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Disney Culls 'Fox' From 20th Century Fox In Rebrand
Disney executives have cut the word "Fox" from their 20th Century Fox film studio in an apparent bid to distance it from operations of the previous owner, Rupert Murdoch. US media suggests Disney does not want to it to be associated with the media mogul's highly partisan, right-wing Fox News network. However, Disney has not clarified its reasons. It bought the studio, with other media operations, in a $71bn deal last March.
20th Century Fox is known for producing some of the biggest films of all-time, including Avatar and Titanic. Variety magazine, which broke the news about the name change, said it had spoken to an unnamed Disney source, who said: "I think the Fox name means Murdoch, and that is toxic." Hollywood is known for being liberal, unlike the Australian tycoon. Disney has also renamed Fox Searchlight Pictures, the arthouse arm, as simply Searchlight Pictures.
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Microsoft Makes 'Carbon Negative' Pledge
Microsoft has pledged to remove "all of the carbon" from the environment that it has emitted since the company was founded in 1975. Chief executive Satya Nadella said he wanted to achieve the goal by 2050. To do so, the company aims to become "carbon negative" by 2030, removing more carbon from the environment than it emits. That goes beyond a pledge by its cloud-computing rival Amazon, which intends to go "carbon neutral" by 2040. "When it comes to carbon, neutrality is not enough," said Microsoft president Brad Smith. "The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world's climate," he added in a blog. "If we don't curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic." The company also announced it was setting up a $1bn (£765m) climate innovation fund to develop carbon-tackling technologies.
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Uber Sells Its India Food Delivery Business To Zomato
Uber has sold its food delivery service in India to local rival Zomato, the firms have announced. Uber will get a 9.99% stake in the Indian start-up, helping it maintain its presence in the sector. All Uber Eats customers in India will now be redirected to Zomato but it's unclear if the acquisition will cause lay-offs. The deal is likely to give Zomato an edge over its rival Swiggy is a fast-growing but fiercely-contested sector. Zomato operates in more than 500 cities in India and the firm believes that the acquisition will further consolidate its presence."We are proud to have pioneered restaurant discovery and to have created a leading food delivery business across India. This acquisition significantly strengthens our position in the category," Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said. Uber Eats launched in India in 2017 with a promise to revolutionise the sector. The San Francisco-based company has since been trying to increase its customer base but faced tough competition from Zomato and Swiggy.
Darshini Kansara, an analyst with CARE Ratings, said that Swiggy and Zomato both had a better grip on the Indian market. "Even though Uber Eats had the advantage of 'global experience', the Indian market is very different from a developed market - the price points and strategies. Other factors like having an interactive app where customers can post photographs and review food items and tie-ups with restaurants gave Zomato and Swiggy an edge." Uber said India would continue to be its priority. "India remains an exceptionally important market to Uber and we will continue to invest in growing our local rides business, which is already the clear category leader," Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO, said. Correspondents say the deal will further intensify the competition between Zomato and Swiggy.
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Facebook Creates 1,000 New UK Job
Facebook will create 1,000 new roles in London over the course of this year, including adding to its team tackling harmful online content. More than half of the new jobs will be technology-focused, with roles in software engineering, product design and data science, the company said. It will take Facebook's UK workforce to more than 4,000. Pressure has been growing on social media firms to remove posts promoting self-harm and political extremism. Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg will announce the new jobs in London later on Tuesday, before travelling to the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Many of these high-skilled jobs will help us address the challenges of an open internet and develop artificial intelligence to find and remove harmful content more quickly," she is expected to say.
Those roles will be in Facebook's "community integrity" team, which designs tools to police posts on Facebook's platforms including Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. The firm had decided to invest more in policing online content, following the suicide of teenager Molly Russell in 2017, Steve Hatch, the firm's vice-president for northern Europe, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "The tragic death of Molly Russell made us really stop in our tracks as a company and acknowledge that there was an issue that we need to do more on. "We've been putting those changes in place steadily over the last 12 months," he said. Facebook aimed to build on the progress it had made in tackling terrorist content to remove other problematic content such as self-harming, Mr Hatch said. The firm had detected and removed two million posts from Facebook and 800,000 from Instagram, he added. "As systems get better they develop, they get better and more effective," he said. "Our aspiration is to remove every single piece of [harmful] content."
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Facebook targets UK growth with 1,000 hires this year
Facebook targets UK growth with 1,000 hires this year
LONDON- Facebook will hire 1,000 people in London this year in roles such as product development and safety as it continues to grow its biggest engineering centre outside the United States after Britain leaves the European Union.UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Facebook's growth was "great news". "We are committed to making the UK the safest place in the world to be online, alongside being one of the best places for technology companies to be based," he said.
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Jaguar Land Rover to cut over 10% of workforce at UK Halewood factory: Union
LONDON: British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) said on Wednesday it will cut around 10% of the workforce at its northern English Halewood factory as it changes shift patterns to boost efficiency at the site.
The Unite Union said the cuts were linked to slower than forecast growth of the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport vehicles, which are made at the plant. The company said the decision was not related to loss of volumes.
JLR posted a 6% decline in 2019 sales "Jaguar Land Rover is taking action to optimise performance, enable sustainable growth and safeguard the long-term success of our business," the company said in a statement.
"Central to the Halewood manufacturing strategy, we are moving from a three shift to a “two-plus” shift pattern from April 2020."
Around 4,5000 people work at the Halewood factory, one of three of JLR's car factories in Britain, with roughly 500 jobs affected by Wednesday's announcement.
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Stocks and oil slump on fears over China virus outbreak – business live
Brexit uncertainty plus political turmoiled equalled financial distress for almost half a million British businesses in the final three months of last year, according to a new survey which measures corporate health.
About 494,000 companies were found to be in significant distress in the last quarter of 2019 by the latest red flag alert from insolvency firm Begbies Traynor, representing about 14% of all economically active firms and the highest number since the survey began in 2004. Significant distress is described as firms which have county court judgments of of less than £5000 filed against them, or businesses which have been identified by its credit risk system.
Retail, real estate and property and construction sectors suffered more than others, although significant distress at businesses rose in 15 out of 22 sectors of the economy. The highest year-on-year increase in the number of businesses suffering significant financial distress was seen in the real estate and property sector, with a 13% rise in the number of businesses affected. The survey finds financial difficulties affecting both bricks-and-mortar and online retailers.
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Robert Downey Jr Net Worth: Whopping Fortune Revealed
Robert Downey Jr. is an actor who is well-known for appearing in films including Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. He has previously landed the top spot of Forbes list of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors. How much money has he made. The actor has an astounding fortune of around £229million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.From 2013 to 2015, he was listed by Forbes as Hollywood’s highest paid actor. His films have grossed around £11billion worldwide which has made him the fifth highest-grossing box office star of all time.
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UK Supermarkets Suffer As Shoppers Shun Booze And Meat
Britain’s supermarkets suffered a slow start to 2020 as shoppers embraced the “Dry January” and “Veganuary” campaigns to shun alcohol and meat, industry data showed on Tuesday. Market researcher Kantar said total UK grocery sales rose just 0.3% in the 12 weeks to Jan. 26, with the traditional “big four” supermarket groups all-seeing year-on-year sales declines.
The researcher said No. 2 player Sainsbury’s (SBRY.L), which last month named a new CEO, was the least bad performer of the big four with a sales decline of 0.6%. Industry leader Tesco (TSCO.L), Walmart-owned (WMT.N) Asda and Morrisons (MRW.L) saw sales fall of 0.9%, 2.2% and 3.0% respectively. Kantar said grocery inflation was 1.0% over the 12 weeks. Prices are rising fastest in categories such as bacon, sausages and cooked meat while falling in butter and fresh poultry.
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Tesla Shares Soar 40% After Analyst Says Firm’s Value Could Hit $1.3tn
Tesla shares have soared 40% in two days, after one US analyst predicted the electric carmaker could transform global transport and that its market value could soar to $1.3tn (£1tn) in less than five years. Shares in the 17-year-old California company rose by 17% to $912 a share on Tuesday, giving Tesla a market value of $164bn – more than the $104bn combined value of Detroit’s big three: General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. The share price surge on Tuesday came on top of a near-20% rise in the stock on Monday. It has now more than doubled since December, as the company has reported stronger-than-expected sales and analysts predict it will streak away from traditional car companies in the development of electric vehicles. The extraordinary spike in the company’s value sets Elon Musk, Tesla’s maverick founder and chief executive, further on the path to collect up to $50bn in the largest corporate pay deal ever struck. Musk, who is already the world’s 22nd-richest person with a $41bn fortune, will collect the “staggering” bonus if Tesla becomes a $650bn company by 2028.
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