Fake news surges after Sri Lanka attack

Agencies
May 22, 2019

Colombo, May 22: Sri Lankan social networks saw a surge in fake news after the Easter suicide bombings a month ago despite an official social media blackout, highlighting the inability of governments to contain disinformation, experts said.

A nine-day ban on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp was introduced following the Islamic State-claimed attacks on churches and hotels on April 21 which killed 258 people and wounded nearly 500.

Many anxious social media users switched to virtual private networks (VPNs) or the TOR network to bypass the order and keep communication open with friends and relatives as the extent of the carnage became clear.

But for others, the tools were a means to spread confusion and vitriol as the island struggled to come to terms with one of the worst terror attacks in its history.

Sanjana Hattotuwa, who monitors social media for fake news at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, said the government blackout had failed to prevent "engagement, production, sharing and discussion of Facebook content", and that he had seen a significant increase in false reports.

AFP has published half a dozen fact-checks debunking false claims made on Facebook and Twitter after the Easter attacks.

Some had dug out photos of coffins and funerals from Sri Lanka's brutal decades-long civil war and claimed they showed victims of the blasts.

One video posted to Facebook showed police arresting a man dressed in a burqa and claimed he was involved in the bombings. The video was actually from 2018, and showed a man who had used a burqa to hide his identity while he sought to attack someone over a debt issue.

Another used a five-year-old photo from India that showed a group of men wearing T-shirts with "ISIS", another name for Islamic State, written on them to claim there was an active IS cell in eastern Sri Lanka.

One Twitter user claiming to be a high-ranking Sri Lankan army brigadier used the platform to accuse neighbouring India of being involved in the attacks. The account was later taken down by Twitter after the Sri Lankan army complained.

Authorities in Sri Lanka -- where ethnic divisions still linger after decades of war -- previously blocked Facebook in March 2018 after Buddhist hardliners used incendiary posts to fan religious violence that left three people dead and reduced several hundred homes and shops to ashes.

The surge in fake news has further blemished the troubled reputation of social media -- which several years ago had been seen as a means to expand freedom of information -- in the region.

In India, authorities have temporarily shut down mobile networks or blocked social media apps during riots, while critics say the spread of hate speech via Facebook was crucial in facilitating a brutal 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.

Since the attacks, Sri Lankan authorities have imposed other short bans on social media, including earlier this month after mobs in the northwestern town of Chilaw attacked Muslim-owned businesses in anger at a Facebook post by a shopkeeper.

But for those unaware of the government ban or unable to circumvent it, the blocking of social media in the days following the attacks was a cause for panic.

A Sydney-based engineer was desperate to call his sister in Colombo soon after hearing about the Easter blasts, but could not get through.

"I kept calling her on WhatsApp, but there was no reply. We are so used to calling on WhatsApp, I had forgotten her landline number," the Sri Lankan-born engineer said.

Fortunately, he said, he managed to call a friend in Colombo who was using a VPN to access WhatsApp and told him about the social media ban that prevented him from reaching his sister.

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Agencies
May 19,2020

Washington DC, May 19: US President Donald Trump has threatened to permanently halt funding for the World Health Organisation (WHO) if it did not commit to improvements within 30 days, and to reconsider the membership of the United States in the global health body.

On Monday, Trump wrote a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus that read, "If WHO doesn't commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of US funding to WHO permanent and reconsider our membership in the organisation."

Trump had temporarily suspended US' contribution to the WHO last month, accusing it of promoting China's "disinformation" about the coronavirus outbreak, although WHO officials denied the accusation and Beijing said that it was transparent and open.

"The only way forward for the WHO is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China. My administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organisation. But action is needed quickly. 

We do not have time to waste," Trump said in the letter.

"I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organisation that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America's interests," he added.

On Monday, the WHO said that an independent review of the global coronavirus response would begin at the earliest and it received backing from China, where the virus was first discovered.

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News Network
March 19,2020

New Delhi, Mar 19: Hit hard by coronavirus, budget carrier IndiGo today announced that it will cut salaries of senior employees. IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta, who will himself take a 25% cut in salary, said senior vice presidents and above are taking a 20% pay cut while vice presidents and cockpit crew are taking a 15% pay cut.

With precipitous drop in revenues, the very survival of airline industry is now at stake, Dutta said while announcing the pay cut. "We have to pay careful attention to our cash flow so that we do not run out of cash," Dutta said adding that he knew how hard it was for families to take a cut in "take-home pay".

"With a great deal of reluctance and a deep sense of regret, we are therefore instituting pay cuts for all employees, excluding Bands A and B, starting April 1, 2020," the chief executive officer said. Band A and B are the lowest brackets in salary class, where most of the employees are.

IndiGo's flight operations chief Ashim Mitra had written an email to pilots this morning saying that the economic environment has deteriorated significantly and no airline is insulated from this severe downturn.

"It has become a necessity to initiate some tough calls and we are working on a string of measures that will be shared and implemented over the next few days and weeks," Mitra said.

With countries sealing their borders partially or fully across the world due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, aviation sector has been hit extremely hard as most airlines globally have drastically curtailed their flight operations.

Another budget airline GoAir has already terminated contracts of expat pilots amid curtailed operations due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Citing "unprecedented" decline in air travel, the budget carrier announced it was suspending international operations and offering leave without pay programme to its staff on a rotational basis.

Government-owned Air India may also cut salary of employees by 5% amid its growing financial woes particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has nearly grounded its entire international operations. The reduction will be across the board, according to a PTI report.

The loss-making airline, which is in the process of a second attempt of privatization after failing to get a single buyer nearly two years ago, has already taken some steps such as reduced flying allowances to cabin crew besides withdrawing entertainment allowance to executive pilots, among others.

“Air India is considering a 5 per cent pay cut to its employees as it faces huge financial crisis due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, which has brought almost its entire international operations save the US, Canada and a few other markets, to the ground," a source told news agency.

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News Network
July 3,2020

Jul 3: China under President Xi Jinping has stepped up its "aggressive" foreign policy toward India and "resisted" efforts to clarify the Line of Actual Control that prevented a lasting peace from being realised, according to a report released by a US Congress appointed commission.

The armies of India and China have been locked in a bitter standoff at multiple locations in eastern Ladakh for the last seven weeks, and the tension escalated after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a violent clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15.

“Under General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping, Beijing has stepped up its aggressive foreign policy toward New Delhi. Since 2013, China has engaged in five major altercations with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC),” said a brief issued by US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"Beijing and New Delhi have signed a series of agreements and committed to confidence-building measures to stabilise their border, but China has resisted efforts to clarify the LAC, preventing a lasting peace from being realised,” said the report and was prepared at the request of the Commission to support its deliberations.

Authored by Will Green, a Policy Analyst on the Security and Foreign Affairs Team at the Commission, the report says that the Chinese government is particularly fearful of India’s growing relationship with the United States and its allies and partners.

“The latest border clash is part of a broader pattern in which Beijing seeks to warn New Delhi against aligning with Washington,” it said.

After Xi assumed power in 2012, there was a significant increase in clashes, despite the fact that he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi several times and Beijing and New Delhi have agreed to a series of confidence-building mechanisms designed to mitigate tensions.

Prior to 2013, the last major border clash was in 1987. The 1950s and 1960s were a particularly tense period, culminating in 1962 with a war that left thousands of soldiers dead on both sides, according to the records of China's People's Liberation Army, the report said.

“The 2020 skirmish is in line with Beijing’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. The clash came as Beijing was aggressively pressing its other expansive sovereignty claims in the Indo-Pacific region, such as over Taiwan and in the South and East China seas,” it said.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the area.

Several weeks before the clash in the Galwan Valley, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe called on Beijing to “use fighting to promote stability” as the country’s external security environment worsened, a potential indication of China’s intent to proactively initiate military tensions with its neighbours to project an image of strength, the report said.

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