Month: January 2021

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Politics

Home to vote on 25th Modification, Trump impeachment

House to vote on 25th Amendment, Trump impeachment

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) speaks during a convening of a joint congressional session to validate the 2020 electoral college vote in the House of Representatives on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC

Caroline Brehman | Getty Images

The House will press ahead on Tuesday to remove President Donald Trump from office for instigating the deadly attack on the Capitol last week.

The Democratic Chamber will vote on a resolution Tuesday night calling on Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to push Trump out of the White House. On Wednesday the House plans to decide whether Trump should be the first president ever to be charged twice.

The Chamber is expected to pass the 25th Amendment that will not force Pence and Cabinet Secretaries to act. The vice president has so far resisted calls to remove Trump from office.

The majority leader of the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Tried on Monday to pass the resolution unanimously. Rep. Alex Mooney, RW.Va., blocked it.

The Democrats, who started impeachment proceedings against Trump on Monday, say they have enough votes to charge the president with high crimes and misdemeanors. It is unclear how many Republicans will join the party to sue Trump.

The legislature uprising that killed five people, including a Capitol police officer, sparked a rush to hold Trump accountable and there were only a few days left in his tenure. Proponents of his dismissal say leaving the president remains in office until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 is too risky.

Some members of both parties have stated that they prefer to reprimand the president, partly because the Senate may not have enough time to remove Trump even if the House sends articles through the Capitol as soon as possible. But those in support of the impeachment argue that a token vote will not hold Trump accountable for his role in the insurrection that threatened the lives of lawmakers and disrupted their count of Biden’s election victory – a formal step in the peaceful transfer of power.

Trump spoke publicly for the first time since the Capitol attack on Tuesday. He took no responsibility for the violence of the mobs and warned that a second impeachment could be dangerous for the country.

Democrats unveiled competing versions of impeachment articles on Monday. The one leaders titled “Incitement to Insurrection” seem most likely from Representatives Jamie Raskin, D-Md., David Cicilline, DR.I., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif.

In the article, lawmakers accuse Trump of launching an attack on an equal branch of government and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power. They cite not only his call for supporters to fight the election results at a rally shortly before the Capitol attack, but also his two-month-long lies that widespread fraud has cost him a second term.

The impeachment article refers to Trump’s call to pressure Georgian Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to undo Biden’s victory in the state. Some Senate Republicans have been pushing for parliament to build articles only around Wednesday’s attack to make it harder for lawmakers to resolve impeachment issues, NBC News reported Monday.

Some Democrats have also questioned whether the House should send articles to the Senate immediately following the indictment against Trump. An early Senate negotiation could hamper Biden’s early agenda, including approving cabinet officials and passing a coronavirus aid package.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Has indicated that the Chamber may not receive articles until a week after Tuesday at the earliest. The Senate must initiate a lawsuit shortly after articles are forwarded by the House.

Hoyer signaled on Monday that he wants to send impeachment measures to the Senate immediately after the House’s actions. House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Didn’t respond Tuesday when asked when the House would send articles to the Senate.

“That’s not something I’m going to talk about now, as you can imagine. Take it step by step,” she told reporters at the Capitol.

On Monday, Biden envisioned the possibility that the Senate could spend half of its day on impeachment and the rest on filling the executive branch.

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Business

Walmart will check grocery deliveries to clients’ properties

Walmart will test grocery deliveries to customers' homes

The Walmart + home screen on a laptop placed in the Brooklyn borough in New York, United States on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Walmart is already bringing groceries to customers’ doors and putting them straight in the fridge in some cities. The company announced Tuesday that it will soon be testing another hands-on approach: deliveries to a smart cooler on customer porches or near their front door.

Starting earlier this spring, the big box dealer announced that it would be launching a pilot in its hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. The participating customers receive a temperature-controlled smart cooler called HomeValet. The cooler is placed outside of the house so that safe and contactless food deliveries are possible around the clock.

“The prospect for this technology is fascinating for both customers and Walmart’s last mile delivery efforts,” said Tom Ward, senior vice president of customer products for Walmart US, in a post on the company’s website. “Customers don’t have to schedule their day to have their groceries delivered. Walmart has the ability to deliver items 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

However, he said the retailer has no plans for 24/7 deliveries.

Walmart is testing the delivery of groceries to a HomeValet, a smart cooler that is placed outside of customers’ homes.

Walmart is the largest grocer in the United States and has made free unlimited grocery deliveries a key benefit of its new subscription-based service, Walmart +. The service started in September costs $ 98 per year or $ 12.95 per month compared to Amazon Prime which costs $ 119 per year or $ 12.99 per month. It includes other benefits such as: B. Fuel discounts and access to a smartphone app that allows buyers to skip the checkout.

The retail giant launched its grocery delivery service in 2018. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Walmart and other retailers have noticed that online grocery shopping is becoming increasingly popular. Customers are looking for convenient and contactless ways to store their pantries and refrigerators, from home deliveries to services like Instacart to roadside pickup outside of a retail store.

Even before the global health crisis, Walmart was experimenting with new food delivery options. In 2019, a membership program called InHome Grocery Delivery was launched in select cities, which brings fresh fruit, meat and other groceries straight to customers’ fridges for $ 19.95 per month. It requires additional security measures, including a smart door lock kit or smart garage door kit in buyers’ homes, as well as a background check and additional training for employees.

The service continues to operate in select cities: Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Vero Beach, Florida and West Palm Beach, Florida. During the pandemic, the company changed its approach to accommodate local restrictions, a company spokeswoman said: It only delivers in the Pittsburgh kitchen. In the other cities, objects are placed directly in the door of houses or in garages.

With the new HomeValet pilot, food is left in rectangular coolers developed by a start-up. You have three zones in which food can be kept at different temperatures – frozen, refrigerated or kept at room temperature like in a pantry. To make a delivery, a Walmart employee can lock and unlock the Smart Cooler with a device.

Categories
Health

New York state will open Covid vaccinations to everybody 65 and over, Gov. Cuomo says

NY Gov. Cuomo holds a press briefing as state prepares to distribute Covid vaccine

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks out on Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) on November 15, 2020 at Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York City, United States.

Andy Kelly | Reuters

New York State will accept new federal guidelines to open the approval of Covid vaccines to anyone over the age of 65 as well as younger people with compromised immune systems, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.

The governor accepted the new guidelines, which Cuomo said came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and also criticized the move. He said demand will quickly outstrip supply. The state had previously given priority to health workers and recently extended the eligibility to those aged 75 and over.

Cuomo said expanding it further to 65 and older would open the eligibility to about 7 million people, but the state only receives about 300,000 doses a week.

“We will accept the federal guidelines,” Cuomo said on a conference call with reporters. “I don’t want New Yorkers to believe that we are not doing everything we can to qualify them for the vaccine because I want to keep the people of New York as calm as we can keep people in these anxious times.”

Cuomo said the state is still facing a “drop, drop, drop from the faucet of federal dosage availability” that is inhibiting the state’s ability to vaccinate people. The federal government has withheld more than half of all available vaccine doses to ensure enough second booster vaccinations are needed to achieve maximum immunity.

But the Trump administration will announce Tuesday that the government will begin distributing these doses to states, a senior government official told CNBC.

This is the latest news. You can find updates here.

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Business

Blanton Museum Redesign Goals to Increase Its Profile

Blanton Museum Redesign Aims to Raise Its Profile

The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin is planning a $ 35 million campus redesign under the direction of Snohetta. Architectural and landscape improvements are being made on the 200,000 square meter site of the museum, including a dramatic biomorphic canopy that redefines the entrance area and a public wall assignment by the Cuban-American painter Carmen Herrera.

“It was sometimes difficult for people to find our front door and to identify us as they drove by,” said the director of the Blanton, Simone Wicha, who wants to improve the arrival feeling for the two buildings of the museum in the Spanish revival style, which blend in with the architectural overall picture of the university.

With more than $ 33 million, the museum will lay the foundation stone in February and the project is expected to complete in late 2022.

Snohetta designed 15 tall, flowering structures to bridge the terrace between the two buildings, giving the museum a more distinctive visual identity. These canopies rise on slender pillars and fan out to form broad petals. They form archways and provide shade over new seating. This ensemble will also take a one-way look at the Texas Capitol and Ellsworth Kelly’s non-non-national chapel, realized on the Blanton campus in 2018.

The Blanton invited Herrera, now 105 years old, to create a mural that is clearly visible through the arches of the facade of the gallery building – the first of several public works of art that he will commission. The museum aims to build on interest in Kelly’s Chapel, which Wicha said put the museum on the international art map and helped increase visitor numbers from around 135,000 to 200,000 a year before the pandemic broke out.

Herrera’s bold composition of 14 monumental green squares, each animated with four white diagonal spears that meet to define a smaller green square, is titled “Green How I” after a refrain in Federico García Lorca’s poem “Sleepwalking Ballad” Desire You Green ”.

“The opportunity to do something on such a large scale and in such an important place was very attractive, especially to the hidden architect in me,” wrote Herrera, who was trained as an architect in her 20s before leaving Cuba, in one E-mail. She noticed that the Blanton was a pioneer in collecting Latin American art.

Although she and Kelly were both in Paris from 1948 to 1954 and then in New York, they did not know each other. “I worked mostly in solitude for many years,” wrote Herrera, whose recognition in the art world has been achieved over the past two decades, including a retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 2016. “I am proud to have been at this stage in my life our big-big projects are shown together at Blanton. “

Categories
Business

Covid variant present in South Africa ‘might evade’ Eli Lilly’s antibody drug: CEO

Covid variant found in South Africa ‘could evade’ Eli Lilly's antibody drug: CEO

Dave Ricks, chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly, told CNBC on Tuesday that he expected the company’s Covid-19 antibody drug to be effective against the variant of coronavirus found in the UK

However, he said the exposure observed in South Africa is likely to be more of a challenge.

“The South African variant … is cause for concern. It has more dramatic mutations to the spike protein that these antibody drugs target,” Ricks told Squawk Box. “In theory, it could evade our drugs.”

Eli Lilly’s antibody drug was approved for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration in November. The drug is aimed at people recently diagnosed with Covid-19 in hopes of preventing the need for hospitalization. Regeneron’s Covid-19 antibody treatment, which President Donald Trump received after contracting the disease, has also received limited approval from the FDA.

According to Ricks, Eli Lilly wants to work with the FDA to quickly test different versions of antibodies to see if they are against virus variants like the one in South Africa.

“We actually have a large library of these antibodies now that are pre-clinical,” said Ricks. “We could think of a very expedited way to study them in a month or two and then approve their use. That seems like a smart thing because this virus is mutating.”

Discovery of variants

Coronavirus variants originally found in the UK and South Africa have received significant attention in recent weeks. They are believed to be more transmissible – but not more deadly – than previous tribes. Even so, a more contagious virus that leads to more infections could continue to weigh on healthcare systems and lead to more deaths.

The discovery of these mutations also coincides with the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines from drug companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech, as well as Moderna. It has led to some questions about whether the vaccines – along with treatments for the disease – would keep their effectiveness.

In a CNBC interview on Monday, Dr. Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, confident that his vaccine, manufactured in partnership with Pfizer, will work against the strains of the virus found in the UK and South Africa.

Daniel O’Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences, told CNBC it was testing its remdesivir treatment against these new strains, but said Monday the antiviral drug would likely be effective. Antiviral drugs like remdesivir try to prevent the virus from replicating. In contrast, antibodies like Eli Lillys bind to the virus present in the body and try to neutralize it.

There have been no confirmed cases of the variant, which was first discovered in South Africa in America, but according to the Wall Street Journal, it was discovered in countries like Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been around 70 confirmed cases of the coronavirus variant in the US that were originally found in the UK.

“It seems clear that Lilly’s single antibody, and likely Regeneron’s cocktail, will stop this as well as the normal variant,” said Ricks of the UK-affiliated tribe. “We haven’t done a clinical study of this effect, but we do have pre-clinical data that strongly suggests that it won’t be a problem.”

Use of antibody therapies

After the FDA approved emergency use for their antibody therapies to Eli Lilly and later Regeneron, problems arose with actually delivering the drug, which requires an intravenous infusion, to Covid patients. In mid-December, CNBC reported that between 5% and 20% of the doses delivered had been administered.

That number is “climbing” now, Ricks said on Monday. He pointed to Alabama as a state where the antibodies are widespread. Alabama “basically runs out and refills every week,” he said.

“There are quite a few” from state to state, Ricks admitted. “We want all states to learn from these practices and really be able to use this medicine, as the benefit is that patients, especially seniors, are kept out of the hospital. We know if you are a senior and have Covid-19 and end up in a hospital hospital bed, the prospects are not good. “

Categories
Health

Seoul’s Recommendation to Pregnant Girls: Prepare dinner, Clear and Keep Enticing

Seoul’s Advice to Pregnant Women: Cook, Clean and Stay Attractive

According to a 2017 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the gender pay gap in South Korea is the highest of its 37 member countries. Working women earn nearly 40 percent less than men, and many stop working when they have children, which is often pressured by their families and jobs.

Other countries in the region, including Japan, which also has an aging population and low birth rate, have large gender gaps, especially when it comes to pregnancy. In Japan, the term “matahara” (short for harassment by motherhood) caught on when a woman’s allegations of workplace bullying after she was born were brought before the country’s Supreme Court in 2014.

These declining populations pose a threat to countries’ economies. It is therefore all the more important that governments act cautiously to encourage women to have children.

Last year, South Korea’s population declined by nearly 21,000 for the first time in its history. Births fell by more than 10.5 percent and deaths by 3 percent. The Department of Home Affairs and Security acknowledged the alarming impact and said that “with the birth rate falling rapidly, the government needs to make fundamental changes to its policies”.

Although the Seoul government may have fiddled with advice, the backlash, as some have said, has proven that attitudes have changed.

“This is just outdated advice,” said Adele Vitale, a birth doula and Italian expatriate who has lived in Busan, a port city on the country’s southeast coast, for a decade.

Ms. Vitale, who works primarily with foreign women married to Korean men, said that while Korean society has traditionally viewed pregnant women as “incapacitated,” their husbands have increasingly held egalitarian views on childbirth and child-rearing.

“The family dynamic has evolved,” she said. “Women are no longer willing to be treated like that.”

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Entertainment

‘Dr. Hen’s Recommendation for Unhappy Poets’ Evaluate: Teen Anxiousness and Cinematic Frippery

‘Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets’ Review: Teen Anxiety and Cinematic Frippery

James Whitman (Lucas Jade Zumann), a teenager who prefers an everyday wardrobe of button-down shirts and suspenders, is huge with another Whitman: Walt. When he wakes up in the morning he recites: “I am easy! I am the truth! I am maybe! I am youth! “- his stab in a” Leaves of Grass “style song by himself.

This is the only real poetry as it is that was invented under the title “Sad Poet”. (Dr. Bird is an imaginary therapist in the shape of a dove.) For James, figuring out social relationships, especially with the opposite sex, and negotiating family problems, of which he has abundant, takes more time than writing. And because James suffers from depression and anxiety, those emotional concerns are tougher for him than for other teens.

That sounds familiar to me and it is. But “Dr. Bird’s Advice to Sad Poets, ”written and directed by Yaniv Raz from a novel by Evan Roskos, aims to highlight its everyday elements through a lot of filmmaking.

As he chases a potential new girlfriend, Sophie (Taylor Russell), and searches for his runaway older sister, we see how James sees or wants to see. A girl’s iris is overlaid with images of daisies. The incarnation of Walt Whitman appears in sepia-colored fantasy sequences. James and Sophie’s dates turn into a French-style black and white romance or a colorful dance number.

The film is so drunk with its stylistic inclinations (and uncomfortable attempts at brain comedy) that it is too little, too late when it sobs to take James’ sanity seriously. And it’s a shame, because only in the last quarter will viewers appreciate the reach of the film’s appealing leading actors.

Dr. Birds advice to sad poets
Rated R for language, topics, sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Rent or buy from Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay-TV operators.

Categories
Politics

Pompeo Returns Cuba to Terrorism Sponsor Listing, Constraining Biden’s Plans

Pompeo Returns Cuba to Terrorism Sponsor List, Constraining Biden’s Plans

WASHINGTON – The State Department on Monday named Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in a short-term foreign policy stroke that will complicate plans by the new Biden administration to restore friendlier ties with Havana.

In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited Cuba’s reception of 10 Colombian rebel leaders as well as a handful of American refugees wanted for crimes in the 1970s and Cuba’s support for Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.

Mr Pompeo said the operation sent the message that “the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and the subversion of the US justice system”.

The New York Times reported last month that Mr Pompeo was considering the move and had a plan on his desk.

The move, announced only a few days ago in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and described his decades of political and economic isolation as a relic of the Cold War.

After his tenure, President Trump acted swiftly to undermine Mr Obama’s policies of openness, to the delight of Cuban-American and other Latino voters in Florida, who welcomed his aggressive stance on Havana and its socialist, anti-American ally, Mr Maduro.

Other Republicans cheered Mr. Trump, saying Havana failed to push through political overhauls and continued to crack down on dissent and break promises it made to the Obama administration.

U.S. officials said the plan to put Cuba back on the terrorism sponsor list was drawn up in a departure from the standard process by the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Office, rather than the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, which normally plays a pivotal role such a decision would play.

Monday’s denomination said Cuba had “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to the Foreign Ministry’s criteria for listing countries that include only three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.

The move automatically triggers United States sanctions against Cuba – likely negligible effects, experts said given the magnitude of the existing American penalties against Havana.

But the action could be a symbolic deterrent for businesses and “add another of many negative incentives to look for ways to export, import from, or provide services to Cuba,” said John Kavulich, president of trade – and Economic Council of the USA and Cuba.

The statement by Mr Pompeo cited Cuba’s refusal to extradite ten leaders of the Colombian National Liberation Army. A foreign terrorist organization that has lived in Havana since 2017 was also named. The leaders traveled to Havana for peace talks in 2017 to end a long riot in Colombia and have not returned home.

The National Liberation Army has taken responsibility for a bomb attack on a police academy in Bogotá in January 2019 that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others.

Mr Pompeo also cited the presence in Cuba of three refugees who were charged or convicted of murder in the early 1970s, including Joanne D. Chesimard, 73, a former member of the Black Liberation Army, now called Assata Shakur, who remains on the List of FBI Most Wanted Terrorists Who Killed a New Jersey State Soldier in 1973.

His statement also stated that the Cuban government “is engaged in a range of malicious behaviors across the region” and that its intelligence and security services are “assisting Nicolás Maduro in maintaining his stranglehold on his people and enabling terrorist organizations to operate,” the Cuban Government supported Colombian rebels beyond their borders and that their support for Maduro had helped “create a permissive environment for international terrorists to live and prosper in Venezuela”.

Speaking of a return to Obama’s more open approach to Havana during the campaign, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to “immediately reverse the failed Trump policies that have harmed the Cuban people and done nothing to move forward Democracy and human rights. “

While the Biden government can remove Cuba from the terrorism list, it requires a screening process that can take months.

Ted A. Henken, associate professor of sociology at Baruch College in New York, called the designation “a symbolic last gesture” by the Trump administration towards Cuba as well as a reward for the Cuban exiled community and like-minded Latino voters who stood for in November gave the president a surprisingly strong number.

“It’s unjustified based on merit or evidence,” he said. “Cuba is a dictatorship that systematically denies its citizens basic rights, but has not been shown to engage in terrorist activities.”

“The label is politically motivated for a domestic audience in the US,” he added.

William LeoGrande, a professor of government at the American University in Washington, noted that Trump’s numerous sanctions against Cuba meant that the new name would have little additional impact.

In the past two years, Cuba has faced the most severe sanctions in the United States in the past 50 years, which have contributed to rationing and the profound shortage of basic necessities such as medicine and food. According to Alejandro Gil, Cuba’s economics minister, the economy contracted by 11 percent last year.

Mr. LeoGrande said the designation could impede legal financial transactions with American financial institutions, such as a U.S. airline that pays the Cuban government for landing fees, as banks become more suspicious of the additional surveillance of such exchanges from Washington.

Banking transactions via third countries could also be affected. During Mr Trump’s tenure, European banks became increasingly reluctant to make payments to Cuban state-owned companies. The island’s terrorism designation could further reduce risk appetite.

Mr LeoGrande said the Cuban government would try to avoid escalating the conflict in the expectation that Mr Biden would try to improve relations.

The news was received with anger on the streets of Havana. “That’s a lie,” said Sergio Herrera, 45, a bicycle taxi driver.

“Trump has his neck in a noose” politically and is “looking for excuses,” he said.

Michael Crowley reported from Washington, Ed Augustin from Havana and Kirk Semple from Mexico City.

Categories
Business

Knowledge Recorder Recovered From Indonesian Aircraft Crash

Data Recorder Recovered From Indonesian Plane Crash

Divers of the Indonesian Navy have recovered the flight data recorder from Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, which crashed into the Java Sea shortly after take-off on Saturday with 62 people on board.

The remains of some victims were also brought ashore in dozens of body bags, officials said. So far, four victims have been identified. No survivors of the flight are expected.

The quick recovery of the flight data recorder, sometimes referred to as a “black box” and one of two on the plane, helps officials understand why the 26-year-old Boeing 737-500 was just four minutes after take off from Jakarta, the capital. The plane flew to Pontianak on the island of Borneo, a flight of about 90 minutes.

The divers retrieved the flight data recorder from the wreck in about 75 feet of water between the islets of Lancang and Laki, officials said.

The Boeing had two data recorders on opposite ends of the aircraft: a flight data recorder in the rear of the aircraft, which can provide information about the mechanical operation of the jet during its short flight; and a cockpit voice recorder that records the conversation between the pilot and the copilot.

Investigators hope that analyzing the information found on both devices can provide a clear picture of what happened during the flight.

The plane crashed nearly 300 meters shortly after taking off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta. The wreck extends over an area of ​​about 300 meters in length and 300 meters in width, the authorities said.

The relatively compact size of the debris field is consistent with an airplane that did not explode before hitting the water.

Each data recorder has an acoustic underwater beacon that emits a signal in the event of a crash to help those searching for the recorder to recover.

But in this case, the acoustic beacon broke away from the cockpit voice recorder and was found separately, said Indonesian Armed Forces commander Hadi Tjahjanto.

Divers continue to search for the recorder itself, he told reporters.

“We are sure that the cockpit voice recorder will also be found,” he said.

Sriwijaya Air released a statement that the aircraft had received a certificate of airworthiness from the Ministry of Transport that was valid until December 17, 2021.

A ministry spokeswoman Adita Irawati said the aircraft’s certificate of operation was renewed in November.

“Sriwijaya Air met the conditions set,” she said.

The latest crash adds to a list of previous airline tragedies in Indonesia. Air Asia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea off the coast of Borneo in December 2014. In October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the Java Sea northeast of Jakarta a few minutes after take-off.

Dera Menra Sijabat reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.

Categories
World News

Parler sues Amazon for withdrawing assist after U.S. Capitol riot

Parler sues Amazon for withdrawing support after U.S. Capitol riot

John Matze, Parler CEO, will join CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on July 2, 2020.

CNBC

The social network Parler is suing Amazon for discontinuing its cloud computing support after the deadly uprising in the US Capitol.

Parler was popular with conservatives and supporters of President Donald Trump and relied on AWS ‘cloud computing services. However, AWS withdrew its support this week after it concluded that posts on Parler “clearly encourage and encourage violence.”

In a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Parler accused Amazon Web Services of violating antitrust laws.

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animations,” the lawsuit said. “It is also apparently intended to reduce competition in the market for microblogging services in favor of Twitter.”

It goes on: “This emergency lawsuit seeks an injunction against defendant Amazon Web Services to prevent Parler’s account from being closed. This is like pulling the plug on a hospital patient for life support. It will bring Parler’s business to a standstill at just that Time when it will skyrocket. “

An AWS spokesman told CNBC that the allegations have no value, while Parler did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

“It is clear that there is significant content on Parler that promotes and incites violence against others and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove such content in violation of our Terms of Use.” an AWS spokesman told CNBC.

“We’ve shared our concerns with Parler for several weeks and during that time we’ve seen a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease that resulted in us closing their services on Sunday evening.”

Apple and Google remove Parler

Parler app screenshots viewed by CNBC show users posting references to firing squads, as well as calls for guns to be brought to Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.

In the lawsuit, Parler’s attorneys ask why AWS is not removing support for Twitter, which is also an AWS customer.

AWS “stated that the reason for the suspension was because AWS was not certain that Parler could properly monitor its platform for content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the lawsuit said. “Hang Mike Pence was one of the most popular tweets on Twitter on Friday night, but AWS has no plans or threats to suspend Twitter’s account.”

Twitter declined to comment.

Parler became the number one free downloaded app on Apple’s App Store after Twitter announced it was permanently banning Trump from its platform. “Conservative users fled en masse from Twitter to Parler,” said the lawsuit.

However, Apple removed Parler from the iPhone app store on Saturday, a day after Google removed Parler from its Android app store.

John Matze, founder and CEO of Parler, condemned the moves of the tech giants. In a series of posts about Parler over the weekend, he said his platform had removed the violent content and added that community guidelines do not allow Parler to be knowingly used for criminal activity.

Matze said Monday that the Parler app will be down “longer than expected” as other cloud hosting companies refuse to partner with Parler in light of press releases from Amazon, Google and Apple.

“This is not due to software restrictions. We have our software and all data ready. Rather, statements by Amazon, Google and Apple to the press about the blocking of our access have meant that most of our other providers have stopped supporting us . ” good, “said Matze.

He added, “Most people with enough servers to host us have closed their doors to us. We’ll all update and update the press when we get back online.”

Parler has transferred its domain name to Epik, which hosts the similar far-right social media network Gab. However, a hosting provider has yet to be found.

Gab, a social network known for its far-right user base and frequent hate speech, appears to be benefiting from the aftermath. On Monday, Gab CEO Andrew Torba announced that the platform had gained 600,000 new users.

– CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.