Ronaldo continues scoring streak as Juve top Serie A

Cristiano Ronaldo stretched his goal-scoring streak to six consecutive league games as Juventus took top spot in Serie A on Sunday with a 2-1 win at Roma, whose defeat was made worse by the cruciate ligament injury of rising star Nicolo Zaniolo.

Juventus move two points ahead of Inter Milan, who were held 1-1 by Atalanta at the San Siro on Saturday, to move top after going two goals up in just 10 minutes in Rome.

Turkish defender Merih Demiral found a way through after three minutes when he connected with a Paulo Dybala free-kick.

Minutes later Argentine Dybala was hauled down in the box, and Ronaldo stepped up to convert from the spot to make it nine goals in six league games.

Both sides had casualties in the first half with Demiral limping off with a knee injury not long after scoring his first Juventus goal, and replaced by Matthijs de Ligt.

And 20-year-old Zaniolo was stretchered off in tears eight minutes before the break after falling victim what Roma later confirmed was a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee as he tried to pass between De Ligt and Adrien Rabiot.

Zaniolo, who is considered one of Italy’s most exciting young talents and was a rare bright points for Roma in a torrid first half, will undergo surgery on Monday.

Roma had their chances with Edin Dzeko hitting the post and Wojciech Szczesny denying Cengiz Under from point-blank range, and Diego Perotti pulled a goal back for the hosts from the penalty spot on 68 minutes after an Alex Sandro handball.

However the capital side fell to their second straight home defeat to drop to fifth, outside the Champions League places, level on 35 points with fourth-placed Atalanta and seven behind rampant local rivals Lazio after their 1-0 win over Napoli on Saturday.

Earlier Alejandro Berenguer struck the only goal as Torino beat Bologna to climb to seventh. (Punch)

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Barcelona Luis Suarez sidelined for 4 months

Barcelona striker Luis Suarez will be out of action for four months after keyhole surgery on his injured right knee, the Spanish champions said on Sunday.

The 32-year-old centre-forward has scored 14 goals from 23 appearances for Barcelona this season, with the club sitting atop the Spanish league and facing Napoli in the last-16 of the Champions League.

The club issued a press release saying the surgery was for an “injury to the external meniscus of the right knee”. (Punch)

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Trump:We are inspired by your courage

US President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States was monitoring Iranian demonstrations closely, warning against any new “massacre” as protests broke out after Tehran admitted to shooting down a passenger plane.

Trump told Iranians in tweets in both English and Farsi that he stands by them and is monitoring the demonstrations.

“To the brave, long-suffering people of Iran: I’ve stood with you since the beginning of my Presidency, and my Administration will continue to stand with you,” he tweeted.

“There can not be another massacre of peaceful protesters, nor an internet shutdown. The world is watching,” he added, apparently referring to an Iranian crackdown on street protests that broke out in November.

“We are following your protests closely, and are inspired by your courage,” he said.

Iran had said earlier it unintentionally downed a Ukrainian jetliner outside Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard, in an abrupt about-turn after initially denying Western claims it was struck by a missile.

The firing came shortly after Iran launched missiles at bases in Iraq housing American forces.

President Hassan Rouhani said a military probe into the tragedy had found “missiles fired due to human error” brought down the Boeing 737, calling it an “unforgivable mistake.”

The new demonstrations follow an Iranian crackdown on street protests that broke out in November. Amnesty International has said it left more than 300 people dead.

Internet access was reportedly cut off in multiple Iranian provinces ahead of memorials planned a month after the protests.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has demanded that Iran provide “full clarity” on the downing of the plane. Ottawa says the dead included 57 Canadians.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also offered his condolences and ordered the armed forces to address “shortcomings” so that such a disaster does not happen again.

Tehran’s acknowledgement came after officials in Iran denied for days Western claims that the Ukraine International Airlines plane had been struck by a missile in a catastrophic error.

The Kiev-bound jet slammed into a field shortly after taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on Wednesday.

The crash came hours after Tehran launched missiles at bases hosting American forces in Iraq in response to the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike.

Fears grew of an all-out war between Iran and its arch-enemy the United States, but those concerns have subsided after Trump said Tehran appeared to be standing down after targeting the US bases. (Punch)

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Facebook, eBay crackdown on scammers trading fake reviews

Facebook and eBay pledged Wednesday to more aggressively tackle scammers trading fake and misleading product reviews in new agreements with British regulators.

The companies have cracked down on people seeking to get paid for penning bogus reviews on shopping and review websites since the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority raised concerns about the problem last June, officials said.

Facebook has removed 188 groups and disabled two dozen accounts in response to the problem while eBay has banned 140 users, the authority said.

The companies also agreed to take steps to stop the offending content from showing up in the future, officials said.

“Millions of people base their shopping decisions on reviews, and if these are misleading or untrue, then shoppers could end up being misled into buying something that isn’t right for them — leaving businesses who play by the rules missing out,” Andrea Coscelli, the competition authority’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The competition authority has said it found evidence of a “thriving marketplace” for fake online reviews in a probe that ran from November 2018 to June of last year.

Officials discovered more than 100 eBay listings selling bogus reviews and more than two dozen Facebook groups where people offered to write them or businesses recruited people to do so.

Neither company was letting the solicitations show up intentionally, British officials said.

Facebook said it could use automated technology to help take down such content as part of its efforts to fight the scams.

“While we have invested heavily to prevent this kind of activity across our services, we know there is more work to do and are working with the (Competition and Markets Authority) to address this issue,” the company said.

eBay has bolstered its filtering system to better identify and block listings for reviews, the competition authority said.

“We maintain zero tolerance for fake or misleading reviews and will continue to take action against any seller that breaches our user polices,” an eBay spokeswoman said. (Vanguard)

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Twitter will allow users to restrict comments on posts

Twitter plans to fight internet trolls by testing a new feature that allows users to control who can reply to their posts, the company said Wednesday.

The social media service will test out a temporary “reply limiting” tool that lets people choose who can join their conversation everyone, only followers, only people mentioned in the tweet or nobody at all before they click send, Twitter said in a statement.

All public accounts will still be visible to everyone on the platform but only the “selected audience” will be able to directly reply. All users will still be able to quote-retweet to add their two cents.

The feature will roll out sometime this year and be treated as a temporary experiment, reps for the firm said.

“As part of our work to help people feel safe participating in the conversation on Twitter, we want to give them more control over the conversations they start, for example, who can reply to their Tweets.

We will be experimenting with this in early 2020,” the statement said.

The feature is part of an effort to boost “conversational health” and to reduce targeted harassment and toxic comments, Mashable reported.

”Part of the goal of the experiment is seeing what the outcomes are. How does that influence the ratio [of retweets] situation? How does that influence how people use good conversations?” Twitter’s product head Kayvon Beykpour said.

Twitter will first launch the feature to a small group of users within the next two months, then decide whether it wants to expand it to a larger audience, according to Suzanne Xie, Twitter’s director of product for conversations.

In July, the company introduced a feature to hide replies, but it requires users to manually click each one, which can be time-consuming. (Vanguard)

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