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After Manchester, May to urge at shortened G-7 stop for internet firms to curb extremist content

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

After Manchester, May to urge at shortened G-7 stop for internet firms to curb extremist content

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with British Prime Minister Theresa May as they participate in a working dinner meeting, during the NATO summit of heads of state and government, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. | THIERRY CHARLIER / POOL PHOTO / VIA AP

BRUSSELS – British Prime Minister Theresa May will urge internet companies to do more to remove extremist content Friday as she makes a shortened visit to the G-7 summit following the Manchester attack.

As British authorities hunt accomplices of the bomber who killed 22 people at a concert on Monday, May will use a meeting with world leaders in Italy to emphasize the importance of tackling the spread of terror online.

“The threat we face is evolving, rather than disappearing, as Daesh (the Islamic State jihadi group) loses ground in Iraq and Syria,” a senior government source said.

“The fight is moving from the battlefield to the internet.”

May cut short her trip to the Group of Seven meeting in Taormina in Sicily after authorities raised Britain’s national threat level to maximum, just weeks before the June 8 general election.

May will attend Friday’s session and lead a discussion on security and counter-terrorism, but miss the program on Saturday.

Her call at a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday for more global coordination on tackling terror was undermined by a row with the United States, Britain’s leading intelligence partner, over repeated leaks of shared material from the Manchester attack probe.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who met May in Brussels and will also attend the G-7 meeting, promised to find those responsible for the “deeply troubling” security breach.

The G-7 summit, also involving the leaders of Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Italy, is May’s first since taking office after last year’s referendum vote to leave the European Union.

The former interior minister has long warned against the spread of extremist ideology online and the issue forms part of her Conservative party’s manifesto for next month’s vote.

Technology firms have a “social responsibility to do more to remove harmful content,” including extremist propaganda and bomb-making guides from their networks, the government source said.

May wants internet companies to develop tools to automatically identify and remove harmful material, based on what it contains and who posted it.

She would also like to see companies block users who post extremist content, and alert authorities when they identify content that could be harmful.

While her proposals are unlikely to result in anything concrete from the summit, the prime minister is hoping to push the debate at a time when extremism is back at the top of the global agenda.

“If we all take action and send a message to the internet companies, that message will hopefully be heard loud and clear,” the source said.

[“Source-ndtv”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Education

Ignore school league tables, head teachers urge parents

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

pupils in class

Parents are being urged to ignore the latest school league tables, after “chaotic” changes to tests in England.

Final year primary pupils sat a raft of tough new tests in the summer. Only 53% of pupils passed, compared to the 80% who passed easier tests in 2015.

Primary heads leader Russell Hobby said ministers had stressed the scale of the changes meant comparisons could not be drawn on previous years’ results.

The government said schools had responded well to the higher demands.

Pupils at 14,930 state primary schools sat the new national Sats tests in reading, writing and maths – the “Three-Rs”; they also sat a spelling and grammar test.

Schools are then ranked by these results to enable parents to narrow down the choice of schools for their children.In the run up to and during the tests, teachers and heads across England complained that the new papers had been set at too high a level and that not enough information had been made available.

The government’s expectation is that 65% of pupils in each school should meet the new expected standard in the “Three Rs”.

In total, about 11,000 schools failed to meet this target.

However, the Department for Education (DfE) said schools that achieved sufficient progress scores in reading, writing and maths would not be considered to be failing.

It had deliberately held steady the percentage of schools deemed to be failing at 5% – the same as last year – so that the volatility of this year’s results did not lead schools that were otherwise successful to be targeted for intervention.

Conversely, just 47 schools saw all pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.

General secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Mr Hobby, said: “The pass mark for the test was set at a ridiculously high level.

“We have just failed half the children in the country and yet Ofsted is saying nearly 90% of schools are good or outstanding.

“Pupils were doing what they should have been doing in the early years of secondary school. Some of the grammatical stuff was the same level as GCSE English.”

He added: “This data is not worth the paper it is written on. The government itself has said that it cannot be used to trigger interventions in schools.

“This year we saw the Sats system descend into chaos and confusion.

“Delayed and obscure guidance, papers leaked online, mistakes in test papers and inconsistent moderation made this year unmanageable for school leaders, teachers, parents and pupils.”

But School Standards Minister Nick Gibb said the introduction of a new curriculum had raised expectations and ensured “pupils become more accomplished readers and are fluent in the basics of arithmetic, including times-tables, long division and fractions”.

“Many schools have responded well to this more rigorous curriculum, supporting their pupils to be leaving primary school better prepared for the demands of secondary school,” he said.

Last year, when four-fifths of school pupils reached the expected level, then known as Level 4C, ministers praised schools for “rising to the challenge of raised standards and expectations for all pupils”.

Boys v girls

Julie McCulloch, primary specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said schools had “performed miracles” in very difficult circumstances and deserved great credit.

“The tests are based on a new, much harder curriculum, which the children had followed for only two years, and the expected standard has been significantly raised.

“In addition, the government’s introduction of these tests has been chaotic.”

The data shows a continuing gender gap, with 57% of girls reaching the expected level in reading, writing and maths compared with 50% of boys.

And the most disadvantaged children fared far worse in these new tests, compared to their non-disadvantaged peers, than they did in the previous test with just 39% achieving the standard.

The government data also reveals regional differences, with London performing very strongly.

map showing school performance in England's local authorities

Of the top 10 ranking local authorities, in terms of the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, nine are in London

Of the 33 London boroughs, all but one (Enfield) was above the national average in terms of the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.

The five local authorities with the highest percentage of pupils making the grade:

Kensington and Chelsea 70%
Bromley67%
Richmond-upon-Thames 67%
Trafford 66%
Sutton 65%

The five local authorities with the lowest percentage of pupils making the grade:

Bedford 42%
Peterborough 43%
Luton 45%
Dorset 45%
Stoke-on-Trent 45%

Ludgvan School in Cornwall was the only school where more than 50% of students achieved a high score in reading and maths and were working at greater depth in writing.

As well as test result data, the school league tables also provide lots of information about schools’ social make-up, teaching workforce and the historic trend in their results.

[Source:- BBC]

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Internet

Salesforce to Urge Regulators to Scrutinise Microsoft’s LinkedIn Acquisition

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Salesforce to Urge Regulators to Scrutinise Microsoft's LinkedIn Acquisition

Salesforce.com, months after losing out on a bid for LinkedIn, is urging regulators to scrutinize Microsoft’s acquisition of the social network, alleging that the deal would pose a threat to competition and privacy.

Salesforce plans to tell US and European antitrust officials it has concerns about the combination, Chief Legal Officer Burke Norton said in a statement Thursday. The $26.2 billion (roughly Rs. 1,74,688 crores) acquisition, Microsoft’s largest ever, has been cleared by US regulators and hasn’t yet been officially submitted for European Union approval. The commission is already seeking information from rivals – a routine step when reviewing the implications of a large transaction.

“Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of LinkedIn threatens the future of innovation and competition,” Norton said. “By gaining ownership of LinkedIn’s unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage.”

If European regulators take an extended look, it could add months to a process Microsoft and LinkedIn have said they expected to finish this year. Salesforce’s push against the deal marks a further rupture in the ties Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella forged early in Nadella’s tenure in 2014. Relations between the two companies have cooled since Microsoft outbid Salesforce for LinkedIn, the largest professional-networking service, in June, according to people familiar with both companies.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has voiced concerns about how technology companies’ control of data might strangle competition. While Microsoft escaped lengthy EU merger probes when it bought Nokia’s handset unit and videoconferencing service Skype, potential issues outlined by rivals can encourage regulators to open an in-depth investigation lasting about four months. Companies may often sell assets or make binding pledges to allay the EU’s objections if it identifies problems.

In the Microsoft-LinkedIn review, regulators would look at whether “the data purchased in the deal has a very long durability and might constitute a barrier for others, or if they can be replicated so that others stand a chance to enter the market,” Vestager said in June. “We’ve done that kind of analysis in the past and it’s something we’re generally paying a lot of attention to.”

The New York Times reported Salesforce’s efforts earlier Thursday.

“The deal has already been cleared to close in the United States, Canada, and Brazil,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a statement. “We’re committed to continue working to bring price competition to a CRM market in which Salesforce is the dominant participant charging customers higher prices today.”

Customer relations
Salesforce is the top provider of software for customer-relationship management, according to Gartner Inc. In 2015, it had 20 percent of the global market by revenue, while Microsoft was No. 4 with 4.3 percent. SAP SE, based in Germany, was No. 2 with 10 percent, a decline from 13 percent a year earlier.

LinkedIn also has a local rival in Europe, the German professional social network Xing.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, has faced antitrust scrutiny around the world in the past. The company went through 10 years of European antitrust investigations that ended in 2009, with the company’s pledge to give consumers a choice of web browsers, and was fined two years later for violating that settlement.

An aggressive move by Salesforce to stall the LinkedIn deal would be a step backward for its budding kinship with Microsoft. Just three months into the CEO job at Microsoft, Nadella announced a wide-ranging partnership with Salesforce, a company Microsoft had previously disparaged in advertising and sued for patent infringement. The deal was held up as a hallmark of Nadella’s Microsoft, friendlier to Silicon Valley and open to working with rivals.

“One of the reasons Steve Ballmer is not the CEO of Microsoft and Satya Nadella is is because Steve had a hard time having relationships with other CEOs,” Benioff said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in December 2015. “I know that from my personal experience, and Satya’s the opposite.”

In April 2015, Benioff was a guest at a small dinner with Nadella and close Microsoft partners ahead of Nadella’s keynote at a big Microsoft conference for software developers in San Francisco. The following day, he sat front and center at Nadella’s speech.

That same day, Bloomberg reported Salesforce was working with financial advisers to help it field takeover offers, a process that had Microsoft evaluate and reject the idea of a deal, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

LinkedIn battle
One year later, the two companies found themselves interested in the same target: LinkedIn. Salesforce battled Microsoft deep into the negotiating process, forcing Microsoft to boost its offer to buy the professional-networking service just days before the deal was announced.

Benioff himself has spoken publicly about being outbid — and has pointed out how much larger Microsoft is than his company. He would do everything differently if given the chance on LinkedIn, he said during an interview on Bloomberg Television earlier this month.

He added that he can’t win all the deals – and that’s especially true “when you’re going up against a Microsoft who has all the power and all the money and all the resources — and kind of that monopolistic control – you’re at a disadvantage,” he said. He also said that “we wish them the best.”

Since the LinkedIn contest, Salesforce has agreed to buy Quip, a word-processing startup that competes with Microsoft, and Microsoft sent out a release saying its customer-relations software had replaced Salesforce at HP. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced a deal with Adobe Systems to favor that company’s marketing software, which competes with Salesforce’s.

As part of the 2014 agreement with Microsoft, Salesforce said it would put more of its own business on Microsoft’s database software and Azure cloud computing service. Yet earlier this year, Salesforce signed a deal with Amazon, Microsoft’s larger cloud rival, and said it would use more Amazon services.

“We love Amazon,” Benioff said.

Benioff stepped up his criticism of the deal on Thursday, at least on his Twitter feed, alleging that a Microsoft executive said the company planned to use the LinkedIn deal to squeeze rivals out by bundling products and blocking data access.

“Amazing @ Scottgu says @ Microsoft 2 use @ LinkedIn data 4 anticompetitive bundles & denying access the data to rivals,” he wrote, linking to the transcript of a Sept. 13 presentation by Microsoft executive Scott Guthrie.

[Source:- gadgets.ndtv]

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Education

Careers advice: Downgrade schools with poor service, MPs urge

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Teacher and pupil in lab

Schools offering substandard careers advice should be downgraded in Ofsted inspections, MPs have said.

Poor careers provision in England’s schools was depriving young people of the chance to consider job options and harming the economy, the MPs said.

Ministers must incentivise improvement, the Commons Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy concluded.

But head teachers’ leaders said a “big stick” would not solve “severe problems” in the careers advice system.

The report says: “We recommend that Ofsted introduce a specific judgement on careers information advice and guidance for secondary schools, and set clear criteria for making these judgements.

“The Common Inspection Framework should be amended to make clear that a secondary school whose careers provision is judged as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ cannot be judged as ‘outstanding’ overall.

“Likewise a secondary school should be unable to receive an overall judgement of ‘good’ if its carers provision is judged to be ‘inadequate’.”

‘Counterproductive’

The report, the first from the sub-committee, which was set up last year, also urges the government to untangle the “unruly” and “complex” web of organisations, service providers and websites overseeing and offering careers advice and put a single minister in charge.

It adds that a host of policy changes, initiatives and new bodies introduced in recent years have failed to make serious improvements in careers advice and “some have proved counterproductive”.

“Too many young people are leaving education without the tools to help them consider their future options or how their skills and experiences fit with opportunities in the job market,” says the MPs.

“This failure is exacerbating skills shortages and having a negative impact on the country’s productivity.”

They want better work experience for all young people and urge up-to-date local information be provided to schools and colleges from businesses through Local Enterprise Partnerships.

Neil Carmichael, who chairs the Education Committee, said it was “concerning that so many young people are being failed by the guidance they receive”.

“Careers advice should be a core part of a young persons schooling – but at the moment it is little more than a poorly thought out add-on,” he said.

Iain Wright, who chairs the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, said initiative after initiative on careers guidance had “rained down from government, creating a confusing and costly mess when what we really need is a clear picture”.The report says the imminent publication of the government’s new careers strategy would be a good opportunity to “finally get careers provision right”.

But Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it was “disappointing that the committee had reached for the big stick of Ofsted”.

Severe problems in the existing careers system urgently needed sorting out and school budgets were frozen and under severe pressure, said Mr Trobe.

“We agree that high-quality careers advice is vital to young people and the economic future of the country, but it is pointless to introduce yet another accountability measure without first addressing these problems,” he said.

And Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the “blunt tool of inspection” was not an effective way to drive improvement in careers guidance.

Education and childcare minister Sam Gyimah said ministers were aware of huge variations in careers guidance.

Mr Gyimah promised the government’s careers strategy, to be published later this year, would “provide a roadmap” for improvement.

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Tech Update

UPDATE 1-Tech companies urge U.S. Supreme Court to boost cellphone privacy

by Loknath Das August 17, 2017

written by Loknath Das

WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) – More than a dozen high technology companies and the biggest wireless operator in the United States, Verizon Communications Inc, have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to make it harder for government officials to access individuals’ sensitive cellphone data.

The companies filed a 44-page brief with the court on Monday night in a high-profile dispute over whether police should have to get a warrant before obtaining data that could reveal a cellphone user’s whereabouts.

Signed by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, including Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Snap and Alphabet’s Google, the brief said that as individuals’ data is increasingly collected through digital devices, greater privacy protections are needed under the law.

“That users rely on technology companies to process their data for limited purposes does not mean that they expect their intimate data to be monitored by the government without a warrant,” the brief said.

The justices agreed last June to hear an appeal by Timothy Carpenter, who was convicted in 2013 in a series of armed robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Ohio and Michigan. Federal prosecutors helped place him near several of the robberies using “cell site location information” obtained from his wireless carrier.

Carpenter claims that without a warrant from a court, such data amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. But last year a federal appeals court upheld his convictions, finding that no warrant was required.

Carpenter’s case will be argued before the court some time after its new term begins in October.

The case comes amid growing scrutiny of the surveillance practices of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies and concern among lawmakers across the political spectrum about civil liberties and police evading warrant requirements.

Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Carpenter, said the companies’ brief represented a “robust defense of their customers’ privacy rights in the digital age.”

Verizon’s participation in the brief was important, he added, given that it receives, like other wireless carriers, thousands of requests for cellphone location records every year from law enforcement. The requests are routinely granted.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending current law enforcement procedures in the case, declined to comment on Tuesday.

Civil liberties lawyers have said police need “probable cause,” and therefore a warrant, to avoid constitutionally unreasonable searches.

In their brief, the companies said the Supreme Court should clarify that when it comes to digital data that can reveal personal information, people should not lose protections against government intrusion “simply by choosing to use those technologies.” (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

[“Source-businessinsider”]

August 17, 2017 0 comment