COVID-19 vaccine may come within 1 year: WHO chief

Washington, Jun 27: Facebook has said that it will flag all "newsworthy" posts from politicians that break its rules, including those from President Donald Trump.

Separately, Facebook's stock dropped more than 8 per cent, erasing roughly USD 50 billion from its market valuation, after the European company behind brands such as Ben & Jerry's and Dove announced it would boycott Facebook ads through the end of the year over the amount of hate speech and divisive rhetoric on its platform.

Later in the day, Coca-Cola also announced it joined the boycott for at least 30 days.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously refused to take action against Trump posts suggesting that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud, saying that people deserved to hear unfiltered statements from political leaders.

Twitter, by contrast, slapped a "get the facts" label on them.

Until Friday, Trump's posts with identical wording to those labelled on Twitter remained untouched on Facebook, sparking criticism from Trump's opponents as well as current and former Facebook employees.

Now, Facebook is all but certain to face off with the president the next time he posts something the company deems to be violating its rules.

"The policies we're implementing today are designed to address the reality of the challenges our country is facing and how they're showing up across our community," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page announcing the changes.

Zuckerberg said the social network is taking additional steps to counter election-related misinformation.

In particular, the social network will begin adding new labels to all posts about voting that will direct users to authoritative information from state and local election officials.

Facebook is also banning false claims intended to discourage voting, such as stories about federal agents checking legal status at polling places.

The company also said it is increasing its enforcement capacity to remove false claims about local polling conditions in the 72 hours before the US election.

Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Civic Media, said the changes are a "reminder of how powerful Facebook may be in terms of spreading disinformation during the upcoming election".

He said the voting labels will depend on how good Facebook's artificial intelligence is at identifying posts to label.

"If every post that mentions voting links, people will start ignoring those links. If they're targeted to posts that say things like 'Police will be checking warrants and unpaid traffic tickets at polls' a classic voter suppression disinfo tactic and clearly mark posts as disinfo, they might be useful," he said.

But Zuckerman noted that Facebook "has a history of trying hard not to alienate right-leaning users, and given how tightly President Trump has aligned himself with voter-suppressing misinfo, it seems likely that Facebook will err on the side of non-intrusive and ignorable labels, which would minimize impact of the campaign."

Earlier in the day, shares of Facebook and Twitter dropped sharply after consumer-product maker Unilever announced a new ad boycott on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram through at least the end of the year.

The European company said it took the move to protest the amount of hate speech online.

Unilever said the polarised atmosphere in the United States ahead of November's presidential election placed responsibility on brands to act.

In addition to the decline in Facebook shares, Twitter ended the day more than 7 per cent lower.

Unilever, which is based in the Netherlands and Britain, joins a raft of other advertisers pulling back from online platforms.

Facebook in particular has been the target of an escalating movement to withhold advertising dollars to pressure it to do more to prevent racist and violent content from being shared on its platform.

"We have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S.," Unilever said.

"Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society."

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Thursday, Verizon joined others in the Facebook boycott.

Unilever "has enough influence to persuade other brand advertisers to follow its lead," said eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin.

She noted that Unilever pulled back spending "for longer, on more platforms (including Twitter) and for more expansive reasons" in particular, by citing problems with "divisiveness" as well as hate speech.

Sarah Personette, vice president of global client solutions at Twitter, said the company's "mission is to serve the public conversation and ensure Twitter is a place where people can make human connections, seek and receive authentic and credible information, and express themselves freely and safely."

She added that Twitter is "respectful of our partners' decisions and will continue to work and communicate closely with them during this time."

Washington, May 21: US President Donald Trump China is on a "massive disinformation" campaign and is desperately trying to deflect the "pain and carnage" that it spread throughout the world, US President Donald Trump has said, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump, who has expressed disappointment over China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed that it was the "incompetence" of Beijing that led to the mass killing across the globe. 

"China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race so they can continue to rip-off the United States, as they have done for decades, until I came along!" Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"Spokesman speaks stupidly on behalf of China, trying desperately to deflect the pain and carnage that their country spread throughout the world. Its disinformation and propaganda attack on the United States and Europe is a disgrace… It all comes from the top. They could have easily stopped the plague, but they didn't," he said in a series of tweets.

Trump blamed China for spreading the coronavirus globally and accused it of being incompetent.
"Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the 'incompetence of China', and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!" Trump said.

China has denied covering up the extent of its coronavirus outbreak and accused the US of attempting to divert public attention by insinuating that the virus originated from a virology laboratory in Wuhan.

"China was the first country to report the COVID-19 to the World Health Organisation (WHO), (and) that doesn't mean the virus originated from Wuhan... There has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last month.

"A discerning person will understand at a glance that the purpose is to create confusion, divert public attention, and shirk their responsibility," he said.

The novel coronavirus which first originated in Wuhan in December last year has claimed 328,120 lives and infected nearly 5 million people globally. The Us is the worst affected country with 93,439 deaths and over 1.5 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Meanwhile, the US Senate passed a bill boosting oversight of companies based in China and other nations that could lead to their removal from American stock exchanges.

The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, proposes to increase oversight of Chinese and other foreign companies listed on American exchanges and delist and ban over-the-counter trading for firms that are out of compliance with US regulators for a period of three years.

In a related development, a group of top Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin following disturbing reports that China's state-owned and-directed enterprises were looking to exploit the economic crisis by buying US and foreign companies.

As companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approach banks to identify the purchase of companies in the US and in Europe affected by the pandemic, the senators urged Mnuchin to protect against the China's and the CCP's predatory economic behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis.

"We write to express our concerns related to the People's Republic of China's (PRC) efforts to exploit the economic crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic to gain control of distressed companies or shirking its international responsibilities amidst a worldwide crisis.

"In both Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and PRC policy documents, Beijing has made no secret of its intentions to dominate strategic industrial and emerging technology sectors as well as influence standards at the expense of liberal, rules-based governance," wrote the senators.

As the crisis reverberates across the globe, the PRC's predatory lending practices — including the use of non-disclosure agreements for bilateral loans — not only damage the fiscal situation of recipient countries but also undermine the international community's ability to respond effectively to the crisis, they said.

"Without US and international pressure for accountability and transparency, those countries that are in debt to the PRC will not have the political cover or protection to open their financial books. Such countries will face the risk of default or a currency crisis, leaving the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Western countries to clean up the PRC's mess," the senators said.

During a campaign round table Katrina Pierson, Senior Advisor to the Trump 2020 Campaign, said that only the US President will defeat the coronavirus, hold China accountable for their negligence, and defend the American people from socialism. 

Washington, Jun 9: The defacement of Mahatma Gandhi's statue by unknown miscreants was a "disgrace", US President Donald Trump has said, days after it was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting during the nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

The statue, which is across the road from the Indian Embassy, was vandalised on the intervening night of June 2 and 3, prompting the Indian embassy to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident happened during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

"It was a disgrace," Trump made the brief comment at the White House on Monday when asked about the incident.

The Indian Embassy here has taken up the matter with the US Department of State for early investigation into the matter, as also with the Metropolitan Police and National Park Service.

It is working with the US Department of State, Metropolitan Police and National Park Service for expeditious restoration of the statue at the park.

The US president and First Lady Melania Trump, during their visit to India in February, had spent considerable time at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally given them a tour of the historic place.

"The First Lady and I have just had a pleasure of visiting Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram, a few miles from here, where he launched the famous Salt March," Trump had said during his address at the Namaste Trump rally at the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad on February 24. A day later, Trump and the first lady also laid a wreath at Raj Ghat in New Delhi.

Pictures of Trump and the first lady with Gandhi's spinning wheel during their visit to the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad are seen hanging on the walls of the White House.

Last week, top US lawmakers and the Trump Campaign condemned the vandalisation of the statue.

"Very disappointing," tweeted Kimberly Guilfoyle, advisor to Donald J Trump for President Inc. and National Chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committees.

North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis said, "It's disgraceful to see the defacing of the Gandhi statue" in Washington DC.

"Gandhi was a pioneer of peaceful protesting, demonstrating the great change it can bring. Rioting, looting and vandalising do not bring us together, he said.

Senator Marco Rubio said, "more evidence that violent radicals and run of the mill crazies have hijacked legitimate protests to create anarchy or for their own purposes."

Protests against the custodial killing of Floyd turned violent in the US and prestigious monuments were damaged. In Washington DC, protestors burnt a historic church and damaged monuments like the Lincoln Memorial.

US Ambassador to India Ken Juster apologised for the incident.

"So sorry to see the desecration of the Gandhi statue in Wash, DC. Please accept our sincere apologies," he said.

"Appalled as well by the horrific death of George Floyd and the awful violence and vandalism. We stand against prejudice & discrimination of any type. We will recover and be better," he said in a tweet last week.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Gandhi was dedicated by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.