The business magnate also shared with people how Alibaba has grown into what it is today.

As a Hanghzou native, Jack Ma attributes his success to the hard-working ethos and innovative spirits that was instilled in him at a young age.

The business tycoon stresses the role of competitive and innovative ideas while opportunities, in his opinion, are open to those who own those creative thoughts.

"There are all kinds of problems every day when you start a new business, and these problems need to be fixed, either by yourself, or by others, because someone has to do it. And those who are able to solve these problems will have seized their opportunity," Ma said.

Ma is encouraging entrepreneurs to have a broader vision and take a wider picture into account in running business.

He describes an innovative entrepreneur as being someone who always sets their sights on the future:

"Being innovative means you look at today from a viewpoint of tomorrow. We need to look at today's China from a viewpoint of the world, and look at ourselves from the viewpoint of those outside this industry. When you think this way, you will do things in a different way," Ma noted.

The Alibaba conglomerate, which just celebrated its 18th birthday earlier this month, has made Ma one of the richest men in China, and in Asia, with a fortune valued at some $30 billion.

Despite the huge success, Ma says he remains cool headed and still stays true to his dreams:

"It's important to retain a 'simple' and 'naive' outlook for the world. If a man still maintains his 'simplicity' and 'naivety' when he turns 100, I think he will be a very noble old man. I hope we can all hold on to a simple mindset and stick to our dreams, because if we lose our dreams, everything we strive for will become pointless and we will only become money-making machines. "

Alibaba's revenue in the 12 months ending in this March rose by 56 percent to $23 billion.

Now, its business has expanded into many other areas such as cloud computing and entertainment, from the original online retail.

The top TPP officials will meet on Thursday and Friday in Tokyo to discuss items to be shelved from the agreement.

The move comes following the withdrawal of the United States. The 11 countries are trying to put off parts of the agreement, which were added on US requests.

Economic Revitalization Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters on Friday that with the APEC forum 8 weeks away, he hopes the 2-day meeting will become a big step toward achieving great results, while keeping the contents of the pact at high levels.

Japanese government officials say Japan wants to avoid revising the contents of the pact, so the United States could come back to the pact in the future. Japan, as the host nation, is expected to lead the talks so the members can come up with a shortlist of the items to be shelved, while trying to identify each member's interests.

The APEC forum will be held in Vietnam in November.

Born in Australia, Lynch joined Rio Tinto’s board in 2011 and was appointed as CFO in 2013. He will remain with the group to ensure a smooth transition of his roles, the firm said in the statement.

Succession planning is already in progress, the company noted, adding Lynch’s replacement will be announced in due course.

Lynch, who turns 65 later this month, leaves the company at a time it searches for a new chairman to replace to Jan du Plessis, who also is also stepping down next year.

Under his direction, the group cut debt significantly and, in February, it was able to post its first gain in annual profit since 2013.

The company, which is also the world’s No. 2 iron producer, announced in August the biggest interim dividend in its history and said it would spend a further $1 billion repurchasing its owns shares.

Adam Rolston wins that honor. Rolston completed the wildest – if not the longest – golf hole in history Saturday when he dropped a 7-foot putt on the 18th green of the Mt Bogd Golf Club in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Rolston’s golfing journey – detailed by The Telegraph and set for verification by Guinness – covered 80 days and 20,093 shots. He was playing at a self-determined par 14,000. There is no creature in ornithological history – back to the link between birds and their dinosaurs ancestors – to describe a hole 6,093 over par.

Rolston, a 28-year old former Hong Kong rugby player, lost hundreds of balls over the 1,250 mile (2,011km) golf expedition, playing through water, ice and across deserts.

“My mates have all been saying you can’t do this and that has been on repeat in my head,” Rutland told The Telegraph. “This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’m in awe of the fact we’ve done it.”
Rolston was raising money for Laureus, which runs children’s sports charities worldwide. He has done this sort of thing for charity in the past. He once rode a bicycle though every country in Africa. Rolston said he chose Mongolia for his golf challenges because of the country’s wide-open, flat and sparsely populated terrain.

Rolston teed off from the western point of Mongolia and worked his way toward the 18th green of the country’s lone golf course.

“We have had dozens of people telling us we were mad or crazy, with comments ranging from: ‘That’s impossible” to ‘Do you not have anything better to do?’” says Rolston.

Among the modes of transport: a golf cart that quickly broke down, a Russian jeep, a camel and three horses.

And that was all in the first week.

Rolston has not lost his love for the game, either.

“I definitely want to keep playing when I get back,” he told The Telegraph. “I’ve been super-pumped about playing golf every day. I might hit fewer balls when I get back, but I will still be addicted to the game as much as I ever have been.”

“This format is the result of the announcement made on September 7th by the President [Nicolas Maduro]... that Venezuela will implement new strategies to free the country from the tyranny of the dollar,” the Venezuelan Oil Ministry said in a statement.

The decision to move to Chinese currency was made last week as a way to get around the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US government in August, which froze some Venezuelan assets and prohibited American citizens from doing business with the country.

This has hurt Venezuela’s oil exports at a time when the country is facing a severe economic crisis. At the time, the White House said the sanctions were “carefully calibrated to deny the Maduro dictatorship a critical source of financing”.

“The market is dominated by transactions with the US dollar, and we must develop other ways to conduct international transactions,” Finance Minister Ramon Lobo told VTV earlier.

Venezuela’s decision follows plans announced by China to start a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold, which could lead to the emergence of a new Asia-based crude oil benchmark.

As China is the world’s biggest crude buyer, the new contract may allow exporters to bypass American sanctions by trading oil in yuan, something that has interested countries such as Russia and Iran.

“In 2012, Iran began to accept yuan for its oil and gas payments, followed by Russia in 2015,” political writer Dan Glazebrook wrote in a column for RT in June.

“If this takes off, this could literally spell the beginning of the end of US global power. The dollar is the world's leading reserve currency, in the main, only because oil is currently traded in dollars. Countries seeking foreign exchange reserves as insurance against crises within their own currencies tend to look to the dollar precisely because it is effectively ‘convertible’ into oil, the world's number one commodity.”

An injection of support from one of Silicon Valley’s largest companies could be a boost to Lyft as the No. 2 ride provider battles rival Uber Technologies Inc for market share.

It was not immediately clear how large an investment Alphabet might make. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported there was at least some discussion of a $1 billion deal.

Alphabet and Lyft declined to comment.

In May, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo and Lyft announced a partnership to work together on developing self-driving technology; neither offered many details of the agreement.

Recently, Lyft has been in an expansion mode, saying in August that it was available in 40 U.S. states covering 94 percent of the country’s population.

Lyft raised $600 million in fresh funding in April, mostly from large global investment funds. The round valued the company at $7.5 billion, up from $5.5 billion at Lyft’s previous financing more than a year earlier.

Additional investment could further push off discussion of an initial public offering, which Lyft had planned likely for 2018, according to sources close to the company. Lyft previously planned not to raise any more funding prior to its IPO, the sources said.

Alphabet since 2013 has been an investor in Uber through its venture capital arm, known as GV. That relationship, though, became more complicated when Alphabet’s Waymo sued Uber this year for alleged theft of trade secrets.

The meeting was co-chaired by Sh.Odonbaatar, Director of the Policy and Planning Department of the Mongolian Foreign Ministry, and Ivan Jancarek, Junior Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic.

The parties discussed cooperation goals to be implemented in near future in the political, trade, economic, agricultural and educational sectors. The sides also exchanged information on the international and regional state and the foreign policy of both countries. They expressed the willingness to broaden the mutually-beneficial cooperation.

The same day, Deputy Foreign Minister of Mongolia B.Battsetseg received Ivan Jancarek. They shared views on the bilateral relations and cooperation in political and economic sectors.

B.Battsetseg hopes that the annual Mongolia-Czech business forum would contribute to creating a new market and partnership between businessmen and companies.

In turn, Ivan Jancarek said he was pleased with a present level of the bilateral traditional relations and cooperation, and added the countries have a chance to expand the economic cooperation.

While this rate is still dramatically too high, it demonstrates that the correct efforts are being taken to decrease the poverty rate in Mongolia and should be studied and replicated in other impoverished countries.

Of the information available regarding the poverty rate in Mongolia, it is even more impressive that the country has managed to reduce its poverty rate in both its urban and, even more so, its rural environments. Urban poverty is typically easier to weed out because urban environments often see the benefits of economic development, which unfortunately take significantly longer to reach rural areas.

In the years 2012 and 2014, rural areas in Mongolia saw their poverty rates fall by nine percent and accounted for half the reduction in poverty during that two-year period. This decrease in poverty can be attributed to the spurt of economic growth that Mongolia has experienced over the past decade. Mainly due to the growth of its mining industry, Mongolia has enjoyed double digit growth rates, significantly helping to generate income for the country’s poor population.

That the Mongolian economy relies on mining, however, may prove to be its downfall and may force the poverty rate in Mongolia to once again take an upward turn. As the demand for coal and copper – Mongolia’s primary mineral resources – continues to fall, it will become imperative to develop a new industry to support the ongoing drop in its poverty rate.

Assisting in the reduction of poverty in Mongolia is the growth of its capital Ulaanbaatar. As it continues to gain significance in Asia and the rest of the world, it will allow for more money to be diverted to poverty reduction efforts and allow more jobs to be created. By creating more jobs in Mongolia’s capital city, people will increasingly be able to save money and eventually climb the economic ladder out of poverty.