Shamayita Acharya

By Aditya Kalra NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc <AMZN.O> has complained to India's market regulator that its local partner Future Retail Ltd <FRTL.NS> misled shareholders by incorrectly saying it was complying with its contractual obligations to the U.S. e-commerce giant, a letter seen by Reuters shows. Amazon is locked in a bitter legal dispute with Future Group, which in August sold its retail assets to Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd <RELI.NS> for $3.4 billion. The deal, Amazon alleges, breaches 2019 agreements by Future. The tussle has strained Amazon's ties not just with Future Retail - one of India's top retailers - but also with Ambani, Asia's richest man, and his Reliance group, which is fast expanding its e-commerce business and threatening companies like Amazon. Amazon last Sunday won an injunction to halt Future's ... Read More on Datafloq

PARIS (Reuters) - Amazon is withdrawing advertising for pre-Black Friday discounts in France, after the government said the campaign was unfair to small shops at time when a coronavirus lockdown has forced them to close. France entered its second national lockdown on Friday to try to contain a surge in infections. The curbs imposed under it include the closure of non-essential stores. A spokeswoman for Amazon <AMZN.O> said the group had agreed to halt its radio advertising campaign around pre-Black Friday sales. A page with discounted items under the header "Black Friday ahead of time" was live on its French website on Saturday, however. Junior Economy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runchaer said she had asked Amazon to suspend the campaign. It was "not at all appropriate at a time when 200,000 businesses will have to ... Read More on Datafloq

By Elizabeth Culliford (Reuters) - Facebook Inc confirmed on Friday it was temporarily halting recommendations for all political groups and any new groups in the run-up to Tuesday's U.S. presidential election. Facebook's Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg referred to one of the changes during a Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying: "We have taken the steps to stop recommendations in groups for all political content or social issue groups as a precaution." Facebook Groups are communities that form around shared interests. Public groups can be seen, searched and joined by anyone on Facebook.   Ahead of the U.S. vote, several watchdog and advocacy groups have pushed for Facebook to limit algorithmic group recommendations. They have argued that some Facebook Groups have been used as spaces to spread misinformation and organize extremist activity. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Nandita Bose and David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twitter <TWTR.N> said on Friday it had changed its policy on hacked materials and lifted a freeze it had placed on the account of the New York Post. The New York Post can now send tweets again, the social media platform said. It had blocked the newspaper's account on Oct. 14 after it published articles about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, which Twitter said violated its hacked materials policy. Earlier this week, Twitter's Chief Executive Jack Dorsey drew fire from Republican lawmakers, who accused the company of selective censorship against conservatives. The New York Post tweeted a picture featuring Twitter's bird logo flying out of a cage, with the caption "Twitter backs down, finally unlocks Post account after Biden ban." ... Read More on Datafloq

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge in Pennsylvania on Friday blocked a U.S. Commerce Department order set to take effect on Nov. 12 that would have effectively barred Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok from operating in the United States. U.S. District Court Judge Wendy Beetlestone enjoined the Commerce Department from barring data hosting within the United States for TikTok, content delivery services and other technical transactions. In her ruling, Beetlestone said the order would "have the effect of shutting down, within the United States, a platform for expressive activity used by approximately 700 million individuals globally. Over 100 million of these TikTok users are within the United States, and at least 50 million of these U.S. users use the app on a daily basis." The Commerce Department, which did not immediately ... Read More on Datafloq

If someone reports sick after a gathering, a new AI-based system can trace contacts across four days and thousands of people in just four seconds. This week, UNLV Lee Business School awarded Volan Technology the coveted Lee Prize Nevada Innovation Award for its advanced solution for enterprise-scale, precise and private contact tracing software. The technology could enable hospitality operators to make dramatic improvements in virus prevention—and save millions of dollars in manual tracing. Read the full report by JT Long at SmartMeetings.com . from AI Trends https://ift.tt/34I65d1 via IFTTT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore e-commerce firm Lazada said on Friday that personal information including addresses and partial credit card numbers from 1.1 million accounts had been hacked, a major breach in the city-state of 5.7 million. The Alibaba-owned firm said in an email that the information was taken from a database of its grocery arm RedMart that was more than 18 months out of date. "The user information that was illegally accessed include names, phone numbers, email and mailing addresses, encrypted passwords and partial credit card numbers," a spokesman for Lazada said. The firm said it had immediately moved to block access to the database and that its current customer data was not affected. (Reporting ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Warehouse chain Sam's Club, a unit of Walmart Inc, said on Friday it will provide prescribed medicines to patients through delivery firm DoorDash Inc, as customers turn to digital orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. DoorDash will deliver items from more than 500 Sam's Club pharmacies and patients can call the pharmacies to schedule a same-day delivery, the warehouse club operator said. Demand for online delivery, ranging from meal kits to sporting goods, has soared during the outbreak, as stay-at-home consumers increasingly prefer having items delivered at their doorsteps due to fears of contracting the virus. Patients can buy prescribed medications from Sam's Club without a membership, according to the club operator's website. "Businesses have evolved amid the pandemic to prioritize the safety of their communities and to adapt to new consumer ... Read More on Datafloq

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of business leaders and public policy experts will launch a new body to grapple with thorny questions surrounding the future of transportation including self-driving and electric vehicles. The group, the Future of Mobility Commission, to be formally unveiled Friday, plans to propose a new regulatory framework to address a global transportation sector "on the cusp of a worldwide transition driven by shared, connected, autonomous, and electric technologies." Alisyn Malek, the commission's executive director, told Reuters the goal is to tackle tough problems and improve safety. "Let's bring everybody together to talk about how do we want the movement of people and goods to actually work," Malek said in an interview. Autonomous cars and ... Read More on Datafloq

By Jane Lanhee Lee OAKLAND, Calif (Reuters) - Self-driving tech company Waymo, which this month opened its driverless taxi service in the Phoenix suburbs to the public, on Friday said its autonomous vehicles there had been involved in 18 minor incidents since 2019 during tests and actual rides. Waymo, a unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc <GOOGL.O>, said it was releasing the data https://ift.tt/3jH6v7P to improve transparency and open a public dialogue. Some residents have complained about the hundreds of Waymo vans driving around town, telling Reuters in the past that their driving patterns were dangerous as they stopped too often, running the risk of being rear-ended by a human driver. Waymo also said it hopes its safety data will help companies and regulators devise industry-wide safety standards for self-driving cars. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Subrat Patnaik (Reuters) - Apple Inc's <AAPL.O> shares fell nearly 5% in premarket trading after the world's most valuable public company reported a steep fall in iPhone sales in China, hurt by the delay of its new model due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Customers put off buying new devices in the second half of September, leading the company to report its steepest quarterly drop in iPhone sales in at least three years. "We think this was most blatant in China, where 5G service is more accessible, with sales in the region declining 29% - also a bigger decline than we anticipated," Angelo Zino, analyst at CFRA Research said on Thursday. Analysts also noted that the iPhone represents a larger portion of revenue in China than any other region, making the company more dependent ... Read More on Datafloq

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp is in final talks with AT&T to acquire U.S. animation-streaming service Crunchyroll in a deal worth more than 100 billion yen ($957 million), the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday. The acquisition would give Sony access to Crunchyroll's 70 million members around the world, allowing the Japanese entertainment and electronics conglomerate to compete better with Netflix and other global rivals, the Nikkei said. Sony, which recently obtained exclusive rights to negotiate for Crunchyroll, hopes to leverage the new channel to distribute its own entertainment content, including films and music. A Sony spokesman declined to comment on the report. It bought Funimation Productions Ltd, an animation distributor with one million paying subscribers, for about $143 million in 2017. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Tessa Vikander and Moira Warburton VANCOUVER (Reuters) - A fifth and final scheduled day of witness testimony in the extradition case of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in a Canadian court will conclude on Friday, although lawyers for both sides proposed days be added to hear all witnesses. Meng, 48, was arrested by Canadian police on a U.S. warrant in December 2018 while on a layover in Vancouver, bound for Mexico. The United States charged her with bank fraud, accusing her of misleading HSBC about Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break U.S. sanctions. Meng has claimed innocence and is fighting the charges from Vancouver where she is under house arrest, monitored by private security at her home in the upscale neighborhood of Shaughnessy. On Friday, ... Read More on Datafloq

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Dominant tech companies will have to explain how their algorithms work under proposed new EU rules and also open up their ad archives to regulators and researchers, Europe's digital and antitrust chief said on Friday. The move is likely to impact U.S. online giants such as Alphabet unit Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, with their treasure troves of data and lucrative online advertising businesses. Advertising algorithms help companies target ads at the users that advertisers want to reach. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the goal was to shed light on how these algorithms work and to make sure that companies are accountable for their decisions. "And the biggest platforms would have to provide ... Read More on Datafloq

By Joey Roulette and Eric M. Johnson WASHINGTON/SEATTLE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's differences with rival presidential candidate Joe Biden extend far beyond planet earth. President Trump's plans to win the race in space call for a 2024 moon mission, and ending direct U.S. financial support for the International Space Station in 2025 - turning over control of the decades-old orbital laboratory to private space companies. Biden, on the other hand, would likely call for a delayed moonshot and propose a funding extension for the International Space Station if he wins the White House, according to people familiar with the fledging Biden space agenda. Pushing back the moon mission could cast more doubt on the long-term fate of Boeing Co's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, just as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' ... Read More on Datafloq

By Kaori Kaneko and Izumi Nakagawa TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan may effectively shut off China from supplying drones to its government to protect sensitive information, according to six people in government and the ruling party familiar with the matter, as part of a broad effort to bolster national security. The primary concerns, those people said, centred on information technology, supply chains, cyber security and intellectual property - worries that have been rising outside Japan as well. But Japan must balance such fears - particularly Beijing's growing push to export sensitive technologies such as commercial drones and security cameras - against deep economic dependence on China. It must also navigate increasingly choppy waters between China and Japan's closest ally, the United States, which is at odds with Beijing over many things, including ... Read More on Datafloq

SEOUL (Reuters) - LG Chem shareholders approved the company's proposal to separate its battery business into a new company, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. The decision paves the way for the battery business, a supplier for Tesla Inc and General Motors Co, to potentially raise funds and go public to finance its high-cost capacity expansion. More than 82% of LG Chem shareholders who attended the meeting voted in favour of the plan, the source said. LG Chem declined to comment. The unit, which will be launched on Dec. 1, will first become a wholly-owned subsidiary tentatively named LG Energy Solutions, and then up to 30% of the company's shares may be listed in an initial offering in about a year. LG Chem's stock price fell 2.8%. ... Read More on Datafloq

SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp grabbed market share in China and Europe in the September quarter as rival Huawei Technologies' dominance slipped due to U.S. sanctions, market data showed. Xiaomi took third spot on the global leaderboard. It sold 47.1 million handsets in the third quarter, a 45% surge from a year earlier, according to market research firm Canalys. The global smartphone market contracted 1% year-on-year in July-September with shipments down to 348 million units, but rose 22% from the pandemic-pummeled second quarter. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd regained the top spot, helped by sales in India, where Chinese brands suffered due to political tensions. Huawei slipped to number two globally, and Apple, which only launched the new iPhone earlier this month, took the number four spot in the September quarter. ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc's Instagram said on Thursday it was making changes to its image sharing platform for U.S. users to prevent the spread of misinformation around the Nov. 3 presidential election. For users in the United States, Instagram will temporarily remove the "Recent" tab from hashtag pages starting Thursday, it said in a statement on Twitter. "We're doing this to reduce the real-time spread of potentially harmful content that could pop up around the election," the statement added. Instagram's "Recent" tab arranges hashtags in chronological order and amplifies content. Researchers have cautioned that automated amplification can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation on the platform. The development comes as social media companies face increasing pressure to combat election-related misinformation and prepare for the possibility of violence or poll place intimidation around the ... Read More on Datafloq

By Elizabeth Culliford (Reuters) - Wikipedia has locked down its main election page ahead of the U.S. presidential election so that only certain editors can make changes, part of preparations to combat potential disinformation and abuses related to Tuesday's vote. The online encyclopedia's articles, written primarily by unpaid volunteers, are relied on by platforms from Alphabet Inc's Google to Amazon Inc's voice assistant Alexa to give their users information and context. "We're not worried about vandals who want to just mess up an article in order to cause a little trouble. The Wikipedia community deals with those issues for breakfast," Ryan Merkley, chief of staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts Wikipedia, said in a phone interview. "We're really worried about coordinated actors ... trying to ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Apple Inc will temporarily close 17 of its 20 stores in France from Oct. 30, as the country goes into a fresh one-month lockdown due to a resurgence of coronavirus cases, the company's website showed. Apple's Opéra, Les Quatre Temps, and Rosny 2 stores in Paris will remain open, the company's website showed. Those three stores are using Apple's new "Express" format, according to the site. Apple is expanding the "Express" format this month in hopes of still being able to serve customers in areas with high numbers of coronavirus cases, while meeting its own health and safety standards for employees and customers, the company's retail chief told Reuters earlier this month. The new format has a wall in front of the main store, with sales counters protected by plexiglass and a few shelves of accessories. Customers make an appointment to pick up ... Read More on Datafloq

By Lisa Richwine (Reuters) - Streaming video service Netflix Inc on Thursday raised monthly charges in the United States for its standard and premium subscription plans, a move that sent the company's shares climbing nearly 5%. Netflix increased the cost of its standard subscription by $1 a month to $14, and the price for the premium tier rose by $2 per month to $18. The standard plan, the company's most popular, enables two streams at the same time, while the premium plan allows for four simultaneous streams. The price increase was the first for U.S. customers since January 2019. Shares of Netflix jumped 4.8% to $509.53 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq. Netflix, the world's dominant streaming service, enjoyed a ... Read More on Datafloq

By Noel Randewich (Reuters) - Alphabet rallied, Apple sank and Twitter tumbled on Thursday after a mixed bag of quarterly reports from top-tier technology companies that investors have relied on this year to power a stock market rally through the coronavirus pandemic. Share swings following the reports from the tech heavyweights after the bell sent exchange-traded funds tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq down about 1% each, suggesting Wall Street may open weaker on Friday. Mostly upbeat results from Facebook , Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon, along with Microsoft's strong report earlier this week, show how the largest U.S. companies have expanded their businesses and outperformed smaller rivals this year as the pandemic accelerates trends toward online shopping, video streaming and other technologies. Alphabet and Facebook both reported strong rises in advertising sales and ... Read More on Datafloq

By Sheila Dang (Reuters) - Twitter Inc <TWTR.N> on Thursday added fewer users than Wall Street had expected and said a rise in expenses would accelerate in the fourth quarter, sending its shares tumbling 16%. The San Francisco-based social media company said it expected expenses to increase by close to 20% in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago due to an increase in investments. The company also cautioned that it was hard to predict how advertisers would react as the U.S. presidential election nears on Nov. 3. Shares of Twitter fell to $44.00 in after-market trading. Twitter said many companies paused ad spending during the second quarter due to widespread protests after the death of George Floyd in May ... Read More on Datafloq

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider   Halloween is just around the corner, waiting to surprise us. Though this year’s celebrations might be less extravagant, requiring special care and precautions, nonetheless we all know that Halloween traditionally has welcomed a slew of joyous activities including pumpkin carving, wearing scary costumes, elaborately decorating our homes, and so on.   The highlight, undoubtedly, has got to be the annual thrill of going trick-or-treating.   Perhaps you remember as a child going door-to-door in your neighborhood and the excitement at approaching the porch of a house covered with cobwebs and ghosts. Do you dare make your way to the front door? What goblins and other frights might await you? And, upon bravely knocking on the imposing door, recall the absolute delight at being given a chocolate bar or your favorite bubble gum.   Off you would sprint, heading to the next house on the block.       Now, as an adult, hopefully, you either are the one d

By AI Trends Staff   Google has had an eventful couple of weeks, announcing enhancements to its search and map capabilities at its virtual “Search On” event on Oct. 15, and on Oct. 20 being accused by the US Justice Department of engaging in anti-competitive practices in order to preserve its search engine business.     At the Search On event, Google detailed how it has tapped AI and machine learning techniques to make improvements to Google Maps as well as Search.     In an expansion of its search “busyness metrics,” users will be able to see how busy locations are without identifying the specific beach, grocery store, pharmacy or other location. COVID-19 safety information will also be added to business profiles across Search and Maps, indicating whether the business is using safety precautions such as temperature checks or plexiglass shields, according to an account in  VentureBeat .     Prabhakar Raghavan, head of search, Google An improvement to the algorithm beneath the “

By AI Trends Staff The federal government’s investments in AI since President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order calling for the US to maintain its leadership in AI in early 2019 have been substantial and are playing out in a range of agencies, as several speakers outlined on day two of the Second Annual AI World Government conference and expo held virtually this week. Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, CISE, National Science Foundation Erwin Gianchandani , Deputy Assistant Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation , described NSF investments in AI, NSF’s National AI Research Institutes and other partnership models. The NSF invested $500 million in AI in fiscal year 2020 just ended, broken down by $320 million in computer and information science, $131 million in engineering and $48 million in math and physical sciences. “We put a spotlight on specific areas of AI and machine learning, often in collaboration with partn

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Electric vehicle maker Polestar, owned by Volvo Cars and its parent China's Geely, is recalling its new Polestar 2 cars for the second time in a month, it said on Thursday. The company, which made its last recall on Oct. 2 after several cars had lost power and stopped running, is recalling close to 4,600 vehicles due to a faulty component. "Polestar has initiated a voluntary safety recall and a service campaign that contains a number of updates for Polestar 2 vehicles," the firm said in statement. "The recall involves the replacement of faulty inverters on most delivered customer vehicles," Polestar said, adding the hardware updates can be done in a single workshop visit. The Sweden-based automaker started producing its Polestar 2 sedans this year in China and sells them in ... Read More on Datafloq

By Yingzhi Yang and Brenda Goh BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing-based ByteDance announced a standalone education technology (edtech) brand Dali for the Chinese market on Thursday, becoming another major tech player looking to capitalise on the sector's boom driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Dali, meaning “forceful strength” in Chinese, will host all the education business of ByteDance and already has 10,000 employees, Dali Chief Executive Chen Lin told a press conference in Beijing. ByteDance founder and chief executive Zhang Yiming said in a statement: “We started to develop interests in the education industry very early on. The brand independence of Dali Education is just the beginning of a long journey.” Demand for education technology grew during the coronavirus pandemic as widespread lockdowns in China and school closures forced students to take online classes ... Read More on Datafloq

STOCKHOLM/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Spotify Technology SA on Thursday added more subscribers in the third quarter than Wall Street had expected and forecast strong growth in the current quarter as more users tuned in to its streaming music service. With more than double the number of subscribers than its nearest rival Apple Music, Spotify has been expanding rapidly in markets across Europe after launching in India and the Middle East last year. Premium subscribers, which account for most of its revenue, were up 27% to 144 million from a year earlier. Analysts on average were expecting the company to have 142.5 million paid subscribers, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. The company expects total premium subscribers in the range of 150 million to 154 million for the fourth quarter. Analysts were expecting it to hit 151.5 million. ... Read More on Datafloq

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators can access some Facebook <FB.O> documents under certain conditions, Europe's second-top court said on Thursday in a case triggered by what the U.S. social media giant says are excessive demands for data. The Luxembourg-based General Court said Facebook will transmit requested documents related to its business activities to the European Commission. "Those documents shall then be placed in a virtual data room which shall be accessible to as limited a number as possible of members of the team responsible for the investigation, in the presence (virtual or physical) of an equivalent number of Facebook Ireland's lawyers," the court said. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Jon Boyle) ... Read More on Datafloq

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Tech giants will have to do more to weed out illegal and harmful content while online gatekeepers will be bound by a list of dos and don'ts under new rules aimed at reining in their power, Europe's antitrust chief said on Thursday. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager also proposed new powers for enforcers to tackle market failures in digital markets and to stop new ones from emerging. Under the proposed Digital Services Act, online platforms will have to check sellers' identities before they can use their services in a move aimed at countering illegal and dangerous content. The tech companies will have to produce reports on their actions and inform users who pays for the advertisements that they see and why they have been targeted by certain ... Read More on Datafloq

By Moira Warburton (Reuters) - In a case dating back two years, lawyers for Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou on Thursday will resume questioning a Canada border officer who intercepted Meng before the federal police arrested her. Scott Kirkland, an officer with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), told a Vancouver court on Wednesday he was worried about allegations being brought of potential civil rights violations if the agency intercepted and interviewed Meng before her arrest by Canadian police. Meng, 48, was arrested at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 while on a layover bound for Mexico. The United States charged her with bank fraud, accusing her of misleading HSBC about Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's business dealings in Iran and causing the bank to break U.S. sanctions. She has said she is ... Read More on Datafloq

By Sam Nussey TOKYO (Reuters) - The chief executive of Nvidia Corp <NVDA.O> said his planned acquisition of Arm from SoftBank Group Corp <9984.T> cost an "arm and a leg," but that the chip designer's valuable network of customers made it worthwhile. Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank announced in September it would sell Arm to U.S. chip designer Nvidia for $40 billion as it builds a cash pile through asset disposal. "I had to pay you an arm and a leg for it," Jensen Huang told SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son in a pre-recorded conversation at annual conference SoftBank World. Huang, wearing his trademark leather jacket and sat before a fire, said Arm's customer network is its most valuable asset, and that he wants to bring Nvidia's artificial intelligence technology to those customers. ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O> said on Wednesday that it detected and attempted to stop a series of cyberattacks from Phosphorus, which the company described as an 'Iranian actor', with the attacks aimed to target over 100 high-profile individuals. "Phosphorus, an Iranian actor, has targeted with this scheme potential attendees of the upcoming Munich Security Conference and the Think 20 (T20) Summit in Saudi Arabia", Microsoft said in a blog, adding it believed Phosphorus is engaging in these attacks for intelligence collection purposes. https://bit.ly/2HHrz0Q (Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Shri Navaratnam) ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - A California court on Wednesday denied an application for a temporary restraining order by the state's Uber Technologies Inc <UBER.N> drivers, saying the drivers could not establish the alleged "political coercion" by the ride-hailing company. The drivers had last week sued Uber over in-app messages regarding an upcoming gig worker ballot measure that the drivers say violates a California law protecting their political rights. The lawsuit had said that Uber was unlawfully pressuring drivers via the app to support the Nov. 3 company-sponsored ballot measure, known as Proposition 22. Uber had rejected those claims. "The application for a temporary restraining order is denied", Richard Ulmer, judge of Superior Court of California for San Francisco County, said in his order. The request for "extraordinary injunctive relief" is belated, the judge wrote, adding that ... Read More on Datafloq

By Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd <005930.KS> said on Thursday it expects fourth-quarter profit to fall due to weak server chip demand and rising smartphone competition, after posting its best quarterly operating profit in two years in the third quarter. The world's top maker of smartphones and memory chips flagged a recovery in the mobile and chip markets next year although it was wary of disruption from the coronavirus pandemic and U.S.-China trade tensions in the short-term. "Global demand is forecast to increase year on year, but uncertainties are unlikely to ease given the possibility of additional waves of the pandemic," Ben Suh, Samsung's executive vice president of investor relations, said in an earnings call. Samsung said mobile chip demand would rise in the fourth quarter, ... Read More on Datafloq

By Fanny Potkin SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China's Ant Group Co Ltd <688688.SS> <6688.HK> has been cutting funding and staff support to many of the overseas e-wallet firms it has invested in as it pivots away from earlier ambitions of becoming a global payments leader, people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The shift in strategy by the Alibaba-backed <BABA.N> <9988.HK> fintech giant came late in 2019, brought on by a change at the helm and a reworking of priorities as it planned for its IPO and grappled with regulatory challenges at home. It has made large cuts to the hundreds of millions of dollars it spent each year to subsidise user growth at overseas e-wallet firms offering digital payment and other financial services, and is repatriating Ant staffers, according to more than a dozen executives who work or have worked with Ant in nine countries. ... Read More on Datafloq

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two key U.S. House Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday asked Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai if the White House was involved in his decision to move forward with new regulations limiting key social media legal protections. Representatives Frank Pallone and Mike Doyle demanded Pai disclose if he had any contact with the White House or President Donald Trump's re-election campaign before his announcement. Pai did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday but told reporters Tuesday he did not feel any pressure from the White House. He did not directly address a question from Reuters about whether he or his staff had any contact with the White House ahead of his announcement. Pallone, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Doyle, who heads a panel ... Read More on Datafloq

By Munsif Vengattil (Reuters) - Image-sharing company Pinterest Inc <PINS.N> projected a 60% sales growth for the current quarter, off the back of a healthy rebound in ad spending by businesses after the early months of COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in the industry. The forecast, which the company termed an 'informal' one, compares to a 35% growth modeled by Wall Street analysts, according to Refinitiv data. Shares of the company, which also beat third-quarter sales estimates, jumped 28% to $63.05 in extended trading. Pinterest said it benefited as advertisers redirected spending to its platform following a social media ad boycott campaign that began in July. A long list of companies have pulled advertising from Facebook Inc <FB.O>, in support of a ... Read More on Datafloq