Tag Archives: biggest

Business

Apple is one of our biggest competitors

Leave a comment

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the opening remarks of the company’s fourth quarter earnings call to blast Apple over its upcoming privacy changes, and to say Facebook increasingly sees Apple as one of its biggest competitors.

Apple is gearing up for a software change that will more prominently ask iPhone and iPad users if they want to share their information for ad-tracking purposes. The online advertising industry expects to be hit as some percentage of users choose not to share that information.

Facebook, which derives nearly all its revenue from online advertising, has been outspoken about the changes, running newspaper ads, publishing a website and running a blog post outlining its arguments opposing Apple over the change it claims “threatens the personalized ads that millions of small businesses rely on to find and reach customers.” 

Zuckerberg, in his comments, suggested Apple uses its position to help its own services, particularly its iMessage service, which competes with Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp services.

“iMessage is a key linchpin of their ecosystem,” he said. “It comes pre-installed on every iPhone and they preference it with private APIs and permissions, which is why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the U.S.”

He said Apple’s business is now depending more and more on gaining share in apps and services.

“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” he said. “This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world, including with the upcoming iOS 14 changes.”

Zuckerberg also reiterated Facebook’s argument that Apple’s privacy changes will make it harder for small businesses ability to reach their customers with targeted ads.

“Apple may say they’re doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitor interests,” he said. “We and others are going to be up against this for the foreseeable future.”

Nominations are open for the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50, a list of private start-ups using breakthrough technology to become the next generation of great public companies. Submit by Friday, Feb. 12, at 3 pm EST.

Read original article here

World

Tse Chi Lop, one of the world’s biggest drug dealers, arrested in Amsterdam

Leave a comment

Canadian national Tse Chi Lop was detained at Amsterdam’s Schipol International Airport on Friday, according to Australian Federal Police (AFP), which has taken the lead in a sprawling international investigation. Before his arrest, Tse was one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives.

Authorities allege that Tse, 57, is the leader of the Sam Gor Syndicate, arguably the biggest drug-trafficking operation in Asia’s history. Experts say he is in the same league as notorious drug lords El Chapo and Pablo Escobar.

“The importance of Tse’s arrest can not be underestimated. It’s big and (has) been a long time coming,” said Jeremy Douglas, the Regional Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The organization is accused of running a synthetic drug manufacturing empire in large swathes of the under-policed jungles of Myanmar, a region marred by civil war and still under the control of various competing warlords and militias — conditions that make it easy to hide industrial-scale drug manufacturing operations from law enforcement.

From there, Sam Gor has allegedly been able to procure large amounts of precursor chemicals, the ingredients to make synthetic drugs, and then move them across the region to nearby markets in Bangkok, but also to farther-flung ones in Australia and Japan, law enforcement said.

Sam Gor allegedly had operatives working throughout the globe, with players in South Korea, England, Canada and the United States, according to a briefing on the syndicate shared with CNN by an official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The documents described Sam Gor as a “triad-like network” — a reference to ethnic Chinese gangs that operate in Asia and North America — but more mobile and dynamic. The group’s existence was revealed in 2016 after a Taiwanese drug trafficker was arrested in Yangon, Myanmar, the briefing showed.

Further police investigations revealed that the organization was, as of 2018, earning between $8 billion and $17.7 billion worth of illicit proceeds a year, according to the briefing. The organization uses poorly regulated casinos in Southeast Asia to launder a significant portion of those proceeds.

AFP said a warrant was issued for Tse’s arrest in 2019 in connection with an operation targeting Sam Gor.

“The syndicate targeted Australia over a number of years, importing and distributing large amounts of illicit narcotics, laundering the profits overseas and living off the wealth obtained from crime,” AFP said in a statement.

Tse allegedly ran his multibillion dollar operation from Hong Kong, Macao and southeast Asia. But his name — or existence — was not public knowledge until he was revealed by a Reuters investigation published in 2019.

Dutch police spokesman Thomas Aling said Tse is expected to be extradited after appearing before a judge. Authorities in the Netherlands were unable to provide details about the legal proceedings and it was not clear whether Tse had a lawyer.

This is not Tse’s first run-in with law enforcement. Tse pleaded guilty to felony narcotics charges in the United States in 2000 and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Details surrounding the case are limited because it is still sealed, but the source said he was released in 2006 and returned to Canada before moving to Hong Kong.

While Douglas of the UNODC praised Tse’s arrest, he said more needed to be done to ensure drug lords cannot take advantage of poor government oversight of the areas in Myanmar and Laos.

“While taking down syndicate leadership matters, the conditions they effectively used in the region to do business remain unaddressed, and the network remains in-place,” he said. “A lot of difficult information is about to come out.”

Read original article here

Business

Bitcoin on track for biggest weekly fall since September as Janet Yellen and ‘double spend’ spook traders | Currency News | Financial and Business News

Leave a comment

Bitcoin has had a volatile couple of weeks after hitting a record high of close to $42,000

R.Tsubin/Getty Images

The bitcoin price was set for its biggest one-week fall since September on Friday morning, having slipped around 9% since Monday.

Bitcoin – which hit an all-time high of close to $42,000 on January 8 – tumbled to around $28,000 in early Asia trading.

But it then recovered to around $32,537 by Friday morning. That means it is down about 9.2% since Monday, putting it on course for the the biggest weekly drop since declining by 12% in September, according to TradingView data.

Should the price tumble back towards the lows seen in the Asia session, the bitcoin price could be heading for its worst week since it crashed 33% in March 2020.

Read More: We spoke to Winklevoss-backed crypto platform Gemini about bitcoin, how to use stable coins, and why regulation won’t kill the boom in digital currencies

Bitcoin came under selling pressure this week after Janet Yellen, Joe Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary, suggested the use of cryptocurrencies should be “curtailed” because they were used mainly for “illicit financing”.

Many analysts put bitcoin’s overnight slide down to a report by BitMEX Research that suggested a flaw called “double spend” – when someone is able to spend the same coin twice – had occurred in the cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

Yet BitMEX later said it the double spend could have in fact been another type of less worrying transaction.

Bitcoin has soared in recent months, rising from a 2020 low of below $4,000 in March to more than $41,000 earlier this month. Overall, it is up around 290% in the last year.

Fellow cryptocurrency Ethereum was around 5% higher on Friday morning to $1,250. That was shy of an all-time high of more than $1,430 hit earlier this week.

Advocates say cryptocurrencies are fast becoming safe-haven assets that can protect investors’ portfolios against the risk of inflation and currency devaluation triggered by the unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus unleashed during the coronavirus pandemic.

They point to a growing number of institutional investors showing interest in Bitcoin. BlackRock on Wednesday moved to add Bitcoin futures to two of its funds, highlighting the demand for the currency.

Yet regulators and critics have warned that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have no fundamental factors driving their value and are highly volatile, meaning investors could “lose all their money”.

Read More: The chief investment strategist at a $9.6 billion volatility-focused money manager breaks down why the stock market is poised to get more chaotic in 2021 – and shares how investors can take advantage of it

Nonetheless, market interest has picked up sharply in recent months. Some analysts said the recent fall could be an opportunity.

“The current correction is a blessing for those who have missed the rally during which the cryptocurrency doubled from its previous high, a move from $20,000 to $40,000,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Avatrade.

Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at currency platform Oanda, said: “We may see a small rebound now, just as we did earlier this month.

“But the price action we’ve seen this month suggests there’s some nervousness around these levels. It will certainly be an interesting watch over the coming weeks.”



Read original article here

World

Serum Institute of India: Blaze at facility of world’s biggest vaccine maker kills 5 people

Leave a comment

The blaze at the Serum Institute of India (SII) in the western city of Pune was brought under control on Thursday though the cause is still under investigation, according to Murlidhar Mohol, the city’s mayor.

Four people were rescued from the six-floor building but five others died, Mohol said. They are believed to have been construction workers as the building was still under construction at the time of the fire.

Videos and images showed black smoke billowing out of the building at the company’s complex. Fifteen units of the municipal corporation and fire department worked to douse the fire, Mohol said.

Preliminary investigations suggest that “during the building’s construction, some welding work could have led to the fire,” he added.

Pune’s fire brigade chief Prashant Ranpise said Friday that the fire started on the second floor. As firefighters worked to put out the flames, the blaze reigned in another spot. The second fire was extinguished at 4:15 p.m. local time by 50 firefighters and personnel. Ranpise said they are still investigating the cause of the fire.

“We have learnt that there has unfortunately been some loss of life at the incident. We are deeply saddened and offer our deepest condolences to the family members of the departed,” SII CEO Adar Poonawalla tweeted Thursday.

SII, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is in partnership with Oxford University and AstraZeneca to produce the Covishield vaccine. In December, the company said it was producing 50 to 60 million doses of Covishield per month, with production to be scaled up to 100 million doses in January or February.

A family business started by Poonawalla’s father 50 years ago to bring cheaper vaccines to the masses, the Serum Institute of India is aiming to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccines for not only India, but also other developing countries.

In a tweet, Poonawalla said that despite a “few floors being destroyed,” production of the Covishield vaccine would not be affected.

“I would like to reassure all governments and the public that there would be no loss of COVISHIELD production due to multiple production buildings that I had kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies,” he said.

Cyrus S. Poonawalla, SII’s chairman and managing director, said in a statement that the fire broke out at a facility that was under constriction in the Special Economic Zone at Manjri. He said it was an “extremely sorrowful day” and the company would offer INR 2.5 million ($34,000) to each of the victims’ families.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences Thursday: “Anguished by the loss of lives due to an unfortunate fire … In this sad hour, my thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives. I pray that those injured recover at the earliest.”



Read original article here