India’s central bank has restricted American Express and Diners Club from adding new customers starting next month, it said Friday, citing violation of local data-storage rules. In a statement, the Reserve Bank of India said existing customers of either of the two card companies will not be impacted by the new order, which goes into…
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Don’t let procrastination slow your roll. Yeah, we’re looking at you, early-stage founders. At TechCrunch, we love to reward action with savings. Want to save a cool $100? Buy your Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising pass before April 30, at 11:59 p.m. (PT), and you’ll keep a cool $100 in your pocket. Take action,…
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Accolade, an employee benefits company that went public last year, on Friday said it plans to buy direct-to-consumer virtual primary care startup PlushCare for up to $450 million. Accolade, which sells healthcare navigation and engagement tools to employers, will pay $40 million in cash and $340 million in Accolade common stock to acquire privately held…
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HOLD: Carr’s Group (CARR) With profits stable for the first half of the 2021 financial year, the agriculture and engineering company’s new chief executive is talking about simplifying the rabbit warren of corporate structures, writes Alex Hamer Carr’s has all the lingo of a 21st century business, with talk of synergies and governance reforms, but…
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The Biden administration marked the US return to international climate leadership this week with ambitious plans to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. But the move also resurfaced some old faultlines. The climate goal put the US broadly on par with the EU, which this week sealed the terms of a European law that commits…
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The best venture capitalists take moonshot risks based on due diligence, support portfolio companies through ups and downs and find focus through noise. When you look at the job description of the best founder, you’ll find nearly the exact same list of characteristics (except, of course, instead of a portfolio, the founder is supporting a…
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Two House lawmakers reintroduced a bill Thursday that would allow Medicare to fund mental and behavioral health services from trained specialists with similar challenges to their patients. The Promoting Effective and Empowering Recovery in Medicare Act of 2021, introduced by Reps. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) and Judy Chu (D-Calif.), would clarify that CMS can reimburse peer…
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While there’s been plenty of attention and money lavished on virtual event platforms over the past year, Introvoke co-founder and CEO Oana Manolache predicted that we’re only at the beginning of a “third wave of digital transformation.” In her framing, the first wave came at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was using video…
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New Bedford, Massachusetts, was once a wealthy centre of the energy industry, sending out ships to hunt sperm whales whose oil illuminated the lamps of the 19th century. The small city is now among the northeastern US state’s poorest and seeking an energy renaissance — as a place to piece together parts for huge wind…
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After spending much of his career in mission-critical environments, including the Israeli Air Force, Israeli Intelligence and leading development of a cybersecurity product at Microsoft, Amit Rosenzweig turned his attention to autonomous vehicles. It was a technology that he soon recognized would need what every other mission-critical system requires: humans. “I understood that there are…
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