🗺️ Picks of the Week — Dec. 4
Boko Haram Massacres Rice Farmers, Brazil Kills the Amazon, India Races to Replace TikTok, Facebook Censors Vietnam, Former French President Dies, Once World’s Largest Telescope Falls
Hello folks, happy Friday! Another week in the books as we welcome in December (when did that happen?), and only a few more weeks until the holidays, so let’s finish strong until then. 💪
In today’s Picks of the Week we’ll visit Brazil who hit a 12-year deforestation high; Nigeria where Boko Haram murdered 76 rice farmers; India where the race is on to replace TikTok after the app was banned; Vietnam where Facebook admitted to censoring the Vietnamese people; France where former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has died due to Covid-19; and Puerto Rico where the world’s former largest telescope has collapsed.
Be sure to check out this week’s podcast with The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan, who shed light on what it’s like to work at one of America’s oldest news institutions, and we also dove deep into her new book Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World. Okay Sophie, let’s do this!
Job Corner
More than 1,000 full-time journalism jobs and internships waiting to be applied to at the likes of the Boston Globe, BuzzFeed News, the Charlotte Observer, The Athletic, The Guardian, the Texas Tribune and the Washington Post. Keep spreading the word… 🙏👇
Preview of the job board 👇
Data Corner
Couple of datasets referenced in today’s newsletter… 📊
Global Conflict Tracker: Real-time dataset on conflicts around the world, from the Council on Foreign Relations
Deforestation: Global forest data, from Global Forest Watch
Brazil 12-Year Deforestation High
We start this week in Brazil where more than 2.7 million acres of rainforest were cut down this year, making it the highest level of deforestation in Brazil in 12 years. Figures were up by 10 per cent from last year, according to Brazil’s national space research agency, and comes after the 2019 international social media campaign to save the Amazon.
Brazil’s Climate Observatory accused Bolsonaro of reducing his own government bodies’ ability to protect the forests, while U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden has threatened economic consequences if Bolsonaro fails to do so. Brazil’s current climate change efforts are ranked as ‘insufficient’, according to Climate Change Tracker.
Similar to how he did last year, the country’s far-right, pro-mining and pro-commercial agriculture President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in January 2019, has called reports of destruction in the Brazilian Amazon a lie. Vice-President Hamilton Mourão spun the news by pointing out that this year’s loss was less than half of what was expected, and Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo, has previously confessed to believing climate change to be a Marxist plot.
Boko Haram Massacres Rice Farmers
We shift our focus to Nigeria next where the jihadist Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for murdering 76 rice field workers. The atrocity took place in the northeastern state of Borno on the same day as the state’s local elections, and is said to be a revenge attack after 19 of the group’s fighters were killed earlier this month.
The Boko Haram insurgency began in 2002 and is now one of the largest Islamist militant groups in Africa, having killed more than 37,500 people since 2011 and are responsible for displacing millions. The group’s presence has also spread into neighboring Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was elected on a promise of taking down the terrorist group, but has so far failed to eliminate them.
Boko Haram: A decade of terror explained
India Races to Replace TikTok
To India next where local developers have responded to the government’s decision to ban a plethora of Chinese mobile apps including TikTok, by developing their own version, “Indian TikTok”. The new version already has almost one million downloads, but has a mountain to climb if it’s to reach the roughly 200 million monthly users that used the original TikTok in India. The app was banned in June over concerns that it threatened India’s national security.
While the homegrown app development approach has initially proven popular, industry experts told Rest of World they don’t think it’ll be possible for the developers to create a clone good enough — or with enough financial backing — to withstand a reinstatement of TikTok in India.
Big Tech Complies with Vietnam Censorship
More tech news next as Amnesty International accused Facebook and Youtube of being tools for censorship and harassment for the Vietnamese government against its own citizens. The two tech giants are accused of complying with state requests and pressure to censor critical content against authorities, as well as allowing state-sponsored trolls and military-cyber troops to operate on the platform.
Out of the 170 prisoners of social conscience in Vietnam, 69 are behind bars for their social media activity, which is also responsible for 78 percent of jailed inmates this year. In a statement, Facebook admitted it complied with the government’s requests to restrict content in order to continue operating in the country, which is a key source of revenue for Facebook, generating almost one third of its total revenue in South East Asia in 2018.
Former French President Dies
We zip to Europe briefly next where former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has passed away aged 94 due to Covid-19. D’Estaing led France from 1974 to 1981, and was known for modernizing the country in its post-war years. The pro-Europe former president lowered the French voting age from 21 to 18, slackened laws on divorce, promoted equal pay, legalized abortion and liberalized contraception laws. His popularity, however, waned following austerity measures and his friendship with Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the corrupt dictator of the Central African Republic.
Former presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to Giscard, while current President Emmanuel Macron said Giscard’s death has “plunged the French nation into mourning.”
Once World’s Largest Telescope Collapses
We end our week in Puerto Rico whose Arecibo telescope, which was the world’s largest telescope for five decades, collapsed this week. Fortunately there were no injuries reported. The 900-tonne instrument was used for 57 years to study distant planets, find asteroids and search for extraterrestrial life. In 1974, astronomers used the observatory to send the first ever interstellar radio message, and in 1992 to discover the first confirmed extrasolar planet.
When the site closed in November due to repairs that were too dangerous to fix, the National Science Foundation stated that the telescope had served as inspiration for Puerto Ricans considering education and employment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Puerto Rican meteorologist Ada Monzón broke down in tears on local TV when announcing the news to her viewers.
That’s all for now! See you next week for more podcast and global news! 👋