As Mr. Xi asserts himself and the primacy of Chinese geopolitical power, China has also become more comfortable projecting Mr. Xi’s vision of a tightly controlled internet. Beijing had long been content to block foreign internet companies and police the homegrown alternatives that sprouted up to take their place, but it is now directly pressuring individuals or requesting that companies cooperate with its online censorship efforts.That puts many American tech giants in a tricky position, especially those that want access to China’s vast internet market of more than 700 million strong. In the past, these companies have typically gone to great lengths to gain a toehold in China. Facebook created a censorship tool it did not use and released an app in the country without putting its name to it. Apple is moving data storage for its Chinese customers into China and last year took down software that skirts China’s internet blocks from its China App Store. Google recently said it would open a new artificial intelligence lab in the country.Often, these companies have little recourse when pressured for help by Beijing. Going to the American government could set off retaliation from China, so many have sought to navigate the situation on their own.“I personally am not sure what the solution is for these companies,” said Mr. Rosenzweig. “I don’t see a good answer because the Chinese government is really putting them between a rock and a hard place.”China leaned heavily on major internet companies when Guo Wengui, a Chinese tycoon in self-imposed exile, went on Facebook and YouTube to accuse a number of Chinese officials of corruption. Chinese officials last year complained to Google, which owns YouTube, and Facebook, according to people familiar with the events who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.Facebook suspended Mr. Guo’s account. In a statement, the company said the account published the personal information of others without their consent, which violated the platform’s policies. A spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Beijing’s complaints played a role.

On Sunday, the Emmys will attempt to answer the question many in fashion have been wrestling with: how should a red carpet look in 2020?With major award ceremonies like the Oscars, Grammys and Golden Globes not for months, the 72nd Emmy awards will potentially lead the way in suggesting how celebrities should dress on Hollywood’s most glamorous night. The show will be held virtually, so while there will be no gawping at a distance at a Blake Lively, there will still be celebrities (nominees include Zendaya, Jennifer Aniston, Issa Rae and Kerry Washington) showing their finery off on Zoom. In fact, 140 professional cameras, set up in a variety of locations, will be able to catch all the ever so slightly time-delayed and possibly pre-recorded glamour.And what of the outfits? Sunday night’s chosen dress code could take everyone by surprise. “The 2020 Emmys are going to be a pyjama party,” a source told US Weekly. “All the celebs are wearing high-end designer pyjamas like Dior.” It follows a report in July when the dress code was announced as “come as you are, but make an effort”. But is this what the viewers really want: a Met Gala theme as imagined by Rip Van Winkle?Like a balloon deflating, it’s a far cry from the pageantry, exoticism and postmodernity we’ve come to expect from the red carpet. In 2020, the bar to “make an effort” has fallen considerably.The rise of virtual ceremonies (and the fact that much of it is pre-recorded) has put a dampener on the unpredictable red carpet. The virus has affected not just the ability to produce culture to give awards to, but also the by-product industry of award shows, with mass gatherings a massive no-no.After the Tony awards were cancelled in June, shows spluttered forward in a socially distanced way. In July, on the eve of the TV Baftas, photographer Rankin played on the concept of award shows in lockdown. Taking the nominee portraits, he matched the beautiful with the blah: actors dressed in designer suits jumping in their back gardens, or doing a jigsaw and shouting at the dog. “Our theme was ‘all dressed up with nowhere to go’,” he wrote. Which was, of course, true.But if there was humour here, it was lacking at last month’s VMAs. Long known for its silly, postmodern sartorial japes, the evening disappointed. The ceremony – home to Lil Kim’s purple nipple pastie, Rose McGowan’s derriere revealing crystal drape dress and Lady Gaga’s meat dress – was humour free.Even Gaga’s triumphant multiple mask appearance had a very serious undertone. The ceremony was criticised for feeling low-wattage, celebrity-wise (too many C-listers, TikTokers and YouTube influencers), tonally odd (a sombre mood pervaded, coming so quickly after Chadwick Boseman’s death) and lacking in standout style moments.But if the red carpet is going through some sort of midlife crisis, the reasons are complex. The pandemic itself has lessened the mystique of celebrities themselves (exhibit A: that rendition of Imagine), but also in practical terms, a fashion stylist is operating under restrictions.“Almost every aspect of my job as a stylist has gone virtual,” says Andrew Gelwicks, who has styled Emmy nominee Catherine O’Hara from Schitt’s Creek, and cast members from the nominated Pose, “(from) selecting looks from lookbooks … as well as the fitting. We are figuring it out as we go along.”He thinks the Emmys will still be a fashion win. “I hope we will continue to see incredible, out-of-this world looks at the Emmys, even though it’s virtual,” he says. “Although many people may not be wearing gowns, there’s still a tremendous opportunity to have fun with fashion.” And the news that presenters will be wearing tuxedo Hazmat suits, designed by Katja Cahill, suggests just that. Phew. Topics Fashion Emmys 2020 Emmys Awards and prizes Television US television features

Dozens of African leaders trooped into Yokohama city on Japan’s Pacific coast in late August and heard prime minister Shinzo Abe promise that Japan’s private sector will invest $20 billion over three years in Africa. What’s more, said Abe, Tokyo would offer “limitless support” for investment, innovation, enterprise, and entre­pre­neur­ship, with backing from Japan’s government-backed institutions.The promises of cooperation were made at the seventh Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD). It is one of several such gatherings that now occur across the globe, where countries make their vows to Africa and court African partners for aid, trade, investment. China’s deepening presence in Africa, however, looms large over them all and so it was at TICAD. China is now Africa’s largest trade partner and its largest infrastructure funder. Last year, president Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion for development projects in Africa.But if Beijing is financing large, visible schemes, Tokyo is focusing on its core strengths by funding partnerships aimed at boosting technological innovation, industrialization, impact investment, institutional building, and climate change adaptation. Tokyo’s strategy is also aimed at providing an ideological counterweight to Beijing by building, as Abe declared at the sixth TICAD in Nairobi in 2016, a partnership “that values freedom, the rule of law, and the market economy, free from force or coercion.”“It’s a move away from traditional aid towards more commercial engagement, and with it a stronger emphasis on African agency and development agendas over a more traditional prescriptive approach,” says Cobus van Staden a senior China-Africa researcher at South African Institute of International Affairs. At this year’s TICAD, he adds, Japanese officials seemed keen to play down the narrative that they were taking on China in Africa.But Beijing, van Staden argues, played a large role in proving to external actors that it is possible to have successful commercial engagement with Africa. Given Africa’s growing population, its speedy adoption of technology and improvements in infrastructure and education, there’s a growing realization that the continent could be the next century’s economic powerhouse.Increasingly, Japan has encouraged its companies to work with African startups and even facilitated potential partnership meetings. Japanese companies, much like their Chinese counterparts, have also looked to Africa as an investment destination.Last year, carmaker Toyota invested $2 million in Kenyan logistics firm Sendy while Sumitomo Corporation invested in the Nairobi-headquartered pay-as-you-go solar firm M-Kopa. Japanese insurance firm Sompo Holdings financed payment platform BitPesa, while Nigerian motorcycle app Max raised $7 million from Japanese motorcycle manufacturer Yamaha. In late August, automaker Mitsubishi also announced $50 million to enable the Africa-focused off-grid solar firm BBOXX to expand into Asia.These investments, along with the promises made at TICAD to boost small and medium enterprises, are vital, says George Gachara, managing partner at the Nairobi-based HEVA Fund. “If you want to have a broad-based change in the continent, you cannot ignore the contribution of the private sector,” Gachara said on the phone from Yokohama. The continent, he added, needed to harness Japan’s research and knowledge capabilities to close the digital divide and prepare for a future where mechanization and big data will disrupt employment.At the Yokohama meeting, Abe didn’t make any major announcements on aid. Cobus says this reflects concerns about the strength of the global economy and may be an indication that the appetite for large loans is waning. This is especially true as China faces criticism that its lending practices are pushing African countries into debt. Van Staden says, “Japan is promoting private sector investment instead, but it remains to be seen how impactful that will be.”

That’s not the ratio Amazon reports in its annual proxy filing, released yesterday. There, the company calculates median pay vs. CEO compensation using Bezos’s salary—a comparatively modest $1,681,840. Based on that figure, Bezos made just 59 times his median employee.The difference highlights the shortcomings of the compensation reporting requirement, enacted for public companies following the 2008 financial crisis. Billionaire entrepreneurs like Bezos rarely receive sky-high salaries; instead, their wealth is tied up in their stock holdings. The $35.1 billion that Bezos accumulated based on Amazon stock increases is not liquid in the same way that his employees’ payroll checks are, but his new net worth does have an immediate effect on his buying power. Over time, he’ll be able to cash out as he pleases.Amazon.com warehouse and fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota. [Photo: Flickr user Tony Webster]The gap between Bezos and his workers also highlights the company’s dependence on the army of low-paid workers who fulfill online orders across dozens of distribution centers. While many employees at its Seattle headquarters make upwards of $100,000 a year, the bulk of Amazon’s workers work alongside robots at these warehouses across the U.S. And according to various analyses, they are often paid below-average wages.The Intercept reported on Thursday that one in three Amazon warehouse employees in Arizona depend on food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.In Arizona, new data suggests that one in three of the company’s own employees depend on SNAP to put food on the table. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the figure appears to be around 1 in 10. Overall, of five states that responded to a public records request for a list of their top employers of SNAP recipients, Amazon cracked the top 20 in four.(Incidentally, Amazon, which is projected to deliver 50% of the country’s online orders by 2021, will begin accepting orders through the SNAP benefits program later this year.)In the shareholder letter that accompanies the proxy filing, Bezos credits a culture of “high standards” for contributing to Amazon’s success. “The high standards our leaders strive for have served us well,” he writes. By way of example, he cites Amazon Prime, now at over 100 million paying customers globally.

Cory Booker isn’t messing around. The New Jersey Democrat says he is willing to risk his US Senate seat to expose Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, with the release of an email deemed “committee confidential” that shows Kavanaugh approved racial profiling by police.Booker challenged his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee today (Sept. 6) to expel him for what he called this act of “civil disobedience,” which he admits would violate Senate rules. “I am, before your process is finished, I am going to release the email about racial profiling,” he said. “I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate. I openly invite and accept the consequences of my team releasing that email right now.”About 141,000 documents linked to Kavanaugh from his years as a staff secretary to former US president George W. Bush have been kept confidential, meaning senators can see them but can’t refer to them in public sessions. Booker and his Democratic colleagues have demanded more time to review the documents, and demanded that many of them be released, arguing the Republican majority is trying to hide Kavanaugh’s most controversial work. “The emails being withheld from the public have nothing to do with national security,” Booker said.At today’s confirmation hearings, fellow Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota expressed her support for Booker’s move and reiterated his demand that the emails from Kavanaugh be made public. She cited James Madison’s famous quote, “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and has borne the brunt of much of the Democrats’ disgruntlement over his approach to documents and his penchant for confidentiality, was clearly flustered by Booker’s gambit. He stuttered angrily, pointing out that senators, too, enjoy the privacy of confidentiality rules that protect their emails for 50 years. ”Do you want to give up your emails?” he asked. “I don’t think you do.”Grassley may be underestimating the resistance to this nominee—and to his rushed confirmation process. Booker, referring to the mere public mention of a confidential document breaking Senate rules, said, “I knowingly violated the rules that were put forth. I’m told the committee confidential rules have knowing consequences…I come from a long line, as all of us do as Americans, of understanding what that kind of civil disobedience is and I understand the consequences.”

Enlarge this image Clarence Dold used his 2013 Nissan Leaf to power his house during a four-day blackout in Santa Rosa, Calif., as a result of the Kincade Fire. Vanessa Romo/NPR hide caption toggle caption Vanessa Romo/NPR Clarence Dold used his 2013 Nissan Leaf to power his house during a four-day blackout in Santa Rosa, Calif., as a result of the Kincade Fire. Vanessa Romo/NPR Lawrence Levee's evacuation call came at 4 a.m. The Getty fire was just a few miles away. He and all of his Mandeville Canyon neighbors needed to evacuate.He grabbed what he could and threw it into his bright blue electric Chevy Bolt. His car battery was only charged halfway, but that left him with plenty of power to make a quick getaway and then some.But after driving around the next day, running errands in an area he didn't know well, he was in a pickle. He couldn't find a charging station. And he had 25 miles left to his tank."Where are the cheap charging stations?" Levy asked a Facebook group for Bolt owners, where members have been talking about how to charge up in a disaster situation.Levee is one of hundreds of thousands of electric car drivers in California, many of whom are caught in a state-wide struggle for electric power. As flames rip through rural and urban areas, utilities are cutting about a million customers off the grid. The blackouts sometimes last for days at a time, forcing some electric car owners to find alternative ways to charge up. It's an ironic conundrum in a state that's home to more electric cars than any other other. California has just under half of the electric cars in sold in the U.S., according to EV Volumes, a group that tracks electric car sales.In Levee's case, he didn't expect to be away from his house for so long. Normally, he'd pull into his garage and connect to a solar-powered battery. But that was impossible. Instead, he tried to hit up a nearby public charger that he remembered driving past a couple of times. But when he got there, it was broken. Business Tesla Led The Charge, But More Premium Electric Vehicles Are Arriving Dreaded "range anxiety" set in. If he didn't plug in soon, he could end up stranded. But his trusty Bolt Facebook group came to the rescue. That's where electric car fans commiserate, offer advice and do the occasional gas-car-driver bashing. Lately, they've been talking about blackouts. They pointed him to an app, and he found a free charger at a mall a few miles away. Levee has only owned his Bolt for eight months, and already he says he'll "never go back to a regular car." Despite the brief inconvenience and the fire evacuations that are in his future, he notes California has better electric car infrastructure than any other state, with 18,000 public charging stations, according to the California Energy Commission. Business As More Electric Cars Arrive, What's The Future For Gas-Powered Engines? And some electric car owners are taking advantage of these charging stations in new ways.Clarence Dold lives in Sonoma County, which had been ravaged by the Kincade fire. Dold owns a 2013 Nissan Leaf and was left without power for four days. But Dold found an ingenious use for his car: as a generator to power his house. All it took was a pair of jumper cables that he connected to the Leaf's battery and an inverter about the size of a dictionary. The inverter box changes direct current (DC) power, the kind that powers electric cars, into alternating current (AC), the electrical current that powers homes.After that, he ran a series of heavy duty extension cords into the main rooms of his ranch house. Throughout the blackout, Dold said, "were watching TV, and had a cold fridge and a couple of lights and things seemed normal." The whole thing cost about $200 — a fraction of the price of a generator, which can run thousands of dollars.Every few hours, Dold said, he'd make his way back into the car to check the battery gauge. He wanted to make sure the house wasn't depleting the car of too much power. If it did, he'd disconnect the cables and drive 5 miles away to recharge at a public charging station."The power outages are not over a broad area; this isn't like a hurricane hitting Florida," he explained. During the blackout, the rest of the neighborhood was a cacophony of gas and electric generator rumblings. Meanwhile, his Nissan Leaf was virtually silent. For Dold, and other enterprising electric car owners like him, that's the secret sauce to surviving what's becoming the new normal in California.

Facebook confirmed July 24 that it is facing two antitrust probes from the US government during a whirlwind day of news for the company.But that wasn’t the only government scrutiny Facebook is facing: it confirmed in its earnings report that it was facing antitrust probes from both the FTC and the Justice Department (DOJ).Facebook, which also owns Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, boasts that 2.7 billion users worldwide who use at least one of its apps monthly. This kind of dominance, partially achieved by gobbling up its competitors, has led to widespread criticism, including by Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who is proposing to break up the tech giant.There’d previously been reports that the FTC was looking into an antitrust case on Facebook, and the DOJ announced it would be looking into the practices of the “market leading online platforms” on July 23.“The Department’s review will consider the widespread concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and some retail services online,” the DOJ said in a statement. “The goal of the Department’s review is to assess the competitive conditions in the online marketplace in an objective and fair-minded manner and to ensure Americans have access to free markets in which companies compete on the merits to provide services that users want.”The FTC’s privacy settlement has left some doubting its efficacy. In addition to the fine, it imposed certain compliance measures on the company, requiring that every new product and service go through a privacy review that is to be regularly monitored by an independent assessor and by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who will also have to certify that the company is fulfilling its obligations. The company will also have to establish a privacy committee on Facebook’s board.The FTC settlement was approved 3:2 along party lines, and Rohit Chopra, one of the Democratic commissioners, explained in a statement on Twitter that he was not satisfied with the conditions:On the antitrust probe, Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives also expressed doubts about its potential to affect Facebook’s business. He wrote in a note to investors:Current antitrust law does not provide for a forced breakup solely due to the size of the business; if it did, Walmart would have been broken up decades ago. Instead, the objective standard is whether a company engages in anticompetitive behavior, thereby driving up prices for consumers. We believe this is a difficult case to make for Facebook and Google (which provide free consumer services), and a stretch for Amazon (which has objectively competitive prices).Zuckerberg, meanwhile, framed the scrutiny into the company as direction coming from lawmakers.“Now we have a clearer path forward—not just in terms of product and business, but in terms of guidance from regulators, which sets clear expectations and gives us a foundation to build on,” he said during the earnings call.

NICOSIA, Cyprus—The biggest bank on this island was at the tail end of a purge of its riskiest customers—from arms traders to online casinos—when its computers started combing the books to check on an American who was attracting more public attention: Paul Manafort.It was 2015, and the future chairman of the Donald Trump presidential campaign was still a low-profile, high-earning adviser to heads of state from Eastern Europe to Central Africa. For eight years, he had banked at this small island nation, which had a big reputation for laundering the fortunes of the ex-Soviet world’s new capitalist elite.By then, Cyprus faced Western pressure to clean up its act, and its banks were using new software to look for suspicious customers. Mr. Manafort’s name popped into news reports after one of his clients, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was toppled. That prompted an automated review of Mr. Manafort’s business at the Bank of Cyprus, the island’s largest commercial lender, according to three officials at the bank and Cyprus’s central bank.Employees spent weeks forwarding the data over an encrypted line, they said, to the country’s anti-money-laundering unit, which, two years later, delivered them to the office of special counsel Robert Mueller in Washington.For the past week, prosecutors have presented documentation of top-dollar purchases that they say constitute evidence of tax and bank fraud by Mr. Manafort. Vendors have recalled how Mr. Manafort would pay them using foreign bank wires.

The final unravelling of the Islamic State’s evil caliphate exerts a horrible fascination. The jihadis committed many appalling crimes in Syria and Iraq – exploiting the chaos caused by the Syrian civil war – and were responsible, directly or indirectly, for murderous attacks in Britain and several other European countries.Most people expect a reckoning. It is only right that Isis fighters who have been captured alive, and those who gave them aid and succour, should face justice as soon as possible.The actions of many other individuals and groups suspected of involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as the killing of non-combatants, should also face rigorous scrutiny. In the interest of impartiality, the list must include rebel Sunni Arab and Kurdish opposition forces.Nor can the role of western and Gulf state governments be air-brushed away. The Ministry of Defence’s claim last week that RAF airstrikes killed or wounded 4,315 enemy fighters in Iraq and Syria since 2014, but killed only one civilian, beggars belief.Yet the quest for justice for all must not obscure the fact that the main responsibility for eight years of mass killing lies squarely on the shoulders of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, his regime cronies, and their Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah allies. In his bid to cling to power, Assad has presided over the deaths of up to 500,000 people, the displacement of roughly half of Syria’s prewar 23 million population, the destruction of major cities and towns, and a vast, destabilising humanitarian crisis.Assad and his main foreign backer, Russian president Vladimir Putin, are responsible for the merciless, systemic and endlessly repeated aerial bombing of schools, clinics, hospitals and community centres designed to terrorise and cow local populations. Captured opposition fighters and sympathisers have been tortured and murdered in their thousands. Assad, supported by Moscow, has used chemical weapons more than 100 times in flagrant breach of legal commitments made in 2013.There is no shortage of evidence to back these charges. The “independent, impartial and international mechanism” for investigating serious crimes in Syria, created by the UN general assembly in 2016, has documented thousands of crimes. The so-called Caesar archive – the regime’s own photographs of the bodies of 6,700 people who died in custody – was smuggled out by a defector. Then there is the eye-witness testimony of exiled Syrian civilians and of UN and NGO workers and human rights activists.The problem is not proving the guilt of Assad and his associates, but bringing them to trial. Attempts in the UN security council to empower the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Syrian war crimes have been blocked by Russia. Assad sits pat in Damascus and denies all allegations as “fake news”. He doubtless takes comfort from the ICC’s eight-year-long failure to try Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, for alleged genocide in Darfur.But there are glimmers of hope. National courts in Europe are under pressure from activists to employ rarely used powers of universal jurisdiction to pursue crimes against international law, such as those committed in Syria, even where there is no direct domestic connection. Courts in France, Germany and Sweden are currently investigating several Syrian individuals, including regime intelligence officers, suspected of serious crimes.Last week a group of Syrian refugees, advised by British barristers and solicitors, launched a legal bid that would enable the ICC to get involved. Following a precedent set last year in Myanmar that extends ICC jurisdiction to cover forcible population transfers, the group wants the chief prosecutor to use their dossier of evidence on regime massacres and torture to open a case against Assad.It is a valiant effort deserving of success. Yet it is a shocking indictment of the UN-led international system, and the inaction of individual governments, including Britain’s, that this may yet prove the best hope of bringing Assad to book.

After months of insisting Donald Trump committed no wrong on his “perfect” call, Republicans have found their way to the inevitable endgame: arguing that the president is above the Constitution that he is sworn to uphold.For months, Trump’s defenders claimed he never conditioned the release of military aid on Ukraine’s announcement of investigations into Joe Biden and Russian conspiracy theories, as alleged in the articles of impeachment. Trump’s legal team opened their argument on Saturday by declaring that no witness heard Trump link the aid to Ukraine’s manufacturing of dirt on Biden. But on Sunday, the nation learned that former National Security Adviser John Bolton heard the president admit he’d done just that. For a moment, the president and his allies seemed flummoxed. Trump issued a series of tweets asserting that he “NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.” Fox News began frantically suggesting that Bolton, of all people, was a secret agent of the left-wing “deep state.” On Monday, Trump’s lawyers resumed their defense in the Senate by arguing that there was no evidence of a quid pro quo in the “House record,” as if the nation remained ignorant of the Bolton account, which appeared on the top of every newspaper, website, and newscast.But, apart from challenging credulity, the response created an obvious problem for Trump and his supporters: It amounted to a compelling argument for bringing Bolton, and even the president himself, before Congress to give sworn testimony, so as to allow the senatorial jury to decide who was telling the truth.That, we know, is the last thing Trump or Mitch McConnell want. On Monday night, Alan Dershowitz broke with Trump’s other defenders by acknowledging the existence of Bolton’s account, and went on to offer an audacious way for Trump to escape its import. The president, Dershowitz said, should be acquitted even if he engaged in the very corrupt scheme alleged in the House articles, because, “Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense.” This, Dershowitz argued, is because such audacious corruption is not sufficiently “crime-like.” The argument, though absurd, was met with relief by the president’s defenders in the Senate, who embraced it with relief and enthusiasm. By Wednesday morning, Senator John Cornyn, the second ranking Republican, was taking Dershowitz’s argument even farther, declaring that, after reviewing the House’s investigatory record, he had concluded the “[e]vidence is undisputed,” rendering “[m]ore witnesses... unnecessary.” That is: Sure, he did it. So what?This afternoon, during the trial’s question-and-answer session, Dershowitz returned to the Senate floor to offer a capstone to the president’s new defense, echoing the argument famously offered by Richard Nixon: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."In Dershowitz’s update of Nixon’s maxim, a president can be impeached only if he acts solely from “corrupt motives.” Thus, he said, if a president thinks “I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. If I’m not elected the national interest will suffer greatly,” then anything goes.So, if Trump believes America needs him, it is OK for him to coerce an ally at war with Russia into announcing a fake investigation of a domestic political opponent by withholding critical military aid duly appropriated by Congress. It was a remarkable display of legal audacity by the former Harvard professor, and, if accepted by a majority of the Senate, will indeed provide a rationale for concluding the trial and acquitting Trump without hearing Bolton’s testimony. But it will also mark the final surrender of the legislative branch to the executive, and the end of the American system of government and way of life, as we have known them.If Trump and GOP senators claim this “victory,” it is one that the Republican party and the president may well come to regret in November. This is because, far from providing Trump with the vindication he so desires, an acquittal in the Senate will amount to an admission that Trump engaged in the very corrupt scheme alleged by the House. Therefore, if GOP senators vote to excuse Trump’s now open and notorious misconduct, they will join Mick Mulvaney in declaring that presidential corruption is no crime at all, and demanding that the nation “get over it.” It remains to be seen whether voters will agree to do so.

Four years ago, Bashir Shikder's wife Rashida flew from Florida to Syria with the couple's young children to join Isis, ignoring anguished Bashir's repeated pleas for her to return home. Now, after hearing news of his wife's death, and that his children – Yusuf now nine, and Zahra, five – are being held by jihadists in the last corner of the terror group's lands, Bashir travels to Iraq in the hope of crossing the border into Syria and rescuing them.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have indicted a former New York City gynecologist on charges of sexually assaulting his patients in an alleged pattern of abuse that they say occurred between 1993 and 2012.Dr. Robert Hadden was a medical doctor who worked for NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University hospitals. He faces several counts of enticement and inducement to travel to engage in illegal sex acts tied to six victims, including one minor identified as “Minor Victim-1,” whom prosecutors say Hadden “repeatedly sexually abused.”In an email to NBC News, attorney Isabella A. Kirshner confirmed she will represent Hadden at his presentment. “I'm not sure if I'll continue after that,” she wrote. Kirshner said Hadden did not have any further comment at this time.The allegations against the doctor came to the forefront when Evelyn Yang, the wife of presidential candidate Andrew Yang, spoke out publicly about what she says happened to her during a medical exam.When she was seven months pregnant, Evelyn Yang told CNN earlier this year, she believed her appointment was done and she was getting ready to leave when the doctor told her abruptly that he thought she might need a cesarean section.She said Hadden pulled her to him and undressed her, then used his ungloved fingers to examine her internally."Something about being on the trail and meeting people and seeing the difference that we've been making already has moved me to share my own story about it, about sexual assault," she told CNN at the time. It is unknown whether Yang is one of the victims included in the indictment."Thank you to the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York for bringing these charges against Dr. Hadden. They are long overdue," Evelyn Yang said in a statement Wednesday. "... Thank you to everyone who made today possible. It shows that if we come forward we can make a difference."At a press conference Wednesday, acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said Hadden “acted as a predator in a white coat."“Hadden allegedly used the examinations of his victims for his own sexual gratification, abusing dozens of victims over a nearly 20-year period, including multiple minor girls, one of whom Hadden had himself delivered," Strauss continued in a statement to NBC News.FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney urged victims to come forward, saying that "FBI special agents, NYPD detectives, analysts, victim specialists, and prosecutors investigating this case are here for each and every one of you, and we are your advocates. It is important to remember nothing Dr. Hadden has done was, or ever will be, your fault.”Prosecutors allege in court documents that Hadden repeatedly encouraged the minor victim’s parents to have their daughter see him and “repeatedly sexually abused Minor Victim-1 through a course of conduct that lacked any valid medical purpose."Hadden, the indictment says, conducted breast exams and administered a vaginal exam “during which he licked the minor victim's vagina.”The doctor is charged with enticing and inducing the women to travel to his New York City office so he could engage in the assaults.In 2014 the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged Hadden with multiple counts of committing a criminal sexual act and he pleaded guilty to one count of forcible touching and one count of third-degree criminal sexual contact.Hadden was sentenced in 2016 and was required to register as a sexual offender and his medical license was revoked.An FBI spokesperson told NBC News that Hadden was taken into custody by the FBI this morning at his home in Engelwood, NJ.Danny Frost, a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, told NBC News, “Our office provided substantial assistance leading to today’s indictment, and our continuing investigation — which examines potential failures by Dr. Hadden’s employer and hospital to disclose additional incidents of abuse to our office and to regulators when required — is intensely active and ongoing.”A spokesperson for Columbia said in a statement: "Nothing is more important to Columbia than the safety of our patients, and we condemn sexual misconduct in any form. We commend the women who have spoken out against Robert Hadden and will cooperate fully with the U.S. Attorney's Office."

He and Mr. Gates shielded millions of dollars from American tax authorities, court papers show, by moving the funds through foreign bank accounts around the world: in Cyprus, the Seychelles, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.“Manafort and Gates hid the existence and ownership of the foreign companies and bank accounts, falsely and repeatedly reporting to their tax preparers and to the United States that they had no foreign bank accounts,” the indictment said.Two of the largest loans totaled $16 million and were made by one bank. The bank is not identified in the indictment, but the description fits what The New York Times reported last year about loans to a company connected to Mr. Manafort called Summerbreeze L.L.C., which borrowed millions from Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, headed by Stephen M. Calk, an economic adviser to Mr. Trump at the time.Mr. Manafort’s dealings with Federal Savings began in July 2016, when he was running Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and continued after he was ousted a month later. In each instance, according to the indictment, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates altered financial statements for their consulting business to make it easier for Mr. Manafort to qualify for mortgages.Mr. Mueller also appears to have obtained communications between Mr. Manafort and his son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai, who ran a real estate investment business in Los Angeles in which Mr. Manafort had invested millions of dollars. The business went bankrupt, and Mr. Yohai himself fell under F.B.I. scrutiny.In a message cited in the indictment, Mr. Manafort appears to ask Mr. Yohai to help in a ruse to make it seem that he was living in a building owned by Mr. Manafort, thereby comporting with information Mr. Manafort had put on a mortgage application.The original indictment did not explicitly bring tax charges, an omission that experts had predicted that Mr. Mueller would ultimately correct. The first indictment also relied heavily on accusations that Mr. Manafort violated foreign lobbying laws, which have rarely been used at trial. The new indictment gives prosecutors more options.

The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google faced tough questions and, at times, hostile criticism about their business practices during a House antitrust hearing. The session highlighted how four of America’s five most valuable companies are under scrutiny from both sides of the aisle. Photo: U.S. House Judiciary Committee/Reuters (Originally Published July 30, 2020) By,and Sept. 15, 2020 7:17 pm ET WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission is gearing up to file a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook Inc. by year-end, according to people familiar with the matter, in a case that would challenge the company’s dominant position in social media. The case preparations come after the FTC has spent more than a year investigating concerns that Facebook has been using its powerful market position to stifle competition, part of a broader effort by U.S. antitrust authorities to examine the conduct of a handful of dominant tech... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

Like Kleenex or Hoover, Amazon Go has become the name brand that describes a whole class of products. In this case, it’s stores that replace human checkers with cameras and image-recognition AI to automatically ring up customers based on what they grab. But many rival tech providers are out there, and one of the hottest, Standard Cognition, just opened up shop in San Francisco.Standard Cognition is the first (and so far only) of these companies to announce a deal to outfit actual stores with its technology–over 3,000 in Japan by July 2020. But the 1,900-square-foot Standard Market store, a tad larger than the inaugural Amazon Go in Seattle, is the company’s first real-world demo. And it’s very real world. I navigated around homeless people and urine puddles on my way to a pre-opening tour of the store at 1071 Market St. earlier this week.The store debuts in a rough-and-tumble part of San Francisco. [Photo: Sean Captain]The spot was the easiest place to get a lease quickly, says COO Mike Suswal (one of the company’s seven cofounders) when he met me at the door. It’s also a very fitting location: Convenience stores are staple institutions of tight urban neighborhoods like these, most of which are far from full-scale supermarkets or greengrocers. If the technology is going to work, it needs to work in places like this.And San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood is typical of the erratic gentrification sweeping American cities. A downtrodden man in a wheelchair rolled past the glass-fronted store from one direction while young professionals trudged by from the other. Hipster bicycle shop Huckleberry is next door to Standard Market, and Twitter’s HQ is only three blocks away–as is the Tenderloin neighborhood, San Francisco’s version of skid row. “We do have a security guard on premise whenever we’re open,” says Suswal.The location, size, and selection of merchandise distinguish Standard Market from what’s technically the first non-Amazon automated grab-and-go store–rival Zippin’s truly tiny market, which opened in beta on August 20 in a spiffier neighborhood near Salesforce’s headquarters. Only those with invites can shop at Zippin, while Standard Market will be open to the public. (The limited hours will vary initially, with the store open most weekdays from 1 to 3pm in the next two weeks.) Zippin also currently stocks fancier fare, such as Laiki Red Rice Crackers and Burma Love tea leaf salad. Standard Market mostly stocks staples like Campbell’s Creamy Tomato Soup, Cliff Bars, Oreos, Ziploc bags, and single rolls of toilet paper.With only ceiling-mounted cameras, the technology doesn’t affect the look of a market, says COO Mike Suswal. [Photo: Sean Captain]Minimal sensorsA bigger difference, perhaps, is the level of technology. Both are parsimonious with overhead cameras compared to Amazon Go’s system, which reportedly involves hundreds of cams for an 1,800-foot store. Zippin’s system requires just 15 of them to track purchases in a 1,000-square-foot store, while Standard Market needs about 27 for 2000 square feet–essentially the same camera-per-square-foot ratio. But Zippin also requires backup readings from bespoke shelving units with weight sensors.“A lot of retailers spend a lot of money on their marketing departments. They don’t want to change their branding or how things are set up,” says Suswal. “So we can’t enforce that they use a certain kind of shelf unit or ask them to put something in a particular place.”An app allows users to check in, automatically pay, and receive a receipt. Anonymous, app-free shopping will be available in the future. [Photo: Sean Captain]That could cut costs for struggling mom-and-pop stores. Standard Cognition wouldn’t provide estimates for how much it costs to equip a store, but it claims the figure would be lower than Zippin’s estimate of $20,000 to $25,000 for hardware and installation per 1,000 square feet of store. Both companies will make money through a monthly fee for their image recognition and inventory tracking services. In a follow-up email to my visit, Standard Cognition says that fees will depend on factors including “store size but also store layout and assortment complexity.”Neither company is out to make money on their San Francisco markets, which simply demonstrate how the tech can help potential store-owner clients. Standard Cognition says its Market Street shop will be open “indefinitely.”Standard Cognition’s system is unperturbed by shoppers who reconsider buying an item and put it back in the wrong place, says Suswal, as he demonstrates mindlessly sticking products all over the shelves. “However, we will tell the system when items are out of place,” he says, “so that staff . . . can be a little bit more efficient in how they restock.”Standard Cognition aims to outfit run-of-the-mill stores–around the world. [Photo: Sean Captain]Suswal emphasizes the need to train visual machine-learning systems vigorously for product recognition. As customers shop, “you . . . can’t see the item completely every time,” he says, grabbing a can of tomato sauce in his hand with various grips that obscure much of the item. Teaching the system a new product takes around two minutes of manhandling before the cameras, after which the update can be pushed out to all stores.For the demo store in San Francisco, though, Standard Cognition had to do some cramming. “We ended up hiring 100 actors to come in here,” says Suswal. This troupe did multiple five-hour faux shopping sessions over a five-week period.The Standard Checkout app [Image: courtesy of Standard Congition]Despite having fewer sensors than Zippin, Standard Cognition is quite confident in the accuracy of its camera system. Accuracy, says Suswal, has reached “five nines,” or 99.999% accuracy for key parts of the tracking system. “We need to get that to like, six or seven lines of accuracy,” he says, to insure the system won’t lose track of customers and their items in a shop.”Like rivals–such as Zippin, AiFi, Aipoly, and Trigo Vision–Standard Cognition says that it does not track or identify faces. Its AI identifies just enough generic aspects of a person to follow where they go and what they pick up from (or put back on) shelves, without ever knowing who that person really is. That will eventually allow people to shop and pay anonymously (a capability coming in the following months). “All it knows is that there’s a person there and then as you pick up things that adds it to your digital basket,” says Suswal. At the end, they reach a kiosk, which tallies the bill and offers various ways to pay, including cash (by far the preferred method in Japan, Suswal says).For now, shoppers do need to use the free Standard Checkout app for Android and iOS, which still provides some privacy. “We’re using [payment service] Stripe, and so that’s all tokenized,” Suswal. “So we don’t have any of the information outside of your email address to send you a receipt.”[Photo: Sean Captain]Should mom and pop worry?The plight of bodegas, or locally owned mini markets, is top of mind in any discussion about store automation. My colleague Elizabeth Segran’s profile of a fancy vending machine startup called Bodega lit a firestorm of concern and indignation about this attempt by ex-Googlers to disrupt the urban institutions. (The company has since rebranded as Stockwell.)COO and co-founder Mike Suswal [Photo: Sean Captain]Suswal says that while Standard Cognition’s technology makes it possible to operate a store with fewer employees, the goal isn’t to render existing neighborhood shops obsolete. In fact, he says, the company’s setup can help such merchants remain viable by allowing them to operate with leaner staffs. It’s no accident that the company appeals to Japanese merchants: In a country with a declining, aging population, it’s a challenge to fill store clerk positions, so technology that requires fewer employees is welcome.American demographics are very different, but Standard Cognition has its own harsh-reality value proposition. “When I was doing my market research before we started the company, it was in New York and predominantly talking to mom-and-pop shops, groceries, greengrocers. And they were frightened that minimum wage is skyrocketing,” says Suswal. “I get the argument to raise minimum wage. I think it’s a good thing. However, these stores are just closing.” If such endangered markets were to automate themselves with Standard Cognition’s platform, he adds, “they would have fewer employees . . . but they would survive.”

The pound jumped and U.K. stocks rose after Prime Minister Boris Johnson scored a decisive election victory on the promise of delivering Brexit. But despite investor optimism, the British government still faces a number of challenges. Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg News Byand Updated Dec. 13, 2019 1:22 pm ET LONDON—Fresh from a decisive electoral victory, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to move quickly to take Britain out of the European Union, while promising to deliver billions of pounds in public spending to consolidate the Conservative Party’s once-in-a-generation gains among working-class voters still hurting from the financial crisis. As Mr. Johnson basked in a historic victory that saw him win a majority of 80 seats in Parliament, attention quickly turned to what kind of vision he has for post-Brexit Britain after... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

The much-anticipated antitrust hearing featuring the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google scheduled for Monday will be postponed for the late Rep. John LewisJohn LewisHillicon Valley: Productivity, fatigue, cybersecurity emerge as top concerns amid pandemic | Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board | Google to temporarily bar election ads after polls close Underwood takes over as chair of House cybersecurity panel Trump to pay respects to Ginsburg at Supreme Court MORE's (D-Ga.) memorial service, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.It is not yet clear when the hearing in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust will ultimately take place.The hearing will mark the first time that Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark ZuckerbergMark Elliot ZuckerbergHillicon Valley: Productivity, fatigue, cybersecurity emerge as top concerns amid pandemic | Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board | Google to temporarily bar election ads after polls close Conservative groups seek to block Facebook election grants in four swing states: report Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board MORE and Sundar Pichai, the leaders of the four companies, appear before Congress together. It's likely the hearing would have already taken place given the desires of lawmakers to schedule it, but the coronavirus pandemic has also complicated efforts to organize it.The hearing is aimed at gathering information for the subcommittee's report on competition in digital markets set to be released later this year.Although the focus is on antitrust, the hearing will likely veer into some questions about hateful content and allegations of anti-conservative bias.Lewis will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday and Tuesday of next week, a rare honor granted to only the most revered American public figures. Updated at 4:30pm

More than 30 new charges, involving millions of dollars of bank and tax fraud, were filed on Thursday against Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his business partner.The 32 new charges were filed by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and a Russian intelligence operation to skew the 2016 presidential election. The move marks the latest step in ratcheting up pressure on Manafort, and Rick Gates, his business partner who was deputy chairman of the Trump campaign. Gates has been reported to be negotiating a cooperation deal with Mueller’s office, which is in turn likely to significantly increase the pressure on Manafort to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into collusion.The new charges come on top of the original 12-count indictment of Manafort and Gates in October, which focused on money-laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent.No trial date has yet been set for Manafort or Gates, and Manafort remains under house arrest, as the special counsel’s office has argued against his lawyers’ bail proposals, questioning the true value of his assets. In a statement, Manafort’s spokesman reiterated his client’s innocence, adding: “The new allegations against Mr Manafort, once again, have nothing to do with Russia and 2016 election interference/collusion. Mr Manafort is confident that he will be acquitted and violations of his constitutional rights will be remedied.”The new charge sheet portrays the two men as resorting to increasingly desperate efforts to keep money flowing to finance extravagant lifestyles, when contracts from their main clients, pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, dried up after 2014, when the Moscow-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia.Manafort and Gates are alleged to have used elaborate schemes, starting in 2006, to hide their Ukrainian income from US tax authorities, through offshore accounts, and describing cash transfers as loans.After the Ukrainian funds evaporated, the two men are alleged to have falsified profit and loss and asset statements so that Manafort could convince banks to make loans based on collateral that either did not exist or was grossly exaggerated. The new loans were used as spending money or to pay off older loans that had fallen due. “Manafort and Gates fraudulently secured more than twenty million dollars in loans by falsely inflating Manafort’s and his company’s income and by failing to disclose existing debt in order to qualify for the loans,” the special prosecutor indictment said.At one point, according to the charge sheet, Manafort’s ability to get new credit was affected by a $300,000 American Express credit card bill that was more than 90 days in arrears. Manafort got Gates to write a letter saying he had borrowed Manafort’s card and had run up the charges and would repay them. Manafort is alleged to have made false statements about his income as recently as October last year. The charges refer on three occasions to another conspirator. It is not clear whether the same co-conspirator is being referred to in each case or whether they refer to more than one person. In one case, the co-conspirator is described as working at one of the lenders that was defrauded. Topics Paul Manafort Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Russia Trump administration news

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the December ruling.Hawaii, several individuals and a Muslim group challenged the latest ban’s limits on travel from the predominantly Muslim nations; they did not object to the portions concerning North Korea and Venezuela. They prevailed before a Federal District Court in Hawaii and before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.The appeals court ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded the authority that Congress had given him over immigration and had violated a part of the immigration laws barring discrimination in the issuance of visas.In a separate decision that is not directly before the justices, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., blocked the ban on different grounds, saying it violated the Constitution’s prohibition on religious discrimination.Toward the end of Wednesday’s argument, the questioning again turned to how much weight the court should assign to Mr. Trump’s campaign statements and how long they should haunt him.Mr. Katyal said Mr. Trump and his advisers could easily have repudiated the earlier statements. “Instead they embraced them,” Mr. Katyal said.The chief justice then asked whether Mr. Trump could immunize his order from constitutional challenge simply by disclaiming his earlier statements. “If tomorrow he issues a proclamation saying he’s disavowing all those statements,” the chief justice asked, “then the next day he can re-enter this proclamation?”Mr. Katyal said yes.In his rebuttal argument, Mr. Francisco pursued the point. Mr. Trump, he said, has already made clear that “he had no intention of imposing the Muslim ban.”“He has made crystal clear that Muslims in this country are great Americans and there are many, many Muslim countries who love this country, and he has praised Islam,” Mr. Francisco said. “This proclamation is about what it says it’s about: foreign policy and national security.”

Amazon and organized labor don’t often find common cause, but an unorthodox attempt at taxing big business has given them just that in Seattle.Staring down the housing crisis facing America’s prosperous cities, some Seattle leaders hope to charge large employers for every employee working in the city. The “head tax” prompted Amazon, the city’s largest private employer and driving force behind Seattle’s booming real estate market, to stop construction at one office tower and move to shift 7,000 jobs to other locations.Union construction workers, fearing a slump in building if Amazon gives up on the city, turned out in force against the measure.Seattle leaders, like their counterparts in other left-leaning cities, have found easy villains in corporate titans.Fast-food chains – McDonald’s chief among them – were politicians’ favorite foil in a successful 2014 push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Pepsi and Coca-Cola were similarly tarred during a 2016 campaign for a sweetened beverages tax, one tightly drawn to avoid sugary drinks from another Seattle-based giant, Starbucks.With the head tax put forward this spring, city council members cut no such break for Amazon, whose headquarters injects a techy glitz to Seattle’s downtown and swells the city’s real estate market.The tax would be imposed against the largest for-profit employers in the city, about 500 businesses in all. Were it to be enacted, it could generate, by estimates, about $75m a year for affordable housing and homeless services.The tax is likely to pass the city council on Monday but may die on the mayor’s desk. In a statement on Friday, Mayor Jenny Durkan said the $500-per-employee tax, as drafted by the council, “hurts workers”.“I cannot support it,” said Durkan, who proposed a limited tax carrying a $250-a-worker charge.Revenue from the proposed tax is slated to address the housing crisis within Seattle, where real estate prices and rents have shot up in the past decade. Nearly half of the city’s renters are struggling even as household incomes jumped 27% from 2012 to 2016. Homelessness is ascendant in the city, where spring sun has again seen tents and shacks pop up along freeways and in city parks.“We have a public health crisis. People are sleeping outside every day,” council member Teresa Mosqueda said on Friday. “Frankly, people are dying in our streets.”Washington state, home to the two richest men in history – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates – is one of seven US states without an income tax. Instead, services are funded primarily through a sales tax, set at 10.1% in Seattle, and property taxes. Supporters of the head tax describe it as a step toward equitable taxation.“A progressive tax on businesses most benefiting from this growth is our best option because we already rely heavily upon regressive property and sales taxes that hit everyone equally,” council member Lisa Herbold said by email.A simmering fight on the tax boiled over on 2 May when Amazon confirmed it was pausing construction on Block 18, a 405,000 sq ft office building at the heart of its Seattle campus, and reconsidering a lease on another downtown tower.“Pending the outcome of the head tax vote by City Council, Amazon has paused all construction planning on our Block 18 project in downtown Seattle and is evaluating options to sub-lease all space in our recently leased Rainier Square building,” Amazon vice-president Drew Herdener said by email.Monty Anderson, executive secretary of the Seattle Building & Construction Trades Council, said he was concerned that the tax would stifle the city’s Amazon-driven building boom, which has made Seattle the nation’s construction crane capital since July 2016.“The ability of us to work is based on companies wanting to come here and build. That’s just a fact for us,” said Anderson, who leads a collection of trade unions representing 10,500 workers.“In ’08 and ’09, when the economy tanked and my members were homeless, drug addicted, committing suicide, it was a tragedy … Now people are building here, and we’re seeing an uptick of our membership into the middle class. Don’t take that away from us.”Organizers with Working Washington, an advocacy organization for low-wage workers in the state, have asked that Bezos be prosecuted criminally for intimidation, comparing him to a mob boss.Facing a signal from Durkan that she will veto the measure as proposed, supporters need to win over the mayor or a sixth member of the council. A 6-3 vote for the tax would be veto-proof.Speaking after Friday’s hearing, Mosqueda said she was hopeful a compromise could be reached before a final vote on Monday.“The unified message from city council today is that we need more revenue to build shelter and housing,” said Mosqueda, who added that she expects the final version of the bill to be different from the one passed on Friday by a 5-4 council vote.If enacted, the tax would take effect in January. Supporters of the bill have planned a Saturday march on Amazon’s headquarters. This article was amended on 14 May 2018 to clarify that the local sales tax rate in Seattle is 10.1%, and not 9.6%, as we originally said. This has now been changed.