Facebook has become the first significant U.S.-based company to announce travel suspension to China in response to a new, deadly coronavirus, with other companies following suit.The social media giant told employees on Tuesday to halt nonessential travel to mainland China, and said any employees who had traveled there are to work from home, according to Reuters.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its Biosafety level for China to a three — which encourages the avoidance of all nonessential travel to the country — while raising the entire Hubei region to a four, stating there is "limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens," according to U.S. officials.On Monday, the U.S. warned Americans to "reconsider" visiting China amid news of the coronavirus death toll ascending to 106. Airlines are also beginning to adjust schedules to avoid traveling to hot zones such as Hubei province and mainland China.Other global companies restricting travel to China include LG Electronics and United Kingdom-based Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), with the latter banning all staff travel to Chinese-ruled Hong Kong for two weeks and to mainland China until further notice, according to a memo received by Reuters."We are asking those who have traveled to mainland China or been in contact with anyone who has traveled to or through Hubei province in the last 14 days to stay home for a period of 14 calendar days," a spokeswoman for HSBC told the news outlet.Wuhan, along with many other cities in the Hubei province, is on lockdown, halting air and rail transportation in and out.International SOS, a medical and travel security services firm advising companies, said business travel to China outside Hubei could proceed, but that could change if there are more significant flight cancellations and disruptions to transportation, Regional Security Director James Robertson said."Many of our clients have chosen to defer or cancel upcoming travel based on their own individual assessments. If people do choose to travel, they need flexible itineraries accounting for extra time for temperature and health screenings," Robertson told Reuters.

Facebook filed today a federal lawsuit in a California court against OneAudience, a New Jersey-based data analytics firm. From a report: The social networking giant claims that OneAudience paid app developers to install its Software Development Kit (SDK) in their apps, and later used the control it had over the SDK's code to harvest data on Facebook users. According to court documents obtained by ZDNet, the SDK was embedded in shopping, gaming, and utility-type apps, some of which were made available through the official Google Play Store. "After a user installed one of these apps on their device, the malicious SDK enabled OneAudience to collect information about the user from their device and their Facebook, Google, or Twitter accounts, in instances where the user logged into the app using those accounts," the complaint reads. "With respect to Facebook, OneAudience used the malicious SDK -- without authorization from Facebook -- to access and obtain a user's name, email address, locale (i.e. the country that the user logged in from), time zone, Facebook ID, and, in limited instances, gender," Facebook said. Twitter was the first to expose OneAudience's secret data harvesting practices on November 26, last year.

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace doesn’t think President Donald Trump or anyone else in his administration should be surprised that Congress and the American people are not taking their claims about an “imminent” threat from Iran at face value. Speaking to Fox News’ Bret Baier on Friday afternoon, Wallace said, “I think to a certain degree, the administration has itself to blame. Because right away the president and Mike Pompeo, when he was doing all five Sunday shows this last week, was saying ‘imminent, imminent, imminent.’” He said that “understandably” people want to know what “imminent” actually meant in this case. As the host laid it out, Trump first said Gen. Qassem Soleimani was targeting an American embassy and is now claiming there were plots against four embassies. “I think if they had been a little more forthcoming right from the start, they might not have allowed this skepticism to build.” “And look, to a certain degree, I think the president has himself to blame, because who has been more critical and less sort of just trusting of the intelligence agencies than Donald Trump over the last three years?” Wallace asked. “So, you know, why shouldn’t we be skeptical too?”All of that being said, Wallace agreed with Baier that this entire episode has been a “political win” for Trump if the conflict with Iran does not escalate any further. “But we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he said. “And if they strike again, whether it’s directly or through a proxy and you begin to see tensions ratchet up, then some people are going to say, are we really safer or not?”

Tens of thousands of women, perhaps many more, disappeared in Mexico on Monday. They vanished from the streets, from cafes, from shops and factories and offices. Their absence was a manifestation of their fury, a demonstration of how impoverished the country would be without them, and a symbolic representation of the women who are for ever missing from the country, having been murdered because they are women.The homicide rate has risen sharply in recent years: more than 10 women a day are being killed. Two particularly horrific crimes have galvanised action. The first was the murder of 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla last month, and the publication of pictures of her mutilated body by local media. The second, days later, was the abduction, torture and murder of a seven-year-old girl, Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett Antón.But Monday’s women’s strike, and the mammoth demonstration that preceded it on Sunday, targeted not only the perpetrators, but authorities that have failed to tackle the violence. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has shown at best indifference to the problem and at worst indignation that women are protesting against it. He has blamed femicides on the “neoliberal” policies of his predecessors, and portrayed feminist activism as part of a rightwing plot against him, suggesting that some of the campaigners want his administration to fail. Last month, when a reporter asked about femicides, he grumbled that he didn’t want the issue to overshadow his plans to raffle off the presidential plane.The protest movement is much more than an expression of mourning for those denied their lives. It is a necessary social response to a social problem, in Mexico and around the globe (the UK too has seen a rise in female homicide victims). While the rate and patterns of violence vary immensely, nowhere is immune. “In rich and poor countries, in developed and developing regions, a total of 50,000 women per year are killed by their current and former partners, fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters and other family members because of their role and status as women,” a United Nations report found in 2018. In Mexico and elsewhere, the problem of femicide, and the abuse of women more broadly, is not only a problem of violent men. It is also the problem of the laws and cultures that permit and reproduce them. The song A Rapist in Your Path, created by a Chilean feminist collective, has been taken up in countries from France to Kenya because when it urges “let the machistas tremble” it means not only perpetrators, but “the cops, the judges, the state, the president”. The UN report calls not only for better laws, but also better coordination between agencies. It urges countries to adopt approaches that are women-centred, rather than those that treat women as “objects of protection or sources of evidence”.In reality, the wave of rightwing populism and authoritarianism around the world is harming women’s rights (and Amlo’s record suggests that left-leaning administrations do not always serve their interests better). In Russia, a 2017 law decriminalised domestic abuse if the incidents happened no more than once a year, and caused no lasting physical damage. Women’s rights activists said the change was followed by a sharp rise in domestic violence – often involving repeated assaults and police inaction. Yet the case of three sisters accused of murdering their abusive father has become a cause celebre and appears to have prompted something of a shift in public attitudes.Mexico’s strike drew upon those held in Argentina, Poland, Spain and elsewhere, as well as the country’s own traditions of activism. Women are demanding that their lives be valued. Feminist campaigners face a backlash, expressed at times in physical violence as well as verbal abuse and threats. Yet we are seeing a wave of women’s protest around the world, from the #NiUnaMenos – “not one less” – movement against gender-based abuse and killings, which began in Argentina, to the #MeToo movement and onwards. The need for it is enraging. But the activism is remarkable, courageous and inspiring. Topics Mexico Opinion Americas Andrés Manuel López Obrador Feminism Women United Nations editorials

At events such as this week’s WWDC keynote, Apple routinely shows that it’s as good as any company in the world at orchestrating onstage product announcements. But on January 24, 1984–the day the company unveiled the original Macintosh at its annual meeting—it was still a relative neophyte at the practice. And it managed to blow it. So many people wanted to see the Mac in person that Cupertino’s 2,600-seat Flint Center filled up to capacity. Thousands of people were stuck outside, unable to see Steve Jobs unveil Apple’s latest breakthrough.Apple made up for its crowd-control failure by giving the unlucky throngs the opportunity to watch a replay of the meeting at a later date. This videotaped version is available on YouTube (with a few segments cautiously muted out of copyright concerns).The video begins with Apple president/CEO John Sculley apologizing for the whole mess at the Flint Center. Then there’s a card in which Apple expresses regret for the quality of the video. And later on, during the annual meeting itself, VP Al Eisenstat apologizes on the fly and announces the plan to show the video to those shut out of the meeting. It’s rare to see Apple—or any company—so unreservedly sheepish about anything.But you know what? The original Mac was so powerful a product, and Jobs’s presentation of it was so memorable, that they’re what people remember. The logistical meltdown is a footnote, albeit a fascinating one.One more thing: In 2014, I wrote about Apple’s east-coast Mac unveiling—held a week later, also with people stuck outside—which is also on YouTube and worth your time.

Sandoz Inc., a generic pharmaceutical company headquartered in New Jersey, was charged for conspiring to allocate customers, rig bids, and fix prices for generic drugs, the Department of Justice announced. A four-count felony charge was filed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, charging Sandoz with participating in four criminal antitrust conspiracies, each with a competing manufacturer of generic drugs and various individuals. This represents the third pharmaceutical company to admit to criminal antitrust charges in the Antitrust Division’s ongoing investigation. The charged conspiracies took place between 2013 and 2015.The Antitrust Division also announced a deferred prosecution agreement resolving the charges against Sandoz, under which the company agreed to pay a $195 million criminal penalty and admitted that its sales affected by the charged conspiracies exceeded $500 million. Under the deferred prosecution agreement, Sandoz has agreed to cooperate fully with the Antitrust Division’s ongoing criminal investigation. As part of the agreement, the parties will file a joint motion, which is subject to approval by the Court, to defer for the term of the DPA any prosecution and trial of the charges filed against the defendant.“Today’s resolution, with one of the largest manufacturers of generic drugs, is a significant step toward ensuring that prices for generic drugs are set by competition, not collusion, and rooting out antitrust crimes that cheated American purchasers of vital medicines,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “Sandoz conspired for years with other manufacturers and their executives to raise prices for critical medications, and the Antitrust Division will continue its ongoing investigation to hold both individuals and corporations accountable for these crimes.”“This significant resolution is a critical step toward ensuring a free and open marketplace for the competitive pricing of generic drugs,” said Special Agent in Charge Scott Pierce, U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General. “The outstanding work by the legal and investigative teams effectively quashed an environment of bid rigging, market allocation and price fixing within the generics industry. Along with our partners at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General will continue to aggressively investigate this type of detrimental behavior.” “This resolution demonstrates the continued dedication of the FBI and our partners to root out collusion and dishonest business practices within the pharmaceutical industry, on behalf of the American people,” said Timothy M. Dunham, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Criminal Division. “We will not turn a blind eye while companies and executives pad their pocketbooks. The FBI will continue to fight for the public to have access to a competitive marketplace of medications that Americans count on.”“When a pharmaceutical company participates in bid-rigging and price-fixing, the entire community suffers,” said U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “My Office will continue to work with the Department of Justice and all of our law enforcement partners to ensure that prices for medicine are set legally, and not through illegal means to benefit pure greed.”In the deferred prosecution agreement, Sandoz admitted that it participated in the charged antitrust conspiracies, as follows:Count One charges Sandoz for its role in a conspiracy with a generic drug company based in New York and other individuals. Sandoz admitted that drugs affected by this conspiracy included clobetasol (cream, emollient cream, gel, ointment, and solution), desonide ointment, and nystatin triamcinolone cream. Count Two charges Sandoz for its role in a conspiracy with Kavod Pharmaceuticals LLC (formerly known as Rising Pharmaceuticals) to allocate customers and fix prices of benazepril HCTZ. Rising was charged and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in December 2019 for its participation in the same conspiracy. Count Three charges Sandoz for its role in a conspiracy with a generic drug company based in Michigan. Sandoz admitted that drugs affected by this conspiracy included desonide ointment. Count Four charges Sandoz for its role in a conspiracy with a generic drug company based in Pennsylvania. Sandoz admitted that drugs affected by this conspiracy included tobramycin inhalation solution. Today’s case is the seventh to be filed in the Antitrust Division’s ongoing investigation into the generic pharmaceutical industry. Sandoz is the third company to be charged; the previous two companies also entered into deferred prosecution agreements. Four individual charges have been filed in the investigation. Three executives have pleaded guilty, including former Sandoz executive Hector Armando Kellum. Ara Aprahamian, a former executive of a company based in New York, was indicted in February 2020 and is awaiting trial. The charged offense carries a statutory maximum penalty of a $100 million fine per count for corporations, which may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by victims if either amount is greater than $100 million. This charge is the result of an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the generic pharmaceutical industry, which is being conducted by the Antitrust Division with the assistance of the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Anyone with information on market allocation, price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct related to the generic pharmaceutical industry should contact the Antitrust Division’s Citizen Complaint Center at 1-888-647-3258 or visit www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.html.

Yet in this age of the judge as celebrity, the decision to focus not on the personalities of the Court but rather on the ideas that fill its opinions has obvious allure. I admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg as much as the next feminist, but I have seen enough movies about her for now. The late Antonin Scalia developed such a cult of personality among Federalist Society members that he felt emboldened to make an obscene gesture to a reporter and did not recuse himself from a case in which his impartiality was in serious question. And most recently, Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings caused some Court watchers to turn away in disgust. Given individual justices who can sometimes seem too big for their robes, Cohen’s wonky emphasis on cases rather than characters offers a steady perspective. After all, the ideas at stake in Supreme Court decisions are what touch our daily lives.Cohen takes as his subject the Supreme Court’s trajectory, and its footprint, since Earl Warren’s rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s. The Court, Cohen suggests, is more influential in shaping national life than many Americans realize. Blockbuster decisions such as Bush v. Gore of course make headlines and attract widespread attention. But Cohen seeks to explore the Court’s place in government in a coherent, structural sense—and the role it plays deeply troubles him:The Supreme Court is more than a legal tribunal, ruling on disputes between parties—it is also an architect. The Court’s interpretations of the Constitution and other laws become blueprints for the nation, helping to determine what form it will take and how it will continue to rise. For the past half-century, the Court has been drawing up plans for a more economically unequal nation, and that is the America that is now being built.In our civic imagination, the Supreme Court protects the downtrodden and safeguards fairness. equal justice under law read the words over the Court’s entrance; justice the guardian of liberty proclaims the building’s eastern facade. This is the noble dimension of the Court’s identity, which the justices emphasize to the citizenry. Cohen disdains it as self-congratulatory cant, describing the Warren Court’s egalitarianism as an exception rather than the rule. The modern Court has more frequently protected the interests of wealthy elites than of minorities and the vulnerable. Cohen writes that in the 50 years since Warren Burger replaced Earl Warren, “the Court has, with striking regularity, sided with the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, in virtually every area of the law.”As these lines suggest, Supreme Inequality is ambitious in scope. Cohen describes the erosion of individual protections and the amplification of corporate power in areas as diverse as criminal justice, business and employment law, and voting rights. He structures sections of the book as lessons in retrenchment: What the Warren Court hath given, the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts hath taken away. For example, Cohen’s chapters on poverty law trace the descent from Warren Court cases such as King v. Smith, which struck down a state rule that allowed authorities to terminate the welfare benefits of a single woman with children if a man regularly stayed with her, to Burger Court opinions such as Dandridge v. Williams, which upheld a Maryland rule that capped welfare payments regardless of the number of children in a family. Similarly, in his section on voting rights, Cohen shows how the Court regressed from the Warren Court’s seminal Baker v. Carr decision, which asserted the Court’s jurisdiction over political redistricting, to the recent Rucho v. Common Cause, which ruled partisan-gerrymandering questions “nonjusticiable” and therefore beyond the justices’ purview. A key factor in the poverty and voting case trends has been raw political power: whether Democrat- or Republican-appointed justices hold the majority.

Of course, just because some of these doomsday scenarios haven’t yet materialized doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually. A number of Trump’s actions have already inflicted serious damage and could have corrosive consequences that will only become evident over time. In some cases, Trump seems to have simply been lucky. A number of warnings, moreover, have proved right.Nevertheless, as American foreign policy comes under greater scrutiny as part of this year’s presidential campaign, the Democratic candidates risk losing credibility with voters and undermining their policy prescriptions if they don’t reckon with the moments when they said the sky was falling and it wasn’t. Why should a voter be convinced that returning to aspects of the pre-Trump status quo is necessarily a good thing when the people advocating for that inaccurately diagnosed the results of Trump’s defiance of convention? The episodes in which critics’ predictions weren't borne out offer valuable lessons for Trump’s challengers, even if they still vigorously disagree with the moves the president has made.As Charles Dunlap Jr., the head of Duke University’s Center on Law, Ethics, and National Security, wrote for Just Security early in the Trump administration, Americans “need balance in our national security and foreign policy discussions before we don sackcloth and ashes and hoist our ‘The End is Near’ signs. True, we are in an era of change, which is what happens in democracies when a candidate runs on a platform of change and wins, and change can be disquieting to those who prefer the status quo. But how good was the status quo?”Consider three emblematic episodes:The War With Iran That Wasn’tIn the wee hours of January 2, shortly after news broke that Trump had killed the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike, Twitter pulsed with anxiety about #WWIII.Enter the Democratic candidates: Bernie Sanders warned that Trump had just placed the United States “on the path to another” endless war, one that could again “cost countless lives and trillions more dollars.” Joe Biden declared that Trump had “just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” potentially bringing America to “the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.” The U.S. was perched precariously on that brink, Elizabeth Warren argued, “because a reckless president, his allies, and his administration have spent years pushing us here.”The calamitous war they envisioned, however, has not come to pass. They were right, though, that there would be devastating consequences. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a U.S. base in Iraq, leaving at least 109 American troops with traumatic brain injuries. The Iranians mistakenly downed a civilian airliner, killing its 176 passengers, and hostilities between Iran and the U.S. remain dangerously high. Tehran has cast off restrictions under the 2015 deal brokered by the Obama administration to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, though it hasn’t yet raced to build a bomb, as many of Trump’s critics predicted would happen when the president withdrew from the agreement in 2018. Had Trump stuck with the accord in the first place, Iran and the U.S. might never have found themselves on the precipice of war over Soleimani’s demise.

Brazil: Alisson; Danilo, Marquinhos, Miranda, Filipe Luis; Arthur, Casemiro, Coutinho; Jesus, Firmino, NeymarArgentina: Romero; Saravia, Otamendia, Pezzella, Tagliafico; Lo Celso, Battaglia, Paredes; Dybala, Icardi, CorreaFrance: Lloris; Pavard, Kimpembe, Varane, Lucas; Kante, Pogba, Matuidi; Mbappe, Giroud, GriezmannGermany: Neuer; Kehrer, Hummels, Sule, Ginter; Kimmich, Kroos, Schulz; Sane, Werner, GnabryBelgium: Mignolet; Alderweireld, Boyata, Denayer; Castagne, Tielemans, Witsel, Chadli; Mertens, Lukaku, HazardNetherlands: Cillessen; Dumfries, De Ligt, De Vrij, Ake; Van de Beek, Blind, Strootman; Promes, Depay, DanjumaRepublic of Ireland: Randolph; Doherty, Duffy, Long, Keogh, Christie; Arter, Hendrick; McClean, O’Brien, RobinsonWales: Hennessey; Roberts, Chester, Williams, Davies; Allen, Smith; Lawrence, Wilson, Brooks; Roberts

Federal regulators opened a new front in their investigation of big tech companies, seeking to determine whether the industry’s giants acquired smaller rivals in ways that harmed competition, hurt consumers and evaded regulatory scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday ordered Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google owner Alphabet Inc. to provide detailed information about their acquisitions of fledgling firms over the past 10 years. ...

Iran’s leaders say they have no wish to recreate the Persian empire in the present-day Middle East. Unlike the US, they say, Iran is not an imperialist power. That is not how it looks to many people in Lebanon, where Iran’s close financial and military links to the country’s leading Shia political organisation, Hezbollah, became the focus of angry anti-government street protests last week.The benign view of Iran as friendly neighbourhood helper is also hard to square with its support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, where the death toll in four years of war has reached 100,000. This conflict resembles a classic proxy struggle between two external powers – Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia – that are each vying for regional dominance.The pervasive influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps within Iran’s hardline clerical establishment, and its close ties to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are key factors shaping what moderates worry is a risky policy of geopolitical overreach. Most prominent among the hawks is Maj Gen Qassem Suleimani, head of the IRGC’s elite Quds force.So it was no surprise, perhaps, that Suleimani turned up in Iraq last week as mass demonstrations in Baghdad and other, mainly Shia, cities threatened to topple the government. Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s prime minister, owes his job to Iran, which became the main powerbroker after most US forces pulled out in 2011. Iraq is another non-province of Iran’s non-empire and Suleimani was not about to let it slip away.The official explanation for his presence was innocuous. “[Iraq’s] security is important for us and we have helped them in the past. The head of our Quds force travels to Iraq and other regional countries regularly, particularly when our allies ask for our help,” an anonymous Iranian official said. In fact, Suleimani was knocking heads together following threats by key Shia leaders to abandon Abdul Mahdi.Suleimani’s success in patching things up – the prospect of the prime minister’s enforced resignation appears to have receded – does not augur well for Iraq. On Friday, two days after his intervention, Baghdad had the biggest anti-government demonstration to date. The protesters want a root-and-branch clear-out of Iraq’s entire ruling elite, regardless of sectarian and ethnic allegiances – and an end to Iran’s string-pulling.This unprecedented post-Saddam challenge to the established order is not just a problem for Tehran. It is an existential problem for Iraq’s fragile three-way democratic power-sharing system cobbled together after the 2003 invasion. Iraq’s leaders have too often failed to provide basic necessities such as clean water and electricity. Iraq’s young people lack opportunities and jobs. Politicians, whether they be Sunni or Shia Arabs or Kurds, are widely dismissed as corrupt and incompetent.In a country that is Opec’s second-largest oil producer and home to 12% of the world’s oil reserves, such persistent failures seem particularly hard to excuse. On the other hand, Iraq is still recovering from the traumatic US occupation and, more recently, from the fight to the death against Islamic State.Many in the US (and Britain) regard the Iraq chapter as closed. This is not the case. Western countries that, not unlike modern Iran, acted imperiously and illegally to impose regime change on Iraq and subsequently control and direct Iraq’s affairs have a continuing responsibility to help secure its democratic integrity, freedom from jihadist terror, and economic and social viability.This responsibility extends foremost to the Iraqi people, who are loudly demanding a new beginning. In recent days, about 250 have been killed, and thousands more wounded, for having the temerity to insist on the free, just democracy that they were promised in 2003. If this carnage were occurring in Hong Kong or Barcelona, there would be a deafening uproar. Why, when we claimed to care so much, do we not care about Iraq? Topics Iraq Opinion Middle East and North Africa Iran Protest editorials

You might argue that this is all to the good: Cities are drowning in red tape, local leaders are naturally averse to change, and tech companies are doing exactly what innovative companies should do. Shouldn’t we be celebrating these innovators?But tech power, at the local level, feels increasingly indomitable. With the mere threat of halting growth, Amazon can send shudders through cities across the country. Even Mr. De Blasio, once seen as a critic of tech, now swoons for Amazon; he lit up New York’s landmarks in “Amazon orange” to woo Jeff Bezos to open the company’s second headquarters there.Or, consider the scooters. Some people love our new e-scooter overlords, and others hate them. But whatever your position, the real problem is that they just appeared out of nowhere one day, suddenly seizing the sidewalks, and many citizens felt they had no real agency in the decision. They were here to stay, whatever nonusers felt about them.Which was all by design. The scooter companies were just following Travis’s Law. In Santa Monica, Bird’s scooters appeared on city streets in September. Lawmakers balked; in December, the city filed a nine-count criminal complaint against Bird.Bird responded with a button in its app to flood local lawmakers with emails of support. The city yielded: Bird signed a $300,000 settlement with Santa Monica, a pittance of its funding haul, and lawmakers authorized its operations.If you love the scooters, you see nothing wrong with this. But there was a time, in America, when the government paid for infrastructure and the public had a say in important local services. With Ubers ruling the roads, Birds ruling the sidewalks, Elon Musk running our subways and Domino’s paving our roads, that age is gone.

France has mocked Boris Johnson’s claim that the UK can have an Australia-style deal with the EU after Brexit as “for the birds”, warning an extra six months may be needed to strike an ambitious trade deal.Its European affairs minister told an audience in London that such a deal did not exist and it was time for both sides to realise the next phase of Brexit was “for people … not for politicians”.Amélie de Montchalin also warned that the EU would not be pressured into signing any trade deal by an “artificial deadline” created by Johnson, and if Europe needed an extra six months to achieve a good deal for both sides then that is what should happen.In a speech to Chatham House, she indicated that France was prepared to take a robust approach to the UK’s decision not to extend the transition period beyond December.She said it would be virtually impossible to do a deal in 11 months if the UK were to diverge completely on regulations, as that would require a hugely complicated “line by line” negotiation on tariffs and border controls.The only way to achieve a deal in the time given was through close regulatory alignment, she said, warning that a crash out would be the UK’s choice and not the EU’s.“We are not ready to sign any kind of deal on 31 December at 11pm. We cannot let our level of ambition be affected by what I would call an artificial deadline. If the UK decides to shorten the negotiating period, it will be the UK’s responsibility. It will not be our choice on the European side,” she said.The prime minister has repeatedly projected a readiness to crash out at the end of the year, claiming that if talks collapse the UK would at least have an “Australia-style deal”.This has been rubbished by many who point out that Australia does not have a deal with the EU and therefore this is just a euphemism for no deal.“The idea that they’re good to be an alternative to a free trade agreement, an honest level playing field, based on the Australia model (which by the way does not exist) is for the birds as you say in the UK,” De Montchalin said.She mocked the UK’s rejection of the notion that the geographical proximity of the EU and the UK was a valid argument for a “special relationship” that did not look like a Canada- or Australia-style deal.“Our future relationship will necessarily be a special relationship. You are not Canada, you are certainly not Australia, first of all because you can get here by train. You are the United Kingdom and no matter what happens the UK will remain a strong economic power on the doorstep of the EU, geographically and economically.She said if the UK wanted a special relationship with the US it would still have to take account of the distance between the two nations.“Paris and London are 300 miles apart. Boston and London are 3,000 miles away. It [a US trading relationship] could be more difficult,” De Montchalin said.She emphasised the UK must remember that when it was negotiating with the EU it was negotiating with 27 member states, which like the UK were “sovereign” nations that had to protect the interests of their own citizens.If the UK were to recognise that it was sovereign states in play rather than an enemy EU, then a space would be opened for a deal, she indicated. Her remarks came as the government released its roadmap for negotiations with the EU over the next 10 weeks, disclosing the key areas they will be discussing during talks.There will be five rounds of negotiations starting from Monday, with meetings alternating between London and Brussels and conducted in English.On the schedule are talks covering 11 topics: trade in goods; trade in services and investment; a level playing field for open and fair competition; transport; energy and civil nuclear cooperation; fisheries; mobility and social security coordination; law enforcement and judicial cooperation in criminal matters; thematic cooperation; participation in union programmes; and horizontal arrangements and governance.The thematic cooperation section refers to cybersecurity arrangements, as well as migration involving asylum seekers and those without the right to stay.The “mobility” section will also look at arrangements that cover healthcare for tourists, short-term business visitors and making it easier for people who have paid into pensions in two or more countries to avoid dual social security liabilities.David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator or his deputy will lead the discussions on behalf of the UK and, after next week, rounds are scheduled for 18 March in London, 6 April in Brussels, 27 April in London and 13 May in Brussels.As already briefed by the government a “stock-taking” meeting – at which point Britain could still walk away from talks – is planned for June.The rights of British citizens in the EU and their ability to move between EU states for work, and short-term visas for travel are also due to be discussed. Wider EU rights were settled in the withdrawal agreement phase. Topics Brexit France Boris Johnson European Union Europe Foreign policy news

The Department of Justice Antitrust Division announced today that it has adopted a series of temporary changes to its civil merger investigation processes, which will remain in place during the pendency of the coronavirus (COVID-19) event. These changes will ensure that the Antitrust Division will be able to continue operations as its employees carry out their duties to protect American consumers under a mass telework directive, in accordance with health guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other health authorities.“As the Antitrust Division takes steps to protect the health and safety of its work force and the parties that appear before it, these process changes will ensure that the Division can continue to review transactions efficiently and effectively,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “The Division remains open for business, and we will continue to carry out our mission to protect competition and the American consumer. We are in this together and intend to work cooperatively with the business community on pending mergers, consistent with our responsibilities under the antitrust laws and to protect the health and safety our employees and the public.”The civil process changes include the following:For mergers currently pending or that may be proposed, the Antitrust Division is requesting from merging parties an additional 30 days to timing agreements to complete its review of transactions after the parties have complied with document requests. If circumstances require, the Division may revisit its timing agreements with merging parties in light of further developments. The Antitrust Division will allow electronic filing of Hart-Scott-Rodino submissions. The Antitrust Division will conduct all meetings by phone or video conference (where possible), absent extenuating circumstances. All scheduled depositions temporarily will be postponed and will be rescheduled using secure videoconferencing capabilities. For questions regarding these process changes, please contact Amy Fitzpatrick at 202-476-0529, or [email protected].

On the day she was set to see a U.S. immigration judge in San Diego last month, Katia took every precaution.After waiting two months in Mexico to press her case for U.S. asylum, the 20-year-old student from Nicaragua arrived at the border near Tijuana three hours before the critical hearing was scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m.But border agents didn’t even escort her into the U.S. port of entry until after 9 a.m., she said, and then she was left stranded there with a group of more than a dozen other migrants who also missed their hearings.“We kept asking what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell us anything,” said Katia, who asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of jeopardizing her immigration case.Bashir Ghazialam, a lawyer paid for by Katia’s aunt in the United States, convinced the judge to reschedule her case because of the transportation snafu. Later, staff at the lawyer’s office learned that at least two families in the group were ordered deported for not showing up to court.Since it started in January, the rollout of one of the most dramatic changes to U.S. immigration policy under the Trump administration has been marked by unpredictability and created chaos in immigration courts, according to dozens of interviews with judges and attorneys, former federal officials and migrants.The program - known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) - has forced tens of thousands of people to wait in Mexico for U.S. court dates, swamping the dockets and leading to delays and confusion as judges and staff struggle to handle the influx of cases.In June, a U.S. immigration official told a group of congressional staffers that the program had “broken the courts,” according to two participants and contemporaneous notes taken by one of them. The official said that the court in El Paso at that point was close to running out of space for paper files, according to the attendees, who requested anonymity because the meeting was confidential.Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Department of Homeland Security official under presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said the problems are “symptomatic of a system that’s not coordinating well.”“It’s a volume problem, it’s a planning problem, it’s a systems problem and it’s an operational problem on the ground,” said Brown, now a director at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “They’re figuring everything out on the fly.”U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) estimated that 42,000 migrants had been sent to wait in Mexico through early September. That agency and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs the nation’s immigration courts, referred questions about the program’s implementation to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which did not respond to requests for comment.Huge surge, few courtsThe disarray is the result of a surge in migrants, most of them Central Americans, at the U.S. southern border, combined with the need for intricate legal and logistical arrangements for MPP proceedings in a limited number of courts - only in San Diego and El Paso, initially. Rather than being released into the United States to coordinate their own transportation and legal appearances, migrants in MPP must come and go across the border strictly under U.S. custody.Some migrants have turned up in court only to find that their cases are not the system or that the information on them is wrong, several attorneys told Reuters. Others, like Katia, have received conflicting instructions.According to court documents seen by Reuters, Katia’s notice to appear stated that her hearing was at 7:30 a.m., while another paper she received said she should arrive at the border at 9 a.m., well after her hearing was set to start. She decided to show up at the border before dawn, according to staff in her lawyer’s office. Still, she wasn’t allowed into the border facility until hours later. Ultimately she was never bussed to the San Diego court and was told her case was closed - a fate she was able to avoid only after frantically summoning her lawyer, Ghazialam, to the border.Most migrants in MPP - including the two families who were deported from her group at the port of entry - do not have lawyers.The Morning RundownGet a head start on the morning's top stories.In open court, judges have raised concerns that migrants in Mexico - often with no permanent address - cannot be properly notified of their hearings. On many documents, the address listed is simply the city and state in Mexico to which the migrant has been returned.Lawyers say they fear for the safety of their clients in high-crime border cities.A Guatemalan father and daughter were being held by kidnappers in Ciudad Juarez at the time of their U.S. hearings in early July but were ordered deported because they didn’t show up to court, according to court documents filed by their lawyer, Bridget Cambria, who said she was able to get their case reopened.Adding to uncertainty surrounding the program, the legality of MPP is being challenged by migrant advocates. An appellate court ruled here in May that the policy could continue during the legal battle, but if it is found ultimately to be unlawful, the fate of the thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico is unclear. A hearing on the merits of the case is set for next month.'Unrealistic' numbersWhen the MPP program was announced on December 20, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said one of its “anticipated benefits” would be cutting backlogs in immigration courts.In the announcement, the agency said sending migrants to wait in Mexico would dissuade “fraudsters” from seeking asylum since they would no longer be released into the United States “where they often disappear” before their hearing dates.But the immediate impact has been to further strain the immigration courts.A Reuters analysis of immigration court data through Aug. 1 found judges hearing MPP cases in El Paso and San Diego were scheduled for an average of 32 cases per day between January and July this year. One judge was booked for 174 cases in one day.“These numbers are unrealistic, and they are not sustainable on a long-term basis,” said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the national immigration judge’s union.To reduce the backlog, DHS estimates the government would need to reassign more than 100 immigration judges from around the country to hear MPP cases via video conferencing systems, according to the attendees of the June meeting with congressional staff.Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for EOIR, said that the rescheduling was necessary to deal with the substantial volume of recent cases.All told, the courts are now struggling with more than 930,000 pending cases of all types, according to EOIR.As of August 1, 39% of the backlog in the San Diego court and 44% of the backlog in the El Paso court was due to MPP case loads, Reuters analysis of immigration court data showed.Despite concerns over the system’s capacity, the government is doubling down on the program.In a July 26 notification to Congress, DHS said it would shift $155 million from disaster relief to expand facilities for MPP hearings, and would need $4.8 million more for transportation costs. DHS said that without the funding “MPP court docket backlogs will continue to grow.”Tent courts are set to open this month in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, and so far more than 4,600 cases have been scheduled there to be heard by 20 judges, according to court data.In Laredo, 20 to 27 tent courtrooms will provide video conferencing equipment so judges not based at the border can hear cases remotely, said city spokesman Rafael Benavides.Brownsville’s mayor Trey Mendez said last month that about 60 such courtrooms were likely to be opened, though he had few details. City manager Noel Bernal told Reuters that communication with the federal government about the plans has been “less than ideal.”'Desperate people'At her next hearing in San Diego in mid-September, Katia hopes to tell a judge how her participation in student demonstrations made her a target of government supporters.Meanwhile, she said, she is living with her parents and 10-year-old brother in a fly-infested apartment with broken plumbing outside Tijuana.The whole group is seeking asylum because of their support for the protests, according to Katia, her mother Simona, her lawyers, as well as court documents.Recently, family members said they witnessed a shootout on their corner and Katia’s brother is now waking up with night terrors.“They are playing games with the needs of desperate people,” said Simona, 46, who like Katia requested the family’s last names be withheld to avoid harming their case. “It’s soul crushing.”Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Iran said Sunday that it was ending its commitment to limit enrichment of uranium as part of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, more fallout from the U.S. strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani.President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal in May 2018, renewing tensions that reached new heights after Friday's air strike.State television reported Sunday that Iran will no longer abide by the deal, which restricted nuclear development in exchange for the easing of crippling economic sanctions.The agreement limited Tehran's uranium enrichment, the amount of enriched uranium it could stockpile and nuclear research and development.The United States' European allies have tried to salvage the deal despite Trump's decision to withdraw and reimpose sanctions, but Iran has gradually reduced its commitments, and the announcement Sunday leaves the agreement in tatters.Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had said earlier Sunday that recent events meant Iran would take an even bigger step away from the deal than it had initially planned.Zarif confirmed the news on Twitter, saying there "will no longer be any restriction on number of centrifuges.""This step is within JCPOA & all 5 steps are reversible upon EFFECTIVE implementation of reciprocal obligations," Zarif said. JCPOA refers to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name of the nuclear agreement.Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.Zarif added that Iran would still cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton claimed that it was "another good day" in a tweet after Zarif's statement."Iran rips the mask off the idea it ever fully complied with the nuclear deal, or that it made a strategic decision to forswear nuclear weapons," Bolton said.Bolton said the "real job" going forward was to stop Iran's leaders from obtaining such capabilities.The news came as fallout from the killing of Soleimani, one of Iran's most powerful military and political figures, stoked growing tensions in the Middle East.Huge crowds flooded streets in Iran and Iraq over the weekend to pay their respects as Iran welcomed Soleimani's body home for a grand funeral. Three days of national mourning were declared while the world held its breath for Iran's response, and Iran's leaders continued to vow revenge.Trump issued new threats late Saturday, saying the United States would attack 52 sites important to the country and its culture if Tehran retaliates against Americans or U.S. assets.Widespread economic discontent has gripped the country since May, when Trump imposed crushing sanctions after having unilaterally withdrawn from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.Iran's Foreign Ministry had said Sunday that officials would meet to discuss their next step away from the nuclear deal, warning that it would be an even bigger step than Iran had initially planned given recent events.The Trump administration has previously acknowledged that Iran was living up to the agreement, but it alleges that the deal also gave Iran cover to pursue its ballistic weapons program and deepen its regional influence.Washington subsequently restored the crippling sanctions, exacerbating a severe economic crisis.Western governments had long feared that Iran's atomic program could allow it to build nuclear weapons. Iran has always maintained that its program is for peaceful purposes.Under the deal, Iran could keep a stockpile of no more than 660 pounds of low enriched uranium. That's compared to the 22,046 pounds of higher enriched uranium it once had.Trump has made countering Iran a central pillar of his foreign policy.Facing an impeachment trial in Washington over his dealings with Ukraine, and with negotiations with North Korea stalled despite his professed admiration for Kim Jong Un, the president faces the prospect of Tehran's escalating its own nuclear ambitions in the face of his "maximum pressure" campaign.

The US Supreme Court appears ready to overturn an Obama-era programme that protects nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation.The White House tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy in 2017 as part of an immigration crackdown.During oral arguments, the court's conservative justices seemed sympathetic to the White House stance.A ruling is due by June 2020, just before the US presidential election.President Barack Obama set up Daca in 2012 to protect immigrants who as young people entered the US illegally or overstayed a visa. These 660,000 migrants, mostly Hispanic, are known as "Dreamers".Questions asked by the court's five conservative-leaning justices on Tuesday did not indicate any doubt over whether President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had the authority to cancel the programme.As the hearing began, hundreds of Daca supporters rallied outside the Capitol Hill court, forcing police to temporarily close the street in front of the Supreme Court.What is this Dreamer debate all about?The court has nine justices and five of them are viewed as conservative leaning. Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who were both appointed by Mr Trump, asked questions on Tuesday that were interpreted by observers as well-disposed towards the president's position.Justice Kavanaugh called the White House's decision to cancel the programme a "very considered decision" that adequately weighed the policy's legality with its impact.Justice Gorsuch noted that even if the court ruled in favour of the "Dreamers" it would only prolong uncertainty for them."What good would another five years of litigation... serve?" he asked.Chief Justice John Roberts - who was appointed by Republican President George W Bush - is expected to be the pivotal vote in the case.His questions on Tuesday did not reveal how the likely-tie breaker plans to ultimately vote. Sonia Sotomayor asked lawyers for the White House whether the decision to cancel Daca was simply a "choice to ruin people's lives".The justice added that Mr Trump had previously told Daca recipients "that they were safe under him and that he'd find a way to keep them here. And he hasn't."Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed to suggest the White House had not adequately weighed the impact of its decision to end the programme, noting, "they said it was illegal and said nothing about the policy".Minutes before the hearing began, the Republican president tweeted: "Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from 'angels.' Some are very tough, hardened criminals."The Daca programme bars anyone with a criminal record from enrolling.But according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, almost 8% of Daca applicants had arrest records.

President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Iran that if it retaliates for the killing of one of its top leaders, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, it will face U.S. attacks on 52 targets, a number he said was symbolic.The president tweeted that the number of targets matched the number of hostages held by Iran in 1979, when 52 American diplomats and citizens were held for 444 days."Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.........targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD," he said. "The USA wants no more threats!"Trump's tweet was vaguely worded, but the United Nations Security Council appears to suggest the targeting of cultural heritage sites is prohibited.Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded earlier, accusing Trump of threatening a "war crime" and breaching the norms of international law."That is, a big(ly) "no no"," he said.Trump added in further tweets that "They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!"Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, he returned to the subject of Iranian heritage sites, saying, "They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. they’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites. It doesn’t work that way."A tide of mourners welcomed Soleimani's body home Sunday as thousands packed the streets of the Iranian cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad to pay tribute to the general.The U.S.-led international coalition against ISIS said Sunday it had paused training and support of Iraqi security forces due to repeated rocket attacks on bases housing its troops.Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.Iran's state television announced that the country was ending its commitment to limit enrichment of uranium as part of the 2015 deal with world powers that eased crippling economic sanctions in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear developmentTrump unilaterally withdrew from the deal last May, leaving it in tatters as other foreign leaders attempted to keep the deal alive. The decision to renege on the agreement has led to months of escalated tensions between the U.S. and Iran.Trump has said the attack was undertaken to prevent war and further bloodshed for Americans who had been targeted by Soleimani in future operations."We took action last night to stop a war," he said in a televised address to the nation. "We did not take action to start a war."But the White House has yet to offer the public proof that the general's plans were significantly out of line with his history of directing Iran's proxy wars and covert operations, which have indeed cost American lives.The White House blamed violent protests earlier this week at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on the general.Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted that Trump was "threatening to commit war crimes.""We are not a war with Iran," she wrote. "The American People do not want a war with Iran. This is a democracy. You do not get to start a war with Iran, and your threats put our troops and diplomats at greater risk. Stop."Some congressional leaders, including U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, have said Americans deserve to see the evidence behind the targeting of Soleimani.Two senior Capitol sources told NBC News that Congress on Saturday received formal White House notification of the attack.Such documentation, which the sources said was classified, is required by law.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said in a statement Saturday night that the notification was insufficient.“This classified War Powers Act notification delivered to Congress raises more questions than it answers," she said. "This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administration’s decision to engage in hostilities against Iran."She said the White House's lack of transparency on the Soleimani attack was concerning."The highly unusual decision to classify this document in its entirety compounds our many concerns, and suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security," Pelosi said.The speaker called on the Trump administration to brief Congress on its plans for Iran.Meanwhile a spokesman for the U.S. Government Publishing Office said the website of its Federal Depository Library Program was hacked Saturday night, and that authorities were investigating.Although officials have not said who is responsible for the hack, a group purporting to be Iranian hackers claimed responsibility."An intrusion was detected on GPO’s FDLP website, which has been taken down," GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said in a statement. "GPO’s other sites are fully operational. We are coordinating with the appropriate authorities to investigate further."The White House and the FBI declined to comment on the hacking.

PARIS -- France is getting ready for massive, nationwide transport strikes against government plans to overhaul the state pension system. The strike will disrupt train, buses and airline services. In Paris, where workers’ unions are planning a march on Thursday, police warned Wednesday of possible violence and damages and ordered all businesses, cafes and restaurants along the way to close. Authorities also issued a ban on protests on the Champs-Elysees avenue, around the presidential palace, parliament and Notre Dame Cathedral. The SNCF railway company expects nine out of 10 high-speed trains to be canceled. International train lines will be affected, too. Air France said about 30% of its domestic flights will be cancelled.

The vote to leave the European Union was influenced by a fantasy set of promises that have been shown as undeliverable, Jo Johnson has said, as he sought to explain his reasons for resigning from the government on Friday.The former transport minister accused the Brexit campaign – which was led, in part, by his brother Boris – of offering the public “a false prospectus” that bears little resemblance to the reality of the deal that the prime minister is to present to parliament.He said it would be a democratic travesty not to go back to the people for another vote.Johnson suggested that other senior Conservatives might be considering their positions, saying that “many are reflecting hard about the deal that’s looming and how they will respond to it”.“In the campaign there were undoubtedly promises made that were shown to be undeliverable – no one can dispute that,” Johnson said, pointing to the vision of a low-tax, pro-business, Singapore-style economy on the edge of Europe.“It was a false prospectus, it was a fantasy set of promises that have been shown up for what they were,” he told the Today programme on Radio 4. “We are now faced with the reality of that in the form of the deal that the prime minister is about to bring back before parliament.“My view is that this is so different from what was billed that it would be an absolute travesty if we don’t go back to the people and ask if they want to exit the EU on this extraordinarily hopeless basis.”Johnson, the MP for Orpington in Kent, spoke the morning after announcing his resignation from the cabinet with an open letter that delivered a stinging criticism of the deal negotiated between Theresa May and EU leaders in Brussels. He accused the PM of offering a choice between “vassalage and chaos” and called for a second referendum now that the reality of Brexit had become clearer.But he denied that his resignation was an attempt to undermine May’s position. “My priority is really just to do my best as a now backbench MP to try and encourage the country to pause and reflect before we do something that is irrevocably stupid,” Johnson said.“I think it would be a democratic travesty if we didn’t go back to the people and seek to consent for the departure of the EU on that basis.”Johnson’s move drew criticism from Tory loyalists. Damian Green, the former first secretary of state, said a new referendum would be unlikely to deliver a clear result. He said: “I think a second referendum would be divisive, but it wouldn’t be decisive. All the evidence is that the country is still, more or less, split down the middle.”• This article was amended on 11 November 2018. Jo Johnson resigned from the government. He was not a member of the cabinet. Topics Jo Johnson Brexit European Union Foreign policy news