President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to sue the Des Moines Register newspaper for a pre-election poll published showing Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump by 3 points in Iowa. Donald Trump said he plans to sue an Iowa newspaper that printed an outlier election poll that showed Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris ahead in the state by 3 points. Trump spoke public for the first time Monday since winning the presidency. He announced from Mar-a-Lago a $100 billion investment from SoftBank Group, a Japanese technology group, into U.S. projects over the next four years. He spoke briefly about the investment alongside Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, and then took questions from reporters for nearly an hour. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort on December 16, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) When asked about ABC News’ recent settlement in the defamation lawsuit , he said he could see himself moving forward with defamation lawsuits to other people and platforms. Trump hinted at several other lawsuits he was considering, including ones against "60 Minutes", Pulitzer and the Iowa newspaper that printed J. Ann Selzer’s headline-grabbing poll in the days leading up to the election. Here is what to know about the poll: Veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer announced she was done with election polling and moving on to "other ventures" after her pre-election poll in Iowa inaccurately showed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of President-elect Donald Trump in the state he had easily won in 2016 and 2020. A highly anticipated election poll from J. Ann Selzer, the "gold standard" pollster in Iowa, was printed in The Des Moines Register on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, showing Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump by 3 points in the Hawkeye State. The poll was an outlier, and Trump ultimately won the state by a 13-point margin, winning 56% of the vote to Harris’ 42.7%. READ MORE: Here it is: The final 2024 electoral map Last month, Selzer announced she was ending her election polling. "Polling is a science of estimation, and science has a way of periodically humbling the scientist," she wrote . On Monday, Trump said he felt the back-and-forth of the polling printed in the newspaper was "fraud" and "election interference." "She's a very good pollster. She knows what she was doing and she didn't quit before. And we'll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow," Trump said. READ MORE: Veteran pollster Ann Selzer ending election polling after 'big miss' in Iowa survey ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit that stems from comments made by host George Stephanopoulos, saying that the former president was found liable for rape. Under New York's narrow definition of rape in legal settings, E. Jean Carroll could not prove Trump committed rape. He was instead found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. LiveNOW's Andrew Craft spoke about the settlement with New York based attorney Randy Zelin. Last week, ABC News agreed to give $15 million towards Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit. The defamation lawsuit involved a "This Week" segment with anchor George Stephanopoulos that aired on March 10, 2024. In the segment, Stephanopoulos made an inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. Stephanopoulos claimed during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. on that day that Trump had been "found liable for rape," which misstated the verdicts in Carroll's two lawsuits against Trump. Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined under New York law. Trump sued Stephanopoulos and the network for defamation soon after the segment aired. As part of the defamation settlement, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library that will be marked as a "charitable contribution." READ MORE: ABC, Trump settle defamation lawsuit When referencing the settlement and hinting at other possible lawsuits, Trump said he’s doing it because America needs "a fair media." "I feel I have to do this. I shouldn't really be the one to do it; it should have been Justice Department or somebody else. But, I have to do it," he said. "It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press." The Source: Information in this article was taken from Donald Trump remarks given from Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 16, 2024, about his ABC News settlement. Information about the ABC defamation lawsuit and settlement was taken from a settlement document made public on Dec. 14 and obtained by The Associated Press.
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Trump’s plans for EV program cuts, global tariffs and more: reportThis article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West. Shivika Sabharwal’s nerves kicked in the second she spotted the size of the crowd. It was mid-September, and Sabharwal was standing center stage inside a massive event space at Mumbai’s extravagant Jio World Convention Centre. The space, which had recently hosted the star-studded wedding between billionaire heirs Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, had been transformed into a sea of green – green spotlights, green archways, a neon-green light display — in honor of WhatsApp’s first business summit in India. Around 1,000 lanyard-wearing executives had shown up for the event, and all eyes were trained on Sabharwal. The relatively introverted 32-year-old is a professional ceramist and not a tech expert. But she was the perfect messenger for the story that WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, has been increasingly eager to tell: how businesses of all sizes are using its messaging app to grow. Standing on stage alongside her father and business partner, Sabharwal explained how she started her company, Shivika Pottery Gallery, out of her home on the outskirts of Delhi. In the early days, she advertised her creations to her personal network from her own WhatsApp account. But as her business expanded, she needed a dedicated way to manage messages and reach new potential customers. Her father, who’d spent some of his career working in tech, suggested she try the WhatsApp Business app, a free product that allows small businesses to set up digital storefronts. Sabharwal used the app to run ads on Instagram and Facebook that allowed users to begin chatting with her on WhatsApp. It increased her reach – so much so that she expanded into teaching pottery, sometimes hosting as many as 30 classes in a single month. When WhatsApp started seeking out volunteers to test its new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot for businesses, Sabharwal and her father signed up – she was eager for new tools to manage her inbox. “This lets me remain focused on what I love,” Sabharwal told the crowd at the Mumbai summit, “which is creating pottery and teaching students.” WhatsApp may have transformed Sabharwal’s business. But Meta’s goal isn’t to sell pottery. Rather, Shivika Pottery Gallery is a tiny element in the larger solar system of services, features, and connections that make up WhatsApp. Summit attendees also learned about the Bengaluru transit system, which now lets people buy train tickets on WhatsApp, and about Max Life, a major Indian insurance company that uses WhatsApp to translate its services into seven regional languages. They heard from the co-founder of Delhi-based children’s food brand, Slurrp Farm, which now makes a quarter of its direct sales on WhatsApp, and from an executive at HDFC Bank, the 10th largest bank in the world, about how customers are now banking on the platform. “Our banking experience has to work for everyone, and this is where we find WhatsApp interesting,” Anjani Rathor, HDFC’s chief digital officer, told the crowd. WhatsApp is the world’s most widely used messaging app; the company says it has 2 billion daily users. These users send more than 100 billion messages every day in 60 languages across 180 countries. Some 400 million of those users are in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market, followed by another 120 million in Brazil. WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of “everything app.” In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, WhatsApp is now also a place for scheduling doctor’s appointments and conducting real estate deals – and buying Sabharwal’s ceramic ducks. In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp. The shift has been driven, of course, by money. WhatsApp has never been much of a moneymaker. While Meta makes billions off mining people’s personal data to sell more ads, WhatsApp is an encrypted app, whose founders once very publicly swore off advertising altogether. Lately, however, WhatsApp has been aggressively luring big businesses to its suite of paid messaging products for businesses, and openly flirting with the possibility of introducing ads in the not-too-distant future. True to Meta’s appetite for voracious expansion, WhatsApp’s goal is nothing short of getting “every business in the world on the platform,” Nikila Srinivasan, Meta’s head of product for business messaging, told Rest of World . During the event in Mumbai, the company announced it would soon begin physically touring smaller cities throughout India to onboard local businesses to the app. Nikila Srinivasan, head of product for business messaging, at Meta’s office in New York. George Etheredge for Rest of World. It’s still early days, but WhatsApp’s efforts to generate revenue this way are beginning to pay off. Meta now makes billions of dollars from the “click-to-message” ads that businesses purchase. Meta also charges tens of thousands of large enterprises, from Air France to Volvo, to send messages through its premium API, which includes a full suite of marketing, payment, and other features. While Meta’s paid messaging tools brought in about $1 billion last year – peanuts compared to the whopping $132 billion the company earned from ads – paid messaging revenue is growing far faster than ad revenue and has more than doubled since early 2023. For Meta, which has squeezed every cent out of Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp represents a potentially vast and largely untapped opportunity. It’s little wonder that Mark Zuckerberg has begun referring to WhatsApp as “the next major pillar” of his company. And yet, for that to be true, Meta will need to pull off a delicate balancing act. To get its money’s worth out of WhatsApp, it will need to transform it into a place where the world’s businesses want to spend their money, without sacrificing the privacy and simplicity that made the world flock to the app in the first place. Inside the MPK21 building at Meta’s vast Menlo Park headquarters. Marissa Leshnov for Rest of World Before Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014, it was something like the anti-Facebook. Where Facebook had become a place for publicly posting photos and messages for all your friends to see, WhatsApp was all about one-on-one and small group messages. Where Facebook was loaded with ads, apps, and games, WhatsApp’s founders – former Yahoo engineers Jan Koum and Brian Acton – eschewed unessential features and publicly swore off ads . The company had spent no money on marketing and had just 32 engineers at the time it was acquired. ( Rest of World attempted to reach Koum and Acton, but received no replies). But perhaps most significantly, where Facebook struggled to adapt to the mobile era, WhatsApp, which launched in 2009, was a mobile-first product that had amassed roughly half a billion users in just five years – many of them in countries where several people’s first experience of the internet took place on a cellphone. It did so by offering those users a cheap workaround to the sky-high SMS prices that some telecom monopolies charged. Rather than getting hit with a bill for every message they sent, WhatsApp users spent just $1 a year for unlimited messages. That and a $250,000 seed investment were enough to keep WhatsApp financially afloat until it raised $60 million from Sequoia Capital in two separate rounds. But WhatsApp wasn’t just cheap. Working out of an unmarked, converted garage in Mountain View, California, the engineering team was laser-focused on ensuring speed and reliability – whether a user was messaging from the latest iPhone in a major American city, or BlackBerrys and Nokia feature phones operating in the most remote places. “We were trying to hit every user, everywhere, on every platform,” Chris Peiffer, one of WhatsApp’s first hires and who worked at Stanford University with Koum, told Rest of World . He recalled hiking to a cellular dead zone in the hills near Mountain View with a Nokia C3 to test WhatsApp’s durability with limited bandwidth. Reliable messaging for everyone, everywhere, wasn’t just altruism – it was a business strategy. WhatsApp’s most likely users weren’t in Silicon Valley, where unlimited texting plans were already widespread, Peiffer said. Instead, the greatest opportunity was in countries like India , where the cost of SMS was out of reach for huge segments of the population, or in tiny European countries like the Netherlands , where cross-border communication was far more common, and therefore, more costly. Making the app work in all of those places meant building a lightweight product, which wouldn’t drain users’ data, by gathering tons of information about them. “The overall mantra from Jan was: This is the user’s data. They paid for it. We should not be using it wastefully,” Michael Donohue, WhatsApp’s former engineering director, told Rest of World . The founders’ commitment to knowing virtually nothing about its users was such that, in 2013, WhatsApp began plans to bring end-to-end encryption to users’ chats. This trifecta of cost, reliability, and privacy quickly made WhatsApp a global phenomenon, with users exchanging 10 billion messages a day around the world by 2012. None of this escaped Zuckerberg, who was rushing to ensure the mobile revolution didn’t pass Facebook by. “WhatsApp is already ahead of us in messaging in the same way Instagram was ‘ahead’ of us in photos,” Zuckerberg wrote in April 2012, according to internal documents revealed as part of a federal lawsuit in the US. It was around the same time that Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, and Zuckerberg wrote that he’d gladly shell out another billion for WhatsApp “if we could get them”. When Facebook did finally acquire WhatsApp – two years later and for a whole lot more money than $1 billion – investors naturally wondered how the social networking giant planned to make a return on this huge investment. Zuckerberg vowed that WhatsApp would “continue to operate independently”, and that its product roadmap would “remain unchanged.” Koum, meanwhile, assured users that the acquisition wouldn’t betray WhatsApp’s ethos. “There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision, and our product,” he said at the time. As Acton would later tell Forbes , Zuckerberg was supportive of the company’s plans to encrypt the app. Koum and Acton also slipped what was effectively a no-advertising clause into the deal terms, stipulating that they could cash out their remaining shares if Facebook ever tried to make money on WhatsApp without their consent. But before long, former employees say, culture clashes began between the Facebook and WhatsApp teams. “WhatsApp was just like: We are focused on doing this communication thing, and that’s all we’re going to do. We’re not going to think about six different things we could build at the same time,” said Donohue, the former engineering director. “I think that was one of the differences.” Brian Acton and Jan Koum at a conference in Laguna Beach, California, in October 2016. Credit: Reuters. The clearest physical metaphor for the way that the Meta machine has subsumed WhatsApp is located right inside the company’s vast Menlo Park headquarters. MPK21, as the building is known, is a nearly 49,000-square-meter behemoth that boasts its own redwood forest. Reaching WhatsApp’s section of the building involves a labyrinthine journey – past the twee reading nooks marking Instagram territory, the conference rooms with nerdcore names like Lorem Ipsum, the spotless mini-kitchens stocked with prebiotic soda, and the motivational posters bearing mottos like “Begin Anywhere”. After a five-minute trek, a bright green wall with the WhatsApp logo appears in the distance, with its own inspirational poster to match: “Move Fast, Stay Simple”. On a Wednesday in September, the space was nearly empty, save for WhatsApp’s vice president of product, Alice Newton-Rex, who sat in a sunlit conference room dressed in a brand-appropriate green blazer. Newton-Rex joined the company in 2019, when Facebook itself was in the midst of a radical rethink of its role in the world. That year, Zuckerberg announced plans for a new “privacy-focused vision for social networking.” While the Facebook of old had been akin to a digital town square, Zuckerberg argued, “people increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room”. This shift, which became derisively known as Facebook’s “ pivot to privacy ”, meant overhauling the way its news feed functioned. But it also meant that WhatsApp, the most private of all of Facebook’s apps, would take a more prominent role within the company’s orbit. “We began to expand our vision for the product,” Newton-Rex told Rest of World . A big part of that vision involved seizing on what Meta believes is a fertile opportunity in business messaging. While mobile adoption and social media use have exploded around the world, e-commerce still lags in many top mobile markets. Only about a third of social media users in India shop online, according to a recent Bain & Company study conducted in partnership with Meta. And yet, other studies Meta has commissioned have found that 90% of Indian consumers now message with a business at least once a week, and 66% report being frustrated with businesses that don’t offer messaging. The company has found similar results in studies of WhatsApp’s other top markets, including Indonesia and Brazil. For Meta, these two trends combined created an opening to incorporate more transactions into messaging itself. Alice Newton-Rex, vice president of product at WhatsApp. Marissa Leshnov for Rest of World “What we realised is, as people were using WhatsApp to talk with friends and family, they were slowly also using it to talk to the local community around them, which meant local businesses,” Srinivasan, Meta’s head of product for business messaging, told Rest of World . She noted that her own mother in Chennai, India, has used WhatsApp for years to schedule deliveries of fresh milk. Similar to messaging, the business use cases for WhatsApp were growing fastest in international markets. WhatsApp’s first business tool – the free WhatsApp Business app that allows companies to advertise and message users – launched in early 2018, and has since grown to 200 million users around the world. Later that year, the company came out with an API that, for the first time, charged companies to send larger volumes of messages over longer periods of time. The product has since expanded to include features that enable appointment booking, subscription sign-ups, loan approvals, personalized promotions, and more within a WhatsApp chat. Though it’s available to businesses of all sizes, it was designed to serve companies that need more tools than the free app has to offer. That includes multinational giants like L’Oréal. According to Guilherme Eler, the company’s social commerce director for Latin America, Brazil was always behind other mature markets in terms of e-commerce sales for beauty products. Door-to-door sales , meanwhile, are common. “When it comes to beauty, people used to buy through conversations,” Eler said. When Covid-19 hit, consumers had little choice but to begin buying products online, and according to Eler, many turned to WhatsApp – a platform used by 90% of Brazilians . “We realised this was a singular opportunity to emulate the door-to-door experience,” he said. L'Oréal began relying on WhatsApp as a tool for offering beauty tips and promoting products to users based on their individual skincare needs. The company soon found that open rates for messages on WhatsApp could be six times higher than on email. Customers also spent more and made more frequent purchases when they shopped via WhatsApp. “We didn't choose WhatsApp. The Latin American population chose WhatsApp,” Eler said. “We chose to be where the consumers were.” For Shauravi Malik, co-founder of Slurrp Farm, the path to marketing and selling on WhatsApp began even earlier. Nearly six years ago, at one of her investors’ suggestions, the self-proclaimed WhatsApp super-user began adding a WhatsApp number to the packaging of her company’s snacks and cereals. It was early days for WhatsApp’s business products, and companies still needed separate phones for each dedicated WhatsApp account. But the platform was an essential way to reach mothers, who are Slurrp Farm’s primary customers, Malik told Rest of World . “We are in the core business of changing behavior about how we eat,” she said. “It’s so important to do this at the level of each individual parent.” Slurrp Farm’s operations on WhatsApp have since grown more sophisticated. As Malik told the crowd at the summit in Mumbai, the company now segments its audience by their city or the age of their child, in order to send more personalised promotions via WhatsApp. Slurrp Farm has also used WhatsApp’s checkout features to allow people to shop directly on the platform. According to Malik, about 25% of direct-to-consumer sales now take place on WhatsApp. There are likely even more shoppers who buy their products elsewhere after having chatted with Slurrp Farm’s customer service team, which Malik said is increasingly becoming more like a sales team. “They are the closest touch point to the consumer, and suited to it,” she said. And yet, for all of the success that brands have had on WhatsApp, Eler from L'Oréal believes the platform still has a long way to go in terms of the breadth of the e-commerce tools it offers. He’s still waiting for WhatsApp to introduce customer reviews and other more sophisticated e-commerce tools to its product catalogs. “I’m not fully happy,” Eler said. But, if anything, that should be encouraging news for WhatsApp, he said, because it shows “it can get way bigger”. WhatsApp’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Marissa Leshnov for Rest of World. One innovation that Meta hopes will boost WhatsApp’s value with businesses is generative AI. WhatsApp executives argue it will multiply what companies get done on the platform. Part of the reason WhatsApp has taken off as a customer service and sales channel in countries like India and Brazil, Srinivasan said, is because the price of labour there is low enough that businesses can afford to have call centers full of workers responding to WhatsApp chats. But AI, she argued, could make that possible for just about any company, anywhere. “We’re really, really bullish about the power of AI,” she told Rest of World . “A few years from now, I can see a world where every small business has an AI agent that’s representing them.” The list of AI features now packed into WhatsApp seems to grow by the month: Meta AI is now baked into the WhatsApp search bar , allowing users to start a conversation with a Meta chatbot. Businesses, meanwhile, are beginning to use a customer service version of the chatbot that can automatically generate responses to inquiries, as well as tools that help them craft AI-generated ad campaigns for Facebook and Instagram. Meta has also built a new AI marketing tool for its ad portal. That feature allows any business to upload a list of phone numbers for customers who have opted in to receive messages. The tool then matches that list against numbers that have been shared on Facebook and Instagram, and uses AI to determine which subset of customers would be the best fit for a given message. “This means that businesses are going to see better ROI [return on investment] and people will see more relevant messages,” Zuckerberg told an audience in São Paulo this summer when he introduced the tool. And yet, with each new revenue-boosting feature, WhatsApp has added a little asterisk to its core privacy promises, according to Nathalie Maréchal, co-director of the privacy and data program at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C. “It’s not necessarily that those asterisks are illegitimate. It’s that they’re complicated,” she told Rest of World , “and many users are either not going to take the time, or aren’t going to prioritize, fully understanding it”. Meta has stood by its commitment to end-to-end encryption – so much so that it’s threatened to pull the app from India if the government forces the company to break encryption, as it’s currently trying to do. Meta has also expanded privacy tools for users, including enabling disappearing messages , encrypting backups , and protecting people’s IP addresses in calls . But while its dedication to encryption isn’t in doubt, Maréchal said, the new features Meta has introduced for businesses are a “departure from the original expectations that were set by WhatsApp’s founders”. When businesses upload lists of their customers’ numbers to the AI marketing tool, for example, Meta can use data from people’s Facebook and Instagram activities to select which customers to target, a Meta spokesperson told Rest of World . And, since chats with Meta AI are, by definition, chats with Meta, they are not encrypted, the spokesperson said. WhatsApp discloses this in the app, but it still means that the things people say and search there can be used to train Meta’s AI models. Meta declined to comment on whether these unencrypted chats with Meta AI could also be subject to government requests for data. That would be relevant context for users, particularly in a country like India, where government data requests are on the rise and where Meta has said its AI chatbot is especially popular on WhatsApp. Namrata Maheshwari, the India-based encryption policy lead for digital rights group Access Now, told Rest of World that while WhatsApp’s pushback against encryption-threatening laws “is a good sign for users”, there “continue to be concerns” due to Meta’s privacy policy, user data sharing, and transparency reporting. “Establishing and maintaining a separation from other Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram will be the difference between the privacy that WhatsApp offers, and the gold standard for private messaging,” Maheshwari said. Newton-Rex said privacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp and that the company is trying to clearly communicate with users about what privacy protections WhatsApp offers and where. That includes AI products. “The cornerstone of this is transparency. We’re not relying on the expectation that people have,” she told Rest of World . “We’re investing in user education.” Newton-Rex also said that while Meta is considering allowing ads on WhatsApp, those ads will never appear in users’ main inboxes. Instead, she said, the company is assessing incorporating ads into WhatsApp’s Channels feature, which allows users to publicly broadcast messages to lists of followers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, WhatsApp’s gradual Meta-morphosis over the last few years has drawn sharp criticism from the app’s original team. “It’s a shadow of the product we poured our hearts into, and wanted to build for the world,” Neeraj Arora, a former WhatsApp executive who orchestrated the Facebook deal, wrote in a lengthy LinkedIn post in 2022. At the time, Arora was running his own social media app along with Donohue. He did not respond to Rest of World ’s requests for comment. Peiffer, meanwhile, said he understands why the product has had to change. “It’s very hard to keep a software product at the forefront of consumer attention for 15 years,” he said. “That is an extraordinary balancing act.” While Peiffer left WhatsApp prior to the Facebook acquisition, he later returned to the company to help build the business messaging products. As WhatsApp evolves, the company’s executives are keenly aware of the risk of turning the app into the junk drawer of the mobile era, overloaded with too many features and AI chatbots hawking products and driving away users. “That is actually the central tension,” Newton-Rex said. “How do we keep it simple? How do we make sure we’re designing for everyone, even as we add new things?” That tension is top of mind for WhatsApp’s business customers, too. “We need to be really cautious about not replicating what email became,” said Eler from L'Oréal. Right now, WhatsApp is working, he said. “I don’t want to spoil it.” The big question, of course, is whether WhatsApp’s billions of users want it to change. So far at least, the data suggests they haven’t been turned off. According to Meta, 1 billion users now message with a business each week across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. WhatsApp is even growing aggressively in one particular market that has always eluded it: the United States, where the app surpassed 100 million monthly active users in July. For Meta, that’s a major breakthrough in its ambitions to turn WhatsApp into a cash cow. As Zuckerberg told investors in July, “All of the work that we’re doing to grow the business opportunity there over time is just going to have a big tailwind if the US ends up being a big market.” Of course, that future is a long way off. While Meta doesn’t disclose how much revenue WhatsApp brings in, it’s safe to say that, even after all this investment, it still accounts for a tiny slice of Meta’s revenue. But to the company’s leadership, that may be more of a feature than a bug, because it means it still has ample opportunity to grow. As Srinivasan put it, albeit perhaps optimistically, “The only way for this to go is up.” Issie Lapowsky is a tech journalist based in Philadelphia. This is the first of a three-part series. This article was originally published in Rest of World , which covers technology’s impact outside the West.Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Reddit, Super Micro Computer, Intuit and more
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Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te (left) is welcomed by Ms Ingrid Larson, managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan, upon his arrival in Hawaii, on Nov 30. Taiwan’s Lai Ching-te kicks off Pacific tour with US stop Taiwan President Lai Ching-te arrived on Nov 30 in the United States for the start of a week-long tour in the Pacific that he said would usher in a new era of democracy, but which has sparked fury in Beijing. China considers self-governed Taiwan to be part of its territory and opposes any international recognition of the island and its claim to be a sovereign state. Beijing especially bristles at official exchanges between Taiwan and the US, which does not recognise Taipei diplomatically but is its most important backer and biggest supplier of arms. Mr Lai, who has been an outspoken defender of Taiwan’s sovereignty and whom Beijing calls a “separatist,” is on his first overseas trip since taking office in May. READ MORE HERE Gautam Adani breaks silence on US indictment Adani Group founder Gautam Adani responded for the first time on Nov 30 to allegations by US authorities that he was part of a US$265 million (S$355 million) bribery scheme, saying that his ports-to-power conglomerate was committed to world class regulatory compliance. The indictment is the second major crisis to hit Adani in just two years, sending shockwaves across India and beyond. One Indian state is reviewing a power deal with the group, France’s TotalEnergies decided to pause its investments, and political rows over Adani have disrupted India’s Parliament. READ MORE HERE Trump threatens 100% tariff on Brics countries President-elect Donald Trump on Nov 30 threatened to impose a 100 per cent tariff on the Brics group of nations if they undercut the US dollar. “We require a commitment... that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty US Dollar or, they will face 100 percent Tariffs,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website, referring to the grouping that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others. The statement comes after a Brics summit held in October in Kazan, Russia, where the countries discussed boosting non-dollar transactions and strengthening local currencies. READ MORE HERE Thousands rally again to oppose Georgia’s government Many thousands of demonstrators gathered late on Nov 30 in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, building barricades, breaking windows and setting off fireworks outside parliament, in protest against the government which called off talks to join the EU. Riot police responded by firing water cannon and tear gas into the crowds. The demonstrations were by far the biggest since the increasingly anti-Western ruling party was re-elected in October in a vote the pro-EU opposition says was rigged. READ MORE HERE Arsenal thump West Ham with five-star show to go second Resurgent Arsenal romped to a 5-2 victory at capital rivals West Ham United in a Premier League derby on Nov 30, with all seven goals coming in a mind-boggling first half in the evening kickoff at the London Stadium. Gabriel’s trademark ninth-minute header opened the floodgates and Arsenal ran riot, with Leandro Trossard tapping in after 26 minutes before Martin Odegaard’s penalty and Kai Havertz’s cool finish in the space of a minute sent some home fans heading for the exits. Incredibly, West Ham responded almost immediately, with Aaron Wan-Bissaka slotting home before a stunning free kick by Emerson offered hope of an unlikely comeback. READ MORE HERE Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards Spin the wheel now
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CVS Health Corporation Announces Pricing of Maximum Tender OfferThe Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested two people on Sunday, including a suspected human trafficker, for allegedly smuggling Pakistani nationals onto a migrant vessel, which capsized off the coast of Greece on December 14. At least five migrants drowned after their wooden boat, carrying many Pakistanis, capsized off Greece’s southern island of Gavdos, the coastguard said, with witnesses saying many were still missing as search operations continued. The number of Pakistanis killed in a Greek shipwreck rose to four on December 16, the Foreign Office said, additionally confirming that there were 47 Pakistani survivors . Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday directed authorities to take solid action against human trafficking and ordered the immediate implementation of the Integrated Border Management System (IBMS) to monitor international travellers. “The recurrence of such incidents is due to the sluggish actions against the people involved,” he added. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the FIA booked four alleged human traffickers and reportedly detained two suspects from Sialkot and Gujrat. According to an FIA press release issued today, FIA Director General Ahmed Ishaq Jahangir ordered a crackdown against elements involved in the Greece boat accident. The release stated that two suspects had been arrested and were identified as Saeed Ahmed and alleged human trafficker Mohammad Aslam. “The suspect (Aslam) is an operative of an international gang involved in human smuggling,” the FIA alleged in the press release. “The suspect extorted Rs8.5 million from the victims.” According to the release, Aslam allegedly sent people to Libya with the help of accomplices, before attempting to send them from Libya to Greece by boat. “The suspect was arrested from Gujranwala using modern technology,” the FIA said in the release. In a separate operation, another alleged trafficker was arrested in Gujrat, according to the FIA. This suspect would allegedly produce false travel documents in exchange for “large sums of money”, the agency said. Director of the FIA’s Gujranwala Zone Abdul Qadir Qamar said in the press release that the crackdown against those involved in the Greek shipwreck remains ongoing and that “all resources are being utilized to arrest the accused”. He added that if there is strong evidence, the accused will receive the death penalty.
Kapin sa 600 ka biktima sa pagpahimulos nga mga bata ang naluwas sa Philippine National Police (PNP) sukad niadtong 2022. Sa usa ka pamahayag niadtong Dominggo, Disyembre 15, 2024, si PNP chief General Rommel Marbil. Sukad niadtong 2022 dihang gipirmahan ang Republic Act 11930 o Anti-Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OSAEC), ang PNP, pinangulohan sa Women and Children Protection Center (WCPC), nipahigayon og kinatibuk-ang 307 ka operasyon nga miresulta sa pagluwas sa 636 ka mga biktima, pagkasikop sa 167 ka mga suspek, ang pagpasaka og 218 ka kaso, ug 12 ka kombiksyon hangtod karon. Kini nga mga operasyon, nga gitumong sa pagbungkag sa mga ilegal nga network nga nagpunting sa mga huyang nga mga bata, nagpakita sa hugot nga pasalig sa PNP sa padayon nga pakigbatok sa pagpahimulos sa bata nga gimando ni Presidente Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Sa mga biktima, 375 ang mga babaye ug 121 ang mga lalaki, pulos nag-edad og 17 paubos. Pipila sa mga naluwas mga hamtong na. Usa sa labing makahasol nga mga kaso mao ang pagluwas sa usa ka upat ka bulan nga bata gikan sa mga kamot sa iyang kaugalingong inahan ug iyaan, kinsa nadakpan tungod sa pagbaligya sa bata sa dark web gikan sa ilang pinuy-anan sa Taguig City. Ang operasyon gihimo sa WCPC, pinangulohan ni Brigadier General Portia Manalad. Pinaagi sa PNP-Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG), gipakusgan sa nasudnong ahensya sa kapulisan ang online entrapment operations aron masubay ug masikop ang mga malapason nga nagpahimulos sa kabataan pinaagi sa digital platforms. Gipasiugda ni Marbil ang nagkadako nga papel sa teknolohiya, labi na ang Artificial Intelligence (AI), sa pagpadako sa mga paningkamot sa imbestigasyon labi na sa pag-ila sa mga sad-an, nga miresulta sa tukma sa panahon nga pagluwas ug malampuson nga mga prosekusyon. "AI-powered tools are transforming the way we solve crimes and rescue victims, especially in cases involving the dark web. These technologies enable us to analyze vast amounts of data, identify suspects with greater precision, and swiftly respond to emerging threats," matod niya. Nanawagan ang taas nga pulis sa publiko nga magpabiling mabinantayon ug aktibo sa pagtaho sa mga gidudahang kaso sa pagpahimulos sa bata. “We urge every Filipino to take part in this fight. Protecting our children is a shared responsibility, and by working together, we can ensure their safety and well-being,” dason niya. Gisubli ni Marbil nga ang PNP nagpadayon sa pagpalig-on sa ilang pakigtambayayong sa lokal ug internasyonal nga mga organisasyon, pagsamok sa trafficking networks, ug paggamit sa mga advanced nga teknolohiya aron mahatagan og hustisya ug mapanalipdan ang mga bata sa nasod. Sa sayo pa, giawhag ni Marcos ang gobyerno ug ang publiko sa paghimo og kolektibong aksyon ug pagpaningkamot sa pagwagtang sa mga kaso sa OSAEC. “It is sexual abuse and exploitation of children. And I leave it to your imagination, and I would imagine in some cases your imagination cannot even begin to fathom what is done to these poor children -- to our poor children,” dugang niya. “And so, we must do more. We must do more. One of the most important parts of the Filipino culture is family. We are known around the world for that. We are so well known for it that we are – Filipinos are the number one caretakers of foreign children all around the world,” dason niya. / TPM/SunStar Philippines
Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) Software Market to Reach USD 8.4 Billion by 2031 | TMR
DR MAX PEMBERTON: I've treated THOUSANDS of patients with bulimia - and like John Prescott, many suffered terrible shame. But there's another kind of bulimia YOU might have - and not even know it...New Delhi: Amid the growing air power of China and Pakistan and the shortage of fighter aircraft faced by the Indian Air Force, the Defence Ministry has formed a high-level committee under Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh to look into the overall capability development of the service through indigenous design, development and acquisition projects. Government officials told that the committee was formed after the Indian Air Force made detailed presentations to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh during the Air Force Commanders' Conference last month in the national capital. During the conference, the top Defence Ministry functionaries were briefed about the futuristic combat aircraft requirements along with the gaps required to be filled in the capability that the force wants to have in the coming times to tackle the threat perception faced on both the fronts. The officials said the committee has other senior members of the Defence Ministry, including the Secretary (Defence Production), Sanjeev Kumar; Defence Research and Development Organisation chief Dr Samir V Kamat; and Deputy Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal T Singh, who is the committee's member secretary. The Secretary of Defence Finance also attended the first meeting of the committee that took place last week. The committee is expected to submit its report to the Defence Minister in the next two to three months with a detailed assessment of the requirements of the force. 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The Chinese are now also likely to provide fighter aircraft to the Bangladesh Air Force, where the new government is not seen as friendly to India. The Indian Air Force's plans of acquiring over 110 fighter aircraft of the 4.5-plus generation capability have been pending for some time with the government, and the committee may suggest a way to address the requirement through the indigenous route. The gap in weaponry on the aircraft in terms of all types of air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles has also been widening vis-a-vis the northern adversary. The long-range surface-to-surface missile systems with the Chinese forces are also believed to have longer ranges and are in much higher numbers than what is possessed by the Indian forces. The Indian Air Force has been relying mainly on the indigenous projects for its future capability development, but the LCA Mark 1A project has been hit by delays due to supply chain issues faced by the supplier GE of the US. The Indian Air Force's plans to have 114 fighter aircraft made in India by Indian manufacturers in collaboration with foreign original equipment manufacturers to fulfil the capability gap. The IAF has already stated that it favours all its major future acquisitions to be built through indigenous routes only. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel )
Customers of UK energy firms who drive electric vehicles are facing higher electricity costs to recharge their cars . This follows the latest rise in the energy price cap by the regulator Ofgem. Marc Dal Cin, energy expert at EV Charger Installation, has told Digital Journal that charging an electric vehicle at home increases the home electricity bill, since the overall energy consumption goes up. The average UK energy tariff is around 32p per kWh for home charging. A full charge for a popular model like the Nissan Leaf 3.ZERO e+ will cost approximately £17, while a larger vehicle such as the Mercedes-Benz EQE will cost £24.50. Over the course of a year, this could add up to around £884 for weekly charges, following the energy price cap increase. Cin advises that charging at home is remains more economical than using public charging stations, which average 48p per kWh. Cin offers several tips for EV drivers looking to reduce their charging costs: Switch to a Time-of-Use Tariff Cin explains: “Many energy providers offer tariffs with cheaper rates during off-peak hours, usually at night. By scheduling your EV charging during these hours, you can significantly lower your costs.” Use Smart Charging Cin states: “Investing in a smart charger allows you to set charging times and optimise energy use. This helps avoid peak energy prices, and some systems even adapt to use renewable energy when it’s most available.” Monitor Your Charging Habits Cin adds: “Only charge your EV when necessary and avoid overcharging the battery. Charging too frequently or unnecessarily can lead to higher electricity bills.” Compare Energy Tariffs Cin outlines: “Regularly review your energy provider and compare tariffs to ensure you’re on the best deal. With prices fluctuating, switching providers can lead to significant savings.” By following these steps, Cin expects electric vehicle drivers to be able to mitigate the impact of rising electricity prices and ensure they continue to enjoy the savings associated with driving electric vehicles. Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news.Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.NEW YORK, Dec. 22, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leading securities law firm Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP announces that a lawsuit has been filed against Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE: ZETA) and certain of the Company’s senior executives for potential violations of the federal securities laws. If you invested in Zeta, you are encouraged to obtain additional information by visiting https://www.bfalaw.com/cases-investigations/zeta-global-holdings-corp . Investors have until January 21, 2025, to ask the Court to be appointed to lead the case. The complaint asserts claims under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 on behalf of investors in Zeta securities. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and is captioned Davoodi v. Zeta Global Holdings Corp. , et al. , No. 24-cv-08961. What is the Lawsuit About? Zeta is a cloud-based technology company that provides a marketing platform to assist marketers in acquiring customers. The complaint alleges that Zeta represented that its marketing platform was powered by the industry’s largest opted-in data set. On November 13, 2024, prominent investment research firm Culper Research published a report titled: “Zeta Global Holdings Corp (ZETA): Shams, Scams, and Spam.” Based on Culper’s investigation that included proprietary interviews with industry experts and former Zeta employees, the research firm found that Zeta’s data set had been generated from a network of “consent farms” – i.e., sham websites designed to gather consumer data under false pretenses or awards that did not exist. Culper Research further wrote that these consent farms drove almost the entirety of Zeta’s growth over the past 2+ years, representing 56% of its Adjusted EBITDA, and could result in devastating regulatory action. The news caused a significant decline in the price of Zeta stock. On November 13, 2024, the price of the company’s stock fell 37%, from a closing price of $28.22 per share on November 12, 2024, to $17.76 per share on November 13, 2024. Click here for more information: https://www.bfalaw.com/cases-investigations/zeta-global-holdings-corp . What Can You Do? If you invested in Zeta you may have legal options and are encouraged to submit your information to the firm. All representation is on a contingency fee basis, there is no cost to you. Shareholders are not responsible for any court costs or expenses of litigation. The firm will seek court approval for any potential fees and expenses. Submit your information by visiting: https://www.bfalaw.com/cases-investigations/zeta-global-holdings-corp Or contact: Ross Shikowitz ross@bfalaw.com 212-789-3619 Why Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP? Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP is a leading international law firm representing plaintiffs in securities class actions and shareholder litigation. It was named among the Top 5 plaintiff law firms by ISS SCAS in 2023 and its attorneys have been named Titans of the Plaintiffs’ Bar by Law360 and SuperLawyers by Thompson Reuters. Among its recent notable successes, BFA recovered over $900 million in value from Tesla, Inc.’s Board of Directors (pending court approval), as well as $420 million from Teva Pharmaceutical Ind. Ltd. For more information about BFA and its attorneys, please visit https://www.bfalaw.com . https://www.bfalaw.com/cases-investigations/zeta-global-holdings-corp Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Muscat to host conference on innovation and sustainability in endowmentsNone