US mulls retaliation to French tech tax
The US is preparing tariffs on $2.4bn (£1.85bn) worth of French exports as retaliation against the country's new digital services tax.
The top US trade official said the new tax, which France approved in July, unfairly targets American tech giants.
He said the potential tariffs were intended to deter other countries from taking similar steps.
The items that could face tariffs at rates up to 100% include cheese, sparkling wine, make-up and handbags.
The decision "sends a clear signal that the United States will take action against digital tax regimes that discriminate or otherwise impose undue burdens on US companies", said US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer.
Californians are turning to vending machines for safer water. Are they being swindled?
Vended water is many times more expensive than tap water. And there isn’t much evidence to show customers are getting the quality they’re paying for
Customers stream into the parking lot of a San Diego strip mall, lining up behind a windmill-shaped vending machine that fills their jugs for 25 to 35 cents a gallon.
“The water that comes from the tap, I don’t trust it, and it doesn’t taste good,” Miguel Martinez said on a recent afternoon, as he filled his bottle from the kiosk. Martinez lives in San Diego’s nearby Shelltown neighborhood, an area located minutes from downtown where many immigrant families have landed.
Three decades after ‘Western HIV plague’ hit USSR, this tiny community is still coming to terms with the devastation and lost children
World Aids Day 2019: In 1988, a children's hospital in the provincial town of Elista became the epicentre of the Soviet Union's first ever HIV crisis. A total of over 270 children were eventually diagnosed with the virus– but for the families it was only the start of a savage injustice, writes Oliver Carroll
The lives were short and wretched. Children died in their parents’ arms, some barely a year old. Others were abandoned in their hospital beds. Those kids who were told about their diagnosis understood little about it. Instinctively, though, they knew what it meant: ostracisation, isolation, fear.
For the parents, the torment was only just beginning.
Maria Sholdayeva, 67, whose son Vadim fell ill just short of his first birthday, says she spent his three remaining years in permanent anguish. At the hospital, she watched as her child's chest cold turned into something much more sinister. At home, there was anything but respite. Her neighbours in the village even threatened to burn her family alive.
Why the French army is not laughing at controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons
French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was under fire after it published a series of cartoons over the death of 13 French soldiers in Mali. Although the army’s chief of staff expressed his “indignation”, his strong response could simply translate as perceived ingratitude towards the army. Or resentment for smearing its recruitment campaign.
Hundreds of people lined up in Paris on Monday to pay tribute to the 13 French soldiers killed while battling jihadist militants in Mali exactly one week before. But controversy erupted over the weekend as the French army’s chief of staff, Thierry Burkhard, sent the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo an open letter following a series of cartoons mocking the army’s recent recruitment campaign and the soldiers’ deaths.
Burkhard tweeted his letter on Friday, where he expressed “deep incomprehension” and "indignation”, claiming the “families’ mourning has been soiled by the extremely outrageous cartoons” published by Charlie Hebdo.
China is rolling out facial recognition for all new mobile phone numbers
Updated 0952 GMT (1752 HKT) December 2, 2019
Facial recognition checks are about to become even more ubiquitous in China, as rules come into force requiring anyone registering a new mobile phone number to submit to facial scans.
While the government says the implementation of biometric data "effectively [protects] citizens' legitimate rights and interests in cyberspace" and helps fight fraud, the move brings with it considerable privacy and security concerns in one of the most tightly controlled online environments in the world.
HOW AMAZON’S ON-SITE EMERGENCY CARE ENDANGERS THE WAREHOUSE WORKERS IT’S SUPPOSED TO PROTECT
EARLIER THIS YEAR, a falling object struck a worker’s head at an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey. The worker visited Amcare, the company’s on-site medical unit, and told the emergency medical technicians on staff there that they had a headache and blurred vision — classic symptoms of a concussion. According to company protocol, Amazon’s medical staff should have sent the worker to a hospital or doctor’s office for further evaluation, or at least called a physician for advice. They did neither.
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