World

Thousands of Indians have taken to the streets to join nationwide protests against continuing sexual assaults of women and girls, including that of an eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and brutally murdered inside a temple in Jammu area of Indian-administered Kashmir.

"Punish the guilty" was the rallying cry on Sunday in New Delhi, Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore and other cities, according to India's NDTV.

"Small little girls are being raped every day and the way this time it has happened, that people actually came and supported these rapists, this is (new) heights and this is the time that we should take it as an alarm," Ved Amrita, a protester in New Delhi, told Associated Press news agency.

Asifa Bano, from the Bakerwal Muslim community, was gang-raped and murdered in Kathua district near Jammu, her case causing public outrage after lawyers tried to prevent state police from filing a charge sheet last week.

The girl was heavily sedated, kept in a Hindu temple, and gang-raped by at least three men over the course of four days in mid-January, the police said in the charge sheet made public on Tuesday.

She was later strangled, and her body was found in the forest near the temple. One of the three suspected rapists was a policeman.

Leaders from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including two ministers from the Jammu and Kashmir government, organised rallies in defence of the accused. The ministers were forced to resign on Saturday amid widespread public anger.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised justice for both rape victims, but critics said it was "too little, too late". Modi's BJP party controls the government both in Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.

The body of another girl who had been raped was found in Surat, Gujarat state, on April 9. Police said on Sunday that they had not yet been able to establish the identity of the young girl, whose body with "86 injury marks" was found in the city's suburbs.

Many protesters expressed particular anger at India's ruling Hindu nationalist party for initially siding with the accused in the Kashmir case. The young victim was Muslim while the accused are Hindu.

Source : Al Jazeera

Facebook is displaying advertisements on group pages operated by overseas wildlife traffickers illegally selling the body parts of threatened animals.

This screen grab from a Facebook group and photographed on a computer screen in Washington, Monday, April 9, 2018, shows what appears to be a bucket of tiger teeth offered for sale on a Facebook page. In a complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, wildlife preservation advocates allege that Facebook's failure to stop illicit traders utilizing its platform for illegal activity violates the social network's responsibilities as a publicly traded company. (AP Photo)

 WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook is displaying advertisements for well-known American corporations on group pages operated by overseas wildlife traffickers illegally selling the body parts of threatened animals, including elephant ivory, rhino horn and tiger teeth.

In a secret complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, wildlife preservation advocates allege that Facebook's failure to stop illicit traders using its service for illegal activity violates the social network's responsibilities as a publicly traded company.

Facebook didn't respond to requests for comment. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was expected to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday about other issues.

The complaint, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press, was initially filed in August on behalf of an undercover informant represented by the National Whistleblower Center, a non-profit legal advocacy group. The identity of the informant, who recorded video of face-to-face meetings with wildlife traffickers set up over Facebook, has been kept confidential out of safety concerns.

The SEC declined to comment Monday on whether the whistleblower complaint triggered an investigation of the company.

"Facebook is not an innocent bystander to these crimes," said Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. "Facebook sold advertisements on the very pages the illegal ivory was being marketed."

A Facebook page engaged in selling items made out of ivory.

 Facebook is one of 20 technology companies that last month joined the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, which was organized by Google and the World Wildlife Fund. Weeks after the March 7 announcement, an AP reporter was able to see scores of internationally banned wildlife products for sale in public and private Facebook groups, most based in Southeast Asia.

Among the items available were belts made from what appeared to be the fur of Bengal tigers, a critically endangered species with only about 2,500 still living in the wild. Also advertised were horns from black rhinos, a species heavily targeted by poachers with little more than 5,000 still roaming Africa.

Negotiations over price and delivery are often initiated by Facebook Messenger. Instagram and WhatsApp, two social media platforms also owned by Facebook, are also sometimes used by traffickers.

The allegations tying Facebook to the illegal trafficking of wildlife are surfacing while the company is already scrambling to recover from a privacy scandal that has wiped out $79 billion in shareholder wealth during the past three weeks.

 The crisis stems from revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm connected to President Donald Trump's successful 2016 campaign, had exploited weaknesses in Facebook's privacy controls to collect personal information about 87 million people without their consent.

Zuckerberg will try to reverse the backlash against the company when he opens two days of testimony in Congress. His appearance will give lawmakers the opportunity to grill him about the Cambridge Analytica episode, as well as evidence that Russian agents manipulated Facebook's network to spread false information that may have swayed the 2016 election.

The SEC complaint may trigger other lines of inquiry about how much of Facebook's annual revenue of $41 billion has been generated by ads running on pages featuring illegal activity, such as the sale of elephant ivory and tiger teeth.

Facebook hasn't disclosed that some of its revenue may be tied to illegal trafficking in wildlife in regulatory filings that are supposed to outline various risks and other threats that could crimp its profits or stock price.

Trafficking investigators say they have seen no drop off in the illegal products offered for sale on Facebook after prior public pledges by the company to crack down. They are calling on federal security regulators to force Facebook to immediately freeze accounts being used by illegal traffickers and cooperate with international law enforcement to identify the individuals involved for prosecution.

"The amount of ivory being traded on Facebook is horrifying," said Gretchen Peters, executive director of the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime, which has analyzed online groups where wildlife goods are being marketed. "I have looked at thousands of posts containing ivory, and I am convinced that Facebook is literally facilitating the extinction of the elephant species."

Myanmar says it has repatriated the first family of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, despite a UN warning that it is not safe to return.

Some 700,000 Rohingya have fled across the border to escape a brutal military campaign that began last August.

The UN has accused Myanmar of "ethnic cleansing" - a charge it denies.

Myanmar says five members of a family arrived at a "repatriation camp" on Saturday, and were provided with supplies and ID cards.

If confirmed, this would be the first group of Rohingya repatriated to Myanmar since the crisis began.

The Myanmar government says it has been engaged in a justified campaign against Rohingya militants in Rakhine state.

Earlier this month, it sentenced seven soldiers to prison terms for involvement in the killing of 10 Rohingya men.

Refugees fleeing the country into neighbouring Bangladesh, however, said that such acts were widespread - describing indiscriminate killings, rape, and the burning of villages.

Source : BBC

The world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030, according to a shocking analysis that has lead to a cross-party call for action.

World leaders are being warned that the continued accumulation of wealth at the top will fuel growing distrust and anger over the coming decade unless action is taken to restore the balance.

An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030. Even taking the financial crash into account, and measuring their assets over a longer period, they would still hold more than half of all wealth.

Since 2008, the wealth of the richest 1% has been growing at an average of 6% a year – much faster than the 3% growth in wealth of the remaining 99% of the world’s population. Should that continue, the top 1% would hold wealth equating to $305tn (£216.5tn) – up from $140tn today.

Analysts suggest wealth has become concentrated at the top because of recent income inequality, higher rates of saving among the wealthy, and the accumulation of assets. The wealthy also invested a large amount of equity in businesses, stocks and other financial assets, which have handed them disproportionate benefits.

New polling by Opinium suggests that voters perceive a major problem with the influence exerted by the very wealthy. Asked to select a group that would have the most power in 2030, most (34%) said the super-rich, while 28% opted for national governments. In a sign of falling levels of trust, those surveyed said they feared the consequences of wealth inequality would be rising levels of corruption (41%) or the “super-rich enjoying unfair influence on government policy” (43%).

The research was commissioned by Liam Byrne, the former Labour cabinet minister, as part of a gathering of MPs, academics, business leaders, trade unions and civil society leaders focused on addressing the problem.

The actor Michael Sheen, who has opted to scale back his Hollywood career to campaign against high-interest credit providers, was among those supporting the calls.

The hope is to create pressure for global action when leaders of the G20 group of nations gather for a summit in Buenos Aires in November. Byrne, who organised the first OECD global parliamentary conference on inclusive growth, said he believed global inequality was “now at a tipping point”.

“If we don’t take steps to rewrite the rules of how our economies work, then we condemn ourselves to a future that remains unequal for good,” he said. “That’s morally bad, and economically disastrous, risking a new explosion in instability, corruption and poverty.”

In a sign of the concern about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of so few, the move has gained support from across the political divide.

George Freeman, the Tory MP and former head of the prime minister’s policy board, said: “While mankind has never seen such income inequality, it is also true that mankind has never experienced such rapid increases in living standards. Around the world billions of people are being lifted out of poverty at a pace never seen before. But the extraordinary concentration of global wealth today – fuelled by the pace of technological innovation and globalisation – poses serious challenges.

“If the system of capitalist liberal democracy which has triumphed in the west is to pass the big test of globalisation – and the assault from radical Islam as well as its own internal pressures from post-crash austerity – we need some new thinking on ways to widen opportunity, share ownership and philanthropy. Fast.”

Demands for action from the group include improving productivity to ensure wages rise and reform of capital markets to promote greater equality.

Danny Dorling, professor of geography at the University of Oxford, said the scenario in which the super-rich accumulated even more wealth by 2030 was a realistic one.

“Even if the income of the wealthiest people in the world stops rising dramatically in the future, their wealth will still grow for some time,” he said. “The last peak of income inequality was in 1913. We are near that again, but even if we reduce inequality now it will continue to grow for one to two more decades.”

(The Guardian)

Russia on Saturday called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council as Moscow said it would consider supplying S-300 missile systems to Syria following U.S.-led strikes.

"Russia convenes an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss aggressive actions of the U.S. and its allies," President Vladimir Putin said in a statement published on the Kremlin website.

"The current escalation of the situation around Syria has a devastating impact on the whole system of international relations," he added.

U.S., British and French forces pounded Syria with more than 100 missiles early on Saturday in response to a poison gas attack that killed dozens of people last week, in the biggest intervention by Western powers against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Putin said the U.S. actions in Syria made the humanitarian catastrophe worse and caused pain for civilians.

"Russia in the most serious way condemns the attack on Syria where Russian military servicemen help the legitimate government to fight terrorism," Putin said.

Missiles for Syria

Moscow may consider supplying S-300 surface to-air missile systems to Syria and "other countries", Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi told a televised briefing on Saturday.

Russia had "refused" supplying those missiles to Syria a few years ago, he added, "taking into account the pressing request of some of our Western partners".

Following the U.S.-led strikes, however, "we consider it possible to return to examination of this issue not only in regard to Syria but to other countries as well," Rudskoi said.

Syria's air defense system, which mostly consists of systems made in the Soviet Union, has intercepted 71 of the missiles fired on Saturday by the U.S., British and French forces, he added.

"In the past year and a half Russia has fully restored Syria's air defense system and continues to further upgrade it," Rudskoi said.

Source : CNBC

A sperm bank in China is demanding potential donors are good Communists, as Beijing's campaign to increase its control over people's lives extends to before they are born.

The Third Hospital of Peking University is asking donors to answer the party's call before they hand over semen in a six-week donation drive launched this week.

Demand for sperm is booming in China since the one-child policy was axed in 2016, but there have been concerns over quality levels.

The Beijing hospital, which is linked to China's most prestigious university, listed a series of requirements for potential donors, including having no serious diseases or "obvious signs of hair loss".

It also said that men between the ages of 20 to 45 who wish to donate must "love the socialist motherland, support the leadership of the Communist Party, be loyal to the party's cause and be decent, law-abiding, and free of political problems."

A storm has damaged two minarets located at different entry gates of the iconic Taj Mahal in the northern Indian city of Agra.

Officials said that winds blowing at 130kmh (80mph) caused the 12ft (4m) pillars to collapse.

The four longer minarets that surround the main structure remain intact.

The 17th Century mausoleum attracts about 12,000 visitors a day and is one of the world's most popular tourist attractions. One of the destroyed minarets was located at the royal gate where tourists often get their first glimpse of the monument.

The other was located at the southern gate. Authorities said that work had begun to restore the damaged structures.

South Korea’s former president Park Geun-Hye has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for abuse of power and corruption, in a scandal that exposed webs of double-dealing between political leaders and the country’s conglomerates, and the power of a Rasputin-like figure at the top of government.

The 66-year-old was not present for the ruling on Friday, citing sickness, and has boycotted the proceedings since October. Park has one week to appeal the litany of charges against her that range from corruption to maintain a blacklist of artists.

Prosecutors had sought a 30-year jail sentence and a £80m fine on charges that also included bribery and coercion. In a rare move, the court in Seoul decided to broadcast her trial live, a move Park objected to.

The court found that Park had colluded with her long-time friend Choi Soon-sil to solicit bribes from South Korean conglomerates including Samsung and retail giant Lotte in exchange for policy favours. Prosecutors charged Park with 18 separate crimes and accused her of working with Choi in taking bribes of at least £25m and pressuring companies to fund nonprofits run by Choi’s family. She was also accused of leaking classified information.

Source : The Guardian

Pakistan’s Supreme Court dashed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s hopes of returning to power on Friday, ruling that the disqualification handed to him last year in the Panama Papers Case was for life.

A report said the disqualification under Article 62 (1)(f) of Pakistan’s constitution is for life. Article 62(1)(f), which sets the precondition for a member of Pakistan’s parliament to be ‘sadiq’ and ‘ameen’ (honest and righteous), was the one under which Sharif was disqualified as PM last year.

Sharif, a three-time prime minister, was ousted by the judiciary in July 2017 over corruption charges which he is currently facing in Pakistani courts.

Friday's ruling addressed an ambiguity over Sharif's disqualification and whether he was barred from office for life or a specific period.

Sharif has denied any wrongdoing and has blamed "hidden hands" for his dismissal.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Jahangir Tareen was among the other lawmakers also disqualified under the article.

A federal judge has ordered former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil to surrender to the authorities by Friday afternoon to start serving a 12-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction.

The warrant was issued hours after the country’s top court rejected da Silva’s bid to remain free while appeals of the conviction were considered.

A federal judge, Sérgio Moro, wrote in the arrest warrant that da Silva would be held in a special cell, outside of the general prison population, in consideration of the “dignity of the office he held.” da Silva will be allowed to surrender to the federal police in the southern city of Curitiba, where his trial was held, Judge Moro said. He set Friday at 5 p.m. as the deadline.

da Silva’s Workers’ Party remained defiant on Thursday, vowing that he would still run for a third term in October, despite the Supreme Federal Court’s 6-to-5 ruling early Thursday that he could not remain free pending further appeals.

da Silva’s imminent imprisonment also sends a chilling message to other prominent political figures caught up in corruption investigations. The threat of jail time has been one of the most important tools in the large-scale investigation known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, which has ensnared not only da Silva, but also dozens of business and political leaders, including President Michel Temer.

Last July, da Silva was convicted on corruption and money laundering charges and sentenced to almost 10 years in prison. The Supreme Federal Court, in denying Mr. da Silva’s request to remain free, upheld a 2016 ruling that allows trial judges to jail defendants after an initial appeal has been rejected.

Source : The New York Times

Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon said any U.S. missiles fired at Syria would be shot down and the launch sites targeted, a step that could trigger a major escalation in the Syrian war.

Russian ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin (L) stands with the head of Lebanon's Higher Relief Council (HRC) Ibrahim Bashir upon the arrival of a Russian aeroplane carrying humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, at Beirut international airport April 3, 2013. REUTERS/Sharif Karim.

Russian Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin, in comments broadcast on Tuesday evening, said he was referring to a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian armed forces chief of staff.

The Russian military said on March 13 that it would respond to any U.S. strike on Syria, targeting any missiles and launchers involved in such an attack. Russia is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally.

The United States and its allies are considering whether to hit Syria over a suspected poison gas attack that medical relief organizations say killed dozens of people in the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus on Saturday.

“If there is a strike by the Americans, then...the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired,” Zasypkin told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, speaking in Arabic. He also said a clash “should be ruled out and therefore we are ready to hold negotiations”.

Russia and the United States blocked attempts by each other in the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to set up international investigations into chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday canceled a planned trip to Latin America later this week to focus instead on responding to the Syria incident, the White House said. Trump had on Monday warned of a quick, forceful response once responsibility for the Syria attack was established.

(Reuters)

Facebook Inc. scans the links and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, and reads chats when they’re flagged to moderators, making sure the content abides by the company’s rules. If it doesn’t, it gets blocked or taken down.

The company confirmed the practice after an interview published earlier this week with Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg raised questions about Messenger’s practices and privacy. Zuckerberg told Vox’s Ezra Klein a story about receiving a phone call related to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Facebook had detected people trying to send sensational messages through the Messenger app, he said.

“In that case, our systems detect what’s going on,” Zuckerberg said. “We stop those messages from going through.”

Some people reacted with concern on Twitter: Was Facebook reading messages more generally? Facebook has been under scrutiny in recent weeks over how it handles users’ private data and the revelation struck a nerve. Messenger doesn’t use the data from the scanned messages for advertising, the company said, but the policy may extend beyond what Messenger users expect.

The company told Bloomberg that while Messenger conversations are private, Facebook scans them and uses the same tools to prevent abuse there that it does on the social network more generally. All content must abide by the same "community standards." People can report posts or messages for violating those standards, which would prompt a review by the company’s “community operations” team. Automated tools can also do the work.

“For example, on Messenger, when you send a photo, our automated systems scan it using photo matching technology to detect known child exploitation imagery or when you send a link, we scan it for malware or viruses,” a Facebook Messenger spokeswoman said in a statement. “Facebook designed these automated tools so we can rapidly stop abusive behavior on our platform.”

Messenger used to be part of Facebook’s main service, before it was spun off into a separate application in 2014. Facebook’s other major chat app, WhatsApp, encrypts both ends of its users’ communications, so that not even WhatsApp can see it -- a fact that’s made it more secure for users, and more difficult for lawmakers wanting information in investigations. Messenger also has an encrypted option, but users have to turn it on.

The company updated its data policy and proposed new terms of service on Wednesday to clarify that Messenger and Instagram use the same rules as Facebook. “We better explain how we combat abuse and investigate suspicious activity, including by analyzing the content people share,” Facebook said in a blog post.

Facebook is on the defensive after revelations that private information from about 50 million users wound up in the hands of political ad-data firm Cambridge Analytica without their consent. Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before the House next week and is holding a conference call on Wednesday afternoon to discuss changes to Facebook privacy policies. (Follow the call on the TOPLive blog.)

The company is working to make its privacy policies clearer, but still ends up with gaps between what it says users have agreed to, and what users think they actually agreed to.

The Messenger scanning systems “are very similar to those that other internet companies use today,” the company said.

(Bloomberg)