Sri Lanka lifts state of emergency as communal tensions subside

Boston, Jun 7: Dozens of scientists doing research funded by Mark Zuckerberg say Facebook should not be letting President Donald Trump use of the social media platform to spread both misinformation and incendiary statements.

The researchers, including 60 professors at leading US research institutions, wrote a letter to the Facebook CEO on Saturday asking that he consider stricter policies on misinformation and incendiary language that harms people," especially during the current turmoil over racial injustice.

The letter calls the spread of deliberate misinformation and divisive language the researchers' goal of using technology to prevent and eradicate disease, improving childhood education and reform the criminal justice system.

The researchers' mission "is antithetical to some of the stances that Facebook has been taking, so we're encouraging them to be more on the side of truth and on the right side of history as we've said in the letter, said Debora Marks of Harvard Medical School, one of three professors who organized the letter.

The other organisers are Martin Kampmann of the University of California-San Francisco and Jason Shepherd of the University of Utah.

All have grants from a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative program working to prevent, cure and treat neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The initiative is run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

They said the letter had more than 160 signatories. Shepherd said about 10% are employees of Chan Zuckerberg foundations.

The letter objects specifically to Zuckerberg's decision not to at least flag as a violation of Facebook's community standards Trump's post that stated when the looting starts, the shooting starts after unrest in Minneapolis over the videotaped killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer.

The letter's authors called the post a clear statement of inciting violence.

Twitter had both flagged and demoted a Trump tweet using the same language.

The Associated Press emailed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative press office for comment. It did not immediately respond.

Some Facebook employees have publicly objected to Zuckerberg's refusal to take down or label misleading or incendiary posts by Trump or other politicians. But Zuckerberg who controls a majority of voting shares in the company has so far refused.

On Friday, Zuckerberg said in a post that he would review potential options for handling violating or partially-violating content aside from the binary leave-it-up or take-it-down decisions I know many of you think we should have labeled the President's posts in some way last week, he wrote.

"Our current policy is that if content is actually inciting violence, then the right mitigation is to take that content down not let people continue seeing it behind a flag. There is no exception to this policy for politicians or newsworthiness.

Amsterdam, Jun 18: A statue of Mahatma Gandhi has been vandalised here in the capital of Netherlands by unknown miscreants with graffiti and spray painting, amid a wave of attacks on controversial figures following the protests around the world after the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd, according to media reports.

The statue of Gandhi on the Churchilllaan in Amsterdam was covered with red paint and the pedestal has 'racist' and an abbreviation for an expletive against the police chalked on it, Metro, the Dutch newspaper, reported.

According to alderman Rutger Groot Wassink, the municipality will file a declaration for daubing.

"Obviously, we are opposed to any form of vandalism and daubing of these things is completely unacceptable," the city official was quoted as saying by the AD.nl.

"It is logical that we will file a declaration, the image will be cleaned," Wassink said.

It is not yet known who is behind the daubing. An employee of the Kunstwacht, who provides maintenance and repairs, says that the cleaning work can take hours.

A 75-year-old man saw the daubs on Wednesday and called the municipality. “I have lived here for forty years and I have never experienced this. I have been watching the statue for years," the man said.

Since the death of 46-year-old Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis, US, and subsequent worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, there has been much debate about street names and statues of people with a colonial past. All over the world, statues of controversial historical figures are brought down or defaced.

Recently, images and buildings have been defaced in various places that refer to the colonial past of the Netherlands, including the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and the statue of Piet Hein in Rotterdam. These are anti-racist expressions that follow the death of Floyd through a white police officer, Metro reported.

Gandhi was known as a champion of human rights and non-violence. But in his twenties, which he spent in South Africa, he still called black people “troublesome, very dirty and they live like beasts” and found that the white people were the “dominant race”. Later he renounced those ideas, the report added.

The statue was unveiled on the Churchillaan on October 2, 1990 in honour of Gandhi's 121st birthday.

The design was made by the sculptor Karel Gomes, who died in 2016. At the time, the plan for the statue came from the Hindu organisation Triveda.

Gandhi is depicted walking, featuring robes around the body, slippers on the feet, a book in one hand and a stick in the other.

New York, May 8: An Indian-American father and daughter, both doctors in New Jersey, have died due to the COVID-19, with Governor Phil Murphy describing their demise as “particularly tough" and hailed them for dedicating their lives for others.

Satyender Dev Khanna, 78, was a surgeon who served both on staff and as the head of the surgical departments for multiple hospitals across New Jersey for decades.

Priya Khanna, 43, was a double board-certified in both internal medicine and nephrology. She was Chief of Residents at Union Hospital, now part of RWJ Barnabas Health.

"Dr Satyender Dev Khanna and Dr Priya Khanna were father and daughter. They both dedicated their lives to helping others. This is a family dedicated to health and medicine. Our words cannot amply express our condolences," New Jersey Governor Murphy tweeted on Thursday.

“Both dedicated their lives to helping others and we lost both of them to COVID-19,” Murphy said during a press conference on Thursday, saying their demise is a "particularly tough one.”

Satyender passed away at the Clara Maass Medical Center where he had worked for more than 35 years.

Murphy described him as a "pioneering doctor” who was one of the first surgeons to perform laparoscopic surgery in the state. He is being remembered by colleagues as a “gentle and caring physician."

“And for a doctor, I'm not one, but I would bet, I don't think there could be a more fitting way to be remembered, or a nurse or a healthcare worker of any kind,” Murphy said, adding that the doctor had a passion for bicycling, and he often found peace from the hustle of the hospital in biking along the Jersey Shore.

Priya did all of her medical training in New Jersey and then did her fellowship in nephrology in South Jersey with the Cooper Health System. Like her father, she too worked at Clara Maass, where she died.

She was also Medical Director at two dialysis centres in Essex County and “took pride” in teaching the next generation of doctors, Murphy said, adding that the ICU physician who cared for Priya Khanna was trained and taught by her as well.

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“Priya will be remembered as a caring and selfless person who put others first. And even while in the hospital, fighting her own battle, she continued to check up on her mom and dad and her family,” Murphy said.

“This is a family, by the way, dedicated to health and medicine,” he said.

The governor spoke with Satyender's wife Komlish Khanna, who is a paediatrician. The couple has two more daughters - Sugandha Khanna, an emergency medicine physician and Anisha Khanna, a paediatrician.

“Unbelievable. Our words cannot amply express our condolences nor, I am sure, can they express the pain that the Khanna family is feeling. But I hope that the fact that our entire state mourns with them is some small comfort. And we mourn everyone we have lost. We commit in their memory to saving as many lives as we can,” Murphy said.