Category: The Fifth Column

It has been noted on more than one occasion that the millennial generation is highly motivated by community-minded initiatives. Some believe the younger generation won’t participate in commerce unless they feel their purchases are going towards a worthwhile cause. For this reason, many entrepreneurs are not only finding ways to make their existing businesses socially conscious, and some are even starting businesses with “giving back” as their primary foundation. Since it might lead to new opportunities, even from customers in other age demographics, some business owners are looking for ways…

Read More

(HRW) – Ongoing debates around US immigration policy should be squarely focused on the people whose rights and families are at stake, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch released an automated Twitter bot, @ImmigrantsAreUS, which is tweeting out profiles of some of the nearly 25 million non-citizens living in the US, both authorized and unauthorized, based on their responses to US Census Bureau surveys. The bot tweets actual survey question responses from a random selection of non-citizens surveyed by the US Census Bureau between 2012 and 2016 in…

Read More

While it’s true some neighborhoods experience higher crime rates than others, one thing is undeniably real, petty crime has been on the rise within the last few years. According to the Pew Research center, violent crime has fallen sharply within the past quarter century. So, while the chances aren’t high you’ll be mugged at gunpoint, less obvious crime, digital theft, and other petty crimes are on the rise. People today are undertaking any necessary measure to protect their businesses and assets with new technology available. Here’s a look at what…

Read More

(GV) – As Pakistan grapples with bringing the perpetrators of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari’s murderer to justice, another heinous killing across the border, in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, has shocked local residents. On January 17, the battered, lifeless body of eight-year-old Asifa Bano was found in a forest in Hiranagar area of Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district. News reports in Kashmir’s local press said Asifa appeared to have been raped and tortured before she was killed, and that there were human bite marks on her body. Asifa Bano…

Read More

(Sunlight) – On January 23rd, 2017, the Washington Post hosted an event at its headquarters in D.C. that explored three key questions: “What makes people trust some news sources and see others as fake?” “The debate about regulating online digital and social media platforms.” “Can the concept of a neutral press survive in an era of hyper-partisanship?” In answering these questions, many of the panelists did what journalists do best; they reported the facts: partisanship, low media literacy, the growth of social media, and the President of the United States…

Read More

(GV) – Indigenous Community Telecommunications, the first and only association of community and indigenous service provider that facilitates affordable mobile phone and internet services to rural areas of Mexico, might be forced to stop operating after the national telecommunications regulator demanded the network pay one million pesos (more than 50,000 US dollars) for the radio frequencies it uses. In July 2016, as Global Voices previously reported, Mexico’s Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) granted the first license to operate a telecommunications network for indigenous community use to the non-profit organization Indigenous Community…

Read More

(SCF) – Serbian community leader in the NATO-occupied Kosovo, Oliver Ivanović, was gunned down, mafia-style, in front of his party offices in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica on January 16. As the old Romans used to say, de mortuis nihil nisi bene, of the dead nothing but the good. Mr. Ivanović did nothing that anyone is aware of to merit such a ghastly fate. But it would also be a mistake to regard him as the Gandhi or Mandela of Kosovo’s Serbs. He was a career politician, with everything that encompasses,…

Read More