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Google receives €2.4bn fine for breaching EU antitrust laws
 The European Union has handed Google a record-breaking €2.42bn (£2.14bn) fine for abusing its dominance of the search engine market in building its online shopping service, in a dramatic decision that has far-reaching implications for the company.

By artificially and illegally promoting its own price comparison service in searches, Google denied both its consumers real choice and rival firms the ability to compete on a level playing field, European regulators said.

The Silicon Valley giant has 90 days to stop its illegal activities and explain how it will reform its ways or face fines of up to €10.6m a day, which equates to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of its parent company Alphabet.

On the back of the finding that Google is the dominant player in the European search engine market, the EU regulator is further investigating how else the company may have abused its position, specifically in its provision of maps, images and information on local services.

The commission’s decision, following a seven-year probe into Google’s dominance in searches and smartphones, suggests the company may need to fundamentally rethink the way it operates. It is also now liable to face civil actions for damages by any person or business affected by its anti-competitive behaviour.

As the EU official in charge of competition policy, commissioner Margrethe Vestager, spelled out the case against Google, she denied accusations that Brussels had a bias against US firms, claiming the tech giant had been guilty of an “old school” form of illegality.

“Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That’s a good thing,” Vestager told reporters, as she announced the fine, the largest ever made in an antitrust case. “But Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals.

“Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.

“What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.”

In the wake of the announcement, shares in Alphabet fell 1.5% in pre-market trading in New York. Vestager brushed off suggestions that the move could harm transatlantic relations, adding that the EU was not willing to give Google a “free pass”.

She confirmed, however, that the EU regulator had stopped cooperating with the US Federal Trade Commission when it decided not to pursue charges in 2013.

Google immediately rejected the commission’s findings, and signalled its intention to appeal, in an indication of the gruelling legal battle to come between the two sides. A company spokesman said: “When you shop online, you want to find the products you’re looking for quickly and easily. And advertisers want to promote those same products.

“That’s why Google shows shopping ads, connecting our users with thousands of advertisers, large and small, in ways that are useful for both.

“We respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today. We will review the commission’s decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case.”

Vestager told reporters that Google had entered the shopping comparison market in 2004 with a service called Froogle which allowed its users to compare products and prices online.

Within two years the company knew it was struggling, she said. One internal document from 2006 discovered during the investigation stated: “Froogle simply doesn’t work.”

From 2008, Vestager said, Google began to implement, initially in the UK and Germany, and then further afield, a fundamental change in strategy to push its comparison shopping service, and break EU law.

According to an analysis of around 1.7bn search queries, Google’s search algorithm systematically was consistently giving prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service to the detriment of rival services.

The placement of Google’s product well ahead of its rivals was pivotal to the shopping service’s success as, even on a desktop, the 10 highest-ranking generic search results on page one generally receive approximately 95% of all clicks on generic search results. The top result receives about 35% of all the clicks and the trend is exaggerated further for searches on mobile phones.

The commission found that Google was dominant in general internet search markets in all 31 countries in the European Economic Area, with a market share of about 90%.

As a result of Google’s illegal practices, traffic to Google’s comparison shopping service increased significantly – 45-fold in the UK, for example – while rivals suffered very substantial losses of traffic on a lasting basis, Vestager said.

The commission found specific evidence of sudden drops of traffic to certain rival websites of 85% in the UK, up to 92% in Germany and 80% in France. Some competitors have adapted and managed to recover some traffic but never in full, Vestager said.

The commission’s fine of €2,424,495,000 was said to take into account the “duration and gravity of the infringement”, and was based on Google’s revenue from its comparison shopping service in the 13 countries where the illegality occured.

If Google fails to comply with the commission’s decision, it would be liable for non-compliance payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, which boasted of a turnover of €80bn last year. Any payment would be backdated to when the non-compliance started, Vestager said.

The commission has already come to the preliminary conclusion that Google has abused a dominant position in two other cases, which are still being investigated. The first cases involve the Android operating system, where the commission is concerned that Google has “stifled choice and innovation” in a range of mobile apps and services by “pursuing an overall strategy on mobile devices to protect and expand its dominant position in general internet search”.

In a second investigation into AdSense, a Google service that allows websites to run targeted ads, the commission is concerned that Google has reduced choice by preventing sites from sourcing search ads from competitors.

European Commission fines: a history

Apple, €13bn (2016): The tech company behind the iPhone was ordered to pay a huge sum in back taxes to Ireland after the commission ruled that the company’s sweetheart tax deal with the Irish tax authorities amounted to illegal state aid.

MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, and DAF, €2.9bn (2016): A group of truckmakers were handed a record fine for colluding to fix prices over a 14-year period.

Microsoft, €1.2bn (2004, 2006, 2008): Microsoft was found guilty of failing to provide code to allow rivals to hook into its Windows server software at a reasonable price. The company’s failure to comply with the commission’s findings led to two additional fines in 2006 and 2008 on top of the initial 2004 order to pay €497m.

Intel, €1.1bn (2009): The US chipmaker was ordered to pay a fine of more than €1bn for anticompetitive practices after being found to have given price discounts to computer manufacturers Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC if they bought its chips.

Facebook, €110m (2017): The social media giant was fined for providing incorrect or misleading information during the commission’s 2014 investigation into Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp.

Output: Google has been fined a record €2.42bn ($2.73) by the European Union for breaches of competition policy that saw the company allegedly use its search engine dominance to boost its online shopping service. The company’s promotion of its comparison service through its search results was found to have been illegal under EU antitrust rules. The result comes after a seven-year investigation by the European commission. Google, which denies the allegations, has 90 days to cease illegal activity or face fines that could amount to 5% of parent company Alphabet’s average daily global turnover.


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Gall Thomson launches neutral buoyancy float
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UltraFloat has been specifically designed to fit around the external profile of the MBC (illustration: Gall Thomson)

Gall Thomson, specialist in the application, design and supply of Marine Breakaway Couplings (MBCs) has introduced a neutral buoyancy float for MBCs.

UltraFloat has been specifically designed to fit around the external profile of the MBC. When two are fitted to an MBC they provide neutral buoyancy, eliminating any reduction in buoyancy on the adjacent hoses.

UltraFloat is the most advanced and operationally efficient float on the market. Shaped to reduce drag it also provides a simple secure attachment and features four inspection windows to assist inspection of the MBC split line.

UltraFloat will provide increased operational efficiency in all Marine Breakaway Coupling applications whether they be SPM, FSO, FPSO, FSU or in other offshore oil terminal production and bunker floating hose strings.

Gall Thomson designs, manufactures and applies anti-pollution and safety Marine Breakaway Couplings. These provide a safe parting point in marine hose transfer systems, automatically shutting off product flow and preventing system damage if there is an extreme pressure surge or excessive tensile load on the hose string. These are engineered solutions that minimise the risk of spill and protect against operational downtime, workforce injury and damage to assets, reputation and the environment.

Output: Marine Breakaway Coupling (MBC) technology expert Gall Thomson has designed a neutral buoyancy float for MBCs, that will fit either side of their external profile. When two of the floats are fitted correctly, they offer neutral buoyancy for the MBC. UltraFloat's design also helps reduce drag and promises more operational efficiency across MBC applications.


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Eze unveils Mifid II-ready commission management software
 Investment technology provider Eze Software has launched its cloud-based commission management platform ahead of MiFID II’s unbundling rules.

The platform was designed to help the buy-side manage and handle the full commission management lifecycle from research evaluation, budgeting, unbundling and specifying RPA payments.

Bill Neuman, managing director for product management and development at Eze Software, explained as MiFID II looms, the buy-side are in greater need of a straight-through commission management process.

“With this platform, we are unifying the disparate elements of the commission management process into a single holistic cloud solution that enables our clients to fully address MiFID II inducement requirements,” he said.

Eze Software added the platform focuses on the creation of a research evaluation process, incorporating broker votes, tracking and evaluation of individual pieces of research.

The platform is available within the Eze Investment Suite, alongside its other MiFID II tools and services.

Output: Investment technology provider Eze Software has unveiled its commission management software ahead of the implementation of the EU's Mifid II. The cloud-based platform handles the full buy-side commission management cycle. It is available as part of the Eze Investment Suite, alongside the company's other Mifid II services. Eze Software said the platform focuses on creating a research evaluation process that incorporating broker votes, tracking and evaluation of individual pieces of research.


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World’s food supply at risk from ‘chokepoints’: Chatham House
 Increasingly vulnerable “chokepoints” are threatening the security of the global food supply, according to a new report. It identifies 14 critical locations, including the Suez canal, Black Sea ports and Brazil’s road network, almost all of which are already hit by frequent disruptions.

With climate change bringing more incidents of extreme weather, analysts at the Chatham House thinktank warn that the risk of a major disruption is growing but that little is being done to tackle the problem. Food supply interruptions in the past have caused huge spikes in prices which can spark major conflicts.

The chokepoints identified are locations through which exceptional amounts of the global food trade pass. More than half of the globe’s staple crop exports – wheat, maize, rice and soybean – have to travel along inland routes to a small number of key ports in the US, Brazil and the Black Sea. On top of this, more than half of these crops – and more than half of fertilisers – transit through at least one of the maritime chokepoints identified.

“We are talking about a huge share of global supply that could be delayed or stopped for a significant period of time,” said Laura Wellesley, one of the authors of the Chatham House report. “What is concerning is that, with climate change, we are very likely to see one or more of these chokepoint disruptions coincide with a harvest failure, and that’s when things start to get serious.”

The chokepoints are already suffering repeated disruptions, the report found. US inland waterways and railways, which carry 30% of the world’s maize and soy, were hit by flooding that halted traffic in 2016 and a 2012 heatwave that kinked rail lines and caused derailments.

The Panama canal has been hampered by drought, while the Suez canal has been closed by sandstorms and threatened by attempted terrorist bomb attacks. Brazil’s muddy roads are often closed by heavy rain, with 3,000 trucks stranded earlier in 2017, while its vital southern ports have been closed by storms and floods. The only chokepoint that has not recently been disrupted is the Straits of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic.

The Middle East and North Africa region is particularly vulnerable, the report found, because it has the highest dependency on food imports in the world and is encircled by maritime bottlenecks. It also depends heavily on wheat imports from the Black Sea.

Grain is loaded into a ship’s granary, in Mariupol, Ukraine. Photograph: Oleksandr Khmelevskiy/Alamy

In 2010, a severe heatwave in Russia badly hit the huge grain harvest, leading the government to impose an export ban. As a result, prices spiked in 2011 and this was a significant factor in the Arab Spring conflicts. Other factors were important too, said Wellesley, but she said: “At the start, it was about the price of bread.”

The risks posed by the chokepoints is rising as the international trade in food is growing but also because of global warming, according to the report. It says climate change is bringing more storms, droughts and heatwaves which can block chokepoints and also damage already ageing infrastructure. But it is also likely to fuel armed conflicts, which can also shut down the bottlenecks.

Other countries especially at risk from disruption are poorer nations reliant on imports such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan, as well as richer nations like Japan and South Korea, according to the report.

China is also a major importer but it has done the most to mitigate its exposure to chokepoint risk, the report found. It has diversified its supply routes, for example building a railway across South America to lessen reliance on the Panama canal. Chinese companies also own and operate ports around the world.

The report recommends increased global cooperation to plan for food supply crises and more investment in crucial infrastructure. Wellesley said: “The straits of Hormuz [which Iran has threatened to close] is a really interesting example of where the energy sector is sitting up and taking notice – the food sector should be doing the same. Those same countries that rely on Hormuz to export their oil rely almost entirely on the same strait for their food supply.”

Output: Global food supplies have faced disruption as a result of “chokepoints” that are increasingly vulnerable due to climate change, according to a report from the Chatham House think tank. Analysts argued that climate change increases the risk of extreme weather events in 14 key locations, through which huge amounts of the world’s food passes, including ports in the Black Sea, Brazil’s road network and the Suez Canal. Previous food supply interruptions have resulted in price rises and major conflicts. Countries at particular risk include Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Sudan and Tanzania. China has done the most to mitigate its chokepoint risk.


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Google expands its student learning tools offering
 Google launched a new browser-based Google Earth this past April, adding educational tools to make it easier for teachers to show the world off to students without having to leave the classroom. The company also collaborated with the BBC to create a digital storytelling platform called Voyager that helps curate the discovery of various places of interest around the globe. Google is taking things even farther today at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, announcing a bevy of new tools and virtual experiences to empower students.

The concept here is to help students become critical thinkers and responsible digital citizens as they explore the world around them. Google announced 10 new stories for its Voyager platform in collaboration with National Geographic Society and PBS Education. These new experiences come with additional classroom activities to let teachers help guide their students, and school IT administrators can add Google Earth as a service within their own Google for Education domains.

The team also promises a new self-guided mode, coming "soon," for the more than 600 currently available virtual field trips via the Expeditions app. A new digital citizenship and safety program called "Be Internet Awesome" is also available to kids. It includes resources for students, educators and families to help kids make smart decisions online. Schools can also purchase a collection of STEM tools for Chromebooks, including a Dremel 3D printer and the littleBits Code Kit, which can be used to help kids become inventors.

Finally, Google is sharing some data around the impact it's having in schools that use Chromebooks and G Suite with seven new "Impact Portraits" from schools around the US. "In the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, for example," Google says in the blog post, "Indiana's measure of third-grade reading skills has grown by 10% since adopting Chromebooks."

Output: Google has launched a raft of online tools aimed at empowering students, according to an announcement at the International Society for Technology in Education conference. As well as 10 new stories and extra classroom activities for its Voyager platform, Google unveiled the "Be Internet Awesome" resource, targeted at helping children to make smart online choices. The search giant said the Expeditions app could also expect a self-guided mode "soon".


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Irish housing market needs to be closely watched: IMF
 The current momentum in prices and mortgage credit in Ireland’s housing market is significant and requires close monitoring, the IMF said. Photograph: iStock

Despite a rapid acceleration in property prices and a surge in mortgage approvals, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said there is no evidence of another housing bubble forming in the Irish economy.

In its latest annual assessment, the Washington-based fund, however, warned that the current momentum in prices and mortgage credit was significant and required close monitoring.

It also suggested that recent changes to the Central Bank’s mortgage lending rules and the introduction of a help-to-buy scheme for first-time buyers had added “impetus” to the market.

In their analysis of the Irish economy, staff at the fund said strong demand for housing was likely to be sustained in the period ahead because of improvements in the labour market and the ongoing reduction in household debt.

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While there was no clear evidence of a “significant price misalignment” in the residential property market, it concluded that “persistent pressures could lead to imbalances, particularly given the lagged supply response”.

Buffers

In its report, the IMF also warned of the need for the Government to adopt a prudent fiscal stance in upcoming budgets “to build buffers and reduce public debt further” especially in light of the risks posed by Brexit and US tax reform.

While subject to large uncertainties, it said the impact of the Brexit on Ireland was expected to be negative and significant.

“A possible slowdown in the UK, accompanied by sustained weakness in sterling, would affect the Irish economy through labour, trade and financial channels,” it said, while noting the possible relocation of UK-based companies to Ireland might act as a mitigating factor.

In its report, it listed the new public-sector pay deal as a significant expenditure pressure for the Government, suggesting the overall wage bill for civil servants remained “comparatively high” as a share of both revenue and expenditure.

It suggested Ireland should continue to broaden its tax base and, just days after the AIB stock market flotation, urged the State to save temporary revenue windfalls rather than deploy them as part of current expenditure.

Overall the IMF’s assessment of the Irish economy, however, was positive with analysts noting Ireland was once again among the euro area’s top growth performers in 2016 while bank balance sheets were continuing to recover from the crash.

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe welcomed the report, saying it affirmed “the exceptional turnaround of the Irish economy”.

Output: There is no evidence a housing bubble is forming in the Irish economy, despite property prices rising significantly and higher mortgage approval rates, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nevertheless, the IMF saw these factors as significant and therefore warned that the situation warrants close monitoring. It believes amendments to the Central Bank’s mortgage lending rules and the help-to-buy scheme have added "impetus" to the property market.


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GreyOrange robot system to sort parcels for Brazil's Loggi
 GreyOrange, a multinational robotics and supply chain automation company, has now entered the Latin America region with its renowned Linear Sortation system. Loggi a Brazilian tech company offering last-mile delivery solutions to e-commerce, retailers and local businesses, has opted for GreyOrange’s high-speed advanced Sortation System at its Sao Paulo hub.

Recognised as one of the world’s Top 50 Robotics Companies by Robotics Business Review two years in a row, GreyOrange has been at the forefront of supply chain automation innovation, democratizing such solutions for various industries. The sortation system for Loggi strengthens GreyOrange’s hold in the last-mile delivery space and in a new geography, after successful implementations in the e-commerce, retail and CPG sectors across India, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

With its same-day, next-day deliveries and real-time tracking solutions designed for various business types and products, Loggi has set new benchmarks in Brazil. The company was looking to partner with another technology company to help them increase delivery capacity and integrate totally with their in-house algorithms. With the objective of launching several last-mile delivery hubs in the region, Loggi’s need was to deploy flexible, scalable and reliable solutions, hence a partner that could address such diverse requirements while adhering to stringent quality and delivery benchmarks. With the new GreyOrange Linear Sortation system, Loggi will be able to process 72,000 parcels per day in his São Paulo hub, almost doubling its current capacity.

Latin America is one of the fastest-growing regions for e-commerce and online retail in the West. Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are expected to double their current ecommerce sales at 47 million USD in 2018, as per a report published by Forrester. Further, online retail sales are set to grow at a CAGR of 17% to reach $85 billion by 2019. GreyOrange realizes the immense growth opportunity that the region presents and its entry into the market with Loggi will enable more businesses in the region to witness flexible, scalable, reliable and efficient automation solutions.

Commenting on this, Samay Kohli, Group CEO, GreyOrange said, “The Linear Sorter has been adopted by many leading ecommerce and logistics companies across India and APAC market. We are excited to have Loggi on board with us now. Having studied the challenges that Latin America faces, we are working to provide an intelligent automation solution that can be customised to reduce turnaround time to ensure fastest delivery to the customer”.

He further added, “Companies in Latin America are not just looking for automation products, but technology solutions that will provide the required technical support to their clients. With GreyOrange’s unique combination of hardware and software expertise, we are looking at addressing the supply chain issues to improve the delivery process of the urban centres and remote locations without burdening the transportation system”.

Daniel Topper, Vice President, E-Commerce, Loggi, “Every day, Loggi offers an incredible express delivery experience, with real time tracking, to thousands of consumers buying on the main e-commerce websites in Brazil. We chose to partner with Grey Orange to accelerate our stellar growth – while maintaining our top-of-the-class SLA level. Indeed, we were looking for a partner who would understand the specific requirements of our express delivery business and, in the meantime, offer a flexible platform that could fully integrate with our in-house routing algorithms and APIs.

GreyOrange has a very successful track record in the express delivery space and demonstrated great understanding of our business and our specific requirements. They worked with us as a true technology partner to create customized and specialized solutions to meet our unique and complex demands. We are excited about the upcoming deployment and are sure that the GreyOrange Sortation system will enable us to face successfully significant increases in deliveries, while improving our efficiency.”

The GreyOrange Linear Sorter combines advanced software and two lines of high-speed sortation conveyors capable of sorting thousands of parcels in various shapes and sizes including polybags, plus irregular and fragile packages. The system starts at the Auto-spacer where sensors determine how the parcels are spread to ensure gaps between the parcels are even. Each parcel is then identified by 1D or 2D barcodes where both its gross and volumetric weights are automatically recorded, before it quickly moves along the high-speed conveyor which sorts the parcels according to dispatch time, destination and other parameters as determined at different times of the day, including service levels such as same-day and next-day delivery.

Output: GreyOrange's robot sortation system is to be implemented in Brazil by delivery company Loggi. The company's high-speed linear sortation system will be put into use at Loggi's Sao Paolo hub. Loggi, which offers last-mile delivery services to e-commerce, businesses and retailers, will now be able to process 72,000 parcels each day – almost doubling its existing capacity.


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Multiple industries hit by another large-scale ransomware attack
 Victims of a major ransomware cyberattack that has spread through the US and Europe can no longer unlock their computers even if they pay the ransom.

The “Petya” ransomware has caused serious disruption at large firms including the advertising giant WPP, French construction materials company Saint-Gobain and Russian steel and oil firms Evraz and Rosneft.

Infected computers display a message demanding a Bitcoin ransom worth $300. Those who pay are asked to send confirmation of payment to an email address. However, that email address has been shut down by the email provider.

“We do not tolerate any misuse of our platform,” said the German email provider Posteo in a blog post.

This means that there is no longer any way for people who decide to pay the ransom to contact the attacker for a decryption key to unlock their computer.

“This is not an experienced ransomware operator,” said Ryan Kalember, senior vice-president of cybersecurity strategy at Proofpoint.

The attack was first reported in Ukraine, where the government, banks, state power utility and Kiev’s airport and metro system were all affected. The radiation monitoring system at Chernobyl was taken offline, forcing employees to use hand-held counters to measure levels at the former nuclear plant’s exclusion zone.

The food giant Mondelez, legal firm DLA Piper, Danish shipping and transport giant AP Moller-Maersk and Heritage Valley Health System, which runs hospitals and care facilities in Pittsburgh, also said their systems had been hit by the malware.

WPP said in a statement that the computer systems at several of its subsidiary companies had been affected, adding that it was “assessing the situation and taking appropriate measures”.

In an internal memo to staff, one WPP firm said it was the target of “a massive global malware attack, affecting all Windows servers, PCs and laptops”. It warned employes to turn off and disconnect all machines using Windows.

Some technology experts said the attack appeared consistent with an “updated variant” of a virus known as Petya or Petrwrap, a ransomware that locks computer files and forces users to pay a designated sum to regain access.

But analysts at cyber security firm Kaspersky Labs said they had traced the infections to “a new ransomware that has not been seen before”. The “NotPetya” attack had hit 2,000 users in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, France, Italy, the UK, Germany and the US, Kaspersky said.

Kaspersky Lab analysts say new attacks are not a variant of #Petya ransomware as publicly reported, but a new ransomware they call NotPetya! pic.twitter.com/zLwKNOR2VL — Anis (@0xUID) June 27, 2017

Last month’s WannaCry or WannaCrypt ransomware attack affected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries, with the UK’s national health service, Spanish phone giant Telefónica and German state railways among those hardest hit.

Symantec cyber security experts said they had confirmed the ransomware in the current attack was using the same exploit – a program that takes advantage of a software vulnerability - as WannaCry.

The exploit - called EternalBlue - was leaked by the Shadow Brokers hacker group in April and is thought to have been developed by the US National Security Agency.

To spread within companies that installed the patch to protect themselves against WannaCry, the Petya ransomware appears to have two other ways of spreading rapidly within an organisation, by targeting the network’s administrator tools.

It’s not yet clear how computers became infected with the ransomware in the first place, but it doesn’t seem to be through email as happened with WannaCry, said Kalember.

Pictures circulating on social media on Tuesday of screens purportedly affected by the attack showed a message stating, “Your files are no longer accessible because they have been encrypted,” and demanding a $300 ransom in the Bitcoin digital currency.

New #ransomware spreading through SMB... Its #rebooting OS and encrypting files. Any idea which one it is? pic.twitter.com/DaEyqIKBvH — Ankit singh (@ankit5934) June 27, 2017

The attack affected all business units at Maersk, including container shipping, port and tug boat operations, oil and gas production, drilling services, and oil tankers, the company said, as well as seventeen container terminals.

“We can confirm that Maersk IT systems are down across multiple sites and business units due to a cyber-attack,” the Copenhagen-based firm said on Twitter. “We continue to assess the situation.”

The disruptions in Ukraine follow a rash of hacking attempts on state websites in late 2016 and a succession of attacks on the national electricity grid that prompted security chiefs to call for improved cyber defences.

The country’s prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, said the attack was “unprecedented” but vital systems had not been affected. “Our IT experts are doing their job and protecting critical infrastructure,” he said. “The attack will be repelled and the perpetrators will be tracked down.”

In a bid to calm public fears about the attack, which temporarily shut down the country’s main airport and prevented travellers from using the Kiev metro, the authorities tweeted a GIF of a dog nonchalantly drinking tea in a room on fire.

Some of our gov agencies, private firms were hit by a virus. No need to panic, we’re putting utmost efforts to tackle the issue 👌 pic.twitter.com/RsDnwZD5Oj — Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) June 27, 2017

Deputy prime minister Pavlo Rozenko earlier tweeted a picture of a darkened computer screen and said the government’s IT system had been shut down. The state grid, Ukrenergo, said its system had been hit but power supplies were unaffected.

The central bank said an “unknown virus” was to blame for the latest attacks. “As a result of these cyber-attacks, these banks are having difficulties with client services and carrying out banking operations,” it said in a statement.

Ukraine has blamed Russia for previous cyber-ttacks, including one on its power grid at the end of 2015 that left part of western Ukraine temporarily without electricity. Russia has denied carrying out cyber-attacks on Ukraine.

Nicolas Duvinage, head of the French military’s digital crime unit, told Agence France-Presse the attack was “a bit like a flu epidemic in winter”, adding: “We will get many of these viral attack waves in coming months.”

The growing fight against cyber-attacks has seen protection spending surge around the world, with the global cyber security market estimated to be worth some £94bn ($120bn) this year – more than 30 times its size just over a decade ago.

Output: Russian oil major Rosneft and Ukraine's international airport have been named among the victims of another ransomware attack that afflicted global businesses on 28 June. Danish shipping giant Maersk confirmed its computers had been hit across several countries, as did food company Mondelez International. Multiple researchers said the malware was Petya, a virus that exploits an NSA hacking tool in the same way as WannaCry, and encrypts hard drives before demanding a bitcoin ransom. This attack was designed to cause disruption and was not driven by the desire to collect a ransom, said Brian Lord, MD at security firm PGI Cyber.


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Researchers blind autonomous vehicle by tricking sensors
 If you've ever been dazzled by some idiot's high-beam driving towards you at night, you'd probably welcome a self-driving car – except one of the key “eyes”, LIDAR, can also be blinded, or tricked into reacting to objects that aren't there.

LIDAR - Light Detection and Ranging - is an important self-driving vehicle technology: it gathers distances to objects by firing a pulsed laser at them and collating the reflections.

Hocheol Shin, Dohyun Kim, Yujin Kwon, and Yongdae Kim of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have demonstrated two kinds of attacks against LIDAR: a spoofing attack, and a saturation attack. Their work is published at the International Association for Cryptologic Research's pre-print archive here.

While their work was in a lab, they write that the potential damage from an attack is serious.

“As per the data from UK Department for Transport, 55m is the braking distance for a car driving at 60mph. Because the braking distance is the distance required solely for braking, even autonomous vehicles have no room for checking the authenticity of the observed dots, but need to immediately activate emergency braking or evasive manoeuvres. Such sudden actions are sufficient to endanger the surrounding vehicles.”

The subject for their proof-of-concept attacks was the Velodyne VLP-16 sensor.

The saturation attack is very straightforward: “By illuminating the LIDAR with a strong light of the same wavelength as that the LIDAR uses, we can actually erase the existing objects in the sensed output of the LIDAR.”

The spoofing attack was more complex: the four researchers not only gave the LIDAR an optical illusion, they made it appear closer than the device creating the illusion.

To do this, the attackers exploited two characteristics of LIDAR, one of them intrinsic to the technology, the other specific to the implementation.

Simplified illustration of how LIDAR operation. Image: IACR paper

Rather than capturing whole objects (as a camera does), LIDAR captures a point cloud sufficient to infer that an object is in its view (the car's computers then decide what action to take, if any). To spoof an object, the attackers only need to make the sensors respond to points of light that look like the point cloud of an object.

Exploiting refraction. Image: IACR paper

If the sensor only responded in a single direction (say, straight ahead), spoofing isn't much an attack, since you'd have to put your attack device in the path of the vehicle.

That's where the implementation comes in: the researchers noticed that the Velodyne LIDAR (and many similar devices) protect their sensors with curved glass. A laser generating a point cloud at an angle can exploit refraction to change the “apparent” direction and distance the point cloud lies in.

“Fake dots in directions other than the direction of the attacker can be a severe threat to the victim, because the detected points have different significances according to their directions on roads”, they write.

The researchers demonstrated a second spoofing attack: they captured the laser pulse emitted by a LIDAR, added a bit of delay, and sent back a corresponding pulse using their own laser.

The paper also points out the difficulty of defending systems against these attacks: adding technology to authenticate the perceived dots, for example, could slow things down too much in an autonomous vehicle. ®

Output: Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have exposed two weaknesses in the LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors used in autonomous vehicles. The team's two proof of concept attacks comprised "blinding" a Velodyne VLP-16 LIDAR sensor with a saturation attack by capturing the sensor's emitted laser pulse and sending it back. The second test used refraction to change the apparent direction and distance of a point cloud, the sensors' way of detecting objects. "Fake [points] in directions other than the direction of the attacker can be a severe threat to the victim," the team wrote.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Former JLL India chairman launches Anarock Property Consultants
 Anuj Puri, former Chairman & Country Head of international property consultancy JLL India, today announced the launch of Anarock Property Consultants, essentially rebranding JLL's erstwhile residential brokerage business which he acquired earlier this year.

Simultaneously, Puri announced the firm’s real estate investment and fund platform, which will invest Rs 300 crore in Residential real estate projects.

"Anarock is the group brand, which will house multiple real estate services verticals. We will provide our regular residential advisory services which charges zero brokerage from our customers. Additionally, the Firm will operate a business model of bulk-purchasing residential apartment inventory through a proprietary investment fund. We will also provide debt, equity and mezzanine funding to residential developers. And this is just the beginning,” said Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants.

Ashwinder Raj Singh is the CEO of the firm and is currently enhancing the firm's team of residential brokers to a pan India headcount of 700 by the end of 2017.

Anarock’s Investment and Fund platform, which is targeting a capitalization of $500 million by 2020, currently houses two funds. ROF-I, with its recent investments, stands fully deployed at Rs 161 crore and has already demonstrated successful exits.

ROF-II, for which Rs 300 crore were raised in 2016, will invest into residential assets from a existing pipeline and its deployment will commence as soon as it completes the last leg of regulatory requirements.

The fund’s key focus areas will be underwriting and asset management, since in the current market dynamics and with the introduction of RERA and implementation of GST, delta returns and successful exits can only be achieved through constant monitoring and robust in-house asset management.

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Output: Anuj Puri, former chairman of property consultancy JLL India, has launched Anarock Property Consultants, rebranding the residential brokerage business he purchased from JLL this year. Puri also unveiled a real estate investment platform that will facilitate bulk purchases of residential apartments, plusplans to provide residential developers with debt, equity and mezzanine funding, as verticals within the Anarock group brand, stating "this is just the beginning”.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Regus NYC most expensive for flexible office space
 The Big Apple is the most expensive big city in the world when it comes renting flexible, short-term office space, according to a new study.

In New York, the average monthly price to rent a workstation in flexible offices for one person was $1,100 for the 12 months ending in February, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Instant Group, a company that locates and manages office spaces for companies, conducted the study, which found San Francisco came in second with an average cost of $1,086 per workstation.

Flexible office space, which includes co-working facilities like those operated by industry giant WeWork, offer shorter terms than a conventional lease for spaces already furnished for use.

The supply of flexible locations in New York City grew by 24 percent between February 2016 and 2017 to 330, according to Instant Group. London has the largest number of flexible office locations at 1,136.

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Communal co-working providers like WeWork now make up about half of the shared-office market in New York City.

“On the real estate side, the biggest thing I have seen in the last two to three years is the advent of WeWork,” Instant Group chief executive Tim Rodber. “It represents what younger people want to do and small, medium and large businesses want to do, which is build flexibility around their workplaces.”

Landlords, too, are starting to provide more shared office spaces in order to compete. [WSJ] – Rich Bockmann

Output: New York City has been found to be the most expensive city in the world for renting flexible, short-term office space, according to a study by Instant Group, which locates and manages office space on behalf of companies. In New York, the average monthly price to rent a workstation for one person was $1,100 for the 12 months ending in February, according to the Wall Street Journal. San Francisco was second, with an average cost of $1,086 per workstation. The supply of flexible locations in New York City grew by 24% between February 2016 and 2017 to reach 330.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Google's shopping and ad revenues at risk after $2.7bn EU fine
 Investigations were triggered after the European Commission received dozens of complaints from U.S. and European competitors who claimed that the company abused its search market dominance to give its Google Shopping service an advantage over other retailers and create a monopoly over consumers.

"Google has abused its dominance as a search engine by giving illegal advantages to another Google product, its shopping comparison service," Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told reporters.

The fine is the largest doled out by Brussels for a monopoly abuse case and follows a seven-year-long investigation.

The business has been given 90 days to cease these practices or face further penalties. This may include noncompliance payments of up to 5 percent of Google parent Alphabet's daily worldwide turnover.

Though the company was charged with distorting internet results by the EU competition authority in April 2015 it has not before faced fines for an abuse of this nature and marks a landmark for the way technology companies are regulated.

Google said it will consider appealing the decision to the highest court in Europe, the European Court of Justice, which will be its final hope of undoing the charges.

EU regulatory guidelines stipulate that such fines are capped at up to 10 percent of the company's global turnover. As part of Alphabet , Google could have been slapped with a charge of up to $9 billion based on its 2016 turnover. While the final bill fell short of this, it eclipses the 1 billion euro ($1.45 billion) fine doled out to chipmaker Intel in 2009. It is also higher than estimates cited by sources in the lead-up to the verdict.

Alphabet's share price dropped 1 percent on the announcement in premarket trading Tuesday.

Alphabet generated $24.75 billion in revenue in the latest quarter, with advertising revenues of $21.4 billion.

Regulators are continuing to investigate two other charges, including whether the Android mobile operating system is being used to promote other Google products at an unfair disadvantage to rivals.

The ruling may also open the way for private litigants to seek compensation for damages at national courts.

"EU antitrust rules apply to all companies that operate in Europe's Economic Area, no matter where they're based," Vestager said. "The purpose is to ensure competition and innovation for the benefit of European consumers. Google has come up with many innovative products, and many innovative services, that have made a difference in our lives — and that's a good thing."

"But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers. It wasn't just about making its product better than its rivals. Google has abused its market dominance in its search engine by promoting its own shopping comparison site in its search results and demoting its competitors."

Google, which makes most of its money from advertising, has argued that the European Commission's theory "just doesn't fit the reality of how most people shop online."

"They reach merchant websites in many different ways: via general search engines, specialist search services, merchant platforms, social media sites, and online ads served by various companies," Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, said in a blog post.

"And of course, merchants are reaching consumers directly like never before. On the mobile web — and more than half of Europe's Internet traffic is mobile these days — dedicated apps are the most common way for consumers to shop."

— Reuters contributed to this report.

Output: Alphabet's Google has been hit with a record $2.7bn anti-trust fine by European Union regulators over how the company promotes its shopping service on web searches. Although the fine is unlikely to dent the company's finances given Alphabet has $90bn in cash, what could be a long-term issue for Google is how it ranks shopping search results. The area has been one of its biggest sources of sales growth and contributes a fifth of its ad revenues. Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, could require Google to feature listings and prices from competitors more prominently in shopping search results.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Uber to appeal imposed English-language tests for London drivers
 Uber said it had won the right to appeal against a court decision in favour of plans by a London regulator to impose new English reading and writing standards in a move which could deprive it of thousands of drivers.In March, the San Francisco-based firm, which allows people to book journeys on their smartphone, lost a court battle against Transport for London (TfL), the latest setback as the authorities crack down on the ride service.Uber has cited TfL data that the language rules, which would involve written tests, could mean about 33,000 private hire drivers out of a total of around 110,000 operating in London would be unable to renew their licences.Drivers applying for a new or renewed licence have until the end of September to prove they meet the more rigorous English language criteria, pushed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan partly in response to pressure from drivers of the city's traditional black cabs who fear their business model is being undercut.Uber called for the proposals to be delayed until after court proceedings due next February at the very least."We're pleased to have secured this appeal to defend tens of thousands of drivers who risk losing their livelihoods because they can't pass an essay writing test," Uber's London General Manager Tom Elvidge said on Tuesday."We urge TfL and the Mayor not to introduce these disproportionate and discriminatory rules before the appeal is heard," he said.TfL did not immediately comment when contacted by Reuters on Tuesday.Uber has had a tumultuous few months after a string of scandals involving allegations of sexism and bullying at the firm, leading to investor pressure which forced out chief executive and co-founder Travis Kalanick.

Output: Ride-hailing service Uber has won a legal victory after it gained the right to appeal a decision in support of an English-language test being imposed on its drivers by Transport for London (TfL). San Francisco-based Uber said the test, which includes a written essay, could hinder around 33,000 private hire drivers from renewing their licence. It has urged London Mayor Sadiq Khan to delay implementing what it called "disproportionate and discriminatory rules" until after court proceedings – expected to take place no earlier than February 2018.


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Twitter to double down on adtech to expel fake users
 by Tobi Elkin @tobielkin, June 26, 2017

In a bit of a tailspin, beset by sluggish user growth and struggling to boost ad revenue, the little blue bird is looking to invest in advertising technology to help turn its business around.

Last week at the Cannes Lions festival, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and CEO, said he plans to focus on ad-tech investments via partnerships with third parties. “Advertising is our business and technology is how we manifest that,” he said. “We’re doubling down.”

The news is viewed as a positive by Rick Kahn, CEO and co-founder, eZanga. “Many social networks, including Twitter, have a gamut of fake users and invalid profiles that bog down their networks. Fake followers, likes, and engagement can be purchased for fractions of a dollar, but amount to vanity and nothing more for brands,” Kahn told DND via email.

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“Twitter has already solved the hardest part of the equation when building a successful ad-tech strategy: It has the users. Applying a mindset of how best to monetize this user base and opening the doors to third-party vendors is the most effective way to compete with the walled gardens,” Hector Pantazopoulos, co-founder and CRO, SourceKnowledge, told Digital News Daily via email.

In order to stop fake users, Kahn said Twitter will need to work with ad-tech providers that can identify real users and offer performance indicators along the way. “Brands care about this performance. They know they need to be present on social networks like Twitter, but are inherently aware that they’re not always receiving fraud-free traffic. If companies like Twitter address this correctly, and swiftly, advertisers will pay in kind for a greater end result,” he said.

Apart from ad tech, another way Twitter is trying to bolster ad revenue is by allowing brands to buy ads on its video streams for Periscope. The move, announced in late March, enables advertisers to buy pre-roll videos on Periscope streams.

Output: Twitter will be "doubling down" on advertising technology to root out fake users and bogus accounts on the platform, said CEO Jack Dorsey. Dorsey told the Cannes Lions festival that Twitter would focus on adtech investment through partnerships with third parties, adding that advertising was its business and "technology was how we manifest that". The social network will also look to boost ad revenues by letting brands buy ads on its Periscope video streams.


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IMF discussion suggests banks should invest in cryptocurrencies
 Bitcoin Returns 1-Day 1-Week 1-Month 1-Year -0.45% 0.07% 7.89% -25.83%

As of 6 p.m. EDT, April 18, 2023

Source: TradingView

How To Buy Bitcoin

Step 1: Choose a Crypto-Trading Service or Venue

Exchanges are a convenient option because they offer a breadth of features and more cryptocurrencies for trading. Exchanges also enable investors to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency and allow users to transfer crypto to their online wallet for safekeeping.

There are many types of cryptocurrency exchanges. Some allow users to remain anonymous and are decentralized and don't require users to enter personal information. For certain demographics, including refugees or those living in countries with little to no infrastructure for government credit or banking, anonymous exchanges can help bring them into the mainstream economy.

Popular exchanges in the U.S. aren't decentralized and follow laws that require users to submit identifying documentation. These exchanges include Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, and Binance; they offer bitcoin and a growing number of altcoins.

When creating a cryptocurrency exchange account, use two-factor authentication and a long, unique password that includes a variety of letters—lowercased and capitalized—special characters, and numbers.

Step 2: Connect Your Exchange to a Payment Option

Depending on the exchange, personal identification can be required and may mean that you have to include a picture of a driver's license or Social Security card, as well as information about your employer and source of funds. The process is largely the same as setting up a typical brokerage account.

At most exchanges, you can connect your bank account directly or you can link it to a debit or credit card. Although you can use a credit card to purchase cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency price volatility could inflate the overall cost of purchasing a token when combined with a credit card's interest charges. Bitcoin is legal in the U.S., but some banks may question or even stop deposits to crypto-related sites or exchanges.

Fees vary for deposits via a bank account, debit, or credit card, and exchanges also charge fees per transaction.

Step 3: Place an Order

Cryptocurrency exchanges have evolved and now mimic the same features as their stockbrokerage counterparts. Crypto exchanges offer several order types and ways to invest. Almost all crypto exchanges offer both market and limit orders, and some also provide stop-loss orders.

Kraken offers the most order types, which include market, limit, stop-loss, stop-limit, take-profit, and take-profit limit orders.

Exchanges also offer ways to set up recurring investments, allowing clients to dollar-cost average into their investments of choice. Coinbase, for example, lets users set recurring purchases for every day, week, or month.

Step 4: Safe Storage

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallets are a place to store digital assets more securely. Keeping crypto outside the exchange and in a personal wallet ensures that investors have control over the private key to the funds. An exchange wallet is offered, but not recommended, for large or long-term cryptocurrency holdings.

Hot Wallets vs. Cold Wallets

Hot Wallets

Online wallets, also known as hot wallets, are apps on devices such as computers, phones, or tablets. These wallets generate the private keys to your coins on internet-connected devices.

The user of an online or hot wallet isn't the holder of the private key to the cryptocurrency that is held in it. Exchange wallets are custodial accounts provided by the exchange. If the exchange is hacked, investor funds are compromised. The phrase "not your key, not your coin" is heavily repeated within cryptocurrency forums and communities.

Hot wallet holders who haven't created enough security run the risk of losing funds to theft. Strong passwords, two-factor authentication, and safe internet browsing should be considered minimum requirements.

Hot wallets are best for small amounts of cryptocurrency or cryptocurrency that is actively trading on an exchange and may be used like a checking account.

Cold Wallets

A cold wallet isn't connected to the internet and is at less risk of being compromised. These offline wallets or hardware wallets store a user's private key on something that isn't connected to the internet and come with software that allows investors to view their portfolio without putting their private key at risk.

A paper wallet is a wallet generated at certain websites that produces both public and private keys printed on paper. Many people laminate these paper wallets and store them in safe deposit boxes at their bank or even in a safe in their home.

A hardware wallet is typically a USB-drive device that stores a user's private keys securely offline. Such wallets have advantages over hot wallets because they are unaffected by viruses that could infect one's computer. With hardware wallets, private keys never come into contact with a network-connected computer or potentially vulnerable software.

Cold wallets are the most secure way to store your bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. They do require technical knowledge to set up, though.

How To Buy Bitcoin With PayPal

You can buy bitcoin through a payment processor like PayPal Holdings Inc. (PYPL). There are two ways to purchase bitcoin using PayPal, by connecting your account to a debit card or bank account or by using the balance of the PayPal account to purchase cryptocurrencies from a third-party provider.

You may also use PayPal to directly buy four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash. Except for those who live in Hawaii, residents of all other states can either use their existing PayPal accounts or set up a new one to buy bitcoin. Additionally, you can use your cryptocurrencies to purchase products and services through the "Checkout With Crypto" feature.

When you buy bitcoin directly from PayPal, it earns money from the crypto spread, or the difference between Bitcoin's market price and its exchange rate with the U.S. dollar. For each purchase, PayPal also charges a transaction fee, which depends on the dollar amount purchased.

You can send crypto, including Bitcoin, from PayPal to an external digital asset wallet that you own and control, or to one owned and controlled by another person like a friend or family member. To send your bitcoin outside of PayPal, you will need to provide the wallet address where you want to send the assets. If you are sending bitcoin, you must use a destination wallet address designated for Bitcoin—you can't use one designated for Bitcoin Cash, for example.

The social trading and multi-asset investment company eToro is among the few online traders that allow the use of PayPal to purchase bitcoin on its platform.

How To Buy Bitcoin With a Credit Card

Using credit cards to buy bitcoin is similar to using debit cards or automated clearing house (ACH) transfers. However, not all exchanges allow you to buy bitcoin with credit cards, due to associated processing fees and the risk of fraud.

Credit card processing can tack on extra charges to such transactions. In addition to paying transaction fees, there may be processing fees that the exchange may pass onto the buyer. Credit card issuers treat bitcoin purchases as cash advances and charge hefty fees and interest rates on such advances.

For instance, American Express users will pay the current cash advance fee for such transactions, and the fee charged will vary by exchange. The credit card company also limits users to $1,000 worth of bitcoin purchases per month.

Bitcoin rewards credit cards like the BlockFi Bitcoin Rewards credit card function like a typical rewards credit card, except that they offer rewards in the form of bitcoin.

Alternative Ways to Buy Bitcoin

Bitcoin ATMs

Bitcoin ATMs act like in-person bitcoin exchanges. Individuals can insert cash into a machine and use it to purchase bitcoin, which gets transferred to online wallets for users. Bitcoin ATMs have become increasingly popular in recent years and are available at the retail giant Walmart Inc. (WMT).

Bitcoin ATMs began requiring government-issued IDs in early 2020.

Two charges are associated with ATM bitcoin purchases: a purchase fee and a conversion fee for converting a fiat currency to bitcoin. Both fees are fairly steep compared with those of other options. The worldwide average purchase fee at bitcoin ATMs is 8.4% of the purchase amount and 5.4% for sales at ATMs.

P2P Exchanges

Some P2P exchange services provide a more direct connection between users. LocalBitcoins is an example of such an exchange. After creating an account, users can post requests to buy or sell bitcoin, including information about payment methods and prices.

Although P2P exchanges don't offer the same anonymity as decentralized exchanges, they allow users the chance to shop around for the best deal. Many of these exchanges also provide rating systems, so that users have a way to evaluate potential trade partners before transacting.

Mainstream Brokerages

Robinhood Markets Inc. (HOOD) is one exchange that offers crypto trading. It charges 0% commission for cryptocurrency trades and purchases and makes money from the payment for order flow, passing its trading volume on to other trading platforms or brokerage firms. Robinhood had enabled trading on its platform for these cryptocurrencies, among others: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Ethereum Classic.

In contrast, you can trade thousands of cryptocurrencies on Coinbase, and as of 2022, traditional brokers like Fidelity Investments began to include bitcoin investing for 401(k) accounts.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency investments are not protected by insurance from the Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC). At regular brokerages, the agency protects against the loss of securities and cash in brokerage accounts containing up to $500,000, with a $250,000 cash limit. Cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase have crime insurance to protect their infrastructure against hacks. But that insurance doesn't protect individual customers from password theft.

How To Sell Bitcoin

You can sell bitcoin at the same venues where you purchased the cryptocurrency, such as cryptocurrency exchanges and P2P platforms. Typically, the process of selling bitcoin on these platforms is similar to the process for purchasing it.

Cryptocurrency exchanges charge a percentage of the crypto sale amount as fees. For example, Coinbase says it may charge a fee when a customer cashes out their crypto, depending on the payment method selected.

Exchanges generally have daily and monthly withdrawal limits. Therefore, cash from a large sale may not be immediately available to the trader. However, with Coinbase, for example, there is no limit on the amount of cryptocurrency you can sell.

What Are the Steps for Purchasing Bitcoin? The steps are: choosing a venue or exchange to place your order, selecting a payment method, and ensuring safe storage for your purchased cryptocurrency.

What Are the Most Popular Venues for Buying Bitcoin? They are cryptocurrency exchanges, brokerage firms, and payment services like PayPal. For indirect ownership of bitcoin, investors can choose to invest in companies that hold the cryptocurrency on their balance sheets, such as Tesla Inc. (TSLA) or MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR).

How Much Should You Expect to Pay for Bitcoin? Typically, the price consists of a fee-per-trade, plus the cost to convert a fiat currency to bitcoin. The fee-per-trade is a function of the currency amount of the trade, and, naturally, the higher the trade amount, the higher the fee.

Is My Bitcoin Purchase Protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC)? No, your bitcoin purchase isn't protected by SIPC. At certain exchanges, like Coinbase, fiat balances in individual accounts may be Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC-) insured for up to $250,000 per account against certain specific risks.

The Bottom Line

Buying bitcoin can seem complicated if you haven't done it, but it's relatively simple. It just requires an account at a service or an exchange, and a way to store your purchases safely.

To buy bitcoin, you must select an appropriate service or venue, connect with a payment method, place an order, and ensure stable storage for purchased cryptocurrency. Each of these steps requires research and a careful assessment of the pros and cons of the relevant service. Bitcoin is available at bitcoin ATMs or from payment services like PayPal and mainstream brokerage firms like Robinhood or Coinbase.

Output: Banks should consider involvement in cryptocurrencies because "rapid advances in digital technology are transforming the financial services landscape", according to a staff discussion note from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its authors, which include economists Dong He, Vikram Haksar and Ross Leckow, suggested digital currencies could help furnish customer solutions related to trust, financial services, security and privacy, while the facilitation of cross-border transfers could reduce compliance costs and curb the funding of terrorism. The IMF report also cautioned that, in making this transition, increased vigilance among regulators towards risks such as money-laundering and cyber attacks might be necessary.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Chinese Central Bank tests digital currency with commercial banks
 Nonetheless the test is a significant step. It shows that China is seriously exploring the technical, logistical, and economic challenges involved in deploying digital money, something that could ultimately have broad implications for its economy and for the global financial system.

A digital fiat currency—one backed by the central bank and with the same legal status as a banknote—would lower the cost of financial transactions, thereby helping to make financial services more widely available. This could be especially significant in China, where millions of people still lack access to conventional banks. A digital currency should also be cheaper to operate, and ought to reduce fraud and counterfeiting.

Even more significantly, a digital currency would give the Chinese government greater oversight of digital transactions, which are already booming. And by making transactions more traceable, this could also help reduce corruption, which is a key government priority. Such a currency could even offer real-time economic insights, which would be enormously valuable to policymakers. And finally, it might facilitate cross-border transactions, as well as the use of the renminbi outside of China because the currency would be so easy to obtain.

Private digital currencies, also known as cryptocurrencies, have shot to prominence in recent years following a wave of excitement, investment, and speculation focused on Bitcoin, a distributed, cryptographically secured form of money invented by an anonymous individual or group in 2008 (see “What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters”). Bitcoin’s distributed ledger of transactions, known as a blockchain, makes it possible for it to operate without any central authority.

China is not the only country interested in overhauling its currency. This year India eliminated some banknotes in an effort to reduce tax evasion and illegal income. And while some other central banks, including the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bundesbank, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, are studying digital fiat currencies, China’s test appears to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

One of the main concerns voiced by other central banks looking at digital fiat currencies is that they could undermine the commercial banking system by making it possible for anyone to have an account with the central bank.

China’s digital currency is designed to avoid this problem. In a paper published in Tsinghua Financial Review, an academic journal, and posted online recently, Yao Qian, deputy director of the Technology Department of the People’s Bank of China, wrote that a digital currency could be integrated into the existing banking system, with commercial banks operating digital wallets for the central bank’s currency.

And while other countries have proposed following Bitcoin’s architecture and many of the largest banks in the world are experimenting with it, the currency developed by the People’s Bank of China is also different in design.

Output: The People's Bank of China has been trialling a preliminary version of a digital currency for the central bank which part-uses blockchain and could operate alongside the renminbi, according to officials. The test, thought to be the first of its kind in the world, has broad implications for the country's economy, from increasing transparency and reducing fraud to generating real-time economic insights. China, believed to be the largest user of bitcoin, could be the ideal place for a digital fiat currency to be launched, according to Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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WPP continues to streamline with two ad agency mergers
 by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, June 26, 2017

WPP continues to consolidate brands throughout its agency empire.

The holding company has confirmed that it is placing the e-commerce specialist Salmon, which it acquired in 2013, under the Wunderman fold. Separately it’s merging two healthcare communications agencies — greyhealth group (ghg) and Sudler & Hennessey — in the Australia-New Zealand region.

Wunderman is launching a new division called Wunderman Commerce, to which Salmon will contribute. Salmon will continue to operate as a stand-alone brand within Wunderman, working with both Wunderman and other WPP companies. Salmon has operations in London, Amsterdam, New York, Seattle, New Delhi, Beijing and Melbourne.

According to the holding company, the addition of Salmon will enhance Wunderman’s offering to include enterprise-level retail and mobile commerce capabilities. Salmon’s expertise includes delivering strategy, platform integration and customer experience solutions across platforms including IBM Watson Commerce, SAP Hybris, Intershop and Magento.

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Salmon in turn will gain access to Wunderman’s clients, global scale, CRM capabilities and offshore marketing automation centers.

The new merged entity in the AUNZ region will be known as Sudler Sydney, and it’s designed to create one bigger agency with broader capabilities across the healthcare communications sector.

WPP AUNZ CEO Mike Connaghan stated: “We are constantly looking to optimize our portfolio of companies and offer clients the strongest possible solution. Merging these two strong healthcare specialists is a natural evolution, creating scale and more opportunities for our people and clients alike.”

Operating under the WPP Health & Wellness AUNZ division, Sudler Sydney will be led by Peter Bernard, formerly Sudler & Hennessey managing director. The merger affects the Australian arm of each agency, but not the global ghg or Sudler & Hennessey brands.

These are just the latest moves WPP has taken to streamline operations within some of its agency groups.

Last month Mindshare absorbed Ogilvy’s Neo unit which became part of a Performance Group at the media agency, part of GroupM. In late May GroupM folded Maxus, its smallest traditional media agency into the larger MEC.

Output: WPP has continued to consolidate its global brands with two fresh ad agency mergers. E-commerce specialist Salmon has been placed under the Wunderman brand, where it will work as a standalone brand of new division Wunderman Commerce. Meanwhile, healthcare communications agencies greyhealth group and Sudler & Hennessy are being merged in the Australia-New Zealand region to create Sudler Sydney.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Facial recognition becomes part of everyday life in China
 When you are introduced to China’s facial recognition technology in a public toilet, it loses some of its futuristic allure. Nonetheless it does illustrate the extent to which Chinese engineers are frantically working to introduce the technology into every part of our daily lives.

It was introduced at the Temple of Heaven toilets in southern Beijing in order to ration the amount of paper people use. After a scan of your face machines will issue around half of metre of paper and only after 9 minutes can you get second helping, if required.

At Beijing Shifan University the technology has been installed in the women's dormitories to add an extra layer of security. The female students we spoke to told us they feel safer and want to see it rolled out across their campus and others.

Almost every week there’s a new technological development in China and it’s facial recognition in particular which is being rolled out at an extraordinary rate.

The fast food giant KFC is currently trialling it at one of their branches in Beijing and next month the e-payment giant Alipay will introduce it for its customers.

The rapid pace of development comes after the Chinese Government made Artificial Intelligence a state priority. Billions of pounds is being ploughed into the research and development of facial recognition, speech recognition, robots, deep learning and 3D printing. In the field of e-payment the country has already left the rest of the world in its wake; the market here is 50 times larger than the United States.

We visited one of the hundreds of start-ups which is benefiting from Government incentives. At the offices of Megvil you don’t need a fob or card to get in the door, is all controlled by facial recognition technology. We saw the faces of employees flash up on a screen, along with their age and gender, as they walked in. Their office was full of young entrepreneurs working on the next big thing in facial recognition.

The technology has been installed at women's dormitories at a university in Beijing.

They are proud that some police forces have adopted their system and that it has helped catch thousands of criminals but it’s the consumer market which most excites them.

They say it is just a matter of months, not years, before we will be able to leave our wallets and keys because our face will be able to do everything from open our front door to pay for goods at the supermarket. They claim using the 83 point facial recognition is even safer than fingerprint technology.

There have been some concerns raised amid this rapid roll out. In Southern china pedestrians were left angered and embarrassed after their personal details were flashed up on big screens at an intersection. They were being picked out, named and shamed for jay walking.

Facial recognition has helped catch thousands of criminals in China.

Robots are of course part of this revolution and in warehouses and factories across China humans are being replaced with machines which can do the heavy lifting and sorting.

In Southern China the home delivery company STO express is now using hundreds of robots to sort the packages at their distribution centre. The floor of the centre looks like a massive game of tetras.

China is desperate to shrug off its reputation for cheap consumer goods and electronics. It watched as the United States and Europe invented software and led the digital age, now it wants to dominate in Artificial Intelligence, described as the next frontier.

Output: Facial recognition technology in China is spreading at an extraordinary rate, from public toilets to schools, and now fast food giant KFC is testing it at one of its Beijing branches. This rapid pace of development has followed the Beijing government's announcement that artificial intelligence is a state priority, pouring billions of dollars into the research and development of facial recognition, speech recognition, robots, 3D printing and deep learning, with hundreds of start-ups benefiting from the government incentives. China has already left the rest of the world behind in the area of e-payments, its market for which is now 50 times larger than the US.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Up to 90% of people 'unlikely' to pay for online news in future
 As news consumption has moved online and distribution has spread across digital platforms, publishers have focused on making direct connections with their readers to develop deeper bonds with them and ultimately get them to pay.

But here’s the challenge: After years of publishers putting news and information online for free in the pursuit of audience scale, most people have gotten used to the idea that they don’t have to pay for content.

Here is a look at the state of paid digital news consumption in the U.S.:

The numbers:

• 54 percent: Globally, more than half of readers say they see no point in paying for news online because they can get the information for free already, according to research released last week by the Reuters Institute.

• 16 percent: The percentage of U.S. consumers who paid for online news last year. For comparison, 33 percent of American adults pay for a digital video service such as Netflix, and 22 percent pay for digital audio content, also per Reuters.

• 79 percent: The share of U.S. readers who say they are unlikely to pay for news in the future. That percentage is higher in most European markets, especially Germany (90 percent) and Finland (89 percent), again per Reuters.

• $18 billion: That’s how much print ad revenue U.S. newspapers made in 2016, a 63 percent drop from the $49 billion they earned 10 years prior, according to the News Media Alliance.

• 89 percent: The percentage of digital ad revenue that Google and Facebook claimed together in 2016, according to third-party calculations conducted using Interactive Advertising Bureau data, leaving just 11 percent for the rest of the digital ecosystem.

The business models:

• Publishers such as The New York Times, where advertising once drove the lion’s share of revenue, have now openly stated they will shift their focus entirely to driving subscriptions. In the Times’ most recent quarterly earnings report, the paper announced it had nearly 2 million digital subscribers. That puts the Times closer in line to other subscription-focused publishers such as The Economist, which sees ad revenues as nice to have but not necessary for survival.

• In the past couple years, there’s been a small but growing number of digital-focused publishers including The Information and De Correspondent that rely mainly on digital subscriptions for revenue.

• Other publishers have launched membership programs that offer additional benefits like paywalled content, research or exclusive access to events. These have been instituted by digital publishers including Stat, Slate and the Charlotte Agenda.

• Third-party vendors are peddling various ways to get people to pay up. Blendle, a Dutch news platform that lets readers pay by the story, claimed 250,000 global users last year. It has tried to get a beta off the ground in the U.S. for a year and a half. In Australia, startups Inkl and Tapview both offer a kind of pay-as-you-go model, in which readers can either pay by the story (normally 10 cents per piece) or pay a flat fee for unlimited access to its partner publishers’ content. Inkl claims a conversion rate of 15 percent from free to paid on its monthly active users, and its paying readers read an average of 50 stories per month, according to CEO Gautam Mishra. Tapview gives ad-blocking readers the option to pay to read specific stories. In the U.S., the magazine-bundling startup Texture, a joint venture between big magazine publishers including Hearst and Time Inc., is promoting its service to users.

• A few publishers, even those committed to remaining ad-supported, have experimented with crowdfunding campaigns. Guardian US raised $50,000 in 31 hours to fund an investigative series about the threat to public lands.

The problem:

“People are working harder and harder to get views, and they’re getting less and less from the advertising,” said Matt Carroll, a professor at Northeastern University and former head of the Future of News initiative. “It’s totally striking that more publishers aren’t working harder to create paid digital circulation.”

The solution:

“I think you’re going to see a lot more people focus on paid,” Carroll added, noting most publishers’ monetization efforts are still focused advertising. “Everybody’s resources are pointed in the wrong direction right now.”

The counterargument:

While a shift toward paid circulation might entice one segment of publishers, it’s not for everybody. “I think there are some subscription models that are really interesting,” said Josh Topolsky, the founder of The Outline. “But as far as I’m concerned, we are just at the beginning of digital advertising. We’re just at the beginning of people understanding what people expect out of their digital products.”

Output: Europeans are less inclined to pay for online news than Americans, according to research from the Reuters Institute. Some 90% of readers in Germany and 89% in Finland said they were unlikely to pay for news in the future, compared with 79% in the US. Globally, more than half (54%) of readers said they saw no point in paying for online news as they can already get the information for free. In the US 16% of consumers paid for online news last year, as opposed to 33% who paid for a digital video service such as Netflix.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Alibaba promotes its data collaboration to Western marketers
 Alibaba’s appearance at the Cannes Lions festival last week saw its chief marketing officer fly into the south of France for the first time in the hopes of wooing swathes of Western marketers to its new advertising platform, Uni Marketing.

Getting CEOs to understand exactly what Alibaba does for brands outside of China is still a hurdle and has been the key focus of its London office since it was set up two years ago. But with the roll out of what it dubs a “unique” ad offering, the e-commerce giant is now looking to attract CMOs with the promise of being a “collaborative” partner rather than a closed data marketplace like Amazon, to which it is so often compared.

It kicked off the week-long industry event revealing it had inked a deal with Publicis Group, giving the French advertising giant the keys to the vast amounts of data Alibaba carries on half a billion shoppers as well as users of Youku (Chinese version of YouTube), which it owns, and Weibo (Chinese-version of Twitter) in which is has a majority stake.

This, in essence, is the Uni Marketing framework: “a system that leverages the multi-dimensional data around our shoppers to help build brands in a different way,” chief marketing officer Chris Tung explained to The Drum.

Alibaba is pitching it to Western businesses as a way to understand the behavioural patterns of Chinese consumers to advertise more effectively against them. Marketers can come in through one of four key pillars, the first of which is the ‘Brand Databank’ where Alibaba aggregates all the consumer data it has across its platforms, analyses it and then turns it into insights for brands to work against.

The Brand Databank also acts as the base for the three other parts of Uni Marketing: Uni Strategy (which “provide a complete picture of consumer behavior” across touchpoints”), Uni Communication (a media planning and ad-serving tool which pulls information from across leading online Chinese media and feeds it back into the databank) and Uni Operation (where brands can create and deliver personalised content and manage consumer relationships across Alibaba touchpoints).

There is also Uni Desk, an advertising planning and serving system that allows media agencies to leverage the Alibaba database as a DMP to service clients.

“It’s a co-creation process between agency, Alibaba and advertiser for a much more targeted and better ROI type of advertising,” said Tung, saying it can plot a consumer’s “life journey” with any brand and tell advertisers how to personalise their comms and target the ad or other form of content accordingly.

“You’re talking about having access to not just the most powerful data in China, but in the world. I call it a GPS system. The old way of doing marketing is like working with submarine radar; you’re looking at a small screen and the definition isn’t high enough. Only when the ship comes into radar can you see it. So, you think you’re targeting people and you find some advertising to get there. But now we have a GPS system that looks at the whole universe and has a broader and deeper understanding of customers behaviours and form meaningful segments. The visibility is much higher for the brands.”

Aside from the landmark deal with Publicis, Alibaba has also been working directly with global FMCG-companies including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and L’Oreal for the past six months on what it claims is brand building activity, rather than pure performance marketing (which much of its advertising efforts had focused on to date). So, even if a brand doesn’t actually sell products on Alibaba it can, Tung claimed, still expect to reaps the rewards from spending ad budgets with it.

“There’s a mobile phone maker that launched its 7th generation last year,” hinted Tung, declining to name the brand directly. “[Alibaba] helped it to really locate consumers that would buy the 7th generation phone. We helped accumulate 3 million leads for it. That’s a big asset.”

The proximity Alibaba has to a shopper’s buying behaviour and visibility on the where, when and what content they are watching with is rivalled only by Amazon, which has also been working hard to bolster its own advertising offering.

But unlike Amazon, Alibaba isn’t actually selling its own wares on the marketplace and so claims a certain level of impartiality that it believes advertisers will warm to.

“We are running a totally different marketplace to Amazon. We’re supporting our partners to build their brands through our data capability. And so, the key words from Alibaba, are that we’re open, collaborative and can make it easy to do business anywhere,” he said.

Indeed, several agency executives The Drum spoke to at Cannes were keen to get involved with Alibaba. The global managing director at another French advertising company, Havas, mused to The Drum that this was the first year at Cannes where the presence of Chinese companies could be acutely felt.

“Alibaba has showcased its big data offer to help [advertisers] understand every stage of the purchase funnel, and the patterns and behaviours of their hundreds of millions of consumers. They are not there to copy and paste. They are here to innovate and lead the next step of the industry, which is literally the merging of marketing and commerce. They are the forefront of it,” Dominique Delport said.

“The positioning is different [to Amazon]. Amazon is very impressive in its model, but obviously as Jeff Bezos [Amazon chief executive] said, your margin is my opportunity. Alibaba has a different approach that is more holistic and harmonious in the Chinese way – more ying and yang. It’s a much more partner-led approach and it seems to work.”

Meanwhile, WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell – who has been vocal in the threat that Amazon poses – said that ‘caution’ is not a word he associates with the Chinese giant.

“Chris Tung did a presentation at our Stream conference and I didn’t hear caution. I heard 49% growth; selling $16bn worth of stuff in one day [Singles Day]. If that’s caution I’d like to have a little bit of it,” Sorrell added.

But, there is caution. Other executives The Drum spoke to have said that while collaboration with platforms like Alibaba is always welcome, they are aware of just how quickly (and easily) the switch can be flipped from friend to foe.

According to eMarketer, Alibaba took 40.3% of all money brands spent on mobile advertising in China in 2016, the equivalent to $11bn (£8.6bn). Come 2019, that figure is expected to soar to about $24.1bn.

Little surprise then that Alibaba currently has a team of 500 people dedicated to working on Uni Marketing, “a commitment no other company [has shown] to marketing innovation” while it’s investing heavily in scaling the platform globally, namely in South East Asia and Russia where its e-commerce platform is popular.

And marketers should now get used to seeing Alibaba at industry events. Tung said its top executives are set to appear at any advertising event or conference where brand marketers will be attending in force, like Cannes, over the coming years as it doubles down on efforts to promote the platform.

Output: Alibaba's advertising platform, Uni Marketing, has offered advertisers data to help brands target shoppers more effectively. Unlike Amazon, Alibaba does not sell its own products, so it can collaborate on brands' advertising efforts with a level of impartiality advertisers may warm to, said the Chinese e-commerce giant's CMO, Chis Tung. Alibaba's platform helped a mobile phone maker generate three million leads for the launch of its seventh generation device, Tung added. For Western brands, the Uni Marketing framework is an effective way to understand the behavioural patterns of Chinese consumers.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Facebook refuses to release political ad campaign statistics
 Facebook won’t release data on political ads to researchers The company's policy is the same for political and commercial advertising.

While many political scientists are itching to get their hands on data documenting how political ads on Facebook performed, the company says it won't be releasing that information. Facebook says it doesn't differentiate between political and commercial ads with this policy and that's not likely to change any time soon.

Researchers want information on how much money candidates spent on ads, who saw them and how often they were clicked in order to assess how big of a role ads played in the election. And because online advertising allows for more specific demographic targeting than other methods, getting information on how ads changed across demographics is information that academics think would boost transparency.

"The holy grail, I think, of political analysis for the 2016 election is to figure out which communications from which entities had an effect on which jurisdictions in the United States," Nathan Persily, a Stanford University professor, told Reuters.

But Facebook wants to keep their policies consistent, which means no exception will be made for political ads. Facebook's deputy chief privacy officer Rob Sherman said that ads are often considered creative content and advertising strategies confidential information. Sherman added that Facebook was open to hearing research proposals, but changes weren't likely to be made.

Output: Facebook has refused requests to release data on its political ad campaigns, according to the social networking giant's Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Rob Sherman. Researchers wanted information on the amount candidates spent on ads, how many people saw them, and how often they were clicked, as online advertising allows for more specific demographic targeting than traditional methods. However, Facebook said it does not differentiate between commercial and political ads and would not release such data.