Why Donald Trump appears if we google 'idiot'?

Agencies
December 12, 2018

Washington, Dec 12: US Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, in an effort to understand how Google search algorithms work, asked its CEO Sundar Pichai why so many pictures of President Donald Trump appear when she does a Google search for "idiot".

"Right now, if you Google the word `idiot` under images, a picture of Donald Trump comes up. I just did that," the California Democrat told Pichai during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday here.

"How would that happen? How does search work so that would occur?" Lofgren asked Pichai, according to the Washington Post.

The Google CEO - who was at the hearing to address allegations of political bias in his company`s widely used search engine -- said the results were based on billions of keywords ranked according to over 200 factors such as relevance, popularity, how others were using the search term, to determine how to best match a query with results.

"So it's not some little man sitting behind the curtain figuring out what we`re going to show the user?" Lofgren asked. "It`s basically a compilation of what users are generating." 

Republicans have long accused Google of political bias, which the company has strongly denied. 

In August, Trump said in a tweet that a Google search for "Trump News" showed only reports from "Fake News Media." He concluded it was "rigged" against him so "almost all stories and news was bad." 

House Republicans said they wanted to hold the hearing -- entitled "Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and Filtering Practices" -- to make sure the search giant was being impartial.

"Americans put their trust in big tech companies to honour freedom of speech and champion open dialogue," Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said in a statement before the hearing.

The House committee had also questioned YouTube, Twitter and Facebook executives at separate hearings on bias in big tech.

In response to Republicans who complained about Google searches, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu said: "If you want positive search results, do positive things. If you don`t want negative search results, don`t do negative things." 

"And to some of my colleagues across the aisle, if you`re getting bad press articles and bad search results, don`t blame Google or Facebook or Twitter, consider blaming yourself."

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News Network
March 11,2020

New Delhi, Mar 11: According to the Union health ministry, there are 62 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country.

The Delhi High Court Wednesday sought the stand of the Centre and the Delhi government on a PIL seeking proper and adequate measures to combat coronavirus.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar issued notice to the Ministry of Health and the Delhi government seeking their replies on the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by an advocate.

The petition, by lawyer Triveni Potekar, seeks directions to the Centre and the Delhi government to make available important and relevant information on access to and availability of medical facilities for testing and treatment for the coronavirus disease.

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News Network
May 23,2020

Karachi, May 23: Ninety-seven people were killed and two survived when a passenger plane crashed into homes in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, health officials said Saturday.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane had made multiple approaches to land at the city's airport when it came down in a residential area, damaging buildings and sparking a rescue operation that lasted into the night.

All passengers and crew had been accounted for and the bodies of those killed had been recovered from the crash site, the Sindh Health Ministry said, adding that 19 had been identified.

A local hospital earlier reported it had received the bodies of people killed on the ground.

The site remained cordoned off on Saturday morning.

The crash sent plumes of smoke were into the air as rescue workers and residents searched the debris for people and as firefighters tried to extinguish the flames.

An AFP reporter witnessed charred bodies being loaded into ambulances.

PIA said the plane lost contact with air traffic control just after 2:30 pm (0930 GMT) travelling from Lahore to Karachi.

The disaster comes as Pakistanis prepare to celebrate the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid al-Fitr, with many travelling back to their homes in cities and villages.

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News Network
July 3,2020

Jul 3: China under President Xi Jinping has stepped up its "aggressive" foreign policy toward India and "resisted" efforts to clarify the Line of Actual Control that prevented a lasting peace from being realised, according to a report released by a US Congress appointed commission.

The armies of India and China have been locked in a bitter standoff at multiple locations in eastern Ladakh for the last seven weeks, and the tension escalated after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a violent clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15.

“Under General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping, Beijing has stepped up its aggressive foreign policy toward New Delhi. Since 2013, China has engaged in five major altercations with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC),” said a brief issued by US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"Beijing and New Delhi have signed a series of agreements and committed to confidence-building measures to stabilise their border, but China has resisted efforts to clarify the LAC, preventing a lasting peace from being realised,” said the report and was prepared at the request of the Commission to support its deliberations.

Authored by Will Green, a Policy Analyst on the Security and Foreign Affairs Team at the Commission, the report says that the Chinese government is particularly fearful of India’s growing relationship with the United States and its allies and partners.

“The latest border clash is part of a broader pattern in which Beijing seeks to warn New Delhi against aligning with Washington,” it said.

After Xi assumed power in 2012, there was a significant increase in clashes, despite the fact that he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi several times and Beijing and New Delhi have agreed to a series of confidence-building mechanisms designed to mitigate tensions.

Prior to 2013, the last major border clash was in 1987. The 1950s and 1960s were a particularly tense period, culminating in 1962 with a war that left thousands of soldiers dead on both sides, according to the records of China's People's Liberation Army, the report said.

“The 2020 skirmish is in line with Beijing’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. The clash came as Beijing was aggressively pressing its other expansive sovereignty claims in the Indo-Pacific region, such as over Taiwan and in the South and East China seas,” it said.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the area.

Several weeks before the clash in the Galwan Valley, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe called on Beijing to “use fighting to promote stability” as the country’s external security environment worsened, a potential indication of China’s intent to proactively initiate military tensions with its neighbours to project an image of strength, the report said.

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