Google gets FCC approval to use undersea cable

WASHINGTON • The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved a request by Alphabet's Google to use part of a US-Asia undersea telecommunications cable, after the company warned it would face significantly higher prices to carry traffic by other means.

Google agreed on Wednesday to operate a portion of the 12,874km Pacific Light Cable Network System between the United States and Taiwan, but not Hong Kong.

Google and Facebook helped pay for construction of the now completed telecommunications link, but US regulators had blocked its use.

The Justice Department earlier told the FCC in a petition that it supported Google's revised request.

REUTERS

HK court rules face masks ban unconstitutional

HONG KONG • Hong Kong's Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that a blanket government ban on face masks was unconstitutional, at a time when most Hong Kong people are wearing them in the hope of warding off the coronavirus.

Partially overturning a lower court's ruling, a three-judge panel said that while the government had the right to ban the wearing of masks at unlawful assemblies, a ban on masks at legal public gatherings was unconstitutional.

Last October, during the height of anti-government protests, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam invoked colonial-era emergency powers, for the first time in more than 50 years, that allowed her to enact a new regulation banning face masks.

At the time, many protesters wore masks to hide their identities from the authorities and also from their employers, particularly if they had close connections to Beijing.

REUTERS

Body of missing Kennedy child found

NEW YORK • The body of the grandson of Maryland's former lieutenant-governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has been found. Eight-year-old Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean went missing with his mother, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, in a canoe last week. His body was found in Chesapeake Bay on Wednesday, two days after his mother's body was found, the authorities said.

Gideon's body was found in 7m of water, over 3km south of his grandmother's home in Shady Side, Maryland, south of Annapolis, the police said.

The two disappeared last Thursday after Ms McKean and Gideon set off in a canoe from that property to recover a ball and drifted into the bay, according to the family and the police.

NYTIMES