US regulators sue firm selling sensitive location data

Mon, August 29, 2022


US regulators on Monday filed a lawsuit to stop data broker Kochava from selling smartphone location information that could help trace visits to "sensitive locations" like reproductive health clinics.

The action by the Federal Trade Commission comes as privacy rights advocates fear that massive troves of information collected from people's smartphone or internet use could serve to track down women seeking abortion care.

Geolocation data purchased by Idaho-based Kochava comes from hundreds of millions of mobile devices, and could be used to trace people's movements to or from health clinics, places of worship, drug-addiction centers, or domestic violence shelters, the FTC said in a press release.


"Where consumers seek out health care, receive counseling, or celebrate their faith is private information that shouldn’t be sold to the highest bidder," Samuel Levine, head of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection said in a press release.

The FTC lawsuit argues that Kochava is making it possible to identify people based on their health care decisions or religion, then exposing them to "threats of stigma, stalking, discrimination, job loss and even physical violence."

The FTC is asking a federal court in Idaho to order Kochava to stop selling sensitive geolocation data and to delete whatever data of that kind it has collected.

Kochava did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kochava buys location information gathered from mobile devices, then packages it in ways that can identify specific devices and show precisely where they were at given times, according to the FTC.

"For example, the location of a mobile device at night is likely the user's home address and could be combined with property records to uncover their identity," the FTC said.

People are typically unaware that their location data is being bought and sold by Kochava, according to the suit.

Privacy advocates have called on internet firms to stop collecting data on users that could be demanded by prosecutors or others out to prosecute women for reproductive health care decisions.

The lawsuit comes just months after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed women's right an abortion.

gc/jh/md

SOCCER

A family feud, blackmail and a witch doctor -- what is the Paul Pogba affair?

A police investigation has been opened after claims by French football star Paul Pogba that he is the victim of a multi-million euro blackmail plot that includes his brother Mathias.


Paul Pogba 

© Rui Vieira, AP

AFP looks into an affair involving a family conflict and a witch doctor, and which comes less than three months before the Juventus star is expected to help France defend their World Cup crown.

 
Who is Mathias Pogba?

Mathias, 32, is the elder brother of Paul (29) and the twin brother of Florentin. All three are professional footballers. Mathias, who was born in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, has had a journeyman career which has taken him to Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia. Much of his career has been spent in the United Kingdom, including spells at Wrexham, Crewe Alexandra and Partick Thistle. Last year he played 12 matches for Belfort in the French fourth tier. Mathias Pogba has also appeared on television in France as a pundit.

Until recently, the Pogba brothers appeared close-knit. Mathias, Florentin and their mother, Yeo Moriba, have regularly been seen attending France matches in which Paul has played. Paul Pogba is also one of the main donors to 48 H POUR, a charity established by Mathias to help provide drinking water and education for children in Guinea.

What has Mathias Pogba said?

On Saturday, Mathias Pogba published a video on Instagram in which he promised "great revelations" about Paul and the Juventus player's agent, Rafaela Pimenta. In the video, Mathias Pogba says the "whole world, as well as my brother's fans, and even more so the French team and Juventus, my brother's team-mates and his sponsors deserve to know certain things".

"All this is likely to be explosive," he concluded without adding any substance to his "revelations".

How has Paul Pogba responded?A statement released on Sunday, and signed by Paul Pogba's lawyers, his mother Yeo Moriba and agent Pimenta, said that the videos published on Saturday night "are unfortunately no surprise".

"They are in addition to threats and extortion attempts by an organised gang against Paul Pogba," read the statement. They added that "competent bodies in Italy and France were informed a month ago".

France Info radio reported that Paul Pogba told investigators he had been threatened by "childhood friends and two hooded men armed with assault rifles". They are demanding 13 million euros ($13m) from him for "services provided", he said, adding that one person close to him had withdrawn 200,000 euros using his credit card.

How far along is the investigation?

Paris prosecutors confirmed to AFP that an investigation was opened on August 3 into allegations of extortion and attempted extortion by an organised gang. According to France Info reports confirmed to AFP by a source with knowledge of the case, Paul Pogba told investigators that he had been threatened by "childhood friends and two hooded men armed with assault rifles" who blamed him for not having helped them financially.

Paul Pogba also told investigators that he had been threatened on several occasions in Manchester, during his time playing for Manchester United, and in Turin, where he currently plays for Juventus. He said he recognised his brother Mathias from among the suspects.

What does Kylian Mbappe have to do with this?

The Paris Saint-Germain striker, and France teammate of Paul Pogba, appears reluctantly in the affair. Paul Pogba told investigators that his blackmailers wanted to discredit him by claiming he asked a witch doctor to cast a spell on Mbappe, which Pogba denies.

In a series of tweets published on Sunday, Mathias Pogba appeals directly to Mbappe, saying: "Kylian, do you understand now? I have nothing against you, what I am saying is for your good, everything is true and known, the witch doctor is known! Sorry for this brother, a so-called Muslim up to his neck in witchcraft."

How could this affect the France team?

The revelation of the affair is badly-timed for the French national team, coming less than three months before they defend their World Cup crown in Qatar. Paul Pogba is currently sidelined with a knee injury and faces a battle to be fully fit, but he remains a key player in the France team, for whom he has won 91 caps and was influential in the run to glory at the 2018 World Cup.

Like the 2016 blackmail affair involving Karim Benzema, Mathieu Valbuena and a sextape, there is a danger that this affair could negatively impact morale within the squad. It could also impact Paul Pogba's relationship with Mbappe. Speaking to RMC Sport, French Football Federation president Noel Le Graet said he hoped the affair "does not call into question" Pogba's place in the team. "At this stage these are just rumours," he added.

(AFP)

VICTIM OF COLONIALISM

Last member of Brazilian Indigenous community found dead

The last of his people, a Brazilian Indigenous man known only as “the man of the hole”, has been found dead, decades after the rest of his uncontacted tribe were killed off by ranchers and illegal miners, officials said.


The man, whose name was never known, had lived in isolation for 26 years after other members of his tribe were killed by illegal loggers and miners in Tanaru territory, Brazil [File: National Indian Foundation via AFP]© Provided by Al Jazeera

The man — whose real name was never known to the outside world — was found in a hammock in a hut in the Tanaru Indigenous territory in Rondonia state on the border with Bolivia on August 23, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) said in a statement. He had been living in complete isolation for 26 years.

Since losing everyone he knew, the man had refused all contact with the outside world and supported himself by hunting and raising crops. His nickname derived from his habit of digging deep holes inside the huts he built, possibly to trap animals but also to hide inside.

He lived in an Indigenous territory surrounded by vast cattle ranches and under constant threat from illegal miners and loggers in one of the most dangerous parts of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, according to Survival International.

Authorities in Brazil did not comment on the cause of the man’s death, nor his age, but said “there were no signs of violence or struggle”.

They also found no evidence of the presence of anyone else in his home or around it.

“Everything indicates that the death was from natural causes,” said FUNAI, a government agency under the justice ministry that handles Indigenous affairs.

Local media reported that the man’s body had been covered in macaw feathers, prompting one expert to speculate that he had known he was about to die.

The man was believed to have been alone since the remaining members of his small tribe were killed in the mid-1990s by illegal loggers and miners seeking to exploit the tribal area.

Rights groups said that the majority of the tribe had been killed in the 1970s when ranchers moved into the area, cutting down the forest and attacking the inhabitants.

“With his death, the genocide of this Indigenous people is complete,” said Fiona Watson, Survival International’s director of investigation, who visited the Tanaru territory in 2004.

“It really was genocide: the deliberate elimination of an entire people by ranchers hungry for land and wealth,” she added.

According to the most recent government data, there are some 800,000 Indigenous people belonging to more than 300 distinct groups living in Brazil, a country of 212 million.

More than half live in the Amazon, and many of those are under threat from the illegal exploitation of natural resources that they rely on for their survival.

According to FUNAI, there are 114 records of isolated Indigenous groups in Brazil, although that number varies.

Under Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, Amazon deforestation reached a record level in the first half of 2022.

The president, who is trailing in the polls ahead of this year’s elections, has encouraged mining and farming activity in protected areas, sparking anger among environmentalists.

ROFLMAO
Trump demands reinstatement as 'rightful' president or 'a new Election, immediately!' as some Republicans seek distance from him



Nicole Gaudiano
Mon, August 29, 2022 

Donald Trump is seeking reinstatement as president or "a new Election, immediately!"

His statement follows news that Facebook limited the story of Hunter Biden's laptop in users' news feeds in 2020.

Trump is doubling down on false election fraud claims as some Republicans seek distance from the issue.

Former President Donald Trump demanded reinstatement as president or "a new Election, immediately" after news that Facebook temporarily limited a controversial story about Hunter Biden's laptop in users' news feeds before the 2020 election.

Trump was responding to Facebook, now Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments on Joe Rogan's podcast that a New York Post story about the laptop "fit the pattern" of polarizing content, including "Russian propaganda," that the FBI had warned the company about. The laptop story had several red flags that raised questions about its authenticity and Facebook limited its reach on the site's news feeds for a few days.

Trump's statement on Truth Social doubles down on false election fraud claims as some Republicans, the Washington Post has reported, are trying to distance themselves from his personal grievances ahead of the midterm elections in November.

In his statement, Trump wrote in all capital letters that the "FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing that, if they didn't, 'Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election.' This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in our Country."

Trump continued: "REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!"



Facebook allowed users to share the story but it showed up less in people's news feeds, so it was seen less. During Rogan's program, Zuckerberg said he couldn't recall if the FBI warned him about the New York Post story specifically, but he thought the story "fit the pattern."

But Meta later tweeted that "nothing about the Hunter Biden laptop story is new" and that the "FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference — nothing specific about Hunter Biden."




Trump has been railing against the FBI since agents searched his Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month for classified documents.

Trump won't be reinstated after losing the election, although QAnon conspiracy theorists spread the idea a year ago. The New York Times' Maggie Haberman said last year that Trump was telling allies that he thought he'd be reinstated, as well.

Federal investigators are weighing possible charges related to Hunter Biden's business activities.

The president has not been implicated, CNN reported, but Republicans say they will ramp up their investigations of the Bidens if they win control of the House in the midterm elections.

Madagascar police shoot dead protesters seeking revenge for albino kidnapping

FRANCE 24 - Yesterday 

At least 18 people were killed in Madagascar on Monday when police opened fire on a what they called a lynch mob demanding that officials turn over to them four suspects held for allegedly kidnapping a child with albinism and killing the mother.

Madagascar police shoot dead protesters seeking revenge for albino kidnapping© Rijasolo, AFP

Dozens were wounded, some of them seriously.

"At the moment, 18 people have died in all, nine on the spot and nine in hospital," said doctor Tango Oscar Toky, chief physician at a hospital in southeastern Madagascar.

"Of the 34 injured, nine are between life and death," said the doctor giving graphic details of the injuries. "We are waiting for a government helicopter to evacuate them to the capital".

Around 500 protesters armed with blades and machetes "tried to force their way" into the station, a police officer involved in the shooting said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"There were negotiations, (but) the villagers insisted," the officer told AFP over the phone from the town of Ikongo, 90 kilometres (56 miles) southeast of the capital Antananarivo.

Police first fired teargas and then rounds in the air to try to disperse the crowd, he said.

"They continued to force their way through. We had no choice but to defend ourselves," the officer added.

The national police in the capital confirmed the "very sad event", but only gave a toll of 11, with 18 injured.

Andry Rakotondrazaka, the national police chief, told a news conference that what happened was a "very sad event. It could have been avoided but it happened".

He said the police "did everything to avoid confrontation", including negotiating with the crowd,

"But there were provocations"... (and) there were people with "long-bladed knives and sticks", he said, adding others hurled stones towards the police.

"The gendarmes used tear gas. But that was not enough to stop the crowd from advancing. There was shooting in the air."

But in the end the gendarmes had "no choice but to resort to self-defence... and limit the damage by shooting".

The kidnapping took place last week, according to Jean-Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, a member of parliament for Ikongo district.

Revenge attacks

Revenge attacks are common in Madagascar.

In February 2017, a mob of 800 people barged into Ikongo prison in search of a murder suspect they intended to kill.

They overpowered guards and 120 prisoners broke out of jail.

In 2013, a Frenchman, a Franco-Italian and a local man accused of killing a child on the tourist island of Nosy Be were burned alive by a crowd.

Some sub-Saharan African countries have suffered a wave of assaults against people with albinism, whose body parts are sought for witchcraft practices in the mistaken belief that they bring luck and wealth.

Albinism, caused by a lack of melanin, the pigment that colours skin, hair and eyes, is a genetic condition that affects hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, particularly in Africa.

Under The Same Sun, a Canada-based charity working to combat discrimination, has been logging cases of similar violence across Africa.

It ranks Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania as the countries where such attacks are most prevalent.

Madagascar, a large Indian Ocean island country, is ranked among the poorest in the world.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

The Samaritans offer support and advice to people feeling suicidal or vulnerable 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their website is https://www.samaritans.org, email address jo@samaritans.org or call free on 116 123

END U$ WAR ON DRUGS

No choice: Colombia's ex-guerrillas revert to coca, crime

David SALAZAR
Mon, August 29, 2022


When he laid down arms at the end of Colombia's decades-long civil conflict, Eiber Andrade did not expect to ever return to a life of crime.

Yet a mere five years later, the 24-year-old ex-guerrilla fighter makes a living from coca -- from which cocaine is derived -- in a region where the government's post-conflict commitment to peace and better living has yet to bear fruit.

After the 2016 peace agreement that saw the disarmament of the FARC guerrilla group and its withdrawal from the Catatumbo region near the border with Venezuela, Andrade tried his hand at agriculture.

The region is home to the world's largest concentration of coca crops -- a total of 40,084 hectares under cultivation in 2020 according to the UN.

It is also fertile ground for coffee, cacao and bananas, but none of these are as profitable.

Short on skills and capital, Andrade's brief foray into food farming failed -- making him one of many among the 13,000-odd disarmed FARC combatants unable to find a way to make a legitimate living.

Andrade, who became a guerrilla fighter at the tender age of 10, said he felt let down by the government.

The money he and other disarmed fighters were to have received as part of the peace deal never materialized.

And in the end, Andrade told AFP, he had no choice but to rejoin the criminal underworld and become a coca harvester.

He has a three-year-old daughter to take care of.

"The presidents we have had have not given us any help," Andrade said.
- 'May Petro help us' -


Other demobilized FARC fighters unable to find a niche in civilian life turned to violence.

Hundreds rejoined rebels battling other groups in a violent rivalry for control of drug and illegal mining resources and smuggling routes in the border region.

Colombia's new president, Gustavo Petro, has vowed to stop the violence and negotiate peace with the last recognized guerrilla group still fighting, the ELN.

He has denounced the failure of the war on drugs that presidents before him had waged with US backing at a cost of tens of thousands of lives among police, soldiers, judges, journalists, subsistence farmers and others over four decades.

Petro has said he wants no more coca growers in jail in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of cocaine, consumed mainly in the United States and Europe.

The country's first left-wing president has also urged cocaine-importing countries to shift the focus from dismantling production to diminishing consumption.

The 2016 peace agreement had envisaged a program of rural development to replace Colombia's lucrative drug trade with legitimate farming activities.

But with lagging funding for bridging projects, there has been no significant decline of coca production.

In 2020, the country had 142,783 hectares under cultivation, according to the latest UN report, compared to 146,139 hectares in 2016.

"May Petro help us," said Andrade. "If he does not, we will have to continue with these things."

Three other ex-guerrillas work with Andrade as coca pickers on a six-hectare estate in Catatumbo.

They earn about $3 per 10 kilograms of coca leaf harvested.
- 'Out of necessity' -

Last Friday, Petro visited the Catatumbo region for talks with coca growers on how best to ease their transition to legitimate and viable farming.

The president, who as a youngster belonged to an urban guerrilla group that later downed arms, wants to boost domestic food production at the same time.

But former FARC child soldier Carlos Abril, now 25, said he had heard similar promises before.

"We entered the (peace) process with joy, with the expectation that we are going to see a new Colombia, in peace," Abril told AFP.


Instead, he too had to become a coca harvester "out of necessity."

Elizabeth Pabon, leader of the Catatumbo small-scale farmers' association of mainly coca growers, welcomed Petro's stated aversion to the large-scale chemical or manual eradication of coca crops.

"It is a relief," she told the government delegation.

And Wilder Mora, leader of the COCCAM coca growers' grouping, said "we are willing to substitute" coca with other crops.

But he stressed could only happen with public investment, which coca-growers have been clamoring for since the 1990s.

das/jss/vel/ll/mlr/st

Ecuador investigates killing of four Galapagos giant tortoises

AFP - Yesterday 

Prosecutors in Ecuador on Monday announced an investigation into the alleged hunting and killing of four giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, a unique and fragile ecosystem considered a world heritage site.


Prosecutors in Ecuador said they have launched an investigation into the alleged hunting and killing of four giant tortoises in the Galapagos National Park© -

The prosecutor's office said on Twitter it was investigating the "suspected hunting and killing of four giant tortoises in the Galapagos National Park wetland complex."

A unit that specializes in environmental crimes is collecting testimonies from national park agents and appointing experts to carry out autopsies on the tortoises.

The park management has filed a complaint over the death of the animals, the Environment Ministry said on its WhatsApp channel.

The ministry did not specify which species the four tortoises belonged to, but said they had been hunted in the wetlands of Isabela Island, located 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean.

Hunting wild animals is punishable by up to three years in prison in Ecuador.

In 2019, a man who rammed a tortoise and damaged its shell was fined $11,000. That same year, another driver had to pay over $15,000 for running over and killing a native Galapagos iguana.

With an area of more than 4,500 square kilometers (1,800 square miles), Isabela is the largest island in the archipelago, and makes up 60 percent of the land surface of the remote oceanic chain.

The Galapagos archipelago is designated as a biosphere reserve for its unique flora and fauna. It was once home to 15 species of tortoises, three of which went extinct centuries ago, according to the Galapagos National Park.

In 2019, a tortoise of the species Chelonoidis phantastica was discovered on the island, more than a century after its supposed extinction.


EXTINCTION: 6 SPECIES WE RECENTLY LOST
Pinta giant tortoise
Lonesome George had reached celebrity status before he died in 2012. The tortoise was the last of his subspecies and an icon of his native islands ― the Galapagos. The tortoises were driven to extinction by whalers and ship merchants in the 19th century using the animals as food, along with deforestation of the islands
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China arrests hundreds over banking scandal that sparked rare protests

Mon, August 29, 2022


Chinese police have arrested more than 200 suspects linked to one of the country's biggest-ever banking scandals, which triggered rare mass protests.

Four banks in central China's Henan province suspended cash withdrawals in April as regulators cracked down on mismanagement, freezing the funds of hundreds of thousands of customers and sparking protests that at times ended in violence.

Police said Monday they had now arrested 234 people in connection with the scandal and that "significant progress" was being made in recovering stolen funds.

"A criminal gang... illegally controlled four village and town banks... and was suspected of committing a series of serious crimes," police in the city of Xuchang said in a statement on Monday.

China's rural banking sector has been hit hard by Beijing's efforts to rein in a property bubble and spiralling debt in a financial crackdown that has had ripple effects across the world's second-largest economy.

Regulators have been gradually offering repayments to depositors since mid-April.

On Monday, the Henan banking and insurance regulator promised to repay those who had deposited between 400,000 and 500,000 yuan ($57,900 to $72,300) starting this week.

Depositors who owed smaller amounts were repaid earlier.

The size and scale of the fraud dealt an unprecedented blow to public confidence in China's financial system, analysts have said, with the banks involved allegedly operating illegally for more than a decade.

A July 10 mass demonstration by depositors in Henan's provincial capital, Zhengzhou, was violently quashed, with demonstrators forced onto buses by police and beaten, according to eyewitness accounts given to AFP and verified photos on social media.

prw/oho/cwl

French-Indian textile designer brings back Mughal patterns



Laurence THOMANN
Mon, August 29, 2022 


Textiles designer Brigitte Singh lovingly lays out a piece of cloth embossed with a red poppy plant she says was probably designed for emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, four centuries ago.

For Singh -- who moved from France to India 42 years ago and married into a maharaja's family -- this exquisite piece remains the ever-inspiring heart of her studio's mission.

The 67-year-old is striving to keep alive the art of block printing, which flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries under the conquering but sophisticated Mughal dynasty that then ruled India.

"I was the first to give a renaissance to this kind of Mughal design," Singh told AFP in her traditional printing workshop in Rajasthan.


Having studied decorative arts in Paris, Singh arrived aged 25 in 1980 in western India's Jaipur, the "last bastion" of the technique of using carved blocks of wood to print patterns on material.

"I dreamed of practising (miniature art) in Isfahan. But the Ayatollahs had just arrived in Iran (in the Islamic revolution of 1979). Or Herat, but the Soviets had just arrived in Afghanistan," she remembers.

"So by default, I ended up in Jaipur," she said.
- 'Magic potion' -

A few months after arriving, Singh was introduced to a member of the local nobility who was related to the maharaja of Rajasthan. They married in 1982.

At first, Singh still hoped to try her hand at miniature painting.

But after scouring the city for traditional paper to work on, she came across workshops using block printing.

"I fell into the magic potion and could never go back," she told AFP.

She started by making just a few scarves, and when she passed through London two years later, gave them as presents to friends who were connoisseurs of Indian textiles.

Bowled over, they persuaded her to show them to Colefax and Fowler, the storied British interior decorations firm.

"The next thing I knew, I was on my way back to India with an order for printed textiles," she said.

Since then, she has never looked back.
- Soul comfort -

For the next two decades, she worked with a "family of printers" in the city before building her own studio in nearby Amber -- a stone's throw from Jaipur's famous fort.


It was her father-in-law, a major collector of Rajasthan miniatures, who gave her the Mughal-era poppy cloth connected to Shah Jahan.

Her reproduction of that print was a huge success the world over, proving especially popular with Indian, British and Japanese clients.

In 2014, she made a Mughal poppy print quilted coat, called an Atamsukh -- meaning "comfort of the soul" -- that was later acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Another piece of her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York.
- 'Sophistication of simplicity' -

Singh starts her creative process by handing precise paintings to her sculptor, Rajesh Kumar, who then painstakingly chisels the designs onto blocks of wood.

"We need a remarkable sculptor, with a very serious eye," she said.


"The carving of the wood blocks is the key. This tool has the sophistication of simplicity."

Kumar makes several identical blocks for each colour used in each printed fabric.

"The poppy motif, for example, has five colours. I had to make five blocks," he said. "It took me 20 days."

At Singh's workshop, six employees work on pieces of cloth laid out on tables five metres (16 feet) long.

They dip the blocks in dye, place them carefully on the cloth, push down and tap.

The work is slow and intricate, producing no more 40 metres of material every day.

Her workshop makes everything from quilts to curtains and rag dolls to shoes.

Singh just finished another Atamsukh for a prince in Kuwait.

"The important thing is to keep the know-how alive," she said.

"More precious than the product, the real treasure is the savoir faire."

lth/stu/mca/cwl

A dancing Hillary Clinton comes to Finnish leader's defense


Sun, August 28, 2022 


"Keep dancing," former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted Sunday, lending her personal support to Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, whose taste for partying has drawn global attention.

Clinton's post included a photo of herself, dancing with a big smile on her face in a crowded club during a 2012 trip to Colombia while still secretary of state. It concluded with the words "Keep dancing, @marinsanna."

Marin quickly responded, tweeting back, "Thank you @Hillary Clinton," and including a heart emoji.

A recently leaked video showed Marin dancing and partying with a group of friends and celebrities.


Critics said it showed inappropriate behavior for a prime minister, while others -- now including Clinton -- have defended the 36-year-old politician's right to enjoy a private event with friends.

Marin told fellow members of her Social Democratic party that it was important to cut loose at times.

"I am human. And I too sometimes long for joy, light and fun amidst these dark clouds," said Marin, the world's youngest prime minister. She added that she had not missed "a single day of work."

But she encountered further blowback when a photo emerged of two women lifting their tops during a party at the prime minister's residence in July.

Marin again apologized.

Clinton, who is 74, headed the State Department from 2009 to 2013 under president Barack Obama.

In 2016, she was the Democratic candidate for US president. Though heavily favored, she lost to real estate magnate Donald Trump in a stunning upset.