Pompeo and Circumstance: The special relationship endures July 23, 2020 The visit of a US secretary of state to any country is always an eagerly anticipated affair. Short of a US presidential visit, there is little that can match the arrival of the global superpower’s leading diplomat onto any domestic stage, as can be testified by the extreme media and political interest these encounters provide. [...]
Former BBC boss Mark Thompson steps down as New York Times chief July 22, 2020 Mark Thompson, a former boss at the BBC and Channel 4, is to step down as chief executive of the New York Times. He will be replaced by the newspaper’s chief operating officer Meredith Kopit Levien, who was also previously its advertising head. Levien said she intends to focus on expanding the newspaper’s subscription model, [...]
Facebook and Instagram to examine algorithm in racial bias investigation July 22, 2020 Facebook has said it is establishing two new groups to assess whether its policies and algorithms are racially biased, following a major advertising boycott against the social media giant. Facebook will set up an Inclusive Product Council, with a similar Equity Team at its sister app Instagram, to explore whether there are “potential biases” across [...]
Tiktok could be sold to US investors to avoid American ban July 22, 2020 Beleaguered video app Tiktok could be split from its Chinese parent company Bytedance and sold off to US investors in a bid to curtail a mooted ban on the app in America, as questions over the company’s data protection policies face mounting criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. Tiktok’s $110bn (£86bn) parent firm Bytedance [...]
Amber Heard admits punching ex-husband Johnny Depp during heated row July 21, 2020 Amber Heard has admitted that she punched ex-husband Johnny Depp during a heated row at their Los Angeles penthouse in 2015, as Depp’s court battle against the Sun newspaper enters its third week. Depp is suing the Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN) and the Sun’s executive editor Dan Wootton over an article from April [...]
Top 10 billionaires: Jeff Bezos boosts fortune by $13bn in one day July 21, 2020 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leads a list of the world’s top 10 billionaires after seeing his personal fortune jump $13bn (£10.2bn) yesterday, in what is believed to be the largest single-day individual wealth jump of all time. Bezos’ net worth has swelled $74bn this year to $189.3bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. The Amazon [...]
Cryptoforhealth Twitter Scam exposes the benefits of cryptocurrency, not the flaws July 21, 2020 Bitcoin tends to get a bad wrap and has ever since its inception. It’s a useful headline for the media, doom mongers and legacy protectors that always have a go. The truth is that the scale of this activity in the cryptocurrency space pales in significance compared to the multi billion dollars scammed everyday from [...]
Tory MPs amp up pressure for UK ban on Tiktok July 20, 2020 A group of senior Conservative MPs have warned that Chinese social media app Tiktok is”’as much a threat to Britain” as banned telecoms firm Huawei, as tensions between London and Beijing continue to sour. The government last week announced it will introduce a ban on new Huawei products from the UK’s 5G network from next [...]
Britain enters talks with Japan to fill Huawei vacuum as trade deal deadline looms July 20, 2020 The British government has entered talks with Japan to help build the UK’s 5G infrastructure after it last week banned Huawei technology from the network over national security concerns. British officials held talks with their counterparts in Tokyo last Thursday about the future of the UK’s 5G networks, according to Japanese newspaper Nikkei, with businesses [...]
Johanna Kyrklund: Are markets paying enough attention? July 20, 2020 Like home-schooled children during the Covid crisis, markets seem to be struggling to pay attention for long. For parents, one of the most difficult parts of lockdown has been home-schooling their children. My social media feed has been full of people tearing their hair out as long-forgotten concepts such as subordinate clauses or trigonometry have [...]