Theresa May’s prospects of getting her Brexit deal through parliament this week dramatically receded on Sunday night after a high-stakes summit with Boris Johnson and other leading hard-Brexiters at her country retreat broke up without agreement.Tory rebels present said that the prime minister repeated “all the same lines” about her deal and that nothing new emerged during the three-hour meeting, at which Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab were also present.One source said May was told by some of those present, including Rees-Mogg, that to get her Brexit deal through she needed to spell out when she was quitting No 10 so that another prime minister could lead the next phase of EU trade negotiations. But the prime minister did not respond to the suggestion.The talks took place amid reports of an imminent coup to remove the prime minister – claims which were forcefully denied by Michael Gove, David Lidington and Philip Hammond.But before a critical cabinet meeting on Monday morning, May remained in a perilous position, with no breakthrough and Downing Street only able to tell reporters that she had discussed “whether there is sufficient support” to hold a meaningful vote this week. A front-page editorial in Monday’s Sun urges May to quit, with the headline “Time’s Up, Theresa”, saying she should announce that she will stand down as soon as her Brexit deal is approved and the UK leaves the EU.MPs are due to vote on Monday night on whether to take control of the parliamentary agenda and hold a series of indicative votes on alternative options, including a customs union and a second referendum.That could leave the prime minister at risk of losing control of the Brexit process, although there was speculation on Sunday night that she may announce her own version of the multiple choice plan on Monday morning.As the prime minister’s allies sought to play down speculation over the reported coup, senior members of the European Research Group and former ministers arrived at Chequers, where Duncan Smith appeared in an open-topped sports car – while Rees-Mogg brought along one of his sons.Others in attendance included David Davis, a former Brexit secretary, Steve Baker, a leading hard Brexiter, and May ally Damian Green.The prime minister, the only woman present, also invited her effective deputy, Lidington, and the environment secretary, Gove, plus Julian Smith, the chief whip, and Brandon Lewis, the Conservative party chairman.Cabinet colleagues at the meeting, including Gove, had hoped it would be possible to persuade Johnson and Raab – both rival Tory leadership contenders who are holding out against the deal – to end their standoff by dropping their opposition together.However, any compromise from Johnson appeared unlikely as he used his latest Telegraph column to attack the government, saying it had “bottled” Brexit and the UK should leave the EU immediately.One argument advanced at the meeting by the government’s side was that if MPs were permitted to hold indicative votes on their preferred Brexit option, “the most likely scenario would be that they would go for a softer Brexit” – a threat that it was hoped might bring the rebels into line.They also believed that Duncan Smith and Rees-Mogg were looking for reasons to sign up to a Brexit deal if May could offer them a plausible justification for ending months of opposition to her deal.After the meeting, Downing Street released a short statement confirming the attendees and adding: “The PM and a number of government ministers met today at Chequers for lengthy talks with senior colleagues about delivering Brexit. The meeting discussed a range of issues, including whether there is sufficient support in the Commons to bring back a meaningful vote this week.”May had been expected to try to bring her deal back to the Commons on Tuesday, but that now looks increasingly unlikely given that Johnson and other high-profile holdouts seem unwilling to change their minds.Earlier on Sunday, May appeared to have seen off talk of a plot to replace her with Lidington or Gove as a caretaker prime minister. The idea of appointing Lidington was said to be supported by soft-Brexit ministers such as Greg Clark, the business secretary, and Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, while Gove was said to have the backing of others, including Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury.Lidington and Gove were quick to deny the speculation. “I don’t think that I’ve any wish to take over from the PM, who I think is doing a fantastic job,” Lidington said. “I tell you this: one thing that working closely with the prime minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task.” Gove said he “absolutely” supported the prime minister.Although few took the idea of an immediate plot seriously, May’s failure to make progress during the weekend will increase the fragility of her position with senior colleagues.Cabinet is expected to discuss whether it will be necessary to hold indicative votes as an alternative after signs of sharp disagreements between leading ministers on the issue. Earlier on Sunday, Hammond admitted that May may not be able to get her deal through the Commons and that Tory MPs he had spoken to were very frustrated and desperate to find a way forward.The chancellor suggested that indicative votes could be the answer. He said: “I’m realistic that we may not be able to get a majority for the prime minister’s deal and if that is the case then parliament will have to decide not just what it’s against, but what it is for.”He said he could not support no deal or no Brexit, but that a second referendum was an idea that deserved to be considered.But there was sharp opposition from Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, who said that if MPs voted for something that was not in the Conservative manifesto, which ruled out staying in the customs union and single market, that could provoke a constitutional crisis – or a general election.May is expected to meet Jeremy Corbyn for a one-on-one meeting on Monday morning to discuss how to resolve the Brexit crisis. Labour has accused the government of indicating that it would try to ignore the will of parliament.Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said: “Having lost control of events, the Brexit secretary indicates the government would frustrate any attempt by parliament to break the deadlock. We are only in this crisis because ministers have pushed parliament away at every turn.” Topics Theresa May Brexit Jacob Rees-Mogg Iain Duncan Smith Dominic Raab Michael Gove David Lidington news

Comments Related Extras Related Videos Video Transcript Transcript for Could regulation be coming to Silicon Valley? In today's tech bikes is regulation coming to Silicon Valley in Andy with HBO apple CEO Tim Cook says. Regulation of big tech companies is now inevitable cook says he believes congress will pass some level of regulation because. As he puts it the free market is not working when it comes to protecting users' privacy. And you may want to change your answer Graham password and speaking of privacy the company says a small number of people's passwords may have been exposed during a security bug. It's Graham says the problem has been fixed and they promise it won't happen again. Hi. YouTube is running free movies there's a catch different movies will come with ads the titles come from major Hollywood studios include some old blockbusters like the terminator. You may eventually be services such as exclusive screenings of new films. Terminator twenty years thirty years old those are tech specs. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

FILE PHOTO: New iPhone Xs that people who just bought at Apple Stores are reselling, are pictured on a street in Hong Kong, China November 3, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby YipSHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese online retailers have started discounting iPhones for the second time this year as Apple Inc wrestles with a prolonged sales slowdown in the world’s largest smartphone market. Several electronics vendors announced discounts on iPhone devices this week, following mass discounts in January just before Apple reported sinking sales in China. Gadget retailer Suning.Com Co Ltd said it would slash the price of the iPhone XS by as much as 1,000 yuan ($148.95) from its official price. Suning had lowered the prices of other iPhone models in January along with other retailers, but those cuts excluded the iPhone XS. Pinduoduo Inc, an e-commerce site best known for selling inexpensive goods, has also said it would sell the 64GB edition of the iPhone XS for 6,999 yuan, a drop of over 1,000 yuan from the official price. Online retail giant JD.com Inc said it would offer discounts on a range of Apple products including the iPhone XS and XS Max, with models of the latter device selling at discounts of up to 1,700 yuan. Like Suning, JD.com initially did not discount the iPhone XS upon its first major round of discounts in January. Apple, JD.com and Pinduoduo did not respond to requests for comment, while Suning could not be reached. Apple’s sales from China declined 20 percent year-on-year, according to its most recent earnings report. Slowing demand for smartphones and increased competition from local brands have chipped at its dominance in the country. The U.S. company has yet to change the official sticker prices of its devices that it lists on its Chinese website. Yet the company has partnered with Ant Financial, the finance arm of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and several state-owned banks to let consumers purchase iPhones via interest-free loans. Reporting by Josh Horwitz; Editing by Stephen CoatesOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Get the DealBook newsletter to make sense of major business and policy headlines — and the power-brokers who shape them.__________Wall Street’s turn against big tech is adding up.As investors have dumped shares of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google-parent Alphabet, $822 billion in value has been wiped off their combined market value since the end of August.Based on the losses from each company’s high point in recent months, more than $1 trillion in value has been erased. Facebook, Apple and Amazon have endured the greatest declines, all down $250 billion or more from their respective peaks.That is a marked reversal for one of the most popular trades on Wall Street. Investors piled into shares of the largest tech companies, betting their revenue would continue to grow strongly as these behemoths upended industries from retail to communication to media.By the end of August, the market value of Apple and Amazon had each surpassed $1 trillion, and Alphabet was flirting with $900 billion. The combined market value of the five had reached $3.6 trillion.But worries about global economic growth as well as lackluster earnings and outlooks the past two quarters have shaken investors’ confidence. In particular, concerns have mounted about how many new iPhones Apple will manage to sell. Facebook has spent much of the year mired in scandal, raising the specter that the United States government will tighten regulation of big tech. All of that has investors questioning whether the values of these big tech companies have become too lofty.[Technology stocks drove a slump that erased November’s gains, as concerns about growth and privacy issues took an increasing toll.]Of course, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet have faced steep sell-offs before, only to bounce back quickly. Just this year, the combined market value of those five companies has tumbled 7 percent or more during three separate periods. In each instance, the stocks resumed their march to fresh highs within weeks.The question now, though, is whether this time will be different.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, will meet on Thursday to discuss whether Rosenstein will stay in his job. Rosenstein had spent the weekend contemplating whether he should resign after a New York Times report last week said he had suggested secretly recording Trump in 2017, a source told Reuters. The White House announced the meeting on Monday after a flurry of conflicting media reports about whether Rosenstein, a frequent target of Trump’s anger, would be leaving the post. “At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter. Trump, who is in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, told reporters he would meet with Rosenstein on Thursday when he returns to Washington. “We’ll be meeting at the White House and we’ll be determining what’s going on,” Trump said. “We want to have transparency, we want to have openness, and I look forward to meeting with Rod at that time.” The Rosenstein furor, kicked off by unconfirmed reports that he had verbally resigned, underscored the mounting tension in the White House over the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election. Related CoverageFactbox: Who would oversee the Mueller investigation after Rosenstein?Instant View: Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein heads to White House amid reports he will resignThere had been widespread speculation that Trump would fire Rosenstein since Friday when a New York Times report said that in 2017 Rosenstein had suggested secretly recording the president and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke a constitutional amendment to remove him from office. The Times said none of those proposals came to fruition. Rosenstein denied the report as “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” Shortly after the Times story, Trump told supporters at a rally in Missouri that there is “a lingering stench” at the Justice Department and that “we’re going to get rid of that, too.” Rosenstein’s departure would prompt questions about the future of Mueller’s investigation and whether Trump, who has called the probe a “witch hunt,” would seek to remove Mueller. The investigation has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas from 32 people. The Rosenstein furor came just six weeks ahead of the Nov. 6 congressional elections, and his removal could become an explosive political issue as Trump’s fellow Republicans try to keep control of Congress. Thursday’s meeting between Trump and Rosenstein is set for the same day that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual misconduct are scheduled to testify at a Senate hearing. FILE PHOTO: Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein speaks during the Bureau of Justice Assistance's rollout for the "Fentanyl: The Real Deal" training video in Washington, U.S., August 30, 2018. REUTERS/Chris WattieIf Rosenstein resigns, Trump has more leeway on replacing him while firing him would make it harder for Trump to designate a successor. Rosenstein’s future ignited a series of conflicting reports on Monday, with the Axios news website cited an unidentified source with knowledge of the matter as saying he had verbally resigned to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Other reports said Rosenstein expected to be fired while NBC News reported Rosenstein said he would not resign and the White House would have to fire him. U.S. Treasury yields fell as much as 2 basis points after the Axios report, signaling investor concern but later pared losses. The S&P 500 also ticked down briefly but recovered most of its losses. Rosenstein has defended Mueller and been a target of Trump since he assumed supervision of the Russia investigation after his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, recused himself because of his own contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington while serving as a Trump campaign adviser became public. Trump also has blasted Sessions frequently and said last week “I don’t have an attorney general.” Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said he was “deeply concerned” about the reports of Rosenstein stepping down, saying his departure would put the federal probe into Russian election activities at risk. “There is nothing more important to the integrity of law enforcement and the rule of law than protecting the investigation of Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller,” McCabe said in a statement. McCabe was fired by Sessions in March after the Justice Department’s internal watchdog accused him of misconduct. McCabe charged that he was targeted for being a witness into whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Slideshow (6 Images)Rosenstein served for 12 years as the chief federal prosecutor in Maryland under both Democratic and Republican presidents before becoming deputy attorney general in April 2017. Trump appointed him after firing Sally Yates, who served as deputy attorney general under Democratic former President Barack Obama and as acting attorney general under Trump. He dismissed her 10 days after taking office, after she refused to defend his executive order banning people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington and Jeff Mason in New York; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Bill Rigby and Bill TrottOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Whenever a new smartwatch debuts, the natural question is: How well will it stack up against the Apple Watch? Apple’s device is, after all, the de facto champion of the category and the only product to reach any kind of breakthrough market acceptance. And so lots of people asked that question when Samsung trotted out its latest smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch, last week.There’s a lot to say about the Galaxy Watch. It offers long battery life, for example, and sports a cool rotating bezel for navigating content. But the most important thing about it may be the most obvious–it’s round.Samsung switched to round smartwatches (and its own Tizen OS instead of Google’s Android Wear, now known as Wear OS) in 2015 and hasn’t looked back. That was the same year that the Apple Watch came out of the gate with the rectangular design that Apple has stuck with.Apple has sold an estimated 5 million of its watches, and sales are accelerating. According to IDC, 47.1% of all “smart wearables” shipped during the first quarter of this year were Apple Watches. Samsung’s Tizen devices accounted for 9.9%, while devices based on Google’s Android or Wear OS devices accounted for roughly 30%.Now, almost all Wear OS watches are round. Between them, Samsung, and other players, the aggregate total for round watches may approach Apple’s share of the market. But not a single round smartwatch has emerged as a formidable rival to Apple’s rectangular timepiece, which continues to dominate both the market and mindshare.Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch. [Photo courtesy of Samsung[Does the Apple Watch’s success have something to do with its shape? Has the market accepted a rectangular design and rejected a circular one?It may not be an either-or scenario. “The market has spoken that having a rectangular smartwatch is okay, hence the success of Apple Watch,” says Moor Insights & Strategy principle analyst Patrick Moorhead. “But this doesn’t prove that consumers have rejected round smartwatches.”Right now, it may simply be easier to nail the design of a rectangular smartwatch than it is to do the same with a round one. There are both hardware and software reasons for this.The space inside a smartwatch is limited and precious. Many of the hardware components that go into smartwatches–batteries, chips, displays, and the like–may not fit efficiently into a round shell. (2015’s Pebble Time Round, which used an e-paper screen and therefore could get away with a smaller battery, may be the closest thing the market has seen to a round smartwatch that didn’t look a tad oversized.)Like Apple, Samsung offers its watch in two sizes. Both Galaxy Watches are bulkier than their Apple Watch counterparts:Large versions: Samsung Galaxy Watch: 46mm x 49mm x 13mm Apple Watch: 42.5mm x 36.4mm x 11.4mmSmall versions: Samsung Galaxy Watch: 41.9mm x 45.7mm x 12.7mm Apple Watch: 38.6mm x 33.3mm x 11.4mmSamsung’s round design is forcing the company into releasing large smartwatches, and I don’t think most prospective smartwatch buyers want that. By contrast, the Apple Watch rides discreetly on the wrist and doesn’t draw too much attention. The rounded-rectangle design may be Apple’s only way of achieving this, at least right now.Apple landed on a form factor that consumers are at least comfortable with. Note that Fitbit’s smartwatch business began to get its footing when it used a low-slung, rounded-square hardware design similar to Apple’s in its Versa watch.On the software side, Apple analyst Neil Cybart pointed out in a recent subscriber email that the kind of data a smartwatch needs to provide displays better on a square or rectangular watch face. Much of the content you see on the face of a smartwatch is presented in left-to-right horizontal rows. On a round watch face, these horizontal lines of data can be cut off on both ends at the bottom and top of the display. And the length of the lines isn’t dynamic; they don’t shorten or lengthen depending on where they’re showing up on the display.Such dynamic line lengths begin to hint at a completely different design motif that exploits, rather than fights against, a round display. For Samsung this might mean the development of an entirely different version of the Tizen OS tailor-fit to a circular display space. Such an OS might, for instance, be able to display data in a rotating ticker running around the outside edge of the watch face. Until such an OS exists, round smartwatches may be an attempt to wedge a square data motif into a round container.The difference in the way content displays on the watch faces of Apple versus Samsung smartwatches will come into even sharper relief when Apple announces the next Apple Watch this fall. This year’s Watch, reports and my sources tell me, will push the boundaries of the display space outward toward the edges of the watch, reducing the amount of black bezel space.Breaking with traditionA round watch design makes complete sense when two or three clock hands sweep a watch face in the circular motion to mark the time. But that’s not the main point of a smartwatch, and most people willing to pay extra for smart features understand that.Part of the sales pitch for the Galaxy Watch is that “people love that the Galaxy Watch looks like a real watch,” as a presenter said from the stage at the launch event last week. I take this to mean that Samsung believes buyers take some kind of comfort in the familiarity of the round design.Samsung is probably overplaying the importance of this. The majority of the world’s best-selling wristwatches last year were round. But consumers seem to view smartwatches as a different species of wearable device, more closely related to a smartphone than a traditional wristwatch. They don’t expect smartwatches to look or act like Rolexes. (Actually, rectangular conventional watches were once standard fare, too; round ones only came to dominate the market in the 1950s or thereabouts, my colleague Harry McCracken points out.)Aesthetically speaking, a round smartwatch is a lovely idea, if it can be done right. My friend Ari Roisman, the CEO of Glide, points out that Apple already adapts round elements in the Watch’s OS–just look at the shape of many of the watch faces, and the roundish grouping of the icons in the app screen, not to mention the rounded side button and corners of the device itself.Someday the components that go into a smartwatch will miniaturize to the point where a svelte and lightweight round design becomes possible. That’s when a round Apple Watch may show up.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dropped and the Nasdaq fell 3 percent on Monday as investors dumped Apple, internet and other technology shares, further shaking confidence in a group of stocks that has propelled the long bull market. Conflicting signals over the state of play between the United States and China on their trade dispute added to caution in the market. Shares of Apple Inc fell after the Wall Street Journal reported the company had cut production orders in recent weeks for all three iPhone models launched in September. The iPhone maker’s stock dropped 4.0 percent to $185.86 and is now down 19.9 percent from its Oct. 3 record closing high in the wake of a disappointing holiday quarter sales forecast and weak outlooks from several suppliers. The S&P 500 technology index, down 3.8 percent, led sector losses. Other market leaders - including the ‘FANG’ stocks - also fell sharply. Shares of Facebook were down 5.7 percent, Amazon.com was down 5.1 percent, Netflix fell 5.5 percent and Alphabet fell 3.8 percent. Since the FANG outperformance run peaked on Aug. 30, the group has underperformed the S&P 500 by 16.25 percent. That is their worst underperformance since the first half of 2014, when they underperformed by around 20 percent. “You’re seeing that rotation away from tech. Certainly the indexes are much more growth-oriented because of the sheer size of those companies now, and they dominate the indexes,” said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago. “You’re going to have more underperformance of the growth names.” The S&P utilities and real estate sectors were the only two that ended in positive territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 395.78 points, or 1.56 percent, to 25,017.44, the S&P 500 lost 45.54 points, or 1.66 percent, to 2,690.73 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 219.40 points, or 3.03 percent, to 7,028.48. Comments by New York Federal Reserve President John Williams on Monday that the U.S. central bank is pushing ahead with gradual rate-hike plans next month as it marches toward a more normal policy stance may have added pressure to stocks. Some investors questioned whether the Fed will be able to continue raising interest rates, possibly harming growth. Richard Clarida, the Fed’s newly appointed vice chair, said on Friday that U.S. rates are nearing Fed estimates of a neutral rate, which “makes sense.” FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed Apple logo is seen in front of a displayed stock graph in this illustration taken April 28, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoOver the weekend, Asia-Pacific leaders meeting in Papua New Guinea failed to agree on a communique for the first time, with U.S.-China trade worries on the forefront. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said in a blunt speech on Saturday the United States will not back down from its trade dispute with China unless Beijing bows to U.S. demands, dampening Friday’s trade optimism that was fueled by comments from President Donald Trump. Shares of Apple suppliers were also hit, including Lumentum Holdings Inc, Universal Display Corp, Cirrus Logic Inc and Skyworks Solutions Inc. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index, which includes some Apple suppliers, dropped 3.9 percent, extending losses from the previous session. “Lots of times we get a rally started the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is this week. If some of these dominos fall on the positive side, we could see this trend reverse,” said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “But right now there are several things working against the market - the Fed, the uncertainty with regard to the trade deal with China and some sector disappointments, particularly in technology.” Trading volumes were thin at the start of the holiday-shortened week ahead of Thanksgiving on Thursday and a shorter session on Friday, which brings slight volatility to markets, traders said. Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., November 12, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidAbout 7.7 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges. That compares with the 8.7 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.72-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.94-to-1 ratio favored decliners. The S&P 500 posted 28 new 52-week highs and 18 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 17 new highs and 159 new lows. Additional reporting by Medha Singh and Sruthi shankar in Bengaluru, Karen Brettell and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by James Dalgleish and Dan GreblerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

There have been reports that the Kurdish group was planning to withdraw its forces from front-line positions fighting the Islamic State, but there was no sign so far that had happened.A report by the Syrian Observatory said the S.D.F. leadership was discussing the prisoners’ release because the home countries of many of them had refused to take them back. The observatory, a London-based group with a network of citizen monitors throughout Syria whose work is widely considered credible, said the prisoners come from 31 countries in addition to Syria, and their family members from 41 countries.The S.D.F. was also concerned that it would need all of its fighters to defend against a possible Turkish military invasion, the report said — a prospect made more likely by a United States withdrawal.The Syrian Democratic Forces are predominantly made up of Kurdish fighters from the Y.P.G., the People’s Protection Units, but under American tutelage the group has signed up many Arab fighters opposed to the Islamic State; Arabs now make up about 40 percent of the force, which has up to 75,000 fighters. The group has been trained, advised, financed and supplied by the United States, which has 2,000 troops, mostly Special Operations forces, in Syria allied with the S.D.F.With American support, especially from airstrikes, since 2016 the Kurds have pushed the Islamic State out of most of the territory it held in eastern and northern Syria, reducing the extremists to a pocket of about 20 square miles on the Iraqi border, near the town of Hajin, far from any cities. Fighting continues in that area, although the S.D.F. claimed last week to have ousted the Islamic State from Hajin.Turkey has vowed to attack the S.D.F. because it considers the Y.P.G. as a front for the outlawed Peoples Workers Party, or P.K.K., in Turkey, and last week it said a cross-border invasion to attack the Kurds was only days away.That led to a telephone conversation between Mr. Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey last Friday, after which the United States quietly began making preparations for the troop withdrawal.

Clashes broke out between police and protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday after thousands took part in a peaceful march in an out-of-town district in Hong Kong.After the end of the Reclaim Sheung Shui protest against parallel traders who snap up goods such as foreign-made formula milk, medicines and soy sauce for reselling in China in the town near the mainland border, hundreds of protesters put on goggles, face masks and hard hats and occupied the streets around the train station, which had been cordoned off for the police-sanctioned demonstration earlier.The scene descended into chaos near a shopping centre shortly after 5pm local time. People rushed to rally outside a community hall, where a police van was parked and a protester was reportedly held by the police. Some dismantled roadside metal barriers and set up makeshift barricades and faced off with police officers on several streets.Police then raised red warning flags to order protesters to leave immediately. They later used pepper spray several times to disperse the crowds and beat some of the protesters with truncheons, who in turn used umbrellas to defend themselves.“Nasty police! Shame on you!” protesters chanted.A witness said he saw at least a dozen people injured by pepper spray and one person was bleeding after being beaten by a police baton.Many shops popular with parallel traders and mainland tourists closed in Sheung Shui, fearing being targeted by protesters. Some protesters took their anger out on a Bank of China branch, which they spray-painted, while others besieged a medicine shop, which was forced to close.The scene had calmed down somewhat by 8pm, when most of the protesters were leaving, but more than a hundred police officers in riot gear suddenly appeared at 8.10. Police went on to several streets and footbridges, apparently looking for protesters.Andrew Wan, a lawmaker, said he was hit by a policeman on his head with a baton and several members of the press were also reportedly hit and attacked by pepper spray. Local press reported that a teenager nearly fell off a footbridge after he was chased by police.As of 9.30pm, a large number of police officers in riot gear were still standing guard and many police vans were still parked around a shopping centre and train station where protesters had earlier congregated. Most of the protesters had left by then but police continued to stop passersby on a footbridge near the shopping centre to check their identity and search their bags.The Hong Kong government issued a statement shortly after midnight that while most protesters behaved in a peaceful and orderly manner, it “strongly condemns the violent acts committed” after the protest, including protesters blocking roads, charging police cordons, assaulting police officers and throwing iron rods and scattering unidentified powder.It also responded to the protest by saying it has already arrested a number of parallel traders and blocked some from entering Hong Kong and will continue to “mitigate the impact on the community brought by parallel trading activities”.Many interviewed by the Guardian earlier in the day said the millions-strong anti-extradition protests during the past month became a lightning rod for them.“Restore Sheung Shui to its former glory,” “Restore our serenity” and “Kick out parallel traders,” shouted many at the march earlier in the day.They said they resented the government for having turned a blind eye to the border town being overrun with parallel traders for more than a decade. They accused them of filling the streets with cardboard boxes of commodities and leaving behind piles of rubbish, while neighbourhood shops were squeezed out of business due to high rents and replaced by shops selling goods popular with mainland tourists and traders.“We didn’t use to bother coming out to air our grievances on local issues, but now that we realise that in unity, we can show our strength, there is no reason not to come out,” said Leona Ip, who lives in Yuen Long, another town frequented by mainland parallel traders. She also said the anti-extradition protests in the past month had emboldened her to fight for local issues which affect her community.Others described the huge anti-extradition protests as “an awakening” to remind them that China is also eroding Hong Kong’s way of life. Topics Hong Kong The Observer Asia Pacific China Protest

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic White House hopeful, has weighed in on Israel’s election, describing the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as a racist and obstacle to peace in the Middle East.“The US-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet,” O’Rourke said on a campaign stop at the University of Iowa. “And that relationship, if it is to be successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist.”Netanyahu hopes to win a fifth term in office in elections on Tuesday. He intends to form a coalition with the support of ultranationalist factions, including Jewish Power, whose members have called for the expulsion of Arabs.O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman, condemned Netanyahu for siding with a “far-right racist party in order to maintain his hold on power”. He said the Israeli leader had defied any prospect for peace after making a last-minute election pledge this weekend to annex Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.Netanyahu said over the weekend that he would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank by “controlling the entire area”.O’Rourke also cited Netanyahu’s 2015 election-day stunt, in which he warned that Palestinian citizens of Israel were “heading to the polling stations in droves”, a move seen at the time as a rallying cry to rightwing voters.O’Rourke’s comments reflect an emerging schism within the Democratic party over criticism of Israel’s actions. A cohort of young progressive lawmakers have been openly critical of the Israeli government, in a break from a tradition of blanket support from both sides of the US political divide.Donald Trump, who has expressed support for Netanyahu during the election campaign, has sought to make Israel a partisan issue. He hopes to appeal to Jewish voters in the US who have traditionally backed Democrats by painting his rivals as unsupportive of Israel.Talking to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday in Las Vegas, the US president said a Democratic victory in 2020 could “leave Israel out there”.In the same speech he was accused of using antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty to Israel, referring to Netanyahu as “your prime minister” while speaking to American Jews.The prominent American Jewish Committee criticised the comment: “Mr President, the prime minister of Israel is the leader of his (or her) country, not ours. Statements to the contrary, from staunch friends or harsh critics, feed bigotry,” it tweeted. Topics Beto O'Rourke Benjamin Netanyahu Israel Middle East and North Africa Donald Trump Palestinian territories Race news

Japan’s culture of cute has embraced poo, which gets a pop twist at the Unko Museum in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Visitors can play a poo-themed video game and pose on a variety of WCs. All the twisty ice-cream and cupcake shapes on display are artificial, and come in a variety of colours and sizes

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Thousands of school teachers joined an 11th weekend of anti-government protests in Hong Kong on Saturday, as shops pulled down their shutters and braced for another restive summer night. Weeks of increasingly violent demonstrations have plunged the city into turmoil. Water-filled barricades fortify the airport and government offices. Posters showing bloody clashes are stuck on street corners and there is a protest nearly every night. The unrest began in June in opposition to a now-suspended extradition bill, and have since grown to include broader demands. Following an escalation in violence over the past few days, rallies on Saturday and Sunday are a test of whether the movement can retain the broad support it has appeared to enjoy. Saturday’s mostly peaceful protest suggested that it may - though thousands also attended a pro-police counter-rally, and a clearer picture is not likely to emerge until Sunday when a protest is scheduled that could draw tens of thousands. “The government has been ignoring us for months. We have to keep demonstrating,” said CS Chan, a maths teacher at a rally of teachers, which police said up to 8,300 people had attended, in heavy rain. Organisers said 22,000 were present. Demonstrators say they are fighting the erosion of the “one country, two systems” arrangement that has enshrined some autonomy for Hong Kong since China took it back from Britain in 1997. During the past week they have increasingly directed their frustration toward police, who have responded with fiercer determination to clear them from the streets. As storms cleared, anti-government demonstrators also marched through Kowloon - the main built-up area on the mainland side of Hong Kong harbour - while large pro-police crowds rallied in a harbourside park across the bay. “I’m heartbroken to see the city being split up like this,” a retired telecoms technician, Michael Law, 69, told Reuters at the pro-police rally. “What the violent protesters have been doing shows no respect for Hong Kong’s rule of law.” Organisers said 476,000 people attended the pro-police rally, while police said 108,000 attended. Reuters was not able to verify either estimate. Riot police walk past a shop as they chase anti-government protesters down Nathan Road in Mong Kok in Hong Kong, China August 17, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas PeterMany shops in Kowloon had shut early, even on big retail boulevards, in anticipation of clashes that have tended to turn nasty at night as front-line activists attack police. On Saturday, protesters who had surrounded a police station soon vanished when riot officers advanced with shields and batons. Some said they were saving their energy for Sunday, when the pro-democracy Civil Human Rights Front, which organised million-strong peaceful marches in June, has scheduled another protest. The increasingly violent confrontations have plunged one of Asia’s financial capitals into its worst crisis for decades. The unrest also presents one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012. Hong Kong’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam, has warned activists not tip their home into an abyss. The European Union urged all sides to engage in dialogue, following other calls for restraint as Chinese paramilitary police have run drills close to the Hong Kong border. Police in Australia also warned supporters and opponents of the Hong Kong protest movement to behave after scuffles at a rally in Melbourne. [nL8N25D04J] Chinese officials have likened some actions by protesters to “terrorism” and Chinese state media outlets have urged Hong Kong police to respond more robustly. Protesters have used slingshots to fire marbles at police, shone lasers at them and at times thrown bricks and firebombs. Having fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the streets, and at one point in a subway station, police are warning that they could get tougher. Although their stations have been attacked scores of times during the crisis, they have so far refrained from deploying water cannon, armoured cars or the dog squad. They have made some 750 arrests, charging some protesters with rioting, which can attract a 10-year jail term. Slideshow (20 Images)But many remain on the side of the demonstrators. Yu, a secondary school music teacher in her 40s, said she was determined to show support for protesting students, even though she did not agree with all their actions: “I do appreciate their courage and caring about Hong Kong ... they are definitely braver than our government.” Reporting by Marius Zaharia, Felix Tam, Anne Marie Roantree, Julie Zhu, Donny Kwok and James Redmayne in Hong Kong. Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels. Writing by Tom Westbrook and Greg Torode; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Kevin LiffeyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain must stand up to bullies in the European Union and press for a “super Canada” free trade deal, former foreign minister Boris Johnson said, increasing pressure on his former boss, Prime Minister Theresa May, over Brexit. Conservative MP Boris Johnson walks through his garden at his home near Oxford, Britain, October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleIn his weekly column in the Telegraph newspaper to be published on Monday, Johnson, who was the figurehead of the campaign to leave the EU, said the Brexit negotiations were entering a “moment of crisis” and that May should change tack. With less than six months before Britain leaves the EU in its biggest shift in trade and foreign policy in more than 40 years, the latest round of talks in Brussels failed to clinch a deal on Britain’s divorce terms, with negotiators pausing negotiations just days before a leaders’ summit. Johnson, the bookmakers’ favorite to replace May, is the latest critic to redouble efforts to urge the prime minister to rethink her plan to leave the EU. “There comes a point when you have to stand up to bullies. After more than two years of being ruthlessly pushed around by the EU, it is time for the UK to resist,” he wrote. “There is a better solution ... It is the Super Canada, zero tariff, zero quota, free trade deal at the heart of a deep and special partnership. It is right for both sides, and it is time to go for it.” The latest round of Brexit talks faltered over the so-called backstop arrangement to prevent the return of a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, a part of the withdrawal agreement on divorce terms. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the two sides could still not bridge a gap between his demands that Northern Ireland stay in the EU’s economic zone and London’s rejection of any checks on trade between the province and the British mainland. Brexit campaigners, like Johnson, are also fearful the government is trying to agree a non time-limited backstop to keep the whole country inside a customs union with the EU indefinitely - something they say will not deliver Brexit. May insists any customs arrangement as part of the backstop must be temporary, but the EU has refused to set an end date. “In presuming to change the constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom, the EU is treating us with naked contempt,” Johnson wrote. “It is time to scrap the backstop, and simply agree what is manifestly the case - that no one wants any new physical checks at the northern Irish border, and nor is there any need for them.” Instead, he said, Britain should pursue an enhanced version of the Canada free trade deal with the EU. “We still have ample time to make it work,” he wrote. Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Sandra MalerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Pellegrini’s counter was long and narrow, a wooden ribbon between customer and creator. In almost every photo you see of it there is conversation between a customer and a smiling gesticulating Sisto. Usually, he is the photo. He was Pellegrini’s.Mr. Malaspina was born in Italy in 1944, and came to Australia in the 1960s, one of hundreds of thousands of Italians who migrated here during the 20th century. Like many of his countrymen, Mr. Malaspina fell into the restaurant business, and in 1972 he and business partner, Nino Pangrazio, bought Pellegrini’s, the iconic espresso bar on Melbourne’s Bourke Street, just steps from Victoria’s Parliament House.The cafe has barely changed since its opening. Its red sign is heritage listed. Its menu of simple pastas might as well be heritage listed as well — and for the last half century, the person likely to greet you when you entered was Mr. Malaspina.Because of this, and because a visit to Pellegrini’s was such a rite of passage, Mr. Malaspina interacted with an uncommon number of locals and visitors. It’s hard to imagine one person in Melbourne who touched more lives. Whenever I returned to Melbourne, an espresso at the counter of Pellegrini’s was a necessity, and Mr. Malaspina’s hospitality and jaunty colorful kerchief were like beacons of home.Much of Melbourne, a city deeply loyal to its own though less well known to the world than Sydney, felt the same way.At the state funeral held for Mr. Malaspina on Tuesday, I sat with more than 1,300 attendees, who included dignitaries, state government leaders, and the wife of the prime minister.

Berivan runs over to join in the dancing, her traditional gold dress catching the winter sunlight. The 15-year-old Yazidi clasps hands with her best friend and stands among the line of women stamping their feet to a Kurdish pop song.Berivan and her mother are from Sinjar in Iraq, the Yazidi homeland, but like thousands of other Yazidis they were kidnapped by Islamic State in 2014 when the group stormed across the border from Syria.Far from here, in the eastern desert, Isis has almost lost control of its last stronghold, Baghuz, but there are at least 3,000 Yazidi women and girls whose fate is unknown.During the genocide, Yazidi men were rounded up and shot then dumped in mass graves. The women were taken to be sold in Isis’s slave markets, many passed from fighter to fighter, who inflicted physical and sexual abuse.Yazidi children have been brainwashed and rights groups say suicide among captives is common. Even for those who manage to escape after years of enslavement and rape, many struggle to survive without an income or identity papers.Berivan and her mother have lost the other members of their family. But at a new women’s commune near Qamishli, in north-eastern Syria, they have had a chance to start over.“I like it here,” she says. “I love going to school, I love mathematics. And I’m going to be a hairdresser when I grow up.”Jinwar is a female-only community, set up by the women of the local Kurdish-run administration to create a space where women can live “free of the constraints of the oppressive power structures of patriarchy and capitalism”. It opened in November and 12 of its 30 adobe brick houses are home to Kurdish, Yazidi and Arab families.The women built their own houses, bake their own bread and tend to the livestock and farmland, cooking and eating together. On Saturday, people from the neighbouring villages have been invited to a graduation celebration for a group of local women who had attended a course on natural medicines at Jinwar’s education centre.Over chicken and rice, and later music and dancing, residents discuss how the newly planted apricot, pomegranate and olive trees are doing.“We built this place ourselves, brick by brick,” says 35-year-old Barwa Darwish, who came to Jinwar with her seven children after her village in Deir Ezzor province was freed from Isis and her husband, who joined the fight against the group, was killed in action.“Under Isis we were strangled and now we are free. But even before that, women stayed at home. We didn’t go out and work. In Jinwar, I’ve seen that women can stand alone.”Jinwar grew out of the democratic ideology that has fuelled the creation of Rojava, a Kurdish-run statelet in north-eastern Syria, since the civil war broke out in 2011.The area has largely thrived despite the presence of enemies on all sides: Isis, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s troops, and Turkey, which regards the Kurdish YPG fighters as a terrorist organisation.The women’s revolution, as it is known, is a significant part of Rojava’s philosophy. Angered by the atrocities committed by Isis, Kurdish women formed their own fighting units. Later, Arab and Yazidi recruits joined them on the front lines to liberate their sisters.But at home, many parts of Kurdish society are still deeply conservative. Some of the women now in Jinwar have left arranged marriages and domestic abuse. Those dynamics, as well as the legacy of Syria’s brutal eight-year war have to be unlearned at Jinwar.“When the families first arrived, the Arab children wouldn’t play with the Kurdish children,” says Nujin, one of the international volunteers working at the village. “But even in just two months you can see the change. The children are already so much happier.”Berivan’s mother, Darsim, was mute when she arrived at Jinwar, a side-effect of trauma. Little by little, she has started to form words again. “The village is the best rehabilitation for the things these families have suffered,” Nujin says.Jinwar is not finished yet: there are gardens to plant and an empty library waiting for books. The community is still coming up with ideas. Behind the education centre there is a swimming pool that will be filled with water in the summer. Most of the residents will get to use a pool – the reserve of only men in most of the Middle East – for the first time.The women have also voted for driving lessons and to start a sewing business.There are plans for a second commune in Deir Ezzor, an Arab province that is still the scene of fierce fighting to destroy Isis – but there is also a sense that what has been built at Jinwar is fragile and could be taken away.It is not clear what will happen when US troops leave the area in a few months. Renewed fighting is a possibility.“This place is peaceful and a refuge from the war,” Nujin says. “So how can we bring guns here if we needed to defend ourselves? I hope Jinwar never has to face that.”This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems. What else should we cover? Email us at [email protected] Topics World news The Upside Syria Middle East and North Africa features

Three years ago, Americans heard Donald Trump on tape talking about grabbing women “by the pussy.” Two years ago, they learned of the many sexual harassment allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein, which helped kick off the #MeToo movement’s current, most public phase. One year ago, they saw Justice Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court after Christine Blasey Ford testified that he had sexually assaulted her.None of this makes headlines as much as it once did, superseded by news like a recent impeachment inquiry into President Trump. But Americans haven’t forgotten.On the contrary, new polling suggests that the events of the last few years, including the election of Trump, the #MeToo movement, and the Kavanaugh hearings, have helped lead to a fundamental shift in the way many Americans view their government.It started back in the fall of 2016, when the research firm PerryUndem began hearing something new in focus groups with Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters: “this palpable sense of who has power and control and who’s losing it,” Tresa Undem, a partner at PerryUndem, told Vox. More than ever before, voters were talking about the power white men seemed to have in American society and how they used it to control everybody else.Those themes continued in polling around the #MeToo movement and the Kavanaugh hearings and were underscored in a poll conducted earlier this month and provided to Vox exclusively ahead of publication. Seventy-six percent of Democratic voters and 49 percent of voters overall agreed with the statement that “one reason Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed is because white men want to hold onto their power in government.” “We would’ve never seen this three or four years ago,” Undem told Vox in an email. Beliefs like that could have effects at the ballot box; in 2018, voters’ views on men’s power in government were a strong predictor of whether they voted Democratic or Republican, Undem said. Overall, Americans — including men — are getting fed up with the balance of power in society. And they’re heading to the ballot box to change it.The new poll, conducted by PerryUndem between September 17 and 19 on a nationally representative sample of 1,000 registered voters using YouGov’s online panel, looked at American attitudes toward the #MeToo movement two years after it became a topic of widespread public conversation. The pollsters also asked questions about Justice Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court, just days after new reporting by the New York Times brought up new sexual misconduct allegations against him.They found that the majority of Americans still support #MeToo despite recent media backlash: 52 percent of those polled had a very or somewhat favorable view of the movement while 35 percent viewed it unfavorably. That’s in line with what PerryUndem found last December, when 52 percent viewed the movement favorably and 29 percent saw it unfavorably. Meanwhile, a 2018 Harvard CAPS-Harris survey showed that 55 percent of Americans supported #MeToo.When it came to Kavanaugh, the pollsters found the same thing they did when they surveyed Americans in December 2018, shortly after his confirmation: Many view the justice unfavorably. In the September poll, 59 percent of Americans said it was likely Kavanaugh lied under oath about his teenage years, compared with 57 percent last December. Forty-one percent said the Senate did the wrong thing in confirming Kavanaugh, the same share as in December (40 percent said the Senate was right and 19 percent were not sure). Meanwhile, 47 percent believed he would be swayed by his own political beliefs compared with 35 percent who said he would be impartial (last year, 32 percent of voters said Kavanaugh would be impartial on issues Democrats support while 34 percent said he would not). The latest Kavanaugh reporting probably did not have a major effect on those numbers, Undem told Vox, though recent focus groups with college-educated voters suggested they were aware of the news. Perhaps the most revealing findings in the poll, though, were about voters’ views on power. The pollsters chose to ask about white men holding onto power in government, Undem said, because that theme kept coming up in focus groups. It may seem like “kind of a weird question,” she said, “but it just reflects what I’ve been hearing.”What they found was striking. Among Democrats, 79 percent of women and 71 percent of men strongly or somewhat agreed that Kavanaugh was confirmed because white men wanted to hold onto power. Fifty percent of independent voters — including 49 percent of independent men and 52 percent of independent women — said the same. “It’s not just women,” Undem said. “The findings around power stood out to me.”The theme of who has power and who doesn’t has been coming up in focus groups since about September 2016, Undem said, when voters talked about abortion as an issue of control over women’s bodies. But voters’ concerns about power intensified with the election of President Trump. Those concerns likely stem from a combination of factors, including the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump talked about grabbing women; the #MeToo movement and its exposure of allegations against powerful men; and “President Trump’s words and behavior around women, around immigrants, and around race,” Undem said.Many Democratic and independent voters are worried “they’re losing their rights, they’re losing their freedom, they’re losing their control,” Undem said.A woman in an Atlanta focus group last month encapsulated this view, telling PerryUndem researchers, “there is a new feeling for me that I’m moving in the direction that I’m not as free as I used to be.” At any moment, the woman said, she “could be told what to do and controlled.”Republicans don’t necessarily share these views. In the September poll, only 15 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement that Kavanaugh was confirmed because of white men wanting to hold onto power. Republicans have actually become more favorable in their opinions of Kavanaugh over time, with 81 percent viewing him favorably in the September poll compared with 60 percent in December. Some white people, meanwhile, believe that whites are the ones at risk of losing power, Nadia Brown, an assistant professor of political science and African American studies at Purdue University, told Vox. Brown says she hears from white students who see power in America as a zero-sum game — “if someone gains power, then someone else loses power.” That conception of power comes out in white Americans talking about people of color taking their jobs, even if those jobs were more likely lost to automation or changes in government policy, Brown said. “There’s this mythical bogeyman that it’s some person of color.”Still, even some Republicans are questioning the amount of power in the hands of white men. In a 2017 PerryUndem focus group on abortion consisting of male Trump voters, several agreed that more women should be involved in abortion legislation, and one said current abortion laws were written by “a bunch of old white men sitting in a room.”And Americans’ views about power and control could affect their voting behavior. One of the biggest effects of the Kavanaugh hearings, Undem said, is that they made half of voters — including 41 percent of men and 58 percent of women — think about men having more power than women in government, according to the poll last December. That view was a significant predictor of voting for a Democratic candidate in the 2018 midterms, Undem said.Ideas about who has power and who doesn’t also influenced women to run for office in 2018, Brown said. After Democrat Doug Jones beat Republican Roy Moore, who had been accused of romantically and sexually pursuing underage girls, in a 2017 special Senate election in Alabama, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and many ordinary Americans on Twitter thanked black women for turning out in force to vote for Jones.But for many black women, thanks were no substitute for “a seat at the table,” Brown said. Their reaction to the comments from Perez and others was, “how about you pay attention to our politics, the issues that we care about, the policies that would impact our lives? And if you’re not going to do it, we’re going to do it ourselves.”“They ran for election in 2018,” Brown said, “and a record number of women of color are serving right now.”Power and control are likely to be factors again in 2020, Undem said. In the September poll, for example, 49 percent of voters and a full 79 percent of Democrats said that the Kavanaugh hearings made them wish more women were elected to office. And beyond just voting for a man or voting for a woman, Americans are likely to go into the 2020 election with the ideas of power and control in mind. The feeling “that older white men have power and are exercising that power over other people, taking away rights, that to me is definitely going to have an effect,” Undem said.The Kavanaugh hearings — in which a woman testified before an audience of mostly men, and her words were not enough to stop a man from being confirmed to the country’s highest court — cemented this feeling in many Americans’ minds, she added. “People now know for certain that men have more positions of power,” Undem said. “You can’t really unsee that.”

Apple says it has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat and will not bring it to market, explaining that it could not bring the product up to its own engineering standards.Apple released the following statement from its VP of hardware Dan Riccio to various news outlets Friday:After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward.Earlier reports had said AirPower faced overheating problems, charging activation issues, and charging level accuracy problems.Apple announced AirPower in September 2017 alongside the iPhone X and iPhone 8 series, both of which featured wireless charging. Apple said AirPower would ship that same year but it didn’t. Then 2018 passed with no AirPower.The charging mat was meant to charge three iDevices at once, like a Watch, an iPhone, and some AirPods wireless headphones. AirPods were also delayed for months after their announcement, but were eventually shipped and have sold very well. AirPods now account for 60% of the sales of wireless headphones worldwide.The HomePod, too, didn’t become available until long after its announcement.

Bear markets in stocks are rare but have the power to spread gloom through the economy. In the last 20 years, there have been only two — one that began with the financial crisis in 2007, and the other that started with the dot-com bust in 2000. Market downturns can gather steam even without strong evidence that economic and corporate fundamentals are weakening.“It’s kind of a feedback loop,” said Robert Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University. “What’s happening right now, we’ve seen some declines, and that emboldens some pundit to say, ‘This is it.’ They get attention, it puts thoughts in people’s minds and they start thinking, ‘Maybe I should exit.’”The Nasdaq is not the only group of stocks in such distress. The Russell 2000 index, which tracks shares of smaller companies, entered a bear market earlier this week. Seven of the S&P 500’s 11 industrial sectors are also at the level, led by energy stocks, which are down 28 percent from their highs earlier this year. That’s in large part because oil has been in a bear market since November.If the broader stock market declines by more than 20 percent this year, it would end what was, by some measures, the longest bull run in history. From March 2009 until its peak in September, the S&P 500 surged 333 percent, a rally that provided a silver lining to the lackluster years that followed the financial crisis of 2008. Investors enjoyed trillions of dollars of gains from the stock market.Those profits are not close to being wiped out. The stock market is still well above where it was even at the start of 2017. But the longer bear markets last, the more pessimism they spread.

Boris Johnson has stepped up Britain’s war of words with Russia by accusing the Kremlin of glorying in the poisoning of the double agent Sergei Skripal.The foreign secretary said Russia had deliberately chosen the Soviet-era nerve agent novichok in the Salisbury attack as a warning to opponents of Vladimir Putin.Theresa May will visit Salisbury on Thursday to meet local businesses and members of the public, as well as receiving a briefing from Public Health England. Speaking as the international community rallied behind the UK, including the previously sceptical French, Johnson said: “Russia is the only country known to have developed this type of agent. I’m afraid the evidence is overwhelming that it is Russia.”Commenting on Russia’s dismissal of the accusation, he told BBC News: “There is something in the kind of smug, sarcastic response that we’ve heard that indicates their fundamental guilt. They want to simultaneously deny it, yet at the same time to glory in it.”He also suggested that Putin had some responsibility for the attack. “There is very little doubt in people’s minds that this is a signature act by the Russia state – deliberately using novichok, a nerve agent developed by Russia to punish a Russian defector as they would see it, and in the run up to Vladimir Putin’s election. “This was a former Russian agent living in this country who had been singled out already by the Russian state as an object for revenge and retaliation, and Vladimir Putin has been on the TV only recently saying that such people deserve to be poisoned, to choke on their own 30 pieces of silver. This is a way of showing look at what happens to people who stand up to our regime.”Johnson said he had been “very heartened” by the strength of the support around the world for Britain’s stance against Russia. On Wednesday a spokesman for the French president, Emmanuel Macron, cautioned the UK not to engage in “fantasy politics”. But on Thursday after holding talks with Theresa May on the incident, Macron shifted stance, saying France shared the UK’s conclusion that there was “no other plausible explanation” other than the involvement of Russia.The Elysée Palace said the UK had “kept France closely informed of the clues gathered by British investigators” as well as the “evidence demonstrating the responsibility of Russia in the attack”. France “accepts this conclusion” and “expresses its full solidarity with its ally”, the statement said.The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, gave unambiguous support to the UK at the security council. Pressed repeatedly on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about earlier French scepticism about the UK’s claims, Johnson said: “President Macron has issued a very strong statement of condemnation.” He added: “Different French spokespeople were saying different things.”Johnson also confirmed the UK would provide samples of the nerve agent used in the attack to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He said: “We have been entirely in conformity with OPCW procedures … We will be submitting a sample so that they can look at the novichok and make their own assessment. We believe the evidence is absolutely overwhelming.”He defended the UK’s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats in response to the attack. He said: “What we have done in expelling 23 diplomats, probably undeclared agents, is something far beyond what Vladimir Putin had bargained for. We have basically eviscerated his intelligence capabilities in this country for decades to come.”Johnson’s comments come after he employed deliberately Churchillian language in an opinion piece for the Washington Post, writing: “A tranquil medieval city has witnessed the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II.”He added: “Britain is striving to uphold the rules on which the safety of every country depends. I hope and believe that our friends will stand alongside us.“There is a reason for choosing novichok. In its blatant Russian-ness, the nerve agent sends a signal to all who may be thinking of dissent in the intensifying repression of Putin’s Russia.”Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, accused Britain of refusing to cooperate with Moscow in the investigation of the incident. Zakharova, who said Moscow was concerned about the use of chemical weapons in Britain, said allegations that Russia was involved were “insane”.Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has chaired an across-government ministerial recovery group, to begin plans for the clean-up operation after the attack.A Downing Street spokesman said May would also be continuing conversations with world leaders. The prime minister’s national security advisor Mark Sedwill will address Nato later on Thursday. “We are looking for a robust international response,” the spokesman said, adding the precise action was still being discussed. “We have spoken with our allies, there’s been a very positive response. The conversations continue to take place.” Topics Sergei Skripal Boris Johnson Foreign policy France Emmanuel Macron Russia Europe news

Lam Research Corp. Chief Executive Martin Anstice has resigned after allegations of misconduct in the workplace, the company said Wednesday while naming its chief operating officer as its new leader.The company’s board of directors has accepted Mr. Anstice’s resignation as CEO and board member, the chip-fabrication-equipment company said. He won’t receive any severance benefits, it said.Mr....