YouTube blocked in Pakistan for not removing anti-Islam film

September 18, 2012
Youtube_Blocked


New Delhi, September 18: The Pakistan government has blocked popular video-sharing website YouTube for not removing a film made in the United States which mocks the Prophet Mohammad and has enraged the Islamic world. The website will remain suspended till the anti-Islam film, Innocence of Muslims, is removed.

"Blasphemous content will not be accepted at any cost," Prime Minister Raza Parvez Ashraf's office said in a statement.

Attempts to access YouTube met with a message saying the website had been classed as containing "indecent material" and was blocked on the orders of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA).


According to a statement issued by the PTA, around 700 links of the anti-Islam film had already been blocked after several complaints were received. "Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has proactively blocked and vigorously preventing all access to anti-Islamic video placed on worldwide web via YouTube with the name of Innocence of Muslims," the statement said.

Rallies across Pakistan over the film intensified today, with thousands taking to the streets, burning US flags and an effigy of President Barack Obama.

About 800 people demonstrated in the north-western town of Warai, in Upper Dir district, setting fire to a magistrate's house and the local press club before a protester was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police.

Another demonstrator died after being shot in the head during clashes with police near the US consulate in Karachi on Sunday.

Up to 3,000 university students, teachers and employees marched in Peshawar, the main city of the militant-plagued northwest, chanting anti-US slogans and demanding a ban on the "Innocence of Muslims" movie.

The low-budget film, thought to have been produced by a small group of Christian extremists in the United States, has sparked violent anti-American protests across the Islamic world.

Last week, riots erupted over the film in Libya, where a mob stormed the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday, killing US ambassador Christopher Stevens and several other staff members.

A total of 19 people have now died in violence linked to the film.




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News Network
April 26,2020

Apr 26: The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the global coronavirus pandemic began, now has no remaining cases in its hospitals, a health official told reporters on Sunday.

"The latest news is that by April 26, the number of new coronavirus patients in Wuhan was at zero, thanks to the joint efforts of Wuhan and medical staff from around the country," National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said at a briefing.

The city had reported 46,452 cases, 56% of the national total. It saw 3,869 fatalities, or 84% of China's total.

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Agencies
February 10,2020

Hubei, Feb 10: The death toll in the deadly coronavirus outbreak in China and other parts of the world has reached 904, CNN reported citing Chinese authorities on Monday.

The number of infected people globally has now hit the 40,000 mark.

According to the country's health officials, the number of people, who died from coronavirus in the Hubei Province, has risen to 871.

"As of 24:00 on February 9, Hubei Province reported a total of 29,631 cases of new coronavirus pneumonia, including 16,902 cases in Wuhan. 22,160 patients are still being treated in hospitals. 73,127 people remain under medical observation," read the statement from the Chinese Regional Health Committee.

The novel coronavirus was first detected in China's Wuhan city in late December and has since spread to more than 25 countries.

On Sunday, the new coronavirus even surpassed the fatalities caused by the SARS epidemic in 2003.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared a global health emergency in the wake of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, WHO's international expert mission led by Dr Bruce Aylward embarked for China.

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News Network
June 2,2020

Oakland, Jun 2: Facebook employees are using Twitter to register their frustration over CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to leave up posts by President Donald Trump that suggested protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.

While Twitter demoted and placed a warning on a tweet about the protests that read, in part, that “when the looting starts the shooting starts,” Facebook has let it stand, with Zuckerberg laying out his reasoning in a Facebook post Friday.

“I know many people are upset that we've left the President's posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Trump's comment evoked the civil-rights era by borrowing a phrase used in 1967 by Miami's police chief to warn of an aggressive police response to unrest in black neighborhoods.

On Monday, Facebook employees staged a virtual “walkout” to protest the company's decision not to touch the Trump posts according to a report in the New York Times, which cited anonymous senior employees at Facebook.

The Times report says “dozens” of Facebook workers “took the day off by logging into Facebook's systems and requesting time off to support protesters across the country." “I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we're showing up.

The majority of coworkers I've spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard,” tweeted Jason Toff, a director of product management at Facebook who's been at the company for a year.

Toff, who has a verified Twitter account, had 131,400 “likes” and thousands of retweets of his comment. He did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Monday.

“I don't know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable. I'm a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark's decision to do nothing about Trump's recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I'm not alone inside of FB.

There isn't a neutral position on racism,” tweeted another employee, design manager Jason Stirman.

Stirman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Sara Zhang, a product designer at the company, tweeted that Facebook's “decision to not act on posts that incite violence ignores other options to keep our community safe.

The policy pigeon holes us into addressing harmful user-facing content in two ways: keep content up or take it down.” “I believe that this is a self-imposed constraint and implore leadership to revisit the solution,” she continued. Zhang declined to comment to The Associated Press.

Representatives for Facebook did not immediately respond to messages for comment.

Twitter has historically taken stronger stances than its larger rival, including a complete ban on political advertisements that the company announced last November.

That's partly because Facebook, a much larger company with a broader audience,targeted by regulators over its size and power, has more to lose. And partly because the companies' CEOs don't always see eye to eye on their role in society.

Over the weekend, Twitter changed the background and logo if its main Twitter account to black from its usual blue in support of the Black Lives Matter protesters and added a #blacklivesmatter hashtag. Facebook did the same with its own logo on its site, though without the hashtag.

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