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Facebook bans Myanmar military chief, others

Agencies
August 28, 2018

Yangon, Aug 28: Facebook has said that it is banning Myanmar's powerful military chief and 19 other individuals and organisations from its site to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation.

The social media giant was heavily criticized for permitting itself to be used to inflame ethnic and religious conflict in the country, particularly against minority Rohingya Muslims.

It has been accused of being lax in fighting online misinformation and manipulation in many countries, but Myanmar is one where it has been most closely tied to deadly violence.

Some 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine over the past year in response to a brutal counterinsurgency campaign by the military, which has been accused of massive human rights violations.

Critics accuse the military of carrying out ethnic cleansing, or even genocide, an allegation denied by the government, which says it was responding to attacks on security forces.

Facebook said yesterday it also targeted pages and accounts that pretended to provide independent news and opinion, while covertly promoting messages of Myanmar's military.

It said it was deleting 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account and 52 Facebook pages.

A separate report by investigators working for the UN's top human rights body, released yesterday, charged that "Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate, in a context where for most users Facebook is the internet."

"Although improved in recent months, Facebook's response has been slow and ineffective," said the report by the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, authorized by the UN Human Rights Council.

"The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined."

Four high-ranking officers and two military units targeted by Facebook were also put on a US government blacklist earlier this month for human rights abuses.

The sanctions block any property they own within the US and prohibit US citizens from engaging in transactions with them.

The US already maintains restrictions on visas, arms sales and assistance to Myanmar's military.

In June, the EU imposed similar sanctions on seven senior army and police officers, all of whom are on Facebook's blacklist.

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News Network
June 15,2020

Beijing, Jun 15: China is locking now ten more neighbourhoods in Beijing to try and contain the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak linked to a food market, authorities announced Monday.

City official Li Junjie said at a press conference that fresh cases had been found in a second wholesale market in northwestern Haidian district, and as a result, the market and nearby schools would be closed, and people living in ten communities around it placed under lockdown.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.

Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.

When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.

"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.

The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.

After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.

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News Network
May 12,2020

Washington, May 12: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation and cybersecurity experts believe Chinese hackers are trying to steal research on developing a vaccine against coronavirus, two newspapers reported Monday.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are planning to release a warning about the Chinese hacking as governments and private firms race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported.

The hackers are also targeting information and intellectual property on treatments and testing for COVID-19.

US officials alleged that the hackers are linked to the Chinese government, the reports say.

The official warning could come within days.

In Beijing Foreign Affairs ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian rejected the allegation, saying China firmly opposes all cyber attacks.

"We are leading the world in COVID-19 treatment and vaccine research. It is immoral to target China with rumors and slanders in the absence of any evidence," Zhao said.

Asked about the reports, President Donald Trump did not confirm them, but said: "What else is new with China? What else is new? Tell me. I'm not happy with China."

"We're watching it very closely," he added.

A US warning would add to a series of alerts and reports accusing government-backed hackers in Iran, North Korea, Russia and China of malicious activity related to the pandemic, from pumping out false news to targeting workers and scientists.

The New York Times said it could be a prelude to officially-sanctioned counterattacks by US agencies involved in cyber warfare, including the Pentagon's Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

Last week in a joint message Britain and the United States warned of a rise in cyber attacks against health professionals involved in the coronavirus response by organised criminals "often linked with other state actors."

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said they had detected large-scale "password spraying" tactics -- hackers trying to access accounts through commonly used passwords -- aimed at healthcare bodies and medical research organisations.

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