World News Thread

[Sunsilver]

Terrible tragedy in Canada:
The number of dead is likely to increase by at least one. One of the players is on life support, and his family has volunteered to donate his organs.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4130553/nhl- ... canadiens/

[Inanna]

Read that on NYTimes this morning; its heartbreaking.

[Frelga]

That was just terrible.

Meanwhile. Russia is now claiming that the UK is holding Yulia Skripal against her will. Yulia was among the people poisoned in the nerve gas blamed on Russia.

The official Twitter of Russian Embassy in UK:

We congratulate Yulia Skripal on her recovery. Yet we need urgent proof that what is being done to her is done on her own free will.

[RoseMorninStar]

Canada

A week or so ago I had read about the phone call between Yulia & her cousin. That reeked of manipulation (on the Russian side) in my opinion. I don't know how that reads in Russia, but I really got the feeling Russia wanted the cousin to come & bring Yulia back to Russia & that Yulia really didn't want her to come.

[Frelga]

Russia is now saying that the UK denied the cousin the visa despite Ylia's pleas.

[Frelga]

Another journalist in Russia murdered. Maksim Borodin of RIA Novy Den "fell" from the fifth floor. He had been investigating Vagner, the private military company managed by Putin's friend whose mercenaries are fighting on Asad's behalf in Syria. https://t.co/34wpyucmmt

The link is to a Russian news site.

[RoseMorninStar]

So what is Putin's deal with Syria? What does he want? What is his goal?

[Frelga]

I honestly don't know. American sources didn't report on it, that I saw, and Russian sources make my teeth hurt.

[Alatar]

Al-jazeeera International and BBC normally give fairly balanced reporting.

[Túrin Turambar]

Mildly entertaining (perhaps moreseo for our UK members), a young American unfamiliar with British politics provides commentary on Prime Minister's Questions:

[Impenitent]

Friends not in Oz who may have access to information I don't have, I request your input and exposition on the following.

I'm copying the whole thing here because I don't know how else to provide the information, as it came to me by email.

Saturday, December 15, 2018
NYTimes.com/AU

Letter 85

Fair Trials and Freedom of Speech?
By DAMIEN CAVE

Jean Jullien

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau chief. Sign up to get it by email.This week’s edition is late due to extra efforts to ensure that what you’re reading does not break the law. The introduction below also ran as a separate article, online and in print.______There is a criminal case unfolding in Australia that shall not be named. The defendant is a figure with a global reputation, someone of great influence in the country and the world. The charges are serious and of significant public interest.But publishing news about this case is illegal.Judges in Australia and some other countries, including Britain, often issue gag orders that temporarily restrict the publication of information related to a criminal proceeding on the grounds that it might sway jurors or potential jurors.Sometimes, judges even require the existence of these orders to be kept secret.In this case, something unusual is happening — the sweep of the restrictions is so all-encompassing that the conflict between the public’s right to know and the defendant’s right to a fair trial is rippling across the internet and the world, touching news outlets and institutions in distant countries.If you’re not in Australia, you may have already read recent coverage of the case.If you are in Australia or depend on online news from international organizations like The New York Times, The Associated Press or Reuters, you probably know nothing about it.Gag orders, also known as suppression orders, are supposed to work that way. They usually apply to speech within a specific jurisdiction.But the global nature of the internet has blurred the lines, giving local judges the power to threaten any website accessible to local residents, regardless of where the site or its journalists are based.That includes The Times: The Times is not publishing the latest news of the case online, and it blocked delivery of the Friday print edition to Australia, to comply with the judge’s order. The Times’s lawyers in Australia have advised the organization that it is subject to local law because it maintains a bureau in the country.Two Times journalists who have been covering the case would be at risk. The judge in the case has threatened journalists with contempt of court charges, which can bring up to five years in prison.Some publications that have published the news have no full-time staff in Australia and face no such risk. Even naming them appears to be illegal.But the battle reaches beyond one particular case. It’s a contest of competing democratic values.The core debate is an old one, pitting the right of the accused to a fair trial against the right of free speech, and of the public to know what’s going on in the courtroom. Those poles are not mutually exclusive: Trials in Australia, as in the United States, are usually both open and fair.“What you need for a fair trial are fair and unbiased jurors, not people who have been kept in the dark,” said Kurt Wimmer, a media and technology lawyer who is a partner with Covington and Burling in Washington.Because of the way technology has shifted the media landscape, gag orders now raise additional questions of scale and geography. The question now is whether a local judge, in protecting the right to a fair trial, should have the unilateral authority to silence journalists and publishers around the globe.In the case at hand, a criminal matter involving someone whose previous position of power touched the lives of millions all over the world, the stakes are especially high. The defendant is well known, having played a public role with issues and institutions that inspire strong emotions, making bias harder to stamp out.On the other side are not just journalists, but also those who were affected by the defendants’ actions over many years in many places. They demand accountability, and also claim a right to know, seeing secrecy as an accomplice to the crimes of the case.A few news outlets without personnel or a corporate presence in Australia — and therefore no legal obligation or vulnerability — have already reported the case’s latest developments online. On Twitter and Facebook, where the news can be found but is not ubiquitous, there has been praise from some Australians that the news was posted, and criticism from others worried that publication has jeopardized justice.Other attempts to maneuver within the law have varied. One news site published the news online but tried to block access to the article in Australia. The New York Times published the news in its American print editions, but not online, while Australian media outlets have tried to sidestep the issue, boldly calling out the court’s restrictions while avoiding mention of the underlying news.Several newspapers published front-page editorials this week. One led with a large-font headline that said: “Censored.”The court, in turn, has been strictly enforcing limits within a common framework.Suppression orders that completely ban coverage related to continuing sensitive prosecutions have become more frequent in many parts of Australia. It happens more often when there are two related trials in close succession and the goal is obvious: to prevent the risk of prejudice by juries, and to ensure that accusers and the accused can have their cases heard without being undermined at trial or on appeal.But, international lawyers note, there are other ways to accomplish that. In the United States, the First Amendment prohibits prior restraint on publication in nearly all instances. Courtrooms are rarely closed, and those that are shut mostly involve cases with classified information.For the most sensitive, dangerous or high-profile cases, such as O. J. Simpson’s murder trial, juries are sequestered. They are kept in a hotel away from the internet, television and other media when not in court, and ordered not to discuss the case with anyone.In Australia, too, there are states — Queensland, for one — that rarely muzzle the media to provide an extra layer of protection for a fair trial. But in Victoria, the location of this particular case, suppression orders have become fairly routine.Hundreds of cases each year in Victoria are subject to such orders, according to court statistics — a trend that began in the 1990s with dozens of overlapping murder cases involving organized crime. And the scope of these prohibitions tends to be broad. In many cases, they bar all information derived from legal proceedings, including ancillary issues that appear to have little to do with protecting the defendant, like a judge’s ruling on challenges to the gag order itself.Some legal experts in Australia say that such orders reflect a misplaced lack of faith in jurors’ ability to reach a fair conclusion without being influenced by coverage or related cases.“We should trust juries, and we should give clear instructions,” said Bruce Baer Arnold, a law professor at the School of Law and Justice at the University of Canberra. He added that this was the standard in the United States, as in most of Australia. “Take the law seriously. Obey instructions. You make your decision on the basis of the argument and the basis of the facts.”Journalists and scholars have also argued that there is another problem with prohibiting publication of facts about such a significant case: the suppression of criticism and accountability.Several lawyers in Victoria declined to be quoted about the issues raised by this case, even generally, fearing they would run afoul of the judge.Members of the public who have already spent months in court observing the case’s progress have also been silenced, unable to share their conclusions with the world when they are most relevant and likely to be respected.For now, one judge in an Australian court is altering how the world sees a global figure accused of serious crimes. To preserve a local media blackout, he and the case’s lawyers, who have supported the media ban, demand that the rest of the world not publicly debate their competence or the man being prosecuted to ensure, as much as possible, fair treatment in court.To some, that suppression of information will be seen as a triumph of justice, a noble win for local self-determination and the rule of law.To others it will be seen as an act that, however well intended, undermines transparency and accountability in a case that much of the world would desperately like to discuss.

ABOUT THIS EMAIL

You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Australia Letter newsletter.

Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company 
620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 




Sent from a tiny phone keyboard via Tapatalk - typos inevitable.

[RoseMorninStar]

That's curious. Maybe Julian Assange/Wikileaks?

Maybe something aboutthe George Pell trial?

[Inanna]

That's curious. Maybe Julian Assange/Wikileaks?

Maybe something aboutthe George Pell trial?

Yes, it is the George Pell Trial. From WaPo.

[Túrin Turambar]

Fun fact - a few weeks ago I mentioned the challenge of knowing how to address a cardinal in social conversation. George Pell was that cardinal.

As most people have pointed out, the gag order has been completely ineffective. A day after the verdict we were discussing it over dinner at the Law Institute.

[Impenitent]

Yeah, George Pell. I did some googling and found it on the interwebs.

Sent from a tiny phone keyboard via Tapatalk - typos inevitable.

[RoseMorninStar]

Fun fact - a few weeks ago I mentioned the challenge of knowing how to address a cardinal in social conversation. George Pell was that cardinal.

Wow. That's got to feel a bit strange. Probably a good thing you didn't kiss his ring.

[Frelga]

But it does answer the question of how to address this particular cardinal.

[Inanna]

In Worldnews, India and Pakistan are at each other's throats, again. The two countries are rarely in a peaceful state, but still.

A week or so ago, a particularly devastating suicide bombing attack in Kashmir killed around 42 Indian forces' personnel (including two from R's high school). Pakistan-based rebel group, Jaish-E-Mohammed claimed responsibility. Here is news from Al-Jazeera: (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/ ... 44498.html)

Yesterday, the Indian Air Force carried a "surgical strike" into Pakistan's territory. The MIGs dropped bombs (the number is also contested) and were in and out within four minutes. India claims to have hit a J-e-M training camp (calling it a pre-emptive non-military strike) - killing terrorists and insurgents. Pakistan claims the bombs hit nothing, just forest. Some civilians in Pakistan claim that there were terrorist training camps in that location, but they moved after the 2005 earthquake. India says they deliberately chose the forest camp, because it was far from the village and to avoid casualties. More from Al-Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/ ... 48237.html

Background: National elections in India are around the corner.

[Frelga]

I saw that on the news, Inanna. Scary stuff. The more recent reports suggest that neither side is trying to escalate, and I can only hope it's true.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, very scary. Let's hope that wiser heads prevail!

Sent from my LG G6 using Tapatalk