U.S. police arrest journalist working for Iran’s state TV: Press TV

U.S police have arrested an American-born journalist working for Iran’s English-language Press TV on unspecified charges, the state-run broadcaster reported on Wednesday. “Marziyeh Hashemi was arrested in St Louis and sent to custody in Washington DC although no formal charges have been pressed against her,” it said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-us-arrests/u-s-police-arrest-journalist-working-for-irans-state-tv-press-tv-idUSKCN1PA0CY?il=0

Exclusive: Facebook brings stricter ads rules to countries with big 2019 votes

Facebook Inc told Reuters on Tuesday that it would extend some of its political advertising rules and tools for curbing election interference to India, Nigeria, Ukraine and the European Union before significant votes in the next few months. As the largest social media service in nearly every big country, Facebook since 2016 has become a means for politicians and their adversaries to distribute fake news and other propaganda. Buying Facebook ads can widen the audience for such material, but some of those influence efforts may violate election rules and the company’s policies. Under pressure from authorities around the world, Facebook last year introduced several initiatives to increase oversight of political ads.

Beginning on Wednesday in Nigeria, only advertisers located in the country will be able to run electoral ads, mirroring a policy unveiled during an Irish referendum last May, Katie Harbath, Facebook’s director of global politics and outreach, said in an interview. The same policy will take effect in Ukraine in February. Nigeria holds a presidential election on Feb. 16, while Ukraine will follow on March 31. In India, which votes for parliament this spring, Facebook will place electoral ads in a searchable online library starting from next month, said Rob Leathern, a director of product management at the company. “We’re learning from every country,” Leathern said. “We know we’re not going to be perfect, but our goal is continuing, ongoing improvement.”

Facebook believes that holding the ads in a library for seven years is a key part of fighting intereference, he added. The library will resemble archives brought to the United States, Brazil and Britain last year. The newfound transparency drew some applause from elected officials and campaign accountability groups, but they also criticized Facebook for allowing advertisers in the United States to obfuscate their identities.

The Indian archive will contain contact information for some ad buyers or their official regulatory certificates. For individuals buying political ads, Facebook said it would ensure their listed name matches government-issued documents. The European Union would get a version of that authorization and transparency system ahead of the bloc’s parliamentary elections in May, Leathern said. The ad hoc approach, with varying policies and transparency depending on the region, reflects local laws and conversations with governments and civil society groups, Harbath said. That means extra steps to verify identities and locations of political ad buyers in the United States and India will not be introduced in every big election this year, Leathern said.

In addition, ad libraries in some countries will not include what the company calls “issue” ads, Leathern said. Facebook’s U.S. archive includes ads about much-debated issues such as climate change and immigration policy even though they may not directly relate to a ballot measure. Australia, Indonesia, Israel and the Philippines are among nations holding key votes this year for which Facebook said it is still weighing policies.

Leathern and Harbath said they hoped to have a set of tools that applies to advertisers globally by the end of June. They declined to elaborate, saying lessons from the next couple of months would help shape the worldwide product. “Our goal was to get to a global solution,” Harbath said. “And so, until we can get to that in June, we had to look at the different elections and what we think we can do.” Other Facebook teams remain focused on identifying problematic political behavior unrelated to ads. Last month, researchers working for a U.S. Senate committee concluded that the Russian government’s Internet Research Agency used social media ads and regular posts on inauthentic accounts to promote then presidential candidate Donald Trump to millions of Americans. Russia has denied the accusation.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-exclusive/exclusive-facebook-brings-stricter-ads-rules-to-countries-with-big-2019-votes-idUSKCN1PA0BT?il=0

One third of U.N. workers say sexually harassed in past two years

The online survey, carried out by Deloitte in November, was completed by 30,364 people from the United Nations and its agencies - just 17 percent of those eligible. In a letter to staff, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the response rate as “moderately low.”

“This tells me two things: first - that we still have a long way to go before we are able to fully and openly discuss sexual harassment; and second - that there may also be an ongoing sense of mistrust, perceptions of inaction and lack of accountability,” he wrote. The survey comes amid the wider “Me Too” movement around the world against sexual harassment and assault.

According to the report, 21.7 percent of respondents said they were subjected to sexual stories or offensive jokes, 14.2 percent received offensive remarks about their appearance, body or sexual activities and 13 percent were targeted by unwelcome attempts to draw them into a discussion on sexual matters. Some 10.9 percent said they were subjected to gestures or use of body language of a sexual nature, which embarrassed or offended them, and 10.1 percent were touched in way that made them feel uncomfortable. More than half of those experienced sexual harassment said it happened in an office environment, while 17.1 percent said it happened at a work-related social event. Two out of three harassers were male, according to the survey. Only one in three people said they took action after experiencing sexual harassment.

Guterres said the report contained “some sobering statistics and evidence of what needs to change to make a harassment-free workplace real for all of us.” “As an organization founded on equality, dignity and human rights, we must lead by example and set the standard,” he said.

The United Nations has tried to increase transparency and strengthen how it deals with such accusations over the past few years after a string of sexual exploitation and abuse accusations against U.N. peacekeepers in Africa. The head of the U.N. agency for HIV and AIDS is also stepping down in June, six months before his term ends, after an independent panel said that his “defective leadership” tolerated “a culture of harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse of power.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-sexualharrassment/one-third-of-u-n-workers-say-sexually-harassed-in-past-two-years-idUSKCN1PA08E?il=0

Pompeo's North Korean counterpart booked on flight to Washington: Yonhap

Three North Korean officials, including its top envoy involved in negotiations with the United States, are booked on a flight to Washington from Beijing on Thursday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol are expected to meet on Thursday or Friday in the U.S. capital to discuss a second summit between their leaders, CNN and South Korean media reported citing sources familiar with the issue. A meeting could mean the two sides are nearing a compromise after months of standoff over how to move forward in ending North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Kim Yong Chol, along with North Korea’s vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui, and a third official, have reservations on a United Airlines flight leaving Beijing on Thursday evening for Washington, Yonhap said on Wednesday, citing an unidentified Chinese airport official. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, asked earlier about the possibility of the top officials from the two sides getting together, said: “We have no meetings to announce.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to work towards denuclearization at a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore in June, but there has been little significant progress since. Pompeo planned to meet his counterpart last November, but the talks were called off at the last minute. Contact was resumed after Kim Jong Un delivered a New Year speech in which he said he was willing to meet Trump “at any time,” South Korea’s ambassador to the United States, Cho Yoon-je, told reporters last week.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa/pompeos-north-korean-counterpart-booked-on-flight-to-washington-yonhap-idUSKCN1PA0BO?il=0

>>4774575

Personally I think it's another one of those agencies that need to be completely abolished.

>>4774661

I'll be curious to see what the charges end up being. She was flown to DC..so I wonder if she had some espionage ties to Brenner and the gang. I think this is going to be quite interesting.

>>4774685

It's Hotel California here, you can come, but you can never leave. KeK

The Memo That Helped Kill a Half Million People in Syria (1 of 2)

A memo sent to Hillary Clinton that WikiLeaks made public in 2016 has not gotten the attention it deserves. Now is the time. After President Donald Trump tweeted that he was pulling American troops out of Syria, Clinton joined his vociferous critics who want more war in Syria. “Actions have consequences, and whether we’re in Syria or not, the people who want to harm us are there & at war,” Clinton tweeted in response to Trump. “Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous. Playing into Russia & Iran’s hands is foolish. This President is putting our national security at grave risk.”

Actions indeed have consequences. The memo shows the kind of advice Clinton was getting as secretary of state to plunge the U.S. deeper into the Syrian war. It takes us back to 2012 and the early phase of the conflict. At that point, it was largely an internal affair, although Saudi arms shipments were playing a greater and greater role in bolstering rebel forces. But once the President Barack Obama eventually decided in favor of intervention, under pressure from Clinton, the conflict was quickly internationalized as thousands of holy warriors flooded in from as far away as western China.

The 1,200-word memo written by James P. Rubin, a senior diplomat in Bill Clinton’s State Department, to then-Secretary of State Clinton, which Clinton twice requested be printed out, begins with the subject of Iran, an important patron of Syria. The memo dismisses any notion that nuclear talks will stop Iran “from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program—the capability to enrich uranium.” If it does get the bomb, it goes on, Israel will suffer a strategic setback since it will no longer be able to “respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today.” Denied the ability to bomb at will, Israel might leave off secondary targets and strike at the main enemy instead.

Consequently, the memo argues that the U.S. should topple the Assad regime so as to weaken Iran and allay the fears of Israel, which has long regarded the Islamic republic as its primary enemy. As the memo puts it: “Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.”

This document, making the case to arm Syrian rebels, may have been largely overlooked because of confusion about its dates, which appear to be inaccurate The time stamp on the email is “2001-01-01 03:00” even though Clinton was still a New York senator-elect at that point. That date is also out of synch with the timeline of nuclear diplomacy with Iran. But the body of the email gives a State Department case and document number with the date of 11/30/2015. But that’s incorrect as well because Clinton resigned as secretary of state on Feb. 1, 2013.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/01/15/memo-that-helped-kill-half-million-people-in-syria.html

>>4774783 (2 of 2)

The Memo That Helped Kill a Half Million People in Syria

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328