Alibaba ploughs $200 million into Snapchat in latest startup deal: source

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is investing $200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat, a source familiar with the deal said, striking its latest Silicon Valley deal as the Chinese ecommerce company builds up mobile services. The investment values the company at around $15 billion, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the situation as saying.

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European telecoms firms call for pragmatism on net neutrality

By Leila Abboud BARCELONA (Reuters) – Europe's two biggest telecom operators have called on regulators to be flexible and pragmatic in finalising rules to protect the openness of the Internet, to allow them to give priority to certain kinds of data traffic on their networks.

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Cameron: Internet firms must do more after UK girls head to Syria

By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron said internet firms must do more to deal with online extremism after three teenage girls radicalized “in their bedrooms” left London in an apparent bid to travel to Syria. Friends Amira Abase, 15, Shamima Begum, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, flew to Turkey last week in what the authorities believe was an attempt to travel to Syria to join the militant Sunni Islamist group Islamic State. News of their actions led to calls from lawmakers for social media companies to do more after it was revealed they had been in contact via Twitter with other women involved with Islamic State

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Alibaba’s Jack Ma seeks to reassure employees over U.S. lawsuits

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd Executive Chairman Jack Ma urged employees to relax about U.S. lawsuits against the firm over possible failure to disclose information to investors, in a letter to staff posted on his official microblog on Friday. A series of lawsuits have been filed in the United States after an unusually public fracas with a Chinese regulator last month over the issue of fakes being sold on Alibaba's websites.

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Uber ordered to shut down South Carolina operations for now

(Reuters) – Ride-sharing company Uber has been ordered by South Carolina regulators to cease operations in the state while it remains in the process of seeking permission to legally do business there. The San Francisco-based company, valued at about $40 billion in its latest fundraising, has touched a raw nerve in many parts of the United States and other countries by threatening to open up often tightly controlled and licensed taxicab markets.

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