By The Washington Post · Rachel Lerman · NATIONAL, TECHNOLOGY
Facebook added a voting information label to several of President Donald Trump’s posts early this week, and applied the same label to one of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s on Tuesday.
“Mail-In Voting, unless changed by the courts, will lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History! #RIGGEDELECTION,” Trump posted early Tuesday morning.
The Facebook label below says “get official voting info on how to vote” and links to the federal government’s official website about absentee voting, including voting by mail.
Facebook said last month that it would start to label all posts – from any user – about voting with a prompt to check out its own voting information page. But while Facebook creates that page, it is adding labels to posts from federal candidates and elected officials that point to the official government site, the company’s vice president of integrity said last week.
The voting information labels are separate from the “newsworthiness” labels Facebook said it would add to politician’s posts that violate the company’s policies but that Facebook determines are newsworthy enough to leave online.
Facebook only reached that decision after harsh criticism from civil rights advocates and others after the company refused to label or remove several of Trump’s posts that some said incited violence or fueled hate. Twitter started adding labels to Trump’s tweets in May, pushing criticism of Facebook to do the same.
Facebook eventually said it will remove posts that incite violence or suppress voting, even from public figures. In other policy-violating instances, the company said it might leave the posts from politicians online but with labels.
Facebook also added voting information labels to a few of Trump’s posts from Sunday and Monday, including one that included a campaign video ad and a repost of an announcement from his campaign’s page.
Biden’s post asking for campaign donations got the label Tuesday, this time pointing to the government’s official voting home page.
Biden spokesman Bill Russo retweeted a tweet about the label on Trump’s mail-in post, writing “What an absolute, abject failure.” He mocked the company’s decision in another tweet, suggesting that Trump and Biden’s posts were too different to receive the same label.
Roger McNamee, author of “Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook catastrophe,” called Facebook’s labeling of Trump’s post “irresponsible.”
“Rather than call out the falsehood, the label is worded so that some will read it as an endorsement of a false statement,” he tweeted.
Trump’s campaign defended his post.
“The President was absolutely correct,” Trump campaign spokesperson Samantha Zager said. “Universal vote by mail is ripe for fraud and would lead to a corrupt election. The same label has been applied to posts on Joe Biden’s page.”
Twitter first slapped two fact-check labels on Trump’s tweets in May when he tweeted that mail-in ballots are fraudulent.
But Twitter determined that Trump’s tweet Tuesday about mail-in voter fraud, which was identical to the post Facebook labeled, didn’t break its rules, according to spokesman Trenton Kennedy. The decision reflects how Twitter won’t take action against “broad, non-specific statements” that could mislead people about elections.
Georgetown University to offer tuition breaks for many undergraduates this fall
Jul 22. 2020Georgetown University said it will discount tuition for undergraduates who do not live on its District of Columbia campus during the fall 2020-21 semester. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Marvin Joseph
By The Washington Post · Lauren Lumpkin · NATIONAL, EDUCATION
WASHINGTON – Georgetown University announced Tuesday that it will offer tuition discounts to many undergraduate students starting classes in August.
Students who are not invited to live on campus, which includes most upperclassmen, will receive a 10 percent cut in tuition totaling about $2,800, officials said. They said undergraduates who return to the campus in Northwest Washington will have access to services that will be unavailable to students living away from the school.
Georgetown, like many other universities, has scaled back on-campus housing amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. A limited number of single bedrooms are being offered to first-year students, some resident assistants and students with special circumstances – including those enrolled in certain academic programs and students with family situations that what would make it difficult to continue school away from campus.
Students who live on campus will pay the full $28,692 in tuition for the semester but will be charged a lower double-occupancy rate for housing instead of a pricier single-occupancy rate, leaders said. Housing and dining fees will also be slashed by 20 percent to account for a shorter-than-normal semester. Students will take a combination of in-person and online classes for most of the semester – which begins Aug. 26 – and then shift to remote learning the week of Thanksgiving.
The discount applied to housing and dining will vary by student but will hover around $2,000.
Officials said all undergraduates will be given a 10 percent tuition reduction if public health concerns prevent students from returning to campus before the start of the semester.
“We recognize the significant investments students and families make to pursue a Georgetown education,” Provost Robert Groves and Geoffrey Chatas, senior vice president and chief operating officer, said in a letter sent to undergraduates. “We continue to minimize tuition increases, and we maintain our deep commitment to attracting the most promising students regardless of their financial circumstances.”
The announcement comes amid a budget crisis that has hit nearly every college and university throughout the country. In May, Georgetown shared plans to suspend contributions to employee retirement plans, introduce a voluntary furlough program and halt some construction as it prepared to enter the academic year with a $50 million shortfall.
But the decision to slash tuition can be credited, in part, to students who pressured the administration to make concessions for those who will spend much of their time in online classes and away from their peers, which they call the virtual opposite of the traditional college experience.
Jackson Butler, a rising Georgetown senior studying finance and accounting, wrote a petition last month urging the university to lower tuition. He promoted the petition on social media and persuaded roughly 2,000 other students to sign.
“Once your experience is being vastly diminished, you expect the cost, the value to be diminished as well,” he said in an interview. “I think it’s a call for other universities to do the same.”
But the university had a different message for graduate students, most of whom can also expect to spend much of their time in virtual classes.
There was no mention of tuition adjustments in a message shared with graduate students Tuesday, but a reminder that fees are due Aug. 21. In an FAQ about the fall semester costs, the campus said the planned tuition cut for some undergraduates recognizes the fact undergraduates are typically offered on-campus housing. Graduate students are not, the university said.
Henry Watson, who is pursuing a PhD in government, said the university’s announcement is emblematic of a culture that places more emphasis on undergraduate students.
“The graduate students often tend to feel like an aside,” Watson said. “I do think that it’s unfortunate that there’s a discount being offered to undergraduate students but not graduate students. The experience isn’t going to be the same for anyone.”
Graduate tuition varies by program, but a juris doctorate costs roughly $33,000 per semester. A full-time master of business administration degree is about $30,000 per semester.
The university said faculty have worked to ensure courses can be taught in-person and remotely.
“Because this flexibility has been built into the curriculum, tuition and mandatory fees will not be reduced or subject to refunds even if there is a change in the method of instruction during the academic year,” officials said in the note to graduate students.
Students of all walks of university life have clamored for housing refunds and tuition adjustments since the coronavirus pandemic forced campuses to shutter in March, arguing that taking online classes in their parents’ homes was not worth paying full tuition. University leaders hoped emergency federal funding would have provided relief, but the stimulus package passed in March fell about $36 billion short of education advocates’ expectations. District of Columbia-area schools received about $65 million for direct student assistance.
Georgetown, which has an endowment of about $1.8 billion, is one of a handful of universities that says it is able to discount tuition for some of its students. Princeton University recently disclosed plans to cut its undergrad tuition by 10 percent, setting the cost of attendance at about $48,500 for the coming school year.
But Georgetown’s neighbors in the District haven’t budged on tuition. Officials at American University told students a tuition adjustment isn’t possible but offered discounts ranging from 18 to 30 percent on student activity fees.
George Washington University in its most recent update to the campus said tuition will remain the same, regardless of the format in which classes are delivered. Howard University leaders shared concerns about being able to afford a tuition reduction.
“While other highly ranked institutions have large endowments and have been able to use them to absorb the unexpected costs of the pandemic, Howard University does not have that same luxury or comparable investment resources,” officials said in a statement. “Howard’s tuition is also significantly lower than comparably ranked universities and the University also maintains a very large financial aid program.”
By The Washington Post · Hamza Shaban · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT
Apple pledged Tuesday to make its entire business – including its vast supply chain – carbon neutral within the next decade, joining other tech giants in reorienting their operations around climate change.
The tech giant, which is already carbon neutral for its corporate operations, said the move means that by 2030, every iPhone, MacBook and iPad sold will have no climate impact.
The initiative follows major climate action from other trillion-dollar technology companies. In January, Microsoft announced plans to remove more carbon than it produces by 2030. Last month, Amazon – which has set its carbon neutral goal for 2040 – publicized the creation of a $2 billion venture capital fund to back ambitious efforts to develop decarbonizing technologies. (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But those promises have also drawn scrutiny from company employees, environmental groups and others who see such initiatives in conflict with tech industry business partnerships with fossil fuel companies.
In Tuesday’s announcement, Apple framed its efforts on climate as a harbinger of technological innovation, new jobs and sustainable economic growth. “Businesses have a profound opportunity to help build a more sustainable future, one born of our common concern for the planet we share,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “With our commitment to carbon neutrality, we hope to be a ripple in the pond that creates a much larger change.”
Apple said it expects to cut emissions by 75 percent by 2030 and reach the rest of its goal through “innovative carbon removal solutions.” It also said it plans to secure commitments from dozens of suppliers to use 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production, and launch one of the largest new solar arrays in Scandinavia.
Environmental and public interest groups praised Apples’s new goals but said the industry needed to do more to combat climate change.
The commitment marks a “significant step up from what we’ve seen from Apple in the past,” said Elizabeth Jardim, senior corporate campaigner for Greenpeace USA. Cutting carbon emissions will “help prevent further catastrophic climate change – the impacts of which will fall most on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities,” she said.
“The world’s largest and most profitable companies must act swiftly to minimize their reliance on fossil fuels throughout their operations by 2030 at the latest,” Jardim said.
Nathan Proctor, director of the Right to Repair campaign at the nonprofit U.S. PIRG, praised the pledge as “the right thing for the planet,” one that will serve Apple and its customers well.
“Instead of waiting to be forced to change by climate-saving legislation, Apple is showing that a climate-friendly model is possible while adapting to thrive in a more renewable system,” he said.
But Proctor also took issue with Apple’s stance on right to repair – the movement to empower consumers to repair and reuse their hardware, which advocates say reduces emissions and eliminates waste from old or broken electronics. The company has been criticized for opposing legislation that would enshrine the right to repair in new laws, and for designing some products that physically can’t be repaired or maintained through time.
“The biggest sustainability problem with our relationship with tech is how many items we buy and how quickly we dispose of them,” Proctor said. “If Apple is going to hit its laudable, lofty climate goals, it will have to improve the durability of its designs, stop locking its devices to thwart independent repair, and embrace that when people buy an Apple product, they should have the right to repair it on their own terms.”
Arctic sea ice is in a downward spiral, and may break a record in 2020
Jul 21. 2020
By The Washington Post · Andrew Freedman · NATIONAL, WORLD, SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT
If one were to design a weather pattern that’s most efficient at ridding the Arctic of its increasingly fragile ice cover during the region’s summer melt season, it would look like what occurred earlier in the month – clear skies, above-average air temperatures, a high-pressure system across the Central Arctic and an ongoing heat wave and wildfires in Siberia.
A recent study concluded that the unusual warmth in Siberia could not have happened in the absence of human-caused global warming.
Sea ice loss accelerated in early-to-mid July, bringing sea ice extent – which measures the area of ocean where there’s some ice cover, down to record low levels for this time of the year.
As of Saturday, the Arctic as a region had an ice extent that was about 193,000 square miles below the previous record low for the date, using data from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.
In other words, the difference between the sea ice extent on July 18, 2020 and the previous record low for the same date is equivalent to the states of Colorado and Oklahoma combined.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., which tracks ice trends and climate change, the record low ice extent is in part the result of the Siberian heat streak that has lasted from January through June, and into July.
As a result of record warm temperatures all the way to Russia’s Arctic shoreline, with wildfires spotted by satellite near the coast, well above the Arctic Circle, sea ice retreated early along the Siberian coast.
Extremely low sea ice cover can now be found in the Laptev and Barents seas, in particular, NSIDC reported Thursday. “The Northern Sea route appears to be nearly open,” the agency stated in a news update. This means lucrative shipping of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and other valuable goods can begin along a still treacherous route over the top of Russia, offering faster access to Asian ports from the North Atlantic.
In fact, one LNG tanker set out from the port of Sabetta, on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula on May 18, accompanied by a heavy duty icebreaker. This was the earliest date of such a Northern Sea Route voyage on record, according to the Barents Observer.
“In the Laptev and East Siberian Seas, the sea ice extent is tracking at the record lowest,” said Julienne Stroeve, a senior researcher at NSIDC, via email.
“This May, the melt ponds were quite unusual in the East Siberian Sea, which likely contributed to early melting out of the sea ice, but also because the Arctic Oscillation was strongly positive over winter this led to lots of new ice formation in that region, which was relatively thin to start with and thus the ice easily melted away with the heat wave in that region,” Stroeve wrote, referring to a weather pattern that affects the distribution of air pressure across the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.
“Now melt ponds are quite widespread over much of the Arctic Ocean, with anomalously more melt pond development north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago, which is also helping to hasten ice melt elsewhere,” she said.
Stroeve took part in a scientific expedition known as MOSAiC, in which a ship with scientists onboard has drifted with the Arctic ice pack for about a year to learn more about this rapidly changing environment. The Arctic region is warming at a rate that is about three times as fast as the rest of the globe, driving myriad changes in the environment, from ice melt to permafrost thaw and increased wildfire activity.
Stroeve said her time aboard the ship during the winter showed her that much of the sea ice in the High Arctic was “relatively thin second year ice” that grew from about 2 feet to 6.5 feet thick by the time she left the ship in early March.
“The amount of surface melting we are seeing could easily melt out ice” of that thickness, she said. “Thus I do have a feeling we are on track to reach a new record low for September.”
“However, weather patterns could change and slow the ice melt, but given how warm the first part of July was over most of the Arctic Ocean, I’m not so sure we can stop the inevitable . . .”
The year with the record lowest sea ice extent was 2012, and that record occurred as a result of both long-term climate change gradually causing Arctic ice cover to become younger and thinner over time, as well as weather that favored rapid ice loss.
How weather patterns evolve over the next two months will help determine whether 2020 becomes a record melt season.
“Weather conditions can change and slow things down quite quickly,” said Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at NSIDC. “A record low is possible, but I would say 50/50 at best. We’d need to continue weather patterns advantageous for ice loss through August to remain on a pace to go below the 2012 record minimum.”
Whether this year breaks the 2012 record, computer models are virtually unanimous in showing the occurrence of seasonal ice-free conditions there by mid-century.
Microsoft president raised Apple issues to House antitrust group
Jul 21. 2020Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, speaks during the GeekWire Summit in 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Ryder
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Dina Bass · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, CONGRESS
Microsoft President Brad Smith raised concerns to U.S. lawmakers about what the company regards as Apple’s anti-competitive behavior around its app store, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Smith, who is also chief legal officer, was invited by the House of Representatives’s antitrust subcommittee to share his experiences around Microsoft’s own antitrust battle with the U.S. government in the late 1990s. During the conversation, which occurred weeks ago, he discussed the company’s issue with Apple, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussion was private.
The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will hold a hearing with the chief executives of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet on July 27. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment Monday.
Smith said last month that regulators should examine app store rules, which he called a far higher barrier to fair competition than Microsoft’s Windows operating software when it was found guilty of antitrust violations 20 years ago. While Smith did not name Apple in that public interview, a Microsoft spokesperson said later the executive was referring to the iPhone maker.
His comments came days after European antitrust regulators opened an investigation into Apple’s policies, saying developers may be forced unfairly to provide a share of app store revenue to the company.
The meeting with the subcommittee was reported earlier by The Information.
Florida teachers union sues over return to in-person classes
Jul 21. 2020Coronavirus cases and deaths Photo by: The Washington Post — The Washington Post
By The Washington Post · Matt Zapotosky · NATIONAL, HEALTH, POLITICS, EDUCATION
Florida’s largest teachers union sued top state officials Monday over an order mandating a return of in-person schooling, drawing the courts into an increasingly politicized nationwide debate over when and how kids can return to class amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The suit from the Florida Education Association asked a judge to stop Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran from requiring the return of in-person schooling without first reducing class sizes and ensuring that educators have adequate protective supples.
The move came as confirmed cases of the coronavirus are increasing in many states, including Florida, raising fears in some quarters that a return to brick-and-mortar schools in the fall could put students and teachers at risk and exacerbate the spread of the virus. Others argue that reopening schools is a critical step in a return to normalcy.
The Florida teachers are asking the court to strike down an emergency order by Corcoran, saying it violates a requirement in the state constitution for safe and secure schools.
On Monday, the United States added more than 53,000 new cases and more than 350 new deaths – both below seven-day averages, though Monday typically sees lower figures than other days. Six states and Puerto Rico reported new highs for currently hospitalized covid-19 patients, with Florida reporting close to 9,500 inpatients.
At the same time, hospitalizations appear to be leveling off in Texas and Arizona. The two states combined still account for more than 18,000 of the estimated 56,000 currently hospitalized covid-19 patients.
Officials say some of the recent increase in cases is probably attributable to increased testing, which was not widely available in the early days of the pandemic. But much also is probably caused by the rollback of government-imposed restrictions on business and social life, leading more people to have contact with one another and spread the virus.
The spikes have put pressure on state and federal leaders to take steps such as mandating the wearing of masks or slowing plans to reopen their economies.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Monday that she was tightening restrictions on bars, gyms and personal service businesses. President Donald Trump said he would resume leading regular late-afternoon public briefings by the White House coronavirus task force, and he more vigorously endorsed mask-wearing than he has previously, tweeting a photo of himself in a mask and suggesting that doing so was patriotic.
The Senate, meanwhile, returned to work for a three-week session before its August break. Lawmakers are under pressure to pass new coronavirus relief legislation before the November elections.
What to do about schooling has long been one of the thorniest dilemmas posed by the coronavirus – in part because the science about how the disease spreads among children, and from children to adults, is not yet developed enough to draw firm conclusions. After Trump tweeted two weeks ago that schools “must” open in the fall, the issue has often been consumed by partisan bickering.
“We have managed to take what I think is one of the most important nonpartisan issues in America, which is getting our kids taught this fall, and turned it into a partisan battle,” said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “Here’s a crazy idea: Let’s just do what’s good for kids and parents.”
Public health experts agree that children are generally less likely to get infected than adults, and they tend to develop milder symptoms. But children are not immune and a small number have died.
“They get the disease, and they do transmit,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “The question is how much, and does that enhance transmission in the community?”
The data on that is mixed.
One study, from Australia, found that nine students and nine adults who contracted the coronavirus had close contact with more than 730 other students and 128 staff, but they could only be possibly linked to two infections.
Another large study from South Korea found that children under 10 years old appeared to transmit to others in their household far less often than adults did, though those between 10 and 19 years old appeared to transmit as much or more than adults.
“I’m going to await further data before I can stand in judgment whether we can assume that children are considerably less infectious than adults,” said Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health.
William Raszka Jr., a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at the University of Vermont Medical Center, said some countries have reopened their schools without new outbreaks, while others have had problems. Of great importance, he said, is the level of spread in the community outside the school.
Places such as Vermont, which have relatively few cases, might be able to open up more easily than places such as Arizona or Florida, which are seeing cases spike, Raszka said. He said high school and colleges might also have more trouble than elementary schools, as older children seem to be more acutely affected.
“Is that risk zero? No. We can’t develop a strategy that has zero risk,” Raszka said. “But we can develop strategies that minimize that risk.”
Politicians and school leaders have taken varying tacks on how to address the crisis – with some advocating for partial or complete distance learning while others seek a return to in-person instruction. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, issued rules last week that mean most schools will not reopen physical classrooms, while Texas reversed a previous order and allowed schools to delay in-person instruction. Texas’ attorney general has told religious schools that any local efforts to restrict their reopening might violate the constitution.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump made clear that he favors face-to-face instruction and threatened to withhold federal funding from districts that do not offer that.
“I do say this – schools have to open,” he told host Chris Wallace. “Young people have to go to school, and there’s problems when you don’t go to school, too. And there’s going to be a funding problem because we’re not going to fund – when they don’t open their schools.”
Vermund said it was “disingenuous of the president to demand schools be reopened and then threaten to cut funding,” as schools with more resources would probably have a better shot of safely reopening.
Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Friday told talk radio host Marc Cox that kids “have to get back to school,” though he conceded that some were likely to contract the virus.
“They’re at the lowest risk possible,” Parson said. “And if they do get covid-19 – which they will, and they will when they go to school – they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home, and they’re going to get over it.”
In Florida, the teachers union said in the lawsuit that the education commissioner’s order that districts must open brick-and-mortar schools, subject to the advice of state and local health departments, would “create an unsafe and unsecure environment for students, employees, and the community at large.”
“When students and employees return to the school site, they will be indoors with each other for 7 hours a day in derogation of CDC guidelines and executive orders issued across the state,” the lawsuit said. “They will be sharing common areas including buses, hallways, classrooms, clinics, locker rooms, and bathrooms. They will be touching door handles and sharing equipment along with potentially hundreds of other people. These millions of individuals will return to their families and to the community to continue to accelerate the spread of Covid-19.”
The suit alleged that some teachers had rushed their retirements over the state’s plan and others were “preparing wills and living wills ahead of possible in person learning that can expose their health and lives to serious threats.”
Corcoran, the Florida education commissioner, shot back that the union did not seem to have read or understand his emergency order, and that even before it, state law required schools to operate for 180 days a year, which amounts to five days a week.
“This E.O. did not order any new directives regarding the requirements of schools to be open, it simply created new innovative options for families to have the CHOICE to decide what works best for the health and safety of their student and family,” he said in a statement.
Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said it would probably be impossible for a place like Florida – where one model suggests 1 in 24 people is infected – to return to in-person schooling safely. Even if transmission from children to adults is low, he said, it is not nothing, and adults in the school could transmit to one another.
But Jha said in other states, where fewer people are infected, schools could open with appropriate precautions. And there is good reason to do so, he said, as a lost school year brings with it serious consequences, particularly for those with lesser means.
“It’s not just the fall,” Jha said. “Things aren’t going to be better in January. Things aren’t going to be better in February. They might not be better until April or May.”
EBay wants to keep stake in classifieds sale, hurting Prosus bid
Jul 20. 2020The eBay Inc. application is seen on an Apple iPhone. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Daniel Acker
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · No Author · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY
EBay Inc. would prefer to keep a stake in the classified advertising business it’s selling, according to people familiar with the matter, lessening the chances Prosus NV will win the hotly-contested auction.
The decision at a board meeting on Friday gives a surprise boost to a bid from Norwegian online marketplace Adevinta ASA, which offered a mix of cash and stock and would leave EBay with a significant stake in the combined business, the people said, asking not to be identified as discussions aren’t public. A combination of the classifieds unit with the listed Scandinavian firm would also allow EBay to benefit from any future increase in the shares, they said.
A private equity consortium backed by Blackstone Group Inc., Permira and Hellman & Friedman has separately been pursuing the unit and also offered to let EBay keep a minority stake, the people said.
Until as recently as Friday, Naspers Ltd.-owned Prosus was considered to be in pole position after submitting the highest, all-cash offer for the entire unit, Bloomberg News reported. EBay’s classifieds business could fetch more than $8 billion in one of the largest auction processes this year, the people said at the time.
Representatives for EBay and Prosus couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Representatives for Adevinta and the private equity firms declined to comment.
EBay and its advisers are still debating the merits of the various offers and bidders could still make a last-ditch effort to tip the scales in their favor, the people said. The seller could make a formal decision on a exclusive partner in the coming days, the people said.
The EBay classifieds portfolio includes online marketplaces separate from the company’s eponymous auction platform. Its brands include Kijiji, commonly used in Canada and Italy, and Gumtree, a classifieds site popular in the U.K., Australia and South Africa. It also owns Bilbasen, a Danish online vehicle marketplace, and British car search website Motors.co.uk.
EBay is selling the business in response to activist investors that want it to focus on its main online marketplace.
Adevinta was spun off of Scandinavian media conglomerate Schibsted ASA last year with the goal of expanding in the global online classified market. The company’s shares surged late last week after “strong” results.
Twitter hack shows risk to social media obsessed markets
Jul 17. 2020
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Abhishek Vishnoi, Anchalee Worrachate, Theo Golden · BUSINESS
This time it was just a cryptocurrency scam. But what happens if hackers infiltrate Twitter again and take aim at financial markets?
It’s easy to imagine a scenario where, instead of tweeting about Bitcoin, a hacked Elon Musk account plunges Tesla Inc.’s stock into a tailspin. It would only take a few seconds for a rogue @realDonaldTrump to send financial shock waves around the world.
For investors who rely on platforms like Twitter to navigate markets, Wednesday’s cyber attack on the accounts of prominent U.S. business and political leaders is a reminder that no source of information is infallible. It also highlights the myriad risks posed by hackers in an era when decisions about trading, and much else, are increasingly made by hyper-fast computers instead of humans.
“It definitely exposes the vulnerability of our own credentials and processes,” Deven Choksey, a strategist at KRChoksey Investment Managers Pvt in Mumbai. “A false or mischievous communication can pose a very big and serious threat to the entire financial system.”
The hack took place just after 4 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, after U.S. markets closed and before the Asia open. Within a short span of time, the Twitter accounts of high-profile figures such as Bill Gates and Kayne West, along with companies like Uber Technologies Inc. and Apple Inc., were urging followers to send funds via Bitcoin.
Twitter said it had detected “a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools” and has started an investigation into the incident. The company’s shares fell as much as 4.7% on Thursday.
Many of the details behind the attack and what other information the criminals could have accessed are still unknown. For now, the hack doesn’t seem to have affected markets, but the potential for chaos and confusion from similar events remains.
“As a trader of equities, commodities, or fixed income, one would be remiss in not having some automatic Twitter feed,” said Tom di Galoma, director of government trading and strategy at Seaport Global Holdings in New York. “However given the recent news, I would have to say traders will have second thoughts on the validity of the news.”
In 2013, hackers gained access to the Twitter accounts of the Associated Press and falsely reported that there were explosions at the White House and that President Barack Obama was injured. In about two minutes, about $136 billion was wiped from the S&P 500 Index.
Back then, fewer executives and politicians used Twitter and computerized trading wasn’t nearly as sophisticated. It all means that there’s the potential for a future attack to have a far greater impact, especially if it’s credible-seeming news coming from influential accounts.
No one has swayed financial markets through Twitter as much as U.S. President Donald Trump, who regularly gives updates on everything from Chinese trade to energy policy on the platform. In April, Trump sparked a surge in oil prices of more than 30% by announcing that Saudi Arabia and Russia would make major output cuts.
Musk has also relied on Twitter for market-moving announcements. He shocked investors in 2018 and sparked a brief rally in Tesla shares when he tweeted about taking it private at $420. (Many people assumed his feed was hacked — it hadn’t been.) Three weeks later, he backtracked and said the company would remain public.
Retail investors, who have access to fewer sources of real-time information and often rely on social media for trading tips, are among the investors most at risk for being conned, according to Viraj Patel, a currency and macro strategist at Arkera Inc. in London.
“Retail traders now have a huge influence on stock markets, potentially just reading a headline and acting quite quickly,” he said. “That is worrying.”
Top E.U. court ruling throws transatlantic digital commerce into disarray over privacy concerns
Jul 16. 2020
By The Washington Post · Michael Birnbaum · BUSINESS, WORLD, EUROPE
BRUSSELS – The European Union’s top court on Thursday threw a large portion of transatlantic digital commerce into disarray, ruling that data of E.U. residents is not sufficiently protected from government surveillance when it is transferred to the United States.
The ruling was likely to increase transatlantic tensions at a moment when President Donald Trump has already been threatening tariffs and retaliation against the European Union for what he says are unfair business practices. It was a victory for privacy advocates, who said that E.U. citizens are not as protected when their information is transferred to U.S. servers as when that information stays inside Europe.
The European Court of Justice ruled that a commonly used data protection agreement known as Privacy Shield did not adequately uphold E.U. privacy law.
The decision means that many companies will have to reconsider how they store and collect the data of European customers, including potentially making a choice between setting up costly Europe-based data hubs or curtailing business in Europe altogether. U.S. and E.U. negotiators, meanwhile, will probably have to start new discussions about whether there are legal arrangements that could guarantee that data could be stored on U.S. soil but in compliance with E.U. law.
U.S. security authorities have far-reaching access to personal data stored on U.S. territory that “are not circumscribed” in a way that is equivalent to E.U. rules, the court ruled. The court said that it was unacceptable for E.U. citizens not to have “actionable rights” to question U.S. surveillance practices.
European data privacy advocates celebrated the decision.
“A victory for personal data protection,” tweeted a Dutch member of European Parliament, Sophie in ‘t Veld, who was involved in the drafting of the powerful European data privacy law known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, that went into effect in 2018. She said the European Commission, the E.U. body that negotiated the Privacy Shield with U.S. authorities in 2016, should have been more vigilant about protecting E.U. citizens.
More than 5,300 companies are signed up to use the Privacy Shield framework to shift data between the European Union and the United States, including giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
The ruling doesn’t affect technology corporations alone, because even a bricks-and-mortar company that occasionally sells products to a European customer needs to store that customer’s data in compliance with E.U. law.
“The Department of Commerce is deeply disappointed,” Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. He said U.S. negotiators would try to work out a solution with E.U. policymakers “to be able to limit the negative consequences to the $7.1 trillion transatlantic economic relationship that is so vital to our respective citizens, companies, and governments.”
The E.U. justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, also said he looked forward to addressing the situation with U.S. counterparts.
E.U. privacy advocates said the most straightforward way to resolve the situation would be for the United States to change its rules around surveillance.
“It is clear that the U.S. will have to seriously change their surveillance laws, if U.S. companies want to continue to play a role on the E.U. market,” said Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and privacy rights activist who brought the court case that was decided on Thursday.
“The court clarified for a second time now that there is a clash of E.U. privacy law and U.S. surveillance law. As the E.U. will not change its fundamental rights to please the [National Security Agency], the only way to overcome this clash is for the U.S. to introduce solid privacy rights for all people – including foreigners,” Schrems said. “Surveillance reform thereby becomes crucial for the business interests of Silicon Valley.”
Businesses called on policymakers to come up with a legally viable solution, saying transatlantic commerce is imperiled in the meantime.
“This decision creates legal uncertainty for the thousands of large and small companies on both sides of the Atlantic that rely on Privacy Shield for their daily commercial data transfers,” Alexandre Roure, the public policy senior manager for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, one of the largest tech industry lobby groups, said in a statement.
“We trust that E.U. and U.S. decision-makers will swiftly develop a sustainable solution, in line with E.U. law, to ensure the continuation of data flows which underpins the transatlantic economy,” the statement added.
How Huawei landed at the center of global tech tussle
Jul 16. 2020A Huawei Technologies logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s offices in Reading, U.K., on July 13, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · No Author · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, NATIONAL-SECURITY, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS China’s biggest tech firm, Huawei Technologies, has risen to global prominence as a leader in 5G, the much ballyhooed, next-generation wireless technology.
It’s also become a major target for the U.S., which has been trying to convince its allies to ban Huawei equipment from their national networks on spying concerns. In a major reversal, the U.K. decided in July to join the boycott, signaling fresh momentum for the American effort. Underlying the wrangling is the question of which country will take the lead in the nascent, “everything-connected” era, and who gets left behind.
1. Why does the U.S. have an issue with Huawei?
U.S. government officials say Huawei is dangerous in part because it could use its growing share of the telecom equipment market to spy for the Chinese government. Already in 2012, a report by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee tagged Huawei and ZTE as potential security threats; the Federal Communications Commission designated them as such this year, a step toward driving them from the U.S. market. Concerns about Huawei drove the 2018 decision by President Donald Trump to block a hostile takeover bid from Broadcom, based at the time in Singapore, for the U.S. chipmaker Communal. The deal could have curtailed American investments in chip and wireless technologies and handed global leadership to Huawei. Such concerns have grown as carriers begin to spend billions of dollars on new 5G networks, which will collect data and enable services on an unparalleled scale.
2. How important is Huawei?
In just over three decades it’s grown from an electronics re-seller into one of the world’s biggest private companies, with leading positions in telecommunications gear, smartphones, cloud computing and cybersecurity, and substantial operations in Asia, Europe and Africa. Huawei generated 850 billion yuan ($122 billion) in sales in 2019 — more than Boeing. It’s plowed billions of dollars into 5G and broken into the top 10 recipients of U.S. patents last year. It has helped build 5G networks in more than 10 countries and expects to do the same in another 20 in 2020. U.S. sanctions spooked some Huawei customers and suppliers globally, while Chinese consumers and carriers rallied to its side.
3. Why is its equipment a security issue?
The U.S. government — like the Chinese and others — is wary of employing foreign technology in vital communications for fear that manufacturers could install hidden “backdoors” for spies to access sensitive data, or that the companies themselves would hand it over to their home governments. U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has said the U.S. might hold back intelligence-sharing with NATO allies if they use Huawei equipment, a threat met with some skepticism. The 5G networks are of particular concern because they will go beyond making smartphone downloads faster. They also will enable new technologies like self-driving cars and the Internet of Things. U.K.-based carrier Vodafone was said to have found and fixed backdoors on Huawei equipment used in its Italian business in 2011 and 2012. While it’s hard to know if those vulnerabilities were nefarious or accidental, the revelation dealt a blow to Huawei’s reputation.
4. Who’s using Huawei and who’s not?
Japan and Australia are among a handful of places that have joined the U.S. boycott. The U.K. will prohibit its telecom operators from buying Huawei equipment starting next year, and equipment currently installed must be removed by 2027. Countries such as India and Vietnam are considered unlikely to use Huawei. But the company has won 5G customers in Russia, the Middle East and Asia, including the Philippines and Thailand. Its equipment tends to be less expensive than alternatives from Nokia and Ericsson and is often higher quality. In Malaysia, the prime minister has said his country will use “as much as possible.”
5. What’s going on elsewhere?
Norway decided against a ban, leaving the choice to individual companies; so far two have gone with Ericsson. Huawei lost two big contracts in Singapore this year but still has a foothold in the market. In the European Union, there are signs of a coordinated balancing act. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is grappling with a potential revolt by lawmakers who want to effectively ban Huawei equipment. China’s ambassador to Germany threatened Berlin with retaliation if such a ban were adopted, citing the millions of vehicles German carmakers sell in China. Brazil has said it isn’t excluding anyone from bidding.
6. What else has the U.S. done?
The U.S. has moved to curb Huawei’s ability to sell equipment in the U.S. and, more significantly, to buy parts from U.S. suppliers, by adding Huawei to a Commerce Department blacklist in 2019. Accusing the company of seeking to “undermine” those export controls, the department on May 15 imposed further restrictions on chipmakers using American gear in designing or producing semiconductors, meaning suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing will have to cut off Huawei unless they get a waiver from Washington — or potentially face penalties. The FCC prohibited the use of federal subsidies to buy equipment made by Huawei and ZTE and said it would consider requiring carriers now using the products to remove them.
7. What’s going on in Canada?
In December 2018, at the request of the U.S., Canadian authorities arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who’s also the daughter of the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei. The U.S. is seeking her extradition as part of a criminal case alleging that she conspired to defraud banks into unwittingly clearing transactions linked to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. Both Meng, who is also deputy chairwoman, and the company have denied wrongdoing. Canada is still deciding whether to allow Huawei to play a bigger role in developing 5G.
8. Who else has accused Huawei?
In 2003, Cisco Systems sued Huawei for allegedly infringing on its patents and illegally copying source code used in routers and switches. Huawei removed the contested code, manuals and command-line interfaces and the case was dropped. Motorola sued in 2010 for allegedly conspiring with former employees to steal trade secrets. That lawsuit was later settled. In 2017 a jury found Huawei liable for stealing robotic technology from T-Mobile, and on Jan. 28, 2019, the Justice Department indicted Huawei for theft of trade secrets related to that case. The same month Poland, a staunch U.S. ally, arrested a Huawei employee on suspicion of spying for the Chinese government. Huawei fired the employee and denied any involvement in his alleged actions.
9. What does Huawei say?
That U.S. restrictions are not about cybersecurity but are really designed to safeguard American dominance of global tech. It has repeatedly denied that it helps Beijing spy on other governments or companies. But bracing for continued pressure, it outlined plans to shake up its management ranks as revenue growth slowed. The company, which says it’s owned by Ren as well as its employees through a union, has in recent years begun releasing financial results, spent more on marketing and engaged with foreign media in an effort to boost transparency. Ren has become more outspoken as he fights to save his company. While he said he was proud of his military career and Communist Party membership, he rejected suggestions he was doing Beijing’s bidding or that Huawei handed over customer information. In March 2019, Huawei went on the offensive, filing a lawsuit in federal court against a statute that blocks U.S. government agencies from using its equipment.
10. Are other Chinese companies feeling the heat?
Yes. In October, the Trump administration placed eight other Chinese tech giants on its blacklist, accusing them of being implicated in human rights violations against minority Muslims in the country’s Xinjiang region. They included Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and Zhejiang Dahua Technology, which by some accounts control as much as a third of the global market for video surveillance; SenseTime Group, the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startup; and fellow AI giant Megvii Technology. ZTE almost collapsed after the U.S. Commerce Department banned it for three months in 2018 from buying American technology. The U.S. Justice Department has charged state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, its Taiwanese partner and three individuals with conspiring to steal trade secrets from Micron Technology.
Georgetown University said it will discount tuition for undergraduates who do not live on its District of Columbia campus during the fall 2020-21 semester. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Marvin Joseph
Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, speaks during the GeekWire Summit in 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Ryder
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The eBay Inc. application is seen on an Apple iPhone. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Daniel Acker
A Huawei Technologies logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s offices in Reading, U.K., on July 13, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jason Alden.
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