The Washington Post called it "the tiny pill fueling Syria's war and turning fighters into superhuman soldiers." The BBC said it was "the drug fueling conflict in Syria." Many other media outlets — Reuters, Voice of America, the Guardian, Time, CNN — have reported on this apparently powerful pill and its outsize presence in the Middle East, especially the civil war in Syria.
The pill is known by an old brand name, Captagon. While it's by and large a run-of-the-mill amphetamine, Captagon has drawn more attention in the past few years due to its apparent use among ISIS recruits and other Syrian fighters, many of whom reportedly pop the pill before running into battle.
Hidden out at sea where few of us dare to venture, the systematic pillaging of fishing grounds is laying waste to the Ocean’s last stocks of fish.
The Deadline film exposes the race to catch these remaining resources by any means possible. Piracy, theft, unlicensed vessels and smuggling are just some of the tactics used to bring the fish that end up on our dinner plates.
If we continue at present rates the United Nations and leading scientists predict all fish stocks will be exhausted by 2050, thereby threatening the life of the Ocean itself.
Kentish town arches update: the eviction has finished. Pigs assisted heavies despite them only presenting papers from the eviction of the previous crew who lived there.
As part of an agreement signed last week (30 June), the World Bank will give the solar alliance access to its global development network and its “knowledge and financing capacity.” The India-headquartered ISA was established at last year’s climate change summit in Paris and is made up of 121 countries.
Over half of the news articles were critical or antagonistic in tone, compared to two thirds of all editorials and opinion pieces Reuters
In many democracies across the world new political leaders get a so-called honeymoon period. As our analysis of the journalistic representation of Jeremy Corbyn’s first two months as party leader in eight national newspapers demonstrates, this did not apply to Corbyn. Our rigorous and statistically representative analysis concluded that when it comes to the coverage of Corbyn in his role as leader of the opposition, the majority of the press did not act as a critical watchdog of the powers that be, but rather more often as an antagonistic attackdog.
Over half of the news articles were critical or antagonistic in tone, compared to two thirds of all editorials and opinion pieces. Besides the almost total lack of support in the latter, especially in the rightwing media, the high level of negativity in the news reporting struck us as noteworthy here. According to the Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO), newspapers are obliged to ‘make a clear distinction between comment, conjecture and fact’ and this also did not apply to Corbyn. Furthermore, Corbyn’s voice is often absent in the reporting on him, and when it is present it is often presented in a highly distorted way. In terms of the news sources used in the articles, the civil war within Labour is very enthusiastically amplified. In most newspapers, including The Daily Mirror and The Independent, Labour voices that are anti-Corbyn outweigh those that are pro-Corbyn.
Hillary Clinton made history last night, putting “the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet” by becoming the first woman nominee of a major political party in the United States. But if you check out the front pages of some of our nation’s most prestigious daily newspapers, you may come to the conclusion that it’s 1992 all over again, and that it was Bill—not Hillary—who made history.
Announcing the historic moment on their front pages, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal were among the (many) papers that featured above-the-fold images of husband Bill Clinton waving to the Democratic National Convention after he delivered an elegant and lengthy address that reframed the narrative of one of the most prominent power couples in U.S. political history.
Alongside straight up lies, another tried and tested Trump tactic this election season has been his constant bullying. Most of the time these attacks have seen Trump pulling the oldest trick in the book: name-calling.
The fact that Trump’s puerile insults have been working in his favor says a lot about either mob mentality, or the sorry state of American education. It’s as if America has become a giant playground and Trump supporters have gathered behind the angry bully. (Unfortunately in this instance the bully might soon be in charge of the whole damn school.)
Digital Economy Bill: new offences for the disclosure of information and the risk to journalists – Dan Tench
26072016
In the recent weeks of political furore, readers may have missed the publication on 5 July of the Digital Economy Bill. The Bill contains a ragbag of provisions from controlling access to online pornography to regulation of the BBC.
However, it is Part 5 entitled “Digital Government”which is perhaps most striking for media lawyers since it contains a number of real curiosities including potentially a number of new criminal offences which could apply to journalists publishing leaked material.
Last week, seven years after the Iraq Inquiry was set up, Sir John Chilcot finally delivered his long-awaited report. Although it stopped short of declaring the Iraq war illegal, and although it failed to examine the real motives for war, the report was not quite the whitewash that had been feared by peace campaigners.
Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, gave a succinct summary of the Chilcot report, listing four of the main findings (each followed by our own comment):
1. There was no imminent threat to Britain from Saddam Hussein, so war in March 2003 was unnecessary.
In reality: utterly devastated by war, bombing and 12 years of sanctions, Iraq posed no threat whatsoever towards Britain or the US. The idea that there was any kind of threat from this broken, impoverished country was simply a lie; a propaganda fabrication by warmongering cynics and corporate hangers-on eager for a piece of the pie.
2. The existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was presented with a certainty that was not justified. It was never 'beyond doubt' that the weapons existed. None have been found in the subsequent 13 years.
Jackrabbot: Why this robot is watching how you move
25 July 2016 Last updated at 00:47 BST
A robot which is learning how to be socially aware and move through pedestrian environments by observing behaviour is being developed by Stanford University.
Unlike self-driving cars which follow well-defined rules, crowds of people have unwritten rules, interacting with each other based on social convention and etiquette, some of which they might not be aware of, explained Stanford University's Alexandre Alahi.
The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse.
Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did.
If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.
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In the recent weeks of political furore, readers may have missed the publication on 5 July of the Digital Economy Bill. The Bill contains a ragbag of provisions from controlling access to online pornography to regulation of the BBC.
In the recent weeks of political furore, readers may have missed the publication on 5 July of the Digital Economy Bill. The Bill contains a ragbag of provisions from controlling access to online pornography to regulation of the BBC.