Amazon on Wednesday agreed to pay $30.8 million to settle Ring and Alexa privacy complaints filed by US regulators, including accusations that employees spied on female customers, according to court documents.. Amazon will pay an additional $25 million as part of a separate deal to settle FTC accusations that children's voice recordings captured by Alexa smart speakers were kept when they should have been deleted, according to the regulator.
Chile's state-owned Codelco copper company, the world's top producer of the metal, closed its Ventanas smelter Wednesday in an area dubbed "Chile's Chernobyl" for the grim environmental impact of heavy industry. . Codelco announced it would close the Ventanas smelter after an incident in June last year when more than 100 people, mostly schoolchildren, suffered sulfur dioxide poisoning in the area around Quintero and Puchuncavi -- two coastal towns that are home to some 50,000 people.
The United Nations special envoy for Myanmar will step down in June, a spokesman for the UN chief told AFP Wednesday, after an 18-month tenure in which she was criticised by the junta and its opponents.. She visited the Southeast Asian nation last August and met junta chief Min Aung Hlaing and other top military officials in a move criticised by rights groups as lending legitimacy to the generals.
Saudi Arabia has charged a women's rights activist detained since November over her social media posts with launching a "propaganda campaign", according to court documents seen by AFP on Wednesday.. Speaking to AFP, Fouz criticised authorities for "targeting influential women demanding women's rights in Saudi Arabia."
Canada will soon require that health warnings be printed on individual cigarettes and cigars in a further crackdown on smoking, the country's addictions minister announced Wednesday.. In 2000, Canada became the first country to order graphic warnings on packs of cigarettes -- including grisly pictorials of diseased hearts and lungs -- to raise awareness of the health hazards associated with tobacco use.
Latvia's foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics was elected as the Baltic country's new president on Wednesday, the first openly gay person to hold the office. . Before becoming foreign minister, Rinkevics worked as a foreign news analyst at the public broadcaster Latvijas Radio and for the defence ministry and president's office. il-mmp/
A rape case that has pitched a 23-year-old woman against Senegal's most prominent opposition leader has dismayed feminists in the country, fearing their cause has suffered an enduring blow.. Some feminists say the two-year-old case has dodged a rare chance to advance the rights of victims of sexual violence.
A Norwegian man and his associates appeared in a UK court Wednesday to answer charges over an alleged conspiracy involving "extreme body modifications" -- including castrations.. The Norwegian's alleged right-hand man, Peter Wates, 66, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.
Ryyan Alshebl fled war-torn Syria in 2015, arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos after a harrowing four-hour journey on a rubber boat. . Alshebl was joined by four friends on his journey to Europe.
Anti-LGBTQ bills in Kenya and Uganda have unleashed an unprecedented wave of online disinformation targeting the community, with experts accusing political leaders of spreading falsehoods that put lives at risk.. Political and religious leaders "have used misinformation to twist the reality and this puts LGBTQ people's lives at risk," he told AFP. "The constant lies make queer people misunderstood.
