EU accepts Apple pledge to let rivals access ‘tap to pay’ iPhone tech to resolve antitrust case/node/2547761/media
EU accepts Apple pledge to let rivals access ‘tap to pay’ iPhone tech to resolve antitrust case
Apple in January proposed to allow third-party mobile wallet and payment service providers access to the contactless payment function in its iOS operating system. (AP)
EU accepts Apple pledge to let rivals access ‘tap to pay’ iPhone tech to resolve antitrust case
The commission had accused Apple in 2022 of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to its mobile payment technology
The commission had charged the company with denying others access to Apple Pay
Updated 11 July 2024
AP
LONDON: The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, said that it’s accepting the commitments that Apple offered earlier this year and will make them legally binding.
The commission had accused Apple in 2022 of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to its mobile payment technology.
Apple responded by proposing in January to allow third-party mobile wallet and payment service providers access to the contactless payment function in its iOS operating system. After Apple tweaked its proposals following testing and feedback, the commission said those “final commitments” would address its competition concerns.
“Today’s commitments end our Apple Pay investigation,” Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s executive vice president for competition policy, told a press briefing in Brussels. “The commitments bring important changes to how Apple operates in Europe to the benefit of competitors and customers.”
The deal promises more choice for Europeans. iPhone users will be able to set a default wallet of their choice while mobile wallet developers will be able to use important iPhone verification functions like Face ID, Vestager said.
Mobile wallets rely on near-field communication, or NFC, which uses a chip to wirelessly communicate with a merchant’s payment terminal.
The commission had charged the company with denying others access to Apple Pay, which it said is the biggest NFC-based mobile wallet on the market.
The changes that Apple is making are to remain in force for a decade, will apply throughout the bloc’s 27 countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, and will be monitored by a trustee.
Apple must make the changes in the EU by July 25.
“As of this date, developers will be able to offer a mobile wallet on the iPhone with the same “tap and go” experience that so far has been reserved for Apple Pay,” Vestager said.
Apple said in a prepared statement that it is “providing developers in the European Economic Area with an option to enable NFC contactless payments and contactless transactions” for uses like car keys, corporate badges, hotel keys, and concert tickets.
Breaches of EU competition law can draw fines worth up to 10 percent of a company’s annual global revenue, which in Apple’s case, could have amounted to tens of billions of dollars.
Fortune reveals 100 Most Powerful Women in Business list for 2025
First Abu Dhabi Bank Group CEO Hana Al-Rostamani, National Bank of Kuwait’s Deputy Group CEO Shaikha Al-Bahar both feature
Updated 15 min 13 sec ago
Zaira Lakhpatwala
DUBAI: Fortune has announced the 2025 Most Powerful Women in Business list, featuring 100 leading businesswomen from sectors including finance, tech, healthcare, telecom, retail and energy.
Its publication coincides with Fortune’s inaugural Most Powerful Women International conference which is taking place in Riyadh on May 20-21.
This year’s edition of the list features 52 women from the US and 48 from other countries, including one each from the UAE and Kuwait.
Hana Al-Rostamani, group CEO of First Abu Dhabi Bank, comes in at No. 76. She is currently the only female chief executive of a publicly listed corporation in the UAE, and serves on several boards, including the Institute of International Finance, the US-UAE Business Council, and the Arab Monetary Fund’s cross-border payment system Buna.
Shaikha Al-Bahar, deputy group CEO at the National Bank of Kuwait, features at No. 92. She has risen through the ranks since joining the bank in 1977 and was appointed to her current role in 2014.
Al-Bahar is the only woman on NBK’s executive management team. She is also chair of the National Bank of Kuwait France, and the National Bank of Kuwait Egypt, as well as a board member of the bank’s UK subsidiary.
“The rise of women as CEOs is continuing, which is great,” said Alyson Shontell, editor-in-chief and chief content officer of Fortune.
She told Arab News: “There have been some years we’ve been doing the list where it has taken a step back. (But) this year, 11 percent of Fortune 500 (companies are) run by women, and that’s the highest it has ever been.”
There are several studies showing the correlation between “diversity of thought and background” in leadership ranks and the financial outcome of a company, and so, “we track it, and we track the progress (in) the hopes of making business better,” Shontell added.
Compiled by Fortune editors, the list is based on several factors such as company size and health, as well as an executive’s career trajectory, influence, innovation, and efforts to make business better.
Lineker had earlier shared a post criticizing Zionism, accompanied by a rat emoji
He will not be part of the BBC’s coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup or next season’s FA Cup coverage
Updated 20 May 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker will leave the corporation following a controversial social media post that drew accusations of antisemitism, according to a statement.
Lineker had earlier shared a post criticizing Zionism, accompanied by a rat emoji, an image historically associated with antisemitic tropes, before deleting it following backlash.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Lineker apologized for the post and announced he would step down early, with the final episode of his show “Match of the Day” airing as the Premier League concludes on Sunday.
He will not be part of the BBC’s coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup or next season’s FA Cup coverage as previously agreed with the broadcaster.
Lineker acknowledged that the post “contained an emoji that has awful connotations.”
He added: “Unfortunately, I did not see the emoji. If I had, I would never, ever have shared it.
“I have stood up for minorities and humanitarian issues, and against all forms of racism all of my life, including, of course, antisemitism, which I absolutely abhor. There’s no place for it and never should be.”
The BBC confirmed Lineker’s departure in its statement on Monday. BBC Director-General Tim Davie said: “Gary has acknowledged the mistake he made. Accordingly, we have agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season.
“Gary has been a defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades. His passion and knowledge have shaped our sports journalism, and earned him the respect of sports fans across the UK and beyond.”
The incident was the latest controversial post by the 64-year-old, who has found himself at the center of several rows over his social media usage, most of which involve him sharing his political views, which goes against the BBC’s rules on impartiality.
In March 2023, he was temporarily suspended over comments he made criticizing the Conservative government’s asylum policy.
Earlier in February, he was among 500 high-profile celebrities who signed an open letter urging the BBC to reinstate a documentary on Gaza that had been removed from iPlayer after it emerged its narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
In his written statement, Lineker said: “Football has been at the heart of my life for as long as I can remember — both on the pitch and in the studio.
“However, I recognize the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”
Microsoft wants AI ‘agents’ to work together and remember things
Agents are AI systems that can accomplish specific tasks, such as fixing a software bug, on their own
Microsoft is trying to help AI agents have better memories of things that users have asked them to do: Exec
Updated 19 May 2025
Reuters
REDMOND, Washington: Microsoft envisions a future where any company’s artificial intelligence agents can work together with agents from other firms and have better memories of their interactions, its chief technologist said on Sunday ahead of the company’s annual software developer conference.
Microsoft is holding its Build conference in Seattle on May 19, where analysts expect the company to unveil its latest tools for developers building AI systems.
Speaking at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, ahead of the conference, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott told reporters and analysts the company is focused on helping spur the adoption of standards across the technology industry that will let agents from different makers collaborate. Agents are AI systems that can accomplish specific tasks, such as fixing a software bug, on their own.
Scott said that Microsoft is backing a technology called Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source protocol introduced by Google-backed Anthropic. Scott said MCP has the potential to create an “agentic web” similar to the way hypertext protocols that helped spread the Internet in the 1990s.
“It means that your imagination gets to drive what the agentic web becomes, not just a handful of companies that happen to see some of these problems first,” Scott said.
Scott also said that Microsoft is trying to help AI agents have better memories of things that users have asked them to do, noting that, so far, “most of what we’re building feels very transactional.”
But making an AI agent’s memory better costs a lot of money because it requires more computing power. Microsoft is focusing on a new approach called structured retrieval augmentation, where an agent extracts short bits of each turn in a conversation with a user, creating a roadmap to what was discussed.
“This is a core part of how you train a biological brain — you don’t brute force everything in your head every time you need to solve a particular problem,” Scott said.
‘It’s a no-brainer to go where the progress is,’ Fortune editor-in-chief tells Arab News ahead of Riyadh summit on women in business/node/2601246/media
‘It’s a no-brainer to go where the progress is,’ Fortune editor-in-chief tells Arab News ahead of Riyadh summit on women in business
Alyson Shontell finds Kingdom’ Vision 2030 transformation “remarkable,” so the magazine wants to see it for itself and show it to the world
The CCO says aim is to build a global network through which women in the Middle East feel connected to women in other parts of the world
Updated 19 May 2025
Zaira Lakhpatwala
RIYADH: The Fortune Most Powerful Women franchise, which includes an annual list of the 100 Most Powerful Women, began in 1998. Now, nearly three decades on, the publication is entering the Middle East region with the Fortune Most Powerful Women International conference in Riyadh on May 20 and 21.
“More and more women were getting into the upper ranks of business,” and “we wanted to be on the ground covering it,” said Alyson Shontell, editor-in-chief and chief content officer of Fortune.
“There’s no more exciting place for us to be right now (than Saudi Arabia) covering the world of business and women’s progress,” she added.
Despite reforms and transformation in the region, some still view it as a place with restricted freedom for women and media. However, Shontell is “excited to go in judgment-free,” and connect with women in the region and “show what they’re doing to the world,” she said.
The transformation in the Kingdom since Vision 2030 has been “remarkable” and, she added, “we want to see it for ourselves and show it to the world.
“It’s a no-brainer to go where the progress is: the Middle East.”
Fortune’s ambition is “to connect global power and the biggest businesses in the world,” and so “we would love to build the most powerful women’s network into a global network,” through which women in the Middle East feel connected to women in other parts of the world, she explained.
This year, 11 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women, which is the highest number it has ever been, Shontell said.
There is still a long way ahead before gender equality is reached in businesses, but “that’s a big reason why we think it’s still important to show the changing evolution of power,” she said.
Last year, Fortune also published a Most Powerful People list — “to recognize powerful people as powerful people” — and that list was dominated by men.
“That’s how the world is, and we’re not going to pretend that it’s otherwise,” Shontell said, adding that it is part of Fortune’s mission to track progress, present the world as it is, and when there are changes, to showcase them as well.
For Alyson Shontell, editor-in-chief and chief content officer of Fortune, there’s no more exciting place for her team to be right now to covering the world of business and women’s progress than Saudi Arabia. (AFP/File)
At the beginning of this year, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his second day in office calling titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”
He has issued multiple orders since then aimed at rolling back the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) policies of major corporations, foundations, non-profits, educational institutions and even the government.
One order, which deems DEI policies “illegal,” suggests that these policies are a “guise” for “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences.”
The directives have raised several concerns, some around women’s participation in the workforce.
Shontell, however, remains optimistic. “There’s a pretty strong commitment from women in the United States,” she said.
“We have made a lot of progress over the last 50 years here, and I don’t think many people would like to see that backslide.”
Alyson Shontell says that despite US President Donald Trump's policies aimed at rolling back the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) policies of major corporations, foundations, non-profits, educational institutions and even the government, women have made a lot of progress in the United States and there is no sign of sliding back. (AFP/File photo)
Shontell herself has been part of that commitment. She joined Business Insider in 2008, as the company’s sixth employee going on to become editor-in-chief in 2016.
When she was appointed as editor-in-chief at Fortune in 2021, she became the youngest and only woman to serve in that role in the company’s 95 years.
“When you think of who the editor-in-chief of Fortune, or even Business Insider, is, you don’t think of a young woman,” Shontell said.
To illustrate her point, she said that even if one asked AI what it thought the editor of a business magazine looks like, it would draw up someone like JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon.
And she was right. We asked Meta AI and ChatGPT: “Can you generate an image of the editor-in-chief of a major global business publication?” The former gave us four images: one of a woman and three of men, while the latter gave a single image featuring a man
There is still a long way ahead before gender equality is reached in businesses, but “that’s a big reason why we think it’s still important to show the changing evolution of power,” says Alyson Shontell. (AFP/File)
The most common reaction Shontell receives is surprise. But she doesn’t mind. Rather, she likes surprising people and the feeling that “no one sees you coming.”
It “kind of gives you something to work toward something to be extra proud of when you achieve it,” she said.
For Shontell, the industry has been nothing but change since she stepped into it, which was well after the days of leisurely business lunches and thick magazines, she says.
“A lot of the trends that we’re seeing now are just completely different than they were before,” and much of the conversation in the newsroom is around future-proofing the company, she said.
Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit in Riyadh will convene women leading globally across business, politics, culture, and more for a mix of international business conversations and key insights into the Middle East region. #MPWDailyhttps://t.co/u72Tj60l2i
The key, according to her, is a flexible team and the knack to recognize trends and understand which ones are here to stay.
When she was at Business Insider, her goal was to get everyone to read it. Fortune, on the other hand, is not about scale.
“My goal is to continue to up our relevance and to broaden the audience just a little bit, but to keep it very much thought leadership,” she said.
Shontell explained that it is hard to run a company in a fast-changing and unpredictable world, and so, the question is: “How can we be the best asset for this global leadership reader?”
The aim is to “give them the information they need to do their jobs through the best of their abilities, so that the rest of us can all benefit from them making better decisions.”
Alyson Shontell says she doesn’t mind the still prevailing common perception about gender in the business world. She likes surprising people and the feeling that “no one sees you coming.” (Instagram: fortunempw)
Fortune was relatively slow to embrace digital media with its website only launching in 2014.
By the end of 2024, it had 24 million global users, and its social channels have a total of 7 million followers.
Still, not many younger audiences are aware of the brand or consume its content. Shontell admits that while Fortune has been very good at reaching C-suite audiences, “we have increasingly been bad at reaching the next generation and pulling them up through their career path.”
But now, with social media, she says “we have permission to show up differently on different platforms” to reach a potential reader.
That means speaking in a different tone of voice perhaps to reach GenZs and millennials on platforms like TikTok, which would be “their first experience with us,” she said.
It is a “delicate balance” of “how do you get that next gen reader so that Fortune will continue to exist and be read and widely known in 20 years, and how do you maintain that thought leadership at the same time?”
As part of this effort, Fortune is reinventing its video offering this year and launching podcasts.
Artificial intelligence is at the core of technology and any conversation about it, and undoubtedly is an “incredibly powerful tool,” said Shontell.
Despite the dangers of AI — fake news, misinformation, deepfakes — and concerns about potential job losses, Shontell believes AI will bring journalism back to its roots.
Any news or information that can be rounded up and aggregated does not need humans and will be done by AI, but that is an “exciting opportunity, because it will bring journalism back to its core roots of seeking original information and facts and bringing it to readers first with the best analysis (and) the best new information that you can get,” she said.
Shontell says that in the last decade or so, the news media industry has almost lost its way, partly because the business model is predicated on cutting through noise and grabbing attention, instead of delivering news in a way that is aligned with the news company’s specific approach.
There will be “hard change,” and news firms can either be a big publication with scale and a “solid” business model like The New York Times or Bloomberg, or a smaller, niche publication; anything in the “messy middle” will have a difficult time, she said.
Photo group says it has ‘suspended attribution’ of historic Vietnam picture because of doubts
World Press Photo honored AP’s Nick Ut with its ” photo of the year ” in 1973
Picture of girl running from a napalm attack became an iconic symbol of the war’s tragedy
Updated 17 May 2025
AP
An organization that honored The Associated Press’ Nick Ut with its ” photo of the year ” in 1973 for a picture of a girl running from a napalm attack in the Vietnam War says it has “suspended its attribution” to Ut because of doubts over who actually took it.
World Press Photo’s report Friday adds to the muddle over an issue that has split the photographic community since a movie earlier this year, “The Stringer,” questioned Ut’s authorship. The photo of a naked and terrified Kim Phuc became an iconic symbol of the war’s tragedy.
After two investigations, The Associated Press said it found no definitive evidence to warrant stripping Ut’s photo credit. The AP said it was possible Ut took the picture, but the passage of time made it impossible to fully prove, and could find no evidence to prove anyone else did.
World Press Photo said its probe found that two other photographers — Nguyen Thanh Nghe, the man mentioned in “The Stringer,” and Huynh Cong Phuc — “may have been better positioned” to take the shot.
“We conclude that the level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo. “At the same time, lacking conclusive evidence pointing definitively to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship, either.”
World Press Photo, an organization whose awards are considered influential in photography, won’t attempt to recover the cash award given to Ut, a spokeswoman said.
Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, said his client hadn’t spoken to World Press Photo after some initial contact before “The Stringer” was released. “It seems they had already made up their mind to punish Nick Ut from the start,” he said.
Gary Knight, a producer of “The Stringer,” is a four-time judge of the World Press Photo awards and a consultant to the World Press Photo Foundation.
The AP said Friday that its standards “require proof and certainty to remove a credit and we have found that it is impossible to prove exactly what happened that day on the road or in the (AP) bureau over 50 years ago.”
“We understand World Press Photo has taken different action based on the same available information, and that is their prerogative,” the statement said. “There is no question over AP’s ownership of the photo.”
Meanwhile, the Pulitzer Prize that Ut won for the photo appears safe. The Pulitzers depend on news agencies who enter the awards to determine authorship, and administrator Marjorie Miller — a former AP senior editor — pointed to the AP’s study showing insufficient proof to withdraw credit. “The board does not anticipate future action at this time,” she said Friday.
