(Reuters) - Tesla Inc and Chief Executive Elon Musk were sued on Friday by an investor who said they committed securities fraud in a scheme to “completely decimate” short-sellers that included Musk’s proposal to take the electric car company private.
FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo
The proposed class-action complaint filed by Kalman Isaacs in San Francisco federal court accused Tesla and Musk of trying to artificially manipulate the company’s stock price.
It said this occurred largely through a series of tweets by Musk on Aug. 7, including when he said he might take Tesla private and that there was “funding secured.”
Musk’s tweets helped push Tesla’s stock price more than 13 percent above the previous day’s close.
The stock has since retreated, in part following reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had begun inquiring about Musk’s activity.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Isaacs accused Musk of making false and misleading statements to inflate Tesla’s stock price, and that Tesla “doubled-down” on those statements by failing to correct them.
According to the complaint, Isaacs bought 3,000 Tesla shares on Aug. 8 to cover his short position, or bet that the price would decline, in the company.
The complaint said the class period begins on the afternoon of Aug. 7, when the defendants launched their “nuclear attack” on short-sellers, and ends the next day.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Rosalba O"Brien
LONDON (Reuters) - London taxi drivers are drawing up a plan to sue mobile app Uber for over 1 billion pounds ($ 1.3 billion), Sky News reported on Tuesday citing unidentified sources, weeks after it was granted a temporary licence to operate in Britain’s capital.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Uber is seen on an iPad, during a news conference to announce Uber resumes ride-hailing service, in Taipei, Taiwan April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo
Sky News said the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA) was likely to argue that 25,000 black-cab drivers in London had suffered lost earnings averaging around 10,000 pounds for at least five years as a result of Uber’s failings, taking the overall possible bill to 1.25 billion pounds ($ 1.64 billion).
The report said it had engaged the law firm Mishcon de Reya to explore the options.
Uber won a probationary licence to operate in the city last month, after Transport for London (TfL) had refused to renew it last September for failings in its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers.
The LTDA were not immediately available for comment. Uber declined to comment.
Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Kate Holton
(Reuters) - Litigation funding provider IMF Bentham Ltd (IMF.AX) said on Tuesday it was funding a representative complaint against social networking website Facebook Inc (FB.O) over alleged breaches of the Australian Privacy Principles.
FILE PHOTO: A Facebook panel is seen during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in Cannes, France, June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo
The company said it would fund the complaint made to the Australian Information Commissioner against Facebook Australia, Facebook Inc and Facebook Ireland. The complaint is being handled by Sydney-based law firm Johnson Winter & Slattery.
The Australian Information Commissioner has also commenced a separate investigation into the matter, IMF Bentham said, adding a class action may follow depending on the Commissioner’s findings.
Facebook has come under intense scrutiny after it admitted in March to making mistakes in letting 50 million users’ data get into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
The company lost more than $ 50 billion in market value in the week after the allegations emerged that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to build profiles on American voters and influence the 2016 presidential election.
Facebook had said in April that a little more than 311,000 Australian users may have had their information improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. (bit.ly/2Ejpktb)
Facebook’s Australian arm was not immediately available for a comment.
Reporting by Ambar Warrick in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar
HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Meituan-Dianping, an online food delivery-to-ticketing services platform, is bringing its sizable initial public offering (IPO) to Hong Kong, where it aims to raise over $ 4 billion, three people with knowledge of the deal said.
Drivers of food delivery service Meituan are seen in Beijing, China April 11, 2018. Picture taken April 11, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
The firm filed plans late on Friday for the city’s second multibillion-dollar tech float this year after smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp’s blockbuster IPO of up to $ 6.1 billion. Meituan-Dianping is also - after Xiaomi - the latest company with a dual-class share structure to file for a Hong Kong listing, under the city’s new rules designed to attract tech companies.
The Beijing-based firm, backed by gaming and social media company Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK), was valued at around $ 30 billion in a fundraising round last year.
It is aiming for a $ 60 billion valuation with the IPO, though industry insiders said it may have difficulty reaching that target as it is still money-losing and relies on a cash-burning business model to boost growth.
The firm is likely to list in October, said the people, who declined to be identified as the information was not public.
Meituan-Dianping did not detail the amount of funds targeted or a time frame. It declined to comment on its planned IPO when contacted by Reuters.
Founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Wang Xing, Meituan, likened to U.S. discounting platform Groupon Inc (GRPN.O), in 2015 completed a $ 15 billion merger with Dianping, akin to U.S. online review firm Yelp Inc (YELP.N). It offers a broad range of services including movie ticketing, food delivery, hotel and travel booking as well as ride-hailing.
Competitors include food-delivery platform Ele.me, backed by e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), and leading ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T).
In its draft prospectus, which gave investors the first detailed look at its financial health ahead of the IPO, the company disclosed a 19 billion yuan ($ 2.9 billion) loss for 2017, steeper than in the previous two years.
Its adjusted net loss - which excludes the impact of fair value changes of convertible redeemable preferred shares and other items - was 2.85 billion yuan, smaller than losses of 5.35 billion yuan in 2016 and 5.91 billion yuan in 2015, the prospectus showed.
Revenue rose to 33.9 billion yuan in fiscal 2017, sharply higher than the 12.99 billion yuan made in the prior year.
Meituan-Dianping’s other backers include venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and DST Global, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd and state-owned investment company Temasek Holdings (Private) Ltd, as well as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Currently, Chief Executive Wang Xing owns 11.4 percent of the company, while Tencent owns 20.1 percent and Sequoia Capital 11.4 percent. Wang will remain controlling shareholder after the listing, the prospectus showed.
Being holders of Class A shares, Wang and two other co-founders, Mu Rongjun and Wang Huiwen, will be beneficiaries of a weighted voting rights structure, or dual-class shares, which give greater power to founding shareholders even with minority shareholding. Each Class A share has 10 votes while each Class B share has one vote.
The firm has mandated Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) to jointly sponsor its IPO. China Renaissance is the financial adviser.
Reporting by Adam Jourdan in Shanghai, Julie Zhu and Fiona Lau of IFR in Hong Kong, Aaron Saldanha in Bangalore, and Matthew Miller in BeijingEditing by Christopher Cushing and Edwina Gibbs
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp Beijing has been formally asked whether its assets, which have fallen 98 percent over the past year, are at risk of turning negative and triggering a share trading halt and possible eventual delisting.
The logo of of Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp is seen on its building in Beijing, China March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s website on Wednesday showed the bourse had sent Leshi 33 questions, including about its assets. Under its rules, a year of negative net assets results in “suspension from being a listed company”, with two years ending in delisting.
Leshi, a video-streaming company that also makes internet-connected television sets, has seen revenue and profit dwindle since mid-2017 amid a funding crisis involving parent conglomerate LeEco and its founder Jia Yueting.
Net assets attributable to shareholders stood at 304 million yuan ($ 47.70 million) at the end of March, from 13.6 billion yuan a year earlier. It reported a net loss of 307 million yuan for January-March 2018 and a loss of 13.9 billion yuan for all of 2017.
The Shenzhen bourse also questioned Leshi about its operations, asset impairment and auditing. It asked the firm to detail its debts, explain slumping performance at subsidiaries, and disclose ownership relations with other companies as well as whether units conduct transactions with other group companies.
It also asked for an update on Jia and his related parties’ repayment of debt to Leshi, and whether there has been a change in the company’s decision-making personnel.
Leshi, which since July has been managed by second-largest shareholder Sunac China Holdings Ltd, in January said Jia and LeEco owed it 7.5 billion yuan. LeEco disputed the figure.
Jia, who remains Leshi’s largest shareholder, has been residing in the United States to work on his electric vehicle start-up company, though Chinese regulators have requested his return.
The Shenzhen exchange has also asked Leshi to explain how its salary expense rose in 2017 though headcount dropped.
It has requested a reply from Leshi by May 18.
A Leshi spokeswoman said the company had no immediate comment when contacted by Reuters.
Leshi’s shares were down 2.6 percent in morning trade in a flat broader market.
Reporting by Sijia Jiang and Hong Kong newsroom; Editing by Christopher Cushing
The United Kingdom"s Information Commissioner"s Office issued an order Friday requiring SCL Elections, the British affiliate of the controversial data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, to turn over all of the data it collected about a United States-based academic named David Carroll. Carroll filed a request for this data in January of 2017 under British data protection law, and received a response in March of that year that the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham describes in the order as "wholly inadequate." Now, Denham is requiring SCL to comply with the request, or face criminal charges.
The enforcement order comes just days after Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Donald Trump"s 2016 campaign, announced that it would shut down and declare bankruptcy, along with its international affiliates, following revelations that the companies had harvested the data of up to 87 million Americans without their knowledge. The company"s former CEO Alexander Nix was also recorded this year on undercover video, appearing to brag about using tactics like bribery and entrapment on behalf of Cambridge Analytica"s clients.
Long before the name Cambridge Analytica became notorious in households across the country, though, Carroll, a professor of media design at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, became suspicious about the way the company built its so-called psychographic profiles of US voters. These profiles, the company claimed, contained information not only about people"s demographics, but their personalities as well. Given that Cambridge Analytica originally spun out of a British company called SCL Group, Carroll filed a request under the UK"s Data Protection Act seeking access to all of the information the company had collected on him.
When SCL sent Carroll back his file, he was utterly unsatisfied. It ranked his interest in topics like immigration and gun control on a numeric scale, but offered no insight into what data was being used to generate those scores, or who actually used them. In mid-March, the same day Facebook announced it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group from its platform as punishment for their transgressions, Carroll filed a request for disclosure in the UK in an attempt to force SCL to hand over the underlying data and answer a litany of questions about how they were being used.
Though that case is still ongoing, the ICO"s order does accomplish some of that work for Carroll. In the order, Denham describes the months-long battle between her office and SCL"s office over Carroll"s data request. According to the order, SCL repeatedly argued that as an US citizen, Carroll had no right to request his data under British laws, going so far as to write in one response that Carroll had no more data access rights in the UK "than a member of the Taliban sitting in a cave in the remotest corner of Afghanistan."
Denham disagreed with that assessment. In March, after the undercover videos of Nix went public, the ICO stormed the company’s offices and seized its servers. Now, the regulator is giving SCL 30 days to provide descriptions of Carroll’s personal data, the purpose that data served, a list of all the recipients of that data, copies of the data itself, and the sources of that data.
“It’s quite exciting,” Carroll says of the order. “At the minimum, it’s the beginning of a victory and pointing toward winning.”
Still, he says, “It didn’t have to come to this. We’ve been trying for more than a year to do this out of court…It just kept escalating.”
SCL now has the opportunity to appeal the ICO’s order. Representatives for SCL didn’t immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Facebook’s recently introduced Messenger Kids app is getting an upgrade that lets parents set “off times” that blocks their children from using the service.
The new Sleep Mode, which debuted on Friday, also lets parents set different times for the app to shut off depending on the day of the week. During “off times,” the app is inaccessible, meaning children will be unable to send or receive messages or video calls, use the creative camera to take or send photos or receive notifications.
All Sleep Mode settings are controlled from the parent’s Facebook account and can be changed at any time.
Messenger Kids, which is aimed at children from 6 to 12, launched in December. While some parents have said that they appreciate having control over their children’s social media access, it’s still been met with controversy. Facebook itself recently faced a number of questions from Congress over how user data it collects is handled, especially when those users are minors.
So far, the word “unpredictable” seems to be one of the most-used descriptive choices when characterizing the events of 2018. And, broadly speaking, this appears to be an accurate term. Just a few months ago, if you were to suggest that the NASDAQ would be seeing “flash crash” activity while General Electric (NYSE:GE) was forming a long-term bottom in a multi-year decline, you might have been laughed out of the room. But this appears to be where we are, given the market’s positive reaction to GE’s April 20th announcements and the generalized lack of certainty in almost every aspect of this current financial environment. We have been saying that the stock declines below $ 13 per share would be the worst of it for holders of GE and we maintain this view in light of the company’s recent strategic moves. We are long GE with a bullish stance on the stock as a long-term hold for portfolio strategies.
OpenAI, a nonprofit research lab started by Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk released the salary details of it"s employees--and they are striking. The organization"s top researcher was paid more than $ 1.9 million in 2016, and another leading researcher who was only recruited in March was paid $ 800,000 that year, according to a recent article in the New York Times.
Salaries for top A.I. researchers have skyrocketed because there is high demand for the skills--thousands of companies want to work with the technology--and few people have them. So even researchers at a nonprofit can make big money.
It likely has more to do with competition than interest in the field itself, however. The Times points out that both of the researchers employed by OpenAI used to work at Google. At DeepMind, a Google-owned A.I. lab in London, $ 138 million was spent on the salaries of 400 employees, translating to $ 345,000 per employee including researchers and other staff, the Times reports.
OpenAI was started by Musk who recruited several engineers from Google and Facebook, two companies pushing the industry into artificial intelligence. People who work at major companies told the Times that while top names can expect compensation packages in the millions, even A.I. specialists with no industry experience can expect to make between $ 300,000 and $ 500,000 in salary and stock as demand for the skills continues to outstrip supply.
LONDON (Reuters) - London’s Transport Commissioner Mike Brown met Uber [UBER.UL]boss Dara Khosrowshahi in January, a freedom of information request revealed, as the Silicon Valley app fights to keep its cars on the streets of its most important European market.
FILE PHOTO - Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer of Uber Technologies, attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Picture
Uber is battling a decision by the city’s transport regulator last September to strip it of its license after it was deemed unfit to run a taxi service, a ruling Uber is appealing.
Since then Uber has made a series of changes to its business model, responding to requests from regulators, including the introduction of 24/7 telephone support and the proactive reporting of serious incidents to London’s police.
Khosrowshahi flew to London in October for discussions with Brown after which Uber promised to make things right in the British capital city.
The pair had a second meeting in London in January, according to a response to a freedom of information request from Reuters.
“The Commissioner met with Dara Khosrowshahi on 3 October 2017 and 15 January 2018, both meetings took place in London,” Transport for London (TfL) said.
A TfL spokesman declined to provide an immediate comment on what was discussed at the meeting. Uber declined to comment.
Reuters had asked for a list of every meeting which had taken place between Uber and TfL’s private hire team and/or Brown since Sept. 22 but TfL declined to release such details.
“We are not obliged to supply the remainder of the information requested in relation to meetings as it ... relates to information where disclosure would be likely to prejudice the exercise by any public authority of its functions ..,” it said.
A court hearing over Uber’s appeal is due this month before the substance of the appeal is heard in June.
Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian ride-hailing firm Ola, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group will launch 10,000 electric three-wheelers in the country over the next 12 months as part of a broader electrification plan, the company said in a statement on Monday.
FILE PHOTO: An employee speaks over his phone as he sits at the front desk inside the office of Ola cab service in Gurugram, previously known as Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, April 20, 2016. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File photo
The move is part of a broader push by Ola to launch 1 million electric vehicles on its platform by 2021, it said in the statement, adding that it will work with various state governments, vehicle manufacturers and battery companies to meet its target.
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - In China, a platform for risqué jokes is no laughing matter.
FILE PHOTO - The logo of Bytedance"s news feed platform Toutiao is seen as its building in Beijing, China October 21, 2017. Picture taken October 21, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
Toutiao, a hugely popular news and online content portal that is luring investors, was forced to pull its joke sharing “Neihan Duanzi” app, literally meaning “implied jokes”, after a watchdog said it included “vulgar and improper content”.
The move comes amid a broader clamp-down targeting online content from livestreams and blogs to mobile gaming, as the country’s leaders look to tighten their grip over a huge and diverse cultural scene online popular with China’s youth.
China’s State Administration of Radio and Television ordered the app to be taken down permanently in a post on Tuesday for low values that had “caused strong disgust amongst netizens”. It urged Toutiao to regulate similar content on its other sites.
Toutiao, one of the country’s fastest-growing tech start-ups which was valued at around $ 20 billion last year, has been in hot water with regulators lately. Earlier this week, its main mobile app was also removed from a number of Chinese smartphone app stores following reports of increased censorship.
In a public letter titled “Apology and Introspection”, Toutiao founder Zhang Yiming pledged to raise the number of in-house censors - referred to as content auditors - to 10,000 people from 6,000 currently to keep its content wholesome.
“This product walked the wrong path and had content in deviation of socialist core values,” he wrote in the letter posted on his official microblog account on Wednesday.
Reporting by Pei Li and Adam Jourdan; Editing by Michael Perry
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump launched his second attack in a week on Amazon.com Inc on Saturday, accusing the world’s biggest online retailer of getting unfairly cheap rates from the U.S. Postal Service and not paying enough tax.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Amazon.com Inc is seen in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo
Trump’s comments on Twitter reiterated criticisms he made on Thursday about the company. He may have been prompted by a report from news website Axios saying he was obsessed with Amazon and considering ways to rein in the company’s power, possibly with federal antitrust or competition laws.
Investor concerns about regulatory action sent Amazon shares down 3.3 percent over Wednesday and Thursday, knocking $ 24 billion off the company’s market value.
“While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $ 1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars,” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
A Citigroup analysis last year showed that if the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) reallocated costs to account for the growing volume of packages it delivers, it would cost $ 1.46 more to deliver each package. Federal regulators, which review contracts made by USPS, have not raised any issues with the terms of its contract with Amazon.
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S. for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
“If the P.O. ‘increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $ 2.6 Billion’,” Trump tweeted, although it was not clear what report he was citing. “This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!”
A White House spokeswoman said on Thursday the administration has no Amazon-related action at this time.
Trump also accused the Washington Post, owned privately by Amazon Chief Executive and founder Jeff Bezos, of being a “lobbyist” for Amazon.
The newspaper, a frequent target of Trump’s ire, won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its critical investigation of Trump’s donations to charities.
Amazon declined comment. The Washington Post did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s apology for how his company handled 50 million users’ data did little on Thursday to ease investor worries about the cost to fix mistakes and lawmakers’ dismay that his response did not go far enough.
Germany’s second-largest bank Commerzbank AG has suspended advertising on Facebook until further notice, Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Thursday, following in the steps of Mozilla, which runs the Firefox web browser.
Allegations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to build profiles on American voters and influence the 2016 presidential election has knocked more than $ 50 billion of Facebook’s market value this week.
Five days after the scandal broke, Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday that mistakes were made and promised to restrict developers’ access to user information as part of a plan to improve privacy protection.
On Thursday, Facebook executives were still saying sorry. “It was a mistake”, Campbell Brown, head of news partnerships at Facebook, said at The Financial Times FT Future of News Conference in New York City.
Zuckerberg’s apology and promises were not enough to ease political pressure on the world’s largest social media company.
“It shouldn’t be for a company to decide what is the appropriate balance between privacy and innovation and use of data. Those rules should be set by society as a whole and so by parliament,” British minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Matt Hancock, told BBC Radio. “The big tech companies need to abide by the law and we’re strengthening the law.”
In Washington, Zuckerberg’s media rounds did little to satisfy lawmakers in either political party who have demanded this week that the billionaire testify before Congress.
Facebook executives were expected to brief two congressional committees on Thursday, after being grilled for nearly two hours by staff for the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.
Facebook Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman and other executives were unable to answer many questions at Wednesday’s meeting, according to two aides who were present. The executives said they had written down a list of 60 questions they promised to answer, the aides said.
The Republican chairman and top Democrat of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee said they will in coming days formally ask Zuckerberg to testify.
REPUTATIONAL COSTS
Wall Street analysts expressed relief that there were no signs so far of a more fundamental shift in the company’s advertising-driven revenue model, but some said there would be costs to shore up its reputation.
Facebook, with more than 2 billion monthly active users, made almost all its $ 40.6 billion in revenue last year from advertising.
A 3D-printed Facebook logo is seen in front of displayed stock graph in this illustration photo March 20, 2018. Picture taken March 20. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Stifel analyst Scott Devitt cut his price target on Facebook by $ 27 to $ 168, while BofA Merrill Lynch slashed its target by $ 35 to $ 230.
“Facebook’s current plight reminds us of eBay in 2004 – an unstructured content business built on trust that lost that trust prior to implementing policies to add structure and process,” Devitt said.
“Warren Buffett has his own thing called a “too hard” pile, and we are choosing to put Facebook shares in it,” he wrote.
Facebook shares were down 2.2 percent on Thursday in heavy trading.
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Analysts said that Zuckerberg’s promises to investigate thousands of apps, and to give members a tool that lets them turn off access, would not substantially reduce advertisers’ ability to use Facebook data - the company’s lifeblood.
Nevertheless, open-source browser and app developer Mozilla said it was “pressing pause” on its Facebook advertising after the revelations prompted it to take a closer look at the site’s default privacy settings.
“We found that its current default settings leave access open to a lot of data – particularly with respect to settings for third party apps,” Mozilla, it said in a blog post.
“When Facebook takes stronger action in how it shares customer data, specifically strengthening its default privacy settings for third party apps, we’ll consider returning.”
Commerzbank said it, too, was pausing its campaign on Facebook. “Brand safety and data security are very important to us,” head of brand strategy Uwe Hellmann told Handelsblatt. The comments were confirmed by a spokesman for the bank.
The Times newspaper reported that British advertising group ISBA, which represents thousands of well-known brands, has threatened to withdraw ads if investigations show user data has been misused.
“We think this issue is more likely to snowball than recede and that advertisers are reaching a tipping point at which spending on not only Facebook and other online platforms, is re-evaluated,” brokerage Liberum said in a note.
Technology stocks have fallen along with Facebook this week as investors worried about tighter scrutiny of global platforms like Google, Twitter and Snapchat.
British police removed cordons around the London headquarters of Cambridge Analytica on Thursday after they deemed a suspicious package which sparked a security alert to be safe.
Efforts by Britain’s information watchdog to investigate Cambridge Analytica were delayed when a judge adjourned for 24 hours its application to search the company’s head office.
Additional reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Paul Sandle; Editing by Nick Zieminski
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission plans to fine Sinclair Broadcasting Corp $ 13.3 million after it failed to properly disclose that paid programming that aired on local TV stations was sponsored by a cancer institute, three people briefed on the matter told Reuters.
The proposed fine, which covers about 1,700 spots including commercials that looked like news stories that aired during newscasts for the Utah-based Huntsman Cancer Institute over a six-month period in 2016, could bolster critics of Sinclair’s proposed $ 3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co.
Sinclair Broadcasting and a spokesman for the FCC declined to comment. Sinclair, which has told reporters previously the violations were unintentional, disclosed the investigation in financial filings.
Sinclair, which owns more than 170 U.S. television stations and is the largest U.S. operator, announced plans in May to acquire Tribune’s 42 TV stations in 33 markets as well as cable network WGN America and digital multicast network Antenna TV, extending its reach to 72 percent of American households. The FCC and Justice Department are reviewing Sinclair’s proposed acquisition of Tribune.
The proposed fine, which was approved by the five-member FCC earlier this week but has not yet been made public, is significant, officials said. The penalty represents an average fine of about $ 7,700 for each of the improperly aired spots but is significantly less than the maximum fine Sinclair could have faced under the law.
Sinclair will have the opportunity to respond to the proposed fine before it becomes final.
Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski
LONDON (Reuters) - Social media companies should face prosecution for failing to remove racist and extremist material from their websites, according to a report by an influential committee.
FILE PHOTO - A picture illustration shows a Facebook logo reflected in a person"s eye, in Zenica, March 13, 2015.REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Prime Minister Theresa May’s ethics watchdog recommends introducing laws to shift the liability for illegal content onto social media firms and calls for them to do more to take down intimidatory content.
Social media companies currently do not have liability for the content on their sites, even when it is illegal, the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life said.
The recommendations form part of the conclusions of an inquiry into intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates in an election campaign this year.
“The widespread use of social media has been the most significant factor accelerating and enabling intimidatory behavior in recent years,” the report said.
“The committee is deeply concerned about the limited engagement of the social media companies in tackling these issues.”
While the report said intimidation in public life is an old problem, the scale and intensity of intimidation is now posing a threat to Britain’s democracy.
FILE PHOTO - People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/File Photo
The report found that women, ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political candidates are disproportionately likely to be the targets of intimidation.
The committee heard how racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic abuse is putting off some candidates from standing for public office.
Platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are criticized for failing to remove abusive material posted online even after they were notified.
FILE PHOTO - A 3D-printed YouTube icon is seen in front of a displayed YouTube logo in this illustration taken October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Ilustration
The committee said it was “surprised and concerned” Google, Facebook and Twitter do not collect data on the material they take down.
“The companies’ failure to collect this data seems extraordinary given that they thrive on data collection,” the report said. “It would appear to demonstrate that they do not prioritize addressing this issue of online intimidation.”
Twitter said in a statement it has announced several updates to its platform aimed at cutting down on abusive content and it is taking action on 10 times the number of abusive accounts every day compared to the same time last year.
YouTube declined to comment, while Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Many politicians have become more vocal about the abuse they face after Labour’s Jo Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and repeatedly stabbed a week before Britain’s Brexit referendum last year.
Reporting By Andrew MacAskill; editing by Stephen Addison
