Facebook has taken down 652 pages identified as misinformation threats, and Serena Williams is highest-earning female athlete.
Aung San Suu Kyi to be stripped of ‘Freedom of Edinburgh’ award
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is set to be stripped of her Freedom of Edinburgh award for her constant refusal to condemn the country’s atrocities against the Rohingya minority, The Guardian reported.
This will be the seventh honour the Nobel Peace laureate has been stripped of over the past year in connection with her silence on the persecution of the Rohingya, who have reportedly been driven out in the hundreds of thousands by a brutal military crackdown. Last year, Suu Kyi was stripped of her ‘Freedom of the City’ awards by three other UK cities, Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle.
Suu Kyi was honoured with the Freedom of Edinburgh award in 2005 in recognition of her efforts to champion peace and democracy in Myanmar, then under junta rule, while under house arrest.
Speaking at a public event in Singapore Tuesday, Suu Kyi remarked that the speed of the Rohingya minority’s repatriation was up to Bangladesh.
Iran says will attack US, Israel, if it feels threatened
Iran warned Wednesday that it would hit back against the US and Israel if attacked by the US. Iran’s announcement follows a statement made by President Donald Trump’s security adviser John Bolton, who said Washington would put more pressure on Tehran “beyond economic sanctions”, Reuters reported.
During a visit to Israel, Bolton is reported to have said, “Just to be clear, regime change in Iran is not American policy. But what we want is massive change in the regime’s behaviour … We are going to do other things to put pressure on Iran as well, beyond economic sanctions.”
In response, Ahmad Khatami, a senior Iranian cleric close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told worshippers during Eid prayers in Tehran, “The price of a war with Iran is very high for America. They know if they harm this country and this state in the slightest way the United States and its main ally in the region, the Zionist regime (Israel), would be targeted.”
The US-Iran feud has been escalating since Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal in May and reimposed sanctions on Iran’s economy. The US has also threatened to end trade ties with any country or company that does business with Tehran. This has unnerved many big companies, forcing them into debates on whether to continue trade with the oil-rich nation.
Facebook takes down 652 pages over ‘misinformation’ threats
Facebook has taken down 652 pages, accounts and groups after it identified them as part of coordinated disinformation campaigns originating in Iran and with links to Russia, CNN reported.
The Iran-linked pages were not just restricted to spreading misinformation in the US, but also targeted the United Kingdom, Latin America and the Middle East. “Some of them posed as a group called “Liberty Front Press.” the CNN report added.
Those behind the pages spent more than $12,000 on advertisements between 2012 and 2017, the company is reported to have said.
Similarly, Twitter had announced Tuesday that it had identified and removed 284 accounts, many of which it linked to Iran, for “coordinated manipulation”.
“Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies have been scrambling to protect their platforms ahead of the US midterm elections in November and prevent a repeat of the widespread disinformation seen during the 2016 presidential campaign,” the report said.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that their efforts to curb the spread of fake information is making the cyber-world a safer place.
Serena Williams tops Forbes list of highest earning female athletes
Tennis star Serena Williams has topped Forbes’ list of highest-earning female athletes, even though she won just $62,000 in prize money in the last 12 months, CNN reported.
The 23-time grand slam champion’s earnings of $18.1 million from endorsements was enough to get her on top of the list for the third consecutive time, it added.
The athlete did not play competitively for 14 months after announcing her pregnancy in January 2017.
While the combined earnings of the top 10 female athletes stood at $105 million from June 2017 to June 2018, that of the world’s top 10 highest-paid sports stars, all male, tops a billion dollars, the CNN report added.
Forbes’ rankings of the world’s top 100 highest-earning athletes of 2018 also features Indian badminton player P.V. Sindhu.
World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe asked to refuse honour
The mayor of a small French village has asked the three youngest members of the football team to refuse the state honour they are due to get for the country’s 2018 FIFA World Cup win, reports CNN.
Kylian Mbappe, Benjamin Pavard and Lucas Hernandez, and other team members, will be awarded France’s highest accolade, the Legion of Honor’, though the date of the ceremony has not been fixed yet.
Jean-Paul Pretot, the mayor of a small village in eastern France, has urged the trio to refuse the award in memory of those who died in battle during the First World War without receiving any recognition.
“On behalf of all those fighters who spent their best years fighting for our freedom, I ask you to refuse the Legion of Honor promised to you and … to pay virtual homage to all those anonymous heroes who fought for our country,” Pretot wrote in his letter to the French Football Federation (FFF).
It would seem almost indecent, he added, if the young trio received the award just a few weeks from 11 November, as the date marks 100 years since the end of the First World War.
US may soon purchase guns for schools
The US education department is considering allowing states to use federal funding to purchase guns for schools, The New York Times reports.
The federal government has a longstanding position that seeks to restrict payments to outfit schools with weapons. Such a move by the education department would undermine efforts by the Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns,the report added.
Arming school staff is frequently bounced around as a viable solution to the US’ gun violence epidemic that has seen several disgruntled students unleashing mayhem on campuses by opening indiscriminate fire and killing hundreds.
China develops high-accuracy optical mirror for space observation
Chinese scientists have invented a high-accuracy optical mirror that is likely to prove an important tool for deep space and astronomical observation, Xinhua reported.
The silicon carbide aspheric optical mirror, weighing 1.6 tonnes, is developed by Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The research team has also developed manufacturing equipment used in the mirror’s production.
Contributed by Sankalita Dey, Anagha Deshpande and Soniya Agrawal, journalists at ThePrint.