WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Portal) – The United States on Friday identified China, Iran and Russia, among others, as countries of particular concern under the Religious Freedom Act for serious violations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Blinken said in a statement that the countries identified as of particular concern – which include North Korea and Myanmar – have committed or tolerated serious violations of religious freedom.

Algeria, Central African Republic, Comoros and Vietnam have been added to the watch list.

Several groups, including the Kremlin-affiliated Wagner Group, a private paramilitary organization active in Syria, Africa and Ukraine, were also identified as of particular concern. The Wagner group was named because of its activities in Central African Republic, Blinken said.

“Around the world, governments and non-state actors harass, threaten, detain and kill individuals because of their beliefs,” Blinken said in the statement.

“The United States will not stand idly by in the face of these abuses.”

He added that Washington would welcome the opportunity to meet with all governments to outline concrete steps towards delisting.

Washington has increased pressure on Iran over its crackdown on protesters. Women have waved and burned headscarves – mandatory under Iran’s conservative dress code – during demonstrations that present one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.

The United Nations says more than 300 people have been killed and 14,000 arrested so far in protests that began after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in custody on September 16 after being arrested for “inappropriate clothing”.

United Nations experts have also urged Shia-majority Muslim Iran to stop persecuting and harassing religious minorities and using religion to restrict the exercise of fundamental rights.

The Baha’i community is among Iran’s most persecuted religious minorities, with a sharp rise in arrests and attacks this year, part of what UN experts say is a broader policy crackdown on dissident beliefs or religious practices, including Christian converts and atheists .

The United States has expressed grave concerns about human rights in western China’s Xinjiang region, home to 10 million Uyghurs.

Human rights groups and Western governments have long accused Beijing of abuses against the predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, including forced labor in detention camps.

The US accuses China of genocide. Beijing strenuously denies any abuse.

The other countries identified as of particular concern were Cuba, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

The US Religious Freedom Act of 1998 requires the President – who delegates the role to the Secretary of State – to designate states as high concern countries that are believed to be systematically and persistently violating religious freedom.

The law gives Blinken a range of policy responses, including sanctions or waivers, but they are not automatic.

Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Jonathan Landay and Tyler Clifford with Washington editing by Matthew Lewis

Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, three days of national mourning began on Saturday after the alleged massacre of civilians in the east of the country, for which the government now conjures up a tally of “more than a hundred” dead.

The DRC army and authorities on Thursday accused M23 rebels of “cowardly murders” of at least 50 civilians two days earlier in Kishishe, a village in Rutshuru territory some 70 km north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province ” to have.

Also readThe Pope postpones his visit to DR Congo and South Sudan to early 2023

The M23 has denied authorship of the killing, the number of which is difficult to ascertain from an independent source due to lack of access to this rebel-held area.

During the Council of Ministers held on Friday, “the President of the Republic condemned in the strongest possible terms the massacre of more than a hundred compatriots in Kishishe, victims of the barbarism” of the M23, according to the report read out in the evening by Communications Minister and government spokesman Patrick Muyaya.

“In her memory,” said President Félix Tshisekedi, “he instructed the government, starting this Saturday, the 3 area at this time.

The mourning will end on Monday with the organization of a “telethon” to raise funds for “the humanitarian aid” for victims of the violence in the east of the country, the spokesman added.

Since news of the massacre broke, calls for an independent investigation have grown louder.

Also readThe Eternal Return of the Eastern Congo Rebellions

During the same Council of Ministers, the President “urged the Minister of Justice to launch an immediate investigation at the internal level and at the same time to promote an international inquiry to shed light on this war crime,” the spokesman said.

The M23, a former Tutsi rebellion defeated in 2013, took up arms again late last year. Kinshasa has accused Rwanda of supporting it, arming it and even fighting alongside it, which Kigali denies.

SEE ALSO – DRC/Rwanda: Ministers pledge to ‘accelerate’ de-escalation of hostilities.

Elon Musk (Portal/Mike Blake/FILE)

The Twitter CEO, Elon Musktried to create great expectations with a unique revelation related to internal company files and documents that would show “what really happened” behind closed doors as the former executives ruled temporarily suppress an investigation by the New York Post 2020 approx Hunter Bidenthe son of the American President, just before the 2020 elections.

But instead of releasing private documents supporting what he previously announced, Musk will show a series of tweets from the journalist. Matt Taibi, who information had already been provided to – and what Twitter executives themselves have detailed for the past two years – confirming what had been broadly commented on the incident.

“What you are about to read is the first in a series based on thousands of internal documents obtained from Twitter sources,” Taibbi said. However, the released files showed what was already documented: Twitter removed links to the Post’s investigation.

“Twitter made a total mistake in handling the Post story,” said the former CEO jack dorsey when questioned by US lawmakers during a 2021 hearing about the company’s handling of the privacy policy.

“Twitter made a total mistake in handling the Post story,” former CEO Jack Dorsey said when questioned by US lawmakers during a 2021 hearing on the company’s handling of the privacy directive (Portal).

The bird’s social network decided to remove the option to view the story in its recommendation algorithms, and also prohibited direct links to the post as part of its pirated distribution policy.

“It had nothing to do with the content, it had to do with the piracy policy,” Dorsey explained at the 2021 hearing. “We had a misinterpretation,” he acknowledged.

Yoel Rotha former Twitter security and trust chief who recently resigned also called Twitter’s handling of the post investigation a mistake.

Yoel Roth, a former head of trust and safety at Twitter who resigned this month, also called Twitter’s management a mistake in the post-story during an interview (TWITTER).

“We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, it was smoke,” Roth said after leaving the company. “Everything seemed like a hack, a leak,” like the one performed by Russian intelligence in the 2016 presidential election.

Taibbi and Musk’s “Twitter files” appeared to add little informationbeyond what former executives have said on the subject.

The social network Birdie decided to remove the option for the New York Post story to appear in its recommendation algorithms, but then banned links to the post under its policy on distributing hacked materials (THE NEW YORK POST).

Twitter blocked the distribution of the post story not only in posts but also in direct messages. According to Taibbi, this blocking was done with “a tool previously reserved for extreme cases, such as child pornography.” However, such a tool was used to block other sources of banned content.

Taibbi and Musk’s “Twitter files” appeared to add little information beyond what former executives had said on the matter. (twitter)

In the examples that Taibbi detailed erroneously removed content and cited a series of tweets that contained intimate images of the former vice president’s son. unauthorized, commonly referred to as “revenge porn”.

In the face of the already well-known revelations, some former Twitter employees mostly reacted with yawns.

“It’s nice to land and read the Twitter archives only to realize there aren’t any (…)” joked one of them to Rolling Stone magazine.

The prominent content was a series of emails Hunter Biden allegedly sent to a group of Ukrainian energy businessmen so they could meet his father when he was Vice President of the United States.

In addition, the computer is also included Hunter Biden Sexually Explicit Material and some pictures where he appears to be using drugs.

The material was not fully verified, but analysts consulted by media outlets such as the Washington Post felt there was a high probability the material was genuine.

Continue reading:

Kanye West, Elon Musk’s New Headache: Frightened Advertisers Put Twitter’s $5B Business At Risk From COVID-19