UK passes Brexit bill; Intel takes $15bn bet on driverless cars; The real money in virtual reality

1 UK passes Brexit bill (Anushka Asthana, Rowena Mason & Lisa O’Carroll in The Guardian) Theresa May’s Brexit bill has cleared all its hurdles in the Houses of Parliament, opening the way for the prime minister to trigger article 50 by the end of March.

Peers accepted the supremacy of the House of Commons late on Monday night after MPs overturned amendments aimed at guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens in the UK and giving parliament a “meaningful vote” on the final Brexit deal.

The outcome means the government has achieved its ambition of passing a “straightforward” two-line bill that is confined simply to the question of whether ministers can trigger article 50 and start the formal Brexit process.

It had been widely predicted in recent days that May would fire the starting gun on Tuesday, immediately after the vote, but sources quashed speculation of quick action and instead suggested she will wait until the final week of March.

MPs voted down the amendment on EU nationals’ rights by 335 to 287, a majority of 48, with peers later accepting the decision by 274 to 135. The second amendment on whether to hold a meaningful final vote on any deal after the conclusion of Brexit talks was voted down by 331 to 286, a majority of 45, in the Commons.

A coalition of 11 grassroots groups campaigning for British nationals in the EU said it also felt for the millions of Europeans in the UK. “We share their suffering, and know exactly how stressful and unpleasant it is to live with this degree of uncertainty for ourselves and our families,” said spokeswoman Jane Golding, who lives in Germany.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/13/brexit-vote-article-50-eu-citizens-rights-lords-mps

2 Intel takes $15bn bet on driverless cars (BBC) US chipmaker Intel is taking a big bet on driverless cars with a $15.3bn takeover of specialist Mobileye. Intel will pay $63.54 a share in cash for the Israeli company, which develops "autonomous driving" systems.

Mobileye and Intel are already working together, along with German carmaker BMW, to put 40 test vehicles on the road in the second half of this year. Intel expects the driverless market to be worth as much as $70bn by 2030.

Jerusalem-based Mobileye has contracts with 27 car makers. It also controls about two thirds of the market for software that runs automatic emergency braking and semi-autonomous cruise control systems already fitted to cars and trucks. Technology companies are racing to launch driverless cars.

Earlier this month, Nissan test drove a converted Leaf vehicle and said it hoped to make the cars available by 2020. Google has also done extensive development of driverless cars. Announcing the deal, Intel said that as cars "progress from assisted driving to fully autonomous, they are increasingly becoming data centres on wheels".

The chipmaker reckons that by 2020 driverless cars will generate 4,000 GB, or 4 terabytes, of data a day that can be mined for information. Mobileye was founded in 1999 to develop "vision-based systems to improve on-road safety and reduce collisions".

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39253422

3 The real money in virtual reality (Sanjiv Purushotham in Khaleej Times) On Nov 18, 2016 businessinsider.com stated that the investments in augmented reality and virtual reality have grown 270 per cent versus 2015. In general, there is broad agreement across industry sources that 2017 will be a watershed year for VR. It is the year that many predict will see the emergence of a killer app that will set the story for the industry. Just as Pokemon go was the watershed moment in 2016 for AR.

Typically, VR is an impressive experience. Based on purpose-built headsets that delivers a surround visual and audio experience, closely mimicking the real world. AR on the other hand adds to the real world, not separating from it. Think Google Glass. Pokemon Go does not even need an additional piece of hardware but instead uses the phone for a mash-up of the real and virtual world.

The Business Insider report expects 50 million plus headsets to be shipped in 2022. Facebook has bought Oculus for a reported $2 billion. Google has invested $542 million in Magic Leap, an AR company. The results of these investments will start playing out over the next couple of years. For example, now both YouTube and Facebook host VR content.

Khaled Zaatarah, CEO and founder of 360VUZ understands VR and what it can do. Of Palestinian descent, he was turned away from the land of his origin at the border. At that moment, he knew what he wanted. If he couldn't see Palestine physically, he would do it virtually. In the process, he would enable himself and millions of people like him to visit places that they physically cannot.

360VUZ is now the leader and pioneer in Virtual Reality in the Middle East and it's the first Virtual Reality startup to be funded and invested in by VCs and big players in the region.

http://khaleejtimes.com/the-real-money-in-virtual-reality

Iceland to end all capital controls; World's first flying car unveiled; Ethiopia rubbish dump landslide kills nearly 50

1 Iceland to end all capital controls (BBC) Iceland will lift all capital controls on its citizens, businesses and pension funds from Tuesday. Capital controls, such as those to restrict money flowing in and out of the country, were imposed in 2008 after the country's biggest banks collapsed.

The government thinks the economy has recovered sufficiently to end controls. Controls were imposed after the collapse of the country's three biggest banks - Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing. At the same time Iceland's national currency, the krona, fell in value.

The removal of the capital controls - which helped stabilise the currency and economy during the country's financial crash - represents the completion of Iceland's return to international financial markets. Since the nation's financial collapse, the economy has seen a robust recovery, helped by a boom in tourism. Last year around 1.8 million people visited the the nation, a 40% rise on 2015.

That tourism boom, coupled with strong investment by business and in the housing market, helped the economy grow 7.2% in 2016. Capital controls were implemented in 2008, with the support of the International Monetary Fund, to shield the economy from severe depreciation.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39248677

2 World’s first flying car unveiled (Khaleej Times) Tens of thousands of people flocked to the Swiss city as the 87th Geneva International Motorshow opened its doors to experts and the media ahead of a public opening on Thursday.

As the doors opened, the show was abuzz with talk of Peugeot-owner PSA's acquisition of Opel, the European subsidiary of General Motors, a 1.3-billion-euro ($1.4 billion) deal that will create the continent's second-biggest carmaker.

During the motor show, Italdesign and Airbus world-premiered Pop.Up, the first modular, fully electric, zero emission concept vehicle system designed to relieve traffic congestion in crowded megacities. Pop.Up envisages a modular system for multi-modal transportation that makes full use of both ground and airspace.

With European sales almost back to levels last seen in 2008, carmakers are celebrating the end of a crisis which saw the global financial meltdown inflict deep dents on the industry. Despite a wave of political uncertainty and the persistent shadow of the 2015 emissions scandal, executives were largely upbeat about the prospects for the coming year.

http://khaleejtimes.com/business/auto/watch-hum-of-optimism-as-geneva-car-show-hits-the-road

3 Ethiopia rubbish dump landslide kills nearly 50 (The Guardian) At least 46 people have died and dozens more have been injured in a giant landslide at Ethiopia’s largest rubbish dump outside Addis Ababa, a tragedy squatters living there blamed on a biogas plant being built nearby.

Dozens of homes of squatters who lived in the Koshe landfill site, on the outskirts of the capital, were flattened when the largest pile of rubbish collapsed on Saturday. Construction materials, wooden sticks and plastic sheeting could be seen in the wreckage. The Koshe site has for more than 40 years been the main garbage dump for Addis Ababa, a rapidly growing city of about 4 million people.

Koshe, whose name means “dirt” in local slang, was closed last year by city authorities who asked people to move to a new dump site outside Addis Ababa. But the community there did not want the landfill, and so the garbage collectors moved back. Poverty and food insecurity are sensitive issues in Ethiopia, which was hit by a famine in 1984-85 after extreme drought.

In recent years, the country has been one of Africa’s top-performing economies and a magnet for foreign investment, with growth in near-double digits and huge infrastructure investment. Still, nearly 20 million Ethiopians live below the poverty line set by the World Bank.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/12/rubbish-dump-landslide-kills-at-least-30-in-ethiopia

Singapore's committee on future economy; White men 'endangered species' on UK boards; Landslide win for India PM Modi's party

1 Singapore’s committee on future economy (Lee Min Kok in Straits Times) Singapore’s Committee on Future Economy, in a 109-page report, has cited how the world today is a different animal when compared to the one at the start of the decade.

"We have seen unexpected changes in the global order, which may portend significant geopolitical and economic discontinuities. Whichever way the world goes, a small, open economy like ours will need to adapt," the report said.

The report cited four main reasons for the need to reinvent the economy: Subdued global growth, which is expected to be lower than in the previous decade; Sluggish global productivity growth; Changing global value chains; and Rapid technological change due to shortened innovation cycles.

The CFE described the world as experiencing a "dark shift in mood away from globalisation" last year, which it attributed to nativist politics and protectionist economics growing in strength and influence in Europe and the US.

It concluded that an anti-globalisation trend would have a greater negative impact on Singapore's economy, given that two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product is generated by external demand.

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-committee-on-future-economys-report

2 White men ‘endangered species’ on UK boards (BBC) White men are becoming an "endangered species" in top business jobs as companies take on more women and ethnic minorities, Tesco's chairman has said. John Allan told a retail conference "the pendulum has swung very significantly" - even though white men still dominate in UK boardrooms.

He said it was an "extremely propitious period" to be "female and from an ethnic background and preferably both". Mr Allan later said his comments were intended to be "humorous".

In his speech, the day after International Women's Day, about the recruitment of prospective non-executive directors, Mr Allan said: "For a thousand years men have got most of these jobs, the pendulum has swung very significantly the other way now and will do for the foreseeable future I think.

"If you are a white male - tough - you are an endangered species and you are going to have to work twice as hard." Mr Allan sits alongside eight other white men and three white women on Tesco's board. Meanwhile, Sophie Walker, the leader of the Women's Equality party, joined calls for a boycott of Tesco saying, that Mr Allan was out of touch and his comments risk alienating customers.

She also highlighted data released by the Fawcett Society this week that suggested the pay gap was influenced by racial and gender inequalities, saying both groups were a "long way from endangering men's dominance of boardrooms".

According to analysis by headhunters Egon Zehnder, women held 26.3% of board positions in the UK's largest companies in 2016 - but it said recruitment, at 29%, was at its lowest proportion since 2012. A report published in November said there was a disproportionately low level of diversity in the boardrooms of FTSE 100 companies.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39241630

3 Landslide win for India PM Modi’s party (San Francisco Chronicle) India's ruling Hindu nationalist party won landslide victories in results announced from key state legislative elections that are seen as a referendum on the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nearly 3-year-old government.

Leaders from Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party said the party's victory in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, would boost Modi's chances of winning another term as India's prime minister in 2019 elections. The Election Commission said the BJP won 311 out of 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh's legislature. The party's president, Amit Shah, described it as "a historic verdict."

In another northern state, Uttarakhand, the BJP won 56 of 70 seats and was leading in one other constituency, wresting power from the Congress party, the main opposition at the national level. The Congress party lost power by winning only 11 seats.

The Congress party had a face-saving win in Punjab state, where it captured 77 of 117 seats, unseating the governing alliance of the BJP and a powerful regional group, the Akali Dal. Both the BJP and the Congress party failed to win a majority of seats in western Goa state and northeastern Manipur state, according to the Election Commission.

Modi called India's massive demonetization drive, which withdrew 86 percent of the country's currency bills from the system, to cleanse the system of tax evasion and corruption. Banks and ATMs witnessed massive lines of people for months. ATMs were not refilled for days and banks ran out of cash within a few hours of opening.

Since taking office in May 2014, Modi's government has been pumping funds into boosting education, while increasing spending on roads, irrigation and other infrastructure. It has also been reforming India's complicated tax regime.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Indian-Prime-Minister-Modi-s-party-ahead-in-state-10994348.php

Largest humanitarian crisis since 1945; Bumper jobs growth in US; Elon Musk offers to fix Aussie power network

1 Largest humanitarian crisis since 1945 (San Francisco Chronicle) The world faces the largest humanitarian crisis since the United Nations was founded in 1945 with more than 20 million people in four countries facing starvation and famine, the UN humanitarian chief has said.

Stephen O'Brien told the UN Security Council that "without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death" and "many more will suffer and die from disease." He urged an immediate injection of funds for Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and northeast Nigeria plus safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid "to avert a catastrophe."

"To be precise," O'Brien said, "we need $4.4 billion by July." UN and food organizations define famine as when more than 30 percent of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition and mortality rates are two or more deaths per 10,000 people every day, among other criteria.

O'Brien said the largest humanitarian crisis is in Yemen where two-thirds of the population — 18.8 million people — need aid and more than seven million people are hungry and don't know where their next meal will come from. "That is three million people more than in January," he said. The Arab world's poorest nation is engulfed in conflict and O'Brien said more than 48,000 people fled fighting just in the past two months.

For 2017, O'Brien said $2.1 billion is needed to reach 12 million Yemenis "with life-saving assistance and protection" but only 6 percent has been received so far. He announced that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will chair a pledging conference for Yemen on April 25 in Geneva.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/UN-says-world-faces-largest-humanitarian-crisis-10993442.php

2 Bumper jobs growth in US (Phillip Inman & Sam Thielman in The Guardian) The US Federal Reserve is poised to raise interest rates next week for only the third time since the financial crisis after the latest job numbers for the world’s largest economy beat expectations.

The closely watched Labor department data for February showed that the number of new jobs soared to 235,000, the best month for job growth since July last year, adding to pressure on the central bank to agree the first of three predicted rises this year.

Officials meet on Wednesday in the wake of strong employment, manufacturing and consumer data that should persuade the Fed to add further to its December rate rise, which saw the cost of borrowing raised by 0.25% to a range of between 0.5% and 0.75%.

President Donald Trump grabbed the chance to hail the strong jobs numbers, covering the first full month of his administration, as a personal victory, despite the momentum clearly springing from the legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The US economy is now in its 77th consecutive month of growth. Last month’s figures were also stronger than expected, with 227,000 jobs added in January. For December, the last full month of Obama’s term in office, the economy added 178,000 jobs. Economists welcomed the figures, though many warned that wages growth of 2.8% failed to indicate that the economy was overheating.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/10/us-jobs-market-trump-first-month-obama

3 Musk vows to fix Aussie power network in 100 days (BBC) Elon Musk, boss of electric car firm Tesla, says he can help solve South Australia's power crisis within 100 days - and if not he'll do it for free. The offer follows a series of blackouts in the state.

On Thursday, Tesla executive Lyndon Rive had said the company could install 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage in 100 days. When asked on Twitter how serious he was about the offer, Mr Musk said if Tesla failed, there'd be no bill.

"Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?" he tweeted in response to Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Australian software maker Atlassian.

Having offered to "make the $ happen (& politics)", Mr Cannon-Brookes then told Mr Musk: "You're on mate." Mr Musk went on to quote a price of $250 per kilowatt hour for 100 megawatt hour systems.

The state of South Australia has suffered from blackouts since September last year, leading to a political spat over energy policy. Tesla has been expanding its battery business alongside its car production. This week the US company launched its Powerwall 2 in Australia, the world's top market for rooftop solar.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39229255

UK workers warned of 15 years without pay rise; ECB sees global politics as the big risk; AirBnB valued at $31bn

1 No pay rise for 15 years, UK workers warned (Katie Allen, Angela Monaghan & Phillip Inman in The Guardian) Workers in Britain are on course to suffer an unprecedented 15 years of lost earnings growth and have been warned to prepare for a third successive parliament of austerity by a leading thinktank.

Analysing Philip Hammond’s spring budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that after suffering a lost decade of earnings growth, households were now about to be hit by big welfare cuts.

Paul Johnson, the thinktank’s director, highlighted permanent scars to the UK economy from the global financial crisis and said that almost a decade on the prospects for income and earnings growth remained weak.

“On current forecasts average earnings will be no higher in 2022 than they were in 2007. Fifteen years without a pay rise. I’m rather lost for superlatives. This is completely unprecedented,” he said at the IFS’s traditional post-budget day briefing. Johnson said the latest economic outlook implied that in the wake of the financial crisis the UK had suffered permanent losses to productivity – a measure of output per hour.

In a grim assessment of the new budget forecasts, the thinktank said families would miss out on £12,000 of pay growth by 2020, the worst decade for 210 years. Workers will be hit with falling real pay, where inflation exceeds wage growth, in the coming months. Real average earnings are only expected to return to their pre-crisis peak by the end of 2022.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/09/uk-pay-growth-budget-resolution-foundation

2 ECB sees global politics as the big risk (San Francisco Chronicle) The head of the European Central Bank says global political events like Brexit and turbulent election campaigns in Europe pose increasing risks for the economy.

Mario Draghi said that the international arena has become more troubling since last year even as the 19-country eurozone's economy continues to heal from its own home-grown and drawn-out economic difficulties.

"If one wants to assess the balance... we would say that the domestic sources of risks have been more contained," Draghi said. "And the geopolitical global risks share of importance, if anything, has gone up."

Risk factors Draghi mentioned include the raft of European elections this year in France, the Netherlands and Germany that will give right-wing candidates opposed to the EU and euro membership a chance to test their support. And Britain is due to start its official divorce talks with the European Union within weeks.

New U.S. President Donald Trump has raised uncertainty about US policy on trade as well as toward the dollar by at one point mentioning the currency was "too strong." Draghi said that while geopolitical events have not derailed the economy's recovery so far, it was unwise to become complacent.

The eurozone economy grew 1.7 percent last year as the bloc continues to recover from a crisis over high debt that threatened to break it apart in 2011-2012. Unemployment has slowly fallen to 9.6 percent with big differences among member countries; Germany's is at 3.9 percent but Greece, still struggling with bailouts, has a rate of 23 percent. By comparison, the rate in the US is 4.8 percent.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/European-Central-Bank-keeps-stimulus-on-track-to-10988881.php

3 AirBnB valued at $31bn (BBC) Home rental company AirBnB has raised $1bn (£821m) of investment funding in a deal that values the firm at $31bn. The San Francisco-based firm disclosed the investment in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

It has grown rapidly since its launch in 2008, and currently operates in 65,000 cities worldwide. The firm, which does not publish its sales figures, makes its money by enabling homeowners to rent out their homes. It takes a 3% cut of each booking and a 6% to 12% service charge from guests.

AirBnB has been diversifying and recently began offering users new services, such as tailor-made city tours and exclusive experiences with local experts. However, it has also faced criticism over claims it is driving up rents and contributing to housing shortages in some cities.

The accommodation site lets people rent out their properties, often at prices undercutting hotels and traditional Bed and Breakfasts. It was started by university friends Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia in 2008 to help pay the rent on their San Francisco flat.

As the site expanded into more and more cities, helped by the use of professional photographers, it attracted backers including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and actor Ashton Kutcher. In total it has raised more than $3bn from investors and it is now the second most valuable start-up in the US after Uber, which is valued at about $70bn.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39224820

China's first trade deficit since 2014; Oil tumbles over 5% to 2017 low; Iceland asks firms to prove equal pay

1 China’s first trade deficit since 2014 (BBC) China has reported its first monthly trade deficit in three years, after imports surged and a slowdown during the Lunar New Year holidays hit output. 

Higher commodity prices and domestic demand were credited with pushing February's imports up 38.1% on a year earlier. But exports unexpectedly fell 1.3%, giving a trade deficit of $9.2bn for the month.

China's monthly imports last exceeded exports in February 2014. The country's economic data from January and February can be distorted by the long holidays, which see businesses slowing down and often cutting back operations or closing completely. And most analysts agree that the latest data is just a blip, with a surplus inevitable again once the impact of the holidays tails off.

With the Chinese economy expanding at its slowest pace in 26 years in 2016, Beijing is likely to be heartened by the latest import figures, as it looks for signs of improvement. Leaders are trying to rebalance the economy, reducing reliance on state investment and exports, and growing more through domestic consumption.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39191200

2 Oil tumbles over 5% to 2017 low (Straits Times) Oil prices slumped to their lowest level of 2017 on March 8 following a bearish US supply report that also dented American petroleum-linked shares. The US oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, slid more than five per cent to $50.28 a barrel, its lowest price since December. International oil benchmark Brent also ended the day at a low for 2017.

The retreat in oil prices came on a choppy day for global stocks, with US equities finishing mostly lower, Asian markets mixed and European equities close to flat. US investors also have questions about an expected Federal Reserve interest rate hike next week, and doubts about whether President Donald Trump can rapidly enact tax cuts and other key aspects of his agenda.

Oil prices have held solidly above $50 a barrel throughout the first part of 2017, a move that has incentivized US shale producers begin to ramp production back up after a two-year slump in oil prices. But US Energy Department's inventory report showed a hefty increase of eight million barrels in petroleum stocks in the latest week.

http://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/oil-tumbles-over-5-to-2017-low-as-us-petroleum-supply-surges

3 Iceland asks firms to prove equal pay (San Francisco Chronicle) Iceland will be the first country in the world to make employers prove they offer equal pay regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality, the Nordic nation's government said on the International Women's Day.

The government said it will introduce legislation to parliament this month, requiring all employers with more than 25 staff members to obtain certification to prove they give equal pay for work of equal value.

While other countries, and the US state of Minnesota, have equal-salary certificate policies, Iceland is thought to be the first to make it mandatory for both private and public firms. The North Atlantic island nation, which has a population of about 330,000, wants to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022. Social Affairs and Equality Minister Thorsteinn Viglundsson said "the time is right to do something radical about this issue."

Iceland has been ranked the best country in the world for gender equality by the World Economic Forum, but Icelandic women still earn, on average, 14 to 18 percent less than men. In October thousands of Icelandic women left work at 2:38 p.m. and demonstrated outside parliament to protest the gender pay gap. Women's rights groups calculate that after that time each day, women are working for free.

Iceland has introduced other measures to boost women's equality, including quotas for female participation on government committees and corporate boards. Such measures have proven controversial in some countries, but have wide support across Iceland's political spectrum.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/In-world-first-Iceland-to-require-firms-to-prove-10985626.php

A stock market-economy disconnect, warns OECD; CIA snoops via TVs, says Wikileaks; Poachers kill rhino for horn in Paris zoo

1 A stock market-economy disconnect, warns OECD (San Francisco Chronicle) There appears to be a disconnect between the recent surge in stock markets and the global economy's underlying strength, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has warned.

Many indexes, particularly in the US, have rallied over the winter to hit record highs. The OECD noted, however, that expectations for company earnings in the US and Europe have not been revised up on the whole. And growth in consumption and investment is still lagging.

The OECD predicts that global economic growth this year will be 3.3 percent and rise to around 3.6 percent in 2018. However, it warned that the "projected modest upturn" could be derailed by a number of factors, including the possibility of a downturn in markets, greater barriers to trade set up by governments, and uncertainties about the path of interest rates around the world.

It said the global economy remains beset by sub-par growth and high inequality following the financial crisis.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Global-economic-growth-seen-picking-up-but-risks-10982444.php

2 CIA snoops via TVs, says Wikileaks (Leo Kelion & Gordon Corera on BBC) Wikileaks has published details of what it says are wide-ranging hacking tools used by the CIA. The alleged cyber-weapons are said to include malware that targets Windows, Android, iOS, OSX and Linux computers as well as internet routers.

Some of the software is reported to have been developed in-house, but the UK's MI5 agency is said to have helped build a spyware attack for Samsung TVs. A spokesman for the CIA would not confirm the details.

Wikileaks said that its source had shared the details with it to prompt a debate into whether the CIA's hacking capabilities had exceeded its mandated powers. These latest leaks - which appear to give details of highly sensitive technical methods - will be a huge problem for the CIA. There is the embarrassment factor - that an agency whose job is to steal other people's secrets has not been able to keep their own.

Then there will be the fear of a loss of intelligence coverage against their targets who may change their behaviour because they now know what the spies can do. And then there will be the questions over whether the CIA's technical capabilities were too expansive and too secret.

Because many of the initial documents point to capabilities targeting consumer devices, the hardest questions may revolve around what is known as the "equities" problem. The NSA has already faced questions when many of its secrets were revealed by Edward Snowden, and now it may be the CIA's turn.

The effort to compromise Samsung's F8000 range of smart TVs was codenamed Weeping Angel, according to documents dated June 2014. They describe the creation of a "fake-off" mode, designed to fool users into believing that their screens had been switched off.

Instead, the documents indicate, infected sets were made to covertly record audio, which would later be transferred over the internet to CIA computer servers once the TVs were fully switched back on, allowing their wi-fi links to re-establish. Samsung has not commented on the allegations.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39193008

3 Poachers kill rhino, take horn in Paris (Kim Willsher in The Guardian) Poachers have broken into a French zoo, killing a four-year-old white rhinoceros and sawing off its horn. Keepers found the dead animal, named Vince, in the African enclosure of the zoo at Thoiry, west of Paris, on Tuesday morning. It had been shot in the head and its large horn removed with a chainsaw.

The poachers fled before they could remove the animal’s second horn, either because they were disturbed or because their equipment failed, police said. Authorities described the incident as the first of its kind in Europe.

Park director Thierry Duguet said the attack was “unbelievable” and that Vince had been one of the most popular attractions at the zoo. “An act of such extreme violence has never happened before in Europe.”

A rhinoceros horn has an estimated value of between €30,000 and €40,000. Detectives say there is an established trade network in illegally poached horn between France and Asia. The white rhino is an endangered species, with an estimated 21,000 remaining in the wild across the world, mainly in South Africa and Uganda.

Their horns are sought after in Asia, where they are valued for their supposed aphrodisiac qualities. In Zimbabwe last autumn, the authorities announced they would remove the horns of 700 adult rhinoceros to dissuade attacks from poachers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/07/rhino-shot-dead-by-poachers-at-french-zoo