Democrats in the California Legislature, still smarting from the election of President Trump, embraced a pair of proposed laws early Saturday that they hope would reshape the 2020 presidential contest in the image of America’s most populous state.

The two measures taken together are perhaps the strongest effort in years by state lawmakers seeking to erase California’s long status as an electoral afterthought.

“It’s time for Californians to have a louder voice about who is going to lead our country,” state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), said during a legislative hearing on his bill to move the state’s 2020 presidential primary from June 2 to March 3.

The hope, supporters said, is that presidential candidates will spend significant time campaigning in the Golden State to try to win the state’s sizable share of the total delegates needed to secure the nomination of either the Democratic or Republican parties.

Senate Bill 149, that could ban Trump from appearing on California’s primary ballot if he doesn’t provide a copy of his income tax returns to state elections officials. While the mandate would apply to all presidential hopefuls, its authors admit the idea came to them after Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns in 2016.

“Making your tax returns public is a pretty low-threshold to meet,” state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said in a statement before adjournment. “The American people shouldn’t be in the dark about their president’s financial entanglements.”

Both bills now head to Gov. Jerry Brown, who hasn’t commented on either proposal. Neither of them may be a slam dunk, either in practice or in principle.

Critics of SB 149 have argued for months that imposing a new threshold for presidential candidates to access the California primary ballot might not pass legal muster. They’ve cited court cases related to state laws governing congressional candidate requirements in other states as an ominous precedent, though the rulings may not be applicable to presidential contenders. Supporters cited their own litany of cases they claim will allow California to set the new rules regarding tax returns.

North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear tests are leaving the United States and international community scrambling for a plan to stop leader Kim Jong Un’s seeming unrelenting march to becoming a nuclear power.

Friday’s test launch, the second to fly over Japan, clearly proves the U.S. territory of Guam is within North Korea’s striking distance, experts said.

It followed this month’s nuclear test, which U.S. officials have publicly all but confirmed was a hydrogen bomb far more powerful than the atomic bombs it previously tested.

“I‘m assuming it was a hydrogen bomb,” Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told reporters Thursday during Defense Secretary James MattisJames Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Senate votes down Paul’s bid to repeal war authorizations| Mattis wants to keep all three parts of nuclear triad | Boeing wins Air Force One design contract Mattis: US must keep all three legs of nuclear triad Senate votes down Paul’s bid to revoke war authorizations MORE’s visit to his base.

“I‘m not a nuclear scientist, so I can’t tell you this is how it worked, this is what the bomb was … But I can tell you the size that we observed and saw tends to me to indicate that it was a hydrogen bomb and I have to figure out what the right response is with our allies as to that kind of event.”

Early Friday morning local time, North Korea launched what U.S. Pacific Command said was an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRMB).

The missile flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before landing in the Pacific Ocean. The missile is said to have flown about 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) and reached a maximum altitude of 770 kilometers (480 miles).

That trajectory puts Guam, 3,400 kilometers from North Korea, squarely in the rouge state’s range, physicist David Wright wrote in a blog for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The range of this test was significant since North Korea demonstrated that it could reach Guam with this missile, although the payload the missile was carrying is not known,” wrote Wright, director of the group’s Global Security Program.

Still, the missile is likely unable to destroy Guam’s Anderson Air Force Base as Kim has stated he wants to do, Wright continued.

“This missile very likely has low enough accuracy that it could be difficult for North Korea to use it to destroy this base, even if the missile was carrying a high-yield warhead,” he wrote. “I estimate the inaccuracy of the Hwasong-12 flown to this range to be likely 5 to 10 km, although possibly larger.”

Friday’s test follows North Korea’s Sept. 3 nuclear test, its sixth and most powerful to date.

This week, analysts at prominent North Korea monitor 38 North estimated the yield of the test was 250 kilotons, based on the strength of seismic activity. That’s consistent with Pyongyang’s claim of having tested a hydrogen bomb.

By comparison, the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released about 15 kilotons of energy.

Despite the progress, Hyten said North Korea still has work to do before being able to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon.

“They haven’t put everything together yet,” Hyten said. “It’s just a matter of when, not if.”

But the rapid pace of North Korea’s quest for a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICMB) has left officials racing to curb the program.

“We’re out of time,” National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said at the White House press briefing Friday. “We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

This week, the United Nations Security Council passed its strongest sanctions yet against North Korea. The sanctions banned North Korean textile exports and capped its imports of crude oil.

But to get the support of Russia and China, which have veto power in the council, the sanctions were watered down from the Trump administration’s original goal of banning all oil imports and freezing international assets of the North Korean government and its leader, Kim Jong Un.

Whether the latest sanctions have an effect depends on whether Russia and China enforce them. At a House hearing this week, administration officials called out Beijing and Moscow for helping North Korea evade sanctions, and Secretary of State Rex TillersonRex Wayne TillersonUS limiting visas in four countries for refusing deportations Senate votes down Paul’s bid to revoke war authorizations ‘Game of Thrones’ polling company takes on White House shakeups MORE responded to the missile test by saying Russia and China “must indicate their intolerance for these reckless missile launches by taking direct actions of their own.”

Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, said the United States needs to “take the gloves off when it comes to China.” That means sanctioning Chinese banks and could also include stepping up so-called freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea and arming the Taiwanese.

Short of starting a trade war by sanctioning China, retired Col. Richard Klass said he doesn’t think there’s a way to pressure China to support the type of blockade that would have an effect on North Korea.

“He knows we’re not going to launch a conventional attack, and unless we can do a blockade and get the Russians and Chinese to agree to it, I don’t think he’s going to stop doing what he’s doing,” Klass, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation board member, said of Kim. “This is a conundrum, and if anybody had a solution, it’d be taken up already.”

Kazianis said North Korea’s recent progress means the United States is likely to have to live with Pyongyang as a nuclear power.

“We are probably going to have to live with it,” he said. “What I think we can do is mitigate and shrink how big that program has to be. We can shrink it to 50 ICMBs, rather than 200 ICMBs. I’d rather live with a North Korea with 50 ICMBs than 200. It’s the difference between millions of lives or hundreds of millions.” 

Update: Facebook has disabled using the user-reported fields in question in its advertising system until further notice.

Facebook automatically generates categories advertisers can target, such as “jogger” and “activist,” based on what it observes in users’ profiles. Usually that’s not a problem, but ProPublica found that Facebook had generated anti-Semitic categories such as “Jew Hater” and “Hitler did nothing wrong,” which could be targeted for advertising purposes.

The categories were small — a few thousand people total — but the fact that they existed for official targeting (and in turn, revenue for Facebook) rather than being flagged raises questions about the effectiveness — or even existence — of hate speech controls on the platform. Although surely countless posts are flagged and removed successfully, the failures are often conspicuous.

ProPublica, acting on a tip, found that a handful of categories autocompleted themselves when their researchers entered “jews h” into the advertising category search box. To verify these were real, they bundled a few together and bought an ad targeting them, which indeed went live.

Upon being alerted, Facebook removed the categories and issued a familiar-sounding strongly worded statement about how tough on hate speech the company is:

We don’t allow hate speech on Facebook. Our community standards strictly prohibit attacking people based on their protected characteristics, including religion, and we prohibit advertisers from discriminating against people based on religion and other attributes. However, there are times where content is surfaced on our platform that violates our standards. In this case, we’ve removed the associated targeting fields in question. We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.

The problem occurred because people were listing “jew hater” and the like in their “field of study” category, which is of course a good one for guessing what a person might be interested in: meteorology, social sciences, etc. Although the numbers were extremely small, that shouldn’t be a barrier to an advertiser looking to reach a very limited group, like owners of a rare dog breed.

But as difficult as it might be for an algorithm to determine the difference between “History of Judaism” and “History of ‘why Jews ruin the world,’” it really does seem incumbent on Facebook to make sure an algorithm does make that determination. At the very least, when categories are potentially sensitive, dealing with personal data like religion, politics, and sexuality, one would think they would be verified by humans before being offered up to would-be advertisers.

Facebook told TechCrunch that it is now working to prevent such offensive entries in demographic traits from appearing as addressable categories. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but really — only now it’s doing this?

It’s good that measures are being taken, but it’s kind of hard to believe that there was not some kind of flag list that watched for categories or groups that clearly violate the no-hate-speech provision. I asked Facebook for more details on this, and will update the post if I hear back.

Update: As Harvard’s Joshua Benton points out on Twitter, one can also target the same groups for Google ad words:

Re: This story on FB allowing anti-Semitic ad targeting https://t.co/zR31joq02l I just tried Google seems to let you target the same terms pic.twitter.com/HDIMZQTf7x

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) September 14, 2017

I feel like this is different somehow, although still troubling. You could put nonsense words into those keyword boxes and they would be accepted. On the other hand, Google does suggest related anti-Semitic phrases in case you felt like “Jew haters” wasn’t broad enough:

And Google is happy to suggest some other search terms I might want to target to broaden my anti-Semitic reach pic.twitter.com/qZrT4UKigF

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) September 15, 2017

To me the Facebook mechanism seems more like a selection by Facebook of existing, quasi-approved (i.e. hasn’t been flagged) profile data it thinks fits what you’re looking for, while Google’s is a more senseless association of queries it’s had — and it has less leeway to remove things, since it can’t very well not allow people to search for ethnic slurs or the like. But obviously it’s not that simple. I honestly am not quite sure what to think.

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Did Apple change the world with the launch of the new iPhones this week? Or did Tim Cook and his team make the smallest changes possible to inch forward the capabilities of the iOS powered smartphones so the money would keep rolling in?

Let’s be clear, the triple-play of the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X are not going to be failures. I still expect Apple’s annual sales to be around the 205 to 210 million handset mark. Sales will remain steady, the faithful will upgrade for another product cycle and everyone stays quietly inside the walled garden of the Apple Store. No risks are taken, the money keeps coming in, and everything is as predictable as cherry pie. In terms of numbers, revenue, and a return for shareholders the three new iPhones are exactly what is required.

I just wish there was more vision and bravery, rather than safety-first business decisions of a company that appears to be scared to make any radical change.

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theatre to launch the new iPhone range (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

What is genuinely new in the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus handsets? The addition of wireless charging (and the resulting use of a glass back because “physics”) is the biggest change to the iOS handsets. As regular readers of my columns will know, I’m a big believer in wireless charging and I’m glad that Apple has decided to work with the Qi standard (as well as its own ‘extension’ due in 2018). But it’s only new to iOS, smartphones running Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone and even WebOS have all been using wireless charging for years.

There are tweaks to the screen to allow true tone, new lighting effects for portrait images (they’re not filters, insisted Apple’s team from the stage), and the yearly bump up in chip speeds with the A11 ‘Bionic’ and increased storage options.

In a sense, Apple has performed the minimum viable upgrade to the iPhone 7 family with the iPhone 8. It’s enough to keep existing Apple users comfortable with rolling over their monthly payments to Apple (or their carrier) to get a slightly better handset, but there’s nothing here that will attract new consumers to the platform.

The new iPhone 8, iPhone X and iPhone 8S are displayed during an Apple special event  (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Above the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, Apple decided to bring in a new ‘Pro’ handset that is confusingly called iPhone Ten, but pronounced iPhone X. Being outside of the normal iterative handset update means Apple could set the price point where it wanted to, and chose to pass the psychological barrier of $1000 (plus tax).

On the face of it, the iPhone X is everything that the iPhone 8 updates were not. Here was the handset that had presentation time spent on it, here was the handset which was going to change the future, here was the beneficiary of Apple’s truckload of superlatives.

Yet the whole package again feels a little flat. Much has been made of the switch to an OLED screen. Yes the bezels have been shrunk by Apple, but they are not invisible by any stretch of the imagination. In percentage terms the Note 8 still has more screen on display than the iPhone X. Neither is OLED screen new technology – Apple is after all sourcing it from Samsung and the South Korean company has been happily outfitting its handsets with OLED screens at higher resolutions than Apples iPhone X for a number of years.

The user interface around the screen, from the various gestures required to the two different ways of displaying the status bar, all speak to a loss of a draconian controller over the iOS UI. It’s getting messy, haphazard, and someone needs to remind Apple of the Zen of Palm and how it is still vitally important when designing software.

Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller introduces the new iPhone X during an Apple special event  (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The other feature was facial recognition. Here, finally, I believe Apple has something. The new sensors that cut awkwardly into the OLED screen allow Apple to conduct a 3D topographical scan of a small area. In the first instance this is used to scan and recognize the face of the user for biometric recognition.

Looking around the internet today the utility of facial recognition is not being talked about, instead there are basic questions about the interface. Apple talked about some scenarios on stage, but ‘showing’ rather than ’telling’ would have not only answered points about hats, beards, and showing the iPhone a picture, but made for a much better presentation that instilled confidence.

The scanners can also be accessed by developers, as witnessed by the animated emoji shown on stage. With a world of rich of possibilities, Apple could have talked about greater AR experiences, about being lifted into games and digital spaces, or shown some real ‘gee whiz’ applications with real world use and practicality.

Instead Apple decided to have its audience of cheerleaders applaud an animated poop.

Just read that sentence again. Apple’s staff decided that the best use of stage time was that demo.

Apple CEO Tim Cook looks on during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theatre on the Apple Park campus (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Apple has always talked a good game during launch events about looking towards the future, revolutionary technology and delivering unique experiences to consumers. This week was no different.

Step back from Apple’s script and it becomes a little bit easier to focus on the relative merits of Apple’s hardware compared to the leading Android handsets. Android handsets have more power, higher specifications, and have been earlier to market with new technology. On the other side of the OS argument, Apple continues to draw a benefit from being able to code the operating system to hardware in a way that is impossible with Android’s wide base of hardware support.

But Apple is not using that advantage to push the narrative forward or to change what it means to be a smartphone. It has decided to diminish the impact of AR on the smartphone and to refine the ideas of other manufacturers. It has decided to move its hardware forward by the smallest possible amount to maximise revenue and ensure that the faithful continue to upgrade their handsets and stay on the iPhone path.

Apple has decided that it does not want to define the future. Instead it is happy to make the safest of updates, roll the new iPhones in glitter and keep taking your money.

Now read more about the expensive gamble inside the iPhone 8…

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, facing outrage over ethnic violence that has forced about 370,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh, will not attend the upcoming U.N. General Assembly because of the crisis, her office said on Wednesday.

The exodus of refugees, sparked by security forces’ fierce response to a series of Rohingya militant attacks, is the biggest problem Suu Kyi has faced since becoming Myanmar’s leader last year. Critics have called for her to be stripped of her Nobel peace prize for failing to do more to halt the strife.

In her first address to the U.N. General Assembly as national leader in September last year, Suu Kyi defended her government’s efforts to resolve the crisis over treatment of the Muslim minority.

This year, her office said she would not be attending because of the security threats posed by the insurgents and her efforts to restore peace and stability.

“She is trying to control the security situation, to have internal peace and stability, and to prevent the spread of communal conflict,” Zaw Htay, the spokesman for Suu Kyi’s office, told Reuters

International pressure has been growing on Buddhist-majority Myanmar to end the violence in the western state of Rakhine that began on Aug. 25 when Rohingya militants attacked about 30 police posts and an army camp.

The attacks triggered a sweeping military counter-offensive against the insurgents, who the government has described as terrorists.

But refugees say the security operation is aimed at pushing Rohingya out of Myanmar.

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They, and rights groups, paint a picture of widespread attacks on Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine State by the security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, who have put many Muslim villages to the torch.

But authorities have denied that the security forces, or Buddhist civilians, have been setting the fires, and have blamed the insurgents instead. Nearly 30,000 Buddhist villagers have also been displaced, they say.

Despite worries that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding, Myanmar has rejected a ceasefire declared by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army insurgents to enable the delivery of aid there, saying it did not negotiate with terrorists.

The Trump administration has called for protection of civilians, and Bangladesh says all of the refugees will have to go home and it has called for safe zones in Myanmar to enable them to do so.

But China, which competes with the United States for influence in the Southeast Asian nation, said on Tuesday it backed Myanmar’s efforts to safeguard “development and stability”.

PUBLIC SUPPORT

The military, which ruled with an iron fist for almost 50 years until it began a transition to democracy in 2011, retains important political powers and is in full control of security.

While Suu Kyi and her civilian government have no say over security, critics say she could speak out against the violence and demand respect for the rule of law.

But anti-Rohingya sentiment is common in Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has surged since the end of military rule.

Suu Kyi, who the military blocked from becoming president and who says Myanmar is at the beginning of the road to democracy, could risk being denounced as unpatriotic if she were seen to be criticising a military operation that enjoys widespread public support.

The U.N. Security Council is to meet on Wednesday behind closed doors for the second time since the latest crisis erupted. British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said he hoped there would be a public statement agreed by the council.

However, rights groups denounced the 15-member council for not holding a public meeting. Diplomats have said China and Russia would likely object to such a move and protect Myanmar if there was any push for council action to try and end the crisis.

The exodus to Bangladesh shows no sign of slowing with the number of refugees rising to 370,000, according to the latest U.N. estimate on Tuesday.

Bangladesh was already home to about 400,000 Rohingyas.

Many refugees are hungry and sick, without shelter or clean water in the middle of the rainy season. The United Nations said 200,000 children needed urgent support.

Two emergency flights organised by the U.N. refugee agency arrived in Bangladesh on Tuesday with aid for about 25,000 refugees. More flights are planned with the aim of helping 120,000, a spokesman said.

Muslim-majority Indonesia sent four aircraft to Bangladesh on Wednesday with 34 tonnes of tents, rice, water and blankets. President Joko Widodo, at a military base to see the flights off, told reporters more would be sent.

Additonal reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in JAKARTA; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore