Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, March 20, 2019. AAP Image/Andrew Taylor/via REUTERS
March 30, 2019
By Lidia Kelly
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Social media executives could spend up to three years in prison and their firms be fined 10 percent of their turnover if they fail to quickly remove violent material from their platforms, according to a new law proposed by the Australian government.
The March 15 massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 50 worshippers were killed at two mosques was carried out by a suspected white supremacist who livestreamed the killings on Facebook, raising criticism of the role of social media in society.
“Big social media companies have a responsibility to take every possible action to ensure their technology products are not exploited by murderous terrorists,” Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement.
“It should not just be a matter of just doing the right thing. It should be the law.”
If the law passes, it will be a criminal offence for companies, such as Facebook Inc and Alphabet’s Google, which owns YouTube, not to “expeditiously” remove the “abhorrent violent content”. Juries would decide whether the content was removed fast enough.
The government will present the law to the parliament next week – its expected final week before the federal election.
Morrison has also said that Australia has created a task force between government and social media companies to tackle the issue and wants to put it on the agenda for the summit of the G20 leaders in Japan in June.
The Australian government said it has met earlier in the week with social media companies, including Facebook, but that the outcome of the talks was not satisfactory.
“(They) did not present any immediate solutions to the issues arising out of the horror that occurred in Christchurch,” Mitch Fifield, Australia’s minister for communications, said in a statement on Saturday.
Facebook on Friday said it was exploring restrictions on who can access their live video-streaming service, depending on factors such as previous violations of the site’s community standards.
Facebook earlier this week banned praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism.
Should Australia move with the introduction of the new law, the individual fines of up to 10 percent of global revenues could be hefty.
The report is a summary of the financial condition of the United States. In a nutshell, it’s less than ideal.
Total net worth — the country’s assets minus its liabilities — is just one of many disturbing data points you will find in the report.
The US government owns $3.8 trillion in assets. The largest asset is $1.4 trillion in “net loans receivable.” These are primarily government-backed student loans totaling $1.08 trillion. In an article published by Sovereign Man, Simon Black it neatly into perspective.
“In other words, the government’s #1 asset is the debt owed to it by young people across America. That’s pretty sad.”
Meanwhile, the government’s liabilities total more than $25 trillion. This includes the national debt, accrued interest, and federal employee and veteran benefits.
When you include the government’s estimate of Social Security’s unfunded liabilities, the country’s net worth drops to negative $75 trillion. Black notes that this is roughly the size of the entire global economy.
It seems a bit of an understatement when the Treasury Department calls current US fiscal policy “not sustainable.”
“The long-term fiscal projections indicate that the government’s debt-to-GDP ratio will rise from 78 percent in 2018 to 530 percent over the 75-year projection period, and will continue to rise thereafter, if current policy is kept in place. The projections in this Financial Report show that current policy is not sustainable. These projections assume that current policy will continue indefinitely, and are, therefore, neither forecasts nor predictions. Nevertheless, policy changes must be enacted so that financial outcomes will be different than those projected.”
In fiscal 2018, Uncle Sam showed a net loss of $1.16 trillion. The federal government collected $3.4 trillion in tax revenue, but it spent over $4.5 trillion.
Nearly half of government spending went to Social Security and Medicare.
The government spent $523 billion paying interest on the national debt.
During fiscal year 2018, the budget deficit increased by 17.0% and gross cost increased by 4.4%.
For Fiscal Year 2018, the government reported $581 billion in equipment (mostly military), and about $500 billion in real estate.
BRUSSELS – A small group of British citizens who oppose Brexit were in an Irish pub in Belgium's capital when they watched a vote on their country's future.
The Britons drinking beer in Brussels had their eyes fixed intently on the James Joyce pub's TV as lawmakers in London said "yea" or "nay" to Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal.
The agreement's resounding defeat Tuesday night drew a smattering of applause in the bar, which is located down the road from the headquarters of the EU's executive European Commission.
At other times, the anti-Brexit crowd booed May and cried "Yes! Yes!" when the possibility of the U.K. abandoning its planned departure was mentioned.
The pub's co-owner, Jessica Fitch, summed up the mood before the vote, saying Brexit makes her "feel like something has been ripped away from me."
PARIS – France paid a daylong tribute Thursday to the Paris firefighters who saved the internationally revered Notre Dame Cathedral from collapse and rescued many of its treasures. As the ceremonies took place, construction workers hurriedly secured key sections of the fire-weakened cathedral, including an area above one of its famed rose-shaped windows.
Fire officials warned that the massive cathedral still remains very fragile and extremely dangerous for construction workers and other specialists. On Thursday, workers using a crane were removing some statues to lessen the weight on cathedral's fragile gables, or support walls, and to keep them from falling, since the section lacked the support of the massive timber roof that burned up in Monday's evening's devastating blaze.
They were also securing the support structure above one of Notre Dame's rose windows with wooden planks.
Several hundred Paris firefighters, who are members of the French military, filed into the presidential Elysee Palace courtyard for a gathering hosted by President Emmanuel Macron to share what his office said were "words of thanks." Top government ministers also attended.
Paris City Hall was holding a ceremony in the firefighters' honor later in the day, with a Bach violin concert, two giant banners strung from the monumental city headquarters and readings from Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
More than 400 firefighters took part in the nine-hour battle to save the 12th-century Notre Dame on Monday. Its spire collapsed and roof was destroyed, but its iconic towers, rose windows, famed organ and precious artworks were saved.
Remarkably, no one was killed in the fire, which began during a Mass, after firefighters and church officials speedily evacuated those inside.
Among the firefighters being honored Thursday is Paris fire brigade chaplain Jean-Marc Fournier, who says he was falsely credited with helping salvage the crown of thorns believed to have been worn by Jesus at his crucifixion.
The chaplain says a team of rescuers broke the relic's protective covering and an official who had the secret code to unlock the protection finished the job. Fournier told France Info on Thursday that his own team arrived on the heels of the salvaging and praised the action "to preserve this extraordinary relic, this patrimony of humanity."
However, Fournier told the daily Le Parisian that he himself was able to save the most precious thing for Catholics from the fire, the cathedral's consecrated hosts. The paper said he climbed on altars to remove large paintings, but that he felt especially proud of another personal salvaging operation: "to have removed Jesus" from the Cathedral.
For Catholics, consecrated hosts are the body of Christ.
Among others honored is Myriam Chudzinski, one of the first firefighters to reach the roof as the blaze raged. Loaded with gear, they climbed hundreds of steps up the cathedral's narrow spiral staircase to the top of one of the two towers. She had trained at the site for hours for just this moment.
"We knew that the roof was burning, but we didn't really know the intensity," she told reporters. "It was from upstairs that you understood that it was really dramatic. It was very hot and we had to retreat, retreat. It was spreading quickly."
She heard a roar, but her focus was on saving the tower. She learned later that it was the sound of the spire collapsing.
Investigators so far believe the fire was accidental, and are questioning both cathedral staff and the workers who were carrying out renovations to the cathedral before the fire broke out. Some 40 people had been questioned by Thursday, according the Paris prosecutor's office.
The building would have burned to the ground in a "chain-reaction collapse" had firefighters not moved as rapidly as they did to battle the blaze racing through the building, José Vaz de Matos, a fire expert with France's Culture Ministry, said Wednesday.
An initial fire alert was sounded at 6:20 p.m., as a Mass was underway in the cathedral, but no fire was found. A second alarm went off at 6:43 p.m., and the blaze was discovered to be consuming the roof.
The island in the Seine River housing Notre Dame at the heart of the French capital remained largely empty Thursday and closed to everyone but residents. Businesses were shuttered and the usual tourist throngs were nowhere to be seen.
The lack of tourists was a significant concern for neighborhood merchants. A large swath of the Ile de la Cite is currently inaccessible, with numerous bridges linking it with mainland Paris closed.
Macron wants to rebuild the cathedral within five years — in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics that Paris is hosting — but experts say the vast scale of the work to be done could easily take 15 years, since it will take months, even years, just to figure out what should be done. Nearly $1 billion has been pledged for the cathedral's restoration.
Benedicte Contamin, who came to view the damaged cathedral from afar Thursday, said she's sad but grateful it's still there.
"It's a chance for France to bounce back, a chance to realize what unites us, because we have been too much divided over the past years," she said.
Cathedral bells rang out across France in a moving tribute Wednesday to Notre Dame and the firefighters.
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Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.
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Read and watch all AP coverage of the Notre Dame fire at https://apnews.com/NotreDameCathedral
President Donald Trump is refusing to meet privately with the governor of Puerto Rico to discuss the pace of disaster relief 17 months after Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory.
That's according to Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello. He said Friday that the White House declined public and private requests to meet ahead of a governors' conference in Washington this weekend. Rossello said Trump bears responsibility for the slow pace of disaster relief.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the governor's team has been in regular contact with federal officials, Rossello said the White House declined his requests to meet with Trump directly without giving a reason. Rossello hopes to speak to Trump when dozens of governors attend a White House meeting on Monday.
The Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that colleges in Georgia are not required to admit illegal immigrant students.
The decision further sparked a national conversation about the rights of Dreamers, as well as the legality of offering them in-state tuition benefits, which usually allow students attending college in their home states to pay far less than their peers from different states.
Citing US Code 1623, which states that anyone who is not legally a citizen cannot be entitled to any benefit that is denied to a citizen of the United States, some have questioned whether those here illegally should be offered in-state tuition rates that aren’t available to other students who are citizens. Currently, 18 states, offer some form of a pathway for in-state tuition to those living here illegally.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 18 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington — offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrant students. Two more states — Oklahoma and Rhode Island — offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrant students, pending approval from the Board of Regents.
So, what do college students think?
Is it fair for those who are here illegally to have access to in-state tuition? Campus Reform spoke to students all day at the University of Nevada- Las Vegas, and not one student said that doesn’t seem right.
“Why do they get to pay less when I’ve got to pay more?” one student said…
…while another added, “What do you get for living here all your life legally instead of coming here illegally? I just don’t think that’s fair.”
Another student echoed that sentiment, saying, “that’s disappointing because I did quite a bit to earn my college.”
WATCH:
Here’s why politicians were no match for Candice Owens because she’s more authentic.
Islamist tyrant Recep Tayyip Erdogan has caused fury by telling New Zealanders they will be sent back in “coffins” like their forefathers in WW1 if they misbehave while visiting Turkey for Anzac day in April.
“If you come in peace, fine, if not, you will be sent back in COFFINS the way your forefathers were dispatched after the Gallipoli Battle of WW1,” said the Turkish president.
Turkey's #Erdogan threatens NewZealanders & Australians who plan to visit #Turkey for #Anzac Day in April. "If you come in peace, fine, if not, you will be sent back in COFFINS the way your forefathers were despatched after the Gallipoli Battle of WW1. pic.twitter.com/jjW8n3kg27
Erdogan aimed his comments at New Zealanders despite the fact that the mosque gunman who killed 50 people was Australian, another slap in the face to a country already suffering immense grief.
The Islamist president is already under fire for showing footage of the Christchurch terror attack to his supporters at political rallies, a disgraceful exploitation of the tragedy.
According to New Zealand’s foreign minister Winston Peters, the stunt “imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad and it’s totally unfair.”
“Is it worth showing this bloody massacre in order to gain a few more votes?” asked Turkish opposition spokesman Faik Oztrak.
Peters has now vowed to set the record straight, asserting, “He knows the separation of us and Australia – some countries don’t think we’re different but we are.”
Erdogan is notorious for siding with extremist Islamists, having previously complained about Austria shutting down extremist mosques by suggesting violent reprisals.
“They say they’re going to kick our religious men out of Austria. Do you think we will not react if you do such a thing?” he said.
FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways aircraft are seen parked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Aditi Shah and Abhirup Roy
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – The grounding of India’s Jet Airways is turning into a quick windfall and long-term opportunity for international airlines keen to scoop up nearly a million outbound passengers from what was once the nation’s biggest airline.
Jet, which previously had a fleet of around 120 largely Boeing Co planes, was forced to indefinitely halt all flight operations on April 17 after its banks rejected the carrier’s plea for emergency funds.
The carrier’s descent into crisis has benefited international airlines in the form of rising fares and demand, data showed.
Fares from India to cities such as Dubai, London, New York, Singapore and Bali in the first quarter of 2019 rose between 4 percent and 32 percent from a year ago, according to Indian travel portal MakeMyTrip Ltd.
In the peak travel months of May and June, fares to London have spiked as much as 36 percent and tickets to San Francisco are up nearly 20 percent from a year ago, according to data from travel portal Yatra.com.
“For the next three months it’s actually bonanza time for international players,” said Ashish Nainan, a research analyst at CARE Ratings. “At least until the middle of June, the fares are not going to come down.”
Due to rising demand, even before Jet’s lessors grounded planes, carriers such as British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, Singapore Airlines Ltd and United Airlines saw an up to a 27 percent increase in passenger numbers from India in the last quarter of 2018, data from India’s aviation regulator showed. That is the latest period for which the data is available.
India is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, clocking 15-20 percent domestic growth in recent years. It has long had only two full-service long-haul carriers, state-run Air India and Jet.
Jet is now hoping to be bailed out by a new investor, with final bids due on May 10.
INCREASING CAPACITY
Before its grounding, Jet had the biggest share of India’s outbound international air traffic, carrying 12 percent of the 7.8 million passengers headed overseas in the Oct-Dec quarter, down from 14 percent a year earlier, data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation showed.
For an interactive graphic on Jet’s market share, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2WvDQYi
For an interactive graphic on average daily flights by the airline, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2FeFDel
The total number of passengers traveling overseas with Jet fell 10 percent during the last quarter of 2018 even as the outbound travel market grew about 5 percent.
Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines posted a 27 percent increase in passengers from India, Cathay registered 17 percent growth and British Airways saw a 10 percent rise in the same period.
Cathay said the events at Jet combined with increasing demand for travel had led it to deploy larger aircraft with more seats on some Indian routes.
“In the long term we would certainly like to be able to offer more capacity into India, not just on our existing routes but by establishing new services to secondary cities,” Cathay said in a statement.
Singapore Airlines, in an email to Reuters, said the Indian market is “very promising” but declined to give details of airfare levels or demand patterns in the wake of Jet’s exit, citing a quiet period before the release of its annual results.
DOMESTIC GAINS
Jet’s grounding has also had a big impact on the domestic market, with inter-city air fares to major cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata soaring more than 20 percent in May and June, according to Yatra.com.
The spike in fares is expected to underpin strong earnings for IndiGo and SpiceJet Ltd, which are set to report results for the quarter ended March 31 in the coming weeks.
“Domestic Indian carriers are the main benefactors, but I suspect if Jet fails to be revived by May 10 then Vistara and other airlines that ply international routes, particularly the lucrative Gulf market, are the main winners,” said Shukor Yusof, the head of aviation consultancy Endau Analytics. Vistara is a joint venture of India’s Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.
Inadequate bilateral traffic rights between India and other countries, however, could be an impediment to foreign carriers’ hopes of winning business lost by Jet, some analysts said.
“Even before Jet’s operational shutdown, international capacity was significantly constrained,” said Kapil Kaul, CEO for South Asia of consultancy CAPA. “We have now more serious capacity challenge … this is unlikely to be stabilized in the near term.”
A new national government likely to be in place sometime after elections end in May is expected to address the international capacity constraints, and once bilateral agreements are eased airlines including Emirates, Turkish and Qatar would immediately benefit, said Kaul.
“We would love to add more flights but we are at the limit of the allocation granted to us for traffic rights,” Emirates Chief Commercial Officer Thierry Antinori told reporters in Dubai on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai, Jamie Freed in Singapore and Tanvi Mehta in Mumbai; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
FILE PHOTO: The company logo for pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is displayed on a screen on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 26, 2019
By Pushkala Aripaka and Ankur Banerjee
(Reuters) – AstraZeneca Plc beat first-quarter sales and earnings expectations on Friday as the British drugmaker benefited from a push into cancer drugs and emerging markets including China.
Newer treatments such as lung cancer drug Tagrisso, now the company’s top selling medicine, have helped the drugmaker’s return to growth after years of crumbling sales due to patent losses on older drugs.
Sales in China have shown explosive growth, more than doubling since 2012, but AstraZeneca executives on Friday said that may not be sustained.
“The enormous growth you currently see in China, 28 percent, probably is not sustainable, but we feel very bullish that the growth will continue to be at a pace of between 15 percent and 20 percent,” Ruud Dobber, executive vice president, BioPharma, told Reuters.
Shares of the company were down 0.2 percent at 5,878 pence at 1031 GMT.
The turnaround in AstraZeneca’s fortunes has been powered by a push into cancer treatments led by Chief Executive Pascal Soriot, who saw off a 2014 takeover bid from Pfizer in part by promising annual sales of $45 billion by 2023.
In the first quarter, sales from its oncology unit rose 59 percent to $1.89 billion, accounting for 35 percent of total product sales.
The company has moved deeper into cancer therapy market through wide-ranging deals, including those for immunotherapy and targeted therapy. Last month, it agreed a multi-billion dollar oncology deal with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd.
Interactive graphic on AZN’s top 10 drugs by sales – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W5XIRX
“We’re reaching that point where after years of having to keep faith, we have actually got something tangible to believe in,” Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Nicholas Hyett said.
AstraZeneca also backed its annual sales and earnings forecast and said it has extensively prepared for UK’s anticipated exit from the European Union, even in the event of a no-deal exit.
The company has already spent more than 40 million pounds ($52 million) on Brexit preparations, including stockpiling six weeks’ worth of drugs in the UK and four weeks in continental Europe to guard against shortages.
AstraZeneca said product sales rose 14 percent at constant currency to $5.47 billion in the quarter, led by its lung cancer drug Tagrisso and respiratory treatment Pulmicort.
Interactive graphic on AZN’s quarterly oncology sales – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W9tbCD
China sales increased by 28 percent to $1.24 billion in the quarter, accounting for nearly a quarter of overall product sales.
Core earnings came in at 89 cents per share in the quarter. Analysts on average were expecting core earnings of 85 cents per share and product sales of $5.29 billion, according to a company provided consensus of 19 analysts.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr/Keith Weir)
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LONDON – Britain and Ireland are making a new push to restore Northern Ireland’s collapsed government, amid mounting criticism of politicians following the murder of a journalist by a banned militant group.
The two governments are expected to make an announcement Friday about talks to revive the power-sharing administration, which has been suspended for more than two years because of a dispute between the main Protestant and Catholic parties.
Security officials warn that political drift in Northern Ireland could embolden those bent on violence.
Pressure on politicians has grown since the killing of journalist Lyra McKee, shot dead by an Irish nationalist militant during rioting in Londonderry last week.
Police have released video footage of a stocky, masked man they say is a key suspect and have urged residents to help identify him.
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