News

September 30, 2021 MILAN (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi promised activists he would speak up at the G20 summit in Rome to accelerate the pledge of $100 billion per year for vulnerable nations to mitigate the impact of climate change, Ugandan delegate Vanessa Nakate said. Nakate, Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and Italy’s Martina Comparelli […]

Death is one of the hardest things to cope with in life, both from an emotional and organizational standpoint. And what’s worse is that the latter of these is inevitably compounded by the fact that those left behind are grieving and focused on that. Unsurprisingly, tech that is being built to help in these situations […]

Loop Health aims to be the “Oscar Health of India” and targets the country’s health insurance gap with its approach to primary care and insurance. The Pune-based company is also the latest startup to raise funding in this area, bringing in $12 million in Series A funding in a round co-led by Elevation Capital and […]

Datacenters are taking on ever-more specialized chips to handle different kinds of workloads, moving away from CPUs and adopting GPUs and other kinds of accelerators to handle more complex and resource-intensive computing demands. In the latest development, a startup called Speedata, which is building a processor (fabless) to cover the specific area of big data […]

Alphabet’s Loon was a stratospheric moonshot that saw the company fly high-altitude balloons to provide cellular network coverage to target areas. The project broke a lot of new ground, including developing technology that enabled balloons to navigate autonomously and stay in one area for long stretches of time, but ultimately came to an end. Now, […]

September 30, 2021 MANAMA (Reuters) – Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid flew to Bahrain on Thursday on the highest-level Israeli visit to the Gulf state since the countries established formal relations last year. Lapid, who landed at Bahrain’s international airport in an Israir plane with an olive branch painted on its nose, will inaugurate Israel’s […]

September 30, 2021 By Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is willing to restore severed inter-Korean hotlines next month but accused the United States of proposing talks without changing its “hostile policy”, the North’s KCNA state news agency reported on Thursday. Kim made the remarks at the reclusive […]

September 30, 2021 DUBAI (Reuters) – Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani urged on Thursday “friendly” states not to isolate Afghanistan after the takeover of the country by the Taliban. He was speaking at a news conference in Doha with European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell. (Reporting by Shakeel Ahmad and Maher […]

September 30, 2021 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s former Imperial capital is set to play host to the wedding of a descendant of the Russian royal family in the first such event in more than a century. Grand Duke George Mikhailovich Romanov will tie the knot with Italian fiancée Victoria Romanovna Bettarini at St. Isaac’s Cathedral […]

Dutch social enterprise Fairphone has announced its first 5G smartphone, the Fairphone 4. The ‘greentech’ mobile maker differentiates from almost the entire smartphone industry through a promise of sustainability via repairable modularity. It combines this with a big push around socially responsibility and ethical electronics — touting fairly sourced materials and better conditions for workers […]

VertoFX, a global B2B payments platform that allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to make payments to their suppliers, today announced that it has closed $10 million in Series A funding. Quona Capital, an emerging fintech-focused venture capital firm, led the round. Other firms also participated, including The Treasury, founded by Betterment’s Eli Broverman and […]

September 30, 2021 PARIS (Reuters) – French supermarket group Carrefour’s CEO Alexandre Bompard is examining options for sector consolidation and talks have taken place with the family behind the Auchan chain of stores, French daily Le Monde reported on Thursday. Le Monde added that both Carrefour and Auchan declined to comment on reports of talks […]

September 30, 2021 BEIJING (Reuters) – China Evergrande’s wealth management unit has made a 10% repayment of wealth management products (WMPs) that are due by Sept 30, the indebted developer said on Thursday. The payment was made on Thursday and relevant funds have been issued to investors’ accounts, Evergrande said in a notice posted on […]

September 30, 2021 (Reuters) – Factbox on Saturday’s Rugby Championship test between South Africa and New Zealand: When: Oct. 2, 8.05 p.m. (1005 GMT) Where: Robina Stadium, Gold Coast (capacity: 27,400) Referee: Matthew Carley (England) Assistant referees: Damon Murphy (Australia), Jordan Way (Australia) TMO: Brett Cronan (Australia) SOUTH AFRICA World ranking: 2 Coach: Jacques Nienaber […]

September 30, 2021 By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE (Reuters) – New Zealand will look to cement their claim as top dogs in the southern hemisphere when they close the Rugby Championship against South Africa on Saturday after Argentina seek a face-saving win over Australia at the end of a wretched campaign. The undefeated All Blacks have […]

September 30, 2021 By Sankalp Phartiyal NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Telecoms group Bharti Airtel said on Thursday it will invest 50 billion rupees ($673 million) in expanding its data centre business to meet customer demand in and around India. Airtel Business chief executive Ajay Chitkara said its Nxtra unit will make the investment by 2025, […]

September 30, 2021 BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand plans to introduce an estimated 45.4 billion baht ($1.34 billion) in stimulus to help smaller businesses retain jobs, its planning agency said on Thursday, as the tourism-dependent country deals with a prolonged coronavirus outbreak. The government will pay firms a total of 9,000 baht ($266) for each worker […]

September 30, 2021 BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s industry ministry on Thursday published its draft rule on data security for the industry and telecommunications sectors. Authorities in the world’s No.2 economy are stepping up regulation in data handling to protect critical data, which could threaten areas such as politics, military, and China’s overseas interests. (Reporting by […]

Facebook has quietly published internal research that was earlier obtained by the Wall Street Journal — and reported as evidence the tech giant knew about Instagram’s toxic impact on teenaged girls mental health. The two slide decks can be found here and here. The tech giant also said it provided the material to Congress earlier […]

September 30, 2021 HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s retail sales climbed for the seventh straight month in August, helped by a stabilising COVID-19 situation, an improved labour market and economic recovery and thanks to a boost from a consumption voucher scheme (CVS). Retail sales in August rose 11.9% from a year earlier to HK$28.6 […]