TopNews

Nuclear and renewable energy major Areva has made announcement about a huge transformation plan after its net loss increased to 4.8 billion euros.

According to Areva, it is going to sell assets, cut costs, decrease capital expenditure and also start discussions with unions about feasible layoffs.

"The scale of the net loss for 2014 illustrates the twofold challenge confronting Areva: continuing stagnation of the nuclear operations, lack of competitiveness and difficulties in managing the risks inherent in large projects”, said Chief Executive Philippe Knoche.

Philippe Knoche is the third CEO to run Areva in four years and he took place of Luc Oursel. In last October Oursel took leave and died in December. According to Areva, it is going to present a three-year financing plan.

Standard Chartered PLC informed that it has lowered a key financial target and also informed that it is going to take new action in order to conserve capital after profit dropped sharply last year.

It has been informed that net profit fell 37% to $2.51 billion from $3.99 billion. It is expected that the earnings will be not good. An announcement was made by the bank that former J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. executive Bill Winters is going to replace Chief Executive Peter Sands. Departure of Mr. Sands was announced last week after months of pressure from some shareholders to put new leadership in place after two years of waning earnings.

Japanese automotive giant Toyota Motor Corporation has offered promotion to more foreigners to senior posts. Europe chief Didier Leroy has been appointed executive vice president by the world's biggest automaker.

Leroy will be one of six executive vice presidents (EVP) at Toyota. Julie Hamp, a senior official at Toyota Motor North America will be made a managing officer and will also become first female executive.

An African-American general counsel in North America, Christopher Reynolds is also going to hold the post of a managing officer. Promotion of Hamp marks a step in Japanese automaker's move to reduce the gender gap in the workplace. Corporate Japan has been asked to appoint women to 30% of top jobs by 2020.

According to reports, population of monarch butterfly has declined by more than 90% during the last two decades. Environmentalists have been seeking protection for the black-and-orange insect under the Endangered Species Act. According to the environmentalists, to save the population of monarch butterfly, it is necessary to restore milkweed habitat. The environmentalists said that restoring milkweed habitat will also help other insects like honey bees, whose numbers have decreased by over 4 million beehives in last about seven decades.

Lincoln Brower, ecologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, said, “My feeling is if the monarch goes, it is like the canary in the coalmine”.

Engineers in Texas have made a cockroach robot that could collect information from places where humans could not go. According to reports, the new tiny robot could be the most revolting creation of a robot from a lab.

The robot, robo-roach includes a live cockroach with a small computer that has been wired into the insect’s nervous system. After enabling the robot, a human can control the tiny robot. Hong Liang, a researcher at Texas A&M University and lead researcher, said that the insect could carry a tiny video camera, sensors and microphones. According to the researcher, the robo-roach could collect information from places where humans would rather not go.

Researchers have found that the weight of ‘Sophie’ the Stegosaurus was around 1,560kg that is equivalent to a large cow, a Beluga whale or a small caravan. Sophie used to live 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period.

London's Natural History Museum unveiled Sophie, in December 2014, becoming the latest fossil in its collection.

Sophie was discovered in 2003 at the Red Canyon Ranch in Wyoming, United States and is one of the most complete Stegosaurus fossils that are found ever and are made up of 360 bones.

Researchers at the Natural History Museum along with a UK-based team analyzed the dinosaur. The UK-based team individual digitally scanned each of her bones.