BLOCK Financial News

Tuesday, August 22, 2023 – While top meme coin prices are faltering, new kid on the block, Sonik Coin, has raised more than $300k  from investors in its goal of becoming the fastest crypto ever to reach a $100 million market cap.

Ecuadorians voted against drilling for oil in a protected area of the Amazon, an important decision that will require the state oil company to end its operations in a region that’s home to two isolated tribes and is a hotspot of biodiversity

Thavisin from the populist Pheu Thai party secured enough votes in parliament to become the country's 30th prime minister on Tuesday. While the vote was still ongoing, his supporters celebrated an end to months of post-election uncertainty in which the winning progressive Move Forward Party was blocked from taking power by conservative senators. Srettha, a real estate tycoon, will lead a coalition of 11 parties assembled by Pheu Thai that includes two pro-military parties affiliated with outgoing Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. Move Forward was excluded from the coalition.

Microsoft has submitted a new proposal to Britain's competition regulator for the acquisition of video gaming giant Activision Blizzard, the watchdog said Tuesday, after a previous version of the deal was blocked. Xbox-owner Microsoft launched a bid for Activision Blizzard early last year, seeking to establish the world's third biggest gaming firm by revenue after China's Tencent and Japan's PlayStation maker Sony. But the $69 billion deal for the purchase of the owner of game titles including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush has faced significant scrutiny by regulators. Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it has «opened a new phase 1 investigation into a new, restructured deal by Microsoft to buy Activision». It added that the new deal follows confirmation by the regulator that «the original deal would be blocked to protect innovation and choice in cloud gaming». Under the new proposed deal «Microsoft will not acquire cloud rights for existing Activision PC and console games, or for new games released by Activision during the next 15 years (this excludes the European Economic Area),» the CMA said. Instead these rights will be divested to French game developer Ubisoft Entertainment prior to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision, according to the CMA. Ubisoft will in particular have «the ability to supply Activision's gaming content to all cloud gaming service providers (including to Microsoft itself)». «This will allow gamers to access Activision's games in different ways, including through cloud-based multigame subscription services,» Sarah Cardell, the CMA chief executive, said. — Confidence — Cardell added that «this is not a green light». «Our goal has not changed — any future

Virgin Australia boss Jayne Hrdlicka has called on the government to reconsider its decision to block Qatar Airways from adding flights to east coast cities, saying it would have an immediate impact on reducing fares and boosting tourism.

animal husbandry minister, Dharampal Singh, by deliberately allowing stray cattle to block the road in Bareilly. As per a TOI report, on August 17, a group of farmers from Pipariya Uprala village in the Sirauli area took action to halt the road when the minister, accompanied by additional chief secretary Rajneesh Dubey, was en route to attend the inauguration of an animal polyclinic in Aonla region, which falls within the minister's jurisdiction. The procession found itself stuck for more than half an hour due to the blockade. An anonymous local farmer stated, «It has been over a year since Singh took over the animal husbandry ministry, but his commitment to eradicating the issue of stray cattle remains unfulfilled.

Reliance Jio, India’s telecom market leader, may launch its fixed wireless access (FWA) device offering – Jio AirFiber — for the consumer market in the festive quarter at an up to 20% discount from the current options in the market, industry executives and analysts said. This will be the first mainline effort by Jio to monetise 5G after the data top pack it introduced early this year. “We should hear the announcement during the upcoming AGM (annual general meeting). Traditionally, Jio has launched new products with big bang offers and this may be no different,” said a person in the know. Jio did not respond to queries sent on the matter by ET at press time. The telco is said to have started consumer trials across cities where its 5G rollout has completed and stabilised. It has also sent out devices to selected users, including employees, for testing in the home environment in preparation for the launch, those in the know added.

Twitter) users can finally breathe a sigh of relief as a recent glitch that affected the visibility of images and links in tweets shared before December 2014 has finally been successfully fixed by the micro-blogging platform. Reports of the issue initially surfaced over the weekend, with concerns arising regarding posts made before 2014, especially those containing images or shortened links from the platform. The glitch, which came to light through a post by Tom Coates, caught attention for affecting even the iconic 2014 Oscars selfie by Ellen DeGeneres, which became the most retweeted ever post. It was a picture of her with famous people like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Later, the picture came back, but not everyone got their pictures back. In response, the @Support account of X released a statement confirming the resolution of the problem and gave assurance that no data or images were permanently lost.

Fund managers were assessing four capital raisings on Tuesday morning as a trio of ASX-listed explorers and a traffic management operator entered trading halts.

Trump said he will turn himself in on Thursday in Georgia to face racketeering and other charges stemming from his bid to overturn the 2020 election. Writing on his platform Truth Social on Monday, Trump said that that day he would be «ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis,» the Georgia official who brought the year's fourth indictment against the former president. The judge in the case earlier approved a $200,000 bond for Trump in the racketeering case filed against him in the southern state. Trump and the 18 other co-defendants in the landmark case have until noon (1600 GMT) on Friday to turn themselves in to the authorities in Georgia to be booked. In his post Trump said Willis is acting «in strict coordination with Crooked Joe Biden's DOJ.

Lithium producer Allkem’s profit soared to a record as its shareholders prepare to vote on a merger with downstream processing specialist Livent later this year.

Ecuadorians voted against drilling for oil in a protected area of the Amazon, an important decision that will require the state oil company to end its operations in a region that’s home to two isolated tribes and is a hotspot of biodiversity

The non-fungible token (NFT) market has been a subject of intense scrutiny and interest, with top NFT traders realizing substantial profits. A recent study by CoinGecko, published on August 4, 2023, sheds light on the investment returns of the top NFT traders on the Ethereum blockchain.

By Brendan Pierson

Broadcom's planned $61-billion takeover of cloud computing firm VMware, which the US chipmaker said should be completed by the end of October. The Competition and Markets Authority last month gave its provisional approval to the deal announced in May 2022, and said on Monday that «its final decision is that the deal does not substantially reduce competition — clearing it to proceed in the UK». Broadcom is seeking to expand into the software market to boost its server business and has already acquired two complementary firms, CA Technology and Symantec. VMware's key product allows different clients to share computer servers by creating what is called a virtual server. British regulators conducted a more in-depth probe into whether the merged company would have an interest in hobbling rivals by making its products work less well or be incompatible. It also examined whether the merged company would gain undue advantage by rivals needing to submit information to make their products interoperable. The CMA found that restricting product interoperability would cause the merged company greater financial losses than gains, and that it would not gain competitive advantage when rivals provided it with product information to ensure that interoperability. «In this case, having carefully considered the evidence and found no competition concerns, we have concluded the deal can go ahead,» said Richard Feasey, chairman of the independent panel that carried out the in-depth probe of the merger. The European Union gave its approval to the merger last month and Broadcom said on Monday that United States authorities did not take action to block the deal during the statutory waiting period. In a statement, Broadcom «affirmed its expectation

Manipur on Monday reimposed an indefinite blockade on two vital National Highways in the state . They accuse the rival community for disrupting supplies of essential communities in tribal dominated areas. The Committee on Tribal Unity (COTU) spearheading the indefinite blockade on the Imphal-Dimapur (NH-2) and Imphal-Jiribam (NH-37) National Highway in Kangpokpi district demanding uninterrupted and adequate supplies of essential commodities to Kuki-Zo community inhabited hill areas of the state. The COTU General Secretary Lamminlun Singsit said that we have earlier given an ultimatum that they would blockade both NH-2 and NH-37 from August 21 if the uninterrupted and adequate supplies of food grains, essential commodities and live saving drugs to the tribal areas are not ensured. The NH-2, the surface lifeline of Manipur was blocked for nearly two months after the ethnic violence broke out in Manipur on May 3.

Justin Trudeau on Monday blasted Meta for banning domestic news from its platforms as wildfires rage, saying up-to-date information during a crisis is crucial. «Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of people's safety,» he told a televised news conference in the Atlantic province of Prince Edward Island, saying the company's actions were «inconceivable.» Trudeau's comments represent the latest government attack on Meta, which this month started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles. Federal Liberal cabinet ministers last week described the ban as reckless and irresponsible.

Himachal Pradesh is battering heavy rains for the past few days with the death toll in the state climbed to 224 in the monsoon fury while 117 people died in road accidents. The rainfall has triggered a number of cases of landslides and cloud bursts which led to huge losses in life and property. A total of 2,022 houses have been fully damaged, and 9,615 houses have been partially damaged, with 113 landslides occurring in this year's monsoon season.

Cauvery water from KRS reservoir to Tamil Nadu to «help the DMK regime perform well in the upcoming Lok Sabha election.» The DMK and Congress are part of the anti-NDA political grouping INDIA. The BJP accused the State's Congress regime of first releasing the water for political gains and was now enacting a drama of convening an all-party meet on Cauvery.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast heavy to very heavy rain, thunderstorm accompanied by lightning or very intense to extremely intense spell of rain is very likely to occur at isolated places in Uttarakhand's Dehradun, Tehri, Pauri, Nainital, Champawat and Bageshwar districts in the next 24 hours, ANI reported The weather department has issued an orange alert for Dehradun, Pauri, Nainital, Champawat and Bageshwar districts while a yellow alert has been issued for Haridwar, Tehri, Chamoli, Udham Singh Nagar and Pithoragarh districts. Heavy rains in Uttarakhand had triggered landslides and flash floods in several places, officials said.

climate change will make extreme weather events occur more often. When they do, power and cellphone service often fail. But that doesn’t mean your tech won’t be important or useful.