07.16.17

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• How I put Linux in the enterprise

  I used to work in higher ed. In the late 1990s, we moved to a new student records system. We created an “add-on” web registration system, so students could register on-line—still a new idea in 1998. But when we finally went live, the load crushed the web servers. No one could register. We tried to fix it, but nothing worked.

• Desktop

  • Automated Firmware Updates, New Installer Coming to System76′s Ubuntu Laptops

    System76, the computer reseller known for shipping laptops and desktop pre-loaded with the Ubuntu Linux operating system, posted an update on the work they’re doing for the Pop!_OS distribution.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 4.12.2

    I’m announcing the release of the 4.12.2 kernel.

    All users of the 4.12 kernel series must upgrade.

    The updated 4.12.y git tree can be found at:
    git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.12.y
    and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

    http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…

  • Linux 4.11.11

  • Linux 4.9.38

  • Linux 4.4.77

  • Linux 3.18.61

  • UBIFS Gets Statx Support, Better Encryption In Linux 4.13

    The Linux 4.13 kernel changes for the UBIFS file-system have been submitted.

    UBIFS, as a reminder, is the Unsorted Block Image File-System deigned for flash memory devices off the UBI layer. UBIFS in Linux 4.10 gained file-encryption support making use of the fscrypt functionality used as well by F2FS and EXT4. With Linux 4.13, there are UBIFS related encryption updates and fixes.

  • Linux 4.13 Thermal Management Sees Some Improvements For CPU_Cooling

    The thermal management updates have landed in the Linux 4.13 code-base.

  • Linux 4.13-rc1 Kernel Released

  • Merge window over – Linux 4.13-rc1 out

    Ok, normally I do this on Sunday afternoon, but occasionally it
    happens a day early like now to avoid people timing me.

    In fact, I was planning on doing it yesterday evening this time around
    because I was so annoyed with lots of late pull requests on Friday
    (and some today), but ended up going to dinner and not getting
    everything done, so it’s only one day early. Next time…

  • The New Changes & Features Of The Linux 4.13 Kernel

    With Linux 4.13-rc1 having been released, here’s my original look at the new features coming for the Linux 4.13 kernel and the other changes merged over the past two weeks of this new cycle.

  • Please pull NFS client changes for Linux 4.13

  • Graphics Stack

    • Mesa 17.1.5 Brings More Fixes To Open-Source GPU Driver Users

      Andres Gomez of Igalia has announced Mesa 17.1.5 as the newest point release to the current Mesa 3D stable series.

      Mesa 17.1.5 fixes a potential crash in core Mesa, has Vulkan / SPIR-V fixes, the usual notable fixes in the Intel i965 and RadeonSI drivers, and some smaller fixes to Etnaviv, OpenSWR, SVGA, and other parts of this massive user-space 3D graphics stack.

    • [Mesa-announce] [ANNOUNCE] mesa 17.1.5

      In Mesa Core we include a fix to prevent a potential crash.

    • Mesa 17.1.5 Linux Graphics Stack Released, Improves AMD Radeon & Intel Drivers

      After teasing us a couple of days ago with the upcoming availability of the fifth maintenance update to the Mesa 17.1 3D Graphics Stack for GNU/Linux distributions, Mesa developer Andres Gomez is now announcing the final release of Mesa 17.1.5.

      Mesa 17.1.5 comes only two weeks after the Mesa 17.1.4 update that probably many of you are using right now on your Linux distros, and it’s here to add an extra layer of improvements for those using AMD Radeon or Intel graphics cards. First off, Mesa 17.1.5 fixes a potential crash in Mesa Core, adds better support for the GLSL and SPIR-V compilers, and solves a linking problem with standalone Android builds.

    • Vulkan 1.0.54 Lands In Mesa For Intel ANV, Some RADV Extensions

      It’s fabulous to see how promptly the Mesa Vulkan drivers are receiving support for new extensions.

      Vulkan 1.0.54 was released on Thursday. This updated promoted the external memory and semaphores extensions from experimental to stable. They also added new extensions for 16-bit storage, dedicated allocation, storage buffer storage class, variable pointers, new memory requirements query, and external fences for external memory.

    • Difficulties and Success Stories

      This hints to a fundamental issue with our approach of using the Present extension in Xwayland. The extension was written with hardware in mind. It assumes a flip happens directly on a screen. There is no intermediate link like a Wayland compositor and if a flip has happened the old buffer is not on the screen anymore. Why do we still try to leverage the Present extension support in Xwayland then? There are two important features of a Wayland compositor we want to have with Xwayland: A tear-free experience for the user and the ability to output a buffer rendered by a direct rendering client on a hardware plane without any copies in between. Every frame is perfect should also remain valid when using some legacy application and that we want no unnecessary copies is simply a question of performance improvements. This is especially important for many of the more demanding games out there, which won’t be Wayland native in the short term and some of them maybe never. Both features need the the full Present extension support in the Xwayland DDX. Without it a direct rendering application would still use the Present extension but only with its fallback code path of copying the Pixmap’s content. And for a tear-free experience we would at least need to sync these copies to the frame events sent by the Wayland compositor or better directly allow multiple buffers, otherwise we would limit our frame rate. In both cases this means again to increase the Present extension support.

    • It Looks Like Intel Could Begin Pushing Graphics Tech More Seriously

      It’s been a while now since last seeing some major graphics advancements on Intel CPUs. With Skylake/Kabylake we are on “Gen 9″ graphics, Kabylake-Refresh / Coffeelake is still Gen9 graphics, Broadwell was on Gen8, Haswell on Gen7.5, and IvyBridge on Gen 7. But with upcoming launches past Kabylake-Refresh/Coffeelake, it looks like we’ll be stamping out Gen 10, Gen 11, and Gen 12.

    • Codeplay Release “clspv”, an OpenCL Tool for Vulkan Enabled Devices

      In collaboration with Google, Codeplay is proud to announce the release of a new open-source tool allowing the compilation of OpenCL C language kernels to run on the Vulkan API.

• Applications

  • Nylas Mail An Amazing Free Email Client For Linux

    ​So questions are being asked whether Ubuntu should still ship with a default email client. Personally, I have not used Thunderbird in a really long time. I wanna believe this is not the first time the question has been asked but this time I believe there is a really good chance that it is gonna get cut. This is because everyday users tend to resort to web-based clients such as Gmail or Outlook for their email needs. And for the power user on Linux, there are quite a few options available to choose from. Geary, Empathy, Evolution, and Thunderbird itself have served many users quite well for sometime now, but I found something worth checking out: it is called Nylas Mail.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Writing x86 SIMD using x86inc.asm

    • Update: Todoist Integration

    • Measure TCP metrics LD_PRELOAD-ish way

    • Another step in the command line – arithmetic

    • A progress bar for the shell

    • How to extract images (frames) from any video in linux (Ubuntu, Mint etc.)

    • Creating TCP / IP (port forwarding) tunnels with SSH: The 8 possible scenarios using OpenSSH

    • Integrate CentOS 7 to Samba4 AD from Commandline – Part 14

    • How to Setup Magento 2 With Varnish and Apache on Ubuntu 16.04

    • Beginner’s Resources in Learning Debian GNU/Linux

    • The Dawn of a new Command Line Interface

    • Using apt Commands in Linux [Complete Guide]

    • How to Install MongoDB on Ubuntu 16.04

    • Carla Sella

  • Games

    • Try not to die in Kindergarten, as this abstract puzzle adventure is now on Linux

      Kindergarten [Steam] a very highly rated abstract puzzle adventure has made it’s way onto Linux. It seems the developer isn’t expecting many sales, so perhaps we can change their mind? It does look pretty good!

    • Jotun: Valhalla Edition is currently 100% free on GOG & Steam

    • Distros Used for Gaming, 2017 vs 2016

      Still digging through the survey results from the end of March 2017. This time, we’ll look at how Linux gamers’ choice of Distro for Gaming (and probably other purposes for most of us) has evolved compared to last year. Let’s go directly to the results, showing only the distributions with more than 1% of users in 2017, in red (in black, the results from 2016).

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • digiKam GSoC Students in Egypt

      It was nice meeting Ahmed and Shaza @ faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University in Cairo. I am proud to mentor them in Google Summer of Code.

      Ahmed is working on implementing a DLNA server in digiKam core to export photo and video hosted in physical and virtual collections. The server is ready and he working on the configuration panel UI. See more here.

    • Best be precise

      KSysGuard — the system monitor — on FreeBSD seems oddly precise.

    • Plasma Wayland and Qt 5.9 and beyond

      As you might know Qt 5.8 created challenging problems for our Wayland session and threw our efforts back quite a bit. In this post I want to discuss the actual problems it created, how we are addressing them and looking into the future.

    • The Regressed State Of KDE Plasma On Wayland, But Things Should Get Better

      KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin has written a blog post explaining the issues they’ve run into with KDE Plasma on Wayland and how changes to Qt have set them back months in their Wayland session support.

    • Akademy Schedule

      The workshops and lightning talks and BoFs are being planned, too. I’m glad Anu Mittal has mentioned her QML + JS workshop, it’s a great topic for getting started with application development. QML is something I’ve never gotten in to, but should, so I’ve penciled this workshop into my schedule as well.

    • [Krita] GSoC’17-Week #4

    • KF5 Applications Porting

      Next week, KDE developers will release the beta of KDE Applications 17.08. This release will again have more applications and nearly all games ported to Qt5/KF5. While Qt4 is already no longer supported for over a year, KDE has decided to support Qt4/kdelibs4-based applications a bit longer.

      The 17.08 release, however, will be the last to include Qt4/kdelibs4-based applications. This means, 17.12 will only include applications that are based on Qt5/KF5. See this mailing list discussion.

    • Kdenlive 17.04.3 released

      In comparison to previous versions this was the least exciting development cycle, in terms of new features, since all focus has been on the code refactoring which will bring more stability and new features. Don’t miss the next Café to keep track on the progress and share your thoughts if you like.

• Distributions

  • Reviews

    • Solus 2017.04.18.0 review – Second time lucky?

      Solus 2017 looks like a nice distro, with some obvious visual caveats and tiny functional quirks. It’s reasonable enough than I’m determined to test it on non-UEFI hardware, where I’ll hopefully have more luck. But on a UEFI platform, it seems hopeless. I don’t know there should be a problem when so many other distros do just fine without any issues. Solus seems to be a special snowflake, and it does not cooperate well with a modern and complex system.

      All in all, I cannot recommend the distro, because the outcome may still be harmful. If a distro cannot install properly, the results can be unpredictable. My testing shows some very favorable things, and Budgie looks quite all right now, but as a package, Solus just doesn’t handle UEFI well. I’ll report back after a third, and hopefully lucky test, but you are warned to carefully proceed until the hardware side has been polished. Double sigh. Maybe another another time.

    • A Short Review of Linux Mint 18.2 “Sonya” Cinnamon LTS

  • New Releases

    • Introducing Endless OS 3.2

      This major release brings some exciting changes with a refreshed desktop, great visual improvements, and more offline apps for our users in Southeast Asia to enjoy. Since this is a major release, make sure to update your OS (Settings > Details > Check for updates now), before you update your apps from the App Center!

  • Red Hat Family

    • Finance

      • Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) PT Raised to $100.00

      • Q2 2018 Earnings Estimate for Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Issued By Oppenheimer Holdings

      • Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Expected to Post Quarterly Sales of $698.94 Million

    • Fedora

      • Who added the most packagers to Fedora?

        To become a packager in Fedora, one needs to follow the procedure: a new packager either submits a package or becomes a comaintainer of an existing one. In both cases a “sponsor” is needed — a person who helps the new packager navigate the Guidelines, build system, and dissemination of packages to users. The image above shows all Fedora packagers with edges leading from the sponsor to the sponsoree. The sizes of labels are proportional to the number of edges (you can read the nicks of people who sponsored approximately at least 10 people).

      • Fedora 26 Powers Up Cloud, Server, Workstation Systems

        All three editions share a common base and some common strengths. All of the Fedora editions are released twice a year.

        The Fedora Project is a testing ground for innovations and new features. Some will be implemented in upcoming releases of RHEL, said Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader.

        “Fedora is not directly involved in those productization decisions,” he told LinuxInsider. “Fedora provides a look at many ideas and technologies, and it is a great place for Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers to get involved and provide feedback.”

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Getting Significant Usability Improvements for Bluetooth and USB Speakers

          In his latest report, Ubuntu Desktop team leader Will Cooke talks about some of the latest improvements that landed in the repositories of the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system regarding audio support.

• Devices/Embedded

  • 50 days of postmarketOS

    Fifty days ago I have announced postmarketOS, a touch-optimized, pre-configured Alpine Linux, which can be installed on smartphones. It avoids Android’s bad habit of forking software for every single device (!) entirely by going the other way around and unifying as much as possible: We use regular Linux programs, and try to have only one unique package per device, with ideally one kernel for all devices.

    While we already have a solid pmbootstrap program for installation and development, pmOS itself is in an early development stage. Making calls and other basic phone features do not work yet. Nevertheless, a small development community has emerged and we can show off quite a few improvements.

  • Raspberry Pi: Everything you need to know

    The Raspberry Pi craze is a little over five years old, and it shows no sign of stopping.

  • Why the Industrial IoT Needs an Open-Source Edge Platform

    The Industrial IoT could be left with dozens of platforms and a huge device and systems integration headache. IOTech’s Keith Steele and Andrew Foster write that an open-source platform with industry partnerships may overcome that challenge.

    The growth in the Internet of Things is being driven by the unprecedented amounts of data being generated by a combination of people, machines and things. Cisco estimates that 600 ZB of data will be generated in 2020 by all people, machines, and things, up from 145 ZB generated in 2015.

    [...]

    The EdgeX Foundry is collaborating with numerous other standards bodies and consortia including OpenFog and the IIC. The EdgeX Foundry architecture was designed to be well-aligned with the OpenFog reference architecture with the intent of the EdgeX code acting as a baseline ingredient for OpenFog test beds that prove out scalable fog computing deployments. The intended collaboration with the IIC is to take this a step further by focusing on test beds for specific industrial markets and use cases.

  • Android

    • How to Watch Videos in Android 8.0′s Picture-in-Picture Mode

    • How to take a screenshot on any Android phone

    • iOS 11 vs Android O: Which Operating System Is Best?

    • After 10 years, I’m breaking up with Android

    • Android killed Windows Phone, not Apple

    • The best security apps to lock down your Android phone

    • LeakerLocker Android Ransomware Threatens to Leak Your Personal Information to Your Contacts

    • The Mastermind Behind Android Made a New Smartphone. Here’s What it’s Like to Use

    • Google Maps has started showing a travel time graph for directions

    • Nokia 3 review

      The Nokia 3 is the lowest-end of Nokia’s new line of Android phones. It’s on sale in the UK for £120, but you will have to make sacrifices for that price. That converts to $156 or AU$200, although Nokia has no plans to bring the phone to the US.

      The biggest problems are in the processor performance. The quad-core chip struggles to run even the stock version of Android Nougat, making swiping around the interface sluggish and stuttery. There’s a noticeable delay when opening apps, too, and some apps — including the Google Play store — forced quit on several occasions. I found it regularly frustrating.

Free Software/Open Source

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Pale Moon browser new release, better media support

      I have updated my palemoon.SlackBuild and have uploaded fresh Slackware packages for this new Pale Moon 27.4.0. As previously shared with you, I diverge from the official developers’ recommendations about how to compile this browser on Linux. For instance the gcc compiler I used on Slackware 14.2 is gcc-5.3.0 (which is part of this distro release). On -current I failed compiling with the gcc-7.1.0 compiler which is the default there and I had to create a “gcc5” package for gcc-5.4.0 (which was an earlier gcc version in slackware-current). I wrote an article on this very blog about that gcc5 package if you are interested, it can be installed in parallel with Slackware’s own gcc-7. There are some other differences, mainly in the way I optimize my build.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 5.3.4 Released and Available via PPA for Ubuntu/Linux Mint

    LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, the word processor, Calc, the spreadsheet application, Impress, the presentation engine, Draw, our drawing and flowcharting application, Base, our database and database frontend, and Math for editing mathematics. Its clean interface and powerful tools let you unleash your creativity and grow your productivity. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers.

• BSD

  • NAS4Free 11.1.0.4.4485 Released

  • FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 Available

    The third RC build for the FreeBSD 11.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 Now Available

    The third RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE cycle.

  • FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 Released As The Final Build Is Near

    FreeBSD 11.1 remains on track for releasing later this month.

    FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 is available this weekend as what should be the final release candidate for this minor update to FreeBSD 11. Changes found in FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 include adding deprecation notices to gdb/kgdb/sicontrol/wlconfig and other drivers that will be removed in FreeBSD 12.0, Capsicum support in the Bhyve virtualization code, and various other fixes and clean-ups.

• Licensing/Legal

  • EUPL v1.2 becomes OSI approved

    “The OSI has approved EUPL v1.2. It will be added to the public list of OSI-approved licenses in due course. As with EUPL 1.1, the approval extends to all the official language versions of the license.”

Leftovers

• Science

  • The ethics issue: Should we let synthetic life forms loose?

  • Busting The Frauds Who Are Stealing Native American Culture

    “It’s just such a huge problem that, basically, anything that is … dealing with Native religion online, is false. It’s entirely false,” Carroll said. “There’s nothing you can rely on online except for two sources; university and tribal websites.” And even then, “only for general information. Most ceremonial details are kept secret to try to avoid abuses that might endanger someone’s health.”

• Health/Nutrition

  • Want National Health Insurance? Dump the Term ‘Single Payer’—and ‘Medicare for All’ Too

  • Here’s What You Can Do to Help Kill the Republican ‘Health-Care’ Bill for Good

    This fight is far from over. The Congressional Budget Office is expected to release a score of the new bill on Monday and Republicans could schedule the first procedural vote as early as Tuesday or Wednesday.

  • ‘Catastrophic collapse’ of West Antarctic ice sheet could raise global sea levels by three metres, warns scientist

    “But with the ice shelves removed, the grounded ice sheets behind them accelerate into the ocean and that causes sea levels to rise.

  • United Nations and World Health Organisation call for drugs to be decriminalised

    But last month, on the International Day Against Drug Abuse, UN Secretary General António Guterres called for tackling the problem through “prevention and treatment,” adhering to human rights.

  • Unresolved Flint Water Crisis Allowing Law Firms to Rake in Millions of Dollars

    At least $14 million has been spent hiring lawyers from at least 33 law firms, according to an Associated Press analysis of state records. Costs are only expected to balloon as Attorney General Bill Schuette’s outside team of two-dozen attorneys and investigators turns toward prosecuting a dozen current or former state employees or appointees whose criminal defenses are being covered by taxpayers.

  • Michigan’s legal bills for Flint water crisis top $14M

    Critics say the wealthy governor should use his own money or a legal defense fund — which could include private, publicly reported donations — to cover his legal bills. But Snyder’s spokeswoman said the spending is appropriate because the fees are related to actions taken in his official capacity as governor; there is a high volume of litigation stemming from the crisis; and the attorney general, who typically defends the governor from suits, is criminally investigating the administration.

• Security

  • U.S. government crackdown threatens Kaspersky’s American dream

    Kaspersky says his company is being targeted for political reasons.

  • Private Email of Top U.S. Russia Intelligence Official Hacked {sic}

    The official’s emails were primarily conversations among Russia experts in government, including the intelligence community, exchanging articles, newsletters, and thoughts on current events. The official corresponded frequently with other Russia experts in academia and the think-tank world.

  • Kali Linux – This Is What You Need to Know Before You Start

    Kali Linux is one of the most famous and widely used Linux distributions for security testing, digital forensics and penetration testing. It has grown in popularity so fast that it is now perceived as an essential part of every security expert (and hacker) toolkit.

• Defence/Aggression

  • What now at Sikkim trijunction?

    The standoff began on June 16, when Indian soldiers moved on to the Dolam plateau to prevent Chinese soldiers from constructing a road through the area. This area, adjacent to the trijunction of the borders of India, China and Bhutan, is strategically important for India.

  • UK residents donate thousands of pounds a year to Islamist extremist organisations, Home Office reveals

    Report says extremist groups ‘portray themselves as charities’ to gain funding

  • Donald Trump ‘rejected plan to defeat Isis because it was too similar to Barack Obama’s’

    Now over six weeks later, reports suggest the delay is in part because Mr Trump is determined to differentiate himself from Mr Obama and wants to make certain the two plans are different enough.

  • Here’s how schools of faith, mobiles are radicalising Kashmir

    Kashmir’s mosques have always been used for religio-political ends, and for separatism since 1989 when the militancy broke out. But the character of the mosque has changed dramatically in the last decade.

  • Hindu pilgrims killed in militant attack in Kashmir

  • People ‘burned to death in homes’ by South Sudan’s government militias

  • Indian Security Forces Kill Top Militant, Aide in Kashmir Gun Battle

    Indian security forces shot dead a top Islamist militant who was accused of killing six police officers during a seven-hour gun battle in the disputed Kashmir region on Saturday, police and army officials said.

  • Basirhat tells us battle for Bengal will be bloody

    Religious fault lines have run deep in the state with 27% Muslim population. It has grown deeper since Mamata Banerjee took over as the chief minister.

  • Communal violence in West Bengal over ‘objectionable’ Facebook post, Centre rushes paramilitary troops

    Meanwhile, the BJP alleged that over 2000 Muslims attacked Hindu families in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and its offices at several places were set on fire. Accusing the state police of failing to control the situation, party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is also in charge of the state, urged Home Minister Rajnath Singh to intervene in the matter.

    Several shops were torched and houses ransacked in Baduria, Tentulia and Golabari. On Monday night, a mob attacked Baduria police station and set ablaze several police vehicles.

  • Baduria in communal fire on ‘objectionable’ facebook posting. Administration may seek Army intervention.

  • Blind, bovine hope will get us nowhere – it’s time to change our response to Islamic extremism

  • UK court to rule on Saudi arms exports

  • Saudi Arabia has ‘clear link’ to UK extremism, report says

    Saudi Arabia is the chief foreign promoter of Islamist extremism in the UK, a new report has claimed.

  • Theresa May to urge cutting off terrorism funding at G20 despite her cosy relationship with Saudi Arabia

    But her push drew accusations of hypocrisy on the basis of her close links with Saudi Arabia and refusal to release a Home Office report into whether the country has been using its oil cash to fund terrorism and extremism abroad.

  • Trump and Saudi Arabia Against the World

    From all this, an overarching picture emerges: that the impulsive Donald Trump has met his younger counterpart, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, equally impulsive and blind to even the medium-term consequences of his aggressive initiatives. In addition, in an autocratic monarchy without free speech, elections, or representative government (and with an abominable record on human rights violations), he lacks all checks and balances.

  • Saudi Arabia boosting extremism in Europe, says former ambassador

    Saudi Arabia has been funding mosques throughout Europe that have become hotbeds of extremism, the former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir William Patey has said.

  • Saudi Arabia exports extremism to many countries – including Germany, study says

  • Is Indonesia’s “pious democracy” safe from Islamic extremism?

  • Tony Blair should be prosecuted over Iraq war, high court hears

    The Chilcot inquiry’s conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and undermined the United Nations requires the prosecution of Tony Blair, the high court has heard.

  • ‘I was sold seven times’: the Yazidi women welcomed back into the faith

    Days later, Baba Sheikh’s brother sought advice on a draft declaration, clarifying that women who had been enslaved by Isis should be welcomed back to the community. By mid-September 2014, an edict was issued in Kurdish, the main Yazidi language, to community leaders. The ceremonies at the Lalish spring, similar to a baptism, followed soon after, developed by religious leaders working with Yazda, a Yazidi-run charity which supports Isis victims.

  • Twisted ‘ISIS jihadis go on Christian killing spree’ in fresh spate of attacks

    He added that it was “strange” that the killer had managed to pass the security guards at the church just behind the clinic shortly before he carried out the attack.

  • International News in Brief: The terror threat lying in Sweden

    The PET intelligence bureau has told DR that Denmark’s biggest terror threat lies in neighbours like Sweden. Swedish intelligence bureau SÄPO recently warned that Sweden is harbouring thousands of extremists.

  • Islamist extremists in Sweden rise to 2,000: Intelligence

    Sweden is home to some 2,000 Islamist extremists, the nation’s intelligence chief said today, a nearly 10-fold increase in less than a decade.

  • Muslim police officer attempts to blackmail student into shutting up about Islam.

    A young woman originally from Oldham, who is set to attend Newcastle University, offered up the opinion, based on fact, that Islamic terrorism has its roots in the texts of the Koran. Because she did this, she was contacted by a police officer from Northumbria Police who threatened the lady, Jonaya English of ‘The Insurgents’ You Tube channel, with having her place at Newcastle University removed.

  • President Erdogan vows to behead ‘traitors’ on first anniversary of failed Turkey coup

    Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to behead traitors in an emotional address to tens of thousands of people on the first anniversary of the country’s failed military coup.

    Mr Erdogan told the vast, flag-waving crowd the attempt to end his more than a decade-long rule was “not the first attack against our country, and it won’t be the last”.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • The world is facing a ‘biological annihilation’ of species, researchers warn

    Researchers mapped 27,600 species of birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles — nearly half of known terrestrial vertebrate species — and concluded the planet’s sixth mass extinction even was much worse than previously thought.

  • India will be in trouble if breakaway Antarctica iceberg leads to sea level rise

    If there is eventually a rise in sea level, it is certain to impact India badly since the country has a long and densely populated coastline. In 2016, a United Nations report said that nearly 40 million Indians will be at risk from rising sea levels by 2050, with people in Mumbai and Kolkata having the maximum exposure to coastal flooding in future due to rapid urbanisation and economic growth.

  • Environmental defenders being killed in record numbers globally, new research reveals

    Activists, wildlife rangers and indigenous leaders are dying violently at the rate of about four a week, with a growing sense around the world that ‘anyone can kill environmental defenders without repercussions’

  • Record 200 activists murdered globally for defending the environment as numbers grow year-on-year

    Nearly four people were killed every week across 24 countries in 2016

  • Inside the Surreal Saudi Suburbia Built by an Oil Giant

  • Thousands sign up to clean sewage because they didn’t read the small print

    Do you read the terms and conditions? Probably not. No one does. And so, inevitably, 22,000 people have now found themselves legally bound to 1000 hours of community service, including, but not limited to, cleaning toilets at festivals, scraping chewing gum off the streets and “manually relieving sewer blockages”.

  • Free WiFi prank clause has thousands volunteering to clean toilets

    Over 20,000 people might have to clean toilets at British music festivals because they signed up for two weeks of free WiFi without giving the terms and conditions involved a second thought.

• Finance

  • Congress Begins To Ask If Amazon Is Getting Too Big, Antitrust Hearing Called

    The U.S. Postal Service delivers the company’s boxes well below its own costs. Like an accelerant added to a fire, this subsidy is speeding up the collapse of traditional retailers in the U.S. and providing an unfair advantage for Amazon.

  • As Universities are gutted, grad student employee unions can provide a vital defense

    Some call this trend the “corporatization of the university.” Anderson calls it “private government.” But my colleagues and I recognize it as a microcosm of America’s historically neoliberal and exploitative politics: an oligarchical dictatorship of administrators limits institutional and academic freedoms, all to fill their own coffers with goods purchased by the sweat of its underpaid workers.

  • Uranium and gold in the Land of New Guinea but in the hand of China and US

  • Gap between rich and poor growing with under 35s worst hit, report reveals

  • What happened when Walmart left

    Banks is not exaggerating. Of the 3,142 counties in the US, McDowell County comes in at No 3,142 in terms of life expectancy. For men, that’s 64 years, a statistic that, as Bernie Sanders likes to point out, is the same for men in Namibia.

  • Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world

    The future of economic globalisation, for which the Davos men and women see themselves as caretakers, had been shaken by a series of political earthquakes.

  • In the UK, 77% of 2017 university grads will never fully repay their student loan debt

    The shift came in the wake of austerity measures that phased out tuition assistance with no repayment requirement.

  • Higher Education funding in England: past, present and options for the future

  • Two jobs just to eat: that’s life for workers in low-wage Britain

  • New “bribery game” shows that sometimes, transparency makes things worse

    In many developing countries, the struggle for economic growth is set back by rampant corruption. According to figures in a new study of the issue, people in urban areas of Kenya typically pay bribes 16 times a month. That’s a drain on the economy, and it adds a layer of complexity between citizens and essential government services.

    While a variety of policy approaches have attempted to limit corruption, it’s difficult to track their effectiveness. Now, an international team of researchers has developed a game-theory approach to teasing out the factors that contribute to corruption. Their results show that under the wrong circumstances, a common method of limiting corruption—government transparency—can actually make matters worse.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • How Fake News Goes Viral—Here’s the Math

    A bare-bones model of how news spreads on social media, published in June in Nature Human Behavior, indicates that just about anything can go viral. Even in a perfect world, where everyone wants to share real news and is capable of evaluating the veracity of every claim, some fake news would still reach thousands (or even millions) of people, simply because of information overload.

  • Congresswoman’s iPhone contained nude images, and an aide put them online

    Another staffer, secretary Dorene Browne-Louis, 45, is accused of covering up last year’s scandal.

  • Chinese labour activist says he was arrested due to factory’s Trump links

    Speaking for the first time since his detention, Hua Haifeng told the Guardian how he was interrogated in marathon sessions every other day for a month, during which police repeatedly asked him for details of his investigation.

  • Is China Trying to Silence the Workers Who Make Ivanka Trump’s Apparel?

    Human-rights activists face trial after an investigation into an abusive factory.

  • Waiting Game: W. Bengal pays price as Didi plays Muslim card

  • Christian conservatives don’t support Donald Trump despite his vulgarity – they support him because of it

  • Pope Francis allies accuse Trump White House of ‘apocalyptic geopolitics’

    The article in La Civiltà Cattolica, which is vetted by the Vatican before publication, lays out a scathing critique of “evangelical fundamentalism” in the US, arguing that, on issues ranging from climate change to “migrants and Muslims”, proponents of the ideology have adopted a twisted reading of scripture and the Old Testament that promotes conflict and war above all else.

  • Women’s March Co-Chair Calls for ‘Jihad’ Against Trump

    “Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community, it is not to assimilate and please any other people and authority,” she said.

  • Donald Trump Jr. paid attorney with funds from his father’s re-election campaign: report

    If you’ve donated to President Donald Trump’s campaign to re-elect, there’s a chance those funds have been used to pay for the first family’s legal defense team. Federal Election Commission records show that the president’s re-election campaign made a $50,000 payment last month to the attorney representing Donald Trump Jr., Reuters reported Saturday.

    The payment came almost two weeks before Trump Jr. revealed that he met with a Russian lawyer in order to discuss damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

    The payment, dated June 27, was made to the Law Offices of Alan Futerfas, according to Reuters, and was disclosed in the most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission. “Legal consulting” was the purported reasoning for the payment.

  • Top allies of Pope Francis criticize religious Trump supporters

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • After Liu Xiaobo’s Death, a Wave of Online Censorship in China

    Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo died in custody on Thursday. Now comes the censorship

  • I’m Suing Donald Trump for Blocking Me on Twitter

    In this op-ed, comedy writer Nick Jack Pappas explains why he and six others have chosen to sue President Donald J. Trump after being blocked by him on Twitter.

  • Dave Neese Provocations: Hate speech from the Koran

  • Why censor body should not be deciding the films you should watch and the words you should hear in them

  • China’s newest censorship methods on display

  • Conejo censorship sets chilling precedent

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Australian Prime Minister Turnbull: The laws of mathematics don’t apply in Australia

    Australia’s Prime Minister Michael Turnbull doesn’t believe in the laws of mathematics – a troubling sign for a world leader to say the least. Australia’s leader spoke the infamous words at a press conference yesterday in Sydney, Australia. When asked by a journalist if the laws of mathematics would trump the laws of Australia (as they trump every man-made law ever), he responded:

    “The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”

  • Privacy International Sues US Government Over Denied Access To Five Eyes Surveillance Agreements

    The last thing anyone heard about Five Eyes surveillance partnerships via official channels was more than seven years ago. In the intervening years, leaked documents have shed a little light on the information sharing Five Eyes countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) engage in. But the last Five Eyes agreement released is now more than 60 years old.

  • New Dutch law allows law enforcement to digitally wiretap your friends and family to get to you

    This past Wednesday, the Netherlands Senate passed a new surveillance and data mining law that will go into effect on January 1st, 2018. The new law (available in Dutch) expands the government’s targeted and mass surveillance powers and were first introduced in 2015. The Dutch government will soon have expanded surveillance powers, allowing authorities to force service providers to give up the information they have on a particular target in what is essentially a digital wiretap.

  • Facebook, Google obliged to decrypt online messages to help Government fight terrorism

  • Laws of mathematics don’t apply here, says Australian PM

    “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,” said Turnbull.

  • Which would you prefer: backdoored crypto, government malware – or the third way?

    As governments turn to malware to circumvent encryption, there will be a tendency for more intelligence agencies to hoard vulnerabilities, which increases the likelihood that they will leak and end up being used on a massive scale, as with WannaCry, rather than for for a small number of highly-targeted operations. Similarly, exploits will become more valuable, and therefore researchers may be tempted to sell them to governments or even criminals, rather than telling the software companies involved so that they can be fixed quickly.

  • Visa considers extending ‘war on cash’ business incentives outside US

    The payment technology company revealed on Wednesday that it was launching a “cashless challenge” which would see 50 U.S. businesses receive $10,000 each to help them convert to a cashless payment model.

  • Indonesia the latest country to partially ban messaging app Telegram over terror fears

    The communications ministry said in a statement that “so many channels in the (Telegram) service contain radicalism and terrorism… encouragement and tips to assemble bombs or launch attacks” that it needed to block it.

  • Facebook is putting ads everywhere in hopes of finding the next News Feed

    Facebook has a cash cow. It’s called News Feed, and for the past five years, it has been the company’s core money maker and source of revenue growth.

    But there is a problem looming: Facebook has been saying for the past year that it is running out of places to put ads in News Feed. The company has determined that it can’t put more ads into users’ feeds without harming their experience. The industry term for this is ratio of ads to other content is called “ad load,” and Facebook says News Feed’s ad load is all maxed out.

  • House pushes to require warrants for all emails with appropriations amendment

    The House Appropriations Committee Thursday night unanimously approved a legislative block to a law that allows law enforcement to seize emails, photographs and other cloud-hosted documents without a warrant.

    Under current law established in 1986 — before the invention of the world-wide web — law enforcement can demand any file stored on a third-party server for more than 180 days.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Turkey dismisses over 7,000 police, soldiers, ministry officials: report

    Turkish authorities also stripped 342 retired army personnel of their rank, Anadolu said. Earlier, Hurriyet daily reported that 7,348 people including 2,303 police — were dismissed in total.

  • TSA: We Don’t Have Security; We Have Pointless, Rights-Violating Fake Security That Endangers Us

    Think of all the wasted American business hours that are spent in the “security” lines in airports across America, where we wait to be eyeballed, scanned, and groped by repurposed mall food court workers in cop costumes.

  • Around 150 West Papuan people in Nabire arrested, including children. Many tortured.

  • Dejuan Guillory, 27, Was Killed by a Sheriff’s Deputy

  • Iraqi male model brutally killed in Baghdad ‘because of his good looks’

    Friends of the actor said on social media they believed he was killed by radical Islamists because of the way he dressed, his long hair and his friendship with female actors.

  • European Court of Human Rights upholds Belgium’s ban on burqas and full-face Islamic veils

    Its ruling said the government had been responding “to a practice that it considered to be incompatible, in Belgian society, with social communication and more generally the establishment of human relations, which were indispensable for life in society…essential to ensure the functioning of a democratic society”.

  • Saudi activist jailed for driving says women ‘still being treated as slaves in 2017′

    She received death threats and was called mentally ill. “I was called a w**** and people accused me of corrupting Muslims… They called me all kinds of names.”

  • Saudi ambassador tells Trudeau government to stop raising blogger Raif Badawi’s case

    Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Canada says Ottawa should mind its own business when it comes to the high-profile case of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for blasphemy.

  • Saudi ambassador tells Ottawa to mind its own business in Badawi case

    More than 200 rallies to protest Badawi’s imprisonment have been held in Quebec alone.

  • Saudi Arabia: 14 protesters facing execution after unfair trials

  • Saudi Arabia: Death penalty used as political weapon against Shi’a as executions spike across country

    The Saudi Arabian government is employing the death penalty as a political weapon to silence dissent, said Amnesty International, following the execution of four Shi’a men in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province on 11 July.

  • Outcry as Saudi Arabia executes six people in one day to bring 2017 death penalty total to 44

    A June report by human rights organisation Reprieve found that 41 per cent of those executed in Saudi Arabia in 2017 were killed for non-violent acts such as attending political protests.

  • Turkey: Free Rights Defenders Immediately

    Turkish police detained the group of prominent activists at a hotel on the island of Büyükada in Istanbul, where they were attending a workshop on protecting the work of human rights defenders. The activists were subsequently taken to various police stations, and lawyers told Human Rights Watch the rights defenders are under investigation for membership of an armed organization, though there is no information on any evidence against them.

  • Pakistan’s secret atheists

    Under a recently passed cyber-crime law, it is now illegal to post content online – even in a private forum – that could be deemed blasphemous.

    The government took out adverts in national newspapers asking members of the public to report any content they believe could constitute blasphemy.

    And the law is being enforced. In June this year, in the first case of its kind, Taimoor Raza was sentenced to death for posting blasphemous content on Facebook.

  • Islamism is a far bigger problem than Islamophobia

    The fact that an anti-Islamic backlash never materialises is of little importance. Sections of the liberal-left will always invoke the phantom menace of ‘Islamophobia’ because it makes them look good. It puts them on the side of tolerance, dialogue and understanding. Rather than address the problem of extreme Islam, the BBC and the Guardian gurgle sanctimonious banalities, or else issue lofty, slanderous warnings about your average, mentally subnormal Englishman’s fragile propensity for racism. Those who want to talk about Islamism – a far greater and tangible menace to our society – risk being tarnished as racists.

  • No, Bangladesh, The Truth is Not a ‘Smear Campaign’

    Human Rights Watch has produced a detailed analysis of cases where individuals were picked up, often in front of witnesses or family members, by security forces who identified themselves as members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Detective Branch (DB), or the “administration.” When these people were not produced in court within 24 hours, as required under Bangladeshi law, family members repeatedly approached police and other officials, who denied the person was detained. While many of these men were eventually produced in court, after a period of weeks or months of illegal detention, others were released with warnings to stay silent. Several were later found killed in so-called gunfights or “cross-fire,” and scores remain “disappeared.”

  • Turkey: Free Amnesty Director Idil Eser

  • Mother Arrested for Letting 10-Year-Old Shop Alone at Lego Store

    An upstate New York mom has been arrested for an unspeakable crime. She allowed her 10-year-old child to shop alone at the Lego store in the local mall while she shopped in a different store.

  • How Islam Has Reshaped Attendance At Public Events

  • El Salvador jails raped teenager for 30 years under murder laws after she said she suffered miscarriage

    A teenager has been jailed for 30 years after suffering what her lawyers said was a miscarriage, after she was raped a year ago.

  • Swedish soldier (from Sri Lanka) prevents Gang-Rape of Christian refugee; gets fired after critical Facebook post

  • Dinner lady suspended after Manchester attack demonstration

    “The grounds for suspending me are it was an EDL march, which is a load of rubbish. Even if I was part of the EDL, which I’m certainly not, it should not have affected my job.”

  • Love jihad in Pakistan: Abducted Hindu girl sold by policeman for Rs 50,000

  • Iraqi cleared of planning to kill sister over “family honour”

    The prosecutor alleged that the man, then 20, had repeatedly threatened to kill or beat the girl, who was 16 at the time. She had violated her family’s wishes by going out, meeting others of her own age and dressing in a manner they considered improper.

    The Supreme Court, in the third and final consideration of the case, only considered the charge of planning a violent crime, for which it did not find sufficient evidence.

    The court declared that messages sent by the man were not enough to prove that he had truly intended to commit murder. It noted that he had earlier sent threatening messages to his sister and others without actually carrying out the threats.

  • Why this revival of Hindi chauvinism?

    It will be interesting to see whether these remarks of Naidu, Swaraj, et al are merely straws in the wind, or whether they presage a wider assertion of Hindi chauvinism by the ruling party.

  • 11 and 12 July, Court of Appeals, Gender Segregation is Gender Apartheid

    This is a significant and potentially precedent-setting case about sex discrimination and equality. Ultra-conservative and fundamentalist gender norms are seeping into the everyday life of minority communities. Education has become a gendered ideological terrain upon which the potential of women and girls together with their hopes, aspirations and dreams are extinguished. Gender segregation in school X is part of a wider political project that is ideologically linked to the creation of a regime of ‘gendered modesty’: one that promotes an infantilised and dehumanized notion of womanhood and, ultimately, amounts to sexual apartheid.

  • Sweden’s Bråvalla music festival cancelled next year after sex attacks

    “It stopped being about music and became almost completely about crime and violence,” said Folkert Koopmans, chief executive of FKP Scorpio.

  • Sweden to hold ‘man-free’ music festival

  • Swedish Premier: Sex Assaults at Music Fest Disgusting Acts

    Organizers of the Bravalla festival in Norrkoping, which hosted 45,000 people in southern Sweden, have called off next year’s event following a rape allegation by a young woman. In addition, three more allegations of sexual assault were reported overnight, bringing the total number of reported sexual assaults to 23.

  • British-Iranian woman jailed in Tehran in state of ‘despair’

  • Women, Interrupted

    The president wouldn’t pardon her because he couldn’t challenge the clout of the clergy at its strongest; he had just signed on the appointment of a harsh cleric to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), who thrives on violence mandated by law. A moderate CII former member Javed Ghamidi was on the run from Islamic terrorists as he had criticised the bad law that hands down death for blasphemy without the normal criteria of justice, such as intent and level of consciousness. Asia Bibi rots in jail in 2017. Governor of Punjab Salmaan Taseer was killed by his police guard for speaking out in her defence. Taseer is unsung, but his killer’s anniversary is celebrated every year religiously at the mausoleum the state allowed to be built for a killer hanged by a judge who had to flee Pakistan after signing the death sentence.

  • Frank Sterling’s tough life after wrongful conviction

    Sterling’s path to freedom was similar; prosecutors also fought his requests for DNA testing, before finally consenting. Those tests helped Sterling prove his innocence.

  • German court: Sharia police may patrol streets

    A court in Germany has authorized a group of self-appointed Sharia police to continue enforcing Islamic law in the city of Wuppertal. The law they were cleared of vioilating outlaws uniforms that are threatening, such as those of Hitler’s brownshirts.

  • Genital mutilation scandal widens to include mothers

    On Wednesday, two more people were accused of participating in the conspiracy. They are: Farida Arif and Fatema Dahodwala, both of Oakland County.

    They were charged with female genital mutilation conspiracy and female genital mutilation. Dahodwala also was accused of lying to investigators.

  • NHS attended to 9,000 FGM cases in England last year, report reveals

    The data, released by NHS Digital and covering the period from April 2016 to March 2017, includes figures from both NHS trusts and GP practices.

  • Breaking the silence in the world capital of female genital mutilation

    Over 200 million of us around the world and where I live in rural Somalia almost every single woman and girl has undergone FGM. 98% of Somali women and girls have been affected – the highest prevalence rate of anywhere in the world.

  • FGM: More than 5,000 new cases in England

    Almost half involved women and girls living in London, NHS Digital found.

  • Egyptian Cleric Says Female Genital Mutilation is Good for the Economy

    Sheikh Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Maligi, an Egyptian cleric, appeared on the Al-Seha Wal-Jamal TV channel this past March and argued that female genital mutilation was perfectly fine because there was an economic benefit to it.

  • Baby factory, another phase of human trafficking – ACP Mba

    According to him, I pray that the kids will end in good hands so that they will not fall victims of organ harvest or ritualists.

  • The Campus Has Become A Circus Taken Over By Racist Bullies

  • A Columbia Professor’s Critique of Campus Politics

  • Overwhelmed by migrants, Italy threatens to bar the door to rescue ships

    Some policymakers have criticised the rescue organisations, saying that their efforts to send ships to patrol the Mediterranean have actually become a key enabling step for smugglers, since no ships actually make landfall on Italy.

  • Farce of July Celebration in Los Angeles Honors Native People

  • New study reveals Europe’s rising anti-Semitism forces Jews to leave or hide

    Who is responsible for the attacks on Jews? In every country studied, except for Russia, the perpetrators are disproportionately of Muslim backgrounds. A British study cited in the University of Oslo report notes that the proportion of Muslim perpetrators increases in the wake of “trigger events” in the Middle East.

  • ISIS risk as at least 27 terrorists are set to be released from ‘Jihad University’ prison wings

    Mr Bryne warned that radicals leave “with better training and a better network” to support their evil.

  • Deadly Tale: Christian Converts from Islam

    On March 9, 2013, Judge Mohammad Moghisseh of Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Courts sentenced her to four years in prison for vague charges such as “propagating against the Islamic regime and collusion intended to harm national security”. She was not allowed to have access to an attorney.

  • Jailed China critic and Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo dies

    Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died Thursday. He was 61.

  • French police officer charged with helping jihadists join Isis

  • Christians in Tanzania arrested for frying fish during Ramadan

    According to CSW, the Christians were informed that they had allegedly breached the law by cooking food during Ramadan. The police officer reportedly verbally abused them and allegedly said, “Today you will know how to fast”.

  • Court of Appeal: gender segregation is sex discrimination

  • 20-year-old girl killed for ‘honour’ in Badin

    Talking to Dawn.com, Mohammad Ibrahim Soomro, the accused who surrendered to Tando Bago police, claimed that he had killed his daughter for honour. “My daughter had married Mohammad Ayub Rajar from Mirpurkhas without our consent six months ago,” Soomro said.

  • The fight to stop Mediterranean people-smuggling starts on land, not at sea

    “People smuggling begins onshore, so a naval mission is the wrong tool for tackling this dangerous, inhumane and unscrupulous business. Once the boats have set sail, it is too late.”

  • Tunstall imam to go on trial accused of glorifying Islamic State at mosque

    The 39-year-old is alleged to have encouraged support for the terror group, as well as influencing his congregation at a mosque to carry out terrorist acts.

  • Sweden’s Islamic Rape Epidemic: Almost Half of Victims are CHILDREN

    Due to the enormous amount of rapes in Sweden, music festivals are now planning gender separated events, just like in Islamic countries.

  • Imam arrested for attempted child rape

  • Cardiff imam jailed for 13 years after abusing girls during mosque Quranlessons

    “All four complainants were very brave indeed in overcoming not only personal but cultural barriers which they faced in making formal complaints and giving evidence against you,” the judge said.

  • Investigation launched into fugitive ISIL militant over sexually abusing Indonesian child in Turkey’s south

  • Too many foreigners in France and Islam not compatible, majority of French say

    Regarding radical Islam, 46% of the French polled said that “even if it is not its main message, Islam still contains within it the seeds of violence and intolerance”.

  • Poles Value Denying Muslim Refugees Over Being in EU, Poll Shows

    A majority of Poles would be ready to give up their generous financial aid from the European Union or leave the bloc altogether to ensure the country can shut its borders to Muslim refugees, a poll showed.

  • Virginity Test: Tajik Bride Takes Own Life, Groom Faces Jail

    Rajabbi Khurshed had no say in most of the misfortunes that befell her.

    Her parents arranged the 18-year-old woman’s marriage, in her native village of Chorbogh in May, to a man she’d never met. The Tajik state obliged Khurshed to undergo a prenuptial medical exam, which in her case included a virginity test that while technically optional is routinely demanded of young women by either or both families. And her new husband, 24-year-old Zafar Pirov, cast her out weeks later after humiliating her with further virginity tests and demanding that he be allowed to take a second wife.

    In the end, a despondent Khurshed seized the only control she felt was left.

    Forty days after her wedding, the young woman, who had dropped out of school to help her parents look after two disabled brothers, drank what Tajik authorities say was a fatal dose of vinegar. She died at a local hospital in Chorbogh, in the southern Vose district, hours later.

  • The War On Dogs Continues: Cop Shoots Two Non-Threatening Dogs During Burglar Alarm Call

    Even while suggesting cops are killing ~9,000 dogs a year, the DOJ’s specialist still couches the data in cop-friendly language: “fatal encounters.” No officers have been killed by dogs, but plenty of dogs have been killed by officers. The fatalities run in one direction.

    And that estimate may be on the low side. Records of people killed by cops are incomplete, thanks to the DOJ’s long-running belief any reporting on police shootings should be purely voluntary. But there’s no shortage of reporting on the epidemic, which has deemed law enforcement “puppycide.”

    In Minneapolis, Minnesota, two more dogs have been shot by a police officer for no apparent reason at all. The dogs will survive but the owner is now saddled with medical bills she wouldn’t have had if responding officers had handled the situation with more common sense.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Net Neutrality and the Open Internet

    The debate over so-called “net neutrality” has raged for more than a decade between tech entrepreneurs and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who deliver digital content to our computers and mobile devices. Scientific American takes a look at the FCC’s proposed plans and clarifies what’s at stake for internet users.

• DRM

  • “W3C Talks EME/DRM with Lunduke” – Lunduke Hour – July 14, 2017

    On this episode of the Lunduke Hour, I talked with a representative from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) about their Encrypted Media Extension (EME) standard for Digital Rights Management (DRM) on the Web.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • TiSA – Foul Play

  • Copyrights

    • Animal rights? Monkey selfie case may undo evolution of the Internet

      That’s a dangerous position for PETA to take, one that asserts that companies that supply tools for people to self-publish their own works can be held liable for the content posted or uploaded by third parties, Blurb says.