Meta onboards Kalaari Capital to scale early-stage startups in India

 Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced a partnership with VC fund Kalaari Capital to upskill and scale young, invested businesses in India by providing them with timely business skilling support.

Mark Zuckerberg‘s Meta (formerly Facebook) on Wednesday announced a partnership with VC fund Kalaari Capital to upskill and scale young, invested businesses in India by providing them with timely business skilling support. The partnership is a part of Meta’s ‘VC Brand Incubator Initiative’ for the growth of micro, small and medium businesses in the country.

“As part of this initiative, Meta has partnered with India’s largest VC funds. We are thrilled to now partner with Kalaari Capital that has been instrumental in the growth journey of many startups,” said Ajit Mohan, VP and MD at Meta in India. Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based in Bengaluru. “As startups scale, they need to leverage several tools and platforms like Meta to support their growth,” said Vani Kola, Founder and Managing Director, Kalaari Capital.

Facebook loses daily users for first time ever, ad growth slows

 The Meta-owned Facebook platform registered 1.929 billion daily users in the fourth quarter of 2021 — from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter

For the first time ever, Facebook has lost daily users globally, reporting lower-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock plunging nearly 20 per cent. The massive stock drop instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in its market value. The Meta-owned Facebook platform registered 1.929 billion daily users in the fourth quarter of 2021 — from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter. The company confirmed late on Wednesday that it is the first sequential decline in its history. Facebook’s monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.91 billion as of December 31, 2021, an increase of 4 per cent year-over-year. Meta still made nearly $40 billion in profit in 2021, mostly from advertising.

“We had a solid quarter as people turned to our products to stay connected and businesses continued to use our services to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. “I’m encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce, and virtual reality, and we’ll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse,” he added.

MPs unite against Facebook over ‘political bias’, seek action against execs

The meeting was attended by 13 MPs of the BJP and four from opposition parties

Facebook was subject to tough questioning by Members of Parliament at a meeting of the Standing Committee attached to the Ministry of Information and Technology, on Wednesday. The meeting was attended by 13 MPs of the BJP and four from Opposition parties. Almost all members criticised the US-based social media giant for political bias.

The BJP MPs wanted to know why 2.6 million pages of BJP-related posts were taken down, erased, or tampered with by the company. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey who has aggressively questioned the practices at Facebook, lashed out at the organisation, along with Anil Agarwal (BJP), Sanjay Seth (BJP) and Mahua Moitra (Trinamool Congress).

As proceedings of Parliamentary committees are covered by Parliamentary privilege, very little information was forthcoming from Facebook on how the organisation defended itself. Those who attended the meeting on its behalf were Ajit Mohan, vice-president of the company, and S Purohit, the legal advisor. Facebook said its deposition would be submitted in writing to the MPs.

Unconfirmed reports suggest some MPs also voiced the demand that executives in Facebook India should be stripped of their positions. Another meeting, for which Facebook will be summoned, is on the cards.Two activists of net neutrality — journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, also the author of The Real Face of Facebook in India, and Nikhil Pahwa, founder of digital news portal Medianama — also addressed the Standing Committee.

IT minister writes to Zuckerberg, accuses FB India team of political bias

Ravi Shankar Prasad alleges Facebook India team ‘impinged’ on beliefs of Indians

Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg raising “serious concerns” regarding the social media platform becoming a tool to create social disturbances in the country.

The letter comes in the wake of allegations against Facebook that it is biased towards the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the letter, Prasad accused the California-headquartered company of deleting Facebook pages that supported right-of-centre ideology in the run-up to the 2019 elections and not offering right of appeal against such action. Prasad said that top management in Facebook India team, from managing director to other senior officials, was dominated by people having a particular political ideology referring to media reports. The political biases of these individuals, according to Prasad, “impinged” on the freedom of speech of millions of people.

“The spate of recent anonymous, source-based reports is nothing but an internal power struggle within your company for an ideological hegemony,” Prasad wrote in the letter. “No other logic can explain how facts are being spun by the selective leaks from within your company to portray an alternate reality.” Referring to recent instances in which the social media platform was used to incite violence, Prasad accused Facebook of inaction. The IT minister said that the social media site was used by “anarchic and radical elements” whose sole aim was to destroy social order by recruiting and assembling people for violence.

Facebook threatens to block Australian publishers from sharing news stories

The social network said the Australian move would force it to pay arbitrary and theoretically unlimited sums for information that makes up only a small fraction of its service

Facebook threatened to block Australian publishers and individuals from sharing news stories on its platform in reaction to an Australian measure that could require it to compensate media organisations for its use of their stories. The social network said the Australian move would force it to pay arbitrary and theoretically unlimited sums for information that makes up only a small fraction of its service.

The measure would force Facebook to choose between either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits, the company’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, wrote in a blog post. No business can operate that way. Campbell Brown, a former NBC and CNN anchor who now serves as Facebook‘s vice president of global news partnerships, said the cutoff threat has nothing to do with our ongoing global commitment to journalism.

Brown’s post, which cited a variety of individual Facebook programs intended to support news organizations, was titled Our Continued Commitment to Journalism. Google, meanwhile, issued an open letter that cast the proposed Australian law as a potential threat to individual privacy and a burden that would degrade the quality of its search and YouTube video services, but did not threaten a cutoff.

Mark Zuckerberg is happy to let Facebook be a tool to spread misinformation and fake news, but is apparently fine with Facebook dropping real news altogether, John Stanton, co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, said in a statement. Regulators need to reign in the tech giants’ total domination of the online marketplace before it’s too late.

One dead in Texas, court set on fire in California as protests spread in US

A protester in Austin, Texas, who was apparently armed with a rifle was shot and killed after witnesses say he approached a car that had driven through a march against police violence

Protests took a violent turn in several US cities overnight, with demonstrators squaring off against agents outside a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, forcing police in Seattle to retreat into a station house and setting fire to vehicles during unrest in California and Virginia. 

A protester in Austin, Texas, who was apparently armed with a rifle was shot and killed after witnesses say he approached a car that had driven through a march against police violence. And someone was shot and wounded in Aurora, Colorado, after a car drove through a protest there, authorities said.

The unrest Saturday and early Sunday stemmed from the weeks of protests over racial injustice and the police treatment of people of color that flared up after the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black and handcuffed, died after a white police officer used his knee to pin down Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes while Floyd begged for air.

In Seattle, police officers retreated into a precinct station early Sunday, hours after large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood. Some demonstrators lingered after officers filed into the department’s East Precinct around 1 am, but most cleared out a short time later, according to video posted online....

Reliance Jio's 2G-free India drive likely to hit Vodafone Idea hard

About 60% of Vodafone Idea's customer base is in the 2G space

Mukesh Ambani’s plan to make India ‘2G-mukt’ will hit the incumbent operators hard, especially Vodafone Idea given its large base of 2G subscribers. After racking up 100 million users for its 4G-enabled feature phones (JioPhone), Reliance Jio in partnership with Google is eyeing the entry-level smartphone segment. Jio is planning to win over 350 million 2G feature phone users by launching a smartphone ‘at a fraction of the current cost’.

Experts believe that Jio, which dominates the mobile broadband space (4G) with 58 per cent market share, could capture the incumbents’ market share in the feature phone segment with its new offering. While Bharti Airtel has 135 million 2G users, 47 per cent of its total subscriber base of 283 million, Vodafone Idea has 174 million 2G users, about 60 per cent of its total subscriber base of 291 million at the end of the March quarter.

Mayuresh Joshi, head of equity research at William O’Neil India, says: “Vodafone Idea has the highest 2G subscriber base among the top three operators. This coupled with a weak financial situation and inability to commit large capex investment will make it the most susceptible to subscriber loss. The ongoing churn for Vodafone could accelerate if Jio is able to launch a smartphone at a substantially lower cost in partnership with Google.”

WhatsApp brings dark mode to web, desktop; adds Status feature for JioPhone

New features will roll out to users over the next few weeks through the new versions of WhatsApp

WhatsApp has announced that it shall soon bring several new features on Android and iOS platform, web and desktop client and phones based KaiOS. The Facebook-owned instant messaging platform has introduced animated stickers and QR codes on WhatsApp for smartphones, improvements to group video calls across platforms, dark mode for WhatsApp web and desktop client, and Status feature on WhatsApp for KaiOS. These features will roll out to users over the next few weeks with the new versions of WhatsApp.

New features coming to WhatsApp

WhatsApp Animated Stickers

The app update will add new animated sticker pack for its user to communicate in fun and intuitive way.

QR codes on WhatsApp

This will allow WhatsApp user to add a new contact by simply scanning the code.

Dark mode for WhatsApp web and desktop

The dark mode theme now extends to your computer

WhatsApp group video calls

The participants limit have been raised to eight people from four people. Moreover, the app will have a video icon in group chats of eight or less, so you can easily start a group video call with one-tap.

WhatsApp for KaiOS gets Status feature

KaiOS is the operating system that powers the JioPhone and JioPhone 2. The upcoming update shall add Status feature to WhatsApp for KaiOS that will let users post an updates that disappear after 24 hour.

WhatsApp may have exposed users’ phone numbers on Google search: Report

The vulnerability is part of WhatsApp ‘click to chat’ feature where user can generate link to invite others

Facebook-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp may have exposed its users’ phone number on Google search owing to a vulnerability in its ‘click to share’ feature. The mobile numbers of users are available on Google search in plain text format, according to an independent cybersecurity researcher Athul Jayaram.

“WhatsApp web portal has leaked around 29,000 – 3,00,000 WhatsApp user’s mobile numbers in plain text accessible to any internet user. What makes this finding easy or appears to be simple is that data is accessible on the open web and not on the dark web,” wrote Jayaram in his blogpost that was reported by Threatpost. He added, “This privacy issue could have been avoided if Whatsapp encrypted the user mobile numbers as well as by adding a robots.txt file disallowing the bots from crawling their domain and a meta noindex tag on the pages. Unfortunately, they did not do that yet and your privacy may be at stake.”

ALSO READ: WhatsApp may allow single account sign-in on multiple devices: Details here

Explaining the issue, Jayaram said that the vulnerability is part of WhatsApp ‘click to chat’ feature where user can generate link to invite others. According to Jayaram, WhatsApp does not encrypt the phone number in the link, as a result, if the link is shared anywhere, the phone number is also visible in plaintext.

For example, if a user shares a “click to chat” link on social media platform, it goes with the mobile number mentioned on it in. Anyone with access to the link might, therefore, be able to see the user’s phone number. Moreover, the URLs are accessed by Google Bots for search indexing. Therefore, the link appears in Google search results even if the original post has been removed from the source…Read More

Facebook launches ‘Collab’ music-making app to take on TikTok: Details here

Named Collab, the app is currently available for iOS devices and requires invite to download

From a messaging app for Apple Watch to meme creator and discovery platform, Facebook is experimenting on several consumer-focused apps under a new team called ‘NPE Teams, from Facebook’. The new addition to the list is a music collaboration app, which allows content creators and fans to create, watch, and mix and match original music videos. Named Collab, the iOS app will be available through invite-based modfel. To request access, you need to sign up for a waitlist. Invites will be send in batches, starting with people in the US and Canada.

“Collabs are three independent videos that are playing in sync. With the app, you can create your own arrangement by adding in your own recording or by swiping and discovering an arrangement to complete your composition. No musical experience is required,” said the NPE Teams, from Facebook in a blogpost. The content created using Collab app can be published on other platforms, including Facebook-owned Instagram and Facebook Stories.

ALSO READ: Facebook brings in new feature to let users lock profiles from non-friends

The Collab is not the first app from NPE Teams. This month itself, the team behind experimental apps rolled out two other apps – CatchUp and Hobbi. The CatchUp app works like a Messenger; it helps you stay in touch with the people by showing if they are available to talk. However, unlike Messenger, the app does not auto set the availability. Instead, you need to indicate that you are available to talk and call.

After Facebook, Silver Lake to invest Rs 5,656 cr in Reliance Jio Platforms

The deal comes less than two weeks after Facebook made an investment of $5.7 billion to buy a minority stake in Jio Platforms

American private equity firm Silver Lake has invested Rs 5,655.75 crore in Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms. The deal comes less than two weeks after Facebook made an investment of $5.7 billion to buy a minority stake in Jio. The investment by Silver Lake values Jio Platforms at an equity value of Rs 4.9 trillion and an enterprise value of Rs 5.15 trillion, and represents a 12.5% premium on the equity valuation of the Facebook investment announced on April 22, 2020 – said Reliance Industries in a statement.

“I am delighted to welcome Silver Lake as a valued partner in continuing to grow and transform the Indian digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Indians. Silver Lake has an outstanding record of being a valuable partner for leading technology companies globally. Silver Lake is one of the most respected voices in technology and finance. We are excited to leverage insights from their global technology relationships for the Indian Digital Society’s transformation,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries.

ALSO READ: Jio-Facebook deal likely to boost adoption of crypto-blockchain in India

Silver Lake is a prominent investor in technology space. The company has over $40 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital. Its investments include Airbnb, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Alphabet’s Verily and Waymo units, Dell Technologies, Twitter and numerous other global technology leaders…

Jio Platforms now more valuable than rest of RIL businesses put together

At Wednesday’s price, RIL’s market capitalisation stood at Rs 8.64 trillion. This means, the other businesses are being valued by the Street at Rs 4.28 trillion

Reliance Industries’ (RIL’s) deal with Facebook to sell 9.99 per cent in Jio Platforms has two messages for the oil to telecom major’s shareholders. The key one is that Jio Platforms is now more valuable than all other businesses of RIL put together, including refining, petrochemicals and retail.

Consider this: Facebook is buying 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms, a 100 per cent subsidiary of RIL, for Rs 43,574 crore. This translates into a market/equity value of Rs 4.36 trillion for Jio Platforms. RIL’s stock gained over 10 per cent after the deal was announced. At Wednesday’s price, RIL’s market capitalisation stood at Rs 8.64 trillion. This means, the other businesses are being valued by the Street at Rs 4.28 trillion.

ALSO READ: Why Facebook is spending billions for a minority stake in Reliance Jio

The other message is that the deal has kick-started the monetisation of digital assets and will help RIL reduce debt, create an incremental revenue stream and could lead to higher valuations for its consumer facing verticals, especially Reliance Retail. The news of falling leverage levels is positive as it came at a time when its core oil and gas vertical was facing major headwinds because of the collapse of crude oil prices. This had raised concerns over the completion of the deal with Aramco, wherein the world’s biggest oil producer was looking at picking up 20 per cent stake in RIL’s chemical and refining business in a deal valued at $15 billion. With the fresh investment from Facebook, leverage concerns have receded…

Why Facebook, Reliance Jio deal is a wake-up call for Amazon, Flipkart

Reliance Jio-Facebook deal is an attempt to marry e-commerce with social media, say analysts.

As Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, invests $5.7 billion for a 9.99 per cent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms, the deal is also seen as a powerful alliance to take on formidable players in e-commerce and payments space such as Amazon, Flipkart and Google. The partnership is expected to help Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance’s e-commerce venture JioMart to take on players such as Amazon and Flipkart in the Indian online commerce market, backed by Facebook. According to industry insiders and analysts, the market opportunities for online commerce in the country is expected to touch $200 billion by 2028 from $30 billion in 2018.

ALSO READ: Facebook-RIL deal to drive investors’ confidence in India’s telecom space

“(Out of the investment made by Facebook) about Rs 15,000 crore would remain with Jio, and this is a huge amount which JioMart can use for building its (e-commerce) network. If they are able to execute this properly on the ground, I think they are going to create massive problems for the likes of Amazon and Flipkart due to the kind of scale that they can achieve,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research.

To begin with, Meena said, JioMart is expected to aggressively chase the grocery space, where they can reach a large number of households and work in a way where customers end up buying a lot of services from Reliance itself, related to areas such as mobile connection, television, music and education. “The bigger worry for Amazon and Flipkart now is to reevaluate their business model or logistics as they are not able to fulfil the grocery demand. There is a lot of demand but companies are not ready to deliver.”

Facebook to invest $5.7 bn in RIL’s Jio Platforms to pick up 9.99% stake

Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail and WhatsApp also enter into a commercial partnership agreement

Facebook on Wednesday announced investment of Rs 43,574 crore to pick a 9.9 per cent stake in Reliance Industries Limited’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Jio Platforms, in what is being touted as the largest foreign direct investment for minority stake in India. The company said, “Today we are announcing a $5.7 billion, or INR 43,574 crore, investment in Jio Platforms Limited, part of Reliance Industries Limited, making Facebook its largest minority shareholder.”

“Reliance Industries Limited, Jio Platforms Limited and and Facebook today announced the signing of binding agreements for an investment of Rs 43,574 crore by Facebook into Jio Platforms,” Reliance Industries said in its statement. Concurrent with the investment, Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail Limited and WhatsApp have also entered into a commercial partnership agreement to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s New Commerce business on the JioMart platform using WhatsApp and to support small businesses on WhatsApp.

The companies will work closely to ensure that consumers are able to access the nearest kiranas who can provide products and services to their homes by transacting seamlessly with JioMart using WhatsApp. Commenting on the partnership with Facebook, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd, said, “The synergy between Jio and Facebook will help realise Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ Mission with its two ambitious goals — ‘Ease of Living’ and ‘Ease of Doing Business’ – for every single category of Indian people without exception.”

‘Will keep you posted’: Modi says he is considering quitting social media

Modi has in excess of 50 million devotees on Twitter and his Facebook page has in excess of 44 million ‘likes’

Executive Narendra Modi on Monday evening said he is thinking about “surrendering” his web based life accounts, provoking a large number of claims to him to remain yet getting a chilly reaction from the Congress party. “This Sunday, considering surrendering my internet based life accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Will update all of you as often as possible,” said Modi on Twitter at 8.56pm.

Modi, with around 50 million supporters on Twitter; 44 million ‘likes’ on Facebook and 35 million devotees on Instagram, utilizes web based life to talk about his administration’s approaches or engaging for harmony. “Harmony and amicability are key to our ethos. I bid to my sisters and siblings of Delhi to keep up harmony and fraternity consistently. It is significant that there is quiet and regularity is reestablished at the soonest,” he tweeted on February 26, talking about the three days of revolting in the national capital that till date have killed in any event 47 individuals.

The tweet from his handle tonight was re-tweeted in excess of multiple times and ‘loved’ by in excess of 28,000 records in two hours. “No sir” began inclining on Twitter about Modi’s post that was later distributed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. The Congress party was not intrigued. “Surrender disdain, not web-based social networking accounts,” said Rahul Gandhi, the gathering’s previous president.

Facebook bans ads with false claims about products linked to coronavirus

Ads that guarantee a cure or prevention are also banned

Facebook said Wednesday that it is banning ads that make false claims about products tied to the new coronavirus. The social network said it is removing ads that feature a product and imply a limited supply, seeking create a sense of urgency in their mention of coronavirus. Ads that guarantee a cure or prevention are also banned, it said. For instance, ads for face masks that claim the products are 100% guaranteed to prevent the spread of the virus are not allowed, the company said.

The ban went into effect this week. Facebook had previously banned ads, along with regular unpaid posts, that peddle fake cures such as drinking bleach, spread conspiracy theories about the virus, or discourage people from seeking medical treatment. The ban went into effect as the World Health Organization reported that the number of new cases outside China exceeded the number of new infections inside the country for the first time on Tuesday. The COVID-19 virus has now spread to at least 39 countries.

Facebook, LG, others restrict business travel to China on coronavirus fear

Facebook became the first major US company to announce a travel suspension after the US government’s warning

Facebook Inc and other global companies including LG Electronics Inc and Standard Chartered Plc are restricting travel to China, as the death toll from a flu-like virus rose above 100 on Tuesday. Airlines are also cancelling flights and adjusting schedules as a growing number of countries raise travel warnings to not just Hubei province where the new coronavirus broke out, but also to the rest of mainland China.

The United States warned on Monday that Americans should “reconsider” visiting all of China, while South Korea elevated its travel warning on Tuesday, advising its citizens to refrain from visiting China. Facebook became the first major US company to announce a travel suspension after the US government’s warning. The US social media company asked employees to halt non-essential travel to mainland China and told employees who had travelled there to work from home, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have taken steps to protect the health and safety of our employees,” the spokesman told Reuters. South Korean home appliances maker LG has put a complete ban on travel to China and has advised employees on business trips in the country to return home as quickly as possible, a company spokeswoman said. South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc said it was urging employees to avoid all non-essential travel to China, while banking group Standard Chartered restricted travel to both mainland China and Hong Kong.

In Germany, auto supplier Webasto, which has 11 sites in China, including in Wuhan, has halted all corporate travel to and from China following the virus and the infection of an employee. Japan’s Honda Motor Co Ltd said it recommended employees avoid travel to China, while Nissan Motor Co said it plans to evacuate its Japanese staff and their families in Wuhan via a government-chartered flight. As companies reassessed the risk of travel to China, some airlines said demand for flights was falling and they were adjusting schedules…Read More

Hong Kong police shoot protester, detain two as video goes live on Facebook

Footage showed a police officer drawing his sidearm in the district of Sai Wan Ho as he tried to detain a masked person at a junction that had been blocked by protesters

A Hong Kong police officer shot at masked protesters on Monday morning, hitting at least one in the torso, as anger sparked by the recent death of a student spilled into the rush hour commute.

The shooting, which was broadcast live on Facebook, is the latest escalation in more than five months of seething pro-democracy protests that have engulfed the international financial hub and battered its reputation. Footage showed a police officer drawing his sidearm in the district of Sai Wan Ho as he tried to detain a masked person at a junction that had been blocked by protesters. Another masked individual then approached the officer and was shot in the chest area, quickly falling to the ground, clutching their left side.

Seconds later, two more live rounds were fired by the officer during a scuffle and another masked protester went to ground, although the footage was less clear as to whether he was struck.

Police then detained the two people on the ground. A pool of blood could be seen near the first individual whose body initially appeared limp, although the person was later filmed conscious and even trying to make a run for it.

The second man was conscious, shouting his name to reporters as he was handcuffed. A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AFP that live rounds were fired at more than one protester in Sai Wan Ho and that a statement would be issued…

Read More : Hong Kong Protest

WhatsApp hacked to spy on govt officials in 20 countries, including India

The revelation comes as more than a dozen Indian journalists and human rights activists said on Thursday they were also targeted

Senior government officials in multiple US-allied countries were targeted earlier this year with hacking software that used Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp to take over users’ phones, according to people familiar with the messaging company’s investigation.

Sources familiar with WhatsApp’s internal investigation into the breach said a “significant” portion of the known victims were high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries in five continents. The hacking of a wider group of top government officials’ smartphones than previously reported suggests the WhatsApp cyber intrusion could have broad political and diplomatic consequences.

WhatsApp filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Israeli hacking tool developer NSO Group. The Facebook-owned software giant alleges that NSO Group built and sold a hacking platform that exploited a flaw in WhatsApp-owned servers to help clients hack into the cellphones of at least 1,400 users.

While it is not clear who used the software to hack officials’ phones, NSO says it sells its spyware exclusively to government customers. Some victims are in the US, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Mexico, Pakistan and India, said people familiar with the investigation. Reuters could not verify whether victims from these countries included government officials. The revelation comes as more than a dozen Indian journalists and human rights activists said on Thursday they were also targeted....

After bitcoin crackdown, China now wants centralised digital currency

China was once a stronghold of bitcoin

As Facebook readies to launch its answer to bitcoin, China is set to introduce its own digital currency — one that could allow the government and the central bank to see what people spend their money on, according to analysts.

Far from the libertarian ideals of cryptocurrencies, whose anonymity allows users to buy and sell without leaving a digital trail, China’s mooted e-cash system will be tightly regulated, experts say, and run by the People’s Bank of China, the central bank. It “would give the PBoC greater insight into transactions throughout the country,” analysts at Beijing-based research firm Trivium China said in a note.

In late September, central bank governor Yi Gang said China’s new currency may be associated with existing electronic payment systems, such as the popular WeChat and AliPay phone apps, which are widespread and allow yuan transactions via bank accounts.

While he gave no timetable, Chinese media are putting their money on a November 11 launch to coincide with “Singles Day” — a massive, annual online sales event. Yi did not say what shape the currency would take. “We will not predetermine the technical path,” he said…