Nothing animates the Hong Kongers I’ve been talking with as much as that final demand. Yesterday, the police shot one protester in the stomach at point-blank range, and another police officer drove into the protesters with his motorcycle, weaving into the crowd to circle back again. Later in the day, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, gave a press conference and, in chilling language, called the protesters the “enemy of the people.” She was voted into office by 777 people from the 1,200-person “Election Committee,” many of whose members are businesspeople with close ties to mainland China. It’s fair to describe her as handpicked by Beijing. Polls in October showed her popularity around 22 percent, with just over one in 10 Hong Kongers saying that they would vote for her voluntarily. No wonder the protesters want the right to elect their own leaders.It’s not that the protests haven’t taken a toll on the protesters. Many are tired. Some surveys suggest that more than 80 percent of the people of Hong Kong may have been exposed to tear gas—an astonishing figure. Some neighborhoods close to protest sites have been so repeatedly drowned in the noxious clouds that the protesters held a rally on behalf of their pets. “I can’t put a mask on my dog,” one resident tearfully explained to me, as others distributed posters of puppies and kittens in protest gear: wearing helmets and masks, and holding bottles of Pocari Sweat, the electrolyte mixture that has become the unofficial drink of the protests. (Electrolyte drinks are great if you are walking long distances in humid weather, as so many in Hong Kong do almost every weekend.)Almost every protest results in videos of protesters being beaten by the police. Many are live-streamed, to horrified viewers. Thousands have been arrested. Fearful accounts are coming out of the police stations, alleging torture, sexual assault, and rape. On Telegram, many protesters claim that some recent suicides are actually murders by the police that have been disguised as suicides. (It’s not clear whether these claims are anything more than just rumors, misinformation, or a tendency to believe the worst.) When being arrested, it is not unusual for protesters to shout their name, in the hopes of lawyers and family being able to reach them, and some yell that they are in no way suicidal. If they aren’t heard from again, they want to make sure it’s clear who’s to blame.I often ask protesters whether they fear the consequences of showing up to these protests. Many of my interviews are interrupted: by tear gas and pepper spray, by police lines marching toward us, by the water-cannon truck. The seasoned protesters are less and less afraid of the tear gas. Some wear tear-gas masks, but risk a year in jail just for that, or even a riot charge, which carries a potential 10-year sentence. Some wear flimsy surgical masks, which may help conceal their identity, but don’t do anything for the burning sensation in their eyes, throat, and lungs. They cough, they run, they wash their eyes with saline or water, and they go on. They do, however, fear being kidnapped or killed.

Trump ally Lindsey Graham has promised a Senate investigation into claims senior justice department officials discussed invoking the 25th amendment and removing the president from power.“There’s an allegation by the acting FBI director at the time that the deputy attorney general was basically trying to do an administrative coup,” the South Carolina senator, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, told CBS Face the Nation.“[To] take the president down to the 25th amendment process. The deputy attorney general denies it. I promise your viewers the following, that we will have a hearing about who’s telling the truth.”The deputy attorney general is Rod Rosenstein, who wrote the memo justifying Comey’s firing, which said it was due to his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.In his book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, McCabe says Trump ordered Rosenstein to produce the memo, a claim the White House has denied.Shortly after the Comey firing, Trump told NBC he had acted because of “this Russia thing”, meaning Comey’s involvement in the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump aides and Moscow.The 25th amendment to the constitution provides for the removal of a president deemed incapable of discharging his duties. It has never been used. Fox News reported on Saturday that James Baker, formerly a senior FBI lawyer, testified to two House committees last year that he was told Rosenstein said he had found two cabinet members who would support such an effort.The full McCabe interview was scheduled to air on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. The reporter who conducted it, Scott Pelley, said on Thursday McCabe also says Rosenstein offered to wear a wire to record incriminating conversations with Trump.Rosenstein has denied discussing the 25th amendment or offering to wear a wire.McCabe’s book is out on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained an early copy, in which McCabe does not mention the discussions about the 25th amendment or, directly, any offer from Rosenstein to wear a wire.Graham was a fierce rival of Trump during the 2016 Republican primary but has become one of the president’s closest allies in power.“I think everybody in the country needs to know if it happened,” he said. “It’s stunning to me that one of the chief law enforcement officers of the land – the acting head of the FBI – would go on national television and say, ‘Oh by the way I remember a conversation with the deputy attorney general about trying to find if we could replace the president under the 25th amendment.“[McCabe] went on national television and he made an accusation that floors me … we’re going to find out what happened here and the only way I know to find out is to call the people in under oath and find out, through questioning, who’s telling the truth because the underlying accusation is beyond stunning.”Asked if he would subpoena McCabe and Rosenstein to appear, Graham said: “How can I not, if that’s what it takes?“I mean, you’re doing your job. The first amendment allows you to ask questions of the most powerful people in the country. I know he’s selling a book, and we need to take with a grain of salt maybe what Mr McCabe is telling us. But he went on national television and he made an accusation that floors me.“…Well we’re going to find out what happened here and the only way I know to find out is to call the people in under oath and find out, through questioning, who’s telling the truth because the underlying accusation is beyond stunning.”In the House, Democrats who took over committee chairs after the midterm elections are also planning investigations. On Saturday Adam Schiff, the chair of the intelligence panel, and Elliott Engel of foreign affairs told Politico they were working out the best way to obtain notes taken in private meetings between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.In such an atmosphere of bitter partisan rancour and startling claims of scandal, special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be close to concluding his investigation of Russian election interference, links between Trump aides and Moscow and potential obstruction of justice by the president.Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Schiff said he wanted to find out “whether the president is somehow compromised, if there is leverage the Russians could use over the president and if the Russians are in a position to expose wrongdoing by the president or his campaign that’s compromising”.In April last year, the inspector general of the justice department faulted McCabe for misleading investigators regarding unauthorised leaks to the media.Schiff was asked if he thought McCabe should be charged for allegedly lying to investigators, as a number of former Trump aides have been. The former FBI official “should be held to the same standard as anyone else that the justice department has looked at”, he said. Topics Donald Trump Trump administration FBI Trump-Russia investigation US Senate US Congress Republicans news

The writing was full of one-liners meant to have some bite, but each lacked teeth. “I don’t just kiss and tell,” says Ambassador Bill Taylor (special guest Jon Hamm). “I kiss and tell and I take notes.” Later, he proves that point by sharing a steamy moment with “telenovela sensation” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Melissa Villaseñor) who says, “Here’s a Red New Deal: It’s my lips.”The sketch drew parallels between the hearings and the hackneyed plot points that have long kept soap operas spinning. There was Ocasio-Cortez and Taylor’s strange kiss, but also Ambassador Gordon Sondland (Kyle Mooney) claiming to have amnesia to explain why he added new information about an alleged quid pro quo in Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian government. There was Rudy Giuliani (Kate McKinnon), wearing an eyepatch so that Yovanovitch mistook him for an evil twin brother, and, confusingly, recently suspended Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett (Kenan Thompson) showing up because Trump had pardoned him for using his helmet as a weapon. The sketch tried tying together the unrelenting news cycle (including the fact that Days of Our Lives will go on hiatus at the end of this month after its cast and crew were let out of their contracts) with tired soap-opera arcs.Not only did “Days of Our Impeachment” lean into the spectacle of the hearings, but it also highlighted how concurrent revelations about Trump’s boorish behavior have failed to elicit any lasting consequences for the president. Pete Davidson returned as lawyer Michael Avenatti (after playing him last season during a flatlined cold open about white-collar criminals), and tried to testify that Trump had had an affair with a porn star. That’s the bigger problem the sketch tries to diagnose: In addition to—or partly because of—people’s apparent inability to pay attention, nothing sticks to Trump. “Yeah, bud, we know,” says Strong as Yovanovitch. “No one seems to care.” Elsewhere in the episode, Harry Styles became the latest star to pull double duty as host and musical guest. Last night marked his first time leading the show, and he did the job dutifully, with turns as an eager British intern offering to pick up lunch at Popeyes, a supporting player to aging child star “Baby Faye,” and a threesome-obsessed social-media coordinator working at the wholesome consumer-goods brand Sara Lee. Styles’s standout moment came in “Joan,” a Millennial-pink-soaked ode to pet ownership. Aidy Bryant played the titular character who confesses her love for her dog, Doug. When Doug suddenly becomes human for an hour, Styles leans into the absurdity of the sketch by declaring his love for Joan in between eating from her garbage can and admitting to his deep-seated fear of vacuums.When Styles served as the musical guest in 2017 (to host Jimmy Fallon), he did an eerily spot-on impression of Mick Jagger and played a captured southern Civil War soldier who knows how to write a sick bridge. Last night’s episode allowed him to expand on those comedic instincts, and Styles gamely committed to each character. His strong presence solidified an otherwise sloppy start to the episode in a season in which SNL hasn’t yet lived up to the political punch of its past. But in an era when the 24-hour news cycle can hardly keep up with the onslaught of headlines, perhaps asking for the focus necessary to satirize the severity of the moment is too much. Amanda Wicksis a writer based in Brooklyn.

Even though American troops have in the past few weeks retreated from certain positions in northeastern Syria, the president detailed how the arm of the U.S. military was still long enough to reach into perilous ungoverned space elsewhere in the country and execute a highly successful operation with the support of a bizarre, transitory array of allies and adversaries alike. “I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq,” said Trump, in a statement likely uttered by no previous American president ever.Even though he’s effectively ditched the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who lost roughly 11,000 of their fighters in the battle against ISIS in Syria, the president noted that the Syrian Kurds had provided the U.S. with “some information that turned out to be helpful” in taking out Baghdadi. (The SDF’s commander has suggested this was an understatement, stating that the raid was the result of five months of intelligence cooperation between his militia and the Americans.)Even though Russian and Turkish forces, who place much less of a priority on combatting the Islamic State than the United States and its allies, have rushed into the void left by American troops in northeastern Syria, Trump observed that the United States had cooperated with Russia in advance to allow American Special Forces to fly over “Russia-held areas” on their way to Baghdadi without having to inform Moscow of the precise nature of the mission, and with Turkey, which “knew we were going in,” so that its forces didn’t “start shooting” in the midst of the operation.The Donald Trump who addressed the nation today was a supremely confident commander in chief, not the president besieged by impeachment proceedings one might have expected. He boasted of how he’d predicted the 9/11 attacks and disastrous Iraq War, and reveled in divulging the gory details of the raid.“We are out” of the business of keeping the peace between dueling factions in Syria and Turkey, Trump crowed, going so far as to declare that exposing his Kurdish partners to slaughter for several days made it “much easier” to deal with them and that he was glad to help the Turks carve out a “safe zone” by attacking and forcibly removing Kurdish elements from northern Syria. “I want our soldiers home.”“We are 8,000 miles away” from Syria, Trump continued, tellingly exaggerating the distance. “Russia is right there, Turkey is right there. Syria is there … Iran is right there. Iraq is right there. They all hate ISIS.” He also called out European nations as a “tremendous disappointment” for their unwillingness to take in ISIS prisoners from their countries. “They can walk back [to Europe]. They can’t walk to our country. We have lots of water in between our country and them.”

If the Biden-Harris ticket wins in November, it will mark the first time that a sitting vice president is a digital native. Not only did Kamala Harris grow up digital, but she’s also spent much of her adult life in and around Silicon Valley, and her statewide campaigns have been backed by some of Silicon Valley’s top Democratic power brokers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.But being a digital native doesn’t necessarily mean that Harris will chart a wise course when it comes to regulating technology, particularly AI and facial recognition. As someone who has founded two AI startups, holds a dozen AI-related patents, and has worked on more than 1,000 AI projects, I can tell you that the way AI behaves in the laboratory is very different from what happens when you unleash AI into the real world. While Harris has proven that she understands the importance of this technology, it’s not clear how a Biden-Harris administration would regulate AI.Harris has already shown a keen interest in how artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology can be misused. In 2018, Harris and a group of legislators sent pointed letters to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, documenting research showing how facial recognition can produce and reinforce racial and gender bias. Harris asked that the EEOC develop guidelines for employers on the fair use of facial analysis technologies and called on the FTC to consider requiring facial recognition developers to disclose the technology’s potential biases to purchasers.As Harris pointed out in a 2019 address, “Unlike the racial bias that all of us can pretty easily detect when you get stopped in a department store or while you’re driving, the bias that’s built into technology will not be easy to detect.”Harris posited a scenario in which an African American woman seeks a job at a company that uses facial analysis to assess how well a candidate’s mannerisms are similar to those of its top managers. If the company’s top managers are predominately white and male, the characteristics the computer is looking for may have nothing to do with job performance. Instead, they may be artifacts that only serve to perpetuate racism, while giving it the veneer of science.While Harris has a track record of asking fundamental questions about how AI is implemented, it’s still unclear how exactly the Biden-Harris team views the government’s role in addressing algorithmic bias. Facial recognition is still a rapidly evolving part of AI, and it has been a lightning rod for criticism. However, AI is much more than facial recognition.AI is the defining technological battlefield of our time, and countries have adopted very different battle strategies. China seems to believe that access to vast volumes of data is key to AI supremacy and is willing to accept almost any implementation of AI, including a vast, secret system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority. The EU has taken a very cautious stance and has considered a five-year ban on facial recognition technologies in public settings. A handful of U.S. cities have proposed similar bans, as activists widely believe that facial recognition in its present form is unreliable and threatens civil rights. But an ultrasafe regulatory approach doesn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes. The EU has previously embraced heavy-handed technology regulations that don’t really solve the underlying problem, as in the case of the now-ubiquitous “cookie warnings” that most people just click through without reading.The U.S. faces a difficult challenge: preventing AI from being used in harmful ways while at the same time not unreasonably constraining the development of this critical technology.In a best-case scenario, the government establishes clear societal expectations of what is and is not acceptable in AI and enforces compliance. The government doesn’t tell technologists how to change their technology—it tells them what the societal goals are and punishes violators with fines or other restrictions. That way, the government isn’t constraining the development of AI technology—it’s setting clear objectives and boundaries.A far worse scenario would be for the government to step in with a heavy hand and mandate specific technological requirements for AI. For example, an activist government might be tempted to “solve” the problem of algorithmic bias by making AI developers remove the variables in the datasets that indicate a person’s race or gender. But that won’t fix the problem.If you remove the variables that explicitly refer to race or gender, the AI will find other proxies for that missing data. Outcomes can still be affected by a person’s gender through other means: Data fields such as employment (schoolteachers tend to be disproportionately female; construction workers are disproportionately male) or age (women tend to live longer) can also play a role in perpetuating bias. Similarly, the AI will find proxies for race, even if the government has mandated that the race field be removed from the data set. Excluding a variable doesn’t mean that the AI can’t represent it in some other way.Even an apparently well-meaning requirement, such as mandating that all AI development steps need to be documented, could have unexpected consequences that affect AI development. It may push organizations toward automated tools for experimenting with and selecting machine learning models because automated systems are better able to document every decision taken. It may also give large organizations with better processes a leg up over a scrappy startup team that may not be positioned to have the same kind of process rigor as an academic or corporate lab. Moreover, if the models themselves have to be “explainable,” then many popular “deep” approaches to machine learning may need to be abandoned.That’s why you don’t want Congress to mandate specific technological fixes for something as complex as AI. Congress should be in the business of making its nondiscrimination goals very clear and holding companies accountable if they fail to live up to them. While larger tech companies may be able to shrug off the risk of penalties, fines proportional to the economic impact of the AI system may be one way to make the cost of violating these regulations painful enough even for big corporations.I hope a Biden-Harris administration would live up to Joe Biden’s often-voiced promise of listening to the experts. In the case of AI, listening to the experts means bringing together a broad group of people to fashion a cohesive national AI policy, one our country needs in order to stay at the forefront of AI internationally. We need ethicists and academicians and social justice activists to be part of this vital process. And we also need a place at the table for people who have actually implemented AI projects at scale and have seen the real-world consequences of AI—intended and unintended.Taking visible “action” on racial bias in AI is easy. Solving the problem at scale without harming U.S. competitiveness in AI is hard. If the Biden-Harris team wins, let’s hope the new administration decides to solve the hard problem.Arijit Sengupta is the founder and CEO of Aible.

For the first time in two and a half years, the yield on benchmark German government bonds fell below zero.Investors have been paying more to park their money in the safest assets, like the 10-year German bond. This bids up bond prices, and pushes down yields. When yields turn negative, investors who hold those bonds to maturity are guaranteed to make a loss. Put another way, borrowers are being paid to issue debt, because they pay back less than the face value on the loans.Shorter-dated German bonds had been negative for a while, but below-zero yields for longer maturities stands out, especially as the 10-year German bond serves as the benchmark for all European debt. The yield on the 10-year closed at -0.02%.What’s going on? It’s more evidence that the global economy is slowing down. When interest rates drift towards zero—or beyond—investors are betting that central banks will reduce interest rates or make other stimulus measures to prop up economic growth.Earlier this month, the European Central Bank confirmed it wouldn’t raise interest rates for the rest of the year, and also announced a new set of cheap bank loans to try and boost lending. This week, the US Federal Reserve signaled that it wouldn’t raise rates for the rest of the year, a U-turn from its previous path of steady hikes. Surveys of corporate purchasing managers in Europe and the US suggest economic activity is slowing. Nerves about the global economy have also spread into the stock market, with European and US indexes all posting losses in trading today.And that’s not the only worrying sign coming from the bond market. The US yield curve has inverted, meaning that yields on short-dated three-month bills are higher than those on 10-year Treasury bonds, for the first time since 2007. This inversion, if it persists, has almost always preceded a recession, though it can take more than a year for it to happen.

Across Hong Kong almost everyday, television screens at restaurants and bars play live footage of protests. On buses and trains, commuters stream the feeds on their phones. Some taxi drivers even play the live-streams on phones mounted on dashboards.For better or worse, some of the most defining, shocking, gruesome, and touching moments of Hong Kong’s protests will be watched, scrutinized, and relived over and over again. The reason: the ubiquitous and unceasing live-streaming of events as they play out on the ground, beamed to tens of thousands of watchers in real time, then archived to be replayed in perpetuity.Since protests began in June in opposition to a now-withdrawn extradition bill, local outlets like the news sites Stand News and HK01, newspaper Apple Daily, publicly funded broadcaster RTHK, as well as student news organizations, have devoted a huge amount of resources to providing what at times feels like round-the-clock coverage of rallies and clashes. A popular webpage even consolidates various live-streams into a dizzying three-by-three grid of video feeds from all over the city.“I haven’t seen this kind of live-streaming of civil unrest and social unrest at this scale, and in my observation it’s quite unique to Hong Kong,” said Masato Kajimoto, a professor at the University of Hong Kong’s journalism school.A confluence of factors makes the city a prime place for exhaustive live-streaming, he noted: its vibrant digital media landscape, high mobile phone penetration rates, limited free-to-air television channels, and compact geography that allows journalists to move quickly. Then there’s fast internet speeds, and excellent network coverage almost everywhere. “Watching videos on those devices are part of our lifestyle,” said Kajimoto.The live feeds find a wide audience throughout Hong Kong and around the world. For those who support the movement but aren’t directly at protest sites, they offer a way to still participate and feel connected. For people seeking information about current road and traffic status, they provide an immediate snapshot of the situation. And for journalists, human rights monitors, and other observers, the live videos are a treasure trove of information.Live-streams and broadcasts are also seen as the most important channels of protest-related information, beating out other sources like traditional media, social media, and the encrypted chat app Telegram, according to a poll conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.“At the peak, we might have 10 live signals simultaneously,” totalling over 30 hours of footage in a day for a single outlet, said Lam Yin-pong, the principal reporter for Stand News and who is regularly out live-streaming the protests. “This means that it’s absolutely impossible for us to re-watch what we’ve done, so we might miss parts of our own reportage.” And that’s just one outlet. The public broadcaster RTHK has up to six cameras rolling during protests. Apple Daily has about five designated live cameras on protest days, with more reporters going live on their phones if needed. HK01 can have as many as 12 live feeds simultaneously. “The entire coverage now seems skewed towards what’s happening right now.”Both Lam and Kajimoto also think that while live-streams drive a lot of traffic, newsrooms may end up devoting a disproportionate amount of resources to live-streaming on the frontlines at the expense of other protest-related reportage.“The entire coverage now seems skewed towards what’s happening right now,” said Kajimoto.Human rights watchdogs know full well the importance of monitoring the fast-changing developments closely. According to MK Tam, the director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, he had mobilized his entire local team to observe protest sites early on in the movement, but quickly realized that the speed, scale, and scope of the protests meant it wasn’t enough to just have on-the-ground observers. Their solution: coordinate staff to ensure round-the-clock monitoring of broadcasts and live-streams on particularly tense days. A report published by Amnesty in late June documenting verified instances of police brutality “really depended on live-stream videos,” said Tam. “We were able to do that because people filmed from many different angles of the same incident.”Researchers from afar have also used the extensive live-streams to study the protests closely. Nathan Ruser, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra who focuses on using satellite data and other open-source intelligence to study human rights issues, has been following the live-streams since the protests began in June.“It’s by far the most live-streamed protest movement.”“It’s by far the most live-streamed protest movement,” Ruser said. He noted that unlike protests in places like Iraq, where only a limited number of grainy WhatsApp and Snapchat videos percolate to the outside world, Hong Kong’s live-streams allow for unique insight into the protests. “The biggest difference between Hong Kong and all the other protests is that in Hong Kong, you have almost parity when it comes to what you can learn remotely researching it to actually being there,” he said.The death of a 22-year-old student, Chow Tsz-lok, from injuries he sustained in a fall at a carpark where riot police had clashed with protesters has further reinforced the important role of live-streams in the protests. In an attempt to piece together a picture of what happened on the night of the incident, people have turned to live-streams, as well as security camera footage and dashboard cameras.Police have pledged to launch an investigation surrounding Chow’s death and recommend a coroner’s court hearing. Many, however, expressed doubts over whether the force could be trusted to properly scrutinize the incident and its own role in it. An international panel of experts have also said that the police watchdog has “structural limitations in [its] scope and powers”Ruser has also been looking into the circumstances leading up to the death of the student by trawling through archived videos. With myriad theories as to how the student fell to his death and to what extent police were complicit in the death, he said that the videos and his research can “hopefully inform commentary about what happened and also demystify it in some way.”For protesters on the ground, the live-streams present both strategic advantages and vulnerabilities. One protester in his 20s, who did not wish to be named, said he and his friends would monitor multiple live-streams of a particular protest on a single screen, and relay information back to protesters on the ground. But in another instance in early September when riot police boarded a double decker bus to make arrests, some internet users noted (link in Chinese) that the police had been able to pinpoint the bus because they had watched live feeds showing protesters boarding it. Then, protesters also later tried to use the live-feeds to try and identify arrestees (link in Chinese) so that lawyers could locate and assist them.Police have also made requests to several media organizations for footage, specifically with regard to two separate nights when thousands of protesters surrounded police headquarters. So far, Apple Daily, Stand News, and news site InMedia have all refused those requests (links in Chinese), citing the need to uphold a free and independent media.As protests get increasingly heated and aggressive, news outlets are also confronted with ethical questions of whether and how to show profanity and extremely violent content, for example at rush hour today (Nov. 11) when a live-stream showed a police officer shoot two protesters with live rounds at close range during an operation by protesters to disrupt traffic.But the question on Kajimoto’s mind is whether live-streaming a death is ever acceptable.“Let’s say somebody gets killed. Live-streaming somebody getting killed is, to me, a violation of basic journalistic ethics. It hasn’t happened yet, but as an industry I think it’s something we should be considering.”Isabella Steger contributed reporting.

In that context, E.gg is fun to look at, but it also scans as a rhetorical exercise to prove a point. When I reached out to Facebook to hear more about why E.gg was created, I was directed to a recent report—commissioned by Facebook—showing that “about one-third of [the] top 100 most downloaded apps are new entrants each year.” In other words, that there is no monopoly on human attention, and there is plenty of room for creative upstarts. Ime Archibong, the head of the New Product Experimentation team, reiterated this point in an emailed statement, saying, “Last year, the average person had 93 apps installed on their phone and used 41 per month … All of this choice and competition fuels innovation.”At the hearing, Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado hounded Zuckerberg over the consolidation of the social-media market, listing Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, and Cyworld as examples of Facebook competitors that existed in 2004—when the company launched—but either don’t exist or don’t matter now. Zuckerberg disagreed with the implication, responding, “Congressman, those were some of the competitors, and it’s only gotten more competitive since.”Some of Facebook’s toughest questioning yesterday came from Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, who pressed Zuckerberg on the company’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram. He quoted from emails obtained by the subcommittee in which Zuckerberg appears to identify Instagram as a competitive threat, and to consider this threat as a primary reason for acquiring the platform—on its face, an obvious violation of antitrust law. Nadler was the only member of the committee to openly suggest that Instagram should be spun off from Facebook as a separate company.In his defense, Zuckerberg argued that “almost no one” thought of Instagram as a “general social network” in 2012. It was just a photo-sharing app, but Facebook made it into a juggernaut. A logical follow-up question went unsaid: Might Instagram have become something more interesting than a Facebook property with more than 1 billion users and all of the same large-scale moderation problems as its parent company? Nor was there much discussion of the many methods by which Facebook has mutated Instagram to function more like Facebook itself, alienated its co-founders, and knit the apps together in obnoxious ways.

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson is the latest Trump-appointed government official to come under fire from the president. And the reasons President Trump is upset with him are simultaneously extremely weak and highly revealing.On Sunday, Trump posted a tweet hyping a new effort led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, to call into question Atkinson’s handling of the whistleblower complaint that first sounded the alarm about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and that eventually led to him being impeached.“ICIG Michael Atkinson facing serious questions,” Trump wrote, along with a quote from Nunes suggesting that Atkinson is somehow part of an anti-Trump conspiracy with Democrats. “The ICIG never wanted proof!” ....the Ukraine Hoax that became the Impeachment Scam. Must get the ICIG answers by Friday because this is the guy who lit the fuse. So if he wants to clear his name, prove that his office is indeed incompetent.” @DevinNunes @MariaBartiromo @FoxNews The ICIG never wanted proof!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2020 Atkinson was appointed to his current role in 2017. He had a relatively low profile until this past September, when he determined that the whistleblower complaint detailing how Trump tried to leverage Ukrainian diplomacy and official White House acts to gain opposition research for his reelection campaign was credible and rose to the level of an “urgent concern.”Atkinson ultimately alerted Congress to the existence of the complaint, which prompted the White House to release a summary of Trump’s now-infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And here’s the important point: As I’ve previously explained, that call summary corroborated the whistleblower complaint both in its broad outlines and with regard to specific details. It illustrated why Atkinson likely felt he had little choice but to determine the complaint was credible.Throughout the ensuing impeachment process, however, Trump has tried to turn reality on its head by insisting that his move to release the call summary somehow refuted the whistleblower complaint and exonerated him. The story Trump told about the whistleblower last night in Monroe is completely detached from reality. Nothing in the complaint has turned out to be inaccurate and much of it is corroborated. Trump is whipping his fans into hysteria over fiction. pic.twitter.com/afLOktYWo8— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 7, 2019 As he did with the Russia investigation, Trump’s tweet about Atkinson indicates that instead of defending his conduct on the merits, he’d like to discredit the entire impeachment process as the result of “deep state” machinations to take him down — even when he has nobody to blame but himself.Trump promised on the campaign trail to only “hire the best people,” but Atkinson is now the latest official he’s appointed to be on the receiving end of one of his salty tweets (or worse). Just last month, Trump tweeted a hint that he was considering moving on from FBI Director Christopher Wray because Wray did a TV interview about the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation that didn’t indulge Trump’s absurd conspiracy theories about the bureau —namely, that the FBI is biased against him and is wrong about Russia (not Ukraine) being the main culprit of election interference in 2016. I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2019 And, of course, Trump spent much of 2018 trashing then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation — a move that was undoubtedly justified given Sessions’s misleading sworn statements about his contacts with Russians during the campaign, but also one that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. (Sessions resigned that November.) “The recusal of Jeff Sessions was an unforced betrayal of the President of the United States.” JOE DIGENOVA, former U.S. Attorney.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018 The common thread in all these cases is that Trump thinks the officials he appoints should do his bidding, and under no circumstances do or say anything that undermines his position.Along those lines, the New York Times reported in November that Trump was considering firing Atkinson because Atkinson had “been disloyal” by not doing more to suppress the whistleblower complaint. That reporting suggests Trump’s concept of government as a protection racket for him hasn’t evolved much since early 2017, when he infamously demanded then-FBI Director James Comey pledge loyalty to him in the weeks leading up to his firing.The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

Donald Trump’s fate in the impeachment inquiry could rest in the hands of a donor and supporter under pressure to turn against the US president to save his own skin.Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, is due to testify on Wednesday during the second week of televised hearings that have rocked the White House.Sondland is certain to be questioned about the biggest revelation from last week: a phone call he made to Trump from Ukraine in July in which the president was overheard asking about an investigation into one of his political rivals. Sondland allegedly assured him it would go ahead.The ambassador made no mention of the call in a deposition to the inquiry behind closed doors, nor in a revised statement three weeks later that conceded a quid pro quo over military aid. Now, in front of TV cameras and an audience of millions, he will be asked why.As he weighs his answer, Sondland may try to balance fealty to Trump with the fate that has befallen others in the president’s circle: his former lawyer Michael Cohen and ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort are both behind bars, while political operative Roger Stone was last week found guilty of lying to Congress.“Hey Ambassador Sondland,” tweeted Joe Scarborough, a former congressman turned TV host, “Roger Stone lied to Congress for Trump and is now going to jail. Just like his campaign manager and lawyer. Are you next? Your call, Gordy.”Washington has been gripped by only the fourth impeachment inquiry in American history. Last week, in the first public hearings, three senior officials – Bill Taylor, George Kent and Marie Yovanovitch – presented a damning account of how Trump smeared his own diplomats so he could establish an irregular channel to bribe Ukraine and boost his chances in next year’s presidential election.But the president remained defiant and there were few cracks in the defensive wall erected by Republicans and conservative media.Sondland, however, could prove pivotal. The hotelier and Republican fundraiser had an on-off relationship with Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaign but came on board with a $1m through his companies to his inaugural committee. Sondland was appointed US ambassador to the EU and moved to Brussels last year.On 10 July this year, a White House meeting with Ukrainian officials ended abruptly when Sondland said he had an agreement with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, that Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy would get a meeting with Trump if Ukraine agreed to open investigations.John Bolton, then national security adviser, was appalled, the inquiry has heard, and remarked: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.”Military aid to Ukraine was frozen until further notice. On 25 July, Trump spoke to Zelenskiy by phone, pressing him for help in gathering potentially damaging information about former vice-president Joe Biden, a potential challenger in next year’s presidential election.On 26 July, Trump spoke by phone with Sondland while the ambassador was in a restaurant in Kiev. Last week Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, told the inquiry that one of his staff overhead parts of the conversation, in which Trump referred to “the investigations”.After the call, the staff member asked Sondland what Trump thought about Ukraine. “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which [his personal lawyer Rudy] Giuliani was pressing for,” Taylor testified.Republicans dismissed Taylor’s account as hearsay and Trump told reporters after the hearing that he knew “nothing” about the call with Sondland. The staff member cited by Taylor was David Holmes, who testified in private on Friday.A copy of Holmes’s opening statement, first obtained by CNN, said: “Sondland told Trump that Zelenskiy ‘loves your ass’. I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him to’.”With Republicans seeking to portray every allegation as based second or third hand sources, Democrats are sure to press Sondland on this direct conversation with the president and ask why he omitted it from his earlier evidence.Matthew Miller, former chief spokesperson for the justice department, said: “I think Sondland’s testimony is incredibly important because if you look at his last appearance before the committee in private, it seems pretty clear he was withholding facts on a number of occasions. He claims to not remember conversations that it was implausible for him to forget.”Sondland told the committee that he never discussed investigating Biden with anyone at the White House or state department, Miller noted. “Now you have this reported conversation where he gets off the phone and says to a staffer that Biden is the most important thing. If that’s true, he just clearly lied to the committee. That is as clear cut a lie as you can catch someone in.”The consequences for Sondland could be dire if he maintains blind loyalty to Trump. Miller, now a partner at management consultancy Vianovo, added: “If I was him, I would be very worried about a referral to the committee for a criminal charge and I would be trying to get on the right side of the committee to prevent that happening. The committee now has a lot of leverage over him to get him to tell the truth.“Throughout the Mueller inquiry [into alleged collusion with Russia], there were a lot of witnesses who thought they could stick with Trump and get a pardon. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are now in prison and Roger Stone has just been convicted. So that’s a pretty dangerous gamble to make.”

Hicks, who was behind closed doors with the committee for more than nine hours, initially refused to answer any questions from investigators about the presidential transition or her time in the White House, with her lawyer telling the panel she was doing so under instructions from the White House.It was only after Democrats tried to subpoena Hicks for her testimony on the spot, and it became clear that Hicks had discussed the transition in a recent interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee, that she and her legal team conferred with the White House and then answered "most" of the committee's questions about the transition, according to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel."This is a breathtakingly broad claim a privilege that I don't think any court would sustain, and I think the White House knows that. This is not executive privilege, this is executive stonewalling," he told reporters after the Hicks interview.Hicks, who also has been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller's team, was "unwilling" to discuss the crafting of Donald Trump Jr.'s initial misleading statement about the meeting as she flew aboard Air Force One with President Trump, Schiff said.Leaving Capitol Hill with her legal team Tuesday night, Hicks had no comment on her marathon session behind closed doors with congressional investigators.Earlier in the day, Democrats and Republicans acknowledged Hicks's limited cooperation with the committee."We got Bannon'ed," Rep. Denny Heck, a Washington Democrat, told several reporters earlier Tuesday as he emerged from the committee meeting room - a reference to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon's refusal to answer any of the committee's questions on the same subjects."She has answered every possible question on the campaign, and my understanding is that the White House has asked her not to answer questions on the transition and her time in the White House," Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, said in an interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas.Asked at Tuesday's briefing whether the White House had instructed Hicks not to answer certain questions, press secretary Sarah Sanders said, "We are cooperating. But I'm not going to comment on any single individual's interaction with the committee."Hicks was initially set to appear before the committee in January, but her interview was scrapped over questions about the scope of the questioning and the White House’s claims of executive privilege.Bannon was instructed by the White House not to answer questions about the transition or his time in the White House, according to sources familiar with his testimony.Republicans and Democrats on the committee are now considering steps to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress.ABC News' Matthew Mosk, Alexander Mallin and Jeff Cook contributed to this report.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Family members of the pop star Prince claim that a pharmacy chain and an Illinois hospital bear responsibility for his fatal drug overdose. The musician's heirs have filed a wrongful death suit to learn more about the circumstances surrounding his death. Matt Sepic of Minnesota Public Radio reports.MATT SEPIC, BYLINE: In April of 2016, thousands of Prince fans descended on the spot where I'm standing now - Paisley Park in Chanhassen, Minn., Prince's home and studio. Today, they're still coming to leave memorials. I see balloons, flowers, even an old concert ticket wedged into the chain-link fence. Two years later, fans and family members alike still don't know how the 57-year-old star, known for clean living, obtained a fatal dose of counterfeit painkillers.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)MARK METZ: Without probable cause and no identified suspect, the Carver County Attorney's Office cannot file any criminal charges involving the death of Prince.SEPIC: That's prosecutor Mark Metz. He told reporters last week that Prince took those fake Vicodin tablets and probably didn't know what was in them. A toxicology test found the musician ingested around 20 times the typical dose of fentanyl, a powerful drug used to ease cancer pain. Despite a two-year investigation, authorities never found out how Prince got the drugs. But the pop star's sister and five half siblings are still seeking to hold someone responsible. They've sued Walgreens, which filled prescriptions for Prince written in the name of his bodyguard. Among other things, the family claims pharmacists there failed to oversee how Prince used the medications.Authorities do not suspect Walgreens of giving Prince the counterfeit drug that killed him. The heirs are also suing Trinity Medical Center. That's the Rock Island, Ill., hospital that treated the pop star when his plane made an emergency landing six days before he died. Prince's siblings allege hospital staff failed to investigate the cause of the overdose or treat it properly. The pharmacy chain, the hospital and the siblings all declined to comment on the suit. Sharon Sandeen teaches at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul. She says connecting Walgreens and the hospital to Prince's death will be difficult. Sandeen says while doctors have a legal duty to diagnose and treat patients, how far does that extend?SHARON SANDEEN: Does that duty go further to require that counseling be provided? And even further removed, does it go beyond - to have them affirmatively investigate why he showed up? I think that last claim is really pushing the envelope.SEPIC: She says the siblings' lawyers must prove that the emergency room doctor not only breached her duty but also contributed to Prince's death. Sandeen says the defense will likely point to investigators' findings that Prince refused Dr. Nicole Mancha's repeated requests for him to stay at the hospital for testing. Mancha also had a hospital pharmacist try to identify one of Prince's pills. Authorities say no chemical test was done, and the tablet was likely the same counterfeit pain medication that would soon end the pop star's life. If the plaintiffs win the suit, it'll likely add millions to Prince's already large estate and could also force hospitals to follow new protocols for treating overdoses. Lawyers for the family released a statement saying that the siblings hope to shed more light on what happened and draw attention to a nationwide epidemic. Prince Rogers Nelson was one of more than 42,000 Americans who died from opioid overdoses in 2016. Tens of thousands more have died since. For NPR News, I'm Matt Sepic in Minneapolis.(SOUNDBITE OF AGNES OBEL SONG, "CITIZEN OF GLASS")Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Andrew Yang is one of 19 Democrats who have declared their candidacy for president in the 2020 US election, but he is the only candidate so far who has incorporated blockchain into a major tenet of his platform.An advocate for universal basic income, he proposes giving a $1,000 “Freedom Dividend” each month to every American older than age 18, assuming that they have graduated from high school and aren’t receiving other government assistance. “This would create two million new jobs in our economy,” he claims. “It would make children and families stronger and healthier and would help tens of millions of Americans transition through what is the greatest economic and technological transformation in our country’s history.”This dividend, he has said, would “likely” be facilitated by blockchain.

WASHINGTON (AP) — “I now do recall.”With that stunning reversal, diplomat Gordon Sondland handed House impeachment investigators another key piece of corroborating testimony Tuesday. He acknowledged what Democrats contend was a clear quid pro quo, pushed by President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, with Ukraine.Sondland, in an addendum to his sworn earlier testimony, said that military assistance to the East European ally was being withheld until Ukraine’s new president agreed to release a statement about fighting corruption as Trump wanted. Sondland knows that proposed arrangement to be a fact, he said, because he was the one who carried the message to a Ukrainian official on the sidelines of a conference in Warsaw with Vice President Mike Pence.ADVERTISEMENT“I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland recalled.His three-page update, tucked beneath hundreds of pages of sworn testimony from Sondland and former Ukraine Special Envoy Kurt Volker, was released by House investigators as Democrats prepared to push the closed-door sessions to public hearings as soon as next week.Trump has denied any quid pro quo, but Democrats say there is a singular narrative developing since the president’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he first asked for “a favor.” That request, which sparked the impeachment inquiry, included a public investigation into Ukrainian activities by Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden and his son and Trump’s allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the House panels conducting the inquiry are releasing the word-by-word transcripts of the past weeks’ closed-door hearings so the American public can decide for themselves.“This is about more than just one call,” Schiff wrote Tuesday in an op-ed in USA Today. “We now know that the call was just one piece of a larger operation to redirect our foreign policy to benefit Donald Trump’s personal and political interests, not the national interest.”Pushing back, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham issued a statement saying the transcripts “show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought.”ADVERTISEMENTIn the transcripts and accompanying cache of text messages, U.S. diplomats are shown trying to navigate the demands of Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who they soon learn is running a back-channel U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine.“It kept getting more insidious,” Sondland told investigators, as the “timeline went on.”Sondland testified that he spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about Giuliani, “and Pompeo rolled his eyes and said: ‘Yes, it’s something we have to deal with.’”In his revised testimony, Sondland, a wealthy businessman who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, says his memory was refreshed by the opening statements of two other inquiry witnesses, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, and Tim Morrison, a European expert at the National Security Council.The ambassador initially testified on Oct. 17 that he did not “recall taking part in any effort to encourage an investigation into the Bidens.” He told investigators he didn’t know that the Ukraine firm Burisma, that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate, was linked to Joe Biden’s son Hunter.But in the weeks since a May visit to Kyiv for Zelenskiy’s inauguration, Sondland and the other diplomats had been heavily involved in Ukraine policy and in text messages about what Trump wanted as they came to realize the military assistance was being withheld.Volker and Sondland both testified they were disappointed after briefing Trump at the White House about the new leader of the young democracy who was vowing to fight corruption.At a pivotal May 23 meeting, Trump “went on and on and on about how Ukraine is a disaster and they’re bad people,” Sondland testified.Trump holds an alternative view, pushed by Giuliani, that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 elections in the U.S., a theory counter to U.S. intelligence findings.″‘They tried to take me down.’ He kept saying that over and over,” Sondland recalled Trump saying.Trump told the diplomats to work with Giuliani on Ukraine issues.Over the time that followed, Volker and Sondland proposed to Zelenskiy’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, that they a draft statement to be issued by Ukraine on potential interference with the U.S. political process. At Giuliani’s urging, that statement needed to have an “insert at end with 2 key items:” Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections.“It was Mr. Giuliani who said: If it doesn’t say Burisma and 2016, it’s not credible, because what are they hiding?” Volker testified.Pressed by investigators, Sondland testified that it would be improper for the U.S. to prompt Ukraine to investigate the Biden family. “It doesn’t sound good.”The statement was never issued, as Ukraine refused it. Volker said he told Yermak it was “not a good idea.”Questions swirled after a government whistleblower’s August complaint about Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy.By September, Sondland also told investigators, Trump was in a “bad mood” and nearly hung up on him when the ambassador asked what it was he wanted from Ukraine.“I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo,” Trump said, according to Sondland. “I want Zelenskiy to do the right thing.”As House investigators released more transcripts Tuesday, they also announced they want to hear from Trump’s acting chief of staff and a top aide to Pence, reaching to the highest levels of the White House.Pence spokeswoman Katie Waldman said the vice president was unaware of the “brief pull-aside conversation” that Sondland reported having with Yermak. She also said Pence was unaware of the ongoing back-and-forth over the statement, and that it never came up during his meeting with Zelenskiy.At a closed-door lunch Tuesday, Pence told Senate Republicans the funds were being withheld over concerns that the Europeans weren’t contributing enough aid and issues of corruption in Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the meeting but unauthorized to discuss it and granted anonymity.Trump says the probe is illegitimate and the administration has resumed its efforts to block the inquiry as two more White House officials, an energy adviser and a budget official, declined to appear Tuesday before investigators, even after one received a subpoena.Meanwhile, investigators said they wanted to hear on Friday from Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. They contend his news conference last month amounted to “nothing less than a televised confession” of Trump’s efforts to have Ukraine investigate Democrats and Biden as the White House was blocking military funding.Trump says he did nothing wrong, and Mulvaney later walked back his remarks.The White House has instructed its officials not to comply with the impeachment inquiry being led by House Democrats. Mulvaney is not expected to appear.Republicans have been unable to deliver a unified argument against the impeachment probe, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he’s “pretty sure” how it all will end.McConnell said he believes Trump will stay in the White House. “I don’t think there’s any question it would not lead to a removal,” he said.A top Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters he doesn’t plan to read the transcripts, calling the whole inquiry “bunch of B.S.”Sondland closed his addendum to the House investigators saying he may have had a second call with Trump, but has been unable to obtain phone records and “cannot specifically recall” if that was the case.___Associated Press writers Colleen Long, Matthew Lee, Matthew Daly, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Jill Colvin and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has dropped out of the race to become the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, ending an upstart campaign that rose from complete obscurity to competitiveness.Yang ended his campaign as ballots were still being counted in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, with early results indicating he had failed to win even 3% of the vote.“Endings are hard and I’ve always had the intention to stay in this race,” he told supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire. “I am the math guy, and it’s clear from the numbers we’re not going to win this campaign.”A lawyer by trade, the 45-year old began his candidacy with no political profile. He had never run for office before or had any significant presence in American political circles.Yet Yang was able to build a following, centering his policy positions on modernizing American industry and better aligning it with an economy changing rapidly due to automation and technology. His signature policy was a promise to provide every American with a universal basic income of $1,000 a month.Proudly declaring his run as “the nerdiest presidential campaign in history”, Yang would describe himself as the “polar opposite of Donald Trump – an Asian man who likes to do math”.Though he did not gain many endorsements from top-tier lawmakers, he did win the support of figures such as Donald Glover and the Tesla founder Elon Musk.His followers called themselves the “Yang Gang” and his campaign merchandise included shirts and hats emblazoned with the word “MATH”.Yang, one of only a handful of Asian Americans to have run for president, proudly spoke of his heritage. Towards the end of 2019, as the historically diverse field of 2020 candidates for the Democratic nomination narrowed and many competitors dropped out, Yang found himself as the only non-white man still standing on the Democratic debate stage.After leading an unconventional campaign, Yang achieved poll numbers in the single digits – not enough for him to be regarded as a frontrunner, but higher than some of the veteran politicians in the field.He also proved he could be a competitive fundraiser, raising over $15m, a significant haul for any presidential candidate but still far less than the frontrunners in the Democratic primary. He never had a lock on an early primary state and as the Iowa caucuses voted, Yang struggled to qualify for debates.Before running for president, Yang founded Venture for America, a not-for-profit group working to help create jobs in cities that had been hit by the Great Recession.Yang’s family also featured prominently in his campaign. He spoke often about his son’s autism and the need to provide better treatment and services for children and families with special needs.“To me, special needs is the new normal in this country,” Yang said during a presidential debate last year.His wife, Evelyn Yang, also revealed that she had been sexually assaulted by her gynecologist in 2012, when she was pregnant with the couple’s first child. Initially, Yang said, she blamed herself and didn’t tell her husband.She told CNN that “everyone has their own #MeToo story” but that not everyone has “the audience or platform to tell their story”. “I’m in this very privileged position to be able to do that,” she said, explaining why she chose to go public with her experience. Since Yang’s interview, several more women have come forward to accuse the doctor of assault.Yang was not the only candidate to depart the race on Tuesday. Senator Michael Bennet, of Colorado, also dropped out, whittling the Democratic field to single digits.Maanvi Singh and Lauren Gambino contributed reporting Topics US elections 2020 Democrats US politics news

Booker’s can’t-we-all-get-along retreat from his Clintonian past continued in the third debate, in September. Asked again about scrapping private health insurance, he replied, “I believe in Medicare for All” and then suggested that the debate didn’t really matter, because “every one of my colleagues on this stage is in favor of universal health coverage and comes at this with the best of intentions.”It’s easy to see why Booker adopted this tack. Conventional wisdom holds that candidates who go negative hurt themselves even when they draw blood. Moreover, during the summer and early fall, Warren rose from the pack to draw even with Biden nationally and surpass him in Iowa, thus confirming the widespread perception that Democratic voters were hungering for an ambitious, unapologetic progressive.But as Warren rose, so did a backlash among Democratic donors and officials who saw her economic policies as dangerously radical and feared that she could not defeat Trump. As Biden careened from poor performance to poor performance, they began searching in earnest for an alternative. Booker might have been it. He was better known to party and financial elites than centrists such as Klobuchar, Bennet, and Montana Governor Steve Bullock; possessed more star power; and offered a greater chance of putting together the coalition of black and relatively moderate white voters that usually powers successful Democratic presidential campaigns. Unlike Kamala Harris, another African American senator who is more moderate than Sanders and Warren, Booker also had a long record of making the very arguments for a pro-business, deficit-conscious liberalism that the Democratic elites who feared Warren and Sanders craved.Yet Booker refused to play that role. And that refusal helped Pete Buttigieg step into the breach. Initially, Buttigieg’s rise was powered less by ideology than by persona. His first breakthrough came during a CNN town-hall appearance in March. By spring, his novel combination of talents and attributes—gay, veteran, religious, midwestern, hyper-educated, dazzlingly articulate—was attracting comparisons to another political unicorn, Barack Obama. But after rising into the mid-single digits in national polls in April, Buttigieg plateaued through the summer and into the fall. As late as September, he still trailed Biden, Warren, and Sanders in both Iowa and New Hampshire by double digits.Buttigieg’s initial breakthrough came less with voters than with donors. After initially making inroads among LGBTQ contributors, he emerged over the summer as the undisputed darling of the very money people who might have been Booker’s natural base of support. In June, a New York Times headline announced that “Wall Street Donors Are Swooning for Mayor Pete.” Buttigieg wasn’t yet attacking Sanders and Warren’s left-populist agenda. But by embracing big-donor fundraisers, which they eschewed, he signaled that he’d give pro-business Democrats a seat at the table. And in the absence of a compelling, avowedly centrist candidate, that was enough. As one finance-industry lobbyist told The Washington Post, “I don’t think Wall Street has a real great sense of what Mayor Pete might mean or not mean. But we do know what Warren means, and so I want part of every story about her to also be about him moving in tandem up the line.”

Rep. David CicillineDavid Nicola CicillineJustice Department charges Google with illegally maintaining search monopoly Pocan won't seek another term as Progressive Caucus co-chair Jewish lawmakers targeted by anti-Semitic tweets ahead of election: ADL MORE (D-R.I.), the chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee, on Wednesday confronted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the spread of misinformation on the platform, questioning whether the company was doing enough to suppress unfounded claims about the coronavirus pandemic. During a subcommittee hearing focused on the emerging size and power of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, Cicilline pointed to a video posted on multiple social media platforms on Monday that featured false claims about the coronavirus outbreak. While the video was eventually taken down by Facebook and others, Cicilline noted that it wasn't before it had racked up roughly 20 million views in the course of five hours. "Doesn’t that suggest that your platform is so big that even with the right policies in place, you can’t contain deadly content?" Cicilline asked. Zuckerberg pushed back, arguing that Facebook has a "good track record" when it comes to policing misinformation, including on topics related to the current health crisis. "This isn't a speech issue," says Rep. @davidcicilline. "It's about Facebook's business model that prioritizes engagement." pic.twitter.com/UR48FEO4wh— The Verge (@verge) July 29, 2020Facebook has faced continued scrutiny over its efforts to moderate misinformation and hate speech on its platform. The company is currently the subject of an ad boycott that demands it take greater steps to manage hate speech and other incendiary content on the site. Cicilline questioned whether the incentives of Facebook and which posts it amplifies were responsible for this environment. After Zuckerberg said that he did not believe Facebook had incentives to have harmful content on its platform, the Democratic congressman shot back that it's "often the most engaging.""It brings the most likes or it brings the most activity, which of course brings a great profit. The more engagement you create, the more money you make on advertising," Cicilline said."With all due respect, the problem is Facebook is profiting off and amplifying disinformation that harms others because it’s profitable," Cicilline added. "This isn’t a speech issue. It's about Facebook’s business model that prioritizes engagement in order to keep people on Facebook’s platform."Zuckerberg rejected accusations that false and harmful content economically benefit the company. "We rank what we show in our feed based on what is going to be the most meaningful to people and is going to create long-term satisfaction, not what’s just going to get clicks or engagement," Zuckerberg said, calling it a "misperception" that Facebook is only concerned with clicks and reactions. Facebook Policy Communications Director Andy Stone said in a statement to The Hill earlier this week that the platform removed a video about the coronavirus because it shared "false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19." The company has also said that it's reviewing why it took hours for the post to be removed.

Reports of his death had been frequent – and exaggerated. But not this time. Even as US forces were flying to Iraq the remains of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in Syria in the early hours of Saturday, a debate about his legacy was stirring.For more than five years, Baghdadi, who was known by birth as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, was the most wanted man on the planet – a figure who had turned an already potent post-invasion insurgency in Iraq into a formidable terrorist juggernaut that changed the course of history.In the time he led the Isis terror group, Baghdadi succeeded in shredding the authority of Iraq and Syria and testing the borders of the entire Middle East – all the while eluding the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and militaries.A darkness rapidly descended as the black flags of Isis were planted across the region. Security states were exposed as fragile husks, unable to withstand Baghdadi’s intimidating enforcers as they overran one town after another, imposing an implacable seventh century world view on those who dared to remain, or had no chance to flee.Mosul was the first to fall, its capture used by Baghdadi to proclaim the formation of a new caliphate on the lands of northern Iraq. Soon it spread to Raqqa, and to the east of Aleppo. The Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil was in the group’s sights, so too the oil city of Kirkuk, and very nearly Baghdad.As the dominoes tumbled, Isis gathered momentum. Its toxic mantra of doctrinal intolerance took root in some areas, but in others it forced populations to flee en masse. Communities that had co-existed since the dawn of millennia were uprooted and are yet to return. Tented shanty towns of the displaced remain dotted across the Kurdish norths of Iraq and Syria a testament to an upheaval which could take generations to be reversed.By mid last year a momentum that had seemed unstoppable had begun to slow. In Iraq, militia groups that had fought alongside the Iraqi army had clawed back all major cities. In Syria, Kurdish proxies of the US had recaptured Raqqa and nearly all the territory Isis had seized. The rest was retaken earlier this year in a painstaking push near where it all began for the forerunners of Isis, along the Euphrates River basin.From the town of Baghuz emerged tens of thousands of Isis fighters and followers, most bedraggled and beaten. Some defiant. The remnants of the group have since been in detention centres in eastern Syria, or Iraqi prisons – their fate uncertain, as is that of much of the land they controlled.While Donald Trump can credibly claim that Isis no longer controls any contiguous land, there have been clear signs over recent months that cells on both sides of the river are beginning to reassemble. Security in eastern Syria remains brittle, as does the region’s body politic.The US decision to abandon the Kurds who fought on their behalf is unlikely to bring stability to a still volatile area, where the stark realities exposed by the Isis rampage remain just as troubling in defeat. The ground war was won by non-state actors who fought on Iraq and Syria’s behalf. The national armies of both countries splintered in the face of the threat and are yet to fully regroup.Isis took hold in the vacuum of the 2003 US invasion, which had ousted the Sunni ruling class in Iraq and diminished the status the sect held in society. The group positioned itself as a champion of the disenfranchised – willing to reclaim lost glories and restore Islamic precepts. A sense of Sunni grievance was central to its message, and it readily tapped into the fortunes of Sunnis elsewhere; in Lebanon, whose patron Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005 and in Syria, where the anti-Assad opposition was primarily drawn from the same sect.Then and now, the narrative resonated with some who otherwise disavowed the hardline theology that Isis used as a driving force. Baghdadi’s ability to evade his pursuers had amplified that appeal, something which his violent death, cornered in a tunnel far from home, may help diminish.But the huge disruption and grievances the group caused remain raw and largely unresolved. The naked failings of authority in the region are in many ways just as troubling. Weak political governance offers few guarantees of justice or reconciliation. Perceived losses are unlikely to be recovered anytime soon.Instead, a new regional order is taking shape that underpins the tremendous chaos Isis has caused. New areas of influence are being demarcated and there is now a real chance that some of the region’s post second world war borders could be redrawn along ethnic sectarian lines.In Syria’s volatile east, large restive populations of Isis detainees remain interned where, for the past six months, they have been able to reorganise. The new Isis camps are bigger and more combustible than the US versions in southern Iraq, where Baghdadi earned his stripes as a future leader during a nine month stint in 2004. Back then, he was able to convince his captors that he was a stabilising influence, and they let him go. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was anything but. He lived and died as one of the savage and influential figures of modern times. Topics Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Iraq Middle East and North Africa Syria Mosul Donald Trump analysis

There is no doubt that China will make Britain pay for stripping Huawei from the 5G network. When Beijing said that the reversal “must come at a cost”, it didn’t mean the £2bn bill cited by the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden; and it sees the UK’s stance on Hong Kong as an aggravating factor. The question is how high the price will be, and how precisely the UK will pay.China’s considerations may include the risk of strengthening a Tory rebellion that could push forward Huawei’s 2027 exit date from the 5G network, and the fact that other countries are looking again at Huawei’s role. The UK is coming into line with other Five Eyes intelligence-sharing nations, the US and Australia, by rejecting Huawei, but could set a new direction in Europe.Beijing is also fighting on multiple fronts. The imposition of a draconian security law on Hong Kong has caused an international backlash and highlighted other issues, including Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang and its increasingly harsh line on Taiwan. Its biggest battle is with Washington; on Tuesday, Donald Trump signed an order rescinding Hong Kong’s special economic status with America. China is also struggling with Australia, over Canberra’s calls for an independent inquiry into coronavirus and the offer of permanent residency to some Hongkongers; with Canada, over Huawei; and with India, which has banned dozens of Chinese apps after a deadly border clash. Relations with the EU are becoming more fraught.But this proliferation of struggles reflects Beijing’s increasing confidence and forcefulness. Britain also looks a good deal weaker than the last time China froze it out, following David Cameron’s meeting with the Dalai Lama. Back then, trade actually increased, and diplomatic relations continued at lower levels. But George Osborne’s subsequent push for a “golden relationship”, with human rights and other concerns low on the agenda as long as the money kept flowing, suggested that the UK will cave whenever it feels the heat. Withdrawal from the EU has left us friendless; and a post-Brexit country weakened by the pandemic will be especially economically vulnerable. The US, despite urging other countries to pick a team, is an utterly inconsistent player.We can expect more than diplomatic snubs this time. Australia’s example is interesting; it faces a ban on some exports, has hinted that China could be behind a cyber-attack, and recently told its citizens that they could risk arbitrary detention if they travelled to China. British businesses might well find they face new obstacles operating in China: HSBC had reportedly warned Downing Street that it could face reprisals if Huawei was blocked from the UK’s critical infrastructure. That sounded, if anything, rather like a disincentive to keep using the Chinese firm. Why offer further leverage for the future?But a broader reconsideration is now needed, with countries looking individually and collectively at how we came to the point where Huawei was regarded as almost indispensable for 5G, while China would not allow a foreign firm to play an equivalent role in its essential infrastructure. It might be convenient for the intelligence services to portray this as a failure of industrial policy – as Robert Hannigan, the former director of GCHQ, did on Wednesday – but there is also truth in his charge. It is time to consider what our technological and manufacturing priorities are and should be, where our companies should be concentrating their efforts, and how they can be encouraged and supported to do so. Topics Huawei Opinion 5G China Xi Jinping Asia Pacific Hong Kong UK security and counter-terrorism editorials

The British government said it will ban wireless carriers in the country from buying new Huawei equipment and require the Chinese company to remove its technology from U.K.’s 5G networks by 2027. WSJ’s Stu Woo explains the significance. Photo: Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Byand Updated July 14, 2020 2:31 pm ET LONDON—The British government said it would bar telecom companies from purchasing new equipment made by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. for their 5G networks in a further sign of the deteriorating relations between Beijing and the West. The sharp about-face by the U.K.—only six months ago it said it could manage the risks of Huawei’s presence in 5G—was a direct consequence of new U.S. sanctions on Huawei, the government said. It marks a significant victory for the U.S. policy and is likely to increase pressure on other countries... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options