Facebook to invest $300 million to help local news survive

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) will invest $300 million over three years in local news globally as it faces blistering criticism over its role in the erosion of the news business worldwide. The investment in time and money is a significant expansion of a plan to help newsrooms in the U.S. and abroad create and sustain viable business models to survive, the company said on Tuesday. Unlike earlier investments in the news business, this latest round is distinguished by how it is not tied to Facebook-related products, recipients of the investments say.

Earlier rounds of investments in the news business were designed to encourage publishers to rely on delivering its products over Facebook, which eventually hurt many news organizations when Facebook’s strategies shifted. “We’re going to continue fighting fake news, misinformation, and low quality news on Facebook,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of Global News Partnerships said in a statement. “But we also have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to help local news organizations grow and thrive.” Critics have slammed Facebook for its role in providing a platform for hate speech, misinformation and political meddling.

The first round of investments in the U.S. will help bolster resources for local reporting, help research how to use technology to improve news gathering and create new products, recruit “trainee community journalists” and place them in local newsrooms and also help fund a program modeled after the Peace Corp, which will place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms over five years. The recipients of the investments include the Pulitzer Center, Report for America, Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, the Local Media Association and Local Media Consortium, the American Journalism Project and the Community News Project.

Fran Wills, CEO of the Local Media Consortium, an alliance of 80 news companies representing 2,200 outlets, said Facebook is helping the group create a branded content program aimed at attracting new advertisers. “Facebook is making this investment to help support local media companies … open up new revenue streams that will support local journalism,” she said. Last December, it announced a $6 million investment in local publishers in Britain. It also plans to expand an “Accelerator” program it launched last year to help local newsrooms such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Denver Post improve its ability to attract subscribers and membership donations. “It’s in their best interest to have as much credible content as they can have on their platform and that’s a direct benefit to consumers,” Wills said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-rises-with-help-from-netflix-and-china-idUSKCN1P91GS

Senate will not be in recess next week if government is still closed: McConnell

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday the Senate would not close for a planned recess if the partial government shutdown stretches into next week.

The partial government shutdown is on its 25th day and has become the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shutdown-mcconnell/senate-will-not-be-in-recess-next-week-if-government-is-still-closed-mcconnell-idUSKCN1P92JQ

Number of Latin Americans in extreme poverty highest since 2008: U.N. agency

The number of people living in extreme poverty in Latin America increased in 2017 to the highest level in almost a decade despite an improvement in government social spending policies, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said the proportion of people in extreme poverty, which is characterized by lack of access to basic human necessities like food and shelter, rose to 10.2 percent of the population in 2017, or 62 million people, from 9.9 percent in 2016.

The figure is the highest since 2008 and largely due to an economic deterioration in Brazil, which has only begun to rebound in the last year from its worst recession in decades. Brazil has about 200 million people, making it Latin America’s most populous nation. “We had years of very low economic growth and the impact has been mostly in unemployment,” Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of ECLAC, told Reuters in Santiago, Chile. Poverty on a more generalized basis declined in Chile, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic from 2012 to 2017, largely due to an increase in work income. But conditions worsened in Brazil, with extreme poverty rising to 5.5 percent of the population in 2017, from 5.1 percent in the previous year, ECLAC said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-latam-poverty/number-of-latin-americans-in-extreme-poverty-highest-since-2008-u-n-agency-idUSKCN1P92T0?il=0

>>4768319

Sure thing they could build those people a paradise with all they have and more.

Brexit bedlam: May's EU withdrawal deal crushed by 230 votes in parliament

British lawmakers defeated Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal by a crushing margin on Tuesday, triggering political chaos that could lead to a disorderly exit from the EU or even to a reversal of the 2016 decision to leave. After parliament voted 432-202 against her deal, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn promptly called a vote of no confidence in May’s government, to be held on Wednesday.

With the clock ticking down to March 29, the date set in law for Brexit, the United Kingdom is now ensnared in the deepest political crisis in half a century as it grapples with how, or even whether, to exit the European project that it joined in 1973. “It is clear that the House does not support this deal, but tonight’s vote tells us nothing about what it does support,” May told parliament, moments after the result was announced. “… nothing about how - or even if - it intends to honor the decision the British people took in a referendum parliament decided to hold.” More than 100 of May’s own Conservative lawmakers - both Brexiteers and supporters of EU membership - joined forces to vote down the deal, leading to the worst parliamentary defeat for a government in recent British history. The humiliating loss, the first British parliamentary defeat of a treaty since 1864, marks the collapse of her two-year strategy of forging an amicable divorce with close ties to the EU after the March 29 exit.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu/brexit-bedlam-mays-eu-withdrawal-deal-crushed-by-230-votes-in-parliament-idUSKCN1P90OU?il=0

Ex-employee of proxy solicitor Georgeson convicted of fraud

A former senior managing director of a firm that advises companies on shareholder votes was convicted on Tuesday of participating in a scheme to bribe a proxy adviser’s employee with sports and concert tickets to learn how its investor clients were voting.

A federal jury in Boston found Donna Ackerly, who worked at proxy solicitation firm Georgeson LLC, guilty of conspiracy and wire fraud charges related to her role in a scheme to bribe an Institutional Shareholder Services employee in exchange for confidential voting information. She was among five ex-employees of Computershare Ltd’s (CPU.AX) Georgeson unit to face charges in a case that prosecutors say shows how a black market for secret corporate information exists for purposes other than insider trading. An earlier trial of Ackerly and three other ex-Georgeson employees ended in a mistrial in March. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in August barred a retrial of the other three. Prosecutors are appealing that decision. Ackerly, 61, is scheduled to be sentenced in April. Michael Kendall, Ackerly’s lawyer, said she would appeal. In his closing argument on Monday, he argued prosecutors lacked evidence showing she knowingly participated in a bribery scheme.

Proxy solicitation firms like Georgeson help publicly traded companies on matters that require shareholder approval by trying to gather information about institutional investors’ holdings and how they are voting. Such information can help proxy solicitors give companies insight into whether shareholder proposals will likely pass or fail and shape strategies to affect the outcome.

Prosecutors said that from 2007 to 2012, Georgeson employees sought an illegal edge by bribing ISS employee Brian Bennett with $14,000 worth of tickets to events like a Boston Red Sox baseball game and concerts featuring U2 and Jay-Z. Bennett in exchange told Georgeson employee Michael Sedlak secret details about how ISS’s clients were voting, which Sedlak relayed to Ackerly and three other Georgeson employees, Charles Garske, Richard Gottcent and Keith Haynes, prosecutors said. That information concerned votes on matters involving companies including Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Archer Daniels Midland(ADM.N), prosecutors said. They said Ackerly and Garske also arranged to have the bribes billed to clients using invoices that included false descriptions, such as “courier services.”

Bennett and Haynes have pleaded guilty. Prosecutors are appealing Stearns’s decision to dismiss charges against Sedlak, Garske and Gottcent after the first trial. Georgeson agreed to pay $4.5 million in 2017 and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve related charges.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fraud-georgeson/ex-employee-of-proxy-solicitor-georgeson-convicted-of-fraud-idUSKCN1P92QL?il=0