Russia threatens to block Facebook over data storage

MOSCOW: In its latest attempt to wrest control of the Internet, Russia’s communications agency on Tuesday threatened to block access to Facebook if the company refuses to store its data locally.

Alexander Zharov, chief of the Federal Communications Agency, told Russian news agencies on Tuesday that they will work to “make Facebook comply with the law” on personal data, which obliges foreign companies to store it in Russia. Critics have slammed the law, which went into effect in 2015, for potentially exposing the data to Russian intelligence agencies.

Zharov said that the Russian government understands Facebook is a “unique service” but said it will not make exceptions and will have to block it next year if Facebook does not comply.

Last year, Russia blocked business-focused social network LinkedIn after a court ruled it violated the law on data storage. LinkedIn is available in Russia only if accessed via proxy servers.

In the most recent step to crack down on Internet freedom, Russia’s parliament in July outlawed the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, and other Internet proxy services, citing concerns about the spread of extremist materials. Russians use VPNs to access blocked content such as LinkedIn by routing connections through servers outside the country.

The law obliging companies to store personal data about Russian citizens in Russia has been applied selectively since it came into force two years ago. It has been widely viewed as the Kremlin’s attempt to expand control over the Internet. Russian Internet freedom activists have urged international tech companies to reject the government’s calls to give them access to personal data, saying that this would undermine cybersecurity for millions of Russian users.

Leonid Levin, chair of the parliamentary committee on communications and information policy, in comments carried by the Interfax news agency on Tuesday expressed hope that “it would not come to” blocking Facebook and that Russian authorities would be able to negotiate with the US company.

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US drone strike kills leader of Pakistan’s Jamaat-ul-Ahrar militants: spokesman

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The leader of Pakistani militant group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, who planned some of the deadliest suicide bombings in Pakistan over the last year, died on Thursday of wounds sustained in a US drone strike in Afghanistan, a spokesman said. “Our leader, Omar Khalid Khorasani, was wounded in one of the recent drone strikes in Afghanistan. He was wounded badly, and today he was martyred,” Asad Mansoor, a Jamaat-ul-Ahrar spokesman, said by telephone.The killing comes ahead of American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit next week and is likely to further ease tensions between the often-wary allies, as Islamabad has been asking Washington for years to target militants who attack inside Pakistan and then hide over the border in Afghanistan. A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has in the past also backed Middle East-based Islamic St...

कुन प्रदेश को अस्थाई राजधानी कहाँ ? प्रदेश प्रमुख को ?

बुधबार ,३ माघ ( काठमाडौँ ) सरकारले आज सात ओटै प्रदेश को अस्थाई मुकाम र प्रदेश प्रमुख तोकेको छ | बुधबार बसेको मन्त्रि परिसद को बैठक ले सात ओटै प्रदेश को अस्थाई मुकाम र प्रदेश प्रमुख तोकेको हो | जसमा प्रदेश १ को बिराटनगर ,२ को जनकपुर ,३ को हेटौडा र ४ को मुकाम पोखरा तोकेको छ | तेस्तै प्रदेश ५ को रुपन्देही ,६ को सुर्खेत तथा ७ को धनगढी तोकिएको छ | पदेश प्रमुख मा प्रदेश १ मा डाक्टर गोविन्द सुब्बा ,२ मा रत्नेस्वोरलाल कायस्थ ,३ मा अनुराधा कोइराला, ४ मा बाबुराम कुँवर, ५ मा उमाकान्त झा ,६ मा दुर्गा प्रसाद खनाल र ७ मा मोहनराज मल्ल लाई निउक्त गर्ने सरकारले निर्णय गरेको छ |

How much is a life worth, ask activists fighting slavery?

LONDON: From $7 for a Rohingya refugee to $750 for a North Korean “slave wife”, human rights activists have voiced concerns that it is becoming increasingly easy to enslave another human being as the cost plummets. The average modern-day slave is sold for $90-100 compared to the equivalent of $40,000 some 200 years ago, said Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery at Britain’s University of Nottingham.“There has been a collapse in the price of slaves over the last 50 years,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference in London, which focuses on women’s empowerment and modern slavery. Pointing to a photo of boys hauling rocks in Nepal “like beasts of burden”, he said their parents would have sold them for $5-$10. Children are so cheap that if they get injured or fall in a ravine their slave master abandons them, Bales said. “They understand it’s less expensive to acquire a new child than to call a doctor,” he added. Bales attributed the fall...

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