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How will coronavirus change the world? — Parlia launches to help you find out

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]




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US rescue must be transparent, consistent and fast

Taxpayers ought to receive a share of the upside after big business recovers




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Big data shows Covid-19 reshaping ESG; UN PRI’s long-term crisis plan; sustainable funds stand tall

Your guide to the investment and business revolution you can’t afford to ignore




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Vaccines and antibiotics made the west complacent. This must change

Rich countries need to fund infectious disease treatments properly




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World Bank’s pandemic bond failure; ESG shakes virtual AGM agendas; BlackRock’s green Fed fight

Your guide to the investment and business revolution you can’t afford to ignore




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Warrior accountants: leading the green revolution?

Corporate accountants could have a significant impact on green issues




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Covid-19 casts pall over Earth Day; Green bonds stand strong; Shake Shack does the ‘other’ right thing

Your guide to the investment and business revolution you can’t afford to ignore




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How much should it cost to contain a pandemic?

Assigning an economic value to life is taboo — but we must confront the trade-offs




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US lawyers and insurers must face Covid-19 liability

Private lawsuits are a vital tool for upholding standards in the free market system




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A Covid-19 supply chain surprise? Exxon and Barclays face proxy battles; challenging data on ESG fund growth




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How the pandemic trapped domestic violence victims in hell

Under lockdown, vulnerable families are imprisoned in a cage of terror, stress and abuse




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Exclusive: Shake Shack CEO talks bailout failings; climate chaos ahead for mortgage market; EU green plans charge forward




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Is it safe to go to the shops, see a friend or get on a plane?

Gillian Tett on how to assess risk in the age of coronavirus




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Covid-19 shows why ESG matters; Barclays’ big climate vote; UK impact investors’ legal hurdle; your questions answered

Your guide to the investment and business revolution you can’t afford to ignore




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WhatsApp eyes lending feature in India as Amazon rolls out Pay Later to tens of thousands of customers

WhatsApp, which began testing its mobile payments feature in India two years ago, could offer at least one more financial service to people in its biggest market. In a filing with the local regulator in India, the Facebook -owned messaging platform has listed credit as one of the areas it will pursue in the country. […]




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Facebook stock spikes despite ‘significant reduction’ in demand for ads

The coronavirus pandemic is significantly slowing the growth of Facebook’s ads business, but investors seem pleased with the company’s performance in Q1 after Facebook released its earnings report Wednesday. The company beat Wall Street expectations on revenues, sharing that they had made $17.74 billion while falling short on earnings per share at $1.71. The company […]




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Instagram ‘pods’ game the algorithm by coordinating likes and comments on millions of posts

Researchers at NYU have identified hundreds of groups of Instagram users, some with thousands of members, that systematically exchange likes and comments in order to game the service’s algorithms and boost visibility. In the process, they also trained machine learning agents to identify whether a post has been juiced in this way. “Pods,” as they’ve […]




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Facebook now allows users in the US & Canada to export photos and videos to Google Photos

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 […]




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Indian education startup Byju’s is fundraising at a $10B valuation

Byju’s, an education learning startup in India that has seen a surge in its popularity in recent weeks amid the coronavirus outbreak, is in talks to raise as much as $400 million in fresh capital at a $10 billion valuation, said three people familiar with the matter. The additional capital would be part of the […]




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Equity Monday: Intel covets Moovit, two early stage rounds, and Uber’s earnings

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Equity had a busy last few days, so to help you catch up: Friday’s episode was a lot of fun (Duolingo, Figma, OMERS, and aquafaba), and we also dropped an Equity Shot on Saturday, digging into the first major technology earnings week. […]




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Facebook to add gift cards, jobs and donation tools to its COVID-19 Community Help hub

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub […]




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Facebook users are buying and selling pangolin parts, even though it’s illegal

In spite of their protected status under international laws, pangolins remain one of the most trafficked animals in the world — and at least some of that trade is taking place right out in the open on Facebook . A new report from tech watchdog group the Tech Transparency Project details how Facebook users are […]




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This early Facebook investor wants to find smart students a job at the next Facebook

For many college seniors, school is a time for self-exploration, considering options, leisurely contemplating the future. Yet that’s rarely the case for computer engineering students who either attend the world’s best universities or rise to the very top of their classes. Almost immediately after choosing their courses during the first week of school, they typically […]




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Vista Equity Partners to invest $1.5B in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners said on Friday it will invest $1.5 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, joining social conglomerate Facebook and Silver Lake that have also made bets on the Indian telecom giant in recent weeks. The planned announcement, which would give the U.S.-headquartered software-focused buyout firm Vista Equity Partners a 2.32% stake in […]




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Facebook’s redesign goes live with simplified navigation and dark mode

After months of testing, Facebook’s redesign is finally official. Announced last year at F8, the more minimalist approach to its desktop design has been rolled out in waves. In March, the company added an option to try out the new version. Users could switch back and leave feedback for why they had done so. This […]




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Lessons for pro-Europeans in the failed Remain cause

The anti-Brexit movement wasted energy on negative campaigning and parliamentary wrecking tactics




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A grand bargain for Europe might yet be possible

Security and climate change will be high on Ursula von der Leyen’s list of priorities




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Britain and EU are negotiating at cross purposes

Once the UK accepted trade friction, everything changed




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Merkel’s successor must confront Germany’s decline

Investment strategies have failed to prepare the country for the technology shock




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Europe is still in thrall to the analogue mindset

The EU is culpably complacent about the challenges of the digital age




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Europe needs a new scale of stimulus — and cash not credit

Direct payments should be made to citizens and companies




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Germany’s testing success looks real — for now

But statistics that show how many days one country is behind another are humbug




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Italy is in more danger than the eurozone knows

It is hard to overstate the turn to Euroscepticism. It will not go away when lockdown ends




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Don’t blame German judges if they say No to ECB asset purchases

It would be the underlying law and EU treaty that needs changing, not the ruling




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Pinn’s illustration of the week: Safe hands

UK election campaign fights for national health




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Pinn’s illustration of the week: Transition

Boris Johnson rules out trade deal extension




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Pinn’s illustration of the week: Supply and demand

Tech companies caught in coronavirus disruption




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Pinn’s illustration of the week: Balancing the Budget

UK government spending faces increasing pressures




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Alipay owner Ant Financial takes minority stake in Klarna

Some big moves in the payments platform space: Ant Financial Group, the owner of China’s Alipay payment platform, has announced it’s taking a minority stake in Swedish payments platform Klarna . Klarna has a strong European presence and a flagship product that lets shoppers buy now and pay later in interest-free installments (typically 14 or […]




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5G devices were less than 1% of US smartphone purchases in 2019

No surprise, really, that 5G smartphone sales are on the way up. Frankly, there’s really no other way to go, according to the latest numbers from NPD’s Mobile Phone Tracking. The firm noted that 5G handsets accounted for less than 1% of total sales in the U.S. The hurdles are also what you’d expect: namely, […]




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Online printing site Doxzoo exposed thousands of customer files

Doxzoo proudly says on its website that your “documents are in safe hands.” But for some time, that wasn’t true. The U.K. printing company left its customer files on a cloud storage bucket, hosted on Amazon Web Services, without a password. Anyone who knew the easy-to-guess bucket name could access the massive trove of customer […]




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Samsung earnings guidance stays upbeat despite global macro crisis

Samsung overnight released its earnings guidance for the first quarter of 2020, stating that it expected sales of $45.4 billion and an operating profit of roughly $5.3 billion. The company’s fiscal year is aligned to the standard calendar year, and it will announce official earnings results on April 23. Those numbers are slightly up from […]




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Google said to be preparing its own chips for use in Pixel phones and Chromebooks

Google is reportedly on the verge of stepping up their hardware game in a way that follows the example set by Apple, with custom-designed silicon powering future smartphones. Axios reports that Google is readying its own in-house processors for use in future Pixel devices, including both phones and eventually Chromebooks, too. Google’s efforts around its […]




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Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch app reminds you to wash your damn hands, dummy

A few months ago, the idea of a hand-washing app would have seemed trivial, at best. We’re all adults here, right? We’ve been washing our hands our entire lives. But things change. It’s mid-April and we’re afraid to go outside and engage with other humans — and thorough hand-washing is one of very few tools […]




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Samsung’s new ‘eco’ TV packing transforms into cat houses, shelves and magazine racks

Here’s a nice thing. It’s not revolutionary or life-changing, but it’s nice. And right now we can all use a little bit of nice. Earlier this month, Samsung announced an addition to its line of “eco-packing” that will turn TV boxes in a wide variety of different “furniture.” I use furniture in quotes here because […]




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Samsung expects COVID-19 to hurt smartphone and TV sales, but increase demand for memory

In its first-quarter earnings report today, Samsung said it expects the COVID-19 pandemic to continue impacting its business for the rest of the year, cutting into sales for smartphones and TVs, but increasing demand for PCs, servers and memory chips as people continue to work or study from home. Samsung’s results for the first-quarter of […]




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India’s Glance tops 100M daily active users in 21 months

Glance, which serves media content, news and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their […]




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Paige adds $5M from Goldman Sachs to double down on AI-based cancer therapies

Paige, the Sloan-Kettering spinout that has been building an artificial intelligence platform to improve cancer pathology and subsequently use those insights to develop better drug therapies, has raised an additional $5 million in funding to continue its work commercialising its platform and expanding its research reach, while also getting FDA clearance to launch in hospitals […]




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Stripe adds card issuing, localized card networks and expanded approvals tool

At a time when more transactions than ever are happening online, payments behemoth Stripe is announcing three new features to continue expanding its reach. The company today announced that it will now offer card issuing services directly to businesses to let them in turn make credit cards for customers tailored to specific purposes. Alongside that, it’s going […]




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Randall Stephenson to step down as AT&T chief, succeeded by COO John Stankey

A big changing of the guard is underway at one of the world’s biggest and iconic names in telecoms and media: AT&T today announced that Randall Stephenson will be stepping down as the chairman and CEO of the telco, and he will be replaced by John Stankey, currently the COO. The change is effective on […]