Uber Technologies will raise the minimum wage it pays drivers in France as part of a wider agreement between ride-hailing companies and driver representatives in the country, the company said on Wednesday.

Drivers will earn a minimum income 9 euros ($9.85) per trip, up from 7.65 euros they were earning previously, and will have a guaranteed income of 30 euros per hour and 1 euro per kilometer.

The changes in hourly income guarantee and minimum wage per kilometer will be implemented by May next year, while the wage increase in revenue per trip will be in effect from February.

Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday that ride-hailing apps Bolt and Free Now have also similarly raised their minimum wage.

Earlier this month, the European Union provisionally agreed on a bill aimed at giving employee benefits to workers at app-based platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo.

App-based delivery workers are usually treated as independent contractors rather than company employees, which means general minimum wage laws do not apply to them.

The proposed bill on ‘gig workers’ rights, that has to be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council, will prevent workers from being wrongfully classified as self-employed, which results in them “missing out on important labour and social protection rights,” the European Parliament had said.

“The package of guarantees on which we have just agreed proves the strength of sectoral social dialogue in France,” said Yves Weisselberger, president of FFTPR, which represent ride-hailing platforms.

A New York state appeals court had earlier this month upheld the minimum wage law for app-based delivery workers in New York City, which would require companies to pay them $17.96 an hour, and rising to nearly $20 in April 2025.

($1 = 0.9134 euros)

:Paramount Global is in talks to sell its Black Entertainment Television network to a management-led investor group, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The potential buyers include BET Chief Executive Officer Scott Mills and Chinh Chu, a former Blackstone executive who runs New York-based CC Capital Partners, the report said.

A price of a little under $2 billion has been discussed, according to the report.

Paramount and CC Capital declined to comment on the report.

Paramount had earlier this year mulled the sale of a majority stake in BET Media Group, which includes the BET cable network, BET Studios and VH1, drawing interest from the likes of Byron Allen, whose Allen Media Group’s assets include The Weather Channel.

The company later dropped the sale process after failing to get satisfactory bids, according to the Bloomberg report.

Chu, who also worked at Salomon Brothers, has helped create five blank-check companies during his time at CC Capital. One of them merged with Getty Images last year to help take the stock-photo company public in the U.S.

Paramount is controlled by the Shari Redstone-led media company that owns 77 per cent of Paramount’s Class A voting shares.

The entertainment conglomerate formed BET Studios in 2021 through a partnership with “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, actress Rashida Jones and “S.W.A.T” co-creator Aaron Rahsaan Thomas.

PARIS : The European Union said on Wednesday it would begin an anti-dumping investigation into biodiesel imports from China, which the bloc’s industry says has slashed domestic production.

In August, it began investigating whether biodiesel from Indonesia was circumventing EU duties by going through China and Britain. The latest investigation, prompted by a complaint from producer group the European Biodiesel Board (EBB), will cover the period from Oct. 1, 2022 to Sept. 30 2023.

The probe will take up to 14 months, with the possibility of provisional duties being imposed within eight months.

“EU producers have submitted evidence of biodiesel imports from China coming into the EU at artificially low prices and claim that these imports are seriously harming their industry because they cannot compete with such low prices,” the European Commission said in a statement.

China’s mission to the EU and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China has been the biggest biodiesel exporter to the 27-member bloc in 2023, the EBB said in a separate statement.

“In 2023, Chinese dumped imports have caused a collapse in the market and production sites closed in several member states,” the EBB added.

In addition to the possible transit of Indonesian biodiesel, there were structural imbalances in biodiesel trade with China, with prices not reflecting the advanced or waste-based biofuel categories that most cargoes have been classified as, it said.

Biodiesel is among the alternative fuels promoted to reduce carbon emissions in transport. The EU’s industry, which the Commission says is worth 31 billion euros ($34 billion) a year, has been the subject of regular disputes with trading partners.

It can be made using palm oil and shipments from Indonesia have been caught up in EU measures to restrict imports of commodities linked to deforestation.

In a separate trade dispute with Beijing, the Commission launched in September a probe into Chinese electric vehicle imports it says are benefiting from state subsidies.

China criticised the EU probe, calling it a “naked protectionist act”.

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A group of 11 nonfiction authors have joined a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court that accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of misusing books the authors have written to train the models behind OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT and other artificial-intelligence based software.

The writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Taylor Branch, Stacy Schiff and Kai Bird – who co-wrote the J. Robert Oppenheimer biography “American Prometheus” that was adapted into the hit film “Oppenheimer” this year – told the court on Tuesday that the companies infringed their copyrights by using their work to train OpenAI’s GPT large language models.

Representatives for OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

“The defendants are raking in billions from their unauthorized use of nonfiction books, and the authors of these books deserve fair compensation and treatment for it,” the writers’ attorney Rohit Nath said on Wednesday.

Writer and Hollywood Reporter editor Julian Sancton first filed the proposed class-action lawsuit last month. The case is one of several that have been brought by groups of copyright owners including authors John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and Jonathan Franzen against OpenAI and other tech companies over the alleged misuse of their work in AI training.

The companies have denied the allegations.

Sancton’s was the first author lawsuit against OpenAI to also name Microsoft as a defendant. The tech giant has invested billions of dollars in the artificial intelligence startup and integrated OpenAI’s systems into its products.

The amended complaint filed on Monday said that OpenAI “scraped” the authors’ works along with reams of other copyrighted material from the internet without permission to teach its GPT models how to respond to human text prompts.

The lawsuit also said that Microsoft has been “deeply involved” in training and developing the models and is also liable for copyright infringement.

The authors asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and an order for the companies to stop infringing their copyrights.

WASHINGTON :Toyota Motor said on Wednesday it will recall 1.12 million vehicles worldwide because a short circuit in a sensor could cause air bags not to deploy as designed.

The recall covers 2020 through 2022 model year vehicles including various Avalon, Camry, Corolla, RAV4, Lexus ES250, ES300H, ES350, RX350 Highlander and Sienna Hybrid vehicles and could result in the Occupant Classification System (OCS) sensors not working. It includes 1 million vehicles in the United States.

The sensors ensure air bags do not deploy if a small adult or child is sitting in the front seat. Dealers will inspect and, if necessary, replace the sensors. The automaker plans to begin notifying owners in February about the recall.

Toyota in July 2022 issued a recall for 3,500 RAV4 vehicles in the United states that because of potential interference between internal parts that could cause the OCS sensor to incorrectly detect the occupant.

Frontal air bags have saved more than 50,000 lives in the United States over 30 years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says.

The new sensors were prompted because older air bags deployed the same way for all driver and passengers, causing some injuries and in rare cases even death to children, small adults, and unbelted passengers who were too close to the air bag as it deployed, the agency says.

WASHINGTON : Big tech companies, like YouTube owner Alphabet among many others, would face further limits on how they use children’s data to beef up profits under a proposal put out by the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday.

The FTC said in a notice of proposed rule-making that it was considering changing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule to put more restrictions on when and how companies could monetize children’s data.

It would also limit how companies can use notifications to nudge children to stay online. The rule affects companies which collect personal information about users under age 13.

“Kids must be able to play and learn online without being endlessly tracked by companies looking to hoard and monetize their personal data,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a statement. “The proposed changes to COPPA are much-needed, especially in an era where online tools are essential for navigating daily life.”

Since many platforms and websites on the internet are free, companies rely on advertising to pay bills. They try to tailor that advertising by using information about users which indicate what they might be interested in.

Critics have accused the platforms of failing to address mental health harms done by algorithms used by the platforms to keep young people engaged.

Under the proposed changes, companies would have to get “separate verifiable parental consent” to share most information about children with advertisers and other third parties.

The proposed changes would reinforce that companies cannot ban children from an activity if they decline to allow collection of personal data and would allow school districts to bar companies that provide educational technology for using any information it collects for a commercial purpose.

The FTC said that it would accept comments on the rule for 60 days.

Neither Alphabet nor Meta immediately responded to a request for comment.

:Apple is ramping up production of the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, setting the stage for a launch by February, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Production of the new headset is at full speed at facilities in China and has been for several weeks, according to the report.

The goal is for customer-bound units to be ready by the end of January, with the retail debut planned for the following month, the report added.

The Vision Pro, priced at $3,499 launched in June and was expected to be available by early 2024 in the U.S.

The company sent an email to software developers on Wednesday encouraging them to “get ready” for the Vision Pro by testing their apps with the latest tools and sending their software to Apple for feedback, according to the report.

Media reports in July suggested the iPhone maker had been forced to make major cuts to production forecasts for the headset due to design complexities.

Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.