Two Reuters reporters were jailed on Monday for seven years for violating a state secrets act during their reporting of the Rohingya crisis, a court said, in the case that has drawn outrage for its attack on media freedom.

The two journalists were being tried since 2017 for breaching Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act while investigating violence against the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state by the army, the BBC reported.

Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on the night of December 12, after meeting with two police officers who, according to the defendants, handed them confidential documents, the Efe news reported.

Since then, both have been held without bail and have appeared 30 times before the court, which started a preliminary investigation on January 9 and formally filed charges on July 9.

The case has been widely seen as a test of press freedom in Myanmar.

The journalists have maintained their innocence, saying they were set up by the police.

“I have no fear,” Lone, 32, said after the verdict. “I have not done anything wrong. I believe in justice, democracy and freedom.”

The two men, who both have families with young children, have been in prison since their arrest in December 2017.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and press freedom anywhere,” said Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler.

Judge Ye Lwin told the court in Yangon the pair had “intended to harm the interests of the state”. “And so they have been found guilty under the state secrets act,” he said.

Lone and Soe Oo, 28, had been collecting evidence about the execution of 10 men by the army in the village of Inn Din in northern Rakhine.

During their investigation, they were offered the documents by two police officers, but were arrested immediately afterwards for the possession of those documents.

Authorities later launched their own probe into the killings, confirming the massacre took place and promising to take action against those who had taken part.

The BBC said that many would see this verdict as a crushing blow to freedom of the press in Myanmar and another setback for the democracy, three years after Aung San Suu Kyi’s party triumphed in free elections.

He said Lone and Soe Oo bowed their heads as the verdict was delivered. Wa Lone – who has missed the birth of his first child while being detained — protested his innocence once again as he was led away.

“We are extremely disappointed by this verdict,” Britain and the US have said, saying the court’s decision was “deeply troubling for everybody who has struggled so hard here for media freedom”.

The UN’s resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Myanmar Knut Ostby said the UN had “consistently called for the release” of the journalists and that “a free press is essential for peace, justice and human rights for all. We are disappointed by today’s court decision”.

“The outrageous convictions show Myanmar courts’ willingness to muzzle those reporting on military atrocities,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.

“These sentences mark a new low for press freedom and further backsliding on rights under Suu Kyi’s government.”

The verdict comes a year after the crisis in Rakhine state came to a head when a Rohingya militant group attacked several police posts. The military responded with a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya minority.

The UN has said leading army figures in Myanmar should be investigated and prosecuted for genocide.

Media access to Rakhine is strictly controlled by the government so it is difficult to get reliable news from the region.

San Francisco Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers at Facebook have set a new record in improving translation from Urdu to English.

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is the field concerned with using AI to do translations in any language.

The team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) has seen a dramatic improvement in its results, the Forbes reported on Saturday.

“To give some idea of the level of advancement, an improvement of 1 BLEU point (a common metric for judging the accuracy of MT) is considered a remarkable achievement in this field; our methods showed an improvement of more than 10 BLEU points,” the team said in a paper that described translation from Urdu to English.

Facebook AI researchers seek to understand and develop systems with human-level intelligence by advancing the longer-term academic problems surrounding AI.

The research covers the full spectrum of topics related to AI, and to deriving knowledge from data: theory, algorithms, applications, software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure.

“Long-term objectives of understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines are bold and ambitious, and we know that making significant progress towards AI can’t be done in isolation,” said researchers from FAIR.

FAIR researchers have tested a new approach that teaches bots how to chit-chat like humans.

Facebook is making deep investments in AI technology and in May announced the next version of its open-source AI framework for developers.

Microsoft is currently leading when it comes to AI and Deep Neural Networks to improve real-time language translation.

Earlier this year, Microsoft brought machine learning to improve language translation for Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.

With Deep Neural Networks-powered language translation, the results are more accurate and the sound more natural.

[IANS]

Canberra Australia’s largest honey producer Capilano has been accused by testers of using fake honey in one of its products, media reports said on Monday.

Capilano’s Allowrie-branded Mixed Blossom Honey, which sources its products from Australia and overseas, claims to be 100 per cent honey.

However, lab tests have found a majority of its samples to be “adulterated”, meaning they contain something other than bee nectar, Xinhua news agency reported.

Trevor Weatherhead, executive director of the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council said he was not sure why anybody would want to pass fake honey off as the real thing. But cost cutting might be a reason.

So far Capilano has denied the accusations and questioned the testing method. “There is no consensus in the industry about the reliability of the Nuclear Magnetic Resolution (NMR) test that has led to the reports,” Managing Director Ben McKee said in a statement.

[IANS]

Los Angeles Reality TV star Jamie Otis says she had experienced a chemical pregnancy just days after she shared a picture of a test that she hoped was positive.

“Sorry I’ve been missing in action. This very bizarre positive pregnancy test then negative test then faint positive lines gave me hope that Gracie was going to become a big sister in 9 months, but the night before last I began having terrible contraction-like pains and spotting,” Otis began, reports people.com.

She added: “Then over the night full blown everything – if you know what I mean. I’m a nurse so I had my suspicions; but my midwife confirmed I had a chemical pregnancy. I don’t know why some people have it seemingly SO easy to get preggers and carry their babies to term and others struggle?”

A chemical pregnancy is “an early pregnancy loss that occurs shortly after implantation”, according to Healthline.

“What I do know is that I am so, so thankful for this little girl (and her daddy) right here. It’s like she knew mommy was in so much pain…. she just wanted to be held and snuggled all night long,” Otis said.

Otis and husband Doug Hehner have had a difficult road to parenthood. In July 2016, Otis and Hehner announced they had lost a baby boy they named Johnathan Edward.

Then in August 2017, Otis gave birth to daughter Henley Grace.

[IANS]

Three soldiers were killed and 14 persons injured after a suicide bomber attacked a government office here on Sunday, police said.

The blast also damaged nearby houses, blew off the roof of a mosque and caused a nearby school to collapse, BBC reported.

Police officer Abdullahi Hussein said a suicide bomber had rammed a car into the district office in Howlwadag district.

The militant group al-Shabab, which has waged an insurgency for more than 10 years, has claimed to be behind the attack.

In a similar incident on July 14, seven people were killed and several others injured in two explosions near the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

(IANS)