BEIJING (AP) — A look at recent developments in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves:
"If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?”
Fuel thieves punctured the Tula-Tuxpan pipeline a few miles from one of Mexico's main refineries on Friday. Half a dozen people interviewed by Reuters on Saturday said their relatives went to the leaking duct in Tlahuelilpan district in Hidalgo state because they struggled to find fuel elsewhere and were desperate to fill up cars to get to work or run their farms. Late last month, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador launched a program to shut down an illegal fuel distribution network that siphons off about $3 billion worth of fuel annually from state oil firm Pemex.
The youngest woman ever elected to Congress has responded to producer Aaron Sorkin’s demand that the new intake of Democrats ‘stop acting like young people’ - saying if politicians do not show up and fight for them, they cannot expect their vote. Speaking on CNN, where he was promoting his Broadway production of To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, the 57-year said he liked the newly elected young Democrats in Congress, but suggested they needed to act differently. “I really like the new crop of young people who were just elected to Congress.
Flight headaches were on the rise Saturday as a winter storm moved toward the Northeast. Cancellations spiked into the thousands, with more likely.
Bloomberg erroneously reported earlier that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s spokesman, George Charamba, dismissed rumors of a palace coup, citing a tweet from the account. Charamba does not have a Twitter account, Regis Chikowore, principal director at the information ministry, said by phone.
Rudy Giuliani said President Trump recalls discussing the Trump Tower Moscow project with Michael Cohen until late 2016.
Google has kicked off 2019 by getting hit with yet another multimillion-dollar fine from a European regulator. Stemming from an investigation that began in May -- the day after Europe's strict new data privacy rules known as GDPR went into effect -- France's data protection authority has announced a $57 million fine against Google in the first such GDPR penalty levied against a US technology company. In a statement explaining the action, the French agency known as the CNIL noted that the fine is a result of deficiencies that include Google not being clear enough about the way user data is handled to present personalized ads. The CNIL's statement goes on to note that "the infringements observed deprive the users of essential guarantees regarding processing operations that can reveal important parts of their private life since they are based on a huge amount of data, a wide variety of services and almost unlimited possible combinations." The penalty is also connected to the way the French agency sees Google as not being clear enough in a broad sense about how user data is collected and how it's subsequently used. Google released a statement saying it hasn't decided yet whether to appeal this punishment, which certainly didn't come as a surprise. Once the General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR for short, went into effect in Europe last year, it was regarded as only a matter of time before regulators there would use the stricter privacy framework to push back on tech giants in a way that's not happening in the US. The CNIL statement goes on to provide context for the fine against Google by noting that "This is the first time that the CNIL applies the new sanction limits provided by the GDPR. The amount decided, and the publicity of the fine, are justified by the severity of the infringements observed regarding the essential principles of the GDPR -- transparency, information and consent." Google, for its part, acknowledged that "high standards" of transparency and control are expected of the company by the public and that Google is "committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR." The new fine, however, is yet another example of European-led pushback against the search giant, which has also come under fire from EU officials over antitrust concerns. Along those lines, the EU hit Google with a record-setting $5 billion fine last year for antitrust issues related to its Android mobile operating system.
BEIJING (AP) — China's population growth rate continued to slow in 2018, spelling possible trouble ahead as a swelling number of retirees pushes up against a shrinking labor pool.
A bomb blast hit Damascus on Sunday, in a rare attack in the Syrian capital that has been largely insulated from violence during nearly eight years of war. The explosion came as another bomb in the northern city of Afrin killed three people and wounded nine others, according to a war monitor, on the first anniversary of a Turkish offensive on the Kurdish-majority region. Also on Sunday Israel said it intercepted a rocket fired from Syria after Damascus accused the Jewish state of carrying out air raids on the south of the country.