An Indian woman has been set on fire on her way to a court hearing to testify against two men who had allegedly raped her.The 23-year-old is in a critical condition in hospital with 70% burns after she was set upon by five men in the city of Unnao in Uttar Pradesh. They dragged her to a field, doused her with petrol and set her alight.In the assault on Thursday, two of the attackers were said by police to be the same men the victim filed rape charges against in March. The young woman was on her way to a hearing to testify against her alleged rapists when the five men grabbed her by the railway station. One of the accused was out on bail while the other had been on the run from police.“The two men set fire to the 23-year-old alive to take revenge,” said a senior police officer, SK Bhagat.Police said the woman had been in a relationship with one of her attackers last year. He had reportedly promised marriage, physically exploited her and then raped her with another friend.The case prompted criticism that the woman’s alleged rapists had been let out on bail. Supriya Sule, an MP for the Nationalist Congress party, tweeted: “Extremely sad and shocked to hear that that Unnao rape victim was burnt earlier this morning. If the culprits were not shielded and [were] prosecuted on time this wouldn’t have happened. Complete state of lawlessness in the state of Uttar Pradesh.”Sakshi Maharaj, the MP from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) for Unnao, described the incident as “really unfortunate”. He echoed the popular BJP view that the rapists should face capital punishment for their crimes.The recent series of attacks and killings have once again brought to the fore India’s problem with sexual violence: more than 32,000 rape cases were reported in 2017, according to government figures, but the real figure is believed to be far higher. However, activists have expressed frustration at calls by the government to deal with the problem simply by introducing the death penalty for rapists, arguing that it does not tackle the underlying social causes of violence against women and the misogynistic attitudes underpinning the crimes.Such views were on full display in a series of social media posts by the Indian film director Daniel Shravan, who, in response to the Hyderabad rape case, suggested that “rape is not a serious thing, but murder is inexcusable” adding that “the government should legalise rape without violence for the safety of women”.The posts, now deleted, addressed women, telling them: “If you are about to get raped, hand over a condom to the rapist and cooperate with him while he fulfils his sexual desire. That way he will not try to harm you.”The comments attracted an onslaught of condemnation online. “He is advocating rape as punishment for women. What will it take to make women feel safe? How many men will be let off,” said a tweet from the #MeTooIndia Twitter account. Topics India Rape and sexual assault South and Central Asia news

Opponents of universal basic income have also pointed to its steep price tag — an annual outlay of $12,000 per American adult would cost approximately $2 trillion, equivalent to roughly half of the current federal budget — and the possibility that giving out free money could encourage people not to work. These reasons, among others, are why Hillary Clinton, who considered adding universal basic income to her 2016 platform, concluded it was “exciting but not realistic.”“In our political culture, there are formidable political obstacles to providing cash to working-age people who aren’t employed, and it’s unlikely that U.B.I. could surmount them,” Robert Greenstein, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group, wrote last year.But Mr. Yang thinks he can make the case. He has proposed paying for a basic income with a value-added tax, a consumption-based levy that he says would raise money from companies that profit from automation. A recent study by the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning policy think-tank, suggested that such a plan, paid for by a progressive tax plan, could grow the economy by more than 2 percent and provide jobs for 1.1 million more people.“Universal basic income is an old idea,” Mr. Yang said, “but it’s an old idea that right now is uniquely relevant because of what we’re experiencing in society.”Mr. Yang’s prominent supporters include Andy Stern, a former leader of Service Employees International Union, who credited him with “opening up a discussion that the country’s afraid to have.” His campaign has also attracted some of Silicon Valley’s elites. Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos, is an early donor to Mr. Yang’s campaign, as are several venture capitalists and high-ranking alumni of Facebook and Google.Mr. Yang, who has raised roughly $130,000 since filing his official paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in November, says he will ultimately raise millions from supporters in the tech industry and elsewhere to supplement his own money.

On 7 November, Lana Lokteff, an American white nationalist, introduced a “thought criminal and political prisoner and friend” as a featured guest on her internet talk show, Red Ice TV. For about 90 minutes, Lokteff and her guest – Greg Johnson, a prominent white nationalist and editor-in-chief of the white nationalist publisher Counter-Currents – discussed Johnson’s recent arrest in Norway amid authorities’ concerns about his past expression of “respect” for the far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik. In 2012, Johnson wrote that he was angered by Breivik’s crimes because he feared they would harm the cause of white nationalism but had discovered a “strange new respect” for him during his trial; Breivik’s murder of 77 people has been cited as an inspiration by the suspected Christchurch killer, the man who murdered the British MP Jo Cox, and a US coast guard officer accused of plotting a white nationalist terror attack.Just a few weeks earlier, Red Ice TV had suffered a serious setback when it was permanently banned from YouTube for repeated violations of its policy against hate speech. But Red Ice TV still had a home on Facebook, allowing the channel’s 90,000 followers to stream the discussion on Facebook Watch – the platform Mark Zuckerberg launched as a place “to share an experience and bring people together who care about the same things”.The conversation wasn’t a unique occurrence. Facebook promised to ban white nationalist content from its platform in March 2019, reversing a years-long policy to tolerate the ideology. But Red Ice TV is just one of several white nationalist outlets that remain active on the platform today.A Guardian analysis found longstanding Facebook pages for VDare, a white nationalist website focused on opposition to immigration; the Affirmative Right, a rebranding of Richard Spencer’s blog Alternative Right, which helped launch the “alt-right” movement; and American Free Press, a newsletter founded by the white supremacist Willis Carto, in addition to multiple pages associated with Red Ice TV. Also operating openly on the platform are two Holocaust denial organizations, the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust and the Institute for Historical Review.“There’s no question that every single one of these groups is a white nationalist group,” said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Intelligence Project, after reviewing the Guardian’s findings. “It’s not even up for debate. There’s really no excuse for not removing this material.”White nationalists support the establishment of whites-only nation states, both by excluding new non-white immigrants and, in some cases, by expelling or killing non-white citizens and residents. Many contemporary proponents of white nationalism fixate on conspiracy theories about demographic change and consider racial or ethnic diversity to be acts of “genocide” against the white race.Facebook declined to take action against any of the pages identified by the Guardian. A company spokesperson said: “We are investigating to determine whether any of these groups violate our policies against organized hate. We regularly review organizations against our policy and any that violate will be banned permanently.”The spokesperson also said that Facebook does not ban Holocaust denial, but does work to reduce the spread of such content by limiting the distribution of posts and preventing Holocaust-denying groups and pages from appearing in algorithmic recommendations. Such limitations are being applied to the two Holocaust denial groups identified by the Guardian, the spokesperson said.The Guardian undertook a review of white nationalist outlets on Facebook amid a debate over the company’s decision to include Breitbart News in Facebook News, a new section of its mobile app dedicated to “high quality” journalism. Facebook has faced significant pressure to reduce the distribution of misinformation on its platform. Critics of Breitbart News object to its inclusion in what Zuckerberg has described as a “trusted source” of information on two fronts: its repeated publication of partisan misinformation and conspiracy theories – and its promotion of extreme rightwing views.A growing body of evidence shows the influence of white nationalism on Breitbart’s politics. Breitbart’s former executive chairman Steve Bannon called the site “the platform for the alt-right” in 2016. In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported on emails and documents showing how a former Breitbart editor had worked directly with a white nationalist and a neo-Nazi to write and edit an article about the “alt-right” movement.A Breitbart spokeswoman, Elizabeth Moore, said that the outlet “is not now nor has it ever been a platform for the alt-right”. Moore also said McHugh was “a troubled individual” who had been fired for a number of reasons “including lying”.“Breitbart is the funnel through which VDare’s ideas get out to the public,” said Beirich. “It’s basically a conduit of conspiracy theory and racism into the conservative movement … We don’t list them as a hate group, but to consider them a trusted news source is pandering at best.”Facebook executives have responded defensively to criticism of Breitbart News’s inclusion in the Facebook News tab, arguing that the company should not pick ideological sides.“Part of having this be a trusted source is that it needs to have a diversity of … views in there,” Zuckerberg said at an event in New York in response to a question about Breitbart’s inclusion. Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships, wrote in a lengthy Facebook post that she believed Facebook should “include content from ideological publishers on both the left and the right”. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram and a longtime Facebook executive, questioned on Twitter whether the company’s critics “really want a platform of our scale to make decisions to exclude news organizations based on their ideology”. In response to a question from the Guardian, Mosseri acknowledged that Facebook does ban the ideology of white nationalism, then added: “The tricky bit is, and this is always the case, where exactly to draw the line.”One of the challenges for Facebook is that white nationalist and white supremacist groups adopt the trappings of news outlets or publications to disseminate their views, said Joan Donovan, the director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard and an expert on media manipulation.Red Ice TV is “a group that styles themselves as a news organization when they are primarily a political organization, and the politics are staunchly white supremacist”, Donovan said. “We have seen this happen in the past where organizations like the KKK have produced their own newspapers … It doesn’t mean that it qualifies as news.”Many people argue that Breitbart is more of a “political front” than a news operation, she added. “When Steve Bannon left Breitbart in order to work much more concretely with campaigns, you could see that Breitbart was a political organ before anything else. Really what they were trying to do was give white supremacist politics a veneer of objectivity.”Donovan said she expects platform companies will reassess their treatment of Breitbart following the release of the Miller emails. She also called for Facebook to take a more “holistic” approach to combating US domestic terrorism, as it does with foreign terrorist groups.A Facebook spokesperson noted that Facebook News is still in a test phase and that Facebook is not paying Breitbart News for its inclusion in the program. The spokesperson said the company would continue to listen to feedback from news publishers.Facebook has long asserted that “hate speech has no space on Facebook”, whether it comes from a news outlet or not.But the $566bn company has consistently allowed a variety of hate groups to use its platform to spread their message, even when alerted to their presence by the media or advocacy groups. In July 2017, in response to queries from the Guardian, Facebook said that more than 160 pages and groups identified as hate groups by SPLC did not violate its community standards. Those groups included: American Renaissance, a white supremacist website and magazine; The Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist organization referenced in the manifesto written by Dylann Roof before he murdered nine people in a black church; The Occidental Observer, an online publication described by the Anti-Defamation League as the “primary voice for antisemitism from far-right intellectuals”; the Traditionalist Worker party, a neo-Nazi group that had already been involved in multiple violent incidents; and Counter-Currents, the white nationalist publishing imprint run by the white nationalist Greg Johnson, the recent guest on Red Ice TV. Three weeks later, following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Facebook announced a crackdown on violent threats and removed pages associated with the the Traditionalist Worker party, Counter-Currents, and the neo-Nazi organization Gallows Tree Wotansvolk. Many of the rest remained.A year later, a Guardian review found that many of the groups and individuals involved in the Charlottesville event were back on Facebook, including the neo-Confederate League of the South, Patriot Front and Jason Kessler, who organized Unite the Right. Facebook took those pages down following inquiries from the Guardian, but declined to take action against the page of David Duke, the notorious white supremacist and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.In May 2018, Vice News’s Motherboard reported on internal Facebook training documents that showed the company was distinguishing between white supremacy and white nationalism – and explicitly allowing white nationalism.In July 2018, Zuckerberg defended the motivations of people who engage in Holocaust denial during an interview, saying that he did not “think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong”. Following widespread criticism, he retracted his remarks.It was not until March 2019 that Facebook acknowledged that white nationalism “cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups” and banned it.Beirich expressed deep frustration with Facebook’s track record.“We have consulted with Facebook many, many times,” Beirich added. “We have sent them our list of hate groups. It’s not like they’re not aware, and I always get the sense that there is good faith desire [to take action], and yet over and over again [hate groups] keep popping up. It’s just not possible for civil rights groups like SPLC to play the role of flagging this stuff for Facebook. It’s a company that makes $42bn a year and I have a staff of 45.” Topics Facebook Social networking Race Social media Digital media features

If decades from now historians look back at this era and marvel at how the richest country on earth, where corporate mergers were commonplace and “too big to fail” became a catch-all phrase for industries ranging from healthcare to telecom, was able to break up Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other behemoths, they’ll have Matt Stoller to thank (among others).Who?While Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and even Donald Trump are the populists who make the headlines with their attacks on the tech giants, it’s actually policy geeks such as Stoller who are driving much of the antitrust debate right now.Now, Stoller is out with his first book, Goliath, a deeply researched and masterfully written history of antitrust in the U.S., making a powerful argument that the desire for “economic equality” is at the heart of the American experiment. In a wide-ranging discussion, we talked to Stoller about the duel between Microsoft and Amazon to win a massive $10 billion Pentagon contract, the perversion of the free market in recent decades, the decline of democracy, and breaking up Big Tech.This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.Fast Company: I wanted to ask you about this big deal, Microsoft’s $10 billion Pentagon deal for cloud services. It made me think of this concept of the “national champion”—this argument that the U.S. military has unique demands that require companies with unique scale. What is your response to that argument—that whether or not it was Amazon or Microsoft, this idea that it had to be a big company, rather than a diversified group of companies.Matt Stoller: I don’t think that’s true. I mean, the CIA is looking for a new cloud provider, and they want multiple providers, a multi-cloud site. Whether you have one cloud provider or multiple cloud providers is kind of a different question than whether you need national champions. The premise of national champions is that you want to encourage monopolies because monopolies will invest, will have the scale and capital to invest. This isn’t true, that’s not what usually would happen. Typically, when you enable monopoly, what you get is political corruption. If we want to have the government investing to put out platforms and monopolize them, then the government should just do it directly. Like with the post office.But the traditional model that was very successful was that you had the government in the 1950s to the 1970s as a large customer for a lot of Silicon Valley companies like Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel and a lot of electronics companies. But the government didn’t create monopolies. The government created competitive markets using procurement policy. So this is a good opportunity to actually structure a more competitive and open market.FC: You’ve obviously talked a lot about Facebook and breaking it up. Can you take us through exactly what you think should be done and explain how that would help.MS: Google and Facebook and there are others like TikTok, what they do is say they’re communication platforms or they’re information utilities—which means that their main product is facilitating your communication that you do. Right? And what is advertising? Advertising is just inserting information you don’t want at the behest of a third party. Right? And so what you see is mass manipulation. You see things like addiction.This is something that [Google cofounders] Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote about in the late ’90s before they found their business model. They were like, there’s no way to do a search engine ethically with an ad finance model because you’ll have the incentive to engage in self-dealing. So, you know that’s a huge problem. And we see this all over the world where this ad model is creating a corrupted public common. That’s what’s happened. To fix it, get rid of the ad model.FC: I mean [Sergey Brin and Larry Page] never do interviews, but it would be nice to see either of them asked about that paper they wrote. And how they feel about that argument today. And whether they’ve been hypocritical in the management of their company.But how likely do you think such a breakup of these companies is going to be? There are so many arguments today about it and even people even on the right talk about it. But I feel like—and this points to a lot of issues in your book—over the last 30, 40 years, these monopolization forces keep increasing in power. On top of the power of corporate lobbyists and the influence of campaign contributions that have captured a lot of politicians in both parties, it’s very hard to disrupt the current structure in a meaningful way. The establishment and even the public will be wary of causing too much chaos. You saw that happen with the last financial crisis. The big banks really were too big to fail. And for all the arguments about breaking up big tech, I feel that in the end we’ll be left with a few little reforms here and there.MS: There’s no “in the end,” you know. We’ll go fascist. That’s sort of what will happen.FC: Go fascist?MS: If we don’t do something about big tech, something meaningful, we’ll just become a fascist society. It’s fairly simple.FC: OK. Is that the argument that has to be presented to motivate people to act and do the right thing?MS: I don’t know. I think we’re acting. I don’t think people want to go fascist. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of investigations. A year ago, everybody laughed at Congress when they questioned Mark Zuckerberg. They were like, “Oh, you look like fools.” And then last month, everybody laughed at Mark Zuckerberg because he looked like a fool. So there’s a change that’s happening, just that people don’t notice it.As for the financial crisis, you said, “people were a little worried.” No, Obama was corrupt. It’s not hard to get this one. People actually were totally fine with structural change. We had a big, structural change. Obama, [former Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner and [former Fed chairman Ben] Bernanke were corrupt. It’s just what happened. People don’t want to admit, because it’s embarrassing. But we screwed up. Our leader was bad, did bad things. That’s not a problem of people being worried about changes. That was just a problem of the guy in charge who screwed it up.FC: So, this seems to tie into the abandonment of the middle class and the working class and their voices and concerns.MS: There’s a long ideological path here. We are changing our ideology, right? That’s what’s happening in China. Big tech, climate change—all of these have presented us with problems, with the breakdown of neoliberalism, which doesn’t have any credibility anymore. So we might decide, oh well, neoliberalism doesn’t make any sense. We should get rid of democracy itself. That’s one particular path that we could do. We’ve done it before. We could go the other way, to kind of a New Deal framework. But we’re not going to stay where we are.We could also just muddle along for a while, but basically you’ve got to choose. There’s no one governing right now, right? No one’s in charge. When something happens with Boeing [two airplanes it manufactured crashed last year due to a software malfunction], no one tries to deal with it. Trump’s not governing. The Democrats aren’t governing.To the extent that anyone’s governing, it’s Mark Zuckerberg and the Chinese. The Chinese are the ones who can order people to do things and they do them. So if that continues—the status quo glide path is that we become a vassal state of China.FC: How do you envision a breakup of Google, for example?MS: I’m not sure. You could do it in a lot of different ways. Typically the easiest way is to put a bunch of rules in place about what they can and can’t do and let them break themselves up.Typically what happens is a court will give an order and say, “Here’s what you have to do. Here are the principles of the breakup. Here are the different divisions.” And then there’s like a negotiation about how to do it. That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is lines of business. You already have existing divisions, and you say, “Well, these two divisions can’t be in the same company.”You can also do it like they did with the electric utilities in the 1930s where they said, “Register with the FCC and you can’t be in more than one state unless we give you a waiver.” And over the course of several years, the utilities, the holding companies, split themselves up. Um, so it’s like, it’s a process basically of government in some form or fashion making a decree and then a negotiated kind of divorce over the course of a year or two.FC: I assume it’d be a little easier with a company like Amazon where you could easily just say, “Okay, AWS is over here and then this division is over here.”MS: It depends what you do. For example, if you wanted to sever Amazon and Whole Foods, it’d be pretty easy. And if you wanted to sever AWS. But if you wanted to sever toys and book sales, that might be harder because its warehouses are integrated. And if you wanted to sever maybe Fulfillment by Amazon from the Amazon Marketplace, that might be easier. I mean, this is why you do the investigation where you can figure out where you use the scalpel.FC: One of the points that’s been made about monopoly is that the current laws that are on the books haven’t been able to really handle these big new companies like Amazon and Facebook is due to the whole pricing model. That obviously people aren’t paying more and that predatory pricing is good for the consumer. So then why haven’t laws—you mentioned the Robinson-Patman Act [which prohibits price discrimination—such as charging different prices to different buyers for the same product] and the Clayton Act [which bans anticompetitive mergers]. What about using those in a more effective way?MS: You can use them. There are plenty of cases you can bring on the consumer welfare standard. We’re facing a breakdown of the rule of law itself. You can trace consumer problems if you want to, pricing problems. I mean Google is raising their prices on certain things. Apple is raising their prices on the App Store or they’re charging 30% on the App Store. There are laws that exist that people can use. They just don’t.FC: And why don’t they? Obviously corruption is one factor, but another factor is consumer apathy in a sense. Your book reminded me a little bit of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism, by Josh Kosman, where he goes through so many monopolies that people have no clue about—how most pet food businesses depend on a single packager and the same with eyeglasses. Why is there not more consumer outrage at this new monopoly capitalism?MS: Consumerism is the wrong frame. This is a political problem. It’s not something you can deal with as a consumer. People have been taught to think of themselves as consumers, so when they have a problem with a commercial relationship, then immediately it’s like, “Oh well, don’t buy from there.” They haven’t been trained to think of themselves as citizens anymore. So they don’t say, “Hey, we should restructure this market so there aren’t these problems that I encountered.”And this is all part of the collapse of the rule of law. So monopolization is a form of theft. That’s really what it is at its heart. We have mass theft going on. Sometimes it’s monopolization. Sometimes, it’s just fraud. Look, I bought a Spirit Airlines ticket, and they just canceled the flight and they were like, “Oh, we don’t have any other flights for three days.” That’s a form of fraud, and it’s crazy that a business model like that exists.FC: What did people do, like other passengers?MS: I had to buy another ticket on a different airline. And then I tweeted about it. I think that they should be shut down. But some people just waited the three days because they couldn’t afford another ticket. And some people took Greyhound.FC: So people are used to being screwed and having to take matters up with the company that’s involved, rather than the politicians?MS: I don’t think people are used to being screwed. But who are you going to complain to? Nobody in the government is going to do anything about it.FC: I don’t know what you think about the current crop of candidates, but will there be another Wright Patman [a legendary Texas congressman who served for almost half a century and waged “constant war against monopoly power,” in Stoller’s words]?MS: AOC is a lot like Wright Patman. Katie Porter [Democratic member of Congress from California] is a lot like Wright Patman. They’re emerging. They are teachers. Patman was a teacher. He believed in explaining to the people what their government did, what was going on, how things worked. So he was a teacher. And that’s what AOC and Porter do. And they also challenge power. I think they hate bullies. Patman hated bullies.FC: And there are voices on the right, like Josh Hawley, they have the right approach, but then all of a sudden they get into on how Facebook is censoring conservative voices and that becomes their big obsession.MS: That’s not his obsession. That’s not actually what he talks about most of the time. He talks about a lot of other things. If you were to measure what he talks about, that’s not a very important part of what he says. And if people would cover the other things that he says, then he would tweet more about that stuff. But it’s like if you talk about various forms of weakness at the FTC or if you deal with user interface manipulation or deception and nobody pays attention to it, then how many times can you say it? You need political support if you’re going to take on the most powerful companies in the world, which he’s doing. Where’s that political support gonna come from? Well, he’s tried to get it from social conservatives, which makes sense. They’re the only ones that are going to back him on this stuff. The problem isn’t that he is doing the wrong thing. The problem actually comes from the liberal gatekeepers who refuse to take corporate power seriously.This interview has been updated to correct some mistakes due to transcription errors.

FILE PHOTO: Giant cranes of Hyundai Heavy Industries are seen in Ulsan, South Korea, May 29, 2018. Picture taken on May 29, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiBRUSSELS (Reuters) - World No. 1 shipbuilding group Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings Co Ltd’s (267250.KS) $1.8 billion merger with rival shipbuilder Daewoo (042660.KS) will face a full-scale investigation in Europe due to serious EU antitrust concerns, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday. Hyundai in January announced the deal to create the world’s biggest shipbuilder with a 21 percent market share, in part a response to over-capacity in the industry. The European Commission will launch an investigation into the deal next week following a preliminary review which ends on Dec. 17, the people said. A full-scale investigation can take up to five months and in most cases ends with companies forced to sell off assets or transfer technology or contracts to rivals to address competition concerns. The EU competition enforcer declined to comment. The deal also requires regulatory clearance in South Korea, Singapore, China and Japan. Kazakhstan has already given the green light. Hyundai last week said it was working with Singapore’s regulators to allay their concerns. “We will do our best to get approval without any problems,” a Hyundai Heavy Industries spokesman said on Monday. State-funded Korea Development Bank (KDB) KDB.UL owns 55.7 percent of Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co Ltd, which has previously declined to comment beyond saying that Hyundai was leading the regulatory process. Hyundai is seeking to convince EU regulators to take into account the competitive threat from the merged China Shipbuilding Industry Corp (CSIC) and China State Shipbuilding Corp Ltd, other sources said previously, an entity with sales more than three times its own. The two Korean shipyards have said they will compete independently after merging, with each company able to negotiate their own contracts with customers and suppliers. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Jin Hyunjoo in Seoul; editing by Jan Strupczewski, Kirsten DonovanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

closeVideoFox News Flash top headlines for Dec. 4Fox News Flash top headlines for Dec. 4 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com"My campaign is evolving the same way President Obama's did," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe.""The same way that Jimmy Carter and others who talked to the larger aspirational goals didn't break through right away. But God, when our team is at number three in net favorably in Iowa and climbing, ... 80 percent of the people have not settled on their final choice.""So we're confident on our pathway to win in Iowa — to upset in Iowa," Booker added. "We're seeing local news write about the fact that we have the makings of an upset."Booker complained about Democratic debate qualifications and claimed that they keep quality candidates from reaching the stage."I believe these artificial hurdles for this debate stage right now are having the unintended consequences of having minority voices – which are essential to our party, essential to moving our party to the right – ... being excluded," he said."And that's problematic for a party that will rely on Black and Latino – black and brown I should say – Asian-Americans and others, turning out in record numbers. Not just to win the presidency, but to win back critical Senate seat that we need from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia to Arizona."He also said there are more billionaires on the debate stage than black people and claimed the billionaires don't have a legitimate shot at winning the Democratic nomination."I am concerned that the unintended consequences of the rules that have been written, allows a billionaire – and by the way, there will now be, if this race stays where it is right now, this 2020 election, we'll have more billionaires than black people – that allows billionaires to be on that stage and not people that have legitimate chances to win the nomination," Booker said earlier in the segment.According to the most recent RealClearPolitics polling average, Booker was under two percent in the Hawkeye State, tied for ninth place with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

“Our process has resulted in more women and candidates of color participating in our primary debates than billionaires,” said Xochitl Hinojosa, a committee spokeswoman. “No one who has failed to reach 4 percent at this point in the race has ever gone on to be the nominee. Our debate criteria reflects this.”Leah D. Daughtry, a longtime Democratic National Committee member who sits on the party’s rules committee, said she’s had a number of conversations in recent days with other members about how to change the system to include more candidates of color. No one has come up with a workable solution.“I don’t know how you fix it now without upsetting the apple cart,” she said. “But it’s a problem. It’s a real problem.”Some prominent Democrats say the party cannot be blamed for the failure of candidates of color to make the stage, placing responsibility on their inability to build momentum for their efforts — particularly among black and Latino voters. A growing number of voters, especially younger black voters, have rejected the notion that mere representation equals the kind of change the Democratic base is hungry for. Polls have consistently shown the former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading among African-American voters, while Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is widely popular among Latinos.“When people make the case that the standards and requirements should be lowered so that candidates of color can make the debate, as a Latina, I find that insulting,” said Maria Cardona, a former D.N.C. official. “The reason why the candidates right now are the ones at the top of the polls are because these are the candidates who are getting the majority of support from, guess who, voters of color.”Some party officials dismiss the criticism of the debate criteria. Ms. Harris, they note, had qualified for the December debate but chose instead to drop out, they said.

Cory Booker, the New Jersey senator struggling to be the only black candidate on the Democratic debate stage this month, has warned that the party could hand re-election to Donald Trump unless it sends a more positive message to African American voters.Booker has just four days left to meet stringent criteria set by the party for the next televised primary debate, in Los Angeles on 19 December. Should he fail to make the cut, the participants will be exclusively white, with more billionaires on stage than black people.In an interview with the Guardian, Booker said he was “worried, very worried” that the party was heading towards a repeat of the 2016 election in which Trump snatched an unexpected victory partly because of the softness of the African American vote.About 4.4 million voters who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 stayed home in 2016. More than a third were black.“There would be a President Hillary Clinton right now if the African American turnout had been close to what it had been in 2012,” Booker said. “That’s how real is the power and influence of the Democratic party’s most loyal voting base.”He added: “That’s why we have to make sure there’s a candidate on that stage that black and brown people in this country can trust, in whom they see their lived experience.”The issue of the fading diversity in the Democratic race has become a major talking point in the wake of the California senator Kamala Harris dropping out for lack of funds. With Harris out, the spotlight is increasingly falling to Booker. He has been quick to sound the alarm over the consequences of black voters feeling undervalued as election year approaches.Asked what message an all-white stage would send African Americans, he told the Guardian: “The message is already being sent.“I’ve talked to civil rights leaders, Congressional Black Caucus members, you hear this being talked about now in the black community. People are saying there, ‘This can’t be,’ especially when there is a candidate out there who is fully qualified under any objective criteria other than the arbitrary polling system.”Booker has met the bar of 200,000 unique donors set by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) but is falling short of attaining 4% in four national or early state polls. Unless he can do that by Thursday he will not have a place at the debate.To rub salt into the wound, Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager, has secured a position. Booker said the presence of billionaire candidates in the Democratic race – Michael Bloomberg is the other – was an insult to “voters who wonder how you can have talented, qualified, experienced, proven diverse candidates that aren’t on the stage.“We’ve seen how you gin your poll numbers up by running nonstop ads – that shouldn’t be the decider of who’s on stage at the debate, it sends a very bad signal.”The Guardian asked Steyer what he thought of the argument that the race was being distorted with billionaires buying prominence while diverse candidates languished.He said: “I’m concerned about the diversity in the debates, too, and I have asked the DNC to change the criteria of the debates to get more diversity.”Steyer has been able to use his personal wealth – he is worth $1.6bn according to Forbes – to vastly outspend Booker so far, buying $55m of TV and online ads to Booker’s $3m. The disparity is paradoxical given that one of Steyer’s main political platforms is combatting growing inequality.“A lot of people have complained to the DNC about how this is going,” Steyer said. “It’s important that we have a diverse group of people competing for the nomination of the Democratic party and I don’t think it’s fair, but I don’t run the process.”The thorny question of billionaires using their financial muscle to wrestle themselves into the Democratic race has welled up again with the late entry of Bloomberg. The former New York mayor is outspending all the top-tier candidates combined, according to the Washington Post.It did not soothe the increasingly fractious mood when Bloomberg commented that Booker was “well spoken”. He later apologised.Booker carved out his political reputation as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He has a distinguished resume that includes having been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, though he has complained that the media rarely point that out, unlike his Democratic rival Pete Buttigieg, also a Rhodes scholar.Booker said he was still confident he would make the debate later this month, joining those who have already been guaranteed a place: Buttigieg, Steyer, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar.The decision of more than a million African American voters to stay home rather than vote in 2016 is widely considered an important factor behind Trump’s shock victory. Trump won the presidency comfortably in the electoral college yet in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin he beat Clinton by only 77,000 votes.In the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee alone, Clinton attracted 70,000 fewer black votes than Obama in 2012.Booker said his anxieties about a potential repeat next November did not stop at the White House. He said low African American turnout could also have an effect on senatorial races in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Arizona that would prevent the Democrats taking back the Senate.“I’m very worried about consequences for the US Senate – it’s not just Donald Trump,” Booker said. “We cannot win in these very diverse states without not just good turnouts of African Americans – we need Obama’s record turnouts again.”Booker was speaking at a Democratic presidential forum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa organized by the Teamsters and focusing on workers’ rights. The Guardian and The Storm Lake Times were media partners of the event. Topics Cory Booker US elections 2020 Democrats Race Donald Trump US Congress US Senate news

Yet she also slid seamlessly into the surrogate role for Mr. Booker at a half-dozen campaign events in Iowa over the weekend. She has braved the post-debate spin room in the past, and often sees her own selfie lines form on the trail. “He’s the only candidate on the stage at the debate talking about, ‘We need to address the child poverty system,’” she said as a gaggle of women formed around her after taking selfies with her in Davenport, echoing the candidate’s message that his voice and platform need to be on the December debate stage. Ms. Dawson, of course, is no stranger to politics. Growing up in New York City, she helped her mother campaign and canvass for local politicians, “licking stamps and envelopes and pushing for local city councilmen and women.” She was an active surrogate for Mr. Sanders during the 2016 primary. She co-founded Voto Latino, a nonprofit voting rights organization, 15 years ago; is active in the Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York; and is on the board of V-Day, a global nonprofit to combat violence against women. The thought of running for office herself has occasionally crossed her mind. “I’ve had definitely a lot of friends who called me Senator Dawson over the years, which cracks me up,” she said. “I’ve always been sort of curious about it.”A goal of her time on the Iowa campaign trail, however, would also meet a need for the Booker campaign. Though the team has taken an R.V. on the road in both Iowa and New Hampshire, no one on the campaign currently has much experience driving the bigger vehicles. But Ms. Dawson does.“I would drive an R.V. in a heartbeat,” she said with a laugh. Both Mr. Booker and Ms. Dawson recognize that their time together on the trail may be limited — Mr. Booker jokingly asked the crowd in Davenport to invite Ms. Dawson to be a surrogate for him if he has to be in Washington for an impeachment trial — but Ms. Dawson said she felt the same budding energy of a late upswing that Mr. Booker said he saw around the state.

“A lot of people have been with Cory and have been supporting him for two decades, and he’s only 50 years old,” said Whitney Tilson, a longtime fan who said Mr. Booker “would surprise everybody” in Iowa because of his high favorability ratings — people who like him but aren’t committed to caucusing for him — in the polls. “He will be president someday.” At 7:30 p.m. on Friday, on the way to his final event of the day, a fund-raising call with Judy Zamore, his campaign’s chief financial officer, and Addisu Demissie, the campaign manager, revealed the weeklong surge. “We are about $1,000 shy of having $1.1 million in for the week, that’s pretty amazing for us,” she said. But Ms. Zamore warned that “it is definitely starting to come back to earth a little bit,” and the possibility of missing the debate stage could make it much harder to continue at the current pace. One key to the Booker campaign’s relative staying power is an extreme dedication to frugality, set by Mr. Demissie and Ms. Zamore. They have staff make their ads in house, instead of hiring an outside consultant. On the road, Mr. Booker regularly stays in supporters’ homes, and has staff do the same. At every all-staff meeting, Mr. Demissie gives out “super saver awards” to especially budget-minded staffers, like those who car-pooled instead of taking a train. But a tight budget has also significantly hampered the operation. The campaign has still not advertised on television, and only this week began running digital video ads. And while they have a broad staff of organizers on the ground, the campaign has only five field offices in Iowa. As of October, Mr. Buttigieg had 22 field offices across the state. Though Ms. Young, the pollster, had explained to Mr. Booker that time was running out for him to meet the polling thresholds for the December debate, the candidate was still exploring his options.

The D.N.C. spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa called the committee’s debate criteria fair, and noted that no campaign objected when the thresholds were announced earlier this year. No television network has agreed to host two nights of debates in January or February, she said.“The D.N.C. will not change the threshold for any one candidate and will not revert to two consecutive nights with more than a dozen candidates,” Ms. Hinojosa said. “Our qualification criteria is extremely low and reflects where we are in the race.”Mr. Booker failed to qualify for Thursday’s debate after failing to reach 4 percent support in any qualifying poll; four such polls were required. He said Wednesday that he would not “argue with the refs” about debate rules. Mr. Castro also has refrained from attacking Mr. Perez over debate rules.It is not clear how robustly the other campaigns believe debate thresholds should be lowered. Some campaign staffers said privately Saturday that they felt obligated to sign the Booker letter or risk appearing racist, or unsupportive of an effort to be inclusive of candidates of color. Many have complained privately for months about the number of candidates on the debate stage, a gripe Mr. Biden has regularly made in public. In June and July, 20 candidates qualified for the debates, resulting in back-to-back nights with 10 candidates in each. “Look, I think everybody knows these aren’t debates,” Mr. Biden told reporters during a September stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “These are one-minute assertions.” Mr. Perez, in an interview Wednesday, said next week’s debate field became only less diverse when Senator Kamala Harris of California, who had qualified, ended her campaign last week. No candidate, he said, has won the nomination without having at least 4 percent support by December. “As we get closer and closer, you need to demonstrate that you are making progress,” Mr. Perez said. “That is a time-honored practice, and it’s a good practice because you do have to demonstrate that you’re making progress.”Lisa Lerer contributed reporting.

Nine Democratic presidential candidates sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee Saturday urging the party to ease the qualification requirements for upcoming debates, highlighting tensions within the party over the decline of candidates of color in a primary field once heralded for being the most diverse in US history.To make the stage for the December debate — which most candidates have pledged to boycott over a labor dispute at the venue — the party required candidates to receive at least 4 percent in four DNC-approved polls, and have at least 200,000 individual campaign donors. The requirements for a debate invitation have grown more stringent as the primary has progressed; it is not yet clear whether the next year’s debates will have tougher requirements for participation. Despite this uncertainty, the letter, spearheaded by Sen. Cory Booker and signed by all seven candidates who have qualified for next week’s debate, asks the DNC to hold candidates to one requirement — either polling or donor numbers — instead of both. The criteria have “unnecessarily and artificially narrowed” the diverse pool of presidential candidates “before voters have had a chance to be heard,” the letter reads. “As a result, candidates who have proven both their viability and their commitment to the Democratic Party are being prematurely cut out of the nominating contest before many voters have even tuned in — much less made their decision about whom to support.” Should the Democratic debate scheduled for next Thursday proceed as planned, it will feature seven of the 15 candidates left in the race. Six of these candidates are white — former Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar; Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and businessman Tom Steyer — and just one is a candidate of color, businessman Andrew Yang. California Sen. Kamala Harris, the only other person of color to qualify, dropped out of the race earlier this month.Despite the top candidates signaling support for the rules change, the DNC won’t budge. In a statement to Politico, the party argued candidates had a chance to give their feedback on the process before it was adopted and “not one campaign objected” to it. The statement continued: “The DNC will not change the threshold for any one candidate and will not revert back to two consecutive nights with more than a dozen candidates. Our qualification criteria is extremely low and reflects where we are in the race.” DNC Chair Tom Perez reiterated this position in an interview with the New York Times Sunday, and said the lineup for January’s debate will definitely depend on both polling and donor rolls. However, Perez said he may consider tweaking the qualifying requirements for debates in February, March, and April. If the party were to acquiesce to the letter’s request, Booker and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro would be allowed to participate in 2020’s debates despite failing to meet the existing criteria. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has said she would also qualify, though she might elect not to participate — she announced she would have skipped December’s debate even if she made the cutoff to protest the DNC’s rules. And although the letter focuses on the increase in diversity a rules change would bring about, such a change would also have the effect of opening the path to the debate stage to even more white candidates: former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is polling high enough, while self-help guru Marianne Williamson may have enough donors to return to the stage. Early in the Democratic presidential primary, Democratic voters could choose from a diverse group of viable candidates, including Harris as one of the early frontrunners. But as the year comes to a close, the highest-polling choices are four white people, two of whom are straight white men. It’s sparked some self-reflection within a party that boasts a significantly more racially diverse electorate than its opponents. Political observers have said the struggles of candidates of color are the result of a number of factors. For one, candidates of color have raised significantly less money than white candidates. Harris, as the Associated Press notes, is the highest-ranking black women in US government, but she still raised $16 million less than Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Observers have argued candidates of color are also hurt by questions of electability. Some Democrats worry that the white working class people who voted for Trump in 2016 won’t come back to the party if the nominee isn’t white, the New York Times reported. In the case of Harris, Howard University political science professor Niambi Carter told Vox’s Li Zhou: “For many folks in the media and the public, Harris is not the prototypical candidate. She is not white; she is not old; and she is not male. ... This belief cannot help but to penetrate the general public’s perceptions of Harris, and for those still reeling from the 2016 election, they don’t want to risk it all again on a person like Kamala Harris.”Meanwhile, Biden — a white, male senior citizen — is routinely ranked the most electable candidate in polls, and retains the strongest support among African American voters of any of the candidates.Of course, many argue the lower-ranking candidates are faltering because they’ve failed to resonate with voters. Perez himself made this point in speaking with the Times, saying, “I’m not doing the polling ... if voters are disappointed that [Booker] hasn’t qualified, then when they answer the phone, they need to express their preference for Cory Booker.”However, Theodore Johnson, who studies African American politics at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the New York Times there is another factor affecting candidates of color, namely that the first black president casts a shadow over how they’re evaluated: “Their road is easier because of Obama, but their ability to secure the nomination is harder because they’re not Obama.”Despite these difficulties, as Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote, Democratic voters are increasingly making racial equity a foundational part of their political demands — an effect he’s calling “the Great Awokening.” And those demands are likely to affect how race plays into contests beyond the 2020 presidential election:To the extent that one believes — as, in fact, the evidence seems to say — that racial polarization of the electorate was a boon to Trump’s fortunes, it seems plausible that Democrats’ new post-Awokening political style will only help him win. But since anti-racism really is a central motivating force for the anti-Trump coalition, it hardly seems realistic or reasonable to expect it to hide that fact. ... While the Great Awokening might drive some Democrats into Trump’s arms now, the sustained phenomenon is forcing the Democratic Party to confront the legacy of America’s racial caste system squarely. The next Democratic president will have to do the same.

It could be argued that the September 2016 speech in which Hillary Clinton said “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” was the moment she lost the White House. The phrase was rapidly deployed to define her – and liberals more generally – as out-of-touch elitists who dismissed voters as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it,” in Clinton’s own phrase.What was easy to miss was the second half of the quote, which posed a more difficult question for liberals: what about the “other basket” of Trump voters – “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.”Yet the frame was frozen before the second part of Clinton’s statement. The word “deplorable” hung over her campaign like a toxic cloud. She suggested, in her book What Happened, that it contributed to her defeat.A similar difficulty has haunted liberal discussions of voters who chose leave in the 2016 EU referendum. It became impossible to talk honestly about the complicated motivations for that vote. If its words were too strong – if anyone suggested that racism or xenophobia played a part – this was seized on as classic smug, elite contempt. “A slur on 17.4 million people”, Mark Francois called it, when Will Self said one didn’t “have to be a racist or an antisemite to vote for Brexit. It’s just that every racist and antisemite in the country did.”Remainers and Labour supporters were constantly accused of losing the argument because they were condescending to voters. Any suggestion that a vote for Brexit or Boris Johnson might express darker motivations than simply admiring the Tory manifesto is always met with a gloating snarl: no wonder you lost.So the real business of understanding what kind of resentments may motivate some of these votes – and, more seriously, how politicians and the tabloid press play on those fears – gets lost in a different scuffle about the right way to address these voters. And here we are, three years on: a Conservative party and prime minister with a history of racism and Islamophobia have just achieved the biggest majority since 1987, and we still don’t know how to talk to, or about, those who voted for such a party and such a man.This is the Clinton trap – the trap of “some, not all”. Any question about some of the preferences on display gets cynically collapsed into an attack on all voters – even when the “some” is explicit. Francois’ comic spluttering about a slur on 17.4 million people is a classic of the genre. There are many reasons one might vote for a party that has been endorsed by Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins. But it is not wild to assume that for some, xenophobia might be one of those reasons.Above all, it is a losing game to pretend that these qualities do not exist and aren’t being weaponised by the right, while trying to quietly and discreetly appeal to them. That way lies the dismal hedge of the Ed Miliband years, putting “Controls on immigration” on a mug and hoping it will slake voters’ appetite for some comforting nativism. There is a balance that can be struck between calling voters names and crudely pandering to them.One defining feature of a populist political climate is a feigned preciousness about the motivations of voters. They are always pristine and unimpeachable, especially when the voters in question are “left behind” or authentically working class – a class that never seems to include black or brown people. En masse, these voters are seen to express a “will of the people”, which must not be questioned or challenged, only passively accepted.That will – which takes shape in the years between elections, not on polling day – is in fact a composite of many factors. It is made up of ideological loyalty as well as a more abstract instinct that some politician is a wrong ’un. It is made up of information delivered by those parties who have greater access to media and more funds to do so. And yes, it is made up of human frailty, resentment and a yearning for status. The vision of Johnson’s Tory party is not really about Brexit – it is about renewing the status of “real” British voters via Brexit and its attendant cultural, social and economic meanness.This strategy is so central for the right – and so powerful – that it must be addressed head-on, without falling into the Clinton trap. It is clearly not a solution to write off voters who respond to this sort of messaging, or call them names. But addressing them isn’t just about tone or language, it is about a vision to offer people who think nobody cares about them, a vision that we should have started building the moment that the first “Controls on immigration” mug cracked in the dishwasher.It is an endeavour that needs to break the feedback loop between the rightwing media and the voter, get on the pitch and challenge nativist rhetoric, and move beyond feebly articulating anti- or pro-immigration positions. The reason people saw homelessness rise, the NHS on its knees and the deaths of thousands under austerity yet still voted Conservative is because they could not imagine an alternative. What is needed is that vivid alternative to the parochial nativism of a post-Brexit Britain, one that addresses those voters directly by making a pitch for their souls that goes beyond the economic. There were a few glimmers of that alternative during the last days of Labour’s muddled campaign, but by then it was much too late.• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist and the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent Topics Labour Opinion General election 2019 Conservatives Brexit comment

Facing a consumer market that’s far from ready for augmented reality-based entertainment, the once-buzzy mixed reality company Magic Leap is now set to target businesses and brands.The Plantation, Florida-based company says it’s planning to offer a slightly updated version of its mixed reality headset and a set of spatial computing services specially designed to help corporations collaborate in virtual spaces.It’s a logical next step for Magic Leap, which has now raised $2.6 billion in venture capital over eight funding rounds since 2014, and generated mountains of hype for its hologram-creating headset. But a recent report from The Information says the company sold only 6,000 units of the Magic Leap One Creator Edition in the first six months after it became available in April 2018—far short of Magic Leap’s CEO Rony Abovitz’s wildly optimistic goal of selling a million of the devices in the first year. The company is now positioned to compete with both Google and Microsoft in building augmented reality applications for businesses.Bringing virtual worlds to businessMixed reality lenses insert layers of digital imagery within the physical world the wearer sees in front of them. Some companies are already using the technology to train employees, or facilitate collaboration in common digital spaces, or let remote experts weigh in on procedures, designs, or repairs. The technology’s biggest payoff for enterprises might be the cost savings from not having to fly employees in from far-flung locations to do these things in person.These are the same types of applications Magic Leap will offer businesses. The company says it’s been busy over the past 18 months working with a group of partners to develop mixed reality services that could be immediately useful in companies in many types of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, and even aviation.“We wanted not to approach this as an ‘if you build it they will come’ platform,” Magic Leap chief product officer Omar Khan says. “We wanted to provide plenty of tools and reference cases so that enterprises wouldn’t have to be asking how [they’re] going to leverage this technology.”The first mixed reality services fall into four basic buckets: collaboration, location-based experiences, 3D visualization, and training.[Photo: courtesy of Magic Leap]A set of collaboration-focused apps let employees in different locations get together in a common digital space to design things or work on problems. “The highest value comes from people coming together volumetrically for copresentations or collaboration around 3D objects, to design things, or review designs, or just to have a whiteboarding session,” Khan says.In addition, location-based experiences are supposed to help businesses create real world learning or entertainment experiences for customers. For instance, a museum might create virtual guided tours that educate visitors on pieces of art. JetBlue will soon let travelers waiting at airport gates use a Magic Leap headset to visualize future vacation destinations.3D visualization apps enable people to see and work on complex models, which could include something like a 3D schematic of a jet engine or a data visualization. In September, Magic Leap signed an exclusive deal with Brain Lab to let surgeons train and prepare for operations by viewing and interacting with 3D objects (like brain scans) within the headset.The final group of apps are designed to train employees for specific tasks while they’re in the actual work environment and able to work hands-free, as opposed to in a classroom or training space. For instance, a remote trainer or expert might show a worker how to repair a machine in a manufacturing facility. “Enterprises have used VR and AR to train employees, but this really takes it to the next level,” Khan says.Magic Leap will provide the development tools and other resources necessary for enterprise customers to build their custom versions of the apps. These will sell along with an updated Magic Leap One headset, and a suite of device management tools and support resources, for $2,995 per device, the company says.Taking on the competitionThe company will be competing head to head with Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 mixed reality headset, which is also aimed at enterprises. Khan told me he believes his product has the edge because it can place 3D imagery anywhere from eight inches in front of the user’s face to as far as the user’s eyes can see, while he believes the HoloLens may limit the space in which digital imagery may be inserted. Khan says the Magic Leap One is also easier to wear for long periods because it weighs only half as much as HoloLens. That’s partly because HoloLens is a self-contained unit, while the Magic Leap device tethers to a round “light pack” device that clips to the user’s pocket. I’ve personally worn both the HoloLens 2 and the Magic Leap One, and I found the Magic Leap holograms to be more compelling and visually beautiful.[Photo: courtesy of Magic Leap]There’s a price difference too: The debut Magic Leap One Creator Edition device (sold separately from the new enterprise suite) starts at $2,300. The HoloLens 2 sells for $3,500. The services each company offers may be on par: Microsoft sells a subscription “remote assist” service that’s roughly comparable to Magic Leap’s “training and assist” service.Google is also selling a redesigned version of its Google Glass product to enterprises. Google’s headset is a much simpler approach, however, as its product overlays simple graphics and data over the real world without actually inserting digital content within the real world.Neither the HoloLens nor Google Glass have enjoyed the relentless hype as Magic Leap’s technology. However, others in the mixed reality industry believe Magic Leap oversold the promise of the consumer mixed reality experience long before the technology—and the buying public—was ready.Magic Leap may have had its reasons for overhyping its product, but as time goes on, it’s becoming clear that mixed reality tech—like many consumer technologies before it—will have to cut its teeth in the workplace before one day becoming a doorbuster at Best Buy. Magic Leap will be no exception.

This. George Carlin said it best:"[...]there are alot of people who want to expand the death penalty to include drug dealers. This is really stupid. Drug dealers aren't afraid to die. They're already killing each other every day on the streets by the hundreds. Drive-bys, gang shootings, they're not afraid to die. Death penalty doesn't mean anything unless you use it on people who are afraid to die. Like... the bankers who launder the drug money. The bankers, who launder, the drug money. Forget the dealers, you want to slow down that drug traffic, you got to start executing a few of these fucking bankers. White, middle class Republican bankers.And I'm not talking about soft, American executions, like lethal injection. I'm talking about fucking crucifixion folks! Let's bring back crucifixions. A form of capital punishment the Christians and Jews of America can really appreciate. And I'd go a little further, I'd crucify people upside-down. Like Saint Peter, feet up, head down. And naked. I'd have naked upside-down crucifixions on TV once a week at halftime on the Monday Night Football game! Halftime! Monday Night! The Monday Night Crucifixions! You'd have people tuning in, don't even care about Football! Wouldn't you like to hear Dan Dierdorf explain why the nails have to go in at a certain angle? And I'll guarantee you one thing. You start execut- you start nailing one white banker per week to a big wooden cross, you're going to see that drug traffic begin to slow down pretty fucking quick. Pretty fucking quick- you won't even be able to buy drugs in schools and prisons anymore!"

During a discussion about solutions to the opioid crisis during last night’s Democratic primary debate, Beto O’Rourke suggested that when pharmaceutical companies go low, we should get high.The former congressman from El Paso said a veteran he once met wouldn’t have gotten addicted to heroin if the veteran had been prescribed marijuana instead of opioids for his health condition. “Now imagine that veteran, instead of being prescribed an opioid, had been prescribed marijuana, because we made that legal in America [and] ensured the VA could prescribe it,” O’Rourke said.This was a savvy answer. It clearly won O’Rourke some fans: At the mention of weed, the entrepreneur Andrew Yang, another Democratic presidential candidate, yelled across the stage, “PREACH, Beto.” (And thereby perhaps underscored O’Rourke’s famed youth-pastor energy.) O’Rourke was also in line with the majority of American voters—two-thirds of whom also support legalizing marijuana—as well as the majority of Democratic candidates for president. Joe Biden, the former vice president, whose stance on marijuana is the most conservative of the bunch, has called merely for decriminalizing the substance.Putting forth marijuana as a solution for chronic pain stands to differentiate O’Rourke, whose campaign has been flagging in recent months. The other candidates mostly focused on putting pharmaceutical executives who have peddled opioids in jail. That’s all well and just, Beto seemed to say, but marijuana could help replace those awful opioids we’re trying to get rid of.

Guardian reporter Chris McGreal talks to Rachel Humphreys about the opioid crisis, which is the worst drug epidemic in American history. During his reporting, he looked at why were millions of opioid pills were being sent to small towns in West Virginia, and the fallout from that drug addiction. West Virginia still has the highest overdose rate per capita.States are now joining together to fight for compensation. The first federal case is due to begin today which will decide on what could be a comprehensive financial settlement across the country. And: broadcaster Emma Barnett on why we all need to talk about periods.

By examining the National Poison Data System, which collects reports of poisonings around the United States, Kimberly Reynolds, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, and her co-authors recently found that people are increasingly using both gabapentin and baclofen to either get high or attempt suicide. From 2013 to 2017, people tried to commit suicide using gabapentin nearly 42,000 times, and thousands more abused or misused the substance. In most cases—nearly 70 percent—the poisoned individuals took a combination of gabapentin and other drugs. Meanwhile, the majority of the poison cases involving baclofen were suicide attempts. “It’s rare, but overdose from large quantities of gabapentin or baclofen can be fatal,” Reynolds told me via email.In isolation, gabapentin isn’t necessarily dangerous. Many chronic-pain patients rely on it to maintain functionality. But when used in high doses, or in combination with opioids or benzodiazepines, it can be risky. “People who take high-dose gabapentin for months or years on end often do develop tolerance”—that is, the need to take more and more of the drug to achieve the same effect, says Arthur Robin Williams, an assistant professor at Columbia University who was not involved in Reynolds’s study. When patients stop taking these drugs abruptly, they can experience withdrawal symptoms. They often start taking them again in order to feel “better,” when in reality their improved feeling is simply the withdrawal symptoms abating.Reynolds’s study and others suggest that doctors’ long struggle to find a safe, reliable treatment for chronic pain is far from over. Just as opioids were used to get recreationally high and potentially cause overdose, it appears that their replacements sometimes are as well. In fact, Reynolds and her co-authors write that people often take gabapentin and baclofen in combination with benzodiazepines, such as Xanax, or with opioids, in order to increase their intoxicating effect.Gabapentin is often prescribed in combination with opioids, in order to enhance their pain-relieving potential, and this combo can be especially dangerous. Gabapentin is sedating, and it increases the risk of overdose death by compounding opioids’ sedating effect. In a 2017 study, David Juurlink, a scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, in Toronto, and his co-authors found that among patients who take prescription opioids, those who die of overdose are more likely to have also been prescribed gabapentin or a version of it, pregabalin, than those who don’t die.Reynolds and others say patients who are prescribed drugs like gabapentin and baclofen should be screened for substance-abuse disorders, mood disorders, and suicidal ideation. And patients who are taking gabapentin should avoid mixing it with other drugs, especially depressants such as alcohol and opioids. Some states have started treating gabapentin as a serious drug, rather than the chronic-pain equivalent of gummy vitamins. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan have reclassified gabapentin as a Schedule 5 controlled substance. Several other states have mandated the reporting of gabapentin prescriptions to prescription-drug-monitoring databases. (Baclofen, however, remains unscheduled.)

I suffer from headackes and migraines.When I was a Kid, aspirin worked but after 10 years (more or less) not so much. I moved to acetaminophen/Paracetamol, until after 10 (again, more or less) years, it not worked anymore.I moved to Ibuprofen, until after 15 years (more or less) it not worked anymore. So i Moved to Potasic Diclofenac, until I got my gastric sleeve and could not take it anymore, so I moved (it still works 20 years latter, is just that I can not take it becaise of the gastric scar).Now I take Etoricoxib, and it more or less works.The point is, sience has moved forward since the discovery of aspirin and Paracetamol/acetaminophen, and there are many generations of NSAIDs available. Indeed a plethora of NSAIDs. So, tell your doctor, in no uncertain terms: "No opioids!" "No stuff that makes me an addict!" "No stuff that makes me want to suicide" "No stuff that gives me a high" "Just Analgesics"If you suffer from long term pain (for example, while healing a fracture, or migraines like me) or chronic pain, climb the ladder (with suppervision from your doctor, of course) until you find an NSAID that works for you and stick to it. If it stops working after some years, climb some more and find the next one. Is better than to risk your life on something that can be used to commit suicide, or can make you an adict.Yes, NSAIDs have some bad side-effects too, kidney things come to mind, but at least, if those side-effects manifest, you can stop or change medication cold turkey, without withdrawl sindrome, or becoming an addict... And they really alleviate the pain, instyead of drugging you so that you still feel the pain, just not care about it.On a side note, In 1993, I had a fracture + ankle sprain in Canada. They offered me opioids (type 3 tylenol), but I refused. Instead I used 600mg of Ibuprofen 3 times a day, and it worked like a charm. Then, back at home (in venezuela) in 2007 after my knee surgery, I was prescribed again type 3 tylenol, but this time around I took it, and guess what? It did not stop the pain AT ALL, instead, it made you not care about the pain due to the codeine. That made me realize, I took the right decition in Canada. So no more opioids for me...

The gleaming white booth towered over the medical conference in Italy in October, advertising a new brand of antidote for opioid overdoses. “Be prepared. Get naloxone. Save a life,” the slogan on its walls said. Some conference attendees were stunned when they saw the company logo: Mundipharma, the international affiliate of Purdue Pharma — the maker of the blockbuster opioid, OxyContin, widely blamed for unleashing the American overdose epidemic. Here they were cashing in on a cure. “You’re in the business of selling medicine that causes addiction and overdoses, and now you’re in the business of selling medicine that treats addiction and overdoses?” asked Dr. Andrew Kolodny, an outspoken critic of Purdue who has testified against the company in court. “That’s pretty clever, isn’t it?” As Purdue Pharma buckles under a mountain of litigation and public protest in the United States, its foreign affiliate, Mundipharma, has expanded abroad, using some of the same tactics to sell the addictive opioids that made its owners, the Sackler family, among the richest in the world. Mundipharma is also pushing another strategy globally: From Europe to Australia, it is working to dominate the market for opioid overdose treatment. “The way that they’ve pushed their opioids initially and now coming up with the expensive kind of antidote -- it’s something that just strikes me as deeply, deeply cynical,” said Ross Bell, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation and a longtime advocate of greater naloxone availability. “You’ve got families devastated by this, and a company who sees dollar signs flashing.” ——— This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. ——— Mundipharma’s antidote, a naloxone nasal spray called Nyxoid, was recently approved in New Zealand, Europe and Australia. Mundipharma defended it as a tool to help those whose lives are at risk, and even experts who criticize the company say that antidotes to opioid overdoses are badly needed. Patrice Grand, a spokesman for Mundipharma Europe, said in a statement that heroin is the leading cause of overdose death in European countries and nasal naloxone is an important treatment option. Injectable naloxone has long been available; it is generic and cheap. But Mundipharma’s Nyxoid is the first in many countries that comes pre-packaged as a nasal spray — an easier, less threatening way for those who witness an overdose to intervene. Nyxoid, which isn’t sold in the U.S., is more expensive than injectable naloxone, running more than $50 a dose in some European countries. A similar product manufactured by another pharmaceutical company has been available for years in the U.S. under the brand name Narcan. Critics say Nyxoid’s price is excessive, particularly when inexpensive naloxone products already exist. Grand declined to say how much Nyxoid costs Mundipharma to manufacture or how profitable it has been. The Sackler family’s pharmaceutical empire has long considered whether it might make money treating addiction, according to lawsuits filed against Purdue and the family. In the U.S., Purdue Pharma called its secret proposal Project Tango, the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York have alleged, and discussed it in a September 2014 conference call that included family member Kathe Sackler. In internal documents, the lawsuits allege, Purdue illustrated the connection they had publicly denied between opioids and addiction with a graphic of a blue funnel. The top end was labeled “Pain treatment.” The bottom: “opioid addiction treatment.” The slideshow said they had an opportunity to become an “end-to-end provider” — opioids on the front end, and addiction treatment on the back end. “It is an attractive market,” the staff wrote, according to the Massachusetts complaint. “Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction.” In its response to the court, the family’s lawyers wrote that the plan was put forward by a third-party private equity fund as a potential joint venture and “at the very most, Project Tango was mentioned in passing on a few occasions and the proposal was subsequently abandoned.” A press release issued by the Sacklers said no member of the family or board had an active role in the presentations or supported the proposal, and called the lawsuits “sensationalized” and “misleading.” Purdue declined to comment. New York’s lawsuit alleges that in 2015, Project Tango was presented to Purdue’s board as a joint venture to sell the addiction medication suboxone that could become the “market lead in the addiction medicine space.” The presentation highlighted the sales opportunity in opioid addiction: 40 to 60 percent who went through treatment would relapse and need it again. Project Tango stalled. It was revised the next year with a new plan to sell naloxone, the lawsuits allege. Publicly, Purdue was denying that its painkillers caused the addiction epidemic. But in internal communications, the company described naloxone as a “strategic fit” and a “complementary” product to the prescription opioids they were already selling, the Massachusetts attorney general said. Purdue calculated that the need for overdose reversal medication was increasing so rapidly, potential revenue could triple from 2016 to 2018. The lawsuit alleges that Purdue identified its own painkiller patients as a target market for naloxone — and that it could use its sales force already visiting doctors to promote opioids to also promote overdose reversal medication. They saw potential profits in government efforts to expand access to naloxone to stem the tide of overdose deaths, a toll that has soared to 400,000 since the American epidemic began. Project Tango fizzled in the U.S.; the family’s press release said Purdue’s board rejected it. But half a world away, in Australia, Mundipharma embarked on an effort to promote naloxone that was sweeping and effective. As part of an Australian coroner’s investigation last year into six fatal opioid overdoses in New South Wales state, Mundipharma submitted a 15-page document touting the benefits of naloxone. If people around the overdose victims had had access to naloxone, the company wrote, many of those deaths may have been avoided. At the same time, Mundipharma was registering Nyxoid in Australia, a fact it acknowledged within its submission. In the document, the company suggested that officials change the country’s laws to allow for easier access to naloxone, get naloxone into needle exchange programs, detox centers and supervised injecting clinics, and establish a national, free take-home naloxone program. “The Coroner should consider what is needed to realise the full public health benefits of this essential medicine,” Mundipharma wrote. During the coroner’s inquest, Mundipharma sent a staffer to court to testify about the benefits of naloxone nasal spray. According to a transcript, Mundipharma’s Medical Affairs Director, Brian Muller, came to court with samples of naloxone products, including Nyxoid. Health and addiction experts also praised the drug’s life-saving potential. In her written findings delivered in March, Coroner Harriet Grahame agreed that naloxone should be more widely distributed and Nyxoid given to the state’s paramedics, police agencies, doctors and hospital emergency departments. Mundipharma also paid for a drug policy institute’s study on naloxone that the federal government ultimately used as a blueprint for a 10 million Australian dollar ($6.8 million) pilot program to distribute naloxone, including Nyxoid. And in October, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt announced that Australia’s government would subsidize Nyxoid prescriptions, meaning it costs Australians as little as AU$6.50 ($4.50) per pack, versus around AU$50 without the subsidy. Asked in an interview whether the government had any concerns about following the recommendations of a Mundipharma-funded report that stood to benefit the company financially, Hunt replied: “All of the advice is that this is a product that will save lives and protect lives and our approach is to be fearless of the source of the product.” In a statement, Mundipharma Australia denied its Nyxoid push in the country had any connection to, or was influenced in any way, by Purdue’s Project Tango. “Mundipharma Australia and Purdue Pharma are independent companies,” the Australian company wrote. “Mundipharma Australia introduced Nyxoid to help meet a clear clinical need.” Grand, the spokesman for Mundipharma Europe, also rejected any link between the company’s Nyxoid strategy and Project Tango, saying that the European company and Purdue have separate managements, boards and strategies. In some countries, including Norway, Nyxoid is the only nasal naloxone product approved, said Thomas Clausen, a professor at the University of Oslo in Norway who runs the nation's naloxone program. Clausen is happy that Nyxoid is available, but not that a company profiting from mass marketing opioids is now trying to profit again off opioid addiction. “It’s kind of a paradox,” he said. Clausen said he hopes other companies will enter the market, and that competition will drive down cost. In its basic, generic form, Clausen said, naloxone is so cheap that the United Nations launched a pilot program in central Asian countries providing injectable naloxone at a cost of around $1 per kit. Some critics argue that Mundipharma should be providing a cheaper — or even free — naloxone product, although Nyxoid’s cost is not remarkable when compared to the exorbitant price of many prescription drugs in the U.S. The most common nasal antidote in the U.S. retails for more than $100, double what most Europeans pay for Nyxoid. Still, in some countries, Nyxoid’s price could prove problematic. Pernilla Isendahl runs a naloxone distribution program in a county in south Sweden that began in June 2018, when Nyxoid came onto the market. Each kit costs the government 450 Swedish Krona ($47.) The project is expected to run for at least three years, and she hopes after that the county will continue to pay for the medication, despite budget constraints. “I can’t really see how it would be financed by the people themselves, at the price it is now,” she said. In the United Kingdom, Nyxoid is being distributed by a handful of charities, said Peter Furlong, coordinator of British charity Change Grow Live’s Nyxoid distribution pilot program in Manchester. Furlong is pleased more people now have access to the medicine, but it still costs more than injectable naloxone. Furlong said he asked Mundipharma if they could reduce the drug’s price for the charity’s pilot, which began in August, but Mundipharma told him it was too early to talk discounts. Grand, the spokesman for Mundipharma Europe, said the company was working closely with charities and addiction organizations to identify the best ways to make the drug available to those who may benefit from it. Nyxoid’s price reflects the company’s investment, manufacturing cost and the value of the technology, while recognizing the “prevailing financial pressures that exist within care sectors,” he said. Stephen Wood, a fellow at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics who studied how pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. raised prices on naloxone products as the addiction epidemic intensified, says that Sackler-owned companies manufacturing naloxone have an ethical duty to make it widely available. “If they were trying to find a solution, they would just distribute naloxone for free,” he said. “They could use all that money they made off opioids to help support a program where they are giving away this life-saving medication.” ——— The Global Opioids project can be seen here: https://www.apnews.com/GlobalOpioids