Sri Lanka newspapers, books go unprinted as economic crisis worsens

Sri Lanka newspapers, books go unprinted as economic crisis worsens
The government says it will intervene after last week cancelling school exams due to paper shortage. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 26 March 2022

Sri Lanka newspapers, books go unprinted as economic crisis worsens

Sri Lanka newspapers, books go unprinted as economic crisis worsens
  • Two major Sri Lankan papers on Friday announced suspension of their print editions
  • The government says it will intervene after last week cancelling school exams due to paper shortage

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government will intervene to help print media, an official said on Saturday, after publishers in the country suspended printing due to a paper shortage brought on by a worsening economic crisis.

The island nation of 22 million people is contending with its worst economic meltdown since independence from Britain in 1948, triggered by a shortage of foreign exchange reserves that has impacted financing on imports. For months Sri Lankans have dealt with shortages of essential goods, including fuel and pharmaceuticals, which has now extended to paper and ink.

Two major Sri Lanka newspapers announced suspension of their print editions on Friday, with other main national dailies also reducing pages after costs soared in recent months due to difficulties securing supplies from abroad.

Amid the paper shortage, which last week led to officials indefinitely postponing national exams for millions of students, Ministry of Information and Mass Media Secretary Anusha Palpita said on Saturday that the government would help print media.

“We know there is a crisis. We have no dollars to import, but we are planning to have a meeting with stakeholders soon,” Palpita told Arab News. “We will intervene to help print media.”

The paper shortage is also affecting other publishers, with local publishing company K-books saying the crisis has disrupted its plans to publish 25 titles in 2022.

“We have decided to temporarily suspend printing for a couple of months,” Heshan Peiris, who owns K-books, said.

Peiris said the cost of a ream of paper in October 2021 was about $13, but has almost tripled to nearly $38.

Rasika Jayakody, an author who planned to publish a series of four books with K-books this year said the problem is not only procuring paper, as price hikes would be too much for readers to bear.

“A book that used to cost 450 rupees ($1.55) will now cost 1,000 rupees. It is just not feasible to go ahead with it at this point,” Jayakody said.

The dollar shortage has sparked energy shortages affecting all sectors across the country, and led to skyrocketing prices, with inflation at a record 17.5 percent in February.

People have been forced to stand in lengthy queues — sometimes for days on end — to purchase gas and fuel. At least four deaths have been reported as a result of clashes at queues or as senior citizens collapse from exhaustion.

Sri Lanka needs nearly $7 billion to service its external debt this year, while the country’s foreign reserves have hit $2.3 billion, down from $7.5 billion when the incumbent administration came to power in November 2019.

The government allowed the rupee to depreciate earlier this month, and announced it will seek an International Monetary Fund bailout to restructure its foreign debt. Officials are also seeking more loans, including from China and India, to overcome its currency crisis.

In the streets of Sri Lanka, faith in the government is at an all-time low.

Shamindra Ferdinando, news editor at the privately owned English-language daily The Island, one of the major titles suspending its print edition, described the current situation as “complete chaos,” adding: “The government wants to blame the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but that is not the reason for this.

“Waste, corruption, and mismanagement over a period of time have denied the country of finances it needs at this moment.”


BBC urged staff to remove TikTok from work devices

BBC urged staff to remove TikTok from work devices
Updated 20 March 2023

BBC urged staff to remove TikTok from work devices

BBC urged staff to remove TikTok from work devices
  • Decision follows concerns raised by government authorities worldwide regarding data privacy and security
  • BBC is second media company in the world to issue guidance

LONDON: The BBC has urged its staff to delete TikTok from their work devices.

“We don’t recommend installing TikTok on a BBC corporate device unless there is a justified business reason. If you do not need TikTok for business reasons, TikTok should be deleted,” said the broadcaster in a note sent to staff on Sunday.

Use of the app for editorial and marketing purposes is still permitted, a spokesperson said, adding that the network would continue to monitor and assess the situation, issuing further guidance if necessary.

Explaining the move, the BBC said: “The decision is based on concerns raised by government authorities worldwide regarding data privacy and security.”

It added that employees who use TikTok on personal or business devices should contact the security team to discuss “the type of BBC information that you are working with.”

Commenting on the news, TikTok said it was “disappointed” by the decision but “(welcomed) the fact TikTok can still be used as part of editorial, marketing and reporting purposes.”

In a statement, the Chinese video platform said: “We believe these bans have been based on fundamental misconceptions and driven by wider geopolitics. We remain in close dialogue with the BBC and are committed to working with them to address any concerns they have.”

The BBC has a strong presence on the platform, with 1.2 million people following the BBC News account and over 4 million following a second BBC account that shares the broadcaster’s program clips.

The BBC seems to be the first UK media organization to issue the guidance and only the second in the world after Denmark’s public service broadcaster, which announced a similar guidance earlier this month.

The news comes a few days after the UK government announced that ministers and civil servants would be barred from having the TikTok app installed on official devices amid fears that sensitive data could be accessed by the Chinese government.

In recent months, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has been at the center of intense criticisms after Western governments grew increasingly skeptical of its relationship with the Chinese government.

TikTok has strived to reassure Western officials over its handling of user data, but several officials have moved to ban the video app from work devices.

ByteDance said the decision was politically motivated and based on “fundamentally wrong information.”

Western social networks including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, which TikTok says gather similar data on their users, are officially blocked in China.

China has accused the US of spreading disinformation and suppressing TikTok after President Joe Biden threatened to ban the app entirely if its Chinese owners do not divest their stakes in it.


Surveillance nation: India spies on world’s largest population

Authorities say they are needed to improve governance and bolster security in a severely under-policed country. (AFP file photo)
Authorities say they are needed to improve governance and bolster security in a severely under-policed country. (AFP file photo)
Updated 20 March 2023

Surveillance nation: India spies on world’s largest population

Authorities say they are needed to improve governance and bolster security in a severely under-policed country. (AFP file photo)
  • Across the country, the use of CCTV and facial recognition is increasing in schools, airports, train stations, prisons and streets as authorities roll out a nationwide system to curb crime and identify missing children

NEW DELHI: Khadeer Khan was arrested in the south Indian city of Hyderabad in January after police claimed to have identified him from CCTV footage as a suspect in a chain snatching incident. He was released a few days later, and died while being treated for injuries he allegedly sustained while in custody.
The police said Khan was arrested because he looked like the man seen in the CCTV footage.
“When it was ruled out that Khadeer was not the one who had committed the crime, he was released. Everything was done as per procedure,” said K. Saidulu, a deputy superintendent of police.
But human rights activists say the 36-year-old was clearly misidentified — a growing risk with the widespread use of CCTV in Telangana state, which has among the highest concentrations of the surveillance technology in the country.
“We have been warning for many years that CCTV and facial recognition technology can be misused for harassment, and that they can misidentify people,” said S.Q. Masood, a human rights activist who filed a lawsuit in 2021 challenging the use of facial recognition in Telangana that is still ongoing.

HIGHLIGHTS

• India poised to become world's most populous nation

• Increased digitisation of services has led to greater surveillance, activists say

• Authorities say surveillance needed to curb crime

“This case has exposed just how harmful it can be,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Across the country, the use of CCTV and facial recognition is increasing in schools, airports, train stations, prisons and streets as authorities roll out a nationwide system to curb crime and identify missing children.
It’s not the only form of surveillance in the country.
The biometric national ID Aadhaar, with some 1.3 billion IDs issued, is linked to dozens of databases including bank accounts, vehicle registrations, SIM cards and voters’ lists, while the National Intelligence Grid aims to link nearly two dozen databases of government agencies for citizen profiles.
Meanwhile, policing of the Internet has also grown, with greater monitoring of social media, and the most frequent Internet shutdowns in the world.
Authorities say they are needed to improve governance and bolster security in a severely under-policed country. But technology experts say there is little correlation to crime, and that they violate privacy and target vulnerable people.
“Everything’s being digitised, so there’s a lot of information about a person being generated that is accessible to the government and to private entities without adequate safeguards,” said Anushka Jain, legal counsel at Internet Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group in Delhi.
“At a time when people are attacked for their religion, language and sexual identity, the easy availability of these data can be very harmful. It can also result in individuals losing access to welfare schemes, to public transport or the right to protest whenever the government deems it necessary.”

BIRTH TO DEATH
India is poised to become the world’s most populous country in April, overtaking China with more than 1.43 billion people, according to estimates by the United Nations.
The government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has prioritized the Digital India program to improve efficiency and streamline welfare schemes by digitising everything from land titles to health records to payments.
Aadhaar — the world’s largest biometric database — underpins many of these initiatives, and is mandatory for welfare, pension and employment schemes, despite a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that it cannot be a requirement for welfare programs.
Yet despite its wide adoption, millions face difficulties with their Aadhaar IDs because of inaccurate details or fingerprints that don’t match, and are denied vital services.
“The government claims linking to Aadhaar brings better governance, but it will lead to a totalitarian society because the government knows every individual’s profile,” said Srinivas Kodali at Free Software Movement of India, an advocacy group.
“The goal is to track everyone from birth to death. Anything linked to Aadhaar eventually ends up with the ministry of home affairs, and the policing and surveillance agencies, so dissent against the government becomes very difficult,” he added.
The ministry of home affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest iteration of digitization is Digi Yatra, which was rolled out at the Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports in December. It allows passengers to use their Aadhaar ID and facial recognition for check-ins at airports.
The ministry of civil aviation has said Digi Yatra leads to “reduced wait time and makes the boarding process faster and more seamless,” with dedicated lanes for those using the app.
But those who choose to not use Digi Yatra may be viewed with suspicion and subject to additional checks, said Kodali.
The data — including travel details — can also be shared with other government agencies, and may be used to put people on no-fly lists, and stop activists, journalists and dissenters from traveling, as is already happening, said Kodali.
The ministry of civil aviation did not respond to a request for comment.

ATTENDANCE APPS
Some of the lowest-paid public-sector workers in India bear the brunt of the government’s surveillance mechanisms.
Municipal workers across the country are required to wear GPS-enabled watches that are equipped with a camera that takes snapshots, and a microphone that can listen in on conversations.
The watches feed a stream of data to a central control room, where officials monitor the movements of each employee, and link the data to performance and salaries.
Authorities have said the goal is to improve efficiency. Workers across the country have protested the surveillance.
In January, the federal government said that the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app would be mandatory for all workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), after having rolled it out in several states last year.
Women make up nearly 60 percent of the more than 20 million beneficiaries nationwide who get 100 days of work in a year, and are paid a daily wage of up to 331 rupees ($4).
The new system requires the supervising officer, called a mate, to upload pictures of the laborers when they start work and when they finish, as proof of their attendance, which was marked in manual logs earlier.
But this requires the mate — usually a woman — to have a smartphone and a stable Internet connection twice a day, which is near impossible in many rural areas, said Rakshita Swamy, a researcher with the non-profit Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee.
“If the pictures don’t get uploaded, the workers are considered absent, and they don’t get paid for the work,” she said.
“There is also hesitation among the women about having their pictures taken. There is no transparency about what happens to these photographs — it’s highly likely that they are being used to train facial recognition algorithms,” she added.
Hundreds of NREGS workers are holding a protest in Delhi, calling for payment of back wages and doing away with the app.
The ministry of rural development has said the app would lead to “more transparency and ensure proper monitoring” of workers, without addressing surveillance concerns.
A long-delayed data protection law, which is awaiting passage in parliament, would offer little recourse as it gives sweeping exceptions to government agencies, say privacy experts.
In Rajasthan state, which has among the highest number of Internet shutdowns in the country, Kamla Devi, a mate in Ajmer district, has struggled with the NMMS app for several months.
“On many days, there’s no network, and I tell the workers to go home. There’s no point if they work because they won’t get paid,” she said.
“This app is ruining livelihoods. It was better when we had a manual attendance log.”

 

 


BBC criticized for labelling Afghan footballer refugees as ‘false’

BBC criticized for labelling Afghan footballer refugees as ‘false’
Updated 19 March 2023

BBC criticized for labelling Afghan footballer refugees as ‘false’

BBC criticized for labelling Afghan footballer refugees as ‘false’
  • ‘Newsnight’ report claimed female players who fled Taliban rule to UK did not play for teams they named

LONDON: The BBC was at the center of another scandal after being accused of calling a group of Afghan female football players who escaped to the UK “false footballers.”

In a “Newsnight” report aired on Friday, of the 35 women and their families that fled to the UK through Pakistan in November 2021, 13 were claimed to have lied on their evacuation forms regarding the teams they played for.

Many social media users found the terminology condescending and belittling and argued that it detracted from the players’ bravery and accomplishments in escaping the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.

One of the players Mozhdah Howaida, posted a video on Twitter describing how she was approached by a BBC reporter, and “thought it was a joke.”

She said: “I came here all alone. I lost my family, my friends, my old ones behind to pursue my education to just play the game which I love.”

Howaida added that she was still dealing with “trauma and nightmares every single night.”

In a tweet, another player Zeynab Mozaffri, said: “I am one of the players you wrote about. It’s sad to read this. I have a question: How come the BBC chose to interview the male coach who left us behind and didn’t fight for us? We as women were at risk, and now he is saying we don’t deserve to be safe?”

In response to the criticism, the BBC issued an apology for any offense caused, emphasizing that it had not intended to diminish the players or their achievements.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We were initially contacted by the former women footballers still in Afghanistan who were unhappy they had been left behind and who had seen others claiming to be top-tier sportspeople granted refugee status. We investigated their claims.

“The BBC has taken care not to identify anyone who hasn’t previously been identified in other media but we will always carefully consider representations from those involved in stories.”


BBC football commentator Lineker returns after suspension for criticizing government

BBC football commentator Lineker returns after suspension for criticizing government
Updated 20 March 2023

BBC football commentator Lineker returns after suspension for criticizing government

BBC football commentator Lineker returns after suspension for criticizing government
  • BBC managers reversed their decision to suspend Lineker, the broadcaster's highest-paid presenter
  • "It was a really difficult situation for everyone concerned," Lineker's co-presenter Alan Shearer said in a short statement

LONDON: Former England football captain Gary Lineker returned to host the BBC’s flagship football show on Saturday, a week after his suspension for criticizing government immigration policy caused a row over the broadcaster’s impartiality rules.

BBC managers reversed their decision to suspend Lineker, the broadcaster’s highest-paid presenter, after his colleagues refused to work in solidarity last weekend, forcing it to air football matches without normal commentary.

The controversy shook the public broadcaster, which is funded by a levy on nearly all British households with televisions, and which often faces accusations of bias from across the political spectrum.

“It was a really difficult situation for everyone concerned,” Lineker’s co-presenter Alan Shearer said in a short statement to viewers before the start of the BBC’s broadcast of an FA Cup quarter-final game between Burnley and Manchester City.

“And through no fault of their own, some really great people on TV and in radio were put in an impossible situation, and that wasn’t fair. So it’s good to get back to some sort of normality and be talking about football again,” Shearer said.

Lineker said: “I absolutely echo those sentiments.”

Lineker, who has hosted refugees in his home, had been suspended on March 10 for a tweet that called government policy on migration “immeasurably cruel” and compared language used to support it to “that used by Germany in the 30s.”

BBC news reporters and current affairs presenters are required to avoid making politically partisan statements, though those guidelines do not generally apply to other staff or to presenters on freelance contracts such as Lineker.

He refused to apologize for his tweet and the opposition Labour Party accused the broadcaster of caving in to government pressure by suspending him. After reinstating Lineker, the BBC said it would review how its impartiality guidelines applied to freelance presenters’ use of social media.

Reducing illegal migration is one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s top policy goals for 2023.

More than 45,000 people — mostly young men from Albania, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq — crossed the Channel in small boats last year, preferring to seek asylum in Britain rather than other countries they had traveled through in Europe.

Interior minister Suella Braverman has described these arrivals as an “invasion” and is seeking to deport thousands of migrants to Rwanda.


Saudi Arabia wins first grand prix in mobile category at Dubai Lynx

Saudi Arabia wins first grand prix in mobile category at Dubai Lynx
Updated 18 March 2023

Saudi Arabia wins first grand prix in mobile category at Dubai Lynx

Saudi Arabia wins first grand prix in mobile category at Dubai Lynx
  • Kingdom also collects gold trophy in radio and audio section

DUBAI: Dubai Lynx, the Middle East’s festival for creative excellence in branded communications, has awarded this year’s winners at a ceremony in Dubai.

Ian Fairservice, the vice chairman of Dubai Lynx, said: “After a successful return to a physical event yesterday, I’d like to congratulate our 2023 Dubai Lynx award winners for setting the creative benchmark in MENA for a 16th year.”

This year marked Saudi Arabia’s first grand prix in the mobile category, which was awarded to delivery app HungerStation and its agency Wunderman Thompson for their campaign “The Subconscious Order.”

A new feature on the HungerStation app has been introduced to recognize when a user has been scrolling for some time. The “subconscious ordering” tool is then launched.

The app then displays a variety of cuisines, and the front camera tracks the eye’s interest. Using artificial intelligence and proprietary food topic modeling, the app then suggests a list of relevant restaurants.

The campaign, which was also deployed on HungerStation’s social media channels, resulted in 2.5 million impressions and 78,000 new customers.

Saudi Arabia also won its first gold trophy in the radio and audio category, thanks to the campaign “Sound of the Flag,” created by SRMG Labs and the King Salman Center for Disability Research.

National Day is the biggest celebration in the Kingdom, yet approximately 720,000 people with impaired hearing are unable to listen to the national anthem.

So, the two companies teamed up to design a wearable “hearing flag” that enables people to feel the song.

The flag features sensors in the fabric to create an immersive experience that brings music to life in a way that the body can feel physically.

Simon Cook, CEO at Cannes Lions, said: “We can see lots of exciting shifts taking place in the Middle East and North Africa, and this year’s winners really showcase the level of excellence coming from the region and the new trends emerging from a post-pandemic body of work.”

Leo Burnett was named network of the year and its Dubai office was named MENA agency of the year, while Starcom received the award for media network of the year.

The full list of winners can be viewed here.