There has been a sharp drop in the price of bitcoin and other virtual currencies after South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinrail was hacked over the weekend.A tweet from Coinrail confirming the cyber-attack sent the price of bitcoin tumbling 10% on Sunday to two-month lows.The world’s best-known cryptocurrency lost $500 (£372) in an hour, dropping to $6,627 on the Luxembourg exchange Bitstamp, while most other digital currencies also recorded large losses. The latest attack highlights the lack of security and weak regulation of global cryptocurrency markets.Coinrail later said in a statement on its website that its system was hit by “cyber intrusion” on Sunday, causing a loss for about 30% of the coins traded on the exchange. It did not quantify the value, but the local Yonhap news agency estimated that about 40bn won (£27.8m) worth of virtual coins was stolen.Coinrail said: “Seventy percent of total coin and token reserves have been confirmed to be safely stored and moved to a cold wallet [not connected to the internet]. Two-thirds of stolen cryptocurrencies were withdrawn or frozen in partnership with related exchanges and coin companies. For the rest, we are looking into it with an investigative agency, related exchanges and coin developers.” Police have begun an investigation, according to the Korea Herald, which cited a spokesperson as saying: “We secured the access history of Coinrail servers and we are in the process of analysing them.”Bitcoin was trading at about $6,750 on Monday afternoon – down from an all-time peak of almost $20,000 in the week before Christmas. In February, it fell to $5,900.South Korea is one of the world’s major cryptocurrency trading centres, and is home to one of the busiest virtual coin exchanges, Bithumb.There have been a series of thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges in recent months. Japan’s Coincheck was hacked in January, with more than $500m-worth of digital currency stolen. It started reimbursing customers in March, but faces two class-action lawsuits. In December, the South Korean exchange Youbit shut down and filed for bankruptcy after being hacked twice.Naeem Aslam at online trading platform ThinkMarkets said: “The question is: is there any limit to these hacks? After every few months, we are seeing the same pattern emerging. This is the result of loose regulatory control and regulators must step in to protect the consumers. Anyone who wants to do anything with exchanges should be forced to adopt high-grade security and regular security upgrades.”The Wall Street Journal (£) reported on Friday that US regulators were investigating potential price manipulation at four major cryptocurrency exchanges. The investigation comes six months after CME Group launched bitcoin futures. Coinbase, Bitstamp, itBit and Kraken have been asked to share trading data related to the futures contracts.Analysts said bitcoin volatility was fading, after the price increased threefold between mid-November and mid-December. David Jones, the chief market strategist at trading platform Capital.com, said this was driven by increased publicity as bitcoin went from being a niche IT interest to becoming mainstream, but added that the hype has now gone. He noted that Facebook and Google had banned cryptocurrency adverts. “Plenty of latecomers to the cryptocurrency rally have had their fingers burnt, have taken their losses (or are still sitting on them) and have vowed never to return,” Jones said. “Activity amongst the wider public has slowed. Arguably, the introduction of a listed futures contract for bitcoin has also calmed the wilder market moves.”• The subheading of this article was amended on 12 June 2018 because an earlier version referred to Coincheck losing about £28m of virtual currency. That loss was meant to refer to Coinrail. Topics Bitcoin Cryptocurrencies news

Racism immediately became an issue in the Florida governor’s race on Wednesday as both nominees made predictions: the Democrat said voters aren’t looking for a misogynist, racist or bigot, while the Republican said voters shouldn’t “monkey this up” by choosing his African American opponent.The Tallahassee mayor and victor in the Democratic primary, Andrew Gillum, and Representative Ron DeSantis made it clear the race is going to be a nasty contest between two candidates who couldn’t be more opposed politically.Only hours after their primary election victories, DeSantis appeared on Fox News and called Gillum an “articulate” candidate, adding: “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting this state. That is not going to work. It’s not going to be good for Florida.”The Florida Democratic party immediately decried DeSantis’s comment as racist. “It’s disgusting that Ron DeSantis is launching his general election campaign with racist dog whistles,” said the party chairwoman, Terry Rizzo, in a statement emailed to reporters.Later in the day Gillum also appeared on Fox News and said: “I’m not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump. There’s enough of that going on.”Critics had already called the “monkey” remark a dogwhistle for racists. Gillum went further, describing the remark as a “bullhorn” on the issue.“In the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls – they’re now using full bullhorns,” he said.Previously, when asked if he was afraid of Donald Trump’s support for DeSantis, Gillum told CNN that his race is about uniting the state.“I actually believe that Florida and its rich diversity are going to be looking for a governor who’s going to bring us together, not divide us. Not misogynist, not racist, not bigots, they’re going to be looking for a governor who is going to appeal to our higher aspirations as a state,” Gillum said. “DeSantis can do the bidding of big business and big lobbyists and Donald Trump and his divisive rhetoric.” Following the “monkey” remark, the DeSantis campaign attempted to clarify in an email that his comments were directed at Gillum’s policies, not the candidate himself. “To characterize it as anything else is absurd,” his spokesman, Stephen Lawson, said.DeSantis came from behind with the help of Trump to beat the establishment candidate, Adam Putnan.The governor’s race, in a state sure to be a battleground in the 2020 presidential election, represents something of a referendum on Trump. Topics US midterms 2018 Florida US politics news

Bitcoin’s price may be down more than 50% from its highs in December, but no one has told Iceland, where the cryptocurrency and its offspring are reshaping the economy.According to Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson, an employee of the energy company HS Orka, Icelandic cryptocurrency “mining” is likely to double its energy consumption to about 100 megawatts this year. That is more than households use in the nation of 340,000 people, according to the national energy authority.Mining is the name for the decentralised process that underpins the integrity of most cryptocurrencies. Effectively, a bunch of computers engage in a race to burn through the most electricity possible and, every 10 minutes, one wins a prize of 12.5 bitcoin for the effort – still worth more than $100,000, despite recent falls.As the price of bitcoin has risen, so too has the amount of electricity that it is economical to use in order to get the rewards. One recent estimate pegged the energy consumption of the entire network as equivalent to that of the Republic of Ireland.But the news from Iceland is the first time cryptocurrency mining within one nation has overtaken productive uses of electricity. Why is Iceland so popular? The answer is simple: location, location and volcanoes. Volcanoes provide Iceland with a cheap and abundant form of renewable energy. Geothermal and hydroelectric plants abound on the island, driving down the wholesale cost of power, which lets bitcoin miners make higher profits as they run their computers 24/7, 365 days a year.The country’s location, at the northernmost tip of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, provides a second benefit beyond a lot of magma. The Arctic air reduces the need to invest in expensive air-conditioning for the server rooms – crucial, since the specialised chips used to mine most cryptocurrencies produce huge amounts of heat when run at their maximum efficiency.Of course, even efficient cooling won’t help miners eke out profits if the price of bitcoin falls too far. But at least one company based in Reykjavik can handle quite a bit more devaluation: Genesis Mining moved there in 2014 from Germany, when the price of bitcoin was well under $1,000. “What we are doing here is like gold mining,” Helmut Rauth, the company’s operations manager, told AP. Of course, gold mines eventually run dry. Who knows if the same will happen to bitcoin ones. Topics Iceland Bitcoin Energy Cryptocurrencies E-commerce Europe Internet features

One of the first stories I ever reported on in Russia was a submarine disaster. In August 2000, two explosions sent the 17,000 tonne nuclear-powered Kursk to the bottom of the Barents Sea and took 118 submariners down to their deaths. I will never forget the sense of national shock and anger at what was widely perceived as a slow response by the authorities, a botched operation to save the crew, and a flood of disinformation around the incident.President Putin faced personal criticism for not interrupting his summer holidays sooner than he did to deal with the situation.Nineteen years on, some things haven't changed. Vladimir Putin is still president and Russia's Northern Fleet has suffered another tragedy in the sea: 14 naval officers have died in a fire on a Russian military submersible. This time, the Kremlin responded more quickly. A few hours after the Russian military revealed the accident, President Putin appeared on TV to express his condolences, and despatched his defence minister to the Northern Fleet's main base in Severomorsk. Russia submersible fire details are 'state secret' Russia marks Kursk anniversary The official line is that a fire broke out on a "deep-water scientific research submersible" in Russian territorial waters. The vessel had reportedly been "surveying the sea bed". The submariners died from "smoke inhalation".There are questions that Russian authorities are refusing to answer. What type of submersible? What exactly was it engaged in? The Kremlin won't say."Of course, the commander-in-chief (the president) has all the information," President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. "But, of course, not all this information can be made public. This is totally classified information. So it's absolutely normal not to reveal this. There is information which is a state secret. This is the interests of the state and state security."Was there a nuclear reactor on board the damaged vessel? "That's not a question for me," Mr Peskov said. "We're not involved in the construction of vessels." In the absence of official answers, Russian media outlets have sought their own. Several newspapers, quoting military sources, identified the stricken vessel as an AS-12 or AS-31 submersible. These mini-subs can dive up to 6,000m (19,685ft) and are designed to be carried under the belly of a larger submarine. They are operated by the Russian military's Chief Directorate for Deep Water Research - the GUGI - often referred to as the country's "underwater intelligence service". Quoting military sources, RBK newspaper today listed the GUGI's main tasks as "monitoring foreign underwater communication lines, recovering from deep water interesting weaponry and military equipment and protecting Russia's own underwater communications cables". Russian news websites published what they said were portraits of the 14 victims displayed on a poster, along with the words: "Eternal glory to the heroes! We will remember you always in our hearts!"Reports emerged that the submariners had served at a military base near St Petersburg. The regional governor of St Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, confirmed that the crew of the submersible was based there. Churches across northern Russia have been holding services in memory of the dead. It was the same after the Kursk disaster: people lighting candles, laying flowers, saying prayers - trying to come to terms with a tragedy at sea.

While their suits are rare, they are not without precedent. In 2014, a court in Huelva, Spain, found three men guilty of an “offense against moral integrity and sexual harassment.” Their victims were Moroccan women who worked for them in 2009. An article in El País in 2010, “Victims of the Red Gold,” documented a series of sexual allegations by Polish and Moroccan workers.In response to criticism in the news media last fall, the Spanish government promised to implement safeguards for this season, and the Moroccan minister of labor has also promised improved conditions. But the workers and unions say little or nothing has changed.Moroccan officials, including the minister of labor and the ambassador in Madrid, Spanish officials, and several representatives of farming associations, declined to comment for this article, as did the owner of Doñaña 1998 d’Almonte.“Our work stops in Tangier — beyond, it becomes a Spanish affair,” Noureddine Benkhalil, a manager at ANAPEC, the agency that recruits the women in Morocco, told a local TV network last year.In an email, a commission spokeswoman at the European Union said that it did not tolerate labor exploitation but said Spain was responsible for addressing the issue.The women say they are determined to see their cases through to the end. The initial whistle-blower, H.H., tries to keep spirits up. Whenever one of the women breaks down, she reminds her that it was their duty to speak so that others could work on these contracts without fear.“I will never let it go,” H.H. said. “I already lost everything. I have nothing to lose. I will fight until I die.”

The former hedge fund investor turned impeachment activist Tom Steyer, who entered the race a month ago and plans to spend millions of dollars of his own money to help fund his campaign, earned 3 percent in the Monmouth poll. It was his strongest finish in a debate-qualifying poll and puts him just one poll result shy of meeting the D.N.C.’s threshold. Though reaching 130,000 donors will be difficult in such a short amount of time, Mr. Steyer’s ability to spend large sums on advertisements could help him amass new donors relatively quickly. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also enjoyed her best finish in a qualifying poll so far, earning 2 percent support in one for the first time since she officially kicked off her campaign in March. The poll result comes on the heels of a generally well-received debate performance for Ms. Gillibrand, which included a particularly memorable line: “The first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office.” Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign recently announced that it had crossed the 100,000-donor mark, which puts her in striking distance of meeting one qualification benchmark. But in order to get on the stage in Houston, she will also need to earn 2 percent support in at least three more polls before the end of the month. (Qualifying polls can be conducted nationally or in early-voting primary states.)Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has crossed the 130,000-donor mark, but she, like Ms. Gillibrand, has only one qualifying poll so far.Mr. Yang’s debate performance last week appeared to bolster his campaign’s fund-raising. A campaign spokesman said that in the four days after Mr. Yang debated, he raised more than $1 million from about 38,000 people, the vast majority of them new donors. By comparison, the Yang campaign raised $2.8 million over the three months ending June 30.“The country heard my message and is ready to talk about real solutions to gun violence, the new realities of the American economy, and how we measure our health and success as a nation,” Mr. Yang said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m excited to have those conversations in Houston and throughout the 2020 election.”

9 U.S. ‘Can The President Be Impeached?’ We Answer Your Questions

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Thousands of civil servants joined in the anti-government protests in Hong Kong on Friday for the first time since they started two months ago, defying a warning from the authorities to remain politically neutral. Protests against a proposed bill that would allow people to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China have grown increasingly violent, with police accused of excessive use of force and failing to protect protesters from suspected gang attacks. Chanting encouragement, crowds turned out to support the civil servants at their rally on Friday evening which halted traffic on major roads in the heart of the city’s business district. “I think the government should respond to the demands, instead of pushing the police to the frontline as a shield,” said Kathy Yip, a 26-year-old government worker. The rally on Friday came after an open letter penned anonymously and published on Facebook set out a series of demands to the Hong Kong government by a group which said it represented civil servants. “At present the people of Hong Kong are already on the verge of collapse,” the group wrote in the letter, saying it was “a pity that we have seen extreme oppression.” The group also listed five demands: complete withdrawal of the extradition bill; a halt to descriptions of the protests as ‘rioting’; a waiver of charges against those arrested; an independent inquiry and resumption of political reform. The protests against a now suspended extradition bill have widened to demand greater democracy and the resignation of Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam, and have become one of the gravest populist challenges to Communist Party rulers in Beijing. China’s new ambassador to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, said on Friday that Beijing supported the action taken by Hong Kong’s government to “bring back the normal order, the rule of law, the normal life of people.” “The demonstration has gone far beyond the nature of a peaceful demonstration, it’s really turning out to be chaotic and violent and we should no longer allow them to continue this reprehensible behavior,” Zhang said. “We do not think that it’s in the long term interest of anyone.” On Thursday the government said Hong Kong’s 180,000 civil servants must remain politically neutral as the city braced for another wave of protests over the weekend and a mass strike on Monday across sectors such as transport, schools and corporates. “At this difficult moment, government colleagues have to stay united and work together to uphold the core values of the civil service,” the government said in a statement. Protest organizer’s said over 40,000 people participated in Friday’s rally, while the police put the number at 13,000. Police said they had arrested eight people, including a leading pro-independence leader, after seizing weapons and suspected bomb-making material in a raid. Under Chinese rule Hong Kong has been allowed to retain extensive freedoms, such as an independent judiciary, but many residents see the extradition bill as the latest step in a relentless march toward mainland control.Anson Chan, former chief secretary, said the rally was spontaneous and civil servants enjoyed the right to assembly and it could not be said to impair political neutrality. Many civil servants, however, were apprehensive about identifying themselves, with many speaking anonymously or asking for only their first name to be used. Hundreds of medical workers also demonstrated on Friday to protest against the government’s handling of situation. Large-scale protests are planned for the weekend in Mong Kok, Tseung Kwan O and Western districts. Members of Hong Kong's medical sector attend a rally to support the anti-extradition bill protest in Hong Kong, China August 2, 2019. REUTERS/Eloisa LopezIn a warning to protesters, China’s People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong on Wednesday released a video of “anti-riot” exercises and its top brass warned violence was “absolutely impermissible”. The PLA has remained in barracks since protests started in April, leaving Hong Kong’s police force to deal with protests. U.S. President Donald Trump has described protests in Hong Kong as “riots” that China will have to deal with itself. Police said seven men and a woman, aged between 24 and 31, were arrested on Friday after a raid on a building in the New Territories district of Sha Tin, where police seized weapons and suspected petrol bombs. Making or possessing explosives illegally can carry a sentence of up to 14 years in jail. The police may arrest more people as the investigations unfold, police officer Li Kwai Wah said, adding, “Recently we are very worried about the escalating violence.” Andy Chan, a founder of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party that was banned last September, was among those arrested. His arrest prompted about 100 protesters to surround a police station to demand his release, television footage showed. On Friday night, crowds of protesters surrounded a police station where Chan was being held, drawing out riot police to the street outside. On Wednesday, 44 people were charged in a Hong Kong court with rioting over a recent protest near Beijing’s main representative office in the heart of the city. The escalating protests, which have shut government offices, blocked roads and disrupted business, is taking a toll of the city’s economy and scaring off tourists. Cheng aged 39, who was speaking behind a large black mask, said the recent triad attack on protesters and slow police response had angered him and his civil service peers. Slideshow (22 Images)Of the five protester demands, he said the need for an independent inquiry into the actions of the police was vital. “I hope to stay in the civil service for a long time. But we have to act now.” Reporting by James Pomfret, Twinnie Siu, Anne Marie Roantree, Felix Tam, Vimvam Tong and Donny Kwok; additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Marguerita ChoyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

WASHINGTON/ASUNCION (Reuters) - The United States on Friday ramped up its attempt to dislodge Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power, imposing new sanctions and revoking visas, while opposition leader Juan Guaido said Maduro’s support among the military was cracking. Venezuelan military officials last weekend blocked an opposition-backed effort to bring food into the country via its borders with Colombia and Brazil, leaving two aid trucks in flames and five people dead. Guaido, who is recognized by most Western nations as Venezuela’s rightful leader, visited Paraguay and Argentina on Friday to shore up Latin American support for a transition government for the crisis-stricken nation. But Maduro retains control of state institutions and the apparent loyalty of senior figures in the armed forces. Following a meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires, Guaido said, without providing evidence, that 80 percent of Venezuela’s military nonetheless supported a change in leadership and that he would continue to seek the support of officers. Earlier on Friday in Paraguay, he said 600 members of Venezuela’s armed forces had already abandoned Maduro’s government following the clashes over the aid. Foreign military intervention is seen as unlikely and Guaido’s international backers are instead using a mix of sanctions and diplomacy to try to put pressure to bear on Maduro. “We are sanctioning members of Maduro’s security forces in response to the reprehensible violence, tragic deaths, and unconscionable torching of food and medicine destined for sick and starving Venezuelans,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The United States “will continue to target Maduro loyalists prolonging the suffering of the victims of this man-made humanitarian crisis,” he said. U.S. sanctions block any assets the individuals control in the United States and bars U.S. entities from doing any business or financial transactions with them. The list includes National Guard Commander Richard Lopez and five other police and military officials based near the Colombian or Brazilian borders. Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country's rightful interim ruler, talks to Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, during their meeting at the Olivos Presidential Residence, in Buenos Aires, Argentina March 1, 2019. Argentine Presidency/Handout via REUTERS The U.S. State Department later said it had revoked the travel visas of 49 people as it cracked down on “individuals responsible for undermining Venezuela’s democracy.” Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Guaido slipped out of Venezuela last week, in violation of a Supreme Court order not to leave the country, to join the aid convoys in Colombia. There, he met with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and other regional leaders and later traveled to Brazil. He has promised to return to Venezuela by Monday, seen as a form of direct defiance to Maduro, who has said Guaido will eventually “face justice.” The Argentine foreign ministry said in a statement that it expects the peaceful and safe return of the opposition leader to Venezuela, without risk to him, his family or his supporters. “Any act of intimidation or violence against the acting president, his family and his inner circle will be considered the responsibility of the Maduro regime,” the ministry’s statement said. On Thursday, Guaido told reporters in Brazil that he had received threats against himself and his family, including prison. Paraguayan President Mario Abdo tweeted on Friday evening that he authorized expired Venezuelan passports to be valid in Paraguay, a gesture of support for Venezuelans who have fled their home country. Governments around the region have called on Maduro to let aid in as inflation above 2 million percent per year and chronic shortages of food have left some eating from garbage bins in order to ward off malnutrition. Maduro has called the U.S.-backed humanitarian aid effort a veiled invasion meant to push him from power, and has insisted that there is no crisis in the country. Slideshow (7 Images)Russia has accused the United States of preparing to intervene militarily in Venezuela and, along with China, blocked a U.S. bid this week to get the United Nations Security Council to take action on Venezuela. Guaido is scheduled to travel to Ecuador on Saturday to meet with President Lenin Moreno. Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Daniela Desantis, additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert in Washington, Mayela Armas in Caracas, Alexandria Valencia in Quito, and Eliana Raszewski and Cassandra Garrison in Buenos Aires; writing by Brian Ellsworth and Hugh Bronstein; editing by Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

When Donna Strickland won the Nobel Prize in physics this year, she was the first woman to receive the honor in 55 years. The previous female winner, Maria Goeppert Mayer, was in 1963, for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. Before that, Marie Curie received the prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity.And that’s it. Between 1901 and 2018, the prize for physics has been awarded 112 times, but only three times to women. The prizes in chemistry, medicine, and economics reflect a similar imbalance. Of the 688 Nobel laureates in science, only 21 have been women.Of course, the gender gap in science is well known. So it’s easy to imagine that the small number of female laureates merely reflects this gap. But is this true, or are there other factors at work that have prevented women winning Nobel Prizes?Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Liselotte Jauffred at the University of Copenhagen and a couple of colleagues, who have compared the gender ratio among Nobel laureates with the gender ratio within their fields and say they do not match. Indeed, women are significantly more underrepresented in the list of Nobel Prize winners than they are in science. The basic facts about prize winners are easy to gather well known. Laureates are on average 55 years old and thus are likely to be sampled from senior faculty members at universities around the world. They also receive the prize for work they did about 15 years earlier, on average. So today’s laureates were sampled from senior faculty members with a time lag of roughly 15 years.But determining the fraction of senior female faculty members relative to all senior faculty over the last hundred years or so is harder. Jauffred and co used data from the US National Science Foundation that lists faculty members at universities by gender and scientific discipline between 1973 and 2010.They assume this data can be used as a proxy for the global distribution of gender ratios. They then extrapolate to determine the gender ratio by discipline between 1901 and 2010.Finally, the team compared the historical gender ratios with the number of prizes awarded to women and searched for potential bias using a hierarchical Bayesian interference model.The results are unequivocal. “Female senior scientists are less likely to be awarded a Nobel Prize than their gender ratio suggests,” say Jauffred and co. But why? One possibility is that the Nobel committee unfairly evaluates nominations for women, but Jauffred and co discount that. Instead, they point to the many biases and hindrances that influence women throughout their careers, often before they become senior enough or influential enough to be considered for major prizes. “We speculate that there are limitations for women to enter the pool of very well esteemed scientists worthy of a nomination,” say the researchers.For example, female laureates are significantly less likely to be married or have children than male laureates. That suggests family life limits the chances that women will enter this pool. Jauffred and co also say that men in academia are more likely to get the resources and support needed for excellent scientific work. “This suggests that men are more prone to end up in the pool of possible Nobel nominees,” they say.That’s interesting work that reveals the insidious influence of gender bias in science. “Strikingly few Nobel laureates within medicine, natural and social sciences are women,” say Jauffred and co.The question now is how best to change this situation so that women are equally and fairly represented.Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1810.07280 : Gender Bias in Nobel Prizes

On a recent night, standing shoulder to shoulder in a darkened street, anti-government protesters in Hong Kong waved American flags and sang the U.S. national anthem, the words blaring through scratchy megaphones.Vast crowds of Hong Kong citizens have marched and staged sit-ins over the last 10 weeks in a city that fears its limited autonomy is under direct threat by Beijing, and U.S. flags have been among the potent symbols used to rally for democratic reforms and an investigation into alleged police brutality.But President Trump’s reaction has ranged from muddled to indifferent, displaying his disinclination to use his office to promote democracy around the world — a task many of his predecessors viewed as a core part of the job — and his focus on trade over human rights.“We have a responsibility to speak up. Instead of doing that, the president is opening the door to Chinese intervention,” said Nicholas Burns, a former veteran U.S. diplomat now at Harvard. “It disavows the obligations we have to the people of Hong Kong and to our role as the strongest democratic power in the world.” Advertisement Trump has voiced his strongest support for Chinese President Xi Jinping, not the protesters seeking democratic reforms, praising the Communist leader as “a good man in a ‘tough business.’”“If President Xi would meet directly and personally with the protesters, there would be a happy and enlightened ending to the Hong Kong problem,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “I have no doubt!”But Trump has also linked the anti-government protests with his damaging trade war with China, showing his fixation on reaching an agreement with Beijing and injecting a combustible new bargaining chip into already volatile negotiations.“Of course China wants to make a deal,” he tweeted. “Let them work humanely with Hong Kong first!” Chinese President Xi Jinping chats with President Trump during his visit to Beijing in 2017. (Andy Wong / Associated Press) Advertisement Although some protests have ended in violent clashes with police, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and State Department officials have steadfastly backed the protesters’ demands or voiced their opposition to a harsh crackdown by Beijing.But Trump has been reluctant to publicly support the protesters seeking free elections and other demands.“It’s a very tricky situation. I think it will work out and I hope it works out, for liberty,” Trump told reporters this week. “I hope it works out for everybody, including China.”Before that, Trump praised Xi for acting “very responsibly” by allowing the protests to continue.Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, described Trump’s praise for Xi as “very disturbing.”“It is unclear whether President Trump is signaling a crackdown or not or whether he is trying to signal anything,” Wang said.He urged Trump to “consistently and publicly voice — via Twitter or other channels — his support to Hong Kong people’s peaceful activism in pursuit of freedom.”Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross described the Hong Kong protests as an “internal matter” for China, echoing Beijing’s defense whenever it is accused of human rights abuses. He denied that previous administrations would have handled the situation any differently. Advertisement “I don’t know if we would have done anything different in the past,” Ross told CNBC on Wednesday. “What would we do? Invade Hong Kong?”A senior administration official said that Washington “continues to monitor the situation in Hong Kong, and we urge all sides to remain calm, safe and peaceful.”The official added that “freedoms of expression and assembly are core values that we share with the people of Hong Kong and these freedoms should be protected,” but did not elaborate on what steps the U.S. was taking to ensure those values are protected. Protesters demonstrate inside the Hong Kong International Airport earlier this month.(Jerome Favre / EPA-EFE / REX) Previous U.S. presidents have worked with despotic leaders, especially during the Cold War, but Trump has sometimes embraced strongmen in unflinching terms while criticizing traditional U.S. allies and alliances.He has showered praise on Russia’s repressive leader, Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s totalitarian ruler, Kim Jong Un, as well as autocrats in Brazil, Hungary, the Philippines and elsewhere. He has expressed a grudging respect for Xi even as he criticizes China’s economic policies.Trump’s critics worry he will look the other way if Chinese paramilitary forces, who have been massing outside Hong Kong, roll in to stamp out the protests. After the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989, Trump applauded the military crackdown that caused the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” the future president told Playboy in 1990. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”President George H.W. Bush, who had headed the U.S. Liaison Office in China in the mid-1970s, publicly denounced the Tiananmen Square slaughter and enacted some sanctions on Beijing. But his administration privately signaled that he wanted to continue strengthening U.S. ties with China. Advertisement “The U.S. was trying to show its unhappiness with what China had done, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” said Doug Paal, who served on the National Security Council at the time.Paal, now at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a nonpartisan think tank, said Chinese diplomats have privately expressed confidence in recent weeks that Trump has no interest in the Hong Kong protests and is narrowly focused on his trade dispute with China.While other presidents rose through politics by paying homage to America as a democratic beacon, Paal said, “Trump skipped that whole process. He came up with a fixated idea on trade deficits.”Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, another Washington think tank, said Trump’s linkage of trade talks to the Hong Kong protests could constrain Beijing’s response to the crisis. A violent crackdown could make it politically untenable for Trump to reach a deal, he argued.No U.S. president, Cheng said, can have a replay of Tiananmen Square “and then say, let me sign this agreement.”To some extent, the White House is in a bind over Hong Kong. If Trump expresses support for the protesters, China could accuse Washington of fomenting dissent and accuse the demonstrators of being pawns of a foreign power. If he remains silent, it could appear as a green light for intervention.President Obama faced a similar dilemma in 2009, when Iranians filled the streets to protest a contested presidential election. Obama downplayed the so-called Green Movement political uprising, eventually hardening his rhetoric only when the Iranian regime launched a violent crackdown.In the end, Tehran blamed the U.S. for fomenting the revolt, while Republicans accused Obama of abandoning the protesters and American values. Obama went on to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran’s leaders, finalizing the agreement in 2015, although Trump abandoned it last year.Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, fears the Trump administration will be unprepared if Beijing sends security forces in to quell the protests.“It will be the single most significant geopolitical event in recent memory if mainland forces enter Hong Kong,” Blanchette said. “That would require a very sophisticated, coordinated response to make sure we’re getting that right.”

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada should ban China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd from supplying equipment to Canadian 5G networks because the security risk is too great, a former spy chief said in an article published on Monday. FILE PHOTO: Picture of Canadian and Chinese flags taken prior to the meeting with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and China's President Xi Jinping at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on December 5, 2017, in Beijing. Fred Dufour/Pool via REUTERSChina’s ambassador last week threatened repercussions if Ottawa blocked Huawei, a warning the Canadian government dismissed. Relations between the two nations have soured since a top Huawei executive was arrested in Vancouver last month on a U.S. extradition warrant. Canadian officials are studying the security implications of 5G networks, the latest generation of cellular mobile communications, but their report is not expected in the immediate future, a source close to the matter said last week. Richard Fadden, who served as the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spy agency from 2009 to 2013, cited what he said was mounting evidence for blocking Huawei. “Canada’s government should ignore the threats and ban Huawei from Canada’s 5G networks to protect the security of Canadians,” he wrote in the Globe and Mail. Some Canadian allies have already imposed restrictions on using Huawei equipment, citing the risk of espionage. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale on Monday told reporters that other companies could supply equipment for future 5G networks but did not give details. China detained two Canadians last month after the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the founder’s daughter, and demanded she be released. A court later retried a Canadian who had already been jailed for drug smuggling and sentenced him to death. “If China would resort to putting Canadians to death to defend its corporate national champion, what might it do if the Chinese Communist Party had unfettered access to Canada’s vital communications networks?” said Fadden. Neither Huawei nor the Chinese embassy responded to requests for comment. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called Fadden’s remarks “nonsense” on Tuesday. A group of 143 academics and former ambassadors from around the world on Monday released an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, urging him to free the two Canadians. “(We) must now be more cautious about traveling and working in China and engaging our Chinese counterparts,” they wrote. “That will lead to less dialogue and greater distrust, and undermine efforts to manage disagreements and identify common ground. Both China and the rest of the world will be worse off as a result.” John McCallum, Canada’s ambassador to China, said on Friday that his top priority was the release of the two detainees and scrapping the death penalty for the condemned man. Hua said she thought the signatories of the letter could not represent the world and were deliberately creating an atmosphere of fear. Reporting by David Ljunggren; Additional reporting by Michael Martin in BEIJING; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Sandra MalerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Reuters) - Ride-hailing company Lyft Inc beat bigger rival Uber Technologies Inc in filing for an initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday, defying the recent market jitters and taking the lead on a string of billion-dollar-plus tech companies expected to join Wall Street next year. Lyft’s IPO will test investors’ appetite for the most highly valued Silicon Valley companies and for the ride-hailing business, which has become a wildly popular service but remains unprofitable and has an uncertain future with the advance of self-driving cars. San Francisco-based Lyft, last valued at about $15 billion in a private fundraising round, did not specify the number of shares it was selling or the price range in a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Lyft could go public as early as the first quarter of 2019, based on how quickly the SEC reviews its filing, people familiar with the matter said. Lyft’s valuation is likely to end up between $20 billion and $30 billion, one source added. The ride service was set up in 2012 by entrepreneurs John Zimmer and Logan Green and has raised close to $5 billion from investors. While it continues to grow faster than its larger competitor, Uber, it is also losing money. Lyft would follow a string of high-profile IPOs of technology companies valued at more than $1 billion this year, such as Dropbox Inc and Spotify Technology SA. However, market turmoil fueled by the escalating trade tensions between the United States and China could dampen enthusiasm for the debuts of other 2019 hopefuls like apartment-rental service Airbnb Inc, analytics firm Palantir Technologies and Stripe Inc, a digital payment company. Including Lyft, these round out four of the top-10 most highly valued, venture-backed tech companies. “Market declines mean that the offer price will be lower than otherwise. But there’s a danger of waiting to go public as well. Markets could go even lower, and the companies could raise less money if they waited longer,” said Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida. Such fears have pushed some companies to hustle. Uber moved its target IPO date up from the second half of next year to the first half. Some venture capitalists said they are urging portfolio companies that had been planning a public debut in the next 18 months to hurry up and file. An illuminated sign appears in a Lyft ride-hailing car in Los Angeles, California, U.S. September 21, 2017. Picture taken September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Chris HelgrenIn a key test for the U.S. IPO market on Thursday, Moderna Inc is considering selling up to 20 percent more shares than originally planned in its IPO, allaying concerns that the stock market tumult could derail the biggest flotation of a biotechnology company since 2016, Reuters reported. The filing by Lyft, which hired JPMorgan Chase & Co, Credit Suisse and Jefferies as underwriters, plants a flag in the ground to go public before larger rival Uber. The race between them is one of the most closely watched in Silicon Valley. A provision included in an investment by SoftBank into Uber requires the company to file for an IPO by Sept. 30 or the company risks allowing restrictions on shareholder stock transfers to expire. Uber investor Mitchell Green, a partner at Lead Edge Capital, said Lyft going public first bodes well for Uber, because if Lyft trades at a high multiple, the much-larger Uber will command even more money. “Lyft has built a very U.S.-based rideshare business that has done well,” Green said. “If public market investors get excited about that they are really going to get excited about a business that is 5X the size.” Earlier this year, Lyft said it had 35 percent of the U.S. ride-hailing market. The company operates in the United States and Canada, while Uber is in much of the world and has other businesses including freight-hailing and food delivery. Both Uber and Lyft have lost huge sums of money by spending heavily competing with each other for passengers and drivers and entering new markets, although they have recently raised prices and reduced subsidies. The companies have held out the promise of boosting profitability by eventually replacing human drivers with robots piloting autonomous vehicles, but a future of cities and suburbs crisscrossed by fleets of self-driving cars is years away, given the technical and regulatory challenges, particularly in the United States. “With autonomous cars on the horizon, it is anyone’s guess where this sector goes in the future,” said Jeff Zell, senior research analyst and a partner at IPO Boutique in Florida. FILE PHOTO: A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone in London, Britain November 10, 2017. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File PhotoLyft in particular is one of the newest entrants to self-driving and has only a small robo-taxi service in Las Vegas using another company’s technology. Its investors include General Motors Corp, which holds a 9 percent stake in Lyft that it acquired for $500 million in 2016, but GM has wound down its cooperation with Lyft, choosing instead to acquire the autonomous car company Cruise. Lyft presents other risks, including unresolved questions about its workforce of independent contractor drivers. A decision by the California Supreme Court earlier this year, which makes it easier for workers to prove they are employees and sets a higher standard for companies to treat workers as contractors, threatens to upend Lyft and Uber’s business models. Both companies face legal battles with drivers over their classification. Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York and Heather Somerville in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Aparajita Saxena in Bengaluru and Joseph White in Detroit; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Kostya didn’t join us, he’d said something about having to be at another meeting, and since Paul and I were both Americans figured we could manage on our own. “Your friend is a powerful little dude,” Manafort told me.He didn’t elaborate but did go on to say how taxing he felt it was for Kostya to have to sit through, and often mediate, the endless meetings between warring factions within OB. What did he mean by “powerful”? The oligarchs who were, in essence, the shareholders of the party paid Kostya more deference than the waitstaff at the Hyatt was paying us.The way I read this was that, after so many years as a functionary interpreting what Manafort was saying to party sponsors, leaders, and hacks alike, he had himself become part of the legend. I saw how Lyovochkin looked at him, and later I would see others look at him in just the same way. He had become, as some media accounts would later refer to him, “Manafort’s Manafort.”One morning a week or so later, I was returning from a brisk, autumnal jog across the crests of the hills that ring Kyiv, still soaking in the kaleidoscope of reds, browns, tans, and greens and the smell of wet birch when I noticed a van idling outside my building. More quietly than usual, I buzzed myself into the podyedtz (entrance hall) and started walking up to my first-floor apartment when I noticed four or five burly men standing outside my place knocking.It was too late to turn back so I continued walking past them, intending to climb at least out of sight. One followed me and leapt a few stairs ahead of me, stopping me with a hand on the shoulder. A few questions, he said in Russian, which I pretended not to speak.I said in English that I worked for USAID, all the while putting on the most dimwitted expression I could manage. It worked, and he gave up. When I got a few floors above them I summoned the elevator, and when it came, directed it back to the ground floor, my thumb pressed against the Door Closed button.Descending, one of the thugs noticed me and with another gave chase. I made it out the front door a good 15 steps ahead of them and sprinted up the hill and back into the park. Having been running for an hour beforehand, I had an advantage against men in blue jeans and bulky leather coats who were probably hungover to boot. Once I was certain I had shaken them, I called Kostya.In the steadiest voice I could muster, I asked, “What the fuck?!?!”Don’t worry, he said, it’s probably all just a misunderstanding, we’ll fix it.Somehow I doubt it was a misunderstanding. There had been an earlier visit by a man identifying himself to me as a plainclothes cop looking for a pair of Georgians, whom he alleged were living in my apartment. No Georgians here, I assured him. He took down a statement, which he had me sign.That, I wrote off at the time, as a misunderstanding, but what had just happened seemed like an aborted kidnapping attempt. Why would someone want to take me? To do what, I couldn’t bring myself to speculate, but I was pretty sure it had to do with my work. Oddly, I did not insist on moving.Kostya spent the better part of those weeks caretaking Manafort, leaving me to channel my creative energies with Sunshine, who turned out to be a talented video maker, and a pamphleteer we called Michael. We shared an office with Manafort, a block off the Maidan, but our workflows were pretty different. Sometimes our paths would cross.Rick Gates, Manafort’s longtime associate and confidant. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty ImagesRick Gates was Manafort’s loyal lieutenant—to a point, anyhow. We would sometimes swap copy in the office and look at what the other had written and make a suggestion or two out of courtesy. Once we were looking at a direct-mail piece that had a photograph of a babushka, an old village woman, on the cover. Manafort heard us talking and walked by, glancing at the final proof. “Looks like a witch,” he said. To me, she looked like a pensioner. Still, they changed the photo to a less witchy-looking babushka.

A Brazilian Congress commission has approved a controversial bill to lift restrictions on pesticides despite fierce opposition from environmentalists, prosecutors, health and environment ministry bodies, and even United Nations special rapporteurs.Driven by a powerful agribusiness lobby, the bill now needs to be voted on in both houses of Congress and sanctioned by President Michel Temer before becoming law.Its proponents say it will free up bureaucracy and modernise dated legislation. But the bill has generated fierce opposition in Brazil, one of the world’s biggest food producers and biggest consumers of pesticides, even those banned in other countries.Opponents dubbed it the “poison package” and said it would lead to the indiscriminate use of dangerous pesticides, while 250,000 signed an online petition against it.“The law will make us more permissive than we already are,” said Larissa Bombardi, a professor of geography and pesticides specialist at the University of São Paulo. “The economic interest will prevail over human and environmental health.”Of 121 pesticides permitted in Brazil for coffee production, 30 are already banned in the European Union, including the toxic herbicide paraquat, Bombardi reported in an extensive 2017 study.The bill overhauls existing legislation, allowing for pesticides to be given temporary register if the approval process has taken over two years and three countries in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) have already approved it. It puts the Ministry of Agriculture in charge of approving new products, removing the Health and Environment Ministries from decision-making and making their roles advisory and it stops towns and states from introducing their own restrictions on pesticides.“It is clear there is opposition, there is passion. There are people who think you do agriculture organically. People use pesticides like medicine,” said the Congress committee president Tereza Cristina Dias, a lawmaker who also presides over the parliamentary farming front.Dias said the controversial ‘temporary register’ of products was only in the case of a new threat to crops from pests and that product approval would become more organised. “The Ministry of Agriculture will do the coordinating, the governance and the transparency,” she said.A long list of organisations and specialist bodies disagreed. The project will bring “serious losses to the protection of human health,” wrote Ronald dos Santos, president of the National Health Council, part of the Ministry of Health. Federal Prosecutors said much of it was unconstitutional and popular TV chef Bela Gil turned up to a commission session to protest, waving a “poison package” placard.In a letter to Brazil’s Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes, United Nations Special Rapporteurs John H. Knox, Hilal Elver, Baskut Tuncak, Dainius Puras and Léo Heller described Brazil as “reportedly the largest consumer and importer of pesticides in the world”. The country already lets foreign companies exploit its lower standards of protection, they said, “exporting hazardous pesticides prohibited from use in their domestic markets to be used in Brazil.”Under Brazil’s current legislation, pesticides with elements considered teratogenic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disruptive, or posing risks to the reproductive system can’t be registered, they said. But under the bill, hazardous pesticides will only be prohibited when there is a “scientifically established unacceptable risk” – a definition too vague to be effective.Greenpeace attacked lawmakers for approving the bill in the face of such wide opposition.“They want a toxic product to look less threatening,” said Marcio Astrini, Greenpeace Brazil’s public policy coordinator. “The toxic garbage being banned in the rest of the planet will be sold here.” Topics Brazil Americas Pesticides Farming news

Bitcoin fell more than 10% yesterday (June 11) to its lowest price in two months, after a relatively small crypto exchange in South Korea reported a hack. The crash widens bitcoin’s year-to-date losses to as much as 50%, wiping about $120 billion off its market value this year.Coinrail, which is among the world’s top 100 crypto exchanges by trading volume, said in a statement that some of the lesser-known cryptocurrencies, such as NPXS, belonging to its users were stolen by hackers. It said it had frozen the tokens that were stolen and halted all trading across the exchange to help with a police investigation.Although Coinrail didn’t specify the value of the heist, a wallet address that has been linked to the alleged attacker appeared to have stolen more than $40 million worth of cryptocurrency, TechCrunch noted.Other major cryptocurrencies including ethereum and ripple also tumbled, with about $45 billion wiped off the total crypto-market value in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.About $1.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen by hackers in the first half of this year, according to a recent report from cybersecurity company Carbon Black.The price plunges were also linked to a report on Friday from the Wall Street Journal (paywall) that US regulators are investigating four major crypto exchanges, including Coinbase and Bitstamp, for price manipulation.

Five-year-old Roxana Gozzer hasn’t seen her father for weeks and does not know the next time she will. Walter Gozzer-Sing never returned home from a “routine” check-in with immigration officials in February. After a month in detention, he was placed without notice on a flight from Miami to Peru. His sudden deportation left the family – including two US citizen children – without their only source of income.Roxana has become a face of a titanic battle in Florida over a “racist” bill that has united activists, Democrats and some police chiefs in opposition. If state bill 168 passes, they say, many more families will face separation.Under the proposed law, sponsored by a hardline Republican who was Donald Trump’s state chair in 2016, local authorities and law enforcement agencies would effectively become federal immigration agents with a responsibility to report and detain undocumented migrants.The intention, according to state senator Joe Gruters, is simply to enhance public safety by speeding up the removal of violent or “bad criminals” and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities that do not comply with existing immigration laws.Opponents insist that far from targeting only criminals and those who Trump considers to be “bad hombres”, families like Roxana’s, with undocumented but working parents, would be at increased risk of deportation. They say a simple traffic stop could lead to an arrest and detention that law enforcement would be compelled to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement before keeping that person in custody for up to 48 additional hours, to await collection by federal agents if Ice issued a detainer request.“I don’t understand why they get angry with families like ours that just want to have a better life,” said Lily Montalvan, who has looked after Roxana and her son Ronnie, 16, alone since her husband, a construction worker, was deported.“I had a beautiful family, always together. For my husband, his life was his work and us. This has destroyed us and I do not know how we are going to continue.”Montalvan and Roxana met Gruters in Tallahassee last week as part of a hundreds-strong delegation from groups including the Florida Immigrant Coalition (Flic) and United We Dream. She said she told him her husband was not a criminal but a hard worker with valid US government labour certification whose only goal since arriving from Peru in 1988 was to raise and support his family. She said Gruters, also the chair of the Republican party of Florida, was unmoved.“I asked my daughter how she felt leaving the senator’s office and she said, ‘It is horrible,’” Montalvan said.Also among the delegation was 19-year-old Nataly Chalco, a student of political science and economics at Florida State University who grew up in south Florida after her family moved from Peru when she was six.“Politicians claim that this bill is strictly to take criminals of the streets, but it doesn’t make anyone feel better when you realise the definition of criminals includes people who are undocumented,” she said.“Things like a broken taillight or driving to work can lead to the separation of families. Undocumented means that every time a loved one gets behind the wheel you get scared. We deserve to live in communities where we aren’t treated like criminals simply for existing.”Chalco, whose status remains uncertain while the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) is decided, said fear of being stopped prevented her parents helping her move to college.“I had to do it alone,” she said. “It was too big a risk for my mom and dad to drive eight hours. One more stop and it could become a felony that could lead to deportation.”Tomas Kennedy, political director of Flic, said the bill passing Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature, possibly in the next two weeks, would leave almost 900,000 undocumented migrants wary of interacting with law enforcement.“People are afraid, people have anxiety, kids are frightened their parents are going to be sent away,” he said.“The bill is apocalyptic, with racist language. It deputises police officers to cooperate with Ice [and] apart from the humanitarian and physical perspective, we end up paying for that bill. Domestic violence victims are already scared to go to the police: imagine the climate of fear of these proposals would foment. The trust between public and law enforcement would just be shattered. People would be very afraid to cooperate with law enforcement.”Jorge Colina, chief of the City of Miami police department, is also concerned.“I’d prefer not to have this job if I had to ask fellow officers to go check where someone is from before helping them,” he said in a Spanish-language interview on Actualidad Radio. “I don’t care if you have papers or don’t have papers, where you came from or who your parents are. That’s not my job. My job is to make sure everyone in this city is safe.”Opponents claim the law would harm Florida’s economy. A study by New American Economy calculated a loss of $3.5bn in gross domestic product and a drop in tax receipts of more than $100m if just 10% of the state’s undocumented workers were to leave, the same percentage that fled Arizona’s workforce following the passage of the since-repealed “show me your papers” law of 2010.“The economy in Florida is powered by immigrants,” Kennedy said. “These people work in construction, in tourism, in the hospitality industry. They’re taking care of people’s kids, they’re cleaning homes, they’re serving in restaurants.“When Georgia passed a similar law in 2011 workers fled to neighbouring states and crops were literally rotting because nobody was picking them. We’re sure we’ll see a similar effect in Florida, it’s a huge agricultural state, a citrus-growing state among other things, and it would be an economic catastrophe.”Democratic opposition to the bill centres on its “sanctuary cities” provision, which would prevent resisting cooperation with federal immigration authorities, specifically over detainer requests. They argue no such law is needed because there are no sanctuary cities in Florida.“There are no jurisdictions in Florida that are out of compliance with information sharing laws at the federal government level,” said Jose Javier Rodriguez, state senator for Miami. “Why does this bill create the phantom of sanctuary cities? Frankly it’s to keep the issue of immigration alive. It is for political purposes.”In a phone interview, Gruters accused detractors of “fearmongering and misinformation”.“The only people who will be impacted by this are criminal illegals who are going to jail,” he said. “It has nothing to do with anybody else. If you are an illegal alien here in Florida and you’re trying to be a contributing member of society, your kids are going to school, and you’re not breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about.“We’re not trying to change immigration law, all we’re trying to do is define it by saying that local governments cannot prohibit cooperation with existing laws. It’s common sense.“Here in Florida we’re going to try to enforce the law and get rid of some of these bad criminal illegal aliens.” Topics US immigration Florida Human rights features

Among those attending the protest was Leonard Cheng, the president of Lingnan University, who said he wanted “to know and understand the situation because many students are here.” He warned students away from violence, saying, “Please run if you see danger.”Yuen Long, which sits near fish and shrimp farms across a bay from the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen, has both old villages and urban new towns, which were built in the 1970s and ’80s to handle Hong Kong’s population growth. For many years, dating back to when Hong Kong was a British colony, the authorities have trodden carefully with the village residents.Descendants of people who lived in the villages in the late 19th century, when Britain took over the area, are still given special land rights and representation in elected bodies — privileges seen as unfair by many in the wider population.Eddie Chu, a pro-democracy lawmaker, warned protesters this week to avoid villages, graves and ancestral halls in the area. Any such incursion, he wrote on Facebook, would help justify the arguments of Junius Ho, a pro-establishment politician from the area. Mr. Ho was seen with men in white T-shirts on the night of the train station attack, and he later said that Yuen Long needed to be defended from protesters. Soon after the attack, the graves of Mr. Ho’s parents were vandalized.Earlier this past week, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense said the military, which has several thousand troops based in Hong Kong, could be called in if the police were unable to maintain order. Hong Kong officials have had the right to ask for military intervention ever since the territory was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, but they have repeatedly said that they have no plans to take such a drastic step.

In October, Google dramatically announced that it would shut down Google+ in August 2019, because the company had discovered through an internal audit (and a simultaneous Wall Street Journal exposé) that a bug in Google+ had exposed 500,000 users' data for about three years. Maybe it should have pulled the plug sooner.On Monday, Google announced that an additional bug in a Google+ API, part of a November 7 software update, exposed user data from 52.5 million accounts. Or as Google puts it, "some users were impacted." Google found the flaw, and corrected it by November 13. This means that app developers would have had improper user data access for six days. Google says it doesn't have any evidence that the data was misused during that time, or that Google+ was compromised by a third party. But the company is now moving up Google+'s termination date to April, and it will cut off access to Google+ APIs in 90 days.LEARN MOREThe WIRED Guide toData Breaches"Our testing revealed that a Google+ API was not operating as intended. We fixed the bug promptly and began an investigation into the issue," David Thacker, Google's vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post on Monday. "We have begun the process of notifying consumer users and enterprise customers that were impacted by this bug. ... We want to give users ample opportunity to transition off of consumer Google+."The bug exposed Google+ profile data that a user hadn't made public—things like name, age, email address, and occupation—and some profile data shared privately between users that shouldn't have been accessible. The flaw did not expose financial data, passwords, or any other identifiers like Social Security numbers. Some of the exposed data overlaps with information that was at risk through the other Google+ bug that impacted 500,000 users. But the two exposures are distinct, unlike situations where a company announces an estimate of total victims after a data breach, and then revises that estimate later after conducting a full investigation.The announcement comes as Google has slogged through a series of prominent privacy and data management gaffes. And while the company's response to this Google+ exposure was quick and thorough, Google has had ample practice on privacy incident response this year alone."This didn't impact passwords or financial data, but it did give the ability to extract large amounts of information like email addresses and profile data," says David Kennedy, CEO of the penetration testing and incident response consultancy TrustedSec. "Issues like these, which have direct security implications, reflect the world we live in today with agile development. The whole goal is to get code and features out to customers faster, but with that comes the risk of exposure and introducing something like this."Kennedy also points out that Google's quick detection is heartening, because it means the company is still actively testing security on Google+ even in its final days. After the incidents revealed in October, though, it seems like the least the company can do.Google is notifying impacted users about the exposure, and there's probably not much you need to do to respond except hightail it off of Google+ if you're still using the service. May it rest in peace.More Great WIRED StoriesEverything you need to know about data breachesTumblr's displaced porn bloggers test their new platformsA SpaceX delivery capsule may be contaminating the ISSHow to use Apple Watch's new heart rate featuresAn eye-scanning lie detector is forging a dystopian future👀 Looking for the latest gadgets? Check out our picks, gift guides, and best deals all year round📩 Get even more of our inside scoops with our weekly Backchannel newsletter

Enlarge this image An Iraqi demonstrator poses outside the torched Iranian consulate on Friday, as protests over poor public services broke out in the city of Basra. Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images An Iraqi demonstrator poses outside the torched Iranian consulate on Friday, as protests over poor public services broke out in the city of Basra. Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images Updated at 11:30 a.m.Anti-government protesters in Iraq set fire to the Iranian consulate in the southern city of Basra on Friday, as the week's demonstrations turned violent.The protesters have called for an end to Iran's influence and to the Iraqi government's dysfunction. They demanded jobs and basic public services. Thousands of residents, living in poverty in the oil-rich region, have grown ill from contaminated water, according to health officials, and the electricity has cut out amid temperatures in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.Outraged demonstrators, shouting "Iran out," torched the Iranian consulate after security forces withdrew, as NPR's Jane Arraf reported. Hours later, airport officials said assailants fired three rockets at Basra's international airport, which is adjacent to the U.S. Consulate. No casualties were reported. It is unclear who launched the attack.Earlier in the week, protesters burned the offices of a major Iran-linked militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and an Iran-backed political party.They also set fire to the city's provincial government headquarters, blocked the entrance to the country's main port of Umm Qasr and set up roadblocks on the highway from Basra to Baghdad, port officials said.Other civilians held two Iraqi workers hostage at an oilfield outside of the city, Reuters reported."On paper, Basra is one of the richest cities in the world in relation to the production of oil," Lukman Faily, a former Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S., told NPR. "In reality, people don't see the wealth. They see their integrity in question as a result of government inability to provide basic functions."The problem is corruption, incompetence and lack of political will, he says. "It's a structure and culture of failure. Add them up together and you get what you have now." He went on to say, "The key question is, will the protests stay in Basra or spread elsewhere?" In the midst of the chaos, medical officials and activists say at least 10 protesters died when security forces allegedly opened fire to disperse the crowds. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he instructed security forces not to use live ammunition and flew to Basra earlier this week, ordering an investigation into the protests.Iraq's foreign ministry expressed "deep regret" over the attack on the consulate and called on local authorities to protect diplomatic missions.Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed the Iraqi government, calling it "responsible for security oversight leading to attack on its consulate," according to the Iranian government's Press TV. It added that "Iran calls for maximum penalty for rioters."Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who celebrated an electoral victory in May, had his own message for Abadi, according to CNN: "I hope you don't think that the Basra revolutionaries are just a bubble ... quickly release Basra's money and give it to clean hands to start at once with immediate and future development projects." Enlarge this image Iraqi protesters gathered outside the burned local government headquarters on Friday. Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images Iraqi protesters gathered outside the burned local government headquarters on Friday. Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images The U.S. Consulate General in Basra‎ conveyed its "deep concern about the violence" in a Facebook message posted before the rockets fired. It called on the Iraqi government to investigate allegations of excessive force and said it would "continue to support the Iraqi people and their government in their efforts to reform the economy, fight corruption, create jobs, and provide the services that the Iraqi people deserve."Years of corruption and militia control have crumbled the city's infrastructure, and Iraqi politicians have struggled to form a coalition government since parliamentary elections in May. The government sent security forces from Baghdad to parts of Basra, Ambassador Faily said. Officials also announced a curfew to calm the city. Middle East ISIS Releases Purported Audio Recording Of Leader Al-Baghdadi Iraq's Minister of Water Resources traveled to Basra on Thursday and trucks containing water were sent to the province, according to official media. The interim head of parliament planned to convene an emergency meeting on Saturday, Reuters reported. The unrest in Basra started in July and comes as the Trump administration seeks to exert pressure in Iran by stemming its oil revenues and reimposing sanctions.