News Roundup Archive

Thursday, August 8, 2013

USIP's Science, Technology & Peacebuilding Roundup

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Science, Technology and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, August 1 - 7, 2013

Table of Contents

**Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup,
which includes a special section on Internet and social media.**


Obama Cancels Meetings with Putin Amid Tensions
President Obama is canceling plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next month — a rare diplomatic snub. The move is retribution for Russia's decision to grant temporary asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
See the full article (AP, Julie Pace, 8/7/13)
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Searching Big Data for ‘Digital Smoke Signals’
The United Nations Global Pulse team — a tiny unit inside an institution known for its sprawling bureaucracy, not its entrepreneurial hustle, [focuses] on harnessing technology in new ways — using data from social networks, blogs, cellphones and online commerce to transform economic development and humanitarian aid in poorer nations. The efforts by Global Pulse and a growing collection of scientists at universities, companies and nonprofit groups have been given the label “Big Data for development."
See the full article (New York Times, Steve Lohr, 8/7/13)*NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Obama Administration Authorized Recent Drone Strikes in Yemen
The Obama administration authorized a series of drone strikes in Yemen over the past 10 days as part of an effort to disrupt an al-Qaeda terrorism plot that has forced the closure of American embassies around the world, U.S. officials said. The officials said the revived drone campaign — with five strikes in rapid succession — is directly related to intelligence indicating that al-Qaeda’s leader has urged the group’s Yemen affiliate to attack Western targets.
See the full article (Washington Post, Greg Miller, 8/7/13)
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New Images Show Destruction In Syrian City Of Aleppo
Satellite images released Wednesday by Amnesty International show widespread devastation that is "severely lopsided" in opposition-controlled parts of the Syrian city of Aleppo. The group says the images highlight human rights violations against Aleppo's civilian population amid the country's civil war.
See the full article (NPR, Krishnadev Calamur, 8/7/13)
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U.S. Plans to Monitor Afghanistan Relief Projects Remotely
As the U.S. military presence dwindles in Afghanistan, officials are finalizing a $200 million plan to use smartphones, GPS-enabled cameras and satellite imagery to monitor relief projects that will continue in areas deemed too remote or unsafe for Americans to visit. It is a risky strategy, say experts and watchdogs, because the U.S. Agency for International Development has been chastised for past oversight failures in Afghanistan and has never used the technology to monitor projects on so grand a scale.
See the full article (Richmond Times Dispatch, 8/6/13)
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Will Global Warming Lead to More War? It’s Not That Simple.
At a basic level, it’s easy to dream up all sorts of ways that hotter temperatures or other climatic disruptions might make conflict more likely. But that hardly means that conflict is inevitable in a warmer world. After all, the 2000s were the warmest decade on record, but they also managed to be “the least conflict-ridden decade since the 1970s.”
See the full article (Washington Post, Brad Plumer, 8/5/13)
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Rise in Violence 'Linked to Climate Change'
Shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world, a study suggests. US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war.
See the full article (BBC, Rebecca Morelle, 8/2/13)
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Despite Administration Promises, Few Signs of Change in Drone Wars
There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. And after Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis on Thursday that the United States was winding down the drone wars there, officials back in Washington quickly contradicted him.
See the full article (New York Times, Mark Mazzetti and Mark Landler, 8/2/13)*NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Video Game Pits China against Japan Over Island Dispute
A new online video game has just been released in China which invites players to fight Japan over a group of islands whose sovereignty is disputed by the Chinese and Japanese governments. The islands are known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China and millions of gamers have already registered to play "Glorious Mission".
See the full article (BBC, 8/1/13)
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Snowden Granted Asylum in Russia, Leaves Moscow Airport
On Thursday afternoon, Edward Snowden, who is wanted in the U.S. for leaking the secrets of American intelligence agencies, received asylum in Russia for one year and left the transit zone of the Moscow airport where he had been marooned for five weeks.
See the full article (Time, Simon Shuster, 8/1/13)
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People's Radio: Tried and True Technology Meets New Innovation
There's an armed conflict in your country and violence is escalating. You don't have access to the Internet and your mobile phone is unable to connect to a network. Perpetrators capitalize on this and try to isolate you further by preventing journalists and humanitarian aid organizations from entering the area where you live. This is the reality for many of the 1.5 billion people who are living in countries affected by violent conflict today.
See the full article (Huffington Post, Karoline Kirchhübel, 8/1/13))
Click to read "Lightning Rounds Spark Tech Solutions for Media Dangers" an Olive Branch Post by Michael Dwyer.
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Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup,
which includes a special section on Internet and social media.

Did we miss anything?

 

 


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USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, August 1 - 7, 2013

Media and Journalism

Internet and Social Media

What's New from PeaceMedia

**Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup.**


Media and Journalism

An Empowering 'Peace Journalism' Program for Young Afghans - Part I of a Series
In 2010, [Afghan journalist Emal Haidary] co-created Afghan Voices, a six-month "peace journalism" training program. In addition to learning to tell stories through pictures, video and text -- the focus is mainly on video because Afghanistan's media is mostly oral -- the program includes seminars on conflict analysis and transformation to update the concepts of balance, fairness and accuracy in reporting.
See the full article (Huffington Post, Rachel Kohn, 8/7/13)
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Crackling Over the Radio, Spotter’s Voice Guides Syrian Rebels
Virtually every rebel in the region listens for it; many listen intently, in the way of people whose lives can depend on news. The Watchtower — Burj al-Moraqaba has become a real-time narrator of Syrian military movements across a large and unpredictable battlefield.
See the full article (New York Times, C. J. Chivers, 8/6/13)*NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Wire Photographer Spotlight: Conflict and Conscience in Gaza by Ali Ali
The eight-day Israeli war in 2012 was different for me because my family home was shelled while I was working. My father and my sister were injured, and words simply can’t express the feeling I had when I learned my family was in danger. Now my family and I were part of the very news that my colleagues and I were covering.
See the full article (Time, Ali Noureldine, 8/6/13)
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Three Journalists Murdered in the Philippines
Three journalists were murdered in the Philippines within 48 hours last week. Photographer Mario Sy was shot dead at his home in the city of General Santos. Sy, a freelancer, worked for several publications. The killer's motive remains unclear, but Sapol publisher John Paul Jubelag speculated that Sy's murder could have been related to his contribution to a report on drug trafficking earlier in the year.
See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 8/5/13)
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Africa's Media Voices Need Wider Support
Last year, under sweeping anti-terror laws used to silence critics of a repressive regime, [Eskinder Nega, one of Ethiopia's best-known journalists] was given an 18-year sentence for daring to write about the Arab Spring and suggesting something similar could happen in his own country without reform.
See the full article (Guardian, Ian Birrell, 8/4/13)
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Egyptian Journalist Freed from UAE Detention
An Egyptian journalist detained for more than a month in the United Arab Emirates has been released, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Anas Fouda, an editor with the MBC media group that owns Al-Arabiya television, was barred from leaving Dubai's international airport on June 28 Fouda told the CPJ he could have been targeted in part because his writings supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whose government was ousted in a popularly backed military coup last month.
See the full article (Aljazeera, 7/4/13)
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Muffled Voices
When Liban Abdullahi Farah was gunned down in Galkayo, a city in the central province of Puntland, in July, he became the sixth journalist to die violently in Somalia this year. This comes as a media law just introduced in Mogadishu, the capital, forces journalists to reveal their sources, curtailing whatever press freedom existed previously.
See the full article (Economist, 8/3/13)
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Internet and Social Media

Pakistani Artists Challenging YouTube Ban
YouTube is a source of entertainment and news for billions around the world, but Pakistanis have lost access to the video site for almost a year after clips of the controversial film "Innocence of Muslims" prompted a government ban. That ban will be challenged for the first time in court Wednesday.
See the full article (BBC, Jinjoo Lee, 8/7/13)
[Return to top] | [Return to section]

U.S. Plans to Monitor Afghanistan Relief Projects Remotely
As the U.S. military presence dwindles in Afghanistan, officials are finalizing a $200 million plan to use smartphones, GPS-enabled cameras and satellite imagery to monitor relief projects that will continue in areas deemed too remote or unsafe for Americans to visit. It is a risky strategy, say experts and watchdogs, because the U.S. Agency for International Development has been chastised for past oversight failures in Afghanistan and has never used the technology to monitor projects on so grand a scale.
See the full article (Richmond Times Dispatch, 8/6/13)
Click to read about "How We Missed the Story, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan" a USIP book by Roy Gutman.
[Return to top] | [Return to section]

From North Korea With Love: A Tablet With No Internet Access
The Samjiyon tablet computer, it is safe to say, is no threat to the iPad. [It] more notable for what it lacks: YouTube, Gmail, Wi-Fi, even access to the Internet - at least, the Internet that most of the world knows. Samjiyon is a North Korean brand, if that is the right word for the labels affixed to electronics in the world's most hard-line communist country.
See the full article (New York Times, Eric Pfanner, 8/2/13)*NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
[Return to top] | [Return to section]

Bradley Manning: Whistleblower or Traitor?
US soldier Bradley Manning has been convicted of espionage for leaking thousands of classified documents in the biggest leak of secret government files in US history. Some 700,000 documents were passed to the anti-secrecy site Wikileaks, including US diplomatic cables and classified battlefield reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
See the full article (Aljazeera, Delphine Halgand, 8/1/13)
[Return to top] | [Return to section]

People's Radio: Tried and True Technology Meets New Innovation
There's an armed conflict in your country and violence is escalating. You don't have access to the Internet and your mobile phone is unable to connect to a network. Perpetrators capitalize on this and try to isolate you further by preventing journalists and humanitarian aid organizations from entering the area where you live. This is the reality for many of the 1.5 billion people who are living in countries affected by violent conflict today. It is a critical international problem, which many people have little or no experience dealing with.
See the full article (Huffington Post, Karoline Kirchhübel, 8/1/13)
Click to read "Lightning Rounds Spark Tech Solutions for Media Dangers" an Olive Branch Post by Michael Dwyer.
[Return to top] | [Return to section]

 

 

What's New from PeaceMedia

"Using Communications Technology for Peacebuilding" - Sisi ni Amani
Rachel Brown from Sisi Ni Amani presented at the Communications is Aid Event in Nairobi in December 2012, where humanitarian & development agencies convened with technology, media, civil society partners to learn more about how communicating with communities using media, new technology and traditional channels, can make development work and humanitarian response more inclusive, effective, efficient and transparent.
See the full video
[Return to top]

Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup.

Did we miss anything?

 

 


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