Archives par mot-clé : marketing

UK police say they’ve arrested some key players behind Manchester bombing

Video Marketing,

By Michael Holden and Costas Pitas

LONDON (Reuters) – British police have arrested a « large part of the network » behind this week’s Manchester suicide bombing but more arrests are likely, the country’s top counter-terrorism officer said on Friday.

Mark Rowley said « immense » progress had been made in the investigation into Salman Abedi, who killed 22 people, seven of them children, at a pop concert in Manchester on Monday.

« They’re very significant, these arrests. We’re very happy we’ve got our hands around some of the key players that we are concerned about. But as I say, there is still a little bit more to do, » Rowley told broadcasters.

Since the attack, armed police backed up by the army have been patrolling cities and trains. Interior minister Amber Rudd said the official threat risk remained at its highest level, « critical », meaning another attack is expected imminently.

Hospitals have been warned to be ready. However, Security Minister Ben Wallace said there was no evidence of a specific threat over Britain’s holiday weekend, when major events will take place including Saturday’s soccer FA Cup final in London, where extra armed officers will be on duty.

As campaigning for a national election on June 8 resumed after it was suspended following the attack, the opposition Labour Party, emboldened by its rise in opinion polls, charged that Britain’s foreign policy had increased the risk of attacks.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also chided Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May for cutting spending on policing. « We must be brave enough to admit the ‘war on terror’ is not working, » he said.

May hit back. « Jeremy Corbyn has said that terror attacks are our own fault, » she said. « I want to make one thing very clear to Jeremy Corbyn and to you, and it is that there can never, ever be an excuse for terrorism. »

May was speaking to reporters at a summit of Group of Seven leaders in Sicily where she won support for action to prevent militants from using the internet to spread propaganda.

A new poll showed Labour had closed the gap with May’s Conservatives to 5 points, suggesting a far tighter race than previously anticipated.

Nine people are being held by police following the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert, including a man arrested on Friday evening. A further two people who were arrested earlier in the week have been released.

The Guardian newspaper, without citing sources, said three of the 10 people arrested so far were brothers who were believed to be cousins of the bomber. Abedi’s father and two brothers have also been arrested in Britain and in Libya.

Grande, who returned to the United States shortly after Monday’s attack, said on Friday she would hold a benefit concert in Manchester for the victims of the bombing. [nL1N1IS148]

ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Police hunting for the suspected Islamist network behind Abedi, the 22-year-old British-born man with Libyan parents who blew himself up as crowds left Monday’s concert, were questioning the eight arrested men, aged between 18 and 38. Buildings across Manchester and northwest England were raided.

FILE PHOTO: The Conservative party's general election campaign battle bus is pictured at an airfield north Newcastle, England. REUTERS/Justin Tallis/Pool

FILE PHOTO: The Conservative party’s general election campaign « battle bus » is pictured at an airfield north Newcastle, England. REUTERS/Justin Tallis/Pool

(Reuters)

On his first official trip to Britain as U.S. secretary of state, Rex Tillerson said « all across America, hearts are broken » by the attack.

British police briefly suspended intelligence sharing with the United States on Thursday after confidential details of their investigation repeatedly appeared in U.S. media. Tillerson said the allies’ close security relationship would survive.

« We take full responsibility for that and we obviously regret that that happened, » Tillerson said.

Corbyn, a veteran anti-war campaigner, said foreign policy was not solely to blame for terrorism but he would deploy troops abroad only « when there is a clear need », distancing himself from the interventionist approach that has seen Britain join the United States and other allies in military action in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan in recent years.

« Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, pointed out the connections between wars that we’ve been involved in or supported … in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home, » he said.

Opponents accused Corbyn of politicizing the Manchester attack. « To suggest that there is any link, that there is any justification, for the events that took place on Monday night in Manchester with UK foreign policy is outrageous, » Rudd said.

She said the security services had foiled 18 plots since 2013. However, with almost 20,000 fewer police than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010, concern about police cuts is now likely to become a major issue in the election campaign.

« We’re now 20,000 police officers down, and we get atrocities like this. Does the government not expect this? » one voter, who was not named, asked Rudd on the BBC’s Question Time program on Thursday night.

Corbyn promised to reverse the police cuts, many of them implemented by May in her previous role as interior minister, and said Britain could not be « protected on the cheap ».

Rudd said counter-terrorism was adequately resourced, and denied the cuts had made it harder to prevent Monday’s attack.

May called the snap election to strengthen her hand in negotiations on Britain’s exit from the European Union. But her campaign hit trouble last week when she pledged to make elderly people pay more for their social care. She was forced on Monday to backtrack on a policy dubbed the « dementia tax » by opponents.

Support for May’s Conservatives fell to 43 percent while backing for Labour rose to 38 percent in the latest YouGov poll, helping to send sterling to a one-month low against the U.S. dollar.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout, Paul Sandle, William James, David Milliken and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2017. Click For Restrictions

Tags: newswires reuters us newswires Join the Conversation: facebook Tweet

Zbigniew Brzezinski, foreign policy intellectual who served as Carter’s national security adviser, dies at 89

Video Marketing,

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the combative, visionary foreign policy intellectual who helped bring Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976 and then guided him through a series of international crises that contributed significantly to Carter’s defeat at the polls four years later, died Friday night. He was 89.

“My father passed away peacefully tonight” his daughter, Mika Brzezinski said on her Twitter account.

The Polish-born strategist became a lightning rod for criticism over the roles he played in the Iranian hostage crisis, a broad but unrewarding diplomatic confrontation with the Soviet Union, and Carter’s innovative but unevenly implemented human-rights policy.

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee in Washington in 1980. (James K. W. Atherton/The Washington Post)

Dr. Brzezinski’s admirers focused on achievements that included the full normalization of U.S. relations with China, an expanded American role in the Middle East that produced an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and skillful involvement behind the scenes that kept Poland’s 1980 Solidarity revolt against Communist rule alive and effective.

The author of more than 30 crisply argued books, Dr. Brzezinski gradually moved away from the strident advocacy of military power and the need to show resolve that made his reputation as an anti-Soviet hawk during his tenure as Carter’s national security adviser.

Once a muscular advocate of U.S. escalation in Vietnam, he gradually came to put more emphasis on the need to be diplomatically and politically supportive of nationalist aspirations in developing countries.

He strongly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The undeclared border war between Russia and Ukraine led him in 2014 to caution that the West should not bring Ukraine into a military alliance. That risked greater, more dangerous complications with Moscow, he argued.

But Dr. Brzezinski maintained that there was more continuity in his thinking than was apparent. “I didn’t have the time to correct distortions or misunderstanding of complex ideas,” he said in a 2014 interview on his career. “In any event, when I was in the White House, it helped me sell our positions to the real hawks in the administration. I took a lot of criticism that would otherwise have been focused on the president.”

Quick of wit and words and unwilling to back away from a fight of any dimension, Dr. Brzezinski was a captivating lecturer at Harvard and then at Columbia. As his powerfully written memoir, “Power and Principle” made clear in 1983, he was driven by a lifelong determination to bend leaders and events to his fierce will.

“He does not seem to realize how often his candor, when directed at others, looks like malice and, when directed at himself, looks like shameless egotism,” journalist Strobe Talbott, a future deputy secretary of state and Brookings Institution president, wrote in his review of “Power and Principle” in Time magazine.

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking at the dedication of the « Ukranian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family » in Washington in 1980. (Larry Morris/The Washington Post)

Dr. Brzezinski also struggled in vain to move out of the shadow of another European-born academic turned policymaker. The New York Times did not resist making a self-fulfilling prophesy by noting in reporting his nomination to head Carter’s national security staff: Dr. Brzezinski “will come to his White House job superbly prepared, as prepared as his predecessor, Henry A. Kissinger, with whom he will be always be compared.”

As well as foreign accents, the two shared a taste for celebrity and control of the policy process that previous national security advisers had largely eschewed. And both initially made their reputations at Harvard by arguing that threatening the limited use of nuclear weapons might be a more effective policy instrument than was the then-controlling doctrine of “massive retaliation.”

Always ready to do battle with bureaucratic and ideological opponents, Dr. Brzezinski placed equally strong emphasis on developing warm personal relationships with world figures he respected.

“The two greatest foreign leaders I dealt with were China’s Deng Xiaoping and Pope John Paul II,” he said in 2014. He had been in touch with then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla since 1976 and used that contact with the Polish-born pope to help mobilize European opposition to counter the risks of a Soviet invasion of Poland in 1980.

Conflicts

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski was born in Warsaw on March 28, 1928. Ten years later, his father, Tadeusz, a diplomat from an aristocratic Catholic family, was posted to Montreal as Poland’s consul general.

The temporary assignment turned into extended refuge for the Brzezinski family as Poland was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union, partitioned, and then absorbed into the Soviet empire after the war. “Zbig,” as he was called throughout his life, took an early interest in Russian culture and diplomacy, his parents recalled.

After obtaining a master’s degree in political science from McGill University in 1950, he enrolled in Harvard and received a doctorate in government three years later. One of his mentors was Merle Fainsod, a leading specialist on Soviet political persecution.

Dr. Brzezinski taught in Harvard’s government department until 1959, when he moved to Columbia University. He was soon named a full professor and became director of the Research Institute on Communist Affairs.

Once challenged by a student there on his failure to foresee Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s removal from power in 1964, Dr. Brzezinski shot back: “Listen, Khrushchev didn’t predict Khrushchev’s overthrow either. How could I have?”

In 1955, he married Emilie Benes, a sculptor and grandniece of Eduard Benes, who served twice as president of Czechoslovakia. Besides his wife and daughter, survivors include two sons, Ian Brzezinski and Mark Brzezinski.

Becoming an American citizen in 1958, Dr. Brzezinski was active in the Council of Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and later the Trilateral Commission, private groups of U.S. business executives, intellectuals and politicians who work to strengthen American ties abroad through dialogue.

His books, journal articles and television appearances propelled him to the fore of Democratic Party foreign policy circles. In a 1965 book, he proposed “peaceful engagement” with the Soviet Union — “The idea was to embrace them in order to erode their control,” he later said — and made that phrase a dominant theme after joining the Policy Planning Council of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s State Department.

Dr. Brzezinski’s stock rose after Johnson used “peaceful engagement” in a foreign policy speech, and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey made him a principal adviser to his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1968.

Dr. Brzezinski recruited Carter, a little-known but ambitious Georgia governor, into the Trilateral Commission in 1973. The Trilateral connection and Dr. Brzezinski’s foreign policy credentials helped boost Carter to victory over incumbent President Gerald R. Ford — whose secretary of state was Kissinger — three years later.

Dr. Brzezinski’s brash manner and rapidly hardening views on Soviet expansionism quickly brought him into conflict with Cyrus R. Vance, the patrician lawyer and government administrator who was Carter’s secretary of state, and Vance’s aides. The Washington press corps began to portray Carter as an indecisive leader who veered from Vance to Dr. Brzezinski and back again. But Dr. Brzezinski always maintained that because Vance was not a strategic thinker, they did not often clash personally over policy.

Vance fought to obtain U.S. ratification of the SALT II treaty with the Kremlin to limit superpower nuclear arsenals. Dr. Brzezinski opposed it, maintaining that conducting diplomacy as usual would reward Soviet misbehavior in Africa and elsewhere.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 pushed Carter to adopt Dr. Brzezinski’s strict “linkage” approach and, among other things, cancel U.S. participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Carter also did not move ahead with ratification of the SALT II treaty, although both countries observed its provisions in practice.

On Iran, the national security adviser urged the unsteady Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to use all force necessary to crush the Islamic revolution. But the uprising quickly chased the terminally ill shah from his throne. Vance had urged political liberalization to quiet the rebellion.

This was one of a number of instances in which Dr. Brzezinski moved off the stated objective of asserting “the primacy of the moral dimension in foreign policy” much more quickly than did Carter or Vance, who appeared to take the campaign goal seriously throughout the administration.

Vance resigned in April 1980, when Carter backed a military attempt — strongly supported by Dr. Brzezinski — to rescue 52 U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran by Iranian radicals. That mission failed when aircraft involved in staging the operation crashed, killing eight U.S. soldiers, and making Carter’s reelection chances remote. The Iranian captors released their hostages on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated to succeed Carter as president.

Even the foreign policy accomplishment of which Dr. Brzezinski was most proud — the establishment of full diplomatic relations with China — sparked controversy because of suspicions at the State Department that Dr. Brzezinski intended to use the initiative as an anti-Soviet ploy.

Although he played a secondary role in the Camp David negotiations that produced the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Dr. Brzezinski and his staff did contribute to expanding the U.S. role in the greater Middle East by crafting the Carter Doctrine as a response to the Iranian crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States, Carter declared, would not permit any outside power to dominate the Persian Gulf and its oil supplies, committing America for the first time to an active role in the gulf.

Dr. Brzezinski’s bristling criticisms of Israeli policies over the years triggered accusations of anti-Semitism, which he denied and rebutted in part by pointing out that his father had been recognized by Israel as having helped Jews escape from Nazi-occupied Europe in World War II.

Dr. Brzezinski continued to engage in spirited public advocacy after leaving the White House and joining the Center for Strategic and International Studies as counselor and trustee. A particularly caustic critic of President George W. Bush, he strongly supported Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008, but gradually came to fault Obama’s lack of “strategic determination” and accused him of having “caved in” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Israeli settlements.

A frequent speaker at international conferences, he recalled in a 2013 interview with political scientist Charles Gati that he had crossed paths at one such gathering with Mikhail Gorbachev. The former Soviet leader greeted Dr. Brzezinski, the lifelong anti-communist, with shouts of “Zbeeeg! Zbeeeg!” They hugged. The following day, in his presentation, Gorbachev disdainfully described Dr. Brzezinski as an unreconstructed Cold Warrior.

When asked why later, Gorbachev responded, according to Dr. Brzezinski: “Zbeeeg, Zbeeeg, they paid us. They expected us to argue.” Asked by Gati if they were “paid that well,” Dr. Brzezinski replied: “Not really, but he seemed to think we were.”

Adam Bernstein contributed to this story.

Jim Hoagland, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is a contributing editor to The Post.

Read more Washington Post obituaries

White Rivers Media hires Shrinivas Vasishta on board as video content head

Video Marketing,

White Rivers Media hires Shrinivas Vasishta on board as video content headDigital and design marketing company, White Rivers Media, has got Shrinivas Vasishta on board as video content head. He will be based out of Mumbai and shall work closely with the top management of the firm. With the addition of this service, the agency will now be crafting video content for brands, thereby making their media solutions even more robust.

Commenting on the development, Shrenik Gandhi, CEO and co-founder, White Rivers Media, said, “I am excited to welcome Shrinivas on board WRM. Shrinivas Brings on the table, a decade-long experience in Digital, Video Content Marketing which will be a great value-add to our bouquet of services and enhance our endeavour to service clients to latest RoI driven New Age Marketing Solutions.”

Vasishta added, “These are interesting times for us, as video as a storytelling medium is experiencing a hockey stick growth moment. I am thrilled to take up this opportunity of scaling up White Rivers Media’s video content department. I look forward to work with a bunch of passionate, creative and super energetic team at WRM. »

Facebook details 3-step strategy for improving viewability

Video Marketing,

Dive Brief:

  • Facebook executives detailed the three-step strategy the company is enacting to address viewability issues on its platform, including working closely with the Media Rating Council (MRC), at a press conference at its new measurement science center and as reported by Adweek.
  • The first part of the process includes an audit by the MRC, previously announced in February, though no concrete timeline was outlined by the social giant for the audit. The MRC will then analyze Facebook data to formulate viewability with third parties comScore, Moat and Integral Ad Science. Finally, Facebook will offer a new buying option for advertisers that will be analyzed by the MRC for assurance that it falls in-line with its definition of viewability. 
  • The MRC defines viewability as video ads that are watched for more than two seconds, or when 50% of display ads are in view on a page for at least one second. Last year, Facebook admitted to greatly overinflating the viewability of its video ads, along with a number of other measurement errors, and has since expanded partnerships with its measurement partners. 

Dive Insight:

Facebook has often been harshly criticized for its walled garden approach to measurement but continued internal metrics errors, coupled with growing pressure from marketing industry figures like Procter Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard, are slowly opening up more third-party accreditation on the platform. Viewability, in particular, is a top-level concern for marketers as digital issues like ad fraud and low-quality advertisements persist. 

Last month, Forrester Research published a report that found U.S. marketers wasted as much as $7.4 billion on display ads last year, with 56% of those dollars being put toward ads that were either fraudulent or unviewable inventory. Viewability is also a crucial metric for video marketing, and Facebook likely wants to allay concerns over the accuracy of its measurements as it moves to launch a premium video service and pushes toward a video-first focus more broadly amid considerable ad load slowdown on its main platform. 

However, even as Facebook lowers some of the barriers to its walled garden, it also appears to have offered veiled criticisms of thought leaders like Pritchard, who’ve put a strong premium on viewability. 

« It’s also worth noting that the metrics that really matter at the end are driving sales, » Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said on the company’s Q1 earnings call earlier this month. « [A]ny of the engagement with ad metrics, whether it’s remembering an ad going back to — people have been measuring that for a long time too, how long a video ad is viewed, are only proxy metrics. What matters is the impact on sales. »

nFusz Announces Global Interactive Video Sales and Marketing Deal With Accessory Geeks

Video Marketing,

Mobile Web Investing

nFusz (OTCQB:FUSZ) has announced it has entered into an agreement with CGETC, an international e-commerce provider known as ‘Accessory Geeks’ to be the exclusive producer of in-video, interactive sales and marketing e-commerce solutions.

As quoted in the press release:

CGETC represents hundreds of U.S. and international brands and is recognized the world over for providing e-commerce solutions to foreign brands seeking to do business in the U.S., and domestic brands seeking to expand their e-commerce capabilities overseas.

“We’ve seen an explosion of brands seeking to expand their sales and marketing efforts internationally and our greatest challenge has been maintaining brand integrity across cultures and languages,” states David Byun, CEO, CGETC. “With Notifi, the interactive video technology developed by nFüsz, our brands can ‘tell their story’ through engaging interactive video messaging that contains an e-commerce ‘call-to-action’ right in the video… it’s incredible!” Rory J. Cutaia, CEO, nFüsz states, “We are so excited to be working with CGTEC, their brands, and their partners to deliver first-of-its-kind in-video interactive e-commerce solutions to manufactures and retailers domestically and internationally.”

Click here to read the full press release.


tech free industry report

« Is Technology About To Change Mankind Forever? »

Learn about breakthrough technology about to impact lives around the globe. We cover the entire industry in our FREE investor’s report. Click below to get your copy.

Get My Free Report
Click here to download for free

Jared Kushner now a focus in Russia investigation

Video Marketing,

Investigators are focusing on a series of meetings held by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and an influential White House adviser, as part of their probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and related matters, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Kushner, who held meetings in December with the Russian ambassador and a banker from Moscow, is being investigated because of the extent and nature of his interactions with the Russians, the people said.

The Washington Post reported last week that a senior White House official close to the president was a significant focus of the high-stakes investigation, though it did not name Kushner.

FBI agents also remain keenly interested in former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, but Kushner is the only current White House official known to be considered a key person in the probe.

The Post has not been told that Kushner is a target — or the central focus — of the investigation, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing. “Target” is a word that generally refers to someone who is the main suspect of investigators’ attention, though prosecutors can and do bring charges against people who are not marked with that distinction.

Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests View Graphic Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests

“Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry,” said Jamie Gorelick, one of his attorneys.

In addition to possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election, investigators are also looking broadly into possible financial crimes — but the people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly, did not specify who or what was being examined.

[Russia probe reaches current White House official, people familiar with case say]

Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said, “I can’t confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of investigations or subjects of investigations.” The FBI declined to comment.

At the time of the December meetings, Trump already had won the election. Contacts between people on the transition team and foreign governments can be routine, but the meetings and phone calls with the Russians were not made public at the time.

In early December, Kushner met in New York with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, and he later sent a deputy to meet with Kislyak. Flynn was also present at the early-December meeting, and later that month, Flynn held a call with Kislyak to discuss U.S.-imposed sanctions against Russia. Flynn initially mischaracterized the conversation, even to Vice President Pence — ultimately prompting his ouster from the White House.

Kushner also met in December with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, which has been the subject of U.S. sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner listens as President Trump and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni participate in a joint news conference at the White House on April 20. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In addition to the December meetings, a former senior intelligence official said FBI agents had been looking closely at earlier exchanges between Trump associates and the Russians dating to the spring of 2016, including one at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Kushner and Kislyak — along with close Trump adviser and current attorney general Jeff Sessions — were present at an April 2016 event at the Mayflower where then-candidate Trump promised in a speech to seek better relations with Russia. It is unclear whether Kushner and Kislyak interacted there.

The New York Times reported that Kushner omitted from security-clearance forms his December meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov, though his attorney said that was mere error and he told the FBI soon after that he would amend the forms. The White House said that his meetings were normal and inconsequential.

Kushner has agreed to discuss his Russian contacts with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting one of several investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In many ways, Kushner is a unique figure inside the White House.

He is arguably the president’s most trusted adviser, and he is also a close member of the president’s family. His list of policy responsibilities is vast — his foreign policy portfolio alone includes Canada and Mexico, China, and peace in the Middle East — yet he rarely speaks publicly about any of them.

Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III is now leading the probe into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and he has set up shop in the Patrick Henry Building in downtown D.C. Even before he was picked by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to take over the case, investigators had been stepping up their efforts — issuing subpoenas and looking to conduct interviews, people familiar with the matter said.

A small group of lawmakers known as the Gang of Eight was recently notified of the change in tempo and focus in the investigation at a classified briefing.

It is unclear exactly how Mueller’s leadership will affect the direction of the probe. This week, Justice Department ethics experts cleared him to take over the case even though lawyers at his former firm, WilmerHale, represent several people who could be caught up in the matter, including Kushner, Manafort and Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is married to Kushner.

Mueller resigned from the firm to take over the investigation.

Investigators are continuing to look aggressively into the dealings of Flynn, and a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., recently issued a subpoenas for records related to Flynn’s businesses and finances, according to people familiar with the matter.

Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group, was paid more than $500,000 by a company owned by a Turkish American businessman close to top Turkish officials for research on Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who Turkey’s president claims was responsible for a coup attempt last summer. Flynn retroactively registered with the Justice Department in March as a paid foreign agent for Turkish interests.

Separately from the probe now run by Mueller, Flynn is being investigated by the Pentagon’s top watchdog for his foreign payments. Flynn also received $45,000 to appear in 2015 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a dinner for RT, a Kremlin-controlled media organization.

Republican wins Montana election one night after being charged with assault

Video Marketing,

BOZEMAN, Mont. — Republican businessman Greg Gianforte won Montana’s sole House district in a special election Thursday, keeping a seat in Republican hands despite facing assault charges for allegedly attacking a reporter who’d asked him about the GOP’s health-care bill.

In his victory speech, Gianforte admitted to the attack and apologized for it.

“I shouldn’t have treated that reporter that way,” he told supporters at his rally here.

The victory, called by the Associated Press, offered some relief for Republicans, who have struggled to sell their Obamacare overhaul, the American Health Care Act. But it was a closer call than the party had expected when it tapped the multimillionaire to run in a state President Trump carried by 20 points — and when Democrats nominated folk singer Rob Quist instead of an experienced politician. With 83 percent of the vote counted, Gianforte led Quist 51 percent to 44 percent, according to preliminary returns.

Some in the crowd laughed at the mention of the incident. “I made a mistake,” said Gianforte.

“Not in our minds!” yelled a supporter.

Democrats, who called on Gianforte to quit the race after the assault charge, believed that late votes broke Quist’s way, and that the first-time candidate put the race in play by attacking the AHCA. Forcing Republicans to spend seven figures defending a typically safe seat, they argued, was worth it.

“We said at the outset that this would be a very difficult election on very red turf,” said David Nir, the political director of Daily Kos, which endorsed Quist and crowdfunded donations for him. “The playing field next month in Georgia and next year in the midterms is much more favorable. Republicans might be breathing a sigh of relief that their morally reprehensible candidate won on Thursday night, but they should still be very worried about 2018.”

Quist conceded defeat shortly after 11 pm local time. “Your voices were definitely heard in this election,” he told supporters at his election party in Missoula. “I know we came up short but the energy and the grassroots movement in this state goes on.”

In-person voting began across the state just hours after Gianforte allegedly “body-slammed” Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, who was trying to ask him a question about the House Republican health-care plan. Gianforte has been charged with misdemeanor assault.

“I’m glad I waited to vote until today,” Wolf Redboy, 43, a software marketer and musician from Missoula, who backed Quist, said Thursday. It was the first election he’d voted in since 2012. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing in that tape. There are lots of words that come to mind for people who want to treat reporters that way.”

The scuffle was caught on tape by the reporter and witnessed by a Fox News reporting team. Gallatin County police announced the charges late Wednesday after the Guardian published the recording.

On Thursday, as three major newspapers pulled their endorsements of the technology entrepreneur and some early voters sought in vain to change their ballots, GOP leaders urged Gianforte to apologize in an attempt to control the damage.

“There is no time where a physical altercation should occur,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said at his weekly news conference on Capitol Hill. “It should not have happened. Should the gentleman apologize? Yeah, I think he should apologize.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), one of Gianforte’s closest allies in Montana politics and a former co-worker at his Bozeman company, called his actions “unacceptable” and agreed that he should apologize. Quist, meanwhile, told reporters Thursday that the scuffle was a “matter for law enforcement” and declined to comment further.

[Gianforte has history of controversial views, hostile comments to journalists]

Wednesday’s incident took place after nearly four weeks of voting in a special election to replace Ryan Zinke (R), who became Trump’s interior secretary in March. By Thursday, more than 200,000 of 700,000 eligible voters had cast early absentee ballots.

In interviews at Quist’s final rally, at a Missoula microbrewery, voters were skeptical that the attack could change the race. Gianforte entered the contest with high negative ratings and an image as a hard-charging bully who had joked about outnumbering a reporter at a town hall meeting and sued to keep people from fishing on public land near his home.

“Greg thinks he’s Donald Trump,” said Brent Morrow, 60. “He thinks he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.”

Gianforte and the allied super PACs had deflected attention from his low approval numbers with ads attacking Quist over unpaid taxes and gaffes about gun rights and military spending. To the extent the assault charge hurt — a GOP-aligned poll found 93 percent of voters aware of it — Republicans thought it denied them another day of attention on Quist.

For 24 hours, the assault charge was the biggest political story in Montana. The Billings Gazette, which serves Montana’s largest city, told readers that it had made a “poor choice” by ignoring “questionable interactions” the candidate has had with reporters in the past. Two other major newspapers also pulled their Gianforte endorsements, with the Missoulian suggesting that the Republican should bow out of public life.

As word spread of the alleged assault in Bozeman, some supporters who had been knocking on doors for Quist began playing voters the audio clip. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has invested more than $500,000 in the race, called for Gianforte to quit the race and released a last-minute radio ad featuring Jacobs’s audio of the incident.

In the recording, Jacobs could be heard asking Gianforte to respond to the newly released Congressional Budget Office score of House Republicans’ AHCA, a bill Gianforte had said he was glad to see the House approve.

After Gianforte told Jacobs to direct the question to his spokesman, there was the sound of an altercation, and a screaming candidate.

“I’m sick and tired of you guys!” Gianforte said. “The last guy that came in here did the same thing. Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here! The last guy did the same thing. Are you with the Guardian?”

[Analysis: Gianforte is fighting for a House seat. He might be miserable in Congress.]

Quist surprised both parties by running — and by securing the Democratic nomination. A supporter of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid, he told activists he backed Canadian-style single-payer health care, and he waxed to local reporters about whether taxes should be raised on the rich, whether military spending should be slashed and whether assault weapon owners should register their guns.

In the first months of the race, Quist raised just $900,000 and appeared to be written off by Washington Democrats. Republicans attempted to define the candidate before he could go on the air, with the opposition research group America Rising paying a tracker to follow Quist, and the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC hiring a researcher to dig up damaging stories about the musician-turned-politician’s tax problems. More than $5 million was spent by outside groups against Quist; Democrats responded with less than $1 million in positive spots.

“We knew that because Rob Quist was an unknown quantity with voters, we had the ability to define him negatively out of the gates,” said America Rising chief executive Colin Reed.

But after the March failure of the first version of the AHCA, Quist’s fundraising surged, adding up to more than $5 million by the final pre-election report — outmatching Gianforte, whom Republicans had hoped would self-fund his campaign.

The AHCA, the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act, had become the dominant issue in the campaign. In the closing days of the race, Quist focused his events and TV ads on his opposition to the Republican bill and brought in Sanders (I-Vt.) to help promote his position on U.S. health care: universal coverage.

The Republican struggled to talk about the AHCA. In public, he said that he would wait to weigh in on the legislation until the CBO score was released and assured him that protections for people with preexisting medical conditions wouldn’t be scrapped. On a call with donors that was leaked to newspapers including The Washington Post, the Republican said he was “thankful” for the House’s vote that moved the bill forward.

At campaign stops and on TV, the soft-spoken Quist either rebutted Republican attack ads or attacked the GOP’s health-care bill, hitting Gianforte especially hard on the donor call remarks.

“Greg Gianforte says he’s thankful for the new health-care bill, the one that eliminates protections for preexisting conditions and raises premiums on every Montanan who has one, because he gets a big tax break at our expense,” Quist said in his closing spot.

Until Wednesday, Democrats worried that a loss would bolster Republican confidence to move ahead with the health care bill. But Gianforte’s triumph over the assault charges gave the winners another reason to cheer — a victory over what the president calls “fake news.”

At Gianforte’s party in Bozeman, Rehberg — among other revelers — spread a shaky rumor that the Fox News journalists who spoke to police were “changing their story.”

In Missoula, where Quist rallied with his voters, Democrats looked for the bright side. Matt McKenna, an adviser to the campaign and a longtime Montana politics insider, noted the ugly tenor of the race, starting with anti-Quist ads the first day of the campaign.

“This is the first day of the end of Greg Gianforte’s political career,” said McKenna. “It may seem like he got away with this because so many people already voted, but they will deny him the prize he really wants which is the governor’s office. He could go to jail. He still has to be arraigned.”

Viebeck reported from Washington. Kathleen McLaughlin in Missoula, Mont., and Ed O’Keefe and Sean Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPos

Marketers in Africa should leverage mobile as an amplifier

Video Marketing,

Given the mobile phone’s central role in people’s lives, it’s worth asking whether brands and agencies in Africa are investing enough in mobile advertising and marketing. For millions of people across the continent, it is their only voice communications device, payments channel, and place to access news and information. As such, it should be the starting point for a marketing strategy in Africa.

Here are a few of the trends we see unfolding across Africa’s mobile market in the years to come.

M-commerce is on the rise

Across Africa, we are seeing mobile commerce rise – whether we are talking about online shopping, or a simple USSD-based transaction, such as a farmer buying microinsurance. A report from We Are Social’s Digital shows that 78% of web pages served to web browsers in South Africa are served to mobile devices. The number is greater than 80% in East and West Africa.

It stands to reason that mobile phones, rather than desktops, will dominate e-commerce in Africa. Brands should be thinking about how they can make it as easy as possible for people to convert and buy from their mobile devices – many online advertisers and stores still take a desktop-first approach.

Feature phones have never gone away

International Data Corporation (IDC) just released some interesting statistics, showing that 215 million mobile handsets were shipped in Africa during 2016, up 10.1% from 2015. Contrary to the narrative of feature phones dying out and smartphones replacing them, feature phones accounted for 56% of the market. Smartphones only grew 3.4% year on year, compared to the double-digit growth of the years before.

One reason for this might be that volatile exchange rates caused users to shop for lower-cost feature phones, rather than pricier smartphones. But there are many sub-$50 smartphones on the market. Perhaps many users just aren’t happy with the user experience they get from a low-cost smartphone. High-data costs possibly also put off some end-users from migrating to smartphones.

Mobile innovation isn’t just about the new technologies

Following from the point above, many of Africa’s most powerful mobile applications have come from using basic GSM technologies like SMS and USSD. M-Pesa, for example, is one of the most widely used mobile money transfer services in the world, and it was created in Kenya back in 2007 using nothing fancier than USSD.

In many cases, the technical limitations of feature phones and a lack of mobile broadband have spurred innovation—necessity is often the mother of invention in Africa. This highlights the fact that marketers need a multidimensional approach to the complex and fragmented market in many African countries—mobile web pages for feature phones, apps for smartphone users, and USSD/text services for basic phones all have a role to play.

There are many innovative ways that brands can reach the ‘feature phone consumer’, from bulk SMS, to Please-Call-Me, to gamification through USSD.

Mobile video is getting bigger

Thanks to falling data prices, Africans are starting to take to mobile video. According to research from Twinpine, 78% of Kenyans and 60% of Nigerians online watch videos using their mobile phone.

Given that numerous international studies show that consumers find video ads to be more attention-grabbing and engaging, there is certainly scope for African advertisers to be making more use of video formats in their advertising. That is, provided they use bandwidth-targeting to ensure that they only address people with faster connections with their ads and use light formats that don’t drain too much of their audiences’ data.

Radio and mobile integration will make a happy pairing

Aside from the mobile phone, radio remains the largest reach and time spent engaging channel in most parts of Africa. Mobile phones with FM radios are popular in many parts of South Africa and on the continent. Regional radio, with its sense of community and its information relevant to the listener’s context, does well in many African countries.

Our experience in South and West Africa is that radio can work together well with mobile, through social media, SMS, and voice notes on station apps. Radio remains an immediate and highly interactive medium, with a high degree of mobile integration, yet often overlooked synergies with mobile. Mobile is the great amplifier of audiences, broadening the reach to like-minded communities.

Closing words: Integrated approach to marketing

African brands should think about their marketing and advertising in a more integrated and holistic manner but weave mobile into their campaigns where it makes sense. Mobile is a powerful channel in its own right but can multiply the value of investments in print, PR, TV, outdoor, and radio.

For more information, visit www.mediamark.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.