The charges against Paul Manafort include “conspiracy against the United States,” laundering foreign money, tax and bank fraud, and failing to register as a foreign agent—but no one would accuse him of being cheap. Donald Trump’s former campaign chair spent unfathomable sums of money on rugs, boxy suits, and ostrich-leather and “blue lizard” jackets.To help feed this lavish lifestyle, US federal prosecutors believe Manafort stretched the truth with his apartment on Howard Street in Manhattan. He called it a “second home” while applying for a loan, when in fact it was almost always available for rent on Airbnb.Federal prosecutors believe Manafort falsely identified the Howard condo as a second home, instead of a rental property, to increase the size of a loan he took out against the property. Darin Evenson, Airbnb’s director of customer experience for North America, testified Aug. 9 that the condo was almost always available on Airbnb between January 2015 and April 2016, the Washington Post reported.During that time the listing only came down twice. The first break was from Oct. 27, 2015 through Nov. 20, 2015. The second was from Feb. 26, 2016 to March 26, 2016, when Manafort was negotiating for the loan. (The bank eventually gave him one for $3.2 million.)Manafort purchased the property in 2012 through “MC Soho Holdings, LLC,” a corporate vehicle owned by him and his family. He paid around $2.85 million for it, using money from Manafort entities in Cyprus, where he had millions in offshore accounts. The property’s Airbnb listing was for an “Amazing full floor loft in SoHo.”Two guests rented the condo for four nights for $1,971 in January 2015, the Washington Post said. Five spent $16,325 to stay there for three weeks that June. Evenson said he didn’t know off the top of his head how many total nights the condo was rented for in 2015 and 2016.

Lionel Messi accused the referee of bias after Argentina were beaten 2-0 by Brazil in the Copa América semi-final.The Argentina captain felt a number of decisions went against his side in Belo Horizonte as goals from Gabriel Jesus and Roberto Firmino in each half put Brazil through to the final against Chile or Peru.Messi was particularly aggrieved Argentina were not awarded a penalty by the Ecuadorian referee Roddy Zambrano immediately before Brazil’s second goal but that was only one of a number of complaints.“They were not better than us. They found the net early and the second goal came from a penalty they didn’t award,” Messi said. “The officiating was crazy. There were clear penalties, on Nicolas Otamendi, on Sergio Agüero.“He [the referee] was on their side. In every divided ball or dispute, he inclined the pitch their way. It’s not an excuse, but the truth is that, in this Copa, they kept on blowing for stupid things, for handballs, penalties. But today, they didn’t even go to VAR when there were clear plays that should have been looked at.”Despite the result, Messi was proud of his teammates and believes there is a bright future ahead for Argentina.The Barcelona striker said: “It was the best match we did in the Copa, against a Brazil that has spectacular players in all its lines. These guys made a huge sacrifice. They deserve respect. Argentina has the material to keep growing.”Dani Alves admitted Brazil had needed to dig deep to secure the result. The captain said: “Argentina were a very difficult opponent. We needed to make a barbaric effort. It’s one more step towards our goal. Everything we aimed for from the beginning we are fulfilling but we knew it would not be easy. I think many people doubted us but we have a lot of trust in our work.” Topics Copa América Lionel Messi Argentina Brazil news

Yet even their zeal seemed to be waning as Mr. Trump continued to push off a decision on what should be done. On Friday, one of the attorneys general, Herbert H. Slatery III of Tennessee, said in a letter to Senator Bob Corker, another Republican of Tennessee, that he no longer supported moving forward with a legal challenge to DACA. “There is a human element,” to the issue “that is not lost on me and should not be ignored,” Mr. Slatery wrote.He also called for action by Congress to normalize the Dreamers’ status, through legislation co-sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.Pro-immigration activists argued it would be particularly callous for Mr. Trump to end the program as Texas is struggling to recover from Harvey.“If DACA were to be repealed, they’re going to be going after many young immigrants and families that have been affected by Harvey, that have been trying to keep their lives together,” said Efrén C. Olivares, the racial and economic justice director at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “Considering a repeal of DACA would be just shocking for anyone who claims to care about Texas and its communities.”Oscar Hernandez, a DACA recipient who is an organizer at United We Dream Houston, joined a conference call on Friday arranged by supporters of the program from the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston where he was helping families displaced by the storm, vowing, “We’re here to stay.”In the community of young, undocumented immigrants, that sentiment was broadly felt.“I thought I was very distant from the days of life without DACA,” said Marcela Zhou, a 26-year-old third-year medical student at the University of California at Los Angeles, who was born in Mexico. “It is scary to go back to that uncertainty.”

Black Sheep, a film commissioned by the Guardian, has been nominated for best short documentary at the 2019 Oscars.Directed by Ed Perkins, Black Sheep tells the story of Cornelius Walker, a black 11-year-old from London who moves with his family to a housing estate in Essex after the murder of schoolboy Damilola Taylor in 2000. Walker, the same age as Taylor and of similar background, found himself confronting a gang of local racists and, after first fighting back, went to extraordinary lengths to fit in and gain their friendship.The film features interviews with Walker looking back 15 years on from the events he describes, which are re-enacted in the locations where they took place, with Kai Francis Lewis playing Walker.Responding to the nomination, Walker said that he was, “humbled and proud. I worked on this film to tell my story and hoped that it would resonate with people. To be nominated for this award is the highest recognition.”The film was produced by Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox (collaborator on the Whitney Houston documentary Whitney). Simon Chinn has previously won best documentary Oscars in 2013 for Searching for Sugar Man and in 2009 for Man on Wire. Black Sheep is executive produced by the Guardian’s head of documentaries, Charlie Phillips, and Lindsay Poulton, executive producer, documentaries.Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, said: “It’s wonderful to see such an important and personal story resonate with so many people and I’m delighted that the Guardian helped to tell it.”Phillips added: “Thanks to [Cornelius’s] bravery in speaking with such candour, combined with Ed Perkins’ beautiful filmmaking, this film will resonate with anyone who’s struggled with their identity as a teenager, and it says something profound and relevant about race in today’s world.”Simon Chinn said that he was “thrilled and honoured” at the nomination. “Thanks to Ed, to everyone who worked on the film and to Cornelius, who was so generous and candid in telling his story and without whom this film could never have been made,” he added.Black Sheep has already won a string of awards, including best short at Sheffield Doc/Fest and the grand jury prize at the Berlin British Shorts film festival. It is the first time a Guardian film has been nominated for an Oscar.The Academy Awards will take place on 24 February at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Topics Oscars 2019 Oscars The Guardian Short films Documentary films Awards and prizes National newspapers news

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong, as they sought to show their movement still had public support even after two months of increasingly violent clashes.Protesters, clad in their signature black and holding umbrellas, marched down major streets in Kowloon, chanting: “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our time!” Volunteers handed out herbal tea and juice, while some shops that had closed for the day left boxes of drinks out for protesters.Three separate rallies took place on Saturday, marking the 11th weekend of protests in Hong Kong as residents continue to press the government to formally withdraw a controversial extradition bill as well as meet other demands.In one of the demonstrations, thousands of teachers braved heavy rains to fill a public square in central Hong Kong where they rallied against police brutality toward young protesters.“When I see how things are right now, I can’t see a future for the children,” said Li, 30, a kindergarten teacher who helped organise the rally. “Today the teachers came out to show students that we understand them and we will fight with them until the end,” she said of the event, called Protect the Next Generation. She said: “It’s not just the students. All Hong Kong people need protecting.”The weekend of demonstrations has served as a test for the momentum of the protests after tensions reached a new level this past week. Following a weekend of violent clashes with police, protesters swarmed Hong Kong’s airport. Demonstrators blocked passengers, forcing a shutdown, as well as clashing with police and detaining two men suspected of being spies in scenes pro-government figures and Chinese state media have seized on as evidence of the protesters’ violent tendencies.Following the violent episodes, protesters have called for a weekend of peaceful marches and a return to the methods used when the demonstrations began in June.On Saturday, the rallies were mostly peaceful as demonstrators appeared focused on Sunday’s demonstration in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. Marching in Kowloon, they yelled: “See you at Victoria Park!”Many wore surgical masks but did not appear to be in full protective gear as they had been in past rallies in preparation for confrontations with the police. Riot police were deployed to meet dozens of protesters who had splintered off from the designated route of a march in Hung Hom in Kowloon and occupied roads, but skirmishes were limited.One group surrounded a police station in Mong Kok and threw eggs at the building until riot police charged at the group, dispersing them. Others vandalised the offices of a pro-Beijing political party. One group left pineapples, meant to symbolise grenades, at the door of a pro-government organisation, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, which played a key role in anti-colonial government riots in 1967, when homemade bombs were planted at street corners around the city. Critics said officials seemed intent on clashing with protesters. The police have banned the original plan for Sunday’s event, a march, and have instead confined it to a rally within Victoria Park. The park can hold about 100,000 people but organisers expect many more. Rally-goers on nearby roads or other overflow areas can be charged with unlawful assembly, which can lead to a maximum of five years in prison.“We know the government is not trying to help the situation or at least not showing any signs of trying,” said Elizabeth Yu, 26, a musician and performer.Government supporters were also holding a rival “anti-violence” demonstration outside the government headquarters. Participants dressed in white, to show their contrast with the protesters, sang the national anthem and chanted: “Oppose violence! Save Hong Kong!”As the protests enter their third month, there has been no sign of concessions from the government, and Beijing has issued increasingly severe warnings. Analysts said authorities were hoping the protests would diminish on their own after students return to school in September.But on Friday secondary school students pledged to boycott classes one day a week when term begins, and university students are expected to launch similar campaigns. Nonetheless, observers suggested it is likely that the momentum of protests will decrease..“Even if the movement gradually dies down from this point on it has long-lasting impacts. Many people gained a kind of political consciousness. This is not something you can erase instantaneously,” said Wong, an academic focusing on social movements in Hong Kong, who prefers not to give his full name. “Probably you won’t see the same frequency and intensity but that doesn’t mean it’s over. Because once people have been woken up, they can’t be put back to sleep,” he said. Topics Hong Kong The Observer Protest Asia Pacific news

It was a tall order: the Indian B antigen is known to be lacking in the blood of Iranians, Pakistanis and Indians, so donors had to have both parents from these populations. Two donors live in the United States, two in Britain and one in Australia. Most people, says Susan Forbes of One Blood, “don’t understand the need for a diverse blood supply.”Publicity about Zainab’s case, though it was extreme in its rarity, helped raise awareness.Yet it is a difficult message: that our blood is different, red and white cells both. When it comes to finding stem cells for bone marrow transplants, the search has to be equally discriminatory. This time the issue is HLA, the human leukocyte antigens present in white blood cells.“The reason why ethnicity comes into the picture,” says Dr. Abeer Madbouly, a senior scientist at Be the Match, a program run by the National Marrow Donor Program, the largest stem cell donor registry in the world, “is that HLA encodes the immune system, and the immune system goes through particular conditions based on where you are.” Depending on the threat, each population will develop particular sets of HLA types. In a diverse population like that of the United States, finding a matched donor becomes more challenging for a patient with a mixed ethnic background.“Let’s say you have someone with African roots and someone from Asian descent coming together, and then they have an offspring of mixed ethnicities,” Dr. Madbouly said. “You have an African HLA and an HLA type common in Asian areas coming together to form a new type of HLA that is not common in either.” Though Be the Match added nearly two million donors to its registry last year, only 30 percent were what Dr. Madbouly calls “diverse.” That’s not enough.Zainab’s blood is rare, and so is her situation. What concerns blood bankers on a daily basis is a more common condition caused by uncommon blood. Sickle cell disease is predominantly found in African-Americans, and thalassemia among South Asians, and both conditions require precisely matched blood. But there is a shortfall between ethnic minority patients who need blood, and ethnic minority donors. In New York, Caucasians are 35 percent of the population but 58 percent of donors. Twenty-eight percent of New Yorkers are African-American but only 8 percent of the donors in New York are African-American, and that’s after five years of hard work and outreach by the New York Blood Center with its PreciseMatch campaign.Even so, there was trouble when the Blood Center began in 2009 to offer the option to “self-declare” ethnicity on its donor forms. This was efficient: without a budget to precisely screen every donation, they could home in on antigens known to be specific to certain populations. At first there were problems, when staff members were initially upset by this apparent division of blood by ethnicity. “We didn’t educate the staff,” says Dr. Westhoff, “to know that we weren’t segregating the blood just to be segregating. We were doing it to send all the African-American units to the sickle program children because they were doing much better with blood that came from this same ethnic group.”

Apple is bracing itself for a formal antitrust investigation by Brussels after the iPhone maker was accused by the music streaming service Spotify of anti-competitive behaviour.Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, is said to be poised to launch an inquiry over claims that one of the world’s most valuable companies has behaved unlawfully by abusing the dominant position of its of its app store in the market.Spotify, which has reached 100 million paying subscribers, alleges that Apple, one of its fiercest rivals alongside Amazon, is using the store to favour its own Apple Music service. Apple charges digital content providers such as Spotify a 30% fee for using its payment system for any subscriptions sold in its App Store.The Financial Times reported on Monday that the European commission had decided there were grounds for a formal investigation, following a complaint filed by Spotify in March, and that an announcement could be expected within weeks.A European commission spokesman said: “The commission has received a complaint by Spotify, which we are assessing under our standard procedures.”Vestager has been a thorn in the side of US tech companies. Google alone has been handed more than €8bn (£6.8bn) in EU fines in a series of antitrust cases.Apple could be liable to pay up to 10% of its global turnover, although companies can avoid fines if they commit to changing their behaviour.In 2017, Vestager forced Apple to pay €13bn in back taxes after ruling its tax deal with the Irish government amounted to illegal state aid. The company and the Irish government have appealed and a decision is expected from the European general court later this year.Spotify, a Swedish company, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange just over a year ago, is embroiled in a battle with rivals such as Google’s Play Music, YouTube Music, Amazon and Tidal.It has a market value of about $25bn (£19bn), making it one of Europe’s few significant tech successes.At the time of its complaint to the European commission over Apple’s alleged unlawful behaviour, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s co-founder and chief executive, wrote a blog describing the charge on subscription services as an unfair “tax”.He wrote: “Apple requires that Spotify and other digital services pay a 30% tax on purchases made through Apple’s payment system, including upgrading from our free to our premium service.“If we pay this tax, it would force us to artificially inflate the price of our premium membership well above the price of Apple Music. And to keep our price competitive for our customers, that isn’t something we can do.”Ek further argued that the complaint to Brussels was not about seeking “special treatment” but the same tariff as non-music streaming apps such as Uber and Deliveroo, which are not subject to the 30% App Store charge.“This is not a Spotify v Apple issue,” he said. “We should all be subject to the same fair set of rules and restrictions, including Apple Music.”An Apple spokesman denied Spotify’s claims, adding that the company only charged apps that were not free to use.He said: “Apple connects Spotify to our users. We provide the platform by which users download and update their app. We share critical software development tools to support Spotify’s app building. And we built a secure payment system — no small undertaking — which allows users to have faith in in-app transactions. Spotify is asking to keep all those benefits while also retaining 100 percent of the revenue.” Topics Apple Computing European Union Europe news

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday that any Russian military action in Syria tried to minimize civilian casualties and was precisely targeted, the RIA news agency reported. Russia resumed air strikes against insurgents in the rebel-held enclave of Idlib province on Tuesday after a hiatus of several weeks, according to a Syrian rebel and a war monitor. Russia has not confirmed it has resumed air strikes. “We, as we have said many times before, act precisely, selectively, trying to minimize possible risks to the peaceful population,” RIA quoted Ryabkov as saying. Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Andrew OsbornOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is an aspiring politician. But his angle in the 2020 campaign is that he’s an outsider, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sees the future and shares the general population’s mistrust of professional lawmakers.His major promise has been Universal Basic Income, a $1,000 monthly check from the government for Americans to spend as they see fit, and tonight at the third round of Democratic primary debates he said in his opening statement that he’d begin by giving 10 American families that amount for a year.“It’s original. I’ll give you that,” South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg quipped when Yang finished and it was his turn to make his plea.But Yang’s offer, while original indeed, was utterly predictable. In fact, I called it yesterday when Yang’s campaign said he’d do something unprecedented at the debate (other guesses from members of the Quartz newsroom included that he’d show up as a hologram, go pants-less to one-up his traditionally tie-less presence, don a hoodie, or crowdsurf as he has done at campaign events).The candidate condemns the American focus on “the almighty dollar,” yet continuously talks about government as a business. Yang talks about Americans being the “owners and shareholders” of democracy. He announced a contest during a presidential debate. A cash giveaway!It’s hardly a move likely to bolster confidence in his ability to run a country. Universal Basic Income may be a good idea, however Yang’s call to action tonight rang not like a novel approach to solving income inequality but like a desperate ploy to attract people to his website.More disturbingly, it’s also unseemly. Yang is asking American families to tell him what they would do with the money he’d send them in order for his campaign to determine who are the most worthy recipients. But UBI is pretty much the opposite of that. It’s a plan that is meant to defend personal dignity by supplying everyone with enough money to meet their basic needs instead of asking the poor in particular to make a case for saving them financially.

Chaos consumed Hong Kong’s international airport Tuesday as formerly peaceful pro-democracy protests took a turn toward vigilantism.Thousands of protesters blocked passengers and occupied terminals, forcing the airport to suspend all check-ins for the second day in a row, later clashing with riot police and attacking suspected undercover cops in their midst. President Trump warned in a tweet that the Chinese government was moving troops to its border with Hong Kong, which enjoys limited autonomy.More than 300 flights had already been canceled Tuesday following Monday’s airport shutdown due to a similar protest. By Wednesday morning, however, only about three dozen protesters remained camped out at the airport, and flights were resuming, the Associated Press reported.Hong Kong is in its 10th week of public unrest. What started as a peaceful movement against an extradition bill perceived to threaten Hong Kong’s rule of law has become a decentralized series of near-daily confrontations between protesters and police. More than 700 protesters have been arrested so far. A protester shows a placard to stranded travelers during a demonstration at the airport in Hong Kong.(Kin Cheung/Associated Press) Advertisement The international airport, one of Asia’s top transportation hubs and a symbol of Hong Kong’s status as a financial center, has been a focal site for protesters, who’ve been trying to raise awareness of their fight for democratic reforms and against alleged police brutality. “We are afraid this could turn public opinion against us, but we are desperate and we are sorry.” Edgar, a 17-year-old protester who refused to give his last name But this time, protesters shifted from the peaceful tactics they’d been using the previous four days, escalating from chanting and handing out fliers to physically obstructing passengers from reaching their flights. Their methods may have antagonized the international visitors they were trying to win over, just as Beijing escalates a propaganda war aimed at portraying the protesters as “radicals” under foreign influence and deserving of a crackdown.Angry scuffles broke out in the late afternoon as hundreds of protesters surrounded two security gates in one of the terminals, sitting down so that no travelers could get to the security check and their boarding gates. An unidentified man, center, is shouted at by protesters during a demonstration at Hong Kong’s International Airport.(Philip Fong / AFP/Getty Images) Advertisement Shouting matches broke out as protesters refused to let passengers by. At one point, some protesters trapped passengers — including families with small children — in a poorly ventilated emergency passageway.Passengers eventually burst through the passageway to make a run for a train to the boarding gates, some of them crying in distress.Jasmine, 25, a traveler from Britain who didn’t give her last name, said she had been sympathetic with the protesters but disagreed with their airport occupation.“I’m getting quite scared, to be honest,” she said. “You cannot just block the whole airport. This is the fifth day they’re doing this, all the poor tourists have to stay here, and the airlines are not helping at all.”“It’s not that I’m against them expressing their political thoughts. But find other means.”The protests Monday and Tuesday came after the most violent clashes between police and protesters so far over the weekend. Police ruptured one woman’s eye with a bean bag projectile, dressed up as protesters to conduct arrests, and fired large amounts of tear gas at close range, including inside a subway station. Protesters attend a sit-in against police violence in Hong Kong’s international airport.(Laurel Chor / EPA/Shutterstock) Beijing has ramped up rhetoric against protesters in recent weeks, saying Monday that they showed “signs of terrorism.” State-owned news channels have broadcast propaganda saying protesters are supported by foreign forces including the United States, and played videos of Chinese military and armed police gathering across the border in Shenzhen as a show of force. There is no evidence that U.S. intelligence is behind Hong Kong’s protests, though American diplomats and officials have met with protest leaders. Advertisement Trump seemed to allude to China’s claim in a tweet Tuesday, which he followed with another one saying that Beijing was moving troops into place.Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said Tuesday that protests were damaging Hong Kong’s economy and could drag the territory into an “abyss.”United Nations human rights spokesman Rupert Colville, meanwhile, voiced concern Tuesday about the escalation of violence. The U.N. rights office had reviewed “credible evidence of law enforcement officials employing less-lethal weapons in ways that are prohibited by international norms and standards,” Colville told reporters in Geneva.He said the office’s high commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, was calling for a “prompt, independent, impartial investigation” into allegations of police brutality, and urged the Hong Kong government to exercise restraint toward protesters. Americans’ attitudes toward China are getting much more negative, thanks to Trump Americans’ attitudes toward China are getting much more negative, thanks to Trump Public opinion of China has soured badly, making the trade war a potentially hot-button campaign issue. Cheers broke out among protesters when the suspension of check-in procedures was announced at 6 p.m. In contrast to Monday, when thousands of protesters panicked and fled the airport, thinking police were on their way, Tuesday’s crowds mostly stayed put.Some took a conciliatory approach to passengers, apologizing and trying to reunite travelers separated from their loved ones. Others continued to block already checked-in travelers from reaching their gates. Advertisement Edgar, 17, a protester who withheld his last name for protection, said the protesters’ moves to block passengers had been decided spontaneously as the sit-in evolved.“We are afraid this could turn public opinion against us, but we are desperate and we are sorry,” he said. “I know some passengers were scared today, but we are scared every day we protest on the streets, of tear gas, rubber bullets and being beaten.“We’re more afraid of what will happen to Hong Kong if we do nothing,” he said.Later in the night, a mob of protesters swarmed around a man suspected to be a plainclothes policeman from mainland China, zip-tying his hands, shouting insults, kicking and threatening to kill him. A paramedic from the firefighting department reached the man, who collapsed several times, but the crowd refused to let the emergency worker extricate him.“All consequences are at your own risk!” the protesters chanted, echoing the warning a People’s Liberation Army officer had uttered in an ominous propaganda video last month.A small group of about two dozen police entered the airport at 11 p.m. to get the collapsed man out. Thousands of protesters met them with screams of “Gangsters! Gangsters!” and “Return her eye!”As medics loaded the collapsed man on a stretcher, police quickly boarded vans to leave, but protesters surrounded one, pushing luggage trolleys in front of it and bashing at the windows.Within minutes, new police wearing riot gear appeared and began to disperse the crowd, firing pepper spray and arresting several people. Protesters pushed trolleys and metal barriers against the terminal entrance as barricades.As police left, the crowds surged around another man who’d been taking pictures with his cellphone, forcing him to sit on a trolley and zip-tying his ankles together and his wrists above his head. They pulled an “I ❤️ HK Police” T-shirt and mainland Chinese passport out of his bag, shouting that he was “fake press” and likely undercover police.Jay, 21, a protester who did not give his last name, said they had surrounded the man because he was wearing a press vest but told protesters he was a tourist. The T-shirt looked like ones “gangsters” had worn while attacking citizens in previous clashes, he said.“So we think he is very suspicious.”The Global Times, a state-run Chinese tabloid, later confirmed that the man was Fu Guohao, one of its employees.Several pro-democratic legislators tried to calm the crowds to no avail. Some protesters poured water on the mainlander’s head as others shined lasers in his eyes, screaming and dragging him into a fetal position on the ground before medics managed to evacuate him.Times staff writer Su reported from Beijing and special correspondent Kilpatrick from Hong Kong.

A fire has broken out at Coachella music festival in California, with footage showing the blaze tearing through a shower block.Attendees shared films on social media of the fire, which took place at the festival’s campsite in the early hours of Saturday.The festival – which kicked off on Friday evening with a performance by Donald Glover’s alter ego, Childish Gambino – is one of the world’s most popular music events, with tens of thousands of people attending over its first weekend.But the fire caused panic, with footage posted online showing a man urging festivalgoers to “back up, back up” as the mobile shower unit stood ablaze behind him.One camper claimed to have heard “explosion sounds” and said one person fled the fire with their towel.Another person shared footage, saying: “The explosion was about 60ft away from our tent … [In] all seriousness, this wasn’t a cool thing to wake up to. Took this as we ran away.”Firefighters attended the scene shortly after 2am to tackle the blaze. Riverside County fire department tweeted: “Firefighters responded to reports of a mobile shower unit on fire. Upon arrival, the shower unit was fully involved, near centre of venue.”Within half an hour, the blaze was “contained”, the department said. “Mobile shower unit in lot eight storage area. Total of two trailers involved. One damaged, one destroyed. No reported injuries to fire personnel or civilians. Fire crews will remain on scene for one hour for overhaul,” it added.Headliners at Coachella, which runs over two weekends, include Tame Impala and Ariana Grande. The actor Idris Elba is also performing a DJ set.Other artists include the British rock band The 1975, Jaden Smith and the Grammy award-winning country music singer Kacey Musgraves.The festival takes place in a desert valley in the southern Californian city of Indio, 127 miles (204km) east of Los Angeles. Topics Coachella California Festivals news

Yesterday I asked Apple a simple question: Why did you ban Alex Jones/InfoWars’s podcasts but not the iOS app, which contains the same odious content and clearly defy the company’s own guidelines?No response from the usually-responsive Apple PR people. Apple gave a generic-sounding statement to BuzzFeed News that doesn’t seem to answer the question:“We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store, as long as the apps are respectful to users with differing opinions, and follow our clear guidelines, ensuring the App Store is a safe marketplace for all. We continue to monitor apps for violations of our guidelines and if we find content that violates our guidelines and is harmful to users we will remove those apps from the store as we have done previously.”I downloaded the InfoWars iOS app yesterday and used it to listen to Jones’s live broadcast. I then listened to parts of the rebroadcast, which became available in the app soon after the live broadcast was over. For comparison, I then tracked down and listened to one of the Jones/InfoWars podcasts. Like many broadcast personalities, Jones simply repackages his live shows as podcasts. It’s the same content. Why would Apple ban the podcasts but not the app?The main subject in yesterday’s show was, of course, Big Tech’s merciless gagging of InfoWars, which, we’re told, is the exclusive source of the information that will save democracy. Jones and his cronies (alt-right social media star Mike Cernovich and Trump strategist Roger Stone) have been quick to seize on Jones’s newfound martyrdom, saying the gagging of other “conservative” voices is coming next.On his show, I heard Jones say the InfoWars app is ranked number one in both the iOS and Android app stores. The app has become much more popular over the past few days as people rush to download it before it’s banned, and it did go from #47 to #3 in the News category at Apple’s app store, and it did rise to the number one “trending” app at the Google Play store, but it wasn’t the number-one app at either store or even the number-one News app at either store.The point here is not that Jones lies and spreads disinformation. There is no language in the App Store guidelines that squarely addresses that. But there is language that prohibits many of the things Jones routinely does on his show. From Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines: (I included the language that applies to Jones in red. I left out the part of the guidelines that don’t apply to his content. Ellipses indicate that the guideline continues.)1.1 Objectionable Content Apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, or in exceptionally poor taste. Examples of such content include: 1.1.1 Defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way. Professional political satirists and humorists are generally exempt from this requirement. 1.1.2 Realistic portrayals of people or animals being killed, maimed, tortured, or abused, or content that encourages violence . . . 1.1.3 Depictions that encourage illegal or reckless use of weapons and dangerous objects, or facilitate the purchase of firearms. 1.1.5 Inflammatory religious commentary or inaccurate or misleading quotations of religious texts. 1.1.6 False information and features, including inaccurate device data or trick/joke functionality, such as fake location trackers . . . The decision to ban the InfoWars app is a question of consistency. It doesn’t make sense to ban the Jones podcasts yet leave the app available. One observer suggested that the live broadcasts streamed through the app are fluid and harder for Apple to monitor. That may be true but, as I point out above, the recording of the broadcasts are available immediately after the live show. Another observer pointed out that Jones and his staff may be carefully selecting non-offensive news articles to post to the “News” section of the app to avoid banning. That may be, but Jones’s own words on the broadcasts are enough to justify removal of the app.Is this about free speech? Unavoidably, yes. Alex Jones and InfoWars are a hard case, because while much of the content is false and offensive, it isn’t so extreme or dangerous (i.e. he doesn’t publish directions for making dirty bombs, or call on his listeners to murder abortion doctors) that concerns over First Amendment rights recede into the background. Jones’s free speech rights are important, because the way InfoWars is treated could affect the way that other edgy political content is treated.On the other hand we live with a market-based economy. If Apple chooses not to support the InfoWars app on its platform, users are free to access the content from some other source, like the InfoWars website.You’ll notice in the guidelines above there’s a mention of political satirists and humorists being exempt from some content rules. Some in the Jones camp have suggested that his content falls under those labels. It’s a stretch. There is little humor in Jones’s broadcasts, and when there is it’s lacerated with hate. It’s humor against someone. Is Jones doing satire? Ask the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims if it’s satire. Ask them if Jones is “humorous.”Tim Cook and Apple have worked hard to communicate what the company stands for. It’s not been shy. Why is it suddenly hedging? It seems inconsistent with other Apple stances.There’s plenty of precedent at Apple for removing apps. It’s banned plenty of fart apps, but somehow truly odious stuff like Jones’s hatred, racism, disinformation, and conspiracy theorizing is left to thrive in the App Store. Please, Apple, do the right thing and ban it.

The White House announced on Monday that the Department of Justice would “expand its investigation” of the 2016 election to include “any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump campaign”.The statement, issued by press secretary Sarah Sanders, came shortly after Donald Trump finished a meeting with deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, FBI director Christopher Wray and director of national intelligence Dan Coats.The meeting, which was not on the White House’s public schedule, came the day after Trump demanded an investigation over a government informant’s meeting with several people connected with his campaign in 2016.Trump posted on Twitter on Sunday: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”A number of House Republicans have been vocally demanding information from the justice department about the informant, including Devin Nunes, the chair of the House intelligence committee, and Mark Meadows, leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Meadows tweeted supportively of Trump’s demand on Monday: “This is the right call from Donald Trump – we’ve seen disturbing evidence that the FBI engaged in political targeting.”The White House also said in the statement that chief of staff John Kelly “will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DoJ and DNI together with congressional leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested”. It was unclear what they will review and which members will be part of the process.Democrats expressed concern about the meeting. In a statement, Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat said: “The White House plan to arrange a meeting where ‘highly classified and other information’ will be shared with members of Congress is highly irregular and inappropriate. The president and his staff should not be involved in the viewing or dissemination of sensitive investigatory information involving any open investigation, let alone one about his own activities and campaign.” He added: “However, if such a meeting occurs, it must be bipartisan in order to serve as a check on the disturbing tendency of the president’s allies to distort facts and undermine the investigation and the people conducting it.”The DoJ a year ago announced the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election and alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Topics Donald Trump Trump-Russia investigation FBI news

Delve into the books of the Mexican writer and musician Julián Herbert and how obedient — how chaste — so much contemporary nonfiction can suddenly seem in comparison. Does Herbert write memoirs? Essays? Novels? His books are mash-ups of memory, investigation and fictional ornamentation, marked with a fond disrespect for genre — much like life.Herbert wrote his previous, prizewinning book, “Tomb Song,” in his mother’s hospital room, as she lay dying from leukemia. It is as much farce as elegy — his dreamy, druggy interludes vie with deathbed scenes and recollections of a childhood of poverty and abandonment, spent in the brothels where his mother worked, changing her name “with the nonchalance with which other women dye or perm their hair” — Lorena, Vicky, Juana. (The source, I’ve often thought, of Herbert’s comfort with the murk and multiplicity of truth.)The title was a twist on “cradle song” — a lullaby. Herbert kept vigil over his mother in her final days, her “best-loved and most-hated son.” His new book, like the last, is translated by Christina MacSweeney — one of the great Spanish translators of her generation. It’s another kind of tomb song, this time for the motherland. “The House of the Pain of Others” tells the story of a “small genocide” that took place in the city of Torreón, over the course of three days in 1911, during the Mexican Revolution. Three hundred Chinese immigrants were shot and bludgeoned to death in the streets, their corpses mutilated, their belongings, businesses and homes ransacked.The crime has had a strange afterlife. It has been misunderstood and misrepresented — many of Torreón’s inhabitants still blame outsiders, marauding revolutionaries and drug cartels (almost anyone, to avoid their own complicity). But it has never been truly forgotten. Oral and printed versions circulated almost immediately in its wake, and academic studies followed. The story of the massacre “wants to be told,” Herbert writes. “It refuses to die. This book is merely a version of that refusal.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. David CicillineDavid Nicola CicillineHillicon Valley: GOP lawmakers offer election security measure | FTC Dem worries government is 'captured' by Big Tech | Lawmakers condemn Apple over Hong Kong censorship FTC Democrat raises concerns that government is 'captured' by large tech companies Democrats want Mulvaney to testify in Trump impeachment probe MORE (D-R.I.) are set to meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday as the panel forges ahead of its antitrust investigation of Big Tech, a person familiar not authorized to speak on the record confirmed to The Hill.The meeting comes as Zuckerberg continues to make the rounds in Washington, D.C., to defend his company amid escalating government scrutiny.Zuckerberg is set to meet separately with Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, a source familiar with the meeting told The Hill. According to Facebook, the embattled tech executive is in town to discuss "future Internet regulation" with policymakers – including the president. Zuckerberg met with President TrumpDonald John Trump Comey: Mueller 'didn't succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency' During deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates MORE on Thursday after huddling behind closed doors with several key Republican lawmakers, including some of his most vociferous critics. On Friday, Zuckerberg will meet with Nadler, Cicilline and Collins just a week after the lawmakers submitted a slew of document requests to all of the country's top tech companies, including Facebook. Nadler's office did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment. Cicilline's office declined to comment.The bipartisan leaders of the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee sent letters to Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google seeking internal communications and documents last week.The panel is requesting communications among each company’s executives, records that were handed over in past antitrust investigations and internal documents detailing their organizational structures. The lawmakers gave each company a deadline of Oct. 14.Those documents could ultimately bolster the panel's antitrust investigation into the digital marketplace, which was announced earlier this year. In a statement at the time, Nadler said a "handful of corporations" are controlling an "outsized share of online commerce and communications. “It is increasingly difficult to use the Internet without relying on these services,” Nadler said. “The documents requested will provide the Committee with a better understanding of the degree to which these intermediaries enjoy market power, how they are using that market power, whether they are using their market power in ways that have harmed consumers and competition, and how Congress should respond.” The Washington Post first reported Zuckerberg's upcoming meeting with the House antitrust investigators.Cicilline has been among Zuckerberg's top critics in Congress, hammering the tech executive for his company's market dominance and series of privacy breaches.Zuckerberg's charm offensive in Washington, which has been described by some as a listening tour, comes as several government bodies have ratcheted up their investigations into Facebook over antitrust and privacy issues. Facebook described Zuckerberg's meeting with Trump, who has accused the company of routinely censoring right-wing voices, as "constructive."

By Sept. 27, 2018 5:38 am ET The past year has been a wash for China’s biggest online stocks. But some investors are enjoying big gains from a well-timed bet on an emerging internet company in the world’s second-largest economy. The recent public trading debut of online services platform Meituan Dianping in Hong Kong has netted a hefty return for Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm that is one of the most active investors in Chinese startups. Various Sequoia funds invested around $400 million into Meituan over a period of years, according to a spokesman.... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

A US former doctoral student has been spared the death penalty for kidnapping and murdering a 26-year-old Chinese scholar, prompting widespread anger in China.Last month, 30-year-old Brendt Christensen was convicted for abducting Zhang Yingying from a bus stop, then raping, choking and stabbing her before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her.Prosecutors had called for the death penalty, which Zhang’s family also supported, but after eight hours of deliberation, a jury in Peoria, Illinois, was unable to reach a unanimous decision. Christensen will automatically receive a sentence of life behind bars without the possibility of parole.News of Christensen’s sentencing spread quickly in China, where it was widely reported. On the microblog Weibo, details of the case were among four of the top trending topics, with many cursing the jury and the US legal system.Zhang’s boyfriend Hou Xiaolin has said that he does not accept the court’s decision. Speaking to media after the sentencing on Thursday, he said: “The result today seems to tell me that I can kill [anyone] … with all kinds of cruel methods and I will not die for it … I’d better act as a loner and then people will not think I’m a dangerous [person].. The result today encourages people to do crimes and [I] will never agree with that.” One user said: “In prison he will be taken care of for the rest of his life. He intentionally killed someone and yet the jury still does not sentence him to death. What are they thinking?” One commentator posted: “This is proof the American justice system is not fair”.Others reflected on how Christensen would have been treated in China, where thousands of prisoners are believed to be executed each year. “Now I think the death penalty is at the very least a way to comfort the victim’s family,” another said, in a comment that was liked by users more than 19,000 times.Zhang’s case has shocked families in China, where many send their children to study abroad in the US. In 2018, there were more than 300,000 Chinese students in the country, according to the US Department of State’s bureau of educational and cultural affairs.On 9 June 2017, Christensen posed as an undercover officer and lured Zhang into his car. Prosecutors said he most likely forced Zhang into a duffel bag that he bought online days earlier and carried her up to his apartment. Once inside, he raped and killed her.Upon hearing the sentencing, Christensen lowered his head and smiled at his mother when he heard that his life would be spared.Zhang’s parents, who travelled from China to attend the trial, pleaded with Christensen to reveal what he did with their daughter’s remains so that they can be taken back to their home country. Prosecutors indicated in court filings that Christensen may have destroyed Zhang’s body.Speaking through an interpreter, her father, Ronggao Zhang, said: “If you have any humanity left in your soul, please end our torment. Please let us bring Yingying home.”Among the most poignant testimony during the penalty phase came from Zhang’s mother, Lifeng Ye. She told jurors how the family was devastated by the loss of her beloved daughter, who had aspired to become a professor and to help her working class family financially.“How am I supposed to carry on living?” she said in testimony by video. “I really don’t know how to carry on.”Ye said Christensen dashed the dreams of Zhang, who was doing post-graduate research in agricultural science at the University of Illinois, and those of her family. Yingying was killed months before she had planned to get married.“My daughter did not get to wear a wedding dress,” Lifeng Ye said. “I really wanted to be a grandma.”Christensen’s parents took the witness stand, too, and appealed to jurors to spare their son’s life. Both said they loved him unconditionally.Michael Christensen said the thought of his son being executed was unbearable, prompting Brendt Christensen to break down crying in a rare display of emotion.Ellen Williams, his mother, told jurors that Christensen’s crime was “horrible” and that she thinks about Zhang’s family “at least five times a day and how horrible this must be for them”. She said her son was extremely bright, kind and considerate.Brendt Christensen was raised in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He began his studies in Champaign at the University of Illinois’s prestigious doctoral program in physics in 2013.Despite his academic achievements, Christensen had suffered mental health problems for years, the defence said, and had tried to get help in dealing with homicidal fantasies in the months before killing Zhang.“What happened next was a ... battle between Brendt and his demons that little by little, he lost,” his lawyer Julie Brain said. Topics Illinois China US crime Asia Pacific news

Encounters with reporters have proved more delicate. In one instance, Uzo Asonye, one of the special counsel prosecutors, stepped into an elevator with a colleague whom he stopped midsentence.“Stop,” he said, gesturing to the reporter’s press badge. He held up his hand to silence her.He turned to the reporter with a smile. “Sorry. I can’t talk to you.”The prosecutors’ habits are to be expected in such a big case, former members of independent counsel teams said. The difference this time is the magnitude of the investigation paired with an era of instant news.“This is unusual,” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, a deputy independent counsel who was selected by Judge Kenneth W. Starr to handle the grand jury questioning of President Bill Clinton. “This is a major, major trial with intense press interest in an era when you have 24-hour cable news.”During the 2007 trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of perjury in connection with the leak of a C.I.A. officer’s identity, the prosecution team took unusual measures to deter attention, said Peter R. Zeidenberg, a deputy special counsel in the case. Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the lead prosecutor, at one point negotiated with a photographer to allow for a picture of him picking up coffee. The deal, Mr. Zeidenberg said, was that the photographer would then leave Mr. Fitzgerald alone.Perhaps no member of Mr. Mueller’s team has drawn more curiosity than the special counsel himself, who has not spoken publicly about the inquiry. The void has filled with speculation about the smallest observations — even about his choice of watch, the hyper-accurate Casio DW-290, which he wears with the face on the inside of his wrist.Public sightings of him are scarce. A New York Times reporter spotted Mr. Mueller leaving a 7-Eleven convenience store in Washington on a Saturday morning this winter in a cinched-waist parka and gym clothes, walking to a small sport utility vehicle. Mr. Mueller got behind the wheel, made a U-turn to cross a double yellow line and drove away.

Microsoft racks up more cloud customers Microsoft on Wednesday reported fiscal first-quarter profit of $10.68 billion, buoyed by another round of business customers signing up for its cloud...

I don’t put too much stock in Bloomberg’s story this week saying that sales of Apple’s HomePod smart speaker are disappointing. There’s a good possibility that Apple isn’t selling as many of the speakers as it had hoped, but it might be for completely different reasons than those proposed in Mark Gurman’s article.The story rests on Slice Intelligence data saying that the HomePod accounted for 10% of all smart speaker sales in the first 10 weeks after its launch, with Amazon’s Echo family dominating with 73% and Google Home taking 14%. After that, the HomePod slipped to about 4% market share, Slice says.Some of the analysts I know have deep reservations about the Slice data, because it counts only online receipts and has poor visibility into in-store purchases. And that’s exactly when the Slice Intelligence data suggests HomePod sales began to flag–when it arrived in stores. That’s an unfortunate blind spot to have when looking at a product like the HomePod. You have to get a good earful of its sound–in a store–before you start feeling comfortable about shelling out $349 for one, especially considering the device’s other limitations (more on that below).So the idea that the HomePod started tanking right when it hit stores sounds a little counterintuitive. The Bloomberg piece also relies on an unnamed sources saying that Apple lowered sales forecasts and cut orders to one of its contract manufacturers for the HomePod, Inventec.Many journalists, including Gurman, have suggested that potential HomePod buyers were put off by the fact that the speaker can’t do as many digital-assistant tasks as the Echo and the Home. For instance, it can’t distinguish between different voices, doesn’t work as a Bluetooth speaker, and is unable to make phone calls without the help of an iPhone.It’s true that Siri seems hobbled inside the HomePod. As of now, the speaker has no dynamic developer community to teach the device new skills, to use Amazon’s parlance. But it’s not been proven that that’s the reason buyers are balking (if they’re balking!).Apple insists—and Google agrees—that people mainly use smart speakers to listen to music, and that the assistant tasks are secondary.Another theory about why people might not be buying scads of HomePods is lock-in. The HomePod sounds really good, but the only music service it supports natively is Apple Music. You can use AirPlay to stream other music apps such as Spotify from Apple devices, but it’s not the same as being able to talk to a speaker to cue up songs. And your friends can’t just walk up and Bluetooth-connect to the HomePod from whatever kind of phone they have and start playing music. The HomePod can’t even distinguish between two different users with different Apple accounts and individual tastes in music.40 Million Potential Customers?When you remove the types of consumer who would be put off by these limitations, you still have a massive target market of 40 million Apple Music subscribers. But not all of them will be interested, for a variety of reasons.First, there’s everybody who already has a smart speaker. “I said from the very beginning that HomePod’s sweet spot was people who had an Apple Music subscription and had yet to invest in a home sound system or speaker, and I continue to believe that is the case,” says Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi. That’s probably a considerably smaller market than 40 million.Milanesi also points out that Bose speakers are popular among Apple Music subscribers. “While Apple Music through HomePod sounds particularly good, I am not sure it is enough for users to make the extra investment,” she says.In theory, Apple Music’s tight integration with the HomePod should be a major selling point to people who happily inhabit the Apple ecosystem. But plenty of Apple Music subscribers are already listening through other speakers. “Those 40 million Apple Music subscribers are finding other ways to connect via their phones to speaker systems through Bluetooth, cables, and even AirPlay via Apple TV,” says Moor Insights & Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead.Moorhead also believes Apple’s marketing machine may not have done enough to close the sale among Apple Music subscribers. “I don’t think Apple ‘stuck’ the message on quality definitively enough like they do with iPhones and even Watch to move buyers across the aisle from alternative solutions they may have invested in for years like Sonos,” he says.Neither Milanesi nor Moorhead endorses Bloomberg’s assertion that HomePod sales are surprisingly shaky. They merely point out the expected challenges the product faced in the market to begin with.We tend to look at all Apple products on the same scale when it comes to user acceptance. Maybe we shouldn’t–especially for things like the HomePod. It could be a niche product. And maybe Apple understands that.Moorhead points out that at $349, the HomePod is an “extremely premium product” and yet not a “must-have” item like a smartphone. “That puts it into a ‘luxury’ category, so inherently the market is limited to those who can afford luxury products,” he says. If all the HomePod does is let Apple make a healthy profit on a piece of high-end hardware, it would be true to the company’s instinctive modus operandi. Apple might be fine with that—even if the HomePod’s impact on the smart-speaker market is less than transformative.