Mark Zuckerberg wants the world to know that he is really interested in China. Already, he has dedicated himself to learning some Mandarin, marching through a talk in Chinese at a Beijing university. When Xi Jinping visited the U.S. last year, Zuckerberg chatted with the Chinese President. The Facebook founder has also hosted Lu Wei, China’s Internet chief, who has famously made it clear that any foreign firm hoping to enter the China market must play by Beijing’s rules.Over the weekend during a trip to Beijing, Zuckerberg continued his China charm campaign. On Saturday, he met with propaganda czar Liu Yunshan. More than anyone who sits on the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee that rules China, Liu decides what Chinese should think, read and experience through the media. A day earlier, despite the smog that blanketed Tiananmen Square, Zuckerberg posted a photo on Facebook of a run he took through the heart of the Chinese capital. Just down the Avenue of Eternal Peace, guards at the gates of the nation’s leadership compound were outfitted in protective face gear. But the tech tycoon wore no anti-pollution mask during his jog. China’s Internet pundits called Zuckerberg an “expensive vacuum cleaner” of toxic air pollution and christened Facebook with a new Chinese name, Fei Si Bu Ke (非死不可), which literally means “have to die.”
Facebook, of course, is banned in China, ever since 2009 race riots in the nation’s northwest spooked control-obsessed authorities. (Another Chinese Internet meme centered around how Zuckerberg was able to post his run on Facebook while in Beijing: the answer is a cumbersome and often expensive workaround called a virtual private network, or VPN.) The Chinese government is allergic to any digital technology that could be used to organize the masses outside of the authorities’ purview. Websites or keywords deemed politically sensitive are censored. YouTube, Google and Twitter are blocked by the Great Firewall.
In their stead, domestic alternatives—such as Tencent’s WeChat, Sina’s Weibo and Baidu—have thrived. These Chinese services, though hugely popular with the nation’s nearly 670 million-strong digital population, submit to constant monitoring and censorship. A Baidu web search, for example, tends to ignore the 1989 massacre when the words “Tiananmen Square” are entered.
Of course, not all Chinese companies have succeeded because of a lack of foreign competition. Alibaba, the tech behemoth behind online shopping platform Taobao, for instance, demolished eBay, which entered the China market with great fanfare and left utterly vanquished. Uber, too, has failed to grab significant market share from domestic car-hailing services, like Didi Kuaidi.
The development of such local firms is crucial to China’s state-sanctioned efforts to encourage innovation. With the nation’s export-led growth slowing, its central planners want to move the economy up the value-added ladder. Earlier this month, at China’s annual parliamentary meeting, Premier Li Keqiang expanded on a so-called Internet Plus strategy, even as the government has cracked down on the kind of free expression associated with digital disruption. The government’s Internet policy is designed to incubate homegrown firms and discourage reliance on foreign companies.
So how does a Western interloper such as Facebook fit in? The timing of Zuckerberg’s latest China foray is curious. (He was officially in town for an economic conference.) Over the past few months, President Xi has put the brakes on free speech in China. He has advocated a global Internet governance network in which each country makes it own rules, as opposed to a system in which information freely flows across national borders. Earlier this month, the Chinese President toured the nation’s largest media outlets and reminded journalists that their primary allegiance was to the Chinese Communist Party, not to the people or any fanciful notion that the press serves as a check on a government’s powers. Under Xi’s rule, hundreds of Chinese free-thinkers have been detained or silenced. In just the latest example, a journalist disappeared last week, while a retired businessmen and Communist Party stalwart found his social-media account shuttered after criticizing Xi’s media tour.
China’s official news service, Xinhua, characterized Zuckerberg’s meeting with propaganda chief Liu as less of a business deal and more of a courtesy call: “Liu expressed hope that Facebook, which has advanced technology and governance mode, should work with Chinese internet enterprises to enhance exchanges and share experience so as to make outcome of the internet development better benefit the people of all countries.”
If Zuckerberg manages to convince Chinese officials to allow Facebook back in, he will almost assuredly have to accept a version of the social-media service that hews to local censorship rules. Perhaps Zuckerberg believes that Facebook lite is better than no Facebook at all. “China is like the legend of Excalibur to Silicon Valley CEOs, the sword in the stone,” says Duncan Clark, a Beijing-based tech analyst whose book Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built, will be published next month. “It’s tempting because it’s so hard. No one has cracked it.” For Zuckerberg, says Clark, “it’s hard to see how Facebook could achieve a meaningful market share as a new entrant in social in China, given the dominance of existing players like Tencent, let alone regulatory issues—managing their China operations to the satisfaction of the authorities in China, without falling foul of public opinion in the West or being grilled by the U.S. Congress.
Six years ago, Google took a different approach. After the company was put under mounting pressure to censor its search results, Google pulled out of mainland China. Critics sniped that Google was already losing ground to local competitor Baidu. But it’s also true that the U.S. firm turned its back on China precisely at the moment when so many others were desperate for a way in.
This year, Google’s Play, a mobile phone app store, could enter China. That could, in theory, help foreign gaming firms penetrate an untapped market. Yet earlier this year, Beijing unveiled further regulations that limit foreign or joint-venture companies from operating and publishing in the digital sphere. No amount of Mandarin lessons or Tiananmen jogs will change the reality of life behind the Great Firewall. Still, the business of tech can move faster than even notoriously fickle fashion cycles. “In tech, new opportunities open up,” says tech analyst Clark. “Even if existing areas like search or social are dominated by Baidu or Tencent, catching the next wave is a constant preoccupation.” Facebook, he says, “needs to be part of this massive market somehow.”
Monday, March 21, 2016
Madonna Son's Future To Be Decided In The US
Madonna can bring legal action launched in England over the future of her 15-year-old son to an end, a High Court judge has ruled.
The singer is in a custody dispute with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie over where Rocco should live.
The 57-year-old wants the teenager to return to live with her in the US after he remained in London with his father after a visit.
Mr Justice MacDonald ruled that the English proceedings could be halted.
The judge analysed the latest round of the dispute at a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London earlier this month.
He was asked to decide whether he should allow English proceedings to draw to a close - or whether he should make decisions about Rocco's welfare.
No-one involved was in court when the ruling was handed down but Mr Justice MacDonald urged Madonna and Ritchie to try to settle the dispute.
He said the youngster was a "very great credit" to his parents and urged Madonna and Ritchie to spend time enjoying his company.
Lawyers have told him that both had outlined proposals for negotiation.
More court hearings are expected to be held in New York.
"At the root of these proceedings ... is a temporary breakdown in trust," said the judge in his ruling.
"For all the media coverage, comment and analysis, this is a case born out of circumstances that arise for countless separated parents the world over."
He added: "I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find, an amicable resolution to the dispute between them."
"Most importantly ... summer does not last forever. The boy very quickly becomes the man. It would be a very great tragedy for Rocco if any more of the precious and fast receding days of his childhood were to be taken up by this dispute.
"Far better for each of his parents to spend that time enjoying, in turn, the company of the mature, articulate and reflective young man who is their son and who is a very great credit to them both."
When Madonna and Ritchie divorced in 2008, it was agreed that Rocco would live with his mother.
However, while the Queen of Pop has been on a global tour in recent months Rocco has been pictured in London with his father, his wife Jacqui Ainsley and their three children.
FBI Begins Probing Bangladesh’s Huge Cyber Heist as Top Crime Expert Gets Kidnapped
Bangladesh on Sunday sought the assistance of the FBI in the hunt for the hackers that stole $81 million from its central bank last month, in a massive heist that has taken the South Asian nation by storm.
An FBI official met with Bangladeshi police in the country’s capital Dhaka in order to trace the origin of a fraudulent transfer request for the amount, funneled to casinos in the Philippines from Bangladesh’s account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Reuters reported.
“This is the biggest transnational organized crime ever seen in Bangladesh and so we sought both technical and human assistance [from the FBI],” Mirza Abdullahel Baqui, a senior police official, told Reuters. He added that the perpetrators are believed to have hailed from six different countries.
The cyberheist, one of the largest ever, had targeted close to $1 billion in Bangladeshi government funds but hackers reportedly had over 30 other transfer requests blocked. Another $20 million was transferred to a bank in Sri Lanka (but halted by that country’s central bank), and, according to the Economist, the damage would have been far more extensive had it not been for a typo in one of the hackers’ requests. The Wall Street Journal meanwhile quoted Philippine officials as saying that some of the stolen money was likely converted into gambling chips — a common money-laundering tactic.
The theft has escalated into a major scandal in Bangladesh, with the central bank’s governor, Atiur Rahman, and several top officials resigning last week amid accusations of negligence. Even as Rahman’s replacement — former Financial Secretary Fazle Kabir — took over on Sunday, reports emerged that one of the country’s leading cybercrime experts was kidnapped while participating in the investigation.
Tanvir Hassan Zoha was abducted from an auto rickshaw in Dhaka last Thursday, his wife told Reuters, just over 24 hours after he had met with the police and told media that he knew three of the user IDs involved in the heist.
“We don’t know why he was picked up,” Kamrun Nahar Chowdhury said of her husband’s disappearance, adding that she had appealed to the Bangladeshi government after police refused to investigate.
The government, meanwhile, has formed an investigative committee under former central bank governor Mohammad Farashuddin, which began its own inquiry on Sunday into the bank’s security breach.
“This is a wake-up call,” Farashuddin said.
An FBI official met with Bangladeshi police in the country’s capital Dhaka in order to trace the origin of a fraudulent transfer request for the amount, funneled to casinos in the Philippines from Bangladesh’s account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Reuters reported.
“This is the biggest transnational organized crime ever seen in Bangladesh and so we sought both technical and human assistance [from the FBI],” Mirza Abdullahel Baqui, a senior police official, told Reuters. He added that the perpetrators are believed to have hailed from six different countries.
The cyberheist, one of the largest ever, had targeted close to $1 billion in Bangladeshi government funds but hackers reportedly had over 30 other transfer requests blocked. Another $20 million was transferred to a bank in Sri Lanka (but halted by that country’s central bank), and, according to the Economist, the damage would have been far more extensive had it not been for a typo in one of the hackers’ requests. The Wall Street Journal meanwhile quoted Philippine officials as saying that some of the stolen money was likely converted into gambling chips — a common money-laundering tactic.
The theft has escalated into a major scandal in Bangladesh, with the central bank’s governor, Atiur Rahman, and several top officials resigning last week amid accusations of negligence. Even as Rahman’s replacement — former Financial Secretary Fazle Kabir — took over on Sunday, reports emerged that one of the country’s leading cybercrime experts was kidnapped while participating in the investigation.
Tanvir Hassan Zoha was abducted from an auto rickshaw in Dhaka last Thursday, his wife told Reuters, just over 24 hours after he had met with the police and told media that he knew three of the user IDs involved in the heist.
“We don’t know why he was picked up,” Kamrun Nahar Chowdhury said of her husband’s disappearance, adding that she had appealed to the Bangladeshi government after police refused to investigate.
The government, meanwhile, has formed an investigative committee under former central bank governor Mohammad Farashuddin, which began its own inquiry on Sunday into the bank’s security breach.
“This is a wake-up call,” Farashuddin said.
Corbyn Calls On Chancellor To Quit In IDS Row
Jeremy Corbyn has called on the Chancellor to quit amid the bitter rift triggered by the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith.
The Labour leader said the Budget delivered by George Osborne had "unravelled" as the Government was set to formally scrap cuts to disability benefits, which led to the dramatic departure of the Work and Pensions Secretary.
His successor, Stephen Crabb is due to tell MPs later that controversial moves to the curb the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have been ditched.
Despite the problems caused for the Government by Mr Duncan Smith, Mr Corbyn had few warm words for the former Tory leader.
Mr Corbyn told Sky News: "He has presided over the most terrible treatment of people with disabilities in our society.
"He has finally found a conscience and his successor is looking for exactly the same level of cuts from somewhere else within that Budget.
"This does not add up, it has unravelled, and George Osborne should be explaining what his Budget now is."
Asked if he felt the Chancellor should go, Mr Corbyn said: "Indeed. He has to consider his position."
He also said the Prime Minister should make a statement "about the budget and the way his government is operating".
David Cameron is expected to seek to calm the furious infighting within his party when he appears in the Commons later to report back from last week's EU migration summit.
The Labour leader said the Budget delivered by George Osborne had "unravelled" as the Government was set to formally scrap cuts to disability benefits, which led to the dramatic departure of the Work and Pensions Secretary.
His successor, Stephen Crabb is due to tell MPs later that controversial moves to the curb the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have been ditched.
Despite the problems caused for the Government by Mr Duncan Smith, Mr Corbyn had few warm words for the former Tory leader.
Mr Corbyn told Sky News: "He has presided over the most terrible treatment of people with disabilities in our society.
"He has finally found a conscience and his successor is looking for exactly the same level of cuts from somewhere else within that Budget.
"This does not add up, it has unravelled, and George Osborne should be explaining what his Budget now is."
Asked if he felt the Chancellor should go, Mr Corbyn said: "Indeed. He has to consider his position."
He also said the Prime Minister should make a statement "about the budget and the way his government is operating".
David Cameron is expected to seek to calm the furious infighting within his party when he appears in the Commons later to report back from last week's EU migration summit.
Five Die After Car Plunges Off Seaside Pier
Five members of the same family have died after a car entered the water at Buncrana pier, County Donegal.
At least two children are understood to have been in the vehicle at the time the "tragic accident" occurred.
Emergency services said they have recovered the bodies of two boys, a man and a woman, and a second female, whose age has not been confirmed.
It is not clear how the car, which is believed to have a Northern Ireland registration plate, ended up in Lough Swilly.
It is thought the slipway leading down to the lough was covered in algae and may have been slippery.
A baby girl was rescued from the car with the assistance of a bystander, Gardai confirmed.
Unconfirmed reports suggest she was handed or thrown out of a window just seconds before the car went into the water.
The child is said to be in a stable condition in hospital.
Sky's Ireland Correspondent David Blevins said: "At this stage, Malin Head coastguard is confirming that there are five fatalities.
"There are adults and children among the dead.
"An infant has been recovered from the water and taken to hospital in Letterkenny, County Donegal.
"A major search and rescue operation is ongoing and has been going on for a couple of hours now.
"Fishing crews that have come back are assisting with the lifeboat crews and the coastguard helicopter.
"We understand that a jeep with a family on board entered the water at the pier from Buncrana in what's being described now as a tragic accident.
"This will be an area that is very popular with families from all over Ireland - from Donegal and indeed from Northern Ireland, which is not far over the Irish border."
It is believed the family may have stopped to admire the sunset.
An Irish police spokesman said: "Gardai and emergency services are at the scene of an incident that occurred at Buncrana Pier.
"A car entered the water and a search of the area is currently ongoing. No further information at present."
The coastguard said the accident happened at around 7.45pm on Sunday.
Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said on Twitter: "Very sad news of fatalities in an incident at Buncrana Pier.
"Thoughts are with relatives of those involved and rescue services."
Kanye West Is Patching His Music Like Software
Kanye West released his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo, on Feb. 14. Normally, a big album release would be followed mainly by touring and promotion. But that’s not enough for Kanye—more than a month later, he’s still working on the album. Most recently, he updated the song “Wolves” and added an extra track on March 15.
That’s possible because the album is accessible exclusively through the streaming service Tidal(legally, at least). Over the last month, Kanye has tweaked and tucked, uploading the revisions to Tidal and announcing them on Twitter. Here he is announcing the “Wolves” change on the 15th:
Kanye’s fast-and-loose approach to versioning started well before the album release, and has a lot in common with how software developers approach their products. Just after he released the single “No More Parties in L.A.” in January, West pulled the track and uploaded a new version, in what the LA Times’ Dexter Thomas called rap’s introduction to the day one patch.
Treating music like updatable software is only possible because of the technological shift from physical media to downloads, and now streaming, as the default way of listening to music. (Kanye has said definitively that The Life of Pablo will “never be for sale” anywhere but Tidal).
And it has a lot of potential benefits for artists. For one, it helps frustrate music pirates, at least half a million of whom have grabbed some version of The Life of Pablo. But those versions are no longer the “real” album — and in fact, there may never be a final version, any more than there’s a final version of Windows. Music versioning might also allow artists to respond to fan feedback on new releases—though Kanye seems to be driven mainly by his own perfectionist muse.
It’s also possible that exclusive, frequently-changing music could help make streaming services more viable as businesses, by letting them offer something no download or CD can. But that may be asking too much — as our Mathew Ingram has pointed out, streaming music is a terrible business.
Lawyer Hopeful Children Orphaned in ISIS Territory Can Return to Australia
There may be hope for the children of an Islamic militant who died in Syria to return to Australia, says a lawyer for Karen Nettleton, the Australian grandmother undertaking an audacious attempt to rescue the orphaned kids from Syria.
Karen Nettleton is currently in Turkey trying to find a way to get the six children out of territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Her daughter Tara Nettleton took her five children — aged between 5 and 14 — to Syria in 2014 to live with their father, Khaled Sharrouf, an Australian-born fighter with the radical Islamist group. The group has released propaganda photos showing the children posing with automatic weapons beside their father. One shocking image shows one of the boys holding up a severed head.
Both parents are believed to have died in Syria, while the eldest daughter, Zaynab, married and had a child with another militant, who has also since died.
Should Karen Nettleton succeed in retrieving her five grandchildren and great-grandchild, it is uncertain how they will be received by the Australian government, which stripped Sharrouf of his citizenship. A lawyer hired by the family, Charles Waterstreet, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the family has been coordinating with the Australian authorities, and suggested they would be welcomed back.
“The Australian government has a duty to assist them to get back. The baby will need to get papers,” Waterstreet said, referring to Zaynab’s child, who was born in Syria. “We have had nothing but co-operation from all federal departments.”
However, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said she would defer to law enforcement on whether the children could return, adding that Australia was only able to offer “very limited” assistance to nationals in Syria, where a civil war is now in its sixth year. “So it’s a very difficult situation. But we have been working with representatives of the family,” Bishop said.
Karen Nettleton is currently in Turkey trying to find a way to get the six children out of territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Her daughter Tara Nettleton took her five children — aged between 5 and 14 — to Syria in 2014 to live with their father, Khaled Sharrouf, an Australian-born fighter with the radical Islamist group. The group has released propaganda photos showing the children posing with automatic weapons beside their father. One shocking image shows one of the boys holding up a severed head.
Both parents are believed to have died in Syria, while the eldest daughter, Zaynab, married and had a child with another militant, who has also since died.
Should Karen Nettleton succeed in retrieving her five grandchildren and great-grandchild, it is uncertain how they will be received by the Australian government, which stripped Sharrouf of his citizenship. A lawyer hired by the family, Charles Waterstreet, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the family has been coordinating with the Australian authorities, and suggested they would be welcomed back.
“The Australian government has a duty to assist them to get back. The baby will need to get papers,” Waterstreet said, referring to Zaynab’s child, who was born in Syria. “We have had nothing but co-operation from all federal departments.”
However, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said she would defer to law enforcement on whether the children could return, adding that Australia was only able to offer “very limited” assistance to nationals in Syria, where a civil war is now in its sixth year. “So it’s a very difficult situation. But we have been working with representatives of the family,” Bishop said.
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