‘I realise I hadn’t had an education, and I tried some side jobs, 9-5 jobs and none of it worked. So I did a bit of study on how to work in something you love. That was social media, and it’s really started to take off in the last year.’
With the coronavirus pandemic disrupting traditional campaigning, candidates and supporters are increasingly turning to social media to reach voters, prompting concerns about online hate speech and disinformation.
March 19 (Reuters) – The Philippines´ presidential candidates debating on Saturday agreed on at least one thing and that was the need to hold social media firms liable for the spread of disinformation as the country prepares for elections on May 9.
In December 2021, the European Union accused the group of ‘serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,’ and of carrying out ‘destabilizing activities’ in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
‘There was a lot of just sitting out in the rain, but then there would be little parts in the cloud and then a rainbow would form out of nowhere. And it would sit there for maybe 10 minutes. The light would cascade across the landscape. And then the storm would come back 10 minutes later and we would be in a torrential downpour again.’
The Wagner Group has taken an increasingly visible role in the war in Ukraine as regular Russian troops suffered heavy attrition and lost control over some previously captured territory in a series of humiliating setbacks.
The three said they had been separated from their parents who were pressured by Russian authorities to send their children to Russian summer camps for what was billed as two weeks, from occupied parts of Kherson and Kharkiv regions.
Western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner Group mercenaries of committing numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.
‘This is a very interesting sign that there’s a degrading of their capabilities,’ Candace Rondeaux, an expert on Wagner who is a senior director at New America, a Washington think tank, told the New York Times.
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that the company was using its access to gold and other resources in Africa to fund its operations in Ukraine.
Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer from a Ukrainian NGO called Regional Centre for Human Rights, told the briefing they were collecting evidence to build a case that Russian officials deliberately prevented return of the Ukrainian children.
Some Russian media have alleged Wagner’s involvement in the July 2018 killings of three Russian journalists, who were shot dead in the Central African Republic while investigating the group’s activities there.
‘It kind of warms your heart when you go to a place where people genuinely want to have a conversation with you and want to know who you are. It’s very different from what I’m used to, living in a place like San Francisco, where people just kind of do their own thing and you go about your business.
A 2017 video posted online showed a group of armed people, reported to be Wagner contractors, torturing a Syrian man, beating him to death with a sledgehammer and cutting his head before mutilating and then burning his body.
The terrifying group went viral in 2022 after a video of members beating a deserter to death with a sledgehammer spread online, has allegedly offered to help Haiti’s embattled government take on violent gangs, the documents detailed.
The video, which has been viewed more than 80,000 times, captures some of the country’s most jaw-dropping sites including the snowy crest of Mount Cook, the majesty of Milford Sound, the dinosaur egg-like Moeraki Boulders on the Otago coast and the famed willow tree leaning over Lake Wanaka.
In November 2022, a video surfaced online that showed a former Wagner contractor Hamadi Bouta, a Syrian army deserter, getting beaten to death with a sledgehammer after he allegedly fled to the Ukrainian side and was recaptured.
Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it has taken thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied areas, but presents this it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
He recalls: ‘It was bittersweet in a sense because the weather was so tough to deal with that the wind, I mean, there were 60mph winds at times where you could barely stand up… you could barely set up a camera. And it rained, I think, every single day that I was there, for about two weeks.
Did he have a favourite location? Shainblum said it was tough to pick one, but that Milford Sound – a fiord in the southwest of the South Island – made a big impression with its ‘striking cliffs’ and ‘pouring’ 1,000ft waterfalls.
Tourists can visit New Zealand from April 12 and this timelapse video and accompanying stunning images are jaw-dropping reminders of the eye-popping sights awaiting them when they venture out and explore the country’s landscapes.