It's a sign that it may be too early to say exactly which companies are going to survive the COVID-19 lockdown and which will fall by the wayside. In a move that has surprised the markets, shares in cinema giant AMC jumped nearly 300 percent in early U.S. trading. The company, one of the most shorted on Wall Street, has been boosted by the confirmation of emergency funding to stave off a possible bankruptcy. Leisure industry stocks across the sector breathed a sigh of relief.

More big news is expected later when Apple posts its first-quarter earnings and investors find out if the new iPhone 12 has been a hit with cash-strapped consumers.

French drugs giant Sanofi, behind schedule on its own vaccine program, is to open one of its factories to rivals Pfizer and BioNTech, as pressure mounts from EU governments to increase the rate at which doses are reaching the market. Meanwhile, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has again warned of the rich/poor world divide in COVID-19 treatment.

New U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has perfected hers, but what exactly is the "eye smile" and how do you do it? Watch our short video to find out.

And finally if you live in the EU, find out why your Syrian shopkeeper or Kurdish barber is probably more likely to have a university degree than you are. 

Louise Greenwood

Digital business correspondent 

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The share price of struggling cinema operator AMC Entertainment quadrupled in early New York trading after confirming $917 million in funding to help it through the COVID-19 shutdown. 

Along with the retail gaming giant Games Stop, AMC stock has been heavily traded by short sellers looking to profit from firms struggling in the pandemic conditions. AMC shares had fallen more than 40 percent since the start of December. But late on Tuesday, CEO Adam Aron, said "the sun was shining" once again on the firm and "bankruptcy was off the table" after securing new loan and equity backing from private capital providers, partly on the strength of the property assets of its UK Odeon cinema business. 

Elsewhere, markets are braced for Q1 earnings from Apple, after the tech giant delivered its new iPhone 12 model weeks later than expected, with many of its top stores in the U.S. and Europe shuttered. Analysts are predicting sales of $59.8 billion for the new device, close to the all-time record of $61.58 billion for iPhone X sales in the first quarter of 2018.

The global retail industry contracted 2 percent last year to $15.4 trillion, with specialist retailers and department stores the hardest hit sectors. The figures from analysts Euromonitor International show online sales reached 25 percent of market share for the first time, with e-commerce giants such as Alibaba and Amazon seeing a slight drop in demand as traditional retailers stepped up their digital sales platforms.

The Goldman Sachs boss implicated for his role in the Malaysian 1MDB corruption scandal is to take a $10 million pay cut. Billions in public money is estimated to have been lost through the fraudulent state-owned wealth fund, which has so far led to the jailing of former prime minister Najib Razak. Announcing the penalty against Goldman's CEO David Solomon, the bank described its role in helping facilitate the scheme as an "institutional failure".

Shares in Sanofi fell on opening in Paris after the French pharma giant announced it would produce millions of doses of rivals BioNTech's and Pfizer's coronavirus vaccines, in a bid to speed up vaccination efforts. Stock had steadied by mid-morning, as the deal to produce more than 125 million doses of the RNA vaccine for EU states was digested by investors. Sanofi's own effort to develop a vaccine have stumbled and it looks on course to miss its deadline to have a treatment in production by the summer. 

Japanese car giant Nissan says it hopes all its "new vehicle offerings" will be electrified within the next decade, as part of efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The company says it is pursuing battery innovations and hybrid technology as a means to eliminate sales of all new gasoline-powered vehicles by the mid-2030s. Nissan has also announced plans to cut 160 office-based jobs at its UK base as COVID-19 drags on EU-wide sales.

The market for secondhand business jets jumped in the last few weeks of 2020, with vendors describing the busiest sales period for 20 years. While the new craft market has declined by up to 30 percent as corporate buyers hold off on purchases, the pre-owned market has grown to roughly four times that of new planes, with sales in the U.S. buoyed by tax breaks.  

The boom in cloud computing during lockdown has been underlined by the latest figures from Microsoft. It says its Azure cloud computing services grew 50 percent in the second quarter last year as employees switched to home working. Shares in the firm rose 41percent overall last year, with a surprise recovery in sales on its LinkedIn professional social network.

In a sign of perhaps more to come in the post-pandemic world, retail giant Walmart is to add robot-staffed warehouses to dozens of its U.S. stores to help fill orders for pick-up and delivery. The robots will assist in the preparation of "thousands of frequently purchased items," according to the firm.

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WATCH: Communicating with others has certainly been more difficult since the introduction of social distancing and mask wearing. Author and body language expert Judi James believes the evolution caused by the pandemic is something that usually happens over decades and has given five top tips that will help you improve your communication. 

Biotech giant Moderna says its new vaccine should be effective against all COVID-19 variants. CGTN Europe was joined by Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter, for his response to the development.

It's very promising, and I've always been hopeful that the Moderna vaccine, which is on a similar platform, almost the same as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, will eventually be licensed and be used. And this will also reduce pressure as more and more suppliers come on board. 

The WHO recommends the Moderna vaccine be given in two doses at an interval of 28 days. But some are suggesting changing the time scale. Do you have concerns over varying this advice?

We've got to think outside of the box. We [should] use the science, the knowledge. We need to create immunity in a large number of people. And, therefore, the expedient of saying, for example, with the biotech vaccine immunize with one dose and then the second dose can be given as far away as three months' time, in that short period you end up immunizing and protecting more people, because we do know that even the one dose is very, very protective.

Do you think globally the vaccine roll-out is happening fast enough to start making a difference?

I refer to the ancient Indian Hindu script, which talks about "the whole world is my family" and we need to act accordingly. It is pointless if one country is 80 percent immunized and the rest of the world is not ... it won't work. It is better to say, let us immunize together... it is in our own interests to actually immunize globally.

And finally, the most recent figures confirm that non-nationals in EU member states are twice as likely to be in jobs for which they are deemed to be "overqualified" than nationals. While the average rate was 44 percent across member states in 2019, the breakdown shows the highest figures were in the so called "frontier" nations of southern Europe, the lowest was in tiny Luxembourg.