Category: Foreign

Facebook Inc has announced a new policy banning “deepfake” videos that are likely to mislead viewers into thinking someone said words that they did not actually say.

According to Facebook, this is in a move aimed at curbing misinformation ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

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It would also remove misleading media if it was a result of technologies like AI that “merges, replaces or superimposes content on to a video, making it appear to be authentic,” the California-based company said in a blogpost.

“This policy does not extend to content that is parody or satire, or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words,” Facebook said.

In the U.S., a doctored video that seemed to show the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, slurring her way through a speech was similarly allowed by Facebook.

The video, spread by Trump supporters including Rudy Giuliani, was edited, but not using any technique more complex than slowing down the raw footage and pitch-shifting the audio.

Facebook has been criticised over its content policies by politicians from across the spectrum.

A British woman has been given a four-month suspended sentence after being found guilty of lying about being raped by a group of young Israelis in Cyprus.

The 19-year-old hugged her family and left court weeping after she was sentenced for public mischief.

Her sentence was suspended for three years, and she has been ordered to pay €148 (£125) in legal fees. She now plans to return to the UK.

Women’s rights groups protested outside court ahead of the sentencing.

The BBC said the puffy-eyed teenager embraced her mother as chants of “We believe you,” and “No means no,” filtered into the courtroom from the protest outside.

Supporters from Cyprus and a group of 50 women who travelled from Israel gathered outside the Famagusta District Court yesterday holding placards.

The teenager’s mother shouted “she’s coming home” to the group following sentencing, and told reporters she felt “relieved”.

Addressing the crowd, the teenager’s mother said: “I just want to thank each and every one of you for turning up today, having belief, having faith and making sure we get justice.”

In court, Judge Michalis Papathanasiou told the teenager he was giving her a “second chance”.

The 19-year-old was put on trial and convicted in December after recanting a claim that she had been raped by a group of 12 young men in a hotel room in July.

She said Cypriot police had made her falsely confess to lying about the incident – something police have denied.

The woman’s lawyer, Lewis Power QC, said she would be returning to the UK on Tuesday.

He told BBC News the case was “not finished by any means”.

AST. PETERSBURG clinic that is run and partly owned by people with ties to President Vladimir Putin has provided medical treatment to Russian mercenaries injured abroad, according to three people with knowledge of military contractors being treated.

The sources include a clinic employee, a reporter’s witness account and company records.

The previously unreported medical treatment for private military contractors wounded in combat overseas, including in Libya and Syria, shows fighters have received indirect support from the country’s elite even as the Kremlin denies they fight abroad on its behalf.

Under Russian law, all medical organisations are obliged to report combat injuries to the police for investigation and it’s illegal for a Russian citizen to participate in armed conflict as a mercenary.

The clinic is owned by large insurance company AO Sogaz, which counts among its senior officials and owners relatives of Putin and others linked to the president, according to the SPARK database, which aggregates data from business registries.

The clinic’s general director, Vladislav Baranov, also has a business relationship with Putin’s elder daughter, Maria. Reuters has no evidence of the daughter’s involvement in the treatment of military contractors.

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Reached by phone, Baranov told Reuters: “Forget about our clinics, that’s my advice for you.” In response to written questions, he said: “I don’t want to communicate with you.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We have no information on this at all.” The defence ministry, Sogaz and Putin’s daughter did not respond to requests for comment.

Russian private military contractors have clandestinely fought in support of Russian forces in Syria and Ukraine, Reuters and other media have previously reported. The contractors are recruited by a private military group known as Wagner Group whose members are mostly ex-service personnel.

NATO is temporarily pulling some of its troops out of Iraq and moving others around within the country, Dylan White, acting spokesperson for the military alliance, said on Tuesday.

According to him, to protect the safety of its troops, NATO will take measures, including the temporary repositioning of some personnel to different locations both inside and outside of Iraq.

“NATO maintains a presence in Iraq. And, we are prepared to continue our training and capacity-building when the situation permits,” he said.

NATO had already suspended its training operations on the ground after the killing of a top Iranian military commander by the United States sent tensions spiralling in recent days.

U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper strongly suggested on Monday that the U.S. military would not violate the laws of armed conflict by striking Iranian cultural sites, a move threatened by President Donald Trump.

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Asked whether he was willing to target cultural sites, Esper told Pentagon reporters: “We will follow the laws of armed conflict.”

Pressed on whether he would then not target such sites, because that would be a war crime, Esper said: “That’s the laws of armed conflict.” He did not elaborate.

Targeting cultural sites with military action is considered a war crime under international law, including a U.N. Security Council resolution supported by the Trump administration in 2017 and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property.

THE United States (U.S.) has denied a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that would have allowed him to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York tomorrow, a U.S. official said.

Yesterday’s comments by the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, came as tensions escalate between the two countries after the United States killed Iran’s most prominent military commander, in Baghdad on Friday.

Under the 1947 UN “headquarters agreement,” the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But Washington says it can deny visas for “security, terrorism and foreign policy” reasons.

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The U.S. State Department declined immediate comment. Iran’s mission to the United Nations said: “We have seen the media reports, but we have not received any official communication from either the U.S. or the U.N. regarding Foreign Minister Zarif’s visa.”

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric declined to comment on the issue.

Zarif wanted to attend a meeting of the Security Council on the topic of upholding the U.N. Charter. The meeting and Zarif’s travel had been planned before the latest flare-up in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

By Oluwaseyi Oso

History will apprise us of an open truth: the world’s greatest enemy has always been conquered by the minutiae set of people—with similar or almost congruent mindset–to defeat the strong enemy that could have served as a disastrous monstrosity to the growth of a society. This is the state of Nigeria and the world, presently. We have been faced with a lot of enemies, in the last decade, and they have been conundrums to the safe continuity of our world.

We have witnessed a lot of wars from these enemies that mystify us every day: poverty, corruption; infringement of human rights, climate change and many more. The purpose of war is to mystify and mislead the enemy. We are all warriors in this part of the world and we should not bury our minds in the assumption that our enemies are incorrigibly indefatigable.

The world will not be out of this present darkness unless we stop seeing ourselves as minors to realise that we have the strength no matter how seemly powerless we may be to wage war against the enemies of our livelihood in humanity. Without this we might not have a safe future in our country and world.

A large number of hearts are sick with the presupposition that they no longer have the right to speak against those who wield power to deprecate their freedom of expression and other varieties of human rights. Even those who sit in the corners of their rooms to discuss the state of the nation, in relation to its political hemisphere, reduce the volume of their conversations because they are scared of getting marooned by those they have elected into the post of power.

Some even shun their neighbours who try to discuss socio-political issues, averring that they have no interest in politics? How do we exorcise the country from this cesspit of seemingly endless hardship sprinkled on every wrinkled faces if we continue to portray ourselves as observers? How long do we remain indifferent to the growth of lives which we have placed in the hand of political institutons? As human beings we belong to political institutions that govern us; but some of us tend to liberate our fears with religious fantasies; we coax ourselves with transcendental assumptions like: “God will heal our country”.

The impoverished even go as far picking his pocket to bless his man of God in the name of “change”. I am not trying to create a dialectic world; I am just trying to portend that two institutions rule the world: Politics and Religion. This is why I coin it as—Relitics. I will like everyone to know that we are the God we need to heal our dying nation; our dying world. The power to recreate the world has been given to us; and it is right inside every heart and mind.

We have to subject our minds to participating in matters that concern the growth of our present time because a time will dawn when future generations we look back to survey what we have left behind. What would be their say by then? Will they say that we were to fearful to speak against our enemies? How many struggles must we see before we decide to salvage ourselves? How many deaths must we see?

As long as we can motivate ourselves that we are stronger, no matter how little we might be, against our enemies then we can suppress them and make it seem like they never existed. The key to liberty is gated by the teeth: it is our tongue. Thus, this New Year, I urge every Nigerian and every member of the world to know that we have been ornamented with voices to hue the world with our opinions. Immixed opinions are the pathway to the progress of a society; however, it would be pertinent for leaders and followers to recognize that opinions have to come together for stronger executions.

At one point in history, opinions that could have saved a country were aborted only for such countries to be faced by disastrous cataclysms. We can amend our thoughts this year if we decipher that we cannot be victimized if we raise our voice as one against the “One” that fights us. We must lay a legacy on which our nation and world will be housed, stalwartly.
Insofar as growth is peculiar to the world, we cannot separate ourselves from being responsible for this growth. Delving into one of the stringent issues that afflict the world—climate change—I would assert that we need to empathize, first and foremost, with parts of the world that have been afflicted with deleterious happenings from climate change. Australia can be evidenced as a part of the planet we all have to bear in mind. Australia is currently suffering from bushfires and one of its causes is the coal industry. As one of the highest exporters of natural gas, coal, iron ore and uranium, the country has not been able to fully suppress the effect of such on the climate.

This has, however, channeled increased global warming. Admittedly, we cannot live or survive in the world if our environment is totally damaged; thus, every part of the world must be aware that we need to take care of the environment that has been found for us. In Nigeria, there have been cases land depravation; increases in temperature; flooding; loss of biodiversity; rise in sea level; ad infinitum. A lot of minds are not informed about the need to take care of the environment; they are not aware of the socioeconomic implications: drought, food scarcity; flooding.

If this should go on, there could be an accentuated rate of starvation and health crisis throughout the nation which would also have a global effect. I would, therefore, conjecture that, this year, we should participate in the expungement of activities that promote increased carbon emissions leading to an unsustainable environment. This is our planet and we all must strive to have full participation in matters that concern our growth and the health of the world as a whole. Our problem is not our differences; our problem is our indifference to things that determine our way of living.
Lastingly, this is not a year to war against ourselves, country to country, continent to continent. This is a period where we must encircle our minds to war against the enemies that serve as bulwarks to our many-sided growth. We have no other place to go. The evolution of the world is right in our minds and for us to have a safer future in this country and the entire universe, we have to start now.

We do not know what we are capable of changing except we try it. Prayers will not work unless we use our endowed knowledge as human beings to make things work. Let every human being listen and learn that we can change the spirit of the world if we hold no fear in us because we are all creators; so we can choose to create “newness” or “obsoleteness”; “war” or “peace”.

At least nine people were killed and 26 injured after an explosion in northern Cameroun, local authorities have confirmed on Tuesday.

The incident occurred on Monday in Fotokol, a town near the border with Nigeria, when “young men in search of metals’’ stumbled on a homemade bomb before mistakenly detonating it, Regional Governor Midjiyawa Bakari said.

Initially, there were fears that the explosion was linked to the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram which poses a steady threat in Nigeria, but Bakari dismissed this after investigations proved otherwise.

He said a group of people going to a market in Fotokol had all crossed the informal border bridge from Nigeria. The youngsters were attracted by the glint of metal.

“One of them realised the metal was dangerous and wanted to get rid of it, but the device exploded.

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Those injured were receiving treatment at a local medical facility,’’ Bakari said.

While active in Nigeria, Boko Haram has also launched offensives in neighbouring Cameroun, Chad and Niger.

Since 2009, tens of thousands of people have died at the hands of the Sunni fundamentalists in the region and an estimated 2.5 million people fled their homes.

It has not been established who had planted the device or when it had been planted.