Across India mob attacks are on the rise, fuelled by false rumours on WhatsApp and social media. According to the BBC's analysis of incidents between February 2014 and July 2018, at least 31 people have been killed and dozens more injured. These are the incidents the BBC was able to verify, many more have been reported.
Many of the false rumours warn people that there are child abductors in their towns, driving locals to target innocent men who are not known to the community. A total of 25 men, 4 women, and two people of unknown gender have died. Here is a timeline of those incidents the BBC has verified.
In one striking example, a video clip shared on WhatsApp went viral in India in June 2018, with tragic consequences. In the clip, a man on a motorbike appears to be kidnapping a child from the street. The messages that accompanied the video as it was shared from phone to phone alleged that the incident had occurred in Bangalore and warned the community to be on the lookout for “potential child-lifters”. Vigilante mobs formed and killed an estimated 10 people.
But the outrage overshadowed the true story.
The clip was in fact part of a safety video produced by a child welfare group in Pakistan. At the end of the original video, the supposed “kidnapper” returns the child to his friends and holds up a sign that reads “It takes only a moment to kidnap a child from the streets of Karachi.” This was edited out in the viral version.
And earlier in the day, Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, lashed out at White House trade adviser Peter Navarro after Navarro, a trade protectionist, took aim at Wall Street and corporate influencers pushing a less aggressive stance against China. Navarro did Trump a “great disservice,” Kudlow told CNBC....not to mention the oddity of Melania choosing to go public in order to ensure someone is sacked.
“It’s like an episode of ‘Maury,’” one former Trump aide observed to POLITICO as the spectacle unfolded. “The only thing that’s missing is a paternity test.”Ha.
SPOTTED BY NYT’S NICK FANDOS (@npfandos): “An empty Capitol, but Mitch McConnell is receiving visitors. Rupert Murdoch in this case.” A photo of Murdoch walking into McConnell’s Capitol office … Also in the shot: Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp. (h/t Bill Grueskin)Given that Murdoch appeared in Australia just before Turnbull was dumped, it's easy to read this a possible message being delivered to the GOP that Rupert was not going to let his companies (or at least, all of them) promote or protect Trump any more. (And as I noted last weekend, the WSJ did run an important anti-Trump article - I think after the McConnell meeting?)
Taiwan grandpa catches 'em all playing Pokemon Go on 15 cell phonesA photo of him and his set up:
Each of 143 participants completed a survey to determine mood and well-being at the study's start, plus shared shots of their iPhone battery screens to offer a week's worth of baseline social-media data. Participants were then randomly assigned to a control group, which had users maintain their typical social-media behavior, or an experimental group that limited time on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram to 10 minutes per platform per day.
For the next three weeks, participants shared iPhone battery screenshots to give the researchers weekly tallies for each individual. With those data in hand, Hunt then looked at seven outcome measures including fear of missing out, anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
"Here's the bottom line," she says. "Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness. These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study."
Hunt stresses that the findings do not suggest that 18- to 22-year-olds should stop using social media altogether. In fact, she built the study as she did to stay away from what she considers an unrealistic goal. The work does, however, speak to the idea that limiting screen time on these apps couldn't hurt.
"It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social media actually makes you feel less lonely," she says. But when she digs a little deeper, the findings make sense. "Some of the existing literature on social media suggests there's an enormous amount of social comparison that happens. When you look at other people's lives, particularly on Instagram, it's easy to conclude that everyone else's life is cooler or better than yours."It's not a huge study, and given the state of psychology at the moment, I half expect no one else will be able to replicate it! But, I want it to be true.
The Irish Aviation Authority is investigating reports of bright lights and UFOs off the south-west coast of Ireland.It began at 06:47 local time on Friday 9 November when a British Airways pilot contacted Shannon air traffic control.
She wanted to know if there were military exercises in the area because there was something "moving so fast".
The air traffic controller said there were no such exercises.
The pilot, flying from the Canadian city of Montreal to Heathrow, said there was a "very bright light" and the object had come up along the left side of the aircraft before it "rapidly veered to the north"....
The pilot said he saw "two bright lights" over to the right which climbed away at speed.
A father of a Parkland school shooting victim appeared on “Fox & Friends” over the weekend and suggested, without evidence, that Democrats registered the accused shooter to vote from jail as part of an effort to steal Florida’s election.“It just shows you how despicable these Democrats are that they’ll stoop that low to go into the prison, the jail, and register these criminals,” said Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was one of 17 people Nikolas Cruz allegedly shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February. “It’s never been done in 20 years.”Citing a “tip from deputies at the jail,” Pollack said the plan failed because Broward County — which is now involved in a recount battle that could swing Florida’s Senate and gubernatorial elections — failed to send the inmates their ballots in time to vote.“They probably shouldn’t be voting anyway,” Fox’s Katie Pavlich remarked after listening to Pollack’s accusations, which neither she nor her two co-hosts challenged at any point, although they contradicted all public evidence.There was a kernel of truth at the heart of the segment and the spiraling social media outrage that accompanied it: Nikolas Jacob Cruz really did register to vote in July, listing his home address as the county jail where he awaits trial after police say he confessed to the mass shooting.He registered as a Republican, which “Fox & Friends” didn’t mention.There is nothing suspicious or mysterious about what Cruz did from his cell. In general, jail inmates are constitutionally entitled to register and vote before their trials, assuming no prior convictions or legal disqualifications. Broward County records show that in 2016 and previous elections, several inmates did exactly that from the same jail where Cruz now sits.
The cost of living issue and the associated food riots caused two months* the impossibility of a fast return of soldiers to not only Australia, but all Allied nations. (They said there just were not enough ships in the world to get soldiers back home within a year.) On that topic, I see this today:
of turmoil in Melbourne during September and October 1917. Recent work
by John Lack adds to our understanding of the significance of these riots by
tracing the reasons particular commercial establishments and places of work
were targeted and demonstrating the deep-seated, class-based resentments
about economic injustice that preceded the war and were aggravated by it.161
This embedded anger underpinned the extensive involvement of Melbourne
workers in the Great Strike of 1917, which, as a number of historians have
argued, was driven by ordinary workers, especially the unskilled at the grass
roots of the labour movement, rather than their leaders.162 While the strike
about the introduction of the Taylorist timecard system began and remained
centred in New South Wales, by early September more than 20,000 workers
in Melbourne were also affected – a third to a half of them actually on strike
or locked out and the rest stood down or on short time. The wharf labourers
were already out over the cost of bread, but now added a refusal to handle
black goods (goods handled by non-union labour) to their cause. As the
mainstay of the Victorian strike – first out and last back – they comprised
over a quarter of the state’s strikers.
Despite the war being over, and Australian troops not constituting part of the Allied occupying force in Germany, it was to be a long time before many Australians would return home. The day after the armistice, Private A. Golding wrote:
They told us we would be another 12 months in France.
Repatriation to Australia was organised by Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, on a first come, first go basis.
While awaiting transport, some men took advantage of the opportunity to travel around France and Britain- one of the incentives for enlisting in the first place. A few hundred Australian servicemen went on to serve in Russia as part of a British force fighting Bolshevik forces. Some light horse units also helped with suppressing an Egyptian nationalist revolt in early 1919.Had I heard about Diggers fighting Bolshevik's before? Maybe. Surely there would be some good material for a story there.
Two of Australia's Victoria Cross recipients had been sent home with VD and at least six men on board The Wiltshire – that ship of shame – ended up being highly decorated. Initially, army regulations made it difficult for men who had committed acts of misconduct, including contracting VD, to be awarded medals but this was later retracted: around 15 per cent of the entire AIF contracted VD.
How this fits with the overall statistics amongst allied soldiers depends on who you ask. Dunbar says: "Some people like to think that Australian soldiers caught more VD than those in other combatant countries and other people say they caught less. I think it depends on the extent to which the person you are talking to upholds the myth of the heroic digger."
It would be a challenge for any writer to make an entire book on sexually transmitted diseases appeal to a wide audience, but Dunbar's sensitive probing of the human psychology and social mores involved transcends the First World War experience and is a timely reminder of the damaging effects of glossing over our human flaws.
