Technology News

BERLIN (AP) — German publisher Axel Springer SE said Tuesday it has completed its acquisition of U.S.-based political news outlet Politico.

The announcement came a day after Axel Springer ousted the top editor of its flagship publication in Germany over misconduct allegations.

The removal of Julian Reichelt from his post as chief editor of tabloid Bild was seen by some commentators in Germany as a possible nod toward concerns from its majority owner, U.S. investment firm KKR, following media reports that the 41-year-old had acted inappropriately toward female employees.

Axel Springer said in a statement that the acquisition of Politico, tech news site Protocol, E&E News and Agency IQ from founder Robert L. Allbritton was completed after it received the necessary regulatory approvals.

A purchase price wasn’t announced, but German media have reported it to be about $1 billion.

“We have always believed deeply in the digital journalism business model and Politico is a prime example of how to make it work,” Axel Springer quoted its chief executive Mathias Doepfner as saying.

“We will work with Politico to further elevate its growth potential and aim to help expand its offering internationally,” he said.

Axel Springer has increasingly moved beyond its traditional European publishing market in recent years, including by investing in specialist online portals such as recruiting site Stepstone.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook is paying a $4.75 million fine and up to $9.5 million to eligible victims to resolve the Justice Department’s allegations that it discriminated against U.S. workers in favor of foreigners with special visas to fill high-paying jobs.

Facebook also agreed in the settlement announced Tuesday to train its employees in anti-discrimination rules and to conduct more widespread advertising and recruitment for job opportunities in its permanent labor certification program, which allows an employer to hire a foreign worker to work permanently.

The department’s civil rights division said the social network giant “routinely refused” to recruit, consider or hire U.S. workers, a group that includes U.S. citizens and nationals, people granted asylum, refugees and lawful permanent residents, for positions it had reserved for temporary visa holders.

Facebook sponsored the visa holders for “green cards” authorizing them to work permanently. The so-called H-1B visas are a staple of Silicon Valley, widely used by software programmers and other employees of major U.S. technology companies.

Critics of the practice contend that the foreign nationals will work for lower wages than U.S. citizens. The tech companies maintain that’s not the case, that they turn to foreign nationals because they have trouble finding qualified programmers and other engineers who are U.S. citizens.

“In principle, Facebook is doing a good thing by applying for green cards for its workers, but it has also learned how to game the system to avoid hiring U.S. tech workers,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Facebook started lobbying to change the system more to its liking starting back in 2013 when the comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate was being negotiated.”

The settlement terms announced Tuesday are the largest civil penalty and back-pay award ever recovered by the civil rights division in the 35-year history of enforcing anti-discrimination rules under the Immigration and Nationality Act, officials said. The back pay would be awarded to people deemed to have been unfairly denied employment.

The government said Facebook intentionally created a hiring system in which it denied qualified U.S. workers a fair opportunity to learn about and apply for jobs that it instead sought to channel to temporary visa holders.

“Facebook is not above the law and must comply with our nation’s federal civil rights laws, which prohibit discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke told reporters in a telephone conference. “Companies cannot set aside certain positions for temporary visa holders because of their citizenship or immigration status.”

Facebook also agreed in a separate settlement with the Labor Department to expand its recruitment for U.S. workers and to be subject to ongoing audits to ensure compliance.

The company based in Menlo Park, California, said it believes it met the government’s standards in its practices. It said it agreed to the settlements to end the litigation and move ahead with its permanent labor certification program — which it called an important part of its “overall immigration program.”

“These resolutions will enable us to continue our focus on hiring the best builders from both the U.S. and around the world, and supporting our internal community of highly skilled visa holders who are seeking permanent residence,” Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook says it ended the April-June quarter this year with over 63,400 full-time employees globally and has 3,000 current job openings.

The lawsuit was filed against Facebook last December by the Justice Department under the Trump administration. The alleged violations are said to have occurred from at least Jan. 1, 2018 to at least Sept. 18, 2019.

A $4.75 million fine and $9.5 million in back pay are a trifle for a company valued at $1 trillion with revenue of nearly $86 billion last year. But the announcement comes at a time of intense public discomfort and scrutiny for Facebook.

Public allegations and testimony to Congress from a former Facebook data scientist that the company disregarded internal research showing harm to children have raised a public outcry and calls for stricter government oversight of the company. The former employee, Frances Haugen, accused Facebook of prioritizing profit over safety and being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation.

The company is also awaiting a federal judge’s ruling in an epic antitrust suit filed against it by the Federal Trade Commission. Calls from critics and lawmakers of both parties to break up the behemoth company are intensifying.

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Follow Marcy Gordon at https://twitter.com/mgordonap

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JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The South African drug regulator has rejected the Russian-made coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V, citing some safety concerns the manufacturer wasn’t able to answer.

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, or SAHPRA, said in a statement Tuesday that the request for Sputnik V to be authorized could “not be approved at this time,” referring to past failed HIV vaccines that used a similar technology. But the regulator added that its review process was continuing and that it was still open to receiving any further safety data from the Russian manufacturer.

A late-stage study published in the journal Lancet last year in more than 20,000 participants found that Sputnik V was safe and about 91% effective in preventing people from becoming severely ill with COVID-19.

Sputnik V uses two types of harmless viruses known as adenoviruses to carry the spike protein into the body, which then primes the immune system to produce antibodies against COVID-19. SAHPRA said concerns have been raised about the safety of Adenovirus Type 5, which is used in one of the Sputnik V doses. The other dose contains Adenovirus Type 26, which is also used by Johnson & Johnson.

South African officials pointed to two failed research studies testing an HIV vaccine also using Adenovirus Type 5, which found men who were vaccinated had a higher risk of being infected with HIV. The regulators said they had asked the Russian makers of Sputnik V to provide data proving the vaccine’s safety in a country with high rates of HIV but that “the applicant was not able to adequately address (their) request.”

In a statement, the Gamaleya Center, Sputnik V’s manufacturer, called the concerns about the vaccine’s vector “completely unfounded.” It said speculation about the link between Adenovirus Type 5 and HIV transmission in high-risk populations was based on “small-scale inconclusive studies among volunteers with highly probable risky behavior.” It noted that the same vector was used in China’s CanSino vaccine, which has been widely used in China.

Dr. Julian Tang, a virologist at Britain’s University of Leicester, was perplexed by the South African decision to reject Sputnik V.

“It’s a strange connection to make,” he said, explaining that while past concerns have been raised about using the particular virus vector in Sputnik V, much remains uncertain. “It’s not the vector that caused HIV so you can’t just blame it on that,” Tang said.

The vaccine made by AstraZeneca uses a related chimpanzee adenovirus; both it and the Johnson & Johnson shot have been approved in South Africa.

Amid widespread vaccine hesitancy in Russia, authorities have struggled to convince people to get vaccinated and the immunization rate in the country has remained stubbornly low, at about 32%, despite availability of Sputnik V.

Sputnik V is currently also being considered for authorization by the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency. The shot has been given the green light in more than 70 countries. To date no significant safety problems have been identified.

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AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng reported from London.

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Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

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Netflix posted sharply higher third-quarter earnings Tuesday thanks to a stronger slate of titles, including “Squid Game,” the dystopian survival drama from South Korea that the company says became its biggest-ever TV show.

The company has ramped up production, rebounding from pandemic-induced delays in the first half of the year. It’s also looking beyond movies and TV and said it plans to fund “new growth opportunities” such as video games, which are being tested in some markets.

“It remains very early days for this initiative and, like other content categories we’ve expanded into, we plan to try different types of games, learn from our members and improve our game library,” the company said.

And as it faces saturation in the U.S. market, Netflix is focusing on growing its international subscriber numbers. For instance, it launched a free mobile plan in Kenya, in the hopes it will get more people in the country to sign up for paid memberships.

In all, Netflix said its subscriber base grew 9% from a year earlier, to 213.6 million, surpassing its own projections.

The increase came about even as Netflix’s subscriber growth softened “a little bit” in Latin America after the company increased prices in Brazil, Spencer Neumann, Netflix’s chief financial officer, said during a conference call with a Wall Street analyst.

“It’s a short-term slowdown in growth, but good for our business and we’re already continuing to grow through it,” he said.

Netflix earned $1.45 billion, or $3.19 per share, in the latest quarter. That’s up from $789.9 million or $1.79 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue grew 16% to $7.48 billion from $6.44 billion.

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $2.56 per share on revenue of $7.48 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

Shares of the Los Gatos, California-based company fell about 1% in after-hours trading.

Netflix also said Tuesday that later this year it will change how it reports its viewership metrics. Instead of how many accounts watch its titles, it will report the number of hours viewed. Netflix said this is a “’slightly better indicator of the overall success of our titles and member satisfaction.”

“It also matches how outside services measure TV viewing and gives proper credit to rewatching,” Netflix said.

For the current quarter, Netflix said it expects to add 8.5 million net subscribers.

The company made no mention in its earnings news release or call of the fallout surrounding a recent Dave Chapelle special, which premiered earlier this month after the third quarter ended.

Netflix said Friday that it had fired an employee for disclosing confidential financial information about what it paid for the Chappelle’s comedy special “The Closer,” which employees and advocacy groups condemned as being transphobic and harmful to transgender people.

The employee, who wasn’t named, shared “confidential, commercially sensitive information outside the company,” a Netflix statement said.

The media watchdog group GLAAD said that “anti-LGBTQ content” violates Netflix’s policy to reject programs that incite hate or violence.

However, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told managers in an internal memo that the show doesn’t cross “the line on hate” and will remain on the streaming service.

Transgender employees and their allies planning to stage a walkout Wednesday in protest.

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AP Business writer Alex Veiga in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Wednesday that it had test-fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine, in its first such underwater test-launch in two years and one it says will bolster its military’s undersea capabilities.

The test Tuesday was the fifth round of missile launches since September and came as North Korea steps up pressure on Washington and Seoul to abandon what Pyongyang sees as hostile policies such as joint U.S.-South Korea military drills and international sanctions on the North.

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said the latest test “will greatly contribute to putting the defense technology of the country on a high level and to enhancing the underwater operational capability of our navy.” It said the new missile has introduced advanced control guidance technologies including flank mobility and gliding skip mobility.

The North’s neighbors said Tuesday that they detected the North’s missile firing and said the weapon landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. South Korea’s military described the missile as a short-range, submarine-launched ballistic missile and said the launch was made from waters near the eastern port of Sinpo, where North Korea has a major shipyard building submarines.

KCNA said Tuesday’s launch was made from “the same 8.24 Yongung ship,” a submarine that North Korea said it used to conduct its first submarine-launched strategic ballistic missile test in 2016. Photos published by North Korea show a missile rising and spewing bright flames above a cloud of smoke from the sea. One image shows the upper parts of what looks like a submarine on the surface of the sea.

North Korea last performed a SLBM test in October 2019. Foreign experts said the North used a submersible barge, rather than a submarine, for the launch at the time.

Tuesday’s launch was the highest-profile weapons test by North Korea since President Joe Biden took office in January. The Biden administration has repeatedly said it’s open to resuming nuclear diplomacy with North Korea “anywhere and at any time” without preconditions. The North has so far rebuffed such overtures, saying U.S. hostility remains unchanged.

The launch came days before Sung Kim, Biden’s special envoy on North Korea, was to travel to Seoul to discuss with allies the possibility of reviving diplomacy with Pyongyang.

At a meeting in Washington with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Kim emphasized U.S. condemnation of the launch, which violates multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and urged Pyongyang to refrain from further provocations and “engage in sustained and substantive dialogue,” the State Department said.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled emergency closed consultations on North Korea on Wednesday afternoon at the request of the United States and United Kingdom.

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said the North Korean weapon tested Tuesday was likely derived from its land-based, nuclear-capable KN-23 missile whose highly maneuverable and lower-trajectory flight provides it with greater chances of evading missile defense systems.

Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi had said Tuesday that the North Korean missile flew on “an irregular trajectory” while traveling as far as 600 kilometers (360 miles).

“A SLBM is the most intimidating nuclear weapon because we don’t know where it can be fired,” said Moon Keun-sik, a submarine expert who teaches at Kyonggi University in South Korea. “North Korea’s goal is building more powerful SLBMs that can be fired from big submarines like the U.S. does.”

North Korea has been pushing hard for years to acquire the ability to fire nuclear-armed missiles from submarines, the next key piece in an arsenal that includes a variety of weapons including ones with the potential range to reach American soil.

Still, experts say it would take years, large amounts of resources and major technological improvements for the heavily sanctioned nation to build at least several submarines that could travel quietly in seas and reliably execute strikes.

North Korea has an estimated about 70-90 diesel-powered submarines in one of the world’s largest submarine fleets. But they are mostly aging ones capable of launching only torpedoes and mines, not missiles. The vessel North Korea used during the 2016 SLBM test is the North’s only submarine capable of firing a missile, but it has a single launch tube and some experts call it a test platform, rather than an operational weapons system in active service, Moon said.

In 2019, North Korea unveiled a 2,000-ton-class submarine with several missile launch tubes but there has been no official confirmation that it’s been deployed for operational use. North Korea is pushing to build bigger submarines including a nuclear-powered one.

Kim, the analyst, said the new missile tested Tuesday was likely a small-sized weapon displayed during a defense exhibition last week. The professor said North Korea likely plans to load this missile on the submarine it disclosed in 2019 while placing bigger SLBMs on larger submarines under development.

In a report this month on North Korea’s military capabilities, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said the North’s pursuit of submarine-launched ballistic missile capabilities along with its steady development of land-based mobile long-range weapons highlight Pyongyang’s intentions to “build a survivable, reliable nuclear delivery capability.”

Some experts say North Korea might continue its weapons tests for a couple of more months until it halts them in consideration of the Winter Olympics slated for February in China, its last major ally and economic pipeline. They say the North may even test-launch long-range missiles directly threatening the U.S. mainland in a breach of a 2018 self-imposed moratorium on such weapons tests to maximize its pressure campaign.

Nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea have been stalled for more than two years because of disagreements over an easing of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against North Korea in exchange for denuclearization steps by the North.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

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