2021年经济学人 一周要闻 百度二次香港上市募资或逾30亿美元

The world this week

一周国际要闻

Business

商业板块

Uber announced that it would comply with a recent legal ruling in Britain which found that its 70,000 or so drivers in the country are employees, not contractors¹. This means they will be entitled to the minimum wage, holiday pay and a pension in Britain, the first country where Uber has accepted such conditions. The status of workers in the gig economy is being reviewed in other cases around the world. Courts increasingly agree that it is the drivers who are being taken for a ride.

优步宣布，将遵守英国最近的一项法律裁决，该裁决称，在英国的约7万名司机为雇员，而不是承包商。这意味着他们将有权在英国享有最低工资、假期工资和养老金待遇。英国是首个让优步接受这些条件的国家。世界各地的其他案例也在审查劳动者在零工经济中的地位。法院越来越认同是司机被骗了。

Competition in the electric-car market accelerated, as Volkswagen set out plans to standardise electrification² technology across all aspects of its vehicles and to scale up production worldwide. It is also to build six battery factories in Europe alone. VW aims to deliver 1m electric or hybrid³ cars this year, bringing it closer to Tesla in sales, and eventually possibly snatching Elon Musk’s crown. Tesla’s CEO said this week that henceforth his job title is “technoking”.

随着大众(Volkswagen)制定计划，在其汽车的所有方面标准化电气化技术，并在全球范围内扩大生产规模，电动汽车市场的竞争开始加速。该公司还将在欧洲建立6家电池厂。大众的目标是今年交付100万辆电动或混合动力汽车，使其销量更接近特斯拉(Tesla)，最终可能夺取埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)的桂冠。特斯拉首席执行官本周表示，今后他的头衔是“技术王”。

Baidu, China’s dominant⁴ search engine is aiming to raise more than $3bn from its forthcoming secondary listing of shares in Hong Kong, according to reports.

据报道，在中国占主导地位的搜索引擎——百度，计划通过即将在香港进行的二次上市筹资逾30亿美元。

Stripe, a payments-processing platform for e-commerce websites, was valued at $95bn after its latest round of financing. That makes the startup more valuable than Facebook and Uber when they were still unlisted firms.

电子商务网站支付处理平台Stripe在最新一轮融资后估值为950亿美元。这使得这家初创公司比Facebook和Uber还未上市时更有价值。

Striving to make women feel safer when they use its dating app, Tinder said it would integrate Garbo, a service that checks people’s backgrounds, into its platform this year. Garbo, run not for profit, was founded by Kathryn Kosmides, a former victim of abuse.

为了提升女性在使用其约会应用程序时的安全感，Tinder表示，今年将把审核用户背景的服务Garbo整合到其平台上。Garbo是一家由Kathryn Kosmides创立的非营利性经营，Kathryn Kosmides曾是一名虐待受害者。

There were more signs that air travel in America is picking up. Figures from the Transportation Security Administration showed it had screened around 1.3m travellers a day over several days for the first time in a year. Numbers are still down by half compared with 2019. With the industry optimistic about summer bookings, the shares of America’s four biggest carriers hit their highest prices in a year.

有更多的迹象表明，美国的航空旅行正在回暖。美国交通安全管理局的数据显示，该机构在数天内每天筛查约130万旅客，这是一年来的首次。与2019年相比，这一数字仍下降了一半。由于航空业对夏季机票预订量持乐观态度，美国四大航空公司的股价达到了一年来的最高水平。

1 contractors   

n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We got estimates from three different contractors before accepting the lowest. 我们得到3个承包商的报价后，接受了最低的报价。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Contractors winning construction jobs had to kick back 2 per cent of the contract price to the mafia. 赢得建筑工作的承包商得抽出合同价格的百分之二的回扣给黑手党。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 electrification   

n.充电，电气化；起电；电化；带电

参考例句：

• Electrification of the countryside--yes, that, too, is impressive. 是的。农村电气化也是了不起的事。 来自演讲部分
• After electrification, it will readily stick to a wall or a ceiling. 起电后，它立即吸附到墙壁上或天花板上。 来自辞典例句

3 hybrid   

n.(动，植）杂种，混合物

参考例句：

• That is a hybrid perpetual rose.那是一株杂交的四季开花的蔷薇。
• The hybrid was tall,handsome,and intelligent.那混血儿高大、英俊、又聪明。

4 dominant   

adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因

参考例句：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。