Day: July 17, 2020

Actor and activist Angelina Jolie urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to fulfill its promise to hold to account perpetrators of sexual violence against children in conflict settings.“I have met child survivors of sexual violence – and domestic violence and trauma and abuse – everywhere,” Jolie said of her 20 years working with the U.N. refugee agency. “There is no continent untouched by these crimes.”She addressed a council session reflecting on the issue, one year after adoption of Resolution 2467, which strengthened prevention through justice and accountability mechanisms, empowered the council to impose sanctions on perpetrators, and opened the way for victims to seek reparations.Jolie gave the example of Yazidi children she had met in northern Iraq. Thousands of their mothers and female relatives have been abducted, enslaved and abused since 2014 by fighters with the Islamic State group. Many are still in captivity.“Many of the children witnessed the murder of their relatives, and the rape of their mothers,” she told the council in a virtual meeting. “One doctor who has provided medical care for hundreds of Yazidi women and girls said that almost every girl she had treated between the ages of 9 and 17 had been raped or subjected to other sexual violence. In some cases, victims were girls under the age of 9.”Specialized care neededShe said the children experience post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, flashbacks and nightmares, yet these “invisible victims” are particularly overlooked when it comes to support services.“What few services there are have been largely focused on women survivors – who have immense trauma and unmet needs of their own,” Jolie said. “The reality is that no one is getting the care they need. But there is a specific lack of dedicated care for children.”Jolie said she has seen these problems in every conflict setting she has visited and urged the international community to step up its funding to address the needs of all survivors.Khin Ohmar, a peace activist from Myanmar, spoke on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. She said in her country, the military has long used rape as a weapon against ethnic communities.“The horrific accounts of Rohingya women during the 2016 and 2017 so-called ‘clearance operations’ remain urgent, shocking and unique in their ferocity,” she said. “They are also representative of the military’s pattern of using gender-based violence in their campaigns against other ethnic communities, including the Kachin, Shan, Ta’ang and Rakhine.”She said grave international crimes continue to be committed in Myanmar, and she urged the council to refer the file to the International Criminal Court, as domestic accountability is not possible.Sexual violence a tactic of warThe U.N. secretary-general’s envoy on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, said sexual violence is a tactic of war and a tool of political repression, used to dehumanize, destabilize and forcibly displace populations. It includes rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization and forced marriage.“This is a crime that shreds the very fabric that binds communities together, leaving social cohesion and safety nets threadbare,” Patten told the council.She said the U.N. documented nearly 3,000 cases last year of conflict-related sexual violence but noted it is a crime that is underreported because of fear of reprisals and stigmatization. Nearly 90% of attacks targeted women and girls; 848 were on children. Hundreds of cases also targeted men, boys and LGBTQI persons.She noted that many victims are still seeking justice and support years later.“In post-conflict contexts, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, survivors of sexual violence are still fighting to realize their rights and status as legitimate victims of war, in order to access reparations and redress,” Patten said.She urged the council to enforce its resolution and show perpetrators that there are consequences for violating it.
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Researchers have discovered one of the blackest materials on Earth – material that reflects less than .5 percent of the light that hits it – on the skin of deep-sea fish that use their blackness as camouflage from predators.The fish’s skin and its possible applications in the above-water world are described in a study published Thursday in the science journal Current Biology. The lead author of the study, Smithsonian Natural History Museum zoologist Karen Osborn, said in her research she kept coming across black fish that she could not quite photograph — she could only capture their silhouette.This inspired her to capture samples of the fish and examine them. Deep-sea fish of this nature, she said, use their blackness to escape predators. In their environment, where sunlight cannot reach, many fish have developed bioluminescence — their own biological light source — which they use to hunt their prey. Their prey, in turn, evolved their blacker-than-black skin.The Pacific blackdragon (Idiacanthus antrostomus), another variety of ultra-black deep-sea fish, is seen in this image released in Washington, July 16, 2020.Osborn found the fish had developed a unique arrangement of melanin — the pigment in skin — concentrated in a thin layer near the skin’s surface.  It is so concentrated, she said, that it prevents light from leaving the layer of skin. This quality allows the fish to be invisible to predators and their own prey alike.The study indicates there are 16 species of fish, some totally unrelated, with this blackness trait in their skin. The researchers said their findings could have practical applications in designing telescopes, cameras and camouflage for humans and their equipment.
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A person is in custody in connection with the killing of a 33-year-old tech entrepreneur found dismembered inside his luxury Manhattan condo.
A law enforcement official said Friday the person in custody has been working as Fahim Saleh’s personal assistant.
Saleh was found at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday inside his luxury seventh floor apartment on the Lower East Side.  
He was found dead in a gruesome scene Tuesday afternoon. Saleh was the CEO of a ride-hailing motorcycle startup called Gokada that began operating in Nigeria in 2018. Authorities say a relative called police after going to check on Saleh and making the gruesome discovery.
Investigators had recovered security video showing Saleh exiting an elevator that leads directly into the full-floor, two-bedroom apartment earlier Tuesday afternoon, closely followed by a masked person dressed entirely in black according to another law enforcement official who was briefed on the case.
 
It also shows a struggle between the two that ensued at the entrance to the apartment, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Police believe that the relative may have interrupted the intruder before that person fled out a back exit.
The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide after an autopsy found the cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the body.
Saleh’s LinkedIn biography described him as a self-taught businessman who founded Gokada, building on his experience of first “seeing an opportunity in his parent’s native country of Bangladesh” and starting that country’s largest ride-sharing company. It said he also invested in a similar venture in Colombia.  
Investigators had been exploring whether the killing could have been related to Saleh’s business dealings.  
Apartments in the 10-story building where Saleh’s remains were found sell for more than $2 million. The building was completed in 2017 as part of a wave of gentrification in the neighborhood.
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Google, the behemoth technology company that has become a verb for online search, is offering financial aid to students who take their certificate programs in data analysis, project management and user experience.Calling it “a digital jobs program to help America’s economic recovery,” the offering comes during record-high joblessness in the U.S. because of quarantines and shutdowns implemented to help stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.  “College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have economic security,” wrote Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google, in a blogpost.In addition to workplaces, many college and university campuses shut down in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. While 60% of campuses say they will hold classes in person this fall, 9% say they will be online only, and 24% say they will offer a hybrid of online and in-person classes.  “We need new, accessible job-training solutions – from enhanced vocational programs to online education – to help America recover and rebuild,” Walker wrote.Google considers the certificates equivalent to a four-year degree, but they take only six months to complete. No college degree is required.  The courses normally cost $49 a month, but the company stated that it will make available 100,000 need-based scholarships, funded by Google.The certificates teach proficiency in data analysis, project management and user experience design.  Data analysts “prepare, process, and analyze data for key insights,” Google stated. The certificate helps learners navigate “the data lifecycle using tools and platforms to process, analyze, visualize and gain insights from data.” The median average wage for data analysts is $66,000, it stated.  Project managers “are responsible for planning and overseeing projects to ensure they are completed efficiently with maximum quality and value added to the business.” Google’s certificate adds “insight into agile project management.” The median average wage is $93,000, according to Google.  User experience – or UX designers – “make technology easier and more enjoyable to use. They create or refine products and interfaces to make them useful, usable, and accessible to users,” the company’s announcement stated. Those certificates include lessons in design, wireframes and prototypes. The median annual wage for UX designers is about $75,000, Google said.The studies will be hosted on Coursera, an online learning platform founded by Daphne Koller, who studied at Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley, and Andrew Ng, who studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UC-Berkeley. Koller and Ng are professors at Stanford University.Students worldwide, forced into online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, have lamented the quality of online classes. They point to inadequate internet connectivity and poor delivery of instruction. Educators, too, have complained about being unprepared to teach over the internet.Students Give Online Learning Low MarksMany call on universities to end the semester earlyGoogle did not respond to emails sent by VOA Student Union.
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The baseless conspiracy theory took off after an anonymous user posed a bizarre question in an internet chatroom: What if retail giant Wayfair is using pricey storage cabinets to traffic children? Self-proclaimed internet sleuths quickly responded by matching up the names of Wayfair products to those of missing children, producing social media posts that have since overrun Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The result: A national human trafficking hotline suddenly began taking a number of calls about the imagined Wayfair scheme, stretching its resources. A woman said she posted a video of herself on Facebook to counter false claims that she was missing. One mother’s pleas to Facebook and YouTube to remove a video of her young daughter that was being used to suggest she was a Wayfair victim went unanswered for days.  Wayfair was forced to respond to the accusations in a recent statement: “There is, of course, no truth to these claims.”  Yet internet users continue to weave a complex web around Wayfair’s furniture and decor, spun from falsehoods and conjecture. Social media influencers, fringe online communities and even political candidates have also now seized on the conspiracy theory as evidence of an even grander one, known as QAnon, that centers on the baseless belief that President Donald Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the “deep state” and a child sex trafficking ring. “Conspiracy theorists always managed to spread their theories in the past, but the internet has made this much easier,” said Kathryn Olmsted, a history professor who studies conspiracy theories at University of California, Davis. “If you believe in one, you believe in another. You start collecting them.”  Mentions of Wayfair and “trafficking” have exploded on Facebook and Instagram over the past week. And on TikTok, the hashtags #Wayfairconspiracy and #WayfairGate together amassed nearly 4.5 million views even as several strands of the conspiracy theory have been debunked. Some social media posts pointed to the high cost of the storage cabinets — which sell for about $13,000 each — as suspect. Wayfair, however, said the steel structures were priced correctly for industrial use. A pillow listed for $9,999 also fueled suspicion, but was an error, the company said. ‘Why am I mad? Because I’m not missing’Other posts shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter connected the name of one of Wayfair’s cabinets, Samiyah, to an outdated missing person report for an Ohio girl named Samiyah Mumin, claiming it was proof that the company is trafficking young girls. A woman who identified herself as Mumin filmed a Facebook video to set the record straight. “Why am I mad? Because I’m not missing,” she said. Mumin did not respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office confirmed Mumin was found after being reported missing for a four-day period in May 2019 and has not been reported missing since.  A Maryland boy who briefly went missing in April also was identified by internet conspiracy theorists as a possible Wayfair victim because his last name matched the name of a pillow. He was found in less than 24 hours, with no signs that he had been trafficked or kidnapped, according to the sheriff’s office in St. Mary’s County. The burst of attention for the Wayfair claims also renewed interest in the QAnon conspiracy theory. In recent days, three conservative congressional candidates in Florida, Georgia and California who have expressed support for QAnon have also pushed unfounded allegations about Wayfair on Twitter. Thousands of tweets promoted the QAnon hashtag with claims that Wayfair is trafficking. A network of popular QAnon Facebook groups shared a video with a mashup of claims about human trafficking, including the Wayfair conspiracy theory.  The term QAnon skyrocketed on Instagram and Facebook, receiving more interactions last week than any other week over the last year, according to data from CrowdTangle, which tracks more than 4 million public pages, profiles and accounts. Surge in hotline callsThe attention created by the Wayfair conspiracy theory has, in some cases, been damaging for the very people social media users say they’re trying to help.  An increase in calls prompted by the conspiracy theory is straining the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which provides emergency help to victims. The line was already seeing a surge in requests for emergency shelter assistance because of the coronavirus, said Robert Beiser, of Polaris, a nonprofit organization that runs the hotline. “There’s a very real possibility that if there’s a conspiracy theory that comes out on the internet and it generates thousands of signals into our hotline, that could get in the way for us providing timely service to survivors who are in crisis,” Beiser said.  YouTube video Meanwhile, a YouTube video of a young London girl sitting on a couch to audition for a Wayfair commercial was used by some pro-Trump YouTube accounts to claim that she was a victim in the alleged trafficking scheme.  The video was taken from the girl’s mother’s YouTube account and spread across the internet, said Carleen McCarthy, a senior agent for the talent agency Alphabet Agency, which represents the girl. The agency and the girl’s mother repeatedly flagged the videos to YouTube and Facebook, as they continued to rake in thousands of views online. YouTube removed the video after the AP inquired about it, although new versions remain on the site. Facebook said in a statement that it’s reduced circulation of false claims around the Wayfair conspiracy theory.  One YouTube influencer — who posted a video, viewed 155,000 times, that accused Wayfair of trafficking children through their products — walked back the comments a few days later. “I didn’t really have all the facts for that video, I just kind of made it on impulse because I was so scared,” said Jeremiah Willis in a later video. “I personally have no knowledge, no evidence, nothing.” 
 
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