started late lb
yes. first time cleaned and dumped did not habben. now it's multiple
Suga emerges as post-Abe possibility
The Yomiuri Shimbun
the public eye for being the face of the “Reiwa” announcement, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga is becoming a focus of attention as a possible successor to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Campaigning for the unified local elections Saturday afternoon, Suga mentioned he had announced the new era name during a speech in front of JR Sapporo Station.
At the sound of “Reiwa,” many in the crowd of over 1,000 listeners raised their smartphones in his direction. After the speech he was swamped by the public — a sign of rising Suga fever.
Since the start of Abe’s second administration, Suga has seen himself as the prime minister’s behind-the-scenes fixer, according to a source close to him. During the era name announcement however, the spotlight shone more on Suga than Abe.
The night before the announcement, Suga apparently practiced lifting up a frame to show the new era name’s characters in the press room at the Prime Minister’s Office. The paper in the practice frame reportedly had the characters for “Heisei” written on it.
Suga has used the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs — which oversees staffing for senior ministry and agency officials — to promote policies under Abe’s platform and increase his own influence within the administration.
For instance, after he suggested that cellular communications fees “could be lowered by about 40 percent” and urged major mobile carriers to lower their rates, NTT Docomo Inc. announced it would cut communication charges by 20 to 40 percent this fiscal year.
Suga also helped cut through opposition among the ministries and agencies to the administration’s plan to successfully revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law in order to increase the number of foreign workers.
He plans to visit the United States in May to meet with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, expanding his role to the diplomatic stage.
Suga, 70, has emphasized he is “not thinking at all about becoming prime minister.”
However, there is a precedent — Keizo Obuchi was the chief cabinet secretary who had announced “Heisei” as the current era name, and he went on to become prime minister.
Liberal Democratic Party factions with leading “post-Abe” candidates are becoming increasingly wary of Suga’s moves.
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005659147
want him at SEC
Facebook : Looks to Build Underwater Ring Around Africa
Facebook Inc. is circling Africa. Literally. The company is in talks to develop an underwater data cable that would encircle the continent, according to people familiar with the plans, an effort aimed at driving down its bandwidth costs and making it easier for the social media giant to sign up more users.
The three-stage project, named Simba after the lead character in "The Lion King," could link up with beachheads in several countries on the continent's eastern, western and Mediterranean coasts, though the exact route and number of landings is in flux, the people said.
Facebook spokesman Travis Reed declined to comment on the company's plans for Africa. "We look all over the world when we consider subsea cable routes," he said.
Simba isn't Facebook's first foray into subsea cables, the high-capacity fiber-optic lines that carry most of the world's core internet traffic. The company has led projects linking markets in North America, Europe and East Asia, usually sharing the investment burden with traditional telecommunications companies, which lack the cash to lay down the cables on their own.
"When you're one of the biggest users of bandwidth, it's entirely rational to cut out the middleman and get the capacity at-cost," said Alan Mauldin, an analyst at market researcher TeleGeography.
Negotiations for the Simba project are continuing, the people said, cautioning that talks could still fall apart.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. is also in talks to build a cable system called Equiano down Africa's western coast, according to people familiar with its plans. China's Huawei Technologies Co. is rolling out subsea cable links to Africa through a subsidiary building a cable through the Indian Ocean.
Industry executives say the proposed Simba system is uniquely ambitious. The project would give Facebook's European and Asian data centers a dedicated and reliable link to growing African markets where its apps like WhatsApp are already popular. The company has funded regional networks in developing economies like Uganda to help connect the roughly 3.8 billion people across the globe who still lack internet access.
The system also could benefit partner telecom companies like MTN Group and Vodafone PLC that already serve booming economies in South Africa and Nigeria. Those companies could help pay for the cable project in exchange for some of its fiber-optic capacity, said one of the people familiar with Facebook's plans. An MTN spokeswoman declined to comment. Vodafone didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tech companies like Facebook and Alphabet, wary of the wholesale telecom market and the regulatory burdens that come with it, tend to avoid selling bandwidth on cables they help fund. They have access to whole strands of fiber-optic wire, allowing them to shuttle most of their data through private networks separated from the broader internet.
Facebook has taken a long-term view with past network investments. Its Internet.org nonprofit has financed access to a small group of websites through Free Basics, a no-cost wireless service offered in several countries. Regulators in other countries have banned the program, arguing against the limited version of the web that the Facebook-backed group has curated.
Facebook is one of several large U.S. technology companies that have taken a growing role in planning and financing the internet's plumbing to serve their interests. In the process, they have supplanted traditional telecom companies that used to dominate the industry.
Alphabet has built fiber-optic cables in several cities and launched broadband-beaming balloons over hard-to-reach areas. Microsoft Corp. is pushing U.S. authorities to allow broadband service to use the "white spaces" in the radio spectrum between the channels reserved for television broadcasts.
A project as large as the one proposed by Facebook could cost up to $1 billion to build, said Greg Varisco, chief executive of Cinturion, a privately held company planning its own cable system in the Indian Ocean.
https://www.marketscreener.com/FACEBOOK-10547141/news/Facebook-Looks-to-Build-Underwater-Ring-Around-Africa-28367112/
UN Fears New Libya War As Renegade General Advances On Tripoli
The so-called international community led by the West once itself responsible for destabilizing Libya by toppling Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, is now urging Benghazi-based renegade General Khalifa Haftar to halt his ongoing assault on the country's capital.
Tripoli witnessed its second day heavy fighting on Saturday, threatening to further rip the country apart descending toward another civil war, as Haftar's self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA) fought to secure Tripoli's international airport, which the LNA later claimed full success in doing. Some international reports confirmed that the LNA gained full control of the airport later in the day Saturday, but other conflicting reports say that this was premature, which could mean only a section was wrested from Tripoli forces.
Tripoli International Airport lies 34km from the city center, and should Haftar gain it as a foothold it will likely be used as a main base of attack by the LNA to try and take the sprawling capital, which is likely to unleash many more days, weeks, or possibly months of bloodshed and heavy fighting.
Already air raids were reported against the LNA, as the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), better equipped from external backers, defended the capital.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-06/un-fears-new-libya-war-renegade-general-advances-tripoli
of you? Please….
pandering to the european audiences. Wish they would stop that. Should stick to what brought them to the table when it started imo
not going to stop me from using the mound but yea pretty pathetic
fu2