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How we all became screen obsessives

Phones, TV and games constantly vie for our attention — but how much do they add to our lives?




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Vedanta presses on with plan to double oil production

Group’s founder Anil Agarwal undeterred by price crash and debt levels




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Airbus signals further production cut with job losses set to follow

Plane maker’s chief warns aerospace industry in ‘gravest crisis’ as group swings to quarterly loss amid aviation collapse




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US businesses face uncertainty over paying staff for temperature checks

The time it takes for employees to be assessed is putting companies in delicate legal territory




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UK quarantine plan poses fresh setback for aviation sector

Airlines and airports say 14-day isolation period would be a ‘death blow’ to industry




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Axa criticises regulatory confusion over dividend policy

Chief executive Thomas Buberl says different guidance between countries ‘difficult to accept’




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Insurers face biggest-ever losses, warns Lloyd’s chief

Pandemic could dwarf other disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, John Neal says




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Westminster loses battle over pension fund investments

Court rules government guidance that bans boycotts against foreign countries is unlawful




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UK pension trustees urged to watch for dividends and ‘excessive’ bonuses

Industry regulator calls for vigilance over actions of employers during pandemic




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Wall Street stages late rally to shave week’s losses

Key measure of American business investment fell only marginally last month




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3D-printed houses could become concrete reality

The technology has significant potential to shake up the construction sector




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Europe’s construction activity collapses as lockdown hits builders

Coronavirus damage to economy drives eurozone investor sentiment to a record low




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Norwegian Cruise Line raises $2.2bn in fight to stay afloat

Company pledges two ships and two islands as collateral in upsized refinancing plan




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Wall Street banks face $100m of losses on Las Vegas deal

Citigroup was biggest lender but Deutsche, Barclays and SocGen are also on the hook




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StanChart and HSBC face losses on loans to rice trader

Phoenix Commodities seeks debt restructuring after racking up $450m of currency hedge losses




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London market passes first post-Brexit test with £1.3bn listing

Smart meter group’s IPO boosts hopes of fundraising uptick after lacklustre 2019




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Church of England raises pressure on miners over dams

Investor group led by the CofE launches database to track tailings dams after Brazil disaster




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Coronavirus: Congress passes $484bn interim stimulus package — as it happened

US job gains since financial crisis wiped out. Switzerland faces sharpest economic contraction since 1974. UK and eurozone business activity hit by historic collapse this month as lockdowns choked Europe’s biggest economies.

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Coronavirus: US tops 1m Covid-19 cases — as it happened

Deaths in England and Wales are highest on record in mid-April while cases in the US surpass 1m

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Coronavirus: US death toll rises by more than 2,000 for third straight day — as it happened

Eurozone GDP in historic fall, millions more Americans file for unemployment, Shell cuts dividend for first time since second world war and UK's AstraZeneca combines with Oxford on a potential vaccine

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Zeitgold raises $29.2M to automate bookkeeping

Zeitgold has raised a Series B round of $29.2 million (€27 million). Overall, the company has raised more than $54 million (€50 million). The company is building a software platform for small companies to automate bookkeeping as much as possible. Vintage Investment Partners is leading today’s round with existing investors Battery Ventures, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, […]




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Runa Capital closes Fund III at $157M, with an added focus on quantum computing

VC fund Runa Capital was launched with $135 million in 2010, and is perhaps best known for its investment into NGINX, which powers many web sites today. In more recent years it has participated or led investments into startups such as Zipdrug ($10.8 million); Rollbar this year ($11 million); and Monedo (for €20 million). HQ’d […]




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Deep Render raises £1.6M for image compression tech that mimics ‘neural processes of the human eye’

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]




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Cuckoo Internet closes seed funding to disrupt UK broadband market

Cuckoo Internet is a new U.K. startup that aims to disrupt the U.K. broadband market. It has now raised £470,000 in seed funding, which includes funding from work.fund, a new Silicon Valley fund operator fund led by Bart Macdonald (Sapling founder). Other investors include Lorin van Nuland (early investor in Betterment), Edward Campbell-Harris (Bulb early […]




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Short sellers circle virus sinners; Amazon’s looming shareholder battle; Businesses fight for prisoner releases

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




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US stock market rally confuses liquidity with solvency

Many zombie companies will fail, no matter how much is sprayed around by the Fed




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Britain and EU are negotiating at cross purposes

Once the UK accepted trade friction, everything changed




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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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Bird is testing Bird Pay, which lets users purchase items from local businesses using its main app

Another on-demand transport app is making a move into payments to expand the existing relationship with its customers (and subsequent margins that it makes from serving them). Bird today announced the launch of Bird Pay, a service that will let people use its app to purchase items from local participating businesses alongside renting scooters. The service […]




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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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Decrypted: Zoom’s security fallout, CrowdStrike’s new CTO, Bugcrowd raises $30M

Another week in quarantine. As the world adjusts to working from home under mandatory stay-at-home orders, hackers are keeping busy. Microsoft said this week that coronavirus-related attacks are on the rise but still make up just a fraction of the overall malicious activity. Cybersecurity companies seem to be faring mostly well — in part thanks […]




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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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Factorial raises $16M to take on the HR world with a platform for SMBs

A startup that’s hoping to be a contender in the very large and fragmented market of human resources software has captured the eye of a big investor out of the US and become its first investment in Spain. Barcelona-based Factorial, which is building an all-in-one HR automation platform aimed at small and medium businesses that manages […]




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SkyCell raises $62M for smart containers and analytics to transport pharmaceuticals

While human travel has become severely restricted in recent months, the movement of goods has remained a constant priority — and in some cases, has become even more urgent. Today, a startup out of Switzerland that builds hardware and operates a logistics network designed to transport one item in particular — pharmaceuticals — is announcing […]




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Amid stock market turbulence, investing app Stash raises $112M led by LendingTree

As coronavirus-hit financial markets continue to flip-flop in the wake of bad news followed by pockets of hope, a startup that aims to introduce ordinary consumers to investing has raised a big round of funding. New York-based Stash, which provides a mobile-first route to managing money through investment — as well as retirement, custodial and […]




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Symend raises $52M to help mediate when customers are at risk of defaulting on payments

With unemployment growing at a worrying rate, we’re seeing a lot more people finding themselves in hot water when it comes to their finances. Today a startup that’s built a platform to help identify and help those users when they find themselves unable to make payments is announcing a very large growth round of funding […]




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NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]




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Dtex, a specialist in insider threat cybersecurity, raises $17.5M

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]




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Microsoft showcases 13 new titles for the Xbox Series X

With conferences canceled indefinitely, companies are increasingly reliant on online events to hype product launches. As they prepare to release a next-gen console before the end of the year, expect plenty of live streams and blogs from both Microsoft and Sony in an attempt to flesh out all that their respective systems have to offer. […]




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Wall Street closes higher after oil rally takes Brent over $30

Investors anticipate boost in energy demand as economies start to reopen




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Wall Street closes higher despite dire US jobs data

Gulf between darkening Main Street and rebounding markets continues to widen




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Sensor Tower raises $45M as demand for app data grows

Mobile app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which provides data-driven insights about the app economy, has raised $45 million in new funding from Riverwood Capital. This is the first significant investment the now-profitable company has seen since its $1 million seed round in 2013. The investment speaks to the growing demand for data about the […]




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Autotech Ventures raises more than $150 million with an eye on ground transportation startups

Autotech Ventures popped on the scene three years ago with a $120 million debut fund and a plan to invest in early-stage ground transportation startups. Now, with investments in 26 startups and a handful of exits, including Xnor.ai, DeepScale and Frontier Car Group, the venture firm is back with a new, bigger fund and the […]




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3D-printed glasses startup Fitz is making custom protective eyewear for healthcare workers

A lot of startups have answered the call for more personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essentials to support healthcare workers in their efforts to curb the spread and impact of COVID-19. One of those is direct-to-consumer 3D-printed eyewear brand Fitz, which is employing its custom-fit glasses technology to build protective, prescription specs for front-line […]




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Deep Render raises £1.6M for image compression tech that mimics ‘neural processes of the human eye’

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]




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UK Budget sides with small businesses, with a caveat

The chancellor need beware that policies introduced in a crisis are hard to end later




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Online learning marketplace Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

The internet has, for better or worse, become the default platform for people seeking information, and today one of the companies leveraging that to deliver educational content has raised some funding to fuel its next stage of growth. Udemy, which provides a marketplace offering some 150,000 different online learning courses from business analytics to ukulele […]




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Y Combinator graduate H1 closes on $12.9 million for its professional healthcare database

Just months after graduating from Y Combinator, H1 Insights, the LinkedIn for the healthcare industry, has raised $12.9 million in a new round of funding. “It’s a better way to connect the ecosystem,” says co-founder Ariel Katz. The company already has more than 8 million profiles for healthcare professionals in its database and is generating […]




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Chinese startup Rokid pitches COVID-19 detection glasses in US

Thermal imaging wearables used in China to detect COVID-19 symptoms could soon be deployed in the U.S. Hangzhou based AI startup Rokid is in talks with several companies to sell its T1 glasses in America, according to Rokid’s U.S. Director Liang Guan. Rokid is among a wave of Chinese companies creating technology to address the […]




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The $99 Mendel Air Sensor uses data to help you grow better veggies (or weed)

The Mendel Air Sensor app is the first app I open every morning. Before Reddit, before Gmail, before NYT. I roll over, grab my phone and check my plants. I don’t know if there’s a higher honor I can bestow on an app. The Mendel Air Sensor is a game-changer for indoor growers. It offers […]