Tuesday, Apple reported a 13% decrease in revenues for the quarter ended March 26.
Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, accounted for a stunning 58% of the drop.
CEO Tim Cook blamed currency appreciation in Hong Kong for the fall, but analysts generally thought that the saturation of the smartphone market in Mainland China had more to do with the disappointing results.
In any event, the Cupertino-based giant now faces a whole range of challenges in its second-largest market. Undoubtedly, the most important of them is that the Chinese government looks like it is now out to get the company and perhaps injure it grievously. In the middle of April, for instance, Beijing unplugged two Apple services.
Puppet Masters
Having been screened in over twenty countries and subsequently picking up numerous awards, Hemal Trivedi and Mohammed Ali Naqvi's hard-hitting documentary, Among The Believers was recently axed by the Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) in Pakistan.
In a notification issued by the CBFC, it stated that "the [production] contains dialogues which project the negative image of Pakistan in the context of the ongoing fight against extremism and terrorism."
To be showcased at a film festival in the capital, the documentary was banned along with Besieged In Quetta (a production about the persecution and plight of the Hazara community in Pakistan).
Having been filmed over the course of five precarious years, Among The Believers follows the infamous Pakistani cleric and ISIS supporter, Abdul Aziz Ghazi, in light of a country on the precipice of acute religiosity and rising sectarian violence.
In a notification issued by the CBFC, it stated that "the [production] contains dialogues which project the negative image of Pakistan in the context of the ongoing fight against extremism and terrorism."
To be showcased at a film festival in the capital, the documentary was banned along with Besieged In Quetta (a production about the persecution and plight of the Hazara community in Pakistan).
Having been filmed over the course of five precarious years, Among The Believers follows the infamous Pakistani cleric and ISIS supporter, Abdul Aziz Ghazi, in light of a country on the precipice of acute religiosity and rising sectarian violence.
© Russia Insider
German public opinion is steadily becoming hostile to US foreign policy.
German public opinion is steadily becoming hostile to US foreign policy.
Just like in Goebbels' time, Russia is smeared on all state and corporate media channels whether the subject is sport, culture, law, media, — or above all — politics.
Carefully selected "information", the concealment of unpleasant facts, blatant lies, double standards, hypocrisy — make up the daily dose of defamation that comes pouring out over Russia. By order of Washington-based warmongers, global mass murderers, and criminals, there is to be a wedge driven through Europe.
The purpose of this wedge is to ensure that European and Russian economic powers do not unite, possibly putting to question the supremacy of the US Empire.
Willy Wimmer is one of the few independent and clever minds in German politics, who choose to counter this insidiously dangerous propagandist madness with truthful information. The CDU politician regularly visits Russia and is well-connected both there and in Germany.
© Russia Insider
They were close political allies until he disagreed with her hostility towards Russia.
They were close political allies until he disagreed with her hostility towards Russia.
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America. In the last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear arsenal on the frontiers of Russia. The Pentagon has designed a high tech anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses.
In Latin America, Obama has shed his shallow pretense of tolerating the center - left electoral regimes. Instead he is has joined with rabid authoritarian neo-liberals in Argentina; met with the judges and politicians engineering the overthrow of the current Brazilian government; and encouraged the emerging far-rightwing regimes in Peru under Keiko Fujimori and Colombia under President Santos.
In Asia, Obama has clearly escalated a military build-up threatening China's principle waterways in the South China Sea. Obama encouraged aggressive and violent separatist groupings in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjian and Taiwan. Obama invites Beijing billionaires to relocate a trillion dollars in assets to the 'laundry machines' of North America, Europe and Asia. Meanwhile he has actively blocked China's long-planned commercial 'silk route' across Myanmar and west Asia.
In the Middle East, President Obama joined with Saudi Arabia as Riyadh escalated its brutal war and blockade in Yemen. He directed Kenya and other African predator states to attack Somalia. He has continued to back mercenary armies invading Syria while collaborating with the Turkish dictator, Erdogan, as Turkish troops bomb Kurdish, Syrian and Iraqi fighters who are engaged on the front lines against Islamist terrorism.
© twitter.com
CIA project a real eye-opener for EU members.
CIA project a real eye-opener for EU members.
It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. While irritated at times, the US has relied on the EU ever since as the anchor to American regional interests alongside NATO.
There has never been a divide-and-rule strategy.
The eurosceptic camp has been strangely blind to this, somehow supposing that powerful forces across the Atlantic are egging on British secession, and will hail them as liberators. The anti-Brussels movement in France - and to a lesser extent in Italy and Germany, and among the Nordic Left - works from the opposite premise, that the EU is essentially an instrument of Anglo-Saxon power and 'capitalisme sauvage'. France's Marine Le Pen is trenchantly anti-American. She rails against dollar supremacy. Her Front National relies on funding from Russian banks linked to Vladimir Putin.
Like it or not, this is at least is strategically coherent.
The Schuman Declaration that set the tone of Franco-German reconciliation - and would lead by stages to the European Community - was cooked up by the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson at a meeting in Foggy Bottom. "It all began in Washington," said Robert Schuman's chief of staff. It was the Truman administration that browbeat the French to reach a modus vivendi with Germany in the early post-War years, even threatening to cut off US Marshall aid at a furious meeting with recalcitrant French leaders they resisted in September 1950.
Truman's motive was obvious. The Yalta settlement with the Soviet Union was breaking down. He wanted a united front to deter the Kremlin from further aggrandizement after Stalin gobbled up Czechoslovakia, doubly so after Communist North Korea crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the South.
© Christopher Gregory/Bloomberg
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority in San Juan.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority in San Juan.
The island is "broke" and business is bad, Jimenez says, gesturing at his thick wad of unsold tickets -- testimony to a public feeling down on its luck. Then he looks over to the utility building: "They made a lot of money, and there were lots of bonds. But not anymore."
Of course, Puerto Rico still has bonds -- about $70 billion outstanding. What it's short of is cash to repay them with. The indebted Caribbean island, home to 3.5 million U.S. citizens, has juggled dwindling resources from one hand to another for months now, to keep creditors at bay. The crisis is set to tip into a new phase this weekend when $422 million of payments are due and, as things stand, unlikely to be made in full -- threatening the biggest default yet.
© Silvia Cattori
Yesterday Silvia Cattori recorded this report from Dr Antaki on the recent amplification of propaganda surrounding events in Aleppo. It has been translated from the French by Vanessa Beeley.
In Batman Vs. Superman, the intrepid reporter Lois Lane (played by Amy Adams), tries to expose a dastardly villain and gets herself into a deadly predicament from which Superman must save her. This has been the Lois Lane formula since 1938. But in this case, the rescue has blowback. The villain in question was an African warlord/terrorist. And the intervention of Superman (and the CIA) somehow precipitates a massacre of local civilians. Lois's efforts end up leading to the very kind of atrocity she was crusading against.
This also aptly describes the Africa policy of Samantha Power, the most strident "humanitarian interventionist" in the Obama administration. Power's career was encapsulated in a single awful moment last week. A New York Times story relates that:
"As the convoy barreled through a village in northern Cameroon on Monday, a 7-year-old boy darted to the road, excited to see the chain of white S.U.V.s carrying Samantha Power, the first cabinet-level American official to visit the country since 1991.
Distracted by a thundering noise, the boy glanced up at the helicopter providing security from above. Suddenly, he was struck dead — killed by the same convoy that had brought officials to showcase American efforts to help protect West Africa's women and children."
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al-Nusra-Front supported by US-NATO-Israel
Fighting escalated in late April when the armed groups sent hundreds of mortars into Syria's second city, and the Syrian Army responded with its long awaited offensive.
Western media now claim that Aleppo's citizens are under threat from the Syrian Army, while Syrian sources show civilians, reeling from constant mortar attacks, demanding that the Army roots out all terrorist groups.
In an attempt to claim the moral high ground, Washington uses proxy NGOs alongside proxy militia, to maintain the fiction that the Syrian Army does nothing but attack Syrian civilians.
© Tim Anderson
Following the interview, Joe and Niall joined us to talk about the U.S. State Department insanity and current events, and Brent gave his weekly Police State Round-up. Behind the Headlines is brought to you by the SOTT Radio Network and SOTT, your one-stop source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.
Live on Sundays at 12 pm Eastern.
Running Time: 01:57:13
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Here's the transcript of the show:
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