In Cambridge’s Market Square, a crowd of families, young people and silver-haired academics listened as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy was read out. Many joined in, from memory, making a collective appeal for non-violent resistance: “Rise, like lions after slumber... Ye are many – they are few.” There were moments of more garrulous protest too. During a speech criticising Boris Johnson, someone shouted: “Off with his head!”From Bodmin to Berlin, Bristol to Oxford, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in towns and cities across England, Scotland and Wales on Saturday to vent their fury at Johnson’s plan to suspend parliament. Around 1,200 people attended the rally in Cambridge, where they booed the prime minister and his adviser Dominic Cummings as though they were pantomime villains.Demonstrations more than 1,000-strong were seen in cities including Manchester, Newcastle and York, where a crowd carrying EU and Yorkshire flags convened outside the famous Bettys tea rooms.Others were held in Amsterdam’s Dam Square, outside the British embassy in Latvia’s capital Riga, and beside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In the German capital one protester waved a banner that read: “The last time this happened, Cromwell discontinued the custom of kings wearing their heads on their shoulders.”The anger was particularly vocal in London. Outside Downing Street, demonstrators chanted “Shame on you”. Momentum, which backs Jeremy Corbyn, told its 40,000 members to “occupy bridges and blockade roads”. Within hours, a sizeable group had brought Trafalgar Square to a standstill by sitting in the road.Three retired teachers, Alan Costar, 65, Linda Abbott, 69, and Maureen Loney, 73, brandished an EU flag and placards reading “defend democracy” and “remain, reform, revolt”.Loney, who has a Slovakian son-in-law, said: “I feel that prorogation is cutting off our legs for any form of protest and the legs of parliament. I think that Boris Johnson is trying to hold Europe to ransom.“What they actually should be doing is someone with a brain needs to stand up and say: ‘Sorry folks, we actually got it wrong.’ It [leaving the EU] isn’t the best thing for the country, it never was.”Costar, who is half-German, added: “I have a dual-national grand-daughter and I’m here for her. She’s two-and-a-half.”In Bristol, a boisterous 5,000-strong procession marched through the city centre shouting: “What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? Now!”, “Boris Johnson, shame on you” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Boris Johnson’s got to go”.Many were old hands, who had been to lots of Remain protests. But others were taking to the streets for the first time. Will Roberts, 39, who was with his wife and two children, had preferred to let the democratic process take its course. “I was disappointed with the result but this is worse than Brexit itself. Hand on heart, this is really frightening. If you know a bit of history, you’ll know this is the thin end of the wedge.”Kevin Byrne, a retired teacher, said: “I’m 80 and this is the first time I’ve been on a demonstration. I’m feeling a bit hesitant but what is happening is appalling. It is against all the democratic principles I’ve been brought up with.”The prime minister’s old Oxford college, Balliol, was targeted. Surrounded by undergraduates, Lesley McKie, 55, said: “Being outside the very institution where he developed a political profile with students at the college today denouncing him sends a powerful message to Johnson and the others leading this coup.”McKie added: “I’m here today with my family. My teen daughters deserve to live in a democracy and we’re here to protest against the undemocratic actions of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings.”In Newcastle, Chris McHugh, from Gateshead, said he was attending to “protect democracy”. The 33-year-old, who works for the Labour MP Liz Twist, said: “The fact that thousands have taken to the streets of Newcastle today is so telling. People from all walks of life have come together … there’s a real sense of unity, whether you voted Leave or Remain, this is about protecting the very fabric of our democracy.”Protests were also held in Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, Swansea, Leeds, and Aberdeen. Jeremy Corbyn addressed large crowds in Glasgow’s George Square, stating: “No way do you take us out without a deal – we will stop you and give the people their rights and their say to determine their future.“[We are] angered that the government and a prime minister elected by 93,000 members of the Tory party is trying to hijack the needs, aims and aspirations of 65 million people. Well, think on Boris, it’s not on and we’re not having it.”In Cambridge, Jasmina Makljenovic, who is British, was tearful as she said: “This is about my children and their future. Boris Johnson is dangerous. This is not how democracy should work. There are dictators everywhere in the world. How on earth do people think they got into power? This is how it happened: slowly and gradually. We are like boiled frogs. Slowly we are being cooked and our freedoms are being taken away.”Back in central London, as the protest continued into the late afternoon, demonstrators outside Downing Street became increasingly creative with their descriptions of the prime minister. Chants included: “Trump’s puppet, shame on you”, “Liar Johnson shame on you”, and “Fascist Johnson shame on you.”Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, spoke from a stage positioned near Downing Street, saying: “Let me tell you, before too long Jeremy Corbyn will be in 10 Downing Street and Boris will be gone.”Laura Parker, national coordinator of Momentum, told protesters: “This is our democracy and we will not let an unelected prime minister manage this power grab. He wants to shut the system down and hide … We know where you live, Mr Johnson.”Writing in today’s Observer, Michael Chessum, an organiser of the protests, said they were merely the start of a national fightback. “We are now witnessing the growth of a huge movement in defence of democracy. From Monday, we will be protesting every single day at 5.30pm all over the country. You can join us at stopthecoup.org.uk.”Further mass demonstrations, organised by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, are planned to take placeon 3 Tuesday to coincide with MPs returning to Westminster from their summer break.The protests were triggered by Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for up to five weeks before the 31 October Brexit deadline, which opponents say is designed to stop MPs preventing Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Topics Brexit The Observer European Union Foreign policy Boris Johnson Oxford Cambridge London news

If I walked up to you and said you never had to enter a password for any login ever again, you might throw your arms around me and act like it was V-J Day in 1945 in Times Square. Passwords are the grit in our digital oysters, and all the friction of creating them with arbitrary and outdated rules, memorizing or managing them, changing them on a schedule, and entering them perfectly sadly never forms a pearl.Which is why the enterprise security company MobileIron has upgraded its suite of authentication products to allow IT managers to abolish the password, relying on mobile devices for what it calls “zero sign-on” access. The firm relies on security features in modern hardware coupled with other signals to make a no-password login as secure as one with a password.For now, MobileIron is at the leading edge of the shift away from passwords. But the move is nowhere near as radical as it sounds, and other companies are working on technologies to give consumer apps and websites better security that requires less work on our part. If the password is indeed on its way out, its death will be every bit as delightful as you’d expect.1960s technology, 21st-century challengesThe password became the default quantum of identity almost accidentally. Its origin is believed to date to the 1960s, when it was introduced on a an early time-sharing system at MIT. At the time, it provided a simple way to keep files private on a single machine when few computers existed in the world.Managing one password for one computer was easy enough. But no one predicted that people would end up with so much online data to secure. Multiply billions of devices times billions of accounts, and it’s been clear for some time that passwords don’t scale.Password management software such as 1Password and LastPass can be a big help, but it still leans on the password as proof of legitimacy. Second-factor authentication (2FA) is often cited as a way to solve password problems, and it does deter account hijacks that rely entirely on a password—but it’s more like a second password than a way to move away from passwords altogether. And 2FA doesn’t provide impermeable defense of data, especially when the factor is sent via text messaging. (The draft of a NIST white paper on best security practices in 2016 that suggested eliminated text messages as a second factor was watered down to remove that recommendation by its release in 2017. It’s unclear who was behind the change.)Most people still don’t use a password manager, which leads many to select the weakest password they can get away with under whatever rules an organization or site sets. That makes most passwords somewhat or highly vulnerable to cracking. With many businesses relying on scads of services to get work done, one service that allows weak passwords–or suffers a breach–can render many other linked services vulnerable.To avoid a password is to rely on an approach in which identity and access are paired. Once you have enrolled by proving sufficiently who you are and that you own a given device that requires biometrics to unlock–a fingerprint or facial scan–a password doesn’t provide any additional assistance.MobileIron wants to lean on that “mobile” part of its name for real. “One of the things that has changed dramatically over the last few years is the use of mobiles as the primary [devices] that an employee will perform their tasks on,” says CEO Simon Biddiscombe.With that mobile-first or mobile-always-available approach, MobileIron can shift the weight of authentication factors. In multi-factor security systems, the factors are usually described as something you know, something you have, and something you are. What you know is usually the password, which has been the foundation of security. But if a security system can grant access based on something you have (like your mobile device), and something you are (a biometric parameter), you need not know anything, and the password isn’t necessary.The most widespread example of this is mobile payment systems such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which let you enroll a credit or debit card. When you pay using that card, the systems authorize the transaction based on something you have (your phone, watch, or tablet) and something you are (a biometric confirmation via a technology such as Apple’s Face ID or Touch ID). “Apple Pay is my favorite example of a consumer app that feels an awful lot like what we’re doing in the enterprise market,” says Biddiscombe.The particulars of MobileIron’s new zero-password option will matter to its current and future customers, who will get to stress out less over breaches and password management. But its implications are far broader. The subversive idea of killing passwords at a corporate level provides some insight into how the smaller-business and consumer market could shift strongly away from the most hated single element of computing.Too many passwordsMobileIron’s bread-and-butter is authentication, so you’d think it would be fixated on passwords rather than trying to get rid of them. Back when the iPhone was new, the company’s founders recognized that executives would buy Apple’s phone and want to access email, while IT departments would be irritated at these new devices they hadn’t vetted and anxious about providing secure access.In recent years, MobileIron has shifted to all sorts of mobile (and desktop) end-point security and single-login access across intranet, cloud, and hosted services with which employees at a single company might be constantly interacting. Workers might use Office 365, Dropbox, Salesforce, and a corporate email server at the same time, and want easy access to all of them, no matter where they are.Biddiscombe also points out that increasingly, mobile workers aren’t just the white-collar employees that enterprise software systems have traditionally focused on. Their numbers also include meter readers, package deliverers, factory workers, tree trimmers, people accepting a rental-car return, and many others. Burdening those workers with passwords, when they’re typically in the field or deep in a factory, doesn’t help their productivity. And that hurts a company’s overall efficiency.In that context, MobileIron hears a lot–a lot!–of feedback from its IT customers about the pain of passwords. Single sign on (often abbreviated SSO) to multiple accounts was supposed to take some of the pain out of that, by letting corporations use their internal logins to validate access to third-party services. But SSO still means both signing on lots of places and entering a password multiple times.The problem is realMobileIron recently commissioned a survey of 200 executives and others who make decisions about cybersecurity, mostly in companies with 1,000-plus employees. Those surveyed say they’d halve their risk of breaches by eliminating passwords. From broader user surveys, The survey also found that almost half of support requests have to do with password or multi-factor lockouts.Ninety percent of the cybersecurity leaders said stolen credentials had led to unauthorized access attempts, while a whopping 86% declared they’d give passwords the heave-ho if they could.[Animation: MobileIron]These problems and attitudes come on the heels of many years of security experts and IT gurus trying to discourage companies and individuals from relying on passwords as a security be-all and end-all.The FIDO (Fast ID Online) Alliance started up in 2013 with the idea of eliminating the paradigm of passwords as the most important authentication element. The group’s membership includes nearly every key financial, telecom, dotcom, and software company, including American Express, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. (The list can be best summarized as “almost everybody except AT&T and Apple.”)FIDO stresses public keys, the neat mathematical magic that allows people to have an secret “private” key while also distributing a paired public key used to prove their identity or encrypt messages only they can decrypt.When using a website that supports FIDO’s U2F (Universal Two-Factor) standard, a user first enrolls and proves their identity in one of a variety of ways, including registering a hardware token–from firms like Yubikey–that has built in a tamper-resistant and unique public/private key pair.On a subsequent visit, a U2F-using visitor still enters a password as a first step, and then taps or clicks the U2F hardware key that generates and transmits a signed message. The verification is also bidirectional, unlike most logins: Both the user and the site transparently deliver security credentials to prove their identiy, which helps deter phishing attacks. (Web security certificates work in a similar way, but aren’t designed specifically to protect user accounts.)Now imagine the above scenario, only without a password being involved at all. That’s the alliance’s goal, and a bundle of newer standards called FIDO2 have brought it far closer to reality.[Animation: MobileIron]With FIDO2, the spec was broadened to allow not just the standalone hardware keys that were required in the alliance’s earlier days, but also any mobile and desktop hardware that includes a hardened, separate security chip that handles cryptographic and biometric identity. This includes Apple’s Secure Enclave, which has been in every new iPhone since 2013; a variety of chips in modern Android phones that adhere to similar principles; and the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip found in many desktop and laptop computers, and which is clearly on its way to becoming a standard feature.FIDO2 can give apps and websites an Apple Pay-like login experience on well over a billion devices–maybe even a couple billion–with no additional effort on a user’s part.Last last year, Microsoft adopted several different no-password login options for its accounts, some of which rely on FIDO2. In February, Google announced that any Android device running version 7 and later now conformed to FIDO2 standards, bringing no-password logins to a host of users.As with the FIDO Alliance, Apple seems for now to be the holdout, although it allows third-party apps–but not websites–to use Touch ID and Face ID for authentication after enrollment within the app. If the company made it a priority, it would likely be a short step to supporting FIDO2’s Web-based login standards.The time is rightIf I’d told you a decade ago that you should get rid of your passwords, you would have thought me deranged, because everything up to that point indicated we needed better, stronger, longer passwords to defeat the breaches already cropping up seemingly daily.But 10 years of account breaches revealed that many companies of all sizes do a terrible job of securing passwords. It also showed that many users choose weak passwords, though we shouldn’t blame them, since a weak password is the best response to a badly designed system.It’s time to kill the password, and with companies like MobileIron working at it for corporations and Google and Microsoft doing the same consumers, we can wave a not-very-fond farewell to a bit of brittle chewing gum that’s managed to hold the gubbins of security together.The future can be as a simple as a glance. As MobileIron’s Biddiscombe says, “I just stare at my device, and my device knows it’s me, and the enterprise opens access to the various services I need.”

A British ten pound banknote is seen in a photo illustration taken March 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/Illustration/File PhotoLONDON (Reuters) - Sterling rose on Wednesday on a report that former British foreign minister Boris Johnson, a prominent eurosceptic, will now back Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal after she promised to quit if her agreement passes in parliament. The pound rose to a five-day high of $1.3269, up 0.5 percent on the day, after the report by the deputy political editor of the Times. Sterling rose to a 10-day high versus the euro of 84.87 pence. Reporting by Tom Finn; Editing by Hugh LawsonOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Gunmen have attacked a convoy of trucks carrying uranium fuel to a nuclear power plant near the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, police say.The convoy came under attack as it drove past a community controlled by drug traffickers in Angra dos Reis, a tourist city 145km (90 miles) from Rio.Police escorting the convoy responded and a shootout followed. No-one was injured or detained.The convoy reached the Angra 2 plant safely 20 minutes after the attack.The attack in the Rio-Santos highway is the latest in a series of violent incidents in an area popular with visitors.In 2017, a British woman was shot and wounded after her family's car drove by mistake into a community run by gangs. Why are there so many murders in Brazil? Stray bullets in Rio: The girl shot in the play area The convoy was carrying uranium fuel fabricated in Resende, in Rio de Janeiro state, to supply Angra 2, one of the two nuclear power plants in Angra dos Reis, which began operations in 2001.The gunmen targeted the police officers that were part of the convoy as it passed the Frade community at around 12:00 local time on Tuesday (15:00 GMT), Brazil's federal highway police said in a statement."Sadly, attacks by criminals have become frequent in that area... Such a beautiful region, with great tourist demand has become a dangerous place," spokesman José Hélio Macedo was quoted by O Globo newspaper as saying.The uranium was being transported in armoured containers in a "natural state" and would not have offered any risk as it had the same level of radioactivity as when it is found in nature, Brazil's nuclear agency Eletronuclear said.The agency, however, said the convoy "had not been attacked by bandits" directly - it was passing in the area at the moment a shootout was happening. Some bandits scared by the heavy police presence shot at a police vehicle in the convoy, it added in a statement.Violence has increased in Angra dos Reis in recent years and heavily armed criminals are now present in once-peaceful communities, correspondents say.Reports say the shootout in Frade was a result of fighting between rival gangs.Angra dos Reis Mayor Fernando Jordão urged the state's government to improve security in the region. "We have nuclear plants here. It's a sensitive area."

Despite enduring a tumultuous week, Boris Johnson remains the overwhelming favourite to become the next Conservative leader, and thus prime minister, in just over three weeks from now. So what can we expect from a Johnson premiership, based on his claimed past record and promises on the campaign trail?What he has claimed: When Johnson has talked about his time in the Foreign Office, he has mainly pointed to the UK’s success in persuading other nations to expel Russian diplomats following the Sergei Skripal poisoning.The reality: The Skripal aftermath is hard to assess – such efforts are international, and span dozens of officials and ministers – but critics would point to Johnson’s otherwise very mixed record in the job, notably his gaffes over Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.What he has claimed: Johnson has mainly talked up his eight years as London mayor, from 2008, saying he halved the city’s murder rate and reduced knife crime.The reality: Much more mixed. London had 155 murders in 2008 and 109 in 2016. Even at the lowest level, of 94 in 2016, this is a 40% reduction. The number for total knife crimes in the city varied, but was almost the same when he left office as in 2008.What he has claimed: Johnson has said, several times, that he tackled poverty as mayor, such that while in 2008 the city had four of the six poorest boroughs in the UK, after his two terms, no London boroughs were in the top 20.The reality: Hard to tell, as it is not clear what measure of “poverty” is being described. The most common on a borough-wide level is known as index of multiple deprivation, but these are just for England, and the results do not match the claims. London did become wealthier overall during Johnson’s time in charge, but inequalities also increased.What he has claimed: He has repeatedly called the 2012 Olympics in London “a huge success”, implicitly claiming credit.The reality: The Games were seen as going well – but much of the planning was already in place before Johnson took over. In contrast, the aftermath has been more mixed, notably the £300m or so of costs to convert the main stadium for use by West Ham United.What he has claimed: Johnson has argued the abandoned plan for a park-meets-bridge across the Thames would have been a triumph had his successor as mayor, Sadiq Khan, not pulled the plug on the project.The reality: The business and transport cases for the bridge were always hugely weak, and the project only lasted as long as it did because of Johnson’s patronage. Johnson also has yet to answer questions over decisions he made allowing the charity behind the project to spend huge amounts of public money before planning consents were completed, which resulted in losses rising above £40m.What he has promised: To swiftly negotiate a new withdrawal agreement with the EU, at the same time ramping up no-deal preparations to ensure departure on 31 October.Does it stack up: The EU has repeatedly insisted it will not reopen the withdrawal agreement, and even if it did, the timetable is hideously tight. Even a no-deal Brexit looks very problematic, with a number of Tory MPs saying they would rather vote down a Johnson government than see it happen.What he has promised: To seek to avoid any new tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit by using the so-called Gatt 24 – article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade – to secure a temporary standstill while details of a new trade deal are hammered out.Does it stack up: Not really, as for Gatt 24 to take hold, both sides must agree to it. Ardent Brexiters insist all will be fine, but they are flatly contradicted by most others, including the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, and the international trade secretary, Liam Fox.What he has promised: To ensure there is no hard Irish border, even in a no-deal scenario, through so-called alternative arrangements – technological approaches by which customs and regulations checks would take place automatically, or away from the frontier.Does it stack up: Not for now – the consensus among experts (and the EU) is that such technology is several years away from being useable, and there is not the slightest chance of a system being in place for 31 October.What he has promised: To increase the threshold for the higher 40% rate of income tax from £50,000 to £80,000.Does it stack up: While allies such as Liz Truss still vigorously defend the plan, it looks politically curious to prioritise something that would cost £9bn a year and most benefit the richest 10% of people. Johnson has now started talking more eagerly about a wider, more progressive overall tax plan.What he has promised: At a hustings event on Thursday evening, Johnson promised to increase education spending by £5bn a year.Does it stack up: It can be done, of course, but the extra Johnson plans to spend on schools seems to go up by the week, and must be seen in the context of his other promises on tax cuts.What he has promised: To rescue the UK’s shopping streets through measures such as planning tweaks to make it easier to change the use of a building, and ending business rates on free-to-use cash machines.Does it stack up: It might not do any harm, but in the wider context of failing town centres and the growth of internet shopping, it feels like little more than a sticking plaster. Topics Boris Johnson Conservative leadership Conservatives analysis

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Indian forces on Monday killed three militants, including the suspected organizer of a suicide bombing in the disputed region of Kashmir that fueled tension between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, police said, with five troops also killed in the clash. The suicide bomb attack on a paramilitary police convoy in Indian-controlled Kashmir last Thursday killed at least 40 men, the deadliest single assault on Indian forces in 30 years of insurgency in the Muslim-majority region. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack. India accuses Pakistan for harboring the group. Pakistan denies that. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, facing an election that must be held by May, is under domestic pressure for decisive action against Pakistan. Modi has promised a strong response and says he has given the military a free hand to tackle cross-border militancy. The three militants killed in the clash on Monday were all Pakistani nationals and members of JeM, two security sources said. “The encounter is still in progress and the security forces are on the job,” police said in a statement. But the 17-hour engagement, that ended shortly before 1330 GMT, came at a cost for India’s security services. Four Indian soldiers and a policeman were killed, while nine troops were wounded, including a brigadier, one of the army’s top roles, and a deputy inspector general of police. A civilian was also killed. “They have protection. Our officers and men are exposed, whereas they’re in the built up area, hiding,” said K. Rajendra Kumar, a former director general of police in Jammu and Kashmir. Security force sources told Reuters one of the dead militants had been identified as Abdul Rashid Gazi, who went by the alias Kamran Bhai and is suspected of playing a leading role in organizing Thursday’s attack. Indian troops had earlier cordoned off Pinglan village in Kashmir’s Pulwama district, where the attack took place on Thursday. An Indian Army soldier carries a rocket launcher near the site of a gun battle between suspected militants and Indian security forces in Pinglan village in south Kashmir's Pulwama district February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Younis Khaliq An indefinite curfew has been imposed and police have asked people to stay indoors. Mohammad Yunis, a journalist in Pulwama, said troops were searching the village and civilians trapped in houses were being evacuated. On Sunday, police said Indian forces had detained 23 men suspected of links to the militants who carried out the Thursday bombing. Kashmir is at the heart of decades of hostility between India and Pakistan. They both claim it in full but rule it in part. India withdrew trade privileges offered to Pakistan after the bomb attack and has warned of further action. The United States had told India it supported its right to defend itself against cross-border attacks, India said on Saturday. With tension mounting, Pakistan withdrew its envoy to India for consultations, a spokesman for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said on Twitter on Monday. The Thursday bomb attack has sparked outrage in India with calls for revenge circulating on social media, and rising animosity towards Kashmiri Muslims in other parts of the Hindu-majority country, to the alarm of rights groups. “We are at a dangerous moment, and authorities must do everything they can to uphold the rule of law,” said Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty India. “Ordinary Kashmiris across India who are only seeking to improve their lives should not be singled out for violence simply because of where they come from.” The anger has also spread to India’s two big obsessions: cricket and its Bollywood film industry. Several cricket fans and a sport official have called on India to boycott a World Cup match against Pakistan in June, while the Cricket Club of India has covered up a portrait of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan - himself a former cricketer - at its Mumbai office. Slideshow (4 Images)The All India Cine Workers Association called for a “total ban” on Pakistanis working in India’s film industry, though they have been largely blacklisted from Bollywood since a similar attack in Kashmir in 2016 in which 19 soldiers died. The Confederation of All India Traders called for a nationwide strike to protest against the attack, and footage from Reuters partner ANI showed shuttered shops in several states on Monday. Additional reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan and Devjyot Ghoshal, Writing by Alasdair Pal and Krishna N. DasEditing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel, William MacleanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Google and Facebook will have to accept China’s censorship and tough online laws if they want access to its 751 million internet users, Chinese regulators told a conference in Geneva on Monday. FILE PHOTO: Facebook logo is seen at a start-up companies gathering at Paris' Station F in Paris, France on January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer/File Photo Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O) are blocked in China, along with Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) and most major Western news outlets. “That’s a question maybe in many people’s minds, why Google, why Facebook are not yet working and operating in China,” said Qi Xiaoxia, director general of the Bureau of International Cooperation at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). In Google’s case, it left China of its own accord in 2010. “If they want to come back, we welcome,” Qi told the Internet Governance Forum at the U.N.’s European headquarters. “The condition is that they have to abide by Chinese law and regulations. That is the bottom line. And also that they would not do any harm to Chinese national security and national consumers’ interests.” China’s Communist Party has tightened cyber regulation in the past year, formalizing new rules that require firms to store data locally and censor tools that allow users to subvert the Great Firewall that blocks sites including Facebook and Google. Their rival Apple (AAPL.O) operates subject to strict censorship, having removed dozens of popular messaging and virtual private network (VPN) apps from its China App Store this year to comply with government requests. In June, China introduced a new national cybersecurity law that requires foreign firms to store data locally and submit to data surveillance measures. “We are of the idea that cyberspace is not a space that is ungoverned. We need to administer, or supervise, or manage, the internet according to law,” Qi said. “Can you guess the number of websites in China? We have five million websites. That means that the Chinese people’s rights of speech and rights of expression are fully ensured.” It was not clear what her figure of five million was based on. According to the website internetlivestats.com, there are 1.3 billion websites on the World Wide Web, defining a website as a unique hostname which can be resolved, using a name server, into an IP address. Reporting by Tom Miles, additional reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing, Editing by William MacleanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Like most Conservatives, I wanted Brexit wrapped up and out of the way under Theresa May’s stewardship, allowing a new leader to begin a new chapter, reinvigorate the party and – at long last – change the subject.So much for that. Far from drawing a line under the unhappy recent history of British politics, the new prime minister will face exactly the same problem as his predecessor. He will also face the same parliamentary maths and apparently, despite the personnel changes in Brussels, the same stance from the EU. The first question on the minds of many Conservative party members as they ponder over their ballot papers, then, will be who is finally going to get Brexit signed, sealed and delivered.For Boris Johnson backers, the answer is clear: we must leave on 31 October, come what may, do or die. Only by convincing the EU that we are serious about this will it move – and if it doesn’t, we’ll be out. There is no other way to escape the “hamster wheel of doom”. Hold your horses (or your hamsters), say the Johnson-sceptics: now is a time for cool heads and calm negotiation, not heroic ultimatums. Plan for no deal, but talk.The problem with choosing between these two approaches is that there are so many unknowns in both scenarios. We don’t know how, when it comes to it, the EU will respond to new prime ministerial overtures, or what it would do if it believed a no-deal Brexit really was imminent. We don’t know how any resulting deal would differ from May’s thrice-rejected agreement, or whether it would fare any better in the House of Commons. We don’t know what would happen if it were defeated, and it is not yet clear exactly how no deal would come to pass with parliament determined to prevent it.It’s easy to see how another clash between the government and parliament – whether over another unpassable deal, or an administration determined to leave without one – could bring about an early general election. Neither candidate wants one, but even if they get their wish, the winner will have to face the electorate eventually. After all, by Christmas we will be halfway through the five-year term.The next question for the Tory selectorate, then, is who is best placed to lead them to victory when the time comes. There is no clear answer here either, as my research earlier in the week showed. Johnson has the greater appeal to those tempted by the Brexit party – indeed, when we asked people how likely they were to vote for each party under each of the two potential new PMs, Nigel Farage’s latest outfit was in fourth place under Johnson, but a close second under Jeremy Hunt. Those who voted Tory in 2017 and Labour leave voters were also more drawn to the idea of a Johnson-led Conservative party. But voters as a whole preferred Hunt, not least because remainers, including Conservative remainers, were very much more open to the idea of supporting him than his opponent.As things stand, it looks unlikely, to say the least, that at the next election the two biggest parties will account for 82% of the vote, as they did two years ago. The winner, then, will be the party that most successfully keeps its 2017 coalition from unravelling. This means the Conservatives can’t afford to lose people at either end. In practical terms, this boils down to the following question: which is greater – the number of remain-voting potential supporters the Tories would lose (or fail to win back) under Johnson, or the number of Brexit party temptees who would abandon the Tories (or fail to return) under Hunt? Which candidate would be more likely to win back Canterbury and Twickenham while holding on to Mansfield and Stoke? There is no clear answer, and the doubt is doubled when you ask whether such an election would be happening when we are in or out of the EU, and what the early consequences have been – which takes us back to the Brexit uncertainties I’ve already mentioned.The conclusion I have come to is that trying to choose between the two candidates on the basis of who would get the best Brexit and who would be most likely to win a subsequent (or preceding) general election amounts to making a series of uncertain tactical assumptions, with a good deal of crystal-ball gazing to fill in the gaps. And that is no way to choose a leader.So we should start at the other end. The candidate to choose is the one who would, day by day, do the best job of being prime minister. That person, it follows, would be more likely to achieve the best things for the UK – whether on Brexit or anything else – and would accordingly have the stronger appeal to the electorate in an eventual election. Both candidates have a strong case to make: both are proper Conservatives, both are engaging, both are committed to honouring the referendum result, and both have ideas to take the country forward. So the decision about who would be the better prime minister comes down to judgment and instinct as much as anything else.I can certainly see Johnson in the job, and I can see him cheering us all up, at least for a time. I don’t fear a catastrophe should he carry the day. But I’ve watched Hunt for a long time, with growing respect. I’ve been impressed with the way he has handled tricky jobs in government, from the Olympics to the doctors’ strike, with calm assurance and attention to detail. His performance as foreign secretary leads me to think the public’s view that he would be the more effective leader on the world stage is well founded. His character and integrity are evident. In a crisis, I would want him in charge. And if I were employing one of them to run a big, complicated project – which is what we are doing – I would choose him.No disrespect to Johnson – but it’s a binary choice, and that’s mine.• Michael Ashcroft is a businessman, politician and former deputy chairman of the Conservative party Topics Conservative leadership Opinion Conservatives Boris Johnson Jeremy Hunt Brexit European Union Foreign policy comment

German Minister of Economy and Energy Peter Altmaier attends a news conference on the development and production of European batteries in Paris, France, May 2, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit TessierBERLIN (Reuters) - Germany hopes that an escalation of the trade dispute between the United States and China can be avoided, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said on Monday, adding that all parties should be careful with implementing unilateral decisions. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to ratchet up tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China, escalating the dispute marked by tit-for-tat duties between Washington and Beijing as ongoing talks were set to continue this week. “We all hope that the trade conflict between the U.S. and China can be resolved because it doesn’t have any positive consequences for anyone,” Altmaier said on the sidelines of a conference in Berlin when asked to comment on the trade dispute. “We need a rules-based trade order, we need open markets, we need fairness and a level playing field i.e. equal rights for companies from all countries involved,” Altmaier added. Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Michelle MartinOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Apple’s event Monday ended up featuring one piece of hardware after all: a new credit card, which it plans to launch this summer in the US. The aptly named Apple Card, created in partnership with Mastercard and Goldman Sachs, will live within the existing Wallet app on iPhones and as a traditional physical card. During a keynote speech, Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay, described the card as “bold and innovative,” even though it doesn’t offer many unique rewards or perks. But it does feature several security upgrades that may appeal to those especially concerned about privacy.Apple Card is ultimately a credit card, and as such, comes with recognizable cash-back perks, though with an Apple-specific twist: 2 percent cash back on any transaction made with Apple Pay and 3 percent back on Apple products and services, including purchases made within the App Store. If you use the real-life titanium Apple Card, you only get a 1 percent cash rebate.The hope is that the card will incentivize a greater number of US retailers and consumers to adopt Apple Pay, the digital wallet service Apple first introduced in 2014. During the company’s event Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that only 70 percent of US retailers accept Apple Pay, far below the adoption rate of 99 percent in Australia. “They’re really nudging consumers toward using Apple Pay on a regular basis and not just as an occasional thing when a retailer allows,” says Sara Rathner, a credit card expert at personal finance company NerdWallet.After you’re approved to receive an Apple Card, a unique, permanent card number is created and stored on your iPhone. Each time you make a purchase, Apple says a different, one-time “dynamic security code” will be generated, which prevents your Apple Card from being stolen or used without your authorization. Your permanent card number is never shown. So-called dynamic credit card technology has been around for several years. Companies like Privacy, for instance, already let users make online purchases without revealing their actual credit or debit card numbers.Even if a physical Apple Card is lost or stolen, there’s far less information on it for a thief to use to try to make a fraudulent transaction. It features no card number, no expiration date, no signature, and no three-digit code on the back. The customer’s name is simply printed on the front alongside a security chip.

Emma González, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting in which 17 people were killed, has criticised Madonna’s depiction of gun violence in the music video for her recent single, God Control.In the graphic clip, a gunman opens fire on a nightclub dancefloor with an automatic rifle, in reference to the shooting at the gay club Pulse in Orlando on 12 June 2016, in which 49 people died and 53 were wounded.In the song, taken from her new album, Madame X, Madonna sings: “Blood of innocence, spread everywhere.” A written statement at the end of the video reads: “Every year over 36,000 Americans are killed in acts of gun violence and approximately 100,000 more are shot and injured. No one is safe. Gun control. Now.”González, 19, called the video “fucked up” and “horrible”, and criticised Madonna for the timing of its release. “She should have sent out a message warning what her new video contained,” she wrote on Twitter, “ESPECIALLY to the Pulse victims, ESPECIALLY as it was released just after the anniversary on June 12th.”González called on anyone who wants to support the gun violence prevention movement to donate to One Pulse Foundation and to listen to “the actual stories from actual survivors of gun violence”, and suggested that anyone sharing images or clips from the video “please tag it as triggering”. The video opens with a written message: “The story you are about to see is very disturbing. It shows graphic scenes of gun violence.”Madonna sampled a clip of González’s February 2018 speech at a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on the Madame X song I Rise. “Us kids don’t know what we’re talking about,” she can be heard saying at the start of the track. “That we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.”Until the October 2017 shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that killed 58, the Pulse terror attack was the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. The Florida gunman, Omar Mateen, was shot and killed by police during the attack – he had described himself as an “Islamic soldier” and pledged allegiance to Islamic State.In a recent interview, Madonna said: “When you think about the amount of people who have died, been killed, have been wounded, whose lives have been changed irrevocably because of the lack of gun control in America, it’s such a huge, huge problem.”In the same interview she also championed LGBT rights and criticised recent US restrictions on abortion, saying: “We fought really hard for a lot of these freedoms and now it seems like they are all systematically being taken away … It doesn’t make me feel hopeless. It just makes me want to fight back.” Topics Madonna Parkland, Florida school shooting US gun control news

(Reuters) - Apple Inc unveiled its Apple TV+ original content streaming service and Apple TV Channels subscription service on Monday without a price tag, making it difficult to evaluate how the new ventures will stack up to Netflix Inc and other competitors. Director Steven Spielberg speaks during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Stephen LamThe Apple TV+ service features original content from Hollywood heavyweights like Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and M. Night Shyamalan and will launch this fall. It will be ad-free and available on Apple devices as well as other platforms such as Roku and Amazon Fire TV. But Apple did not announce pricing or confirm whether the new service would be available on Android devices. In addition to Apple TV+, in May Apple is launching Apple TV Channels, which will allow users to subscribe to individual streaming services. Apple TV Channels include HBO, Showtime, Starz and others, and will live inside the company’s newly designed Apple TV app. Notably, Apple TV Channels excludes Netflix content. Apple does not yet offer a discounted bundle of other companies’ streaming services. That would have given it an edge over Amazon.com Inc, which through its Prime Video Channels allows Prime members to subscribe to individual streaming services at full price. Like Apple, Amazon is making a push into original programing as a way to sell other services. But Prime Video viewers also get the benefits of the fast Amazon order delivery and other perks that come with Prime membership, so may be unlikely to scrap that service for Apple. And unlike Hulu and Netflix, Apple TV+ will not come stocked with a library of popular broadcast shows. Netflix is said to have paid $100 million to continue licensing the NBC hit series “Friends,” which is reportedly its second-most-watched show. Hulu, starting at $5.99 a month, streams classic series like “Seinfeld” as well as current shows. Walt Disney Co is also jumping into the streaming war with Disney+, a streaming service armed with the entire library of Walt Disney Studios’ theatrical releases and Disney-branded television shows as well as new, exclusive content. Dsney has also suggested it could bundle Disney+ with ESPN+ and Hulu, of which it owns a majority stake after its acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets. Apple TV+ will be competing in the children’s programing space with new programing in partnership with the Sesame Street Workshop. Reporting by Helen CosterOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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.

A British engineer was killed in Syria while trying to clear a house booby-trapped with bombs after volunteering to fight against Islamic State following the Manchester terrorist attack, an inquest heard.The coroner David Horsley ruled that Ollie Hall, 24, died on active service while serving with the Kurdistan People’s Protection Units (YPG) and paid tribute to his “outstanding example of courage and self-sacrifice”.An inquest in Portsmouth heard Hall was so angered by the Manchester bomb attack that he decided to join Kurdish fighters in Syria.The telecoms engineer left for Iraq via Germany on 18 August last year and met up with YPG, attending its training academy in Rojava, northern Syria, for five weeks before working to clear mines and explosives in Raqqa, where he died on 25 November. His mother, Jane Lyndon, said her son had not told her of his plans until he had arrived in the Middle East. She said that on the day he left, he gave her £20 to pay for a taxi to get home from work. “He said, ‘I love you Mum’ and I said ‘I love you’, and that was the last time I saw him,” she said. Describing him as having a strong personality, she said he was angered by terrorist attacks in the UK and Europe and his belief the government was not taking action. She said: “I knew he was mad about them but we had no idea he felt so strongly.” Lyndon, a nurse, said she had been told her son went into a house in Raqqa after an elderly man and his daughter had been concerned about booby-traps. Jonathon Duncan, a friend, said Hall had been planning to go to Syria for about six months and had given up smoking and drinking and got fit before leaving. He said recent terrorist attacks in the UK had inspired him to volunteer and added: “The one in Manchester was a bit too close to home.”Brett Lockyer, a pathologist, said Hall died of multiple trauma injuries likely to have been caused by two bombs. Horsley recorded a narrative verdict, saying Hall, who was from Portsmouth, died “on active service with Kurdish forces”, adding: “He gave his life to protect the safety of others.”The coroner continued: “He was someone who felt deeply about the world and its problems and resolved to do something about it himself to bring an end to terrorism and repression. So deep was his commitment that he gave up the secure and comfortable life in his family home.“His actions have made him a hero in the Kurdish community. He also should be an outstanding example of courage and self-sacrifice to whoever hears his story.”Outside court, his mother said she hoped others would not follow in his footsteps. She said: “We just want to say that we are so proud of Ollie. I wish he had never gone, but we are proud of what he did. We wouldn’t want other people to go out there.“From everyone I speak to out there, he was very popular and well-liked. One friend said he was not a soldier when he went out there but he became a soldier and then some.”Describing how she felt when he told her by text message that he had travelled to the Middle East, she said: “I was absolutely devastated, I just had this feeling that I am not going to see him again.“I couldn’t be mad with him, he was in Syria and I didn’t want to lose communication with him. Some days he would be messaging me from 4am to midnight. We will always be proud of him, we just wish he hadn’t gone.” Topics Syria Islamic State Middle East and North Africa news

Activists have warned of an “epidemic” of sexual harassment and violence against women in Indonesia, in the wake of two recent cases of horrific domestic abuse.In one incident, a man in Jakarta reportedly slashed his wife’s throat with a machete after she refused to have sex with him, an act witnessed by their two children, aged seven and 14.The mother survived the attack last week, police told reporters, after neighbours heard screams, broke down the door and found her in a critical condition. The 34-year-old woman is recovering and “now able to speak”.This week a mother of three from west Java attacked her husband with an axe after he allegedly demanded his sex “quota”. Police said the woman, who gave birth two months ago, had postpartum depression.“The stories were so shocking, one because they were pretty graphic and brutal, but at the same time I was quite shocked that not many media picked it up,” Hannah Al Rashid, an Indonesian actor and activist, told the Guardian.“Maybe it’s because in these cases both women were married and it was about marital rape, something that a lot of people in this country deny exists.”Describing violence against women in Indonesia as an “epidemic”, the actor said: “I think what scares me most about the issue here is that you can call it an epidemic and not much is being done.”In a country where airing marital problems has long been considered taboo, the recent incidents are indicative of a deeply ingrained problem, said Mariana Amiruddin, from the national commission on violence against women.“In Indonesia marital rape is subject to the domestic violence act,” she said. “But the culture here still considers that wives have to sexually serve [their husbands] under any circumstances.”Data from the national commission in 2018 showed the highest number of cases of violence against women occurred within households, with a rising trend of marital rape, in part, the commission believes, because more women are coming forward.Separately, results from a survey released by a coalition of women’s rights groups on Wednesday showed that Indonesian women also face frequent sexual harassment in public spaces, including in the street and on public transport, and at the workplace and educational institutes.The survey, which included 62,000 respondents from across 34 provinces, revealed that more than 60% of women in Indonesia had experienced verbal sexual harassment, and more than half before the age of 16.The results also tackled several victim-blaming myths:“Victims of sexual harassment have been blamed a lot for being seen as ‘inviting’ harassment by wearing sexy clothes or walking alone at night,” said Rika Rosvianti, from one of the groups involved. “But all these assumptions can be refuted by the results of this survey. The survey results clearly show that veiled women are often harassed, even during the day.”Some 17% of women surveyed said they were sexually harassed in public while wearing a hijab, while 35% said they were harassed during the day, compared to 21% at night.Speaking at the release of the survey, Al Rashid called on the public to raise awareness about violence against women, particularly online.“Sometimes we think who are we to change anything? But we actually can make a change, one case at a time.” Topics Women's rights and gender equality Indonesia Domestic violence

As earnings season comes to an end, the stock market continued its descent this week. Where does that leave Silicon Valley’s tech giants? It’s true that some of them have lost market value, but don’t pass the hat around for them yet: Most of these companies are coming off a solid quarter.Here’s how the tech bigwigs–Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Snap, and Twitter–fared in their earnings reports:The Winners“2017 was a strong year for Facebook, but it was also a hard one,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote in the company’s earnings release. That’s quite the understatement, but he’s right–Facebook is doing fine. In fact, while Facebook reported that users are spending 50 million fewer hours on the platform each day, its user base is still growing and revenue hit nearly $13 billion, up 48% year over year.Netflix exceeded expectations this quarter, in no small part because we all binged The Crown and Stranger Things. Even after its recent price hike, Netflix attracted 8.3 million new subscribers in Q4, bringing its total subscriber base to 117 million.Snap hasn’t had the smoothest ride since its IPO last March, so this earnings report was a particularly bright spot. At $285.7 million, its revenue was well over expectations, and its lagging daily user numbers jumped by 8.9 million to 187 million. Let’s hope that holds up as Snapchat rolls out its redesign.Riding a wave of recent “comeback” stories, even Twitter eked out a win this quarter, posting a profit ($91 million) for the first time in its history. Twitter’s stock price hasn’t been this high since 2015. The embattled company still hasn’t moved the needle on its monthly active users, but after Twitter’s string of losses, we consider this a triumph.The Mixed BagThis was actually Apple’s biggest quarter: Its revenue crossed $88 billion, up 13% from the previous holiday quarter. But when you’re Apple, that’s not as meaningful. The company failed to meet analyst expectations, and iPhone sales–a key metric–were down. What Apple’s earnings report did prove, however, is that people are willing to shell out for the iPhone X.The LoserFrom where we’re standing, it seems like these problems aren’t going away anytime soon.

Mr. Comey said he again explained that Mr. McCabe was “a pro” and had never mentioned Mr. Trump’s attacks.At their dinner, Mr. Trump gave contradictory explanations about whether Mr. Priebus knew they were meeting.Early on, as they discussed whom Mr. Comey’s point of contact should be at the White House, Mr. Trump said that “Reince doesn’t know we are having dinner” but that Mr. Comey should plan to go to him.But as Mr. Comey was preparing to leave the White House that night, Mr. Trump told him: ”Reince knows we are having dinner’ (the opposite of what he said earlier),” according to one memo.Mr. Comey neither explained nor speculated why Mr. Trump contradicted himself.In their own meeting on Feb. 8, 2017, Mr. Priebus tried to ask Mr. Comey whether the F.B.I. was wiretapping the national security adviser at the time, Michael T. Flynn.Weeks earlier, reports had emerged that Mr. Flynn was overheard on a wiretap talking with the Russian ambassador to the United States about sanctions being imposed by the Obama administration as punishment for its election interference. The calls raised concerns among senior law enforcement and intelligence agencies that Mr. Flynn might have been working to help the Russians.

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.

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.

Huawei, one of the world's biggest makers of smartphones and telecommunications equipment, said Thursday that the government had informed it of the decision. "This is an extremely disappointing result for consumers," the Chinese company said on Twitter. "Huawei is a world leader in 5G." The announcement follows reports in recent months that Australian national security agencies were concerned about alleged ties between Huawei and the Chinese government. The Australian government said in a statement Thursday that the involvement of telecom equipment suppliers "who are likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government that conflict with Australian law" could mean the country's wireless carriers are unable "to adequately protect a 5G network from unauthorized access or interference." The Australian government's statement didn't mention China or Huawei by name. Huawei has repeatedly rejected the security concerns, insisting that it is a private company owned by employees with no other shareholders. But it has faced scrutiny and restrictions in Australia and other countries previously. In 2012, it was blocked from the bidding for a huge Australian national broadband network. Huawei said Thursday that the Australian government also banned fellow Chinese tech firm ZTE (ZTCOF) from providing 5G technology for the country's wireless networks. ZTE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company is still struggling to repair the damage inflicted by a crippling US government ban that prevented it from doing business with American companies for months. ZTE's controlling shareholder is Shenzhen Zhongxingxin Telecommunications Equipment, a Chinese state-owned corporation. ZTE has in the past denied that its products pose a security risk. The Chinese government is "gravely concerned" by Australia's decision, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Thursday. "The Australian government should not use various excuses to artificially set barriers," Lu said at a regular news briefing. "We urge the Australian government to abandon ideological prejudices and provide a fair competitive environment for Chinese enterprises operating in Australia." Australia's ban comes amid increased scrutiny in other countries including the United States and the United Kingdom, where officials have warned of potential national security risks from using Huawei or ZTE products. Huawei tweeted Thursday that it "has safely & securely delivered wireless technology" in Australia for close to 15 years. Vodafone (VOD) and Optus, two of Australia's biggest mobile phone carriers, have supplier relationships with Huawei and had previously tested the company's 5G equipment. Vodafone's chief strategy officer in Australia, Dan Lloyd, criticized the government's announcement, saying it "creates uncertainty for carriers' investment plans." "This decision is a significant change which fundamentally undermines Australia's 5G future, and we will consider what it means for our business," he added. Spokespersons for Optus and Telstra (TLSYY), another major Australian carrier, said in separate statements that the companies "will comply" with the government's decision. -- Angus Watson and Yong Xiong contributed to this report.