A month and a half after US Congressional members called on Jeff Bezos to testify in an antitrust probe, Amazon has said its founder and CEO would be willing to appear at a hearing — under certain conditions. It would be Bezos’s first time testifying before Congress.The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Amazon, along with Apple, Facebook, and Google, because of the unprecedented power they wield over the way Americans shop, search, and communicate online. Bezos’s willingness to testify is an acknowledgment of the seriousness of the probe, which could result in lawmakers recommending legal action from federal regulators or an overhaul of antitrust laws to rein in Big Tech.A lawyer representing Amazon told leaders of the House Judiciary Committee in a letter on Sunday that Bezos would be open to testifying if it was alongside the CEOs of the other three tech giants. He added that the company wanted more clarity on the timing and format of such a hearing, and stressed that other Amazon executives, not Bezos, now run the day-to-day businesses at Amazon that the investigation has focused on.The investigation, led by subcommittee chairman David Cicilline (D-RI), began last summer and has evaluated the ways the tech titans compete against rivals and even their own partners. The goal is to determine whether current antitrust laws are suitable to check their power or whether new laws need to be written. In the case of Amazon, lawmakers have expressed concerns about the data Amazon uses to create its own brands that end up competing against small businesses that sell on Amazon’s platform. The committee has also heard from small businesses that say Amazon gets away with bullying them because of the e-commerce giant’s control over online commerce in the US.The year-long probe has already included five public hearings, along with massive document requests from the four companies. At its conclusion, the subcommittee will issue a report on its findings, which may include recommendations for updates to antitrust law. These findings, and potential recommendations, could put pressure on regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission to take legal action against Amazon in an effort to change the way it does business or to potentially break up certain parts of its business from one another. They could also lead to new antitrust laws that would more tightly control the practices of the dominant online tech platforms.It is not yet clear whether the Congressional investigators will try to hold one hearing with all four CEOs or separate hearings for each company — or whether Amazon would make Bezos available in an Amazon-only hearing. Any one of the CEOs testifying in front of lawmakers has the potential to be a huge newsmaker, with crowds of journalists and other interested parties wanting to attend. These hearings are undoubtedly a form of political theater. But they also have the power to attract more political scrutiny of a company while raising awareness among the general public about issues at a given corporation. A single hearing with all four CEOs present would mark a historic event in the business world. But the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic raises questions about how Congress might pull off a hearing with even one big-time CEO right now, let alone all four. Cicilline’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it would consider holding the hearing, or hearings, virtually. “The testimony of CEOs and the production of internal documents is essential to complete this bipartisan investigation into the state of competition in the digital marketplace,” Cicilline said in a statement to Recode. “The Antitrust Subcommittee will continue to use the tools at our disposal to ensure we gather whatever information is necessary for our work.”Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the European Union was nearing formal antitrust charges against Amazon related to its dealings with its own sellers, which are the small- and mid-sized merchants that sell goods to consumers on Amazon and account for nearly 60 percent of the company’s sales. Some critics say Amazon engages in anti-competitive behavior against these merchants by using their data to unfairly compete against them with its own line of brands, such as Amazon Basics.The concern is that Amazon profits from these sellers by charging them commissions and advertising fees to access Amazon’s huge customer base, but then uses the data it collects from those same partners to unfairly compete against them.Likewise, the US Congressional antitrust investigation has also homed in on Amazon’s treatment of these merchants. The original call for Bezos to testify came in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation in April that revealed Amazon employees have at times accessed data from individual marketplace sellers to help decide which products Amazon would create and sell under its private-label brands. A top Amazon lawyer, Nate Sutton, had previously testified that Amazon had policies that precluded its own in-house brands from using data from individual sellers to create its own products. Amazon said at the time that it would investigate the matter internally but hasn’t publicly commented on its findings.Amazon is facing other scrutiny, too. Some US lawmakers, policymakers, and even some of Amazon’s own white-collar employees are concerned the company hasn’t done enough to protect its warehouse workforce during the global health crisis; they’re also questioning why the company fired more than a half-dozen employees who were involved in protests about Covid-19 working conditions. Amazon has said the employee activists were fired for violating company policies and has touted myriad precautions it has taken inside its warehouses that it says show it has done more than many of its e-commerce competitors. Beyond the antitrust investigations in Europe and by US Congress, the Federal Trade Commission has also been probing Amazon on similar antitrust matters, including how it competes with its merchants, and whether Amazon Prime unfairly undercuts competitors on price. While the Congressional antitrust investigation can’t end in legal action, the FTC’s probe could. And whether the FTC admits it or not, both the EU’s expected antitrust charges and the House investigation could apply more pressure for the commission, which in the past has been slow to act, to do something. Support Vox’s explanatory journalismEvery day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

Amazon took all the friction out of retail, and then some. It used to be that if you wanted to buy something, you had to get up from your chair, walk out your door, go find it, buy it, and then bring it back home. These days, you don’t even have to stand up, and the thing you want will be at your door a day or two later.Pretty much everyone who sells anything online is chasing Amazon’s tail in one way or another, the result of which is that the time we used to spend finding and acquiring the material things we want or need is now ours to do with as we wish.That’s profound. But it’s also set an impossibly high standard for most small businesses.When I started my fast fashion furniture startup, The Inside, I had to abide by the ground rules set by Amazon, which literally changed the rules of consumption for most of humanity. If you want to succeed in retail these days, your only course of action is to figure out something that Amazon can’t do that you can do in a more frictionless, designed, aspirational, and brand-worthy way. That’s what CEO Niraj Shah did with online retailer Wayfair: he figured out frictionless in a big enough category—furniture—that it actually mattered.Don’t get me wrong: there has never been a time quite like today for small companies to challenge established monopolies. But here’s the flip side of that argument: just as yesterday’s incumbents have suddenly found themselves vulnerable to attacks from below, there are already new incumbents standing in the path of almost any company seeking to grow these days. And they are much more powerful than the incumbents of yesterday.Big tech: Friend or foe?If you want to advertise today, you best be figuring out what to do with regard to the new incumbents. Pretty much all digital marketing takes place on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, or Google AdWords. Consumer brands used to spend their money in People magazine. That’s no longer the case. In 2019, Google’s share of digital ads was 31 percent, Facebook’s 21 percent, and Amazon’s 4.2 percent.But it doesn’t matter what a company wants to do, whether that’s opening a coffee shop, trying to invent a new cancer drug, or consulting for big corporations on sustainability. Everyone has to ask themselves, “What is my strategy regarding these companies? Are they friend, foe, or neither?”Let’s talk about Amazon in particular. Because in my business, they are an everyday concern and every single decision we make vis-à-vis competing and/or cooperating with Amazon will have a major influence on how we grow.A binary split has emerged in online retail that makes the future look more straightforward than it has in years: Amazon owns anything basic, so if you want to own anything, it can’t be basic. It doesn’t matter what you make, whether it’s fashion, furniture, homewares, electronics, shoes, or camping gear. If people are inclined to Google a product and do price comparisons, Amazon is almost always going to offer the lowest price. And unless you have some serious value-add to offer, Amazon will eventually come for you.They are a behemoth. Anyone who tries to compete with them directly is a fool. They’ve also got us by the throats: As of January, an estimated 112 million Americans were members of its Prime program. As the company keeps adding perks to membership, the roster keeps growing. Total prime memberships have not slipped in a single quarter since 2014.Whatever it is you’re selling, every single consumer business has to spend a large chunk of their time building moats against Amazon. That threat notwithstanding, there has been an explosion of new microbrands on the Internet, and The Inside intends to break out of that pack.But we can’t sit still. Before we know it, the Seattle juggernaut is going to be drop-shipping anything basic to our houses on a drone. In 2017, Amazon accounted for 70 percent of US e-commerce growth and nearly 35 percent of overall retail growth. And all of it at a lower cost than anyone else. You can’t compete, but because of Amazon, all companies now require a relentless focus on the need for speed.It used to be that the only people who cared about speed of delivery were pizza companies and pizza buyers. Today, if you can’t get it where they want it, when they want it, you probably won’t make the sale.There is hope: only 5 percent of Prime subscribers report that Amazon is the only place they shop online. (It’s sort of amazing that 5 percent of them do, but that’s another story.)So let me repeat something I just said: The most important piece of advice I can offer fledgling entrepreneurs about this topic is so straightforward that it seems obvious, but that hasn’t stopped a remarkable number of people—including me—from failing to do so: Do Not Underestimate Amazon.How do you start a business competing against a company that doesn’t need to make money on the sale? How do you innovate in a world where your competitor doesn’t need to make money on the sale? I didn’t face that challenge with my first startup, DwellStudio, all the way back in 2000. I sold Dwell to Wayfair in 2013, but it wasn’t exactly clear to me at Wayfair, either, because I was on the winning side of that equation. And while I now have a startup that is doing things that neither of those two can do, at the end of the day, we’re all selling furniture.If you can’t beat them, use themNow that I’ve told you that, I’m going to tell you that you also need to figure out how you’re going to work with them—and Facebook and Google. Because if you don’t, you’re doomed. As a direct-to-consumer retailer, we are practically obligated to leverage Facebook and Google for customer acquisition.At The Inside, we advertise on both platforms to reach our audience. They control digital advertising. And you can’t just wing it anymore; you need specialists. We hired a search engine optimization, or SEO, specialist, on a consulting basis to handle all the intricacies of the digital advertising universe. And it made a huge difference in our business. Organic search traffic on the site was up 143 percent for the year through May, while May sales were up 90 percent over April, which, in turn, were up 85 percent over March.To those of us who were already in the workforce when these new positions were invented, it’s still sometimes difficult to accept the necessity of them. Ten years ago, we all started hearing about “social media coordinators.” And most of us thought, That’s not a real job. Well, I’ve got news for you: it most certainly is.The fact that jobs like social media coordinator and SEO specialist didn’t exist 10 years ago is one of the reasons I wrote a new book, Frictionless, with my coauthor Duff McDonald. In my industry, both jobs are hybrids that we couldn’t even have conceived of a few years back—designers served with a side of technology savvy or data analytics. In other words, a left brain/right brain kind of person. Mark my words: that is exactly the kind of combination that every single employer will be searching for in the future—people capable of creative and collaborative problem-solving, who can move frictionlessly from their right brain to their left. If your kids have that inclination, you should help them develop it, as they will need it.Even if you don’t want to advertise on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest, you have to be on Google. You can choose to not do these other things and try to grow organically, but it will be really slow. If you want to reach venture scale, you will be on all of them.Do we sell on Amazon? We do not. At this point in time, their technology is not sophisticated enough to support the customization that we offer our customers. Not only that, we’re in the direct-to-consumer business, and we’re not sitting on enough margin to cut Amazon in on the sale. Amazon works when you have both retail and wholesale, and you sell to both channels. At The Inside, we pass all of our savings onto the consumer.Do we advertise on Amazon? We do not. But we probably will, eventually. The last I heard, two-thirds of people begin their product searches on Amazon. And those customers have what you call high intent. At this point, it makes more sense for us to put our advertising dollars on Facebook and Google and take a wait-and-see approach with Amazon. Two out of three ain’t bad.Long-term, I know I need to figure out a way to participate in Amazon Prime’s ecosystem. It’s one of the most elegant business models I’ve ever seen—they don’t have customer acquisition costs! But I’m not going to be able to do that until I gain such efficiencies of scale that I might be able to share some of my profits with them. In the meantime, we will continue to use them as our office supply closet and hope they don’t swallow us whole before we realize what’s happening.Christiane Lemieux is a design entrepreneur, author, and regular contributor to Architectural Digest. Duff McDonald is a journalist and author of several books. From the book FRICTIONLESS: Why the Future of Everything Will Be Fast, Fluid, and Made Just for You by Christiane Lemieux and Duff McDonald. Copyright © 2020 by Christiane Lemieux and Duff McDonald. Published on June 23, 2020 by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.

Nominees like Schitt’s Creek, Succession, and Watchmen were all vying for a hefty pile of trophies, and with recent winners like Game of Thrones and Fleabag no longer on the air, the biggest races were a bit more unpredictable than usual. Schitt’s Creek swept the comedy categories, taking home all seven awards it was nominated for — including Outstanding Comedy Series and all four of the comedy acting honors. Combined with its two wins at the Creative Arts Emmys earlier this week, Schitt’s Creek’s nine Emmys set a new record for the most wins for a comedy series in a single year. It was an excellent bow for the popular Canadian series, whose sixth and final season aired earlier this year. But it also meant that other comedy shows like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which has long been an Emmys favorite and was nominated for 18 awards this year, walked away with zero wins. (Same for The Good Place, another well-liked comedy that wrapped up in 2020.)Watchmen was the biggest winner in the limited series categories, walking away with three of the seven categories it was nominated in. HBO’s acclaimed comic book adaptation took home Outstanding Limited Series, and stars Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Matteen II won top acting awards. Other nominated limited series I Know This Much is True, Unorthodox, and Mrs. America also took home trophies in big categories (Lead Actor, Directing, and Supporting Actress, respectively).HBO also won big in the drama categories with Succession, whose run to its first Outstanding Drama Series win was preceded by wins for Writing, Directing, and Lead Actor (Jeremy Strong). Meanwhile, Ozark actress Julia Garner won for her supporting role on the Netflix series, while Billy Crudup of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show won for his. Particularly noteworthy was Zendaya’s win for her starring turn in Euphoria, an unexpected but well-deserved honor.Below is the complete list of winners at the 2020 Emmys.Christina Applegate, Dead to MeRachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselLinda Cardellini, Dead to MeCatherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek — WINNERIssa Rae, InsecureTracee Ellis Ross, Black-ishAnthony Anderson, Black-ish Ted Danson, The Good Place Michael Douglas, The Kominsky MethodEugene Levy, Schitt’s Creek — WINNERRamy Youssef, Ramy Daniel Levy, Schitt’s Creek — WINNERDavid West Read, Schitt’s CreekMichael Schur, The Good PlaceTony McNamara, The GreatSam Johnson and Chris Marcil, What We Do in the ShadowsPaul Simms, What We Do in the ShadowsStefani Robinson, What We Do in the ShadowsAmy Sherman-Palladino, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMatt Shakman, The GreatJames Burrows, Will and GraceRamy Youssef, RamyAndrew Cividino and Daniel Levy, Schitt’s Creek — WINNERGail Mancuso, Modern FamilyDaniel Palladino, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselAndre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-NineWilliam Jackson Harper, The Good PlaceAlan Arkin, The Kominsky MethodSterling K. Brown, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselTony Shalhoub, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMahershala Ali, RamyKenan Thompson, Saturday Night LiveDaniel Levy, Schitt’s Creek — WINNERD’arcy Carden, The Good PlaceYvonne Orji, InsecureAlex Borstein, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMarin Hinkle, The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselKate McKinnon, Saturday Night LiveCecily Strong, Saturday Night LiveAnnie Murphy, Schitt’s Creek — WINNERCurb Your EnthusiasmDead to MeInsecureThe Kominsky MethodThe Marvelous Mrs. MaiselSchitt’s Creek — WINNERThe Daily Show with Trevor NoahFull Frontal with Samantha BeeJimmy Kimmel LiveLast Week Tonight with John Oliver — WINNERThe Late Show with Stephen ColbertCate Blanchett, Mrs. AmericaShira Haas, UnorthodoxRegina King, Watchmen — WINNEROctavia Spencer, Self MadeKerry Washington, Little Fires EverywhereJeremy Irons, WatchmenHugh Jackman, Bad EducationPaul Mescal, Normal PeopleJeremy Pope, HollywoodMark Ruffalo, I Know This Much Is True — WINNERTanya Barfield, Mrs. AmericaDamon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson, Watchmen — WINNERSally Rooney and Alice Birch, Normal PeopleSusannah Grant, Michael Chabon, and Ayelet Waldman, UnbelievableAnna Winger, UnorthodoxLynn Shelton, Little Fires EverywhereLenny Abrahamson, Normal PeopleMaria Schrader, Unorthodox — WINNERNicole Kassell, WatchmenSteph Green, WatchmenStephen Williams, WatchmenDylan McDermott, HollywoodJim Parsons, HollywoodTituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy SchmidtYahya Abdul-Matteen II, Watchmen — WINNERJovan Adepo, Watchmen Louis Gossett Jr., Watchmen Uzo Aduba, Mrs. America — WINNERMargo Martindale, Mrs. America Tracey Ullman, Mrs. AmericaToni Collette, UnbelievableJean Smart, WatchmenAmerican SonDolly Parton’s Heartstrings: These Old BonesEl Camino: A Breaking Bad MovieUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the ReverendMrs. AmericaThe Masked SingerNailed It!RuPaul’s Drag Race — WINNERTop ChefThe VoiceJason Bateman, Ozark Sterling K. Brown, This Is UsSteve Carell, The Morning Show Brian Cox, SuccessionJeremy Strong, Succession — WINNEROlivia Colman, The CrownJodie Comer, Killing EveLaura Linney, Ozark Sandra Oh, Killing EveThomas Schnauz, Better Call SaulGordon Smith, Better Call SaulChris Mundy, OzarkJohn Shiban, OzarkMiki Johnson, OzarkJesse Armstrong, Succession — WINNERPeter Morgan, The CrownLesli Linka Glatter, HomelandBen Semanoff, OzarkAlik Sakharov, OzarkAndrij Parekh, Succession — WINNERMark Mylod, SuccessionJessica Hobbs, The CrownMimi Leder, The Morning ShowGiancarlo Esposito, Better Call SaulBradley Whitford, The Handmaid’s TaleBilly Crudup, The Morning Show — WINNERMark Duplass, The Morning ShowNicholas Braun, SuccessionMatthew Macfadyen, SuccessionMeryl Streep, Big Little LiesHelena Bonham Carter, The CrownSamira Wiley, The Handmaid’s TaleFiona Shaw, Killing Eve Julia Garner, Ozark — WINNERSarah Snook, SuccessionBetter Call SaulThe CrownKilling EveOzarkSuccession — WINNERWill you help keep Vox free for all?The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. It’s essential that all Americans are able to access clear, concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives, and the lives of their families and communities. That is our mission at Vox. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election: Contribute today from as little as $3.

"We the People" <strong>What it is:</strong>&nbsp;Created by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/we-the-people/id83213431?mt=2" target="_blank">this podcast</a> uses the Constitution as a framework for insightful, nonpartisan discussions about major contemporary issues with politicians, historians, journalists, authors and more.<br><br><strong>Try this episode:&nbsp;</strong>"<a href="https://www.acast.com/wethepeople/presidential-succession-and-the-25th-amendment-at-50" target="_blank">Presidential succession and the 25th Amendment at 50</a>" National Constitution Center

Conservative MPs are warning of a risk of entryism in the party as the pro-Brexit group Leave.EU encourages its supporters to become members in order to back Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg in a future leadership contest.Conservative party rules mean anyone who has been a member for more than three months can vote in a leadership contest. Grassroots members have the final say between a pair of candidates selected by Conservative MPs in a series of ballots.Leave.EU was set up by the rightwing businessman and Ukip-backer Arron Banks to fight the 2016 referendum, but lost out to the more mainstream Vote Leave in its bid to be the official Brexit campaign group.It claims to have 88,000 supporters, and is urging them to “flood” the Tory party to elect a “true Brexiteer” such as Johnson or Rees-Mogg.“These people are absolutely dedicated to their cause. And you don’t need an awful lot of people to make a huge amount of difference – so it’s really worrying,” said the Tory MP Anna Soubry, who has repeatedly rebelled against her party to advocate for a soft Brexit.Fed up of how this weak "conservative" government has handled Brexit?A leadership contest is inevitable. Join the huge number of our members already flooding the Tory party, ready to elect a true Brexiteer.Help put the spine back into the Tory party: https://t.co/Vgc33bXJWn pic.twitter.com/GUy1UWix07— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) August 15, 2018 She claimed local associations had few resources to check the credentials of potential members. “Some of it is people who over Europe felt they no longer support us and went off to Ukip and are now rejoining the party,” she said. Ukip’s support collapsed in the 2017 general election, as May promised to deliver Brexit.Another Tory MP, George Freeman, said he was deeply concerned about how the party’s future direction could be affected. “The Conservative party has a date with destiny this winter in deciding how to handle Brexit,” he said.“We must resist pressure from Nigel Farage – an unaccountable unelected rabble rouser pushing a hard-right nationalist agenda – to distort the Conservative membership... We should ... fight instead for mainstream voters abandoned by Corbyn.”Fellow MPs Nicky Morgan and Phillip Lee have also sounded the alarm, with Morgan backing a call from the one nation Tory Reform Group to its supporters, urging them to check their membership is up to date.Lee, who resigned from the government over its refusal to back Dominic Grieve’s amendment on giving MPs a meaningful vote, tweeted that there was evidence of “entryism”, and it was time to “wake up and act against a hard-right Momentum”.The latest published figures showed Tory membership at 124,000, making it less than a quarter of the size of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party and raising the risk that a relatively small number of activists could influence the outcome of a poll.Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said: “It does seem like quite a sensible thing for people to do, if they’re ideologically obsessed with Brexit. What we do know is that quite a lot of people joined immediately after Brexit, assuming that there was going to be a leadership contest, so there is a precedent.”In 2016 members did not get the opportunity to vote, as Theresa May became the sole candidate after Andrea Leadsom dropped out at a late stage. Bale added: “It’s difficult to believe that the membership would elect a remainer anyway, so it’s all about the degree of Brexit that they’re going to get from any leader.” Allies of former foreign secretary Boris Johnson have denied that he is laying the groundwork for a leadership bid. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/ReutersWith many of May’s MPs in open revolt over the Chequers deal and a series of important votes looming in the autumn, her leadership appears increasingly fragile.Johnson resigned as foreign secretary in July, saying he could not support the negotiating position reached in the cabinet awayday at Chequers, which includes accepting a “common rulebook” for the goods and food sectors. He has not called for May to be replaced as prime minister, despite saying that her Brexit plan would leave Britain in “miserable, permanent limbo”.But the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) of MPs, chaired by Rees-Mogg, has made clear it is not willing to accept the Chequers deal. Unless May changes course dramatically, that could mean pushing for a change of leadership.Allies of Johnson have denied he is laying the groundwork for a leadership bid, and many in Westminster believe he would be unlikely to muster the backing of enough MPs to make it to the final runoff, when members would get their say.With the ERG adamantly opposed and with Labour also rejecting the white paper, it appears unlikely May can win the “meaningful vote” she has promised MPs on the final deal – and what will happen next is highly uncertain. The prime minister’s director of communications, Robbie Gibb, went on the offensive on social media on Sunday, issuing a warning to both sides. “Nobody else in British politics has a detailed plan for our future relationship with the EU that: delivers on the instruction of the British people; commands sufficient support in Parliament; and is negotiable with the EU,” he tweeted.— Robbie Gibb (@RobbieGibb) August 19, 2018 “It’s time to come together, agree a pragmatic Brexit that most people can support and get on with it.Gibb hit out at campaigners pushing for a referendum on the final deal, tweeting: “The prospect of a second referendum would damage UK negotiations.”The government is set to publish the first in a series of technical notices this week designed to prepare the UK for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. May is likely to come under further pressure from both sides of her fractious party over the content of some of the notices, which will cover areas such as farming, financial services and customs, if they are deemed too alarmist.Leave.EU is one of a number of campaign groups focusing their efforts on influencing Tory party policy, including Leave Means Leave, which last week announced it was “relaunching the Brexit campaign” to secure a “swift, clean exit” from the EU.The party may also face pressure from the grassroots to give members further power. John Strafford, a veteran Tory campaigner, has written to the party’s board urging it to change the rules so that any MP with the support of 20 Parliamentary colleagues can go forward to the final ballot among the party’s members, the Telegraph reported on Sunday.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive,is willing to testify before a House antitrust investigation (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source)into the market power of major tech companies alongside other chief executives, a lawyer for Amazon wrote to lawmakers on Sunday. The New York Times reports: Amazon had resisted making him available to the House Judiciary Committee, the group overseeing the antitrust investigation, prompting lawmakers to threaten to legally compel Mr. Bezos to testify. The panel is likely to question Mr. Bezos, the world's richest person, about claims that Amazon boxes out small businesses, abuses its power and mistreats warehouse workers. If he testifies before the committee, it will be Mr. Bezos' first appearance before Congress. In the letter sent on Sunday, Robert K. Kelner of the law firm Covington & Burling, which is representing Amazon before the congressional investigation, said the company was "committed to cooperating with your inquiry and will make the appropriate executive available to testify." He added: "This includes making Jeff Bezos available to testify at a hearing with the other C.E.O.s this summer." Mr. Kelner said Mr. Bezos' availability was dependent on first resolving several issues, including timing, format and questions about the committee's request for internal documents.

Roy Chen glances down a street teeming with mainland Chinese shoppers in this market town 2 miles from the mainland border and shakes his head. A native of Sheung Shui, the young entrepreneur resents the onslaught of outside consumers that he says is overwhelming his hometown and making him feel like a second-class citizen. “This used to be a street where we could buy cheap toys – now it’s all pharmacies” that cater to mainland Chinese traders, he says. “The prices are very high, and if you’re from Hong Kong and need to buy a little medicine, the clerks just ignore you.”Down the block, throngs of mainland buyers pack the stores, lining the sidewalks with their ubiquitous roller bags. “It’s like this every day,” says a saleswoman in a navy-blue smock, as she hands out big canisters of baby formula. Millions of mainlanders, some with multiple-entry permits, take advantage of Hong Kong’s tax-free status and lower prices to snap up medicine, cosmetics, infant formula, and other goods with brand names trusted by mainland consumers. Many of them, known as “parallel traders,” repackage the goods in small parcels to avoid taxes and resell them for a profit across the border.The voracious appetite for such products stems partly from the mainland’s problem with counterfeit goods. “They don’t trust the Chinese formula. Many things in their country are fake,” says one Hong Kong pharmacist. She describes the industrious traders derisively as working “like so many ants, [to] move things from place to place.” The election is in 19 days. The legal battles have already begun.The brisk trade, while profitable for some, has caused rising prices and shortages in baby formula and other key goods for Hong Kongers. It has also driven out small businesses and raised rents as large retailers move in, leading to protests by local people like Mr. Chen. The border scene is emblematic of the social, economic, and cultural effects of a growing influx into Hong Kong of mainland Chinese people, companies, and investment since China regained sovereignty over the British colony in 1997. As China has stepped up efforts to integrate Hong Kong with the mainland, Hong Kongers say they feel threatened, facing what they describe as pressure on all fronts.While more than five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have focused on Beijing’s political encroachments, they have brought to the forefront deeper divides of culture and identity between Hong Kong and the mainland. Combined with rising nationalist sentiment on both sides of the border, these forces portend a protracted struggle between the world’s biggest communist power and the quasi-democratic territory on its southern flank. That struggle has taken an ominous turn in recent days and weeks, as police have shot three protesters, and another protester died after a fall, fueling widespread anger and more demonstrations. Beijing warned this week that Hong Kong is slipping into “terrorism,” and has signaled plans for stepping up security while tightening political and legal controls over the territory.Mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong have surged from 2 million in 1997 to about 50 million last year. Meanwhile, under a program that allows up to 150 mainlanders to move to Hong Kong on a one-way permit every day, more than 1 million mainland Chinese have moved to Hong Kong to become permanent residents – a significant addition to the territory’s population of 7.4 million. ANN SCOTT TYSON/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Mainland shoppers, taking advantage of Hong Kong’s tax-free goods, swarm markets near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China. While the flow of mainland labor has contributed to Hong Kong’s overall economic growth, many Hong Kong natives stress the negative impact, such as competition for jobs, resources, transport, services, and housing. They use ominous – even discriminatory – language, comparing mainlanders to a plague of locusts.The more they live cheek by jowl with mainlanders, the more Hong Kong people are embracing their own distinct local identity – with many stressing how different they are from their northern compatriots. Politically, they say, Hong Kong people value the rule of law, and the freedom to speak their minds and question authority; mainlanders are brainwashed by propaganda and blindly follow Beijing. Culturally, they stress, Hong Kongers speak Cantonese, which is unintelligible to Mandarin-speaking mainlanders, and have different standards when it comes to social etiquette, hygiene, and civility. “There is an emergence of a very strong local identity in this movement ... that I have never seen before,” says Stan Hok-Wui Wong, a social scientist at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.This more assertive Hong Kong identity is evident across generations, classes, and regions of the territory – from border towns and traditional clan villages in the New Territories, to the densely inhabited neighborhoods of Kowloon and the business districts of Hong Kong Island, according to interviews with scores of people in Hong Kong. It is amplified by Hong Kongers’ concerns about Beijing’s efforts in recent years to tighten its grip over the semi-autonomous territory, and the erosion of their rights and freedoms. “The [mainland] Chinese pressure is everywhere,” says Stephen, a history student, as he attended a large rally one night this fall in downtown Hong Kong’s Edinburgh Place on the shore of Victoria Harbor.“Young people are discontent over this cultural and social invasion of Hong Kong,” as well as the economic influence, he says. “Here is a very iconic example,” he says, pointing behind him to the growing number of Chinese state-owned companies visible on Hong Kong’s glittering skyline.“We are afraid that the speed of the colonization will be faster than we expected,” he says. (Stephen and some other people interviewed for this story provided only their first or last name, or a pseudonym, to protect their privacy.)Such broad concerns about mainland encroachment have fueled this year’s mass political activism. Deeply distrustful of Hong Kong’s government and police, Hong Kongers have banded together and repeatedly taken to the streets to defend their interests, with by far the biggest wave of protests erupting in June. The protests began over a proposed extradition bill – withdrawn last month - that would have allowed Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to the mainland for trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party. Protesters also demand that the government allow an independent investigation of police conduct and institute universal suffrage to elect Hong Kong’s chief executive. BOBBY YIP/REUTERS A mainland visitor poses for a photo along Hong Kong’s harbor. Those who don’t take to the streets often provide logistical or moral support. Mr. Chen, the small-business owner from Sheung Shui, backs Hong Kong’s protesters by giving them water and supplies. “My little brother is on the front lines” of the demonstrations, he adds proudly.“If Hong Kong is not free in the future, then we will be no different from the mainland,” he says. Mainland people “don’t understand us. They say, ‘Don’t wage revolution in Hong Kong!’ But then they come and take advantage of what we have.”Along Women’s Street, mainland immigrants sell purses and watches, silk robes and Spider-Man backpacks at outdoor market stalls that line the narrow road in Mong Kok, a densely populated neighborhood on Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula. A sudden rain sends the mostly female clerks scurrying to hoist blue tarps to protect their wares. Wearing a white T-shirt and jeans with her hair in a ponytail, one clerk, Ms. Liu, sums up her priorities since moving to Hong Kong from the mainland a decade ago. “You make a living. That’s all that matters,” Ms. Liu says, reflecting an attitude common among mainlanders here. Mainland immigrants like Ms. Liu generally have a lower level of education and job skills than Hong Kongers, and come to the southern city in search of economic opportunity, better wages, and a higher standard of living. But although they provide an injection of younger laborers that Hong Kong needs, the immigrants can undercut local workers by accepting lower pay. “They take your jobs!” exclaims Alex, a Hong Kong resident and tour guide, explaining how his father lost his painting job because a mainlander agreed to work for half the wage.In the eyes of many Hong Kongers, mainland immigrants are also consuming social services – and public housing – that are then unavailable for needy locals. Many of the immigrants are younger women and children who come to reunite with Hong Kong spouses and do not work. They are allowed to join their spouses living in public housing, while longtime Hong Kong residents must meet strict income criteria and wait more than five years to gain access to low-income flats. “It’s not fair,” says Mr. Wong, a civil servant in Hong Kong’s Housing Department who is critical of government policy. “The Chinese [immigrants] don’t have to show their income to get housing and social benefits,” he says, as he stands on the sidelines of a recent rally in downtown Hong Kong. TYRONE SIU/REUTERS Pro-China supporter Alex Yeung, owner of Wah Kee Restaurant, takes a selfie next to a giant Chinese flag as he and others celebrate National Day of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 2019. The shortage of the heavily subsidized public housing is a dire issue in Hong Kong, where the high-rise apartment buildings are home for 3.3 million people – or about 45% of the population. Meanwhile, sky-high prices put private property out of reach for most. Hong Kong is the most expensive place to own a home in the world, according to data from the World Economic Forum. At current rates, it would take about 20 years for the average skilled service worker in Hong Kong to afford to buy a 650-square-foot flat in the city center. Average rents are close to the average monthly wages of workers.The problem is rooted in a shortage of land for development, and government policy, but has been exacerbated in part by growing demand from wealthy mainlanders. Hong Kong is the favorite offshore property market for mainland buyers, according to an October survey by the Swiss investment bank UBS.“Chinese people move to Hong Kong just looking for resources – housing, medical care,” says Jimmy, a real estate broker on Hong Kong Island. “If they contribute to Hong Kong we don’t mind, but if they simply take things, we don’t like it. The money is all from our taxes.”Immigration programs that attract wealthy investors and professionals from the mainland have also drawn concern from Hong Kong’s more highly educated, white-collar workers, who see big Chinese firms filling jobs with mainland employees.“In the recruitment, they prefer mainlanders rather than locals, especially when the daily operation of the enterprise will use Mandarin,” says Nicholas, a Hong Kong native who will soon enter the workforce as a college graduate. “That causes a disadvantage for Hong Kong people to compete for jobs,” he says.Feeling besieged economically, Hong Kongers blame the north. “From the local perspective, many of the mainlanders are in direct competition with locals,” says Professor Wong. “The superrich and the low-skilled are competing away the resources that are supposed to be for Hong Kong people.” THOMAS PETER/REUTERS Apartment buildings loom out of the hills of Hong Kong, the most expensive place to own a home in the world. Such blame is shortsighted, some say, noting that young immigrants help rejuvenate Hong Kong’s aging population. “If we do our job properly, to make sure they are welcome, their skill set can be fully utilized,” says Paul Yip, chair professor in the department of social work at The University of Hong Kong. Moreover, Hong Kong’s government needs to “address the deep-rooted problems” such as housing and provide greater training and opportunities for Hong Kong’s youths, he says. In the absence of such measures, “the resentment goes both ways,” says Professor Yip.As the us-against-them mentality toward mainlanders grows, so does Hong Kongers’ collective identity as a distinct people with their own culture, place, and destiny.Tucked away amid the verdant hills of northwestern Hong Kong, an ancient village of the powerful Tang clan seems far removed from the high emotions and intensity of the neon city. Rural clan strongholds are traditionally conservative and pro-Beijing. But even here, pride in Hong Kong’s culture, unique character, and activism as distinct from the mainland is growing. “Hong Kong people are braver” than mainlanders because they dare to speak their minds, says one young clansman, Tang Kuho, as he stops to visit along a village path. Mr. Tang, who is training to be a Hong Kong firefighter, strongly supports peaceful protests in the territory. In contrast, Mr. Tang says, mainlanders keep quiet out of fear of government retribution, and also because propaganda and patriotic education give them an overly rosy view of their country and its history. “Mainland people can’t say what they think,” he says.Farther down the path next to an elegant Tang clan ancestral hall, Ms. Yang, a mainland woman who married into the clan, sells traditional homemade sesame sweets. Since moving to Hong Kong from her hometown of Changsha in China’s Hunan province three years ago, Ms. Yang has also felt the widening divide between Hong Kong and mainland people. “Hong Kong people are relatively xenophobic,” she says. “They don’t want to have contact with us; it’s that simple.”Mainlanders who arrived in Hong Kong after 1997 are considered “outlanders,” she says. Earlier waves of immigrants consider themselves “Hong Kong people,” she says, including her husband’s grandmother, who arrived some 80 years ago.Feeling alienated, Ms. Yang relies on friendships with other young mainland mothers. “We have our own circle. We take the children to school together, so it’s easy to meet them. We support one another,” she says. Her overall feeling about Hong Kong? “I don’t like it. I want to return to the mainland – about 80% of us want to move back.” ANN SCOTT TYSON/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR “Hong Kong people are relatively xenophobic. They don’t want to have contact with us; it’s that simple.” – Ms. Yang, who moved to Hong Kong from mainland China Although they share Chinese ethnicity, Hong Kongers and mainlanders have lived in different worlds for much of the last two centuries. During 150 years of British colonial administration from 1841 to 1997, Hong Kong absorbed liberal political values under a British legal system and, while never a democracy, had a robust civil society and saw the beginnings of representative government. “Hong Kong has been developing in a very liberal political environment. All these Hong Kong elites were educated in Britain, studying law at the best British universities,” says Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. “That is part of the DNA of the Hong Kong people.”China’s communist rulers, in contrast, adopted a Soviet-inspired style of governance and political culture. Many Hong Kong people belong to families of refugees who fled during China’s 1949 communist revolution and the political unrest that followed. “They knew their money would be confiscated so they came to Hong Kong,” Professor Cabestan says. “The anti-communist DNA is very strong in Hong Kong.” “This explains the gap ... between China and Hong Kong.” As China’s leaders have moved to tighten the Communist Party’s controls, especially since party chief Xi Jinping took power in 2012, Hong Kong has pushed back. Hong Kong has increasingly resisted Beijing’s ongoing efforts to impose national policies – from a draconian national security law to “patriotic” education – that many in the territory believe encroach on their rights outlined in the “one country, two systems” framework under which China resumed sovereignty in 1997. “China has tried to subsume Hong Kongers since 1997, but their stateless nationalism has, paradoxically, become more consolidated through their struggles,” writes Brian C.H. Fong, a comparative political scientist at The Education University of Hong Kong, in an October article.Mass protests for human rights and democracy in 2003, 2014, and this year have solidified the territory’s unique political identity. Meanwhile, nationalist sentiment has grown in the mainland, bolstered by party propaganda. To describe these trends, Professor Fong coined the phrase “one country, two nationalisms.” Each seems to be reinforcing the other: As Hong Kong’s protesters push for greater autonomy from Beijing’s autocratic regime, Chinese officials and state-run media denounce them as separatist rioters backed by hostile foreign forces who must be reined in. (The vast majority of Hong Kong protesters seek autonomy, not independence from China.)“Ironically, instead of successfully assimilating Hongkongese into one Chinese nation, Beijing’s incorporation strategies are leading to a rise of peripheral nationalism in the city-state and waves of counter-mobilization,” Professor Fong writes.These divergent outlooks are playing out in tensions between local and mainland students on university campuses in Hong Kong, which have intensified with a handful of recent violent confrontations between Hong Kong and mainland students. This, coupled with serious clashes between protesters and police on campuses over the past week, has led many mainland students to flee across the border, according to press reports.Earlier this fall at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, rising on lush hills shaded by banyan trees and overlooking Tolo Harbor, Hong Kong student activists hand out pamphlets outside the light rail station.“We want a real democratic society, where Hong Kong people have the right to vote for their government,” says Miss Chow. “We are seeing a lot of decaying in the system.” Posters and graffiti supporting the movement cover campus buildings, walls, and walkways.Although some mainland students quietly support the pro-democracy protests, others vocally oppose them. “Some shout slogans, like ‘Hong Kong is part of China’ at our assemblies,” she says. “Others are a bit confused about freedom of speech in Hong Kong” because it is so novel. SUSANA VERA/REUTERS Protesters hide their faces after trying to speak to the vice chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Indeed, asked about the protests, some newly arrived mainland students seem surprised by the level of openness on Hong Kong campuses. “This is a free university, with free speech,” says a first-year engineering student from Shandong province. Still, her reaction was mixed. “Sometimes what they say makes sense, but sometimes they overdo it,” she says. While Hong Kong students have welcomed her, she notes, “it makes me sad to see so many posters. I love my country.”Miss Chow hopes more mainland students will back the movement, as they sift the truth from propaganda about Hong Kong. “In Hong Kong, they can have more exposure to freedom of speech and different media and information,” she says. “Some of them may change their minds.”Many Hong Kong people believe the past five months of unprecedented protests mark a turning point in attitudes that has changed the territory forever. Opinion polls also suggest a tectonic shift in outlook. Only slightly more than 10% of Hong Kong people identify themselves as “Chinese” – a post-1997 record low, according to a June public opinion poll by The University of Hong Kong. A majority identify as “Hong Konger,” the poll shows. And Hong Kong people are gaining pride in themselves, a July survey shows. One possible outcome, say experts, is that pro-democracy and localist candidates will receive a significant boost in district elections scheduled for Nov. 24 and legislative elections to be held next year.Prior to the latest huge wave of protests, Professor Wong’s research anticipated a gradual shift toward pro-Beijing conservatism in Hong Kong elections, as more mainland immigrants gained permanent residency and the right to vote.But Hong Kong is now in fluid, uncharted territory. Some mainland immigrants have joined the protests and support the calls for greater police and government accountability. Several interviewed say they either back the protests or are neutral. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. “There is a huge consensus that the government needs to do something to respond to the people’s demands,” says Professor Wong, who studies Hong Kong elections. “Many are unhappy with the performance of the administration. That may change their political orientation.”Professor Yip agrees. “We have to move with the times,” he says. “You can’t put Hong Kong back in a cage.”

The FBI launched an investigation into whether Donald Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests – and Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal from his own administration the details of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to two bombshell reports.The New York Times reported on Friday that law enforcement officials were so concerned about Trump’s behavior after he fired James Comey as FBI director that they launched a counterintelligence investigation into whether he was acting as a Russian agent, either intentionally or unwittingly.According to another report by the Washington Post, Trump has taken unusual steps to conceal the contents of his discussions with Putin. After meeting with the Russian president in Hamburg in 2017, the Post reported, Trump took his interpreter’s notes and instructed him not to disclose what was discussed to other US officials.On Saturday night, Trump was asked by a Fox News host whether he had ever worked for Russia.“I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked,” he said.He did not give a yes or no answer.As for his conversations with Putin, he said: “I’m not keeping anything under wraps, I couldn’t care less.”On Sunday, Democrats said the latest revelations raise serious questions about Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia.“Why is he so chummy with Vladimir Putin – this man who is a former KGB agent, never been a friend to the United States, invaded our allies, threatens us around the world, and tries his damndest to undermine our elections?” Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on ABC’s This Week.“Why is this President Trump’s best buddy? I don’t get it.”Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said it was suspicious that Trump has “parroted” the policies of Putin.“I do think it’s curious that throughout that whole summer when these investigations started, you have Vladimir Putin policies almost being parroted by Donald Trump,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.“You had Trump say only nice things about Putin – he never spoke ill about Russia. The Republican campaign doctrines softened on Russia and decreased their willingness to defend Ukraine.”Warner said the US government still does not know what took place in Trump’s meetings with Putin, including another in Helsinki last summer where Trump appeared to embrace Putin’s claim, rejected by US intelligence, that his country had nothing to do with an interference effort in the 2016 election.“The American government does not know what was discussed between Trump and Vladimir Putin in that frankly pathetic, embarrassing encounter,” Warner said.Republicans defended the president, saying the US during his administration has imposed tough sanctions against Russia in response to its interference campaign during the 2016 election and its aggression in Ukraine.“We’ve been very tough on Russia,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “Look at the sanctions that we have taken with this administration. I know this administration and I know this Congress is very tough on Russia and we will continue to be so. But I want this president to be able to build a relationship, even on a person level, with all the world leaders.” Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, last July. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/ReutersRon Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican senator and chair of the homeland security committee, said he had only heard “innuendo” about Trump’s interactions with Russia, not any evidence of improprieties. He said there were legitimate reasons to want to guard the president’s conversations with Putin.“This is not a traditional president,” he told CNN. “He has unorthodox means, but he is president of the United States. It is pretty much up to him in terms of who he wants to read into his conversations with world leaders. He was burned by leaks in other areas and he was pretty frustrated.”Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of the president, was more forceful, telling Fox News Sunday: “I am going to ask the FBI director: ‘Was there a counterintelligence investigation opened up regarding the president as being a potential agent of the Russians?’ I find it astonishing.“If this really did happen, Congress needs to know about it. How could the FBI do that? What kinds of checks and balances are there?”Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not answer specific questions about whether he was aware of the FBI counterintelligence work when he directed the CIA.“The notion that President Trump is a threat to American national security is absolutely ludicrous,” he told CBS.

This will not surprise anyone familiar with the recent congressional testimony of the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray. In an appearance last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he reported that, since the start of the fiscal year in October, the bureau had made around 100 arrests related to domestic terrorism, with a majority of the cases “motivated by some version of what you might call white-supremacist violence.” He assured lawmakers that the bureau was “aggressively” investigating such activities. Likewise, Mr. McAleenan said that the issue has been one of his “top priorities” since taking office in April and that he has asked an advisory council “to help us study domestic terrorism, especially white-supremacist extremism and racially motivated violence.”The White House appears ambivalent about the threat. Earlier this month, CNN reported that, for more than a year, the White House rebuffed efforts by Homeland Security to make domestic terrorism a strategic priority. One former senior Trump official told the network that the president didn’t like the topic “because the preponderance of it involves white supremacy and that’s not something this administration is comfortable speaking out against.”More broadly, the president’s immigration approach continues to fuel instability at Homeland Security, where several officials — including former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen — have been pushed out in recent months for being insufficiently hard-line. Last week, Axios broke the news that a top aide to Mr. McAleenan, Andrew Meehan, was leaving amid tensions between the White House and department leadership. Mr. McAleenen himself is regarded with skepticism by some of Mr. Trump’s more hawkish allies, who have pressed for his removal. In June, the president voiced hesitation about permanently nominating Mr. McAleenan, saying he still needed “to get used to him.” The appointment in June of Thomas Homan, a Trump loyalist and an immigration hard-liner, to coordinate policy as the White House “border czar” was seen by some as a sign that Mr. Trump lacks confidence in Homeland Security officials. Every president brings into office a particular set of principles and priorities. But when those biases start undercutting the government’s ability to pursue smart policies — or even carry out basic duties, a responsible leader must think less about his personal prerogatives and more about the nation’s overall security.

“I’m imagining a lot of gold-plated stuff and pseudotapestries,” said Wendy Goodman, the design editor of New York magazine. “Needlepoint faux 14th-century furniture and bath curtains in silk taffeta that the Manaforts were told was water-repellent. What do you think the interior of the cars look like? Was it sheer fur?”In short order, reporters from The Weekly Standard and HuffPost identified J&J Oriental rugs as the likely location of Mr. Manafort’s spree. (J&J did not answer questions from The New York Times.) That flummoxed the small network of high-end dealers who rely on a mix of cooperation and competition when dealing with the biggest collectors, and who expressed utter disbelief that Mr. Manafort had spent this amount at what was basically a neighborhood store.“I looked at that website, and the rugs shown there were mostly standard Iranian commercial goods from now or not long ago,” said Daniel Shaffer, the executive editor of Hali Magazine, a rug and textiles publication. “There was nothing collectible about them. I don’t know what he bought, but with the kind of things I saw on the website, he would have had to buy a container load to spend a million dollars.”“I can’t believe it was kosher,” Mr. Nazmiyal said, echoing the opinions of more than half a dozen other Persian carpet experts. “If you want to buy jewelry and you’re going to spend a million dollars, you go to see Fabergé, you go to Cartier and Tiffany. When you go to a local, neighborhood store for rare and expensive rugs, in all probability that dealer is going to contact a dealer in a big metropolitan area to get it on consignment and bring it to you. That drives the price up. There’s more hands involved. People hear about it.”Mr. Manafort wasn’t even a fixture on the auction scene, a typical stomping ground for those looking for deals on highly collectible pieces.“He never came,” said Mary Jo Otsea, who ran the rugs department at Sotheby’s, where she worked for more than 30 years. She oversaw the 2013 sale of the most expensive carpet ever, a kaleidoscopic tapestry of leafy vines that was woven in Southeast Iran in the early 17th century and measures 9 feet by 6½ feet.

Some people have treated entrepreneur Andrew Yang like a joke candidate – including, to some extent, Yang himself. He has skateboarded and crowd-surfed on the campaign trail. He has Super Nintendo on his tour bus and celebrated the opening of his New Hampshire office by shooting whipped cream directly into a fan’s mouth. Said the Associated Press: “Of all the many Democrats running for president, Andrew Yang is having the most fun.” Andrew Yang’s success, however, demands that Americans take him seriously as a candidate. Unfortunately, he and his campaign make this task difficult, particularly when it comes to disability policy. Every major candidate has addressed the issue of care for disabled and elderly Americans. And while no platform is perfect, most candidates have a basic understanding of the social safety net, or at least their advisers do. Except maybe Yang’s.On Monday, Yang finally released his health care policy plan, with a section on people with disabilities. I read it. I also read his book, The War on Normal People, combed his website on details about disability programs, and asked his campaign for comment. And as a disabled person who has relied on various social safety net programs in the past, I am still left confused as to how disability benefits would be affected by the centerpiece of Yang’s policies, universal basic income, or what he calls the Freedom Dividend. His health care policies for disabled people also raise more questions than answers.With the Freedom Dividend, the government would pay every American $1,000 per month, no strings attached. This is unlikely to ever make it through Congress. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it did. Then what would happen to disability benefits? It is difficult to analyze the impact of the Freedom Dividend on other social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicaid, or food stamps. Andrew Yang’s new health care plan and the “Care for People with Disabilities” section say absolutely nothing on the matter. When Vox contacted Yang’s campaign for clarification, his national press secretary insisted that Yang’s plan “touches on aspects” of disability benefits, but did not explain how or in what way. I was repeatedly given answers and sent links to parts of the website that were totally irrelevant to the questions I’d asked. A major issue for how the Freedom Dividend might impact disability benefits is whether a program will “stack” with it. That is, whether a person will still be able to receive their existing benefits while also receiving the Freedom Dividend. While Yang does outline some social programs that will “stack” — like Social Security retirement benefits — it is an incomplete list. For many of the programs he omits — like SNAP (better known as food stamps) or housing vouchers — a person has to demonstrate a certain amount of financial hardship in order to qualify. While the Freedom Dividend should hypothetically be available to everyone, his campaign’s loose grasp on what benefits disabled people even use in the first place suggests it may not.For example, the FAQ on universal basic income on Yang’s website includes basic errors. It notes: “some people who receive more than $1,000 a month in SSI would choose to take the Freedom Dividend because it has no preconditions.” This means they they can opt-in without having “to deal with a degrading and paternalistic bureaucracy,” Yang’s national press secretary told me. However, the problem with this statement is that it conflates SSI, Supplemental Security Income, with SSDI, Social Security Disability Insurance, which encompass very different things. SSDI consists of cash payments to people who have a disability that prevents them from having a job. The amount of money a person gets from SSDI is based on work credits — the longer a person has worked and the higher the person’s previous wage, the more money that person may be entitled to.SSI, on the other hand, is for people who are poor or disabled and who do not have the work experience necessary to qualify for SSDI. Yang’s point about people who receive more than $1,000 a month in SSI is particularly nonsensical because it is impossible to receive more than $1,000 per month in SSI. The maximum allowed federal rate for an individual in 2019 is $771. Of course, $1,000 is more than $771, so it may seem, on the surface, that Yang is essentially offering a $229 increase in benefits to the 3.4 million Americans who rely on SSI. And who couldn’t use a little more money? To paraphrase a Yang campaign slogan, “math!” Unfortunately, much like the policy, the math isn’t that simple.Many states require that people qualify for SSI in order to receive government-funded long-term services and supports through Medicaid. If a quadriplegic person requires an aide to get out of bed, get dressed, and get showered every morning, that person needs to either qualify for SSI to get those services, or pay for them out of pocket — an incredibly expensive proposition. It is unclear whether choosing the Freedom Dividend over SSI would impact access to these necessary services. Yang’s website doesn’t say, and after several exchanges, Yang’s spokesperson eventually sent me a link to the FAQ, which, again, doesn’t answer the question. It’s unclear if taking the Freedom Dividend might cause someone to lose access to the benefits they need to stay alive. Yang’s other mentions of disability are bizarrely and arbitrarily limited. In his official disability policy platform titled “Care for People with Disabilities,” Yang calls for ensuring wheelchair accessibility, but only for hospitals, and with no explanation as to how he would do so. He calls hearing aids and mobility devices “preventative care services … to prevent further secondary conditions.” Hearing aids help with hearing loss in a pretty straightforward way, so I’m not sure what secondary conditions Yang’s platform is talking about. Regarding questions on long-term services and supports for people with disabilities, Yang’s campaign insisted that their plan “touches on aspects of it.” A spokesperson did not explain which aspects when pressed. Yang’s campaign was similarly opaque on whether he supports Medicare for All. On one hand, it’s listed on his website as a key part of his policy platform. But in his expanded health care plan, he notes, “swiftly reformatting 18% of our economy and eliminating private insurance for millions of Americans is not a realistic strategy,” a direct reference to the single-payer plans proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Instead, Yang boldly declares, “We are having the wrong conversation about healthcare.” But what is the right conversation? For Yang, it’s shifting the “focus away from funding mechanisms and budget towards solving the major problems within the healthcare system.” Instead of a comprehensive plan addressing access to health care and insurance affordability like the ones proposed by the other frontrunners, he addresses a mishmash of seemingly unconnected issues, from telemedicine to tort reform to electronic medical records. It is unclear why some issues warrant Andrew Yang’s attention and not others. Sure, making HIV prevention medication and reproductive health care more widely available are worthy goals, but there’s no coherence or overarching policy. This dedication to the arbitrary when it comes to disability extends beyond the borders of Yang’s health care plan. The first bullet point on Yang’s mental health plan, for example, is to begin a national anti-stigma campaign for mental health issues called “Everybody Needs Help Sometimes.” Yang also calls for incentives for improved mental health outcomes. The thing is, some people need help all the time. Incentives for improved mental health outcomes are not useful for those of us who will never be “well.” Yang’s autism policy also seems strangely short-sighted, considering his own son is on the spectrum. He calls for more funding for early diagnosis and therapy for children, but autism is not a childhood condition. Yang does not have a proposal for when autistic people inevitably grow up. He makes the same call for other disabilities in his wider disability policy platform, and it is equally, bafflingly limited. As one of only seven candidates who have qualified for the Democratic debate this week, Yang is still in this race. But the caucuses and primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire are approaching, and as the Democratic field tightens, candidates face increased scrutiny over their policies. Yang certainly has big ideas, but big ideas are not enough to improve the lives of Americans with disabilities. He needs to understand the fundamentals before proposing radical systemic change. And it is abundantly clear, given the existing evidence, that he does not.

The campus of one of Hong Kong's top universities turned into a battleground on Tuesday as student protesters fought with police well into the night.After police entered the campus, protesters set up roadblocks, formed human chains to pass supplies, and made weapons including petrol bombs. Others fought back with bows and arrows, as police fired volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd.The BBC spoke to some of the students at the scene.

Though the U.S. governmentaverted a shutdown of TikTok through a new Oracle/Walmart partnership, that leaves much bigger questions unresolved. The biggest issue may be that banning apps "defeats the original intent of the internet," argues the New York TImes. "And that was to create a global communications network, unrestrained by national borders."But the Times also asks whether the TikTok agreement fails even at its original goal of protecting the app from foreign influence:Other questions also remain, including America's larger policy towards other apps like Telegram made by foreign countries. Even Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Freeman-Spogli Institute, complains to the Times that "bashing TikTok is not a China strategy. China has a multi-prong strategy to win the tech race. It invests in American technology, steals intellectual property and now develops its own technology that is coming into the U.S... And yet we think we can counter this by banning an app. The forest is on fire, and we are spraying a garden hose on a bush."And another article in the Times argues that the TikTok agreementdoesn't even eliminate Chinese ownership of the app:

This Wednesday, Donald Glover essentially endorsed Andrew Yang for president by announcing on Instagram that he is hosting a merch pop-up in L.A. before the Democratic primary debate on December 19. This cosign comes as no surprise. The multi-hyphenate entertainer, who has made waves with his TV show Atlanta and politically-focused single “This Is America” (accompanied by a violent music video that shocked and fascinated), has, like Yang, a simplistic yet popular vision of justice. To both, it seems many of the world’s ills can be solved with wily genius, innovation, and money. Racism can be defunded, and instead, the marginalized can be lifted up with $1000 a month as technology steps in to do the jobs humans are not advanced enough to excel at. Economic power via meritocracy has worked for them, and they want to make it work for more people. We see this vision in Yang’s technocratic policies and Glover’s tongue-in-cheek music (with lyrics like “We just want the money / Money just for you,” “Grandma told me / get that money / black man”) and depressive scripts. According to them, though getting rich can be a cynical, lonely game, if the economic winners amongst us can get everyone as close to capital as possible using user-tested methods, then social injustice can be transcended.Glover’s teaming up with Yang shouldn’t befuddle anyone familiar with the rappers he looks up to and takes after: namely Jay-Z and Kanye West, who assert a similar brand of cynicism disguised as pragmatic intelligence, not only in their music, but in their actions. Though the Watch the Throne pair has diverged in their methods and conduct, each believes that only access to real wealth (not just the trappings of wealth, but investments and access) makes positive change possible. Kanye puts his money into clothing brands and designer operas for the masses, while Jay-Z inks performance deals with the NFL and criticizes Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to play along with the organization. In a belated response to a critique by rapper and poet Saul Williams that artists like Jay-Z mistakenly “equate money with liberation”, Jay-Z wrote Williams an email saying (sic throughout):Our fight for economic freedom is new, not the same war that Harriet Tubman was fighting. If I used the same “weapons” as them I would be shooting a musket at people with Fully automatic assault rifles. Although I think it’s a must, we challenge each other, we should be careful that it doesn’t come off as judgement.Williams took a screenshot of the email, posted it on instagram, and responded in the caption that the fight for economic freedom is actually not new (“[t]here have been wealthy black Americans in every generation since the 1600’s, and in Africa since forever”), but “[t]he seduction of power and the systemic constraints of white supremacy will take more than money to burn.” Williams believes that instead of getting money, black people should “push for essentially socialist measures which provide healthcare and education to all.” To put it simply, Jay-Z is a capitalist and Williams is a socialist who doesn’t see market economics as extractable from racism: “Even as we push against the systemic structures in criminal justice, housing, etc. [sic] we know that it is not simply a question of money being used against us [sic] rather it is the ideology that negates our worth as human beings that seems to justify the constant exploitation of our worth and work. Thus, the attack is largely against belief systems, philosophies empowered by money and a corrupted rule of law.” I quote this exchange at length because it exemplifies an increasing divide within black communities that is certainly not new, but has now entered the mainstream entertainment sphere. Hip-hop specifically has toggled between conscious and hedonistic bents. But since the early-aughts, the get money imperative has won out both due to its centrist appeal and its ambassadors’ ability to outlast their conscious counterparts in the bloodthirsty music industry. For a time, though, performers like Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, and Common hit the mainstream rapping about anti-racism and systemic oppression as much as they rapped about sexuality and fame. These are the same rappers who, at the beginning of his career, Kanye looked up to and even collaborated with before embracing the darker side of his ambivalence. Still, the conscious rap of the era was itself complicated, and contained a spectrum of ideas and ideology from noble to questionable to bigoted—for instance, misogynistic and xenophobic ideas have been prevalent within the male-dominated “Hotep” or Afrocentric circles associated with conscious rap. Today, many young rappers have distanced themselves from the scene if not outright forsaken it, instead taking on entrepreneurial, conventionally successful mentors like Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, Kanye, and Diddy. But now, womanist and black socialist movements, drawing from the work of activists like Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton have made some new ground within the hip-hop scene. Rapper Noname has recently turned her focus to community activism with her Noname’s Book Club, which focuses on bringing people together to discuss works by authors of color that “speak on human conditions in critical and original ways.” Noname has also announced on Twitter that she is done performing her music for majority white crowds who often flagrantly drop the N-word while singing along to her music and intends to instead focus her energies on anti-racist and anti-capitalist organizing. These anti-racist socialist views, while recently expressed, have been in the making: On the song “Self” off her 2018 album Room 25, Noname rejects both the respectability politics of conscious rap and the trivialism of get money rap: Fucked the rapper homie now his ass is making better musicMy pussy teaches ninth-grade EnglishMy pussy wrote a thesis on colonialismIn conversation with a marginal system in love with JesusY'all really thought a bitch couldn't rap, huh?Maybe this your answer for thatGood pussy, I know niggas only talk about money and good pussyAnd in October of this year Noname tweeted, “Rap is curated and presented to us by white elites. It has legitimized and enriched several publications that depend on black culture for content. Between radio and streaming playlist[s] they’ve decided what type of rap is profitable for mainstream. Liberation isn’t profitable.” A day later, she added, “I was very confused about this because.. ya know... conditioning, but black capitalism isn’t progress or collective freedom. It’s just capitalism. The goal isn’t for a few blacks to make it into upper class society. The goal is economic stability and liberation for all!!!!”And it’s not just Noname pushing the conversation in the entertainment industry forward. Rappers Cardi B and Lizzo have shown support for the most progressive Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, with Cardi B outright endorsing him and even interviewing him about his policies relatively early in his primary campaign. Earl Sweatshirt, who grew up with progressive and activist parents, is a more introspective rapper with recent music focusing on self-growth and self-deception, but in a discussion with his UCLA law professor mom, Cheryl I. Harris, he spoke about how capitalism was built on slavery and told a fan that “[r]ap music is slave music. Slave communication was encrypted, spoken in code, so really this is the new version of it.” It seems like a new generation of rappers—who are as likely to be independent artists as they are to be signed to a major label—are increasingly looking to leverage their fame differently. That is, not in the service of capitalism, black or otherwise. So what does the revelation about Glover’s political priorities mean in the context of rappers and their political pursuits? Well, Glover, while energetically young, is 36 and, as a searching New Yorker profile revealed, psychically senior. He has the kind of jaded yet opportunistic outlook that tends to suit those whom the system has already rewarded. Most of Glover’s complaints, in his music and otherwise, center on how much higher he could reach if he were white, with the access that rich white people have. Jay-Z and Kanye make similar points, lamenting black people’s lack of economic power relative to whites. If only we could make our art as freely and recklessly and lift black kids out of the ghetto and into billionaire-funded centers like the one T’Challa founds at the end of Black Panther. But their vision, while seductive, is limited, depressing, and ahistorical—a code that, once cracked, will disappoint.

By releasing its requests, the House committee offered a glimpse of the depth of the scrutiny that the companies will face and laid out the lines of investigation. The lawmakers are looking for signs of executives’ intent when they made decisions that harmed competitors, according to a person close to the congressional investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the lawmakers’ plans were private.The information the committee collects can also feed the other investigations, and help lawmakers more sharply question witnesses under oath in hearings, said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University.“Those interrogations take on an entirely different tone,” said Mr. Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. “This is a significant escalation of the process.”The inquiries into individual companies are complex; the tech giants span a range of digital markets, including internet search, advertising, e-commerce and social media. And the companies are likely to resist some of the requests, contending they could reveal trade secrets.The companies will almost certainly try to narrow the scope and reduce the volume of the documents they deliver. But the House investigators have leverage. These are document “requests” but backed by the threat of subpoenas if the companies do not comply.The communications habits of the individual companies will also play a role in determining how much evidence there is and in what form.At Amazon, for example, Mr. Bezos writes brief emails to make announcements or delegate, but largely gives feedback and discusses issues in person. He is well known internally for forwarding customer complaints to staffers with just a “?,” leaving teams scrambling to resolve the issue.

In choosing to focus on his baby bonds proposal, Mr. Booker is seizing on an issue that has come to define the early primary race: inequality of wealth and income. While many other candidates paint broad agendas to combat the growing wealth gap, such as calls for “Medicare for all,” Mr. Booker’s baby bonds proposal is among the most complex and specific offered by a presidential candidate.On the campaign trail, Mr. Booker touts a Columbia University study from January that concluded that baby bonds “would dramatically reduce racial wealth inequality.”Election 2020 ›Latest UpdatesUpdated Oct. 18, 2020, 4:23 p.m. ETSenator John Cornyn says getting Trump to mend his ways is like someone trying to ‘change their spouse.’Biden talks a lot about Scranton. Some locals don’t like what they hear.In public, Team Trump projects confidence. In private, it’s a different story.A broad rewriting of the social contract, Mr. Booker’s proposal calls for every child born in the United States to be given a $1,000 bonded savings account that is run through the Treasury Department. Each year, the federal government would contribute to the account on a tiered basis; those who come from a family of four making less than $25,100 a year would be given $2,000. The contributions would be lowered as families move up the income ladder, and any family of four making more than $125,751 would receive no contributions.The proposal estimates that children from the nation’s poorest families would receive roughly $46,000 when they turned 18. But the money would carry restrictions; it could only be spent on “wealth-building” transactions like paying for college, buying a home or starting a small business.Mr. Booker’s office estimates that the program would carry an annual price tag of about $60 billion, and would be paid for by restoring the estate tax rate to its 2009 levels, closing loopholes in the capital gains tax, and adding a surtax rate for estates worth at least $10 million and at least $50 million.But just before Mr. Booker was about to delve into the more intricate details of his baby bonds proposal, he was interrupted by one of the home’s residents — Sadie, a golden lab.“What are your questions,” he said, pausing his remarks to rub the dog behind the ears. “I am the leader in the Senate on animal issues.”

It’s probably fair to say that in the history of politicking, few politicians have publicly declared what to do about America’s crumbling malls, or how to provide free marriage counseling for all, or how to make filing taxes fun. But Andrew Yang, who’s gunning to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, certainly has—and those are the more minor concerns among a dizzying list of 80 policy positions on his campaign website.It’s an indication that Yang is running a rather methodical, data-driven, science-happy campaign. He’s applying that approach to more standard-issue problems like labor, climate change, and the economy but giving them a decidedly tech-forward approach: how (and why) we should define robots, what use might geoengineering have in saving the planet, and whether the government should embrace universal basic income and give every American a $1,000 check.Yang talked with WIRED about all this and more in a recent interview.(The conversation below has been condensed and edited for clarity.)Matt Simon: You've been talking a lot about automation. We've had waves of automation before, but now with robots and AI, things seem different. Why wouldn't it be a transition like we saw in the mass mechanization of agriculture, where people shifted into other jobs?Andrew Yang: Four million manufacturing workers lost their jobs over the last number of years. According to economic theory and the precedent you just referred to, then these 4 million workers would get retrained, reskilled, and relocated and find new jobs in another industry. In reality, nearly half of them left the workforce and never worked again, and of that group nearly half filed for disability. It's very lazy to say, “Hey, decades ago something happened to farming workers, so magic will ensue this time.” You can very clearly see the magic was not there for the manufacturing workers; the magic will not be there for the retail workers or the call center workers.MS: There's this fallacy that if you're a truck driver and you get displaced by self-driving trucks, folks will say, “Oh, we'll just teach you how to code!” I think that’s presumptuous and insulting.AY: That's exactly right. Why would we even think we can retrain coal miners and truck drivers to become software engineers? The only reason we think that is we've been brainwashed to equate economic value and human value, where if workers have lost their value in the marketplace then we think, OK, we have to transform you into something that does have value even if that transformation is totally unrealistic.MS: So what about a robot tax? You replace a job with a robot, you get taxed, and we use that money for retraining.AY: I'm a fan of some kind of transfer of value from the people that are in a position to benefit greatly from new innovations to help cushion the blow for people who are going to be displaced. And so a localized robot tax, as they're considering in San Francisco, may make a lot of sense.I will say that in a lot of contexts, it's hard to figure out what's a robot. And so the example is if CVS replaces a cashier with an iPad, are you going to tax them on that? And are retailers in a position to be able to pay those taxes? And what's the appropriate level of taxes you're using as a baseline? The whole thing actually gets very difficult when you try to apply it economy-wide.It's one reason why I'm proposing a value-added tax, which would end up serving many of the same goals. If you look at a company like Amazon, which is obviously going to be one of the biggest winners from artificial intelligence, it paid zero in federal taxes last year. We need to get some of the gains that Amazon's harvesting. You could go around trying to tax the robots in Amazon's fulfillment centers, but it would be much more efficient and harder for them to gain if we just passed a value-added tax, which would give the people a tiny sliver of every Amazon sale, every Google search, every robot truck mile.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s campaign gained significant traction in the fourth quarter of 2019, raising $16.5 million from October to December, his campaign said Thursday. That included bringing in more than $4 million in the last week of December alone, and reaching 1 million individual donations and a total of 400,000 donors. The total is a substantial gain from the third quarter, when Yang’s campaign said he raised $10 million, and nearly 6 times the $2.8 million he reported in the second quarter of 2019.I am excited to report our Q4 numbers - we got our one-millionth donation and neared 400,000 total donors with thousands of new donors in the past week alone. The #yanggang is growing a lot faster than the other campaigns - and we will shock the world in February. 😀🎉🚀— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) January 2, 2020 Though Yang’s fundraising haul was a significant increase from previous quarters, he still trails the top-tier candidates. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign said Wednesday that he raised $24.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. During that same period, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raised over $34.5 million from 1.8 million donations, his campaign said Thursday, which will likely be the highest amount among the top-polling candidates. Other candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Vice President Joe Biden, have not yet released their fourth-quarter fundraising totals and have until Jan. 31 to do so. Yang’s ascendance comes as other candidates of color have struggled to gain traction in the Democratic presidential race, where the field of top contenders has gotten increasingly white. He was the only candidate of color to qualify for the December debate, and has yet to qualify for this month’s debate ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The entrepreneur has gained more followers and increased his national profile in recent months, drawing in voters with his nonpolitical background and a signature campaign plan to give every U.S. citizen 18 years or older a “universal basic income” of $1,000 a month. Yang has also been candid about his obstacles as an Asian American candidate. Earlier this year, he faced criticism from Asian Americans for frequently telling self-deprecating jokes perpetuating persistent stereotypes against Asian people, undermining the significance of his historic presence on the presidential debate stage. The conflict illustrated the bind in which candidates of color are placed: having to figure out how to best represent their underrepresented group, while trying to make white voters feel comfortable with their presence — with few prior models to follow.

Premature claims of victory will be blocked from Twitter and Google in the run-up to November’s US presidential election, as both companies follow Facebook in trying to fight the prospect of a stolen vote.Under its new rules, Twitter will treat as harmful misinformation any tweet which makes false claims about election rigging, or prematurely claims to announce the election results.The platform does not currently have rules against such tweets because its misinformation policy is designed to combat only those messages with the potential to cause “immediate harm”, but starting on 17 September, Twitter says, certain claims about elections move into that category.“Twitter is where people come to hear directly from elected officials and candidates for office, it’s where they come to find breaking news, and increasingly, it’s an integral source for information on when and how to vote in elections,” the company said in a blogpost.The new rules do not commit Twitter to removing such misinformation; instead, it may choose to apply a label to the offending tweets, as it has done with previous examples of electoral misinformation shared by Donald Trump.Google’s policies focus on the company’s search autocomplete, which offers suggestions for terms to search for based on what users have entered. The company says it will remove any predictions that look like they could be claims “for or against a particular candidate or party”.It will also remove predictions that seem to offer any information about voting methods, requirements or polling locations: for instance, the company said, neither “you can vote by phone” nor “you can’t vote by phone” will appear as search suggestions.The rules will not, Google emphasised, affect search results themselves.Last week, Facebook led the way with a similar set of rules, announced by its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. “This election is not going to be business as usual,” he wrote in a post on the site. “If any candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the results are in, we’ll add a label to their post educating that official results are not yet in and directing people to the official results,” Facebook said.None of the companies explicitly named Donald Trump in their explanation for the new policies, but fears have been growing for some time that the president could seize on delayed results, due in part to the rapid increase in voting by mail, and declare himself victor before the true count is known.

closeVideoHBO's 'Watchmen' lands 26 Emmy nominationsLeslie Jones and fellow stars revealed the 2020 Emmy nominations ahead of a ceremony which will likely be virtual due to COVID-19.Jimmy Kimmel returned to his duties as host of ABC's late-night show where he promptly poked fun at his gig hosting the lowest-rated Emmys to date.The comedian returned to host “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” at the El Capitan Entertainment Center studio for the first time since the pandemic began after announcing in June that he would be taking the summer months off. A bevy of guest hosts filled in for him during that time, including Anthony Anderson, Billy Eichner, Sarah Cooper, Lil Rel Howery and David Spade.Kimmel’s return makes him the last of the broadcast network late-night hosts to go back to their respective studios. The 52-year-old revealed at the top of his show that his crew now operates under new guidelines to help maintain safety and social distancing and that, like his late-night counterparts, he now performs without an audience.He also took time out of the show to mock his own low-rated hosting gig at the Emmys the night before. Kimmel presided over the 72nd Emmy Awards on Sunday, which took place virtually and allowed the nominees to simply video in from their respective quarantines to accept their awards.JENNIFER ANISTON REMINDS FANS ABOUT NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION DAY: ‘DO IT FOR RBG!’ Jimmy Kimmel returned to his late-night hosting duties after hosting the 2020 Emmys. (ABC)Unfortunately, the virtual gimmick didn’t seem to land with audiences. Deadline reports that the show only brought in 6.1 million viewers and a 1.2 rating among adults ages 18-49 in time-adjusted results.“Well, we set a record, let’s just say that,” Kimmel joked.Regardless of the ratings, Kimmel noted that hosting the show was still “a lot of fun – given the difficult circumstances.”Kimmel went on to explain the part of hosting the Emmys in the time of COVID-19 that he found to be the strangest.“The weirdest part of hosting this show was – when it was over – there are usually parties – and everyone is carrying their Emmys around. Everyone’s happy, everyone’s celebrating. This year, the show ended – and it was like ‘well, I guess I’ll go into my car – and drive home,'” he said.He added: “Doing an awards show – where all the winners are at home – is a strange experience. It was probably the first time in history that someone won an Emmy – and then, 10 minutes later put a load of laundry in the dryer.”Kimmel has hosted both the Emmys and the Oscars in the past.