Hillary Clinton says she wants to be Facebook CEO. Is Zuckerberg listening?

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might be willing to swap a life in politics to lead the world's largest social-networking company, a media report said.

On being asked by Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, which company she would want to be the CEO of, Clinton didn't pause before quickly answering "Facebook", CNET reported on Friday.

"It's the biggest news platform in the world. Most people in our country get their news -- true or not from Facebook," Clinton was quoted as saying.

The former US presidential candidate was at Harvard on Friday receiving the Radcliffe Medal, which honours people who have "had a transformative impact on society".

Facebook is working to win back its users' trust following a series of recent controversies, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from as many as 87 million Facebook users were improperly shared with the political consultancy.

Time magazine wanted me to be the 'Person of the Year'; I declined: Trump

United States President Donald Trump claimed that he denied being named Time's 'Person of the Year' after the magazine told him he "probably" would be selected "like last year."

"Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named "Man (Person) of the Year," like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!" Trump tweeted.
 
The magazine named Trump 'Person of the Year' in 2016, following his shocking victory over Hillary Clinton.

"It's a great honor. It means a lot," Trump said at the time. "To be on the cover of Time magazine as the person of the year is a tremendous honor," reported the Hill.

Time defended the controversial decision by saying the award is given to "the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year".

Time began conducting a reader poll for its Person of the Year competition earlier this month.

Trump's tweet came in the backdrop of an online readers' poll that shows Trump being outperformed by singer Taylor Swift and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz for this year's honor.
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Assange says WikiLeaks rejected request by data firm tied to Donald Trump

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday that he had rebuffed a request for help last year from the head of a data firm that worked for Donald J. Trump and is now facing congressional scrutiny.

On Twitter, Mr Assange said he had been approached before the 2016 election by Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Mr Trump during the final months of the campaign. Mr Assange did not disclose what kind of help Mr Nix sought, only that he had declined the request.

“I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica,” Mr Assange wrote, “and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks.”

But The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Mr Nix had emailed Mr Assange looking for copies of more than 30,000 emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton’s private server and never publicly released. Mrs. Clinton has said that the emails were personal in nature.

A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday evening.

It is not clear precisely when the two men corresponded. CNN reported on Wednesday that the emails were exchanged in the summer of 2016. Cambridge Analytica was being paid by a rival campaign — that of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — through early June, according to Federal Election Commission records. By early summer, Cambridge Analytica had also begun wooing the Trump campaign, which hired the firm in June. The firm’s principal owner is the conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, who backed Mr Cruz during the campaign before switching his allegiance to Mr Trump.
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Brexit a 'very big disadvantage' for UK, says Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton said Brexit would put Britain at a "very big disadvantage" and force companies to move resources to continental Europe, in an interview aired today.

Britain leaving the European Union could cause serious disruption for the country as it tries to reorder its trading relationships, she told BBC television.

"I think it would be a very big disadvantage to Britain," said Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate who lost to Donald Trump in last year's US presidential election.

"No deal meaning no preferential trade deals, which means products in Britain would not have the kind of easy access to the European market that you've had under EU membership.

"It could very well mean that there would be more pressure on businesses in Britain, if not to leave completely, at least (to) also have sites and employment elsewhere in Europe.

"The disruption for Britain could be quite serious," the former US secretary of state said.
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Russia slams fresh US sanctions, says move is a blow to normalising ties

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Wednesday slammed the US move to impose fresh sanctions on Moscow, calling it "destruction of prospects for normalising relations between the two countries".

Ryabkov's comments came after the US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a package of further punitive measures for Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US elections and its 2014 annexation of the Crimea.

"What is happening is beyond common sense," Ryabkov told Russia's official TASS news agency. "The authors and sponsors of this bill are making a very serious step towards destruction of prospects for normalising relations with Russia."

He said the approval of the law "would be the work of the enemies of Russia and the US".

Ryabkov also said that Washington's move had complicated negotiations between the two countries about the reutrn of seized Russian diplomatic property in the US.

"The US executive authority's capabilities to make the only correct decision to return to us the diplomatic property without any conditions are significantly narrowed... Therefore, of course our dialogue on this topic becomes even more difficult," Sputnik news agency quoted Ryabkov as telling RIA Novosti.
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Why aren't investigators looking into 'crooked' Hillary's crimes: Trump

US President Donald Trump took to social media to ask why congressional committees and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are not investigating the links between the Russian government and "dishonest" Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump on Monday resorted once again to Twitter to lambaste Clinton and lash out at the investigations being pursued by several congressional committees to determine if his election campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the result of the election and hurt Clinton's chances at the polls, Efe news reported.

"So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes and Russia relations?" tweeted Trump.


So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017
 The President's comment comes a few hours after his son-in-law Jared Kushner denied having "improper contacts" with Russian officials.
Kushner released a statement outlining the testimony he intends to provide on Monday behind closed doors before the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional bodies pursuing the Russia investigation.
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Trump Jr, former campaign manager to testify before Russia probe panel

President Donald Trump's eldest son and a former campaign manager will testify before Congress next week as part of US investigations into the Trump team's alleged contacts with Russia, a Senate panel has announced.

Donald Trump Jr and Paul Manafort are scheduled to testify in an open hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at 10 am (local time).

Both men attended a controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer last year in which they were expecting to receive dirt from Moscow on Donald Trump's 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton.

Adding to the political drama in Washington next week, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, albeit in a closed- door session, CNN reported, citing Kushner's lawyer.

Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, also attended the June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Trump Jr sent shockwaves through Washington when he confirmed the meeting by releasing a series of emails in which the now-president's son was told the campaign could get "very high level and sensitive information" that was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump."
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Clinton as President would have made America weaker, Putin happier: Trump

US President Donald Trump has said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would have been happier if his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton would have won the last year's general elections, as this would have made America weaker.

In his first major interview after his last week's maiden meeting with Putin in Hamburg, Germany on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, Trump said he and the Russian leader both are advocating interest of their respective countries. But there is scope for co-operation between the two at the global stage.

"We are the most powerful country in the world and we are getting more and more powerful because I'm a big military person. As an example, if Hillary had won, our military would be decimated. Our energy would be much more expensive. That's what Putin doesn't like about me," Trump told Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in an interview.

"And that's why I say, why would he want me? Because from day one I wanted a strong military, he doesn't want to see that," he said, according to the excerpts of the interview released by CBN.

"From day one I want fracking and everything else to get energy prices low and to create tremendous energy. We're going to be self-supporting, we just about are now. We're going to be exporting energy - he doesn't want that.

"He would like Hillary where she wants to have windmills. He would much rather have that because energy prices would go up and Russia as you know relies very much on energy," he continued.
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Donald Trump appears to confirm he's under probe, slams it as witch hunt

US President Donald Trump appeared to confirm that he was being probed for firing the FBI chief and described it as a "witch hunt", as he asserted that there was no proof of his "collusion with the Russians" even after seven months of investigation.

"I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director (James Comey) by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt," Trump said in an early morning tweet.

Trump's apparent confirmation that he is under probe for obstruction of justice by special counsel appointed to probe alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential polls came a day after a Washington Post report pointed to such an investigation.

The probe by special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief, "marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin," The Washington Post had reported.

Trump did not respond to shouted questions from the media as he was leaving the White House lawns to board Marine One for the Joint Andres Air Force Base for his day-long trip to Florida.

"Despite the phony Witch Hunt going on in America, the economic and jobs numbers are great. Regulations way down, jobs and enthusiasm way up!" said the US President in another tweet.

He accused the mainstream American media of allegedly spreading the wrong news.

"The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media -- over 100 million people! I can go around them," Trump said.

In the past, he has frequently used the term 'Fake News Media' for outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.
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An internet firm serving hate on web has just tweaked its complaint policy

Cloudflare, a major content delivery network that has a variety of white supremacist websites as clients, has said it will change its policies to allow people to more safely lodge complaints about the material on the hate sites.

Cloudflare’s announcement comes on the heels of a ProPublica article detailing the company’s dealings with sites such as The Daily Stormer, a virulently racist neo-Nazi operation whose owner has promised to strike back at critics. The article revealed that Cloudflare’s standard arrangement with clients included passing along personal information of people who had complained to the company about The Daily Stormer and other sites.

In an interview, Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, said the company would soon permit people in certain instances to complain anonymously and would be more selective in its decisions to share with its clients the personal information — names and email addresses, for instance — of people who reported objections.

“We have to have ways for people to report that abuse and not have people feel they are being bullied or threatened,” he said.

Cloudflare, based in San Francisco, operates more than 100 data centers spread across the world, serving as a sort of middleman for websites — speeding up delivery of a site’s content and protecting it from several kinds of attacks. Cloudflare says that some 10 percent of web requests flow through its network.

In the interview this week, Prince said Cloudflare would continue to have the racist sites as paying customers. Prince said Cloudflare does not regulate content and will not bar a customer unless they are determined to be a technical threat — like a site serving malware — or if his company is served with a court order.
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Why Trump won? Hillary Clinton blames misogyny, FBI, Russia and herself

Hillary Clinton says she is taking responsibility for her 2016 election loss but believes misogyny, Russian interference and questionable decisions by the FBI also played a role in the historic upset.

The former Democratic presidential nominee on Wednesday reflected on the presidential contest during the Women for Women International's annual luncheon in New York.

Clinton said she was "on the way to winning" until a combination of events in the final days. She cited the FBI director's letter to Congress resurrecting questions about her email practices and WikiLeaks' repeated release of her campaign's internal emails that "scared off" people.

She also said misogyny "played a role in this election", won by Republican Donald Trump.

She conceded she made mistakes but said, "The reason I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days."
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