Facebook Inc.’s campaign to re-enter China has hit another setback with the departure of a veteran executive who had been leading efforts to improve relations with Chinese government leaders. Wang-Li Moser resigned late last year, people with knowledge of the situation said Friday. Ms. Moser wanted to return to the U.S. for personal reasons, one of these people said.Ms....

Amazon is ready to let people develop their own Alexa apps, getting its customers to create games, lectures, and other voice-controlled experiences that can expand what its virtual assistant can do.There will be limits, however. Alexa cannot be trained to spout hate speech or other derogatory content, including Nazi propaganda. Preventing Alexa from becoming a Nazi robot seems wise. Yet, customers in the market for racist, white supremacist content can find plenty for sale in Amazon’s book section.Making decisions on the nature of content is inevitably somewhat arbitrary, and many tech giants have struggled with it. Amazon’s approach has been to patrol only certain sections of its sprawling business, leading to the somewhat paradoxical result of barring, say, a T-shirt emblazoned with a Nazi swastika, while selling a book promoting Nazi theories.With hate crimes in the US on the rise, activists fighting against hate speech say Amazon should do better, given its massive reach.It’s not that Amazon doesn’t police anything. The company has detailed terms of service prohibiting hate speech. They do not allow, for instance, products that promote, incite or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views. “We’ll also remove listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence,” Amazon’s terms say. Yet these terms “apply to all products except books, music, video and DVD,” arguably the categories most likely to include such content.Other tech companies that handle content also follow rules that might seem perplexing. Facebook, for instance, which employs 15,000 people to moderate content, banned white supremacy while allowing white nationalism (though it’s reviewing its position on the issue).When contacted for this story, Amazon offered no insight about why it has different rules for different parts of its business, but referred Quartz to its content guidelines for books. It specifically pointed to the portion stating that “as a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.”The same guidelines note that Amazon “reserve[s] the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content”—though when requested, the company didn’t provide details of what it deems “inappropriate content.”One publication that made the cut: The manifesto by the White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters Militia, a hate group responsible for bombing a mosque in Minnesota. It’s just one of the episodes that prompted calls for Amazon to get rid of hateful publications. The manifesto is still on the site, where it sells for $6.75.Also available is The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel by neo-Nazi leader William Luther Pierce that has inspired extremists from Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to Idaho domestic terrorist group The Order, according to the FBI. The story portrays the violent overthrow of the US government, beginning with the bombing of FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. The Turner Diaries, which is banned in Germany, has been reviewed 353 times on Amazon, with an average rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars.Indeed, a surprisingly extensive selection of white nationalist and neo-Nazi titles are still sold on Amazon’s website, long after they were exposed by activists.Amazon sells items promoting hate through three different channels: There are sales made directly by Amazon, sales made by third-party sellers on Amazon, and materials—particularly books—created by extremists using the self-publishing space offered by Amazon.The platform has several books on offer by the late George Lincoln Rockwell, a Holocaust denier and the founder of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell’s 1966 tract, White Power, sells for $13.95 in paperback, $24.99 in hardcover, and $6.45 for the Kindle version.One “verified purchaser” of White Power gave the book a 5-star review, writing that “the Jews” employ “psychological devices to bring about the complete destruction of a once honorable people,” namely whites, and added, “Anybody who has the European spirit flowing through their veins should read this book…Show the world that there is nothing wrong with loving the white race and embracing its inherent power.”Seventy-eight people “found this helpful,” according to Amazon’s site.In White Identity by Jared Taylor, a white supremacist who has earned a place in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Extremist Files,” warns white readers that “if they do not defend their interests they will be marginalized by groups that do not hesitate to assert themselves, numerically and culturally.” The 2011 book, which gets 4.6 stars on Amazon from 131 customer reviews, qualifies for free shipping on orders over $25. Gift wrapping is available.Unlike many European countries, which bar the publication and sale of material promoting hate, the US has no laws that forbid Amazon from selling any of the books above.The company has the right to decide what products it does and does not sell. The only thing keeping it from offering racist material is its goodwill or public pressure, which has been growing.Last year, the Action Center on Race and the Economy and the Partnership for Working Families, a group that produces research to promote race equality, published a report accusing Amazon of giving hate groups a platform to “generate revenue, propagate their ideas, and grow their movements.”“Amazon must take a public stand against hate and violence, and take action to ensure that it is not profiting from hate or enabling others to profit from hate,” said the report.Amazon, like many other major tech companies, has attempted to reassure its customers that it is on the lookout for hate speech, says Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch, a Washington, DC nonprofit that monitors the extreme right. However, it hasn’t implemented the necessary changes to its systems required to flag and remove hateful content, he adds.One incentive for more effective self-policing is that selling racist material can put off a lot of customers.“It’s disturbing, it’s distressing. You don’t want your kids to come across it,” says Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League.Many other online sellers have recognized this, says Pitcavage, pointing to eBay as an example. The company has been policing hate materials for many years, and though things inevitably fall through the cracks, he has noticed a very significant difference in the availability of products inciting hate before and after eBay’s policy against them.Similar examples could be found prior to the advent of internet shopping, Pitcavage says. Record stores, for instance, would often refuse to carry white supremacist albums, and bookshops or even libraries would rarely carry items promoting hate speech.It’s hard to make the case that Amazon has a duty to ban certain content from its US site, because free speech is at the core of American values.“I don’t know that there is a clean fix,” says Holt of Right Wing Watch.For example, Shannon Martinez, a former neo-Nazi who now works to extricate others from hate groups, calls the idea of banning books outright “highly problematic,” because it could set a bad precedent for restricting other kinds of speech.Even if Amazon were to ban racist or Nazi books, what criteria would be acceptable? One might be the threat posed by the books. While some of them may not be a direct call to violence, some come close to crossing the line, says Martinez.Still, she questions whether Amazon should be giving people such easy access to certain materials. Short of actually pulling racist titles from its virtual shelves, Martinez believes Amazon should modify its recommendation engine so it no longer suggests long lists of other problematic books to people who search for a racist title.Right now, Amazon links to an extensive stock of similar extremist material, says Martinez. “If I’m a 19-year-old kid who heard [white nationalist] Richard Spencer mention the title of a particular book and I go to Amazon to look for it, then I have direct access to an entire world of extreme right-wing literature at my fingertips,” she adds.

The US military has identified three of the four Americans killed during a suicide bombing in Syria claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.Jonathan Farmer, a soldier, Shannon Kent, a sailor, and civilian Scott Wirtz died in Manbij on Wednesday as a result of wounds from the blast.IS said a militant had detonated an explosive vest next to an American patrol in the Kurdish-held town.US forces are operating around Manbij to back Kurdish and Arab forces. The fourth victim of the explosion is an unnamed contractor, according to US Central Command. At least 15 people were killed in the blast, and another three US soldiers were wounded. Mr Farmer, 37, of Florida, served as Army chief warrant officer. He was a recipient of the Army Achievement Medal, Bronze Star Medal, and Purple Heart, among other decorations, the Marine Corps Times reported. War-weary Syrians in Manbij wait to learn fate Is Trump ending the 'Forever Wars'? After the caliphate: Has IS been defeated? Shannon Kent, 35, of New York, was a Navy chief cryptologic technician. In a statement, Navy Cmdr Joseph Harrison described her as "a rockstar" and "leader to many in the Navy Information Warfare Community".The Pentagon said Mr Wirtz was a civilian from Missouri working as an operations support specialist at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).A former Navy Seal for 10 years, he had been working for the DIA since 2017, and had previously completed three deployments to the Middle East for the agency."We are deeply saddened by the loss of this patriot," DIA Director Lt Gen Robert P Ashley, Jr said in a statement. "This is a stark reminder of the dangerous missions we conduct for the nation and of the threats we work hard to mitigate."They were the first US casualties following President Donald Trump's recent order to pull the military from Syria. The investigation into the attack is ongoing.On Wednesday, a suicide bomber using what the Pentagon called an "improvised explosive device" attacked a restaurant near Manbij's main market, said US officials.The restaurant, the Palace of the Princes, was a favourite among US troops - even playing host to Senators Lindsey Graham and Jeanne Shaheen, the New York Times reported.The troops were to meet members of the Manbij Military Council at the restaurant when the attack occurred, a witness told Reuters news agency.CCTV footage from a nearby shop shows a large fireball engulfing several people standing on the street outside. US soldiers were evacuated by helicopter following the attack, according to local media. The US-led coalition announced it destroyed an Islamic State group "command and control facility" on Thursday in a mosque in Safafiyah, Syria."ISIS continues to violate Law of Armed Conflict and misuse protected structures like hospitals and mosques, which cause a facility to lose its protected status," said a US military statement, using another acronym for IS.Last month, Mr Trump announced that the US would begin pulling out all its 2,000 troops from Syria because IS had been "defeated".Opponents of the withdrawal stressed that although IS now control only 1% of the territory they overran five years ago, the group had not disappeared entirely.IS fighters have been driven out of almost all of eastern Syria. A recent US report said some 14,000 remaining IS militants in Syria and neighbouring Iraq were expected to use guerrilla tactics as they attempt to rebuild their network.US Vice-President Mike Pence said he and President Trump condemned the attack in Manbij but reiterated that the withdrawal plan would continue as the US had "crushed the [IS] caliphate and devastated its capabilities".

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces launched an operation on Thursday to clear the desert bordering Syria of Islamic State in a final push to rid Iraq of the militant group, the military said. Fighters stand behind an earth embankment near a military vehicles, on a desert near Syrian border, Iraq in this still image taken from a video obtained by Reuters on November 23, 2017. Hashid Shaabi/Handout via REUTERS TV Troops from the Iraqi army and mainly Shi’ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were taking part in the campaign against militants hiding in a large strip of border land, Iraqi military officials said. “The objective behind the operation is to prevent remaining Daesh groups from melting into the desert region and using it as a base for future attacks,” said army colonel Salah Kareem, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym. Islamic State fighters who ruled over millions of people in both Iraq and Syria since proclaiming their “caliphate” in 2014, have been largely defeated in both countries this year, pushed out of all population centers to empty desert near the border. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective, but he would declare final victory only after the militants were routed in the desert. [nL8N1NR57C] In the latest operation, Iraqi forces had “purified” 77 villages and exerted control over a bridge and an airport, operations commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said in a statement. Over 5,800 squared kilometers had been “purified,” he added. On Friday Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control. Iraqi army commanders say the military campaign will continue until all the frontier with Syria is secured to prevent Islamic State from launching cross border attacks. “We will completely secure the desert from all terrorist groups of Daesh and declare Iraq clean of those germs,” said army Brigadier General Shakir Kadhim. Army officials said troops advancing through sprawling desert towards the Syria border are facing landmines and roadside bombs placed by retreating militants. “We need to clean scattered villages from terrorists to make sure they no longer operate in the desert area with Syria,” said army Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Fairs. Iraqi military helicopters provided cover for the advancing troops and destroyed at least three vehicles used by militants as they were trying to flee a village in the western desert, said the army officer. Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate has swiftly collapsed since July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling battle that had lasted nine months. Driven also from its other main bastion in Syria’s Raqqa, Islamic State has since been gradually squeezed into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert straddling the Syria-Iraq frontier, pursued by a range of enemies that include most regional states and global powers. The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert which runs along the border of both countries. Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Nick Macfie, William Maclean and Peter GraffOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

A court in India has charged Tarun Tejpal, the former editor of Tehelka magazine, with raping a colleague.A trial court in Mapusa in the western state of Goa charged Mr Tejpal with rape, sexual harassment and wrongful restraint. He has pleaded not guilty. His unnamed accuser has alleged that he assaulted her at an event organised by Tehelka in Goa in November 2013.Legal experts say if found guilty, Mr Tejpal could be sentenced to at least seven years in jail.The case will be next heard on 21 November. India rape case editor freed on bail Tarun Tejpal: Powerful and pioneering journalist Indian editor questioned in sex case After Mr Tejpal was accused of rape, he was arrested and spent six months in jail until the Supreme Court granted him bail. The case prompted critics to accuse Tehelka magazine - one of India's top investigative titles, which has exposed gender inequality and officially-sanctioned misogyny - of hypocrisy and double standards.The case had particular resonance because it came amid a debate about attitudes to sexual violence in India after the brutal gangrape and murder of a woman in Delhi in December 2012.

In 2016, the F.B.I. sent an informant, a typical investigative step, to speak to two Trump campaign advisers after agents uncovered evidence that both had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign. When the role of the informant gained attention last year, the president seized on it to accuse law enforcement officials of illegally infiltrating his campaign.Mr. Comey is familiar with the issue. In March 2017, Mr. Trump accused the F.B.I. and Obama administration in a tweet of illegally wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign. The tweet angered Mr. Comey, who knew the claim was false and pushed the Justice Department to refute it. The Justice Department never released a statement, but Mr. Comey later said publicly that Mr. Trump’s claim had no merit.“If the attorney general has come to the belief that that should be called spying, wow,” Mr. Comey said at a cybersecurity conference outside San Francisco. “That’s going to require a whole lot of conversations inside the Department of Justice. But I don’t know what he meant.”Mr. Comey said that regardless of what the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, found during his investigation into Mr. Trump and his campaign, Mr. Barr already revealed, in his letter to Congress last month, that the investigation had uncovered important facts about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.“It tells us even without even reading the Mueller report that the Russia thing was not a hoax,” Mr. Comey said. “That it was real and that it is backed — that assessment is backed by hard evidence. It is true that the Russians came after us. They are going to come again because they exceeded their wildest hopes.”Despite Mr. Barr’s claims about spying, Mr. Comey said he would give Mr. Barr the benefit of the doubt that he would put following the facts and law above protecting the president.“Maybe the only thing I can say generally is I think his career has earned him a presumption that he will be one of the rare Trump cabinet members who will stand up for things like truth and facts and institutional values. So I still think he’s entitled to that presumption,” Mr. Comey said. “Language like this makes it harder, but I still think he’s entitled to that presumption and because I don’t understand what the heck he’s talking about, that’s all I can say.”

Once a powerhouse of job creation, India’s IT sector has slammed the brakes on hiring in recent months, even as newer industries like e-commerce and food technology increase recruitment.The $150 billion IT services industry is among the sectors most disinclined to hire between October 2017 and March 2018, according to a survey by recruitment firm TeamLease. “Paradigm shifts in business models of IT service businesses are upending talent acquisition and firms are hiring strictly on a need-basis,” the report said.But technological advancement is also changing the genre of jobs, replacing low-end and repetitive roles with complex and high-skill ones, according to Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and executive vice-president of TeamLease Services. “Say, if it’s eating away two jobs where the guys would earn Rs25,000, it’s creating one job where he will earn Rs50,000-60,000, compelling people to become more productive,” Chakraborty told Quartz. Best sectors for hiring Worst sectors for hiring 1. Financial services 1. IT 2. Knowledge process outsourcing 2. Educational services 3. Health & pharma 3. FMCG & durables 4. E-commerce and tech startups 4. BPO/ITeS 5. Power & energy 5. Travel & hospitality 6. Media & entertainment 6. Agrochemicals 7. Telecommunications 7. Manufacturing 8. Retail 8. Construction & real estate Till a couple of years ago, the IT sector was among India’s top job creators. Firms like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro recruited thousands every year. But automation reversed this trend.Infosys, for instance, logged a marked 65% decrease in hiring in 2016 over the previous year. TCS’s hiring in 2016 fell by more than 10,000 compared to the year before, and the firm is expected to downsize even further. Going forward, the company’s net employee intake will be even lower than the 79,000 it hired in 2016, TCS human resource head Ajoy Mukherjee told The Economic Times in April this year.Most other IT firms, too, are going slow on “mass hiring” as they shift to smaller teams handling more sophisticated operations and let robots take over jobs like server maintenance and data entry. However, demand remains high for niche skills like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and big data, Chakraborty said. And it is not just in IT. “Industry-agnostic” skills let people work anywhere, from banking, financial services & insurance to healthcare to education to retail, she explained.Meanwhile, new technology firms continue to hire big time. E-commerce companies and other tech startups are among the most optimistic, TeamLease said.“Having weathered demonetisation, and tackling enormous changes wrought by GST (goods and services tax), the e-commerce sector is managing to generate more consumer demand,” the report noted. “The demand for data analysts, machine learning/artificial intelligence experts, UX/UI (user experience/user interface) designers and similar niche profiles is propelling job creation.”

The continuing suffering of civilians living under siege in Syria has been brought into sharp focus by new images of a malnourished baby who later died of starvation in a suburb of Damascus controlled by the opposition. The images, released on Monday by the news agency AFP, show Sahar Dofdaa, a one-month-old baby weighing less than 2kg, with sunken eyes and her ribs protruding through translucent skin. The child was being treated for malnutrition by a doctor in the town of Hamouria, in the eastern Ghouta region. She died on Sunday. “The supplies are very low, and if it continues more kids will die,” said one aid official, who requested anonymity. Tens of thousands of civilians in Ghouta are living under a blockade imposed by forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. About 3.5 million people in Syria live in besieged or hard-to-reach areas, and the majority of those are in places militarily encircled by the Assad regime.Infighting by local rebel forces and the hoarding of food supplies by merchants have worsened an already dire crisis.Doctors and activists say food shortages are so severe that dozens of cases of malnutrition are being seen in local clinics and field hospitals. New mothers are unable to breastfeed their children because they themselves are undernourished, and products such as baby milk are almost non-existent. Mohamad Katoub, a doctor and official at the Syrian American Medical Society, which helps to run several hospitals in Ghouta, said there were currently 68 cases of severe malnutrition in hospitals in the region. The actual number was probably higher owing to difficulties in gathering data from all medical facilities in the war-torn area. He said deaths among these patients were usually a result of malnutrition weakening their immune systems, which then failed to ward off infections.Yahya Abu Yahya, a doctor in the region, told AFP that out of 9,700 children examined in recent months, 80 were suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition, 200 had moderate acute malnutrition and 4,000 had nutritional deficiencies. Sahar, the baby in the photographs, was unable to breastfeed because her mother did not have enough food to produce milk, AFP said. “Today eastern Ghouta is suffering from the worst kind of criminality,” said the activist Raed Srewel. “Thousands of children are in danger, and if there is no international movement or a UN initiative to resolve this, the consequences will be extremely dangerous and Ghouta will become a humanitarian catastrophe.” Eastern Ghouta is one of several “de-escalation” zones created under a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey to reduce the violence in Syria. But the government has continued to impose a siege on the area, giving rise to mounting concerns over the suffering of civilians. Aid officials say families have been forced to sell food supplements to buy more essential staples like sugar or bread, leading to cases of acute malnutrition. A kilogram of sugar now costs the equivalent of $15 (£11), one official said – a price far beyond the reach of civilians who have been living for years under brutal conditions. The government has limited the aid provided to those areas by international organisations and the UN, and recent bouts of infighting between rebels have made it more difficult to send aid. The shortage has given rise to a local black market controlled by unscrupulous merchants, which has worsened civilian suffering and made basic staples prohibitively expensive. Most families subsist on bread made of barley, olives and boiled plants. The siege of eastern Ghouta had long been porous, with smugglers evading or bribing the local fighters manning checkpoints. But an offensive this year that broke the rebels in many towns in rural Damascus allowed the government to tighten the blockade significantly. Violence continues in other parts of Syria, with Islamic State militants reportedly killing more than 80 people in the past two days over accusations that they collaborated with the Syrian government to undermine the terror group. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring organisation, said 83 people were killed by Isis in the town of Qaryatain in Homs province. The town fell to Isis in 2015 when militants conquered the nearby historic city of Palmyra; Isis reportedly destroyed a monastery and imprisoned many of Qaryatain’s Christian inhabitants. The town was later reclaimed by the government with the backing of Russian forces, but Isis recently launched a counter-offensive.The group is in retreat across Syria after losing its de facto capital, Raqqa, last week in a campaign by Kurdish forces backed by a US-led international coalition.

Jay Blahnik在想媒体介绍GymKit 新浪手机讯 11月16日上午消息，一家支持GymKit的健身馆今天在澳大利亚开业，作为苹果公司的Apple Watch和健身器材搭配的“样板间”，它让更多人了解苹果在健康方面的想法 ... GymKit它是苹果主导的健身器械智能化技术平台，也是Apple Watch变成健教练的一个未来环节：用户进入健身房，将Apple Watch碰一下健身器械，手表便可与健身房里的器械们同步数据

Donald Trump responded to North Korea’s sixth nuclear test by turning on one of Washington’s closest allies in the region, South Korea, blaming it on Seoul’s policy of “appeasement”.Pyongyang’s rhetoric and actions leading up to the test have been aimed at the US, however, and detonation of the most powerful nuclear device the regime has built so far reflects the failure of any remaining hope Trump might have had that his own bellicose rhetoric would work as a deterrent.Since the US president’s warning that “fire and fury” would befall North Korea if it continued to threaten the US, Kim Jong-un has unveiled a detailed plan to fire a salvo of missile at the US Pacific of Guam, conducted its most provocative ballistic missile test to date, flying it over Japan territory, and carried out its most ambitious nuclear test, of what it claims is a thermonuclear device. Initial estimates suggest it may have been a two-stage bomb perhaps ten times more powerful than the biggest of the earlier tests.Trump’s response in a series of Sunday morning tweets was to lash out at China, saying North Korea had become a “great threat and embarrassment” to Beijing, but more strikingly at the South Korean government of Moon Jae-in.“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Trump tweeted.Moon, who was elected in May, has cautioned against threatening a pre-emptive attack against North Korea and insisted that South Korea, which would almost certainly bear the brunt of a response, would have to be consulted before major military action.Former US officials and Korea experts said that one of the main aims of Pyongyang’s strategy is to drive a wedge between South Korea and its US protector. The principal strategic goal of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), two of which were tested in July, is to hold at risk the US mainland and therefore put in doubt a US response to any North Korean attack on the south.By distancing Washington from Seoul, they said, Trump was behaving as Kim Jong-un wanted. He had warned South Korea it would have to pay for using a US missile defence system (Thaad) and on the eve of the nuclear test, he was reported by the Washington Post to have been on the point of withdrawing from a five year old free trade agreement with Seoul.“Reassuring South Korea is a top priority,” Jon Wolfsthal, a former special assistant to Barack Obama on non-proliferation, said. “The Trump administration is failing this test. Threats about the Thaad bill and now the trade agreement are very damaging.”Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association said: “At a time when alliance unity, and coordination are essential, it is hard to overstate how damaging and stupid this is.”Trump’s actions on Korea have not been coordinated with the rest of his administration. His national security team were taken by surprise by his threat of “fire and fury like the world as never seen” against Pyongyang. His foreign policy advisors are reported to be trying hard to stop him withdrawing from the trade agreement with Seoul, a policy he is pursuing for domestic political reasons, having denounced US trade agreements as bad for American workers in the election campaign.While the president issued threats against North Korea, his secretaries of state and defence, Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, had attempted to pursue a more calibrated path, insisting that diplomacy was Washington’s main focus. Through much of August, Tillerson made clear that talks with Pyongyang were a possibility if it maintained a pause in missile and nuclear tests. The US military also scaled down its own military operations, temporarily stopping practice runs by its heavy B1-B bombers near North Korean territory. However, the US military leadership only acknowledged the pause after it was over, following North Korea’s missile test over Japan, raising a question about whether the US was properly handling its messaging policy to Pyongyang.“US North Korea policy is in tatters. The administration has not articulated clear goals, cabinet officials regularly issue statements that conflict with the president, and the administration has not appointed any of the necessary senior officials to handle the diplomatic morass,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior research scholar in the Paul Tsai China Centre at Yale Law School.“In this environment, the Trump administration must articulate and begin to implement a comprehensive North Korea strategy. No seasoned analyst believes the North will give up its weapons, but perhaps, over time, the US and its partners can get it to agree to some restrictions on its programs.”She said that any comprehensive strategy would include economic pressure, as well as military deterrence and containment in tandem with a strong emphasis on diplomacy and working with partner governments.“If the Trump administration has any desire to implement a comprehensive strategy the president must cease his unwarranted maligning of US treaty allies, and realize they are indispensable to the way forward,” Rapp-Hooper said. “One of North Korea’s goals in developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is to separate the US from its allies. The US president must not aid and abet Pyongyang.” Topics North Korea Donald Trump Trump administration US foreign policy US politics analysis

Donald Trump wanted to prosecute former election rival Hillary Clinton and ex-FBI director James Comey but was talked out of it, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.The US president told then White House counsel Don McGahn in the spring that he wanted to order the justice department to bring charges against the pair, the Times said, citing two unnamed people familiar with the conversation.McGahn wrote a memo to dissuade Trump, noting that the potential consequences for such an action could include impeachment, according to the report.The New York Times added that Trump has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Clinton and Comey.The Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith called the news “really another story about how weak Trump is”.“It’s not news that Trump wants DOJ to investigate or prosecute Clinton or Comey,” Goldsmith tweeted. “He’s long expressed that opinion on Twitter and elsewhere … The President has nearly complete formal authority over DOJ. But the remarkable lesson of the last 2 years is that Trump nonetheless has practically no effective authority to use these tools to harm his political enemies. When it comes to using DOJ, Trump is incompetent and weak.”“Jack’s got a point,” replied the Georgetown University law professor Marty Lederman, but Lederman noted that the president’s influence over justice department decisions “is informal, not formal – he can threaten removal, but doesn’t have the legal authority to direct prosecutions.“More importantly,” wrote Lederman, Trump’s influence presumably is now stronger, with [acting attorney general Matt] Whitaker in place.”Trump’s prosecution hopes emerged in the same week that it was revealed that Ivanka Trump had conducted official business over personal email. In any case it may be too late for the president to prosecute Clinton for the crimes she is accused of committing on Fox News.“Anything Hillary Clinton did as Secretary of State was more than five years ago,” tweeted the George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason. “The general federal statute of limitations is five years. Trump and Whitaker can’t prosecute Clinton now, even if they wanted to.”Trump provoked an outcry during a 2016 election debate by telling Clinton that, if he was in charge of the nation’s laws, “you’d be in jail”. After winning the election, he publicly backed away from such threats.He has accused Comey of illegally leaking classified information without offering evidence to support the claim. Comey is a witness against the president in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. Topics Donald Trump Hillary Clinton James Comey Trump administration US politics news

The Narendra Modi government may finally be coming to terms with the worrying state of India’s economy.The world’s fastest-growing large economy till recently, India’s GDP growth has taken a hit over the past few quarters. From cruising at nearly 9% in financial year 2016, it fell to a three-year low of 5.7% during the April-June quarter of FY2018. Jobs have seen a steady decline even as industrial production slipped. Private spending, both of consumers and companies, has also slowed down.While the government and its key representatives had been defensive about the emerging scenario till now, there now seems to be a change.On Sept. 20, India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, indicated that the economy will be given a booster shot, a grudging acknowledgement of what many have been pointing out for a while now: there is a slide.“We have noted all the economic indicators,” Jaitley said on Sept. 20. He said, “The government will take additional measures in the coming days after consulting PM (prime minister Narendra Modi).”With national elections due in less than two years, it is no surprise that the government has swung into action now. In 2014, Modi promised to turn around the then ailing Indian economy. However, many of the reforms undertaken by his government are yet to show results.In November 2016, India declared two high-value notes—Rs500 and Rs 1,000, which constituted 86% of the total money in circulation by value—illegal tenders. This led to a severe cash crunch, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. While it was presented as an initiative to fix the menace of unaccounted wealth in the country, India’s central bank later said that 99% of the banned notes had returned, considerably diluting the very purpose of the drastic move.Then, even before the economy could recover from the demonetisation shock, the government introduced the goods and service tax (GST), independent India’s biggest tax reform, which replaced a bevy of taxes with a far more uniform system. However, that too seems to have caused severe problems.“What we need right now is more government spending,” Rajrishi Singhal, an independent consultant, said. “Private spending has dried up as banks have been battling stressed loans and companies are over-leveraged. Private spending, too, has been hit by demonetisation. In all this, the only way out is for the government to start spending more. The question now is, how are they going to do it.”Singhal reckons that numerous public sector units are sitting on piles of cash, and the government must ensure that they spend and kick-start economic growth. “Many of the economists in the current government believe that the fiscal deficit is sacrosanct, and that the government shouldn’t widen it. Then there is the constant worry of rating agencies downgrading. But, if you don’t spend now, it can be counter-productive.”

Apple will report its fiscal fourth quarter earnings Thursday after the bell, and the numbers may well show depressed iPhone sales and lots of apprehension about supply and demand for the new iPhone X, which will go on sale this Friday.The company’s fourth quarter, which covers July, August, and September, typically starts an upswing in seasonal results after a drowsy Q2 and Q3, culminating in a big Q1 over the holiday season.Thomson Reuters analysts expect Apple to announce $50.79 billion in revenues for the quarter. A month ago Apple forecast between $49 billion and $52 billion. Apple reported Q4 revenues of $46.85 last year.The fourth quarter is also when the numbers start to show sales of the new phones Apple announces in September. This year, the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X were all announced September 12. So the Q4 results will capture some initial figures on the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which started shipping September 22. Keep in mind, though, those may have been depressed by people waiting to buy the fancier iPhone X, or at least read the reviews before finalizing a buying decision.Analysts polled by Estimize.com believe the company sold 48.16 million iPhones in the September-ending quarter. Analyst Neil Cybart believes that number includes sales of about 12 million iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus units in the last part of September. “…There is evidence of customer demand for iPhone 8/8 Plus being down by about 30% year-over-year in comparison to the iPhone 7/7 Plus launch in 2016,” Cybart wrote in a recent brief.Holiday Sales Will Tell The TaleApple derives two-thirds of its revenue, give or take, from iPhone sales, so its new phone releases–and consumers’ reaction to them around the world–are of supreme importance at earnings time. We’ll know a lot more about Apple’s performance when it reports earnings for its holiday quarter, the first full quarter when both the iPhone 8 models and the iPhone X will be on sale.The most interesting part of the earnings report Thursday will be Apple’s forecast for sales of the phones. Sales of the iPhone X might be seriously constrained by supply shortfalls owing to problems with the new facial recognition technology, numerous reports have said and our sources have confirmed. But how constrained the supply will be, nobody knows yet.“Production problems might lead to weaker numbers for the next two quarters,” writes Investing.com senior market analyst Clement Thibault in a research note.“We would accept an all-time high valuation on the stock if the iPhone X rollout were going smoothly,” Thibault writes. “Right now, the availability of the flagship is limited, and the holiday season is almost here.”Some of the analysts we’ve spoken with say the iPhone X supply constraints could last up to six months. Apple’s site is currently reporting a 5-6 week lead time for new orders.Looking To ChinaApple’s critical Chinese market has yielded disappointing results in recent quarters, and the problems may continue, if in a different form.On the bright side, a recent Canalys report said Apple shipped 11 million iPhones in China in the September-ending quarter, representing a 40% uptick from the year-earlier quarter. iPhone sales in China had dropped by half since 2016.And early reports say that Chinese consumers are very excited to buy the new iPhone X, but the supply problems will affect the Chinese market like everywhere else. This could create some bad feeling in a burgeoning market where Apple still has a lot of growing to do and needs to win hearts and minds.Services Are GoIt’s very possible that Apple’s phone business is simply maturing. The dramatic sales jumps of the past (see: iPhone 6) may not be so dramatic in the future. Apple may continue to expand its selection of iPhones, taking some of the spotlight off individual models. And as the global market for smartphones softens, the iPhone business may one day no longer be large enough to contribute its current share of Apple revenue.Enter Apple’s growing services business, which is more constant, and which relies not on new device sales but rather utilizes iDevices already in use. Apple can sell services through platforms such as the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, Apple Pay, and iCloud to users all year long (with no sales seasonality), and can continue to coax users to buy more.In 2016, when services revenues were about $7 billion, Apple said it wanted to double the business by 2020. Most analysts expect the company to have made progress down that path in Q4. The company will likely announce year-over-year growth of around 20% for Services.iPad HopesFor the first time in eons, Apple’s iPad business got good news last quarter when sales for the tablet jumped up 15% from the year-earlier quarter. It was the first time sales of the device increased since the holiday quarter of 2013.Some of those increased sales are due to Apple’s March introduction of the $329 9.7-inch iPad, a model with a price tag low enough to compete with Chromebooks for educational usage. And this quarter’s results may see some juice from back-to-school sales of the device.Beyond that, Apple has been pushing very hard to increase sales of iDevices into businesses. It’s done this through partnerships with big IT providers such as SAP and IBM, as well as programs to foster the creation of business apps that look more like consumer apps and run well on iPads and iPhones. It’s also built new features into iOS to appeal to the business crowd, such as multitasking and drag-and-drop gestures. If the iPad continues its momentum from last quarter, corporate sales could be a factor.Fast Company will have news and analysis of both the Apple earnings report and the executive call with investors tomorrow after the bell.

When it comes to tobacco control, India needs all the help it can get.Since 2005, the government has stepped up efforts to raise awareness about the health risks of smoking. Among other initiatives, it has restricted the advertising of products and used gory images on cigarette packages to discourage buyers. As a result, tobacco-use prevalence has declined from 34.6% of the population in 2009-10 to 28.6% in 2016-17, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (pdf) shows.The experience of the US, then, could offer some lessons to India.In 1964, over 40% of Americans were smokers. Fifty years on, thanks to various initiatives, that number has declined to just over 15%, according to a case study by The Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based non-profit. This has saved the lives of over 8 million Americans, it says.This is particularly relevant to India, where big tobacco firms such as Philip Morris have spotted an opportunity to expand their business, recycling the promotional strategies once used in the US, as reported by Reuters.So here’s what India can do:The very first step in the US was to establish the health risks of tobacco by funding hundreds of research studies, the case study says. Even as tobacco companies spent millions of dollars to combat the bad press, the combined efforts of medical researchers, non-profits like the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association, and non-smoker rights groups promoted public awareness of the deadly effects of cigarettes and second-hand smoke.“In 1964, US surgeon-general Luther Terry, a smoker himself, issued a damning report linking smoking to cancer, which finally started to cut through the false advertising,” the case study says. “The percentage of Americans who believed that smoking caused cancer jumped from 44% to 78% between 1958 and 1968…Adult smoking rates began to slowly decline as many tried to stop on their own.”In India, the government and various non-profits have for years worked at raising awareness. For instance, as part of movie shows, cinema halls across the country screen videos about the ill-effects of tobacco use. The local media, too, has highlighted important research findings. These efforts may be paying off as, by 2016-17, some 55% of Indian smokers and 50% of smokeless tobacco users were planning to quit (pdf).Nevertheless, a more widespread approach is needed in India as the largest segment of its tobacco users (around 199 million people) lives in rural areas, smoking beedis or relying on smokeless tobacco.Another key element of the US anti-smoking strategy was to use regular surveys to identify smokers and better target them through campaigns. This was particularly effective in the 1990s, the study says, when teen smoking rates in the US surged because of price cuts and special marketing strategies used by tobacco companies. Since 2000, the charitable organisation American Legacy Foundation, now called the Truth Initiative, has spent over $2 billion on an anti-smoking campaign specifically targeted at teenagers.“(The initiative’s) marketing is credited as a major factor in teen smoking rates falling from 36.4% in 1997 to 15.7% in 2013,” the study explains.Much of America’s success was due to the sustained use of a variety of approaches—from taxes and regulations to litigation and targeted marketing.In India, it is a little different. Even as successive governments have implemented different strategies (pdf), including banning smoking in public places, mandating health warnings covering 85% of cigarette packages, and heavy taxing, the efforts have mostly ignored the real cause of the crisis: the large and unorganised beedi industry, with its significant political connections. While taxes on cigarettes have risen over 1,066% over the past two decades, beedis, or hand-rolled cigarettes, remain affordable and hugely profitable, even though the people who roll them are among India’s worst-paid workers, and vulnerable to respiratory infections.Ultimately, it’s going to take a more expansive approach to address India’s smoking problem. And like in the US, it will require millions of dollars.

The latest reason for Colin Kaepernick’s absence from the NFL is apparently not down to his throwing accuracy, his wage demands or his protest against injustice in the United States. Instead, Ray Lewis claims a “racist” tweet sent by his girlfriend Nessa Diab stopped the Baltimore Ravens from signing the quarterback.Kaepernick attracted huge amount of publicity last season when he refused to stand for the national anthem – which many say has led to his failure to find a new team. The Ravens were said to have been close to signing Kaepernick, but Lewis, the team’s most famous former player, said Diab’s tweet ended that conversation.“We were going to close the deal to sign him,” Lewis told Showtime’s Inside the NFL on Tuesday night. “[Ravens owner] Steve Bisciotti said: ‘I want to hear Colin Kaepernick speak to let me know that he wants to play football.’ And it never happened because that picture comes up the next day.”The tweet, from 2 August, compared Lewis and Biscotti to Samuel L Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters in Django Unchained. In the film, Jackson plays a loyal slave to DiCaprio’s racist plantation owner. Diab’s tweet was addressed to Lewis and has not been deleted. It was retweeted more than 4,000 times.Diab, a radio and TV host, is said to have influenced Kaepernick’s stance on social issues. ESPN’s Dianna Russini said John Harbaugh, the Ravens head coach, and general manager Ozzy Newsome were keen on recruiting Kaepernick as a backup to their starting quarterback Joe Flacco, but Bisciotti has blocked the move.Lewis said: “[Diab] goes out and put out this racist gesture and doesn’t know we are in the back office about to try to get this guy signed. Steve Bisciotti has said it himself: ‘How can you crucify Ray Lewis when Ray Lewis is the one calling for Colin Kaepernick?’”Kaepernick said he will stand for the anthem this season if he is picked up by a team. He has received support from his fellow quarterbacks: both Aaron Rodgers and Cam Newton believe Kaepernick should be back in the NFL. Rodgers believes the absence is because of his fellow quarterback’s protest. Topics Colin Kaepernick NFL US sports Baltimore Ravens news

BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Saturday demanded a 30-day truce across Syria as rescuers in the country’s eastern Ghouta region said bombing had not let up long enough for them to count bodies during one of the bloodiest air assaults of the seven-year war. Shortly after the unanimous vote by the 15-member council, warplanes struck a town in eastern Ghouta, the last rebel enclave near Syria’s capital, an emergency service and a war monitoring group said. Warplanes have pounded the region for seven straight days while residents holed up in basements. U.N. chief Antonio Guterres appealed on Wednesday for an immediate end to “war activities” in eastern Ghouta, where nearly 400,000 people have lived under government siege since 2013, without enough food or medicine. While Syrian ally Russia supported the adoption of the U.N. resolution, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia cast doubt on its feasibility. Previous ceasefire deals on the ground have had a poor record of ending fighting in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s military has gained the upper hand. “What is necessary is for the demands of the Security Council to be underpinned by concrete on the ground agreements,” Nebenzia told the council after the vote. He later told reporters it was unrealistic to expect an immediate ceasefire and that the parties had to be encouraged to work for it. After several days of delay and last-minute negotiations to win the support of Russia, the council adopted the resolution - drafted by Sweden and Kuwait - demanding hostilities cease for 30-days “without delay” to allow aid access and medical evacuations. “We accept that it might take a number of hours before it can all be fully implemented ... we just have to keep the pressure up, implementation is key now,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom told Reuters. Russia did not want to specify when a truce would start, so a proposal for the truce to begin 72 hours after adoption was watered-down to demand it start “without delay.” Further talks on Saturday added a demand for all parties to “engage immediately to ensure full and comprehensive implementation.” “As they dragged out the negotiation, the bombs from Assad’s fighter jets continued to fall. In the three days it took us to adopt this resolution, how many mothers lost their kids to the bombing and shelling?” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council. Related CoverageRebels in Syria's eastern Ghouta welcome U.N. ceasefire resolutionSyrian Observatory says strikes hit Ghouta after U.N. vote“We are deeply skeptical that the (Syrian) regime will comply,” Haley said. A surge of rocket fire, shelling and air strikes has killed more than 500 people since Sunday night, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The dead included more than 120 children. The monitor said raids hit Douma, Zamalka and other towns there on Saturday, killing 40 people. After the U.N. vote the two dominant rebel factions in Ghouta - Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam - both committed to implement the truce and facilitate aid access, but also reiterated their right to respond to any attacks on them. Medical charities have decried attacks on a dozen hospitals. The Syrian government and Russia say they only target militants. Moscow and Damascus have said they seek to stop mortar attacks injuring dozens in the capital, and have accused insurgents in Ghouta of holding people as human shields. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military. “We’re combating terrorism on our territories,” Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari told the Security Council. “Our government will reserve the right to respond as it deems appropriate in case those terrorist arms groups are targeting civilians in any part of Syria with even one single missile.” Ja’afari said his government interpreted the resolution as also applying to “Turkish forces in Afrin, and the operations of the anti-ISIL (Islamic State) coalition in Syria ... Israeli forces in Syria, especially the occupied Syrian Golan.” People inspect missile remains in the besieged town of Douma, in eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria, February 23, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam KhabiehThe truce demanded by the Security Council does not cover militants from Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and the Nusra Front. First responders searched for survivors after strikes on Kafr Batna, Douma and Harasta, the Civil Defence in eastern Ghouta said on Saturday. The rescue service, which operates in rebel territory, said it had documented at least 350 deaths in four days earlier this week. “Maybe there are many more,” said Siraj Mahmoud, a civil defence spokesman in the suburbs. “We weren’t able to count the martyrs yesterday because the warplanes are touring the skies.” As the bombs rain down, workers have struggled to pull people from the rubble, Mahmoud said. “But if we have to go out running on our legs and dig with our hands to rescue the people, we will still be here.” A witness in Douma said he woke up in the early hours on Saturday to the sound of a squadron of jets bombing nearby. The streets have mostly remained empty. The local opposition council said it was setting up emergency volunteer teams in several districts to reinforce shelters with sandbags and try to link them through tunnels. Several previous ceasefire attempts have quickly unraveled during the multi-sided conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands and forced 11 million people out of their homes. Syrian state media said Ghouta factions fired mortars at districts of Damascus on Saturday, including near a school. Insurgent shelling wounded six people, it said, and the army heavily pounded militant targets in response. The Ghouta pocket has become the war’s latest flashpoint, after a string of rebel defeats and negotiated withdrawals. With Russian jets and Iran-backed militias, Assad’s military has restored state rule over the main cities across western Syria. Slideshow (6 Images)Insurgents in eastern Ghouta have vowed not to accept such a fate, ruling out the kind of evacuation that ended rebellion in Aleppo and Homs after bitter sieges. Russia has blamed Nusra fighters, from al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, for provoking the situation in Ghouta. The two main Islamist factions there in turn accuse their enemies of using the presence of a few hundred jihadist fighters as a pretext for attacks. Reporting by Ellen Francis, Dahlia Nehme and Michelle Nichols; Editing by William Maclean, Daniel Wallis and Chris ReeseOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The US government has announced significant cuts in its United Nations budget obligations for 2018-19 in what will be interpreted as a further ratcheting up of pressure from the Trump administration looking to bend decision-making at the international body to its will.In a statement released over the holiday, the US mission to the United Nations said next year’s budget would be slashed by over $285m and unspecified reductions would also be made to the UN’s management and support functions. The announcement did not make clear the entire amount of the budget or specify what effect the cut would have on the US contribution. “We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of,” the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said, adding that the “inefficiency and overspending” of the organization was well-known.Under the UN charter, the US is responsible for 22% of the the body’s annual operating budget, or around $1.2bn in 2017-18, and 28.5% of the cost of peacekeeping operations, estimated at $6.8bn over the same period. In her statement, Haley said she was pleased with the results of budget negotiations, and the US mission would continue to “look at ways to increase the UN’s efficiency while protecting our interests”.But the timing of the announcement sends a clear message. On Thursday, the general assembly voted 128-9 in favor of a resolution condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. After the vote, Haley reminded the assembly that the US was “by far the single largest contributor to the UN” and would remember the vote “when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations, and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit”.Before the vote, the US president, Donald Trump said at a cabinet meeting: “Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars ... We’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”On Sunday, Guatemala became the first country to follow the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem. Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales made the announcement via Facebook. Topics United Nations Donald Trump news

A change of the old order in Hollywood is long overdue, according to Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning film-maker behind the hit films Crash and Million Dollar Baby.The Canadian screenwriter and director said many of the established rules of big-budget showbusiness should be re-examined in the light of falling box-office receipts and the recent scandalous claims and revelations about the enduring influence of the casting couch.“Los Angeles is a town run by a group of powerful corporations, the studios, and they inevitably want to make what they know they can sell. This means they often lag a few years behind creatively,” he said this weekend.A reliance on sci-fi and youth franchise reboots is not enough, he added. “I love comic-book movies, but do we want a diet of only that? It is about money, of course. The studios have to make more than they did last year, so we have Fast and Furious number whatever.”Haggis, who wrote the screenplay for Casino Royale (2006), as well as Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, and whose exposé of gritty Los Angeles life in Crash earned him international plaudits in 2005, said a desire to make grown-up films had led him to leave Hollywood. The insular nature of Los Angeles both concealed bad behaviour like Harvey Weinstein’s and inhibited creative risk-taking.“LA is pretty much a one-industry town and conversations become quite circular. In New York I talk instead to neuroscientists, bakers and restaurateurs,” he said.The film-maker hit the headlines seven years ago when he cut ties with the Church of Scientology, a powerful force in Hollywood, and began to speak out against them after 35 years inside the movement. He appeared in the Emmy-winning documentary Going Clear in 2015, revealing the disappointment he felt once he had seen through the mystical hierarchy of the church.Now Haggis, 64, who is working on a documentary about the early days of the Aids epidemic in San Francisco, said he enjoys greater artistic contact with the outside world, including at international film festivals. “I look forward to the cross-pollination and the fact that film-makers in New York and Europe have a completely different approach,” he said. Next weekend he will receive the inaugural Vision Award in recognition of his career at the Evolution Mallorca film festival .“People have been hoping for a new trend of more serious American film-making for a while,” Haggis said. “I remember when I was Oscar-nominated for Crash in 2006, the other contenders were all serious films, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich, so I thought Hollywood had turned a corner. But people told me, rightly, that it was just an anomaly.”It was a hunger for films with greater depth that established the success of Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s Miramax and then The Weinstein Company.“It is really hard for their innocent employees in New York, who worked hard and may well lose their jobs, but a lot of people are compromised by Harvey’s alleged actions,” said Haggis. “Although everyone thinks it is vile behaviour, you have got to focus on those who may have colluded and protected him. For me, they are as guilty as he is and in some cases more so, if I can say that. I mean, he was a predator and a predator is a predator. But what about those who would rather look the other way?”Haggis does not think sexual harassment and abuse are endemic in Hollywood, but admitted it is a “fairly sexist” town. “It is not an innocent place and never has been. Most of this behaviour has been aimed at women, but I am sure that former child stars such as Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, who have both made allegations in the past that no one took seriously, are worth considering, too.“Were people covering for paedophiles, too? We have to think that may have happened as well, because no one speaks out about being abused just to benefit their career. I find it particularly terrible that people had their dreams held to ransom in that way.”Hollywood, Haggis believes, always invites newcomers to sell their souls. “People make compromises, but you don’t have to. I did sometimes, of course, especially in my early TV days. But then I made a conscious decision: if it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell.“I hawked the screenplay for Crash around the studios for the longest time. They all turned it down. But I felt I couldn’t keep selling little pieces of my soul, and now I have earned the right to the final edit on the films I direct. Sometimes people won’t work with me because of that, but there you are. How many academy awards have they won?”This December, London will host a fundraising event for Haggis’s charity, Artists for Peace and Justice, which since he founded it in 2009 has raised millions of pounds to fund education in Haiti. “We can’t solve poverty there, or anywhere else, but at least we are giving them the right start so that they can come up with their own solutions,” he said. Topics Film industry The Observer Los Angeles Rape and sexual assault Harvey Weinstein interviews

NEW DELHI—India raised tariffs on some imports in an effort to bolster the weak rupee and tackle its widening current-account deficit.The rates, which took effect Thursday, have been raised by as much as 10 percentage points on 19 categories of imports which the government considers nonessential, such as air-conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines and jewelry.The...

The chaos that marked Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a hallmark of his presidency. Decorum once associated with the Oval Office has been replaced by “modern presidential”, an amalgam of tantrums, tirades, and tweetstorms, all emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or Trump-owned properties. This break with the past is every bit as much about substance as it is style.Trump’s legal brush-back pitch hurled at the author Michael Wolff, his firing of FBI director James Comey and his taunts of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s dictator, are not simply poses. They graphically reflect Trump’s understanding of his powers and the deference to which he believes his decisions and person are entitled.David Frum’s Trumpocracy is an attempt by the former speechwriter for George W Bush – author of the term “axis of evil” – and never-Trump Republican to come to grips with this. He laments what he views as “the corruption of the American Republic” and painstakingly catalogs the threats he sees posed by Trump to America, liberal democracy and Europe.Frum is disturbed by Trump’s nepotism and tropism toward kleptocracy, citing a legal ruling obtained by Trump that the White House was outside the scope of federal anti-nepotism laws. More broadly, Frum is alarmed by Trump “disabling” the “federal government’s inhibition against corruption” and his disdain for the notion that the law should be insulated from politics. To prove his point, Frum cites Trump’s expectation of personal loyalty from federal prosecutors and his public comments that the FBI director “really reports to the president”.Frum is not sanguine about a return to old norms in a post-Trump America. He observes that “it took a lot of work by a lot of people over a long time to build even America’s highly imperfect standards of public integrity”. Like Rome, which was sacked in an afternoon, Frum adds, “undoing that work would be a far easier task”.At the same time, Frum confronts the disconnect between white working class voters and America’s elites, and acknowledges that while it was Trump who lit the fuse, the powder that exploded on election night 2016 was all around: “Donald Trump did not create the vulnerabilities that he exploited. They awaited him.”Frum rattles off the systemic stresses generated by globalization and immigration that led to Trump’s electoral college win. In that vein, Frum had already been skeptical about the benefits of immigration. As he writes here, “population is citizenry as well as a labor force … and when it grows slowly, it can less easily assimilate newcomers.”Frum is mindful that the terms “Trump-voter” and Republican are not synonymous. To illustrate this point, he dissects in granular detail how Pennsylvanians reelected Pat Toomey, their incumbent Republican senator, while casting their lot for Trump, then diagrams the Toomey and Trump electoral coalitions. Although their voters overlapped, they were not identical. Class fissures were prevalent.Yet it is over the very issues of class and the country’s red-blue divide that Frum appears to miss part of the picture. It’s not only about jobs, income, opioids or even race. It is also about the impact of America’s 21st-century wars, and who has done the actual fighting and dying.The fact is that red state residents are over 20% more likely to join the military, while the denizens of blue America punch way above their weight when it comes to college. Even as Hillary Clinton won 2.86 million more votes, Trump won 60% of veterans.Ironically, the George W Bush administration helped set the stage for Trump. There was a notable correlation between battlefield casualties and support for Trump. Those parts of the US that felt the carnage more as a reality than as an abstract swung Republican. According to Douglas L Kriner of Boston University and Francis X Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could very well have been winners for Clinton if their war casualties were lower.”Frum’s book is a victim of timing, buffeted by the release of Wolff’s Fire and Fury and the passage of the tax bill. In addition to lambasting Trump for his authoritarian tendencies, Frum takes the president to task for a lack of accomplishments, for delivering “very little by way of an affirmative conservative agenda”.Actually, since the book was put to bed, a lot has changed. Heading into 2018, the tax code has since been upended, Obamacare’s individual mandate is gone and the US recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. While the desirability of any of this is clearly subject to debate, each development is tangible and potentially lasting.The author is on stronger ground when he examines Russia’s role on the global stage, the 2016 election and the intellectual moorings of Trumpism. Frum critically quotes a 2014 speech in which Steve Bannon offered more than a mere dollop of praise for Vladimir Putin, and for that period in American history where “freedoms” were “controlled at the local level”. As a coda, Bannon also described a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”. And we know how that ended.Frum is less than optimistic as he looks at the US, Europe and the future. Trumpocracy also struggles with how to actually connect with white working class voters, who may have comprised as much as 45% of 2016’s electorate and who are now the heart and soul of the Republican base. As the scholar Barrington Moore Jr. said more than a half-century ago, “No bourgeoisie, no democracy.” How all this plays out in the years ahead remains the open question. Frum, for one, is fearful, and understandably so. Topics Donald Trump Trump administration US politics Republicans Politics books Michael Wolff reviews