DUBAI, Jan 29 (Reuters) – A loud explosion at a military plant in Iran’s central city of Isfahan was caused by an “unsuccessful” drone attack, Iranian state media reported on Sunday, citing the defence ministry.
“One of (the drones) was hit by the … air defence and the other two were caught in defence traps and blew up. Fortunately, this unsuccessful attack did not cause any loss of life and caused minor damage to the workshop’s roof,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency IRNA.
Iranian news agencies earlier reported the loud blast and carried a video showing a flash of light at the plant, said to be an ammunitions factory, and footage of emergency vehicles and fire trucks outside the plant.
In July, Iran said it had arrested a sabotage team made up of Kurdish militants working for Israel who planned to blow up a “sensitive” defence industry centre in Isfahan.
The announcement came amid heightening tensions with arch-enemy Israel over Tehran’s nuclear programme. Israel says Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies this.
“(The attack) has not affected our installations and mission…and such blind measures will not have an impact on the continuation of the country’s progress,” the defence ministry statement said.
There have been a number of explosions and fires around Iranian military, nuclear and industrial facilities in the past few years.
In 2021, Iran accused Israel of sabotaging its key Natanz nuclear site and vowed revenge for an attack that appeared to be the latest episode in a long-running covert war.
The blasts at sensitive Iranian sites have at times caused concern amid tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme with Israel and the United States.
Israel has long threatened military action against Iran if indirect talks between Washington and Tehran fail to salvage a 2015 nuclear pact.
Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Cynthia Osterman and Josie Kao
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said Wednesday it will reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.
The restoration of his accounts could provide a boost to Trump, who announced in November he will make another run for the White House in 2024. He has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram, platforms that are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.
His Twitter account was restored in November by new owner Elon Musk, though Trump has yet to post there.
Free speech advocates say it is appropriate for the public to have access to messaging from political candidates, but critics of Meta have accused the company of lax moderating policies.
Meta said in a blog post Wednesday it has “put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”
“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in the blog post.
The decision, while widely expected, drew sharp rebukes from civil rights advocates. “Facebook has policies but they under-enforce them,” said Laura Murphy, an attorney who led a two-year long audit of Facebook concluding in 2020. “I worry about Facebook’s capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act.”
The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern Wednesday over Facebook’s ability to prevent any future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
Others said it was the right decision.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a former ACLU official, defended the reinstatement. He had previously endorsed the company’s decision to suspend Trump’s account.
“The public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office,” said Jaffer. “It’s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false, so that it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”
OTHER REACTIVATIONS?
The decision to ban Trump was a polarizing one for Meta, the world’s biggest social media company, which prior to the Trump suspension had never blocked the account of a sitting head of state for violating its content rules.
The company indefinitely revoked Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts after removing two of his posts during the Capitol Hill violence, including a video in which he reiterated his false claim of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
It then referred the case to its independent oversight board, which ruled that the suspension was justified but its indeterminate nature was not. In response, Meta said it would revisit the suspension two years after it began.
Meta’s blog post Wednesday suggested it may reactivate other suspended accounts, including those penalized for their involvement in civil unrest. The company said those reinstated accounts would be subject to more stringent review and penalties for violations.
Whether, and how, Trump will seize upon the opportunity to return to Facebook and Instagram is unclear.
Trump has not sent any new tweets since regaining his account on Twitter, saying he would prefer to stick with his own app Truth Social. But his campaign spokesman told Fox News Digital last week that being back on Facebook “will be an important tool for the 2024 campaign to reach voters.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump responded to his reinstatement on Meta apps, saying: “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” He did not indicate if or when he would begin posting on Meta platforms again.
Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat who previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the decision to reinstate him.
“Trump incited an insurrection,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.”
Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; additional reporting by Greg Bensinger, David Shepardson, Kanishka Singh, Eva Mathews and Yuvraj Malik; Editing by Kenneth Li and Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
NEW DELHI, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Students were detained by the Delhi police on Wednesday as they gathered to watch a recent BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India has dismissed as propaganda and blocked its streaming and sharing on social media.
This follows similar disruptions, some of which turned violent, at gatherings this week by students to watch the documentary that questions Modi’s leadership during deadly riots two decades ago, as his opponents raise questions of government censorship.
Modi, who is aiming for a third term in elections next year, was the chief minister of Gujarat in February 2002 when a suspected Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, setting off one of independent India’s worst outbreaks of religious bloodshed.
In reprisal attacks across the state at least 1,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims, as crowds roamed the streets over days, targeting the minority group. Activists put the toll at around 2,500, over twice that number.
The government has said the BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question” released last week is a biased “propaganda piece” and has blocked the sharing of any clips from it on social media.
The Students’ Federation of India (SFI) said on Wednesday it plans to show the documentary in every Indian state.
“They won’t stop the voice of dissent,” said Mayukh Biswas, general secretary of the SFI, the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Ahead of one of those screenings at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia university, 13 students were detained amid a heavy police deployment. The university blamed the students for creating a “ruckus on the street” and said they did not have permission for holding the show, police said.
“There is no chance that anybody who tries to disturb the discipline of the university will go free,” the university’s vice chancellor, Najma Akhtar, told Reuters.
A day earlier, bricks were hurled, allegedly by members of a right-wing group, on students hoping to watch the documentary at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, students said.
Student leader Aishe Ghosh said they were watching the documentary on their phones and laptops after power was cut off about half an before a scheduled screening.
The university had denied permission and threatened disciplinary action if the documentary was screened.
“It was obviously the administration that cut off the power,” Ghosh said. “We are encouraging campuses across the country to hold screenings as an act of resistance against this censorship.”
The media coordinator for the university did not comment when asked about the on-campus power cut.
A spokesman for the right-wing student group did not respond to a message seeking comment. A police spokesperson did not respond to queries.
Protests also erupted following the film’s screening at campuses in the southern state of Kerala on Tuesday while a show was cancelled mid-way at a university in the north Indian city of Chandigarh, according to local media reports.
Derek O’Brien, a member of parliament in the upper house of the parliament, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the opposition “will continue to fight the good fight against censorship” in reference to the block on sharing clips from the documentary on social media.
The BBC said its documentary series examines tensions between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority and explores Modi’s politics in relation to those tensions.
“The documentary was rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards,” the BBC said.
It approached “a wide range of voices, witnesses and experts” and featured a range of opinion including responses from people in Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the BBC said.
Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi and Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik; Editing by Robert Birsel and Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – U.S. senators slammed Live Nation Entertainment’s lack of transparency and inability to block bot purchases of tickets on Tuesday, in a hearing called after a major fiasco involving ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming concert tour.
Live Nation Entertainment Inc (LYV.N) subsidiary Ticketmaster, which has been unpopular with fans for years, has drawn fresh heat from U.S. lawmakers over how it handled ticket sales last fall for Swift’s “Eras” tour, her first in five years. Experts say Ticketmaster commands more than 70% market share of primary ticket services for major U.S. concert venues.
“We apologize to the fans, we apologize to Ms. Swift, we need to do better and we will do better,” Joe Berchtold, who is president and chief financial officer of Live Nation, told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
“In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets,” Berchtold said.
Republican Senator Mike Lee said in an opening statement that the Ticketmaster debacle highlighted the importance of considering whether “new legislation or perhaps just better enforcement of existing laws might be needed to protect the American people.”
LACK OF COMPETITION
Senators slammed Berchtold for Live Nation’s fee structure and inability to deal with bots which bulk buy tickets and resell them at inflated prices.
“There isn’t transparency when no one knows who sets the fees,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said, responding to Berchtold’s claim that Live Nation fees fluctuate based on “ratings.”
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn called Live Nation’s bot problem “unbelievable,” pointing out that much smaller companies are able to limit bad actors in their systems.
“You ought to be able to get some good advice from people and figure it out,” she said.
[1/2] Taylor Swift arrives at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, U.S., August 28, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
“I’m not against big per se, but I am against dumb,” Republican Senator John Kennedy said, referring to Live Nation’s dominance in the ticket sales market. “The way your company handled ticket sales for Ms. Swift was a debacle, and whoever in your company was in charge of that should be fired.
“If you care about the consumer, cut the price! Cut out the bots! Cut out the middle people and if you really care about the consumer, give the consumer a break!”
Jack Groetzinger, cofounder of ticket sales platform SeatGeek, testified that the process of buying tickets is “antiquated and ripe for innovation” and called for the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which merged in 2010.
“As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the U.S., the industry will continue to lack competition and struggle,” he told lawmakers.
Ticketmaster has argued that the bots used by scalpers were behind the Taylor Swift debacle, and Berchtold asked for more help in fighting the bots that buy tickets for resale.
Other witnesses include Jerry Mickelson, president of JAM Productions, who has been among critics of Ticketmaster.
In November, Ticketmaster canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public for Swift’s tour after more than 3.5 billion requests from fans, bots and scalpers overwhelmed its website.
Senator Klobuchar, who heads the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, has said the issues that cropped up in November were not new and potentially stemmed from consolidation in the ticketing industry.
In November, Ticketmaster denied any anticompetitive practices and noted it remained under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation, adding that there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree.”
A previous Ticketmaster dispute with the Justice Department culminated in a December 2019 settlement extending the consent agreement into 2025.
Reporting by Diane Bartz, Moira Warburton and David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Diane Bartz
Thomson Reuters
Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.
NEW DELHI, Jan 24 (Reuters) – A top Indian university cut off power and internet supply on campus on Tuesday before a screening by its students’ union of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India has dismissed as propaganda, broadcaster NDTV reported.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the capital New Delhi had threatened disciplinary action if the documentary was screened, saying the move might disturb peace and harmony on campus.
Modi’s government has labelled the documentary, which questioned his leadership during deadly riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, as a “propaganda piece”, blocked its airing and also barred sharing of any clips via social media in India.
Modi was chief minister of the western state during the violence in which more than 2,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims.
The students’ union of the JNU, long seen as a bastion of left-wing politics, was to screen the documentary, “India: The Modi Question”, at 9 p.m. (1530 GMT).
A person present with students inside campus said the documentary was now being watched on mobile phones through links shared over Telegram and Vimeo (VMEO.O) after the power went out.
“There are about 300 people streaming the documentary now in campus on their phones since the power went out about half an hour before the screening,” the person, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters.
Footage from inside the campus showed some students huddled together and watching the film on a laptop propped up on a chair.
The JNU media coordinator did not comment when asked about reports of internet outage and a power cut inside the campus. A source in the administration said a fault in the power line caused outages in faculty residences and other facilities and the issue was being looked into.
The university administration earlier said it had not given permission for the documentary screening.
“This is to emphasise that such an unauthorised activity may disturb peace and harmony of the university campus,” it said.
“The concerned students/individuals are firmly advised to cancel the proposed programme immediately, failing which a strict disciplinary action may be initiated as per the university rules.”
Union president Aishe Ghosh had asked students via Twitter to attend the screening, describing it as having been “‘banned’ by an ‘elected government’ of the largest ‘democracy'”.
Ghosh did not respond to phone calls and a message after reports emerged of a power outage in campus.
Police vigilance was ramped up following a request from campus, police said.
The documentary was also screened at some campuses in the Communist-ruled southern state of Kerala, The Hindu newspaper reported.
India’s home ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the government’s plans if the film is shown at JNU and in Kerala.
The 2002 Gujarat violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59. Crowds later rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods. In 2017, 11 men were jailed for life for setting the train ablaze.
Modi has denied accusations that he did not do enough to stop the riots and was exonerated in 2012 following an inquiry overseen by the Supreme Court. Another petition questioning his exoneration was dismissed last year.
Last week, the BBC said the documentary was “rigorously researched” and involved a wide range of voices and opinions, including responses from people in Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly, Shivam Patel and Rupam Jain; additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez
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Jan 23 (Reuters) – Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) said on Monday it plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.
The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) to shed thousands of jobs.
“Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts.
“I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” he added, echoing a sentiment voiced by other tech bosses in recent months.
Spotify’s operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year as the audio-streaming company aggressively poured money into its podcast business, which is more attractive for advertisers due to higher engagement levels.
Reuters Graphics
At the same time, businesses pulled back on ad spending on the platform, mirroring a trend seen at Meta and Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), as rapid interest rate hikes and the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war pressured the economy.
The company, whose shares rose 5.8% to $103.55, is now restructuring itself in a bid to cut costs and adjust to the deteriorating economic picture.
It said Dawn Ostroff, the head of content and advertising, was leaving after an over four-year stint at the company. Ostroff helped shape Spotify’s podcast business and guided it through backlash around Joe Rogan’s show for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
The company said it is appointing Alex Norström, head of the freemium business, and research and development boss Gustav Söderström as co-presidents.
Spotify had about 9,800 full-time employees as of Sept. 30.
($1 = 0.9196 euros)
Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Shailesh Kuber
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MUMBAI, Jan 22 (Reuters) – India has blocked the airing of a BBC documentary which questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots, saying that even sharing of any clips via social media is barred.
Directions to block the clips from being shared have been issued using emergency powers available to the government under the country’s information technology rules, said Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, on his Twitter handle on Saturday.
While the BBC has not aired the documentary in India, the video was uploaded on some YouTube channels, Gupta said.
The government has issued orders to Twitter to block over 50 tweets linking to the video of the documentary and YouTube has been instructed to block any uploads of the video, Gupta said. Both YouTube and Twitter have complied with the directions, he added.
Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat when it was gripped by communal riots that left more than 1,000 people dead, by government count – most of them Muslims. The violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59.
Human rights activists estimate at least double that number died in the rioting.
Modi denied accusations that he failed to stop the rioting. A special investigation team appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate the role of Modi and others in the violence said in a 541-page report in 2012 it could find no evidence to prosecute the then chief minister.
Modi was later named the head of his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which he led to power in general elections in 2014 and then in 2019.
Last week, a spokesperson for India’s foreign ministry termed the BBC documentary a “propaganda piece” meant to push a “discredited narrative”.
Reporting by Ira Dugal; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan
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MEXICO CITY, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Just after sunset on Thursday, February 10th, two men in a white Dodge Ram pickup pulled up in front of Heber Lopez Vasquez’s small radio studio in southern Mexico. One man got out, walked inside and shot the 42-year-old journalist dead. Lopez’s 12-year-old son Oscar, the only person with him, hid, Lopez’s brother told Reuters.
Lopez was one of 13 Mexican journalists killed in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based rights group. It was the deadliest year on record for journalists in Mexico, now the most dangerous country for reporters in the world outside the war in Ukraine, where CPJ says 15 reporters were killed last year.
A day earlier, Lopez–who ran two online news sites in the southern Oaxaca state–had published a story on Facebook accusing local politician Arminda Espinosa Cartas of corruption related to her re-election efforts.
As he lay dead, a nearby patrol car responded to an emergency call, intercepted the pickup and arrested the two men. One of them, it later emerged, was the brother of Espinosa, the politician in Lopez’s story.
Espinosa has not been charged in connection with Lopez’s killing. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment and Reuters could not find any previous comment she made about her role in corruption or on Lopez’s story.
Her brother and the other man remain detained but have yet to be tried. Their lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“I already stopped covering drug trafficking and corruption and Heber’s death still scares me,” said Hiram Moreno, a veteran Oaxacan journalist who was shot three times in 2019, sustaining injuries in the leg and back, after writing about drug deals by local crime groups. His assailant was never identified. “You cannot count on the government. Self-censorship is the only thing that will keep you safe.”
It is a pattern of fear and intimidation playing out across Mexico, as years of violence and impunity have created what academics call “silence zones” where killing and corruption go unchecked and undocumented.
“In silence zones people don’t get access to basic information to conduct their lives,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “They don’t know who to vote for because there are no corruption investigations. They don’t know which areas are violent, what they can say and not say, so they stay silent.”
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about attacks on the media.
Since the start of Mexico’s drug war in 2006, 133 reporters have been killed for motives related to their work, CPJ determined, and another 13 for undetermined reasons. In that time Mexico has registered over 360,000 homicides.
Aggression against journalists has spread in recent years to previously less hostile areas–such as Oaxaca and Chiapas–threatening to turn more parts of Mexico into information dead zones, say rights groups like Reporters Without Borders and 10 local journalists.
Lopez was the second journalist since mid-2021 to be murdered in Salina Cruz, a Pacific port in Oaxaca. It nestles in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a skinny stretch of land connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific that has become a landing spot for precursor chemicals to make fentanyl and meth, according to three security analysts and a DEA source.
Lopez’s last story, one of several he wrote about Espinosa, covered the politician’s alleged efforts to get a company constructing a breakwater in Salina Cruz’s port to threaten workers to cast their vote for her re-election or else be fired.
The infrastructure was a part of the Interoceanic Corridor–one of Lopez Obrador’s flagship development projects in southern Mexico.
Jose Ignacio Martinez, a crime reporter in the isthmus, and nine of Lopez’s fellow journalists say since his murder they are more afraid to publish stories delving into the corridor project, drug trafficking and state collusion with organized crime.
One outlet Reuters spoke to, which asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said it had done an investigation on the corridor, but did not feel safe to publish after Lopez’s death.
Lopez Obrador’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about corruption accusations related to the corridor.
THE MECHANISM
In 2012 the government established the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
[1/4] Marilu Sanchez holds a framed picture of her late husband Gustavo Sanchez, a journalist killed by assailants while riding his motorcycle with his son, at her home in Morro de Mazatan, in Oaxaca state, Mexico, October 18, 2022. REUTERS/Jorge Luis Plata
Known simply as the Mechanism, the body provides journalists with protections such as panic buttons, surveillance equipment, home police watch, armed guards and relocation. Since 2017, nine Mechanism-protected reporters have been murdered, CPJ found.
Journalists and activists may request protection from the Mechanism, which evaluates their case along with a group of human rights defenders, journalists and representatives of nonprofits, as well as officials from various government agencies that make up a governing board. Not all those who request protection receive it, based on the analysis.
At present there are 1,600 people enrolled in the Mechanism, including 500 journalists.
One of those killed was Gustavo Sanchez, a journalist shot at close range in June 2021 by two motorcycle-riding hitmen. Sanchez, who had written critical articles about politicians and criminal groups, enrolled in the Mechanism for a third time after surviving an assassination attempt in 2020. Protection never arrived.
Oaxaca’s prosecutor at the time said Sanchez’s coverage of local elections would be a primary line of investigation into his murder. No one has been charged in the case.
Sanchez’s killing triggered Mexico’s human rights commission to produce a 100-page investigation into authorities’ failings. Evidence “revealed omissions, delays, negligence and breach of duties by at least 15 public servants,” said the report.
Enrique Irazoque, head of the Interior Ministry’s department for the Defense of Human Rights, said the Mechanism accepted the findings, but highlighted the role local authorities played in the protection lag.
Fifteen people within government and civil society told Reuters the Mechanism is under-resourced given the scope of the problem. Irazoque agreed, though he noted its staff of 40 increased last year to a staff of 70. Its 2023 budget increased to around $28.8 million from $20 million in 2022.
In addition to the shortage of funding, Irazoque said that local authorities, state governments and courts need to do more, but there was a lack of political will.
“The Mechanism is absorbing all the problems, but the issues are not federal, they are local,” he said in an interview with Reuters.
More convictions are what Irazoque believes are most needed, saying the lack of legal repercussions for public officials encourages corruption.
Impunity for journalist killings hovers around 89%, a 2021 report from the Interior Ministry, which oversees the Mechanism, showed. Local public servants were the biggest source of violence against journalists, ahead of organized crime, the report found.
“You would think the biggest enemy would be armed groups and organized crime,” said journalist Patricia Mayorga, who fled Mexico after investigating corruption. “But really it’s the ties between those groups and the state officials that are the problem.”
Many Mexican journalists killed worked for small, independent, digital outlets that sometimes only published on Facebook, noted Irazoque, saying their stories dug deep into local political issues.
Mexico’s National Association of Mayors (ANAC) and its National Conference of Governors (CONAGO) did not respond to requests for comment about the role of state and local governments in journalist killings or allegations of corrupt ties to crime groups.
President Lopez Obrador frequently pillories the press, calling out reporters critical of his administration and holding a weekly segment in his daily news conference dedicated to the “lies of the week.” He condemns the murders, while accusing adversaries of talking up the violence to discredit him.
Irazoque says he has no evidence the president’s verbal attacks have led to violence against journalists. Lopez Obrador’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
“What type of life is this?,” journalist Rodolfo Montes said, eyeing security footage from inside his home where the Mechanism, in which he first enrolled in 2017, had installed cameras with eyes on the garage, street and entryway.
Years earlier, a cartel rolled a bullet under the door as a threat, and he has been on edge ever since. An entire archive box of threats spread over a decade sat in the corner. Looking down at his phone after a cartel threatened his 24-year-old daughter just a few days before, he said, “I’m living, but I’m dead, you know?”
Reuters Graphics
Editing by Claudia Parsons and Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Pepe Cortes in Oaxaca
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Procter & Gamble falls after commodity cost pressure warning
Netflix down ahead of quarterly results
Dow down 0.76%, S&P 500 down 0.76%, Nasdaq down 0.96%
NEW YORK, Jan 19 (Reuters) – U.S. stock indexes closed lower on Thursday after data pointing to a tight labor market renewed concerns the Federal Reserve will continue its aggressive path of rate hikes that could lead the economy into a recession.
A report from the Labor Department showed weekly jobless claims were lower than expected, indicating the labor market remains solid despite the Fed’s efforts to stifle demand for workers.
Expectations the central bank would further dial down the size of its interest rate increases at its policy announcement next month were unchanged by the report.
Investors have been looking for signs of weakness in the labor market as a key ingredient needed for the Fed to begin to slow its policy tightening measures.
Jobless claims
Other data showed manufacturing activity in the mid-Atlantic region was subdued again in January, while data from the commerce department confirmed the recession in the housing market persisted.
“What we are seeing is the market carving out a bottom in the uncertainty so the news is having less of an effect and what we are seeing today is really just a continuation of that,” said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, an independent broker-dealer in Waltham, Massachusetts.
“The fact we are not seeing more of a reaction says a lot of the bad news is out there.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 252.4 points, or 0.76%, to 33,044.56, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 30.01 points, or 0.76%, to 3,898.85 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 104.74 points, or 0.96%, to 10,852.27.
Traders work at the post where Carvana Co. is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., December 7, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Recent comments from Fed officials continue to highlight the disconnect between the central bank’s view of its terminal rate and market expectations.
Boston Fed President Susan Collins echoed comments from other policymakers to support the case for interest rates to rise beyond 5%.
But stocks moved off their session lows after Fed vice chair Lael Brainard said the Fed is still “probing” for the level of interest rates that will be necessary to control inflation.
Markets, however, see the terminal rate at 4.89% by June and have largely priced in a 25-basis point rate hike from the U.S. central bank in February, with rate cuts in the back half of the year. .
Both the S&P 500 and the Dow fell for a third straight session, their longest streak of declines in a month.
On the earnings front, Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) declined 2.11% after warning of commodity costs pressuring profits, despite raising its full-year sales forecast.
Analysts now expect year-over-year earnings from S&P 500 companies to decline 2.8% for the fourth quarter, according to Refinitiv data, compared with a 1.6% decline in the beginning of the year.
Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) closed 3.23% lower ahead of its results scheduled for release after the closing bell on Thursday. But the stock rebounded to gain 3.33% after posting subscriber gains for the quarter and the departure of co-founder Reed Hastings as chief executive to an executive chairman role.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.49-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.70-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 1 new 52-week highs and 3 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 46 new highs and 33 new lows.
Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak, editing by Deepa Babington
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Jan 17 (Reuters) – Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has postponed the launch of its lightweight augmented-reality glasses indefinitely due to technical challenges, but is still planning to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.
The iPhone maker’s mixed-reality headset – which combines both augmented and virtual reality – is set to launch in this year’s spring event, Bloomberg said, adding that the device will cost around $3,000.
Apple’s mixed-reality device would compete with the likes of Meta Platforms’ (META.O) Quest Pro virtual and mixed-reality headset, which it launched late last year for $1,500, half of the Apple device’s reported price.
The Cupertino, California-based company now plans to focus on lowering the price of the follow-up version of its mixed-reality device, expected as soon as 2024 or early 2025, instead of working on the AR glasses, according to the report.
Apple will aim to do so by using chips on par with those in the iPhone rather than components found in higher-end Mac computers.
Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Information website first reported Apple’s plans to unveil a cheaper mixed-reality headset on Tuesday.
earlier in the day, the iPhone maker unveiled MacBooks powered by its new and faster M2 Pro and M2 Max chips in a surprise launch weeks ahead of its usual schedule.
Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman
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