studies, or the meta-analysis as a whole, for widespread digital brain drain or digital dementia as a result of general, natural uses of digital technology, coauthors Jared Benge and Michael Scullin wrote. The meta-analysis, which aggregated findings across many different pieces of research, included previous studies on digital technology use in adults older than 50 if they examined cognitive performance or dementia diagnosis as an outcome. The average participant age was 68.7 years at the beginning of the study (a third of the studies were longitudinal, collecting data over time). These participants are described as digital pioneers who did not have access to technology and the internet while growing up. Within the meta-analysis, the three studies that focused on the use of social media showed findings that are more mixed, with inconsistent results for cognitive measures. The authors hypothesize that increased social media use could mean participants had less face-to-face social interaction, which is notable because in-person socializing is believed to protect the aging brain against dementia. Helping seniors stay social Beyond social media, technology use could enable a thriving social life for aging adults, who might use video calls, messaging, and email to stay in touch with loved onesdigital tools that share little in common with social medias algorithmic feeds. Digitally enabled social connections improve feelings of loneliness in some older adults, but they may also increase exposure to socially driven misinformation or reduce the frequency of face-to-face relationships, the authors wrote. Additional work is therefore needed to understand how, when, and for whom digital social connectedness benefits well-being and cognition. The authors also suggest that future studies should look at the same trends in lower-income countries, where a spike in dementia diagnosis is expected and access to technology is expanding rapidly. While the studys results show a robust positive trend between the use of technology and a healthy aging mind, figuring out the root cause of those positive outcomes is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. For example, decreased walking speed presages cognitive decline in a host of neurodegenerative diseases, but the reverse causal direction is also present: Regular walking leads to better cognitive performance and slower rates of cognitive decline, the authors wrote. For aging adults, its possible that better cognition promotes technology use, even as technology use promotes better cognition. While the current meta-analysis showed a consistent, strong positive association between natural uses of digital technologies and overall cognitive well-being, there is no simple answer to whether technology is always good or always bad for the aging brain, the authors wrote. It is unknown whether the current findings will hold in future decades for people who were initially exposed to digital technologies during childhood or as the types of general digital technology exposure change.
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E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money for scientific and engineering research away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools. His comments on his social media platform Truth Social come less than a week after his administration sought to block the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students as part of Trump’s extraordinary effort to seize some government control of U.S. academia. Trump, a Republican, has frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, complaining that it has hired Democrats, “Radical Left idiots and ‘bird brains'” as professors. Harvard, a private university, has sued to restore the funding, saying the cuts are an unconstitutional attack on its free speech rights and unlawful. Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research after a lengthy application process by individual scientists, work that is not typically done at trade schools. It was not clear whether Trump was referring to Harvard grants his administration has already frozen. Harvard has said it was told that virtually all of its federal grant awards were revoked earlier in May, in a series of letters by the NIH, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and other agencies. The letters each said the grants were being suspended because they “no longer effectuate agency priorities.” Harvard did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The White House did not respond to questions about the specific funds Trump wants to repurpose or how it could be reallocated to trade schools under the law. On Friday, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, a policy the university said was part of Trump’s broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to “surrender its academic independence.” The order provides temporary relief to thousands of international students, who were faced with potentially having to transfer under a policy that the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts called a “blatant violation” of the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws. It said the move would have an “immediate and devastating effect” on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders. Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, representing 27% of total enrollment and a significant chunk of its revenue from tuition fees. The move was the latest escalation in a broader battle between Harvard and the White House, as Trump seeks to compel universities, law firms, news media, courts and other institutions to align with his agenda. Trump and fellow Republicans have long accused elite universities of left-wing bias. In recent weeks, the administration has proposed ending Harvard’s tax-exempt status and hiking taxes on its endowment, and opened an investigation into whether it violated civil rights laws by discriminating against “white, Asian, male, or straight employees” or job or training program applicants. Harvard has said its hiring and admissions are compliant with the law. David Shepardson, Jonathan Allen, Nate Raymond and Jasper Ward, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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