MISCELLANEA

1.   
Technology

17 Google made $4.7 billion from the news
industry in 2018

It’s more than the
combined ticket sales of the last two “Avengers” movies. It’s more than what
virtually any professional sports team is worth. And it’s the amount that
Google made from the work of news publishers in 2018 via search and Google
News, according to a study by the News Media Alliance.

The journalists who create that content deserve a cut of that
$4.7 billion, said David Chavern, the president and chief executive of the
alliance which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the country,
including The New York Times. “They make money off this arrangement,” Mr.
Chavern said, “and there needs to be a better outcome for news publishers.”

That $4.7 billion is nearly as much as the $5.1 billion
brought in by the United States news industry as a whole from digital
advertising last year – and the News Media Alliance cautioned that its estimate
for Google’s income was conservative. For one thing, it does not count the
value of the personal data the company collects on consumers every time they
click on an article like this one.

(Source:
www.nytimes.com)

18 Facebook will launch its new
cryptocurrency soon

Facebook is preparing to
launch its own cryptocurrency sooner than you expect. The company plans to hand
over control of the currency system to outside backers as part of a move to
reassure financial regulators. Facebook has reportedly been in discussions with
dozens of financial institutions and tech companies that will oversee the new
cryptocurrency and contribute capital to the programme. The payment system
would be free of transition fees and is designed to be used all over the world,
especially in developed nations.

The digital token is
reportedly designed to serve as a global currency – one that Facebook hopes
will facilitate peer-to-peer payments among its more than two billion users.
Zuckerberg hinted at Facebook’s crypto ambitions during the company’s developer
conference in May. “When I think about all the different ways that people
interact privately, I think payments is one of the areas where we have an
opportunity to make it a lot easier,” Zuckerberg said.

In recent weeks, several
news outlets have reported that Facebook is planning to launch its own
payments-focused cryptocurrency. People will be able to use the currency to
transfer funds and make purchases on Facebook messaging platforms such as
WhatsApp and Messenger.

The news has caused quite
a stir in the crypto world – and on Wall Street. Anthony Pompliano, founder and
partner at blockchain-focused investment firm Morgan Creek Digital, believes
Facebook’s cryptocurrency could quickly become the “most used product in
crypto.”

(Source: www.wsj.com
and www.finance.yahoo.com)

19 Hottest cryptocurrency is up by
360% this year and its name isn’t Bitcoin

Litecoin, which has gained
more than 330% since the beginning of the year, is outpacing all its crypto
peers, including Ether and XRP, as well as the best-known and largest token
Bitcoin. It has a market cap of about $8.4 billion, making it the
seventh-largest digital asset, according to data compiled by Mosaic Research
Ltd.

The rally can partly be
attributed to Litecoin’s upcoming halving (also known as halvening), whereby
the number of coins awarded to so-called miners is slashed by 50%. The idea is
that a cut in supply will not only drive up its price but will also prevent an
erosion of value. Miners currently receive 25 new Litecoins per block, but
following the halving – which is expected to fall on August 6 – they will
receive 12.5.

Halving typically happens
roughly every four years and the run-up to it has, in the past, coincided with
a rally in the underlying tokens. Four years ago, when the last Litecoin
halving occurred, the coin gained about 60% in the three months beforehand
according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. And the phenomenon isn’t isolated to
Litecoin, either – Bitcoin is set to undergo its next halving in May, 2020 and
its biggest proponents are already seizing on the drop in supply as a catalyst
for further gains.

“Every time we’ve seen a
halving event in Bitcoin or Litecoin, the price has risen astronomically,” said
Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at trading platform eToro, in a phone
interview. “So if that pattern continues, what we’ve seen so far is small
potatoes in comparison,” he said. “This is quite normal for the crypto market.”

These developments, among
others, have pushed up the price of Bitcoin by 120% since the beginning of the
year. Ether, too, has gained close to 100%. Litecoin, which was trading below
$30 at the end of last year, is now worth $130.

(Source:
www.hindustantimes.com)

20 Coding & App-making just a
child’s play for these school kids

Vyom Bagrecha loves to
read, draw and play computer games. Just like any other nine-year-old, albeit
with one exception. Vyom also does software coding and has already created a
health app that is now available on Google Play Store for mobile users on the
Android platform.

“I’m now working on a
parking-related application, and when I’m older I want to be able to code
robots to save the environment,” said the 4th grade student of Nahar
International School in Mumbai. Vyom’s curiosity about how games work made his
mother enrol him for an online coding programme. Very few schools taught
mathematics during the Industrial Revolution and there was widespread
unemployment till schools added it to the curriculum. I see that happening with
coding and think it should be a part of the curriculum, says his mother.

Vyom’s app is a basic
health tool which, for example, converts the number of glasses of water one has
had into litres, and such like. Children are creating all kinds of things
online, including simple drawings to games developed by children as young as
ten.

Schools, too, are starting
to impart coding skills to kids, making the shift from teaching traditional
computer programmes. Some schools are setting up coding clubs, while some are
even adopting such programmes over the traditional computer science textbooks

Manju Rana, Principal at
Seth Anandram Jaipuria School in Ghaziabad, says the school started a coding
club about a year ago to foster logical reasoning and encourage kids to find
their own ways and methods of learning. Since most children are taking to this
as a hobby, it takes away the pressure associated with learning something as
part of their core curriculum. Corporates, too, have started school-level
initiatives to expose kids to coding.

(Source:
tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com)

2. World news

21 PwC’s $5.8 mn UK fine strengthens
demand to break up big-four audit firms

PricewaterhouseCoopers was
fined 4.55 million pounds ($5.8 million) by the U.K.’s accounting watchdog over
failings in its handling of technology firm Redcentric Plc, giving fresh
ammunition to critics calling for a breakup of the so-called “Big-Four”
auditing firms.

The penalty was reduced
from 6.5 million pounds after the company admitted its wrongdoing ahead of a
final decision by the Financial Reporting Council. Two PwC partners, Jaskamal
Sarai and Arif Ahmad, were each fined a reduced 140,000 pounds after admitting
breaches in the standards of their work and were also given a “severe
reprimand.”

The breaches were
“numerous and in certain cases were of a basic and / or fundamental nature,
evidencing a serious lack of competence in conducting the statutory audit
work,” according to an FRC statement.

This latest transgression
adds to the scrutiny of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, EY and KPMG, which
together control more than 90% of UK audits for large companies. The
Competition and Markets Authority has urged a split of their operations amid
allegations of conflicts of interest and a failure to spot a series of
high-profile corporate failures, including the wake of building contractor
Carillion Plc.

The FRC’s sanctions follow
an investigation that began more than two years ago into PwC’s handling of
Redcentric’s financial statements for 2015 and 2016 after an initial review
showed that Redcentric had overstated its net assets and profits after tax by
20.8 million pounds.

“We are sorry that our
work fell below the professional standards expected of us,” PwC said in an
emailed statement. The firm said it has taken numerous steps to strengthen
processes and is investing 30 million pounds “to provide greater focus on the
quality and public interest responsibilities of PwC’s statutory audit
services.” An outside spokesman for Redcentric declined to comment.

 (Source:
www.business-standard.com)

22 US wants to stall digital tax,
hoping to wear down allies

The Trump administration is deep in talks with 129 other
countries on implementing a new standard for taxing digital companies,
including Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc – but its
heart lies elsewhere in the discussions. Rather than usher in with allies a new
era of technology taxation, the United States’ goal is to fend off foreign
taxes aimed at American companies.

The strategy: String out
the negotiations for as long as possible to delay the pain and hold out for an
agreement with softer edges, say people involved with and briefed on the talks
at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). By
slow-walking the discussions, American officials hope they can reach a global
agreement that amounts to a small-scale tax increase on global companies, but
averts a massive tax increase by foreign countries that see US companies as
sources of revenue.

It is in the interest of the
US to prevent a proliferation of unilateral digital services taxes, said Jeff
Vander Wolk, an international tax lawyer at Squire Patton Boggs LLP and an OECD
official until last year. The way to get them to back off is to get them into a
multilateral agreement. Any future pact would likely create a whole new set of
rules governing which countries have the right to tax the companies, which
corporate profits were taxable and how to resolve the inevitable disputes that
would arise.

Deciding where profits should
be taxed is no easy feat in a digital economy. Corporations can have their
headquarters in the US, intellectual property stored in Ireland, engineers
developing some of the algorithms in India and users all over the world. The US
is hoping to harness this complexity and use the power of roadblock, according
to lawyers and tax experts who have discussed the project with Treasury
Department officials.

Striking a deal could mean
that American companies pay more in taxes, but the US could lose out on tax
revenue. Yet, the absence of the deal could be even worse. If talks break down,
every country is likely to pass its own laws. That could mean American
companies are taxed multiple times on the same profits from a number of
countries.

The new tax rules would
mean that taxes are paid based on where users are located. That would allocate
tax revenue away from countries containing lots of headquarters – such as the
US, Sweden, Ireland and other European countries – and to populous nations.

 (Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com)

3. Health

23 Why spending just two hours a week
in nature is good for you

Anyone who’s watched a
child run free in a forest or play in a stream doesn’t need a research study to
tell them that spending time in nature is good for kids’ health. It’s something
that most parents know intuitively. When kids have the chance to play free in
nature, they’re happier, better behaved and more connected socially.

Most adults know that
nature is good for them, too – that’s why we often leave behind the stress of
work to vacation in beautiful, natural places. But how much time in nature do
we need to be healthier? A group led by researchers in the United Kingdom tried
to answer that question, in what they describe as a first step towards coming up
with a nature version of national physical activity guidelines.

In the study published
recently, researchers surveyed more than 19,000 people in the United Kingdom
about the recreational time they spent in nature during the past week, along
with their self-reported health and well-being. They found that people who
spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature saw a boost in their mental and
physical health, compared to people who didn’t spend any time in nature.

The researchers say the
size of the health benefits was similar to what people would get by meeting the
guidelines for physical activity. However, it didn’t matter how or where people
racked up the 120 minutes – many short walks near home were just as effective
as a longer hike on the weekend at a park. The researchers point out that this
is just a first step towards being able to recommend that people spend a
certain amount of time each week in nature.

 (Source:
www.healthline.com)

24 For the third time, WHO declines to
declare the Ebola outbreak an emergency

Even with more than 1,400
dead, the World Health Organization says the risk of the disease spreading
beyond the region remains low and declaring an emergency could have backfired.
For the third time, WHO has declined to declare the Ebola outbreak in the
Democratic Republic of Congo a public health emergency, though the outbreak has
spread into neighbouring Uganda and ranks as the second deadliest in history.

An expert panel advised
WHO against it because the risk of the disease spreading beyond the region
remained low and declaring an emergency could have backfired. Other countries
might have reacted by stopping flights to the region, closing borders or
restricting travel, steps that could have damaged Congo’s economy.

Dr. Preben Aavitsland, a Norwegian
public health expert who served as the acting chairman of the emergency
committee advising WHO, said there was “not much to be gained but potentially a
lot to lose.”

At the same time, the
committee of ten infectious disease experts said in a statement that it was
“deeply disappointed” that donor nations have not given as much money as needed
by WHO and affected nations to battle the outbreak.

But some global health
experts have argued in recent months that WHO should declare an emergency to
bring the world’s attention to the Ebola crisis. Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of
the Wellcome Trust, a health foundation based in London, said that such a
declaration would have strengthened efforts to control the outbreak. “It would
have raised the levels of international political support and enhanced
diplomatic, public health, security and logistic efforts,” he said. WHO
Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus accepted the committee’s
recommendation, saying that even if the outbreak did not meet the criteria for
an emergency declaration, “for the affected families this is very much an
emergency.”

WHO has requested $98 million for its response and has
received only $44 million so far. In an interview before the announcement, Dr.
Tedros said it had recently received commitments from Britain, the United
States and Germany.

“We’ve never seen an
outbreak like this,” he said. “It happened in a chronic war zone and overlapped
with an election that politicised the whole situation. Militia attacks kept
interrupting the operations, and when that happens, the virus gets a free
ride.”