US President Donald Trump has called allegations of sexual harassment against Kavanaugh a ‘hoax’, and an art installation to understand warming.
Donald Trump 2016 campaign ‘sought fake social media accounts to influence voters’
US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had sought proposals from an Israeli company to create fake social media accounts for manipulation and to gather intelligence against Democrat Hillary Clinton, as well as fellow Republican competitors such as Ted Cruz, The New York Times reports.
The company, known as Psy-Group, reportedly used “authentic looking” sock puppet accounts to spread misinformation across social media platforms and gather intelligence on Trump’s opponents.
The plan, priced above $3 million, was called “Project Rome” and used code names to identify the primary people involved. While Trump was named “Lion” and Clinton “Forest”, Cruz was “Bear”.
Copies of the proposals acquired by The New York Times reportedly revealed plans to gather intelligence on Clinton and those close to her.
The FBI is said to have interviewed the firm’s employees as part of their investigation. The company is now in liquidation.
Trump says allegations against Kavanaugh a ‘hoax’
US President Donald Trump has said the allegations of sexual assault against the newly elected Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh were a “hoax” and “all made up”, BBC reports.
Kavanaugh was accused of sexually assaulting Dr Christine Blasey Ford, now a professor, in their teens. After a hearing where both sides were heard, as well as inquiry by the FBI, the US President’s nominee took oath as a Supreme Court judge Monday.
Speaking at Kavanaugh’s swearing-in ceremony, Trump apologised to him and his family, saying the allegations stemmed from a “campaign of personal and political destruction based on lies and destruction”.
Later, while leaving the White House for an event, the President reportedly called the allegations a set-up by his Democratic rivals. “A man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats using the Democrats’ lawyers and now they want to impeach him,” he said.
Google to shut down Google+ soon
Google has announced in a blog post that it will shut down access to its social media portal Google+ for individual users in the next 10 months, The Verge reported.
The decision followed a data leak that affected around 500,000 accounts and may have allowed up to 438 different third-party applications access to private information, the tech giant said in the blog post, according to The Guardian.
Google also pointed out the portal’s “low usage and engagement”, saying 90 per cent of Google+ user sessions lasted less than five seconds. However, it plans to keep the service alive for enterprise customers who use it to facilitate conversation among co-workers.
I don’t always agree with President’s tweets, says Melania Trump
US First Lady Melania Trump has said that she doesn’t always agree with her husband Donald Trump’s tweets, reports Daily Mail. Trump is known to post incendiary, unconsidered tweets that often land him in headlines for the wrong reasons.
Talking to reporters during her Africa tour, Melania was asked about her role in advising Trump. She said she gave him her honest opinion, adding that “sometimes he listens and sometimes he doesn’t”. “I have my own voice and my own opinions and it’s very important for me to express them,” she added.
“Do you ask him to be a little more polite in his public discourse?” asked another reporter.
Why there are so many children in US courtrooms today
More and more children are finding their way to US immigration courtrooms amid a surge in the number of kids arriving at the border unaccompanied in a desperate bid to seek asylum, The New York Times reports.
One of the latest cases saw a court in New York summon a two-year-old girl named Fernanda Jacqueline Davila.
According to the report, “about 13,000 children who came to the United States on their own were being held in federally contracted shelters this month, more than five times the number in May 2017”.
Children who come to the border all by themselves or are sent by their parents to avail of asylum are being held up at detention centres for months on end, with a strict US policy making it difficult for family members on the American side to claim children from federal custody.
These children pay regular visits to courts that could determine “whether they will be deported, reunited with their parents, or granted asylum”, the report added.
An artwork you can swim in to gauge warming’s toll on coral reefs
Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist and the World Wide Fund for Nature have set up an interactive artistic installation in Bern, Switzerland, to criticise the disappearance of coral reefs due to the warming and acidification of the ocean, Global Times reports. The installation, Hirschengraben, is an indoor pool.
Coral reefs comprise a marine ecosystem and a lot of sea creatures depend on them for food. They are also said to protect shorelines from erosion and storms.