TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1. #ALIBABA- Technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has facial recognition technology which can specifically pick out members of China's Uighur minority, surveillance industry researcher IPVM said in a report.
The report comes as human rights groups accuse China of forcing over 1 million Muslim Uighurs into labour camps, and call out firms suspected of complicity.
China has repeatedly denied forcing anyone into what it has called vocational training centres, and has also said the region of Xinjiang is under threat from Islamist militants.
Still, sensitivities have prompted caution among Chinese internet firms which often self-censor to avoid running afoul of a government which strictly controls online speech, and which last month published draft rules to police live streaming.


2. #TWITTER-Twitter Inc is reversing changes made to its retweet function intended to curb the spread of misinformation during the U.S. presidential election, the company said.
The microblogging site had in October made it difficult for users to retweet a tweet with misinformation and promoted the use of quote tweets, which included commentary from the user.
It had also imposed curbs including labeling and removal of tweets calling for people to interfere with the election process or implementation of results.
Twitter said it will no longer prompt quote tweets from the retweet icon. "Retweet functionality will be returning to the way it was before," the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
3. #UBER-A group of British Uber drivers took their employer to court in the Netherlands on Wednesday in a bid to get access to data the company collects about them.
The drivers say Uber determines the allocation of available rides and their fares based on information about their performance, behaviour and other personal traits it gathers through the app they have to use to do their job.
They demand full access to this information and the working of Uber's algorithms, as they say it ultimately decides how much money they earn and how they could do better.

4. #IBM:- International Business Machines Corp said on Wednesday Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna would take over as chairman from Jan. 1, replacing Ginni Rometty, who stepped down as its long-time CEO earlier this year.
Rometty, who was the tech pioneer's first woman CEO, would occasionally be asked to act as an independent contractor after her retirement, IBM said.
Before assuming the role of CEO in April, Krishna was head of IBM's cloud business and has been with the company since 1990.

5. #GOOGLE:-Staff on Google's Ethical AI research team on Wednesday demanded the company sideline a vice president and commit to greater academic freedom, escalating a confrontation with management following this month's termination of scientist Timnit Gebru.
The personnel called on Vice President Megan Kacholia to be removed from the team's management chain after she allegedly excluded Gebru's boss from the decision to fire her, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
Gebru had questioned Google's demand for her to retract a paper describing harms from Google-like technology, and the company answered by saying it accepted her resignation.
The document also demanded an explanation of the dismissal, transparency into reviews of staff papers, and an investigation into how Google handles employee complaints about working conditions, like those Gebru raised while at the company.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1.#GOOGLE- EU antitrust regulators have sought information from advertisers regarding Google advertising technology practices, a European Commission document seen by Reuters shows.
Alphabet-owned Google, the world's largest online search engine, has been hit with fines totalling 8.25 billion euros ($10 billion) in the last three years for blocking rivals in online shopping, Android smartphones and online advertising.
It now faces two European Union investigations into its advertising practices, focused on technology and data.
Google and Facebook together capture over half of the internet ad sales market globally. Both companies are currently the target of a U.S. lawsuit over their 2018 deal which gives Facebook's advertiser clients the option to place ads within Google's network of publishing partners

2.#LG :-South Korea's LG Electronics said on Wednesday it was considering all options for its loss-making mobile division, which analysts said could include shutting its smartphone business or selling off parts of the unit.
LG said in a statement that 23 consecutive quarters of losses in its mobile business had totalled around 5 trillion won ($4.5 billion) amid stiff competition.
Shares in LG closed up 12.8%, against a rise of 0.7% in the broader KOSPI index.
"In the global market, competition in the mobile business including smartphones has gotten fiercer," LG said in the clearest sign yet that it could be considering a winding down of the troubled business.
"LG Electronics believes we have reached the point where we need to make the best decision about our mobile phone business, considering current and future competitiveness."
Chief Executive Brian Kwon said the company planned to retain employees regardless of what happened to the mobile unit.

3.#AMAZON:- Amazon is suing EU antitrust regulators for allowing the Italian competition watchdog to pursue its own case against the U.S. online retail giant over the way it selects sellers, arguing that this should be wrapped into an EU investigation.
Amazon took its case to the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe's second-highest, on Tuesday, asking it to annul the EU's decision to exclude Italy from the wider investigation, a court filing shows.
The move came two months after the European Commission opened an investigation into the criteria the company uses to select winners of its "buy box", which allows customers to add items from a specific retailer directly into their shopping carts.
The probe will also examine whether the company gives preferential treatment to its own retail offers and marketplace sellers that use its logistics and delivery services.
The Italian case was launched in 2019 over the same issue but focuses on the Italian logistics markets.
Amazon said the EU should absorb the Italian case for the sake of consistency and efficiency.


4. #TWITTER:-Twitter has locked the account of China's U.S. embassy for a tweet that defended China's policies in the Xinjiang region, which the U.S. social media platform said violated the firm's policy against "dehumanization".
The Chinese Embassy account, @ChineseEmbinUS, posted a tweet this month that said that Uighur women were no longer "baby making machines," citing a study reported by state-backed newspaper China Daily.
The tweet was removed by Twitter and replaced by a label stating that it was no longer available. Although Twitter hides tweets that violate its policies, it requires account owners to manually delete such posts. The Chinese embassy's account has not posted any new tweets since Jan. 9.
Twitter's suspension of the embassy's account came a day after the Trump administration, in its final hours, accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang, a finding endorsed by the incoming Biden administration.
The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Twitter's move.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1.#TWITTER- India has asked Twitter Inc to take down 1,178 accounts the country says are backed by arch rival Pakistan or operated by sympathizers of a separatist Sikh group, two technology ministry sources said on Monday.
Many of these accounts were sharing and amplifying misinformation and provocative content on the ongoing farmers protests, one of the sources said, declining to be named as the order is not public.
Twitter has yet to comply with the government order, which was issued on Feb. 4, the sources said.

2.#SOFT BANK :- SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund unit posted an 844 billion yen ($8 billion) third quarter profit on Monday as Chief Executive Masayoshi Son hailed the bounce back of his investment portfolio.
The profit marks a sea change from a year earlier when high-profile misses such as the flopped IPO of office sharing firm WeWork and the COVID-19 pandemic forced Son to sell assets to stabilise his investing empire.
"Our vision never changed," Son told a news conference in Tokyo after his company announced its latest results.
But with interest rates at rock bottom, an ebullient market is now driving tech stock gains and a turnaround at the Vision Fund unit.
Son returned to a favoured analogy – that SoftBank is a goose that lays golden eggs by backing fast-growing companies such as Alibaba
3.#HYUNDAI:-South Korean's Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors Corp. saw their Shares plunge, after saying that they are not in talks with Apple Inc. in the latest round of a did-they-or-didn't-they game between the three companies.
Shares in Hyundai fell 5.01% to KRW237,000 ($211.91) by 11:59 PM ET (4:59 AM GMT) and Kia shares slumped 13.40% to KRW87,900 after both companies said earlier in the day in separate regulatory filings that “we are not having talks with Apple on developing autonomous vehicles.”
Both Korean companies saw their shares surge in early January, after Hyundai released a statement that said, “Apple and Hyundai are in discussion, but as it is at early stage, nothing has been decided." A local media report first broke the news of the collaboration, with the report also saying that the companies were ere in discussions to develop self-driving electric vehicles by 2027 and develop batteries at U.S. factories operated by either Hyundai or Kia.
However, Hyundai released a statement later in the day that backtracked on the earlier one, which erased all mentions of Apple but added that the company was “getting requests for cooperation on joint development of autonomous electric vehicles from various companies.” These “various companies” were not identified.


4. #AMAZON:- Amazon.com Inc has ordered hundreds of trucks that run on compressed Natural gas as it tests ways to shift its U.S. fleet away from heavier polluting trucks, the company told Reuters on Friday.
The coronavirus pandemic caused delivery activity to surge in 2020, with truck volumes exceeding 2019 levels on average while passenger car traffic fell. But that increase in road activity means more pollution, as heavier-duty trucks emit higher levels of greenhouse gases than passenger vehicles.
Transportation companies are building their stable of electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions. Much of the nation's freight is delivered via medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which account for more than 20% of the industry's greenhouse gas emissions even though they make up less than 5% of the road fleet, according to U.S. federal data.
"Amazon is excited about introducing new sustainable solutions for freight transportation and is working on testing a number of new vehicle types including electric, CNG and others," the company said in a statement.
Amazon has ordered more than 700 compressed natural gas class 6 and class 8 trucks so far, according to the company.
The online retailer's sales rose 38% in 2020; it plans to run a carbon neutral business by 2040.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT


1.#TWITTER- Twitter Inc said on Wednesday it would not fully comply with orders from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to take down some accounts as it does not believe the orders are consistent with Indian law.

It has permanently suspended some accounts but for others, it has only restricted access within India and the tweets can still be read outside the country.
The U.S. social media giant has found itself in a heated no-win row with Modi's administration, which wants it to take down more than 1,100 accounts and posts that the government argues are spreading misinformation about months-long farmers' protests against new agricultural laws.
Some accounts, the government said, are backed by arch-rival Pakistan or are operated by supporters of a separatist Sikh movement.
The government has played hardball, sending Twitter a notice of non-compliance last week that threatens its executives with jail terms of up to seven years and the company with fines if it does not block the content.
Twitter said it had suspended more than 500 accounts that were engaging in clear examples of platform manipulation and spam, and had also taken actions on hundreds of others that breached its rules relating to the inciting of violence and abuse.
Others were geo-blocked, although Twitter did not go into detail on how it made decisions on which accounts to restrict.
"These accounts continue to be available outside of India," Twitter said. "Because we do not believe that the actions we have been directed to take are consistent with Indian law."


2.#TESLA :Electric-vehicle startup Rivian, which is backed by Amazon.com Inc and Ford Motor Co, is looking to go public as soon as September at a valuation of about $50 billion or more, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.
Rivian has been in talks with bankers about its plans, but the company's timeline for an initial public offering isn't final and a listing could happen later in the year or next year, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company declined to comment.
Rivian, which aims to put an electric pickup and SUV in production this year, announced last month a $2.65-billion investment round led by T. Rowe Price. The startup has said it has raised $8 billion since the start of 2019.
The company's deliveries of pickups would start in June, while those of SUVs would begin in August. Launch editions of the vehicles are priced at $75,000 and $77,500, respectively, with a 300-mile (480 km) driving range for both.
In 2019, Amazon ordered 100,000 electric vans from Rivian. The first Amazon vehicles went into production at Rivian's factory in Normal, Illinois in late 2021, with all deliveries to be completed by 2024.


3.#APPLE:-Apple Inc has partnered with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to develop micro OLED displays, which it plans to use in its upcoming augmented reality (AR) devices, Nikkei Asia reported on Wednesday.
Apple is collaborating with TSMC, the sole supplier of iPhone processors, as micro OLED displays are far thinner, smaller and use less power, making them more suitable for use in wearable AR devices, the report said.

The displays under development are less than 1 inch in size, Nikkei added.
Bloomberg News in January reported that Apple was still working on underlying technologies for its AR glasses, codenamed N421. It said the product was several years away, citing sources, but added that Apple has previously targeted as early as 2023 to unveil it. The micro OLED project with TSMC is currently at the trial production stage and will take several years to achieve mass production, according to Nikkei.


4. #GOOGLE:- Alphabet Inc's YouTube said on Tuesday it has become the first digital platform to receive an accreditation from the Media Rating Council, signifying the streaming video service effectively protects its advertisers from appearing on content deemed inappropriate for paid ads.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1. #MASTER CARD- Mastercard Inc said on Wednesday it was planning to offer support for some cryptocurrencies on its network this year, joining a string of big-ticket firms that have pledged similar support.
The credit-card giant's announcement comes days after Elon Musk's Tesla Inc revealed it had purchased $1.5 billion of bitcoin and would soon accept it as a form of payment.
Asset manager BlackRock Inc and payments companies Square and PayPal have also recently backed cryptocurrencies.
Mastercard already offers customers cards that allow people to transact using their cryptocurrencies, although without going through its network.
"Doing this work will create a lot more possibilities for shoppers and merchants, allowing them to transact in an entirely new form of payment. This change may open merchants up to new customers who are already flocking to digital assets," Mastercard said.
Mastercard specified that not all cryptocurrencies will be supported on its network, adding that many of the hundreds of digital assets in circulation still need to tighten their compliance measures.
Many cryptocurrencies have struggled to win the trust of mainstream investors and the general public due to their speculative nature and potential for money laundering.

2.#TWITTER :Twitter Inc Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Wednesday the company is exploring allowing its users to receive tips, or digital payments, from their followers.
Dorsey said the feature would help the social media platform earn more money and engagement from its base of 192 million daily users.
"I think the first thing we want to focus on is that economic incentive to people who are contributing to Twitter," he said at the virtual Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.
Introducing user tipping and new features like content subscriptions would help the company diversify its revenue, which it currently earns mainly from selling advertising on Twitter.
The company said Tuesday during an earnings call with analysts that he did not expect subscriptions to be meaningful to the company's revenue until next year.
Last month, Twitter bought newsletter startup Revue, as it hopes to attract users wanting to create long-form content.
3.#MICROSOFT:-Microsoft Corp approached Pinterest Inc in recent months about a potential deal to acquire the $51 billion social media company, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people briefed on the matter.
The negotiations were currently not active, according to the report.
A general shift to virtual interactions leading to increased engagement on social media platforms benefited Pinterest as well, with its monthly active users jumping 37% to 459 million in the fourth quarter.
The company said it added a record 100 million monthly active users in 2020.
Pinterest's shares have risen over seven times from its pandemic-low in March last year. Pinterest had previously signaled it wants to remain an independent company, the FT said.
The social media company generates revenue by placing advertisements next to the Pins, or posts, uploaded on the site by users.
A deal between the two companies would also have tested the Biden administration's appetite for allowing powerful technology companies to strike deals, according to the FT.
4. #ASTRA ZENECA:- AstraZeneca expects profit growth to pick up this year after the COVID-19 vaccine developer beat forecasts for quarterly drug sales, with demand for its cancer and other therapies cushioning the disruption caused by the pandemic.
Last year was a crucial one for the Anglo-Swedish company. It teamed up with the University of Oxford to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, and struck its largest ever deal by buying U.S. drugmaker Alexion .
AstraZeneca said on Thursday it expects 2021 revenue to increase by a low teens percentage, with "faster growth" in core earnings to $4.75 to $5.00 per share. That translates to 18-24% growth in earnings, following 15% in 2020.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1.#TWITTER FACEBOOK -Australia will next week introduce landmark legislation to force Alphabet's Google and Facebook to pay publishers and broadcasters for content, a senior government official said on Friday.
The legislation, which Google says will be "unworkable", will make Australia the first country to require Facebook and Google to pay for news content.
"The bill will now be considered by the parliament from the week commencing 15 February 2021," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in an emailed statement.
The legislation is being closely watched around the world.
With bipartisan support, it could come into law this month despite the misgivings of Google, which says the law will force it to withdraw its search function.
Software giant Microsoft Corp said it was confident its search product Bing could fill the gap in Australia if Google withdrew.
Lucinda Longcroft, director of government affairs and public Policy for Google in Australia and New Zealand, said the company had proposed amendments to a Senate enquiry but they were rejected.
Nevertheless, the company still hoped to discuss the law with members of parliament.
"We look forward to engaging with policymakers through the parliamentary process to address our concerns and achieve a code that works for everyone - publishers, digital platforms, and Australian businesses and users," Longcroft said in an emailed statement.
Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
The U.S. search and social media giants have pressed Australia to soften the legislation, with senior executives from both companies holding talks with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Frydenberg.
Google last week launched a platform in Australia offering news it has paid for, striking its own content deals with publishers in a drive to show the proposed legislation is unnecessary.
2.#TWITTER :Twitter Inc said on Thursday it suspended the account of conservative activist group Project Veritas for repeated violations of its private information policy, which prohibits sharing, or threatening to share others' private information without consent.
The social media company also temporarily locked the account of the group's founder, James O'Keefe, for violating the same policy, a Twitter spokeswoman said in a statement.
Project Veritas said in a public Telegram post that the Tweet that led to the suspension was a video of one of their journalists asking Facebook 's VP of integrity Guy Rosen a question about censorship.
"The reporter on the ground never revealed the location," the group said, adding that it was appealing the suspension as no privacy was violated.
Twitter said O'Keefe was required to delete the violative Tweet to regain access to his personal account. He posted a video on Twitter of him doing that.
3.#FORD:- Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley on Thursday publicly encouraged South Korea's chemicals and electric vehicle (EV) battery maker LG Chem Ltd and SK Innovation Co Ltd to reach a settlement on LG's battery allegations that SK stole trade secrets.
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Wednesday sided with LG Chem, but permitted SK to import components for domestic production of lithium ion batteries for Ford's EV F-150 program for four years, and for Volkswagen of America's electric vehicle line for two years.
"A voluntary settlement between these two suppliers is ultimately in the best interest of US manufacturers and workers," Farley wrote on Twitter.
4. #GOLDMAN SACHS:- Global financial firms including Goldman Sachs , BlackRock and Fidelity International are poised to add hundreds of staff in China this year as they look to take advantage of the opening up of its $40 trillion financial sector.
Beijing in the last one-and-a-half years stepped up the pace of liberalisation mainly as part of a trade deal with the United States, and allowed foreigners to fully own their local ventures in areas including investment banking and asset management.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1.#Volkswagen - Volkswagen said bad planning on the part of its suppliers has compounded a computer chip shortage blighting the global auto industry, claiming it gave ample notice that the coronavirus' hit to car production would be limited.
VW was in December the first carmaker to warn of a chip supply crunch that has hit global automakers, forcing them to cut or halt production as the semiconductor industry struggles to keep up with a recovery in the car sector.
The German company told its suppliers in April last year - when much of global car production was idled due to the coronavirus pandemic - that it expected a strong recovery in the second half of 2020, a VW executive, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Volkswagen, the world's second-largest carmaker, says it was made aware of the chip shortage by one of its suppliers at the end of November, but that that warning came too late.
"We have communicated our demand early on. We have passed on our forecasts which have confirmed that demand," said the executive.
"If suppliers do not trust our numbers and consult their own forecasts, we should have been informed straight away. This has not happened."
As well as identifying potential weaknesses in the automotive supply chain, the question over who is responsible for the shortages could play a decisive role in any legal disputes down the line.
The current shortages are seen as stemming from a combination of factors, as auto manufacturers compete against the sprawling consumer electronics industry for chip supplies.
The executive said differing demand forecasts could explain the current problem, which has led VW to warn that chip supply will remain strained during the first half of 2021.
"This has caused a lot of trouble. If the supplier didn't have a chip problem in its own supply chain, we would get our control units," the executive said.

2. #TWITTER :The Bank of Italy said on Monday a set of experimental indicators it created from the content of millions of tweets accurately tracked consumer mood on price, offering scope for a powerful new monetary policy tool.
The effort comes as economists and policy-makers around the world increasingly turn to social media and other unconventional sources to measure consumer behaviour and as inflation continues to defy targets set by many leading central banks.
Researchers found their indicators, based on millions of tweets, not only tallied with final inflation read-outs and existing measures of price expectations by Italy's national statistics office, financial markets and other forecasters but were also in real-time and provided more granular detail.
"The results suggest that Twitter can be a new timely source for devising a method to elicit beliefs," the authors of the 107-page study said, adding they believed the Italy-focused research could be replicated elsewhere.
Twitter has roughly 200 million monthly active users worldwide and had around 10 million active users in Italy in 2019, the authors said.
The analysis started by collecting 11.1 million tweets posted in Italian between June 2013 and December 2019 containing at least one of a set of previously selected words related to inflation, prices and price dynamics.
"The rationale for focusing on pure raw tweets count is the intuitive notion that the more people talk about something, the larger is the probability it reflects their opinion and that their view can influence other people's expectations," it said.
Then the dataset was "cleaned" to remove advertisements or tweets that use the word inflation in an unrelated context.


3. #GOOGLE :- Google Ireland and Google France have agreed to pay a 1.1 million euros ($1.34 million) fine after a probe found that Google's hotel rankings could be misleading for consumers, France's finance ministry and fraud watchdog said on Monday.
The ministry and watchdog also said in a statement that Google has amended its hotel rankings practices since September 2019.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1.#BYTE DANCE - ByteDance is not in preliminary discussions about listing video app TikTok on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a person familiar with the matter said, following a Chinese media report that talks were underway.
The Global Times, published by China's ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper, said earlier on its Twitter account that ByteDance was in preliminary talks about a NYSE listing. Shortly after, it tweeted that ByteDance had denied the report.
No such talks were being held, said the source, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.
ByteDance, which owns the video app, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the matter.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal to shift TikTok's American assets into a new entity to address U.S. security concerns. Those talks have continued since Biden took office in January, sources have said.
The White House has said it has an ongoing review of potential risks posed by TikTok on U.S. data. The U.S. Justice Department asked two federal appeals courts earlier this month to put on hold government appeals on lower courts' rulings blocking restrictions the Trump administration sought against the app.



2. #TWITTER :Japan's recently appointed vaccine tsar, Taro Kono, is having a breakout moment.
Twitter-savvy and educated at Georgetown University in Washington, Kono has seen his popularity surge even as the government of his boss, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, has been battered by criticism over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two recent opinion polls have favoured Kono, who is also the minister for administrative reform, to be the next prime minister. As Japan launches its much awaited COVID-19 vaccination campaign, his role as the logistics head of the programme has thrust him even more firmly into the spotlight.
Part of Kono's attraction, in a nation known for wooden, script-following leaders, is his ability to engage directly with voters through social media, a sharp contrast to Suga, who has been criticised for seeming stiff and aloof from voters.
In recent weeks, Kono, 58, has used Twitter to publish videos on vaccine safety, repost memes and address media reports. He frequently responds directly to followers - 2.2 million on his Japanese account and 50,000 for his English one.
Last week he posted about conferences with governors over the coronavirus, and a black mask embroidered with a dinosaur skull he had worn the previous day.
But for all his appeal to voters and a resume that includes foreign and defence minister, some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he would lead as premier, are wary.
Given the LDP's majority in parliament, its leader is virtually guaranteed the premiership. Only two LDP presidents have failed to be premier during brief spells when the party was out of power - including Kono's father, Yohei.
Some say his father's being denied the top job may have helped feed the son's ambition for the post.

4.#APPLE :-Apple Inc is planning to increase its dividend according to Chief Executive Tim Cook, CNBC reported on Tuesday, citing the shareholder meeting.
The company's shareholders also approved compensation for Apple executives for fiscal 2020, the report said.
Shareholders will not vote until next year's annual meeting on Cook's September grant of 333,987 restricted stock units, his first major stock package since 2011, which took effect at the start of Apple's fiscal 2021.
It grants him stock units with a possibility to earn as many as 667,974 more if he hits performance targets.
Apple, the biggest U.S. listed public company by market capitalization with a value of $2.1 trillion, has thrived during the pandemic even though it had to temporarily shut several stores.
The company's board had declared a cash dividend of $0.205 per share of the company's common stock in the holiday quarter.
5.#TWITTER:- Twitter said on Tuesday it had taken down 373 accounts which it said had ties to Russia, Armenia and Iran and had breached its platform manipulation policies.
The company said it had taken down 238 accounts operating from Iran for various violations of its policies.
Twitter said 100 accounts with Russian ties were removed for amplifying narratives that undermined faith in NATO and targeted the United States and the European Union.
Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow planned to look into the grounds for Twitter blocking the accounts, TASS news agency reported.
Twitter also said 35 accounts with ties to Armenia were taken down, adding that they had been created to target Azerbaijan.
"The 373 associated accounts across the four networks were permanently suspended from Twitter for violations of our platform manipulation policies," the company said in a blog post.

TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-


1.#TWITTER - Twitter Inc said on Thursday it expected to double annual revenue to at least $7.5 billion and reach 315 million users in 2023, sending its shares up more than 8%.
Twitter will boost its new features to increase revenue and users, it said ahead of its investor presentation on Thursday.
The social media network has struggled to catch up with larger rivals like Facebook and smaller viral apps like ByteDance's TikTok in offering features. But in recent months, it has made a push to launch services such as audio-chat, similar to that of viral app Clubhouse.
"We know we've been slow," said Chief Executive Jack Dorsey during Twitter's virtual investor day. "When you compare us with our peers, it's been especially stark."
In a regulatory filing, Twitter estimated reaching at least 315 million monetizable daily active users (mDAU), or those who see ads, by the fourth quarter of 2023.
Internationally, Twitter faces challenges in India, a rapidly growing market with plans to require that social media companies erase certain content and coordinate with law enforcement.
Twitter had previously refused to delete content connected to farmers' protests in India.
2. #FACEBOOK:-Facebook Incon Thursday launched a campaign to explain to users how small businesses depend on personalized advertising, ahead of upcoming plans by Apple Inc to prompt iPhone users to allow apps to use their data for ads.
The campaign called "Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found" highlights several advertisers that have grown their business on Facebook and Instagram, such as Houston-based fashion brand House of Takura. A commercial will air on TV, including during the Golden Globe Awards this Sunday, Facebook said.
The campaign to convince users to warm up to ads comes as Facebook, which faces several U.S. antitrust lawsuits, has accused Apple of anti-competitive behavior in using its control of the App Store to limit app developers' collection of user data from other apps.
Facebook's ad spending behind the campaign is in the millions of dollars, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Facebook generates revenue from ads and through fees for businesses using a feature that lets customers purchase directly within Facebook and Instagram. Facebook said it will continue to waive those fees through June.
The social media giant said Thursday it will launch an Instagram sticker and Facebook hashtag "DeserveToBeFound" to let small businesses share and publicize their offerings across the platforms.
It will also simplify its Ads Manager, a self-serve tool that lets brands buy and create Facebook ads, to make it easier for small businesses to use.
Annette Njau, founder of House of Takura, said personalized ads have been essential to expanding her brand, which sells handbags made in Africa. She said 85% of her sales so far this year have come from Facebook.
3. #BANK OF AMERICA :- Bank of America Corp cut some of its staff in the global banking and markets division this week, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Employees in sales and trading, research, investment banking and capital markets were affected by the move, the report said, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The staff reduction is part of Wall Street's typical practice of staffing changes around this time of the year after bonuses are distributed, the report added.
Bank of America did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
Last year, the bank had said it would not cut any jobs in 2020.
4.#APPLE :-Target Corp Said on Thursday it would double Apple Inc's footprint in some of its stores and expand online offerings, as the big box retailer beefs up its strategy to house popular brands at its outlets to woo more customers.
Target said the expanded partnership with Apple would begin rolling out this month, with additional locations scheduled to do so by the end of this fall.

We Provide over 15 Trade signals for free to enhance Your Trading strategy so you can cash in potential market moves. Invite your friends to the group to take advantage of it. TRADE SIGNAL AS ON 09-04-2021

#CADCHF
SELL=0.73478
TARGET=0.73430
SL=0.73574

#NATURAL GAS
BUY=2.498
TARGET=2.565
SL=2.462

#TWITTER
BUY=71.17
TARGET=73.92
SL=69.03

#LITECOINUSD
BUY=225.18
TARGET=228.05
SL=223.41

#S&P500
SELL=4085.99
TARGET=4073.25
SL=4094.48