VINCENNES, France: A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon carried Sunday the Olympic torch in Paris to honor journalists wounded and killed in the field.
The torch relay, which started in May, is part of celebrations in which about 10,000 people from various walks of life were chosen to carry the flame across France before the Games opening ceremony on July 26.
Christina Assi, of Agence France-Presse, was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling on Oct. 13 2023 while reporting on fire exchange along the border between Israeli troops and members of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. The attack killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah. Assi was severely wounded and had part of her right leg amputated.
AFP videographer Dylan Collins, also wounded in the Israeli attack, pushed Assi’s wheelchair as she carried the torch across the suburb of Vincennes Sunday. Their colleagues from the press agency and hundreds of spectators cheered them on.
“I wish Issam was here to see this. And I wish what happened today was not because we were struck by two rockets,” Assi told The Associated Press, struggling to hold back her tears. “I wish I could have honored journalists this way while walking and in my best health.”
AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera accused Israel of targeting their journalists who maintained they were positioned far from where the clashes with vehicles clearly marked as press, while international human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said the attack was a deliberate attack on civilians and should be investigated as a war crime.
“This is a chance to continue talking about justice, and the targeted attack on Oct. 13 that needs to be investigated as a war crime,” said Collins.
The Israeli military at the time said that the incident was under review, maintaining that it didn’t target journalists.
While holding the torch, Assi said participating in the relay “is to send a message that journalists should be protected and be able to work without fearing that they could die at any moment.”
In late November 2023, Rabih Al-Maamari and Farah Omar of the pan-Arab television network Al-Mayadeen were also killed in an apparent Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon while covering the conflict.
Assi doesn’t believe there will be retribution for the events of that fateful October day but hopes her participation in the Olympic torch relay can bring attention to the importance of protecting journalists. “For me, justice comes the day I can stand up again, hold my camera, and get back to work,” she said.
The watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists, in a preliminary count, said at least 108 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, the majority in the Gaza Strip.
The war was triggered by the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ sudden attack on southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 250 others. Israel says Hamas is still holding about 120 hostages — about a third of them thought to be dead. Israel retaliated with an offensive that has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Hezbollah militants have traded near-daily strikes with the Israeli military along their border over the past nine months.
Lebanese photojournalist, wounded in Israeli strike, carries Olympic torch to honor journalists
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Lebanese photojournalist, wounded in Israeli strike, carries Olympic torch to honor journalists
- Christina Assi, of Agence France-Presse, was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling on Oct. 13 2023
India press watchdog demands journalist murder probe
- Chandrakar’s body was found on January 3 after police tracked his mobile phone records following his family reporting him missing
NEW DELHI: India’s media watchdog has demanded a thorough investigation after a journalist’s battered body was found stuffed in a septic tank covered with concrete.
Freelance journalist Mukesh Chandrakar, 28, had reported widely on corruption and a decades-old Maoist insurgency in India’s central Chhattisgarh state, and ran a popular YouTube channel “Bastar Junction.”
The Press Council of India expressed “concern” over the suspected murder of Chandrakar, calling for a report on the “facts of the case” in a statement late Saturday.
Chandrakar’s body was found on January 3 after police tracked his mobile phone records following his family reporting him missing.
Three people have been arrested.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long insurgency waged by Naxalite rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized indigenous people in India’s resource-rich central regions.
Vishnu Deo Sai, chief minister of Chhattisgarh from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called Chandrakar’s death “heartbreaking” and promised the “harshest punishment” for those found responsible.
India was ranked 159 last year on the World Press Freedom Index, run by Reporters Without Borders.
Washington Post cartoonist quits after paper rejects sketch of Bezos bowing to Trump
- Ann Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press
- Wapo exec says the cartoon was rejected only to avoid repetition, because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon
A cartoonist has decided to quit her job at the Washington Post after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes posted a message Friday on the online platform Substack saying that she drew a cartoon showing a group of media executives bowing before Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize “billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” Several executives, Bezos among them, have been spotted at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago. She accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations.
Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking other cartoonists to post Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.
“Tyranny ends at pen point,” the association said. “It thrives in the dark, and the Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a punch-drunk boxer.”
The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, provided The Associated Press on Saturday with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Shipley said in the statement that he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”
He said he decided to nix the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. ... The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.
Al-Qaeda has executed Yemeni journalist abducted 9 years ago, says media watchdog
- Mohamed Al-Maqri disappeared in the Arabian Peninsula while covering an anti-group protest in Al-Mukalla
LONDON: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has executed Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Maqri after holding him captive for nine years, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Thursday.
Al-Maqri, a correspondent for the television channel Yemen Today, was abducted in 2015 while covering an anti-AQAP protest in Al-Mukalla, the capital of the southern governorate of Hadhramaut.
He was executed along with 10 other individuals after years of enforced disappearance.
“The killing of Mohamed Al-Maqri highlights the extreme dangers Yemeni journalists face while reporting from one of the world’s perilous conflict zones,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA (Middle East and North Africa) program coordinator.
“Enforced disappearances continue to endanger their lives.”
Rezaian condemned the act and called for accountability, urging all factions in Yemen to abandon such “abhorrent practices.”
The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate also condemned the execution, saying it was working with “the relevant authorities to investigate the crime, prosecute the perpetrators, recover the journalist’s body, and deliver it to his family.”
Al-Maqri had been held incommunicado by AQAP since Oct. 12, 2015, following his abduction during the protest.
The group accused the individuals of “spying against the mujahedeen,” a label the group uses for its fighters.
His death underscores the increasing dangers for journalists operating in Yemen, where armed groups have targeted media professionals as part of broader efforts to suppress dissent and control narratives.
At least two other Yemeni journalists remain subjected to enforced disappearances, a practice characterized by abduction and the refusal to disclose a person’s fate or whereabouts.
Waheed Al-Sufi, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Arabiya, has been missing since April 2015 and is thought to be being held by the Houthi movement.
Naseh Shaker, who was last heard from on Nov. 19, 2024, is believed to be being held by the Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist organization in southern Yemen.
Yemen continues to rank among the deadliest countries for journalists, with armed conflict and factional violence leaving media workers vulnerable to abductions, disappearances, and killings.
Apple agrees to $95 million deal to settle Siri eavesdropping suit
- A class action lawsuit filed five years ago accused Siri of listening in on private conversations of people with iPhones, iPads, HomePods or other Apple devices enhanced with the digital assistant
SAN FRANCISCO, California: Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing its digital assistant Siri of listening in on users’ private conversations.
The proposed settlement detailed in a court filing accessed on Thursday came with Apple holding firm that it did nothing wrong.
“Apple has at all times denied and continues to deny any and all alleged wrongdoing and liability,” the tech titan said in the proposed settlement, which requires a judge’s approval to be finalized.
A class action lawsuit filed five years ago accused Siri of listening in on private conversations of people with iPhones, iPads, HomePods or other Apple devices enhanced with the digital assistant.
The California-based tech giant has made user privacy a big part of its brand image, and one of the reasons it tightly controls its “ecosystem” of hardware and software.
Talk captured by “unintended Siri activation” were obtained by Apple and perhaps even shared with third parties, according to the suit.
A proposed settlement fund of $95 million would be used to pay no more than $20 per Siri device to US owners who had private conversations captured without permission, the settlement indicated.
The agreement also requires Apple to confirm it has deleted any overheard talk and make user choices clear when it comes to voice data gathered to improve Siri.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay more than $30 million to the US Federal Trade Commission to settle litigation accusing the company of violating privacy with its Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa digital assistant.
Blowback online to Jewish Chronicle article claiming Palestinian solidarity is antisemitic
- Newspaper faces criticism after writer Melanie Phillips suggests advocating for Palestinian rights fosters ‘deranged and murderous Jew-hatred’
- One social media user wrote: ‘Your exploitation of antisemitism is seriously disturbing. But why would Zionists care that they endanger Jews by merging their identity with Israel?’
LONDON: British newspaper The Jewish Chronicle is facing intense criticism over an article in which the writer equated support for the Palestinian cause with antisemitism.
The piece was written by British commentator Melanie Phillips and published on Tuesday with the headline “If you support the Palestinian cause in any form, you’re facilitating Jew-hate.” It was subsequently edited and the headline changed to “The Truth of the Palestinian cause,” without any editorial note of the changes.
In her article, Phillips suggested that advocating for Palestinian rights fosters “deranged and murderous Jew-hatred.”
She wrote: “Jew-hatred has not only been normalized. It’s been rebranded as social justice because support for Palestinianism, which seeks to write the Jews out of their country, their history and the world, is what now passes for a moral sense among swathes of the public, the entire intelligentsia and even — heaven help us — many Jews.”
Phillips continues: “Let’s not hear any protests that you were once a member of Habonim or have a holiday home in Herzliya … If you support the Palestinian Arab cause today, you are facilitating deranged and murderous Jew-hatred. Own it.”
The article was widely condemned on social media.
The user Torah Jews wrote in a message posted on X: “Your exploitation of antisemitism is seriously disturbing. But why would Zionists care that they endanger Jews by merging their identity with Israel?”
Miqdaad Versi, a spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote that even after the “secret” edits to the article, Phillips’ words “remain disgusting.” He added: “Always good to see the cranks at The Jewish Chronicle show their true colours.”
Some critics accused the newspaper of promoting “Israeli propaganda.” Others warned that such rhetoric undermines efforts to combat true antisemitism by conflating it with solidarity for the Palestinian people.
Political commentator Owen Jones said: “Melanie Phillips is explicitly stating what Israel’s cheerleaders have long been pushing for. They want to redefine antisemitism as ‘any form of solidarity with Palestinians,’ rather than the very dangerous hatred of Jewish people that it is.”
This is not the first time the writer and the newspaper have caused controversy. Phillips has long argued that solidarity with Palestinians should be considered antisemitic, and she has denied the existence of Islamophobia.
In September, The Jewish Chronicle was criticized after it emerged that one of its writers had fabricated details in several high-profile stories. The revelations prompted a mass exodus of staff, with departing employees complaining of poor editorial standards under the present management.
