News of the World

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Shares of Fox Plunge After Company Announces
Tucker Carlson Departure

Shares of Fox Corporation fell sharply after the company announced it was parting ways with popular conservative host Tucker Carlson.

Shares were down by as much as 5.1 percent after the news broke. They have since recovered some of that ground.

The company said Carlson’s last program at the network was broadcast on Friday night. “Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named,” Fox said.

Prior to the announcement, shares of Fox had climbed 0.3 percent Monday morning.

Don Lemon ‘Terminated by CNN’ After 17 Years

CNN host Don Lemon on Monday said he has been “terminated” by the network after 17 years.

“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN. I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly,” said the late-night evening news anchor turned morning show co-host, who recently received “formal training” in the aftermath of saying sexist comments on air.
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Following the news, the CNN Communications team’s Twitter account wrote, “CNN and Don have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”
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Later a message was posted to CNN Communications team’s Twitter account saying that Lemon’s initial statement was “inaccurate,” claiming that he was “offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”

US, EU sanction Iran over rights violations, censorship

This means a freeze on any assets they hold inside the EU and a ban on travel to the bloc. EU companies are also banned from making funds available to those under sanctions.

The US Treasury Department on Monday imposed sanctions on four senior Iranian law enforcement and military officials involved in crushing protests that erupted last year after an Iranian woman died in the custody of the morality police who enforce strict dress codes.

The department said in a statement it was also taking action against the new secretary of Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC), the authority responsible for Iran's cyberspace policy and blockage of popular websites.

"The Iranian people deserve freedom of expression without the threat of violent retaliation and censorship from those in power," Brian Nelson, the department's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in the statement.

UK Condemned For Arresting
Critic of Emmanuel Macron Using Anti-Terror Law

European parliamentarians have condemned the UK for arresting a critic of Emmanuel Macron under anti-terror legislation.

Politicians sitting in the European Parliament have written to Home Secretary Suella Braverman about the arrest of French publisher Ernest Moret, denouncing the decision to incarcerate the Emmanuel Macron critic as “unjustifiable”.

Moret was detained by anti-terror police shortly after arriving in London, with officers in the country claiming it was in relation to the Frenchman allegedly attending anti-government protests that have recently taken place in France. Moret was subsequently arrested for refusing to give police his phone passcode.

The detention of the publisher has garnered widespread condemnation both in the UK and beyond, with elected officials from across Europe signing a letter to Suella Braverman denouncing the detention as an assault on free speech.
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It went on to allege that the arrest was ultimately undertaken on behalf of Macron’s government, with the politicians describing Moret’s detention as further evidence that France was drifting away from liberal democracy.

“This assault on the freedom of expression of a publisher is yet another manifestation of the slide towards repressive and authoritarian measures taken by the French government in the face of widespread popular discontent,” they wrote.

In response to the letter, the UK Home Office thanked the MEPs for writing to them, adding that the document will be “processed and a response provided in due course”.

Chinese Ambassador Suggests
Ex-Soviet Baltic States Not Sovereign Nations

The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in separate announcements late Saturday deemed statements by Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, as unacceptable.

In a recent interview with the French news channel LCI...

“That depends … on how one perceives this problem,” the envoy told the broadcaster. “There’s the history. Crimea was at the beginning Russian, no? It was (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev who gave Crimea to Ukraine in the era of the Soviet Union.”
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“With regards to international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries, they do not, they do not have the status – how to say it? – that’s effective in international law, because there is no international agreement to solidify their status as a sovereign country,” he said.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis tweeted that “If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic States don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine,’ here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis.”

His Estonian counterpart, Margus Tsahkna, said Chinese ambassador’s comments were “false and a misinterpretation of history,” while Latvian Foreign Minister Edgar Rinkevics said that the statements were “completely unacceptable.”
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In a separate statement, France’s Foreign Ministry expressed concern about the ambassador’s comments about ex-Soviet states and said: “It’s for China to say whether these comments reflect its position, which we hope is not the case.”
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European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday criticized the Chinese ambassador’s “unacceptable remarks” on former Soviet republics’ sovereignty.

“The EU can only suppose these declarations do not represent China’s official policy,” he tweeted.