Now, Canada wants to end arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and 2016 Russian campaign targeted African-Americans during the US presidential election.
Putin wants govt to ‘take charge’ of rap music in Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed concern over what he calls the use of bad language in rap music, BBC reports.
Putin wants the government to “take charge” of the rap music in the country. He said it would be impossible to ban it but the ministry of culture can take steps to control its spread in the country. He said, “It should be taken over and navigated in a particular way”.
According to a report on music portal thefader.com, during a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art in St Petersburg, Putin called on the Russian government to “take charge” in controlling the music.
Putin’s statement came after Russian rapper Husky was arrested after many of his concerts were cancelled.
Putin said, “Rap and other modern [forms of art] are rested upon three pillars — sex, drugs and protest. I am most worried about drugs. This is the way towards the degradation of a nation.”
He also expressed his dislike for the explicit language use in lyrics, he said, “We have all sorts of body parts, and it’s not like we put them on display all the time.”
African-Americans were the targets of 2016 Russian influence campaign, says report
The Russian influence campaign that is believed to have helped Donald Trump to win the 2016 US presidential election targeted African-Americans on social media by creating fake accounts, websites and with propaganda messages, reports The New York Times.
A study done by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company along with researchers at Columbia University as well as Canfield Research LLC, found that the Russian influence campaign in 2016 was carried out by Internet Research Agency (IRA), a company based out of St Petersburg.
The agency allegedly created fake social media accounts on every possible platform to help Trump garner support in the elections and even after he was elected as the president.
The report, however, throws light on Russians focusing on African-Americans. It said, “The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets.”
The report also mentioned, “The black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” On Facebook, advertisements targeted those who had some interest in black history. There was a Russian Instagram account @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
The Russian agency also created a lot of websites disguised as African- American origin, with names such as blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org, and blacksoul.us.
Renee DiResta, one of the authors of the report and director of research at New Knowledge, said that as the election tension was brewing, the Black Lives Matter movement was the at the centre of attention in the US, and the Russian took advantage of it.
She said, “Very real racial tensions and feelings of alienation exist in America, and have for decades, adding, the I.R.A. didn’t create them. It exploits them.”
Canada to end arms deal with Saudi Arabia
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that his government is looking forward to ending a multibillion-dollar deal that involves the selling of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, reports The Guardian.
Trudeau in an interview with CTV Sunday, however, said that the government is yet to map out a plan on how to leave the deal. He said, “We are engaged with the export permits to try and see if there is a way of no longer exporting these vehicles to Saudi Arabia”.
After the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and increasing civilian deaths in Yemen war, the Canadian PM is pressured by the rights groups, academics, and policy advisers to cancel the arms deal.
However, Trudeau was unwilling to cancel to deal citing that it may cost Canadian government billions.
Germany and Sweden have already ended their contracts with Saudi, and the US Senate last week has approved a resolution to withdraw from backing the Arab country.
A new object discovered in the solar system
The International Astronomical Union’s Minor planet Center has announced Monday the discovery of an object in the solar system that is 100 times farther than earth is from the sun, CNN reports.
Carnegie Institution for Science’s Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen and Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo were the ones who found out the object in the solar system.
The organisation has named it 2018 VG18, but researchers who have discovered it are called the object “Farout”.
According to researchers, there are chances that the object is a dwarf planet, more than 310 miles in diameter, and has a pinkish hue colour, which is generally associated with the objects that are rich in ice, given the fact that it is farthest from the sun. The researchers claimed that the object has a slow orbit, indicating that it takes “Farout” 1000 years to make a trip around the sun.