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Facebook cuts ads from controversial pages

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 30 Juni 2013 | 23.41

Facebook is pulling ads from pages that contain violence or sexual content. Source: AAP

FACEBOOK is pulling ads from pages that contain violence or sexual content.

The social network says that on Monday it will expand its definition of pages and groups that are too controversial to carry advertisements.

Facebook has sought to strike a balance between giving its 1.1 billion monthly users the freedom to post what they want and providing advertisers with space to sell their products.

In May, Facebook Inc lost more than a dozen advertisers, at least temporarily, after the activist group Women, Action and the Media urged an advertising boycott to protest hate speech on the Facebook site.

The controversial content included grisly photos and mottos that encouraged rape, abuse and other violence against women.

The company said then that it would review its guidelines.


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No breakthrough for Kerry in Mideast talks

US-LED efforts to broker a resumption of peace talks have ended without a breakthrough, a top Palestinian official says, although Washington's top diplomat hailed "real progress".

US Secretary of State John Kerry has spent the past four days locked in intensive shuttle diplomacy between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership in a high-profile bid to draw the two sides back into direct negotiations after a gap of nearly three years.

But after 13 hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and around six hours with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Kerry's marathon efforts ended on Sunday with little sign of progress.

Speaking in Ramallah after Kerry held his third and final meeting with Abbas, chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said there had been "no breakthrough."

"It was a positive and profound meeting with president Abbas but there has been no breakthrough so far and there is still a gap between the Palestinian and Israeli positions," he told a news conference.

But Kerry himself insisted he had had "very positive" discussions with both sides since beginning his shuttle diplomacy in Jerusalem on Thursday night.

"We agreed we have made real progress but we have a few things we need to work on," he said after a final meeting with Abbas before heading off to Asia.

"We both feel good about the direction," he said.

Netanyahu insisted that Israel was not blocking a return to negotiations.

"We are not putting up any impediments on the resumption of the permanent talks for a peace agreement between us and the Palestinians," he said.

"There are things that we will strongly insist on in the talks themselves, especially security ... there will be no agreement that will endanger Israelis' security."

Abbas is pushing Israel to free the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners, to remove roadblocks in the West Bank and to publicly agree to make the lines that existed before the 1967 Middle East war the baseline for negotiations.

Netanyahu is reportedly willing to consider just the first two conditions - but only after talks are under way - and has flatly refused to countenance any return to the 1967 lines.

Palestinian officials appeared pessimistic about Kerry's chances of achieving a breakthrough.

"Netanyahu and his government are not serious about establishing a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, they speak of a state without clear borders, and we need clarity according to international resolutions," said Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior official of Abbas's ruling Fatah party.


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Obama to host summit of African leaders

Barack Obama will host a landmark summit of leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa next year. Source: AAP

US President Barack Obama will host a landmark summit of leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa next year, the White House says.

The plan has strong echoes of high-profile China-Africa summits, which over the last decade have cemented Beijing's clout on the continent.

Obama will announce on Sunday that "he plans to host the first of its kind, a summit of leaders from across sub-Saharan Africa in the United States," said senior White House advisor Ben Rhodes.

"This is something that we've never done before. It's something that other nations have done," said Rhodes.

Obama is currently on the first major visit to the continent where his father was born since his election almost five years ago.

He made a brief visit to Ghana in 2009. Critics say a more substantial trip had been long overdue and have accused Obama of allowing China to steal ground from the United States in business and diplomacy.

"What we want to do is to continue the type of high-level engagement that we've had in this trip, we want to have that marker laid down so that next year the President is bringing together heads of state from across sub-Saharan Africa in Washington," said Rhodes.

Speaking in the iconic township of Soweto on Saturday, Obama dismissed talk of a Chinese and US scramble for influence on the continent, but urged Africans to watch out for lop-sided deals with foreign investors.

"I actually welcome the attention that Africa is receiving from countries like China and Brazil and India and Turkey."

But he urged African nations to make sure trade was not a one-way street.

"When we look at what other countries are doing in Africa, I think our only advice is make sure it's a good deal for Africa.

"Somebody says they want to come build something here: Are they hiring African workers? Somebody says that we want to help you develop your natural resources: How much of the money is staying in Africa?"

Obama, in South Africa on the second-leg of a three-nation Africa tour, said that too often foreign investment did not benefit locals and actually encouraged the type of corruption and resource-stripping that guts economies.

He offered up the United States as a more equitable partner which wanted African economies to grow into consumer powerhouses.

Amid a raft of Chinese investment, which topped $200 billion last year, US businesses have expressed concern that Africa is a diplomatic blind spot for their government.

In March, China's new President Xi Jinping visited Africa, as well as Russia, on his first foreign trip, signing a raft of business and energy deals signalling Beijing's intent to deepen ties further.


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EU wants answers over alleged US bugging

A top EU official says ties with the US could suffer over a report that America bugged EU offices. Source: AAP

THE European Union is angrily demanding answers from the United States over allegations Washington had bugged its offices, the latest spying claim attributed to fugitive leaker Edward Snowden.

The report in German weekly Der Spiegel is likely to further strain relations between the United States and Europe, shortly after they launched formal negotiations to create what would be the world's biggest free trade area.

Der Spiegel said its report, which detailed covert surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on EU diplomatic missions, was based on confidential documents, some of which it had been able to consult via Snowden.

"We have immediately been in contact with the US authorities in Washington DC and in Brussels and have confronted them with the press reports," the European Commission said in a statement.

"They have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us."

One document, dated September 2010 and classed as "strictly confidential", describes how the NSA kept tabs on the European Union's mission in Washington, Der Spiegel said.

Microphones were installed in the building and the computer network infiltrated, giving the agency access to emails and internal documents.

The EU delegation at the United Nations was subject to similar surveillance, Der Spiegel said.

US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes refused to be drawn into commenting directly on the allegations in a briefing in Johannesburg on Saturday, but said it was "worth noting" the US was "very close" to EU security services.

The Spiegel report is the latest in a series of allegations about US spying activity revealed by Snowden, a former NSA contractor who is holed up in a Moscow airport transit zone after the United States issued a warrant for his arrest and revoked his passport.

EU powerhouse Germany said the United States must quickly say whether the reports were true or not.

"It's beyond our imagination that our friends in the US consider the Europeans as enemies," Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.

The US authorities issued an arrest warrant this month for Snowden after he revealed details of NSA's so-called PRISM program which collects and analyses information from internet and phone users around the world.

Snowden himself remains in political limbo at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after flying in from Hong Kong last week, unable to fly on without legal travel documents or exit the airport without a Russian visa.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said that US Vice President Joe Biden had asked Quito to reject any asylum request from the 30-year-old who is wanted by the United States on charges including espionage.

But he said Snowden's fate was in Russia's hands as Quito could not process his asylum request until he was on Ecuadoran soil.


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Putin signs 'anti-gay propaganda' ban

Skull casts doubt on Cook's claims

human Skull

WHEN police were called to reports of human remains found on a river bank on NSW's north coast they prepared themselves for a grim murder investigation.

Taxpayers stash their returns

Taxpayers stash their returns

THE nation's addiction to stashing cash and paying down debt is set to continue as millions of taxpayers make the most of their tax returns.


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Somali forces arrest Islamist leader

Rockin' the cat spa

DIVINE CREATURES LUXURY CAT HOTEL FINALIST

COULD this be the most expensive cat nap in the country?

Skull casts doubt on Cook's claims

human Skull

WHEN police were called to reports of human remains found on a river bank on NSW's north coast they prepared themselves for a grim murder investigation.

Legal row 'sparked Nigella strangling'

Legal row ?sparked Nigella strangling?

NIGELLA Lawson and Charles Saatchi are said to be in a bitter dispute over two former personal assistants accused of misappropriating over $280,000.

How one little boy saved mum's life

Jessy Palmer

HIS mother was having a severe fit right in front of his eyes, but this seven-year-old boy showed how to be cool in a crisis.

Taxpayers stash their returns

Taxpayers stash their returns

THE nation's addiction to stashing cash and paying down debt is set to continue as millions of taxpayers make the most of their tax returns.


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Snowden handover impermissible: Russian MP

A TOP Russian politician has declared it was "morally impermissible" to hand over to the United States fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowdon, who remains in a political limbo at a Moscow airport.

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Germany blocks carbon cap for automakers

THE German government says it blocked a European Union agreement on capping carbon emissions from cars because the deal would have harmed its domestic auto industry.

Environmental campaigners had lobbied to limit emissions from passenger cars to 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer within seven years.

But Germany wants to allow automakers such as BMW, Daimler and Audi to collect "credits" they can use to offset higher pollution levels beyond 2020.

Government spokesman Georg Streiter says Germany asked for a decision on the issue to be postponed Thursday because "a fair solution also has to take account of the particularities of the German auto industry" whose emissions are above EU average.

Streiter said on Friday that Germany "wouldn't be doing so well today if the auto industry were doing badly".


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