Editorial in publications worldwide urges leaders to take measures to stop ‘greatest threat to public health’
More than 200 health journals worldwide are publishing an editorial calling on leaders to take emergency action on climate change and to protect health.
The British Medical Journal said it is the first time so many publications have come together to make the same statement, reflecting the severity of the situation.
Continue reading...TikTok, Twitter and Facebook among companies bringing in new measures worldwide that protect children
TikTok has turned off notifications for children past bedtime, Instagram has disabled targeted adverts for under-18s entirely and YouTube has turned off autoplay for teen users: moves seemingly triggered by Britain introducing a new set of regulations aimed at protecting children online.
On Thursday the UK introduced a new set of regulations aimed at protecting children and at a stroke became a global leader in the field, with the prospect of multimillion-dollar fines for companies that breach its new “age appropriate design code” leading to a cascade of last-minute changes across some of Silicon Valley’s largest players.
Continue reading...Secret documents reveal scale of funeral strategy and government anxieties over resources
The UK government’s vast security operation to manage the immediate aftermath of the death of the Queen include official social media blackouts and a ban on retweets.
These plans, codenamed Operation London Bridge, which were first revealed in a Guardian Long Read in 2017 and have now been seen in full by Politico, detail the scale of the arrangements for the funeral and government anxieties about whether the UK has the resources to execute them.
Continue reading...The Afghan television anchor Beheshta Arghand has been evacuated from Afghanistan amid risks for her safety and freedom after interviewing a Taliban official live on air after the fall of Kabul in late August.
Arghand, who is now in Qatar, said she had felt trapped in a leadership that did not accept women. The Taliban limited freedom of the press to ask questions, enforced burkas to be worn on some TV stations and suspended female journalists at others
Continue reading...Syed Taalay Ahmed, who worked for Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International, was ambushed in Tamale
Tributes have been paid to a British journalist who was killed in an armed robbery in Ghana.
Syed Taalay Ahmed, 31, who grew up in Hartlepool, was working for Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International (MTA) when he was killed, the station said.
Continue reading...US tech firm fined for not complying with order to come up with proposals on compensating publishers
Google is appealing against a €500m (£430m) fine imposed by France’s antitrust watchdog after a dispute with local media about paying for news content.
The financial penalty came amid increasing international pressure on online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share more of the revenue they make from using media outlets’ content.
Continue reading...Reporters covering rightwing protests have been assaulted, robbed and sprayed with mace as victims say police fail to enforce the law
Los Angeles has seen volatile protests almost every weekend this summer over trans rights, political opposition to masks and vaccines, and the recall of the Democratic governor. At least seven journalists have been physically assaulted while covering these rallies, six of them by rightwing demonstrators.
Attacks on the press are just one part of escalating rightwing street violence in the city, which has included multiple stabbings, people being sprayed in the face with bear Mace, an assault on a breast cancer patient outside a clinic, and repeated physical brawls with leftwing protesters in the streets. In another sign of growing tensions, protesters rallying against vaccine mandates showed up at the homes of two Los Angeles city council members on Sunday.
Continue reading...Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford told by officials that her visa would not be renewed
The BBC’s Moscow correspondent has used her final dispatch before her expulsion from Russia by the Kremlin to warn that the country was “moving in reverse” when it came to free speech and press freedoms.
Sarah Rainsford recorded the moments after she was pulled aside by authorities at the airport on a return trip to Moscow and informed that Russia’s FSB security service had banned her for life from the country.
Continue reading...Many shops plan to open early for the arrival of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You next month
When they were children they lined the streets in their witch hats and capes, keen to pick up the latest Harry Potter title as bookshops opened their doors at midnight. Now they are a little older, the prospect of a tussle with some millennial emotions could see them queuing around the block again on 7 September, as dozens of bookshops plan to open early for the arrival of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You.
In a nationwide promotional push, prompted by signs of big public demand, freshly printed copies of the Irish author’s third novel are to be served to customers with special commemorative merchandise as they enjoy a coffee and pastry.
Continue reading...With a hit Netflix series and The Fran Lebowitz Reader now published in the UK, the American wit talks about failing to write, her dislike of Andy Warhol and her best friend Toni Morrison
Fran Lebowitz is a famous writer who famously doesn’t write. “I’m really lazy and writing is really hard and I don’t like to do hard things,” she says, and it’s the rare writer who would not have some sympathy with that. Yet, as all writers also know, writer’s block, which the 70-year-old has suffered from for four decades now, is never really about laziness. Lebowitz’s editor Erroll McDonald (“the man with the easiest job in New York”) has said she suffers from “excessive reverence for the written word”.
Given that Lebowitz has, at last count, more than 11,000 of them in her apartment, there is no question that she loves books. “I would never throw away a book – there are human beings I would rather throw out of the window,” she says. So is this talk of “excessive reverence” a euphemistic way of saying that she has low self-esteem and doesn’t think she can write anything good enough to commit to print?
Continue reading...More than a dozen independent media sign open letter calling for halt to ‘foreign agent’ designations
Russia’s leading independent media have appealed to Vladimir Putin and other top government officials to halt a crackdown on journalists under which some of the countries’ top outlets have been declared foreign agents or banned outright over the last year.
More than a dozen media, including Meduza, TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta have signed an open letter to the government calling on it to remove individual journalists and their outlets from its blacklists and repeal laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable organisations” altogether.
Continue reading...Authorities increase regulation of fame and fan culture that they say will tackle online bullying and protect children
Chinese authorities have banned online lists ranking celebrities by popularity, as regulators continue a drive to “clean up” fame and fandom culture.
According to regulations published in state media, all existing lists that rank Chinese stars must also be removed from the internet.
Continue reading...Their success depends not on providing solutions but on ginning up, by any means necessary, the conservative base
The pandemic has upended all our lives, leaving many of us frightened and confused. But if the weekend’s angry anti-lockdown protests reflected genuine pain in the community, they also showed how, in a complicated international emergency, rightwing grifters have seized an opportunity.
If you look for Covid truth on Telegram and Gab, you’ll uncover the online equivalent of a crowded outdoor market, dominated by shouting stall holders.
Continue reading...Complaints unit backs makers of Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, except over section on Tory ‘sleaze’ stories
Rupert Murdoch has largely lost a year-long dispute with the BBC after he objected to a documentary series that “implied he posed a threat to liberal democracy”.
Murdoch’s News UK business complained that a BBC Two documentary unfairly suggested the Australian-born media mogul “exercised malign political influence” through his ownership of news outlets. It said the BBC programme was biased and failed to give enough weight to more positive appraisals of Murdoch’s career.
Continue reading...Subscriber-only website synonymous with pornography will now focus on more mainstream content
OnlyFans, the subscriber-only website synonymous with pornography, has announced it will ban adult material from the site after pressure from its payment processors.
The company will continue to allow some posts containing nudity but “any content containing sexually-explicit conduct” will be banned, with the site instead focusing on more mainstream content.
Continue reading...CEO says problem is primarily one of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ among the US public, touting platform’s vaccine literacy tool
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg skirted a question on Thursday about coronavirus vaccine disinformation on the social network, choosing to phrase the problem instead as primarily one of “vaccine hesitancy” among the US public.
In an interview with CBS, which was released on Thursday morning, TV anchor Gayle King pressed Zuckerberg to release information on how many people have viewed and shared Facebook posts containing misinformation about the Covid vaccine.
Continue reading...The Guardian and other UK media demand action for those who have helped report from Afghanistan
• UK media repeat call for evacuation of Afghan colleagues
Dear prime minister and foreign secretary,
When British media organisations wrote to you earlier this month about the grave Taliban threat to Afghan journalists and translators who had worked with us, you responded almost immediately. You recognised their vital contribution to a free press by reporting on the British mission in Afghanistan and promised colleagues at risk a path to safety. President Biden did the same in the United States.
Continue reading...Malta’s attorney general formally lays charges against businessman Yorgen Fenech over journalist killing
Malta’s attorney general has called for a life sentence for the businessman Yorgen Fenech for allegedly masterminding the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which rocked the country four years ago.
The attorney general, Victoria Buttigieg, laid formal charges against Fenech, who was arrested in November 2019 trying to leave Malta on his yacht, accused of complicity in the murder and criminal conspiracy. He has since been undergoing a pre-trial compilation of evidence where he pleaded not guilty.
Continue reading...Speaking to camera on Monday night, the CNN anchor Chris Cuomo said he had never been an adviser to his brother, the disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo – but had given his brother advice.
Related: Chris Cuomo’s ethical troubles at CNN highlight rise of ‘info-tainment’
Continue reading...The BBC newsreader takes over the venerable quiz show next week. He discusses fighting for viewers, dealing with online abuse – and making his parents proud
There is one correct way to start an interview with the new host of Mastermind: turn the tables on him – put him in the chair, under the spotlight. He hasn’t prepared a specialist subject, though, so I pick one for him, an easy one: the life and work of Clive Myrie, gleaned from previous interviews and the internet. There may be errors, but I can accept only the answer on the card. It will lead to topics for discussion. He is up for it, he says, although his face says: “WTF?”
The setting – a meeting room at the BBC’s New Broadcasting House – isn’t perfect. The lighting is all wrong. There are chairs, but not the chair. At least I can play the theme on my phone. Bam baba bam, bam baba bam, da da …
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