Indonesian Startup Uses Road Safety to Drive Women’s Empowerment

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Iim Fahima Jachja cannot operate a vehicle and relies on a driver to get around the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, but that did not stop her from putting road safety at the heart of her women's empowerment startup. Since launching in late 2016, Queenrides has attracted 200,000 members to join its website. Aside from reading articles about lifestyle and financial management, members can also gather in person for workshops covering topics like sexual health and family planning. But road safety has been a focus from the beginning said, Jachja, a mother of two. "When you are safe on the road, you can be the best you want to be," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Jakarta. Road deaths are high in Indonesia, according to the transport ministry, which…
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Facebook Says Human Rights Report Shows It Should Do More in Myanmar

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Facebook on Monday said a human rights report it commissioned on its presence in Myanmar showed it had not done enough to prevent its social network from being used to incite violence. The report by San Francisco-based nonprofit Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) recommended that Facebook more strictly enforce its content policies, increase engagement with both Myanmar officials and civil society groups and regularly release additional data about its progress in the country. "The report concludes that, prior to this year, we weren't doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence. We agree that we can and should do more," Alex Warofka, a Facebook product policy manager, said in a blog post. BSR also warned that Facebook must be prepared to…
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Don’t Leave Half the World Offline and Behind, Urges Web Founder

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British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, appealed on Monday for companies and governments not to leave behind half of the world population yet to have internet access, which includes billions of women and girls. Berners-Lee told the opening of the Europe's largest technology conference that everyone had assumed his breakthrough in 1989, that connected humanity to technology, would lead to good things - and it had for a while. But he said the internet was "coming of age" and going awry, with fake news and issues with privacy, hate speech and political polarization, as well as a growing digital divide between those in richer and poorer countries. He called on companies and governments to join a "contract for the web" by next May in order…
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China Hosts Import Expo, Pledges to Buy More

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Foreign governments and businesses were hoping Chinese President Xi Jinping would use the opening of China’s first international import expo to make specific announcements about reforms for trade and investment.  But that did not happen, and some saw the measures Xi rolled out Monday as falling short of expectations.   “We were waiting today for President Xi to inform the world about the reform that will take place in the coming days, but what we wanted to hear, (such as) the complete steps on implementing the reform and a clear timetable did not appear,” said Carlo Diego D’Andrea, vice president and Shanghai Chapter chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in China.   In his speech, President Xi said China would relax barriers to access in areas such as financial…
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Xi Pledges to Open Chinese Market

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Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that China would take steps to widen access to its markets as he opened a huge trade fair amid criticism from other countries about China's economic and business practices. Xi said China would lower tariffs, take more action to punish violations of intellectual property rights, and work to boost domestic consumption of imported goods. Speaking at the trade expo in Shanghai, Xi pledged to "embrace the world" as China promotes the growing consumer market in the world's second-largest economy. He did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump by name, but alluded to Trump's "America first" economic policies by criticizing isolationism and citing a need to defend multilateral trade. ​The United States and China are locked in a battle over trade, with Trump complaining about…
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New Orleans Restaurateur Aims for Inclusivity in New Venture

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When employees enter Saba — an Israeli restaurant started by award-winning chef Alon Shaya — they pass by the company’s mission statement, which emphasizes the importance of a safe and comfortable working environment. Only at the end does it really get around to food with the words: “Then, we will cook and serve and be happy.” “The team is number one and that is who we are as a company,” said Shaya, explaining the genesis of his and his wife’s new venture, Pomegranate Hospitality , which includes restaurants in New Orleans and Denver, and the environment he hopes to create for the company’s nearly 150 employees. Discussions about new restaurants generally revolve around the food. And at Saba the piping hot pita bread or the blue crab hummus is discussion-worthy.…
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China Seeks to Rebrand Global Image With Import Expo 

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Facing a blizzard of trade complaints, China is throwing an "open for business'' import fair hosted by President Xi Jinping to rebrand itself as a welcoming market and positive global force.  More than 3,000 companies from 130 countries selling everything from Egyptian dates to factory machinery are attending the China International Import Expo, opening Monday in the commercial hub of Shanghai. Its VIP guest list includes prime ministers and other leaders from Russia, Pakistan and Vietnam.  The United States, fighting a tariff war with Beijing, has no plans to send a high-level envoy.  Xi's government is emphasizing the promise of China's growing consumer market to help defuse complaints Beijing abuses the global trading system by reneging on promises to open its industries.  "This says, look, we're not a global parasite that is creating…
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As Americans Vote, Facebook Struggles With Misinformation

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As U.S. voters prepare to head to the polls Tuesday, the election will also be a referendum on Facebook. In recent months, the social networking giant has beefed up scrutiny of what is posted on its site, looking for fake accounts, misinformation and hate speech, while encouraging people to go on Facebook to express their views. “A lot of the work of content moderation for us begins with our company mission, which is to build community and bring the world closer together,” Peter Stern, who works on product policy stakeholder engagement at Facebook, said at a recent event at St. John’s University in New York City. Facebook wants people to feel safe when they visit the site, Stern said. To that end, it is on track to hire 20,000 people…
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Record Imports Balloon US Trade Deficit in September

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A hungry American economy powered by a strong U.S. dollar saw record imports in September, driving the U.S. trade deficit to its highest level in seven months, the government reported Friday.  And amid President Donald Trump's trade war with Beijing, the U.S. trade deficit with China swelled again, as crucial soybean exports — a sore spot for Republicans in next week's midterm elections — continued to suffer.  With rising wages and low unemployment, Americans purchased more foreign-made telecommunications equipment, computers, mobile phones, aircraft engines, clothing and toys, the Commerce Department said.  The U.S. trade deficit posted its fourth straight monthly increase, rising 1.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted $54 billion, significantly overshooting analyst forecasts, as imports hit $266.6 billion, the highest level ever recorded. Exports also rose to $212.6 billion. …
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Twitter Deletes 10K Accounts That Sought to Discourage US Voting 

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Twitter Inc. deleted more than 10,000 automated accounts posting messages that discouraged people from voting in Tuesday's U.S. election and wrongly appeared to be from Democrats, after the party flagged the misleading tweets to the social media company.  "We took action on relevant accounts and activity on Twitter," a Twitter spokesman said in an email. The removals took place in late September and early October.  Twitter removed more than 10,000 accounts, according to three sources familiar with the Democrats' effort. The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, a party group that supports Democrats running for the U.S. House of Representatives.  2016 experience The DCCC launched the…
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US Added 250,000 Jobs, Wage Growth Fastest Since 2009

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U.S. employers added a stellar 250,000 jobs last month and boosted average pay by the most in nearly a decade in an effort to attract and keep workers.   The Labor Department's monthly jobs report, the last major economic data before the Nov. 6 election, also shows the unemployment rate remained at a five-decade low of 3.7 percent.   The influx of new job-seekers lifted the proportion of Americans with jobs to the highest level since January 2009.   Consumers are the most confident they have been in 18 years and are spending freely and propelling brisk economic growth. The U.S. economy is in its 10th year of expansion, the second-longest such period on record, and October marks the 100th straight month of hiring, a record streak.     ...
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Days After Synagogue Massacre, Online Hate Is Thriving

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A website popular with racists that was used by the man charged in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre was shut down within hours of the slaughter, but it hardly mattered: Anti-Semites and racists who hang out in such havens just moved to other online forums. On Wednesday, four days after 11 people were fatally shot in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, anonymous posters on another website popular with white supremacists, Stormfront, claimed the bloodshed at Tree of Life synagogue was an elaborate fake staged by actors. The site's operator, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, said traffic has increased about 45 percent since the shooting. The anti-Semitic rhetoric was just as bad on another site popular with white supremacists, The Daily Stormer, where a headline said: "Just go,…
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Google Workers Worldwide Protest Company’s Handling of Sex Harassment Cases 

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It was a protest that went around the globe.  From Singapore to Dublin, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Pryor, Oklahoma, Google employees walked out of their offices to protest the internet search giant's handling of sexual discrimination cases, and express their frustration with its workplace culture.    WATCH: Google Silicon Valley Employees Join a Worldwide Protest In San Francisco, where Google has several offices, hundreds of workers congregated at a plaza where they gave speeches and held signs. One read: "I reported and he got promoted." The unusual protest — tech companies are not unionized and typically keep strife about personnel matters behind closed doors — riveted Silicon Valley, which has struggled in recent years over the treatment of women in the industry. Resignation, severance The Google protest was spurred by a New York Times story that…
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Trump Signs Sanctions Order Targeting Venezuela’s Gold Exports

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Washington ratcheted up pressure on Venezuela's leftist President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday with new measures aimed at disrupting the South American country's gold exports, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said. Bolton promised a tough stance by the Trump administration toward "dictators and despots near our shores" and singled out Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in a speech in Miami, which is home to large numbers of migrants from Cuba and Venezuela. He spoke days before U.S. elections next week that include close races for a Senate seat and the governorship in Florida. His remarks were likely to be well received by those Cuban-Americans and other Hispanics in Florida who favor stronger U.S. pressure on Cuba's Communist government and other leftist governments in Latin America. In his prepared remarks for the…
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Wall Street Gains Ground After Selloff, but Tech Falters as Apple Slips

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U.S. stocks rose on Thursday, as robust earnings reports supported a third day of recovery from a bruising selloff in October, but a drop in Apple's shares ahead of results kept technology stocks under pressure. Chemicals producer DowDuPont Inc rose 6.6 percent after quarterly profit topped estimates and the company announced a $3 billion share buyback. NXP Semiconductors climbed 8.6 percent after the chipmaker topped profit and revenue estimates, while American International Group Inc gained 4.7 percent after the insurer posted a smaller-than-quarterly loss. Markets also got a lift after U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet he had a "very good" talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade and North Korea and that the two planned to meet at the upcoming G-20 summit. The rebound comes after…
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Report: China Exporting Knowledge of Restricting Internet Worldwide

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China is exporting its methods of strict internet controls to governments around the world that are employing them to stifle dissent and free flow of information, and tighten their grip on power, according to U.S.-based Freedom House. In an annual report issued Wednesday, the rights watchdog said global internet freedom had declined for the eighth consecutive year in 2018, with democratic governance under threat from what it called "digital authoritarianism."   Freedom House says Beijing has held sessions on managing online content with 36 of the 65 countries tracked in the report, and provided internet monitoring equipment to governments of many of those nations.  The group also says many governments have passed or proposed new laws restricting internet information and access in the name of fighting "fake news." The report…
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Google Workers Launch Worldwide Protests

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Hundreds of Google employees left their offices Thursday as part of a worldwide walkout protest of the company's handling of sexual harassment cases and its workplace culture. More than a thousand workers and contractors reportedly gathered outside of Google's Mountain View, California, headquarters. Hundreds more, most of them women, also launched protests outside nearly two dozen global company offices. "We are a small part of a massive movement that has been growing for a long time," organizers said in an article published in the online magazine The Cut. "We are inspired by everyone from the women in fast food who led an action against sexual harassment to the thousands of women in the #metoo movement who have been the beginning of the end for this type of abuse." The walkouts…
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Report: Freedom of Internet Declines for 7th Consecutive Year

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Governments around the world are increasing control over use of the internet and social media, according to the latest report by the Freedom House organization. In 2017, officials in many countries accused dissidents of spreading fake news as a pretext to silence them. Online propaganda and uncontrolled harvesting of personal data have permeated the internet in the past year. A Freedom House expert told VOA these trends are a major threat to democracy. Zlatica Hoke has this story. ...
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White House Adviser: More US Tariffs on China Goods Not ‘Set in Stone’

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U.S. President Donald Trump has not "set in stone" any decisions on escalating tariffs on Chinese goods and may withdraw some duties if there are promising policy discussions with China, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday. Kudlow said on CNBC that the meeting agenda between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of November in Buenos Aires has not yet been worked out, but "we may have a very good meeting in Argentina with President Xi.” Asked about whether Trump would proceed with tariffs if the meeting fails to ease trade tensions, Kudlow said: "I would say nothing is set in stone right now. By the way, the president on one of the cable shows, did say - it didn’t get picked up - that…
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Trump Carbon Plan Attacked by Coastal States, Lauded by Coal Interests

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President Donald Trump's proposal to replace an Obama-era policy to fight climate change with a weaker plan allowing states to write their own rules on emissions from coal-fired power plants was criticized by coastal states, but applauded by coal interests on Wednesday. Under the proposed Affordable Clean Energy plan that acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler issued in August, the federal government would set carbon emission guidelines, but states would have the leeway to set less stringent standards on coal plants, taking into account the age and upgrade costs of facilities. The heads of environmental and energy agencies from 14 mostly coastal states, including California, New York and North Carolina, told the EPA in joint comments on the Trump plan that it would result in minimal reductions of…
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Cuba Says Investor Interest Up Despite US Hostility

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Cuba's foreign trade and investment minister said on Wednesday the country had signed nearly 200 investment projects worth $5.5 billion since it slashed taxes and made other adjustments to its investment law in 2014. Cuba began a major effort to attract foreign investment as socialist ally Venezuela's economy went into crisis and has ratcheted it up as export revenues decline and the Trump administration backtracks on a detente begun under then-U.S. President Barack Obama. "Foreign investment in Cuba is growing despite the recent strengthening of the U.S. economic, trade and financial blockade, though it is below what we want," the minister, Rodrigo Malmierca, said at an investment forum in Havana. Even as the forum unfolded, debate on an annual resolution condemning U.S. sanctions got under way at the U.N. General…
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US Supreme Court Divided Over How Google Settled Privacy Case

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U.S. Supreme Court justices, in an internet privacy case involving Google, disagreed on Wednesday over whether to rein in a form of settlement in class action lawsuits that awards money to charities and other third parties instead of to people affected by the alleged wrongdoing. The $8.5 million Google settlement was challenged by an official at a Washington-based conservative think tank, and some of the court's conservative justices during an hour of arguments in the case shared his concerns about potential abuses in these awards, including excessive fees going to plaintiffs' lawyers. Some of the liberal justices emphasized that such settlements can funnel money to good use in instances in which dividing the money among large numbers of plaintiffs would result in negligible per-person payments. Conservatives hold a 5-4 majority…
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Fitch Shifts Mexico Debt Outlook From Stable to Negative

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Fitch Ratings changed its outlook on Mexico's long-term foreign-currency debt issues Wednesday from “stable” to “negative,” citing the potential policies of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The leftist Lopez Obrador has tried to smooth anxieties in the business community, but upset many on Monday by cancelling a partly built, $13 billion new airport on the outskirts of Mexico City. The private sector had strongly backed the airport project, but Lopez Obrador called it wasteful. Instead he plans to upgrade existing commercial and military airports. He made the decision based on a public referendum that was poorly organized and drew only about 1 percent of the country's voters.   Alfredo Coutino, Latin America director at Moody's Analytics, said the decision to cancel the airport project “added not only volatility but also…
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Birthday Blues for Bitcoin as Investors Face Year-on-Year Loss

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Bitcoin was heading towards a year-on-year loss on Wednesday, its 10th birthday, the first loss since last year's bull market, when the original and biggest digital coin muscled its way to worldwide attention with months of frenzied buying. By 1300 GMT, bitcoin was trading at $6,263 on the BitStamp exchange, leaving investors who had bought it on Halloween 2017 facing yearly losses of nearly 3 percent. A year ago, bitcoin closed at $6,443.22 as it tore towards a record high of near $20,000, hit in December. That run, fueled by frenzied buying by retail investors from South Korea to the United States, pushed bitcoin to calendar-year gains of over 1,300 percent. Ten years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin's still-unidentified founder, released a white paper detailing the need for an online currency…
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UK-Canadian ‘Grand Committee’ Seeks to Question Zuckerberg

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Parliamentary committees in Britain and Canada on Wednesday urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before a joint hearing of international lawmakers examining fake news and the internet. Damian Collins, the head of the U.K. parliament's media committee, is joining forces with his Canadian counterpart, Bob Zimmer, to pressure Zuckerberg to personally take part in hearings, as he did before the U.S Congress and the European Parliament. The so-called "international grand committee" session would be held Nov. 27 and could include lawmakers from other countries. "We understand that it is not possible to make yourself available to all parliaments. However, we believe that your users in other countries need a line of accountability to your organization — directly, via yourself," the pair said in a letter to Zuckerberg. "We would…
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