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Showing posts from June 18, 2017

Facebook to tackle online extremism and hate speech in new initiative

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Fiona Parker for Metro.co.uk Friday 23 Jun 2017 4:28 pm The programme aims to tackle online extremism (Picture: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty) A new joint-initiative, which aims to tackle online extremism and hate speech in the UK, has been launched by Facebook. Faith leaders and Brendan Cox, the widower of murdered MP Jo Cox are also backing the Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI). Inside leisure centre where Camden residents are staying after council estate evacuation The social media giant says ‘cutting-edge technology’ and ‘dynamic techniques’ will be used to remove content that violates Facebook’s Community Standards as quickly as possible. The company claims the OCCI will aim to provide training for NGOs to help them to monitor and respond to extremist content. The initiative will also provide marketing support for NGOs to undertake counter-speech campaigns through Facebook’s advertising credits. Jo Cox was murdered by Thomas Mair last year (Picture:

Myanmar releases nearly 70 more child soldiers: UNICEF

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There are no concrete figures on how many children are still among the estimated 500,000 troops that serve in Myanmar's military or the ethnic rebel armies it battles in the country's border regions. By:  AFP  | Yangon | Published:June 23, 2017 7:25 pm FILE PHOTO: Army soldiers carry weapons as they walk to the earthquake struck area in Tarlay, Myanmar. (Source: Reuters, file) Starry starry night: India gets its first astronomy resort Tubelight box office collection day 1: Salman Khan film collects Rs 21.15 cr Tubelight: Salman Khan tries to act but does he succeed? Myanmar’s military released 67 child soldiers Friday, its first discharge this year as part of a slow process to end decades of forced recruitment of underage fighters that began under the former junta. There are no concrete figures on how many children are still among the estimated 500,000 troops that serve in Myanmar’s military or the ethnic rebel armies it battles in the country’s border regions.

State Dept. to drop Iraq, Myanmar from list of worst child soldier offenders: report

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is slated to remove Iraq and Myanmar from a U.S. list of the world's worst offenders on the use of child soldiers,  Reuters  reported Friday. The State Department is reportedly moving ahead with the action, despite internal opposition from officials at the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which historically has had an influential voice on the matter. Reuters also said that Tillerson will not add Afghanistan to the list, despite internal calls to do so. One official told the news outlet that the decision appeared to have been made after pressure from the Pentagon to avoid complications in assisting the Iraqi and Afghan militaries. Human Rights Watch said removing Myanmar, known previously as Burma, would be a "completely premature and disastrous action that will effectively betray more children to continued servitude and rights abuses." Myanmar is of interest to the U.S. due to its border with Ch

ISIS group urges fanatics to carry out more lone-wolf and vehicle attacks 'without mercy' in the West in twisted posters showing a car crushing skulls

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Sick  ISIS  propagandists have called for more lone-wolf and vehicle attacks on the West in the final days of Ramadan. The pro-jihadi Nashir News Agency published an image showing a car running over skulls along with the caption 'run them over without mercy'. ISIS regularly uses its social media channels and anonymous messaging apps to call for attacks on the West, but the latest propaganda drive carries particular weight after a series of attacks across Europe.  Nashir News Agency, a pro-ISIS channel, has encouraged extremists to carry out more lone wolf and vehicle attacks on the West, saying 'run them over without mercy' It comes after a spate of vehicle attacks in London, which began with the Westminster Bridge attack back in March while killed five Four jihadis launched vehicle and knife attacks at Westminster Bridge and London Bridge in recent weeks, killing 13, while an attack on a mosque in Finsbury Park by Darren Osborne used the same IS

Iraqi official: ‘Liberating minds from extremism’ not just land is key

Iraqi parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri told Al Arabiya News Channel in an interview on Friday evening that “liberating minds from extremist ideology” is far more important than just freeing territories seized by ISIS. Jabouri made his comments after Saudi forces  foiled  one planned terrorist attack,  targeting the area surrounding Mecca’s Grand Mosque and worshipers. The Grand Mosque is the largest mosque in the world and surrounds Islam’s holiest place, the Kaaba, in the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. “We need a unified stance” to further support “moderate Islam” to tackle this ideology, Jabouri said, urging that Muslim youth needs to be a “invested” in. He said this extremist ideology needs to be “fully eliminated” since “it can find another place” after areas are “liberated.” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Thursday that the “liberation” of the city of Mosul from ISIS will be announced in a few days. Iraq launched an operation in October last year to lib

Trump slashes grant for group combating white extremism

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BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA – Christian Picciolini, founder of the group Life After Hate, a program dedicated to helping people leave white power groups, poses for a photo outside his Chicago home in January. | AP The Trump administration on Friday slashed $400,000 in federal funding for one of the few U.S. groups that combat white extremism but denied it is now focusing only on fighting radical Islamists. A grant announcement by the Department of Homeland Security eliminated funding for the Chicago-based Life After Hate, which was initially awarded the money in January during the closing days of the Obama administration. Life After Hate, run by a former skinhead, is among a handful of domestic programs dedicated to helping people leave white power groups including neo-Nazi organizations and the Ku Klux Klan, and it was the only one of the original grant recipients dedicated solely to combatting white extremism. The co-founder of Life After Hate, Christian Picciolini, said in an

Theresa May’s counter-extremism plan will create an incompetent police state

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After the terrorist attack in Finsbury Park, the Tories proposed a series of policies that would effectively police and criminalise thoughts. This will do nothing whatsoever to address what incubates violent extremism. Police investigate at the scene of the crime in Finsbury Park, 19 June 2017. Ik Aldama/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved. Theresa May’s response to the upsurge of violence that has hit Britain since the beginning of 2017 will fail for one fundamental reason: she refuses to hold her own government to account for its systematic incubation of extremism.  "As I said here two weeks ago, there has been far too much tolerance of extremism in our country over many years – and that means extremism of any kind, including Islamophobia,” said the Prime Minister, hours after a 47-aged man, Darren Osborne, ploughed a van into Muslim worshippers outside the Finsbury Park mosque. This was the fourth terrorist attack in the UK over the last three months. The first was the a

Funding the Kashmir unrest: The big nexus revealed

Vicky Nanjappa Published: Saturday, June 24, 2017, 5:50 [IST] The Enforcement Directorate filed a chargesheet in a money laundering case against terror groups and separatists operating in Kashmir and Pakistan. The ED named the likes of Hafiz Saeed, the chief of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, it did not take the names of any separatist leader. Hafiz Saeed The ED chargesheet comes close on the heels of a National Investigation Agency probe into the funds being received by separatists and terrorists in the Valley to fund the unrest. This is a continuation of the NIA probe, an ED officer informed. We will now scan the bank records and also the money exchange that has taken place, the officer also said. The NIA had found that terrorists had been raising money through cross-border trade and also the sale of California almonds. The ED is a specialised agency to track money laundering and transfer of funds. The NIA which will probe the larger conspiracy would rely on the ED's investi

Mosul is Falling, But Will it Stand?

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BANGUI — A new peace deal between the Bangui government and 13 major rebel groups in the Central African Republic is being met with criticism and skepticism domestically. The agreement signed Monday in Rome promised an immediate cease-fire in exchange for political representation for the rebels. The new accord followed a series of peace deals signed by armed groups in the CAR during 2014 and 2015. All fell apart. "As one of the armed group representatives said, 'We have signed a good paper,' " said Igor Acko, the U.S. Institute of Peace's national program specialist in Bangui. "But the only worry is that it can remain just a 'good paper.' " Acko received word of the new deal while in Bambari in central CAR, and said he went directly to members of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic, one of the country's major armed groups. The militia members told him they were not aware of the deal or its contents. "So th

In Iraq, Children Dying, Suffering in 'One of the Most Brutal Wars'

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“My son Momin liked to play with his spinning top all the time,” says Zamin Makhool, 28, sitting on the floor of her sweltering tent with wet concrete floors in a refugee camp near Mosul. “He was four years old and he was carrying his top when it happened.” She had put Mayada, her nine-month-old daughter, down for a late morning nap when she heard the first blast. It was last December, and her neighborhood was still firmly held by Islamic State (IS) militants. Makhool ran to the door and saw parts of a building crash into the street. After losing two children in the war with Islamic State, Zamin and Ibrahim Makhool's only remaining daughter, Amani, speaks of her old home fondly while living in a desert refugee camp outside Mosul. "It was perfect," she says. "I want to go home," in Hammam Alil, Iraq on June 21, 2017. The next strike hit her house, leaving it in a pile of rubble and a hole three meters deep. Neighbors found the body of four-year-old

US strikes killed 500 civilians in Syria last month: Monitor

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People walk past a building reportedly targeted by US warplanes in the Syrian city of Raqqah. (Photo by AFP) A London-based monitor says US airstrikes on two Syrian provinces killed 472 civilians last month, more than double a previous 30-day toll. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday the period between May 23 and June 23 saw the highest civilian death toll in US airstrikes since they began in September 2014. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said 222 civilians, including 84 children, were killed in the Dayr al-Zawr. Another 250 civilians, including 53 children, were killed in Raqqah province, he added.  The new deaths brought the overall civilian toll from the US-led aerial attacks to 1,953, including 456 children and 333 women, the French news agency quoted him as saying. The previous deadliest 30-day period was between April 23 and May 23 this year that claimed 225 civilian lives.  The increase has led human rights groups to question whether

Russia fires cruise missiles at Daesh in Syria, doesn’t inform US

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Russian vessels deployed to the Mediterranean have fired cruise missiles at Daesh targets inside Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry says. The missiles were fired from two Russian warships and a submarine at targets inside the western Syrian province of Hama on Friday, it said. “As a result of the surprise mass missile strike, command points were destroyed and also large stores of weapons and ammunition of the IS (Daesh) terrorists in the area of Aqirbat in the Hama Province,” the ministry said. It added that Russian planes then carried out aerial strikes that “destroyed the remainder of the IS fighters and their facilities.” Russia has also been conducting an aerial bombardment campaign against terrorist positions in Syria on a request by Damascus. Russia has been conducting cruise missile strikes and aerial attacks against terrorist positions in Syria on a request from the Syrian government. Russia ‘nearly 100 percent certain Baghdadi has been killed’ Meanwhile on Fri

Hate crimes surge 500% in Manchester after bombing

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A woman walks past a poster displaying a message of defiance to the terror attack of May 22 at the Manchester Arena, in Manchester, northwest England on May 31, 2017. (Photo by AFP) Police figures show that Islamophobic hate crimes in the British city of Manchester have soared by more than 500 percent following the terrorist attack that claimed 22 lives there.  The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) revealed a 505-percent rise in Islamophobic incidents in the northwestern city, with a total of 224 cases of anti-Muslim hate crimes reported in the month after the May 22 bombing attack, compared with 37 in the same period in 2016. Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said hate crime reports in Manchester had returned in recent days to similar levels as before the attack but warned that the true number of incidents could be even higher due to under-reporting. “Greater Manchester has a diverse population, with people from different faiths and backgrounds, and this is something that we a