(Reuters) - Consumer Reports, an influential U.S. non-profit group that conducts extensive reviews of cars, kitchen appliances and other goods, is gearing up to start considering cyber security and privacy safeguards when scoring products.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's largest, most influential securities regulator said open access to data is essential to developing financial tech solutions using innovative technology such as blockchain, in a white paper published on Monday.

Traders gather at the post where Snap Inc. is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. investment firm Grayscale Investments has launched the first-ever private fund focused on ethereum classic, a blockchain platform, according to Barry Silbert, founder of the company's parent Digital Currency Group.

FILE PHOTO: Employees walk along a corridor in the Infosys campus in the southern Indian city of Bangalore September 23, 2014. REUTERS/Abhishek Chinnappa

A stuffed ghost rests on a trader's screen above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after Snap Inc. listed their IPO in New York, U.S., March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

MILAN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Facebook Inc has suspended its location-sharing feature in Italy after a Milan court ruled last year that the social networking giant had violated competition and copyright laws by effectively copying a similar app from a local start-up.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Volkswagen will show off a fully self-driving car at the Geneva auto show, as part of the German carmaker's drive to be at the forefront of new technologies in the wake of its diesel emissions scandal.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - IBM and Danish transport company Maersk said they were working together to digitize, manage, and track shipping transactions using blockchain technology.

BEIJING (Reuters) - The green energy car subsidiary of Chinese automaker Beijing Automotive Group [BEJINS.UL] plans an initial public offering in 2018, Chairman Xu Heyi said on Monday, adding that the unit should be profitable that year.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's Competition Board said on Monday it had opened an investigation to determine whether Google had violated the country's competition law.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] was raising venture capital in 2013, it was one of the hottest deals around – and no one was more eager to write a check than Bill Maris and David Krane of Google's venture capital arm.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's three state-owned telecommunications companies plan to eliminate domestic roaming fees and offer pricing incentives to small and mid-sized enterprises, to encourage corporate customers to adopt network technology such as cloud computing.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's President Park Geun-hye colluded with her friend Choi Soon-sil to receive bribes from Samsung Group, which was aimed to cement Samsung Chief Jay Y. Lee's control of the company, a special prosecutor said in a statement on Monday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Armed with a hefty dividend, Xerox Corp shares look cheap even as they have shot up this year following the company's spin-off of its business processing business, according to an article in Barron's.

(Reuters) - Ride hailing company Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] has for years used a secret tool to deceive the authorities in markets where its service faced resistance by law enforcement or was banned, the New York Times reported, citing sources.

(Reuters) - Answers Corp [AFCVHA.UL], which owns the Answers.com and Multiply websites, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday with a plan to swap ownership of the company to creditors who are owed about $540 million, according to court documents.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Digital currency bitcoin hit a record high on Friday on optimism about the approval of the first U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded fund by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

(Reuters) - More U.S. consumers complained about imposter scams than identity theft for the first time in 2016, as fraudsters relied more on the phone and less on email to find victims, the Federal Trade Commission said on Friday.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (Reuters) - A top U.S. Federal Reserve official on Friday raised caution about central banks issuing digital currencies as they are vulnerable to cyber attacks and criminal activities along with privacy issues that still need to be addressed.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Financial technology firms in Brazil are grouping to discuss with local watchdogs how to regulate the fast-growing sector, in which the number of players has risen roughly six-fold over the past couple of years.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Hyperledger project, a cross-industry open source blockchain group led by the Linux Foundation, plans to release its first production-ready distributed ledger code base by the end of the month, as projects involving the nascent technology begin to mature.

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government said on Friday it was inclined to investigate Rupert Murdoch's planned takeover of Sky to see whether it was in the public interest, the first step of what is likely to be a politically charged process.

(Reuters) - Comcast Corp's NBCUniversal said on Friday it had invested $500 million in Snap Inc as it continues to spend heavily on digital media companies.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox has asked EU antitrust regulators to approve its $14.4 billion takeover bid for European pay-TV company Sky, a filing on the European Commission showed on Friday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Taxi app Uber [UBER.UL] lost a court battle on Friday to stop a London regulator from forcing private hire drivers to prove their reading and writing skills in English, the latest setback for the firm in London which could now lose some workers.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Paytm E-Commerce Pvt Ltd has raised $200 million from China's Alibaba Group Holding and venture capital fund SAIF Partners to expand its online retail business in a market dominated by homegrown Flipkart and U.S. tech giant Amazon.

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court will on March 9 hold its first hearing in the trial of Samsung Group leader Jay Y. Lee, who faces charges of bribery as part of a corruption scandal that has rocked the country, a court indicated on Friday.

(Reuters) - Spotify said on Thursday it has reached 50 million paid subscribers, growing 25 percent in less than six months and extending the Swedish music streaming service's lead over its closest rival, Apple Music.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc said on Thursday it plans to comply with California regulations and seek permits to put its self-driving cars back on the state's roads, an about-face following the company's legal spat with state officials in December.