1 ‘Economic frustration led to Trump, Brexit’ (Katie
Allen in The Guardian) Politicians
around the world risk giving more traction to nationalistic movements if they
continue to ignore the growing numbers of workers getting a “raw deal” from globalisation,
the head of the UN’s labour agency has warned.
The director general of the International Labour
Organization, Guy Ryder, described Donald Trump’s victory in the US
presidential election and the UK’s vote for Brexit as “the revolt of the dispossessed”
and gave a damning assessment of the establishment’s failure to offer an
alternative to protectionism.
British-born Ryder said governments had been too
quick to focus on headline figures that flattered the state of labour markets
since the global financial crisis. In so doing they had failed to scratch below
the surface into a world of zero-hours contracts, underemployment and
unreliable incomes, he said, as the ILO released research showing a rise in
such non-standard forms of employment.
Speaking days after Trump stunned the world with his
victory over Hillary Clinton, the ILO chief highlighted the common ground
between the Republican candidate’s supporters and those who voted for the UK to
leave the EU. “It is the people who feel they haven’t benefited from
globalisation and from the EU, from the way things are organised. This is the
revolt of the dispossessed in that regard,” he said.
The ILO report finds temporary work, agency work,
precarious self-employment and other non-standard forms of employment have
become more widespread. On the ground, that translates into downward pressure
on earnings, unreliable working hours and lower access to workplace benefits.
His comments reflect the tendency among ministers to
focus on record employment levels and falling unemployment, while largely
ignoring that wages have stagnated, people have felt pressured into
self-employment and millions say they want to work more hours than they can
get.
2 This year may be hottest ever (San Francisco Chronicle)
The UN weather agency says 2016 is set to break the record for the hottest year
since measurements began in the 19th century.
The World Meteorological Organization said Monday
that preliminary data through October shows global average temperatures this year
are 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
That's getting close to the limit set by the global
climate agreement adopted in Paris last year. It calls for limiting the
temperature rise since the industrial revolution to 2 degrees C or even 1.5
degrees C. This year's temperatures were boosted by the El Nino weather event.
The previous hottest year was 2015. WMO said 16 of
the 17 hottest years have occurred this century, with the only exception being
1998, which was also an El Nino year.
3 Facebook’s fake news crisis (Dave Lee on BBC)
Despite the best efforts of Mark Zuckerberg to downplay Facebook’s role in the
election of Donald Trump, the scrutiny of how fake news is spread on the
platform has intensified. Buzzfeed News is reporting that "more than
dozens" of Facebook employees have created an unofficial task force
dedicated to addressing the issue.
“[Mark
Zuckerberg] knows, and those of us at the company know, that fake news ran wild
on our platform during the entire campaign season,” the source said. Meanwhile,
Google announced it would do more to prevent fake news sites from making money
through advertising.
Earlier, Facebook denied claims that a tool to
whittle out fake news had been created before the election, only to be shelved
due to concerns it would make Facebook look like it was censoring conservative
views. Mr Zuckerberg appears to be increasingly agitated by the suggestion that
fake news was a serious problem on his site.
He posted a lengthy update to his profile page
defending it. "Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what
people see is authentic,” he wrote. "Only a very small amount is fake news
and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or
even to politics."
His conclusion: "Overall, this makes it
extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction
or the other." That statistic - 99% - has been the subject of much
derision as it apparently refers to content of any kind being posted to
Facebook.
In May, Facebook came under heavy criticism after it
was alleged that human editors working on the Trending Topics section of
Facebook were removing stories that pushed a conservative or pro-Trump agenda. Facebook
denied this was the case, but removed the human element anyway in an attempt to
appear neutral.
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