Archives for April 2021

Facebook users can appeal harmful content to oversight board

LONDON (AP) — Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board said Tuesday that it will start letting users file appeals over posts, photos, and videos that they think the company shouldn’t have allowed to stay on its platforms.

The board said it will accept cases from users who object to content posted by others and who have already exhausted Facebook’s appeals process.

Until now, users could only appeal to the Oversight Board when their own content was taken down by Facebook. The company is able to refer cases on its own to the board.

“Enabling users to appeal content they want to see removed from Facebook is a significant expansion of the Oversight Board’s capabilities,” Thomas Hughes, director of the Oversight Board Administration, said in a statement.

Facebook set up the oversight panel last year to act as the ultimate referee on whether specific content should be allowed on its platforms, amid furious criticism about its inability to respond to a tide of misinformation, hate speech and other harmful content. The board is empowered to make binding rulings on whether posts or ads violate the company’s rules.

The social media giant regularly takes down thousands of posts and accounts. Some 300,000 of those cases have been appealed to the Oversight Board since its debut, but the board is prioritizing the review of cases that have the potential to affect many users around the world.

The board said it has the technical capability to let users appeal to remove content from third parties while also protecting their privacy.

In its latest ruling, also released Tuesday, the Oversight Board upheld Facebook’s decision to remove a Dutch user’s video showing two people in blackface portraying Black Pete, a traditional children’s character in the Netherlands. The board said the clip violated Facebook’s rules banning blackface.

Still to come is the board’s ruling on Facebook’s move to indefinitely suspend former U.S. President Donald Trump, The decision is expected soon.

Expert says cop was justified in pinning down George Floyd

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former Officer Derek Chauvin was justified in pinning George Floyd to the ground because he kept struggling, a use-of-force expert testified for the defense Tuesday, contradicting a parade of authorities from both inside and outside the Minneapolis Police Department.

Taking the stand at Chauvin’s murder trial, Barry Brodd, a former Santa Rosa, California, officer, stoutly defended Chauvin’s actions, even as a prosecutor pounded away at the witness, banging the lectern at one point during cross-examination and growing incredulous when Brodd suggested Floyd was struggling because he wasn’t “resting comfortably” on the pavement.

“It’s easy to sit and judge … an officer’s conduct,” Brodd testified. “It’s more of a challenge to, again, put yourself in the officer’s shoes to try to make an evaluation through what they’re feeling, what they’re sensing, the fear they have, and then make a determination.”

He said he doesn’t believe Chauvin and the other officers used deadly force when they held Floyd down on his stomach, his hands cuffed behind his back and Chauvin’s knee on his neck or neck area for what prosecutors say was 9 1/2 minutes.

Brodd likened it instead to a situation in which officers use a Taser on someone fighting with officers, and the suspect falls, hits his head and dies: “That isn’t an incident of deadly force. That’s an incident of an accidental death.”

Several top Minneapolis police officials, including the police chief, have testified that Chauvin used excessive force and violated his training. And medical experts called by prosecutors have said that Floyd died from a lack of oxygen because of the way he was restrained.

But Brodd said: “I felt that Officer Chauvin’s interactions with Mr. Floyd were following his training, following current practices in policing and were objectively reasonable.”

The question of what is reasonable is important: Police officers are allowed certain latitude to use deadly force when someone puts the officer or other people in danger. Legal experts say a key issue for the jury will be whether Chauvin’s actions were reasonable in those specific circumstances.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher used his cross-examination to once again painstakingly go through video clips of a pinned-down Floyd gasping that he couldn’t breathe and then going limp.

The prosecutor hammered away at Brodd, saying that a reasonable officer in Chauvin’s position would have known Floyd stopped resisting, that another officer told him he couldn’t find a pulse, and that others said Floyd had passed out and was no longer breathing.

“And the defendant’s position is, and was, and remains, as we see here at this moment, in this time, in this clip — on top of Mr. Floyd on the street. Isn’t that right?” Schleicher asked, as he banged his hand on the lectern repeatedly.

“Yes,” Brodd replied.

At one point, Brodd argued that Floyd kept on struggling instead of just “resting comfortably” on the ground.

“Did you say ‘resting comfortably’?” an incredulous Schleicher asked.

Brodd: “Or laying comfortably.”

Schleicher: “Resting comfortably on the pavement?”

Brodd: “Yes.”

The prosecutor went on to say that Floyd was moving, but it was because he was struggling to breathe by shoving his shoulder into the pavement.

Under questioning by the defense, Brodd also testified that bystanders yelling at police to get off Floyd complicated the situation for Chauvin and the others by causing them to wonder whether the crowd was becoming a threat, too.

Brodd also appeared to endorse what prosecution witnesses have said is a common misconception: that if someone can talk, he or she can breathe.

“I certainly don’t have medical degrees, but I was always trained and feel it’s a reasonable assumption that if somebody’s, ‘I’m choking, I’m choking,’ well, you’re not choking because you can breathe,” he said.

Chauvin, a 45-year-old white man, is on trial on charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death last May after his arrest of suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 at a neighborhood market.

Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson has argued that the 19-year Minneapolis police veteran did what he was trained to do and that Floyd died because of his illegal drug use and underlying health problems, including high blood pressure and heart disease. Fentanyl and methamphetamine were discovered in his system.

The defense began presenting its case on Tuesday after the prosecution rested following 11 days of testimony and a mountain of video evidence.

Nelson started by bringing up a 2019 arrest in which Floyd suffered from dangerously high blood pressure and confessed to heavy use of opioids. And he suggested that the 46-year-old Black man may have suffered last May from “excited delirium” — what a witness described as a potentially lethal state of agitation and even superhuman strength that can be triggered by drugs, heart disease or mental problems.

Nelson also elicited testimony from another witness that Floyd panicked and cried over and over, “Please, please, don’t kill me!” when officers first approached his SUV at gunpoint on the day of his death.

Nicole Mackenzie, a Minneapolis police training officer, was called by Nelson to expound on excited delirium. While Floyd was pinned to the ground, a relatively new officer at the scene had mentioned that Floyd might be suffering from such a condition.

Mackenzie testified that the signs of excited delirium can include incoherent speech, extraordinary strength and sweating, and that officers are trained to call paramedics, because a person in that state can rapidly go into cardiac arrest.

An expert in forensic medicine previously dismissed Nelson’s excited-delirium suggestion during the prosecution’s case, saying Floyd met none of the 10 criteria developed by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

The defense’s first witnesses testified about a May 6, 2019, incident in which Floyd was pulled from a car and arrested by Minneapolis police.

A now-retired paramedic who responded to that call, Michelle Moseng, testified that Floyd told her he had been taking multiple opioids about every 20 minutes.

“I asked him why and he said it was because he was addicted,” said Moseng, who described Floyd’s behavior as “elevated and agitated” before the judge struck that remark from the record.

Moseng said she recommended taking Floyd to the hospital based on his high blood pressure, which she measured at 216 over 160.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Erin Eldridge got Moseng to testify that Floyd’s respiratory output, pulse, heart rate, EKG and heart rhythms were normal. Eldridge said Floyd was taken to the hospital and released two hours later.

The prosecution’s expert witnesses rejected the notion that drugs or underlying health problems caused Floyd’s death, with a cardiology expert on Monday saying that Floyd appeared to have “an exceptionally strong heart.”

Another defense witness Tuesday was Shawanda Hill, who was in the SUV with Floyd before his ill-fated encounter with Chauvin.

When he saw an officer at the window with a gun, Floyd “instantly grabbed the wheel and he was like, ‘Please, please, don’t kill me. Please, please, don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot me. What did I do? Just tell me what I did,’” Hill testified.

Also testifying was Minneapolis Park Police Officer Peter Chang, who helped at the scene that day. He said he saw a “crowd” growing across the street that “was becoming more loud and aggressive, a lot of yelling across the street.”

“Did that cause you any concern?” Nelson asked.

“Concern for the officers’ safety, yes,” Chang replied.

Nelson hasn’t said whether Chauvin will take the stand. Testifying could open him up to devastating cross-examination but could also give the jury the opportunity to see any remorse or sympathy he might feel.

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Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd

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Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press video journalist Angie Wang contributed from Atlanta.

Spain’s PM wants EU recovery funds to create greener nation

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s left-wing government wants the massive coronavirus windfall it will be receiving from the European Union to transform the nation after the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.

Spain is set to receive 140 billion euros ($166 billion) — half in direct payments, half in loans — from the 750 billion-euro ($908 billion) recovery plan adopted by EU leaders last year as the continent’s economy reeled under lockdown restrictions, job losses and reduced consumer spending.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the leader of Spain’s Socialists, unveiled his coalition government’s plans for 70 billion ($83 billion) in direct aid that it hopes to invest over the next three years. In line with EU priorities, they place a heavy emphasis on creating a greener economy, digitalizing business and public administrations and boosting productivity, all while fighting gender inequality and ensuring Spain’s underpopulated rural areas don’t get left behind.

“This is the biggest opportunity for Spain since its entry into the European Union, and that was 37 years ago,” Sánchez said. “These opportunities only come twice in a generation, and Spain is not going to let it go by.”

The EU’s 27 nations have until the end of the month to hand in their coronavirus recovery plans to Brussels. Sánchez will first present his plan to Spain’s Parliament on Wednesday, when opposition parties can argue for changes.

Sánchez said his government has forecast a 2% annual GPD growth thanks to the financial injection for a nation of 47 million whose economy shrunk 11% last year. The first goal of the recovery funds spending is to offset the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the pandemic, above all in Spain’s large tourism industry.

Meanwhile, Sánchez wants to shift the nation’s economy by boosting renewable energy use and other initiatives to fight the effects of climate change.

The government’s more than 200 spending initiatives include 13.2 billion euros ($15.7 billion) for adapting Spain’s roadways for electric, hybrid and plug-in vehicles. Another 6.8 billion euros ($8.1 billion) will go to improving the energy efficiency of homes, and 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) will be used to expand renewable energy use. Four billion euros ($4.7 billion) will ensure that a 5G mobile network is available nationwide, including in rural areas.

“In the short term, we want to promote the recovery our our economy. In the mid-term, we want to foster its complete transformation,” Sánchez said. “The pandemic has made even more urgent a transformation that was already necessary.”

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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Durant, Nets top Wolves 127-97 in makeup game after shooting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The show in Minnesota went on, the day after raw emotion from a fatal police shooting of a local Black man was too strong to play.

Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets made quick work of the Timberwolves, even if focus was harder to come by than usual.

Durant scored 31 points on 11-for-15 shooting in his most productive performance in 2 1/2 months, as the Brooklyn Nets blew out the Minnesota Timberwolves 127-97 on Tuesday afternoon.

“I felt like my wind and legs are getting up under me, each and every minute I’m playing,” said Durant, who missed 23 games with a strained hamstring until returning last week.

The game was rescheduled from the previous night, out of sensitivity to the community following the traffic-stop death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright. Players from both teams wore black warmup shirts that read, “With liberty and justice for all,” with the last two words in all-caps for extra emphasis, and a moment of silence was held before tip-off.

“All we can do is be here for each other physically, emotionally try to comprehend what guys are going through,” Timberwolves guard D’Angelo Russell said, adding: “I encourage everybody to go out there and do what you can physically do to make things better, not just speak about it.”

Anthony Edwards had 27 points and eight rebounds for the Timberwolves, who played without Karl-Anthony Towns on the one-year anniversary of his mother’s death from COVID-19 complications. Towns chose to sit out and spend the time with his family.

Joe Harris pitched in 23 points for the Nets, who had 31 assists on 46 made baskets. Missing James Harden (strained hamstring), Kyrie Irving (personal reasons) and LaMarcus Aldridge (non-COVID-19 illness), the Nets were in command from the jump and ahead by 23 points before the midpoint of the second quarter. They built their lead as big as 45 points early in the fourth quarter.

With Harden, Irving and Aldridge all out, Nash put Chris Chiozza and Nicolas Claxton in the starting lineup for the first time, the 17th and 18th different players to appear in the first five for the Nets in just 54 games this season. They have used 32 different combinations.

“I’m really proud of the guys. We’ve had a lot thrown at us this year,” coach Steve Nash said.

Durant played 27 minutes and had his highest points total since Jan. 31.

“We’re trying to find that balance, and at least he had a good game and got some minutes on his legs,” Nash said.

NEXT TEST

The Nets would prefer not to play Durant in back-to-back games, so the postponement will force them to make a decision on his status for Wednesday against Eastern Conference co-leader Philadelphia. Pursuing the No. 1 seed for the playoffs might not be as important as keeping their star forward fresh.

“I want to play just to get back in the swing of things, more so than pinpointing that matchup. We want to get everybody healthy and acclimated to what we’re doing out there, and I think that’s just as important rather than circling the calendar,” Durant said.

Harden won’t be ready to play the Sixers. Nash had no update on Irving’s status.

JUST A GAME

Several Timberwolves players have been outspoken on issues of racial justice over the past year, with the death of George Floyd literally hitting close to home — about three miles from Target Center. The trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer whose knee was pressed on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, has been taking place about eight blocks from the arena.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be African American, to be an African American parent,” Nash said. “It’s unacceptable, and it’s devastating to put yourself in their shoes.”

Said Timberwolves guard Josh Okogie: “When nothing changes and the same thing happens, that’s I think for me the most difficult part.”

HEAVY HEARTS

The Timberwolves have also carried the burden of the loss of one of their biggest fans, Jackie Cruz-Towns, the mother of their star center who died at age 58 last year. She fought COVID-19 for more than a month.

EMPTY ARENA, AGAIN

With the day-of rescheduling and the afternoon tipoff, the game was played with the gates closed. The Timberwolves have had only two home games in front of fans, with a 3,000-person capacity allowance that started on April 5 as part of the state’s relaxation of some COVID-19 restrictions.

TIP-INS

Nets: Chiozza hurt his right hand in the first half and did not return. He had four points and five assists in 14 minutes. … DeAndre Jordan, who was a healthy scratch the past five games, had 13 points and seven rebounds.

Timberwolves: Russell scored 15 points in 20 minutes against his former team. … Naz Reid started for the 14th time this season in place of Towns. He had two points in 16 minutes.

UP NEXT

Nets: Visit Philadelphia on Wednesday. They split the first two games against the Sixers.

Timberwolves: Host Milwaukee on Wednesday and finish the homestand on Friday against Miami.

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More AP NBA coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Grab to list in US via $40 bln merger with Altimeter Growth

HONG KONG (AP) — Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing company, Grab Holdings, said Tuesday that it plans to merge with U.S.-based Altimeter Growth Capital in a deal that would value it at nearly $40 billion and allow it to trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

That would make it the largest SPAC merger ever, more than double current record-holder United Wholesale Mortgage’s $16 billion merger in January.

The deal is the latest milestone in the booming business of SPACs, as investors race to find the next hot, young company when stock prices of big, established companies are already at records. SPAC stands for “special purpose acquisition company,” but they are often better known as “blank-check companies.” With a SPAC, investors plug in cash and then wait for it to find a privately held company to merge with, allowing the target to go public more quickly than if it went through a more traditional initial public offering.

In its SPAC deal, Grab is expected to receive about $4.5 billion in cash proceeds and will be valued at about $39.6 billion, according to a statement. Big institutional investors, including BlackRock, T. Rowe Price and Fidelity, are also putting cash into the deal.

The merger will make Grab the most valuable Southeast Asian company to list shares in the U.S. The company is headquartered in Singapore and serves customers across eight countries from Myanmar to Indonesia.

“It gives us immense pride to represent Southeast Asia in the global public markets,” Grab CEO Anthony Tan said in a statement.

Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter, described Grab as one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing companies.

“We are thrilled that Grab selected Altimeter Capital Markets as their partner to go public and even more excited to become sizable long term owners in this innovative, mission driven company,” said Gerstner, a tech-focused investor who also is on the board of directors of iHeartMedia.

Shares of Altimeter Growth Capital have been trading on the Nasdaq under the “AGC” ticker since late last year, as it looked for targets, and had climbed as high as $18 in January. After the Grab announcement Tuesday morning, its share price fell 6.9% to $12.99.

SPAC mergers have gained popularity over the last year as they allow companies to go public and gain capital more cheaply and more quickly than using a conventional IPO process. When the SPAC acquires a target, the acquired company takes the SPAC’s spot on an exchange and typically gets a new stock ticker. After the Grab deal closes, the combined company expects to trade under the ticker “GRAB.”

A traditional IPO requires a company to hire an investment bank, produce mountains of materials for investors to scrutinize, and eventually talk to potential investors in roadshows before they can go public.

SPACs have already raised more than $99 billion in less than four months in 2021, according to SPACInsider. That’s more than last year’s total of $83.3 billion, which itself towered over the prior year’s total of $13.6 billion. The exploding fervor for SPACs is one of several dangerous signs critics see of a bubble forming in global stock markets, as low interest rates and rabid demand among some investors pushes prices higher.

Given the volatility of technology shares recently as the world makes halting progress toward ending the pandemic, the SPAC deal gives Grab more certainty than a conventional IPO, said Celeste Goh, a research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Many SPACs are searching for merger targets, and that “high competition for deals would arguably put a notable company like Grab in a position to negotiate for a better valuation,” Goh said.

Grab, founded by Tan and co-founder Hooi Ling Tan (no relation) in 2012, began as a ride-hailing company but later expanded into offering other services such as deliveries of groceries and takeout meals, digital payments and financial services. With customers coming for so many different services, Grab calls itself a “superapp.”

It acquired Uber’s business in Southeast Asia in 2018, and it’s been progressing toward profitability. It expects to lose $600 million this year, not including interest payments, taxes and some other items. That would be a milder loss than the $800 million it lost last year, not including interest payments, taxes and other items. It also expects adjusted net revenue to rise to $2.3 billion this year from $1.6 billion in 2020.

The company was last valued at over $14 billion after a $1.5 billion cash injection from Japan’s SoftBank in 2019.

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Business Writer Stan Choe in New York contributed.

Archives for April 2021

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