UN experts say British government is breaching WikiLeaks publisher’s human rights
UN experts have called for Julian Assange to be released from prison and criticised the British government for breaching his human rights.
The WikiLeaks publisher was jailed for 50 weeks on Wednesday for breaking bail conditions imposed seven years earlier by seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Continue reading...Corporate boycott of New York event grows after campaign by LGBT rights activists
The Financial Times has pulled its involvement in an event honouring Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, after a campaign by LGBT rights activists against the celebration of the self-declared homophobe.
The recently elected South American leader is due to be honoured at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce’s person of the year gala dinner, which is scheduled to take place in New York later this month.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary’s press freedom day speech ramps up British assault on RT
Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt will on Thursday declare the Russian government-owned TV station RT to be a “weapon of disinformation” in a speech to mark World Press Freedom Day.
The comments, to an audience in Ethiopia, mark an escalation of a British ministerial assault on the standards of the Russian broadcaster, originally known as Russia Today, which had faced repeated investigations into its output by the media regulator Ofcom.
Continue reading...Reporting guidelines devised and signed by five major news organisations
New Zealand media organisations have taken the unprecedented step of agreeing to censor their reporting of the trial of the man accused of the Christchurch mosque massacre in an attempt to contain the dissemination of his white supremacist beliefs.
On 15 March a shooter killed 50 people in two Christchurch mosques, the largest mass shooting in New Zealand’s modern history.
Continue reading...Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site posts public apology for misleading more than 45,000 donors about New York office
A Netherlands-based crowdfunded news site which raised $2.6m ahead of “launching in the US” has apologized and said it “screwed up”, after announcing its headquarters will actually be in Amsterdam.
In December 2018, the Correspondent, a planned English-language version of the Dutch De Correspondent, raised $2.6m from more than 45,000 donors in a widely publicized fundraising campaign. In March, however, it said it would not after all open a newsroom in New York.
Continue reading...At annual F8 developer conference, CEO focuses on ‘sense of intimacy’ and unveils plans for payments tools
Even Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t keep a straight face.
The Facebook founder and chief executive repeatedly broke out in laughter as he announced a product roadmap for his company’s new “privacy-focused social platform” at its annual developer conference, F8, in San Jose on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Born in a Kenyan refugee camp, the Muslim Somali-American model returned to her birth country for historic photoshoot
Somali-American model Halima Aden has become the first Muslim model to appear in Sports Illustrated magazine wearing a hijab and burkini. She appeared in the swimsuit edition, out in May, wearing a number of different colourful burkinis.
The model told the BBC: “Young girls who wear a hijab should have women they look up to in any and every industry.
Continue reading...President’s 10,000th false claim came on Friday when he discussed the Charlottesville protests, the Washington Post reports
Donald Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims since he became president in January 2017, according to a count by factcheckers at the Washington Post.
Trump’s strike rate of “alternative facts” – a phrase made infamous by senior adviser Kellyanne Conway – has increased rapidly in recent months, the paper said on Monday.
Continue reading...‘When you chip away at the press, you chip away at our democracy’, Pultitzer-winning historian Ron Chernow tells Trump-free event
As Donald Trump flailed his arms and railed against the media at a raucous campaign rally on Saturday night, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian delivered an elegantly scathing rebuke at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) annual dinner.
America the split screen nation – so evident in polarised reactions to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference – was on vivid display again in two speeches.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to protect the press, but his barbs have resulted in journalists being harassed
Andrés Manuel López Obrador swept the Mexican left into power with promises of respecting the press and ending the killing of journalists.
Related: 'They went to execute him': fourth Mexican journalist killed so far in 2018
Continue reading...Congresswoman received death threats following video Trump posted – but he didn’t technically violate the rules
The rules just aren’t the same for Donald Trump as they are for the rest of us. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apparently admitted as much this week on a phone call with Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar.
As reported by the Washington Post, Dorsey, often criticized for his inaction when it comes removing hateful and threatening content from the platform, was asked by Omar why he hadn’t taken down a video posted by Trump earlier in the month. The video, which spliced together misleading and out of context comments from Omar about the issue of Islamophobia with footage of the 9/11 attacks, was clearly targeted harassment to anyone who saw it.
Continue reading...The video, widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later
Tesla has sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media which showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding, the latest in a string of fire incidents involving the company’s cars.
The video, time stamped Sunday evening and widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later. A video purportedly of the aftermath showed a line of three cars completely destroyed.
Continue reading...In the genealogy company’s commercial, a white man gives a black woman a ring and says they can ‘escape to the north’
Ancestry.ca, the Canadian outpost of the genealogy site Ancestry.com, has taken down an ad that was criticized for appearing to romanticize slavery. It was deemed an irresponsible retelling of an already reprehensible history.
ooooh my god LMAOOO who approved this ancestry commercial??? pic.twitter.com/Isy0k4HTMA
Continue reading...Leica, whose biggest growth market is China, say short film was not officially sanctioned
Western companies trying to do business in China learned long ago that they must bow, at least in part, to the political demands of an authoritarian state. So when the German camera-maker Leica released an advert featuring perhaps the greatest political taboo in contemporary Chinese history, it looked like an unusually audacious gamble.
In fact the short film referencing the Tiananmen Square crackdown appears to have been an extraordinary – and potentially very expensive – mistake.
Continue reading...Officers urge dissidents to step away from violence after Lyra McKee shot in Derry riots
Police in Northern Ireland have issued a call for peace in memory of the journalist Lyra McKee, who died after being shot during rioting in Derry on Thursday night.
Evoking the 29-year-old’s own words about the power of conversation, police encouraged relatives of dissident republicans, who have been blamed for shooting McKee, to urge their family members to step away from violence and pursue peace.
Continue reading...BBC Newsnight presenter once spotted former US president perusing ancient erotic text
The Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis has said she once caught Bill Clinton perusing the Kama Sutra in a hotel gift shop.
The BBC presenter said she spotted the former US president with the risque reading material following a day of interviews.
Continue reading...Number of organisations and individuals permanently banned for being ‘dangerous’
Years after the company first dismissed fears it was empowering extremists, Facebook has permanently banned a number of far-right organisations and individuals including the British National party (BNP), the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First .
The ban, which came into effect at midday on Thursday, extends beyond the groups and individuals specifically cited as hate organisations: posts and other content that “expresses praise or support” for them will also be banned, as will users who coordinate support for the groups.
Continue reading...The setup looked potentially hostile but became a free, hourlong commercial for the Sanders candidacy, broadcast to Fox viewers
At every turn they clapped and cheered, enamored with the candidate’s prescriptions for universal healthcare, a humane attitude toward immigrants and the rejection of climate change denialism.
Bernie Sanders was the candidate, and the people clapping and cheering were audience members who turned out in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a televised town hall on Monday night sponsored by none other than Fox News.
Continue reading...President Sisi is playing cat and mouse with us, shutting down our websites and blocking our social media but we won’t give in
As the world watches the peaceful revolution that is changing Sudan in awe and amazement, it is clear that in Egypt, Sudan’s neighbour to the north, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is getting nervous. On the same day as the protests in Khartoum reached a head, several of us who oppose Sisi’s autocratic rule launched an online petition to declare any result from Tuesday’s referendum on proposed constitutional amendments “void”.
Among the amendments Sisi is trying to force on the Egyptian people is a provision that could allow him to remain in power until 2030. The amendments would also increase the control of the military, which would be given powers to police the political sphere in Egypt. They would also give Sisi control over the appointment of judges and the public prosecutor.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretaries wrote to assure Ecuador president over WikiLeaks founder’s extradition
Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, was assured by two British foreign secretaries that Julian Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face the death penalty, according to letters seen by the Guardian.
Letters signed by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his predecessor Boris Johnson, dated 7 March 2018 and 10 August 2018 respectively, confirm a person cannot be extradited if they could face the death penalty, according to British legislation.
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