Jack Dorsey encouraged his 4 million followers to visit Myanmar even though military is accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Dorsey visited Myanmar for a 10-day meditation retreat and tourism

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been criticised for encouraging his 4.12 million followers to visit Myanmar, without mentioning the widespread allegations of ethnic cleansing of the country’s majority-Muslim Rohingya ethnic group.

In a lengthy thread on Twitter, Dorsey, 42, described in detail his experience on a silent meditation retreat in Pyin Oo Lwin, a town in northern Myanmar, before encouraging his followers to visit the South Asian country.

“Myanmar is an absolutely beautiful country. The people are full of joy and the food is amazing,” he said in the post on Saturday evening.

There was no mention of the plight of the Rohingya in the more than 700-word thread.

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2017, according to the United Nations, following a sweeping army crackdown in response to Rohingya attacks on security forces.

Rohingya refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh say Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist civilians killed families, burned many villages and carried out gang rape. UN-mandated investigators have accused Myanmar’s army of “genocidal intent”.

Myanmar has denied the allegations, saying its forces engaged in a counterinsurgency operation against “terrorists”.

Dorsey’s comments provoked a backlash with Twitter users accusing the Silicon Valley boss of being tone-deaf to the plight of the Rohingya and spawning the hashtag #JackIgnoresGenocide.

“I’m no expert on meditation, but is it supposed to make you so self-obsessed that you forget to mention you’re in a country where the military has committed mass killings and mass rape, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee in one of today’s biggest humanitarian disasters?” Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director of Human Rights Watch, responded on Twitter.

International lawyer Suchitra Vijayan also weighed in comparing the “silence” Dorsey sought from his meditation to his tight-lipped approach to the plight of the Rohingya.

Matthew Smith, CEO of Southeast Asia-based human rights NGO Fortify Rights, told Al Jazeera that Dorsey had “at best” miscalculated the reaction his post would provoke.

“It’s important that powerful people know and understand the landscape of abuse in Myanmar and speak openly and publicly about it. Genocide is everyone’s problem, and while we don’t expect everyone to speak about it publicly at every turn, atrocity crimes are the elephant in the room with regard to social media here,” Smith said.

“Mr Dorsey’s failure to mention the Rohingya or the Kachin, the Shan, and other [ethnic groups in Myanmar] was a political miscalculation at best. The pope made the same mistake. It’s not a good look”.

Social media in Myanmar

It was the second time Dorsey kicked up a social media storm within a month. In November, a picture of him with a placard saying “smash Brahminical patriarchy”, referring to the “highest” Hindu caste, went viral.

Twitter later apologised for the photo, which was taken during a trip to India and posted by a journalist Dorsey met during his visit.

Twitter CEO trolled for ‘smash Brahminical patriarchy’ placard

Dorsey has not responded publicly to the criticism over his visit to Myanmar, but an individual with knowledge of the trip stressed to Al Jazeera it was a holiday and Dorsey did not hold business meetings while in the country.

Social media companies have drawn criticism for allegedly allowing hate speech to spread at the peak of the military crackdown in Myanmar.

In August 2017, hundreds of new Twitter accounts sprang up in Myanmar, many of which appeared to be attempts to counter sympathetic portrayals of the Rohingya by the Western news media and human rights activists.

They portrayed the ethnic minority as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, or “Bengalis”. Rohingya regard themselves as native to Rakhine but the government has denied most of them citizenship.

In November, Facebook admitted it had not done enough to prevent the social network from being used to incite violence, following a report it commissioned on its presence in Myanmar.

Aljazeera

Beijing Apple has appealed against a Chinese court ruling that banned the sale and import of most iPhone models after granting Qualcomm an injunction against Apple, a stunning decision that comes amid the trade war between the US and China, CNBC reported.

Apple accused Qualcomm of playing dirty tricks, including asserting a patent that had already been invalidated by international courts, and other patents that it had never before used.

“Qualcomm’s effort to ban our products is another desperate move by a company whose illegal practices are under investigation by regulators around the world,” Apple said in a statement on Monday.

The ban does not cover the new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Plus or iPhone XR, which were not yet available when Qualcomm, an American microchip maker, filed its lawsuit, CNN reported.

The ruling was announced publicly on Monday but put into effect last week, but Apple said in a statement that all iPhone models remain available in China.

The phones covered by the ban make up about 10 per cent to 15 per cent of current iPhone sales in China, according to Daniel Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities.

The court granted a pair of preliminary injunctions requested by Qualcomm.

Qualcomm claims that Apple violates two of its patents in the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

The patents allow people to edit and resize photos on a phone and to manage apps by using a touchscreen, according to Qualcomm.

The practical effect of the injunction is not yet clear.

“If Apple is violating the orders, Qualcomm will seek enforcement of the orders through enforcement tribunals that are part of the Chinese court system,” CNN quoted Don Rosenberg, general counsel for Qualcomm, as saying on Monday.

Qualcomm applauded the ruling, saying Apple owes it money for using its technology.

Apple and Qualcomm are suing one another in courts across the world. Billions of dollars are at stake, and each side has claimed some victories.

(IANS)

Pakistan would continue to lend full diplomatic, political and moral support to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Imran Khan said Monday.

Khan’s remarks came in a message on the Human Rights Day which is observed every year on December 10.

This year, the Human Rights Day marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

He said this year is also significant for Pakistan as it has joined the UN Human Rights Council.

“Pakistan’s membership of the Council, for the fourth time, is a testimony to the confidence of the international community in Pakistan, as a consensus builder within the international human rights policy framework,” he said.

PTI

 Morocco’s navy coast guards have rescued 72 illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean, the Moroccan Army said.

The rescued included 53 sub-Saharan Africans and 19 Asians, Xinhua quoted the Moroccan Army as saying on Saturday.

The migrants, among them women and children, were brought safely to the port of Nador, the army said.

Morocco has witnessed a significant hike in illegal immigration attempts in 2018.

According to the Moroccan Interior Ministry, the authorities have foiled over 76,000 illegal immigration attempts between January and November 2018.

IANS

Toronto With its population of cricket-loving immigrants increasing rapidly, the Indian-dominated city of Brampton on the outskirts of Toronto will soon build the first world-class cricket stadium in Canada.

Announcing this while addressing members of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce here on Friday, Brampton’s newly elected Mayor Patrick Brown said cricket is a passion in India as he has witnessed during his visits.

“That’s why we will build a world-class cricket stadium in Brampton during my term,” so that anyone coming from India to do business or live in his city doesn’t miss what they love, the Mayor told the Indo-Canadian gathering.

Known as a friend of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Indo-Canadian community here, Brown, a former MP, has been to India 18 times during the past 11 years.

In fact, he started this year in India by doing a puja in Varanasi and offering prayers at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

The Indo-Canadian community accounts for a huge portion of the city’s population of over 600,000, with Punjabis alone making up over 20 per cent of its population.

To make the huge Indian community feel at home in his city, the Mayor said: “We will also have the first outdoor ‘garba’ this year out on the streets.”

He also mentioned that Brampton already allows the Indo-Canadian community to celebrate Diwali with fireworks.

The Mayor said that since creating jobs tops his agenda, he would take every step to make Brampton attractive for businesses and investors from anywhere, including India, by keeping the cost of doing business in his city low.

“There won’t be any tax increase during my term,” he said.

Describing Indian and other diaspora communities of his city as its biggest assets, the Mayor said he would use the huge Indian community to pitch his city to businesses in India.

“The Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce can open doors for Brampton in India. I have been India 18 times in 11 years and I will do now as Mayor to pitch Brampton to businesses in India,” he said.

Assuring the Indian-friendly Mayor of all support, Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce President Pramod Goyal said the chamber has been building business bridges between the two countries for over 40 years and creating jobs.

(IANS)

London To help news industry use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in more innovative ways, Google has announced a partnership with Polis, the international journalism think-tank at London School of Economics and Political Science, to create “Journalism AI”.

Part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), the “Journalism AI” project will focus on research and training for newsrooms on the intersection of AI and journalism.

“As part of ‘Journalism AI’, next year, we’ll publish a global survey about how the media is currently using — and could further benefit from — this technology,” Google said in a statement on Friday as it organised GNI Innovation Forum here.

“We’ll also collaborate with newsrooms and academic institutions to create a best practices handbook and produce free online training on how to use AI in the newsroom for journalists worldwide,” informed Matt Cooke, Head of Partnerships and Training, Google News Lab.

After testing with partners over the last two years, Google also introduced a new tool called Google Earth Studio which is an animation tool for Google Earth’s satellite and 3D imagery.

The tool empowers graphics specialists with new ways to leverage Google Earth imagery for storytelling.

“We’re inviting newsrooms around the world to start using the product for the first time,” said Google.

According to the company, it has provided free training to journalists on a range of tools reaching more than 140,000 people in-person.

“Our training on Google tools for journalists are now available in 16 languages — including Indonesian Bahasa, Thai and Turkish,” said Cooke.

Google News in November launched a new innovation challenge to help scribes and publishers in the Asia-Pacific region produce quality journalism in the digital age.

The Asia-Pacific Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge will fund selected projects up to $300,000 and finance up to 70 per cent of the total project cost, that inject new ideas into the news industry.

According to Google, in Asia-Pacific, journalists and publishers are increasingly grappling with questions over how quality journalism can thrive in the digital age.

“From Yangon to Manila, Sydney to New Delhi, they are experimenting with fresh approaches to reporting and new business models,” said the company.

(IANS)

London Italian regulators have fined Facebook 10 million euros for selling users’ data without informing them.

The competition watchdog handed Facebook two fines totalling 10 million euros, “also for discouraging users from trying to limit how the company shares their data”, Italian portal The Local reported on Saturday.

Facebook “misleadingly gets people to sign up… without informing them in an immediate and adequate way of how the data they will provide will be harvested for commercial purposes”, read a statement from Italy’s AGCM consumer and market watchdog.

The authority has directed Facebook to publish an apology to users on its website and on its app.

Reacting to this, a Facebook spokesperson said they are reviewing the authority’s decision.

“We hope to work with them to resolve their concerns. This year we made our terms and policies clearer to help people understand how we use data and how our business works,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.

“We also made our privacy settings easier to find and use, and we’re continuing to improve them. You own and control your personal information on Facebook,” the statement said.

Facebook Italy recently agreed to “make a payment of more than 100 million euros” to end a fiscal fraud dispute with Italian authorities.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is Facebook’s lead privacy regulator in Europe, in October opened a formal investigation into the fresh Facebook data breach which affected 50 million users, that could result in a fine of $1.63 billion.

“The investigation will examine Facebook’s compliance with its obligation under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security and safeguarding of the personal data it processes,” said DPC.

(IANS)

 CNN’s offices and studios here were evacuated on Thursday night because of a phoned-in bomb threat. But police and the network have issued an all-clear message saying it was safe.

“The NYPD (New York Police Department) has now given us the all clear, and employees have been permitted to return to the building,”CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker said in an internal memo to staff on Friday.

“The building is secure and safe for everyone to return in the morning. We appreciate the swift action by the local authorities, and the patience and professionalism of all the employees who were impacted.”

The threat was not substantiated, the NYPD tweeted.

The threat came on Thursday night when a caller indicated there were five devices in the building, according to a law enforcement source.

Several fire alarm bells rang inside the newsroom, signaling an evacuation shortly after the call was received.

Staffers evacuated the offices in the Time Warner Centre building.

The network temporarily went to taped programming for about half hour before going live from the street while police investigated.

The network’s bureau was evacuated in October after a package with an explosive device, addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, was discovered, officials said.

That package was among more than a dozen improvised explosive devices sent to prominent Democratic politicians and donors around the country in October. None of the devices detonated, and no one was injured.

Suspect Cesar Sayoc, 56, was charged with five federal crimes and is currently in custody waiting for trail. If convicted, he could receive up to 48 years in prison.

IANS

United Nations Former senior Indian diplomat Preeti Saran has been elected unopposed to an Asia Pacific seat on the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) of the UN.

The UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) elected the recently-retired External Affairs Ministry Secretary (East) by acclamation on Wednesday to the 18-member committee of experts that monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR).

Saran will begin her four-year term on January 1, after another former Indian diplomat, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, completes his third term on the CESCR at the end of this year.

After Saran’s election, India’s Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin tweeted: “Thanks to all our friends for electing by acclamation India’s candidate Amb. Preeti Saran…”

Members of the CESCR serve in their personal capacities as experts and do not represent their countries even though they may have been nominated by their own nation.

India was elected in October to the UN Human Rights Council, where the representation is by countries and not individuals.

It received 188 votes in the 193-member General Assembly, the highest number polled by any of the contestants.

When the rotating elections for the nine members to start their terms next year on the CESCR was held in April, Heisoo Shin of South Korea was re-elected but the Asia Pacific region did not have a nominee for the second seat leading to the postponement of the election for it.

While any country from the Asian Pacific group was free to put up a candidate for that seat, none did deferring to India, according to diplomatic sources.

In November, India nominated Saran, who had retired from the foreign service in September, and her nomination was circulated to UN members by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on November 23, paving the the way for Wednesday’s delayed election.

Saran’s election will add a woman to the CESCR, which has been criticised for having only five women on the 18-member panel.

An international NGO, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which monitors the CESCR, commented earlier in 2018, “Unfortunately the gender balance on the Committee remains poor.”

“States should be very concerned by this gender imbalance on a UN human rights treaty body, particularly given the Committee’s mandate to monitor implementation of States obligations to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights,” it said.

CESCR was set up in 1985 by the ECOSOC to monitor on its behalf the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which has been ratified by 169 countries.

Countries that are parties to the covenant are required to submit reports to the CESCR every five years on how they protect those rights.

The CECSR meets in Geneva for four weeks every year. The other Asian member is Shiqiu Chen of China, whose term ends in 2022.

During her 36-year diplomatic career, Saran had also served as the ambassador to Vietnam and was a minister and a counsellor at India’s mission to the UN in Geneva.

(IANS)