by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 29, 2016 | News
She has been suspended from all official duties and has been replaced, at least for now, by her former deputy, Michel Temer, whom she accuses of stabbing her in the back.
He inherits a tattered economy and ongoing corruption controversies.
To read the CNN article on this,
please hit this link. by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 29, 2016 | Initiative
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere visited Facebook’s offices in Berlin on Aug. 29 and said that it should do more to keep forbidden content from the social-network platform.
“Facebook should take down racist content or calls for violence from its pages on its own initiative even if it hasn’t yet received a complaint,” Thomas de Maiziere said.
“Facebook has an immensely important economic position and just like every other large enterprise it has a immensely important social responsibility.”
The German government has been critical of Facebook in the past, with political leaders and regulators complaining that it has been too slow to respond to hate speech and anti-immigrant messages.
To read the news article on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 29, 2016 | News
The United States and India agreed Aug 29 to allow the use of each other’s land, air and naval bases for repair and resupply, part of an initiative to tighten their growing de-facto defense alliance to counter China’s growing military aggressiveness, especially in the South and East China Seas.
The signing of the agreement will “make the logistics of joint operations so much easier and so much more efficient,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a news briefing with Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar.
To read the Reuters article on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 26, 2016 | News
In a rare show of cooperation between the two superpowers, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted joint operations in the Pacific with its Chinese counterpart this summer, part of annual patrols to deter illegal fishing.
A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said the USCG Mellon “rendezvoused and conducted a professional exchange” with two Chinese Coast Guard ships.
“The exchange focused on professional goodwill between coast guards,” U.S. Coast Guard District 17 spokesman Lt. Brian Dykens said. He added that the U.S. government has a “shiprider agreement” with China in which the U.S. Coast Guard vessel works with one or two Chinese Coast Guard ships.
Earlier this week, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said “cooperation between the two countries’ coast guards has deepened through personnel exchanges and joint operations.”
Xinhua also reported that the China Coast Guard plans to expand patrols in northern parts of the Pacific Ocean and deepen cooperation with the U.S. side.
The U.S., Japan and nations on the South China Sea have sought to counter Beijing’s militarized expansion into the South and East China seas.
To read The Japan Times’s story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 26, 2016 | News
In the foothills of the Andes in Bolivia.
On Aug. 26, Bolivian miners lifted their roadblock where violent protests had taken place this week. This came a day after miners murdered Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Illanes. President Evo Morales called it a day of “deep pain” for the country.
Mr. Illanes, 56, was killed after being taken hostage by workers who had blocked a major highway in Panduro, around 100 miles from the capital, La Paz. Officials said he died of blows to the head.
The workers have been demanding more mining concessions with less stringent environmental rules.
President Morales, an ex-coca grower, nationalized Bolivia’s natural-resources sector after being elected in 2006.
At first, he was widely praised for pouring mineral and other commodities profits into welfare programs. But his government has been dogged by accusations of cronyism and authoritarianism in recent years and some labor unions have become angry with him as falling commodity prices have crimped spending.
To read the Reuters story on this, please hit his link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 26, 2016 | News
A U.N. body called the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination asserts that politicians helped fuel a surge in racist hate crimes during and after Britain’s referendum campaign on whether to leave the European Union.
The panel said many prominent politicians share the blame for the outbreak of xenophobia and intimidation against ethnic minorities.
“Many politicians and prominent political figures not only failed to condemn it but also created and entrenched prejudices, thereby emboldening individuals to carry out acts of intimidation and hate towards ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities and people who are visibly different,” it said.
More than 3,000 allegations of hate crimes were made to British police – mainly regarding harassment and threats – in the week before and the week after the June 23 vote, up 42 percent from the rate in 2015.
To read the piece on this in The Guardian, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 24, 2016 | News
After a half century of conflict that has killed 200,000 people, talks between the Colombian government and Marxist rebels called FARC have resulted in a peace agreement, say sources on both sides.
To read the story on this, please hit this link
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 24, 2016 | News
The move is just another sign of how much anxiety is rising around the world about cyberattacks, many of them originating from Russia and other authoritarian governments.
To read the article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Aug 23, 2016 | Initiative
WikiLeaks’ crusade to expose the government secrets of some countries, but not those of Russia or China, is violating the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill.
The Japan Times reports: “In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.”
Meanwhile, there has been increasing speculation that Julian Assange, who runs WikiLeaks, is either effectively acting as an agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin or declines to hack Russian or Chinese information because, especially in dealing with the former, he could end up dead. And, of course, democracies and open societies such as the U.S. are much easier to hack than police states like Russia and China.
To read The Japan Times’s story on this, please hit this link.
