The ideological war playing out on China's internet
Updated 0547 GMT (1347 HKT) October 15, 2017
As China's leaders gather in Beijing this week for the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an ideological war is under way on the country's internet.
Some experts predict President Xi Jinping will use the meeting to establish a level of control and influence over the Party not seen since Mao Zedong, the strongman founder of the People's Republic.
While the internet has always been a key battleground for the Party, the past 12 months have seen a marked increase in censorship, with new laws and regulations targeting online expression even in areas or on certain topics where dissent was once tolerated or passed undetected.
US special forces deaths in Niger lift veil on shadow war against Islamists in Sahel
Four American forces died in an attack blamed on a group led by Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, one of several extremist factions in the vast semi-desert area
When four US special forces soldiers died in an ambush earlier this month in scrubby desert in western Niger, attention was suddenly focused on one of the most remote and chaotic war zones on the planet.
The US troops had been embedded with a larger unit of Nigerien troops and were attacked as they left a meeting with local community leaders a few dozen kilometres from the remote town of Tongo Tongo.
Some reports claimed US troops were on a mission to kill or capture a high-value target in the area, perhaps even Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, the leader of the only local faction of fighters to have formally pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Last remaining Isis fighters to leave Raqqa today as de facto capital falls after three years of jihadi rule
Militants flee city used as base to plan attacks against the West
The last remaining Isis fighters in the group's self-styled "capital" Raqqa are expected to leave the city on Saturday night, taking civilians with them as human shields, according to reports.
In a withdrawal agreed with US-backed Syrian militias that have them surrounded, Syrian Isis fighters will leave the city on Saturday evening.
Officials gave conflicting accounts on whether foreign fighters would also be leaving the city, where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been battling to defeat Isis since June.
Populists poised to shift Austria toward right in upcoming election
Austria looks likely to move to the right in Sunday's elections. Conservative Sebastian Kurz is predicted to become prime minister, while the nationalist Freedom Party is expected to come second and could become part of the next coalition government.
“All polls show that Kurz will be the winner,” Reinhold Gärtner, professor of political science at Austria’s Innsbruck University, told FRANCE 24. Polls have consistently put Kurz’s conservative People’s Party (OVP) at first place with over 30 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, the hard right Freedom Party (FPO) is projected to win at least 25 percent – double the score of the AfD, the nationalist party that shocked many by coming third in last month’s German elections.
If the polls are right, the 31-year-old foreign minister Kurz would become one of the world’s youngest leaders. Thanks to Austria’s proportional representative system, he would have to form a coalition, and polls suggest that the FPO and the Social Democrats (lagging in third place) are the only potential partners with enough seats to build a parliamentary majority.THE SPECULATIVE CIVIL WAR NOVEL COMES HOME
Brendan C. Byrne
HEAVILY ARMED FASCISTS openly organize on the streets of a former Confederate stronghold. Car attacks on protesters are normalized on social media. Berkeley increasingly resembles a battleground. Alex Jones bellows that the latest mass shooting is the beginning of a leftist revolution. It feels like the next Fort Sumter will be livestreamed imminently. As the future-Civil War novel seems to spring to life before our eyes, two recent entries have taken the speculative fiction subgenre mainstream.
Christopher Brown’s “Tropic of Kansas” (Harper Voyager) and Omar El Akkad’s “American War” (Knopf), are polished, ambitious debut novels released by major publishing houses. Both written before November 8, the authors’ attempts to imagine future consequences to then-present political realities have been made less and less speculative by the rolling disaster we live in. While popular stand-ins for political anxiety in recent years have included vampires, zombies, and all-round secular apocalypses, the Second American Civil War seems inescapably terrifying in its specificity. This is not a metaphor capable of being misread.
Harvey Weinstein: More women accuse Hollywood producer of rape
Two more women have accused Harvey Weinstein of raping them as the top Hollywood producer finds himself increasingly shunned by his peers.
British actress Lysette Anthony says he attacked her at her London home in the late 1980s while another, unidentified woman says she was raped in 1992.
The organisation behind the Oscars has voted to expel Weinstein and his own brother called him "sick and depraved".
Weinstein, 65, insists any sexual contacts he had were consensual.
Police in London are investigating an allegation against Weinstein who is also being investigated by police in New York.
More than two dozen women - among them actresses Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rose McGowan - have made a number of accusations against him including rape and sexual assault.
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