TECHNOLOGY

Alphabet Inc's Google unveiled new Pixel smartphones with higher quality cameras, a radar sensor to track hand gestures and faster virtual assistant on Tuesday, but the devices had no surprise features to set them apart from rivals and nix concerns about price.

China's Huawei may be facing closer official scrutiny in Europe amid U.S. allegations that it poses a security threat, but mobile operators in the region are still queuing up to buy its gear for their next-generation 5G networks.

Amazon's cloud computing is like a "soft drug", a French minister said on Tuesday, warning that time was running out for Europe to wean itself off the U.S. company's services.

TikTok will bring in an external group comprising former U.S. congressmen to review and advise on its content moderation policies including on child safety, misinformation and hate speech, the popular Chinese-owned video app said on Tuesday.

The risks posed by cryptocurrencies such as Facebook's Libra must be addressed before any launch, a senior Bank of France official said on Tuesday, adding to a chorus of regulatory scepticism that threatens to derail the project.

Epic Games' launched a "Chapter 2" reboot of its battle royale smash hit "Fortnite" on Tuesday, drawing the eyeballs of millions of gamers globally as it bid to halt defections to rivals "Apex Legends" and "Call of Duty".

Germany's Wirecard rejected allegations of impropriety on Tuesday after the Financial Times newspaper published documents on the company's accounting practices which it said appeared to indicate an effort to inflate sales and profits.

Some of the biggest public pensions funds in the United States have invested in one of the world's largest purveyors of video surveillance systems that the U.S. government claims are used in wide-scale repression of the Muslim population of western China.

France is pushing for the creation of a European-wide regulator of digital platforms such as Google to sanction possible abuse of power, a French presidency official said on Tuesday, citing a dispute over EU copyright law as an example.