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By Natalie Thomas BEIJING (Reuters) – In China’s online hostessing world, men find virtual company and the women can find riches. Student Xiao Yue, 21, spends four hours most days chatting online with fans who shower her with virtual roses and other presents. She is one of more than 10,000 hostesses on the internet site bobo.com, a live broadcasting web platform where anyone can record themselves singing, playing piano, dancing
Backed by well-connected venture capitalists, founder James Beshara says Tilt stands out in a crowded mobile-payments field with its focus on small groups pooling their money for a defined purpose.
(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc amended a 2009 partnership to give Yahoo more flexibility to enhance the search services on any platform. Microsoft will get exclusive rights to sell ads delivered by its Bing ads platform, while Yahoo will continue to sell ads on its Gemini platform. The 10-year search partnership was crafted by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in 2009. (Reporting
Apple is expanding its environmental efforts by investing in a new Chinese solar power project and preserving 36,000 acres of “sustainable” timberland in Maine and North Carolina. The initiatives …
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd has been sued by a white American information technology worker who accused India’s largest software services exporter of overwhelming favoritism toward workers of South Asian descent in the United States. In a complaint filed on Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, Steven Heldt said 95 percent of Tata’s 14,000-person U.S. workforce descend from South Asia, primarily India, and that the company violated federal civil rights law
By Eric M. Johnson SEATTLE (Reuters) – Street vendors selling Seattle’s Real Change newspaper will accept digital payments from Thursday through a new smartphone application developed by workers at Google Inc in a volunteer project to help hawkers serve increasingly cashless patrons. Seattle residents looking for a weekly dose of reform-minded news will be able to scan a barcode with their phones to receive a $2.99 digital edition of the
U.S. housing starts rose far less than expected in March and permits recorded their biggest drop since last May, which could raise concerns about the economy’s ability to bounce back from a soft patch hit in the first quarter. Groundbreaking increased 2.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 926,000 units, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. Starts for single-family homes rose, while groundbreaking for the multifamily segment fell
A group of India’s leading technology and Internet firms has pulled out of Internet.org, Facebook’s flagship effort to get billions more online, in a growing debate over free access and internet neutrality in the country. Net neutrality is the concept that all websites on the internet are treated equally. The debate over access and neutrality has grabbed headlines in India this week after leading telecom carrier Bharti Airtel announced a
For Norway’s $890 billion sovereign-wealth fund, the investment risks stemming from monetary policy have never been greater. Like most global investors, the Oslo-based fund is trying to navigate uncharted terrain as central banks across the world push out stimulus to protect economic growth and spur inflation.
Citigroup said Thursday that its first-quarter net income rose 21 percent as the company continued to slim down its operations and control expenses. The bank earned $4.8 billion, or $1.51 a share, in the …
