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Capital Float, an Amazon-backed startup that offers its buy now, pay later service on many popular online platforms in India including that of the e-commerce firm, said on Tuesday it has raised $50 million in a new financing round following a strong growth in recent quarters. Lightrock India led the Bangalore-based startup’s Series D financing […]

For many financial institutions in Southeast Asia, verifying new customers takes a week or two, said the founders of Verihubs. The startup cuts that time down to as little as five seconds, using AI-based identity authentication technology and APIs that let companies continue verifying returning customers through SMS, WhatsApp or flash calls. Verihubs announced it […]

September 28, 2021 (Reuters) – Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni has called up three Premier League players for next month’s World Cup qualifiers despite the South American country remaining on Britain’s COVID-19 travel ‘red list’. Tottenham Hotspur’s Giovani Lo Celso and Cristian Romero along with Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez have been named in the 30-man […]

September 28, 2021 BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s economy is forecast to grow 1% this year, down from the 2.2% projected in July, hit by a spike in COVID-19 cases and a delayed reopening to visitors, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as the country fights its biggest virus outbreak to date. Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy […]

September 28, 2021 SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding said on Tuesday its founder Eric Li has launched a new company dedicated to making smartphones. The company, called Hubei Xingji Technology Co Ltd, has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone to establish its headquarters in the […]

September 28, 2021 SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has begun offering payment services from Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat on a number of its apps, after the government ordered major tech firms to stop blocking each other’s services and links. Local tech blog 36Kr reported on Tuesday that users of Alibaba’s food delivery […]

Unless you’ve been in a cave over the last week, you’ve likely read a review or some discussion about “The Contrarian,” a new book about billionaire investor Peter Thiel by longtime Businessweek Bloomberg columnist Max Chafkin. It isn’t surprising. Thiel has become an important figure in America over the last 15 years, and Chafkin is […]

September 28, 2021 By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California on Monday became the eighth, and by far the largest, U.S. state to make universal distribution of vote-by-mail ballots permanent, a practice that became more widespread during the COVID-19-plagued 2020 election cycle. The measure requiring mail-in ballots to be routinely sent to every active […]

September 28, 2021 By Sofia Menchu and Enrique Garcia GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Guatemalan authorities will begin efforts on Tuesday to recover the bodies of dozens of Indigenous children believed to have been buried clandestinely at a former military garrison in the 1980s during the country’s civil war. Excavations at the site will be led […]

September 28, 2021 By Kantaro Komiya TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan will lift a coronavirus state of emergency in all regions on Thursday as the number of new cases falls and the strain on the medical system eases, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said. The plan, approved by a government advisory panel, takes Japan as a whole out […]

September 28, 2021 By Wayne Cole SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian retail sales dived for a third straight month in August as half the population were trapped in coronavirus lockdowns, though reopening is in sight as vaccinations race toward world-beating levels. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday showed retail sales fell 1.7% in […]

September 28, 2021 By Joori Roh SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s central bank said on Tuesday it would raise its focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in managing its foreign currency assets and prepare guidelines to be applied to these assets going forward. To respond to growing demand for socially responsible investing, the […]

September 28, 2021 SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Shares in Hainan Airlines, the flagship carrier of embattled Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, rose as much as 5% on Monday, its maximum level allowed for the day, after it gave an update on its restructuring plans. Sources told Reuters on Monday that China’s HNA Group will receive strategic investment […]

September 28, 2021 By Renju Jose SYDNEY (Reuters) -Sydney residents who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 risk being barred from various social activities even when they are freed from stay-at-home orders in December, New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejkilian warned on Tuesday. Under a roadmap to exit lockdown in Australia’s biggest city, unvaccinated people […]

September 28, 2021 (Reuters) – Emma Raducanu’s outfit from her victorious U.S. Open campaign will be displayed at the Tennis Hall of Fame after the 18-year-old Briton became the first qualifier to win a Grand Slam. Raducanu defeated https://ift.tt/38XjHT0 Canada’s Leylah Fernandez in the Flushing Meadows final earlier this month to become the first British […]

September 28, 2021 By Paresh Dave (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s near-acquisition of social media app TikTok last year was the “strangest thing I’ve ever worked on,” Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said on Monday. TikTok had been ordered by then-U.S. President Donald Trump to separate its U.S. version from Chinese parent ByteDance because of national […]

September 28, 2021 By Scott Murdoch HONG KONG (Reuters) – Asian shares mainly drifted lower Tuesday as investors continued to fret over China Evergrande Group’s unsolved debt crisis and eyed the potential impact of a widening power shortage in China. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.13% lower on Tuesday, following a […]

September 28, 2021 By Supantha Mukherjee STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Kepler Interactive, a game publisher co-owned and run by developers, on Tuesday said it got $120 million in funding from Chinese gaming firm NetEase Inc. The group, formed with seven gaming companies including Alpha Channel and Sloclap, plans to offer game studio founders to become co-owners, […]

September 28, 2021 BEIJING (Reuters) -More than a thousand robots are set to join the delivery personnel ranks of Chinese behemoths Alibaba, Meituan and JD.com over the next year as the pandemic fuels demand for contactless services. The firms expect to operate over 2,000 robots between them by 2022, up about four-fold from now, their […]

September 28, 2021 BEIJING (Reuters) – Profits at China’s industrial firms grew at a weaker pace in August from a year earlier, slowing for a sixth consecutive month, as manufacturers struggled with high commodity prices, COVID-19 and shortages in some key components. Profits rose 10.1% on year to 680.3 billion yuan ($105 billion) last month […]