The special event follows Sony’s confirmation of the PlayStation 5 name back in October, and details about the power of the console earlier in 2019. The PS5 will use an eight-core CPU (which will be based on AMD’s third-gen Ryzen line) and a custom GPU based on AMD’s Radeon Navi hardware. Sony is also supporting 8K resolutions, 3D audio, 4K gaming at 120Hz, a lower power consumption option, and it’s including an ultra-fast SSD inside the new console.

Sony’s event comes just days after Microsoft revealed the full specs for the Xbox Series X console. Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox will include a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU with eight cores clocked at 3.8GHz each, a custom AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 12 teraflops and 52 compute units clocked at 1.825GHz each. The console also includes 16GB of GDDR6 RAM with a 1TB custom NVME SSD storage drive and the ability to expand storage with 1TB expansion cards.

Courtesy: The Verge

Data from Flight Radar showed that the two balloons (HBAL092 and HBAL125) are currently airborne in Migori and Homabay area over 60,000 feet.

Several more balloons were to be deployed on April 28 as announced by ICT Secretary Joe Mucheru on a live TV show hosted by Trevor Ombija.

The balloons were launched in Nakuru and have since travelled though Nairobi, Machakos, Kiambu, Kajiado, Garissa and Tana River counties.

The balloons are expected to connect Kenyans with high speed 4G internet services.

The Google partnership is expected to help Kenyans in remote areas access internet services in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump called the decision and his banning across tech platforms “a total disgrace” and said the companies would “pay a political price.”

The board’s much-awaited verdict has been watched for signals on how the world’s largest social media company will treat rule-breaking political leaders in the future, a key area of controversy for online platforms.

The board, created by Facebook to rule on a small slice of its content decisions, said the company was right to ban Trump following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump supporters.

But it said Facebook inappropriately imposed a suspension without clear standards and that the company should determine a response consistent with rules applied to other users of the platform. It said the company could determine that Trump’s account could be restored, suspended temporarily or permanently banned.

“Indefinite penalties of this sort do not pass the international or American smell test for clarity, consistency, and transparency,” said former federal judge Michael McConnell, co-chair of the Oversight Board, during a press conference after publishing its decision on Wednesday.

In its decision, the board said Facebook refused to answer some of the 46 questions it posed, including those on how its news feed and other features affected the visibility of Trump’s posts and whether the company planned to look into how its technology amplified content as it had done in the events leading to the Capitol siege.

The board said Facebook’s existing policies, such as around deciding when material is too newsworthy to remove, need to be more clearly communicated to users. It also called on Facebook to develop a policy that governs how it handles novel situations where its existing rules would be insufficient to prevent imminent harm.

“We will now consider the board’s decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate,” Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president of global affairs and communication, said in a blog entry following the decision. “In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s accounts remain suspended.”

Trump called the move “an embarrassment to our Country,” and added that “Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before.”

A board spokesman told Reuters the decision had not been shared with Trump’s team in advance of the announcement.

Tech platforms have grappled in recent years with how to police world leaders and politicians that violate their guidelines. Facebook has come under fire both from those who think it should abandon its hands-off approach to political speech and those who saw the Trump ban as a worrying act of censorship.

Several academics and civil rights groups publicly urged the board to block Trump permanently, while Republican lawmakers and some free-expression advocates blasted the decision. Political leaders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders expressed concern that private companies could silence elected officials on their sites.

At the time of the suspension, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post that “the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.” The company later referred the case to its recently established board, which includes academics, lawyers and rights activists, to decide whether to uphold the ban or restore Trump.

The binding verdict means Trump will not for now be able to return to Facebook’s platforms, where he had a combined 59 million followers across Facebook and Instagram, His campaign spent about $160 million on Facebook ads in 2020, according to Democratic digital firm Bully Pulpit Interactive’s campaign tracker.

On Tuesday, Trump launched a new web page to share messages that readers can then re-post to their Facebook or Twitter accounts. A senior adviser has said Trump also plans to launch his own social media platform.

The decision marks a milestone for the recently-established board, which Facebook financed with $130 million. The body has been hailed as a novel experiment by some researchers but criticized by other critics who have been skeptical over its independence or view it as a PR stunt to deflect attention from the company’s more systemic problems.

“Today’s decision shows that the Facebook Oversight Board experiment has failed,” said a group of academics, experts and Facebook critics known as the “Real Facebook Oversight Board.” “This verdict is a desperate attempt to have it both ways, upholding the ‘ban’ of Donald Trump without actually banning him, while punting any real decisions back to Facebook.”

U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, said in a tweet, “Facebook is more interested in acting like a Democrat Super PAC than a platform for free speech and open debate. If they can ban President Trump, all conservative voices could be next. A House Republican majority will rein in big tech power over our speech.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, applauded the board’s decision. “Facebook is not the public square,” Hoyer said in a Washington Post live interview. “So they’ve made a determination and they don’t want to be an avenue to convey that, through their medium, and I think they have the right to do that,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer said the impact of social media and the tech companies has drawn a lot of interest on Capitol Hill and lawmakers plan to review outdated regulations governing them. “We’re going to look at that closely,” he said.

severing a yearslong connection between the two companies as they prepare to launch competing video-streaming services. He resigned on Tuesday, Apple said in a one-sentence filing to securities regulators.

Mr. Iger, who has led Disney as CEO since 2005, joined Apple’s board in 2012 and was serving as the nominating-committee chair and on the compensation committee.

He had a close relationship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, born out of the 2006 sale of Pixar Animation Studios to Disney. Mr. Jobs was Pixar’s chairman. The resignation came on the day Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook announced a $4.99 monthly price for its streaming service, Apple TV+, and said it would become available on Nov. 1.

The price undercut Disney’s plan to charge $6.99 for its Disney+ service, also coming in November. Apple’s filing gave no reason for Mr. Iger’s departure. In a statement, the company called him “a dedicated, visionary CEO and a role model for an entire generation of business leaders.”

“While we will greatly miss his contributions as a board member, we respect his decision, and we have every expectation that our relationship with Bob and Disney will continue far into the future,” Apple’s statement said.

Mr. Iger said in a statement that his time on the Apple board was an “extraordinary privilege.” He added: “I have the utmost respect for Tim Cook, his team at Apple, and for my fellow board members.”

He didn’t specify why he resigned. Apple’s price for TV+ was widely seen as an attempt to catch up with established media competitors, including Disney and Netflix Inc., in the intensifying streaming wars and compensate for its smaller programming library.

Apple plans to launch TV+ with a handful of original shows, including “The Morning Show,” a drama about a morning TV news show that stars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

The tech giant also will try to leverage its huge existing customer base, with more than 1.4 billion devices in use world-wide.

The two companies’ plans to launch competing subscription-video services made it difficult for Mr. Iger to remain on the Apple board, according to a person familiar with Mr. Iger’s thinking.

“Apple’s got a broader role in the media landscape,” this person said. “He’s reached the conclusion that there are a growing number of issues that will come up before the board that will limit his ability to fully engage and participate as a board member.” Apple TV+ is a much smaller part of the tech giant’s overall portfolio.

But remaining on the Apple board could have created at least the perception of a conflict of interest, regardless of how much or little board time was dedicated to the subject. Mr. Iger told Bloomberg Television in April that he was in a “constant dialogue about making sure I’m not doing anything” that would conflict with “what an Apple board member would do.”

He added the Apple streaming business was “nascent” and “relatively small,” so it wasn’t discussed much at that time. Mr. Iger has repeatedly described Disney+ as central to his company’s future, as consumers give up cable-television packages in favor of streaming-service bundles of their own creation.

The company’s $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets was largely a bid to amass content to make Disney+ a viable competitor to Netflix and Amazon.com Inc. ’s Prime video service. Disney’s $6.99 month price for its streaming service is itself significantly less than Netflix, which costs $12.99 a month for its standard option.

Disney plans to offer Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel movie titles on the service, as well as a slew of original series and “The Simpsons” along with other shows and movies which it acquired in the Fox deal earlier this year.

Mike Walters, who was head of compliance at UK lender Barclays until he joined KPMG in 2013, and Harps Sidhu, KPMG’s head of capital markets consulting, will both leave the business at the end of this month. Their departure comes weeks after an investigation by KPMG into alleged misconduct by Mr Howarth that scrutinised his use of WhatsApp messages.

One KPMG insider said the three senior exits had “knocked out the effective chain of leadership” within the firm’s financial services consulting division, which has turned into “a bit of a disaster zone”. “The core leadership of one of the most profitable areas of the business has just been taken out. People want to know what will happen to their careers,” the insider said. KPMG’s financial services work, including consulting and audit, made revenues of £681m last year, making it one of the firm’s largest business lines.

The departures have sparked a reshuffle within the senior ranks of the division, which advises some of the UK’s biggest financial institutions, including Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide. Mr Howarth, who ran KPMG’s financial consulting business, was forced out in August as KPMG convened a disciplinary panel. Mr Howarth told the Financial Times he had already resigned and he vowed to appeal against the outcome.He said there was no complainant and he did not believe the internal process was fair or would lead to a just outcome. It is not a happy place to work at the moment.

A lot of people were asked questions about whether we had seen any misconduct by Tim [Howarth] KPMG financial services partner Two people close to the matter said he was ousted after complaints about messages he had sent on WhatsApp. A number of KPMG insiders said the investigation into Mr Howarth had led to tensions between partners and unsettled some staff. “It is not a happy place to work at the moment,” said one financial services partner.

“A lot of people were asked questions about whether we had seen any misconduct by Tim. We thought it was wise not to speak to each other or to Tim during that time.” The insider said partner infighting had increased since it emerged in June that another senior partner, Sanjay Thakkar, had taken a leave of absence from KPMG’s deal advisory division after being accused of bullying. KPMG has since encouraged all staff to speak up about any concerns relating to inappropriate behaviour, triggering a large number of complainants to come forward. Mr Walters reported into Mr Howarth. He joined KPMG as head of financial risk management in 2013 after eight years at Barclays where he led its compliance function, which included 1,300 employees. Previously he worked at Deloitte, another Big Four accounting firm, for 16 years. Mr Sidhu was a partner at EY before he joined KPMG in 2013. He is in charge of KPMG’s capital markets consulting practice and is head of the financial services regulatory change unit, as well as the firm’s global lead for Mifid II with its bank and asset management clients. A person close to the matter described him as a “rainmaker”. Recommended KPMG court case over Carillion is needed to serve public interest As part of the reshuffle Lisa Fernihough has taken over from Mr Howarth as head of financial services consulting for KPMG UK, and Liz Claydon has been appointed as UK head of deal advisory in place of Mr Thakkar. Mr Walters and Mr Sidhu have not yet been officially replaced. The financial services consulting division, which has about 70 partners, has also lost its head of the financial services internal audit practice, Jonathan Calvert-Davies, who is joining HSBC in October. Mr Calvert-Davies only joined KPMG in January 2018. The wave of departures is the latest in a series of blows for KPMG, which has been battling to restore its reputation after issues including a corruption scandal in South Africa and scrutiny over its audit work for Carillion, the government outsourcer which collapsed last year. KPMG and Mr Sidhu declined to comment. Mr Walters and Mr Howarth did not respond to a request for comment.

Once lauded as engines of economic growth, the companies in social media, Internet search, e-commerce and other digital technologies have increasingly been on the defensive over lapses such as privacy breaches and their outsized market influence.

Politicians including President Donald Trump, consumers, other firms and regulators have criticized that power.

“I’m launching an investigation into Facebook to determine whether their actions endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices or increased the price of advertising,” New York Attorney General Letitia James tweeted.

“The largest social media platform in the world must follow the law,” she said.

The Facebook probe will include New York, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and the District of Columbia, (on.ny.gov/2lG1unu).

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said it was leading an investigation of large tech companies but did not name them.

That probe, likely to include more than 40 state attorneys general, is expected to focus on Google, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. A second source previously said that the Google investigation would look at the intersection of privacy and antitrust.

Google’s parent Alphabet said on Friday the Department of Justice in late August requested information and documents related to prior antitrust probes of the company. The company added in a securities filing that it expects similar investigative demands from state attorneys general, and that it is cooperating with regulators.

On the federal level, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are probing Facebook, Google, Apple (AAPL.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O), also for potential violations of antitrust law.

Trump has called for closer scrutiny of social media firms and Google, accusing them of suppressing conservative voices online without presenting any evidence.

Facebook’s shares were down nearly 2% in afternoon trading. Google, Apple and Amazon stocks were virtually unchanged.

Will Castleberry, Facebook’s vice president for state and local policy, said after the New York announcement that the company would work constructively with state attorneys general.

“People have multiple choices for every one of the services we provide. We understand that if we stop innovating, people can easily leave our platform. This underscores the competition we face, not only in the United States but around the globe,” Castleberry said.

CRITICISMS OVER PRIVACY, MARKET CONTROL

The tech companies have come under fire repeatedly in recent years. Facebook, for example, has been slow to clamp down on hate speech, and it recently paid a $5 billion settlement for sharing 87 million users’ data with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The consultancy’s clients included Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

The social media platform, which owns one-time rivals Instagram and WhatsApp and has more than 1.5 billion daily users, has been criticized for allowing misleading posts and so-called “fake news” on its service.

Google has faced accusations that its web search service, which has become so dominant that it is now a verb, leads consumers to its own products at the cost of competitors.

“We look forward to working with the attorneys general to answer questions about our business and the dynamic technology sector,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in an email.

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has been accused of unfair tactics with third-party sellers on its website, who must pay for advertising to compete against first-party and private label sales by Amazon itself.

Apple has come under fire from app developers over practices like making only iPhone apps available through its official App Store. The music-streaming app Spotify (SPOT.N) has alleged that App Store policies make it difficult to compete against Apple Music for paid subscribers.

Amazon and Apple had no immediate comment.

State attorneys general often act jointly to influence policy, including when the federal government lacks the resources or is disinclined to act.

The attorneys general of 20 states and the District of Columbia teamed up with the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998 to sue Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) for trying to extend its monopoly in personal computer operating systems to internet browsing software. That case later settled.

More recently, 43 states and Puerto Rico sued Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd TEVA.O and 19 other drugmakers in May, accusing them of scheming to inflate prices and reduce competition for more than 100 generic drugs.