The fund made its debut on June 5. By the end of the month, it was up 5.2 percent compared to 6.9 percent for the S&P 500. Mr. Martin also provided back test data — which may not reflect future returns — showing that the strategy has done well in the past.Another approach is to invest in an E.T.F. that tracks emerging markets generally but excludes companies listed or domiciled in China and Hong Kong. Such a fund, the Columbia EM Core ex-China E.T.F., gained nearly 33 percent for the five years ending at the start of July, but it lagged the S&P 500 index, which gained nearly 55 percent. Through June, the E.T.F. was up 12 percent, while the S&P 500 gained about 17.3 percent.Yet another China trade strategy is to seek bargains in beaten-down stocks and play for the potential bounce when the trade war wanes, said Dave Nadig, managing director of ETF.com. “You want to focus on portfolios that include Chinese A shares, the local shares sold on mainland China, which are the most depressed,” he said.Mr. Nadig cited the Xtrackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares E.T.F., based on an index of the 300 largest and most liquid stocks in the China A-Share market, which trade on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The index includes stocks that focus on Chinese consumers. Through June, the E.T.F. was up more than 30 percent.Mr. Sotiroff, the Morningstar analyst, suggested a longer-term strategy, based on E.T.F.s that provide broadly diversified exposure in emerging and developing markets.Some examples are the iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol EAFE E.T.F., which focuses on developed market equities (excluding the United States and Canada) with lower volatility characteristics, and the iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol Emerging Markets E.T.F., which invests in lower-volatility emerging markets.“These are very well diversified, not single-industry bets, that you could hold for 10 or 15 years and get a good outcome,” he said. “Plus, both funds are very cheap compared with other options in those categories.”

A list of India’s most valued brands once again shows the diverging fortunes of two brothers helming India’s wealthiest business dynasty.The brand value of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group underwent a sharp erosion in the past year, even as elder brother Mukesh Ambani’s three-year-old telecom venture Reliance Jio debuted among India’s 100 most valued brands.The Reliance Group’s brand value fell 65% to $559 million (Rs3,848 crore) in the past year—the biggest drop among Indian companies. The conglomerate is now ranked 56, down 28 places from 2018, in this year’s Brand Finance India 100 list that’s topped by the Tata Group.The list was released by Brand Finance, a London-based independent strategy consultant, on July 16.The reason for the fall is the turmoil at various businesses of the Reliance Group. Reliance Communications (RCom), once counted among the country’s leading telecom brands, for instance, is facing insolvency proceedings at India’s National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).“The (Reliance Group) brand has witnessed continuous erosion in its value creation due to increased pressure from various group businesses and is currently facing some stiff questions from its stakeholders,” said David Haigh, chief executive officer, Brand Finance.In contrast, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, a part of his conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., has a brand value of $3.6 billion, and is at rank 14 on the Brand Finance India 100 list. Identified as a “challenger brand,” Jio is the most promising new entrant, according to the report.“Reliance Jio is poised to become India’s leading telecommunications provider and it’s likely to retain its low-price strategy,” said Haigh.Brand Tata, perched on top for a second straight year, saw its value rise 37% to $19.6 billion, surpassing the combined value of the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and India’s second-largest IT firm Infosys.The Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) conglomerate has also made it to the top 5 for the first time. The group’s brand value grew 35% to reach $5.2 billion.It has a strong play in the farm equipment sector (Mahindra Tractors), financial services (Mahindra Finance), and IT services (Tech Mahindra). It has been making strong inroads into US markets and chasing global growth aggressively, the report, said.Besides Jio, the other debutants in the list include the hypermarket chain DMart ($937 million) at rank 33 and the homegrown FMCG brand Patanjali ($614 million) at 51.Besides brand value, Brand Finance also evaluates the relative “strength” of brands, based on factors such as marketing investment, familiarity, customer loyalty, staff satisfaction, and corporate reputation.Reliance Jio, HDFC Bank and Indian Oil are India’s strongest brands, according to the company.Brand strength Index (BSI) score of top 10 strongest brands2019 (%)2018 (%)Jio87N.AHDFC Bank86.588Indian Oil84.677.2Maruti Suzuki84.476.9Indigo83.479.1Airtel82.585.6LIC82.470Bharat Petroleum8173.9ACC80.666.8Amul80.480Source: Brand FinanceThe financial services sector shines in the Brand Finance India 100 this year, with as many as 14 banking brands featuring in the list.India’s three largest lenders have registered a strong growth in their brand value. At $6 billion (up 34% over last year), the State Bank of India tops the sector, followed by HDFC Bank (up 19% to $4.9 billion) and ICICI Bank (up 41% to $3.9 billion).“The banking sector is currently undertaking a major shift as a result of an increase in spending on infrastructure, technology and innovative customer experience tools, all of which have the potential to contribute to heightened brand values across the board for banks,” said Haigh.Automobile companies emerged as the most trustworthy brands, delivering on quality and innovation. Even though German marquee brands Mercedes, Audi and BMW enjoy the highest levels of consumer trust, their Indian rivals Tata Motors and Bajaj are also placed high.Even as many technology-powered auto brands are seeking to become leaders in “personal transportation,” established auto brands have strong consumer equity (globally and in India) and are not going to give way easily, noted the report.Another interesting finding of the report is that consumer confidence in technology brands is high.Indians trust and love global players such as Google, YouTube, and Apple, which enjoy strong brand reputation in India. “Consumers feel that these brands broadly deliver on their product-service promises. Notably, their scores for trust are also high. Indian consumers trust most tech brands, including Facebook and Uber, which have a mixed reputation in other parts of the globe,” added Haigh.

Hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, argue that Mr. Zarif’s American affectations are what make him dangerous. Mr. Zarif and his patron, President Hassan Rouhani, are “polished front men for the ayatollah’s international con artistry,” Mr. Pompeo has said, suggesting that the foreign minister uses his flawless, idiomatic American English as a ruse to mask his allegiance to the hard-line agenda of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.But critics shoot back that threatening Iran’s top diplomat makes no sense, given Mr. Trump’s repeated insistence that his ultimate goal is to restart negotiations with Iran. Cutting off the intermediary for any such talks, the critics say, may ultimately leave the administration no choice other than confrontation.“It just makes it harder or impossible for the Iranians to choose some kind of diplomacy,” said Jeff Prescott, a former senior director for Iran on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.In an extensive email exchange, Mr. Zarif said he felt little personal risk from American sanctions. “Everyone who knows me knows that I or my family do not own any property outside Iran,” he wrote. “I personally do not even have a bank account outside Iran. Iran is my entire life and my sole commitment. So I have no personal problem with possible sanctions.”Washington, Mr. Zarif argued, would only be hurting itself by cutting him off.“The only impact — and possibly the sole objective — of a possible designation would be to limit my ability to communicate. And I doubt that would serve anyone,” he wrote. “Certainly it would limit the possibility of informed decision-making in Washington.”

When most comedy fans think of Kevin Nealon, they probably picture him seated behind the “Weekend Update” desk on Saturday Night Live, often using his signature subliminal messaging bit to skewer whoever happened to be making headlines that week in the early-’90s. “I’m Kevin Nealon and that’s news to me,” he would deadpan as his weekly sign-off. Twenty-five years later, the Connecticut-raised stand-up comedian has crafted a very different image for himself in Hiking with Kevin, his weekly web series in which he goes on long hikes around Los Angeles with his famous friends. His slim suits have been replaced with T-shirts, mirrored sunglasses and a bucket hat. An alternative title could be “Comedians on Hikes Getting Winded.” Three seasons into the show, which returned this month on YouTube, Nealon says he’s exhausted his long list of comedian friends and has now had to start reaching out to publicists to book celebrity guests. Sometimes, publicists will even reach out to him. This past week’s premiere had an unusually revealing conversation with Alec Baldwin, and upcoming episodes will feature hikes with Lisa Kudrow, Tiffany Haddish, and Christian Slater among other Hollywood stars. Occasionally a guest will agree to go on the hike only if the trail is flat. “I call those my flatliners,” Nealon jokes. For instance, he said his former SNL castmate David Spade would only go if the hike was “perfectly flat” and ended up complaining—comically—whenever there was a slight incline. Before he started making the show, Nealon would mostly go on hikes alone. When he would pass people hiking together on the trail, he would notice that they were “always in these deep conversations.” He thought to himself, “There’s something about hiking where you’re not having eye contact and you’re outdoors and I don’t know if it’s the endorphins or what but you’re much more revealing.” He originally filmed the episodes with a selfie stick and his iPhone and has since upgraded to a more advanced GoPro with an external mic. When his guests arrive to the trailhead, they’ll often ask, “Where’s the crew?” He has to explain that it’s just the two of them alone in nature.Highlights from our conversation are below and you can listen to the whole thing right now by subscribing to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, the Himalaya app or wherever you listen to podcasts.“There’s a canyon near my house where I like to hike and that’s where I do all my meditating and thinking and writing. When I’m walking, my mind is a lot more open to ideas. So I called a friend of mine, the actor Matthew Modine, and I said, ‘Hey, Matt, you want to go for a little hike?’ So he comes up and we go for a hike and it’s kind of an arduous hike. It’s a big loop and it’s pretty steep and we’re almost to the top and we’re both out of breath and our sentences are fragmented and I thought this would be funny if I was interviewing him and I videotaped it and you couldn’t understand what either of us were saying.”“He was very still raw from everything that went down. And probably still is kind of recoiling from all that and getting back on his feet. We went to lunch afterwards and it was like he was going through a breakup with his girlfriend, staring off sometimes. Because he loved what he did and he was really good at it. And a lot of people are saying that he left too soon, he should have stayed. So I don’t know if he’s sort of regretting leaving so quickly, but the situation at the time with Roy Moore, it’s almost like the Democrats had to throw a sacrificial lamb out there. I think he should have stayed longer, at least had some sort of congressional investigation.” “It wasn’t really on my radar because I knew I’d never get on there—because I didn’t do impressions or characters. Dana Carvey, who I shared a house with in the Hollywood Hills, he recommended me. He got on the show that summer [of 1986] and I was really excited for him. Out of the blue, he calls me and says, ‘I’m out at Lorne Michaels’ house and they’re still looking for one more cast member and I told him about you.’ First he goes, ‘Guess who’s in the kitchen? Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.’ I said, ‘You’re kidding!’ Anyway, he says, ‘I think Lorne’s going to want to see your audition tapes.’ I said, ‘Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd are in the kitchen?’ I didn’t even hear the other stuff, it didn’t register, because I knew I’d never get on that show. So I sent them in and then a couple of weeks later, Dana calls and says, ‘I’m back out at Lorne Michaels’ house, guess who’s in the kitchen? Steve Martin!’ I said, ‘You’re kidding me!’ Anyway, he says, ‘Lorne liked your tapes, I think they’re going to fly you in for an audition.’ I said, ‘Steve Martin’s in the kitchen?!’” “At the time, you don’t know what’s going to live on. Because everything is happening so quickly and you’re trying to survive and you’re doing your best. That was definitely a sketch that kind of cemented the idea of Saturday Night Live and what it was all about back then. And that was just one of those sketches that will never go away. I never really broke up [laughing] on SNL, now it seems pretty commonplace for them to break up. And Lorne always said that was really hacky. That probably was the closest I ever came to cracking up. But yeah, I remember doing that and it was me, Jan Hooks, Mike Myers, Patrick Swayze, and Chris Farley. And sadly, all of those people are gone now except for Mike Myers. But it was fun and in hindsight—and I didn’t know this at the time—but I think Chris Farley was really reticent about whether he should do it or not. I think he was a little self-conscious about his weight. But I didn’t know that at the time, I just thought this was a guy who just wants to get laughs no matter what happens.”“I don’t think you ever get really comfortable or secure. Getting [“Weekend Update”] was almost another layer of fear of getting fired. Eventually I did three years of that and then I was replaced by Norm Macdonald and left the following year. I had been there for eight seasons at that point and I did one more season after that. I appreciated the show, I loved the show. But I was even going out and doing sketches with food in my mouth from the craft service table. That’s how lackadaisical I was about it. I thought it’s time. And also the cast had gotten so big and they were looking to clean house. I was kind of pushed out too. I know [Chris] Farley was kind of fired and [Adam] Sandler that year was fired. I was essentially kind of forced out. I knew they probably wouldn’t bring me back if I wanted to. So the writing was on the wall. I had been there for a while, they saw all my tricks. And I got it. I really didn’t want to stay any longer, I had my fill of it.” Next week on The Last Laugh podcast: Stand-up comedian Bill Burr.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Saturday said it would propose making it harder for foreigners to come to the United States or remain there if they have received or are likely to receive public benefits such as food aid, public housing or Medicaid. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a Make America Great Again rally at the Civic Center in Charleston, West Virginia, U.S., August 21, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo The proposed regulation from the Department of Homeland Security would expand immigration officers’ ability to deny visas or legal permanent residency to aspiring immigrants if they have received a range of taxpayer-funded benefits to which they are legally entitled, such as Medicaid, the Medicare Part D low-income subsidy, Section 8 housing vouchers and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is commonly known as food stamps. U.S. immigration law has long required officials to exclude a person likely to become a “public charge” from permanent residence. But U.S. guidelines in place for nearly two decades narrowly define “public charge” to be a person “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence,” either through direct cash assistance or government-funded long-term care. The Trump administration’s proposal is a sharp departure from current guidelines, which have been in place since 1999 and specifically bar authorities from considering such non-cash benefits in deciding a person’s eligibility to immigrate to the United States or stay in the country. The changes would apply to those seeking visas or legal permanent residency but not people applying for U.S. citizenship. “Under long-standing federal law, those seeking to immigrate to the United States must show they can support themselves financially,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement to Reuters. “This proposed rule will implement a law passed by Congress intended to promote immigrant self-sufficiency and protect finite resources by ensuring that they are not likely to become burdens on American taxpayers.” If a foreigner is receiving one or more of the public benefits laid out in the proposal when they apply for a visa or residency, that would be a heavily weighed negative factor in their determining their eligibility to come to or remain in the United States. If an immigrant is deemed inadmissible because of the new rule, they might be eligible to post a bond, no less than $10,000, to come into the United States. The overhaul is part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit both legal and illegal immigration, an issue he highlighted during the 2016 presidential campaign and that has become an important topic in the 2018 congressional elections. Trump has advocated ending a visa lottery program and some kinds of family-based immigration but many of his desired changes would require congressional action. The proposed regulation, which does not need to be approved by Congress, will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks, officials said, the first step toward final adoption. The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal and the agency must consider all submitted comments and could change the regulation before the final version is adopted, likely not for at least several months. The proposal would affect more than 382,000 people per year who obtain permanent residence while already in the United States, DHS said. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people living abroad obtain U.S. permanent residence each year through the State Department, which would likely change its own regulations to match those of DHS when the proposal becomes final. Immigrant advocates have criticized the administration’s plan, which was first reported by Reuters in February when it was in an early draft form, saying that it is an effort to cut legal immigration without going through Congress to change U.S. law. They also believe the rule could negatively affect public health by dissuading immigrants from using health or food aid to which they or their children are entitled. Even the proposal published on Saturday anticipates some of those impacts. If immigrants forego enrolling in public benefits because of the new regulation, it could lead to “increased rates of poverty and housing instability” and “worse health outcomes,” the proposal states. Although the administration’s proposal would be a major change, the version released on Saturday is narrower in scope than previous leaked drafts. It will not penalize immigrants for using home heating aid; the widely used earned-income tax credit; WIC, a federal program that feeds poor pregnant or nursing women and their children; and Head Start, which provides early education to low-income children. Previous versions of the rule would have penalized immigrants for using those benefits. The regulation also would consider only the use of certain benefits by the individual applicant, and not their dependents, including U.S. citizen children. Previous versions of the regulation would have taken into account the use of benefits by an applicant’s children, even those born in the United States, which immigrant advocates said would force people to pull their children out of needed health and food programs. Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Sandra Maler and Bill TrottOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

For three months, at least a third of Hong Kong’s population of only 7 million has been protesting for democratic rights in the streets of the semi-autonomous territory. Yet Beijing’s powerful leader, Xi Jinping, has not crushed the demonstrations. Why? Does he worry about economic fallout? Or the loss of China’s hopes to be seen as a benign global leader?One possibility is that Mr. Xi would be crushing one of his claims to power: the promise of a “China dream.” This grand idea, repeated again and again, rests in part on a racial stereotype. It is the myth that all people of Chinese descent share a cultural unity and their political identity must be defined – and enforced – by the Communist Party.It is this notion of ethnic patriotism – or bloodlines as destiny – that has been so ably challenged by the protesters. Their embrace of civil values as a collective identity is not based on dimensions of “Chineseness.” They have forged a cultural unity around the daily practice of freedom of speech and assembly, equality under a system of law left by British rule, and political transparency and accountability.Hong Kongers – which most prefer to be called instead of Chinese – have coalesced around a shared self-governance, mutual respect, and open-mindedness. The crushing of the protests could not crush this internalized identity. A violent display of authority would expose the empty myth of a homogeneous ethnicity. The emperor would be seen as having no clothes.Since his rise to power in 2012, Mr. Xi has tried to extend his “China dream” to both Hong Kong and the independent island nation of Taiwan. In a 2015 meeting with Taiwan’s then-leader, Ma Ying-jeou, he stated, “We [China and Taiwan] are brothers connected by flesh even if our bones are broken. We are a family whose blood is thicker than water.”The Taiwanese, who have enjoyed democracy for three decades, do not buy this claim, especially as it is made under the threat of military coercion. Nearly two-thirds of the country’s 23 million citizens see themselves as Taiwanese, not Chinese. Their view is reinforced by Beijing’s rising threats against the Hong Kong protesters.The “China dream” is based on the work of Mr. Xi’s ideology mastermind, Wang Huning. The former scholar sits on the party’s powerful politburo. His writings argue that Chinese people are prone to accept authoritarian rule out of Confucian-style reverence. They are “descendants of the dragon” and not yet advanced in their thinking to really know their interests. They need the paternalistic rule of an unchallenged Communist Party, not a system based on the choice of individuals. Mr. Wang says democratic freedoms and basic rights are “self-defeating.” Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. Cultural typecasting is not unique to China’s rulers. Many leaders hold to power on claims of ethnic cohesiveness rather than a civic nation.In their thinking and actions, Hong Kong’s protesters have already overthrown Mr. Xi’s ethnic branding. Their conscience is already free. Their identity is chosen, not given, and rooted in universal values, not an imposed dream of ancestral traits. Whatever crackdown may still be imposed, this self-determined identity cannot be crushed. This may be giving Mr. Xi pause.

The most pressing moral, political and social issues of our time converge in and at Google. As the largest and most successful “big data” company, Google has the unfettered power not just to shape – but to declare (in the words of Shoshana Zuboff) – our futures. The data that the company harvests, sells and uses to create automation systems literally determine our life chances: how we are interpreted and understood by police and military technologies, our credit scores, our access to healthcare, our professional reputations, how much we pay for goods and services, and our ability to obtain work.Unlike in the 20th century, when competitive capitalism both spawned and responded to the power of labor unions, social movements and business regulation, in today’s political world, Google – and its ilk, Amazon and Facebook –operate in a seemingly impenetrable vortex of power. Government regulators, despite clarion calls by scientists and social scientists, have repeatedly failed to even properly investigate what the company’s immense and fast-growing power may mean – much less to rein it in. The inscrutable “black box” within which Google operates shows little sign of cracking in the face of new and old privacy and anti-trust laws.Who, then, will represent the public interest as new technologies are developed and deployed? In this brave new digital world, the most effective friction and oversight have come from an unlikely and surprising source: white-collar tech workers within Google. In the past few months, researchers, engineers, scientists and policy and communication specialists (among others) at the tech firm have protested and objected (at great personal cost) to protect us from the dystopian effects of unregulated AI. Undermining the stereotype of self-absorbed, Silicon Valley computer scientists, Google workers have acted both individually as conscientious objectors and collectively, banding together in concerted activity and mutual aid.These organized tech workers, through courageous acts of protest, have made a revolutionary leap: they have explicitly connected Google’s workplace practices to the broader public interest. They have argued that practices like forced arbitration and the use of temporary workers (more than 50% of the company’s workforce) make Google a difficult and sometimes harrowing place for women and people of color. And they have insisted that if the people most likely to be hurt by new technologies are not present and empowered to shape them, then biased and harmful outcomes are likely for us all.The business management and “pipeline” literature overwhelmingly support this positive connection between workplace diversity and corporate ethics. But the Google worker-organizers have taken the traditional argument a step further. In a recently released, seminal report from the AI Now Institute at NYU, Discriminating Systems: Gender, Race, and Power in AI, the artificial intelligence ethics expert and the Google walkout organizer Meredith Whittaker argues (with scholars Sarah Myers West and Kate Crawford) that when diversity is “stripped of the histories and lived experiences of systemic discrimination”, it becomes an “empty signifier”. They emphasize that the diversity crisis in tech is being addressed through a “worker-driven movement” engaged in fighting bias and inequity both in the workplace and in the technology it produces. Such a movement, the report maintains, is one of the primary forces working to rein in the dystopian impacts of widespread, unregulated automation.Whittaker and the Google worker-organizers (including those involved with the Tech Workers Coalition) have proven both their prescience and their effectiveness. For example, shortly after Google announced the creation of an AI ethics panel called the “Advanced Technology External Advisory Council”, which included the Heritage Foundation president, Kay Coles James (widely criticized for her transphobia and climate denial), thousands of Googlers and external supporters banded together in a protest petition. How, they asked, could this council address pressing AI governance issues with members who would exclude those historically marginalized, and thus most at risk of harm from AI? In a rapid response to the public petition and the controversies it engendered, Google disbanded the panel in days.To those of us on the outside, Google appeared to be serving its former motto – doing no evil and taking the concerns of its workforce seriously. But for those on the inside of the firm, something else was brewing. Taking a cue from the age-old, anti-worker corporate playbook, Google individually targeted the leading worker-organizers. Whittaker – a prominent AI ethics researcher – was told that in order to keep her job, she must abandon her work at the AI Now Institute at NYU, which she co-founded three years ago and from which the ground-breaking Discriminating Systems report was launched. She was also told that her job at Google would change dramatically – moving away from her expertise on AI ethics. Claire Stapleton – another one of the seven leading Google walkout organizers and a longtime Googler – was both demoted and told to take “sick leave”. She was not sick, and her demotion was rolled back only after she hired an attorney.For the past few months, in my capacity as a law professor and researcher, I have interviewed Google worker-organizers and discussed their experiences during and after protests. My research reveals the extent to which the acts of retaliation faced by these women are not isolated. While Whittaker and Stapleton are among the most well-known Google worker-organizers – with their names included in many of the public Google walkout statements – many less-well-known Googlers have been retaliated against and even fired when they, in the words of one former manager who I interviewed, “push back at all – even when it is our job to push back”. A pattern, I have been told by insiders, is that when a worker raises either ethical issues or labor issues, she is “managed out”. This sometimes means being made so unhappy through reassignments and everyday mistreatment that the worker feels compelled to leave.What Google has done to Whittaker and Stapleton flies in the face of US work laws. Retaliating against a worker who is engaged in concerted activity is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. Additionally, since both worker-organizers have been fighting gender and racial discrimination in the workplace, their demotions and reassignments may also be unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. But perhaps even more promising is the tremendous support that these women – and others like them – have been receiving from their co-workers who pledge to support them and stand alongside them as they fight retaliation. In a rapidly organized, unprecedented “sit-in” just this week, Googlers in 15 offices across the world shared their own stories with harassment and retaliation at the company – ensuring that we understood that Whittaker and Stapleton were not alone.How should those of us who do not work at Google or in the tech industry view Google’s actions and their overall workplace culture? How should we as Google users and consumers respond to the company’s clear attempt to thwart collective organizing in the workplace? How much should we care?A whole lot, in my view. In the absence of much-needed government regulation of this powerful tech company, workers like Whittaker and Stapleton are not just standing up for their own livelihoods, but for our collective futures. Without the tremendous pushback of these organizers – and others in the tech world – we would have very little leverage to make sense of emerging data practices and their impacts on our everyday lives. We owe these workers not just our sympathies, but also our solidarities. Veena Dubal is an associate professor of law at the University of California, Hastings Topics Google Opinion Artificial intelligence (AI) comment

What is undeniable is the humanitarian crisis in Tijuana. But it is a crisis created in part by Mr. Trump. Record numbers of desperate families, fleeing violence, corruption and extreme poverty, have been arriving in caravans to our southern border. Instead of their asylum requests being promptly processed, as established by international and United States laws, only a few are allowed in every day. This policy of cruelty by design has unjustly affected children and the most vulnerable people in our hemisphere. These refugees certainly do not pose a danger to our national security.There is no need for a new wall — except, of course, in Mr. Trump’s mind. The closest he got to building his wall was in January 2018, when Democratic senators negotiated a compromise for a wall in exchange for legislation on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Then the White House unexpectedly walked away from the deal.Would the Democrats revisit the offer? Luis Gutierrez, who recently retired from the House of Representatives after 26 years, once explained to me that it was like paying a ransom for a kidnapping. If the White House brings up the deal this time, it will put the Democrats in a moral dilemma: Protect the Dreamers — maybe including siblings and families — and, in the process, open the government. But the wall would be an essential element of any new deal.It won’t be easy. It is no longer 2018. Things have changed dramatically. Democrats control the House and the wall has become toxic. And then, there is the racist thing.The wall has become a metaphor to Mr. Trump and his millions of supporters. It represents a divide between “us” and “them,” a physical demarcation for those who refuse to accept that in just a few decades, a majority of the country will be people of color.This is about more than just a wall. Mr. Trump promised it in 2015, in the same speech in which he announced his candidacy, the same speech in which he called Mexican immigrants rapists, criminals and drug traffickers. His goal was to exploit the anxiety and resentment of voters in an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic society. Mr. Trump’s wall is a symbol for those who want to make America white again.The chant “Build that wall, build that wall” became his hymn — and an insult not just to Latinos but also to all people who do not share his xenophobic ideals. The wall went from a campaign promise to a monument built on bigoted ideas. That is why most Americans cannot say yes to it. Every country has a right to protect its borders. But not to a wall that represents hate, discrimination and fear.

新浪手机讯 9月20日下午消息，苏州首家Apple Store将于本周五（9月21日）上午十点正式开幕。新店坐落于苏州工业园区，是江苏省第五家苹果商店，也是大中华区第51家零售店。苏州首家Apple Store 据了解，苏州的Apple Store一共分为两层，由一块高达十米的弧形玻璃幕墙连接。其中一楼的照明天花板微微倾斜，店内的摆设则继承了苹果一贯的干净整洁。新店门口还摆放了六棵树木，迎接进门的顾客。店内有树木陈列 店中除了常规的产品展示区，还配有Forum互动坊。在这里，顾客和用户可以免费参加Today at Apple课程，包括编程、摄影、音乐、艺术和设计等多个方面。另外，顾客还可以在店内Avenue长廊试用各种配件和第三方产品。Forum互动坊 新店将于本周五上午十点正式开幕，第一批进店的顾客能获得纪念T恤。届时，在网上预购新iPhone的用户可以在这Apple Store零售店提取产品，其他产品包括Apple Watch Series 4可直接在店内购买。（苏航）Boardroom商谈室二楼阶梯产品展示区墙内配件展示一面墙的手机壳店内布局设施

A growing percentage of Google employees aren’t too pleased with a new member of the company’s Advanced Technology Ethics Advisory Council.On Monday, 662 Googlers (at press time) signed a petition calling for the removal of Kay Coles James, the current president of the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. James currently sits on the newly formed council, which helps the Silicon Valley giant make decisions on AI tools and new technologies.Google’s workforce takes specific issue with James’s reportedly transphobic and anti-LGBT statements. The letter links to several of James’s controversial tweets, including one that criticized powerful nations’ “radical” redefining of sex and gender.“If they can change the definition of women to include men, they can erase efforts to empower women economically, socially, and politically,” she tweeted earlier this month. The #EqualityAct is anything but equality. This bill would shut down businesses and charities, politicize medicine, endanger parental rights, and open every female bathroom and sports team to biological males. Learn more here: https://t.co/eJPDvfJKEs — Kay Coles James (@KayColesJames) March 21, 2019Employees also took offense to what they say is James’s anti-immigrant stance. However, they only provided one example, in which the think tank president referenced illegal aliens crossing the border, in addition to criminals and sex traffickers. It did not reference immigrants as a whole.The letter argues that James’s appointment to the council “significantly” undermines Google’s position on AI ethics.“The potential harms of AI are not evenly distributed, and follow historical patterns of discrimination and exclusion. From AI that doesn’t recognize trans people, doesn’t ‘hear’ more feminine voices, and doesn’t ‘see’ women of color, to AI used to enhance police surveillance, profile immigrants, and automate weapons — those who are most marginalized are most at risk,” reads the statement. “Not only are James’s views counter to Google’s stated values, but they are directly counter to the project of ensuring that the development and application of AI prioritizes justice over profit.”According to sources who spoke to The Verge, there are also those within Google who defended the appointment. Some employees believe it’s a step forward to bringing to more views and discussion around AI technologies.“Google cannot claim to support trans people and its trans employees — a population that faces real and material threats — and simultaneously appoint someone committed to trans erasure to a key AI advisory position,” ended the petition.

Andrew Yang would be “happy to sit down and talk” with Shane Gillis, a comedian who called the Democratic presidential contender “a Jew chink” in one of a number of offensive remarks unearthed after he was named as a new cast member on Saturday Night Live.“Shane,” Yang tweeted on Saturday, “I prefer comedy that makes people think and doesn’t take cheap shots. But I’m happy to sit down and talk with you if you’d like.”Yang added that he does not think Gillis should lose his SNL role.The new season of the flagship NBC show begins in two weeks’ time. Gillis was named to the cast on Thursday, alongside Bowen Yang – a Chinese American writer for the show and now its first Asian cast member – and Chloe Fineman.A freelance journalist soon unearthed and tweeted footage of Gillis, 31, making racist, bigoted and homophobic remarks, among them offensive comments about Asian people, food and culture, on Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. A flood of similar footage followed.Gillis’s remarks about Andrew Yang were first reported by Vice. In a discussion of the Democratic presidential race on Luis J Gomez’s Real Ass Podcast, the comedian is heard first referring to the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.“That Jew chink?” he says. “Commie Jew chink? Next, please, next. Gimme your next candidate, Dems. Jew chink, next. Actually, they are running a Jew chink: Chang, dude.“Yang, or Chang?”Yang, a tech entrepreneur, would be the first Asian American president. He is currently sixth in the Democratic race, according to the realclearpolitics.com polling average. Qualifying ahead of a number of national political figures, he appeared onstage in Houston on Thursday in the third Democratic debate.By Saturday morning he had offered comment on Gillis’s remarks. NBC and SNL had not.Gillis released a statement on Thursday, saying he was “a comedian who pushes boundaries”.“I sometimes miss,” he added. “If you go through my 10 years of comedy, most of it bad, you’re going to find a lot of bad misses. I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said. My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”The New York Times reported that Gillis was invited onstage at The Stand, a comedy club in the city, on Thursday night.“Gillis told the crowd he had been playing a character during the podcast,” the paper said, “and that he did not himself think of Chinese people that way.”The owner of The Stand, Cris Italia, told the Times Gillis had “been nothing but a model citizen here” and added: “It’s ridiculous to take one quote out of context from a podcast he did over a year ago and ruin his opportunity to be a cast member.”But Greg Maughan, founder and executive director of the Philly Improv Theater in Philadelphia, told the Times he had stopped working with Gillis in 2017 because of his insistence on using “racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and homophobic” material.Another Philadelphia venue, the Good Good Comedy Theatre, said on Twitter: “We, like many, were very quickly disgusted by Shane Gillis’ overt racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia – expressed both on and off stage – upon working with him years ago. We’ve deliberately chosen not to work with him in the years since.”On Saturday afternoon, on Twitter, Yang added a second thought on the matter.“For the record,” he said, “I do not think [Gillis] should lose his job. We would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive. We are all human.” Topics Saturday Night Live US elections 2020 Democrats Comedy news

A Turkish restaurateur who shot to Instagram fame with a video showcasing his flamboyant way with a steak knife and salt has endured publicity of an altogether different nature this week over footage of him serving Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro.Restaurants owned by Nusret Gökçe – known as Salt Bae for his meme-friendly theatrics – have been targeted by protesters and inundated with one-star reviews over the footage, which emerged after Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores stopped in Istanbul on Monday on their way home from China, where the president was seeking investment to prop up Venezuela’s collapsing economy.The footage depicted Gökçe performing his signature move – elaborately carving up and seasoning slabs of expensive steak – at Maduro’s table, before the two men puffed on cigars.The video did not pass unnoticed in Venezuela, where nine in 10 households live on less than $1 a day and 60% of the population lost an average of 11kg (24lb) in weight last year because of the effect of hyperinflation on food prices.Gökçe was accused of being an “accomplice of a murderous regime”, while the image that sparked the original meme was doctored to show the chef showering starving Venezuelans with salt, accompanied by the hashtag #ShameOnYouSaltBae.The online review site Yelp was forced to moderate posts about Gökçe’s restaurants after a series of one-star reviews critical of both Salt Bae’s food and perceived political stance.“Was planning on visiting, however noticed they feed communist dictators in there,” one reviewer wrote. “Overpriced and low morals,” said another.On Wednesday, the outrage spilled on to the streets, when dozens of protesters draped in Venezuelan flags massed outside the Miami branch of Gökçe’s Nusr-Et steakhouse chain and called on passersby to boycott it.The backlash was fuelled by Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio, whose state is home to increasing numbers of Venezuelans fleeing hardship at home. He wrote on Twitter: “I don’t know who this weirdo #Saltbae is, but the guy he is so proud to host is… the overweight dictator of a nation where 30% of the people eat only once a day & infants are suffering from malnutrition.” Rubio followed up by posting the Miami restaurant’s address and phone number, encouraging followers to let the chef know what they thought of his guest.The chef has since deleted all mention of Maduro’s visit from his social media profiles. His restaurant group did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.Maduro told Venezuelan television that he dined at Gokce’s Istanbul restaurant after receiving a personal invitation, and plans to visit again soon. The president, who has already visited Turkey twice this year, is drawing closer to its president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.Maduro and Gökçe’s personal relationship also looks set to endure: Maduro has invited the chef to Caracas and demonstrated on television on Wednesday how Salt Bae taught him his signature sprinkling technique. Topics Venezuela Nicolás Maduro Food and drink Americas news

The Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has followed Samsung’s lead by unveiling a super-luxury 5G phone with a folding screen called the Mate X with a price tag of €2,299 (£1,995).Introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday, the Mate X has a flexible OLED display that covers both the front and back of the device, and which unfolds outwards to become an 8in tablet screen.Richard Yu, the chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business, said the Mate X represented “a voyage into the uncharted”. “As a new breed of smartphones, Huawei Mate X combines 5G, foldable screen, AI and an all-new mode of interfacing to provide consumers with an unprecedented user experience,” he said.The Chinese firm, which has been at the centre of a political storm, was pipped to the post by its South Korean rival with the launch of its Galaxy Fold smartphone last Wednesday.The design of the two cutting-edge devices is quite different. Samsung put the folding screen on the inside of the device, which opens like a book to reveal a 7.3in screen, and a smaller 4.6in screen on the outside for use like a standard phone.Huawei’s Mate X has just one screen on the outside. When closed, the front screen measures 6.6in, comparing favourably with large non-folding smartphones such as Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro. The screen that folds around the rear is dormant unless used to take photos or for other similar tasks. That leaves the flexible screen exposed to the outside world at all times and at risk of scratching.The 11mm thick Mate X also has a solid strip on one edge that sits flush with the rear screen when folded over, acts as a handle and contains a quadruple Leica camera system. The phone also features a fingerprint sensor built into its power button, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, a large battery and a new 55W version of the firms SuperCharge technology that can reach 85% from zero in 30 minutes.Analysts viewed the unveiling as broadly positive, giving Samsung competition in the new folding-phone space, but were sceptical that a device costing as much as three times current top-end smartphones would sell in significant numbers.Francisco Jeronimo, an associate vice-president with IDC, said the Mate X’s “form factor seems a lot more user friendly than the Samsung Galaxy Fold”.Ian Fogg, vice president of analysis for OpenSignal, called the Mate X’s foldable design striking but warned: “Remember a foldable design places new tough demands on all aspects of the hardware, not just the display - it still has to deliver a great network experience, battery life etc.”Huawei says the Mate X is the “world’s fastest foldable 5G smartphone”, and that its position as a manufacturer of 5G network infrastructure has given it a unique advantage because the company was able to test the phone on internal 5G networks before release.That same position, however, has also made it a geopolitical talking point. The US has told European countries that it may find it difficult to work with anyone who uses Huawei products in their networks after raising security concerns about the company.Huawei is the second-largest smartphone manufacturer by volume ahead of Apple and behind Samsung, and it has its eyes on first place. It is also expected to launch a range of flagship smartphones in Paris in March.Huawei said its Mate X would be available later in the year to coincide with the launch of 5G networks, which are expected to begin limited rollout this summer in the UK and elsewhere. Several other Chinese firms, including Xiaomi, area also expected to unveil folding-screen phone designs this year, as the battle to lead the next wave of smartphone innovation heats up. Topics Huawei Smartphones Android Mobile phones Mobile World Congress Telecommunications industry Software news

BOSTON (Reuters) - Oil prices slumped up to nearly 8 percent to the lowest in more than a year on Friday, posting the seventh consecutive weekly loss, amid intensifying fears of a supply glut even as major producers consider cutting output. Oil supply, led by U.S. producers, is growing faster than demand and to prevent a build-up of unused fuel such as the one that emerged in 2015, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to start trimming output after a meeting on Dec. 6. But this has done little so far to prop up prices, which have dropped more than 20 percent so far in November, in a seven-week streak of losses. Prices were on course for their biggest one-month decline since late 2014. A trade war between the world’s two biggest economies and oil consumers, the United States and China, has weighed upon the market. “The market is pricing in an economic slowdown - they are anticipating that the Chinese trade talks are not going to go well,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, referring to expected talks next week between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. “The market doesn’t believe that OPEC is going to be able to act swiftly enough to offset the coming slowdown in demand,” Flynn said. Brent crude futures settled down $3.80 a barrel, or 6.1 percent at $58.80. During the session, the benchmark dropped to $58.41, the lowest since October 2017. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) lost $4.21, or 7.7 percent, to trade at $50.42, also the weakest since October 2017. In post-settlement trade, the contract continued to fall. For the week, Brent fell 11.3 percent and WTI posted a 10.8 percent decline, the largest one-week drop since January 2016. Market fears over weak demand intensified after China reported its lowest gasoline exports in more than a year amid a glut of the fuel in Asia and globally. Stockpiles of gasoline have surged across Asia, with inventories in Singapore, the regional refining hub, rising to a three-month high while Japanese stockpiles also climbed last week. Inventories in the United States are about 7 percent higher than a year ago. Crude production has soared as well this year. The International Energy Agency expects non-OPEC output alone to rise by 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) this year while demand next year was expected to grow 1.3 million bpd. Adjusting to lower demand, top crude exporter Saudi Arabia said on Thursday that it may reduce supply as it pushes OPEC to agree to a joint output cut of 1.4 million bpd. However, Trump has made it clear that he does not want oil prices to rise and many analysts think Saudi Arabia is coming under U.S. pressure to resist calls from other OPEC members for lower crude output. If OPEC decides to cut production at its meeting next month, oil prices could recover, analysts say. “We expect that OPEC will manage the market in 2019 and assess the probability of an agreement to reduce production at around 2-in-3. In that scenario, Brent prices likely recover back into the $70s,” Morgan Stanley commodities strategists Martijn Rats and Amy Sergeant wrote in a note to clients. If OPEC does not trim production, prices could head much lower, potentially depreciating toward $50 a barrel, argues Lukman Otunuga, Research Analyst at FXTM. (Graphic: Global crude oil supply & demand balance - tmsnrt.rs/2PKtzIy) VOLATILITY SPIKES TO 2-YEAR HIGH By the middle of November, commodity trading advisory funds tracked by Credit Suisse prime services had dropped 1.5 percent on the month, owing to the losses in energy futures and the increased volatility. Mark Connors, global head of portfolio and risk advisory at Credit Suisse, told Reuters this week that the action among macro and CTA funds reflects a risk-aversion trade, as net long positions have dropped from near five-year highs to roughly even exposure between longs and shorts. Hedge funds and other money managers cut their net long positions in Brent by 32,263 contracts to 182,569 in the week ended Nov. 20, according to data provided by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) on Friday. That’s the lowest net long position since December 2015. FILE PHOTO: A pump jack on a lease owned by Parsley Energy operates at sunset in the Permian Basin near Midland, Texas U.S. August 23, 2018. REUTERS/Nick Oxford/File PhotoVolatility, a measure of investor demand for options, has spiked to its highest since late 2016, above 60 percent, as investors have rushed to buy protection against further steep price declines. The decline in oil prices pulled U.S. energy shares lower. Oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp fell more than 3 percent and were the leading decliners on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Oilfield service providers Schlumberger NV and Halliburton Co also fell nearly 3 percent. (Graphic: Oil price volatility spikes - tmsnrt.rs/2DBYUpH) additional reporting by Christopher Johnson and Amanda Cooper in London, and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Marguerita Choy and Susan ThomasOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Brodie is the founder ofEmma's Torch, a nonprofit that provides culinary training for refugees and connects them with jobs in restaurant kitchens.Until recently,the U.S. has historically resettled more refugees than any other country-- about 3 million since 1980.Yet in their new communities, refugees often encounter a slew of obstacles, including language barriers and difficulty accessing services. Even if they have an advanced education or high-level skills, most are only able to obtain entry-level jobs. "Oftentimes, they're just falling through the cracks," Brodie said. "Being a young adult at a time where we're seeing one of the worst refugee crises in modern history has given me a sense of this is our time to really make a difference."Brodie started the nonprofit in 2017 after moving to New York and attending culinary school. She named her organization for theauthor Emma Lazarus, whose poem is inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty."We have students who have fled political unrest, ... students who are the only survivors of their families," said Brodie, whose nonprofit also helps asylum seekers and survivors of human trafficking.The groupoperates a restaurant in Brooklynand café at the Brooklyn Public Library's main branch, where students hone their skills during the 12-week, paid program."I really wanted to make sure students were getting real on-the-job training," Brodie said.Students spend the first month learning basic food preparation techniques and food safety guidelines. After that, they work at different stations of the restaurant, learning cooking methods such as braising, searing and roasting. In the third month, they get barista training and learn how to take orders and interact with customers. JUST WATCHEDCNN Heroes: Emma's TorchReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCNN Heroes: Emma's Torch 03:17In addition, they receive English classes tailored toward the kitchen and culinary industry and later do mock interviews and receive interview tips from industry professionals. Nearly 50 students have graduated from the program, qualified for restaurant employment as line cooks. For Brodie, the goal is to set graduates on a path with upward mobility."When our students graduate, we're helping them find full-time employment that helps them begin their new careers," she said.The nonprofit has support from high-end restaurants throughout the city that Brodie says are eager to hire their graduates."I hope that every one of my students can go out there and dream just a little bit bigger and believe that they have a right to pursue those dreams," she said. CNN's Laura Klairmont spoke with Brodie about her work. Below is an edited version of their conversation.CNN: What are some of the obstacles your students face? Kerry Brodie: We work with a really diverse population. The experience of being a refugee can actually be really isolating because you're coming in to a new place, and you're leaving behind a lot of what you already knew. Our students have been through things that I couldn't possibly understand and are grappling with a lot of challenges. We're asking people to adjust to a new country, a new culture, and to really sink or swim. We need to make sure that we're giving people the ability to swim. But there's often really limited resources for that type of opportunity. CNN: What inspired you to start a culinary program for refugees?Brodie:I was working at the Human Rights Campaign, learning more and more about the asylees who were coming to this country and more broadly about the refugee crisis. It was in 2016when that photo of Alan Kurdi was shown throughout the news. And it was really forcing people to think about the 65 million people who are currently displaced around the world. At the same time, I was volunteering at a homeless shelter and grappling more and more with the ways in which we could be using food to do more than just feed people. It could be a way to empower people.Food is this great equalizer. It's something that has very low barriers to entry when it comes to linguistic skills. And it's an area where upward mobility is possible. In New York City alone, culinary jobs account for a large percent of jobs, but restaurants are struggling to fill their kitchens with highly trained individuals and finding it harder to retain staff. There's so many openings that are left unfilled because access to trained people who stay in those positions was really limited. CNN Hero Kerry BrodieUltimately, we're not just about workforce development, we're about empowerment—making sure our students understand that they're not victims and that what they create and do has inherent value. We're really excited to give our students access to jobs, but also the chance to show their identity and to see that it's welcome here, that it enhances our community. (They're) people who have different experiences, who have different ideas about flavors and culture, and that can help restaurants feel more and more inspired.CNN: How does the program help graduates build careers in the industry? Brodie: Early on in the program, students also discuss their career goals. They are asked where they want to be in five years and begin to work out a career plan. Our whole team is really dedicated to how can we create an environment where our students can grow and thrive. We find ways to work with them as individuals, to recognize that everybody has a different story and that everybody has a different career path and just finding ways to be more sensitive to that. By the time a student graduates, we know what their hopes and dreams are.We have an amazing council of restaurants and chefs and people in the industry who are really dedicated to helping our students achieve those dreams. It's a partnership. We provide ongoing mentorship so that when you have a question about work, a question about starting that new business, you know you can turn to us. It's really about building a network. We are trying to be a constant source of support and understanding. Our students walk out with a real sense of family and community.Want to get involved? Check out the Emma's Torch website and see how to help.To donate to Emma's Torch via CrowdRise, click here.

The best journalists in China are persistent and aware of the risks of the job, he said. “Outside of China, journalists are fired for writing false reports,” he said. “Inside China, they are fired for telling the truth.”Ms. Zhang, the veteran reporter, has written in-depth features about the wives of imprisoned human rights lawyers and opinion pieces on the dangers of censorship. She lives in fear that the police will show up at her apartment in central China and force her to stop, she said.“Control of the media is lethal,” said Ms. Zhang, who is better known by her pen name, Jiang Xue. “But we are powerless to solve it.”At a two-week boot camp for aspiring journalists in Chengdu, in southwestern China, organized this year by a nonprofit group, Ms. Zhang spoke about the dangers of totalitarianism. Inside a residential building, Ms. Zhang, in a quiet, gentle voice, urged about 30 students to stand up for the weak and vulnerable.“Believe in the power of persistence,” Ms. Zhang told the class.Cheng Xinyu, 16, who paid more than $200 to attend the camp, said she signed up because she was tired of the skewed presentation of the news in China.“I need to see the point of view of the journalist,” she said, “and to know what good reporting should be.”

A Christmas market was evacuated in the German city of Potsdam on Friday after a nail-packed device was found in a nearby shop.Brandenburg’s interior minister, Karl-Heinz Schröter, said the package left at a pharmacy contained nails and a powder, which was being analysed to determine whether it was an explosive.Germany is on high alert for potential terrorist attacks nearly a year after a Tunisian Islamist hijacked a truck, killed its driver and rammed the vehicle into a Christmas market in nearby Berlin, killing 11 people there.“There was a successful attempt to spread fear, because at this point it isn’t possible for Christmas festivities to go ahead as normal’, said Schröter, a member of the Social Democratic party and the interior minister of the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin. He said the area would remain shut while police searched with sniffer dogs for any other packages. He told reporters that several hundred grams of nails had been found in a metal cylinder inside the package, but added: “We just don’t know at this point if this was a device that could have actually exploded, or a fake, or a test.” A robot using water jets was used to ensure the device was safe, officials said. Potsdam police said x-rays had shown wires, nails and batteries inside the package, but that no detonator had been found. The device was described by the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten newspaper as a package measuring 40cm by 50cm that had been delivered to the pharmacy. The newspaper said police were alerted at about 2.30pm local time (1.30pm GMT) after an employee opened the package and saw suspicious wires and electronics inside.Christmas markets opened across Germany on Monday at the start of the holiday season, fortified with security staff and concrete barriers to protect shoppers. The country has about 2,600 markets, filled with sparkling Christmas trees and wooden stalls serving candied nuts, sausages, mulled wine and handicrafts.Potsdam’s mayor, Jann Jacobs, said it was likely that the Christmas market would reopen tomorrow.The German interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, this week said Germany had increased information sharing between state and federal officials and taken other steps to increase security after a series of missteps on the Berlin case. A spokesman from his ministry said this week that the risk of an attack in Europe and Germany was “continuously high”. Topics Germany Europe news

A power outage crippled the tourist-filled heart of Manhattan just as Saturday night Broadway shows were set to go on, sending theatregoers spilling into siren-filled streets, knocking out Times Square’s towering electronic screens and bringing subway lines to a near halt.Electricity was restored to customers and businesses in midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side by about midnight.John McAvoy, the CEO of energy provider Con Edison, said a problem at a substation caused the power failure at 6.47pm, affecting 73,000 customers for more than three hours along a 30-block stretch from Times Square to 72nd Street and Broadway, and spreading to the Rockefeller Center.McAvoy said the exact cause of the blackout would not be known until an investigation was completed.The temperature was around 28C (82F) as the sun set, challenging the city’s power grid, but not as steaming as Manhattan can get in July.Power went out early on Saturday evening at much of the Rockefeller Center, reaching the Upper West Side and knocking out traffic lights.A big cheer went up among Upper West Side residents when power flickered back on at about 10.30 pm. For hours before that, doormen stood with flashlights in the darkened entrances of upmarket apartment buildings along Central Park West, directing residents to walk up flights of stairs to their apartments, with all elevators out.Police directed traffic at intersections as pedestrians and bikes weaved through the dark.The failure came on the anniversary of the 1977 New York City outage that left most of the city without power.The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, said in a statement that although no injuries were reported “the fact that it happened at all is unacceptable”. He said the state’s department of public service would investigate.He said the outage posed a safety risk.“You just can’t have a power outage of this magnitude in this city,” Cuomo said. “It is too dangerous, the potential for public safety risk and chaos is too high. We just can’t have a system that does that, it’s that simple at the end of the day.”Most Broadway musicals and plays cancelled their Saturday evening shows, including Hadestown, which last month won the Tony award for best musical. Several cast members from the musical Come From Away held an impromptu performance in the street outside the theatre for disappointed audience members.The outage also hit Madison Square Garden, where Jennifer Lopez was performing on Saturday night. Attendees said the concert went dark about 9.30pm in the middle of Lopez’s fourth song of the night. The arena was later evacuated. And at Penn station, officials were using backup generators to keep the lights on.Both Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts were evacuated.When the lights went out early on Saturday evening, thousands of people streamed out of darkened Manhattan buildings. They crowded Broadway, where there was bumper-to-bumper traffic, emergency vehicle sirens and honking car horns.People in the neighbourhood commonly known as Hell’s Kitchen began directing traffic themselves as stoplights and walking signs went dark.Ginger Tidwell, a dance teacher and Upper West Side resident, was about to order at a West Side diner on Broadway and West 69th Street just before 7pm. “When the lights started flickering, and then went out, we got up and left, walking up Broadway with all the traffic lights out and businesses dark,” she said.But once they got to West 72nd Street, they found another diner that was open and had power.“It was still sunny and everyone just came out to the street because they lost power and air-conditioning; it was super crowded,” she said. “Everyone was hanging out on the street on a nice night. All you could hear was fire trucks up and down Broadway. All of Broadway was without traffic lights.”Underground, the entire subway system was affected. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said four Manhattan stations were closed to the public at Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center, Hudson Yards and Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street. But he said train operators were able to manually change the signals and bring at least one car into stations so passengers could get off. Topics New York Broadway news

Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar public company on Thursday, as a rise in its share price pushed it past the landmark valuation.The iMac to iPhone company, co-founded to sell personal computers by the late Steve Jobs in 1976, reached the historic milestone as its shares hit $207.05, the day after it posted strong financial results. Apple’s share price has grown fourfold since Tim Cook replaced Jobs as chief executive in 2011. The company hit a $1tn market capitalisation 42 years after Apple was founded and 117 years after US Steel became the first company to be valued at $1bn in 1901. It means Apple’s stock market value is more than a third the size of the UK economy and larger than the economies of Turkey and Switzerland.While energy company PetroChina was cited as the world’s first trillion-dollar company after its 2007 flotation, the valuation is considered unreliable because only 2% of the company was released for public trading.Saudi Arabia’s national oil company Saudi Aramco could be worth up to $2tn upon its planned stock market float but the value is yet to be tested.This week’s rise in Apple’s share price was powered by quarterly financial results released on Tuesday that were better than Wall Street had expected. The company racked up profits of $11.5bn in three months on the back of record sales that hit $53.3bn, pushing shares of the iPhone giant higher and easing the value of the company up from $935bn towards $1tn (£770bn). “Growth was strong all around the world,” Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri, said.The company is sitting on a $285bn mountain of cash reserves and made a net profit of $48.5bn in 2017, its last set of full-year results.Apple’s astounding recent performance has left rivals in the competitive technology sector trailing in its wake.Its strong financial figures were in marked contrast to those of Facebook, which suffered the worst day for a single company in US stock market history last week, losing more than $120bn from its value as its shares fell more than 20%.Amazon, which was regarded as the next most likely to breach the $1tn mark, was also left behind despite posting higher-than-expected profits last week.A fall in the retailer’s share price since then means it is now worth $883bn, while fellow tech giant Alphabet – Google’s parent company – is valued at $845bn.Apple was co-founded in 1976 by Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak, who is credited with designing and building the company’s first desktop computer, the Apple I, which sold for $666.66.Despite being among the key pioneers of the personal computer revolution, Jobs resigned from the company in 1985 after falling out with the then chief executive John Sculley.He did not return until 1997, when Apple paid $427m to acquire workstation computer company NeXT, becoming chief executive shortly afterwards.The company had been flirting with bankruptcy and was thought to have lost its way as it lost market share to Bill Gates’ Microsoft.But Jobs revived its fortunes, working closely with British designer Jony Ive to develop products such as the iMac that married sleek aesthetics with pioneering technology.But it was the decision to branch out from computers that turbocharged the company’s fortunes at the turn of the 21st century, as Apple moved into the arena of personal gadgets. The result was the invention of disruptive products such as the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007, which became cultural landmarks as well as pushing technological boundaries.Since the launch of the iPhone, there have been 18 different iterations and more than 1.2bn have been sold. The gadget accounts for 60% of the company’s $229bn in annual sales.Apple’s success turned Jobs into one of the most respected inventors and business figures in the world.But in 2011, a year and a half after returning to work following a liver transplant, he was forced to step down as chief executive as his health failed. He handed control of the company to Tim Cook and died just weeks later aged 56.Under Cook, the company extended its reputation for taking big bets on risky products, such as the Apple Watch, and the cordless AirPod headphones, which dispensed with the need for a headphone jack on its phones.But it has also faced controversy, including criticism of its attitude towards payment of corporation tax and the labour conditions faced by the factory workers who make the products it sells to wealthy consumers.In 2017, the European commission ruled that Apple should pay €13bn in back taxes to Ireland, finding that its use of arcane corporate structures to limit its tax payments was illegal.Among the revelations that emerged from the Paradise Papers last year, the Guardian revealed that Apple had secretly shifted key parts of its empire to Jersey as part of a complex rearrangement that allowed it to keep an ultra-low tax rate.In 2011, it was accused of exploiting Chinese workers, amid a string of suicides at the factory of its supplier Foxconn in southern China, where staff were alleged to be working excessive hours in poor conditions.•This article was amended on Friday 3 August to correct an editing error. Apple’s share price has grown fourfold since 2011, after Tim Cook took the helm. Topics Apple Computing news

Spike Lee has addressed Donald Trump’s claim that his Oscars acceptance speech was a “racist hit” aimed at the president.When Lee won his first Oscar on Sunday night, he used his speech to attempt to mobilise the crowd ahead of the 2020 elections, saying: “Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing!”Although he mentioned no one by name, Trump was swift to retaliate on Twitter, saying:“Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President, who has done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts,etc.) than almost any other Pres!”Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the social media retort, Lee said: “Well, it’s okee-doke, you know. They change the narrative.“They did the same thing with the African American players who were kneeling, trying to make it into an anti-American thing, an anti-patriotic thing, and an anti-military thing. But no one’s going for that.”Lee’s victory, in the best adapted screenplay category for BlacKkKlansman, was one of the key moments of Sunday night’s ceremony. After leaping into the arms of presenter Samuel L Jackson, he paid tribute to his late grandmother, “Zimmie Shelton Reatha, who lived to be 100 years young, who was a Spelman College graduate even though her mother was a slave.“My grandma who saved 50 years of social security checks to put her first grandchild – she called me Spikie Poo – she put me through Morehouse College and NYU Grad Film.”Lee seemed to speak for many present when he later declared himself dissatisfied with the best picture victory for Green Book. Topics Spike Lee Donald Trump Oscars Oscars 2019 Race Awards and prizes news