This week: ‘Space taxis’, the cannabis job fair and the Samwer brothers

Queues, desks, pens, application forms: Canna- Search, which took place in the US city of Denver this

week, is just like any other job fair, save for the fact that the 50 companies seeking the talents of up to 500 people at this event all operate in Colorado’s cannabis industry – there are already some 12,000 people in the state employed in the field.

With attire ranging from sandals-and-suits to business suits, job-hunters flocked to the appropriately named Mile High Station conference centre to find out whether they would fancy working for companies that sell products such as “high-quality handcrafted infused edibles” (sold as Incredibles) and Tetrahydrocannabinol-infused beverages (advertised as Ice Cold Cannabis). The market is said to be growing.

Getting to know: The Samwer brothers

The Samwer brothers

Marc, Oliver a

nd Alexander

are set to become Germany’s latest billionaires thanks to the flotations of Rocket Internet and online fashion site Zalando.

Their father, a lawyer, encouraged his sons to read Germany’s financial newspaper Handelsblatt, and with or without the benefit of its pearls of wisdom, they decided as teenagers to go into business together. They will now profit from the estimated €5 billion from the Rocket flotation and cash in from a possible €4.5 billion valuation for Zalando.

Their biographer Joel Kaczmarek describes Marc (44) as “the foreign minister of the family” and Alex (39) as “the intellectual”. Oliver (42), meanwhile, is the one driven to prove himself, or “the typical middle child”.

In Numbers: Diamonds not forever

6

Years until the worldwide production of diamonds will begin to tail off unless new discoveries are made, according to miners

De Beers

.

40 Percentage of demand for the gems that still comes from the US, the biggest market for the rare stones, despite surging interest from China and India.

$85 billion Estimated size of the global market for diamonds, aka a type of carbon allotrope, aka a girl's "best friend". The Lexicon: Space taxi US space agency Nasa is fed up with having to rely on Russia to give its astronauts lifts to the International Space Station at a price of $70 million (€54 million) a seat. But rather than commission new shuttles of its own, it has decided to concentrate on its longer-term ambition of sending humans to Mars and contract out its orbital "space taxi" needs to private companies Boeing and SpaceX.

The contracts, under which services will begin from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 2017, are worth up to $4.2 billion to Boeing and as much as $2.6 billion to Elon Musk's SpaceX. In other words, the fares are literally astronomical. The list: Netflix conquests Not content with the 13 million subscribers it has outside of the US, on-demand giant Netflix is introducing itself to some new territories.

1 France: The company is promising unhappy French politicians that it will invest in original French-language content, including a drama called Marseille set in that city.

2 Germany: After a bash in Paris, Netflix executives next took the cast of Orange is the New Black to Berlin for some red carpet action. But like France's Vivendi, cable channel Sky Deutschland also launched a streaming service ahead of the competitive threat.

3 Austria: Netflix continued what The Hollywood Reporter called its “InterRail tour of Europe” by stopping over in Vienna.

4 Belgium: In total, Netflix is entering six new European markets this week, with analysts expecting it to add 5-6 million subscribers as a result of its forays.

5 Australia: Netflix hasn’t announced an Australian launch yet, but it has bought the streaming rights to Batman prequel Gotham for the territory, so it’s only a matter of time before world domination is complete.