YANGON: Facebook has removed the page of a Myanmar monk once dubbed the “Buddhist Bin Laden” for his incendiary posts about Muslims, the company confirmed, as it faces pressure to clamp down on hate speech.

Wirathu, a prominent face of Myanmar’s Buddhist ultra-nationalist movement, had amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on the network, using it as a platform to attack Muslims, singling out the stateless Rohingya minority.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since last August following a military crackdown in Rakhine state that has been likened to ethnic cleansing by the US and the UN, but which has been applauded by Myanmar nationalists online.
A Facebook spokesperson told AFP late Monday that Wirathu’s page had been removed.

“Our Community Standards prohibit organisations and people dedicated to promoting hatred and violence against others”, a Facebook spokesperson said in an email.

“If a person consistently shares content promoting hate, we may take a range of actions such as temporarily suspending their ability to post and ultimately, removal of their account.”

The page was taken down in late January. Wirathu could not be reached for comment, but he said in a video last year that his account had been temporarily banned for 30 days because “Facebook is occupied by the Muslims.”

Facebook use has grown exponentially in Myanmar since a quasi-civilian government opened up the telecoms sector in 2013, making it easier for people to access the internet in the largely Buddhist country.

Hardline monks like Wirathu took to the platform as well, gaining notoriety for fanning anti-Muslim hatred through inflammatory posts.
His tirades have been blamed for stoking sectarian violence, which has plagued Myanmar’s transition to democracy.

After Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi came to power in 2016, the government dissolved the Ma Ba Tha group to which Wirathu belonged, and slapped the monk with a one-year speaking ban.

But the man who once appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the “face of Buddhist terror” remains influential.

The social media giant has faced calls to rein in hate speech on its Myanmar accounts for years, with pressure mounting during the Rohingya crisis.

Thet Swe Win, a Yangon-based interfaith activist, said Facebook’s move sent a symbolic message about not tolerating hate speech.
But getting rid of the page will not resolve the problem, he warned.

“They remove his account but not his videos, and his religious hate speeches, they are still on Facebook and his followers are spreading it,” he said.

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Monday arrested Axact Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Shoaib Ahmed Sheikh after the Sindh High Court (SHC) set aside his acquittal in a money-laundering case and rejected his application for pre-arrest bail.

FIA personnel took the IT company’s head into custody from outside the SHC building where he spent hours in an attempt to get a pre-arrest bail after a two-judge bench annulled his acquittal.

The bench, comprising Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto and Justice Shamsuddin Abbasi, set aside the order passed by the District and Sessions Judge-V, Karachi on August 24, 2016, that acquitted Sheikh.

Allowing the appeal filed by the federal government through the FIA against Sheikh’s acquittal, the bench directed the trial court to hear the case afresh and decide the same within three months.

Sheikh and co-accused were told to appear before the trial court on March 3, when fresh trial will begin.

The Axact CEO was accused of having illegally transferred Rs170.17 million to a Dubai-based firm, Chanda Exchange Company, in April 2014. Chanda Exchange Company’s directors – Mohammad Younis and Mohammad Junaid – were named co-accused in the case, which was registered under Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947 with First-Information Report (FIR) 51/15.

Arguing on behalf of the federal government on Monday, Additional Attorney General Salman Talibuddin said that Shaikh exercised the authority to operate Axact’s bank accounts and to run its offices.

An amount of Rs170 million was drawn from the bank accounts of the company through 116 cheques. No one questioned from where Rs170 million were earned and where the same was spent, he said, adding that Axact’s employees had testified that these bank accounts were operated on the directives of the accused.

The additional attorney-general told the court that the accused persons had sold fake degrees all over the world and stashed money in foreign bank accounts operated from Dubai.

Challenging the merits of Axact CEO Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh’s acquittal order, the federal law officer argued that the trial court had not passed the order on merit. He admitted that the prosecution’s witnesses were available, but the charge could not be framed against the accused persons.

Defence lawyer Shaukat Hayat contended that the additional attorney general was making arguments in relation to fake degrees instead of the matter at hand that was related to money-laundering.

He argued that the case relating to fraud and forgery was pending before the district and sessions court. He further argued that in no case, it had been established that the Axact CEO was involved in the sale of fake degrees.

Hayat argued that there was no evidence to establish that the illegal method of transferring money called ‘Hawala’ was adopted in making transactions through 116 cheques. The prosecution failed to mention a single date when the alleged illegal transfers were made, he added.

Hayat argued that the trial court had thoroughly examined the entire evidence brought by the FIA on record. In its appeal, the FIA had not mentioned as to what evidence the trial court had not considered, he added.

After hearing arguments from the additional attorney-general and the defence lawyer, the SHC allowed FIA’s appeal, setting aside the acquittal of the Axact CEO and others.

Following nullification of his acquittal, Shaikh tried to leave the court, but returned as FIA officials were present outside the court building to arrest him since he had not obtained a pre-arrest bail.

His lawyer moved an application seeking grant of three-day protective bail to his client to avoid his arrest.

On his request, SHC Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh constituted a single bench, headed by Justice Phulpoto, to hear the bail plea. However, the judge after hearing arguments rejected the plea. Finding no other alternate legal remedy, Shaikh on the advice of his lawyers surrendered to the FIA staff.

In 2015 New York Times investigation into fake degrees alleged that Axact was making hundreds of millions of dollars selling phoney academic credentials to thousands of people around the world.

The NYT report and subsequent FIA investigations said that Axact used a series of shell companies to manage its illegal affairs, including the webpages for dozens of non-existent universities, high schools, and accreditation bodies, banking affairs, and possible money laundering. The company was also accused of extortion, the claims that were repeated in 2018 stories appearing in the BBC and Gulf News.

Former FBI agent Allen Ezell told the BBC that Axact had continued to launch new online universities and was also involved in extortion and blackmail.

Approximately 2.1 million blank bogus degrees and certificates of universities and schools were recovered from the administrative process management department of Axact in Karachi, which took 15 days just to count. These details were included in the challan submitted to the courts.

WASHINGTON DC: Bill Gates says he has paid more than $10 billion in taxes over a lifetime but billionaires like him should pay “significantly” more because they benefit more from the system.

The Microsoft co-founder, the world’s second richest man after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, was critical of a recent US tax overhaul that slashed corporate taxes and lowered the top bracket for individual income.

“I’ve paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes,” he said.

He said the tax overhaul passed in December favors the rich despite Republican claims it will help the middle and working classes.

“People who are wealthier tended to get dramatically more benefits than the middle class or those who are poor, and so it runs counter to the general trend you’d like to see, where the safety net is getting stronger and those at the top are paying higher taxes,” he said.

With a sixth of the US population living in what he called “disappointing” conditions, he said US policymakers need to think about rising inequality and ask, “Why aren’t we doing a better job for those people?”

Samsung may have to look for an alternative to buy the company’s OLED panels after reports have suggested Apple has slowed down production of the iPhone X.

The anniversary edition iPhone X uses the expensive OLED panels made by the South Korean giant, unlike other smartphone makers who prefer the cheaper LCD panels.

With Apple currently being Samsung’s only buyer, the South Korean company faces the possibility of seeing its excess OLED displays going to waste.

According to a report by Nikkei, Samsung hoped that after the launch of the iPhone X, other smartphone makers would follow suit and use the expensive panels, which didn’t turn out to be the case.

“Other smartphone makers, who Samsung had hoped would incorporate OLED panels, have been slow to make the transition due to their expense and are sticking to liquid crystal displays,” according to the report.

The report also suggested that in the future Samsung may not be the only producer of OLED panels with Chinese OLED companies catching up swiftly to the technology.

Currently, a Samsung OLED panel costs $100, while LCD panels are available at a much cheaper price.

Apple itself is no stranger to controversy with the company recently confirming that some iPhone 7 devices were facing a cellular service issue.

Previously, Apple faced a backlash after an announcement that the company slowed down batteries for older iPhones. for slowing down batteries. Apple had to apologise for letting down its customers.

The iPhone X’s hefty price tag of $999 has gradually slowed down demand for the device after an initial surge.

Last year, a report for the Wall Street Journal estimated that the South Korean giant earns about $110 on every iPhone X sold and would earn about $4 billion more in revenue by making parts for the iPhone X than it would for its own flagship Galaxy S8 device.

Snapchat’s latest app redesign, aimed at broadening the appeal of the youth-oriented social network, sparked a backlash from many users complaining about the abrupt overhaul of their preferred service.

More than 578,000 users had signed an online petition by midday Monday calling on parent firm Snap to roll back the update, which was released last week.

“Many users have found that it has not made the app easier to use, but has, in fact, made many features more difficult,” the petition at change.org states.

“Many ‘new features’ are useless or defeat the original purposes Snapchat has had for the past years.”

The update separates the “media content” from that of friends, a move aimed at avoiding problems faced by social media rivals Facebook and Twitter on a proliferation of misinformation.

But a flurry of Twitter comments took issue with the update to Snapchat, which has become a favorite of teens for its disappearing messages but also offers content from various media partners.

“I don’t even wanna use Snapchat till they fix this update, I just immediately get mad when I open the app,” one user tweeted.

Another Twitter comment said, “this snapchat update is the worst thing to happen since U2’s album was downloaded to everyone’s phone.”

Supermodel Chrissy Teigen added her voice to the protests, tweeting, “How many people have to hate an update for it to be reconsidered?”

Some Snapchat users complained the app was updated automatically and may have caused the loss of some messages or archived data known as Memories.

Twitter users offered tips on how to uninstall the update to get the old version of the application.

But the Snapchat support team tweeted that “unofficial workarounds to change the way Snapchat looks are temporary and can result in getting permanently locked out of your account or losing Memories.”

Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst who follows social media for the research firm eMarketer, said it was too soon to judge user reaction to the redesign.

“We’re watching users’ reaction to Snapchat’s redesign very closely, but at this point, we don’t see it having an impact on usage among young people,” she said.

“It’s very possible that once they get used to the new way the app is laid out, they will use it just as heavily as before.”

An eMarketer survey released Monday showed Facebook is losing younger users at a pace faster than anticipated, with many switching to applications like Snapchat or the Facebook-owned Instagram.