2016 could be the high-water mark for Australian power and renewables deals following a strong year for transactions in 2015, according to PwC's energy, utilities and mining leader Mark Coughlin.

PwC has been appointed as a Skills Service Organisation by the Federal Department of Education and Training to work with Industry Reference Committees to develop modern and relevant training packages.

Twenty tech entrepreneurs have been chosen for a new accelerator program run by PwC and backed by some of Australia's largest corporates that aims to rapidly scale Australia's most promising science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education initiatives.

PwC today announced it was collaborating with a range of Australasian startups and emerging technology companies to deliver a purpose-built cloud platform that brings together some of the leading cloud solutions in the market today, all in one place.

Providing every primary school in the country with access to at least one specialist science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teacher could be possible if teachers are incentivised to acquire STEM specialisations and collaboration between schools is prioritised.

The overwhelming majority of global banks and traditional financial services firms believe part of their business is at risk of being lost to standalone Fintech challengers, according to a PwC report released today.

Australian oil and gas companies will need to think bigger and embrace customers in Asia, rapidly evolve their business models, and become much more responsive to emerging trends, if they are to thrive in a challenging new global marketplace.

PwC and NAB have teamed up to help self-employed and microbusiness customers operating in an emerging more flexible economy to manage their GST requirements.

Australias four major banks delivered combined cash earnings of $14.9 billion for the first half to March 2016.

An enhanced Singapore-Australia free trade agreement (SAFTA) represents the biggest step-forward in over a decade in our economic relationship with Singapore.

The emerging global market for business services using drone technology is valued at over US$127 billion with the drone revolution disrupting industries ranging from agriculture to filmmaking.

Australian organisations are experiencing a significantly higher rate of economic crime than the rest of the globe according to a PwC survey released today which finds 52 percent experienced economic crime in the last 24 months compared to the global average of 36 percent.

PwC Australia has recruited former CEO and Managing Director of David Jones Limited, Paul Zahra as Global Retail Advisor to add fuel to its growing retail and consumer practice.

PwC has today been announced as the first employer partner for a new Pathways in Technology (P-TECH) style pilot at McCarthy Catholic College, Emu Plains.

PwC Australia has acquired a 15 per cent stake in TOP Education, a Sydney-based private higher education provider, in move that will strengthen the firm's focus on Australia's third largest export - international education.

The world's top 40 mining companies were in a race to the bottom in 2015, with falling market capitalisations and net losses leaving them slower, lower and weaker, according to PwC's Mine 2016 report released today.

Cloudflare today announced a new partnership with JD Cloud & AI that will see the company expand its network in Chinato an additional 150 data centers. Currently, Cloudflare is available in 17 data centers in mainland China, thanks to a long-standing partnership with Baidu, but this new deal is obviously significantly larger. CloudFlare’s original partnership […]

Google today announced that it is making Meet, its video meeting tool for businesses that directly competes with the likes of Zoom, available for free to everyone. Until now, you could participate in a Meet call without being a paying user, but you needed a paid G Suite account to start calls. You won’t be […]

Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. Current Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role and focus on R&D and leading new projects, while Kearns will focus on expanding the company’s product portfolio and communicating with […]

About a year ago, Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online, its online code editor based on the popular Visual Studio Code project. It’s basically a full code editor and hosted environment that lives in your browser. Today, the company announced that it is changing the name of this service to Visual Studio Codespaces. It’s also dropping […]

Microsoft has now opened registration for the virtual edition of its online-only Build 2020 developer conference, which will take place from May 19 to 20. Typically, the event draws more than 6,000 developers, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, that’s obviously not an option. In contrast to Google, which completely scrapped its I/O developer conference […]

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started as an affordable cloud backup service, but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than similar […]

Nvidia today announced its plans to acquire Cumulus Networks, an open-source-centric company that specializes in helping enterprises optimize their data center networking stack. Cumulus offers both its own Linux distribution for network switches, as well as tools for managing network operations. With Cumulus Express, the company also offers a hardware solution in the form of […]

AWS today announced the launch of the Elemental Link, a small hardware device that makes it easy to connect a live video source to the AWS Elemental Media Live service for broadcast-grade live video processing in the cloud. The $995 Link, which weighs in at less than a pound, is meant to allow Media Live […]

Orca Security, an Israeli cloud security firm that focuses on giving enterprises better visibility into their multi-cloud deployments on AWS, Azure and GCP, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led by GGV Capital. YL Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments also participated in this round. Together with its seed […]

Mozilla today launched version 76 of its Firefox browser, and with that, it’s launching a couple of new features that you’ll likely notice if you’re already using the open-source browser. The highlight of today’s release is the enhanced password manager. Firefox Lockwise, as it is called these days, will now ask you for your device […]

Under different circumstances, GitHub would be hosting its Satellite conference in Paris this week. Like so many other events, GitHub decided to switch Satellite to a virtual event, but that isn’t stopping the Microsoft-owned company from announcing quite a bit of news this week. The highlight of GitHub’s announcement is surely the launch of GitHub […]

Hub Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that developed a software and hardware platform for cryptographic operations, today announced that it has raised a $5 million Series A round led by AXA Ventures. Crowdfunding platform OurCrowd also participated in this round. Like most companies at the Series A stage, the company plans to use the investment […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

In the April 2020 update of its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), released on April 7, and before a recently announced agreement by oil producing countries to limit production, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. crude oil production will average 11.8 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2020, a 4% decline from the 2019 production levels. Crude oil production will average 11.0 million b/d in 2021, a 6% decline from 2020 (Figure 1). If realized, the STEO 2020 production decline would mark the first annual decrease since 2016. The majority of the forecasted production decline occurs between the first and fourth quarters of 2020, dropping from 12.7 million b/d to 11 million b/d (13%) and remaining around that level through 2021. The forecast did not incorporate the April 12 joint announcement by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and several other non-OPEC countries to reduce crude oil production. These production reductions may significantly affect global balances and could provide upward price pressure that would affect U.S. crude oil drilling and production. ...

On Monday, April 20, 2020, New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil front-month futures prices fell below zero dollars per barrel (b)—at one point, trading at -$40.32/b (Figure 1)—and remained below zero for part of the following trading day. Monday marked the first time the price for the WTI futures contract fell below zero since trading began in 1983. Negative prices in commodity markets are very rare, but when they occur they typically indicate high transactions costs and significant infrastructure constraints. In this case, the WTI front-month futures contract was for May 2020 delivery, and the contract was set to expire on April 21, 2020. Unless they have made other arrangements ahead of time, market participants that hold WTI futures contracts to expiration must take physical delivery of WTI crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma. Typically, most market participants close any futures contracts ahead of expiration through cash settlement in order to avoid taking physical delivery, and only about 1% of contracts are physically settled. The extreme market events of April 20 and April 21 were driven by several factors, including the inability of contract holders to find other market participants to sell the futures contracts. In addition, in this case, the scarcity of available crude oil storage meant several market participants sold their futures contracts at negative prices, in effect paying a counterparty to close out of the contracts. ...

Transportation fuel demand in the United States has decreased since mid-March 2020, as a result of reduced economic activity and stay-at-home orders aimed at slowing the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). With low demand and a decrease in profitability, as measured by crack spreads, U.S. refineries have reduced gross inputs (runs), which dropped to 12.8 million barrels per day (b/d) for the week ending April 17, 3.8 million b/d lower than the previous five-year (2015–19) average and the lowest level since 2008 (Figure 1). Gross inputs increased slightly to 13.2 million b/d the week of April 24. ...

On April 27, 2020, the U.S. average regular retail gasoline price was $1.77 per gallon (gal), the lowest price since February 2016. On May 4, the U.S. average gasoline price increased slightly to $1.79/gal. The United States declared a national emergency on March 13 in response to concerns regarding spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). From March 16 to May 4, the U.S. average regular retail gasoline price fell by $0.46/gal. The lower gasoline prices reflect low crude oil prices, low gasoline demand, and rising gasoline inventories. ...

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets. To use the feature, Facebook users will need […]

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

While Jackbox clearly owes a great deal of its current popularity to the shelter-in-place policies, they've also been honing their craft for years. It's worth looking at what makes them work.

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations […]

Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the […]

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]

IRL, the recently pivoted calendar app that aggregates live virtual events, has today launched a web version of the platform. The company, which has $11 million in funding from Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund and Floodgate, started as a social planning app that helped folks find each other in the real world, based on interest and […]

Tinder will add a video dating feature in the second quarter of this year, parent company Match announced on Tuesday as part of its Q1 2020 earnings report. The company also detailed the coronavirus impact, which slowed Tinder user growth in the quarter, as social distancing requirements and government lockdowns went into effect. Match didn’t […]

A video about the coronavirus featuring a well-known vaccine conspiracist is spreading like wildfire on social media this week, even as platforms talk tough about misinformation in the midst of the pandemic. In the professionally-produced video, a solemn interviewer named Mikki Willis interviews Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in recent […]

Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass. His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment […]

1. Promising coronavirus vaccine candidate from China in talks to be tested globally  Times Now
2. China conducts first successful coronavirus vaccine test on monkeys  Times of India
3. Inactivated PiCoVacc vaccine found safe, efficacious in animal study  The Hindu
4. Chinese drugmaker in talks to test coronavirus vaccine globally: Report  Hindustan Times
5. Covid-19: The race to develop coronavirus vaccines is heating up  Times of India
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1. Blood thinners may boost survival rates of Covid-19 infected patients: Report  Top Live News
2. Coronavirus blood-clot mystery intensifies  Nature.com
3. Blood thinners could improve survival chances for sickest coronavirus patients, study says  USA TODAY
4. Evidence Builds Linking Anticoagulation to COVID-19 Survival  Medscape
5. Doctors may have found a way to reduce the risk of death in severe coronavirus cases  BGR
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1. Virender Sehwag would've easily crossed 10,000 Test runs had he played for another country: Rashid Latif  India Today
2. Sehwag would’ve had 10k runs if he played for another team; was under Sachin, Dravid’s shadow: Ex-Pak...  Hindustan Times
3. Ex-Pak skipper believes Sehwag couldve achieved more had he played for another country - Republic World  Republic World
4. Sehwag would’ve crossed 10,000 Test runs if he played for another country, says Pakistan’s Latif  Scroll.in
5. Virender Sehwag remained under shadows of other players: Rashid Latif  Jimmys Post
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1. Peshawar Remembers its ‘Grandson’ Rishi Kapoor  The Wire
2. When Aishwarya Rai-Abhishek Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor-Alia Bhatt joined Rishi Kapoor in New York, spot...  Hindustan Times
3. Rishi Kapoor To Ranbir Kapoor To Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: Count The Stars In The Throwback Pic Shared By Riddhima Kapoor Sahni  NDTV
4. Rishi Kapoor Diary  Outlook India
5. Hina Khan, Aditya Narayan and Bharti Singh to be part of musical tribute to Rishi Kapoor and Irrfan  India Today
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1. Facebook redesign is finally rolling out for everyone | BGR India  BGR India
2. Dark mode on Facebook starts rolling out with brand new desktop site  Livemint
3. Facebook for desktop gets dark mode for all: Here's how to get it  India TV News
4. Facebook’s redesigned website now live: Here’s how to get  The Newsopedia
5. Facebook starts rolling out redesigned desktop site to all: Here’s what’s new  Hindustan Times
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1. Raghuram Rajan on monetisation debate: 'It's neither a game changer nor a catastrophe'  CNBCTV18
2. India Raises Borrowing Limit by Over 50% to Rs 12 Lakh Crore as Virus Grips Economy  The Wire
3. Need for non-collateralized reverse repo operations: SBI Report  Economic Times
4. View: Why a new 'Bad Bank' when there are 24!  Economic Times
5. Bank credit up 6.74% to Rs 102.69 lakh crore; deposits rise 9.82%  Moneycontrol.com
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1. Saudi, US companies also eyeing stakes in Reliances Jio Platforms  Business Standard
2. Mukesh Ambani is a man on a mission and even a pandemic or lockdown can’t stop him  ThePrint
3. General Atlantic Is Said to Be In Talks for Reliance Jio Stake  BloombergQuint
4. Saudi, US firms eye stakes in Reliance Jio  Hindustan Times
5. Mukesh Ambani in no mood to rest; trying to get more investors for Jio, talks on with rich Saudi wealth fund  The Financial Express
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