All posts tagged: committed

Ian Hislop on journalism, ‘privilege’ of editing and why he is committed to print

Ian Hislop on journalism, ‘privilege’ of editing and why he is committed to print

Published by skeptic

Ian Hislop is pictured accepting a fellowship of the Society of Editors following the organisation’s 25th anniversary conference in London on 1 May 2024. Picture: Press Gazette Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has told the Society of Editors that print is “still kicking” as he accepted a fellowship of the organisation. Speaking at a reception following the Society’s 25th anniversary conference last week, Hislop said he feels embarrassed when people thank him for doing a story because, in cases such as the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, it was campaigning groups that “did all the work”. The satirist also revisited notable moments from his editorship, including run-ins with libel lawyer Peter Carter-Ruck and the moment he was found guilty of contempt of court. And he said that regardless of “however brilliant” journalism is, “we have to make sure that people want to read it” — hence why, he said, the closest thing Private Eye has to a philosophy is “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down”. Ian Hislop’s speech to the Society of …

US remains committed to diplomacy despite North Korea’s nuclear escalation   

US remains committed to diplomacy despite North Korea’s nuclear escalation   

Published by skeptic

washington —  The U.S. says it has been trying to engage North Korea by sending messages repeatedly despite Pyongyang’s apparent lack of interest in dialogue and its escalation of threats in the region. “We have sent such messages in multiple ways – through third parties and directly, orally and in writing – and have included specific proposals on humanitarian cooperation and other topics for discussion,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We have also emphasized our willingness to discuss practical steps both sides could take to address the security situation in the region,” the spokesperson continued via email to VOA’s Korean Service on April 26. “To date, however, the DPRK has shown no indication it is interested in engaging. Instead, we have seen a marked increase in the scope and scale of DPRK provocations, which have only served to raise regional tensions and increase the risk of accidental or unintentional escalation,” the spokesperson added. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. North Korea has been conducting multiple missile and rocket tests, including …

Facebook Cofounder Says Tesla Has Committed “Consumer Fraud on a Massive Scale,” Will End in Jail

Facebook Cofounder Says Tesla Has Committed “Consumer Fraud on a Massive Scale,” Will End in Jail

Published by skeptic

“This is Enron now, folks.” Heads Will Roll Amidst a chaotic month for Tesla — even by its continuously plunging standards — Facebook cofounder and multi-billionaire Dustin Moskovitz has made some pretty dire predictions for the automaker, accusing it of committing “consumer fraud on a massive scale.” “This is Enron now, folks,” Moskovitz wrote on Threads, referring to the corporation that went bankrupt in 2001 after it was exposed for one of the biggest accounting frauds in history. “It may keep going, but people are going to jail at the end.” His concerns stem from a graph Tesla shared to mark a key milestone: one billion miles driven using Full Self-Driving, the company’s highly fraught advanced driver assist system. He then compares it with a new graph released during Tesla’s latest earnings call — an event that came with its own eyebrow raising moments. The point of the side-by-side is this: according to Moskovitz, the automaker is wrongly recognizing its deferred revenue — revenue for a product that hasn’t been delivered, like an annual subscription …

China Is Committed to Resolving Maritime Disputes Through Talks, Official Says

China Is Committed to Resolving Maritime Disputes Through Talks, Official Says

Published by skeptic

QINGDAO, China (Reuters) -China remains committed to resolving maritime disputes with other countries through dialogue but will not allow itself to be “abused,” a top military official said at a meeting of senior foreign naval officials in the port city of Qingdao on Monday. The sea should not be an arena where countries can flex their “gunboat muscles”, added Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s second-highest-ranking military official. “Reality has shown that those who make deliberate provocations, stoke tensions, or support one side against another for selfish gains will ultimately only hurt themselves,” Zhang said during the opening ceremony of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium at the upscale St Regis hotel. The comments were an apparent reference to growing tensions in the South China Sea, where Washington treaty ally Manila is in a fraught standoff with Beijing over the strategic waterway, a potential flashpoint for U.S-China relations. Zhang also told the gathered delegates that “carrying out maritime containment, encirclement and island blockades will only plunge the world into a vortex …

Tory MP Dodges Questions About Offence He Thinks Angela Rayner Has Committed

Tory MP Dodges Questions About Offence He Thinks Angela Rayner Has Committed

Published by skeptic

The Tory MP who made the complaint to police about Angela Rayner has failed to say what offence he thinks she has committed when pressed repeatedly on the BBC. On Friday, Greater Manchester Police said it was investigating whether “any offences have been committed” over the Labour’s deputy leader’s sale of an ex-council house almost a decade ago. The probe opened after a “reassessment of information” given to the police by deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, James Daly. The force, which had previously said it would not launch an inquiry into the allegations, did not provide further details of its investigation. On Monday, Daly appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live programme, and was quizzed by presenter Jo Coburn. When Coburn asked “what crime do you think she has committed?”, Daly replied that the police should be allowed to “do their work”. When asked what he has “brought to light”, Daly said: “I think they should be allowed to carry out that investigation” Coburn responded: “I still don’t understand. What’s the offence that’s been committed?” …

Angela Rayner Says She Will ‘Step Down’ If She Committed A Crime

Angela Rayner Says She Will ‘Step Down’ If She Committed A Crime

Published by skeptic

Angela Rayner has said she will “step down” as Labour deputy leader if she committed a crime as the police probes claims made over an ex-council house she sold almost a decade ago. On Friday, Greater Manchester Police said it was investigating whether the MP broke electoral law after being accused of providing the wrong information about her living arrangements. The police inquiry was launched following a complaint from deputy Tory chairman James Daly. In response, Rayner issued a statement saying: “I’ve repeatedly said I would welcome the chance to sit down with the appropriate authorities, including the police and HMRC, to set out the facts and draw a line under this matter. I am completely confident I’ve followed the rules at all times. “I have always said that integrity and accountability are important in politics. That’s why it’s important that this is urgently looked at, independently and without political interference. “I make no apologies for having held Conservative ministers to account in the past. Indeed, the public would rightly expect me to do so …

Argentina’s Javier Milei downplays atrocities committed by dictatorship on day of remembrance

Argentina’s Javier Milei downplays atrocities committed by dictatorship on day of remembrance

Published by skeptic

“More than ever: never again,” “There were 30,000 of them,” “Neither forgetting nor forgiveness.” Placards in hand, between 80,000 and 100,000 people (depending on the source) converged on the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on Sunday March 24. That date, the anniversary of the 1976 coup d’état, is dedicated to “memory, truth and justice” for the crimes against humanity committed by the military junta during the dictatorship (1976-1983). On Sunday, as they headed home after the first “24 de marzo” of Javier Milei’s far-right presidency, participants felt that they had taken part in “a march like no other,” given the leader’s position on the topic and his tendency to deny or relativize those crimes. Many of them, however, had not yet seen the video released by the government on social media in the morning, at precisely the moment when the demonstration began, presenting “its version” of this dark period in Argentine history. In a 12-minute video, for the first time since the return of democracy in 1983, a government officially revived the “theory of …

Sentenced to 60 years in prison for a murder he never committed, Josh Kezer was able to forgive

Sentenced to 60 years in prison for a murder he never committed, Josh Kezer was able to forgive

Published by Sam

Josh Kezer falsely imprisoned for murder ” data-image-caption=”Josh Kezer, Credit: CBN YouTube Capture ” data-medium-file=”https://i1.wp.com/openthewordblog.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/josh-kezer-credit-cbn-youtube-capture.jpg?w=500&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i1.wp.com/openthewordblog.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/josh-kezer-credit-cbn-youtube-capture.jpg?w=500&ssl=1″ width=”500″ height=”333″ fifu-data-src=”https://i1.wp.com/openthewordblog.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/josh-kezer-credit-cbn-youtube-capture.jpg?w=500&ssl=1″ alt=”Josh Kezer falsely imprisoned for murder” class=”wp-image-92456″ srcset=”https://i1.wp.com/openthewordblog.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/josh-kezer-credit-cbn-youtube-capture.jpg?w=500&ssl=1 500w, https://openthewordblog.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/josh-kezer-credit-cbn-youtube-capture.jpg?w=768 768w, https://openthewordblog.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/josh-kezer-credit-cbn-youtube-capture.jpg 800w” sizes=”(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px”/>Josh KezerCredit: CBN YouTube Capture There was no DNA. The justice department didn’t even have a weapon, fingerprints, a motive, or any way of connecting the man to the murder of Mischelle Lawless from Sikeston, Missouri in 1992, who had been beaten and shot three times. In fact, the blood found beneath the murdered girl’s fingernails as she initially fought back against her assailant did not match Josh Kezer’s blood, who was charged and ultimately found guilty of her murder. The justice department was able to convict Josh because of a ‘fabricated story’ and ‘false testimonies’ given by jailhouse snitches looking for a lighter sentence, Christian Learning reports. As a result, Josh, who was 17 at the time at the time of the murder, was sentenced to 60 years and would spend the next 16 years in prison for a …

Iran committed crimes against humanity during protest crackdown, U.N. report says

Iran committed crimes against humanity during protest crackdown, U.N. report says

Published by skeptic

Iran is responsible for the “physical violence” in detention that led to Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022 and committed crimes against humanity during its crackdown on the protests that followed, an independent U.N. fact-finding mission has said. The mission said in a report Friday that crimes such as murder, imprisonment, torture and rape were “committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against a civilian population, namely women, girls and others expressing support for human rights.” These crimes included persecution on the grounds of gender — a crime against humanity — which intersected with discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and religion, the report said. Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested in Tehran on Sept. 13, 2022, for allegedly wearing “improper” hijab, referring to the strict Islamic dress code that Iran enforces on women. Her death days later sparked mass protests under the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom,” which soon broadened into wider expressions of dissent against the Iranian authorities and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. In a statement published Saturday …

both sides are reporting sexual violence committed by their enemy – but these crimes are hard to investigate

both sides are reporting sexual violence committed by their enemy – but these crimes are hard to investigate

Published by skeptic

Five months after the October 7 attacks, the United Nations has announced it has found reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas fighters and others engaged in the attacks committed crimes of sexual violence including rape, gang rape and other conflict-related sexual crimes. At the same time, both UN experts and two independent organisations (Addameer – a Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association – and Physicians for Human Rights) claimed that there are credible allegations that Palestinian women and girls were raped while being detained by the Israeli forces. Sexual violence is an umbrella term covering a range of acts of a sexual nature against women, girls, men and boys. It includes rape, forced marriage, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion and enforced sterilisation. It also covers sexual slavery, trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual violence or exploitation when committed in situations of conflict. Sexual violence serves many goals. It dehumanises the civilian populations, humiliates victims and creates fear in local communities where it is committed. Reports show that children born of sexual …