The prestigious opera house La Scala in Milan has become embroiled in offstage drama of its own, with its boss under fire over negotiations to the Saudi Arabia culture minister, Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud, become a member of the board. Alexander Pereira, the Austrian CEO and artistic director credited for bringing in more sponsors and creating a healthier balance sheet since his appointment in 2014, said the new board member would bring in an additional €15m (£12.8m) over the next five years.

Pereira said that the money would either be paid by a Saudi individual or come via a private company or bank. “It’s a great opportunity,” Pereira said. “I’ve discussed it with Giuseppe Sala [the mayor of Milan] and Alberto Bonisoli [Italy’s culture minister], who has met his counterpart. Such economic opportunities don’t come by every day.”

But his negotiations have been described as “unscrupulous” by some board members, who called for the Italian government to intervene in the “complex and delicate” issue. “The [negotiations] are an entirely personal initiative,” the members were quoted in the daily Corriere della Sera as saying. “At this moment Saudi Arabia does not stand out for its democratic balances.”(theguardian)…[+]

Facebook has been accused of abusing a security feature in order to weaken user privacy, after the social network was found using phone numbers initially handed over for account safety for other purposes. The company now faces criticism that it will be harder to convince users to take other necessary security measures if users view this as an abuse of trust.

Since 2011, Facebook has asked users for their phone numbers in order to enable “two-factor authentication”, a common account security feature that sends a text message whenever a login is attempted. The social network even required the feature to be used by the moderators of large Facebook pages, telling them they had to hand over a phone number in order to prevent the page from being easily stolen by a canny hacker.

But in the years after the social network first enabled two-factor authentication, Facebook began to use the phone numbers users had provided for other purposes – eventually, by September 2018, going so far as to update the language used in the prompt, adding the words “and more” to the end of a statement that had previously read, simply: “Add your phone number to help secure your account.” Now, users who once added their phone number for security are faced with a privacy setting that asks them who can look them up using that number. The options are “everyone”, “friends of friends”, or “friends”. There is no choice to ban that use.(theguardian)…[+]

TRINIDAD – Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is urg­ing all ac­tive po­lice of­fi­cers to turn out for work on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, not based on con­se­quences, but be­cause of “pa­tri­o­tism and an an­swer to the call to du­ty”.

A to­tal of 6,000 of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to re­port for du­ty across the coun­try dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, with some 1,600 po­lice of­fi­cers be­ing ros­tered to work in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, to pro­vide blan­ket se­cu­ri­ty for the dis­trict over the next two days.

In a state­ment, the CoP has al­so giv­en the as­sur­ance to all of­fi­cers that Car­ni­val leave for which all of­fi­cers are en­ti­tled, will be grant­ed. Grif­fith al­so com­mend­ed all the of­fi­cers “for their un­stint­ing per­for­mance and ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty,” while en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to al­so come out and give the sup­port that is nec­es­sary to make the 2019 fes­tiv­i­ties the safest ever. Re­gard­ing safe­ty, po­lice are again ap­peal­ing to mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors to stay away from large trucks in mo­tion dur­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

Mean­while, cit­i­zens plan­ning on vis­it­ing the coun­try’s beach­es and rivers in the days dur­ing Car­ni­val and un­til Ash Wednes­day can ex­pect to see an in­creased po­lice pres­ence as mu­nic­i­pal po­lice will be de­ployed to as­sist with Car­ni­val safe­ty ef­forts.Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein as­sured that the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice of­fi­cers will be out in full force, en­sur­ing that beach-go­ers and tourists alike feel safe and se­cure when vis­it­ing ma­jor beach­es.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]