mark: i'm mark crumpton. you are watching "bloomberg west." opposed to the impeachment of the president -- president locke wrote today. on monday, the leader of the country in delegate -- invalidated the decision. opposition activists say at least 10 people are dead and several others wounded following two airstrikes in northwestern syria. the air raids came hours after a cease-fire was extended for another 48 hours. vice president biden has not endorsed either of the democratic candidates but he tells abc news who he thinks will win in november. >> we are all anxious to see --

>> who she is. i feel confident hillary will be the nominee and will be the next president. mark: mr. biden's comments go further down -- further them president obama. donald trump says he has narrowed his list of potential running mates to about five with deep resumes. he says he has not ruled out new jersey governor chris christie, who has been chosen to head trump's transition team. global news 24 hours a day powered by our 2400 journalists in more than 150 news euros around the world. from the bloomberg news bureau in new york, i'm mark crumpton. "bloomberg west" is next. ♪

emily: i'm emily chang and this is a special edition of "bloomberg west" in boston where we are surrounded by 1500 government and civic leaders for the annual meeting of the chamber of commerce. welcome to those turning in -- tuning in on television and those here in boston. a huge discussion topic is the growing tech infrastructure. we will hear from the person who helped spearhead the move to boston, mayor marty walsh. first, we want to begin with biotech because while boston may have fallen behind look on valley in internet startups, it is holding its own in this sector. massachusetts gets more than triple li na of funding from the national institute of health in california. venture capital funding also spiked to a record $2 billion last year.

the area we want to focus on his cambridge, home to 180 tech companies and all five of the top london hospitals in the united states as well as harvard and m.i.t. our next guest comes from the heart of that area and is focused on genome scale technology and is using a vast database to help match similar cancer profiles and get doctors the best resources. foundation's cofounder is here with me as well as the chief commercial officer. thank you for joining us. i want to start with biotech because i'm curious how boston became the hub for biotech. guest: it starts with the universities. you have the concentration of the clinicians and the

entrepreneurs. welcome to the hub of biotech. emily: ge says it is coming here to be closer to the biotech corn or. what do they get? guest: they get access to a rich population of talent exclusive here in the boston and cambridge area. it is an m.i.t., harvard, the major medical centers that they have access to. it is very attractive for the cambridge area. emily: i want to talk about gene editing. how does what you are working on get us closer to a cure for cancer? guest: we can read the programming code of patients with cancer now and in being able to read that code, we know what the software bugs are and we can sit just what types of their bees might be best matched or that specific patient.

to know what that might mean is tremendous. emily: when you hear things like a cure for cancer, how far out is that? guest: it is a tough disease and enemy and there are probably a thousand different kinds of cancers. we are going through them one by one. for some, a tremendous effect has been had immediately and for others, we are still working on it. a lot of big improvements are happening now. emily: you are working on getting this covered, but the test are over $5,000. how close are you to getting insurance to cover this? guest: it tends to out pace reimbursement. we have a number of regional contracts now being signed and other pairs are recognizing the data that now we are having a major impact on overall patient survival at a reduced cost to

traditional therapy. that data is emerging and those pairs are coming online. emily: shares of foundation are down from its peak a year ago. why is that? guest: the whole sector has been down. it is a long game that is fundamentally happening. we are incredibly enthusiastic about the future, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done. emily: are you changing your story or changing your strategy? what can you do to rekindle investment? guest: we continue to focus on three primary areas -- education, the ability to take action on the information we provide and fundamentally, it is about servicing oncologists. they simply need people to be there to answer their questions and help them with patient care as quickly as possible. emily: we talked about this a few months ago -- here we are again.

the sector is still struggling. why is that? guest: the fundamentals are extraordinarily strong. there was a time when it got ahead of themselves. maybe there was some consolidation, but ultimately, this is a sector that thrives on proving we are making a big difference for patients. it's that steady progress. i think we will continue to see that as we move forward. emily: when do you see that turnaround? guest: it's happening now. we had a strong quarter and we continue to do same things we are doing. creating awareness, driving adoption and assisting in positive patient care. emily: pharma sometimes gets a bad rap. when do you see things like that getting resolved? guest: what do people want

? people want to live long and healthy lives. emily: and afford the best technology and medicine. guest: the general contract we have had is if we have the fundamental inner -- innovation that lets people have those long and healthy lives, bringing those important therapies east to people who make those differences, i think that ecosystem has worked. there are obviously strains on it but whatever changes we make to it, we need to keep the part that works in tact. emily: i want to talk about regulation is there's question about whether the technology really stands up. regulators are looking at it even more closely than they were. who is right? guest: i think the feds are on that one, so i will leave that to the feds. the bedrock of making these breakthrough therapies is about data. can you show that these things make a fundamental difference?

we are fundamentally different and we do spend and a norton amount of time ensuring that our data is out there to demonstrate our quality and we are working closely with the agency to certify parts of our laboratory. we feel very comfortable with their entrance into our space. emily: we have been talking about how a lot of internet software talent has moved to silicon valley stop what do you think about why attack? are they here to stay? guest: this is the epicenter of biotech. if you are walking down the street in kendall square, you have the academics and clinicians and yet the small companies and big companies and the investors, literally, i walk one block and bump into multiple

people and have a conversation. sometimes it's about an investment opportunity, sometimes it -- that critical mass doesn't exist anywhere else. that liquidity is something very special. emily: thank you both so much. now to a story we are watching -- lawmakers are getting involved in allegations of political bias at a book. in a letter to ceo mark zuckerberg, john and asked whether stories with conservative views have been excluded from the facebook trending topic section. this comes on the heels of a story published by gizmodo that cited unnamed a spoke contractor saying curators were encouraged to label certain stories as trending even if a were not popular and leave conservative stories out. a lengthy rebuttal was written

saying we take these reports extremely seriously and have found no evidence that the allegations are true. gawker media says it stands by the report. speaking of facebook, peter thiel is now a delegant for donald trump. according to forbes, he's listed as a delegant for trump in the states 12 congressional district. the trump campaign submitted the list of names on monday. i sat down with peter thiel a few weeks ago and asked who he is supporting in this election cycle. peter: i find political philosophy interesting and there's a lot of these questions that are interesting and important. if i was involved, i think i would just blow my brains out. you would just go crazy after a while. emily: as an outspoken libertarian, he supported the candidacy of carly fiorina.

he has given money to fiorina and ted cruz in the past. coming up, disney and electronic arts moving dramatically in extended trading. we will look at the results, next. stay with us. ♪

emily: this is a special edition of "bloomberg west" live in boston where we are surrounded by his and government leaders for the annual meeting of the chamber of commerce.

i want to welcome our bloomberg 1200 radio audience here and turned to earnings. disney and electronic arts reporting after the bell. disney shares down after posting second-quarter results that missed estimates as profits dip at the abc network and its consumer products division. ea shares going the opposite direction, up 7% in extended trading after beating on profits and revenue in the fourth order. for more on this tale of two different rings, i'm joined by our editor at large, cory johnson. it has been such a fun you days here, but let's start with disney. even post star wars, not a great quarter. cory: analysts know there was some week is in the abc networks. that caused profits to dip, but big picture, 4% year over year growth, that is a strong

quarter. not the same kind of growth they saw last quarter but still growth nonetheless. emily: cable profits were up. cory: there were long-term concerns about the unbundling. if it starts to show pressure, this company is so strong but espn has been doing better than expected. "star wars" toys actually hurt. the dollar-denominated assets, selling dollar-denominated currency hurts them because of the strong dollar. while a lot of the toys sold, the profits were not as strong. that sort of them scares things. theme parks very strong this quarter. the current quarter, they are

going to open disney shanghai and that is expected to be very positive, but beginning in the second calendar quarter -- emily: and they have the follow-on to the "star wars" franchise planned. cory: particularly the theme park in florida will have a whole new place there -- it is a resource for disney properties. so they are expecting to use that over the course of many years. in this corner, star wars merchandise hurting them. emily: let talk about ea. cory: star wars is the story there. 14 million copies of that game sold to retailers, but he'll positive for ea in that quarter. one year ago, they had a

battleship game and it was one of their biggest ever. emily: cory johnson, our editor at large today in boston, thank you. now to a story we are watching -- amazon positioning itself as a competitor to youtube, letting users post their own content for advertising and royalties link to their uploaded video. it is similar to their strategy with e-books but allowed authors to [inaudible] one analyst at sanford bernstein is setting a $1000 price target, 47% up from where shares closed on monday. carlos kercher said the only major roadblock amazon faces is finding new areas of investment to keep up with the growth in gross profits. shares closed on tuesday any

consensus price target is 809. coming up, what is the next tech breakthrough for drones? we will hear from one of austan's leading robotics experts, next. -- boston's leading robotics experts, next. ♪

♪ emily: this is a special edition of "bloomberg west" where we are taking a deep dive into the boston tech scene and the innovators driving it. i'm joined by one of the leading figures in robotics and the ceo of a company on the cutting edge of drone technology. thank you so much for joining us.

we were just talking about how boston is a hub for biotech, but it is also a hub for robotic. how did it become this way? guest: boston is a hub for robotics because of m.i.t. and umass, and companies like irobot came out of those institutions and now companies are coming out of companies like irobot. emily: what sets your technology apart? guest: we have been developing drones that are persistent. a lot of times you have to bring them down in 20 or 30 minutes. ours, you send them up and leave them there. from monitoring to security to managing the entire facility, the trick is a micro filament tether. powering them up on the ground

and allowing them to fly emily: so it is not necessarily making battery life longer, it is powering them a different way. when does that actually happen? guest: i think it happens around 2020. i believe people will be able to deliver. this is the first year where you will be able to go fly commercially legally. last year you had to get an exemption in this year, you will be able to fly legally. you will be able to fly over people and into populated a breadth. technology is developing so fast. it's a really exciting time to be in the drone. emily: how is just raises thinking about this and what is he interested in? guest: amazon has been

concentrating on delivery but there are a host of other applications like fulfillment center robots. now, they are automating performance centers and there are so many applications when you are a logistics company. there are so many great applications. emily: google went big on robots and bought boston dynamics. then they got rid of it. do you think robotics companies -- guest: i don't think they are stepping away from robotics. i think they might be stepping away from human robots because it might be a bit too far from

commercialize a double right now. but i think you have to get into promotional applications and then move to more complex machines. emily: irobot, the robotics company you founded come are facing a proxy battle and i wonder what you make of the changes red mountain is calling for?

>> philippine stocks are rising. this central big holds a policy meeting tomorrow. he says the outcome of this week's vote will not have any impact. gradingthe guests houses are giving a gloomy outlook on commodities after the crash that happened see losses. mitsubishi sees a 19% fall in oil. they are predicting a 29% drop. prices on fuels and metals will continue for two-three years.

profit diving by almost a third as it struggles with its lossmaking carrier. elevating to 1.1 billion dollars. sprint is on track to improve profits by nearly $2 billion a year. those are the headlines from bloomberg news powered by over 2500 journalist. let's get the latest from the markets right now. japan comes back online. clicks we saw that strength in the yen earlier. it was up by a third of 1%. it was up by 6/10 of 1%. more positivity coming through into that japanese equity market . it is reaching for a second session after yesterday. we are seeing

weakness in the region. here in hong kong. they have fallen to a two-month low. it is down by 6/10 of 1%. still seeing good movement similar to what we are seeing across the rest of the region. crews are headed back to 35 barrels. we have stopped coming under pressure in hong kong. the the been having a very solid session up by about 3% taking its today gains since january. solid movesry coming through in a straw you led by those commodities. the a excess 200 is holding at levels that it has not seen since august 19. .ew zealand also looking shot let's have a quick check on the yen. it is stronger today.

up by about half of 1% there against the dollar holding at 100 and eight. -- 108. that is the picture on asian equity markets at the moment. emily: this is a special edition in the boston center. welcome to all of those tuning in. i want to welcome our bloomberg radio audits right here in boston. they are expected to bring in hundreds of jobs. the move was formally announced in january and ge just announced that massachusetts spends more on research and development than any other region in the world.

on solving for the world. we are excited to bring our headquarters to this dynamic and creative city. joining us now is marty wash. i want to start with boston in general because i work in silicon valley. silicon valley is the center of the main tech. what do you think boston has? not understand what is happening and our city and innovative economy is incredible. in downtown boston, 35% of her office space is tech companies. we have a lot of great innovation and start up companies here. we have 25 universities in the city, so we have a lot of rain power here.

emily: getting ge was a huge to. how will you know if it is worth it? mayor walsh: i think it is already worth it. they are moving their global headquarters to the city of boston and we are already seeing the benefits and the results of that. companies wanting to stay here after they get grounded, we have a lot of startups and i think a lot of company say why do we want to leave the city where we have companies like general electric coming into our city every day. general electric is one of those that such a win for our city. emily: do you think it will be a big acquirer here? mayor walsh: when we have the conversations about the collaborative approach with the governor and myself, a republican governor and democratic mayor working closely, i don't think we put a big incentive package on the table.

jeff and melt said that is healthy in this environment and this is a healthy environment for business. emily: let's talk about the tax breaks, we worth up to $25 million and hour help secure this field. that would generate more in property tax revenue even with the incentives. what are some concrete ways you think this deal will combat things like income inequality mayor walsh: general electric made a $50 million investment in schools and job training for top emily: how much of that goes to stem education? mayor walsh: $25 million goes in a may the official announcement. twenty five ilion dollars into the city, working in fools like madison park and dearborn high school. k to 12, a lot of that money is

going to go right in because they understand the origins of educating the workforce. the workforce here in our city. emily: what about affordable housing? mayor walsh: not as big a piece but we launched a plan to create 53,000 units by 2030. these are under construction or in the pipeline. we have already begun that conversation long before general electric decided to come to our city. inequality is a big problem and we have the number one inequality city which is not a good label to have. the way we combat that is with affordable jobs and good housing. emily: uber has infiltrated the city. how do you view them from a regulatory respective? mayor walsh: we will look at

regulations on car sharing services. i think both can exist. i'm not getting in on this conversation where you either pick uber or you pick taxis. they can both exist. we need to get some more regulations to make sure people feel safe and with cabs, we have a medallion system in boston and we try to make adjustments there. emily: draft kings is also a boston company. how do you feel about them doing business? mayor walsh: i think one of the things that is a problem here is that we like to regulate and congress and washington and massachusetts and other states, we have not caught up with how do we regulate these industries? that's something that needs to be looked at so good business models can move forward. emily: you have been referred to as the moneyball mayor.

how will they influence the rest of your term? mayor walsh: we measure everything from diversity to everything in between. data is so important. we have looked at it on a year-to-year basis and we are literally looking at a day to day basis. we keep track of everything and monitor it on a daily basis. we are able to see how we are doing on services whether it is remitting or trash pickup or whatever it might be. we saw the funds down, so we made a phone call and said why are the the payments down? we have not caught up with our population, so we are putting on

another class and looking at this data every single day. emily: boston mayor marty walsh, thank you for joining us. it's great to be here. speaking of uber, the company has agreed to start a guild for 35,000 drivers in new york. uber drivers will have a higher standard of protection and support than others and will be able to participate with meetings with management on a regular basis. they do not plan to create hills and other cities because more drivers use it for near full-time. coming up, 2016 may be the year of the hybrid job. we will talk to the president of bently university about how she is preparing graduates for the changing workplace. ♪

emily: this is a special edition of "bloomberg west" in boston massachusetts. the search for life on mars may not be as simple as looking on the surface of the red planet. scientists say we need to look deeper to find that answer. sam grobart follows honeybee robotics which has built components for every mars rover since 2003 and is working on a drill that could dramatically improve our chances to find extraterrestrial life. sam: a company called honeybee robotics is developing a drill that could take our search for extraterrestrial life low the

surface of mars. >> you want to go below the surface and find the history of the planetary body and at the same time, find life. the problem with mars is the first couple of meters have been oxidized and radiated, which means all the potential microorganisms have died. if you want to find them, you have to go hundreds of meters below the surface and that is where the drilling comes in. sam: honeybee has been drilling instruments for mars rovers in 2003. but designing a drill for an alien world is a different challenge. the engineers are trying it out at a gypsum quarry in southern california. the drill itself is a probe tethered to a long cable and is designed to row: letters to ice and rock and be hoisted back to

the surface. the drill has to rely on solar energy and use far less power than the black & decker you bought at home depot. >> powerful, but using very little power. it runs off the power of about two lightbulbs. sam: to find alien microbes, this drill has to do more than put a hole in the ground. it needs to analyze what it finds low. >> you drill down and analyze what you find below the surface. you dump the sample into the instruments and they can analyze it. >> we have the uv leds which will help us protect -- find microorganisms that emit bio fluorescents.

that could be a microorganism, who knows? to date, we have only scratched the surface of mars. we have gone two to three inches with curiosity, but it definitely going to happen. the question is when. i hope in our lifetime. if i were to guess, i would say 20 years. emily: that was bloomberg's sam grobart reporting. one boston suburb is hoping its approach to defining education will separate it from its peers. they are looking to prepare students for the emergence of what they call the hybrid job. thank you for joining us. what is the hybrid job? gloria:

we went out with a labor analytics firm and surveyed 25,000 job openings and found if employers are hiring for research and technology, they want someone who knows more than the disciplineitself. they want someone who knows social media and they want someone who can handle analytics. big data is permeating every single job question we can think of. emily: what should you be studying now are majoring in now if you want to erin t yourself a good job? gloria: follow your passion but marriott to something that relates to the business world. marry it with technology capabilities. you have to be up to date with the latest technology and make sure above everything else, do an internship. everyone in college today should be studying, whether it is history, marketing, whatever it

is, pair that with some thing will take you into the real world. emily: the most popular degrees are combinations of mbas and masters of is this analytics. gloria: if you look at what's happening, there is no company out there that's not going to be hiring people proficient in getting data and leveraging it. masters of business analytics is red-hot and the number of oaks of lying work has tripled since we first introduced it into the marketplace and that is only going to continue. emily: we have talked about mark zuckerberg dropping out of harvard and peter thiel has encouraged students to drop out of college and start companies instead. what is the value of higher education today? gloria: it's not what you study and it's not where you go to school, it is

how you study what you are studying and getting actual skill sets while you are in college and marrying them with lifelong learning capabilities. you should have that combination of liberal arts and some set of professional skills. there is nothing that will replace a four-year college experience when you learn leadership skills that. emily: what are some new trends you are in -- uncovering about how to keep women in careers? gloria: it is one of the thorniest conundrums. they said it would take a hundred years to reach parity in the boardroom. we don't have enough time for that. the clearest answer is a ceo who gets it. male or female. it requires all managers at

every level to follow of that. you will have sponsorships and women will be given a profit and loss responsibilities and they will be given the development they need every step along the way and you will stop having this leaky pipeline. emily: thank you so much for joining us. very excited about work you are doing. coming up, we will sit down with the cofounder of a term launched on the harvard campus about how to keep innovation and entrepreneurs in boston. ♪

emily: welcome back to a special edition of "bloomberg west." the x fund was founded to employ early capital and was started by harvard area and boston

entrepreneurs. they have deployed $11 million in investment and joining me now is one of those founders to hopes to take over management responsibility from the cofounder. the x fund has been embroiled in a bit of drama lately. you moved to terminate your cofounder and filed a restraining order. your cofounder said you tried to get rid of him without him knowing it. what really happened? guest: when you are growing fast and scale something, things get broken. it's unfortunate the way things turned out, but we are moving forward. emily: so you are going to take over management responsibility? guest: yes. that means i'm back in boston more often.

emily: your investors voted to cut investment in half which means you lost effectively $50 million. guest: we decided to release them from part of their commitment. the good news is we still have $60 million to support the portfolio. emily: and you are going to find a new partner? guest: i hope so. we have to do exactly what we have done to start. x fund was founded with what we called liberal art founders. they are technically talented but have a spark of something else. like i have a guest room in my house and when it is free, i'm going to rent it as a hotel room. that's a real social insight. it produces liberal arts

founders that have thoughts like that. emily: you grew up as a venture capitalists and worked in silicon valley and now you commute to boston. so you are sort of unbiased and i can ask you what's the advantage of starting a company in bostoand staying in austin? guest: from an investment standpoint, we think it's an incredible opportunity. we went from $53 billion to 23 billion. i feel like this is a place full of talent, capital, and this is a place where lots of incredible people come to get their education and where their ideas are first formed. emily: harvard has been criticized for not doing enough. what do the schools need to do to kickstart innovation? guest: that's a fantastic

question. most of the elite colleges have a system and their career services office hire people to pretend to be investment anchors and do mock interviews. what have these colleges done and the answer is to partner with firms like x fund to say if you want to create something unusual and new, here are the resources that we are or are not affiliated with. emily: i'm so glad you are here. thank you. that does it for this special edition of "bloomberg west." we have been hearing from some of the most innovative thinkers

along with the mayor helping to keep the city's great talents and ideas here. tomorrow, are focus continues and we will pick up -- ♪

♪ manus: emirates reports a first annual sales the client in a decade. it claims a stronger dollar, fewer bookings. fewer bookings, glunt from oil, and global uncertainty. france will rise above its 20 day average. that has not happened since the collapse in 2015. manus: technology