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 Donald Trump said Wednesday that he believes he will win the Latino vote, slamming Hillary Clinton for promoting what he called an immigration policy that would “let everybody come in… killers, criminals, drug dealers.”

 “I have a great relationship with the Mexican people. I have many people working for me – look at the job in Washington – I have many legal immigrants working with me. And many of them come from Mexico. They love me, I love them,” the 2016 GOP contender said in an interview with NBC News. “And I’ll tell you something, if I get the nomination, I’ll win the Latino vote.”

 Trump said that “there’s nothing to apologize for” in relation to his controversial comments about Mexico, arguing that he’ll win the support of Latinos because of his record creating jobs.

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 “Hillary Clinton is not going to be able to create jobs, I will tell you right now,” he said. “Neither is Jeb Bush going to be able to create jobs. I will create jobs and the Latinos will have jobs that they don’t have right now. And I will win that vote.”

 He added that Hillary Clinton’s immigration policy would be to “let everybody come in… killers, criminals, drug dealers.”

 “Hillary’s weak on immigration,” he said. “I might be divisive on immigration, but she’s weak on immigration, which is far worse."

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 "If you listen to Hillary, she is so weak on immigration, we will have a crime rate like you've never seen," he added.

 Trump also labeled Clinton “the worst secretary of state in the history of our nation.”

 “The world blew up around us,” he said of her tenure at the helm of the State Department.

 The real estate mogul continued to state that he will build an "impenetrable" wall between the United States and Mexico and that he would "make" the Mexican government foot the bill.

 "Mexico's making a fortune off the United States," he said. "I would get them to pay for the wall. Believe me."

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 Trump dismissed the idea that his business has been hurt by companies backing away from him as a result of his controversial comments. Macy's, Serta, NBC Universal and Univision have announced that they've severed business ties with him.

 "This is too important. Yeah, I’m losing some contracts. Who cares?" he said. "They're weak and they want to be politically correct. Some of them have already apologized to me and said they made a mistake."

 Trump was also asked about a Washington Post report that quoted undocumented immigrants working on his hotel project in Washington, D.C.

 "We have a very strong system," he replied, saying that the newspaper did not reference any of the workers by name. "I have a contractor that is one of the biggest in the nation, they're doing it. So far, they're doing a very good job. We have a very strong verification system."

 In a statement, Trump's campaign said:

 Trump International Hotel, Washington DC has hired Lend Lease, a globally recognized construction management firm, to oversee construction at the Old Post Office and requires all contractors performing work at the project to follow all applicable federal, state and local laws. Our contractors are required to have prospective employees produce documentation that establishes identity and employment eligibility in compliance with immigration law. Lend Lease and the Trump Organization have worked on many large development projects together and have always used best in class practices above and beyond what is required by law."

 Trump’s controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants came during his unscripted announcement speech last month.

 “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best,” he said during the speech. “They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting."

 NBC Universal announced on June 29 that it was cutting ties with Trump as a result of the comments.

 "At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values," NBC’s statement read. "Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump."

 NBC News is owned by NBC Universal. ||||| Donald Trump insulted a female NBC News reporter during a live on-air interview Wednesday, calling her naïve. When Katy Tur stumbled over a question about immigration and crime, Trump cut her off and said, “Come on, try getting it out.” Trump continued: “Don’t be naïve. You’re a very naïve person,” he told her when she referred to the Pew Research Center as an independent source. He then followed up by telling her, “I mean, I don’t know if you’re going to put this on television, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Trump stuck to his guns on immigration and bashed Hillary Clinton as the “worst [secretary of state] in the history of the United States.”

  |||||

– This will likely come as a surprise to Latino voters, but Donald Trump tells NBC News that he would win the Latino vote. As for his comments about Mexican immigrants largely being a bunch of rapists and drug dealers, he sees nothing to apologize about: "I have a great relationship with the Mexican people ... I have many legal immigrants working with me. And many of them come from Mexico. They love me, I love them. And I'll tell you something, if I get the nomination, I'll win the Latino vote." Trump says he would do so by creating jobs. He also doubled down on his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, and he vowed to make Mexico pay for it. For good measure, he slammed Hillary Clinton as the worst secretary of state in history and as weak on immigration, because she would "let everybody come in … killers, criminals, drug dealers." During the interview, Trump called NBC's Katy Tur "naive," and the Daily Beast accuses him of sexist mansplaining. (Actress America Ferrara, for one, is probably not swayed by this win-the-Latino-vote assertion.)


News article:

More than half a billion dollars will be there for the taking Friday after no winning tickets were drawn for the growing Mega Millions jackpot.

 The numbers drawn Tuesday night were 7, 25, 43, 56 and 59, and the Mega Ball was 13. But no ticket matched all six numbers for the $458 million jackpot, pushing the estimated prize for the next drawing to $502 million, according to lottery officials.

 Gerry Broome/AP, FILE

 It's the fourth time in the game's history that the jackpot has surged past half a billion dollars.

 “Jackpot rolls are always exciting, but surpassing the $500 million mark for only the fourth time is a historic milestone,” Mega Millions lead director Gordon Medenica said in a press release Wednesday morning. “Large jackpots like this one capture everyone’s attention, and it would be great to see the roll go on for a while longer. But at the same time, we can’t wait to see someone win.”

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 The next Mega Millions drawing will take place Friday at 8:59 p.m. ET. The cash payout option for the $502 million jackpot is $301 million.

 Mega Millions can be played in 44 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. ||||| Feeling lucky? The Mega Millions jackpot climbed to an estimated $502 million jackpot after no winning numbers were drawn Tuesday. (Photo: Getty Images)

 Feeling lucky? The Mega Millions jackpot climbed to an estimated $502 million jackpot after no winning numbers were drawn Tuesday.

 The estimated jackpot is the fourth-largest payout in the 16-year history of Mega Millions multi-state lottery game. The next drawing will be on Friday, March 30.

 The winning numbers of Tuesday's drawing were 7, 25, 43, 56, 59, with a gold Mega Ball 13.

 The jackpot has been rolling over since it was last won on Jan. 5 at $451 million. Shane Missler, 20, of Port Richey, claimed that prize as the trustee of Secret 007 LLC. He chose to receive his winnings in a one-time, lump-sum payment in the amount of $281.87 million.

 Since the last winning jackpot, there have been 33 winners of $1 million or more.

 The only larger Mega Millions jackpots have been:

 $656 million, split on March 30, 2012, by players in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland.

 $648 million, split on Dec. 17, 2013, by players in California and Georgia.

 $536 million, won on July 8, 2016, by a player in Indiana.

 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2GeuCM3 |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The next Mega Millions lottery winner could take home the fourth largest jackpot in its history. No ticket matched Tuesday's six drawn numbers, meaning the jackpot climbs from $458 million to $502 million for Friday's drawing. It's just the fourth time the jackpot—last won by a 20-year-old Floridian on Jan. 5—has surpassed the half-billion dollar mark, per ABC News. The highest ever jackpot was $656 million won by three players exactly six years ago Friday, reports USA Today. (This case offers a lesson, should you win.)


Summarize this article:

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC reporter Tchima Illa Issoufou: "I lost my aunt as a result of the stampede"

 At least 717 people taking part in the Hajj pilgrimage have been killed in a stampede near the Islamic holy city of Mecca, officials in Saudi Arabia say.

 Another 863 people were injured in the incident at Mina, which occurred as two million pilgrims were taking part in the Hajj's last major rite.

 It is the deadliest incident to occur during the pilgrimage in 25 years.

 King Salman has ordered an urgent review of this year's Hajj plans "to improve the level of organisation".

 The supreme leader of Iran, which lost at least 95 of its citizens in the crush, has criticised Saudi Arabia's preparedness.

 It is the second disaster to strike Mecca in two weeks, after a crane collapsed at the Grand Mosque, killing 109 people.

 In pictures: Aftermath of the stampede

 Accounts from BBC staff in Mina

 During the Hajj, pilgrims travel to Mina, a large valley about 5km (3 miles) from Mecca, to throw seven stones at pillars called Jamarat, which represent the devil.

 The pillars stand where Satan is believed to have tempted the Prophet Abraham.

 At the scene - Tchima Illa Issoufou, BBC Hausa

 Image copyright AFP/Getty Images

 People were going towards the direction of throwing the stones while others were coming from the opposite direction. Then it became chaotic and suddenly people started going down.

 There were people from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Senegal among other nationalities. People were just climbing on top of others in order to move to a safer place and that's how some people died.

 People were chanting Allah's name while others were crying, including children and infants. People fell on the ground seeking help but there was no-one to give them a helping hand. Everybody seemed to be on their own.

 It affected some members of our group. I lost my aunt as a result of the stampede and at the moment, two women from our entourage - a mother and her daughter - are still missing.

 The Saudi civil defence directorate said the stampede occurred at around 09:00 local time (06:00 GMT) as pilgrims were walking towards the five-storey structure which surrounds the pillars, known as the Jamarat Bridge.

 Maj Gen Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry, said the crush occurred when two large groups of pilgrims converged from different directions on to one street.

 Photographs showed the bodies of dozens of pilgrims on the ground, some piled high. They were all dressed in the simple white garments worn during the Hajj.

 Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption "Dead bodies stretch as far as my eyes can see," one BBC employee in Mina said

 Image copyright AP Image caption Dozens of Iranians were reportedly among the dead

 Image copyright AFP Image caption The incident occurred as pilgrims walked towards the Jamarat Bridge, where the pillars are located

 "I saw someone trip over someone in a wheelchair and several people tripping over him," Abdullah Lotfy, from Egypt, told Associated Press. "People were climbing over one another just to breathe."

 "Dead bodies stretch as far as my eyes can see," said Bashir Sa'ad Abdullahi, the BBC's Abuja editor, who is in Mina.

 The civil defence directorate said the victims were of "different nationalities", without providing details.

 As well as victims from Niger witnessed by the BBC's correspondent at the scene, Iran's state news agency, Irna, said at least 95 Iranians were among the dead, with another 150 injured.

 The BBC understands at least three Indonesians are among the dead.

 Hajj: Previous tragedies

 2006: 364 pilgrims die in a crush at foot of Jamarat Bridge in Mina

 1997: 340 pilgrims are killed when fire fuelled by high winds sweeps through Mina's tent city

 1994: 270 pilgrims die in a stampede during the stoning ritual

 1990: 1,426 pilgrims, mainly Asian, die in a stampede in an overcrowded tunnel leading to holy sites

 1987: 402 people die when security forces break up an anti-US demonstration by Iranian pilgrims

 Timeline: Deadliest stampedes

 Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who headed an emergency meeting after the stampede, has ordered an investigation.

 The Saudi health minister, Khaled al-Falih, said the crush occurred because many pilgrims moved "without respecting the timetables" established by authorities.

 Image copyright AP Image caption Pilgrims converge on Mina to cast stones at three pillars representing the devil

 Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV reported that the head of the central Hajj committee, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, blamed the stampede on "some pilgrims with African nationalities".

 But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, said the Saudi government "must accept the huge responsibility for this catastrophe", adding that "mismanagement and improper actions" were to blame.

 The UK Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking more information about whether British nationals were involved.

 What happens at the Hajj?

 Image copyright AP

 What rituals do pilgrims perform? The pilgrimage takes place in several stages over five days, including circling the Kaaba (a cube-like building in the centre of Mecca's Grand Mosque) en masse and throwing seven stones at pillars called Jamarat which represent the devil.

 The pilgrimage takes place in several stages over five days, including circling the Kaaba (a cube-like building in the centre of Mecca's Grand Mosque) en masse and throwing seven stones at pillars called Jamarat which represent the devil. How many people go? Well over a million pilgrims from outside Saudi Arabia, and several hundred thousand from inside the kingdom, converge on the site each year.

 Well over a million pilgrims from outside Saudi Arabia, and several hundred thousand from inside the kingdom, converge on the site each year. How do the authorities cope? Authorities deployed 100,000 security personnel and 25,000 extra health workers this year, as well as 100,000 air-conditioned tents for temporary accommodation.

 Why do millions gather in Mecca every year?

 The Saudi authorities have spent billions of dollars on improving transport and other infrastructure to try to prevent such incidents.

 The Hajj is the fifth and final pillar of Islam. It is the journey that every able-bodied adult Muslim must undertake at least once in their lives if they can afford it.

 The number of people attending Hajj rose from 57,000 in 1921 to a high of 3.2m three years ago, according to the Saudi Central Department of Statistics and Information.

 That figure dropped to just over two million last year. ||||| Sign up and get access to special features Connect to your Facebook or Twitter account and we'll fill in your registration information.

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  ||||| (CNN) A stampede during one of the last rituals of the Hajj -- the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca -- has killed more than 700 people and injured nearly 900 others in Saudi Arabia.

 The stampede occurred Thursday morning during the ritual known as "stoning the devil" in a tent city in Mina, about two miles from the holy site in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.

 Footage obtained by CNN Arabic shows a disturbing scene. Bodies piled upon bodies, a few moving, but most appearing lifeless. Workers in hard hats and reflective vests can be seen pulling dead bodies away to get to those who are still alive.

 The video captures the cacophony of shouts amid the chaos.

 Ethar El-Katatney, a pilgrim who was near the stampede site about five hours after the surge happened, said she walked past ambulances carrying bodies of victims. She said she saw numerous police officers and medical personnel in the area.

 JUST WATCHED Hajj: The pilgrimage to Mecca Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Hajj: The pilgrimage to Mecca 01:39

 "I saw the ambulances, I saw bodies. ... At least 20, 30 ambulances passed me by," she told CNN by phone.

 The incident is the deadliest disaster at Mina since 1990, when 1,426 people died.

 Civil defense authorities said the latest death toll is 717, with 863 people injured, but the numbers have been climbing steadily. Officials deployed 4,000 workers, along with 220 ambulances and other vehicles, to Mina in response to the disaster.

 In the ritual, crowds of pilgrims throw stones at three pillars in a re-enactment of when the Prophet Abraham stoned the devil and rejected his temptations, according to Muslim traditions.

 Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz held an emergency meeting to discuss the stampede, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

 فيديو: خطة عاجلة تطبقها مستشفيات المشاعر المقدسة لفرز الحالات المصابة بتدافع منى #الإخبارية #تدافع_مشعر_مني pic.twitter.com/nnaDNUrIO9 — قناة الإخبارية (@alekhbariyatv) September 24, 2015

 He ordered an inquiry.

 Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud later ordered a review of the country's plans during Hajj.

 "Regardless of the investigation results, the improvement of the methods and mechanisms of the Hajj season will not stop. We have instructed the concerned entities to re-evaluate the current policy and the distribution of responsibilities," he said.

 In Thursday's stampede, pilgrims were walking toward the largest of the pillars when there was a sudden surge in the crowd about 9 a.m., causing a large number of people to fall, the Saudi Press Agency said, citing civil defense officials.

 Information on what led to the surge wasn't immediately available.

 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Hide Caption 1 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Saudi emergency personnel surround bodies of Hajj pilgrims at the site of a stampede Thursday, September 24, in Mecca, Islam's holiest city. Thursday morning's stampede killed hundreds during one of the last rituals of the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage Hide Caption 2 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Saudi emergency personnel carry a body. Hide Caption 3 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede People stand near the bodies of victims at the site of the stampede. Hide Caption 4 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Bodies lie covered in sheets. The death toll has been climbing steadily. Hide Caption 5 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede People stand near bodies covered in sheets. Hide Caption 6 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Muslim pilgrims and rescuers gather around the victims. Hide Caption 7 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Bodies lie in the street as emergency personnel work. Hide Caption 8 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Saudi emergency personnel load a wounded pilgrim into an ambulance. Hide Caption 9 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Emergency personnel carry an injured person. Hide Caption 10 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Saudi ambulances arrive on the scene. Hide Caption 11 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede A man searches for a relative injured in the stampede. Hide Caption 12 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Saudi medics tend to an injured pilgrim. Hide Caption 13 of 14 Photos: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede Saudi emergency personnel stand near bodies of Hajj pilgrims. Hide Caption 14 of 14

 A risky pilgrimage

 The ceremony was the scene of stampedes and hundreds of deaths in the 1980s and 1990s as pilgrims passed a crowded bottleneck area leading to the small pillars on the ground.

 In 2006, a stampede there killed at least 363 people.

 After that, the Saudi government erected three massive pillars and completed a $1.2 billion, five-story bridge nearby where pilgrims can toss stones. It was meant to be a roomier atmosphere and a more efficient way to accommodate the faithful.

 Speaking at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, Pope Francis offered words of comfort during evening prayers.

 "I have two feelings for my Islamic brothers. First my greeting for being today the day of the sacrifice. I would have liked that my greetings would have been warmer," he said.

 "A second feeling is my closeness, my closeness with the tragedy that its people have suffered today in Mecca. In this moment of prayers, I join and we join them."

 The ritual

 The stoning ritual is done over at least two days. Pilgrims stone the three pillars at Mina -- believed to be where the devil was stoned when he tried to dissuade Abraham from obeying God's orders to slaughter his son. According to tradition, the event was a test from God, who gave Abraham a ram to slaughter instead.

 Thursday was the third day of the Hajj.

 On September 11, just days before this year's Hajj started, a construction crane crashed through the roof of another Hajj destination, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing 107 people. At least 238 others suffered injuries when a powerful storm toppled the crane.

 Losing one's life during the Hajj season is considered by many devout Muslims as an entry to heaven.

 A spiritual climax

 More than 2 million Muslims from around the world are attending the annual Hajj pilgrimage this year.

 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Muslim pilgrims make their way to cast stones at a pillar in the "stoning the devil" ritual Thursday, September 24, in Mina near Mecca, Saudi Arabia. At some point during this last rite of the annual Hajj, a stampede occurred, killing and injuring hundreds . More than 2 million Muslims have been making the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. The Hajj is one of the most celebrated events in the Islamic calendar. Hide Caption 1 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage A pilgrim reads the Quran on a rocky hill called the Mountain of Mercy, on the plain of Arafat, near Mecca on Wednesday, September 23. Hide Caption 2 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Muslim pilgrims pray at Namira Mosque on September 23 on Mount Arafat near Mecca. Hide Caption 3 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Pilgrims join in one of the Hajj rituals early September 23 on Mount Arafat. For most Muslims, the pilgrimage is the spiritual climax of their lives, with many saving for decades to be able to make the journey to Mecca. Hide Caption 4 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Muslim pilgrims pray on the Mountain of Mercy, on the plain of Arafat. Islam requires every Muslim who is physically and financially able to make the journey to Mecca at least once in his or her lifetime. Hide Caption 5 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Muslim pilgrims pray on the Mountain of Mercy on Tuesday, September 22. Hide Caption 6 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Muslim pilgrims touch Islam's holiest shrine, the Kaaba , at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday, September 21. Performing the Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. Hide Caption 7 of 8 Photos: The Hajj: Muslims gather for annual pilgrimage Muslim pilgrims circle counterclockwise the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday. The pilgrimage, conducted over five days, includes detailed rituals including wearing a special garment that symbolizes human equality and unity before God, a procession around the Kaaba and the symbolic stoning of evil. Hide Caption 8 of 8

 Known as the fifth pillar of Islam, the Hajj is an obligation upon every Muslim who has the financial means and the physical ability to perform it. For most, it is the spiritual climax of their lives, with many saving for decades to make the journey. ||||| CAIRO (AP) — Every year, millions of Muslims converge on the Saudi holy cities of Mecca and Medina for the annual hajj pilgrimage, with the massive ceremonies representing a major security and logistical challenge for the kingdom's authorities.

 FILE - In this Jan. 5, 2006 file photo, rescuers attend to the scene of a building collapse in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The day before the hajj began, an eight-story building being used as a hostel near the... (Associated Press)

 FILE - In this April 9, 1998 file photo, pilgrims walk past a broken umbrella left on the ground at the site of a stampede that left more than 150 people dead at Mina, Saudi Arabia. The stampede broke... (Associated Press)

 In this image posted on the official Twitter account of the directorate of the Saudi Civil Defense agency, rescuers respond to a stampede that killed and injured pilgrims in the holy city of Mina during... (Associated Press)

 On occasion, the hajj and events surrounding it have been marred by accidents and tragedies, such as Thursday's stampede near Mecca that killed at least 310 people.

 Here's a look at some deadly hajj-related incidents:

 ___

 2015: At least 310 people are killed and hundreds injured in a stampede in Mina, on the outskirts of the holy city of Mecca. In the lead-up to hajj, 111 people are killed and nearly 400 injured when a crane collapses in bad weather, crashing onto the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site.

 ___

 2006: More than 360 pilgrims are killed in a stampede at the desert plain of Mina, near Mecca, where pilgrims carry out a symbolic stoning of the devil by throwing pebbles against three stone walls. The day before the hajj began, an eight-story building being used as a hostel near the Grand Mosque in Mecca collapsed, killing at least 73 people.

 ___

 2004: A crush of pilgrims at Mina kills 244 pilgrims and injures hundreds on the final day of the hajj ceremonies.

 ___

 2001: A stampede at Mina during the final day of the pilgrimage ceremonies kills 35 hajj pilgrims.

 ___

 1998: About 180 pilgrims are trampled to death in panic after several of them fell off an overpass during the final stoning ritual at Mina.

 ___

 1997: At least 340 pilgrims are killed in a fire at the tent city of Mina as the blaze was aided by high winds. More than 1,500 were injured.

 ___

 1994: Some 270 pilgrims are killed in a stampede during the stoning ritual at Mina.

 ___

 1990: The worst hajj-related tragedy claims the lives of 1,426 pilgrims in a stampede in an overcrowded pedestrian tunnel leading to holy sites in Mecca. |||||

– A stampede at the "stoning the devil" ritual has become the hajj pilgrimage's worst disaster in a decade. Saudi authorities say at least 717 people were killed; previous reports said at least another 450 were injured in the crush of people at Mina, near the holy city of Mecca, the AP reports. The BBC explains that the hajj is "the fifth and final pillar of Islam"; every adult Muslim who can physically and financially manage to do so is expected to make the pilgrimage once in their lives. Two million people are this year participating in the annual five-day pilgrimage, which started Tuesday. One of the final major rites of the hajj involves casting stones at pillars that signify the devil. After numerous similar disasters at the ritual, including a 2006 stampede that killed 345 people, the Saudis spent $1.2 billion on measures to reduce congestion at the site where pilgrims hurl stones at three pillars, CNN reports. Read about other hajj-related tragedies, the worst of which happened in 1990, here.


Google has altered autocomplete suggestions in its search engine after it was alerted to antisemitic, sexist and racists entries.

 Google’s autocomplete feature aims to suggest common searches after a user enters one or more words into the site’s search box or address bar of its Chrome browser.

 Typing the phrase “are Jews” into Google, the search engine suggested “evil”, for “are women” it again suggested “evil” and for “are Muslims” it suggested “bad”, an Observer article reported.

 Google, democracy and the truth about internet search Read more

 On Monday the searches for Jews and women no longer returned those results, although the “are Muslims bad” autocomplete was still present.

 A Google spokesperson said: “We took action within hours of being notified on Friday of the autocomplete results.” Google did not comment on its decision to alter some but not all those raised in the article.

 It said: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs – as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.

 “Autocomplete predictions are algorithmically generated based on users’ search activity and interests. Users search for such a wide range of material on the web – 15% of searches we see every day are new. Because of this, terms that appear in autocomplete may be unexpected or unpleasant. We do our best to prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing, but we acknowledge that autocomplete isn’t an exact science and we’re always working to improve our algorithms.”

 This is not the first time Google and others’ autocomplete and search algorithms have caused offence. An auto-suggested photo tag within Google’s Photos service in July 2015 labelled two black teenagers as “Gorillas”. Google apologised and said it was working on “longer term fixes” around the recognition of dark-skinned faces as well as the linguistics of photo labels.

 In May 2015, Google apologised when the White House was returned as a result for searches for “nigger house” and “nigger king” within Google maps.

 Google declined to explain why the results occurred but a spokesperson said: “Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologise for any offence this may have caused.”

 In April this year Google apologised after a search for “unprofessional hairstyles for work” yielded image results showing predominantly black women with natural hair, while searching for “professional” ones returned pictures of coiffed, white women.

 In June, Google’s image search also caused offence by returning criminal mugshots for searches of “three black teenagers” but not for “three white teenagers”.

 Google has also previously denied “conspiracy theories” accusing it of censoring its search results to please the Conservative party in exchange for a deal over its taxes. ||||| Google must urgently review its search ranking system because of “compelling” evidence that it is being “manipulated and controlled” by rightwing propagandists, leading academics have said, after the Observer reported that hate sites are now dominating searches on Muslims, Jews, Hitler and women.

 Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist and the author of Weapons on Math Destruction, said that unless Google acknowledged responsibility for the problem, it would be a “co-conspirator” with the propagandists. “This is the end for Google pretending to be a neutral platform,” she said. “It clearly has a terrible problem here and it has to own and acknowledge that.

 “It simply can’t go on pretending that it has no editorial responsibilities when it is delivering these kinds of results. It is simply not defensible for it go on claiming ‘plausible deniability’. It has clearly become a conduit for rightwing hate sites and it must urgently take action.”

 Google alters search autocomplete to remove 'are Jews evil' suggestion Read more

 The Observer found that searches for “are jews” were offering the suggestion “are jews evil”, and nine out of the 10 top results gave links to rightwing antisemitic hate sites. Google refused to comment on the individual search results, but on Sunday, it moved to change some but not all of the autocomplete suggestions that the report highlighted.

 Frank Pasquale, professor of law at Maryland University, said he found this “a very troubling and disturbing development”. “They’ve gone on in the fly and plugged the plug on certain search terms in response to your article, but this raises bigger and more difficult questions. Who did that? And how did they decide? Who’s in charge of these decisions? And what will they do in the future? This is clearly just being done in response to a story in the media, but it’s not accountable, and it’s not sustainable. I find it really troubling that they’ve taken this very quick and hasty response without any explanation of how and why they’ve done it.”

 Google had removed the lines suggesting that Jews and black people are evil and that blacks “commit more crimes”, but it is still suggesting Muslims were “bad” and that Islam “should be destroyed”. While Facebook has faced criticism in the wake of revelations about how the site had become a conduit for fake news, the problem facing Google is potentially even more intractable.

 O’Neil said that she believed Google would ultimately have to hire human editors. She said: “There’s a a growing list of social media empires that have been attempting with all their power and might to claim that they don’t have editorial responsibility, but they have been proven wrong.

 “They have been proven wrong by this troll army, and quite clearly when it comes to the questions that require a subtle understanding of the truth versus lies, they are going to have to use human judgment.

 “It is clearly very frightening what is going on here. Google has done a huge amount of work to avoid exactly this scenario. And yet the troll army has still managed to break through all its resources and defences. It is very troubling and they are clearly very, very good at this, but it’s why Google has to own this problem. It is doing a terrible job here.

 “Twenty years ago, these sites with these views … they would have been completely shut out by the mainstream press, but we have replaced our guardians of information with algorithms that are dumb and that can be toyed with and manipulated.”

 Jonathan Albright, assistant professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, said that rightwing websites had launched a new “information war”, and that that they were winning. His research has shown that fake news and extremist sites have created a vast network of links to each other and mainstream sites that has enabled them to game Google’s algorithm. The top eight out of 10 results for the Google search “was Hitler bad?”, for example, are links to Holocaust denial sites including the neo-Nazi site, StormFront.org.

 Albright’s research has shown that fake news and information is a far bigger structural problem than had been previously realised. He has mapped a “vast satellite system that is encroaching on the mainstream news system”. Websites propagating extreme rightwing propaganda have thrown out thousands of hyperlinks that connect to each other and to mainstream news sources, such as YouTube and Facebook, and he says they “are growing in strength and influence every day”.

 Julia Powles, a researcher at Cambridge University on technology and law, said Google’s response to the problem was “the classic PR response”. She added: “The media makes a fuss about something. Google goes in and hand-tweaks the result, while still claiming that it is not an editor and it is totally neutral, when clearly that is not true. It can and does change search results when it suits them.

 Google, democracy and the truth about internet search Read more

 “They keep using this analogy that they’re like a card catalogue, but they’re really more like a card shark that can be gamed. It raises deeply disturbing issues about the democratic distribution of information.”

 A Google spokesperson said: “We took action within hours of being notified on Friday of the autocomplete results.” Google did not comment on its decision to alter some but not all those results raised in the article.

 It said: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes, unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject-matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs. As a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.”

 Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land and one of the leading authorities on Google search, said Google faced a “very difficult, very challenging issue”. “They’ve done the PR of getting rid of some of the bad stuff quickly, and they will hope the PR spin will help this go away, but it doesn’t take away from the bigger issues. I take the concern very deeply. Google is the universal resource that people turn to. It is a concern they really need to solve.” ||||| Tech-savvy rightwingers have been able to ‘game’ the algorithms of internet giants and create a new reality where Hitler is a good guy, Jews are evil and… Donald Trump becomes president

 Here’s what you don’t want to do late on a Sunday night. You do not want to type seven letters into Google. That’s all I did. I typed: “a-r-e”. And then “j-e-w-s”. Since 2008, Google has attempted to predict what question you might be asking and offers you a choice. And this is what it did. It offered me a choice of potential questions it thought I might want to ask: “are jews a race?”, “are jews white?”, “are jews christians?”, and finally, “are jews evil?”

 Are Jews evil? It’s not a question I’ve ever thought of asking. I hadn’t gone looking for it. But there it was. I press enter. A page of results appears. This was Google’s question. And this was Google’s answer: Jews are evil. Because there, on my screen, was the proof: an entire page of results, nine out of 10 of which “confirm” this. The top result, from a site called Listovative, has the headline: “Top 10 Major Reasons Why People Hate Jews.” I click on it: “Jews today have taken over marketing, militia, medicinal, technological, media, industrial, cinema challenges etc and continue to face the worlds [sic] envy through unexplained success stories given their inglorious past and vermin like repression all over Europe.”

 Google is search. It’s the verb, to Google. It’s what we all do, all the time, whenever we want to know anything. We Google it. The site handles at least 63,000 searches a second, 5.5bn a day. Its mission as a company, the one-line overview that has informed the company since its foundation and is still the banner headline on its corporate website today, is to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. It strives to give you the best, most relevant results. And in this instance the third-best, most relevant result to the search query “are Jews… ” is a link to an article from stormfront.org, a neo-Nazi website. The fifth is a YouTube video: “Why the Jews are Evil. Why we are against them.”

 The sixth is from Yahoo Answers: “Why are Jews so evil?” The seventh result is: “Jews are demonic souls from a different world.” And the 10th is from jesus-is-saviour.com: “Judaism is Satanic!”

 There’s one result in the 10 that offers a different point of view. It’s a link to a rather dense, scholarly book review from thetabletmag.com, a Jewish magazine, with the unfortunately misleading headline: “Why Literally Everybody In the World Hates Jews.”

 I feel like I’ve fallen down a wormhole, entered some parallel universe where black is white, and good is bad. Though later, I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016 and found one of the underground springs that has been quietly nurturing it. It’s been there all the time, of course. Just a few keystrokes away… on our laptops, our tablets, our phones. This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Are women… Google’s search results.

 Stories about fake news on Facebook have dominated certain sections of the press for weeks following the American presidential election, but arguably this is even more powerful, more insidious. Frank Pasquale, professor of law at the University of Maryland, and one of the leading academic figures calling for tech companies to be more open and transparent, calls the results “very profound, very troubling”.

 He came across a similar instance in 2006 when, “If you typed ‘Jew’ in Google, the first result was jewwatch.org. It was ‘look out for these awful Jews who are ruining your life’. And the Anti-Defamation League went after them and so they put an asterisk next to it which said: ‘These search results may be disturbing but this is an automated process.’ But what you’re showing – and I’m very glad you are documenting it and screenshotting it – is that despite the fact they have vastly researched this problem, it has gotten vastly worse.”

 And ordering of search results does influence people, says Martin Moore, director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power at King’s College, London, who has written at length on the impact of the big tech companies on our civic and political spheres. “There’s large-scale, statistically significant research into the impact of search results on political views. And the way in which you see the results and the types of results you see on the page necessarily has an impact on your perspective.” Fake news, he says, has simply “revealed a much bigger problem. These companies are so powerful and so committed to disruption. They thought they were disrupting politics but in a positive way. They hadn’t thought about the downsides. These tools offer remarkable empowerment, but there’s a dark side to it. It enables people to do very cynical, damaging things.”

 Google is knowledge. It’s where you go to find things out. And evil Jews are just the start of it. There are also evil women. I didn’t go looking for them either. This is what I type: “a-r-e w-o-m-e-n”. And Google offers me just two choices, the first of which is: “Are women evil?” I press return. Yes, they are. Every one of the 10 results “confirms” that they are, including the top one, from a site called sheddingoftheego.com, which is boxed out and highlighted: “Every woman has some degree of prostitute in her. Every woman has a little evil in her… Women don’t love men, they love what they can do for them. It is within reason to say women feel attraction but they cannot love men.”

 Next I type: “a-r-e m-u-s-l-i-m-s”. And Google suggests I should ask: “Are Muslims bad?” And here’s what I find out: yes, they are. That’s what the top result says and six of the others. Without typing anything else, simply putting the cursor in the search box, Google offers me two new searches and I go for the first, “Islam is bad for society”. In the next list of suggestions, I’m offered: “Islam must be destroyed.”

 This is the equivalent of going into a library and asking a librarian about Judaism and being handed 10 books of hate Danny Sullivan

 Jews are evil. Muslims need to be eradicated. And Hitler? Do you want to know about Hitler? Let’s Google it. “Was Hitler bad?” I type. And here’s Google’s top result: “10 Reasons Why Hitler Was One Of The Good Guys” I click on the link: “He never wanted to kill any Jews”; “he cared about conditions for Jews in the work camps”; “he implemented social and cultural reform.” Eight out of the other 10 search results agree: Hitler really wasn’t that bad.

 A few days later, I talk to Danny Sullivan, the founding editor of SearchEngineLand.com. He’s been recommended to me by several academics as one of the most knowledgeable experts on search. Am I just being naive, I ask him? Should I have known this was out there? “No, you’re not being naive,” he says. “This is awful. It’s horrible. It’s the equivalent of going into a library and asking a librarian about Judaism and being handed 10 books of hate. Google is doing a horrible, horrible job of delivering answers here. It can and should do better.”

 He’s surprised too. “I thought they stopped offering autocomplete suggestions for religions in 2011.” And then he types “are women” into his own computer. “Good lord! That answer at the top. It’s a featured result. It’s called a “direct answer”. This is supposed to be indisputable. It’s Google’s highest endorsement.” That every women has some degree of prostitute in her? “Yes. This is Google’s algorithm going terribly wrong.”

 I contacted Google about its seemingly malfunctioning autocomplete suggestions and received the following response: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs – as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.”

 Google isn’t just a search engine, of course. Search was the foundation of the company but that was just the beginning. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, now has the greatest concentration of artificial intelligence experts in the world. It is expanding into healthcare, transportation, energy. It’s able to attract the world’s top computer scientists, physicists and engineers. It’s bought hundreds of start-ups, including Calico, whose stated mission is to “cure death” and DeepMind, which aims to “solve intelligence”.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2002. Photograph: Michael Grecco/Getty Images

 And 20 years ago it didn’t even exist. When Tony Blair became prime minister, it wasn’t possible to Google him: the search engine had yet to be invented. The company was only founded in 1998 and Facebook didn’t appear until 2004. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are still only 43. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is 32. Everything they’ve done, the world they’ve remade, has been done in the blink of an eye.

 But it seems the implications about the power and reach of these companies is only now seeping into the public consciousness. I ask Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation, whether it was the recent furore over fake news that woke people up to the danger of ceding our rights as citizens to corporations. “It’s kind of weird right now,” she says, “because people are finally saying, ‘Gee, Facebook and Google really have a lot of power’ like it’s this big revelation. And it’s like, ‘D’oh.’”

 MacKinnon has a particular expertise in how authoritarian governments adapt to the internet and bend it to their purposes. “China and Russia are a cautionary tale for us. I think what happens is that it goes back and forth. So during the Arab spring, it seemed like the good guys were further ahead. And now it seems like the bad guys are. Pro-democracy activists are using the internet more than ever but at the same time, the adversary has gotten so much more skilled.”

 Last week Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina, published the first detailed research on how rightwing websites had spread their message. “I took a list of these fake news sites that was circulating, I had an initial list of 306 of them and I used a tool – like the one Google uses – to scrape them for links and then I mapped them. So I looked at where the links went – into YouTube and Facebook, and between each other, millions of them… and I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

 “They have created a web that is bleeding through on to our web. This isn’t a conspiracy. There isn’t one person who’s created this. It’s a vast system of hundreds of different sites that are using all the same tricks that all websites use. They’re sending out thousands of links to other sites and together this has created a vast satellite system of rightwing news and propaganda that has completely surrounded the mainstream media system.”

 He found 23,000 pages and 1.3m hyperlinks. “And Facebook is just the amplification device. When you look at it in 3D, it actually looks like a virus. And Facebook was just one of the hosts for the virus that helps it spread faster. You can see the New York Times in there and the Washington Post and then you can see how there’s a vast, vast network surrounding them. The best way of describing it is as an ecosystem. This really goes way beyond individual sites or individual stories. What this map shows is the distribution network and you can see that it’s surrounding and actually choking the mainstream news ecosystem.”

 Like a cancer? “Like an organism that is growing and getting stronger all the time.”

 Charlie Beckett, a professor in the school of media and communications at LSE, tells me: “We’ve been arguing for some time now that plurality of news media is good. Diversity is good. Critiquing the mainstream media is good. But now… it’s gone wildly out of control. What Jonathan Albright’s research has shown is that this isn’t a byproduct of the internet. And it’s not even being done for commercial reasons. It’s motivated by ideology, by people who are quite deliberately trying to destabilise the internet.”

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A spatial map of the rightwing fake news ecosystem. Jonathan Albright, assistant professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, “scraped” 300 fake news sites (the dark shapes on this map) to reveal the 1.3m hyperlinks that connect them together and link them into the mainstream news ecosystem. Here, Albright shows it is a “vast satellite system of rightwing news and propaganda that has completely surrounded the mainstream media system”. Photograph: Jonathan Albright

 Albright’s map also provides a clue to understanding the Google search results I found. What these rightwing news sites have done, he explains, is what most commercial websites try to do. They try to find the tricks that will move them up Google’s PageRank system. They try and “game” the algorithm. And what his map shows is how well they’re doing that.

 That’s what my searches are showing too. That the right has colonised the digital space around these subjects – Muslims, women, Jews, the Holocaust, black people – far more effectively than the liberal left.

 “It’s an information war,” says Albright. “That’s what I keep coming back to.”

 But it’s where it goes from here that’s truly frightening. I ask him how it can be stopped. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it can be. It’s a network. It’s far more powerful than any one actor.”

 So, it’s almost got a life of its own? “Yes, and it’s learning. Every day, it’s getting stronger.”

 The more people who search for information about Jews, the more people will see links to hate sites, and the more they click on those links (very few people click on to the second page of results) the more traffic the sites will get, the more links they will accrue and the more authoritative they will appear. This is an entirely circular knowledge economy that has only one outcome: an amplification of the message. Jews are evil. Women are evil. Islam must be destroyed. Hitler was one of the good guys.

 Fake news and a 400-year-old problem: we need to resolve the ‘post-truth’ crisis Read more

 And the constellation of websites that Albright found – a sort of shadow internet – has another function. More than just spreading rightwing ideology, they are being used to track and monitor and influence anyone who comes across their content. “I scraped the trackers on these sites and I was absolutely dumbfounded. Every time someone likes one of these posts on Facebook or visits one of these websites, the scripts are then following you around the web. And this enables data-mining and influencing companies like Cambridge Analytica to precisely target individuals, to follow them around the web, and to send them highly personalised political messages. This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go.”

 Cambridge Analytica, an American-owned company based in London, was employed by both the Vote Leave campaign and the Trump campaign. Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, has made few public announcements since the Brexit referendum but he did say this: “If you want to make big improvements in communication, my advice is – hire physicists.”

 Steve Bannon, founder of Breitbart News and the newly appointed chief strategist to Trump, is on Cambridge Analytica’s board and it has emerged that the company is in talks to undertake political messaging work for the Trump administration. It claims to have built psychological profiles using 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters. It knows their quirks and nuances and daily habits and can target them individually.

 “They were using 40-50,000 different variants of ad every day that were continuously measuring responses and then adapting and evolving based on that response,” says Martin Moore of Kings College. Because they have so much data on individuals and they use such phenomenally powerful distribution networks, they allow campaigns to bypass a lot of existing laws.

 “It’s all done completely opaquely and they can spend as much money as they like on particular locations because you can focus on a five-mile radius or even a single demographic. Fake news is important but it’s only one part of it. These companies have found a way of transgressing 150 years of legislation that we’ve developed to make elections fair and open.”

 Did such micro-targeted propaganda – currently legal – swing the Brexit vote? We have no way of knowing. Did the same methods used by Cambridge Analytica help Trump to victory? Again, we have no way of knowing. This is all happening in complete darkness. We have no way of knowing how our personal data is being mined and used to influence us. We don’t realise that the Facebook page we are looking at, the Google page, the ads that we are seeing, the search results we are using, are all being personalised to us. We don’t see it because we have nothing to compare it to. And it is not being monitored or recorded. It is not being regulated. We are inside a machine and we simply have no way of seeing the controls. Most of the time, we don’t even realise that there are controls.

 Facebook and Google move to kick fake news sites off their ad networks Read more

 Rebecca MacKinnon says that most of us consider the internet to be like “the air that we breathe and the water that we drink”. It surrounds us. We use it. And we don’t question it. “But this is not a natural landscape. Programmers and executives and editors and designers, they make this landscape. They are human beings and they all make choices.”

 But we don’t know what choices they are making. Neither Google or Facebook make their algorithms public. Why did my Google search return nine out of 10 search results that claim Jews are evil? We don’t know and we have no way of knowing. Their systems are what Frank Pasquale describes as “black boxes”. He calls Google and Facebook “a terrifying duopoly of power” and has been leading a growing movement of academics who are calling for “algorithmic accountability”. “We need to have regular audits of these systems,” he says. “We need people in these companies to be accountable. In the US, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, every company has to have a spokesman you can reach. And this is what needs to happen. They need to respond to complaints about hate speech, about bias.”

 Is bias built into the system? Does it affect the kind of results that I was seeing? “There’s all sorts of bias about what counts as a legitimate source of information and how that’s weighted. There’s enormous commercial bias. And when you look at the personnel, they are young, white and perhaps Asian, but not black or Hispanic and they are overwhelmingly men. The worldview of young wealthy white men informs all these judgments.”

 Later, I speak to Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology, and the author of the study that Martin Moore told me about (and that Google has publicly criticised), showing how search-rank results affect voting patterns. On the other end of the phone, he repeats one of the searches I did. He types “do blacks…” into Google.

 “Look at that. I haven’t even hit a button and it’s automatically populated the page with answers to the query: ‘Do blacks commit more crimes?’ And look, I could have been going to ask all sorts of questions. ‘Do blacks excel at sports’, or anything. And it’s only given me two choices and these aren’t simply search-based or the most searched terms right now. Google used to use that but now they use an algorithm that looks at other things. Now, let me look at Bing and Yahoo. I’m on Yahoo and I have 10 suggestions, not one of which is ‘Do black people commit more crime?’

 “And people don’t question this. Google isn’t just offering a suggestion. This is a negative suggestion and we know that negative suggestions depending on lots of things can draw between five and 15 more clicks. And this all programmed. And it could be programmed differently.”

 What Epstein’s work has shown is that the contents of a page of search results can influence people’s views and opinions. The type and order of search rankings was shown to influence voters in India in double-blind trials. There were similar results relating to the search suggestions you are offered.

 “The general public are completely in the dark about very fundamental issues regarding online search and influence. We are talking about the most powerful mind-control machine ever invented in the history of the human race. And people don’t even notice it.”

 Good luck in making Google reveal its algorithm | John Naughton Read more

 Damien Tambini, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, who focuses on media regulation, says that we lack any sort of framework to deal with the potential impact of these companies on the democratic process. “We have structures that deal with powerful media corporations. We have competition laws. But these companies are not being held responsible. There are no powers to get Google or Facebook to disclose anything. There’s an editorial function to Google and Facebook but it’s being done by sophisticated algorithms. They say it’s machines not editors. But that’s simply a mechanised editorial function.”

 And the companies, says John Naughton, the Observer columnist and a senior research fellow at Cambridge University, are terrified of acquiring editorial responsibilities they don’t want. “Though they can and regularly do tweak the results in all sorts of ways.”

 Certainly the results about Google on Google don’t seem entirely neutral. Google “Is Google racist?” and the featured result – the Google answer boxed out at the top of the page – is quite clear: no. It is not.

 Google and Facebook are thinking long term. They have the resources, money and ambition to do whatever they want John Naughton

 But the enormity and complexity of having two global companies of a kind we have never seen before influencing so many areas of our lives is such, says Naughton, that “we don’t even have the mental apparatus to even know what the problems are”.

 And this is especially true of the future. Google and Facebook are at the forefront of AI. They are going to own the future. And the rest of us can barely start to frame the sorts of questions we ought to be asking. “Politicians don’t think long term. And corporations don’t think long term because they’re focused on the next quarterly results and that’s what makes Google and Facebook interesting and different. They are absolutely thinking long term. They have the resources, the money, and the ambition to do whatever they want.

 “They want to digitise every book in the world: they do it. They want to build a self-driving car: they do it. The fact that people are reading about these fake news stories and realising that this could have an effect on politics and elections, it’s like, ‘Which planet have you been living on?’ For Christ’s sake, this is obvious.”

 “The internet is among the few things that humans have built that they don’t understand.” It is “the largest experiment involving anarchy in history. Hundreds of millions of people are, each minute, creating and consuming an untold amount of digital content in an online world that is not truly bound by terrestrial laws.” The internet as a lawless anarchic state? A massive human experiment with no checks and balances and untold potential consequences? What kind of digital doom-mongerer would say such a thing? Step forward, Eric Schmidt – Google’s chairman. They are the first lines of the book, The New Digital Age, that he wrote with Jared Cohen.

 We don’t understand it. It is not bound by terrestrial laws. And it’s in the hands of two massive, all-powerful corporations. It’s their experiment, not ours. The technology that was supposed to set us free may well have helped Trump to power, or covertly helped swing votes for Brexit. It has created a vast network of propaganda that has encroached like a cancer across the entire internet. This is a technology that has enabled the likes of Cambridge Analytica to create political messages uniquely tailored to you. They understand your emotional responses and how to trigger them. They know your likes, dislikes, where you live, what you eat, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry.

 And what next? Rebecca MacKinnon’s research has shown how authoritarian regimes reshape the internet for their own purposes. Is that what’s going to happen with Silicon Valley and Trump? As Martin Moore points out, the president-elect claimed that Apple chief executive Tim Cook called to congratulate him soon after his election victory. “And there will undoubtedly be be pressure on them to collaborate,” says Moore.

 Journalism is failing in the face of such change and is only going to fail further. New platforms have put a bomb under the financial model – advertising – resources are shrinking, traffic is increasingly dependent on them, and publishers have no access, no insight at all, into what these platforms are doing in their headquarters, their labs. And now they are moving beyond the digital world into the physical. The next frontiers are healthcare, transportation, energy. And just as Google is a near-monopoly for search, its ambition to own and control the physical infrastructure of our lives is what’s coming next. It already owns our data and with it our identity. What will it mean when it moves into all the other areas of our lives?

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg: still only 32 years of age. Photograph: Mariana Bazo/Reuters

 “At the moment, there’s a distance when you Google ‘Jews are’ and get ‘Jews are evil’,” says Julia Powles, a researcher at Cambridge on technology and law. “But when you move into the physical realm, and these concepts become part of the tools being deployed when you navigate around your city or influence how people are employed, I think that has really pernicious consequences.”

 Powles is shortly to publish a paper looking at DeepMind’s relationship with the NHS. “A year ago, 2 million Londoners’ NHS health records were handed over to DeepMind. And there was complete silence from politicians, from regulators, from anyone in a position of power. This is a company without any healthcare experience being given unprecedented access into the NHS and it took seven months to even know that they had the data. And that took investigative journalism to find it out.”

 The headline was that DeepMind was going to work with the NHS to develop an app that would provide early warning for sufferers of kidney disease. And it is, but DeepMind’s ambitions – “to solve intelligence” – goes way beyond that. The entire history of 2 million NHS patients is, for artificial intelligence researchers, a treasure trove. And, their entry into the NHS – providing useful services in exchange for our personal data – is another massive step in their power and influence in every part of our lives.

 Because the stage beyond search is prediction. Google wants to know what you want before you know yourself. “That’s the next stage,” says Martin Moore. “We talk about the omniscience of these tech giants, but that omniscience takes a huge step forward again if they are able to predict. And that’s where they want to go. To predict diseases in health. It’s really, really problematic.”

 For the nearly 20 years that Google has been in existence, our view of the company has been inflected by the youth and liberal outlook of its founders. Ditto Facebook, whose mission, Zuckberg said, was not to be “a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission to make the world more open and connected.”

 The more we argue with them, the more they know about us. It all feeds into a circular system Jonathan Albright

 It would be interesting to know how he thinks that’s working out. Donald Trump is connecting through exactly the same technology platforms that supposedly helped fuel the Arab spring; connecting to racists and xenophobes. And Facebook and Google are amplifying and spreading that message. And us too – the mainstream media. Our outrage is just another node on Jonathan Albright’s data map.

 “The more we argue with them, the more they know about us,” he says. “It all feeds into a circular system. What we’re seeing here is new era of network propaganda.”

 We are all points on that map. And our complicity, our credulity, being consumers not concerned citizens, is an essential part of that process. And what happens next is down to us. “I would say that everybody has been really naive and we need to reset ourselves to a much more cynical place and proceed on that basis,” is Rebecca MacKinnon’s advice. “There is no doubt that where we are now is a very bad place. But it’s we as a society who have jointly created this problem. And if we want to get to a better place, when it comes to having an information ecosystem that serves human rights and democracy instead of destroying it, we have to share responsibility for that.”

 Are Jews evil? How do you want that question answered? This is our internet. Not Google’s. Not Facebook’s. Not rightwing propagandists. And we’re the only ones who can reclaim it. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Google will no longer offer a search suggestion for "are Jews evil" which directs users to anti-Semitic websites. The search engine says it has removed offensive autocomplete results initially spotted by Carole Cadwalladr at the Observer, reports the Guardian. Cadwalladr explained how Google suggested a search for "are Jews evil" when "are Jews" was typed into its search box. Typing "are women" and "are Muslims" returned "are women evil" and "are Muslims bad," Cadwalladr said. Clicking those suggestions took her to page results that would lead one to conclude that "Jews are evil. Women are evil. Islam must be destroyed. Hitler was one of the good guys," Cadwalladr added. An answer box highlighted by Google even explained that "every woman has some degree of prostitute in her." A data scientist urged Google to take action, noting it had "clearly become a conduit for right-wing hate sites" and a victim of "the troll army," per the Guardian. "It is clearly very frightening what is going on here." Most of the offensive autocomplete results spotted by Cadwalladr have since been erased—"are women equal to men" was among them, per CBS News—though "are Muslims bad" is still a suggestion. Google says it tries "to prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing," but "autocomplete predictions are algorithmically generated based on users' search activity and interests" and "may be unexpected or unpleasant." That said, "we acknowledge that autocomplete isn't an exact science and we're always working to improve our algorithms." (Google previously suggested Wisconsin was "stupid.")


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Cleanup crews are working inside the Air Route Control Center in Aurora after fire, smoke and water left the place quite a mess. Technical crews are still trying to assess the damage and determine how long it will take to fix it.Brian Howard, 36, of Naperville has been charged with one felony count of Destruction of Aircraft or Aircraft Facilities after he allegedly set a fire in the basement of an Aurora FAA facility, cut the feeds to the radar and damaged the communications system, forcing a ground stop at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway international airports, the FBI says.Investigators say Howard managed to do extensive damage to the host computer, as well as the lines to radar in the facility. The Air Route Control Center monitors high altitude aircraft before landing in Chicago or flying through the area.Much of that work is being handled for the time being by other facilities in surrounding states, but at a much more limited capacity. Experts say the thousands of flights cancelled and delayed today had a definite negative impact on the economy.Illinois Senator Mark Kirk said in a statement tonight, "I want to see not only an immediate review by the FAA of the screening process....but also a report within 30 days outlining changes the FAA will make to prevent any one individual from having this type of impact on the heart of the United States economy."Authorities have stressed all day they believe this was an isolated incident and that Howard acted alone."This is a local issue with a contract employee," Aurora Police Chief Greg Thomas said. "There is no terrorist act."According to the criminal complaint, Howard allegedly entered the FAA facility at approximately 5:06 a.m. with a black hard-sided roller board suit case. The complaint alleges that at approximately 5:36 a.m., a message appeared on a Facebook account in Howard's name that contained a reference to the three-letter call number for the facility. The message was forwarded to law enforcement.The complaint says paramedics from the Aurora Fire Department then responded to a 911 call placed at approximately 5:42 a.m. by an individual at the FAA center. Paramedics entered the basement and followed a trail of blood that led them to Howard, officials said."They covered him, attempted to get him out of the building. There was some degree of effort on their part to drag him out of the building. But he was conscious. And as far as being cooperative, I would say not necessarily. They had to fight with him physically," Aurora Fire Department Chief John Lehman said. Howard remains hospitalized with self-inflicted stab wounds and is under police guard.Howard had worked for the Control Center as a contract employee for approximately eight years, according to the complaint. Howard was authorized to be in the building, officials said. No firearms were found on the scene, Thomas said.Howard had intimate knowledge of the building and radar system. According to ABC7 sources, he cut every radar feed to FAA air controllers before setting gas-soaked rags on fire near sensitive equipment and also damaged the communications system.Naperville police said he also made suicidal threats, prompting his family to ask for a well-being check Friday morning at his Naperville apartment. After speaking with Aurora officials, Naperville officers searched his apartment and found no victims, police said.Police said Howard had no real record, only a few minor traffic citations from 2007. Sources said he was angry he was going to be transferred with work to Hawaii."We don't know what his motive was at this point, and so the evidence is still being collected," Tom Ahern, ATF spokesperson, said."The scene is being worked, as with any investigation would, trying to gather all the evidence, interview all the people, collect all the information so we know what's going on," Thomas said.Officials said there could be days of potential radar outages at the Aurora facility, which could result in significant flight delays in the Great Lakes region. Without the Aurora facility, planes are moving in and out of Chicago at a "reduced rate" after airspace management was transferred to adjacent FAA facilities.There are only three routes out of Chicago right now: east toward South Bend, north to Milwaukee, and west to Rockford. Planes have to stay at a lower altitude for a longer time to maintain contact with those smaller facilities, which can only handle about 25 percent of normal operations.The FAA is beefing up staffing at those facilities and others in the area, and has not said when the repairs will be made to the Aurora building and when controllers can come back to work.Hundreds of Chicago flights were canceled, delayed and re-routed Friday. Airlines are urging travelers to check the status of their flights at www.fly.faa.gov ||||| (CNN) -- The man accused of setting a fire in an air traffic control center, causing the shutdown of operations at Chicago O'Hare International and nearby Midway Airport, sent a private Facebook message to a relative just before he started the blaze, the FBI says in an affidavit.

 "Take a hard look in the mirror, I have," the message said, according to the affidavit. "And this is why I am about to take out ZAU [the three-letter identification for the control center] and my life. ... So I'm gonna smoke this blunt and move on, take care everyone."

 Then, 36-year-old Brian Howard apparently started the fire in the control center basement, the affidavit said. When firefighters arrived, they found him lying on the floor and slicing his throat with a knife, the affidavit said.

 The FBI charged Howard, a resident of Naperville, Illinois, with one count of destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities, a felony. Howard was taken to a hospital for treatment of his injuries.

 The fire started at about 5:40 a.m. Friday and caused the evacuation of the air traffic control center in Aurora, Illinois, which controls flights in several Midwest states.

 Airlines at O'Hare canceled 1,550 flights and 470 at Midway, the Chicago Department of Aviation said at 8:45 p.m. Friday. Southwest Airlines suspended all fights for the day at Midway and Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport.

 The ripple effect caused the cancellation of flights at airports across the nation. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had 70 cancellations on Friday, compared to seven on Thursday, according to Flightaware, a flight-tracking website. LaGuardia Airport in New York City had 56 on Friday and 10 on Thursday.

 By Friday afternoon, flights to the Chicago airports had resumed at a "reduced rate," authorities said. The effect of the fire on Saturday's flight activity has not been determined and it was not clear when the center would reopen.

 Faced transfer to Hawaii

 Howard had worked eight years in the center but faced a transfer to Hawaii, the FBI says in an affidavit. The documents don't specify his job title but said he worked in "telecommunications matters."

 The FBI said Howard arrived at the control center a little after 5 a.m. dragging a "hard-sided roller board suitcase" into the basement, where he usually worked. He allegedly sent the Facebook message about 30 minutes after arriving and the recipient notified police.

 At 5:42 a.m. somebody in the control center called 911 about a fire, the affidavit said. First responders found smoke in the air, blood on the floor, exposed cables, burned towels, a gasoline can, a lighter and a knife on the floor, the affidavit said.

 One paramedic saw some feet sticking out from under a table and found a shirtless Howard "in the process of actively slicing his throat with another knife," the affidavit said. Howard, the affidavit said, told the paramedics to "leave me alone."

 Police obtained search warrants for Howard's home and found "legal documents that had been laid out in a staged manner, in an attempt to make them easier to find," the affidavit said. The affidavit didn't describe the documents.

 No court date has been set for Howard. If convicted, Howard faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $ 250,000.

 CNN affiliate WLS reported that Howard was a machinist mate in the Navy from 1996 to 2000 with nothing unusual about his military record. He had a few traffic citations in 2007, but nothing serious, WLS said.

 "He seemed like an everyday, normal kind of guy to me," neighbor Colin McGrath told WLS.

 Travelers are frustrated

 When the two Chicago airports shut down, controllers at other airports helped manage traffic to and from Chicago.

 O'Hare last year handled 883,000 takeoffs and landings, ranking it as the second-busiest airport on the planet, according to Airports Council International.

 Travelers stood in long lines inside the O'Hare terminal trying to rearrange flight plans. They described a frustrating scene to CNN reporters.

 "There's chaos mixed with outrage," said Bernard Thompson of Washington, D.C., who needs to be home by Sunday for a speaking engagement.

 Thompson said that after his flight was canceled, the airline told him the next flight with an open seat would leave Monday. He booked a flight with another airline, only to discover the first airline couldn't locate his luggage.

 "I'll get there but it's a question of whether I'll have my luggage with me," he said.

 The fire ruined travel plans at other airports.

 Des Moines International Airport reported 19 cancellations on Friday, according to Flightaware, including the flight that would have carried Chelsea and Bill Wright to New York City.

 "We boarded our dogs and our kids are here and we got babysitters for them so it's messing everything up," Chelsea Wright told CNN affiliate KCCI.

 Other control centers pitch in to help

 In a typical backup plan for a disabled FAA center, the FAA could assign air traffic control authority to FAA centers in other cities, such as Indianapolis, Cleveland, Minneapolis or Kansas City.

 Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union, said air traffic controllers braced for a tough day. "Indianapolis Center is one of the major facilities bearing the brunt of the extra workload today due to the Chicago Center situation," Church said.

 O'Hare is a main hub for United Airlines and other major carriers, with flights headed to international destinations. When controllers stop flights scheduled to fly to O'Hare, it has the potential to trigger a line of falling air traffic dominoes that will ruin travel plans for countless would-be passengers.

 Illustrating the point, the flight tracking website FlightRadar24.com showed no aircraft flying in an area stretching from eastern Iowa to central Michigan.

 Smoke at FAA facility stopped flights in May

 Friday's flight stoppages come four months after smoke at an FAA radar facility in Elgin, Illinois, prompted flight cancellations and delays at O'Hare and Midway.

 In that May 13 incident, most flights in and out of O'Hare were delayed by an average of an hour or more, and more than 600 flights were canceled, the Chicago Department of Aviation said. Some 75 flights were canceled at Midway.

 The smoke in that May incident was caused by a faulty motor in an air conditioning system, the FAA said at the time.

 CNN's Mike Pearson and Amanda Watts contributed to this report. |||||

– Anyone hoping to fly into or out of Chicago could be in for a delay today along with numerous others. More than 850 flights have been canceled out of Chicago's O'Hare International and Midway International airports after an employee allegedly set a fire in the basement of a major Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control center around 6am local time. The FBI is on the scene after the man was found with self-inflicted cuts to his wrist, also in the basement, WLS reports. Sources say the fire, now extinguished, was intentional and that the employee "used accelerant to start the fire near sensitive flight equipment." He also may have revealed his plan online, a source says. Authorities were seen confiscating a car at the facility hours after the fire began. All employees were evacuated. Another man was treated for smoke inhalation. Apart from flights into and out of Chicago, the incident at the Aurora, Ill., center could also delay thousands of "long-distance routes to other regions" as the center "controls air traffic for a giant swath of the Midwest," CNN reports. But the ground stop was recently lifted, and FAA officials say flights have resumed at a "reduced rate." Even so, travelers are urged to check their flight status, as many flights were delayed or re-routed.