Technology

Activist investors say telecommunications pioneer AT&T Inc won't take their calls for its upcoming annual meeting, reinforcing their concerns that the shift of the gatherings to cyberspace due to the COVID-19 pandemic would restrict shareholder input.

The coronavirus outbreak in Germany has become manageable again as the number of patients who have made a recovery has been higher than the number of new infections every day this week, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Friday.

France's state-supported tracing app project "StopCovid" will not be ready when parliament debates it on April 28-29, the minister for digital affairs Cedric O said on Friday.

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived just as Respond Software CEO and co-founder Mike Armistead was trying to sell automated cyber security software to new clients. Most of them are no longer in a buying mood. So Respond Software, a 50-employee, venture-backed startup, applied for about $1 million in government support.

Companies will be able to hold their annual shareholders' meeting over the phone or online during the coronavirus pandemic under a promised new law, Britain's business ministry and accounting watchdog said on Friday.

Italy plans to use a smartphone app developed by tech start-up Bending Spoons to track people who test positive for the new coronavirus as part of efforts to lift its nationwide lockdown.

Australians were strongly urged to sign up for a controversial mobile phone app that will track their movements as officials warned on Friday that public life could be constrained for another year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Amazon does not know when its warehouses in France might reopen but hopes it can be soon, the head of its French business said on Friday.

A senior cybersecurity official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday that foreign government hackers have broken into companies conducting research into treatments for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) circulated on Thursday a draft order asking FCC members to approve Ligado Networks' low-power nationwide 5G network despite objections from the Defense Department and major U.S. airlines.

Verizon Communications Inc on Thursday agreed to buy BlueJeans Network Inc, a rival of Zoom Video Communications Inc, for less than $500 million as it looks to tap into the new-found popularity of video-conferencing apps.

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would start notifying users who had engaged with false posts about COVID-19 which could cause physical harm, such as drinking bleach to cure the virus, and connect them to accurate information.

Sports fans and players across the world frustrated by canceled matches because of the coronavirus epidemic are turning to e-sports, with professional real-world athletes joining virtual game tournaments of football, auto racing and basketball.

A senior FBI cybersecurity official said on Thursday that foreign government hackers have broken into institutions conducting research into treatments for COVID-19, the sometimes fatal respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.

Toyota-backed self driving company Pony.ai said on Friday it would provide an autonomous delivery service to residents of Irvine, California, as demand for online orders surges because of the coronavirus lockdown.

Uber Technologies Inc said on Thursday it expects an impairment charge of up to $2.2 billion in the first quarter due to the coronavirus outbreak and revenue to decline by $17 million to $22 million in the quarter.

U.S. fintech startup Stripe Inc said on Thursday it raised $600 million, as companies that provide the online infrastructure for financial and payment services get a boost from the coronavirus pandemic.

Private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc has registered Rackspace Holding Inc for an initial public offering (IPO) that could value the cloud services firm at more than $10 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter said.

U.S. chip supplier Nvidia Corp said on Thursday Chinese authorities had approved its $6.9 billion acquisition of Israeli chip designer Mellanox Technologies Ltd, overcoming the last obstacle for the deal announced over a year earlier.

Apps to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus should not collect user location data, the European Commission said on Thursday, as Apple Inc and Google weighed whether to work with virus apps that use location tracking.