Image of the week: Teenage robots
They grow up so fast. This is Asimo, short for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, and he is 15 years old. He can walk (amusingly), run (at 9km per hour), hop and go up and down stairs. Underneath that helmet, Asimo has big, black saucer eyes and a bit of a teenage smirk. He can use sign language to communicate.
But the best thing about this latest upgrade to Honda's humanoid robot, unveiled in a presentation in Zaventem near Brussels this week, is that he doesn't seem to mind the fate that humans have always had in store for robots: a career as a drinks waiter. Honda has given him enough hand dexterity to pour a drink from one vessel to another one without spilling a drop. No lemon, thanks. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters
In numbers: Coconut water craze
$166m
Sum that Red Bull China will pay for a 25 per cent stake in Vita Coco, the biggest seller of coconut water, having enjoyed sales of $270 million in the US last year.
$665m
Valuation that the deal gives Vita Coco’s parent company All Market after a period in which coconut water’s popularity among consumers has surged at the expense of soft drinks.
$87m
The second-largest coconut water brand, Zico, owned by none other than the Coca-Cola Company, collected this much in sales last year – double its 2012 revenues.
The lexicon: ‘Hard hat tour’
This is one for the politicians and their strategists: British chancellor George Osborne is about to embark on a "hard hat tour" of the UK. The phrase is shorthand for a succession of pre-election photo opportunities that are likely to involve Osborne chatting to company directors on construction sites or in the bowels of manufacturing plants.
The Financial Times noted that it was “a standing joke” in the UK Treasury that Osborne was rarely seen in public without either a fetching hard hat or pair of laboratory goggles. Throw in a high-vis jacket, and you have the complete election campaign outfit.
Getting to know: Jeff Bewkes
Time Warner chief executive Jeff Bewkes (62) spent last weekend in the executive haven of the Allen & Co media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Rumours circulated that Time Warner was an acquisition target. "I know nothing about it," he told Variety. Now that it has emerged that 21st Century Fox made a formal offer to buy Time Warner in June, he won't be able to keep his cards so close to his chest.
The New Jersey-born Bewkes arrived at Time Warner via its pay-TV jewel HBO, which he joined in 1986, some 13 years before The Sopranos kick-started multiple waves of critical plaudits for its content. And he can be blunt when he feels like it – he once described Time Warner's 2000 mega-merger with AOL as "the biggest mistake in corporate history".
The list: Endangered jobs
The US recruitment site Career Cast has thoughtfully come up with a list of the most endangered professions, based on the fact that more jobs of those descriptions will be lost than added between now and 2022.
1 Mail carrier: Postal workers have the worst hiring outlook in the US, according to Career Cast, as the slow death of snail mail continues.
2 Travel agent: We just keep booking those holidays all by ourselves.
3 Flight attendant: Airlines are cutting back, but cabin crew are also staying in their jobs for longer, reducing the need for new flyers.
4 Lumberjack: Part of the problem for the logging industry is that demand for paper has plunged, so fewer people are in the market for wood pulp.
5 Newspaper reporter: The paperless society glistens on the horizon, with Career Cast's hiring outlook for print journalists in the US standing at minus 13 per cent.
