Kerry in Afghanistan to meet possible leaders
Kerry in Afghanistan to meet possible leaders
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. and its allies are growing increasingly concerned as Afghanistan shows signs of unraveling in its first democratic transfer of power from President Hamid Karzai. With Iraq wracked by insurgency, Afghanistan’s dispute over election results poses a new challenge to President Barack Obama’s effort to leave behind two secure states while ending America’s long wars.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a hastily arranged visit to Afghanistan today to help resolve the election crisis, which is sowing chaos in a country that the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost more than 2,000 lives trying to stabilize. He was to meet with the two candidates claiming victory in last month’s presidential election runoff.
“I’ve been in touch with both candidates several times as well as President (Hamid) Karzai,” Kerry said before leaving Beijing, where he attended a U.S.-China economic meeting. He called on them to “show critical statesmanship and leadership at a time when Afghanistan obviously needs it.
“This is a critical moment for the transition, which is essential to future governance of the country.”
With Iraq wracked by insurgency, Afghanistan’s power dispute over the election results is posing a new challenge to President Barack Obama’s 5 1/2-year effort to leave behind two secure nations while ending America’s long wars in the Muslim world.
Girl not cured of HIV as previously thought
Associated Press
A Mississippi girl born with the AIDS virus and in remission for more than two years despite stopping treatment now shows signs that she still harbors HIV — and therefore is not cured.
The news is a setback to hopes that very early treatment with powerful HIV drugs might reverse an infection that has seemed permanent once it takes hold.
The girl is now nearly 4. As recently as March, doctors had said that she seemed free of HIV though she was not being treated with AIDS drugs. That was a medical first.
But on Thursday, doctors said they were surprised last week to find the virus in her blood, and there were signs that it was harming her immune system.
She is now back on treatment and is responding well, they said. The news is “obviously disappointing” and will affect a federal study that had been about to start testing early, aggressive treatment in such cases, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
FTC sues Amazon over kids’ app charges
NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Trade Commission is suing Amazon over charges that the company has not done enough to prevent children from making unauthorized in-app purchases, according to a complaint filed Thursday in federal court.
The move had been expected since last week, when Amazon said it wouldn’t settle with the FTC over the charges. Amazon said in a letter to the FTC last week that it had already refunded money to parents who complained and was prepared to go to court.
On Thursday Amazon said its statements in the letter still apply and did not comment further.
The dispute is over in-app charges in children’s games on Kindle devices, where it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate whether users are spending virtual or real currency to acquire virtual items. When it introduced in-app charges in 2011, a password was not required to make any purchase, from 99 cents to $99. That changed in 2012, when Amazon required a password for charges over $20. In 2013, the company updated password protection again, but in a way that allowed windows of time where children could still make purchases, according to the FTC complaint.
One woman cited in the complaint said her daughter racked up $358.42 in charges while playing a game.
FTC Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich said in a media call that thousands of consumers had been affected and the unauthorized charges totaled in the millions of dollars.
“A central tenant in consumer protection is that you need to obtain consumer consent before placing charges on their bills,” she said. “That applies all places, from brick-and-mortar stores to app stores.”
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring refunds to consumers for unauthorized charges. It also seeks to ban Amazon from billing account holders for in-app charges made without their consent.
Last week the FTC announced a similar lawsuit against T-Mobile. Federal regulators urged consumers to go through their phone bills line by line after the agency accused T-Mobile US of wrongly charging customers for premium services, like horoscope texts and quirky ringtones, the customers never authorized.
The FTC settled with Apple over a similar matter for $32.5 million in January.
Apple complained at the time. CEO Tim Cook explained to employees in a memo that the settlement did not require the company to do anything it wasn’t doing already but he added that it “smacked of double jeopardy” because Apple had already settled a similar class-action lawsuit in which it agreed to refunds.
Amazon said last week its parental controls already go beyond what the FTC required from Apple as part of the settlement.
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Amazon’s stock slipped $2.05 to close at $327.92 in Thursday’s trading.