Author: AP

China says it welcomes visit by US officials amid trade spat

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China says it welcomes a planned visit by US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to Beijing next week amid trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Wednesday that China looks forward to the visit for “consultation on trade and economic issues.”

The United States and China are entangled in their most consequential trade dispute since World War II. Both countries have proposed tariffs of $50 billion on each other’s products; Trump is looking to impose tariffs of up to $100 billion more on Chinese goods.

Mnuchin has expressed optimism that the countries can avoid a trade war. He met last week with finance officials from China, Japan and Europe.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has vowed to open China’s market wider to foreign companies.

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Wells Fargo fined $1B for mortgage, auto lending abuses

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Wells Fargo will pay $1 billion to federal regulators to settle charges tied to misconduct at its mortgage and auto lending business, the latest punishment levied against the banking giant for widespread customer abuses.

In a settlement announced Friday, Wells will pay $500 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), its main national bank regulator, as well as a net $500 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The fine is the largest ever imposed by the CFPB and its first since the Trump administration took control of the bureau in late November.

Starting in September 2016, Wells has admitted to a number of abusive practices across multiple parts of its business that duped consumers out of millions of dollars. Regulators, in turn, have fined Wells several times and put unprecedented restrictions on its ability to do business, including forcing the bank to replace directors on its board. Even President Trump, whose administration has been keenly focused on paring back financial regulations, has called out Wells for its “bad acts.”

In Friday’s announcement, the CFPB and the OCC penalised Wells for improperly charging fees to borrowers who wanted to lock in an interest rate on a pending mortgage loan and for sticking auto loan customers with insurance policies they didn’t want or need. The bank admitted that tens of thousands of customers who could not afford the combined auto loan and extra insurance payment fell behind on their payments and had their cars repossessed.

These abuses are separate from Wells Fargo’s well-known sales practices scandal, where employees opened as many as 3.5 million bank and credit card accounts without getting customers’ authorisation. The account scandal torpedoed Wells Fargo’s reputation as the nation’s best-run bank.

In that case, Wells Fargo paid a combined $187 million in fines and penalties to federal regulators, including the CFPB, and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, and the company’s then-CEO John Stumpf stepped down after being bashed by politicians on both side of the aisle.

Even with the latest settlement, Wells Fargo isn’t in the clear. Its wealth management business is reportedly under investigation for improprieties similar to those that impacted its consumer bank. And the Department of

Justice is investigating the bank’s currency trading business.
The $500 million paid to the Comptroller of the Currency will go directly to the US Treasury, according to the order. The $500 million paid to the CFPB will go into the bureau’s civil penalties fund, which is used to help consumers who might have been harmed in other cases. Wells has previously said it began reimbursing auto loan and mortgage customers last year.

The settlement imposes further restrictions on Wells Fargo’s business, a sign that regulators have lost patience with the bank’s promises to turn itself around. Wells will need to come up with a risk management plan to be approved by bank regulators, and get approval from bank regulators before hiring senior employees. The OCC said in a statement that one reason for the size of the fine against Wells was “the bank’s failure to correct the deficiencies and violations in a timely manner.”

The $500 million fine matches the largest fine ever handed out by the Comptroller of the Currency against HSBC in 2012.

The Federal Reserve cracked down on Wells earlier this year by restricting it from growing larger than the $1.95 trillion in assets that it held at the time and requiring the bank to replace several directors on its board. The Federal Reserve cited “widespread abuses” for taking such an action.

“While we have more work to do, these orders affirm that we share the same priorities with our regulators and that we are committed to working with them as we deliver our commitments with focus, accountability, and transparency,” said Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan in a statement Friday.

The action by the CFPB is notable because the penalty is the first imposed by the bureau under Mick Mulvaney, appointed by President Trump to take over the consumer watchdog agency in late November. The largest fine previously handed down by the CFPB was a $100 million penalty also against Wells Fargo.

While banks have benefited from looser regulations and lower taxes under President Trump, Wells Fargo has been called out specifically by Trump as a bank that needed to be punished for its bad behaviour.

“Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased. I will cut Regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating!,” Trump wrote on Twitter back in December.

The White House said that, outside of his tweet, President Trump was not involved in the Wells Fargo investigation or settlement.

Consumer advocates have been critical of the Trump administration’s record since it took over the CFPB. However, advocates were pleased to see Wells Fargo held to account.

“Today’s billion dollar fine is an important development and a fitting penalty given the severity of Wells Fargo’s fraudulent and abusive practices,” said Pamela Banks, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union.

On Friday, Wells Fargo adjusted its previously reported first-quarter earnings to reflect the penalty. The nation’s third-largest bank now says it made $4.7 billion in the first 90 days of the year, down from $5.46 billion in the same period a year earlier.

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Audit clears Facebook despite Cambridge Analytica leaks

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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An audit of Facebook’s privacy practices for the Federal Trade Commission found no problems even though the company knew at the time that a data-mining firm improperly obtained private data from millions of users — raising questions about the usefulness of such audits.

Facebook agreed to outside audits every two years as part of a 2011 settlement with the FTC over its privacy practices. It is not clear from the report whether the company informed PricewaterhouseCoopers, which performed the audit, of the Cambridge Analytica data grab that would put Facebook in the crosshairs of Congress.

The heavily redacted audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers is available on the FTC’s website. It covers February 12, 2015 to February 11, 2017.

PwC declined to comment, but Facebook said Friday that keeping data secure is a priority.

“We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information, said Rob Sherman, Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer, in a statement. “We appreciate the opportunity to answer questions the FTC may have.”

The fact that PwC found no issues raised red flags for privacy advocates.

“The FTC failed to protect the public,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the nonprofit digital rights group Centre for Digital Democracy. “Instead of conducting its own review to enforce one of its most important decisions— the consent decree —it looked the other way, which allowed Facebook to engage in serious misconduct.”

Chester said the audit shows that the “FTC cannot be relied on to really protect consumers.”

The 2011 consent decree bound Facebook to a 20-year privacy commitment. Any violations of that pact could cost the company a ton of money. In his congressional testimony last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared uninformed about key details of the agreement, saying he did not remember if it carried a financial penalty.

Any violations of the 2011 agreement could subject Facebook to fines of $41,484 per violation per user per day. To put that in context, Facebook could theoretically owe $8 billion for one single day violation affecting all of its American users, or about half of the profit that the company booked for all of last year.

The agreement requires that Facebook users give “affirmative express consent” any time that data they haven’t made public is shared with a third party. Cambridge Analytica accessed information from so many users (the firm puts the number at 30 million, although Facebook has said 87 million) because it was able to access the data of people’s friends, and not just people who explicitly permitted access when they took a personality quiz. While Facebook did have controls in place that allowed people to restrict such access, they are found buried in the site’s settings and are difficult to find.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, said during last week’s hearing that in her view, “these requirements were not met,” because user consent shouldn’t have been buried in privacy settings.

PwC disagreed.

“In our opinion, Facebook’s privacy controls were operating with sufficient effectiveness to provide reasonable assurance to protect the privacy of covered information and that the controls have so operated throughout the Reporting Period, in all material respects for the two years ended February 11, 2017,” the report states.

Facebook is also under a separate investigation by the FTC because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The agency is looking at whether Facebook has engaged in “unfair acts” that cause “substantial injury” to consumers.

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As doors close in the US, China’s Huawei shifts to Europe

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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As trade disputes simmer, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, the No. 3 smartphone brand, is shifting its growth efforts toward Europe and Asia in the face of mounting obstacles in the US market.

Shenzhen-based Huawei, the world’s largest maker of telecoms equipment, has long coveted access to the US but recently laid off key American employees at its Washington DC office.

The US has regularly stymied Huawei’s efforts to enter the America, citing national security concerns. Huawei has failed to find a U.S. carrier to partner with for its smartphones, and the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved a draft order that could damage Huawei’s existing business in network gear. The order cited Huawei and its Chinese rival ZTE by name.

That came after Huawei canceled a planned January announcement that a major US carrier would sell its smartphones for the first time. The company gave no details but news reports said that partner was AT&T Inc. and scrapped the deal under government pressure.

Huawei’s struggles in the United States are in contrast to its booming business in developing countries and growing presence in Europe, where it has been working on next-generation, or “5G,” wireless standards. The company’s profits rose 28.1% in 2017, boosted by strong enterprise and consumer sales and booming business overseas.

The recent setbacks have left Huawei’s future in the US uncertain. Huawei recently let go of several American employees in their Washington DC office, including William Plummer, who spearheaded efforts to convince the US to allow Huawei in for nearly a decade. Though Huawei declined to comment on the layoffs, the news was first reported by the New York Times and independently confirmed by the Associated Press.

“There is no change to our business strategy in the US,” said Huawei spokesman Joe Kelly. “Any changes to staffing size or structure are simply a reflection of standard business optimisation.”

Kelly said fears that Huawei’s network equipment could be used to collect sensitive information reflected “baseless suspicion.” Experts say the concerns could be valid, but suspect they’re mainly a pretext for limiting competition and allowing US suppliers to charge higher prices.

“What we’ve seen so far suggests that there’s not a lot of concrete evidence that Huawei poses a national security threat,” said Josephine Wolff, Professor of Cybersecurity Policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “It leads a lot of people to believe that this is more about trying to protect the US tech sector.”

American companies have long chafed under Chinese regulations that require them to operate through local partners and share technology with potential competitors in exchange for market access.

Foreign companies are increasingly alarmed by initiatives such as Beijing’s long-range industry development plan, dubbed “Made in China 2025.” It calls for creating global leaders in electric cars, robots, and other fields.

“That sense that China is cultivating national champions, and cultivating companies within its own borders at the expense of other companies, has a lot of US companies concerned about how much their intellectual property rights will be safeguarded there,” Wolff said.

Huawei and ZTE’s burgeoning 5G research is seen as a particular threat, as its expanded transmitting capabilities are seen as crucial for a host of emerging technologies based on artificial intelligence – including self-driving vehicles, robots and other machines that transmit vast amounts of data in real time.

ZTE faces devastating threats to its business after the US Commerce Department blocked the company from importing American components for seven years, accusing the smartphone maker of misleading US regulators after it settled charges of violating sanctions against North Korea and Iran.

But unlike ZTE, efforts to impede Huawei in the US likely won’t stop its rapid expansion elsewhere.

Last month, Huawei’s president of consumer handsets Kevin Ho said the company is pivoting to Europe and developing Asian markets. He called them priorities “No. 1” and “No. 2.”

Huawei chose to unveil its latest flagship phone last month at the Grand Palais in Paris, while in Finland, the company employs more than 300 engineers developing cameras, audio algorithms, and 5G technology. Many used to work at Finnish rival Nokia.

Apart from expanding its clout on UN bodies that coordinate cellular technology standards, early on Huawei joined forces with European companies to develop 5G standards. In February, it completed the world’s first 5G test call in partnership with London-based Vodafone.

Still, while Chinese trade relations with Europe remain calm, Washington has been warning officials in Canada and Australia about Huawei, raising questions about the company’s long-term global prospects.

“Huawei is perceived differently in Europe but that’s definitely a risk for the company,” said Thomas Husson, principal analyst at technology research firm Forrester. “Let’s not forget Europeans can still try to push in favor of European-based solutions from Nokia or Ericsson.”

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‘Fearless Girl’ to leave Wall Street’s ‘Charging Bull’

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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New York’s “Fearless Girl” statue that has become a global symbol of female business prowess will be moved from her spot staring down Wall Street’s bronze “Charging Bull” to a new home facing the New York Stock Exchange.

And the bull, a longtime fixture and tourist attraction at the foot of Broadway, may wind up following in her footsteps.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday that “Fearless Girl,” a sculpture by Kristen Visbal of a girl with her hands on her hips and chin pointed up, will be moved by the end of the year to a permanent home near the stock exchange.

The statue was installed in March 2017 by the Boston-based State Street Global Advisors financial firm as a temporary display lasting a few weeks to encourage corporations to put more women on their boards. But its popularity spawned an online petition seeking to keep it. The city agreed.

Much of its popularity hinged on its juxtaposition with the 11-foot-tall (3-meter-tall), 7,100-pound bull statue, which Italian sculptor Arturo Di Modica created as a symbol of American financial resilience following the 1987 stock market crash. Di Modica wanted the girl gone, saying she altered the dynamic of his bull and was no more than what he called “an advertising trick.”

Relief for the sculptor, though, may not be coming.

“The Bull will almost certainly be moved and will very likely wind up reunited with ‘Fearless Girl,’ ” de Blasio’s spokesman, Eric Phillips, wrote on Twitter.

The two figures on a Broadway traffic median have become such a popular draw that it constitutes a safety hazard, with crowds often spilling into the street, city officials said.

After the announcement, visitors from around the world swirled around the ponytailed girl in a windblown dress.

The bull and the girl belong together, said Martine Guillon, a high school teacher visiting from Paris.

“A little girl can be stronger than a big animal; she’s a human mental force that is bigger than animal force,” Guillon said in her native French. “It touches me a lot to see, in front of this enormity, the force of a little girl with her hands on her hips who knows how to say, ‘I’m here too, I count too, and even if I’m a very little girl, if you push with animal strength, you won’t get far.'”

The relocation to the stock exchange, three blocks away, would bring the bull back to its original place where it was delivered on a forklift truck as guerrilla art during the night in December 1989 to express financial survival after the stock market collapse.

“Moving her to the stock exchange will show that a woman really has a place there,” said Lin Mateedulsatit, a 26-year-old woman who works for a chemical trading company in Thailand.

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2 black men arrested at Starbucks get an apology from police

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Rashon Nelson initially brushed it off when the Starbucks manager told him he couldn’t use the restroom because he wasn’t a paying customer.

He thought nothing of it when he and his childhood friend and business partner, Donte Robinson, were approached at their table and were asked if they needed help. The 23-year-old entrepreneurs declined, explaining they were just waiting for a business meeting.

A few minutes later, they hardly noticed when the police came into the coffee shop — until officers started walking in their direction.

“That’s when we knew she called the police on us,” Nelson told The Associated Press in the first interview by the two black men since video of their April 12 trespassing arrests touched off a furor around the U.S. over racial profiling or what has been dubbed “retail racism” or “shopping while black.”

Nelson and Robinson were led away in handcuffs from the shop in the city’s well-to-do Rittenhouse Square neighborhood in an incident recorded on a white customer’s cellphone.

In the week since, the men have met with Starbucks’ apologetic CEO and have started pushing for lasting change at the coffee shop chain, including new policies on discrimination and ejecting customers.

“We do want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody again,” Robinson said. “What if it wasn’t us sitting there? What if it was the kid that didn’t know somebody that knew somebody? Do they make it to jail? Do they die? What happens?”

On Thursday, they also got an apology from Philadelphia police Commissioner Richard Ross, a black man who at first staunchly defended his officers’ handling of the encounter.

“I should have said the officers acted within the scope of the law, and not that they didn’t do anything wrong,” Ross said. “Words are very important.”

At a news conference, a somber Ross said he “failed miserably” in addressing the arrests. He said that the issue of race is not lost on him and that he shouldn’t be the person making things worse.

“Shame on me if, in any way, I’ve done that,” he said.

He also said the police department did not have a policy for dealing for such situations but does now and it will be released soon.

Nelson and Robinson said they went to the Starbucks to meet Andrew Yaffe, a white local businessman, over a potential real estate opportunity. Three officers showed up not long after. Nelson said they weren’t questioned but were told to leave immediately.

Yaffe showed up as the men were being handcuffed and could be seen in the video demanding an explanation for the officers’ actions. Nelson and Robinson did not resist arrest.

“When you know that you did nothing wrong, how do you really react to it?” Nelson said. “You can either be ignorant or you can show some type of sophistication and act like you have class. That was the choice we had.”

It was not their first encounter with police. But neither had been arrested before, setting them apart from many of those they grew up with in their gritty southwest Philadelphia neighborhood.

Nelson and Robinson spent hours in a jail cell and were released after midnight, when the district attorney declined to prosecute them.

Nelson said he wondered if he’d make it home alive.

“Any time I’m encountered by cops, I can honestly say it’s a thought that runs through my mind,” Nelson said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

Starbucks has said the coffee shop where the arrests occurred has a policy that restrooms are for paying customers only, but the company has no overall policy. The men’s attorney, Stewart Cohen, said they were illegally profiled.

The arrests prompted protests at the Starbucks and a national boycott. Kevin Johnson, CEO of the Seattle-based company, came to Philadelphia to meet with the men, called the arrests “reprehensible” and ordered more than 8,000 Starbucks stores closed on the afternoon of May 29 so that nearly 175,000 employees can receive training on unconscious bias. Starbucks has not identified the employee who called police.

Robinson said that he appreciates the public support but that anger and boycotting Starbucks are not the solution.

The men said they are looking for more lasting results and are in mediation with Starbucks to make changes, including the posting in stores of a customer bill of rights; the adoption of new policies on customer ejections and racial discrimination; and independent investigations of complaints.

“You go from being someone who’s just trying to be an entrepreneur, having your own dreams and aspirations, and then this happens,” Nelson said. “How do you handle it? Do you stand up? Do you fight? Do you sit down and just watch everyone else fight for you? Do you let it slide, like we let everything else slide with injustice?”

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Asia shares hit by tech warning, oil holds near highs

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Asian shares slipped on Friday as a warning on smartphone demand from the world’s largest contract chipmaker slugged the tech sector, while lofty oil prices stirred inflation fears and undermined sovereign bonds.

Apple led the way after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing cut its revenue target to the low end of forecasts and blamed softer demand for smartphones.

“The big story for the APAC region today will be fallout from TSMC’s miss, which will weigh heavily on the tech sector, with first order impacts on the Semis and Samsung Electronics/ Galaxy supply chain,” analysts at JPMorgan said in a note to clients.

“The miss appears largely to have been due to Apple iPhones, and so may also weigh on the Apple supply chain.”

Stocks in South Korea took an early 0.4 percent dip with the tech sector losing 1.6 percent. Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.5 percent with tech down 0.9 percent.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan shed 0.4 percent, again led by a 0.7 percent drop in technology.

Wall Street had also been hit by weak result from tobacco company Philip Morris, which sent its shares down as much as 17.7 percent and dragged on the S&P 500.

The Dow ended down 0.34 percent, while the S&P 500 lost 0.57 percent and the Nasdaq 0.78 percent.

Oil prices edged back a touch after hitting their highest since late 2014 on drawdowns in global supply and as Saudi Arabia looks to push prices higher. [O/R]

Brent crude futures were steady in early trade at $73.78 a barrel, while U.S. crude eased 5 cents to $68.24.

A global oil glut has been virtually eliminated, according to a joint OPEC and non-OPEC technical panel, two sources familiar with the matter said, thanks in part to an OPEC-led supply cut deal in place since January 2017.

Analysts at CBA noted market measures of inflation expectations had spiked higher this week as oil prices surged, with some hitting highs not seen since mid-2014.

That in turn pressured fixed-income debt with yields on 10-year Treasuries jumping to a one-month top at 2.93 percent. Yields are up 10 basis points in just two days, the sharpest move since early February.

In currency markets, the main mover was sterling which dived late Thursday when Bank of England Governor Mark Carney cooled expectations for an interest rate hike in May, pointing out there were “other meetings” this year.

Sterling dropped more than a cent to $1.4085, leaving it a long way from the week peak of $1.4373.

The sudden retreat in sterling helped support the U.S. dollar more broadly and the dollar index was steady at 89.940.

The euro also eased back a touch to $1.2346, while the dollar remained tightly bound on the yen at 107.41 yen, still short of recent peaks at 107.78.

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Wells Fargo to be fined $1B as early as Friday

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Federal regulators plan to fine Wells Fargo as much as $1 billion as early as Friday for abuses tied to its auto-lending and mortgage businesses, The New York Times and other news outlets reported, citing unnamed sources.

The potential $1 billion fine would be largest ever imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank’s main national regulator, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal watchdog bureau set up after the Great Recession.

The fine against Wells Fargo had been expected. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo said last week that it was negotiating with federal regulators to pay as much as $1 billion in fines to settle various charges.

A CFPB spokesman declined to comment, as well as a spokesman for the Comptroller’s Office. A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo also declined to comment.

The problems with Wells Fargo this time are not tied directly to its well-known sales-practices scandal, where the bank admitted its employees opened as many as 3.5 million bank and credit card accounts without getting customers’ authorization. But they do involve to significant parts of the bank’s businesses: auto lending and mortgages.

Last summer, Wells Fargo admitted that hundreds of thousands of its auto-loan customers had been sold auto insurance that they did not want or need. In thousands of cases, customers who could not afford the combined auto-loan and extra insurance payment fell behind on their payments and had their cars repossessed.

In a separate case, Wells Fargo also admitted that thousands of customers were charged unnecessary fees in order to lock in their interest rates on their home mortgages. Wells Fargo is the nation’s largest mortgage lender.

This would be the first fine against a bank by the Trump administration since Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the CFPB, took over the bureau in late-November.

While banks have benefited from looser regulations and lower taxes under President Donald Trump, Wells Fargo has been called out specifically by Trump as a bank that needs to be punished for its bad behavior.

“Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased. I will cut Regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating!” Trump wrote on Twitter back in December.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Russia takes heavy hand to internet to block messaging app Telegram

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Russian authorities are freezing up vast swathes of the country’s online world in what critics call a heavy-handed — and so far unsuccessful — attempt to block a popular messaging app, Telegram.

The head of the communications watchdog acknowledged Wednesday that millions of IP addresses unrelated to Telegram have been blocked since a court ordered last week that the app be taken offline.

The move has created trouble for millions of companies and consumers, and was described by some as “carpet bombing” the internet to get after one small company. Telegram was still available in Russia despite authorities’ frantic attempts to hit it by blocking other services, but many users are preparing for the worst, setting up proxies to circumvent the ban.

The row erupted after Telegram, which was developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, refused to hand its encryption keys to Russia’s intelligence agencies. The Russian government insists it needs them to pre-empt extremist attacks but Telegram dismissed the request as a breach of privacy.

Alexander Zharov, chief of the Federal Communications Agency, told the Izvestia daily in an interview published Wednesday that Russia is blocking 18 networks that are used by Amazon and Google and which host sites that they believe Telegram is using to circumvent the ban.

Countless Russian businesses — from online language schools to car dealerships — reported that their web services were down because of the communication watchdog’s moves to bloc networks.

Internet experts estimate that Russian authorities have blocked about 16 million IP addresses since Monday, affecting millions of Russian users and businesses.

In the interview, Zharov admitted that the authorities have been helplessly trying to block Telegram and had to shut down entire networks, some of which have over half a million IP addresses that are used by unrelated “law-abiding companies,” he said.

Russia’s leading daily Vedomosti in Wednesday’s editorial likened the communications watchdog’s battle against Telegram to warfare.

“The large-scale indiscriminate blocking of foreign IP addresses in Russia in order to close the access to the messaging app Telegram is unprecedented and bears resemblance to carpet bombings,” the editorial said.

Zharov also indicated that Facebook could be the next target for the government if it refuses to comply with Russian law.

Authorities previously insisted that Facebook store its Russian users’ data in Russia but has not gone through with its threats to block Facebook if it refuses to comply.

Zharov said authorities will check before the end of the year if the company is complying with its demands and warned that if it does not, “then, obviously, the issue of blocking will arise.”

Thousands of small businesses have used Telegram for many reasons, from advertising cheap airline tickets to offering advice on the stock markets.

Among the countless victims of Telegram’s ban is a small Moscow-based education project which uses the app’s bot platform to engage users in tasks and foster creative thinking.

Solomon Shlosman, co-founder of the MOST Creative Camp, said Wednesday he set out “to do something good for my country and to contribute to people living here . but they — the government — are preventing me from doing this. Blocking is what they did in the Soviet times and now they are doing it again.”

Shlosman said the ban on Telegram got him thinking about translating the coursework into English and trying to attract an English-speaking audience.

While free speech and political discourse have been shrinking in traditional Russian media for years, the internet remained a truly free platform for debate and communication, where users could express their opinions. That changed several years ago when Russian authorities started blocking websites of opposition politicians, and the courts began to send activists to jail for social media posts.

While Telegram remains widely available in Russia, many users are preparing for it to go offline, setting up virtual private networks that would allow them to bypass local restrictions.

To Nikita Likachyov, editor-in-chief of the Russian online tech magazine T Journal, the Telegram ban is a watershed moment for the Russian internet community. Public reaction to the ban will show if the community can come up with “successful counter-measures against the decision,” Likhachyov said.

How effective the government is in blocking Telegram can determine the future of other social media platforms.

“If they go full house on Telegram, it means they can go full house on YouTube and Facebook,” he said.

But, Lykachyov says, the fact that the rebel messaging app is still up and running shows that government agencies are not competent enough to enforce the ban.

“The government has put so much pressure on trying to get control of the internet and still it doesn’t understand how it works — in terms of the spirit and freedom. You cannot tame that beast, and we don’t want to give it up,” he said.

Several small demonstrations against the ban were held this week in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and some Telegram supporters were detained.

A court on Wednesday sentenced a member of the punk collective Pussy Riot who had spent nearly two years in prison for a protest in Russia’s main cathedral to 100 hours of community service for a protest against the Telegram block. Maria Alekhina and a dozen activists were throwing paper planes outside the communications watchdog’s office on Monday.

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US, Japan plan new talks on ‘fair and reciprocal’ trade deal

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The US and Japan said Wednesday they’ve agreed to start talks to develop what President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe described as a new “free, fair and reciprocal” trade deal between the two countries following two days of talks.

But the leaders said they had failed to reach a deal that would exempt Japan from new US steel and aluminum tariffs, as Abe had wanted.

“If we can come to an arrangement on a new deal, that would certainly be something we would discuss,” Trump said during a joint press conference at his private Mar-a-Lago club. But he said the current trade deficit between the two countries is too high for him to offer an exemption now.

Most other key US allies — among them Australia, Canada, the European Union and Mexico — have already been granted exemptions to Trump’s protectionist measures on steel and aluminum.

The US trade deficit with Japan last year was $56.1 billion, according to the US Department of Commerce.

Trump said he was working to reduce that imbalance and pushing to remove barriers to US exports.

“We’re committed to pursuing a bilateral trading relationship that benefits both of our great countries,” he said.

Japan has previously voiced reluctance to a bilateral trade deal with the US.

Trump also made clear that he has little interest in rejoining negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal unless the terms are dramatically altered.

“While Japan and South Korea would like us to go back into TPP, I don’t like the deal for the United States,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, following a dinner with Abe and their respective wives at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “Too many contingencies and no way to get out if it doesn’t work. Bilateral deals are far more efficient, profitable and better for OUR workers.”

Trump pulled the US out of TPP days after his inauguration but recently said he might be open to rejoining.

During Abe’s two-day visit, Trump appeared to be seeking to reassure him of the pair’s close alliance as the president prepares for a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump and Abe spent Wednesday morning golfing at one of Trump’s nearby courses in their latest show of “golf diplomacy,” and had an intimate dinner on Tuesday evening with their wives.

The Trump-Abe summit has played out amid growing tensions between the two countries over North Korea and trade. Japan has raised concerns that the US might press Kim only on long-range missiles that could hit the mainland United States — and not on the short- and medium-range missiles that pose an immediate threat to Japan — as they discuss North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Abe on Tuesday praised Trump for his courage in agreeing to meet with Kim and suggested he and Trump had already come to terms on several issues.

Speaking through a translator during one of their meetings, Abe said that he and Trump had had “very in-depth discussions” on both North Korea and economic issues and that “on those two points” they had “successfully forged a mutual understanding.”

The two did not reveal what those agreements were, but Abe had been expected to urge Trump to exempt Japan from the tariffs and press him on the missile issue.

Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, had said earlier Tuesday that issuing Japan the waiver was “on the table,” but he declined to say what Trump would ask for in return.

The talks came amid news that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had recently traveled in secret to North Korea to meet with Kim ahead of a US-North Korea summit planned in the next two months. Two officials confirmed the trip to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the visit publicly.

Trump on Wednesday confirmed the visit in a tweet, saying “a good relationship was formed” heading into their anticipated summit.

“Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!” Trump wrote.

On Tuesday, Trump said North and South Korea are negotiating an end to hostilities before next week’s meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The meeting will be the third inter-Korean summit since the Koreas’ 1945 division.

“They do have my blessing to discuss the end of the war,” Trump said.

Trump said five locations for the summit are under consideration, but he wouldn’t list them.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump are set to host the Japanese delegations for dinner Wednesday evening.

Abe did, however, secured a commitment from Trump to raise with Kim the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea.

Trump said it was clear that Abe cares about the issue deeply.

Pyongyang has acknowledging abducting 13 Japanese, while Tokyo maintains North Korea abducted 17. Five have been returned to Japan. North Korea says eight others died and denies the remaining four entered its territory. Japan has demanded further investigation.

The US itself is pushing for the release of three Americans.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow