Category: Biz Tech

  By Francesco Guarascio and Jason Hovet | BRATISLAVA   BRATISLAVA Multinationals should refrain from tax avoidance practices and pay their fair share of taxes, the head of euro zone finance ministers said on Saturday, in a new endorsement to the European Union fight against tax dodging.   In the wake of the 'Panama Papers' revelations of widespread tax avoidance practices, Brussels has toughened up its drive for tax fairness by tightening controls and adopting stricter rules. The recent shock multi-billion euro tax demand on

  By Terje Solsvik and Yasmeen Abutaleb | OSLO/SAN FRANCISCO   OSLO/SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc on Friday reinstated a Vietnam War-era photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, after a public outcry over its removal of the image including harsh criticism from Norway's prime minister.In a clash between a democratically elected leader and the social media giant over how to patrol the Internet, Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Facebook was editing history by erasing images of the iconic 1972 "Napalm

By Adam Jourdan and Paul Carsten | SHANGHAI/BEIJING SHANGHAI/BEIJING Judging by the volume of online chatter, there's a lot less buzz in China ahead of this week's expected launch of the new Apple Inc iPhone, and people on the street say they're more likely to "wait and see" what the latest device offers than rush out to buy. Posts on China's popular Sina Weibo microblogging site show the iPhone 6, which took China by storm in 2014 with its new, larger screen,

By Laurence Frost and Gilles Guillaume | PARIS PARIS Renault expects diesel engines to disappear from most of its European cars, company sources told Reuters, after the French automaker reviewed the costs of meeting tighter emissions standards following the Volkswagen scandal. The sober reassessment was delivered at an internal meeting before the summer break. It shows how, a year after VW admitted engineering software to cheat U.S. diesel emissions tests, the repercussions are forcing major European carmakers to rewrite strategic plans that

MasterCard Inc said on Tuesday it had expanded its deal with payment processor PayPal Holdings Inc, which would allow customers to use PayPal's payment services in stores. PayPal's partnership follows a similar deal with MasterCard's larger rival Visa Inc in July as the company looks to expand its payments network. PayPal will allow users to select a credit or debit card as the default payment method and share data on transactions made through MasterCard's tap-and-pay feature, which allows the shopper to wave

By Se Young Lee | SEOUL SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) will replace all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones equipped with fire-prone batteries and halt sales of the flagship product in 10 markets, a devastating blow for what had been a revival in the firm's mobile business. Koh Dong-jin, head of the South Korean company's smartphone business, spoke at a news conference jam-packed with reporters and cameras where he expressed regret at the recall, which will affect markets including South Korea and

By Tom Bergin | LONDON LONDON Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he will appeal the European Commission's ruling that his company received an unlawful 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) subsidy when Ireland gave it preferential tax deals and that he was confident the decision would be reversed. But over a dozen lawyers, including three advising companies on appeals, told Reuters it was impossible to predict how EU courts would rule in an area that has not been tested before. State aid cases

By Julia Love | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google has suspended Project Ara, its ambitious effort to build what is known as a modular smartphone with interchangeable components, as part of a broader push to streamline the company's hardware efforts, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The move marks an about-face for the tech company, which announced a host of partners for Project Ara at its developer conference in May and said it would ship a developer

BRUSSELS The European Commission rejected on Thursday Apple's criticism that an EU order to the company to pay back taxes to Ireland was political, noting the calculations were based on facts and Apple's own data. In an interview with the Irish Independent, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook on Thursday described the EU's imposition of a 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) back tax bill as "total political crap" motivated in part by anti-U.S. bias. The European Commission's Competition chief Margrethe Vestager, asked if

DUBLIN The European Union's imposition of a 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) back tax bill on Apple (AAPL.O) is "total political crap", Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a newspaper interview on Thursday, and anti-U.S. bias may have played a role. But in a separate radio interview he vowed to boost Apple's tax payments by repatriating billions of dollars in global profits to the United States next year. On Tuesday, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager questioned how anyone might think an arrangement

DUBLIN Apple expects to repatriate billions of dollars of global profits to the United States next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a radio interview on Thursday, but did not specify exactly how much would be returned. Apple was found to be holding over $181 billion in accumulated profits offshore, more than any U.S. company, in a study published last year by two left-leaning nonprofit groups, a policy critics say is designed to avoid paying U.S taxes. Asked about the level

By Charlotte Greenfield | WELLINGTON WELLINGTON An appeal by flamboyant German tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom over a decision to extradite him to the United States began in New Zealand on Monday, with the Megaupload founder's legal team arguing the hearing should be livestreamed on YouTube. The High Court hearing opened in Auckland nine months after a lower court ruled Dotcom could be sent to the United States to face copyright infringement and money-laundering charges over the operation of file-sharing website Megaupload. "US defends

  DUBAI Iran has detected and removed malicious software from two of its petrochemical complexes, a senior military official said on Saturday, after announcing last week it was investigating whether recent petrochemical fires were caused by cyber attacks.   The official said the malware at the two plants was inactive and had not played a role in the fires.   "In periodical inspection of petrochemical units, a type of industrial malware was detected and the necessary defensive measures were taken," Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran's

By Yasmeen Abutaleb | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc (FB.O) changed its popular "Trending" feature, which shows users the most-talked about topics of the day, to make it more automated and further eliminate the potential for human bias, the company wrote in a blog post on Friday. The update is Facebook's latest attempt in recent months to stress its neutrality as its influence grows. The feature came under scrutiny in May after a news report alleged it suppressed conservative news, which prompted

By Heather Somerville | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Chinese powerhouse Didi Chuxing's acquisition of Uber Technologies Inc's China operations marked the biggest move yet toward consolidation in an industry that many investors and Silicon Valley pundits view as a winner-take-all game. On the day the Didi deal was announced earlier this month, Uber board member Bill Gurley said Uber's rivals in other markets had a slim chance of splitting the market with the dominant player, just as Uber struggled to erode Didi's

By Joseph Menn | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc issued a patch on Thursday to fix a dangerous security flaw in iPhones and iPads after researchers discovered that a prominent United Arab Emirates dissident's phone had been targeted with a previously unknown method of hacking.   The thwarted attack on the human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor, used a text message that invited him to click on a web link. Instead of clicking, he forwarded the message to researchers at the University of

By David Shepardson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Volkswagen AG has agreed to spend more than $1.2 billion to compensate its 650 U.S. dealers for their losses from the German automaker's diesel emissions scandal, two sources briefed on the matter said on Thursday. The company and a lawyer for VW dealers announced a tentative settlement at a court hearing in San Francisco, but declined to disclose the amount. The settlement, which followed talks that began in May, came as a judge ordered VW to

 SEOUL South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Tuesday it will start selling its third smartphone powered by the company's own Tizen mobile operating system in India next week.   The Z2 phone, equipped with a 4-inch screen and India-specific features such as a safety mode for motorcyclists, will be the cheapest Tizen phone Samsung has launched to date at 4,590 rupees ($68.44).   The phone, the first Tizen-powered device that will run on 4G networks, will start selling in India

  TOKYO Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp said Tuesday it will review its TV brand licensing deals overseas in an effort to boost its global presence under the aegis of Taiwan's Foxconn.   "We have decided to review our current brand licensing business in Europe and Americas, and are currently examining various possibilities," Sharp said in a statement.   The comment follows a report by the Yomiuri newspaper that Sharp will dispatch officials next month for negotiations to buy back its TV business in the

By Ben Gruber | CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA scientists are putting the finishing touches on a spacecraft designed to rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu in 2018 to find clues about the origins of life. "We are days away from encapsulating into our rocket faring and lifting this spacecraft on to the Atlas V vehicle and beginning the journey to Bennu and back," Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the mission told Reuters at the Kennedy Space Center. The $1 billion mission,

By Eveline Danubrata and Glenys Kirana | JAKARTA JAKARTA Asian fans of smartphone game Pokemon Go are hunting out the best telecom providers and network gear to overcome the hurdle posed by patchy network signals in their race to capture virtual cartoon characters. From Indonesia to Hong Kong and Cambodia, the wild popularity of Nintendo's (7974.T) augmented reality app is also driving lifestyle changes for many gamers, who must trudge through real-life locations in their quest. The game launched in many Southeast Asian

SINGAPORE Singapore will make regulatory changes to facilitate the use of electronic payments, the central bank said on Friday, as the city-state aims to become a major centre for financial technology (fintech). "Our vision is to make Singapore an electronic payments society, a society that spurs innovation in payments technology, that gives consumers maximum convenience and confidence in making payments," said Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. MAS will streamline existing money changing, remittance and payment systems law

By Jessica DiNapoli U.S. internet publisher Gawker Media Group Inc said on Thursday that it would shut down its news and gossip website Gawker.com next week after Univision Holdings Inc successfully bid for the internet publisher's six other websites. The decision to end Gawker.com's 14-year run comes two days after Univision (UVN.N) won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Gawker Media for $135 million, outbidding media company Ziff Davis LLC. Univision's winning bid for Gawker Media was approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge earlier

By Tom Bergin | LA HULPE, Belgium LA HULPE, Belgium More than a dozen current and former board directors and senior managers of SWIFT, the bank messaging system that helps transmit billions of dollars around the world every day, have told Reuters that the organisation for years suspected there were weaknesses in the way smaller banks used its messaging terminals – but did not address such vulnerabilities. The sources said that until February, when hackers tried to steal nearly $1 billion dollars

Cisco Systems Inc is laying off about 14,000 employees, representing nearly 20 percent of the network equipment maker's global workforce, technology news site CRN reported, citing sources close to the company. San Jose, California-based Cisco is expected to announce the cuts within the next few weeks, the report said, as the company transition from its hardware roots into a software-centric organization. (bit.ly/2bEQfa3) Apart from Cisco, the other tech giants, which have announced job cuts in the face of PC industry decline in

Now, all you need is a phone number to start a video call with any contact who uses an Android- or iOS-based smartphone. Google on Tuesday launched Google Duo, pitting it directly against Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) FaceTime, which allows video calls only between Apple devices. Duo will also compete with Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) video-calling app Skype, Facebook Inc's (FB.O) Messenger and even its own Hangout app. Duo comes with a unique feature called "knock knock", which lets a person to see live video

LONDON Sage Group, a provider of accounting, payroll and payments software for businesses, said cyber attackers had used an internal login to access the data of some of its British customers. The personal details of the employees of about 280 British companies were potentially exposed in the breach, a company source said. "We are investigating unauthorised access to customer information using an internal login," the company said in a statement. "We cannot comment further whilst we work with the authorities to investigate but

By Harry Pearl and Charlotte Greenfield | SYDNEY SYDNEY German tech entrepreneur and alleged internet pirate Kim Dotcom will seek a review of a Federal Court decision which rejected his bid to keep hold of millions of dollars in assets held in Hong Kong and New Zealand, his lawyer said. A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled two to one on Friday that Dotcom could not recover his assets because by remaining outside the U.S., he was

By Krishna N. Das and Karen Lema | MANILA MANILA Bangladesh's central bank has said it is withholding findings of investigations into the cyber theft of $81 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to avoid tipping off the "foreign perpetrators" of the hack. Bangladesh Bank lawyer Ajmalul Hossain was responding to comments by Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) in the Philippines - through which the stolen money was routed before disappearing into Manila's casino industry -

SYDNEY Australia's first online national census was in chaos on Wednesday after the survey website crashed overnight due to a possible cyber attack, raising concerns over the country's cyber security and criticism of its slow internet services. "It was an attack and we believe from overseas," Australia’s chief statistician, David Kalisch told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. Kalisch said that no data from the 2.3 million forms already submitted to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) had been stolen. "We have it

People visit a Tesla Model S car during the Auto China 2016 in Beijing, China, April 25, 2016. Reuters/Jason Lee/File Photo BEIJING Tesla said on Wednesday that one of its cars had crashed in Beijing while in 'autopilot' mode, with the driver contending sales staff sold the function as 'self-driving', overplaying its actual capabilities. Tesla said it had reviewed data to confirm the car was in autopilot mode, a system that takes control of steering and braking in certain conditions. The company, which

|By Arabian Post Staff| Residential batteries, together with battery applications in commercial, industrial and utilities, are considered to be the next big opportunity in batteries besides electric vehicles. Indeed, this will become a $6 billion market by 2026 as predicted by the new IDTechExResearch report “Batteries for Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Utility Applications 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, Players and Opportunities”. On April 30, 2015, Tesla officially launched its residential and commercial/utility-scale energy system products "Powerwall" and "Powerpack" in Los Angeles, with the price well below earlier

A security guard stands guard outside a branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in Paranaque city, Metro Manila, Philippines August 2, 2016. Reuters/Erik De Castro/File Photo MANILA Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) officials say they have preserved ties with major U.S. banks despite the use of one of its branches in Manila by cyber criminals to funnel $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The money was sent to RCBC by

A sign of Alibaba Group is seen at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2016 in Shanghai, China, May 12, 2016. Reuters/Aly Song/File Photo HONG KONG Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is offering to help international technology firms such as SAP SE to enter China, a market where foreign tech companies face increased government scrutiny. Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, said in a statement on Tuesday it aims to assist technology firms overcoming business obstacles in China. It