Stories from Abroad

Reporters Without Borders, the group that works to protect journalists, and journalism, across the globe, has asked Facebook to abandon a news feed test it is conducting in six countries, saying the change, if implemented, would imperil many media outlets. Facebook says it is testing ways to improve its news feed, a test being conducted in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia. "The goal of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content," Facebook explained.

President Donald Trump embarks on a nine-day trip to Asia this weekend. It is his longest foreign trip so far as US president, and will include two days in China—behind the country’s Great Firewall. Does that mean the world is in for an extended version of his recent 11-minute Twitter time out? Probably not. While China’s massive censorship machine technically blocks Chinese citizens from using Twitter, there are ways around it—especially for foreigners.

The media regulator Ofcom has ruled that the Fox News programmes Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight breached impartiality rules covering British broadcasting. The rulings relate to coverage of the Manchester Arena bombing in May and President Donald Trump’s executive order in January that restricted travel to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries. Investors interpreted the rulings as a setback for the Murdoch family’s hopes of taking full control of Sky.

Four years ago, well before the furor over allegations Moscow meddled in the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House, at least 195 web addresses belonging to Trump, his family or his business empire were hijacked by hackers possibly operating out of Russia.  The Trump Organization denied the domain names were ever compromised. But a review of internet records by the AP and cybersecurity experts shows otherwise. And it was not until the week of Oct 30, after the Trump camp was asked about it by the AP, that the last of the tampered-with addresses were repaired.

American tech giants need to rethink their relationship with China. Now. The need to do so was evident on Oct 30 when Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and a bevy of other leaders in the worlds of technology, finance and industry were whisked to the Great Hall of the People to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. President Xi was fresh off a Communist Party congress that anointed him as China’s paramount leader.

Apparently, the Justice Department has identified more than six members of the Russian government involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and swiping sensitive information that became public during the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors and agents have assembled evidence to charge the Russian officials and could bring a case in 2018. Discussions about the case are in the early stages, apparently. If filed, the case would provide the clearest picture yet of the actors behind the DNC intrusion. U.S.

Lawmakers on Nov 1 released a trove of ads that Russian operatives bought on Facebook, providing the fullest picture yet of how foreign actors sought to promote Republican Donald Trump, denigrate Democrat Hillary Clinton and divide Americans over some of the nation’s most sensitive social issues. The ads that emerged, a sampling of the 3,000 that Russians bought during the 2016 presidential campaign and its aftermath, demonstrated in words and images a striking ability to mimic American political discourse at its most fractious.

Senators who called tech giants to Capitol Hill on Nov 1 to answer for their roles in Russia’s election interference differed along party lines over the Kremlin’s role in swaying the race, with Republicans offering an implicit defense of the legitimacy of President Donald Trump’s victory. After months of publicly sidestepping the issue, several Republicans used a high-profile hearing with executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter to dismiss the impact of Russia’s use of the sites to spread misinformation and buy ads to try to tip the election in President Trump’s favor.

Just days after being likened to a king by President Donald Trump, President Xi Jinping of China reiterated his commitment to reform while holding court before a group of wealthy and influential business leaders from his country and the United States.

In some upside-down logic from the land of down under, Australian consumers have been able to upgrade their broadband internet access to the latest fibre-optic lines, only to receive slower speeds than over ageing copper wires. Such experiences are the absurd result of a grandiose government plan to bankroll what was supposed to be the world’s most advanced broadband network, called NBN.