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By Standard Reporter | Published Sat, August 12th 2017 at 14:22, Updated August 12th 2017 at 16:44 GMT +3

Acting Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi has denied reports of police using excessive force to control protests that broke out Saturday night after President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared winner.

Matiang said the country is calm except some parts of Mathare, Kibera and Kisumu where protests are being held and the police have responded to restore peace.

The Government will stop at nothing short of protectingthe lives of Kenyans and their property and [we] warn any person that may have criminal intent that they will face the full force of the law, Matiang said during a press briefing in Nairobi.

He added that the protests are being fanned by false social media posts and the Government is on high alert and anybody found spreading propaganda on social media will be arrested.

There has been an increase in a number of false and inflammatory messages being spread on social media platforms, we have laws that govern against abuse of social media and the Government will not hesitate to take action against culprits, he said.

He said demonstrations are allowed by lawbut they must be peaceful, without posing a threat to life or property.

Matiang' urged both local and international media to exercise their duty responsibly, to inform accurately without fanning violence.

ALSO READ: Stray police bullet kills girl in Mathare North area

There have been unconfirmed reports that several people have been injured and others killed in demonstrations in some parts of the country.

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Government denies reports that the police are using excessive force to control protests - The Standard

In early April, the National Rifle Association published to YouTube and its video hub, NRATV, a lacerating monologue about the New York Times. Dana Loesch, a conservative commentator who had recently become a national spokeswoman for the association, speaks directly into the camera. We the people have had it, Loesch says. Weve had it with your narratives, your propaganda, your fake news. Weve had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life. And weve had it with your pretentious, tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism.

Loeschwho once ran a popular motherhood blog, Mamalogues, before becoming a newspaper columnist, radio personality, and then Tea Party activistalternately sneers and smirks, relishing her takedown. She warns that the Times should consider this the shot across your proverbial bow, flings a few more epithets at the newspaperold gray hag, untrustworthy, dishonest ragand ends the video with a declaration: Were coming for you. The three-minute-and-fifty-seven-second episode, part of a Commentators video series sponsored by the gun manufacturer Kimber, attracted relatively little attention when it first went up. Another video the N.R.A. posted just over a month earlier, challenging the Times The Truth Is Hard television ad during the Academy Awards, had similarly struggled to gain traction. But, last week, NRATV shared a trimmed-down version of Loeschs video on Facebook and Twitter . @DLoesch has a message for the @nytimes: Were coming for you, the tweet said, followed by the hashtag #ClenchedFistofTruth.

An axiom of digital video strategy nowadays is that different types of videos are better suited for different platforms. This particular segment, it turned out, worked well for social media, attracting, as of late this week, a hundred and twenty-three thousand views on Facebook, along with fourteen hundred retweets and more than twenty-four hundred likes on Twitter. Loeschs vigorous social-media jousting with detractors, who thought shed threatened at one point in the video to fist the Times , helped boost traffic. (Loesch insistedand the transcript accompanying her video on NRATV supports her casethat she had said fisk, a slang term, popular among bloggers in the two-thousands, that refers to a point-by-point rebuttal.) Perhaps most important for the N.R.A.s communications shop, the video garnered an avalanche of earned mediawriteups in the Guardian , Slate, USA Today , Newsweek , Vice , Salon, and elsewhere.

Over the past few months, the N.R.A. has released a succession of Web videos, all strikingly bellicose even by the standards of the association. Theyre also notable for how far they seem to veer from the N.R.A.s ostensible priority, defending gun rights. In early April, NRATV published a video that featured images of the Times headquarters and interspersed footage of violent protesters with commentary from Loeschcoiled and urgentaccusing the left of inciting people to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding, until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness. Biting off each word and brimming with derision, Loesch says, The only way to stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

In another video, posted in July, Dom Raso, a barrel-chested former Navy SEAL and NRATV contributor, declared that the country had fallen into organized anarchy, led by people who hate our President and who hate the people who support him. After a Washington Post article commented that Rasos dark video had failed to even mention guns, the N.R.A. went after the Post . Grant Stinchfield, another pugnacious NRATV personality, accused the Post of fomenting the organized anarchy of the violent left and promised that the N.R.A. would never stop fighting the violent left on the battlefield of truth. Stinchfield kept up his assault this week, lashing out at two reporters, Adam Goldman of the Times and Dave Weigel of the Post , who had expressed consternation at the Loesch ad on Twitter.

For several years, I worked on investigations at the Times on gaps in gun laws and the influence of the gun lobby. They were often highly critical stories, examining the N.R.A.s efforts to stymie firearms research , its lobbying to make it easier for people with a histories of mental illness to have their gun rights restored , and its work blocking legislation that would make it harder for domestic abusers to keep their guns. Yet, through all of this, I cant recall the N.R.A. going after the Times or me, for that matterin such a direct way. (I did once have my photo posted on a Web site called Ammoland.com.)

I called Richard Feldman, a former N.R.A. lobbyist, to help me understand the organizations latest tack and why the gun lobby would stray from its focus on the Second Amendment. In 2007, Feldman published Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, a memoir of his time working for the association. In the book, Feldman wrote about his gradual realization that the associations aims and those of gun owners did not always align, and that wielding power and wringing contributions from members sometimes overshadow protecting Constitutional liberties. The N.R.A. is certainly at a crest in power today, with Republicans in control of Congress and Trump in the White House. The gun lobby was an early endorser of Trump and spent more than thirty million dollars, more than any other outside group, to get him elected. In April, at the N.R.A.s leadership forum in Atlanta, Trump became the first sitting President since Ronald Reagan to address the association.

Feldman told me that this kind of political success can actually be problematic for the N.R.A. The N.R.A. is not so much interested in winning, Feldman told me. Theyre interested in fighting, because fighting is great for fund-raising and membership recruitment.

Hillary Clinton in the White House, with her support for tougher gun laws, would have been a boon for the N.R.A. Trumps surprise election meant the association needed to recalibrate, and quickly. Philip Bump, a writer for the Washington Post , published a chart last week that tracked the N.R.A.s paid Twitter ads since November, 2016, and the mentions of the terms left, violence, and media (and including the Twitter handles of the Washington Post or the Times ). The spike is startling and revealing about the way the N.R.A. has decided to adjust its customer-acquisition strategy, aping the angry rhetoric of the candidate it championed. And the ensuing media outrage over the videos only fuels the virtuous cycle for the N.R.A.

It is, of course, perfectly within the prerogative of an advocacy group to stir anxiety and fear among its members or potential members for the sake of attracting donations. But gun owners, contemplating whether to re-up their forty-dollar annual memberships or hand over their credit cards for the first time, might consider the fact that theyre being manipulated. And for those (rightly) outraged by the intimations of violence in the videos, it is worth weighing the reality that were part of the N.R.A.s strategy, too.

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How the NRA Manipulates Gun Owners and the Media - The New Yorker

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian government forces seized full control of the last major town in Homs province held by Islamic State, Syrian state media reported on Saturday, as the army and its allies press a multi-pronged advance into eastern areas held by the jihadist group.

Syrian state media cited a military source saying Islamic State militants had been killed and their weapons destroyed at the town of al-Sukhna, some 50 km (30 miles) northeast of the ancient city of Palmyra.

The town is also located some 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial boundary of Deir al-Zor province, Islamic State's last major foothold in Syria and a major target for the Syrian government.

The jihadists have lost swathes of Syrian territory to separate campaigns being waged by government forces backed by Russia and Iran, and by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic (SDF) Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia. The SDF is currently focused on capturing Raqqa city from Islamic State.

Syrian government forces advancing from the west have recently crossed into Deir al-Zor province from southern areas of Raqqa province.

Islamic State controls nearly all of Deir al-Zor province, which is bordered to the east by Iraq. The Syrian government still controls a pocket of territory in Deir al-Zor city, and a nearby military base.

Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Alison Williams

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Syrian army secures Islamic State-held town in Homs province: state media - Reuters

Todays Highlight in History:

On July 13, 1977, a blackout hit New York City in the mid-evening as lightning strikes on electrical equipment caused power to fail; widespread looting broke out. (The electricity was restored about 25 hours later.)

In 1787, the Congress of the Confederation adopted the Northwest Ordinance, which established a government in the Northwest Territory, an area corresponding to the eastern half of the present-day Midwest.

In 1793, French revolutionary writer Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later.

In 1863, deadly rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York City. (The insurrection was put down three days later.)

In 1939, Frank Sinatra made his first commercial recording, From the Bottom of My Heart and Melancholy Mood, with Harry James and his Orchestra for the Brunswick label.

In 1955, Britain hanged Ruth Ellis, a 28-year-old former model convicted of killing her boyfriend, David Blakely (to date, Ellis is the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom).

In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot at his partys convention in Los Angeles.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to be U.S. Solicitor General; Marshall became the first black jurist appointed to the post. (Two years later, Johnson nominated Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

In 1972, George McGovern received the Democratic presidential nomination at the partys convention in Miami Beach.

In 1978, Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Co. by chairman Henry Ford II.

In 1985, Live Aid, an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, took place to raise money for Africas starving people.

In 1999, Angel Maturino Resendiz, suspected of being the Railroad Killer, surrendered in El Paso, Texas. (Resendiz was executed in 2006.)In 2013, a jury in Sanford, Florida, acquitted neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman of all charges in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager; news of the verdict prompted Alicia Garza, an African-American activist in Oakland, California, to declare on Facebook that black lives matter, a phrase that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ten years ago: Former media mogul Conrad Black was convicted in Chicago of swindling the Hollinger International newspaper empire out of millions of dollars. (Black was sentenced to 6 years in federal prison, but had his sentence reduced to three years; he was freed in May 2012.) Family prayer services and a huge public outpouring in Austin, Texas, ushered in three days of memorial ceremonies honoring the late Lady Bird Johnson.

One year ago: With emotions running raw, President Barack Obama met privately at the White House with elected officials, law enforcement leaders and members of the Black Lives Matter movement with the goal of getting them to work together to curb violence and build trust. Theresa May entered No. 10 Downing Street as Britains new prime minister following a bittersweet exit by David Cameron, who resigned after voters rejected his appeal to stay in the European Union.

Thought for Today: Individuality is freedom lived. John Dos Passos, American author (1896-1970).

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Today In History: July 13, 2017 - Journal Times

NEW YORK (AP) Facebook anonymously launched a new photo-sharing app in China in a new effort to make inroads in the world's most populous country.

China's ruling Communist Party controls internet traffic across the country's borders and tries to keep the public from seeing thousands of websites including Facebook.

The app, called Colorful Balloons, was launched in China earlier this year and does not carry Facebook's name. Facebook confirmed Saturday that it launched the app.

The social media company's connection to the app was first reported Friday by The New York Times, which said it was released in China through a separate local company called Youge Internet Technology.

The launch of the app comes as China is cracking down on technology that allows web surfers to evade Beijing's online censorship.

Last month, users of Facebook's What'sApp messaging service, which normally operates freely in China, were no longer able to send images without using a virtual private network. That came amid official efforts to suppress mention of the death of Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate.

China's biggest internet service provider, China Telecom Ltd., sent a letter to corporate customers last month saying that VPNs, which create encrypted links between computers and can be used to see sites blocked by Beijing's web filters, would be permitted only to connect to a company's headquarters abroad. The move could block access to news, social media or business services that are obscured by China's Great Firewall.

Chinese authorities have long blocked Facebook, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, arguing that foreign social media services operating beyond their control pose a threat to national security.

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Facebook anonymously launches an app in China - Allentown Morning Call