position:bureau chief

  • Water bottler sets sights on growing Cambodian market

    A $2 million company hopes to cash in on the growing local bottled market by using modern technology and local natural resources.

    A NEW player in Cambodia’s purified drinking water market has seen early signs of success with a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant and production facility in #Kampot province, and expects to distribute nationwide in 2009, the company said.

    #TADA_Bokor Natural Spring Drinking Water began operations in early November with a US$2 million capital investment from the T-DA Import Export Co Ltd, which distributes the brand in Kampot province, Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh.

    Company owner and first deputy president of Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management, Nhim Vanda, said TADA Bokor was licensed by the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy in 2006 following a study conducted with foreign partners to determine the suitability of mineral water from Kampot province’s Bokor mountain.

    A bottling factory was built at the base of the mountain in Makprang district, Nhim Vanda said.

    “Our factory was built to rigid technical standards and equipped with the latest technology imported from abroad to meet all hygiene requirements,” he said.

    “We have been evaluated by our national laboratory at the Ministry of Industry and the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia at the Ministry of Water Management, as well as by consultants from South Korea.”

    Nhim Vanda said the company also manufactures its own plastic bottles and has taken steps not to adversely affect the province’s natural environment, which has become the focus of nascent efforts to create an ecotourism industry in the Kingdom.

    OUR FACTORY WAS BUILT TO RIGID TECHNICAL STANDARDS ... [WITH] THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY.

    TADA Bokor employs 35 workers and produces an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 cases of water each day.

    “We purify the natural spring drinking water through reverse osmosis and ozone processes, as well as ultraviolet purification technology, to make it better than other brands,” he said.

    “I will enlarge our distribution to other provinces nationwide next year,” he said.

    Chheng Uddra, bureau chief of the Product Licensing Department at the Ministry of Industry, said TADA Bokor has complied with all ministry regulations and requirements.

    “I have sent my experts last month to check the quality of the water, the bottling and the factory to ensure it was built to proper standards,” he said.

    There are more than 130 pure drinking water companies operating in Cambodia, but only 20-including TADA Bokor-operate within health parameters set by the government, Chheng Uddra said.

    He added that because the ministry has not always implemented existing laws, it imposes three-month evaluations on companies to test the quality of the water.

    If standards are not being met, then companies risk losing their license, Chheng Uddra said.

    https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/water-bottler-sets-sights-growing-cambodian-market
    #eau_en_bouteilles #eau #privatisation #Cambodge

    Un article de 2008, que je mets ici pour archivage...

    @simplicissimus: en lien avec le post sur le #Bokor, dont je viens de terminer un petit texte:
    https://seenthis.net/messages/715554

  • Egypt: The White House and the Strongman - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/sunday-review/obama-egypt-coup-trump.html

    President Trump boasts that he has reversed American policies across the Middle East. Where his predecessor hoped to win hearts and minds, Mr. Trump champions the axiom that brute force is the only response to extremism — whether in Iran, Syria, Yemen or the Palestinian territories. He has embraced the hawks of the region, in Israel and the Persian Gulf, as his chief guides and allies.

    But in many ways, this hard-line approach began to take hold under President Barack Obama, when those same regional allies backed the 2013 military ouster of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    That coup was a watershed moment for the region, snuffing out dreams of democracy while emboldening both autocrats and jihadists. And American policy pivoted, too, empowering those inside the administration “who say you just have to crush these guys,” said Andrew Miller, who oversaw Egypt for the National Security Council under Mr. Obama, and who is now with the Project on Middle East Democracy. Some of the coup’s most vocal American advocates went on to top roles in the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.
    Image
    In July 2013, supporters of the ousted Mr. Morsi protested in Cairo against the killing of 50 demonstrators a day before. A much bigger massacre came in August.CreditNarciso Contreras for The New York Times
    I was The New York Times Cairo bureau chief at the time of the coup, and I returned to the events years later in part to better understand Washington’s role. I learned that the Obama administration’s support for the Arab Spring uprisings had been hobbled from the start by internal disagreements over the same issues that now define Trump policy — about the nature of the threat from political Islam, about fidelity to autocratic allies like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and about the difficulty of achieving democratic change in Egypt and the region.

  • Le WSJ ? Postulerais-je ou ne postulerais-je pas ?
    http://www.dedefensa.org/article/le-wsj-postulerais-je-ou-ne-postulerais-je-pas

    Le WSJ ? Postulerais-je ou ne postulerais-je pas ?

    08 janvier 2018 – Ce n’est qu’un petit potin, après tout mais il est vrai qu’ici ou là, dans la presse-antiSystème, on en fait des gorges chaudes. J’ignore qui est tombé dessus le premier parmi les malfaisants de l’antiSystème ; à ma connaissance, et sous toute réserve par conséquent, le premier à avoir écrit à ce propos c’est Bryan MacDonald sur le réseau officiel FakeNews & Co, je veux dire RT qui est l’objet de toutes les adorations secrètes de notre-Macron. Il s’agit d’une annonce très sérieuse et détaillée du Wall Street Journal (WSJ pour les amis), sur le site du Dow Jones, concernant les offres d’emploi. Le WSJ cherche un chef de bureau pour le journal à Moscou, et il détaille le profil de la personne recherchée.

    Je ne vais pas trop m’attarder sur (...)

    • Dow Jones Jobs - Bureau Chief, Moscow in MOSCOW, Russia
      https://dowjones.jobs/moscow-rus/bureau-chief-moscow/7DE7FB839209478099E99D9A3A9BE3BD/job

      Bureau Chief, Moscow

      The Wall Street Journal is seeking an experienced and enterprising journalist to serve as Moscow bureau chief and spearhead ambitious coverage of Russia — its economy, politics, foreign and security policies and people.

      The Russian story is more important than it has been in decades, with the country playing a much more assertive role on the world stage under President Vladimir Putin, a course that has increasingly put Moscow at odds with the U.S. and much of the West.

      We are looking for someone who can lead wide-ranging reportage — delving deeply into the economic underpinnings of Russian power and Mr. Putin’s own grip on domestic politics, getting inside Russia’s hacking complex and chronicling Moscow’s activities in the Mideast and elsewhere.

      A central goal will be explicating Russia’s strategic aims and exploring the country’s fraught relations with the Trump administration amid American officials’ assertions that Moscow used a campaign of hacking and disinformation to try to sway last year’s presidential elections.

      Another will be looking at Putin’s role as a champion of so-called illiberal democracy who has become a beacon for right-wing politicians across Europe and even in the U.S. His traditional conservatism of blood and religion resonates amid economic uncertainty.

      We are looking for an accomplished candidate who can report and write major stories while also leading a team of other top-notched correspondents to deliver world-beating coverage of this critical story. Strong Russian language skills are a distinct advantage.

      Avec de telles missions explicites, c’est pas gagné pour son futur visa de travail…

  • Edward Snowden’s New App Uses Your Smartphone to Physically Guard Your Laptop
    https://theintercept.com/2017/12/22/snowdens-new-app-uses-your-smartphone-to-physically-guard-your-laptop

    Like many other journalists, activists, and software developers I know, I carry my laptop everywhere while I’m traveling. It contains sensitive information; messaging app conversations, email, password databases, encryption keys, unreleased work, web browsers logged into various accounts, and so on. My disk is encrypted, but all it takes to bypass this protection is for an attacker — a malicious hotel housekeeper, or “evil maid,” for example — to spend a few minutes physically tampering with it without my knowledge. If I come back and continue to use my compromised computer, the attacker could gain access to everything.

    Edward Snowden and his friends have a solution. The NSA whistleblower and a team of collaborators have been working on a new open source Android app called Haven that you install on a spare smartphone, turning the device into a sort of sentry to watch over your laptop. Haven uses the smartphone’s many sensors — microphone, motion detector, light detector, and cameras — to monitor the room for changes, and it logs everything it notices. The first public beta version of Haven has officially been released; it’s available in the Play Store and on F-Droid, an open source app store for Android.

    #haven #surveillance
    https://github.com/guardianproject/haven

  • Al Jazeera Jerusalem bureau chief: Netanyahu’s colluding with Arab autocrats to silence us - Opinion

    It’s no surprise that other Mideast regimes want to see Al Jazeera’s independent voice gone. But why would Israel, one of the only self-proclaimed functional democracies in the region, want to join them?

    Walid Omary Jul 31, 2017
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.804320

    But this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to shut down Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem office. Citing, in his own statement, the legal restrictions that currently prevent this, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to change the rules to silence our voice. 

    Israelis, don’t let your leaders kill the messenger: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. July 30, 2017AMIR COHEN/AP
    While it’s no surprise that regional regimes would want to see the closure of Al Jazeera, why would Israel, one of the only self-proclaimed functional democracies in the region want to silence its voice?
    The collusion by Netanyahu with his Arab autocratic neighbors leaves little doubt that free independent media and truth are ready to be sacrificed as collateral damage in the power politics of the region. What difference then is there between Israel, as a perceived democracy, and these dictatorships?
    This recent turn of events, sadly, is not new for us. Our unflinching dedication to independent journalism and getting the story right has come with a heavy price. Our journalists have been threatened, imprisoned, tortured, and killed; our offices bombed, our websites hacked, and our social media accounts taken down. 
    We were the first network based in the Middle East to introduce investigative journalism to the region and have continued to win industry awards, including Emmys, for our in-depth brand of journalism. In many cases, our independent journalism put into focus the corruption marring the region and the world. At other times, it exonerated individuals and nations, including Israel, for charges and conspiracies alleged by detractors.

  • Bret Stephens’s greatest hits
    http://mondoweiss.net/2017/04/bret-stephenss-greatest

    I was shocked last night when I learned that Bret Stephens has been hired as an op-ed columnist by the New York Times. Being an idealist, I’ve always believed that the Times is going to begin to reflect progressive opinion on Israel and Palestine; but this hire told me I’m dreamin. It goes to show, there really is a neoconservative bloc at the Times. That’s why Jodi Rudoren was Jerusalem bureau chief (and told readers about “a sliver of opportunity” in Gaza). It’s why Bill Kristol was a columnist for a while. It’s why editors always let through stupid headlines about Jerusalem. It’s why the op-ed page is all Zionist, from Roger Cohen to David Brooks to waffling Tom Friedman. And why the paper slags the boycott movement against Israel without rejoinder from pro-BDS voices.

    But let’s hear from the temperamental Stephens himself; let’s see why I think this hire is so problematic. What characterizes Stephens’s speech is an irritable callowness that easily flares into prejudice. That prejudice is conventional neoconservative, and Jewish-centric with a boyish gloss. A former editor of the Jerusalem Post— the launching pad for Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Goldberg — Stephens is often Islamophobic.

  • Netanyahu caught on tape negotiating mutual benefits with businessman - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.763607

    At the heart of Case 2000 is an attempt at an unambiguous deal between money and government. Sources who spoke with Netanyahu said he was surprised by evidence against him.

    Désolé, je n’ai trouvé un rapport en français que sur ce site d’extrême-droite :

    L’opposition veut faire tomber Netanyahou suite à un enregistrement entre le Premier ministre et un homme d’affaire
    http://alyaexpress-news.com/lopposition-veut-faire-tomber-netanyaou-suite-a-enregistrement-ent

    • Netanyahu caught on tape negotiating mutual benefits with businessman
      At the heart of Case 2000 is an attempt at an unambiguous deal between money and government. Sources who spoke with Netanyahu said he was surprised by evidence against him.
      By Gidi Weitz | Jan. 8, 2017 | 7:02 AM

      Suspicions in the main corruption affair involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are backed by a tape documenting alleged contacts between Netanyahu and a businessman over mutual benefits, Haaretz has learned.

      At the heart of the affair, dubbed Case 2000, lies an attempt to make an unambiguous deal between money and government – not suitcases brimming with cash in return for a gas monopoly, or bank transfers to a secret account in return for franchises in natural resources or infrastructure, but the businessman’s support that would help Netanyahu remain in office in exchange for huge financial benefits.

      Even if this pact was only partly realized or was still in its infancy, the mere existence – and documentation – of such incredible negotiations demands an immediate criminal investigation. When the affair is fully revealed, the details will shed light on how decisions are made at the top.

      It may be said that the affair is based on solid evidence that will be difficult to dispute, like that provided by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s bureau chief Shula Zaken about Olmert: a series of tapes in which the prime minister’s own voice is heard. People who spoke with Netanyahu over the weekend after his second police interrogation over corruption allegations said he was surprised by the evidence against him. “He didn’t expect it,” said a person who knows Netanyahu well.

      The details of the affair are sensational also because for many years Netanyahu has been perceived, and rightly so, as a stranger to the local swamp of crony capitalism, adeptly navigated by his two predecessors, Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon. A few years back, the man who admired the American trust-breaking president, Theodor Roosevelt, was not the cup of tea of the major players in Israel’s economy. Netanyahu has been described in the past as a cautious man whose sins, while they might infuriate the public, were minor. When the details of the “Case 2000” affair are revealed, these perceptions could crack.

      This explosive material landed on the desk of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit back in the spring. After sitting on it for long months and withholding the information from the public with no justification, the attorney general hastened to plug the narrative beneficial to Netanyahu: The affair is serious from a public perspective and is borderline in criminal terms.

      It’s time to put an end to this spin and to two others making headlines these last few days: That Netanyahu is calm and certain that it’ll all end in hot air; and that Mendelblit is a steadfast attorney general, who conducted a comprehensive, thorough and quick investigation. These two descriptions, aggressively peddled to the public by lackeys of these two intelligent individuals, are trickery and deception.

      It appears that the minor of the two affairs involving Netanyahu, the gifts case, is being received by the public with a shrug. The explanation may be the high threshold set over the last decade, when Israel watched in wonder as a president accused of rape barricaded himself in his residence, tycoons funneled millions into the prime minister’s son’s bank account, envelopes bursting with dollars finding their way into another prime minister’s hands, a finance minister who topped off his bank account with labor unions’ funds and a defense minister who stashed away hundreds of thousands of dollars and bought himself a luxury pad with money from tycoons.

      Today, it appears that only a gas monopoly in return for suitcases of cash, or a TV franchise for a bloated bank account in the Virgin Islands under a straw man’s name will wake the public out of its stupor. This is what Israeli society has come to.

      Suspicions in the gifts affair come as no surprise. For years stories abounded of Netanyahu’s tendency to abuse his status to receive funding from wealthy individuals in Israel and abroad for his luxurious lifestyle. This included first-class flights, hotel suites, expensive Cuban cigars, champagne and suits. Despite many reports since the early 1990s, about his parsimoniousness, his bizarre funding of personal expenses from the public purse, his fondness for enjoying the good life but not paying for it, Netanyahu continued in a behavior, which mainly showed dubious judgement.

      In this affair, wealthy businessmen, above all movie producer Arnon Milchan, were allegedly asked to buy hundreds of thousands of shekels worth of luxury items for Netanyahu and his wife Sara. A report by Channel 10’s Raviv Drucker that Netanyahu had asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to assist Milchan with his visa problems, proves once more that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and that the friendship between Netanyahu and Milchen was not just a warm, authentic relationship that happened to develop between the huge money and a top politician.

    • Israël : la police examine un enregistrement impliquant Netanyahu
      AFP | 08/01/2017
      http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1028010/israel-la-police-examine-un-enregistrement-impliquant-netanyahu.html

      La police israélienne, qui enquête sur une éventuelle implication de Benjamin Netanyahu dans des affaires de corruption, examine un enregistrement d’une conversation avec un patron de presse sur l’éventualité d’apporter une couverture plus favorable au Premier ministre, selon des informations diffusées dimanche.

      Selon la chaîne privée Channel 2, la police est en possession d’un enregistrement d’une conversation entre M. Netanyahu et Arnon Moses, propriétaire du quotidien Yediot Aharonot et de son site d’information Ynet.
      Ce journal fournit une couverture traditionnellement hostile à M. Netanyahu. Cette même chaîne de télévision israélienne affirme que les deux hommes discutaient d’"un accord qui aiderait le Yedioth en échange d’une couverture favorable" au Premier ministre.

      Selon Channel 2, les discussions entre M. Netanyahu et l’éditeur portaient sur la possibilité de réduire ou fermer le supplément hebdomadaire du Israel HaYom, pour donner un coup de pouce aux ventes de son rival et à la fortune de la famille Moses.
      En échange, ajoute la même source, le Yedioth baisserait le ton de sa couverture traditionnellement hostile à M. Netanyahu. La chaîne ne précise pas quand cette conversation avait eu lieu ou si un accord avait été conclu.

      Depuis son lancement en 2007, le tirage du quotidien gratuit pro-Netanyahu Israel HaYom dépasse celui de Yedioth. Le journal appartient au milliardaire américain juif Sheldon Adelson, soutien de longue date de M. Netanyahu.

      Le Premier ministre a été interrogé jeudi par les enquêteurs pendant cinq heures, pour la deuxième fois en une semaine, dans le cadre d’une enquête sur des cadeaux qu’il est soupçonné d’avoir reçus illégalement d’hommes d’affaires.

      Channel 2 avait auparavant indiqué que M. Netanyahu avait reçu pendant sept ou huit ans des boîtes de cigares de choix de la part d’Arnon Milchan, homme d’affaires israélien, producteur hollywoodien et ami du Premier ministre. La valeur totale de ces cigares s’élèverait à des dizaines de milliers de dollars, selon Channel 2.

      La chaîne affirme également que la police soupçonnait M. Milchan d’avoir offert à l’épouse du Premier ministre, Sara, du champagne rose d’une valeur d’une centaine de dollars la bouteille.
      Un avocat de Benjamin Netanyahu avait affirmé vendredi que ces soupçons étaient « dénués de toute substance ».

  • Top court ruling on journalists was against the nation: President - POLITICS
    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/top-court-ruling-on-journalists-was-against-the-nation-president-

    President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has heightened the tone of his criticism against the country’s Constitutional Court by saying the top court’s verdict which caused the release of two journalists from prison was “against the nation.” 

    The Constitutional Court has to be one of the institutions that should be the most sensitive about the interests and rights of the state and the people. But this institution and its president [Zühtü Arslan] have not hesitated to rule against the country and its people on one of the most concrete examples of a massive attack towards Turkey in recent times,” Erdoğan said at a rally in Burdur, a Western town, on March 11. 

    Two prominent journalists from daily Cumhuriyet, its editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, and Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gül, were set free after 92 days of imprisonment as a result of a Constitutional Court decision which said their rights had been violated. Dündar and Gül had been arrested by a lower Istanbul court on charges of espionage and terrorism after they reported about claims that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) was allegedly shipping weapons to rebels in Syria. 

    Erdoğan vowed he would continue to stand against the top court’s verdict in line with his presidential duty to protect the constitution, saying, “I am responsible for monitoring the orderly and harmonious work of state bodies, the implementation of the constitution and representing the unity of the state and the people of the Republic of Turkey. Those who would exceed the boundaries of its authority will have to face me. I will never hesitate to voice my objections in the name of my people if the Constitutional Court opts for such a thing.

  • The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people | Ars Technica UK
    http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people

    “Ridiculously optimistic” machine learning algorithm is “completely bullshit,” says expert.

    In 2014, the former director of both the CIA and NSA proclaimed that “we kill people based on metadata.” Now, a new examination of previously published Snowden documents suggests that many of those people may have been innocent.

    (...) The highest scoring selector who travelled to Peshawar and Lahore is “PROB AHMED ZAIDAN”, Al-Jazeera’s long-time bureau chief in Islamabad.
    As The Intercept reported, Zaidan frequently travels to regions with known terrorist activity in order to interview insurgents and report the news. But rather than questioning the machine learning that produced such a bizarre result, the NSA engineers behind the algorithm instead trumpeted Zaidan as an example of a SKYNET success in their in-house presentation, including a slide that labelled Zaidan as a “MEMBER OF AL-QA’IDA.”


    #machine_learning #stupidité_artificielle #drones #robots_tueurs

  • Saudi King Salman purging monarchy of Abdullah’s inner circle - Middle East - Israel News | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.654210

    After the first purge carried out by Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in January, a few days after the death of his predecessor King Abdullah, comes the second round. It is not likely to be the last.

    The first to be ousted was Abdullah’s inner orbit of loyalists, including his bureau chief, Khaled al-Tuwaijri, his two sons, Mashal (governor of Mecca) and Turki (governor of Riyyad), his intelligence chief Khalid bin Bandar and the latter’s father, Bandar bin Sultan, who headed the National Security Council.

    The current round aims to ensure the line of succession. Among others, Salman ousted the crown prince, Muqrin bin Abdulaziz – Abdullah’s favorite – replacing him with the powerful Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef. The king appointed his son, Mohammed bin Salman, as deputy crown prince – that is, the man who will inherit the kingdom if Mohammed bin Nayef departs.

    These moves are not surprising. From the beginning of Salman’s rule, it was clear that Prince Muqrin, once the failed intelligence chief, would not remain crown prince for long. Even Mohammed bin Salman’s appointment as deputy crown prince was expected, and not only because of his diplomatic skills and expertise on terrorism, which he acquired in numerous courses he took at the FBI Academy.

    The distancing of Abdullah’s loyalists and strengthening of the Sudairi branch of the ruling family, of which Mohammed bin Nayef is a member, is part of a settling of scores with King Abdullah, whose reign saw a waning of the influence of the Sudairi princes – the sons of Hassa al-Sudairi, one of the 10 wives of Saudi Arabia’s first king, Abdulaziz (Ibn Saud).

    If there is a surprise appointment, it is that of Adel al-Jubeir as foreign minister, replacing Saud al-Faisal, who designed and implemented Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy for four decades. Al-Faisal, 75, has Parkinson’s disease and it seems his request to leave office was authentic. Jubeir is the first Saudi foreign minister who is not a member of the royal family.

    No change in foreign policy due

    These appointments are part of internal housekeeping; they do not change the kingdom’s foreign policy. King Salman, despite his own health issues – he apparently suffers from Alzheimer’s – immediately made his mark when he intensified official public discourse against Iran, supported the establishment of an Arab intervention force and initiated the attack on the Houthis in Yemen to root out Iran’s influence in that country.

    The strong man in the kingdom is no doubt Nayef, who will continue to serve both as interior minister and head of the National Security Council. He is the man who will implement foreign policy, one of whose principles is the effort to establish a “Sunni axis” against Iran.

    As part of this effort, Saudi Arabia has changed its policy toward Turkey, and despite the rift between Egypt and Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was invited to visit the king. Nayef, who met with Erdogan in Turkey before that visit, set its agenda.

    It seems that as part of the efforts toward a “Sunni axis,” Saudi Arabia will encourage Hamas to cut itself off entirely from Iran and return to the “Arab fold,” despite the ongoing enmity between Egypt, Saudi Arabia’s ally, and Hamas.

    Salman’s son Mohammed, who is defense minister, is in his 30s, too young to be seen as successor to the throne, but that could change.

    The main challenge before the new regime is to absorb the strategic changes expected to accompany the emerging nuclear agreement with Tehran, and the rapprochement between Iran and the United States. If and when sanctions on Iran are lifted, new oil will flow that is expected to grab an important share of the Saudi market. Saudi Arabia will also have to build up its influence in Syria and Iraq as a bulwark against Iranian power in those countries, especially if Iran proposes its own solution to the crisis in Syria.

  • “The Upshot” is the New York Times’ replacement for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight - Quartz
    http://qz.com/185922/the-upshot-is-the-new-york-times-replacement-for-nate-silvers-fivethirtyeight

    “The Upshot.” That’s the name the #New_York_Times is giving to its new #data-driven venture, focused on politics, policy and economic analysis and designed to fill the void left by Nate Silver, the one-man traffic machine whose statistical approach to political reporting was a massive success.
    +

    David Leonhardt, the Times’ former Washington bureau chief, who is in charge of The Upshot, told Quartz that the new venture will have a dedicated staff of 15, including three full-time graphic journalists, and is on track for a launch this spring. “The idea behind the name is, we are trying to help readers get to the essence of issues and understand them in a contextual and conversational way,” Leonhardt says. “Obviously, we will be using data a lot to do that, not because data is some secret code, but because it’s a particularly effective way, when used in moderate doses, of explaining reality to people.”

    #sites_de_presse #data_journalism

  • Philippine President Aquino compares China to Nazi Germany - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/06/phil-f06.html

    On February 4, Philippine President Benigno Aquino, speaking in an exclusive interview in Malacañang presidential palace with New York Times Hong Kong bureau chief, Keith Bradsher, compared China and its role in Southeast Asia to that of Nazi Germany in the lead up to the Second World War.

    Aquino likened the disputed portions of the South China Sea to the Sudetenland, annexed by Hitler in the lead up to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. He stated that “the Philippines faces demands to surrender territory piecemeal to a much stronger foreign power and needs more robust foreign support for the rule of international law if it is to resist.”

    #philippines #chines #déclarations_imprudentes #point_goldwin

  • Al Jazeera journalists detained for 15 more days | Mada Masr

    http://www.madamasr.com/content/al-jazeera-journalists-detained-15-more-days

    Al Jazeera’s English-language bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy, correspondent Peter Greste, producer Baher Mohamed and cameraman Mohamed Fawzy were arrested ten days ago. Fahmy is of Egyptian origin but holds a Canadian passport, while Greste is Australian. Mohamed and Fawzy are both Egyptian.

    (...)

    The Ministry of Interior released a statement identifying the defendants as “elements of the Muslim Brotherhood.” The National Security Apparatus claims to have evidence that the journalists used two hotel rooms to hold meetings with other Brotherhood members, and “broadcast news that harms national security as well as spread false information for Al Jazeera without the approval of relevant authorities,” the ministry claimed.
    The prosecutor general’s office accused the journalists of terrorism by virtue of their association with the Brotherhood, and harming Egypt’s image abroad through their reporting.
    The defendants face five years in prison on the charges, since the Cabinet passed a decree designating the recently banned Islamist organization as a terrorist group.

    #journalisme #presse #médias #AlJazeera #prison

  • The Times Is Working on Ways to Make Numbers-Based Stories Clearer for Readers
    http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-times-is-working-on-ways-to-make-numbers-based-stori

    Concernant les chiffres, le New York Times décide de ne plus en parler isolément sans les mettre en perspective,

    Toward that end, I just finished speaking with David Leonhardt, someone who is well positioned to do something about this. Not only is he the Washington bureau chief, but he also is a Pulitzer Prize-winning economics writer. (...)

    He agrees that there is a problem, and told me that The Times is already working on a solution. A small group of editors is “thinking through a whole set of issues about how we present numbers,” he told me. The results, he said, will probably be determined within a couple of months. They might take the form of new entries to the stylebook, announcements within newsroom departments or e-mails laying out new guidelines to the whole news staff.

    Ceci après une série de critiques,

    And while he noted that the recent pressure for change is “coming from the left,” specifically the economist-writer Dean Baker and MoveOn.org – which now has more than 18,000 signatures on a petition — this is not a partisan issue.

    Réaction de Dean Baker,

    Numbers in Context : Big Congrats to the New York Times and Margaret Sullivan
    http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/numbers-in-context-big-congrats-to-the-new-york-times-and-margaret-sullivan

    Anyhow, we will see exactly how the NYT ends up dealing with the issue, but they deserve a great deal of credit for recognizing the problem and trying to address it. Margaret Sullivan, the paper’s public editor, deserves special credit for taking this one on and pressing it with the paper’s edtors. Also Bob Naiman, at Just Foreign Policy, played an important role in initiating a petition at Move-On on this issue, which eventually got almost 19,000 signatures. That’s pretty impressive for the ultimate wonk petition.

  • MIDEAST - Egyptian forces raid on Turkish news agency bureau, detain journalist
    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/egyptian-forces-raid-on-turkish-news-agency-bureau-detain-journal

    Egyptian military forces raided the Cairo bureau of Turkey’s Ihlas News Agency on Aug.20, detaining the bureau chief, while also extending the custody period of a reporter for state-run TRT.

    The military government’s forces detained the Ihlas bureau chief, Tahir Osman Hamdi, and seized the agency’s live broadcast equipment.

    Hamdi was subsequently taken into police custody.

  • Condamnations for detonating an Improrvised Explosive Device in Bahrain:
    Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief

    A court in Bahrain has sentenced seven men to 15 years in jail for attempted murder and making, possessing and detonating a homemade bomb that injured five policemen in Bani Jamra, a village west of the capital Manama.
    The High Criminal Court in Manama also sentenced nine other people to 10 years for their role in the bomb plot on January 28.
    According to reports, only five of the defendants are in jail after six escaped from custody while the other five have never been traced.[...]

    A court last month sentenced 17 men to 15 years in jail each for their role in a bomb explosion that critically injured four policemen on April 9 last year.
    In a separate case, a Bahraini a court put off the trial of 21 suspects on charges of illegal assembly to April 18. The suspects who reportedly took part in an illegal rally on January 25 denied the charges.
    The court said that it wanted to listen to the testimonies of more witnesses before issuing its verdict

    Gulf News
    http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/bahrain/16-men-sentenced-for-bahrain-bomb-attack-1.1166332

  • Israel orders release of Al Jazeera reporter - Al Jazeera
    http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/09/2011926124650861345.html

    Israel’s military court has ordered the release of Al Jazeera’s Kabul bureau chief.

    Samer Allawi was arrested on August 10 while trying to cross the border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank, from which he hails.

    Israeli authorities charged him with being a member of Hamas.

    [...]

    Salim Waqim, Allawi’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera that his client was interrogated about his work and management of Al Jazeera’s Kabul bureau, his personal financial information and his relationships with colleagues, friends, family and relatives.