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  • Opinion | Who’s to Blame for Those Kate Middleton Conspiracies? |Conversations and insights about the moment. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/26/opinion/thepoint#kate-middleton-russia-interference

    Par Zeyneo Tufekci

    Who’s to Blame for Those Kate Middleton Conspiracies?

    A British government source, reportedly, told the British newspaper The Telegraph that “hostile state actors” — China, Russia and Iran — are “fueling disinformation about the Princess of Wales to destabilize the nation.” British morning shows promptly picked up the story, comparing it to election interference.

    It’s certainly possible that countries with a history of online conspiracy mongering played some role in amplifying the most salacious rumors about Catherine, the Princess of Wales. But it’s also undeniable that large numbers of people — and celebrities and newspapers and everything else — were intensely interested in the princess’s whereabouts.

    The claim about foreign bots and the Princess of Wales is just the latest of similar claims of foreign interference or social media manipulation made without convincing public evidence. Young people are dissatisfied with President Biden’s policies over the Israel-Hamas war? Blame TikTok. Consumer sentiment soured amid high inflation and housing prices? Must be social media!

    If our institutions turn foreign meddling on social media into the new “the dog ate my homework,” it will become an easy excuse to ignore public dissatisfaction with divisive policies. And how will such claims be believable when they actually involve consequential foreign meddling in elections?

    There is nothing mysterious about the Kate Middleton rumors and conspiracies. She completely disappeared from view amid conflicting claims about her whereabouts. Then photo agencies conceded that the one photo the palace released of her and her children was doctored. Because the royals cultivate a headline-grabbing parasocial relationship with the public, the topic merged with the global water cooler chat online and rumors ran wild.

    But there is a lesson. Kensington Palace is the latest institution to discover that lying to the public will make people suspicious. Mistrust will swirl on social media, as valid questions and bonkers conspiracies percolate.

    It was true for the pandemic and for the war in Gaza. It’s true in the royals’ case, too. Western institutions should first worry about shoring up their own behavior. Then they can talk about meddling — with evidence, please.

    #Zeynep_Tufekci #C_est_la_faute_aux_rezosociaux

    • Je suis arrivé à cet âge où il y a des théories du complot sur une certaine Kate Middleton, mais je ne le savais pas, et je m’en fous.

      Avant, c’était les vedettes secondaires qui font la couverture du journal télé vendu à la caisse du supermarché : ça fait bien 25 ans qu’à chaque fois je me demande « mais qui est cette personne ? ». Je vois que maintenant, j’arrive même à passer à côté des théories du complot des interwebz.

  • The Israeli military acknowledges mistaking a bike for a weapon in a strike, but stands by the attack.
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/12/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#the-israeli-military-acknowledges-mistaking-a-bi
    Published March 12, 2024Updated March 13, 2024
    https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1767610105686585345/pu/vid/avc1/540x540/vZfJ0pC1BFOyxJbF.mp4?tag=12

    The drone footage shows two people walking down a road in Gaza, when they are suddenly blasted by an Israeli strike, their forms disappearing in the flash of an explosion.

    Text appearing over the video, which was released by the Israeli military, described the scene as showing the “elimination of terrorists.” One person is labeled as holding a rocket-propelled grenade.

    The person actually held a bicycle, the military acknowledged on Monday in response to questions from The New York Times, saying in a statement that it regretted the mistake in the video. The Israel Defense Forces still defended the strike, asserting that the two people were combatants, without providing its evidence.

    “When the video was published, the bicycle carried by one of them was mistakenly marked as a rocket launcher,” the military said in a statement to The New York Times. “The I.D.F. regrets the marking error.”

    The acknowledgment came after The Times asked the Israel Defense Forces about a Times analysis of the footage suggesting that one of the people was holding a bicycle instead of a weapon. The mistake had been first identified by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an advocacy group that focuses on documenting and calling attention to potential human rights violations in Gaza.

    The brief video clip, which the military released on March 3, shows two people walking in southern Gaza City, one with the bicycle and the other with what appears to be a white sack of flour. An annotation on the video incorrectly identifies the bicycle as an “RPG” or rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The date of the strike is unknown.

    The Times analysis found that the dimensions of the object in the video were consistent with a bicycle and, at one point, the front wheel of the bike can be seen slightly turning. The handlebars of the bike are also visible. Additionally, underneath the bicycle the ground is disturbed as its tires roll forward, an effect that would not have happened had the object been a shoulder-mounted weapon.

    Despite the error in identifying the bicycle as a weapon, the I.D.F. stood by its claim that the people targeted were combatants.

    “During the several days leading up to the documented strike, armed terrorists used the route shown in the video in order to transfer ammunition and attack I.D.F. forces,” the statement said. “The strike took place after real-time identification of the people as armed terrorists, based on information gathered ahead of the strike.”

    The statement said that the decision-making process behind the strike would be referred to military investigators who examine possible cases of misconduct by Israeli forces. Some human rights groups say that the Israeli military lacks the capacity for independent accountability and rarely penalizes soldiers for harming Palestinians. Israeli officials have defended the military’s efforts to limit harm to civilians and have opened investigations into some cases.

    Mohammed Qreiqea, a researcher for Euro-Med, told The Times that, according to witnesses he spoke with, the people were returning from collecting aid. One of the people in the strike died, while the other suffered a lung puncture but survived, he said. Their families did not immediately respond to phone calls, and the Israeli military did not describe the condition of the two people targeted.

    The strike was conducted on a road just a block away from Salah al-Din street, the main north-south highway in the Gaza Strip.

    As of Tuesday evening in Israel, the video with the incorrect annotation remained on the Israeli military’s website and social media accounts.

    Aaron Byrd contributed video production.

    — Aric Toler, Haley Willis and Neil Collier

  • Opinion | The Increase in Measles Cases Is Utterly Avoidable | Zeynep Tufekci. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/13/opinion/thepoint#measles-outbreak-vaccine

    The Increase in Measles Cases Is Utterly Avoidable

    The World Health Organization has reported a “staggering” increase in the number of measles cases and deaths around the world. Millions of these victims are in poor countries and war zones, where vaccination programs have faltered because of the pandemic, violence or a lack of resources. In 2022, there were an estimated nine million measles cases globally, with 136,000 deaths.

    Increasingly, measles outbreaks have been taking place in wealthier countries, largely because of vaccine refusal. This is a dangerous situation — and not just for the willfully unvaccinated.

    Measles is airborne, wildly contagious and deadly. While the measles vaccine is greatly protective, losing herd immunity against the disease would result in many victims, and not just those who are willfully unvaccinated.

    A small percentage of fully vaccinated people will develop breakthrough measles infections if exposed to the disease. While their cases may be mild, they can transmit the disease to others. That’s how measles will spread to infants too young to be vaccinated, older people and the immunocompromised. (In the United States, babies get vaccinated against measles between 12 and 15 months of age.) Because the vaccinated can have few to no symptoms, vaccinated breakthrough cases are easy to miss — until that potentially deadly transmission.

    Some Republican politicians and state legislatures have toyed with removing or weakening vaccine mandates against measles, mumps and rubella in children. The number of Republicans who believe parents should be able to forgo vaccines for their children — even if that choice increases the risk of disease to others — is now up to 42 percent. That’s more than double the number before the pandemic, when the percentages were similar between the parties.

    Make no mistake: If efforts to remove these mandates succeed, there will be more outbreaks. Many unvaccinated children will die horrible deaths, while the vaccinated will be largely spared. But many babies, grandparents and immunocompromised patients will get sick and die, too.

    In a sane world, our country would allocate the resources to get vaccines to those in poorer countries and conflict zones and would refuse to budge on compulsory childhood vaccines. The alternative should be unthinkable.

    #Zeynep_Tufekci #Vaccination

  • Amnesty International accuses Israeli forces of killing Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/06/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news/amnesty-international-accuses-israeli-forces-of-killing-palestinians-in-the

    Amnesty International said on Monday that Israeli forces were killing Palestinians in the West Bank with “near total impunity” as the world’s attention focused on Gaza, demanding in a new report that the International Criminal Court step up its investigation into Israel’s conduct in the Israeli-occupied area.

    In the West Bank, Israeli forces have used live fire to disperse Palestinian protests, attacked people trying to help the injured and carried out deadly arrest raids that have spread fear throughout Palestinian communities, Amnesty International said in its report. It said the Israeli forces’ actions added to the country’s “well-documented track record of using excessive and often lethal force to stifle dissent and enforce its system of apartheid against Palestinians.”

    The human rights organization said that Israel’s use of unlawful force in the West Bank had sharply escalated since Oct. 7, when a Hamas-led attack from Gaza killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health officials there.

    The Israeli military has described its actions in the West Bank as counterterrorism efforts necessary to prevent further attacks. Israel has strongly denied prior accusations that it has committed the crime of apartheid.

    Israeli military operations have raised alarms from several human rights groups, including the United Nations human rights office, which called in December for Israel to “end unlawful killings” of Palestinians in the West Bank and to immediately stop the use of “military weapons and means during law enforcement operations.”

    Since Oct. 7, Israeli forces in the West Bank have killed at least 360 Palestinians and injured 4,270, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Sunday. Last year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since the office began recording casualties in 2005, and about 70 percent of those killings were reported during Israeli military operations, O.C.H.A. has said.

    Amnesty’s report detailed its investigations into four incidents that it said were emblematic of the recent escalation, and renewed its call for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, to take action. In 2021, the I.C.C. opened an investigation into allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Israeli-occupied areas, but many Palestinian groups have criticized the pace and focus of the inquiry.

    Amnesty’s director for global research and policy, Erika Guevara-Rosas, called for Mr. Khan to investigate the killings in the West Bank as possible war crimes, saying in the report that “an international justice system worth its salt must step in.”

    #Palestine #Cisjordanie #Amnesty_international

  • Opinion | Boeing Is Missing Much More Than Four Door Bolts - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/06/opinion/thepoint#boeing-door-bolts

    Cette affaire Boeing est un révbélateur de la manière dont le capitalisme néolibéral est devenu une manière de singer dans tous les domaines les pratiques du capitalisme numérique. Go fast and break things, soyez agiles, on apprend des erreurs... Une bascule radicale de la culture des ingénieurs vers les pratiques des auditeurs et des commerciaux.

    There it is, the probable answer to why the exit door plug on the Boeing 737 Max Alaska Airlines flight blew out in the air. A National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report on the incident, released today, says that four bolts on the door plug were missing.

    Those four bolts, which prevent the door from sliding up, are removed on purpose when mechanics have to take the door off for maintenance or inspection, as was done last September, according to the report. But somehow, when the installation was over, they weren’t there. No bolts — nothing to stop the door from sliding up and then off.

    Preliminary N.T.S.B. reports like this one focus on establishing facts rather than spelling out who was at fault, which will wait for the final report. But this plane was practically new, and the Boeing chief executive, David Calhoun, has already acknowledged that it was a “quality escape” that caused the blowout.

    Everything so far indicates that Boeing is a company plagued by shoddy quality control. Just yesterday, it disclosed that a supplier had found “two holes may not have been drilled exactly to our requirements” on about 50 unfinished Boeing 737 Max planes, requiring more work on the planes and delaying their delivery.

    How could all this happen?

    This morning, before heading to Capitol Hill to testify before the House Transportation Committee, the F.A.A. administrator Mike Whitaker stopped by CNBC to discuss everything the agency has done to try to get ahead of this: slowing Boeing production lines, revoking certain exemptions, getting more inspectors on the ground, etc.

    But he also said something that really goes to the heart of the matter. Pressed by the host about the root causes, Whitaker said, “The system is designed really as an audit system, and I think that hasn’t worked well enough.”

    Our airline safety system assumes that airplane manufacturers are also deeply invested in upholding safety standards, so the F.A.A. oversight focuses on identifying new problems, improving existing systems and auditing to make sure existing standards are properly upheld.

    What happens if a company instead focuses more on what it could get away with in terms of cost-cutting?

    That’s how we get to a world where audits alone will not have “worked well enough.” The missing bolts may have caused the door to blow out, but it’s the missing corporate ethos that we should examine to understand the root cause.

    #Boeing #Zeynep_Tufekci

  • Conversations and insights about the moment. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/30/opinion/thepoint#tech-hearings-transparency

    Zeynep Tufekci
    Feb. 1, 2024, 1:02 p.m. ETFeb. 1, 2024
    Feb. 1, 2024

    Zeynep Tufekci

    Opinion Columnist
    We Need Information, Not Apologies, From Tech Companies

    At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Wednesday on online child sexual exploitation, perhaps the most dramatic moment came when Mark Zuckerberg, the C.E.O. of the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, turned around and stood up to face parents holding up photos of their children who had died by suicide after sexual abuse or extortion via a social media platform.

    “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Zuckerberg said to them.

    Here, reasonable voices might intervene. An unbearable tragedy, certainly, they might say, but such tragedies have occurred before social media came along. Let’s not lose proper historical and individual context when talking about the mental health and well-being of children, they might point out.

    All of that is technically correct, but fundamentally wrong. And one senator got to the heart of it.

    “Platforms need to hand over more content about how the algorithms work, what the content does and what the consequences are, not at the aggregate, not at the population level, but the actual numbers of cases so we can understand the content,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware. He said he was sponsoring a bill with that requirement, setting new standards for disclosure and transparency, and posed the question forthrightly for Zuckerberg and the C.E.O.s of TikTok, Snap, X and Discord:

    “Is there any one of you willing to say now that you support this bill?”

    The answer was … silence. Crickets. Not one C.E.O. would commit. “Mr. Chairman, let the record reflect a yawning silence from the leaders of the social media platforms,” Coons noted, with resignation.

    The platforms have nearly absolute immunity as an industry. Thanks to Section 230, they generally cannot be sued and held liable for tragic events even if they were facilitated by their product; they get to keep all the profits made from these products. And yet when the public asks for meaningful transparency and data — so that it’s not just an appeal to emotion that results in legislation — the public is told, basically, to pound sand.

    We wouldn’t accept this from any other industry, and we should not accept it from technology companies. And that’s the most important point anyone should make until legislators start passing bipartisan bills that force meaningful transparency on these companies, which could finally allow proper accountability and reasonable oversight.

    #Zeynep_Tufekci #Facebook #Enfants

  • Laissez nous le temps de fabriquer des preuves.

    Israeli Army Searches Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital for 2nd Day : Israel-Hamas War Live Updates - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/16/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/16/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news/israeli-forces-search-al-shifas-grounds-which-it-says-hid-a-secret-hamas-fa

    By Thursday afternoon in Gaza, the only evidence that the Israeli military had so far provided publicly of Al-Shifa’s purported dual use was video showing some weapons and equipment — about a dozen guns, a grenade, protective vests and military uniforms — that it said soldiers found within an M.R.I. unit at the hospital. The New York Times has been unable to verify the provenance of the weapons.

    Mr. Hamdan, the Hamas spokesman, called the video “a weak and ridiculous narration,” at a news conference in Beirut. “The occupation resorted to this farce to cover up the fall of its alleged story,” he added.

    He said Israeli troops had “terrorized the patients and detained them in a barbaric manner,” and accused them of “destroying the medicine warehouse and disabling the M.R.I. machine.”

    On Oct. 27, the day that its forces invaded Gaza, the Israeli military published a map of the site that suggested Hamas was operating four underground complexes beneath the hospital’s internal medicine department, its chest and dialysis department, its M.R.I. department and a rest area at its western edge. The map also suggested that Hamas ran a command center at or near the hospital’s outpatient clinic.

    The army has not yet presented evidence publicly that any of those five sites exist. It did say in a statement that soldiers had found an aboveground command center in the M.R.I. unit, without providing further evidence. Hamas dismissed the assertion as “a fabricated story that no one would believe.”

    A spokesman for the Israeli military, Maj. Nir Dinar, said that Israel needed more time to find and present evidence.

    “It takes time because Hamas knew we were coming, and they’ve tried to hide evidence of their war crimes,” Major Dinar said. “They’ve messed up the scene, they’ve brought in sand to cover some of the floors, and they’ve created double walls.”

  • Nouveau grand moment de la propagande israélienne (posté sur le compte du porte-parole de l’armée israélienne) :

    And now we show you more evidence. In this room, there is a list. This list, in arabic, says, “We’re in operation, operation against Israel, started on the 7th of october.” This is a guardians list: where every terrorist writes its name, and every terrorist has it’s own shift.
    https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1724163901745414144/pu/vid/avc1/1280x720/hO9zDPl3Q_Ab8r5M.mp4

    J’ai fait vérifier par madame, et effectivement les terroristes qui se succèdent sur ce calendrier se nomment Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi et Dimanche. Et au bout d’une semaine, les choses sont bien faites, c’est à nouveau terroriste nommé Lundi, suivi du terroriste Mardi, etc. Et ainsi de suite jusqu’au bas de la page.

    Pour être bien clair : ce que Gugusse présente comme les « noms » des terroristes, ce sont juste les jours de la semaine.

    Ça devrait suffire à convaincre Joffrin.

    • ils s’en foutent que ça soit du pipo, même « facile » à debunk ; leur propagande est passée, ils remplissent les tuyaux de merde, c’est plus cher à nettoyer qu’à faire (et je retrouve pas le nom de ce "principe" de coût/bénéfice qui avantage la désinformation)

    • Gaza : Israël affirme avoir des indices de l’utilisation d’un hôpital par les combattants du Hamas
      https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/international/video/gaza-israel-affirme-avoir-des-indices-de-l-utilisation-d-un-hopital-p

      Sur une photo publiée par le compte X (ex-Twitter) d’un lieutenant-colonel de Tsahal, un document placardé sur un mur du « sous-sol de l’hôpital al-Rantissi » semble attribuer différentes tâches aux terroristes avant, pendant et après les attaques du 7 octobre, note BFMTV.

      Alors on passe d’un calendrier parfaitement lisible à l’écran, qui ne contient littéralement que le nom des jours de la semaine, à « une liste des gardiens des otages » selon le porte-parole de l’armée israélienne, mais maintenant selon « Le HuffPost avec AFP » citant BFMTV, c’est « un document qui attribue différentes tâches aux terroristes avant, pendant et après les attaques du 7 octobre ».

      Donc on a totalement lâché l’affaire, hein. On s’en cogne de raconter strictement n’importe quoi, en fait.

    • pas impossible aussi que France Q exécute les ordres du chef et serve la soupe, sans réfléchir paske, même s’ils ont un gros doute sur la teneur des infos qu’on leur demande de relayer, il vaut mieux exécuter les ordres ; sans réfléchir ; et puis bon, c’est que de l’actualité hein, ça sera vite oublié :-)

      Et #merci @arno pour Brandolino

    • La version du New York Times dit ceci :

      The Gazan Health Ministry said in a statement that the paper, including days and dates, was nothing more than “a regular work shift timetable, a standard administrative practice in hospitals.”

      The ministry, however, failed to address one key detail: The calendar begins on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, and *an Arabic title written at the top uses the militants’ name for the assault: “Al Aqsa Flood Battle, 7/10/2023.”*

      les pros du calendrier, vous confirmez ?

      (source : https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/14/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war-news)

    • Oui : « Opération Al-Aqsa Flood (7/10/2023) ». Mais « key detail » et « the militant’s name for the assault », ce sont des avis du NY Times. J’ignore comment des Palestiniens de Gaza appellent l’attaque du 7 octobre et la guerre qui s’ensuit, mais je ne vois pas pourquoi ils ne l’appèleraient pas ainsi. Et le détail devient « vital » après que les médias occidentaux, reprenant la présentation israélienne, aient raconté n’importe quoi sur le reste du calendrier.

    • C’est juste, mais depuis le 7 octobre cette date est devenue iconique et cadence toutes nos actions, qu’on soit résistants ou non.
      Et puis je ne vois pas pourquoi ce calendrier est dramatique même s’il contient des noms de résistants ! Rien ne justifie le bombardement d’hôpitaux.

    • On peut même élargir le propos : la focalisation sur les hôpitaux est intéressante pour les deux « camps ». Pour les Palestiniens, elle permettrait de démontrer l’inhumanité des bombardements israéliens (qui attaquent « même » les hôpitaux), ainsi que le deux-poids-deux-mesures occidental (qui condamne en Ukraine mais justifie en Palestine). Pour les Israéliens, l’enjeu est de démontrer que le Hamas utilise la population comme boucliers humains.

      Mais dans les deux cas c’est une guerre de symboles qui passe à côté de l’enormité du massacre. Parce que les plus de 11000 personnes tuées, donc presque la moitié d’enfants, dans les bombardements israéliens, à quelques exceptions près, ne sont pas morts dans des attaques sur les hôpitaux. Ils sont morts dans des bombardements massifs sur des zones d’habitation.

      On se fait facilement balader par les éléments de langage israéliens. Il y a quelques jours encore, ça ne parlait pas de justifier les bombardements sur les hôpitaux : tout le commentariat nous parlait de Dresde pour justifier qu’on rase complètement une ville. Le temps qu’on démonte ce discours dégueulasse, hop on passe à autre chose, et maintenant on se demande si c’est acceptable de bombarder des hôpitaux. Dans quelques jours on sera à discuter du nouvel élément de langage imposé par la propagande israélienne (en ce moment, je vois venir un assez joli « on leur apporte de l’eau, on leur apporte du fuel, mais comme le Hamas est vraiment très méchant, les gens refusent et continuent de mourir de leur plein gré »).

    • La mort de la journaliste d’Al-Jazira, Shireen Abu Akleh, place Israël face à ses responsabilités d’occupant (12 mai 2022)

      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/05/12/la-mort-de-la-journaliste-d-al-jazira-shireen-abu-akleh-place-israel-face-a-

      Mais à cette heure, le bureau de M. Bennett ne se préoccupe pas d’exprimer une vérité assurée, ce qui aurait nécessité du temps et de l’humilité. Ce qui compte, c’est que ces images instillent le doute. Elles entretiennent une autre version des faits, qui s’oppose aux accusations convergentes des confrères de Shireen Abu Akleh. C’est un pauvre mensonge par omission, à mèche courte, valable pour quelques heures à peine.

  • Le titre ignoble du moment : Explosion Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/world/middleeast/gaza-explosion-al-maghazi-camp.html

    Autant de prudence ça pique les yeux. Le New-York Times n’est même pas foutu de dire « Israeli Airstrike », même en soulignant que c’est ce que disent les gazaouites. Parce que déjà, écrire « airstrike », ça aurait tendance à un peu trop incriminer l’une des parties.

    Et sans aucun souci pour la logique, le même journal publie le même jour : Israel accuses Hamas of operating out of 2 more Gaza hospitals.
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/06/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#israel-accuses-hamas-of-operating-out-of-2-more-

    « C’est pas nous qui bombardons les hôpitaux, d’ailleurs c’est parce que le Hamas s’y cache. »

  • Donald Trump Is Indicted in New York - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/30/nyregion/trump-indictment-news

    Mr. Trump will be the first former president to face criminal charges. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case is focused on a hush-money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.

  • Ukraine starts to build a wall on its border with Belarus, a close Russian ally.

    Ukraine has started to build a fortified wall along its border with Belarus, a senior Ukrainian official has said, to protect it against its northern neighbor, whose territory Moscow has used as a staging ground for its invasion and a launchpad for missile attacks.

    The wall could also be aimed at preventing the government in Belarus, a repressive former Soviet republic, from allowing asylum seekers to traverse its territory into Ukraine, according to Yohann Michel, a research analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

    Construction so far extends only a few miles in the northwestern region of Volyn, a region that also borders Poland, a country that is a staunch Ukrainian ally. Video posted by Kyrylo Tymoshenko (https://t.me/tymoshenko_kyrylo/2640), a senior official in the office of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, showed a concrete barrier topped with coils of razor wire and watchtowers painted green.

    While the wall was guarded by soldiers, its value so far appeared largely symbolic, given that the border between the two countries runs 650 miles, although some of its length runs through terrain such as swampland that would be difficult for a military force to navigate. It was also unclear what protection the completed wall might offer against tanks or artillery.

    “This is one of the elements of the engineering barriers that are being installed to protect our border,” Tymoshenko said in a video he posted on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday that showed him inspecting the wall. “Of course, the work is going on not only in Volyn. This applies to all regions bordering Belarus and Russia.”

    President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus is a staunch ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and the United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Belarus over its support of the war. Since last month, Russia has launched a series of raids using drones made in Iran from Belarus that have damaged Ukraine’s towns, cities and energy infrastructure.

    At the same time, Russia has amassed thousands of troops in Belarus along the Ukrainian border, according to Ukrainian officials, although their mission was unclear. The defense minister of Latvia, Artis Pabriks, said last month that the assembled force would likely be too weak to mount a successful thrust across the border, and military experts say it would be difficult for it to penetrate into western Ukraine in order to disrupt the flow of Western military supplies to Ukraine via Poland.

    Poland built a wall this year along its border with Belarus to make it harder for asylum seekers to gain access, following a crisis a year ago in which thousands of people attempted to access the European Union via Poland. European leaders accused the government in Belarus of allowing asylum seekers from the Middle East into the country and then funneling them westward toward Poland and Lithuania.

    “Belarus can create more problems for Ukraine by forcing immigrants to cross by foot,” Mr. Michel said.

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/18/world/russia-ukraine-war-news?#ukraine-starts-to-build-a-wall-on-its-border-with-
    via @fil

    #murs #barrières_frontalières #frontières #Russie #Ukraine #Biélorussie #migrations #réfugiés

  • Covid Updates: South Africa Identifies New Variant - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/25/world/covid-vaccine-boosters-mandates

    Covid Updates: South Africa Identifies New Variant
    Britain, Israel and Singapore have restricted travel from the region. South African scientists will meet with W.H.O. experts on Friday.Scientists in South Africa on Thursday identified a concerning new coronavirus variant with mutations that one scientist said marked a “big jump in evolution,” prompting several countries to quickly limit travel from the region. Within hours, Britain, Israel and Singapore had restricted travel from South Africa and some neighboring countries, citing the threat of the new variant. By Friday, markets were down in Japan in response to the discovery, and officials in Australia and in New Zealand said that they were monitoring the new variant closely.The European Commission will also propose restricting air travel to the bloc from southern Africa based on concerns over the variant, Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president, said in a Twitter post on Friday. She referred to it by its scientific name, B.1.1.529. In the past two days, scientists detected the variant after observing an increase in infections in South Africa’s economic hub surrounding Johannesburg. So far, 22 positive cases have been identified in the country, according to South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Two cases were detected in Hong Kong, both apparently linked to someone who had traveled from South Africa. No cases have been detected yet in Britain.
    A number of variants have emerged since the onset of the pandemic. One underlying concern about them is whether they will stymie the fight against the virus or limit the effectiveness of vaccines. South African scientists will meet with the World Health Organization technical team on Friday to discuss the new variant, and the authorities will assign it a letter of the Greek alphabet.But governments are not waiting to impose restrictions. By Thursday evening, Britain had banned flights from South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe, starting at noon local time on Friday. The six nations will be added to the country’s red list, which would require British travelers coming from those nations to quarantine on arrival.
    “More data is needed but we’re taking precautions now,” Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said on Twitter.In a statement posted Friday on a government website, South Africa said it would urge Britain to reconsider the measure, saying: “The U.K.’s decision to temporarily ban South Africans from entering the U.K. seems to have been rushed, as even the World Health Organization is yet to advise on the next steps.”Within a few hours, officials from Israel and Singapore had announced that they, too, would add the same countries to their red lists, along with Mozambique. In December 2020, South Africa was the first nation to report the appearance of the Beta variant, which has now spread to nearly 70 countries. Scientists have been concerned that some clinical trials have shown that vaccines offer less protection against the Beta variant. Since then, the more virulent and aggressive Delta variant has spread all over the world and is believed to be fueling the latest surge in cases.The variant has also been identified in Botswana. The country’s health ministry confirmed in a statement that four cases of the new variant were detected in people who were all fully vaccinated. All four were tested before their planned travel.
    With over 1,200 new infections, South Africa’s daily infection rate is much lower than in Germany, where new cases are driving a wave. However, the density of mutations on this new variant raises fears that it could be highly contagious, leading scientists to sound the alarm early.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#sante#variant#afriquedusud#lesotho#grandebretagne#israel#singapour#circulation#frontiere

  • Les #Etats-Unis enverront [de la matière première pour la fabrication de #vaccins contre le #Covid-19] en #Inde
    https://www.zonebourse.com/actualite-bourse/Coronavirus-Les-Etats-Unis-enverront-du-materiel-medical-en-Inde--330629

    25 avril (Reuters) - Les Etats-Unis fourniront immédiatement de la matière première pour la fabrication de vaccins contre le Covid-19, des équipements médicaux et du matériel de protection afin d’aider l’Inde à répondre à l’augmentation massive de cas de coronavirus, a annoncé dimanche la Maison Blanche.

    U.S. to send vaccine materials and other supplies to hard-hit India, officials say.
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/25/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases#us-vaccines-india-covid

    Under pressure from vaccine makers in India who say they need supplies to combat a surge in coronavirus cases, the Biden administration said on Sunday that it had partially lifted a ban against the export of raw materials needed to make vaccines.

    [...]

    Asked on Thursday why America would not lift its ban on exporting raw materials, Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, told reporters that “the United States first and foremost is engaged in an ambitious and effective and, so far, successful effort to vaccinate the American people.”

    The resistance was met with criticism from Indian politicians and health experts.

    “By stockpiling vaccines & blocking the export of crucial raw materials needed for vaccine production, the United States is undermining the strategic Indo-US partnership,” Milind Deora, a politician from Mumbai, one of the hardest-hit cities, said on Twitter.

    The statement on Sunday marked a change in approach: [...]

  • Covid-19: Australia and New Zealand will open a travel bubble starting April 19. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/05/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases

    Australia and New Zealand will open a travel bubble starting April 19.
    The Australia-New Zealand travel bubble is expected to deliver a boost to tourism and to families that have been separated by strict border closures.
    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand announced on Tuesday that her nation would establish a travel bubble with Australia, allowing travelers to move between the countries without needing to quarantine for the first time since the pandemic began.The bubble, which will open just before midnight on April 19, is expected to deliver a boost to tourism and to families that have been separated since both countries enacted strict border closures and lockdown measures that have all but eliminated local transmission of the coronavirus.The announcement came after months of negotiations and setbacks, as Australia battled small outbreaks and officials in both countries weighed testing requirements and other safety protocols.
    “The director general of health considers the risk of transmission of Covid-19 from Australia to New Zealand is low and that quarantine-free travel is safe to commence,” Ms. Ardern said at a news conference.
    Since last year, Australia has permitted travelers from New Zealand to bypass its hotel quarantine requirements. New Zealand’s decision to reciprocate makes the two countries among the first places in the world to set up such a bubble, following a similar announcement last week by Taiwan and the Pacific island nation of Palau.Australians flying to New Zealand will be required to have spent the previous 14 days in Australia, to wear a mask on the plane and, if possible, to use New Zealand’s Covid-19 contact tracing app. In the event of an outbreak in Australia, New Zealand could impose additional restrictions, including shutting down travel to a particular Australian state or imposing quarantine requirements, Ms. Ardern said.
    She warned that the new requirements would not necessarily free up many spaces in New Zealand’s overwhelmed hotel quarantine system, which has a weekslong backlog for New Zealanders wishing to book a space to return home. Of the roughly 1,000 slots that would now become available every two weeks, around half would be set aside as a contingency measure, while most of the others would not be appropriate for travelers from higher-risk countries, Ms. Ardern said.Before New Zealand closed its borders to international visitors in March 2020, its tourism industry employed nearly 230,000 people and contributed 41.9 billion New Zealand dollars ($30.2 billion) to economic output, according to the country’s tourism board. Most of the roughly 3.8 million foreign tourists who visited New Zealand over a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019 came from Australia.Ms. Ardern encouraged Australians to visit New Zealand’s ski areas, and said she would be conducting interviews with Australian media outlets this week to promote New Zealand as a tourism destination.The bubble would also make it easier for the more than 500,000 New Zealanders who live in Australia to visit their families. “It is ultimately a change of scene that so many have been looking for,” Ms. Ardern said, addressing Australians. “You may not have been in long periods of lockdown, but you haven’t had the option. Now you have the option, come and see us.”

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#australie#nouvellezelande#sante#bulledevoyage#tourisme#economie#retour

  • Novavax’s Vaccine Works Well Except on Variant First Found in South Africa - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/28/world/covid-19-coronavirus

    China cancels Lunar New Year celebrations for millions of migrants.
    Hankou Station in Wuhan, China, last week. A year ago, the station was among the first places to be closed after the coronavirus outbreak.
    Hankou Station in Wuhan, China, last week. A year ago, the station was among the first places to be closed after the coronavirus Every winter, Pang Qingguo, a fruit seller in northern China, makes the 800-mile trip to his ancestral home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday of the year in China, with his family.The coronavirus ruined the festivities last year, stranding Mr. Pang in the northern city of Tangshan as many Chinese cities imposed lockdowns. Now, as China confronts a resurgence of the virus, the pandemic is set to spoil the holiday again, with the authorities announcing onerous quarantine and testing rules to dissuade migrant workers like Mr. Pang from traveling for the new year, which begins this year on Feb. 12.
    Mr. Pang, who describes his home in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang as the “happiest place,” is anguished by the rules. He has taken to social media in recent days to express frustration about his situation and post photographs of his 7-year-old daughter, whom he has not seen in more than a year. “Society is so cruel,” he wrote in one post.
    Many of China’s roughly 300 million migrant workers face a similar reality as the government tries to avoid a surge in cases during what is typically the busiest travel season of the year. The authorities have demanded that people visiting rural areas during the holiday spend two weeks in quarantine and pay for their own coronavirus tests. Many migrants, who endure grueling jobs for meager wages in big cities, say those restrictions make it impossible to travel.The rollout of the rules has drawn widespread criticism in China, with many people calling the approach unfair to migrant workers, who have long been treated as second-class citizens under China’s strict household registration system. The workers have been among the most deeply affected by the pandemic, as the authorities have carried out scattered lockdowns to fight the virus and employers have reduced hours and pay.In a regular year, hundreds of millions of people travel by plane, train and car to be with their families for the Lunar New Year. The holiday, which typically includes big festive banquets and fireworks, is normally the only time that many workers can return to their hometowns to see loved ones. This year, many are making plans to spend the holiday alone.
    China has added restrictions, offered incentives and appealed to a sense of filial and national responsibility to urge people not to travel.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#chine#sante#religion#deplacement#quarantaine#test#travailleurmigrant

  • Covid-19: Over Two Million Around the World Have Died From the Virus - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/15/world/covid19-coronavirus

    As India prepares to begin an ambitious coronavirus vaccination program this weekend, more than 700,000 Hindu pilgrims gathered to take a dip in the Ganges River on Thursday, the start of the Kumbh Mela, one of the largest religious gatherings in the world.The faithful who traveled to Haridwar, the holy town at the foothills of the Himalayas that is the site of this year’s pilgrimage, said a dip in the freezing waters will cleanse them of their sins and provide blessings that extend through several generations.
    The authorities said that about 1,000 people had been fined for not wearing masks or maintaining social distance, but Sanjay Gunjyal, a police official monitoring the crowd, acknowledged the difficulty of trying to enforce the rules. “In a limited space, crowd management and maintaining social distancing is extremely difficult,” he said.India has recorded at least 10.5 million coronavirus cases — the world’s second-highest total after that of the United States — although the South Asian nation’s outbreak is widely believed to be worse than the official figures suggest.At least 2,500 security personnel were stationed along the river, where Covid-19 testing centers were set up and attendees’ fevers were being checked.“Their belief system was paramount and not the fear to catch Covid,” said Manoj Singh Negi, a spokesman for the police department monitoring the event. “That they got to touch the holy waters was the overriding sentiment.”

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#inde#sante#religion#pelerinage#migrationinterne

  • The facial-recognition app Clearview sees a spike in use after Capitol attack.
    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/09/us/trump-biden#facial-recognition-clearview-capitol

    After the Capitol riot, Clearview AI, a facial-recognition app used by law enforcement, has seen a spike in use, said the company’s chief executive, Hoan Ton-That.

    “There was a 26 percent increase of searches over our usual weekday search volume,” Mr. Ton-That said.

    There are ample online photos and videos of rioters, many unmasked, breaching the Capitol. The F.B.I. has posted the faces of dozens of them and has requested assistance identifying them. Local police departments around the country are answering their call.

    “We are poring over whatever images or videos are available from whatever sites we can get our hands on,” said Armando Aguilar, assistant chief at the Miami Police Department, who oversees investigations.

    Two detectives in the department’s Real Time Crime Center are using Clearview to try to identify rioters and are sending the potential matches to the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force office in Miami. They made one potential match within their first hour of searching.

    “This is the greatest threat we’ve faced in my lifetime,” Mr. Aguilar said. “The peaceful transition of power is foundational to our republic.”

    Traditional facial recognition tools used by law enforcement depend on databases containing government-provided photos, such as driver’s license photos and mug shots. But Clearview, which is used by over 2,400 law enforcement agencies, according to the company, relies instead on a database of more than 3 billion photos collected from social media networks and other public websites. When an officer runs a search, the app provides links to sites on the web where the person’s face has appeared.

    In part because of its effectiveness, Clearview has become controversial. After The New York Times revealed its existence and widespread use last year, lawmakers and social media companies tried to curtail its operations, fearing that its facial-recognition capabilities could pave the way for a dystopian future.

    The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the Oxford Police Department in Alabama is also using Clearview to identify Capitol riot suspects and is sending information to the F.B.I. Neither the Oxford Police Department nor the F.B.I. has responded to requests for comment.

    Facial recognition is not a perfect tool. Law enforcement says that it uses facial recognition only as a clue in an investigation and would not charge someone based on that alone, though that has happened in the past.

    When asked if Clearview had performed any searches itself, Mr. Ton-That demurred.

    “Some people think we should be, but that’s really not our job. We’re a technology company and provider,” he said. “We’re not vigilantes.”

    — Kashmir Hill

    #Clearview #FBI #algorithme #CCTV #biométrie #élections #facial #reconnaissance #délation (...)

    ##extrême-droite