I think about all freedoms. So when you say free expression, free speech, or freedom of information or Article 19, all of those concepts are linked together, I immediately think of all human rights at once. Because what I have seen during my current or past work is how that freedom is really the cornerstone of all freedom. If you don't have that, you can't have any other freedom.
Alibaba Cloud is not inherently a security threat, but its ties to China and the legal environment create potential risks that Western companies must carefully evaluate. For low-risk applications (e.g., serving customers in Asia), it may be a viable option. For high-sensitivity operations, most security-conscious organizations opt for cloud providers based in allied countries with strong rule-of-law protections (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud).
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
Hosted by Nina West, the show features legendary drag artists Lexi, Bosco, Shea Coulee, Jewels Sparkles, Crystal Methyd, Suzie Toot, Brooke Lynn Hytes, and Lydia B. Kollins. Related: Florida attorney general harasses wine bar for violating a drag ban that judges already blocked Related: Judges forced a Florida Pride drag show indoors at the last minute Florida's anti-drag law, which threatens the business licenses of venues that allow children into "adult live performances," has been blocked in court.
Given the current circumstances, if I do not suspend this edition of the film festival, anyone involved in the festival whether directors, forum participants, associated staff, volunteers, or even audience members could potentially face threats or harassment, he said in a statement. This situation places me in a difficult ethical position. As both an organiser and an individual, I have no intention of putting anyone in danger, whether such danger is real or fabricated as a means of intimidation.
In the film's first scene, a young girl is introduced bopping up and down in the backseat of a car, to the beat of a repetitive dance number all but designed to annoy tired moms and dads everywhere. Her father (Ebrahim Azizi) tries to turn down the music, but after some pleading, and a look from Mom, it goes back to full volume.
The EC also said it preliminarily found that both Meta and TikTok violated their DSA obligation to grant researchers adequate access to public data. "The Commission's preliminary findings show that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok may have put in place burdensome procedures and tools for researchers to request access to public data. This often leaves them with partial or unreliable data, impacting their ability to conduct research, such as whether users, including minors, are exposed to illegal or harmful content," the announcement said.
Books about sex, science, and politics were among the works selected for "Banned in Boston (and Beyond)," a Houghton Library pop-up exhibition that coincided with the American Library Association's Banned Books Week. "I think you'll find very few librarians for whom the freedom to read and the freedom of access to information isn't a very important topic, and that's a reason I really wanted to do something about this subject," said John Overholt, who organized the exhibition. "Because it means a lot to me."
Winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Jafar Panahi's gripping It Was Just an Accident may well mark the start of a new chapter in the celebrated Iranian director's career. Since his 2010 imprisonment and subsequent ban from filmmaking, Panahi has been making meta-cinematic movies starring himself. Shot clandestinely in tight and/or remote spaces far from the prying eyes of the authorities, these films (which include Closed Curtain, , and the masterpiece
In case you've missed it, Jim Rodenbush, the director of student media and an adviser to the Indiana Daily Student, was fired this week. This decision came after disagreements between the paper and the university's leadership about what information gets published in the special print editions of the newspaper. The university insisted that no news content would be in the print edition. Instead, breaking news would be on the IDS's website.
One of the things that disgusts me is a statement made by Kevin Bakhurst not too long ago when somebody said, there's no comedy on RTÉ at the moment. And he went, 'Oh, well, you know comedy, it's hit and miss'. And basically that was an admission of total defeat. And I'd never heard a head of a TV station saying that before that they actually gave up on making comedy.
The most extraordinary thing about Chinese director Lou Ye's An Unfinished Film (2024) is how ordinary it is, considering the attention it has garnered globally. In semi-documentary style, the 106-minute flick follows a film crew as they try to resurrect a 10-year-old project, and find themselves quarantined at a hotel near Wuhan, China, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The poster showed the lead actor holding a bottle of beer and smoking a cigarette; unsurprisingly, the board nixed both elements and rejected the compromise of erasing them while leaving smoke still trailing out of the star's mouth. In the end, the buyer was provided with an image of the hero on a motorcycle with his love interest, a misleading visual he declined to convert into a bait-and-switch display standee.
The measure is part of a trio of regulations that Kim Ilhyuk, a North Korean defector, calls the three evil laws. They were implemented during the Covid pandemic lockdown and intended to impose even stricter control on the population of the country, which Kim Jong Un, North Korea's supreme leader, rules with an iron fist. The focus, to a large extent, was on young people and their interaction with foreign cultures.
A woman in Russia has reportedly been fined under the country's anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law for five-year-old posts on social media of rainbow flag images. As reported by independent outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, known for its critical coverage of the Russian government, a court in the city of Cherkessk in the Karachay-Cherkessia region heard the unnamed woman shared "symbols of the extremist LGBT community" under a pseudonym.
