New York, United States | AFP | Spotify shares took a hit Thursday after a disappointing growth outlook offset the first-ever quarterly profit posted by the streaming music sector leader. Shares in the Swedish-based music group slid 5.7 percent to close at $141.16 after the company’s third quarter earnings report. …
Read More »Google workers walk out in global protest over harassment
New York, United States | AFP | Thousands of Google employees joined a coordinated worldwide walkout Thursday to protest the US tech giant’s handling of sexual harassment, staging protests from Singapore to London to New York to the company’s California campus. The “Google Walkout For Real Change” account that sprang …
Read More »NASA’s Dawn asteroid mission ends as fuel runs out
Washington, United States | AFP | Dawn, a NASA spacecraft that launched 11 years ago and studied two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, has ended its mission after running out of fuel, officials said Thursday. Scientists have known for about a month that Dawn was essentially out …
Read More »Over 7 million Yemeni children face ‘serious’ famine threat: UN
Hodeida, Yemen | AFP | Over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country’s war will not save all of them, the UN children’s agency said. “Today, 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected …
Read More »Millions in Mexico City see water supply cut off for days
Mexico City, Mexico | AFP | Millions of people in Mexico City were without water on Wednesday, and expected to wait at least four days as authorities undertake maintenance work on one of the major supply systems. Half of the capital’s eight million population were affected, with a further three …
Read More »India court sentences 16 police to life for killing 42 Muslims
New Delhi, India | AFP | An Indian court Wednesday sentenced 16 police officers to life imprisonment for rounding up and massacring dozens of unarmed Muslims during historic riots in the country’s north decades ago. The officers were found guilty of shooting 42 men and tossing their bodies into canals, …
Read More »Qatar Airways becomes CONMEBOL ‘airline partner’
Doha, Qatar | AFP | Qatar Airways announced yet another football sponsorship deal on Wednesday by unveiling a four-and-a-half year agreement with CONMEBOL to become the South American football confederation’s “official global airline partner”. The sponsorship agreement will run until the end of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. “Qatar …
Read More »Standard Chartered profits up by quarter in January-September
Hong Kong, China | AFP | Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered on Wednesday said pre-tax profits rose 25 percent in the first nine months of the year, and warned it was keeping tabs on worsening China-US trade tensions. The results come as the world’s top two economies have imposed a series …
Read More »Typical tweet shorter since character length doubled
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Twitter on Tuesday confirmed that a year after doubling the character limit for tweets, the average length of messages fired off in English actually got a smidge shorter. The news promised to allay concerns that raising the character limit from 140 to 280 …
Read More »Samsung Electronics posts record in Q3 despite smartphone struggles
Seoul, South Korea | AFP | Samsung Electronics on Wednesday posted record quarterly operating and net profits for the July-September period as solid demand for its memory chips cushioned the fallout from slowing smartphone sales — but warned of tougher times ahead. The South Korean tech giant — the world’s …
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