general news

HONG KONG—Chinese tech companies are quietly pulling back from doing business in Russia under pressure from U.S. sanctions and suppliers, despite calls by Beijing for companies to resist overseas coercion.Several major companies are curtailing shipments in Russia, where Chinese tech firms dominate the market for many products, without making any public announcements, according to interviews with people familiar with the matter. They include PC giant Lenovo Group Ltd. and smartphone and gadget maker Xiaomi Corp., the…

Last year when Facebook FB -6.77% blocked news in Australia in response to potential legislation making platforms pay publishers for content, it also took down the pages of Australian hospitals, emergency services and charities. It publicly called the resulting chaos “inadvertent.”Internally, the pre-emptive strike was hailed as a strategic masterstroke. Facebook documents and testimony filed to U.S. and Australian authorities by whistleblowers allege that…

Roku Inc. ROKU 5.83% has teamed with private-equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc. APO 3.73% to bid for a minority stake in the pay-TV and streaming service Starz, which is known for series like “Outlander” and “Power,” according to people familiar with the situation. In November, movie and television production company Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.…

Bill Gates said that he isn’t sure of Elon Musk’s motives in buying Twitter Inc. TWTR 0.39% and that social media must play a role in curbing the spread of misinformation.“He actually could make it worse,” Mr. Gates said of Mr. Musk’s potential impact on the platform, speaking Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. But, he said, “That’s not his track record.” “How does he feel about…

Uber Technologies Inc.’s UBER -4.65% revenue more than doubled last quarter, as demand for rides rebounded from the downturn caused by the Covid-19 surge late last year and the company’s food delivery grew despite restaurant reopenings. Uber issued a bullish outlook for the current quarter, but its shares fell about 5% Wednesday, triggered in part by rival Lyft Inc.’s LYFT -29.91% results a day earlier. Lyft spooked…

Paramount Global PARA -1.29% said its main streaming platform, Paramount+, added 6.8 million subscribers during the first quarter, as the service benefited from original content including “Halo” and a “Star Trek” series, as well as National Football League games.…

A camera recognizes employees’ faces and hails an elevator programmed to bring them to their floor. Sensors on the walls measure particles and CO2 levels in meeting rooms, pumping in fresh air when levels rise too high. Higher levels of certain particles mean it is more likely that viruses could be present. In a control room, big screens show every floor in the 23-story building. The headquarters, completed in 2021, is at the forefront of a quiet revolution sweeping through commercial buildings across the U.S. Office…

WASHINGTON—The Securities and Exchange Commission will boost the size of its special unit devoted to investigating cryptocurrency frauds and other misconduct, a move that follows the agency’s aggressive push to get the unregulated industry to come under federal supervision. The SEC said it plans to add 20 investigators and litigators to its Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, which was created in September 2017 when regulators noticed a surge of new digital coins sold to the public. The…

Thousands of food-delivery drivers walked off the job in Dubai over the weekend to protest low pay and poor working conditions, a rare act of defiance in the Middle East business hub where labor actions are criminalized.The foreign workers contracted by Deliveroo, a U.K.-based app that went public last year with backing from Amazon.com Inc., refused to make deliveries for over 24 hours, crippling the company’s service during a busy period at the end of Ramadan when Muslims fast during the…

The precise movements of millions of users of the gay-dating app Grindr were collected from a digital advertising network and made available for sale, according to people familiar with the matter.The information was available for sale since at least 2017, and historical data may still be obtainable, the people said. Grindr two years ago cut off the flow of location data to any ad networks, ending the possibility of such data collection today, the company said. The commercial availability of the personal information, which…