Connect with us

World

After engagement Prince Harry, Meghan Markle sets for first royal duty

Published

on

London: Prince Harry and his American actress fiance Meghan Markle will visit a World Aids Day charity fair in Nottingham on Friday, as the couple’s first royal engagement.

 

 

The couple announced their engagement on Monday, reports international English leading news channel.

The couple, who are due to marry at Windsor Castle in May 2018, will also meet head-teachers at a the Nottingham Academy after attending the fair hosted by the Terrence Higgins Trust.

 

 

 

Prince Harry has spent time in Nottingham both publicly and privately since he first met young people there in 2013, when he was exploring issues around youth violence.

A year later, he established the Full Effect programme, which aims to stop youth violence in the city.

 

Prince Harry, fiance Meghan Markle sets for first royal duty:

 

Harry’s communication’s secretary, Jason Knauf, said the Prince was looking forward to introducing Markle to a community that had “become very special to him”.

 

 

On Tuesday, it emerged that Markle, an actress who until then had been a UN women’s advocate and worked for World Vision, was to start royal life with a “clean state”, the international online web portal reported.

Knauf said she planned to focus her attention on the UK and Commonwealth.

 

 

“This is the country that’s going to be her home now and that means travelling around, getting to know the towns and cities and smaller communities,” he said.

She will also become the fourth patron of the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

 

 

The foundation is behind Prince Harry’s Invictus Games-the Paralympic-style competition for injured servicemen and women and veterans-and also the mental health charity Heads Together.

 

World

Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

Published

on

By

Anyip Mobile Proxies

Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.

Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai

Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.

Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.

Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.

WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.

Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.

Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy

Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.

The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.

Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.

Continue Reading

Trending