TRENDING WORLD NEWS

FACEBOOK IS DEVELOPING ITSELF TO DEAL WITH EXPANDING INSPECTION OF ITS POWER-

US Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for the breakup of big tech companies like Facebook. Regulators have unlocked investigations into Facebook's ability in social networking. Even one of Facebook's own founders has laid out a case for why the company needs to be break up. Now the world's biggest social network has begun to change its behavior-in both pre-emptive and defensive ways-to deal with those threats. Late last year, Facebook halted acquisition talks with Houseparty, a video-focused social network in Silicon Valley, for fear of inciting antitrust concerns, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Acquiring another social network after Facebook was already such a dominant player in that market was too risky, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the discussions were confidential. Facebook has also started internal changes that make itself tougher to break up. The company has been knitting together the messaging systems of Facebook is more clearly in charge, said, two people briefed on the matter. Executives have also labored on rebranding Instagram and Whatsapp to more prominently associate them with Facebook. The social network's changes are now encouragement a debate about whether a more knitted-together Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram is just smart business or helps build up potential anti-competitive practices. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has repeatedly said his company accepts competition on all sides and is loath to face a fragmented version of the social giant. He does not want to lose Instagram and Whatsapp, which are enormous and have the ability to continue fueling Facebook's $56 billion business. The big question is, is this a logical business plan? said Gene Kimmelman, a former antitrust official in the Obama administration and senior adviser to Public Knowledge, a nonprofit think tank in Washington. For a social network with the enormous growth in photos and messaging, there's probably significant business justification for combining the units. But lawmaker David Cicilline, chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee, said Facebook's moves needed to be scrutinized. The amalgamation of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp into the single largest communications platform in history is a clear attempt to evade effective antitrust enforcement by making it harder for the company to be broken up he said. Facebook has pushed back on the idea that the company's moves are in anticipation of a potential breakup.

Building more ways for people to communicate through our messaging apps has always been about creating benefits for people-plain and simple said Stan Chudnovsky, a vice president at Facebook overseeing messaging,People want to be able to reach as many people as they can with the messaging apps has always been about creating benefits for people plain and simple said Stan Chudnovsky,a vice president at Facebook overseeing messaging. People may be able to reach as many people as they can with the messaging app they choose. In Washington, Facebook has its eye particularly on the Federal Trade Commission, the agency, the agency that is now investigating it for anti-competitive practices, said two of the people with knowledge of the social network. The FTC became interested in looking at Facebook and its power last year when the agency's investigators where separately examining the company for privacy violations, said two people close to the process. At the time, the FTC's investigators uncovered internal Facebook documents that prompted concerns around how the company was acquiring rivals, they said. Facebook's long string of acquisitions -it bought Instagram in 2012 and Whatsapp in 2014, among many others have been targeted for reducing competition. Around the time that the FTC activity on Facebook ramped up, the company also stepped back on at least one potential acquisition. Last December, Facebook executives were in advanced discussions to buy Houseparty, a social networking app that lets multiple people video chat on their mobile phones at once, said two people with knowledge of the talks. But weeks into the conversations, Facebook's corporate development team murdered the talks with Houseparty, the people said.

HONG KONG AIRPORT ABANDON COMPLETELY FLIGHTS AS PROTESTS ESCALATE-

Hong Kong's airport halted flights on Monday, criticism demonstrators for the disruption, while China said the anti-government protests that have swept the city over the previous two months had begun to show sprouts of terrorism. The airport authority said it was working with airlines from 6 am on Tuesday, but the developments raise the shakes sharply after a weekend of skirmishes during which both activities and police toughened their stances. China's People's Armed Police also constructed in the neighboring city of Shenzhen for exercises, the state-backed Global Times newspaper said. The Communist Party's official People's Daily Newspaper said on the Twitter-like Weibo that the force can hold incidents including riots or terrorist attacks. Hong Kongers responded by taking to the streets again. Crowds picketed a police station, singing hymns. Hundreds of people returned to the subway station where police had hit activists with batons, to protest against heavy-handed tactics. Protesters have been frequently using extremely threatening tools to attack the police in recent days, constituting serious crimes with sprouts of terrorism appearing said Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office spokesman Yang Guang in Beijing. The precise trigger for the airport's closure was not clear since protesters who stayed, a 24-year-old wearing a mask, who gave his name only as yu. Why should we leave? After weeks of massive demonstrations brought the financial hub to a halt, China has said sprouts of terrorism are emerging among protesters. So far, China has left it to the Hong Kong police to handle the protests with the People's Liberation Army troops in the city staying in the barracks. However, some Hong Kong legal experts, quoted by multiple media outlets, have said that by linking the protests with terrorism, Beijing may be getting ready to use its extensive anti-terror laws to crack down on the demonstrators. Adding to fears that Beijing may be contemplating action, the paramilitary People's Armed Police have been assembled in the city of Shenzhen, which neighbors Hong Kong. Carrier Cathay Pacific alerted its staff on Monday that they could be fired if they bear or participate in illegal protests as the airline comes under pressure from Beijing. The warning follows new regulations imposed by China's aviation regulator requiring Cathay Pacific to submit manifests of staff on flights to the mainland or through its airspace. Beijing told the airline that staff elaborates on the protests that have gripped Hong Kong for more than two months would be banned from flights to the mainland. The airline has already said it will comply with those regulations, citing the importance of its business in China and the requirement to adhere to local rules. But in a Monday message to staff, chief executive Rupert Hogg reiterated that Cathay Pacific employees would also face disciplinary consequences if they get involved in the protests.

HONG KONG PROTESTORS ENCOUNTER WITH POLICE AT AIRPORT, FLIGHTS DISTORT-

Protestors mismatched with police at Hong Kong's international airport on Tuesday evening after flights were disrupted for a second day, plunging the former British colony deeper into turmoil. The scuffles ruin out in the evening between police and protesters after an injured person was taken out of the main terminal by medics. Several police vehicles were blocked by protesters, and riot police moved in, pushing some protesters, and riot police moved in, pushing some protesters back and using pepper spray at times amid heated scenes. Protesters also barricaded some passageways in the airport with trolleys and other objects. Hong Kong's Airport Authority said operations at the airport had been seriously disrupted and that departing passenger had been unable to reach immigration counters. Hong Kong's stock market fell to a seven-month short. 10 weeks of increasing brutal clashes between police and protesters have roiled the Asian financial hub as thousands of residents chafe at a perceived decrease of freedoms and autonomy under Chinese rule. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Hong Kong to exercise restraint and investigate evidence of its forces firing tear gas at protesters in ways banned under international law. Take a minute to look at our city, our home, Chief Executive Carrie I am said, her voice cracking, at a news conference in the government headquarters complex, which is fortified behind 6-foot-high water-filled barricades. Can we bring to push it into the abyss and see it smashed to pieces? China this week condemned some protesters for using threatening tools to attack police, calling the clashes sprouts of terrorism. They present President Xi Jinping with one of his biggest challenges since he came to power in 2012.

GLOBAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE IN THE BACKGROUND OF SWEDEN'S 'CAUTIONARY TALE'-

Johnny Castillo, a Peruvian born neighborhood watchman in this district of Stockholm, still puzzles over the unexpected events that two years ago revolved the central square of this predominantly immigrant community into a symbol of multiculturalism run amok. First came a now-infamous comment by US President Donald Trump, suggesting that Sweden's history of welcoming refugees was at the root of a violent attack in Rinkeby the previous evening, even though nothing had actually happened. You look at what's occurrence last night in Sweden. Who would believe this? They took in large numbers. They're having problems like never thought possible. The President's source: Fox News, which had excerpted a short film encouraging a dystopian view of Sweden as a victim of its asylum policies, with immigrant neighborhoods crime-ridden no-go zones. But two days later, as Swedish officials were heaping bemused derision on Trump, something did happen in Rinkeby: Several dozen masked men attacked police officers making a drug arrest, throwing rocks and setting cars ablaze. And it was right around that time, according to Castilo and four other witnesses, that Russian television crews showed up, offering to pay immigrant youths to make trouble in front of the cameras. They desired to show that President Trump is right about Sweden, Castillo said, that people coming to Europe are terrorists and want to distract society. That nativist rhetoric-that immigrants are invading the homeland-has gained traction, and political acceptance, across the West, amid dislocations wrought by vast waves of migration from West Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the nationalists' message-making, Sweden has become a main cautionary tale. What even more striking is how many people in Sweden-progressive, egalitarian, welcoming Sweden-seem to be a warning to the nationalists' view: that immigration has brought crime, chaos, and fraying of the cherished social welfare net, not to mention a withering away of national culture and heritage.

Fuelled by an immigration backlash, right-wing populism has taken hold, reflected most prominently in the steady ascent of a political party with neo-Nazi roots, Sweden Democrats. In elections last year, they captured nearly 18% of the vote. To dig beneath the surface of what is happening in Sweden, though, is to uncover the workings of an international disinformation machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation, and amplification of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces. Indeed, that machine, most influentially rooted in Vladimir Putin's Russia and the American far-right, underscores a fundamental irony of this political moment: the globalization of nationalism. The central object of these manipulations from abroad-and the chief instrument of the Swedish nationalists' success is the country's increasingly desired, and virulently anti-immigrant, digital echo chamber. A New York Times examination of its content, personnel, and traffic patterns illustrated how foreign state and nonstate actors have helped give viral momentum to a clutch of Swedish far-right websites. Russian and Western entities that traffic in disinformation, including an Islamophobic think tank whose former chairman is now Trump's national security adviser, have been crucian linkers to the Swedish sites, serving to spread their message to susceptible Swedes. The distorted view of Sweden forced out by this disinformation machine has been used, in turn, by anti-immigrant parties in Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere to stir xenophobia and gin upvotes, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that tracks the online spread of far-right extremism.

TO CONSERVE MINI PENGUINS, AN AUSTRALIAN SUBURB WAS CLEANED OFF THE MAP-

It's a magical sight: Just as the light begins to vanish, thousands of tiny penguins waddle out of the surf on an island in south-eastern Australia, then head up the beach and along well-worn paths toward their burrows. The "penguin parade" has been a major attraction since the 1920s, when tourists were led by torchlight to view the nightly arrival of birds-the world's smallest penguin breed, with adults averages 13 inches tall-from a day of fishing and swimming. For much of that time, the penguins lived among the residents of housing development, mostly modest vacation homes, in tight proximity to cars and pets, as well as ravenous foxes. The penguins' numbers fell precipitously. But in 1985, the state government took an extraordinary step: It agreed to buy every piece of property on the Summerland Peninsula and return the land to the penguins. The process was completed in 2010. The birds are now thriving. There are regarding 31,000 breeding penguins on the peninsula, up from 12,000 in the 1980s. Phillip Island Nature Parks is the most favored wildlife tourist destination in the state of Victoria, drawing 740,000 visitors in 2018. And late last month, a gleaming symbol of that success opened to the public: a $58 million visitor center, a striking star-shaped building with glass walls that look onto penguin burrows. The case study at Philip Island is proof that difficult short-term decisions can yield great long-term results said, Rachel Lowry, chief conservation officer of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature-Australia. It is an incredible example of permit scientific modeling to motivate and inform a decision that has gone on to gain both people and nature in the long term. For many residents of Victoria, a visit to the penguin parade was and still an is-childhood rite of passage, the destination for school trips and family outings.