Technology Archive

As Myanmar’s long-simmering Rohingya crisis boils over into ethnic cleansing, refugee exodus and possible civil war, there are inevitable calls for economic sanctions to be reimposed on Myanmar’s military-dominated government. The outgoing Obama administration lifted U.S. economic sanctions on Myanmar, also known as Burma, in late 2016 in recognition of its partial transition to democracy under de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Now the Nobel Peace Prize laureate finds herself the subject of international condemnation for her failure to act toward, or even to speak in favor of, a peaceful resolution to the crisis. There is no hint of […]

Last month, Snap—the parent company for the popular social media app Snapchat—announced it would remove Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite network, from its platform inside Saudi Arabia in “an effort to comply with local laws,” as a Snap spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. Snap’s decision came on the heels of a June ultimatum by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to their rival Qatar, which owns Al-Jazeera, to close down the network completely—one of 13 conditions for ending their ongoing economic blockade of the tiny Gulf country. The move to “silence freedom of expression,” as an Al-Jazeera spokesperson put it, […]