Category Archives: Media

Taliban orders female Afghan TV presenters to cover faces on air

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Female anchors post pictures of themselves being ‘erased’ on orders of virtue and vice ministry

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have ordered all female TV presenters to cover their faces on air, the country’s biggest media outlet has said.

The order came in a statement from the Taliban’s virtue and vice ministry, tasked with enforcing the group’s rulings, as well as from the information and culture ministry, the Tolo news channel tweeted on Thursday. The statement called the order “final and non-negotiable”, the channel said.

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Widow of man killed in Libya accuses South Africa of ‘silence’ in hunt for his body

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The South African government sent Anton Hammerl’s passport to his widow in 2016 but has refused to say how it came to have it

The widow of a British-based photographer who was murdered by Col Gaddafi’s forces in Libya in 2011 has accused South Africa of withholding crucial information about her husband’s death that could help in efforts to locate his body.

Anton Hammerl was killed in an incident in May 2011 that saw other journalists, including James Foley – who was later kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic State in Syria – taken prisoner.

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John Peel: personal records and memorabilia set for Bonhams auction

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Items including a handwritten letter from David Bowie and Peel’s horn gramophone will be up for sale next month

Records and music memorabilia once owned by the celebrated former BBC DJ John Peel, including a signed mono pressing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1968 album Two Virgins, is to be sold at auction in June.

Peel’s family said in a statement: “John/Dad was in a position to have access to many of the most celebrated people and events in the history of popular music. This is reflected in a wealth of souvenirs he collected. In going through the accumulation of 40 years of pop music moments, we decided that some of the most interesting items might find a home, with fans of his programme or of the artists whose music he played.”

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Elon Musk: Twitter deal cannot progress without proof on bot numbers

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Tesla CEO and world’s richest person expressed concerns about presence of fake accounts on platform

Elon Musk has cast further doubt over his $44bn (£35bn) takeover of Twitter after stating the deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company proves that less than 5% of its users are fake or spam accounts.

The Tesla chief executive used his Twitter account to say the agreed deal would not progress until the firm showed proof that only a small proportion of its users were fake.

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Shireen Abu Aqleh: UN security council condemns killing of journalist

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In rare unanimous statement, council calls for ‘immediate and impartial’ inquiry into the Al Jazeera journalist’s death

The UN security council has unanimously condemned the killing of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh while she was covering an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank, diplomats said.

In a rare unanimous statement, the security council also called for “an immediate, thorough, transparent and impartial investigation into her killing”.

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US secretly issued subpoena to access Guardian reporter’s phone records

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Newspaper decries ‘egregious’ move by DoJ to obtain details of Stephanie Kirchgaessner as part of investigation into media leaks

The US justice department secretly issued a subpoena to gain access to details of the phone account of a Guardian reporter as part of an aggressive leak investigation into media stories about an official inquiry into the Trump administration’s child separation policy at the southern border.

Leak investigators issued the subpoena to obtain the phone number of Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the Guardian’s investigations correspondent in Washington. The move was carried out without notifying the newspaper or its reporter, as part of an attempt to ferret out the source of media articles about a review into family separation conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

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Chilean journalist dies after being shot while covering Workers’ Day marches

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Francisca Sandoval, 29, is the first journalist to be killed in the line of duty in Chile since the Pinochet dictatorship

A Chilean journalist who was shot in the head by a street trader while covering Workers’ Day marches on 1 May has died of her injuries.

Francisca Sandoval, 29, was reporting in Barrio Meiggs, a ramshackle market district in the centre of the capital, Santiago, when a group of men opened fire after a standoff with the marchers.

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‘Wagatha Christie’ trial: Rebekah Vardy accused of throwing friend ‘under bus’

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Lawyer for Coleen Rooney suggests Vardy is trying to shift blame for leaking of information to Sun newspaper

Rebekah Vardy has been accused of throwing her former agent and friend “under a bus” in a last-ditch attempt to save her reputation in the “Wagatha Christie” libel trial.

The footballer’s wife was accused – during the third day of a libel trial at the high court on Thursday – of deliberately destroying evidence, habitually leaking stories to the Sun newspaper, and trying to shift the blame on to her adviser Caroline Watt.

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Shireen Abu Aqleh: thousands attend state memorial in West Bank

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Palestinians line streets in Ramallah as journalist’s coffin travels through, after shooting in Jenin on Wednesday

Shireen Abu Aqleh, the Palestinian American journalist shot dead during an Israeli army operation, has been honoured with a full state memorial in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

At least 5,000 people lined the streets on Thursday as her coffin, draped in the Palestinian flag, was driven through the city and the Qalandia checkpoint en route to St Joseph hospital nearer her home in occupied East Jerusalem. Her funeral will be held in the holy city on Friday.

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GB News chairman has history of dismissing threat of climate crisis

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Revelation Alan McCormick has tweeted articles denying climate science fuels fears of GB News’s role as climate sceptic platform

The new chairman of GB News has a history of sharing articles that dismiss the threat of climate breakdown, it can be revealed, sharpening concerns about the TV channel’s role as a platform for advocates of the continued burning of fossil fuels.

Alan McCormick, a co-founder of Legatum Group, a Dubai-based investment firm and one of the channel’s key funders, tweeted several articles by climate science deniers, an investigation by DeSmog found, including one claiming there was “no scientific proof” that humans were causing the climate emergency.

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Spanish journalist held in Poland on suspicion of pro-Russian espionage

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Pablo González, who has joint Spanish and Russian nationality, alleged to have worked for GRU military intelligence

A freelance journalist from Spain is spending his 10th week in Polish custody while prosecutors there investigate what they claim is a case of espionage linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a case that raises red flags about press freedom in Europe at a time of war, prosecutors are expected next week to ask a judge for a further three-month extension to the detention of Pablo González, who has freelanced for media including Spain’s La Sexta TV channel, Spanish state news agency EFE and the US-government funded Voice of America.

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BBC to invest £10m and double comedy pilots in bid to find next Fleabag

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BBC Comedy development drive to fuel search for ‘relatable British characters’

The BBC will double the number of half-hour comedy pilots it makes and invest an extra £10m in the genre in a bid to find the next Fleabag or Motherland.

Sharing plans for the future of comedy at the corporation, the director of BBC Comedy, Jon Petrie, said his department was investing in its “development process”.

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Al Jazeera accuses Israeli forces of killing journalist in West Bank

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Israeli official appears to back away from earlier claims Palestinians to blame for death of Shireen Abu Akleh

Al Jazeera has accused Israel of deliberately killing one of its reporters during a military raid in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin.

Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, a Palestinian American and one of the Arab world’s best-known journalists, who had covered the conflict for decades, was shot in the head on Wednesday morning and taken to hospital in a critical condition.

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French TV news presenter faces multiple allegations of sexual offences

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Twenty women have accused Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, also known as PPDA, of sexual harassment and abuse

Twenty women have come forward to openly accuse one of France’s best-known television news presenters of sexual harassment and abuse – including rape – following an investigation by French journalists.

Patrick Poivre d’Arvor – known as PPDA – has faced a number of accusations that emerged after a writer first went to police to accuse him of rape, in February last year. The investigation was later dropped.

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Adidas sports bra ads banned in UK for objectifying women

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Twitter and poster campaign featuring dozens of sets of breasts was harmful and offensive, says ASA

An Adidas campaign featuring dozens of sets of breasts to promote the diversity of its range of sports bras has been banned by the UK advertising watchdog for using explicit nudity and appearing where children could see the ads.

The campaign, versions of which ran on Twitter and select large poster sites, prompted 24 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ads were gratuitous, objectified women by “sexualising them and reducing them to body parts”, were harmful and offensive and were able to be seen by children.

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‘Wagatha Christie’: Vardy ‘deeply regrets’ intimate Peter Andre remarks

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Coleen Rooney lawyer reads from 2004 tabloid interview in which Rebekah Vardy described singer’s ‘manhood’

Rebekah Vardy has said she deeply regrets making unflattering personal remarks about Peter Andre in a newspaper interview, as the multimillion pound “Wagatha Christie” libel trial against Coleen Rooney got under way at the high court.

The trial between the two footballer’s wives is taking place in a wood-panelled Victorian-era courtroom in central London that has heard many important cases over the years – but this could be the first where physiological matters were discussed at such length.

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‘I almost got hit’: the Ukrainian journalists turned war correspondents overnight

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Initially writing stories and making television reports was secondary for the journalists as many focused on survival

When the war started journalists in Ukraine found themselves at the centre of the biggest story in the world. They became war correspondents overnight.

Ukrainian journalists were spotlighted this week when the Pulitzer prize board awarded them with a special citation, hailing the country’s reporters for the “courage, endurance and commitment to truthful reporting” they have shown since the Russian invasion.

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Ex-Facebook moderator in Kenya sues over working conditions

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Petition alleges local workers subjected to irregular pay and inadequate mental health support

A former Facebook moderator has filed a lawsuit against its owner, Meta Platforms, alleging poor working conditions for contracted content moderators violate the Kenyan constitution.

The petition, also filed against Meta’s local outsourcing company Sama, alleges that workers moderating Facebook posts in Kenya have been subjected to unreasonable working conditions including irregular pay, inadequate mental health support, union-busting, and violations of their privacy and dignity.

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Two slain in Mexico are the latest in unrelenting slaughter of journalists

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The president has been accused of failing to address the wave of violence and has been incessant with his attacks on reporters

The unrelenting slaughter of Mexican journalists has continued after two more newspeople were gunned down by unidentified assassins – taking the 2022 death toll to 11 in what is the deadliest country for media professionals outside a warzone.

Yesenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera were murdered in the town of Cosoleacaque, about 350 miles east of the capital Mexico City, around 3pm on Monday.

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Washington Post wins public service Pulitzer for Capitol attack coverage

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Paper beat out two other finalists, the New York Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Washington Post has won the 2022 Pulitzer prize for public service journalism, for The Attack, its account of the deadly assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January 2021.

The paper beat two other finalists: the New York Times, for challenging official accounts of US military engagements in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, for an exposé of electrical fires in city rental operations.

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