United States of America
I cover business, technology, and more. I am a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, with a Master's focusing on data journalism, investigative reporting and longform narrative.
After hitting a three year-low in March, business conditions for U.S. startups are steadily improving. The Bloomberg U.S. Startups Barometer, a weekly gauge that tracks the funding flowing into private technology companies as well as the exits that make their investors money, increased 16 percent from a year earlier.
Since taking office in December, Argentina President Mauricio Macri has won over foreign investors by pulling the nation out of default and restoring the credibility of its data. Now, he's also beginning to get a vote of confidence from the country's $17 billion mutual fund industry.
Amazon has beaten investors' expectations on revenue today, $38 billion in sales reported for this quarter, compared with the $37.2 billion investors were anticipating. Strong revenue growth numbers are par for the course with this company: Amazon has an unbroken, 20-year streak of posting revenue growth in the double digits.
Fitbit Inc. topped analysts' revenue projections on better-than-expected demand for fitness bands, and announced its anticipated smartwatch will debut in time for the holiday shopping season. Second-quarter sales were $353.3 million, a decline of 40 percent, but higher than analysts' average estimate of $341.2 million.
A former employee of BetterWorks Systems Inc. sued the venture-backed startup and three executives alleging sexual harassment, physical assault and a work environment that's hostile to women. The female employee's complaint describes BetterWorks Chief Executive Officer Kris Duggan making inappropriate motions toward her on a bed during a company retreat in October and said an internal investigation concluded that he hadn't violated the startup's harassment policies.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri's plans to close the largest fiscal deficit in two decades and revitalize a sagging energy sector were dealt a blow Thursday after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling on gas tariffs. Gas company shares plunged.
Even after Brazil outperformed almost all other major markets this year, analysts and fund managers say there's still room for further gains if suspended President Dilma Rousseff is impeached in coming weeks. Rousseff's permanent ouster would clear the way for acting President Michel Temer to get on with the fiscal reforms investors have been pushing for.
A growing number of foreign investors are turning to a little-known corner of Argentina's bond market as the central bank chops interest rates that were once as high as 38 percent. The notes were sold by the province of Buenos Aires in February and yield six percentage points more than the country's inter-bank deposit rate of 25.6 percent, according to Torino Capital.
Acting President Michel Temer is sparking a "major change in economic direction" in Brazil, says BlackRock Inc.'s Will Landers. Temer's push to revive Latin America's biggest economy will pick up steam when his interim tag is removed in the coming months, said Landers, the head of global emerging markets at the world's largest money manager.
Living on a boat in the San Francisco Bay is much more affordable than living on land in the San Francisco Bay Area. But now there’s a housing crunch for boats, too.
It's the last day of the year for tomatoes. This December has been cold. A steady drizzle is falling on the parking lot of the Claremont Avenue Department of Motor Vehicles, which is given over to the Temescal Farmers' Market on Sundays. Nearly every vendor wears a wool cap for warmth.
By Isabel Gottlieb The city of San Francisco is enlisting the help of local businesses to transform one of the Tenderloin's most notoriously crime-ridden blocks with art. The new project aims to bring an outdoor public art installation to Turk Street between Mason and Taylor. The installation may be integrated into construction scaffolding as work...
West Contra Costa Unified School District is about to become the laboratory for a nationwide experiment to improve education. The project, called the Teachers Guild, takes new ideas proposed by educators from around the country and tests them in classrooms, using feedback from schools and teachers to refine them throughout the process.
Students at Summit K2, a charter middle school in El Cerrito, are testing a new way to learn online, courtesy of Facebook. Called the Personalized Learning Platform, the Facebook-developed software lets students chart their own path and track their progress through online learning materials.
I’ve never crossed an empty Cooper Square — there are always people coming up out of the entrance for the 6, in line at the Mud Truck, messing around with the cube. Homeless guys, fruit cart guys, drunk college students. It’s not where I would have thought to look for a clean, minimalist image.
The modern TV infomercial started with a karate chop. "In Japan," begins the dramatic voice-over in the 1978 commercial, "the hand can be used as a knife." A man in a white karate suit splits a stack of wooden boards with his hand.