An overwhelming majority of Europeans would support a radical new measure that would require social media companies to direct all users who have seen false information toward fact-checks, according to new polling from global advocacy group Avaaz. The initiative is intended to prevent the spread of “fake news” on Facebook and Twitter as governments come under growing pressure to regulate social media.

Research shared exclusively with TIME shows that 86.6% of people support Avaaz’s new proposal known as Correct the Record, which activists and politicians say could be the most effective way to stop “fake news” from spreading online.

Under the Correct the Record initiative, social media companies would have to make sure that all users who see false information on their feeds are also later presented with fact-checks — whether in the form of a notification telling them something they’ve seen may have been misleading, or a pinned post in their newsfeed with a link to a fact-check by a “verified” organization.

The proposal is one of the first concrete suggestions for how to combat the spread of disinformation online, at a time when false news is increasingly affecting the outcome of elections and fueling violence around the world.

The international activist network Avaaz, in collaboration with the polling group YouGov, surveyed more than 5,000 people in Germany, France, Spain and Italy on the subject of Correct the Record. In each country, at least 81% and as many as 92% of respondents said they either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that social media companies should “work with independent and trusted fact checking organizations to provide all users who have been exposed to widespread false or misleading content with verified corrections.”

“Correcting the record is a legal responsibility that newspapers have to meet in many countries,” Ricken Patel, the executive director of Avaaz, tells TIME. “When they print false information, they have to print corrections. Part of Correct the Record is just bringing that journalistic tradition of correction into social media.”

European Union officials have also welcomed the Correct the Record proposal. “We need rapid corrections, which are given the same prominence and circulation as the original fake news,” said Julian King, the E.U. security commissioner, after being briefed on the proposal late last year.

Facebook, one of the key targets of the proposal, has not yet provided a formal response to a TIME request for comment. The company does already have partnerships with fact-checking bodies around the world. “Misinformation is bad for our community and bad for our business. It’s why we’re investing significant time and resources to fight it,” the company wrote in a 2018 blog post.

But the matter is increasingly urgent as European Union elections approach in May, and activists say Facebook is not doing enough. Of the Avaaz survey’s respondents, 77.8% said they believed fake news and “politically motivated disinformation” posed a threat to the legitimacy of those elections, and 84.8% said they believed social media companies should be regulated.

“We have found a tremendously receptive audience for Correct the Record as an idea, across the spectrum, from academics to regulators to experts, to the social media executives themselves, to political party leaders,” Patel, tells TIME. “You name it, I have not found strong arguments against this solution.”

But some activists raised concerns that Facebook could not be trusted to partner with fact-checking organizations. “This measure is a good starting point, but only as long as there’s democratic accountability,” says Kyle Taylor, the director of the campaign group Fair Vote U.K. “It’s not safe to outsource truth to a private company.”

Snopes, the popular online fact-checking website, pulled out of a fact-checking arrangement with Facebook earlier in February, citing dissatisfaction that the arrangements were benefiting Facebook at the expense of the “whole web.”

“The work that fact-checkers are doing doesn’t need to be just for Facebook — we can build things for fact-checkers that benefit the whole web, and that can also help Facebook,” Vinny Green, Snopes’ vice president of operations, told Poynter. Others raised concerns about reports that Facebook had hired a PR firm to spread anti-Semitic tropes about George Soros. “They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” Brooke Binkowski, a former Snopes editor, told the Guardian.

Christoph Schott, a campaign director at Avaaz, says Facebook’s current fact-checking arrangements are a step in the right direction, but are not enough. Only a small percentage of those who see “fake news,” he says, ever come into contact with a post debunking it. “They don’t inform the other maybe 95% of users,” he tells TIME. Correct the Record, he says, would change that.

Damian Collins, the U.K. lawmaker who eviscerated Facebook in a 111-page report published in mid-February and called for regulation to limit “fake news” on social media, also supports the proposal. (In response to that report, Facebook said it was open to “meaningful regulation.”)

“Support for the Correct the Record measure highlights the growing concern about disinformation on social media and the threat this poses to our democracy,” Collins tells TIME. “The big tech platforms should do more to act against known sources of disinformation and to warn users when they may have been exposed to it. We know they have the technical capability to do this.”

It remains unclear how Correct the Record” can be implemented in practice. Avaaz has presented the proposal to Facebook, Twitter and Google executives, as well as to governments — who could use the idea as a basis for new laws. Social media companies may also attempt to avoid regulation by self-imposing such measures.

In plans submitted to the E.U., NATO, and European governments, Avaaz suggests a five step plan of “define, detect, verify, alert and correct.”

They suggest that social media companies should provide a way for users to flag content for checking, and that a piece of disinformation should be flagged when independent fact-checkers verify that content is misleading. Once they have debunked the content, “each user exposed to verified disinformation should be notified using the most visible notification standard,” according to a policy document presented to E.U. and NATO leaders.

“Facebook has always said ‘we’re open to legislation, if it’s the right legislation,’” Patel, the Avaaz executive director, says. He hopes the company will soon see that it’s smart to rebuild trust in the brand. “This is Facebook’s moment of truth. The E.U. elections are coming. Is it going to be another version of the U.S. election in 2016?”

(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. shares jumped 3.5 percent in pre-market trading Wednesday after the company projected sales that suggest consumers are still snapping up the company’s high-end iPhones even as updated models are on the horizon.

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant said on Tuesday it expects fiscal fourth-quarter revenue between $60 billion and $62 billion. Analysts were looking for $59.4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Fiscal third-quarter results also beat Wall Street expectations, at one point sending the shares to $198 in extended trading, a record price if the increase holds through Wednesday.

Apple’s stock gained 12 percent this year though Tuesday’s close — before the results were announced — putting the iPhone maker on a path to become the first U.S.-based company with a market value of $1 trillion.

“These results and guidance will increase investor confidence,” Shannon Cross of Cross Research wrote in a note to investors. “We expect the vast majority of Apple’s product line-up to be refreshed during the next couple of quarters which should support near-term results.”

More than a decade after its debut, the iPhone is still Apple’s most-important product, accounting for about 60 percent of revenue. While unit sales have slowed recently, the company is building digital services and a suite of other gadgets around the device. Those newer businesses, along with higher iPhone prices, have supported revenue growth.

Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter outlook is closely watched because this is usually the period when the company unveils new iPhones. The company is expected to launch three new phones later this year. That’s raised Wall Street expectations for more sales and profit.

The results “were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Read about Apple’s future iPhone plans here.

Fiscal third-quarter sales rose 17 percent to $53.3 billion, Apple said. Profit came in at $2.34 per share. Analysts expected revenue of $52.4 billion and earnings of $2.18 a share.

The company sold 41.3 million iPhones in its third quarter, generating revenue of $29.9 billion. That was driven by a higher average selling price of $724, thanks in part to the iPhone X, which starts at $999.

Analysts were looking for 41.6 million iPhone units in the quarter, and an average selling price of $699, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg News.

During a conference call with analysts, Cook said the iPhone X was the most popular iPhone in the fiscal third quarter, gaining market share around the world.

Apple reported record services revenue of $9.55 billion, up 31 percent from a year earlier. Analysts forecast $9.2 billion. The category includes the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud storage and Apple Pay. The company is working on expanding these offerings with original videos and a news subscription service.

Cook told analysts that Apple is on track to meet a goal of doubling Services revenue by 2020. Paid subscriptions have now passed 300 million, he also noted.

Apple said its gross profit margin will be 38 percent to 38.5 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, versus analysts’ estimates of 38.2 percent.

The company’s Other Products segment continued to see strong growth, with revenue up 37 percent to $3.7 billion. The category includes AirPods headphones, the Apple Watch, Apple TV, and the HomePod. Cook said wearables were a highlight of the quarter, with sales up 60 percent year over year. The Apple Watch had a record quarter with mid-40 percent growth, the CEO also said. The company doesn’t report sales figures for the Watch.

Apple said it sold 11.6 million iPads in the quarter, up from the 11.4 million in the year-ago period. In March, Apple launched an updated $329 iPad geared toward students. It’s also working on an upgraded Pro model with iPhone X features like Face ID, which could increase sales of the device.

Tropical storm Ophelia became the 10th Atlantic storm in a row to strengthen into a hurricane Wednesday — the first time that such a long string of storms have all reached hurricane strength since 1893, meteorologists said.

Many of those 10 hurricanes have not hit the U.S. mainland — and Ophelia isn’t expected to reach America either. But a few others, including Harvey, Irma and Maria, have left dozens in the U.S. dead and caused billions of dollars in damage. Hurricane season continues through the end October, leaving the potential for even more destruction.

This year’s unusually strong storm season comes after years of relative hurricane drought. No major hurricane — a Category 3 storm or stronger with sustained winds of at least 111 mph — had made landfall in the U.S. since 2005.

Strong storm seasons come and go as a result of a variety of factors, including the presence of El Niño and other climate patterns. But scientists say that climate change is also making storms more severe, since warmer ocean water helps storms strengthen.

“A warmer ocean makes a warmer atmosphere,” Gabriel Vecchi, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University, told TIME earlier this year. “A warmer atmosphere can hold more water.”

(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc. added Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson to its board, picking a controversial Silicon Valley luminary and a respected human-resources expert to show securities regulators that it’s giving Elon Musk more oversight.

Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle Corp., and Wilson-Thompson, the global chief human resources officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., join a board the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered to step up its oversight after Musk claimed in August to have had the funding and investor support for a buyout. The chief executive officer relinquished the role of chairman in November, and both he and the company agreed to pay $20 million penalties.

In Ellison, Musk has added another larger-than-life technology titan lauded for his business accomplishments but not without his own corporate-governance controversies. The 74-year-old billionaire came under attack from Oracle shareholders for excessive pay packages while running the company. Ellison also publicly defended Musk after his tweets about taking Tesla private landed him in hot water with the SEC, a point that raised eyebrows with corporate-governance experts.

“His vocal support for Musk doesn’t suggest the kind of objectivity coming in that I think people had hoped for,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “The SEC’s point was to to bring in two people who were neither supporters nor vocal opponents of Tesla.”

Street Cheers

Wall Street analysts and investors cheered the news, with Tesla shares rising as much as 3.5 percent to $327 as of 9:55 a.m. Friday in New York. The stock was up 1.5 percent this year through the close Thursday.

Wedbush Securities’ Daniel Ives called the choice of Ellison “a home run” and said he could “help channel Musk’s energy and passion into positives” and steer him away from the cloud created by his “going private tweetstorm,” according to research note published Friday.

Tesla also said it is setting up a committee on the board to oversee compliance with the SEC agreement regarding public disclosures and public statements and review potential conflicts of interest, employment and compensation disputes, according to a regulatory filing Friday.

The new additions to the board put a bookend on a months-long distraction that at one point looked like it might cost Musk his future with the company. While reining him in may prove challenging, they’ll help steer a carmaker that’s made significant strides in profitably making and delivering electric vehicles.

Ellison went off-script during an Oracle meeting with analysts in October to announce that he had been building a personal stake in Tesla and that it was his second-largest holding. He criticized how the media had covered Musk, 47, whom he called a close friend.

“This guy is landing rockets,” Ellison said in October of Musk, who also runs Space Exploration Technologies Corp. “You know, he’s landing rockets on robot drone rafts in the ocean. And you’re saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Well, who else is landing rockets? You ever land a rocket on a robot drone? Who are you?”

‘Funding Secured’

Tesla said in its statement announcing Ellison would be joining the board that he had purchased 3 million shares of the electric-car maker earlier this year.

Tesla’s board now has 11 members, including three women. This fall, California became the first U.S. state to mandate that publicly traded companies have women on their boards. Those with at least seven directors need to have at least three women by 2021.

The SEC moved to punish Tesla and Musk because it alleged he committed fraud by tweeting that he had the “funding secured” to take the company private at $420 a share. The agency said this and other claims the CEO made on Aug. 7 were false and misleading and affected Tesla’s stock.

Musk and Tesla reached the settlement with the SEC on Sept. 29. It gave the company 90 days to add directors and take other actions. Since then, the CEO has publicly lampooned the agency and bristled at the notion that he’ll change his Twitter habits.

Read more on Musk’s criticisms of the SEC

Tesla’s legal department also has been going through shakeups since Musk’s run-in with the SEC.

The company tapped Dane Butswinkas, the Washington trial lawyer who represented the CEO in his legal battle with the agency, earlier this month to become general counsel. He’ll replace Todd Maron, who’s leaving Tesla in January after five years. Before he joined the company, he represented Musk through two divorces.

In November, Phil Rothenberg, a vice president on Tesla’s legal staff, left to became general counsel at Sonder, a hospitality startup. Rothenberg previously worked at the SEC.

A controversial memo written by a top Facebook insider is causing a ruckus inside and outside the company as it continues to deal with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its handling of users’ personal information more broadly.

The memo, written by Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth in 2016 and titled “The Ugly,” argues that Facebook’s goal should be connecting people even if it “costs a life by exposing someone to bullies” or “someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.” The memo, originally viewable only to Facebook employees, was obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg quickly responded to the memo’s publication, arguing its contents do not reflect the company’s true ethos.

“We’ve never believed the ends justify the means,” Zuckerberg said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “We recognize that connecting people isn’t enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year.”

Zuckerberg also said the Bosworth is “a talented leader who says many provocative things,” and that the memo is something “that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly.”

Bosworth himself walked back the memo, saying in a tweet that “I don’t agree with the post today and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.” Instead, he characterized the note as an effort to surface “hard topics” for internal discussion among Facebook employees.

Bosworth’s memo was first published one day after a Chicago man was shot and killed in an incident streamed on Facebook Live, the company’s livestreaming platform.

Under heightened scrutiny for its role in influencing recent political campaigns, Facebook announced it is banning foreign ads relating to Ireland’s upcoming referendum on abortion.

The decision follows intense international criticism over attempts to use the social media company’s platform to sway voters in elections, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Britain’s Brexit referendum, Reuters reports.

“As part of our efforts to help protect the integrity of elections and referendums from undue influence, we will begin rejecting ads related to the referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland,” said Facebook in a statement on its website.

On May 25, Irish voters will take part in a referendum on whether to liberalize Ireland’s divisive abortion laws, which are some of the strictest rules in the world. The procedure is illegal in the Catholic-majority Republic of Ireland, with terminations not allowed in cases of rape or incest, according to the BBC.

U.S.-based pro-life groups are among those who have bought online ads in the country ahead of the vote, ABC reports. Last month, the Irish data protection commissioner said it was possible foreign actors could try to sway the referendum.

Facebook said it is still developing automated election integrity tools, so the company would rely on campaign groups to identify the foreign ads.

A new “view ads” tool, which is still in trial mode after launching on April 25, allows users to see all of the ads an advertiser is running on the site in Ireland.

SOUTHPORT, England — Jordan Spieth faced more blustery conditions at Royal Birkdale as he set out to try to win the third leg of the career Grand Slam at The Open Championship.

Spieth had a three-shot lead over Matt Kuchar, who is playing in the final group of a major for the first time.

THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP: Leaderboard | Photo Gallery

Xander Schauffele put together a 65 on Sunday morning, the best round of the early starters. The wind was expected to increase, though nothing like the second round.

Kuchar was the only player within five shots of Spieth.

A record crowd has taken it all in. The R&A says this is the highest attendance for an Open in England, topping the 230,000 mark set at Royal Liverpool when Tiger Woods won in 2006.

This article was written by Doug Ferguson from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

Golf trophies are nice and meaningful, and Stewart Cink has a gracious plenty of them decorating his Duluth home.

But the trophy the 2009 British Open champion — and six-time PGA Tour winner — was holding Monday was looking like a centerpiece.

It's the one featuring the bronze figure of the late Payne Stewart, jaunty in trademark knickers, the one that has come to represent the PGA Tour pro who represents "character, charity and sportsmanship," that will command a special place.

Cink is the 2017 recipient of the Payne Stewart Award, its 20th winner, joining a roster that includes the likes of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Byron Nelson, Gary Player, Davis Love III, Steve Stricker, Nick Faldo and, last year, Jim Furyk. The winner traditionally is named at East Lake Golf Club, a particularly fitting venue this year. Club-member Cink has carried the banner for East Lake's community endeavors since leaving Georgia Tech and hitting the Tour full-time in 1997.

Cink's also the guy who, after beating 59-year-old Tom Watson in a playoff for the '09 Open, so carefully tempered his joy of winning with respect for the old champion and the sentimental story line that was denied that day.

"I'm not really into golf for recognition too much, but this is a recognition that I'm very, very proud of," Cink said Monday.

"All those other (trophies) are about a career and a livelihood, this is one is about what golf instilled into me — a nature of wanting to give back some of golf's values."

Cink choked up Monday when asked what in his personal life led him down the path of philanthropy. He remembered back 25 years, while at Tech, and his long-time girlfriend called from Auburn with some startling news: She was pregnant.

The young couple sought counseling, and were encouraged to accelerate plans of marriage and child-rearing. The counselor at the time "helped us become confident that we could do it, that we could be married, we could raise a family while in college," Cink said.

He and Lisa Cink have raised two sons, and Cink's wife in turn served as a pregnancy counselor for 10 years. "I'm just so proud of that," Cink said, his voice cracking.

"Our hearts were forged that day (25 years ago)," he said.

The two predominant organizations within the Cinks' charitable foundation are the Pregnancy Resource Center of Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit. Also to benefit from a $300,000 grant from the Southern Company, sponsor of the Payne Stewart Award, are the East Lake Foundation and the Healing Place, an Alabama-based grief counseling center for children. Also, the annual East Lake Invitational celebrity golf tournament, started by Cink and Billy Andrade, benefits the Drew Charter School Senior Academy at East Lake.

Lisa Cink, who has since April, 2016, has been in treatment for stage four breast cancer, was with her husband Monday. The pride in seeing the Cink name in the company of Payne Stewart Award winners was undeniable. "I look at those names and I see great men, giving men. I see big-hearted genuine men and the women behind them. I also see our friends," she said.

No matter how uncomfortable the compliment makes his wife, Cink could not help but credit her example with giving his golf career a little kick in the slacks. His three top-10 finishes are his most since 2013. His $1.2 million in money winnings is his most since 2010.

"Lisa has been fighting now for a year and a half and I've watched her fight," he said. "Seeing the nature of what she's done and how she has left no stone unturned has inspired me to leave no stone unturned as far as my career.

"As we just saw, the PGA Championship was a showcase for youth — it's awesome, they're great. I thought maybe I hadn't fought quite hard enough. Maybe there were a few stones I hadn't turned over."

At 44 — "I'm not 45 yet, so I'm in my early 40s," he said — winning more golf trophies on the PGA Tour may be problematic. Currently 73rd in FedEx Cup points, he plans to return to the course in two weeks with the start of golf's playoffs. Making it back to East Lake Sept. 21 with the surviving 30 players for the Tour Championship would be monumental.

Having already enjoyed a career moment at East Lake in 2017, Cink is in full its-all-gravy-from-here mode.

"All I can do is move up (in the FedEx standings), that's the way I'm viewing it," he said with a smile. 

This article is written by Steve Hummer from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.