“Those who spread the video range in age from 15 to in their early 20s. If found guilty the young people’s punishments will range from a criminal record to having their name added to child protection registers for 10 years. The age of consent in Denmark is 15 but it is a criminal offence to distribute images of anyone aged under 18.”
“Japan’s public broadcaster sent out a false alert warning of a North Korean missile on Tuesday, just three days after Hawaii residents received an erroneous message about an incoming missile. ‘North Korea appears to have launched a missile … The government urges people to take shelter inside buildings or underground,’ the message read, according to a translation from Reuters. The false warning went out just before 7 p.m. in the evening, through broadcaster NHK’s Japanese mobile app and website.”
“China’s market for reliable wealth management products is expected to explode in coming years, through the sales of funds and banking products, and traditional finance houses are now being seriously challenged in the market by emerging internet financial companies. Tencent has already teamed up with Howbuy, an online distributor of mutual funds, and a number of fund houses to line up nearly 100 mutual funds products via WeChat.”
Read more: http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2126876/tencent-granted-licence-sell-mutual-funds
“Its tech giants hold three drawcards: faster growth in salaries, opportunity and a sense of home. China’s internet space is enjoying bubbly times, with compensation sometimes exceeding American peers’. One startup was said to have hired an AI engineer for cash and shares worth as much as $30 million over four years.”
“The BBC reports 250 ISIS fighters were permitted to leave Raqqa with 3,500 family members to ISIS-controlled territory. The U.S. and British-led coalition reportedly knew about the deal brokered by Syrian Democratic Forces and monitored the exodus. Quentin Sommerville of our partners at BBC report.”
“86.4 percent of those surveyed feel the American military should be used only as a last resort, while 57 percent feel that US military aid to foreign countries is counterproductive. The latter sentiment ‘increases significantly’ when involving countries like Saudi Arabia, with 63.9 percent saying military aid—including money and weapons—should not be provided to such countries. The poll shows strong, indeed overwhelming, support, for Congress to reassert itself in the oversight of US military interventions, with 70.8 percent of those polled saying Congress should pass legislation that would restrain military action overseas.”
“The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to extend the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program for six years with minimal changes, rejecting a push by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to impose significant privacy limits when it sweeps up Americans’ emails and other personal communications. Effectively, the vote was almost certainly the end of a debate over 21st-century surveillance and privacy rights that broke out in 2013 after the leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/us/politics/fisa-surveillance-congress-trump.html?_r=0
“She is one of 100 French women who wrote an open letter, warning about a new ‘puritanism’ sparked by recent sexual harassment scandals. It deplores a wave of ‘denunciations’, following rape allegations made against US movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. A group of French feminists condemned the letter, accusing the signatories of trivialising sexual violence.”
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42630108
“Assistant Professor Thornhill said that he had expected some grumblings but hadn’t foreseen such an uproar from many who saw the class as an affront to an entire race — and some who viewed it as a personal attack on them for being white.”
“The South Carolina Department of Revenue said Alhanik filed $971,935 in sales tax returns in the period between 2013 and 2016, but after an investigation the agency found the store’s sales was $2.6 million, according to a press release. Alhanik dodged paying more than $136,000 in sales taxes during that four-year period, the department said.”