Tuesday, 7 January 2020

Tuesday Morning Briefing: Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne deploys to the Middle East

Middle East

'We're going to war, bro': Six hundred mostly young soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are going to the Middle East, part of a group of some 3,500 U.S. paratroopers ordered to the region. Their final destinations are classified.

The United States has denied a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that would have allowed him to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, a U.S. official said. Monday’s comments by the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, came as tensions escalate between the two countries after the United States killed Iran’s most prominent military commander in Baghdad on Friday. Defense Secretary Mark Esper strongly suggested that the U.S. military would not violate the laws of armed conflict by striking Iranian cultural sites, a move threatened by Trump.

Dozens of people were killed in a stampede as huge crowds of mourners gathered for the funeral of a slain military commander in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman, forcing his burial to be postponed, state-affiliated media reported.

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Facebook said it will remove deepfakes and other manipulated videos from its platform if they have been edited, but not content that is parody or satire, in a move aimed at curbing misinformation ahead of the U.S. presidential election. The social media giant told Reuters that as part of its new policy it will not remove a heavily edited video that attempted to make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem incoherent by slurring her speech and making it appear like she was repeatedly stumbling over her words.

Tokyo prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Carlos Ghosn’s wife Carole for allegedly lying in testimony, as officials sought ways to bring the fugitive car industry boss back for trial on financial misconduct charges. The perjury arrest warrant accuses Carole Ghosn of falsely claiming not to know, or to have met, people connected to a company that received payments from Nissan Motor, part of which it subsequently transferred to a firm owned by Ghosn.

Elon Musk showed off striptease moves at the launch of Tesla’s Model Y electric sports utility vehicle program at its new Shanghai factory, where the company delivered its first cars built outside the United States to the public.

World

A St. Petersburg clinic run and partly owned by people with ties to President Vladimir Putin has provided medical treatment to Russian mercenaries injured overseas. The previously unreported medical treatment shows fighters have received indirect support from the country's elite even as the Kremlin denies they fight abroad on its behalf.

Australian firefighters used a break from searing temperatures to strengthen containment lines around huge wildfires as the financial and environmental costs of the crisis mounted. Australia’s government is sticking firmly to a position that there is no direct link between climate change and the country’s devastating bushfires, despite public anger, the anguish of victims and warnings from scientists. Action at the Australian Open will be confined to the three stadiums with retractable roofs and eight indoor courts if conditions become hazardous due to the bushfire crisis, organizers of the Grand Slam event said.

At least 30 people were killed in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno after an improvised explosive device detonated on a bridge, sources told Reuters. The bomb detonated at roughly 5 p.m. local time on a crowded bridge in the market town of Gamboru that leads into neighboring Cameroon. Witnesses in the market town said more than 35 injured people were taken to the local hospital following the attack.

Venezuelan lawmaker Luis Parra for years denounced abuses by the security forces of President Nicolas Maduro, berating police for forcing a family from its home for their political beliefs and accusing intelligence agents of raiding his own house. But Parra rose from obscurity on Sunday to claim the leadership of the national congress, with the backing of Maduro’s ruling Socialist Party.

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW

White House proposes regulatory principles to govern AI use

The White House proposed regulatory principles to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence aimed at limiting authorities’ “overreach”, and said it wants European officials to likewise avoid aggressive approaches.

3 min read

Intel's Mobileye demos autonomous car equipped only with cameras, no other sensors

Intel released a video of its Mobileye autonomous car navigating the streets of Jerusalem for about 20 minutes with the help of 12 on-board cameras and, unusually, no other sensors.

2 min read

Qualcomm launches autonomous driving computer, aiming to hit roads by 2023

Qualcomm announced a computing system for autonomous vehicles designed to handle everything from lane controls to full self-driving that it aims to have on the road by 2023.

3 min read

Top Stories on Reuters TV

Mixed signals from Pentagon on troops in Iraq

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