News Roundup Archive

Thursday, October 31, 2013

USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

 

United States Institute of Peace

 

 

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, October 24 - 30, 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

Egyptian Prosecutor Censors Journalists
An Egyptian prosecutor has banned journalists from reporting on a legal complaint filed by a former presidential candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, who claimed that last year's elections were fixed. According to a judicial source cited by the website Aswat Masriya the prosecutor made the decision after Shafiq's attorney argued that the election results were "manipulated."
See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 10/29/13)
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New Guidebook Tells Reporters How Not to Write About Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A new reporter’s guidebook released on October 23 aims to balance media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a field that often spirals into semantic mudslinging at the cost of clear news coverage. The Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) published Use With Care: A Reporter’s Glossary of Loaded Language in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict after a year of joint work between six anonymous Israeli and Palestinian media veterans.
See the full article (Daily Beast, Alice Su, 10/28/13)
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Iran Bans Reformist Newspaper over Article Questioning Shia Islam
As Iran engages with the international community, its government, led by President Hassan Rouhani, has taken great strides to convince Western leaders that it is open to change. But within the country, Rouhani and his government have had to strike a pragmatic balance between allowing some freedoms and the keeping in line with the country’s conservative rulers. That was made evident this week as Iran's press watchdog imposed a ban on the Iranian reformist newspaper Bahar for publishing an article seen by critics as questioning the beliefs of Shia Islam, Iranian media reported Monday.
See the full article (Aljazeera, 10/28/13)
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Egyptian Satirist Bassem Youssef Upsets All Sides on Return to TV
The Egyptian broadcaster CBC has distanced itself from its star satirist, Bassem Youssef, after he criticised both the army-backed government and the Islamist regime it succeeded in the first episode of his long-delayed new series. Youssef's widely watched show, which rose to global prominence last year for lampooning the former president, Mohamed Morsi, had been off air since before Morsi's overthrow in July.
See the full article (Guardian, Patrick Kingsley, 10/28/13)
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Somali Journalist Killed by Attackers, Others Beaten
A Somali journalist died in the hospital on Saturday after being attacked by gunmen on Tuesday, his colleague told the Associated Press Sunday, bringing the number of reporters killed in Somalia this year to seven. Mohamed Mohamud, nicknamed "Tima'ade," was shot more than five times, by unidentified gunmen on his way to work, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
See the full article (Reuters, Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar, 10/27/13)
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Moroccan Editor Jailed on Terrorism Charges Released on Bail, Still Faces Charges
A prominent Moroccan editor facing charges of abetting terrorism for reporting on an al-Qaida video was released on bail Friday after a month in prison, according to supporters and his lawyer. Ali Anouzla left Sale prison, near the capital Rabat, and was greeted by a crowd of supporters and journalists, but he made no statements.
See the full article (AP, 10/25/13)
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Westgate Attack: Kenyan Police Warn Journalists
Kenya's police chief has warned journalists over their coverage of last month's attack on the Westgate shopping centre, following reports of looting by soldiers. David Kimaiyo said reporters should not "provoke propaganda" or "incite Kenyans" in their coverage. CCTV footage has been leaked on local media which appears to show soldiers taking items from a supermarket.
See the full article (BBC, 10/24/13)
Click to read "Al-Shabab's Kenya Attack - Avoiding the Pitfalls of a Military Response" an Olive Branch Post by Dominik Balthasar.
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Internet and Social Media

Kuwaiti Blogger Faces 10 Years in Jail for "Insulting" Tweets
The Kuwaiti appeals court has upheld a 10-year prison sentence for a blogger's comments on Twitter. It confirmed the conviction and sentence of Hamad al-Naqi, who was found guilty in June of insulting the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, of provoking sectarian tensions, of insulting the Prophet Mohammed and the prophet's wife and companions, mocking Islam, and misusing his mobile phone to disseminate the objectionable comments.
See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 10/29/13)
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Syrian Hackers Target Obama's Twitter, Facebook Posts
The pro-Assad group Syrian Electronic Army claims it hacked the Twitter and Facebook accounts of U.S. President Barack Obama. In an exclusive email to Mashable sent from an account believed to belong to the SEA on Monday, the group notified us of the hack, but would not provide details about how it accomplished it. It appears the SEA did not actually access Obama's social media accounts, but altered the links in the posts by tampering with the URL shortener service for BarackObama.com.
See the full article (Mashable, Fran Berkman, 10/29/13)
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Vietnam Convicts Facebook Blogger Who Criticized Government
A blogger who posted criticism of the Vietnamese government on Facebook (FB) was handed a suspended 15-month prison sentence by a court in the southern province of Long An. Dinh Nhat Uy, 30, said he was convicted of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state. He used Facebook to campaign for the release of his younger brother, imprisoned for using social media for political commentary, according to Human Rights Watch. Uy, who was arrested June 15, faced a three-year prison sentence.
See the full article (Bloomberg News, 10/29/13)
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Punishments Reduced, but Burma’s Harsh Online Law Remains
Burma’s restrictive Electronic Transactions Law, under which political dissidents were in the past imprisoned for sending or receiving “detrimental” e-mails, remains in place for now, though work continues to have the code revised or replaced. This week Rangoon parliamentarian Thein Nyunt won the consent of fellow Lower House MPs to have punishments under the law reduced, with lawmakers voting to replace prison sentences with a system of fines.
See the full article (Irrawaddy, Simon Roughneen, 10/24/13)
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What's New from PeaceMedia

"Leymah Gbowee: Unlock the intelligence, passion, greatness of girls" - TEDTalks
Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee has two powerful stories to tell -- of her own life's transformation, and of the untapped potential of girls around the world. Can we transform the world by unlocking the greatness of girls?
See the full video
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USIP's Science, Technology & Peacebuilding Roundup

 

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Science, Technology and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, October 24 - 30, 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.**


From Pakistan, Family Comes to Tell of Drone Strike’s Toll
What 13-year-old Zubair Ur Rehman remembers most about the day his grandmother was killed is how “particularly blue” the sky was in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan. Yes, just as New Yorkers say of 9/11. On Tuesday morning, Zubair, 9-year-old Nabila and their father, Rafiq Ur Rehman, told a handful of lawmakers that they were deliberately attacked anyway — the first time members of Congress had heard directly from survivors of an alleged U.S. drone strike.
See the full article (Washington Post, Melinda Henneberger, 10/29/13)
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Mobile Technology to Track Missing Children in SAARC Nations
Using mobile and GPS technologies, a SAARC body is trying to develop a digital system to track missing children at the regional level and combat cross-border trafficking. "We are now seriously looking at how digital technology can be applied to control cross-border trafficking. Hopefully after 2015, we will have an integrated system based on mobile or GPS technologies which can be applied in all the eight SAARC countries," said Rinchen Chophel, director general for the South Asia Initiative to End Violence Against Children (SAIEVAC) secretariat.
See the full article (Economic Times, 10/29/13)
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‘Spy Rocks’ Could Be the Military’s New Secret Weapon
Warfare technology has come a long way since the days of throwing stones, but that won’t keep the military from incorporating rocks into their arsenal of weapons. This week at the annual AUSA Army Meeting in Washington, D.C., Lockheed Martin showcased developments in their Surveillance technology called SPAN (Self-Powered Ad-hoc Network), a “covert, perpetually self-powered wireless sensor network” that can provide “unobtrusive, continuous surveillance” in units so small they can fit in a rock.
See the full article (Wired, Allen McDuffee, 10/28/13)
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FraudCracker Seeks to Ease Fraud Whistleblowing
South African startup FraudCracker is aiming to combat fraud with its online technology solution to tackle the large amount of money lost every year through internal fraud and international fraud rings. Statistics show that on average companies lose seven per cent of their annual turnover to fraud. The product helps companies identify and combat fraud while keeping whistleblowers secure.
See the full article (Humanipo, 10/28/13)
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Officials Alert Foreign Services that Snowden has Documents on Their Cooperation with U.S.
U.S. officials are alerting some foreign intelligence services that documents detailing their secret cooperation with the United States have been obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to government officials. Snowden, U.S. officials said, took tens of thousands of military intelligence documents, some of which contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the United States.
See the full article (Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima, 10/24/13)
Click to read "Awkward: Explaining Dialogue in Libya Amid U.S. Government Shutdown" an Olive Branch Post by Colette Rausch and Christina Murtaugh.
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What’s in Your Smartphone? Blood Electronics
Arming militias in a war-torn region of Africa? There’s an app for that. By now, just about everyone has heard of blood diamonds, but you may not know their close cousins: “conflict minerals.” They include metals such as gold, tantalum, tungsten and tin, used to fuel your smartphone’s vibration mode or help maintain your camera’s battery life.
See the full article (Politico, Eric Bradner, 10/24/13)
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Secret Memos Reveal Explicit Nature of U.S., Pakistan Agreement on Drones
Despite repeatedly denouncing the CIA’s drone campaign, top officials in Pakistan’s government have for years secretly endorsed the program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts, according to top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos obtained by The Washington Post. The files describe dozens of drone attacks in Pakis Melinda Henneberger Melinda Hennebergertan’s tribal region and include maps as well as before-and-after aerial photos of targeted compounds over a four-year stretch from late 2007 to late 2011 in which the campaign intensified dramatically.
See the full article (Washington Post, Greg Miller and Bob Woodward, 10/24/13)
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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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