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We started this competition with 20 impressive startups. After three days of fierce pitching in the virtual yet incredibly competitive Startup Battlefield arena, we have a winner. The startups taking part in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. Like last year, we reproduced the nail-biting excitement […]

September 23, 2021 By Lewis Krauskopf and Marc Jones NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) – World stock markets rallied on Thursday and the U.S. dollar retreated from one-month highs as worries faded about contagion from China Evergrande and as investors digested the Federal Reserve’s plans for reining in U.S. stimulus. Wall Street’s main indexes all ended up […]

September 23, 2021 (Reuters) – Insurance company FWD Group Holdings Ltd, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, made its filing for a stock market listing in the United States public on Thursday, revealing a jump in revenue last year. The insurer, which will list through an initial public offering, posted revenue of $9.49 billion […]

September 23, 2021 BERLIN (Reuters) – Candidates vying to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor clashed on Thursday on tax, debt and foreign policy in a final television debate as opinion polls showed the race tightening three days before a federal election. A FGW poll for ZDF Television showed support for the conservative CDU/CSU alliance, […]

In order to combat human trafficking effectively, those combating it must understand it — and these days, that means data. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons there is no convenient index of trafficking victims, though this confidential information is in some ways abundant. Microsoft and the International Organization for Migration may have found a way forward with […]

The company whose tech powered the sensational MyHeritage app that turned classic family photos into lifelike moving portraits is back with a new implementation of its technology: Transforming still photographs into ultra-realistic video, capable of saying whatever you want. D-ID’s Speaking Portraits may look like the notorious ‘deepfakes’ that have made headlines over the past […]

NTWRK, a video shopping app that has helped to popularize the idea of live-streamed commerce in the U.S., announced today it’s closed on $50 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and global luxury group Kering, owners of luxury brands Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and others. The company has been […]

Rivian, the electric vehicle startup that’s gearing up for an initial public offering, continues its trend of growing fast. The company will be opening a service support operations facility for vehicle owners in Plymouth, Michigan — and just in time, as deliveries of the launch edition of the R1T pickup are expected to commence late […]

Bay Area-based autonomous farming startup Iron Ox this week announced a $53 million round. The Series C, led by Breakthrough Energy Venture, brings the firm’s total funding up to $98 million. Iron Ox is one of a large number of companies looking to revolutionize farming for the 21st century, amid growing concerns over population growth, […]

September 23, 2021 By Joseph Menn SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When a senior executive at virtual private network company ExpressVPN admitted to working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service to hack American machines last week, it stunned employees at his new company, according to interviews and electronic records. What ExpressVPN then said after the […]

September 23, 2021 By Tyler Clifford and Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) – R. Kelly’s accusers were motivated by money to lie about his alleged sexual abuses, a lawyer for the R&B superstar argued on Thursday in a final effort to persuade jurors not to convict Kelly of sex trafficking charges. In his closing argument […]

September 23, 2021 By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to give $1 billion to Israel for its Iron Dome missile-defense system, two days after objections from the most liberal Democrats forced leaders to remove it from a broader spending bill. The measure passed by 420 to 9 […]

September 23, 2021 MILAN (Reuters) – A technical outage occurred at sport global service DAZN in Italy on Thursday, sparking anger among customers unable to access the app and watch part of Serie A soccer games Sampdoria v Napoli and Torino v Lazio. DAZN, which secured the rights to screen all Serie A live soccer […]

September 23, 2021 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Thursday that the decision by the Biden administration to lift international travel restrictions in early November will be a boost to the U.S. economy, especially for tourist destinations like New York and for business travel. Raimondo said the decision announced Monday to […]

September 23, 2021 By Lindsay Dunsmuir (Reuters) – Even as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell predictably dodged the latest question over his future as head of the central bank, his signal of openness to Democratic demands for tougher regulation of Wall Street under a new regulatory chief may assuage what critics see as a weak […]

September 23, 2021 (Reuters) – Nike Inc missed estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, signaling demand for its sports shoes and apparel was slowing. Nike’s shares, which are down about 9% from their record high hit in August, fell 3% in extended trading. Months long factory closures in Vietnam, where about half of all Nike […]

September 23, 2021 MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The aviation market in Latin America and the Caribbean should by early 2024 recover to the size it was before the coronavirus pandemic, Arturo Barreira, regional chief of European aircraft maker Airbus, said on Thursday. Travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 health emergency hit civil aviation hard last […]

September 23, 2021 LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former supermodel Linda Evangelista has filed a $50 million lawsuit over cosmetic procedures that she says left her “brutally disfigured” and turned her into a recluse. The Canadian model, one of the biggest figures on runways and magazine covers in the 1990s, said in an Instagram post that […]

September 23, 2021 By Abdirahman Hussein MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Dozens of Somalis posed for selfies and chattered excitedly in rows of red, plush seats as they waited for the start of their country’s first movie screening in three decades. Among the crowd in the National Theatre was 24-year-old Kaif Jama, the writer and star of […]

September 23, 2021 By Daina Beth Solomon and Humeyra Pamuk CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. special envoy to Haiti resigned in protest in a letter that blasted the Biden administration for deporting hundreds of migrants back to the crisis-engulfed Caribbean nation from a camp on the U.S.-Mexican border in recent days. Daniel Foote, […]