\nThe devastating fire that ravaged the famed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15 prompted unsubstantiated rumors online about who or what was to blame.\n\nBy Tuesday, for example, the website of former Fox News commentator Kevin Jackson had zeroed in on a whole group of people, running a headline that reads: “Muslim Ties to Notre Dame Fire.”\n\nWe could find no credible sources to support the incendiary suggestion that Muslims were responsible.\n\nThe French government said in a press release Tuesday the cause of the fire remained unknown, and Paris public prosecutor Remy Heitz told reporters that investigators were currently eyeing it as an accident.\n\nThe article on Jackson’s site, however, advances the unsupported idea of a “Muslim attack” through paragraphs of innuendo, not fact.\n\n“Was this a true accident? Or is someone trying to send Christians a message?” the article on theblacksphere.net reads. “Many people speculate this is a Muslim attack on Christianity. In 2016, a car parked outside Notre Dame was discovered. It contained full gas tanks and documents written in Arabic. Therefore, authorities were well-aware of the threats posed against Notre Dame.”\n\nBut there is no evidence tying that 2016 episode with this week’s fire, as some news outlets worked to make clear. The U.K.’s Telegraph, which covered the 2016 incident at the time, affixed an update to its story indicating: “This story is from 2016 and unrelated to the fire at Notre-Dame on April 15 2019.”\n\n

Jackson's article published innuendo suggesting a "Muslim attack" was responsible.

At 6:20 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET) on Monday, a fire alarm rang out, interrupting mass. Security guards started to evacuate the cathedral even though they did not see any sign of a fire, a spokesman for the Paris fire brigade told CNN.\nFrançois-Xavier Lochet, a 70-year-old worshiper, said the congregation had just begun the Universal Prayer when the siren sounded. He said visitors were ushered out but those gathered for mass remained in place. Lochet said mass continued until a police officer went up and told the priest: “This is no joke. You’ve got to get out.”\nTwenty-three minutes later, at 6:43 p.m. (12:43 p.m. ET), a second alarm blared and the fire was visible at that point, the fire department said.\nAround 400 firefighters were deployed to the scene but were delayed slightly by rush hour traffic.\nPolice in Paris confirmed a fire had taken hold at Notre Dame and asked the public to avoid the area in a tweet sent at 7:20 p.m. (1:20 p.m. ET). A minute later, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo posted a tweet saying “a terrible fire is underway” with photographs taken outside the church: one of smoke billowing from near the spire and over the towers, and a second showing the fire department responders working at the scene.\n\nShortly before 8 p.m. (2 p.m. ET), the cathedral’s famed spire burned to a blackened shell before finally toppling, as thousands of Parisians who had gathered in the streets watched in horror.

Fire visible at 6:43 p.m. and 400 firefighters deployed to the scene.

A fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris was brought under control by firefighters in the early hours of Tuesday morning, though officials warned there were still residual fires to put out.\n\nThousands of Parisians watched in horror from behind police cordons as a ferocious blaze devastated Notre Dame Cathedral on Monday night, destroying its spire and a large part of the roof.\n\nAn investigation has been opened by the prosecutor’s office, but police said it began accidentally and may be linked to building work at the cathedral. The 850-year-old gothic masterpiece had been undergoing restoration work.\n\nThe French president, Emmanuel Macron, attended the scene and later gave a speech in which he vowed that the cathedral would be rebuilt, as fire crews said the landmark’s rectangular bell towers and structure of the building had been saved.\nMacron said “the worst had been avoided” thanks to hundreds of brave firefighters who battled for hours and who would continue working through the night. One firefighter was severely injured but no other casualties were reported.\n\n“What happened tonight in Paris, in this cathedral, is a terrible event,” the president said, vowing to raise funds worldwide and bring the best talents from around the world to reconstruct the building in its entirety.\n\n“Notre Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicentre of our lives ... So I solemnly say tonight: we will rebuild it together.”

Firefighters battle for hours, one severely injured, no other casualties

Investigation opened by the prosecutor’s office regarding the fire.

Fire alarm rang out interrupting mass in Notre Dame.


\n\nEquifax says a giant cybersecurity breach compromised the personal information of as many as 143 million Americans — almost half the country.\nCyber criminals have accessed sensitive information -- including names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and the numbers of some driver\'s licenses.\n\nAdditionally, Equifax said that credit card numbers for about 209,000 U.S. customers were exposed, as was "personal identifying information" on roughly 182,000 U.S. customers involved in credit report disputes. Residents in the U.K. and Canada were also impacted.\n\nThe breach occurred between mid-May and July, Equifax said. The company said it discovered the hack on July 29.\n\nThe data breach is one of the worst ever, by its reach and by the kind of information exposed to the public.\n\n"This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do," said Equifax chairman and CEO Richard F. Smith.\n\nEquifax is one of three nationwide credit-reporting companies that track and rates the financial history of U.S. consumers. The companies are supplied with data about loans, loan payments and credit cards, as well as information on everything from child support payments, credit limits, missed rent and utilities payments, addresses and employer history, which all factor into credit scores.\n\nUnlike other data breaches, not all of the people affected by the Equifax breach may be aware that they\'re customers of the company.

Equifax has come under fire for its handling of the huge cybersecurity breach.

\n\nHackers were able to access personal data of 143 million Equifax customers.\nHow did it happen?\n\nMuch is still unknown. But it came down to a flaw in a tool designed to build web applications, the company said in a press release this week. And Equifax admitted it was aware of the security flaw a full two months before the company says hackers first gained accessed to its data.\n\nSome of the information hackers had access to includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and some driver\'s license numbers.\n\nThe tool is called Apache Struts, and it\'s used by many large businesses and government organizations. Equifax used it to support its online dispute portal -- where Equifax (EFX) customers go to log issues with their credit reports. The flaw allowed hackers to take control of a website.\n\nA cybersecurity arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, US-CERT, "identified and disclosed" the Apache Struts flaw in March, Equifax said in a statement.\n\nAnd the company\'s security department "was aware of this vulnerability at that time, and took efforts to identify and to patch any vulnerable systems."\n\nYet, according to the company, hackers exploited the flaw months later.\n\nEquifax has said it discovered the data breach on July 29. On Friday, it said it waited until it "observed additional suspicious activity" a day later to take the affected web application offline.\n\nAnd on August 2 Equifax contacted Mandiant, a professional cybersecurity firm, to help the company assess what data had been compromised.\n\n

\n\nVisa and MasterCard are issuing confidential alerts to financial institutions across the US, cautioning them that more than 200,000 credit cards were compromised in the recent Equifax data breach, according to PYMNTS. \n\nCompromised information included card account numbers, expiration dates, and cardholders’ names, all of which can be used to conduct fraud at online retailers and perform identity theft. Visa and MasterCard claim that the breach initially occurred in November 2016, but Equifax says the accounts were all stolen at the same time — in May 2017 — exploiting the information of approximately 143 million US consumers.\n\nAs consumers increasingly use digital financial services, their information becomes more susceptible to fraud. This is the third cybersecurity incident for the agency since 2015. There were two prior data hacks in which cyber criminals stole tax and salary information from the Equifax website, according to The New York Times. At a time of rising breaches — in 2016, 15.4 million victims had their identities stolen, up 16% from the prior year — it's more important than ever for companies to assure consumers that their information is secure. This could include investing in higher security, such as blockchain technology, biometric authentication, or real-time alerts.\n\nDan Van Dyke, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service has written a detailed report that explores the digital payments ecosystem today, its growth drivers, and where the industry is headed.

\n\nThe Equifax data breach that leaked information on the now-145 million people was caused by a vulnerability in Apache's Struts system. Trouble is, the software provider supplied a patch back in March that should have eliminated that vulnerability. But Equifax's former CEO (who suddenly retired last week) told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that a single IT technician was at fault for the whole thing after they failed to install the patch.\n\nWhile speaking to the committee (video below), former CEO Richard Smith outlined the company's normal procedure for new patches: Have a technician install it and then scan the system for any remaining vulnerabilities. Apparently, both the human and computer steps failed.\n\nAs Smith outlines in his written testimony (PDF), the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) sent Equifax (alongside many other companies) a notice on March 8th, 2017 about the vulnerability in certain versions of Apache Struts. Equifax sent out an internal mass-email, which should have required its internal IT team to fix the vulnerability within 48 hours, but that didn't happen. An automatic scan for vulnerabilities on March 15th also failed to indicate that Equifax was using a Struts version that had the vulnerability.\n\nBased on Equifax's postmortem investigations, the hacker that exploited this exact weakness likely first used it to pry into Equifax on May 13th, and then continued until July 30th, and Equifax's security tools were none the wiser.

Equifax failed to fix vulnerability within 48 hours.


Shares in banks all over the world have plummeted in recent days as fears that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) could precipitate a wider crisis in the sector.\n\nThe speed at which market jitters have spread across the world have forced bank executives and regulators to move with unprecedented swiftness: US authorities guaranteed all deposits in SVB – and smaller bank Signature – 48 hours after it collapsed. Just hours after Credit Suisse’s share price plunged on Wednesday, the Swiss central bank stepped in with a $54bn loan.\n\nWhile there’s nothing new about a financial emergency, these crises – and their resulting responses – are unique in having been accelerated by a frenzy of social media chatter that has fuelled the panic.\n\n‘It was a bank sprint, not a bank run’\nA bank run occurs when customers lose faith in an institution’s ability to look after their money, and large numbers withdraw their deposits all at once. As more people withdraw their funds, the likelihood of the bank being able to cover the withdrawals falls, leading more customers to pile in and demand the return of their money.\n\n“If you see a bomb disposal expert running down the street, don’t ask them what’s happened, just try to keep up,” writes Daniel Davies, the managing director of Frontline Analysts, in the Financial Times.\n\nRumours around a bank’s solvency can build up for months or years before it leads to a run. Or it can happen in a matter of hours.

UBS took over Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse in a rushed takeover.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continues to reverberate, hitting bank stocks, revealing hidden stresses, knocking on to Credit Suisse, and setting off a political blame-game.\n\n\nWhy the $212bn tech-lender abruptly collapsed, triggering the most significant financial crisis since 2008, has no single answer. Was it, as some argue, the result of Trump-era regulation rollbacks, risk mismanagement at the bank, sharp interest rate rises after a decade of ultra-low borrowing costs, or perhaps a combination of all three?\n\nFederal investigations have begun and lawsuits have been filed and no doubt new issues at the bank will emerge. But for now, here are the main reasons experts believed SVB failed.\n\nThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders argues that the culprit was an “absurd” 2018 law, supported by Congress and signed by Donald Trump, that undid some of the credit requirements imposed under the Dodd-Frank banking legislation brought in after the 2008 banking crisis.\n\nDodd-Frank required that banks with at least $50bn in assets – banks considered “systemically important” – undergo an annual Federal Reserve “stress test” and maintain certain levels of capital as well as plans for a living will if they failed.\n\nSVB’s chief executive, Greg Becker, argued before Congress in 2015 that the $50bn threshold (SVB held $40bn at the time) was unnecessary and his bank, like other “mid-sized” or regional banks, “does not present systemic risks”.\n\nTrump said the new bill went a “long way toward fixing” Dodd-Frank, which he called a “job-killer”.

In 2018 a law was passed for banks to not be required to have a $50bn safety capital.

On Wednesday, Silicon Valley Bank was a well-capitalized institution seeking to raise some funds.\n\nWithin 48 hours, a panic induced by the very venture capital community that SVB had served and nurtured ended the bank’s 40-year-run.\n\nRegulators shuttered SVB Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest ever. The company’s downward spiral began late Wednesday, when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. What followed was the rapid collapse of a highly-respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.\n\nEven now, as the dust begins to settle on the second bank wind-down announced this week, members of the VC community are lamenting the role that other investors played in SVB’s demise.\n\n“This was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs,” Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor at Restive Ventures, told CNBC. “This is going to go down as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting its nose off to spite its face.”\n\nThe episode is the latest fallout from the Federal Reserve’s actions to stem inflation with its most aggressive rate hiking campaign in four decades. The ramifications could be far-reaching, with concerns that startups may be unable to pay employees in coming days, venture investors may struggle to raise funds, and an already-battered sector could face a deeper malaise.

Silicon Valley Bank attempted to raise $2.25 billion from investors.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) abruptly collapsed

President Biden says customers of U.S. banks should have confidence that their money will be there when they need it, as he seeks to limit the damage done by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and other problems. He also promised accountability for leaders and investors of banks that fail.\n\nBiden\'s words didn\'t prevent anxiety over the banking emergency from hammering stock prices of financial institutions on Monday morning. The pain was particularly acute for regional and middle-sized banks.\n\nThe banking emergency has prompted federal regulators to take extraordinary actions to close two banks and guarantee all their deposits.\n\nBecause of those actions, Biden said, "every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them."\n\nCompanies with accounts at the collapsed banks "can breathe easier, knowing they\'ll be able to pay their workers and pay their bills," Biden said. "Their hardworking employees can breathe easier as well."\n\nBiden spoke from the White House at 9 a.m. ET Monday, just 30 minutes before the New York stock market opened. But one hour into trading, a number of banking stocks were down.\n\nMany eyes are on First Republic Bank, the San Francisco institution whose clients include tech companies and wealthy investors. The bank\'s stock plummeted below the $20 mark early Monday — one week after it closed at $122.\n\nBank of America and Wells Fargo also saw their stock prices slip, both of them falling by 4% or more in the first hour of trading.


\n\nUrgent plans to defuse tensions and address fury over disproportionate police action against black and minority ethnic people are being drawn up by the mayor of London, as Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests are expected in dozens of towns and cities by the weekend.\n\nThe initiative from Sadiq Khan to apply pressure on the Metropolitan police, the UK’s largest force, over the use of stop and search, Tasers and other practices comes amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus in crowds, and fears of violence as it emerged that far-right groups were planning counter-demonstrations.\n\nSteps to address anger over systemic racism, brought into sharp focus after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, contrast with UK ministers’ rhetoric and pressure from Tory backbenchers for police and prosecutors to crack down on disorder.\n\nBoris Johnson acknowledged the “incontrovertible, undeniable feeling of injustice” behind the BLM protests, in an article for the black newspaper the Voice, in which he also strongly condemned those who have flouted social distancing to attend them.\n\nHe wrote that he would not support such action “for the obvious reason that we risk a new infection at a critical time and just as we have made huge progress”, adding that: “Those who attack public property or the police – who injure the police officers who are trying to keep us all safe – those people will face the full force of the law.”\n\n

In UK, far-right groups are planning counter-demonstrations.

\n\nViolence has erupted in cities across the US on the sixth night of protests sparked by the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd.\n\nDozens of cities imposed curfews, but many people ignored them, leading to stand-offs and clashes.\n\nRiot police faced off with protesters in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and LA, firing tear gas and pepper bullets to try to disperse crowds.\n\nPolice vehicles were set on fire and shops were looted in several cities.\n\nThe country is experiencing the most widespread racial turbulence and civil unrest since the backlash to the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.\n\nThe outpouring of anger began last Tuesday after a video showed Mr Floyd being arrested in Minneapolis and a white police officer continuing to kneel on his neck even after he pleaded he could not breathe and fell unconscious.\n\nMore than 75 cities have seen protests, with streets only days ago deserted because of coronavirus full of demonstrators marching shoulder to shoulder. Some US officials have warned of protest-connected virus outbreaks.\n\nThe Floyd case has reignited deep-seated anger over police killings of black Americans and racism. It follows the high-profile cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York and others that have driven the Black Lives Matter movement.\n\nFor many, the outrage also reflects years of frustration over socio-economic inequality and discrimination, not least in Minneapolis itself, where George Floyd died.\n\n

Riot police face off with protesters, firing tear gas and pepper bullets.

\n\nIn the nearly three weeks since videos surfaced of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, thousands have participated in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Los Angeles, Athens, Tel Aviv, Sydney, and Mexico City, protestors have left their homes and taken to the streets amid the coronavirus pandemic to honor Floyd, to stand against racism, and to demand justice for others killed by the police. Here are powerful photos from those protests, from multi-lingual signs to Compton Cowboys on horseback.\n\nTo support the Black Lives Matter movement, you can also donate your travel rewards points to groups fighting for racial justice and spend your money at Black-owned bookstores and Black-owned restaurants throughout North America.\n\nDemonstrators honor George Floyd at the site of his murder on June 3. After 13 days of around-the-clock demonstrations, the city of Minneapolis met protestors' demands and announced plans to disband their police department, focusing instead on community-led initiatives. \n\nDutch protestors gathered on and around the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam to march in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests around the world. The Democrats 66, a political party in the Netherlands, is currently calling for a ban on police chokeholds within their own police forces.\n\nSparked by Floyd's murder, protestors gathered in Paris last week with signs that read “Justice pour Adama.” Adama Traoré was a Malian-French man who died in police custody in 2016, in the Paris suburb of Beaumont-sur-Oise.

Videos of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was released.

\n\nThousands of protesters gathered in Washington, D.C., on Saturday for its largest demonstration yet over George Floyd’s death in police custody, a capstone on a defining week for a city — and nation — that has grappled with widespread outrage over racial injustice, police brutality and the politics accompanying them.\n\nDemonstrators from about a dozen separate protests marched along normally bustling thoroughfares toward the White House through a large swath of downtown cordoned off by police, in what was D.C.'s largest assembled crowd since the Women’s March against President Donald Trump after his inauguration in 2017.\n\nOfficials expected the city to swell with some 100,000 to 200,000 protesters, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said at a news conference Friday. Protests began early Saturday afternoon near the U.S. Capitol and Lincoln Memorial before coming together near the White House.\n\nLarge protests also took place across the U.S. and in major cities overseas, including London, Paris, Berlin and Sydney, Australia, according to the Associated Press.\n\nMeanwhile, Floyd was remembered in his small hometown of Raeford, N.C., where hundreds of mourners lined up to pay their respects to the African American man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer 12 days ago.\n\nWhile the initially fiery protests have calmed in recent days after being overshadowed by episodes of violence and looting in cities across the country, including Washington, the anger among protesters over Floyd’s death hasn’t subsided.\n\nMany D.C. marchers, like Angel Ughiovhe, say they’ve come back to protest every day because “enough is enough.”\n\n

Thousands of protesters gathered in Washington, D.C. for the largest demonstration yet over George Floyd’s death in police custody.


The Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners, including the Guardian and the BBC.

What do they reveal?
The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.

A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president’s best friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin – is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.

An offshore investment fund run by the father of British prime minister David Cameron avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents to sign its paperwork.

David Cameron admits to owning shares in a Panama-based offshore trust set up by his late father.

\n\nReports published this week on the secretive industry that banks and lawyers use to hide the financial holdings of some of the world’s top leaders and billionaires brought a powerful global response, including the resignation of one prime minister, while the White House and U.S. agencies reacted more cautiously.\n\nPresident Barack Obama addressed the massive leak of documents, which led to the reporting, on Tuesday during a press conference about business tax reform.\n\n“There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally, is a huge problem,” the president said. The president also noted in his remarks that the problem is not unique to other nations. “There are folks here in America who are taking advantage of the same stuff. A lot of it is legal, but that’s exactly the problem,” the president added. “It’s not that they’re breaking the laws, it’s that the laws are so poorly designed that they allow people, if they’ve got enough lawyers and enough accountants, to wiggle out of responsibilities that ordinary citizens are having to abide by.”\n\nThe Justice Department, which is investigating alleged corruption in the world’s top soccer body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), said it may focus more on the financial dealings raised in the reporting based on the documents.\n\n

The Justice Department is investigating alleged corruption in the world’s top soccer body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

\n\nIcelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday, after documents leaked from a Panama-based law firm revealed that his wife possesses a secret offshore account worth millions of dollars.\n\nThe money is housed in a shell corporation called Wintris, which had bought bonds in Icelandic banks. So when Iceland\'s financial sector collapsed in 2008, Wintris became a creditor to those banks. In 2013, Gunnlaugsson became the prime minister, having run partly on a promise to get tougher with Iceland\'s remaining foreign creditors.\n\nSo what Icelandic voters didn\'t know when they elected him in 2013, but have learned with this week\'s "Panama Papers" revelations, is that Gunnlaugsson\'s own wife was secretly one of the creditors he\'d promised to crack down on — an enormous and undisclosed conflict of interest.\n\nWhen the truth came out this week, it led to mass protests on Monday calling for Gunnlaugsson\'s resignation. He stepped down the next day.\n\nWhat happened in Iceland shows the political power of the Panama Papers, but it also shows the degree to which the political turmoil from the 2008 financial crisis is, in some ways, still ongoing in that country.\n\nWhat\'s more, if Gunnlaugsson\'s resignation leads Iceland to schedule new elections soon, that vote could end up empowering a radical political party called the Pirate Party, a left-libertarian amalgam that\'s obsessed with transparency and direct democracy.\n\n

Mass protests on Monday called for Gunnlaugsson's resignation.

\n\nThe Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners, including the Guardian and the BBC.\n\nWhat do they reveal?\nThe documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.\n\nA $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president’s best friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin – is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married.\n\nAmong national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.\n\nAn offshore investment fund run by the father of British prime minister David Cameron avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents to sign its paperwork.

An offshore investment fund run by the father of British prime minister David Cameron avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain.


Elon Musk says that Twitter is close to becoming cash-flow positive after making sharp layoffs and working to lure advertisers back to the platform.\n\n“I’d say we’re roughly breakeven at this point,” Musk said Wednesday, during a live interview with the BBC recorded on Twitter Spaces.\n\nMusk has pushed to make more money at Twitter to recoup his multibillion-dollar investment in the company. As part of this income-generation drive, Twitter has sought to make more money from subscriptions, charging users $8 a month to get access to Twitter verification marks and for the ability to edit tweets, among other features.\n\nMusk said that Twitter will start removing blue checks from accounts without a subscription to the company’s paid Twitter Blue service next week.\n\nDuring the interview, Musk said that “almost all” advertisers have resumed buying ads on the platform, after several hit pause on Twitter advertising following Musk’s acquisition of the app.\n\nMusk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late October after a drawn-out legal battle with the company. He has since sought to radically overhaul the platform, including its content moderation policies.\nThis has spooked many product placers, with half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers now estimated to have left the platform since Musk took over.\n\n“Depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be ... cashflow-positive this quarter, if things keep going well,” Musk said.\n\nBrands were concerned about the app failing to tackle hateful posts in the wake of the $44 billion deal, which was completed in October 2022.

Twitter revenues plumment in recent months.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s most important shitposter, has added the company to his business empire after months of legal skirmishes, according to CNBC, The Washington Post, and Insider. The acquisition was confirmed in an SEC filing from the company on Friday morning, noting it’s delisting $TWTR from the New York Stock Exchange. He celebrated by firing executives. Musk fired Parag Agrawal, who succeeded Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO, and chief financial officer Ned Segal, both of who were in the building at the time and escorted out by security, according to Reuters. Vijaya Gadde, the company’s policy chief whom Musk had publicly criticized, was also ousted. Sean Edgett, the general counsel, is gone, too, The New York Times reports. (Bloomberg says security escorted him out, as well.) Chief customer officer Sarah Personette was not among the executives fired but announced she resigned on October 28th with a tweet thread posted the following Tuesday. In it, she mentions, “I do believe the new administration understands the importance of holding up the standards of GARM.”\nThe execs were in line for handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: Agrawal $38.7 million, Segal $25.4 million, Gadde $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk’s takeover, $11.2 million. However, a subsequent report from The Information indicated Musk has said they’re fired “for cause” in an attempt to block them from receiving those payouts. It’s unclear what this may mean for Personette.

Twitter acquisition was confirmed in an SEC filing.

Less than a week after Elon Musk finally gave in and paid full price for Twitter, his attempts to remake the platform are already descending into an entirely predictable clown show. Watching him begin to reshape content moderation and launch a poorly considered monetization scheme would be entertaining if their potential effects weren’t so dire, with consequences for Twitter’s employees and users, and potentially the broader society. \n\nOriginally reported Sunday by The Verge, a plan to charge verified users to get or keep their blue checks was expected to cost $20 a month. But after widespread backlash on the platform and a poll tweeted by Musk ally Jason Calacanis, in which nearly 82% of users responded that they wouldn’t pay anything for verification, those plans appear to have changed.\n\nBy Tuesday afternoon, Musk had posted a thread on the platform outlining his plan to charge $8 a month instead — part of an overhaul of Twitter’s existing Blue service.\n\nAlong with the coveted blue check, Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to post longer video and audio clips. They will also have half as many ads in their feeds and be able to get around paywalls from news publishers “willing to work” with the platform, and their tweets will get priority in replies, mentions and search results.\n\nIt should come as no surprise that such a plan could have a number of drawbacks.

Musk proposed a plan to charge verified users $20 a month for verification.

Twitter has begun laying off sizable chunks of the company, the first major move by Elon Musk since his acquisition of the company was completed last week.\n\nTwitter told employees in an email sent Thursday evening and seen by NBC News that the company would notify staffers by email about their employment.\n\n“We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,” the email said.\n\nThe firings immediately prompted a class action lawsuit against Twitter for allegedly failing to give a 60-day warning of mass layoffs.\n\nIt had been widely reported that Musk planned to slash the company\'s 7,500-person payroll after he finalized his $44 billion acquisition late last week. He immediately dismissed CEO Parag Agrawal, as well as Twitter’s chief financial officer and its head of legal, public policy and trust and safety upon taking over the company.\n\nA Twitter employee said Thursday\'s email was the first communication staff members had received from Twitter since the acquisition Oct. 27.\n\n"It\'s total chaos, house melting down, everyone looking towards this email," the employee said.\n\nAccording to the email from Twitter, staff members will get notices either through their company email accounts — if they still have jobs — or their personal email accounts if their "employment is impacted."\n\nWorries about layoffs began to emerge before the buyout transaction was complete, but Twitter\'s general counsel urged employees not to dwell on rumors before Musk took ownership.

Lawsuits filed against Twitter for allegedly failing to give 60-day warning of mass layoffs


\n\nIn a historic and far-reaching decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade on Friday, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, upheld for nearly a half century, no longer exists.\n\nWriting for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority."\n\nThe decision, most of which was leaked in early May, means that abortion rights will be rolled back in nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow. For all practical purposes, abortion will not be available in large swaths of the country. The decision may well mean too that the court itself, as well as the abortion question, will become a focal point in the upcoming fall elections and in the fall and thereafter.\n\nJoining the Alito opinion were Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by the first President Bush, and the three Trump appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, concurred in the judgment only, and would have limited the decision to upholding the Mississippi law at issue in the case, which banned abortions after 15 weeks. Calling the decision "a serious jolt to the legal system," he said that both the majority and dissent displayed "a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share."

Abortion rights organizations have filed lawsuits challenging state courts in at least four states.

\n\nThe supreme court has ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States, upending the landmark Roe v Wade case from nearly 50 years ago in a rare reversal of long-settled law that will fracture reproductive rights in America.\n\nJoe Biden called the ruling a “tragic error” and the Republicans celebrating it “wrong, extreme and out of touch”.\n\nThe court, the president said, had pointed America down “an extreme and dangerous path”. Sounding an alarm over a concurring opinion by the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, Biden said key rights including same-sex marriage and access to contraception could now be targeted by the rightwing court.\n\nHe said: “Justice Thomas said as much today. He explicitly called to reconsider the right of marriage equality. The right of couples to make their choices on contraception.\n\n“This is an extreme and dangerous path the court has now taken us on.”\n\nThe ruling, handed down a day after the court overturned a New York gun control law, came in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the last abortion clinic in Mississippi opposed state efforts to ban abortion after 15 weeks and overturn Roe.\n\n“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” said the majority opinion, written by Samuel Alito and joined by four other conservatives, referring also to a 1992 ruling which buttressed Roe. “The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”\n\n

\n\nNovember 8, 2016: Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. During his presidency, he appointed three conservative judges to the court - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — solidifying a conservative majority.\n\nJune 27, 2016: In its strongest defense of abortion rights in 25 years, the court strikes down Texas rules forcing clinics to meet hospital-like standards and doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.\n\nDecember 1, 2021: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was brought to the Supreme Court, a case dealing with a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. Upholding Mississippi's ban would mean overturning Roe.\n\nMay 2, 2022: A Politico report details a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating the Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. The news set off protests and rallies across the country.\n\nJune 24, 2022: The court ruled 6-3 to uphold Mississippi's law, with the decision to overturn Roe a 5-4 vote. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the conservative justices in the decision to uphold Mississippi's law, but urged a concurring opinion concerning Roe. The decision is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states in the nation.\n\n

Trump appointed three conservative judges to the court - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — solidifying a conservative majority.

May 2, 2022: Politico report details leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating the Court would overturn Roe v. Wade.

June 24, 2022: Supreme Court rules 6-3 to uphold Mississippi's law, with the decision to overturn Roe a 5-4 vote.


After months of waffling, lawsuits, verbal mudslinging, and the near miss of a full-blown trial, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.\n\nOn Thursday night, Mr. Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy the social media service, said three people with knowledge of the situation. He also began cleaning the house, with at least four top Twitter executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — getting fired on Thursday. Mr. Musk had arrived at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and met with engineers and ad executives.\n\nThe closing of the deal, which followed months of drama and legal challenges as Mr. Musk changed his mind about buying the company, sets Twitter on an uncertain course. Mr. Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has said that he wants to make the social media platform a more freewheeling place for all types of commentary and that he would “reverse the permanent ban” of former President Donald J. Trump from the service. Mr. Musk’s open approach to speech on Twitter could exacerbate long-simmering issues of toxic content and misinformation, affecting political debates around the world. Early tests will come within days, when Brazil elects its president and American voters go to the polls on Nov. 8 for the midterm elections. Twitter said it would prohibit misleading claims about voting and the outcome of elections, but that was before Mr. Musk owned it.

Twitter reinstates banned user accounts.

Twitter has begun laying off sizable chunks of the company, the first major move by Elon Musk since his acquisition of the company was completed last week.\n\nTwitter told employees in an email sent Thursday evening and seen by NBC News that the company would notify staffers by email about their employment.\n\n“We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,” the email said.\n\nThe firings immediately prompted a class action lawsuit against Twitter for allegedly failing to give a 60-day warning of mass layoffs.\n\nIt had been widely reported that Musk planned to slash the company\'s 7,500-person payroll after he finalized his $44 billion acquisition late last week. He immediately dismissed CEO Parag Agrawal, as well as Twitter’s chief financial officer and its head of legal, public policy and trust and safety upon taking over the company.\n\nA Twitter employee said Thursday\'s email was the first communication staff members had received from Twitter since the acquisition Oct. 27.\n\n"It\'s total chaos, house melting down, everyone looking towards this email," the employee said.\n\nAccording to the email from Twitter, staff members will get notices either through their company email accounts — if they still have jobs — or their personal email accounts if their "employment is impacted."\n\nWorries about layoffs began to emerge before the buyout transaction was complete, but Twitter\'s general counsel urged employees not to dwell on rumors before Musk took ownership.

Twitter sends email to employees notifying them of layoffs.

Elon Musk closes $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.

Elon Musk has completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the company confirmed in a securities filing Friday, putting the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.\n\nThe company said the deal “became effective” on Thursday, as part of a filing notifying its intention to de-list from the New York Stock Exchange, a move that happened later on Friday. The confirmation comes after a source familiar with the deal told CNN the deal had closed Thursday night.\n\nMusk also appeared to acknowledge the takeover in a tweet Thursday night saying, “the bird is freed.”. The deal’s closing removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for much of the year. It also averts a court battle that was set to take place if the acquisition did not close by 5 p.m. ET Friday. But Musk’s takeover now raises a host of new questions for the future of the social media platform, and the many corners of society impacted by it. Musk on Thursday fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Neg Segal and policy head Vijaya Gadde, according to two sources familiar with the situation. He also fired Sean Edgett, Twitter’s general counsel, a source told CNN.\nDespite multiple news outlets confirming the changes Thursday night, Twitter staff had still not formally been informed of the changes as of Friday morning, two Twitter employees told CNN.

Twitter de-lists from the New York Stock Exchange.


Musk proposed a plan to charge verified users $20 a month for verification.

Elon Musk has completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the company confirmed in a securities filing Friday, putting the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.\n\nThe company said the deal “became effective” on Thursday, as part of a filing notifying its intention to de-list from the New York Stock Exchange, a move that happened later on Friday. The confirmation comes after a source familiar with the deal told CNN the deal had closed Thursday night.\n\nMusk also appeared to acknowledge the takeover in a tweet Thursday night saying, “the bird is freed.”. The deal’s closing removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for much of the year. It also averts a court battle that was set to take place if the acquisition did not close by 5 p.m. ET Friday. But Musk’s takeover now raises a host of new questions for the future of the social media platform, and the many corners of society impacted by it. Musk on Thursday fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Neg Segal and policy head Vijaya Gadde, according to two sources familiar with the situation. He also fired Sean Edgett, Twitter’s general counsel, a source told CNN.\nDespite multiple news outlets confirming the changes Thursday night, Twitter staff had still not formally been informed of the changes as of Friday morning, two Twitter employees told CNN.

Twitter de-lists from the New York Stock Exchange.

Musk originally offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April ($54.20 per share), a deal that Twitter ultimately accepted. Musk in May put the takeover "temporarily on hold" because of a dispute over the number of fake or spam accounts that Twitter claimed to have. Twitter said that fake accounts represented less than five percent of users, but Musk was not convinced. In July, Musk decided he no longer wanted to buy Twitter and attempted to call off the purchase, claiming that Twitter did not comply with its contractual obligations and that he was not provided with the relevant business information that he requested. Twitter in turn filed a lawsuit to force Musk to go on with the sale, accusing him of trashing the company, disrupting its operations, and destroying stockholder value. Musk\'s decision to offer to continue on with the purchase comes ahead of a trial that was set to begin on October 17. With Musk once again on board, it is probable that the acquisition will go through, provided he does not change his mind again.

Musk put the takeover "temporarily on hold".

Elon Musk appears to be closer to completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter than at any point since he first said the deal was “on hold” nearly five months ago. But it’s not a done deal yet. Musk earlier this week sent a letter to Twitter (TWTR) proposing to move forward with the acquisition at the original price of $54.20 per share and suggesting the litigation over his initial effort to exit the deal be dropped. Twitter (TWTR) replied saying it had received the letter and plans to close the deal on the originally agreed upon terms. But Twitter and Musk on Wednesday had yet to reach an agreement on ending the litigation, which would avert the trial that’s set to take place in less than two weeks, a person familiar with the negotiations told CNN. The source added it was unclear if the two parties would reach an agreement on Wednesday. The judge overseeing the case on Wednesday also filed a letter saying that neither party has moved to stay the proceedings in the case and “I, therefore, continue to press on toward our trial set to begin on October 17.” As it considers Musk’s revived acquisition proposal, Twitter must also think about how to avoid getting stuck in a situation where the billionaire pulls more shenanigans and drags the process out even longer. That could mean continuing the legal fight, for now, or adding new provisions to the original contract.

Elon Musk sends a letter to Twitter proposing to move forward with the acquisition.

Twitter filed a lawsuit to force Musk to go on with the sale.


\n\nAbortion rights activists across the country are sending a clear message after the overturn of Roe v. Wade: They’re not backing down.\n\nFrom Minnesota to California to Florida, more than a dozen protests are planned Monday to denounce the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate the nearly 50-year-old federal constitutional right to have an abortion.\n\nThe fallout was swift: At least 10 states have effectively banned abortion since Friday’s ruling. And 26 states have laws indicating they could outlaw or set extreme limits on abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.\n\nActivists on both sides of the debate rallied in jubilation or devastation.\n\n“Old men, stop telling me what to do with my body,” read one protester’s sign in Washington, DC.\n\n“People’s bodies are more regulated than guns,” read another protester’s sign in Atlanta.\n\nOutside the Supreme Court, an elated Valentina Aaron held up a sign with an image of a fetus. “Forceps off my body,” the sign read.\n\n“It’s incredibly exciting,” Aaron said about the historic ruling. “If I was a baby in a womb, I would want someone to stand up for me.”\n\nBut nearby, abortion rights supporter Joseph Little held a sign saying, “Forced birth is enslavement.”\n\n“Making people give birth is enslavement,” Little told CNN. “When you tell people that they no longer have a voice in their own personal matters, that’s enslavement. It’s oppression. And the Bible clearly says that we need to correct oppression.”\n\n

Protests are planned across the country to denounce the ruling.

May 2, 2022: Politico report details leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating the Court would overturn Roe v. Wade.

\n\nWithin days of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memorial service in late September 2020, boxes of her files and other office possessions were moved down to a dark, windowless theater on the\u202fSupreme Court’s\u202fground floor, where\u202f–\u202fbefore the ongoing pandemic\u202f–\u202ftourists could watch a film about court operations.\nGrieving aides to the justice who’d served 27 years and become a cultural icon known as the “Notorious RBG” sorted through the chambers’ contents there.\nThe abrupt mandate from Chief Justice John Roberts’ administrative team to clear out Ginsburg’s office and\u202fmake way for the next justice broke from the common practice of allowing staff sufficient time to move and providing a new justice with temporary quarters if needed while permanent chambers were readied.\nIt upset employees throughout the building. They were aware that in the weeks before Ginsburg died, her staff had labored to ensure she had case documents at hand, whether in the hospital or at home. They were exhausted from all the memorial arrangements, which had attracted thousands of people to Washington.\u202f\nBut the confirmation of then-President Donald Trump’s chosen successor, Indiana-based US appeals court\u202fJudge Amy Coney Barrett, was as much a fait accompli at the court as in the political sphere.\n

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020.


Microsoft has finally commented on the rumblings about the $10 billion investment into the OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, after rumors have been swirling for weeks about this colossal financial deal. While Microsoft didn’t confirm the actual financial figure in the press release on Monday, they did announce the partnership between the two companies would be extended.\n\nThis recent investment is the third phase of the financial commitment from Microsoft. Previous investments were made in 2019 and 2021 into the AI startup.\n\nWe’re going to look at how artificial intelligence will change how Microsoft competes with Google, Apple and other tech giants—and how Q.ai can help you keep abreast of the changes.\n\nMicrosoft finally confirmed a new multi-year investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in a press release on January 23. When we last wrote about Microsoft’s investment in ChatGPT, it was reported by Semafor that the tech giant was looking to invest an additional $10 billion into the startup. The official release doesn’t confirm or deny the rumored dollar figure, as they only commented on continuing the partnership.\n\nMicrosoft noted how they were committed to turning Azure into an AI supercomputer for the entire world. Microsoft Azure is the exclusive cloud provider for every tool under the OpenAI banner.\n\nJust as a quick reminder, ChatGPT is the chatbot released late last year by OpenAI, a company that Elon Musk and Sam Altman originally founded. This revolutionary tool reported one million users at the beginning of December after being out for about a week.

OpenAI launches subscription plan for ChatGPT

Google announced plans Monday to publicly launch its highly anticipated chatbot, which will be integrated with its marquee search engine as Big Tech companies race to deliver artificial intelligence products to the public after Open AI’s ChatGPT captivated millions.\n\nCEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post it will unveil its chatbot—called Bard—to the public “in the coming weeks.”\n\nOne of its primary features will be providing snippets of information in response to searches that have no obvious answer, such as the question, “is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?”\n\nGoogle—through its parent company, Alphabet—has spent more money than any other business on artificial intelligence, putting more than $31 billion toward research and development in 2021, according to the Wall Street Journal.\n\n“Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture,” Pichai said.\n\nThe race is on for tech companies to roll out chatbots following the immense accomplishments of ChatGPT, which has attracted some 100 million monthly average users since it publicly launched at the end of November. Investors have been hungry to latch onto the chatbot hype, with BuzzFeed’s stock more than doubling in a single trading day last month after the company said it would start using ChatGPT to create content.

Alphabet has invested over $31 billion in AI R&D in 2021.

When ChatGPT came out in November, it took the world by storm.\n\nWithin a month of its release, some 100 million people had used the viral AI chatbot for everything from writing high school essays to planning travel itineraries to generating computer code.\n\nBuilt by the San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, the app was flawed in many ways, but it also sparked a wave of excitement (and fear) about the transformative power of generative AI to change the way we work and create.\n\nChatGPT, which runs on a technology called GPT-3.5, has been so impressive, in part, because it represents a quantum leap from the capabilities of its predecessor from just a few years ago, GPT-2.\n\nOn Tuesday, OpenAI released an even more advanced version of its technology: GPT-4. The company says this update is another milestone in the advancement of AI. The new technology has the potential to improve how people learn new languages, how blind people process images, and even how we do our taxes.\n\nOpenAI also claims that the new model supports a chatbot that’s more factual, creative, concise, and can understand images, instead of just text.\n\nSam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, called GPT-4 “our most capable and aligned model yet.” He also cautioned that “it is still flawed, still limited, and it still seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it”

ChatGPT or GPT-3.5 has been released by OpenAI.

Investors showed great interest in ChatGPT, sending BuzzFeed’s stock surging after the company announced plans for it to create content.

Microsoft\n plans to release software to help large companies create their own chatbots similar to ChatGPT, CNBC has learned.\n\nIn the two months since startup OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, it has become a hit, impressing people with its ability to spit out comments on a wide variety of topics and in many styles. UBS analysts said last week that it’s on track to reach 100 million monthly active users more quickly than video-sharing app TikTok.\n\nMicrosoft is seeking to capitalize on the attention in multiple ways. The company provides the cloud-computing back end for ChatGPT, and in January Microsoft said it had invested billions of dollars in OpenAI. Microsoft has also been working to incorporate OpenAI technologies into its own products. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it is augmenting Bing, its search engine, and Edge, its internet browser, with ChatGPT-like technology.\n\nIn addition, Microsoft plans to announce technology for companies, schools and governments to create their own bots with ChatGPT, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked not to be named while discussing private plans. Microsoft imagines helping clients launch new chatbots or refine their existing ones with the new technology, which could suggest responses for call-center agents to use during customer service conversations, the person said.\n\nThe underlying artificial intelligence model of ChatGPT cannot currently provide substantial answers about anything that happened after 2021, because it hasn’t been trained on recent information.

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and is augmenting Bing and Edge with ChatGPT-like technology.


It’s been five months since Elon Musk took over Twitter after a long-drawn out, tumultuous negotiating period. There has been a lot of controversy since he positioned himself at the helm of the social media platform, including massive layoffs, allowing too-long tweets, and altering the algorithm to make his Super Bowl tweets rank higher. He closed the deal to acquire Twitter on Oct. 28, after paying his original officer price of $54.20 a share for a grand total of approximately $44 billion. He fired some of the company’s top executives almost immediately, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and chief legal officer Vijay Gadde. Soon after, he began to lay off staff members to remove around half of the 7,500-strong workforce. Twitter value drops to half of Musk’s acquisition price. Now, it appears that Twitter is facing financial challenges. Changes since Musk’s takeover have resulted in more hate speech, issues in acquiring blue check verification, and problems with the app’s features. According to Zoe Schiffer, managing editor of Platformer, a tech news website, the billionaire sent an email to Twitter employees admitting that the company has been through radical changes which were necessary. Musk also reportedly acknowledged that the platform was previously about four months from running out of money. Per Schiffer, the value of Twitter is now half of what Musk paid for it. “Current grants are based on a $20b valuation,” she tweeted, although Musk says he is hopeful of eventually getting a valuation of $250 billion. Advertisers concerned about their brand have left the platform, leading to plummeting revenues for the company in recent months.

Twitter's value is half of Musk’s acquisition price.

Less than a week after Elon Musk finally gave in and paid full price for Twitter, his attempts to remake the platform are already descending into an entirely predictable clown show. Watching him begin to reshape content moderation and launch a poorly considered monetization scheme would be entertaining if their potential effects weren’t so dire, with consequences for Twitter’s employees and users, and potentially the broader society. \n\nOriginally reported Sunday by The Verge, a plan to charge verified users to get or keep their blue checks was expected to cost $20 a month. But after widespread backlash on the platform and a poll tweeted by Musk ally Jason Calacanis, in which nearly 82% of users responded that they wouldn’t pay anything for verification, those plans appear to have changed.\n\nBy Tuesday afternoon, Musk had posted a thread on the platform outlining his plan to charge $8 a month instead — part of an overhaul of Twitter’s existing Blue service.\n\nAlong with the coveted blue check, Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to post longer video and audio clips. They will also have half as many ads in their feeds and be able to get around paywalls from news publishers “willing to work” with the platform, and their tweets will get priority in replies, mentions and search results.\n\nIt should come as no surprise that such a plan could have a number of drawbacks.

Musk proposed a plan to charge verified users $20 a month for verification.

A poll tweeted by Jason Calacanis showed that 82% of Twitter users wouldn’t pay for verification.

Musk changed the plan to charge users $8 a month for verification.

Twitter revenues plumment in recent months.


\n\nIranian police are reported to have fired on protesters in Saqqez, home city of Mahsa Amini who died in custody after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab "improperly".\n\nThousands gathered near the grave of the Kurdish woman and clashed with security, 40 days since her death.\n\nA rights group and witnesses said officers fired live rounds and tear gas at the crowds in the city.\n\nProtests swept across Iran after Ms Amini, 22, died on 16 September.\n\nShe had been detained three days earlier by the morality police in the capital, Tehran, and fell into a coma after collapsing at a detention centre.\n\nThere were reports that officers beat her with a baton and banged her head against a vehicle, but police denied that she was mistreated and said she suffered a heart attack.\n\nOn Wednesday, security forces were deployed in Saqqez and other parts of Kurdistan province, in anticipation of fresh demonstrations on the 40th day of mourning for Ms Amini - a culturally significant occasion for Iranians.\n\nVideos showed thousands of mourners walking along a road, through a field and across a river to bypass roadblocks and reach the graveyard where Ms Amini is buried.\n\nThe crowds were heard shouting "Woman, life, freedom" and "Death to the dictator" - two of the signature chants of the protest movement - as well as "Down with traitors" and "Kurdistan will be the graveyard of fascists".\n\nIt was not clear whether members of Ms Amini\'s family were present.\n\n

Protestors have faced a brutal crackdown from the government.

\n\nProtests have intensified this week in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely. Amini died on Sept. 16 three days after her arrest in Tehran, and many Iranians are alleging that she was killed by law enforcement. Protestors have faced a brutal crackdown from the government who have deployed riot police, resulting in arrests, injuries and at least 17 deaths, according to the state media.\n\nIranian authorities claim that Amini died of heart failure, but her family and protestors across Iran accuse the government of covering up her murder. The international protests have expanded to express anger over a range of issues, not just restrictions women face over hijabs and more generally in Iran but also against the current regime. At one Iranian protest, a street full of Iranians chanted “death to the oppressor, be it the shah or the supreme leader!”\n\nMahsa Amini, 22, was arrested on Sept. 13 while visiting Tehran by the notorious morality police who enforce compulsory conservative Islamic behavior and dress. Hijabs are mandatory to wear in public for all women in Iran, regardless of religion or nationality. Amini was accused of violating the country’s law on headscarves.\n\nIran’s security forces said that upon her arrest, Amini was taken to a detention center where she received training on hijab rules, and it was there that she collapsed from a heart attack.

22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely.

Upon her arrest, she collapsed from a heart attack.


\n\nThe US, and the technology sector which were among its biggest customers, face another Lehman Brothers moment with the failure of SVB.\n\nUS regulators rushed to seize the assets of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on Friday after a run on the bank, the largest failure of a financial institution since the height of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.\n\nSilicon Valley, the country\'s 16th largest bank, failed after depositors - mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies - hurried to withdraw their money this week as anxiety over the bank’s situation spread.\n\nThe bank could no longer cope with the massive withdrawals of its customers and its last attempts to raise new money did not succeed.\n\nUS authorities therefore officially took possession of the bank and entrusted its management to the U.S. agency responsible for guaranteeing deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).\n\nLittle known to the general public, SVB had specialised in financing start-ups and had become one of the largest banks in the US by asset size: at the end of 2022, it had $209 billion (€196 billion) in assets and about $175.4 billion (€164.5 billion) in deposits.\n\n\nIts demise represents not only the largest bank failure since that of Washington Mutual in 2008, but also the second-largest failure of a retail bank in the United States.\n\nUS Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called several financial sector regulators together on Friday to discuss the situation, reminding them that she had "full confidence" in their ability to take appropriate action and that the banking sector remained "resilient".

\n\nA global rout sparked by investors’ pessimism about the US economy has pulled down Indian technology companies, too.\n\nThe Nifty IT, a key Indian stock market index for the information-technology space, is ending 2022 down 24% from the previous year, its worst fall since the 2008 global financial crisis. This decline comes after five straight years of annual gains.\n\nTech majors such as Wipro, Tech Mahindra, and Mphasis have lost more than 40% of their market value in 2022. Hundreds of employees of both startups and bellwether companies have been laid off. Venture capitalist funding has dwindled.\n\nWhile the Indian economy itself has been resilient in a shaky global environment, its tech industry’s weak stretch may continue into 2023.\n\nFears of a recession, stoked by rising interest rates in developed markets, have hit the revenues, sales, and growth prospects of many global tech firms. A major share of Indian tech firms’ earnings comes from global clients.\n\nThis sell-off only intensified after Goldman Sachs, in September, downgraded Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Bengaluru’s Infosys to “sell” from “buy,” citing a potential slowdown in revenue growth.\n\nMeanwhile, HCL Technologies, India’s third-largest IT company by revenue, has also lowered its revenue growth projection for 2023.\n\n

Nifty IT index ends 2022 down 24%, its worst fall since 2008 global financial crisis

Investors are pessimistic about the US economy.

SVB had specialised in financing start-ups.


President Biden says customers of U.S. banks should have confidence that their money will be there when they need it, as he seeks to limit the damage done by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and other problems. He also promised accountability for leaders and investors of banks that fail.\n\nBiden\'s words didn\'t prevent anxiety over the banking emergency from hammering stock prices of financial institutions on Monday morning. The pain was particularly acute for regional and middle-sized banks.\n\nThe banking emergency has prompted federal regulators to take extraordinary actions to close two banks and guarantee all their deposits.\n\nBecause of those actions, Biden said, "every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them."\n\nCompanies with accounts at the collapsed banks "can breathe easier, knowing they\'ll be able to pay their workers and pay their bills," Biden said. "Their hardworking employees can breathe easier as well."\n\nBiden spoke from the White House at 9 a.m. ET Monday, just 30 minutes before the New York stock market opened. But one hour into trading, a number of banking stocks were down.\n\nMany eyes are on First Republic Bank, the San Francisco institution whose clients include tech companies and wealthy investors. The bank\'s stock plummeted below the $20 mark early Monday — one week after it closed at $122.\n\nBank of America and Wells Fargo also saw their stock prices slip, both of them falling by 4% or more in the first hour of trading.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo see their stock prices slip by 4% or more.

Stefan Kalb was in the middle of a meeting around 1 p.m. on Thursday when a fellow company executive sent him a panicked Slack message: "Do you know what\'s happening at SVB?"\n\nKalb, the CEO and co-founder of Seattle-based food management startup Shelf Engine, had been following news of a bank run at Silicon Valley Bank. Droves of depositors were attempting to pull out as much as $42 billion from the bank on Thursday alone, as fear spread that the bank was teetering on the brink of collapse.\n\nThe bank seemed to be on firm financial footing on Wednesday. The following day, it appeared to be under water.\n\nFor Shelf Engine, a 40-person startup founded in 2015 that uses artificial intelligence to help grocery stores reduce food waste, this was a big problem.\n\nNot only did Silicon Valley Bank help the company process checks and payments, but millions of dollars of the startup\'s cash was locked up in the bank.\n\nKalb sprung into action. He and his team quickly opened an account at JPMorgan Chase and attempted to wire transfer every last penny out of Silicon Valley Bank.\n\n"Unfortunately, our wire was not honored and our money is still at Silicon Valley Bank," Kalb, 37, said in an interview on Friday. "We woke up this morning hoping the money would be in that JPMorgan bank account, and it was not."

Hysteria and fear spread that the SVB was collapsing.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continues to reverberate, hitting bank stocks, revealing hidden stresses, knocking on to Credit Suisse, and setting off a political blame-game.\n\n\nWhy the $212bn tech-lender abruptly collapsed, triggering the most significant financial crisis since 2008, has no single answer. Was it, as some argue, the result of Trump-era regulation rollbacks, risk mismanagement at the bank, sharp interest rate rises after a decade of ultra-low borrowing costs, or perhaps a combination of all three?\n\nFederal investigations have begun and lawsuits have been filed and no doubt new issues at the bank will emerge. But for now, here are the main reasons experts believed SVB failed.\n\nThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders argues that the culprit was an “absurd” 2018 law, supported by Congress and signed by Donald Trump, that undid some of the credit requirements imposed under the Dodd-Frank banking legislation brought in after the 2008 banking crisis.\n\nDodd-Frank required that banks with at least $50bn in assets – banks considered “systemically important” – undergo an annual Federal Reserve “stress test” and maintain certain levels of capital as well as plans for a living will if they failed.\n\nSVB’s chief executive, Greg Becker, argued before Congress in 2015 that the $50bn threshold (SVB held $40bn at the time) was unnecessary and his bank, like other “mid-sized” or regional banks, “does not present systemic risks”.\n\nTrump said the new bill went a “long way toward fixing” Dodd-Frank, which he called a “job-killer”.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) abruptly collapsed


\n\nViolence has erupted in cities across the US on the sixth night of protests sparked by the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd.\n\nDozens of cities imposed curfews, but many people ignored them, leading to stand-offs and clashes.\n\nRiot police faced off with protesters in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and LA, firing tear gas and pepper bullets to try to disperse crowds.\n\nPolice vehicles were set on fire and shops were looted in several cities.\n\nThe country is experiencing the most widespread racial turbulence and civil unrest since the backlash to the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.\n\nThe outpouring of anger began last Tuesday after a video showed Mr Floyd being arrested in Minneapolis and a white police officer continuing to kneel on his neck even after he pleaded he could not breathe and fell unconscious.\n\nMore than 75 cities have seen protests, with streets only days ago deserted because of coronavirus full of demonstrators marching shoulder to shoulder. Some US officials have warned of protest-connected virus outbreaks.\n\nThe Floyd case has reignited deep-seated anger over police killings of black Americans and racism. It follows the high-profile cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York and others that have driven the Black Lives Matter movement.\n\nFor many, the outrage also reflects years of frustration over socio-economic inequality and discrimination, not least in Minneapolis itself, where George Floyd died.\n\n

Tens of thousands of demonstrators and activists were arrested, and hundreds hit with more serious charges by federal and local prosecutors.

\n\nBlack Lives Matters protesters in Bristol have pulled down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.\n\nDemonstrators attached a rope to the Grade II-listed statue on Colston Avenue on Sunday before pulling it to the ground as crowds cheered. They then jumped on it and rolled it down the street before pushing it into Bristol Harbour.\n\nThe historian David Olusoga compared the action to the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. However, the home secretary, Priti Patel, urged the police to respond. She told Sky News: “I think that is utterly disgraceful and that speaks to the acts of public disorder that have actually now become a distraction from the cause in which people are protesting about.”\n\nSupt Andy Bennett, of Somerset and Avon police, said his force was carrying out an investigation into criminal damage.\n\nHowever, Bennett told the BBC he understood that Colston was “a historical figure that’s caused the black community quite a lot of angst over the last couple of years”, adding: “Whilst I am disappointed that people would damage one of our statues, I do understand why it’s happened, it’s very symbolic. \n\n“You might wonder why we didn’t intervene and why we just allowed people to put it in the docks – we made a very tactical decision, to stop people from doing the act may have caused further disorder and we decided the safest thing to do, in terms of our policing tactics, was to allow it to take place.”\n\n

The statue was then rolled down the street and pushed into Bristol Harbour.

Black Lives Matters protesters in Bristol pulled down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.

\n\nIn the nearly three weeks since videos surfaced of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, thousands have participated in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Los Angeles, Athens, Tel Aviv, Sydney, and Mexico City, protestors have left their homes and taken to the streets amid the coronavirus pandemic to honor Floyd, to stand against racism, and to demand justice for others killed by the police. Here are powerful photos from those protests, from multi-lingual signs to Compton Cowboys on horseback.\n\nTo support the Black Lives Matter movement, you can also donate your travel rewards points to groups fighting for racial justice and spend your money at Black-owned bookstores and Black-owned restaurants throughout North America.\n\nDemonstrators honor George Floyd at the site of his murder on June 3. After 13 days of around-the-clock demonstrations, the city of Minneapolis met protestors' demands and announced plans to disband their police department, focusing instead on community-led initiatives. \n\nDutch protestors gathered on and around the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam to march in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests around the world. The Democrats 66, a political party in the Netherlands, is currently calling for a ban on police chokeholds within their own police forces.\n\nSparked by Floyd's murder, protestors gathered in Paris last week with signs that read “Justice pour Adama.” Adama Traoré was a Malian-French man who died in police custody in 2016, in the Paris suburb of Beaumont-sur-Oise.

Videos of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was released.

\n\nUrgent plans to defuse tensions and address fury over disproportionate police action against black and minority ethnic people are being drawn up by the mayor of London, as Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests are expected in dozens of towns and cities by the weekend.\n\nThe initiative from Sadiq Khan to apply pressure on the Metropolitan police, the UK’s largest force, over the use of stop and search, Tasers and other practices comes amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus in crowds, and fears of violence as it emerged that far-right groups were planning counter-demonstrations.\n\nSteps to address anger over systemic racism, brought into sharp focus after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, contrast with UK ministers’ rhetoric and pressure from Tory backbenchers for police and prosecutors to crack down on disorder.\n\nBoris Johnson acknowledged the “incontrovertible, undeniable feeling of injustice” behind the BLM protests, in an article for the black newspaper the Voice, in which he also strongly condemned those who have flouted social distancing to attend them.\n\nHe wrote that he would not support such action “for the obvious reason that we risk a new infection at a critical time and just as we have made huge progress”, adding that: “Those who attack public property or the police – who injure the police officers who are trying to keep us all safe – those people will face the full force of the law.”\n\n

In UK, far-right groups are planning counter-demonstrations.


\n\nSwitzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, has agreed to buy its ailing rival Credit Suisse in an emergency rescue deal aimed at stemming financial market panic unleashed by the failure of two American banks earlier this month.\n\n“UBS today announced the takeover of Credit Suisse,” the Swiss National Bank said in a statement Sunday. It said the rescue would “secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy.”\n\nUBS is paying 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.25 billion) for Credit Suisse, about 60% less than the bank was worth when markets closed on Friday. Credit Suisse shareholders will be largely wiped out, receiving the equivalent of just 0.76 Swiss francs in UBS shares for stock that was worth 1.86 Swiss francs on Friday. Owners of $17 billion worth of “additional tier one” bonds — a riskier class of bank debt — will lose everything, Swiss regulators said.\n\nExtraordinarily, the deal will not need the approval of shareholders after the Swiss government agreed to change the law to remove any uncertainty about the deal.\n\nCredit Suisse (CS) had been losing the trust of investors and customers for years. In 2022, it recorded its worst loss since the global financial crisis. But confidence collapsed last week after it acknowledged “material weakness” in its bookkeeping and as the demise of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank spread fear about weaker institutions at a time when soaring interest rates have undermined the value of some financial assets.\n\n

UBS shares are down 0.81% at $20.83 during the premarket session on the last check Wednesday.

In 2022, Credit Suisse recorded its worst lost.

UBS agrees to buy Credit Suisse in emergency rescue deal

Credit Suisse had been losing the trust of investors and customers for years.

Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed.


Another Bay Area bank was affected Monday by uncertainty in the financial markets following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday.\n\nStock in San Francisco-based First Republic Bank sank nearly 62% Monday and shares of other regional banks suffered losses, reportedly. First Republic has 86 locations across the country. Its Midpeninsula offices include two in Menlo Park and one each in Los Altos, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Redwood City.\n\nOn Sunday, regulators seized Signature Bank in New York after it failed.\n\nBut a San Jose State University professor of finance and accounting does not see the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank as signs of a coming crisis.\n\n"I don\'t think it is a huge contagion issue," said assistant professor Matthew Faulkner. "It\'s more toward an isolated incident."\n\nOver the weekend and Monday, top federal officials including President Joseph Biden appeared to be getting ahead of the issue.\n\nBiden sought to ease American\'s fears by making all deposits held by Silicon Valley Bank customers available regardless of the amount of their deposits, federal officials said over the weekend.\n\nThat includes businesses who must pay their employees and their bills, officials said.\n\n"Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe," Biden said Monday morning. "Your deposits will be there when you need them."\n\nInvestors will not be protected, Biden said. According to the president, they took a risk and "that\'s how capitalism works."\n\nTaxpayers will not be on the hook for the losses.

Shares in banks all over the world have plummeted.

Stefan Kalb was in the middle of a meeting around 1 p.m. on Thursday when a fellow company executive sent him a panicked Slack message: "Do you know what\'s happening at SVB?"\n\nKalb, the CEO and co-founder of Seattle-based food management startup Shelf Engine, had been following news of a bank run at Silicon Valley Bank. Droves of depositors were attempting to pull out as much as $42 billion from the bank on Thursday alone, as fear spread that the bank was teetering on the brink of collapse.\n\nThe bank seemed to be on firm financial footing on Wednesday. The following day, it appeared to be under water.\n\nFor Shelf Engine, a 40-person startup founded in 2015 that uses artificial intelligence to help grocery stores reduce food waste, this was a big problem.\n\nNot only did Silicon Valley Bank help the company process checks and payments, but millions of dollars of the startup\'s cash was locked up in the bank.\n\nKalb sprung into action. He and his team quickly opened an account at JPMorgan Chase and attempted to wire transfer every last penny out of Silicon Valley Bank.\n\n"Unfortunately, our wire was not honored and our money is still at Silicon Valley Bank," Kalb, 37, said in an interview on Friday. "We woke up this morning hoping the money would be in that JPMorgan bank account, and it was not."

Executive sends panicked Slack message about Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)

Regulators seized Signature Bank in New York on Sunday.

SVB depositors pull out up to $42 billion from the bank.


On Wednesday, Silicon Valley Bank was a well-capitalized institution seeking to raise some funds.\n\nWithin 48 hours, a panic induced by the very venture capital community that SVB had served and nurtured ended the bank’s 40-year-run.\n\nRegulators shuttered SVB Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest ever. The company’s downward spiral began late Wednesday, when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. What followed was the rapid collapse of a highly-respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.\n\nEven now, as the dust begins to settle on the second bank wind-down announced this week, members of the VC community are lamenting the role that other investors played in SVB’s demise.\n\n“This was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs,” Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor at Restive Ventures, told CNBC. “This is going to go down as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting its nose off to spite its face.”\n\nThe episode is the latest fallout from the Federal Reserve’s actions to stem inflation with its most aggressive rate hiking campaign in four decades. The ramifications could be far-reaching, with concerns that startups may be unable to pay employees in coming days, venture investors may struggle to raise funds, and an already-battered sector could face a deeper malaise.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo see their stock prices slip by 4% or more.

Stefan Kalb was in the middle of a meeting around 1 p.m. on Thursday when a fellow company executive sent him a panicked Slack message: "Do you know what\'s happening at SVB?"\n\nKalb, the CEO and co-founder of Seattle-based food management startup Shelf Engine, had been following news of a bank run at Silicon Valley Bank. Droves of depositors were attempting to pull out as much as $42 billion from the bank on Thursday alone, as fear spread that the bank was teetering on the brink of collapse.\n\nThe bank seemed to be on firm financial footing on Wednesday. The following day, it appeared to be under water.\n\nFor Shelf Engine, a 40-person startup founded in 2015 that uses artificial intelligence to help grocery stores reduce food waste, this was a big problem.\n\nNot only did Silicon Valley Bank help the company process checks and payments, but millions of dollars of the startup\'s cash was locked up in the bank.\n\nKalb sprung into action. He and his team quickly opened an account at JPMorgan Chase and attempted to wire transfer every last penny out of Silicon Valley Bank.\n\n"Unfortunately, our wire was not honored and our money is still at Silicon Valley Bank," Kalb, 37, said in an interview on Friday. "We woke up this morning hoping the money would be in that JPMorgan bank account, and it was not."

CEO & co-founder of startup "Shelf Engine" attempts to wire transfer their money out of SVB

SVB depositors pull out up to $42 billion from the bank.


\n\nProtests have intensified this week in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely. Amini died on Sept. 16 three days after her arrest in Tehran, and many Iranians are alleging that she was killed by law enforcement. Protestors have faced a brutal crackdown from the government who have deployed riot police, resulting in arrests, injuries and at least 17 deaths, according to the state media.\n\nIranian authorities claim that Amini died of heart failure, but her family and protestors across Iran accuse the government of covering up her murder. The international protests have expanded to express anger over a range of issues, not just restrictions women face over hijabs and more generally in Iran but also against the current regime. At one Iranian protest, a street full of Iranians chanted “death to the oppressor, be it the shah or the supreme leader!”\n\nMahsa Amini, 22, was arrested on Sept. 13 while visiting Tehran by the notorious morality police who enforce compulsory conservative Islamic behavior and dress. Hijabs are mandatory to wear in public for all women in Iran, regardless of religion or nationality. Amini was accused of violating the country’s law on headscarves.\n\nIran’s security forces said that upon her arrest, Amini was taken to a detention center where she received training on hijab rules, and it was there that she collapsed from a heart attack.

US expected to issue new sanctions against law enforcement officials involved in Iran protests crackdown.

Upon her arrest, Amini was taken to a detention center where she received training on hijab rule.

Her family and protestors across Iran accuse the government of covering up her murder.

\n\nUN human rights experts* condemned the killings and the crackdown by security forces in Iran on protesters following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, including alleged arbitrary arrests and detentions, gender-based and sexual violence, excessive use of force, torture, and enforced disappearances. They urged that the reports be thoroughly and independently investigated and those responsible held to account.\n\nThousands of people have been rallying in daily demonstrations throughout the country after 22-year-old Amini’s death on 16 September following her arrest and detention by the morality police for allegedly wearing her headscarf incorrectly. Protesters have been demanding accountability for the death of Amini and calling for an end to the ongoing repression of women and girls’ fundamental rights.\n\n“We are deeply troubled by continued reports of deliberate and unlawful use by the Iranian security forces of live ammunition, metal pellets and buckshot against peaceful unarmed protesters in breach of the principles of legality, precaution, necessity, non-discrimination and proportionality, applicable to the use of force,” the experts said.\n\n“An alarming number of protesters have already been detained and killed, many of whom are children, women and older persons. The Government must instruct police to immediately cease any use of excessive and lethal force and exercise restraint.”\n\nThey said reports of physical and sexual violence against women and girls during protests and in public spaces, and the denial of other women’s and girl’s rights while in detention, or when active in public, were frightening.\n\n

Reports of physical and sexual violence against women and girls during protests and in public spaces have been reported.


\n\nHollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of rape and sexual assault by courts in New York and Los Angeles.\n\nHere is a summary of the key events that led him to court:\n\n- Weinstein issues an apology acknowledging he "has caused a lot of pain" - but disputes allegations he harassed female employees over nearly three decades.\n\n- It is announced that Harvey Weinstein has been sacked by the board of his company, with immediate effect. \n\n- The organisation behind the Oscars votes to expel Weinstein. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says: "What\'s at issue here is a deeply troubling problem that has no place in our society."\n\n- Weinstein\'s former company files for bankruptcy, months after the Oscar-winning producer was accused of multiple sexual assaults.\n\n- Weinstein faces fresh sexual assault charges in New York from a third woman, in a case dating back to 2006.\n\n- After five days of deliberation, the jury finds Weinstein guilty of a criminal sexual act in the first degree and third-degree rape.\n\n- Weinstein goes on trial in LA, facing 11 charges involving five alleged victims.\n\n- Weinstein is found guilty by a Los Angeles jury of raping a woman.\n

Harvey Weinstein appeared in a New York court.

\n\nIt has created a wave of awareness and brave confrontations over sexual harassment and assault, taking down powerful men in the process. And now the #MeToo movement has been named Time magazine\'s Person of the Year for 2017.\n\nOn its cover, Time called the people behind the movement "The Silence Breakers." Its story features women and men who have spoken out — including activist Tarana Burke, who started the hashtag 10 years ago.\n\n#MeToo rose to prominence as a social media campaign in the wake of high-profile accusations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. After actress Alyssa Milano popularized the hashtag, thousands of women began sharing their stories about the pervasive damage wrought by sexual harassment and by "open secrets" about abuse.\n\nThe movement\'s empowering reach could be seen in the platform on which Time announced its choice: the Today show. It was just one week ago that NBC fired the morning program\'s longtime and powerful co-host, Matt Lauer, over a detailed complaint of "inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace."\n\nWhile the most high-profile #MeToo stories have come from women and men who work in the movies and media, the Time article also features women who work hourly jobs, some of whom want to remain anonymous. The magazine\'s cover portrait includes strawberry picker Isabel Pascual, lobbyist Adama Iwu and former Uber engineer Susan Fowler along with Ashley Judd and Taylor Swift.\n\n

Tarana Burke started the #MeToo hashtag 10 years ago

\n\nWhen #MeToo exploded in the fall of 2017, its most optimistic promise was that it would become more than a hashtag, more than a brief interruption in America\'s regularly scheduled sexism, more than a reckoning for famous men who had abused wealthy, white women.\n\nThere were front-page headlines, explosions of long-stifled rage and examinations of collective complicity. There was hope those two small words signaled the beginning of meaningful change and, eventually, healing –  a belief the silence was finally broken. \n\nHas #MeToo delivered? \n\n"People are paying more attention, but I\'m not convinced that we\'re able or ready to behave differently about it as a nation," said Kristen Houser, chief public affairs officer at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.\n\nBrett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, ascended to the Supreme Court. President Donald Trump, who has been accused by 19 women of sexual misconduct, was recently accused of rape by prominent writer E. Jean Carroll, and public reaction was muted. While Congress has overhauled the process for handling sexual harassment claims on Capitol Hill, it has not passed any legislation in the past two years to address sexual harassment in America\'s workplaces. Thousands of migrant children who crossed the southern border into the U.S. have reported they were sexually assaulted while in government custody. \n\n

Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault and ascended to the Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump was accused of sexual misconduct and rape by 19 women and E. Jean Carroll, respectively.

#MeToo movement named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2017.