(Reuters) – Facebook Inc will ban ads that discourage people from voting ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to its second annual Civil Rights Audit published on Sunday. Facebook pledged to put its new “don’t vote” policy prohibition into e... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Central banks grappling with fast-changing financial technology and companies like Facebook (FB.O) moving into finance will aim to work together more closely through an innovation hub approved on Sunday by the Bank for International Settleme... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – When Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos was spotted schmoozing in NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s booth during the Super Bowl in February, the media world exploded with anticipation about Amazon’s imminent domination of sports media. B... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Record highs in the U.S. stock market and the anticipation of equity-friendly interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve later this year are prompting top-performing large-cap fund managers to seek out unloved stocks in hopes of further gai... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that if he could have one “do-over,” it would be “personnel” decisions, including naming former Senator Jeff Sessions as his first U.S. attorney general. “I would say if I had one do over, it wo... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Politicians need to quickly coordinate regulatory responses to new risks from technology companies like Facebook moving into finance, though banks won’t be squeezed out anytime soon, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Sunda... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump told NBC News in an interview aired on Sunday that he “may” talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit this week about Russian interference in the upcoming 2020 U.S. election. Asked if he would do s... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – In August 2018, Spanish authorities uncovered a plot by anti-Brexit campaigners to assassinate leading Brexiteer and now favorite to be Britain’s next prime minister, Boris Johnson. Or did they? That story and others like it were created by ... More »
(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc is exploring using drones not just to deliver packages but also to provide surveillance as a service to its customers, according to a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The delivery drones can be used to... More »
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Tuesday unveiled its most significant business reshuffle since co-founder Jack Ma announced his pending retirement, as the e-commerce firm looks to bolster its investment focus in the face of sl... More »
(Reuters Health) – Researchers have harnessed the power of social media to build a genetic database, according to a new report. The “Genes for Good” project, which turned to Facebook to recruit people to fill out surveys and send in saliva samples for DNA anal... More »
(Reuters) – Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk tweeted here late on Sunday that he had “just deleted” his Twitter account, while also changing his Twitter display name to “Daddy DotCom”. Sunday, June 16 was Father’s Day in the United States and the Tesla Inc... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Ocado is plowing 17 million pounds ($22 million) into the emerging “vertical farming” industry, further diversifying the online grocer and technology group’s business. Vertical farming involves producing food indoors, with crops gr... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – “Foreign forces” are trying to hurt China by creating chaos in Hong Kong over an extradition bill that has prompted mass protests in the former British colony, an official Chinese newspaper said on Monday. Riot police surrounded Hong Kong’s... More »
(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission on Friday issued warning letters to four flavored e-liquid product makers, stepping up pressure on firms using social media influencers to promote their products. Social media m... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) will roll out commercial 5G licenses “in the near future”, Xinhua said. It did not provide further details. Beijing had granted licenses at the end of 2018 to China’s three sta... More »
(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Sunday it had resolved the network congestion in the eastern United States that affected services in Google Cloud, G Suite and YouTube. Google said it would conduct an investigation of the outage and make appropriate i... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) said on Monday curbs on employees of Huawei Technologies and its subsidiaries have been lifted, and they would be allowed to participate in a peer review process for its research... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Online retail giant Amazon said it would open pop-up shops in Britain to give more than 100 small online businesses an opportunity to sell on the high street for the first time. The first of the 10 stores, which are branded “Clicks and Morta... More »
DUBAI (Reuters) – Bahrain, a U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has warned citizens and residents that following anti-government social media accounts could result in legal action, hardening a government campaign against critical online voices. The i... More »
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Grammy-winning singer R. Kelly was charged on Thursday with 11 new felony counts of sexual assault and abuse that could, if he is convicted, send the R & B singer to prison for 30 years, the Chicago Sun Times reported. Kelly was indicted by... More »
LIMA (Reuters) – The presidents of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia criticized a recent decision by the organization that manages internet protocol to grant global retailer Amazon Inc the rights to the .amazon domain. Amazon Inc has been seeking the exclusi... More »
(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that the company stop selling facial recognition technology to government agencies, while a resolution to audit the service drew more support, a regulatory filing on Friday showed. Some... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump, engaged in personal attacks on House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, retweeted a heavily edited video that falsely claimed the Democratic leader had difficulty speaking to reporters. In a Twitter pos... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s official Xinhua news agency condemned the spreading of “false news” on Monday after some websites published a year-old alert announcing a ceasefire in the Sino-U.S. trade dispute. The one-line item, originally published on May 20, 2... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese gaming giant NetEase said on Monday it would partner with The Pokemon Company and Gamefreak for the domestic release of Pokemon Quest, marking the first official Pokemon mobile game release in China. NetEase also said it would form... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Tencent Video has delayed the broadcast of the “Game of Thrones” finale, according to an official message published by the online streaming site on Monday, prompting uproar among fans of the popular TV series in the country. Tencen... More »
(Reuters Health) – Kindergarteners who get more than two hours of screen time a day may be more likely to have behavior and attention problems in school than their classmates who spend less time in front of televisions, smartphones and tablets, a Canadian stud... More »
(Reuters) – Some of the biggest, highest-profile U.S. hedge fund investors and money managers fell back in love with FAANGs in the first quarter, according to regulatory filings released on Wednesday. After dumping shares of Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, Amazon.com... More »
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc said it owned $860.6 million of Amazon.com Inc shares at the end of March, after the billionaire admitted to underestimating the online retailer and its Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. The size of the investment ... More »
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – An inquiry into Christchurch’s mosques shooting massacre began hearing evidence on Monday, as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern prepared to co-host a meeting in France that seeks global support to tackle online violence. A lone g... More »
(Reuters) – Cigarette maker Philip Morris International Inc has suspended a global social media marketing campaign in response to Reuters inquiries into the company’s use of young online personalities to sell its new “heated tobacco” device, including a 21-yea... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Facebook Inc quickly rejected a call from co-founder Chris Hughes on Thursday to split the world’s largest social media company in three, while lawmakers urged the U.S. Justice Department to launch an antitrust investigation. Facebook ha... More »
(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday said Elon Musk must face a defamation lawsuit by a British diver who said he was falsely branded a pedophile and child rapist by the chief executive of electric car company Tesla Inc. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hailed France’s efforts to regulate hateful content online as a model for the European Union after meeting President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday. His comments come after the U.S. social media giant was heavil... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has launched a PR campaign to counter calls for a boycott of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest final in Tel Aviv, using Google ads which refer to the boycott but lead to a glossy website extolling Israel. The international Boyco... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos unveiled on Thursday a mockup of a lunar lander being built by his Blue Origin rocket company and touted his moon goals in a strategy aimed at capitalizing on the Trump administration’s renewed push to... More »
HYDERABAD, India/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Over the past year, a team of as many as 260 contract workers in Hyderabad, India has ploughed through millions of Facebook Inc photos, status updates and other content posted since 2014. The workers categorize items ... More »
HYDERABAD, India/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc has thousands of content labelers around the world who categorize content with the aim of creating large datasets that can be more readily analyzed by humans and software. One project at outsourcing vendo... More »
(Reuters) – “It’s a challenge to describe that noise,” says Reuters senior photographer Mike Blake, after witnessing his first rocket launch. “It’s a sound of rippling energy. Reverberating, cracking. It’s something that stays with you.” Blake worked with Joe ... More »
MOGOSOAIA, Romania (Reuters) – “Repeat after me! To be together with who I want,” a family of Romanian witches chant via a video call to a client in India paying for a love spell. The session, in a decorated shed in a back yard 15 km (9 miles) north of Buchare... More »
(Reuters) – A British cyber security researcher hailed as a hero for neutralizing the global “WannaCry” ransomware attack in 2017 has pleaded guilty to U.S. charges of writing malware. Marcus Hutchins, who was charged on 10 counts in the United States, pleaded... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange repeatedly violated his asylum conditions and tried to use the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a center for spying, Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. London police dragged As... More »
(Reuters) – Apple Inc brought in Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Momoa to talk up its new television streaming service at a Hollywood-style event on Monday marked by standing ovations, hugs and soaring rhetoric. The event ended almo... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Monday it will launch a credit card with Goldman Sachs Group Inc this summer that can be used to earn cash back on the purchase of Apple products, but analysts suggest its rewards do not stand out among rivals. The Apple ... More »
(Reuters) – Apple Inc unveiled its Apple TV+ original content streaming service and Apple TV Channels subscription service on Monday without a price tag, making it difficult to evaluate how the new ventures will stack up to Netflix Inc and other competitors. T... More »
SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Apple Inc is expected to finally lift the curtain on Monday on a secretive, years-long effort to build a television and movie offering designed to compete with big media companies and boost digital services revenue as iPho... More »
(Reuters) – YouTube has denied that it is cancelling high-end dramas and comedies on its paid service platform, refuting the claims made in a report earlier on Sunday. A Bloomberg report said, citing sources, that the platform has stopped accepting new pitches... More »
(Reuters) – Apple Inc is expected to unveil a new video streaming service and a news subscription platform at an event on Monday at its California headquarters. The iPhone maker is banking on growing its services business to offset a dip in smartphone sales. W... More »
(Reuters Health) – That nifty new health app you downloaded to your phone to keep track of your meds might be sharing your information with a host of unrelated companies, some of which have nothing to do with healthcare, a new study finds. When researchers ran... More »
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – United Parcel Service Inc wants to get beyond U.S. doorsteps with a new push into healthcare. The world’s largest package delivery firm is preparing to test a U.S. service that dispatches nurses to vaccinate adults in their homes, Reuters has... More »
MELBOURNE/SYDNEY (Reuters) – Some New Zealand companies are weighing whether to advertise on social media, as two industry groups urged them not to in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Christchurch that was livestreamed on Facebook and redistributed on ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Social media platforms must be able to react more quickly and stop the broadcast of live events, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party said on Sunday, after a gunman in New Zealand broadcast a shooting rampage last week. A gunman b... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s planned second headquarters in northern Virginia cleared a key test on Saturday when local officials approved a proposed financial package worth an estimated $51 million amid a small but vocal opposition. Amazon in Novem... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s plan to set up a second headquarters in northern Virginia, after being rebuffed in New York, will face its first test when local officials vote on Saturday on a proposed financial package worth an estimated $51 million. ... More »
(Reuters Health) – Adults who spend just 20 minutes a day using a smartphone mindfulness training app may feel less lonely and have more social interactions than people who don’t, a small experiment suggests. While mindfulness training has long been linked to ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese dockless bike-sharing company Mobike said on Monday it will pull out of some Asian countries and re-evaluate its units in other overseas markets amid a wide-scale contraction in the market and the bankruptcy of top competitor Ofo. T... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Thousands of people took to the streets of Moscow and two other cities on Sunday to rally against tighter internet restrictions, in some of the biggest protests in the Russian capital in years. Lawmakers last month backed tighter internet co... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed on Friday to break up Amazon, Google and Facebook if elected U.S. president to promote competition in the technology sector. Seeking to stand out in a crowded field vying to be the Democratic candidate for pr... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House Judiciary Committee will seek documents from more than 60 people and organizations as it begins investigations into possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by President Donald Trump, the panel’s chairman said on Sund... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – A three percent tax on the French revenue of large internet companies could yield 500 million euros (568.5 million pounds) per year, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday. Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper the tax is aimed a... More »
(Reuters Health) – When multiple doctors are on the job, there’s a higher likelihood that a correct diagnosis will be made, a new study suggests. Researchers found that diagnoses were far more accurate if they were the result of online physician crowdsourcing,... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – An investment firm backed by the Beijing city government is in talks with prospective investors to raise over 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in its first fund aimed mainly at cutting-edge tech investments, said two people with direct know... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Online retailer Amazon will create more than 1,000 apprenticeship roles in Britain over the next two years, it said on Tuesday, indicating the country’s imminent departure from the European Union is not deterring it from investing. With only... More »
(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it appointed former PepsiCo Inc Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi as a director, making her the second woman to be named to the e-commerce giant’s board this month. Earlier this month, the company named Starbucks Cor... More »
(Reuters) – The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, admitted on Monday he knew less than he thought about Oracle Corp, the company overseen by fellow billionaire Larry Ellison. Investors were flummoxed earlier this month when Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway... More »
MOJAVE, Calif. (Reuters) – A Virgin Galactic rocket plane on Friday soared to the edge of space with a test passenger for the first time, nudging British billionaire Richard Branson’s company closer to its goal of suborbital flights for space tourists. Virgin ... More »
(This Feb 7 story corrects to show, in fourth paragraph, that a temperature rise of 2°C is equivalent to 3.6°F, not 35.6°F) By Gwladys Fouche OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund will push the 9,000 firms it invests in to disclose more data on gre... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Islamic State is far from defeated, and instead is morphing into an asymmetrical warfare force after the militant group lost almost all of the territory it once controlled in Syria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday. Merkel’s re... More »
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India could lose a vital U.S. trade concession, under which it enjoys zero tariffs on $5.6 billion of exports to the United States, amid a widening dispute over its trade and investment policies, people with close knowledge of the matter ... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s federal cybersecurity agency is investigating whether China’s Huawei Technologies could be a security threat after warnings from other countries, the Funke group of newspapers reported on Friday, citing Economy Minister Peter Altma... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Woody Allen sued Amazon Studios on Thursday, saying he deserves at least $68 million in damages over their refusal to distribute his completed film “A Rainy Day in New York” and their decision to abandon a four-picture production and distr... More »
TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian comedy “Schitt’s Creek” and drama “Anne with an E” led the nominations for the Canadian Screen Awards, grabbing 15 nods each on Thursday. The awards, which will be broadcast on March 31, recognize achievements in Canadian film, TV ... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – “Thar she blows!” The old cry of sailors sighting a whale’s waterspout is taking on new meaning as scientists turn to drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, to gather samples of the fluids exhaled by the huge mammals and track their health. Ma... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. agency that insures worker pensions sought permission on Friday to take over two underfunded Sears Holdings Corp pension plans, after objecting to Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert’s proposed $5.2 billion buyout of the bankrupt retailer.... More »
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, has signed a deal with Canada’s Telesat to launch part of a satellite constellation aimed at providing speedy internet access to governments and businesses globally, the companies said on Thurs... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket set to carry satellites into space for U.S startup OneWeb has been delayed after an anomaly was discovered on the rocket, company chairman Greg Wyler said on Thursday. The rocket was set to take off next ... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A defect has been discovered on part of a Russian space rocket that is due to launch next month carrying satellites into orbit for U.S. startup OneWeb, two Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday. The Russian Soyuz is scheduled to blast ... More »
SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Search engine Bing’s outage in China last week was a technical error, rather than an intentional censorship block, a source familiar with the matter said, although Chinese authorities and Microsoft have not commented on the topic. ... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Superhero film “Black Panther,” heralded for its mainly black cast and vibrant celebration of African culture, won the top Screen Actors Guild award on Sunday, boosting its stature ahead of next month’s Oscars ceremony. “Black Panther” ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Didi Chuxing said it had set up a joint venture (JV) with Beijing Electric Vehicle Co., a unit of state-owned BAIC, to work on new energy vehicle and artificial intelligence projects. The JV, BAIC-Xiaoju New Energy Auto Technology C... More »
CINCINNATI (Reuters) – When Danny Reagan was 13, he began exhibiting signs of what doctors usually associate with drug addiction. He became agitated, secretive and withdrew from friends. He had quit baseball and Boy Scouts, and he stopped doing homework and sh... More »
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is planning to unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger services and incorporate end-to-end encryption into these apps, the New York Times reported ... More »
(This January 24 story corrects throughout to say that the “Fruit Ninja” game deleted by the CAC was not developed by iDreamSky Technology Holdings Ltd, nor distributed by Tencent.) BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s cyber watchdog said on Thursday it has deleted clo... More »
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Europe’s Arianespace is discounting the price of satellite launches with its Ariane 5 rockets as it competes against U.S. rival SpaceX for customers before the release of the cheaper Ariane 6 rocket next year, a senior executive said on W... More »
(Reuters) – Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) forecast first-quarter revenue slightly below Wall Street estimates on Thursday, even after a record quarter for new customers, sending shares of the world’s largest streaming service down 4 percent in after-hours trading. Inve... More »
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia is bringing in new rules requiring e-commerce sellers to share data with authorities, while also stressing that they must pay taxes, the finance ministry said on Monday. Surging smartphone use and a rising middle-class income in I... More »
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Samsung (005930.KS) plans to launch a budget smartphone series in India ahead of a global release, aiming to regain ground ceded to Chinese rivals such as Xiaomi (1810.HK) in the world’s second-biggest mobile phone market. The South Korean c... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s antitrust watchdog plans to order Facebook to stop gathering some user data, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The Federal Cartel Office, which has been investigating Facebook since 2015, has already found that the social media giant... More »
(Reuters) – Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX will reduce its workforce by about 10 percent of the company’s more than 6,000 employees, it said on Friday. The company said it will “part ways” with some of its manpower, citing “extraordinarily difficult challen... More »
MUMBAI (Reuters) – A group representing online sellers in India will appeal against the Competition Commision of India’s (CCI’s) ruling in favour of Walmart-owned Flipkart, the group’s lawyer Chanakya Basa said in a release on Saturday. All India Online Vendor... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) shares seesawed on Thursday as investors questioned how the impending divorce of company founder Jeff Bezos would affect his control of the most valuable company on Wall Street and its ambitious expansion plans. Bez... More »
HANOI (Reuters) – Facebook has violated Vietnam’s new cybersecurity law by allowing users to post anti-government comments on the platform, state media said on Wednesday, days after the controversial legislation took effect in the communist-ruled country. Desp... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May return for a third season of their thrill-seeking motor show “The Grand Tour”, with plenty of fast cars and stunning scenery they hope will take viewers’ minds off the real world. The Amazon pro... More »
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s new curbs on e-commerce companies may not be enough to win over small store owners and traders in next year’s general election, with the key voting bloc still seething over what it sees as broken promises by Prime Minister Narendr... More »
(Reuters) – The New York Yankees are in talks with Amazon.com Inc and Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc about a joint bid for the team’s regional sports network, Yes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The baseball t... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s internet regulator said on Friday the recently published rules governing financial information providers are aimed at firms supplying information to an institutional audience and to specific investors, rather than the general public... More »
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s photo-sharing social network Instagram said on Thursday it has fixed a bug that led to a temporary change in the appearance of its feed for a large number of users. The bug led to a small test being distributed widely, the company sa... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – French tech company Sigfox has developed a bite-size tracker that can be inserted into the horns of rhinos to help conservationists monitor and protect the endangered species. With the dramatic decline of animal species in the past century mo... More »
(Reuters) – Minnesota prosecutors will not charge the billionaire chief executive officer of China’s JD.com Inc, Richard Liu, after he was accused of rape by a University of Minnesota student during a recent U.S. visit, authorities said on Friday. Hennepin Cou... More »
