Bitcoin climbs past $53,000 after hitting seven-week low

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Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates has claimed that the world will be "completely back to normal" by the end of 2022 thanks to Covid-19 vaccine supplies. 

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Mr Gates said that the speedy rollout of vaccines in the US and the UK would free up jabs to be shared with less wealthy countries. 

He added that he did not expect the virus to have vanished by next year, but that cases would be in the "very small numbers". 

Roku, one of the largest TV streaming services for smart TVs has accused Google of unfair demands for preferential treatment for its YouTube TV service.

Roku on Monday notified its users via email that Google had threatened to remove YouTube TV from the service. 

It is the latest allegation of anti-competitive practises levied at Google, which was sued by the Daily Mail owner last week over its search engine. 

Although Roku provides YouTube TV to its customers, it also competes with Google for smart TV dongles, operating systems and TV shows. 

A Roku spokesman told Axios: "Google is attempting to use its YouTube monopoly position to force Roku into accepting predatory, anti-competitive and discriminatory terms that will directly harm Roku and our users.

"Roku is not asking Google for a single additional dollar in value. We simply cannot agree to terms that would manipulate consumer search results, inflate the cost of our products and violate established industry data practices."

A world without enough food is just around the corner and can only be averted if humans forget their qualms about eating genetically-modified crops.

That’s according to Federico Trucco, the chief executive officer of Bioceres Crop Solutions Corp., a company that’s literally trying to put bread on the table with the controversial technology.

Bioceres is trying to succeed where no other company has before by selling genetically-modified wheat. While the vast majority of the world’s soybean and corn crops are already GMOs, these are fed to livestock. Biotech wheat, on the other hand, would be directly eaten by humans in bread and pasta, something consumers and regulators have roundly rejected in the past. Currently, only Argentina, where Bioceres is based, has ever approved a GM wheat.

Trucco’s Malthusian warning about future food shortages comes as world leaders meet to recommit to emissions goals at time when climate change is decimating harvests, and a surge in food prices is forcing more people to go hungry.

“It’s going to get to a point when it becomes exponential and all of a sudden we need to change things yesterday,” Trucco said in an interview. “And I feel that’s coming up fairly soon. We’re not talking beyond five years.”

Bitcoin jumped as much as 12pc on Monday to over $53,000 and was on course to snap five straight days of losses, though the cryptocurrency has slumped almost a fifth from its all-time high hit earlier this month.

Some pinned Monday’s move on a tweet Saturday from billionaire Elon Musk, who in the past has affected prices with his comments on the social platform.

In a potential reference to cryptocurrencies, the Tesla founder asked “What does the future hodl?”, using a term often seen as meaning “hold on for dear life” that supporters use to refer to buying and holding their digital assets.

“There is always a sharp movement when Tesla’s CEO talks about Bitcoin on Twitter ahead of quarterly earnings,” said Laurent Kssis, global head of exchange-traded products at crypto firm 21Shares AG. “As the U.S. wakes up, we could see further appreciation leading to $54,000-$54,500.”

Cryptocurrencies fell sharply on Friday on concern that U.S. President Joe Biden's plan to raise capital gains taxes would curb investments in digital assets, though they later recovered some of their losses.

Bitcoin has lost over 19pc from its April 14 record of almost $65,000. Still, the cryptocurrency has risen over 80pc this year, fuelled by growing adoption from mainstream investors and companies such as Tesla.

Ministers have launched a £1bn auction for thousands of miles of phone lines running alongside Britain’s railways, in a move they hope will improve train services while boosting broadband speeds for millions of homes.

Private sector bidders will have the chance to upgrade 10,000 miles of cables, while also building 250 new mobile phone masts close to train lines. The investment could help the Government meet its commitments to drastically improve rural broadband and eradicate so-called 5G “notspots”.

It could also help with connectivity for passengers, if train companies improve their technology on board. The phone lines are also used for signalling on the railway. Many of the lines are decades old and made of copper; upgrading them to full-fibre lines is expected to improve the network by leading to fewer signal failures.

Read Ollie Gill's news story here

Apple has unveiled plans to invest more than $1 billion in North Carolina to build the company's first East Coast campus, a move expected to bring at least 3,000 new jobs to the state.

The North Carolina project falls under a commitment to invest $430 billion and add a total of 20,000 new jobs over the next five years, expanding teams in states including Colorado, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington, New York, California.

The campus and engineering hub is set to be located in the Raleigh-Durham area's Research Triangle Park alongside hundreds of other science and technology firms. The hub will be home to thousands of additional jobs in machine learning, artificial intelligence, software engineering and other fields, the company said.

The exact timeline for the project was not immediately given.

Apple also said it plans to establish a $100 million fund to support schools and community initiatives and contribute more than $110 million in infrastructure spending to go toward broadband, roads, bridges and public schools across the state.

Nicolas Kurona has bought Google.com.ar for just £2, according to a report in the BBC. 

Mr Kurona achieved the surprising feat last week after checking the Network Information Center Argentina (NIC) when Google was down. The NIC, which is responsible for operating the .ar country code domains, listed Argentina's Google domain as available to buy. 

"When the purchase process was completed and my data appeared, I knew that something was going to happen... I was really anxious," he told the BBC.

It remains unclear why Google's domain name was released, however the tech giant now says it has regained control of the domain. 

The removal of dozens of tweets seen to be critical of the Indian government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic is putting people's health at risk and quashing dissent, lawmakers and human rights activists said on Monday.

Twitter withheld some tweets after a legal request by the Indian government, a company spokeswoman told Reuters on Saturday. These included tweets from a lawmaker, a minister in the state of West Bengal, and a filmmaker.

"Suppression of information and criticism of government is not only dangerous for India but it is putting people around the world at risk," said Mirza Saaib Beg, a lawyer whose tweets were among those withheld.

"Freedom of inquiry is an intrinsic part of freedom of speech and expression. These restrictions are further reflective of the weakening of all institutional spaces in India," said Beg, who is studying at Britain's University of Oxford.

India's ministry for information technology did not respond to a request for comment.

It comes as the country's new coronavirus infections hit a record peak for a fifth day on Monday, rising to about 353,000 cases. Read our dispatch here. 

More than four million iPhone users could be in line for £750 each in compensation from Google as the company this week defends itself against a class action claim over data tracking in the Supreme Court. 

The tech giant will fight claims, potentially worth £3bn in total, that it "illegally" collected personal data from British iPhone users who used the Safari browser between 2011 to 2012.

Richard Lloyd, a former director at Which?, launched the mass legal action in 2018. The case was later thrown out after the judge ruled the defendants had not been able to prove the basis for their compensation claim against Google. 

However, in 2019, three Court of Appeal judges overturned the earlier ruling. Read more here.

Regulators have today launched an anti-trust probe into Meituan, one of China's biggest food delivery firms, as Beijing clips the wings of its soaring tech companies.

The probe was prompted by reports that Meituan allegedly engaged in forced exclusivity agreements with vendors, the State Administration for Market Regulation said in a statement.

Those were among its "suspected monopolistic behaviours", the regulator said.

E-commerce titan Alibaba was hit by a record 18.2 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) fine this month after facing a similar charge.

The woes of Meituan, which counts gaming giant Tencent as a shareholder, is the latest sign that China's assault on big tech is far from over.

Beijing has taken the country's tech firms to task in order to curtail the reach of private companies into the public's daily finances and - analysts believe - to rein in their runaway expansion as well as the status of their super-rich founders.

Two weeks ago the regulator warned 34 technology giants - including Baidu, Tencent and Meituan - to "rectify" any anti-competitive measures, prompting a series of public pledges to abide by anti-monopoly guidelines.

Cybersecurity company Darktrace is targeting a valuation of up to £1.9bn in an initial public offering, boosting confidence in London's ability to appeal to high profile technology listings after the recent Deliveroo flop.

According to terms of the deal, reported by Bloomberg, Darktrace will be marketing shares at 220p to 280p each. 

The company plans to sell between 51.1 million and 65.1 million new shares and hopes to raise around $200 million.

But the listing is not without controversy. My colleagues Matthew Field and James Cook covered how Darktrace has been accused of “very, very aggressive” sales tactics as well as its ties to Autonomy founder Mike Lynch . You can read their full story here. 

The NHS has signed a contract with London-based start-up Faculty, to use its artificial intelligence software to predict future demand, in anticipation of winter spikes and seasonal Covid cases.  

"COVID-19 will likely continue to be a challenge for healthcare services, especially as winter approaches," Faculty said in a blog post published on Monday, announcing the contract. 

"Faculty and the NHS will address new areas where AI forecasting tools can improve service delivery and patient care, such as understanding and predicting A&E demand and winter pressures." 

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Faculty worked with the NHS to develop an Early Warning System (EWS) that used data to warn hospitals when potential spikes in Covid cases were approaching so they could divert staff, beds and vital equipment to hotspots.

The new partnership wants to apply this technology across the NHS, not just to surges caused by Covid. Faculty personnel will work alongside NHS data scientists to build machine learning tools and maintain the current EWS tool. 

"The response to the pandemic has demonstrated the importance and impact of using data and machine learning techniques to make predictions about the future and inform more effective decision-making," said Faculty. 

Faculty was set up in 2014 by Dr Marc Warner. The company has also worked with the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), to monitor the impact of the pandemic on UK GDP and provide live updates to officials.

Daniel Ek, the billionaire chief executive of music streaming service Spotify, is readying a bid to buy Arsenal football club.

After tweeting last week about his desire to own the team, Ek has teamed up with former players Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira for a formal bid.

As well as hoping to buy Arsenal, Ek is fighting arch rival Apple for music streaming dominance and has also set up his own venture capital fund to back European technology start-ups.

The most popular guessing game for Apple followers today is predicting exactly when the company’s iOS 14.5 update will arrive.

Apple’s official word is that it’s coming this week. But Apple journalists have publicly predicted that iOS 14.5, and all the privacy enhancements it will bring, is coming either today or tomorrow.

Apple has a history of releasing software on Tuesdays, so we may have a little while to wait.

When Apple releases its latest iOS 14.5 software update today or tomorrow, the stakes are higher than just a handful of interesting new features.

This new update contains a broadside against the mobile advertising industry that threatens to upend its ability to keep generating money.

iOS 14.5 will explicitly ask iPhone users if they want to allow apps to track them around the web. Most surveys have indicated that a majority, perhaps even as many as 80pc, of iPhone users will refuse to give permission.

For apps that rely on tracking such as Facebook, this is a serious problem that threatens their ability to gather data and then serve relevant adverts. 

Apple agreed to delay the changes until now only after a major lobbying campaign led by Facebook that included full-page newspaper adverts. But now iOS 14.5 is right around the corner.

1) iPhone users could be in line for £750 from Google for 'illegal' data tracking The tech giant will on Wednesday fight allegations that it "illegally" collected personal data by using a Safari workaround

2) Kano gets another $15m and Future Fund backing for DIY computers The children's build-your-own-device start-up secured backing from the taxpayer last year

3) Opinion: Arm faces an uncertain future if $40bn Nvidia sale is blocked The British chipmaker returning to the public markets could be tricky to pull off at the same valuation, writes James Titcomb

4) Bank of England considers 'going Swedish' with Britcoin  Sweden's largely cashless society has lessons the UK can learn as it takes own tentative steps into digital currency

5) Investigation: Darktrace accused of 'aggressive' Autonomy-like sales tactics The cybersecurity company is listing next month, but its links to Autonomy founder Mike Lynch are under renewed scrutiny 

Coming up today

After 9pm – NXP semiconductors reports Q1 results