Penghargaan nasional yang diberikan oleh junta militer Myanmar kepada seorang biksu atas jasanya bagi persatuan negara pada hari Selasa, 03/01/2023, menjadi ramai diperbincangkan.
Lantaran biksu bernama Wirathu itu, sangat terkenal sebagai penghasut kebencian agama dan dijuluki "Buddhist bin Laden".
Wirathu adalah salah satu dari ratusan orang yang menerima penghargaan dan gelar kehormatan “Thiri Pyanchi" atas pekerjaan luar biasa untuk kebaikan dan persatuan Myanmar.
Lantaran biksu bernama Wirathu itu, sangat terkenal sebagai penghasut kebencian agama dan dijuluki "Buddhist bin Laden".
Wirathu adalah salah satu dari ratusan orang yang menerima penghargaan dan gelar kehormatan “Thiri Pyanchi" atas pekerjaan luar biasa untuk kebaikan dan persatuan Myanmar.
Tetapi gelar yang diberikan sangat bertolak belakang dengan kontribusi Wirathu selama ini.
Ia telah lama dikenal karena retorika nasionalis anti-Muslimnya, terutama terhadap minoritas Muslim Rohingya.
Pada 2013, ia tampil di sampul majalah Time sebagai "The Face of Buddhist Terror".
Wirathu menyerukan pemboikotan bisnis milik Muslim dan pembatasan pernikahan antara umat Buddha dan Muslim.
Menurut kelompok HAM, seruan Wirathu telah memicu permusuhan terhadap masyarakat dan menjadi dasar untuk tindakan keras militer pada tahun 2017 yang memaksa sekitar 740.000 Rohingya melarikan diri ke perbatasan Bangladesh.
Di masa pemerintahan Aung San Suu Kyi, Wirathu pernah dipenjara tuduhan atas penghasutan.
Setelah kudeta yang dilakukan oleh junta militer, Wirathu akhirnya dibebaskan dari segala tuduhan September 2021.
Russia cannot view Italy as a guarantor of the potential peace process around Ukraine due to Rome’s biased stance against Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
The diplomat was asked to comment on the reports that Rome was poised to act as a guarantor of peace settlement in Ukraine. In particular, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced that at a press conference on December 29, 2022.
"Obviously, with regard to the biased position taken by Italy, we cannot view it either as ‘an honest broker’ or a possible guarantor of the peace process," Zakharova said in her response to a media question published on the ministry’s website.
Zakharova pointed out that "many countries pledge their readiness to take part in resolving the Ukraine crisis, and some even openly offer us their mediation services."
"Pope Francis, French President Emmanuel Macron, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and other heads of state and government, politicians and public figures have spoken about it," she continued. "Some are sincere in doing so, but others are motivated by their self-interest, trying to wedge themselves into the negotiation process for foreign policy benefits."
"However, we find it strange to hear proposals for mediation from the countries that since the very beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine have taken an unambiguous and very aggressive anti-Russian position, not only supporting the bloody Kiev regime, but also providing it with substantial military and military-technical assistance and intentionally pumping the cutting-edge weapons into Ukraine," Zakharova said.
According to the diplomat, "Along with a wide range of weapons and military equipment, Italy also supplies Kiev with anti-personnel mines."
Zakharova pointed out that "not only do those irresponsible actions multiply casualties, including among the civilian population in Donbass, and drag out the end of the conflict, but they also risk dragging NATO countries into direct military confrontation with Russia."
"Nevertheless, Kiev’s Western handlers, with Italy regrettably among them, have no intention of stopping and, on the contrary, are stepping up their supplies," she said.
"It would be better if European pseudo-peacemakers halted their military boost of Kiev and focused their efforts on working more firmly and demandingly with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who has repeatedly reiterated his total aversion to a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and even signed a decree on September 30, 2022 to reject negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman concluded.
Russian MoD Holds Briefing on Special Military Operation in Ukraine
The Russian Army eliminated more than 40 Ukrainian servicemen in the Kupyansk direction;
Russian troops eliminated a Ukrainian sabotage group the Kharkov region;
The Russian Air Force shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 and an Su-25 in the Kramatorsk region, the DPR and in the Nikolaev region;
Russian forces eliminated over 100 Ukrainian servicemen in the Donetsk direction;
The Russian Army eliminated five Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups in the LPR and DPR;
Russian forces destroyed two US-made counter-battery radars in the DPR;
Russian troops destroyed five Ukrainian warehouses with artillery ammunition in the DPR and in the Zaporozhye region;
Ukrainian troops lost more than 150 soldiers killed and wounded in the Krasny Liman direction;
The Russian Army destroyed three Ukrainian 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers in Kharkov and Zaporozhye regions;
Russian troops repelled counterattacks by Ukrainian forces in the South Donetsk direction;
Russian forces eliminated more than 180 Ukrainian servicemen in the DPR and the Zaporozhye region.
Since Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, he has alleged censorship by the previous leadership of the social media platform and enacted broad changes with little warning.
US social media company Twitter said on Wednesday it was softening the platform's policy on political advertising.
"We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US. We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks," the company tweeted.
Twitter also plans to align its advertising policy with the one followed by US television and other mass media services, the message read.
The ban has been in place sine 2019, prohibiting the promotion of political content on the platform.
The ad could also bring additional revenue to the company which is hampered by a small income. The issue became important after several major advertisers left Twitter as a reaction against Musk taking control of the social network last year, because they feared he would moderate content.
Musk, who has repeatedly stressed he is a champion of free speech, changed the strict moderation policy and revealed Twitter papers, suggesting that under the previous ownership, an inordinate amount of censorship had existed as well as possible links with authorities regarding the control of news flow on the network.
Elon Musk-led Twitter said it will expand the political advertising it permits in coming weeks to “facilitate public conversation around important topics” and align its advertising policy with those of TV and other media outlets.
We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US. We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks.
Twitter Inc. will relax a three-year ban on political advertising in a continued policy shift after its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk.
The company said on Tuesday that it will expand the political advertising it permits in coming weeks to “facilitate public conversation around important topics” and align its advertising policy with those of TV and other media outlets, with further details to be announced.
While it wasn’t immediately clear how extensive the changes will be, it represents a departure from a global ban on advertisements by candidates, elected officials and political parties first announced in 2019 by Twitter co-founder — and chief executive officer at the time — Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey justified the ban, which attracted the ire of then-President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, by saying that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
But since Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, he has alleged censorship by the previous leadership of the social media platform and enacted broad changes with little warning. Among other shifts, the company has ended a policy preventing the sharing of Covid misinformation, reinstated the accounts of Trump and other right-wing personalities, and banned users tracking Musk’s private jet.
Twitter currently allows some so-called issue ads or cause-based ads for some economic, environmental and social topics, albeit with restrictions. The company said it will also relax its policy for such cause-based ads in the US.
Political advertising was a minor income source for Twitter before the ban — amounting to less than $3 million in sales during the 2018 US midterm elections. Still, the easing may help a company now struggling to stem losses in ad revenue as brands pull back from the site amid concern about its moderation policies.
FILE - A man wearing a face mask to protect against coronavirus travels on a metro in Berlin, Germany, March 22, 2022. A German doctor has been sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for illegally issuing more than 4,000 people with exemptions from wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
A German doctor was sentenced late Monday to two years and nine months in prison for illegally issuing more than 4,000 people with exemptions from wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic.
A regional court in the southwestern town of Weinheim confirmed Tuesday that the doctor was convicted of “issuing incorrect health certificates” to people from across Germany, most of whom she had never met or examined.
In addition to the prison sentence she was handed a three-year work ban and ordered to pay 28,000 euros ($29,550), the sum she had received for issuing the medical certificates. Her office assistant was fined 2,700 euros.
“The process is more reminiscent of a sale of certificates than a medical procedure,” the court said in a statement. It noted that she was not faulted for providing certificates to her existing patients.
During the trial the defendant had argued that wearing masks was harmful to people’s health.
The doctor’s lawyer intends to appeal the verdict, public broadcaster SWR reported.
The doctor’s lawyer intends to appeal the verdict, public broadcaster SWR reported.
Dozens of supporters gathered outside the court in Weinheim, north of Heidelberg, to protest against the verdict and Germany’s pandemic restrictions.
Germany ended requirements to wear masks in many indoor settings last year, though they are still compulsory on long-distance trains, in doctors’ practices, hospitals, nursing homes and on some regional public transport.
Twitter was pressured by US lawmakers and media to exaggerate alleged Russian meddling on the social media platform during the 2016 president election, journalist Matt Taibbi said in the latest release of the so-called Twitter Files.
The latest batch of internal documents released on Tuesday, in coordination with Twitter chief Elon Musk, shows that the social media giant had originally seen no coordinated effort by Russia to use the social media platform to launch a major campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.
"No evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity (different timing, spend, targeting, ($10k in ad spend)," Twitter's Russia Task Force said in a document on October 2017.
Twitter's then Public Policy Vice President Colin Crowell said in an email to former CEO Jack Dorsey in September 2017 that Democrat lawmakers had taken cues from then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to pressure Twitter to investigate accounts linked to Russia.
The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence Committee Mark Warner also pressured Twitter to produce material that will make news headlines about alleged Russian meddling in the US elections via social media, according Crowell.
However, Twitter continued to find no coordinated effort by Russia to use the platform to allegedly influence the presidential elections, the documents found.
In an October 23, 2017 email the task force said the probe found only 17 suspicious accounts linked to Russia, only two of which had significant ad purchases, including Russia Today, which spent less than $10,000.
Twitter Files, discrediting doctors and experts who spoke out against vaccines
New twitter document released on December 26, detailing how Twitter executives attempted to censor 'inconvenient' data on Covid by discrediting doctors and experts who spoke out against vaccines
Using their pull, Zweig writes, the government was able to discredit doctors and experts, and suppress ordinary users' freedom of speech on Twitter — even if they were citing the Center for Disease Control's own data.
The documents provide more context as to how the government infiltrated the social media giant to suppress certain stories, as Twitter CEO Elon Musk vows there will be more revelations next week
According to the documents released on Monday, the Trump administration met with executives at Twitter, Google, Facebook and Microsoft looking for 'help from the tech companies to combat misinformation' about 'runs on grocery stores... that could stoke panic buying and behaviors' in the early days of the pandemic.
1. THREAD:
THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy – By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed – By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*
Then, when the Biden administration took over, they became focused on tackling 'misinformation' about vaccines and targeted high-profile vaccine skeptics like Berenson.
In the summer of 2021, Zweig writes, Biden said social media companies were 'killing people' for allowing vaccine misinformation — and just a few hours later, Berenson's account was suspended.
He was kicked off the platform the following month, and ultimately sued (and settled with) Twitter.
As part of the legal process, Twitter was compelled to release internal communications, which showed how the White House pressured the company to take action on Berenson.
14. But Twitter did suppress views—many from doctors and scientific experts—that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing.
But the Biden administration was apparently 'very angry' that Twitter had not done more to deplatform other accounts, and pressured executives to do more.
The Biden administration also piled pressure on the social media platform to suspend former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson over his tweets questioning Covid vaccines
In the latest instalment of the Twitter Files, journalist David Zweig laid bare how both the Trump and Biden administrations pressured Twitter executives to censor information that was 'true but inconvenient.'
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks with reporters after a House Republican caucus meeting on the first day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 3, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Republicans are facing a leadership drama as they take control of the House Tuesday. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appears to lack support to become speaker ahead of key vote.
As the 118th Congress convenes, the first order of House business will be election of a new speaker, and current Republican leader Kevin McCarthy could be stymied by a group of hardliners demanding concessions.
Because the GOP holds only a slim majority, a small number of defections could stop McCarthy from gaining the office he's long sought.
As the House prepares to usher in the 118th Congress and new Republican majority on Tuesday, GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy is struggling to secure enough support for his bid to be House speaker to avoid a protracted and historic fight on the House floor.
The California congressman has lobbied his fellow Republicans for months and made several concessions to a small but outspoken bloc of conservatives. But the efforts have not yet produced the breakthrough McCarthy needs to be elected House speaker in the first round of voice voting, which is expected to take place shortly after noon ET.
In order to be elected speaker, McCarthy needs support from a majority of the members who vote Tuesday, or 218 of the 434 House members expected to vote. But with only 222 Republicans total, and no Democrats expected to vote for him, McCarthy can afford to lose only four members of his caucus
As of Tuesday morning, six current Republican members and three members-elect, all conservatives, still publicly opposed McCarthy. McCarthy also faced months of organized opposition from influential conservative outside groups, which have amplified his critics on social media.
McCarthy's failure to win public support from his entire caucus has already cast a shadow over the new Republican majority, exposing divisions within the party that have existed for decades. The differences were deepened by former President Donald Trump, who emboldened a small band of ultra-conservatives.
Trump eventually backed McCarthy's bid for speaker, as did other influential conservatives such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
House Republicans began Tuesday morning with a caucus meeting that was viewed as McCarthy's final opportunity to make his pitch to members who might be on the fence.
Rep. Crenshaw on Republicans who oppose McCarthy as Speaker: "If you're a narcissist & you believe that your opinion is so much more important than everyone else's […] you'll threaten to tear down the team for the benefit of the Democrats."
After the meeting but before the vote, McCarthy told reporters that "we may have a battle on the floor, but the battle is for the conference and the country, and that's fine with me."
"Look, I have the record for the longest speech ever on the floor, I don't have a problem getting a record for the most votes for Speaker too," he added.
Judging from early statements by key Republican holdouts, the conservatives had a long list of demands they believed McCarthy has failed to meet.
Judging from early statements by key Republican holdouts, the conservatives had a long list of demands they believed McCarthy has failed to meet.
House Democrats, meanwhile, openly relished the internal chaos roiling the opposing party.
"We certainly are seeing chaos today in Congress, and this is an extension of the extremism that we have seen from the GOP," incoming House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
She accused McCarthy of having "thrown away his moral compass."
With at least five Republicans publicly vowing to oppose him and more quietly on the fence, Mr. McCarthy appeared short of the necessary votes, despite a series of major concessions he has made in an attempt to appease the far-right lawmakers.
“I am not going away,” Mr. McCarthy defiantly told Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, which devolved into bitter squabbling as the leader berated his detractors and his critics vented their spleen, according to lawmakers who attended.
In a room in the basement of the Capitol, Mr. McCarthy made the case that the lawmakers opposing him were selfishly disrupting what was supposed to be a day of unity for their own personal gain.
“I earned this job,” Mr. McCarthy said.
“Bullshit!” came the response from Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, one of the hard-right Republicans opposing him. (She later told a reporter she did not shout anything during the meeting, but would not say whether she had spoken up.)
“He’s worked hard,” Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, another of the defectors, said of Mr. McCarthy’s final plea during the meeting. “In his mind, he has.”
But Mr. Norman told reporters he still planned to oppose Mr. McCarthy.
Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, emerged from the meeting fuming.
“This meeting wasn’t about trying to inform people about what it takes to get to 218 and ask for what you want,” he told reporters. “This was about a beat down and a simulated unity in the room that doesn’t really exist.”
Mr. McCarthy’s allies were equally furious. One incoming committee chairman, Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, who is set to lead the Armed Services Committee, declared during the meeting that those who opposed Mr. McCarthy should lose their committee assignments, according to people in the room.
If Mr. McCarthy is unable to win the support he needs on the first ballot, lawmakers would take successive votes until he or a different nominee secured enough supporters to prevail. No speaker election has gone to multiple ballots since 1923, but Mr. McCarthy has vowed to fight for the job on the House floor until the very end.
Mr. McCarthy’s allies have insisted that the Republican leader would stop at nothing to win the job, and they previewed plans to try to cajole more of the holdouts — especially incoming freshmen who have yet to publicly declare positions — on Tuesday.
“I think we can get there,” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio told reporters as he left a meeting in Mr. McCarthy’s office on Monday night.
Asked how many ballots it would take for Mr. McCarthy to prevail, Mr. Jordan replied, “We’ll see tomorrow.”
In the months leading up to the vote, Mr. McCarthy had made a series of concessions to win over the defectors, including encouraging his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government and calling on Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign or face potential impeachment proceedings.
Over the weekend, in a last-ditch effort to sew up the votes, Mr. McCarthy put forward his most significant offers yet. He unveiled a package of rules governing how the House operates, including the so-called Holman rule, which allows lawmakers to use spending bills to defund specific programs and fire federal officials or reduce their pay.
His biggest concession was agreeing to a rule that would allow five lawmakers to call a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker. That had been a top demand of conservatives who had previously used the procedure to drive out Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio.
But it was not enough to appease the obstreperous right flank of his party, which wanted any single lawmaker to be able to force such a vote. After Mr. McCarthy announced the concessions, nine more Republicans emerged — most of whom had previously expressed skepticism about his bid for speaker — to criticize Mr. McCarthy’s efforts to win them over as insufficient.
At the same time, some moderate supporters of Mr. McCarthy said they were unsettled by the hefty concessions, arguing that a small group of naysayers should not be allowed to hijack the new majority.
The past few years have seen more US states authorize the use of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. Medics say the fact that cannabis can be infused into chocolate bars, gummy candies, cookies, chips and juices should prompt parents be more vigilant in keeping kids from eating it.
The number of small children in the US who accidentally ate marijuana-laced treats increased drastically between 2017 and 2021, a new study has revealed.
Within this period, there were more than 7,040 exposures to edible cannabis in children under age six, including some toddlers, according to an analysis of records from the National Poison Data System.
The survey found that in 2017, there were 207 reported cases of accidental edible cannabis exposure among young children, while by 2021, there were 3,054 such cases.
Almost a quarter of these children wound up hospitalized, some seriously ill, the study said, adding that symptoms include heart problems, confusion, vomiting and trouble breathing.
Marit Tweet, a medical toxicologist with the Southern Illinois School of Medicine who led the study, called for greater vigilance by parents and for more laws to be passed so as to make pot products less appealing and accessible to children.
“When it’s in a candy form or cookies, people don’t think of it in the same way as household chemicals or other things a child could get into. But people should really be thinking of it as a medication,” she was cited by a US media outlet as saying.
Tweet was echoed by study co-author Antonia Nemanich, who said, “My stance is that it is not a problem that these products are legalized, but the problem is that they’re not packaged the way drugs or medications are packaged. We have a lot of safeguards in place for that.”
The cases of children accidentally eating pot-laced products, including candies, chocolate, chips and cookies, coincided with more US states authorizing medical and recreational marijuana use.
Right now, using cannabis for medical purposes is legal in 37 states, while 21 states have legalized the recreational use of the drug.
There were more than 7,040 exposures to edible cannabis in kids under 6 between 2017 and 2021, according to an analysis of records from the National Poison Data System, a central repository for data from America’s Poison Centers.
In 2017, there were 207 reported cases of accidental edible cannabis exposure among kids under the age of 6. By 2021, there were 3,054, the study found.
With increased legalization, there may also be more products available overall.
“Honestly, we knew it was increasing. I work in the [emergency department] as well as taking calls for the poison center, and so even though I was seeing more cases coming through the ER, when we looked at the data nationwide, we were definitely surprised,” said study co-author Dr. Antonia Nemanich, who works in emergency medicine and medical toxicology at Rush Emergency Medicine in Chicago.
“I think all of that plays into this, and the regulations haven’t kept pace with the increased prevalence of the product,” Nemanich said.
The American College of Medical Toxicology has urged the industry to change its packaging so kids don’t get so easily confused and can’t open the packages as easily. The association also suggests that people should not use cannabis products in front of children.
Nemanich says edible cannabis products should come in plain, neutral, opaque white packaging.
“My stance is that it is not a problem that these products are legalized, but the problem is that they’re not packaged the way drugs or medications are packaged. We have a lot of safeguards in place for that,” she said. “They’re marketed as if they’re just any other tasty treat.”
She hopes the study will spur change.
“We wanted to catch this population of kids that are getting into this stuff unintentionally,” Nemanich said. “We know they’re not seeking it out as a mind-altering substance. We knew subjectively they were at high risk because we’d see a lot of exposures in the ER, and they’re very likely to just put something in their mouth that looks tasty.”
