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Downing Street was forced to make an official complaint to senior Chinese officials after a financial journalist on the Prime Minister's delegation was banned from attending the only official public event on the trip.

While no reason was given for ban the reporter worked for the financial wire service Bloomberg which has written critical stories about the party leadership.

A senior embassy official said that they had been warned two days before that Robert Hutton would not be welcome to attend the press conference in Beijing with David Cameron and his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang.

"We were told by the Chinese authorities that it would not be appropriate for you to attend," the embassy official told Mr Hutton.

When Downing Street were informed they tried with no avail to get the ban lifted. They then made an official complaint to the Chinese authorities.

A Number 10 spokesman said: "As soon as this issue became apparent on Sunday, we raised our concerns at senior levels and made clear it would be completely inappropriate to exclude journalists from the press statements.

"When we heard what had happened today we expressed our deep concern to senior Chinese officials about journalists being blocked."

The ban is embarrassing for Mr Cameron as he had hoped the focus of the trip to be about improving British Chinese trade and move on from a focus on human rights and freedom of speech.

But having said in the run up to the trip that "nothing was off limits" in discussions Downing Street had little choice but to make an official complaint - especially as Mr Hutton is a Westminster-based journalist travelling with Mr Cameron's delegation.

The Bloomberg website is blocked in China after it ran stories on the wealth of families of senior leaders including relatives of the president, Xi Jinping.

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'Censorship' row overshadows David Cameron trip to woo China

This story first appeared on Billboard.com.

Miley Cyrus bared her chest in New York on Twitter, but it wasn't another random act of nudity for the singer; this time, it was in support of a cause.

PHOTOS: Miley Cyrus' Most Controversial Moments

Cyrus posted the picture to Twitter on Saturday, featuring her flashing the camera -- though fret not, as two red hearts reading "Merry Christmas" covered her up, joined by other holiday-esque graphics, such as wreaths and a snowman.

"Merry Christmas THANK YOU NY for being one of the few states to @freethenipple," she tweeted along with the photo, referring to the indie film Free the Nipple. The feature film questions the censorship of the U.S. media in regards to naked females compared with its censorship -- or, often, lack thereof -- of violence.

Despite Cyrus' support, Free the Nipple is struggling to receive a wide release in American theaters, especially due to its NC-17 rating, The Daily Dot reports. Director Lina Esco is attempting less traditional routes for the film, currently using crowdfunding to get the film seen.

PHOTOS: Miley Cyrus Turns 21: A Look Back at Her Wild Year

As Cyrus pointed out on Twitter, her support of the movie isn't just another excuse to get naked -- "it's about equality," she tweeted.

It is illegal for women to be topless in public in 37 U.S. states. New York City made it legal in 1992, though that hasn't stopped police from arresting topless women, according to the film's FundAnything page.

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Miley Cyrus Tweets Topless Photo in Support of 'Free the Nipple' Film

BEIJING: US technology giant Apple has removed an anti-censorship application from its Chinese app store on orders from Beijing, the software's developers said on Friday.

The FreeWeibo app is intended to allow users to read sensitive postings on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, that have been censored and deleted, one of its designers said.

Beijing maintains strict controls on the Internet, including a range of technical measures known as the Great Firewall of China, and weibo operators employ ranks of censors to delete contentious comments.

California-based Apple blocked Chinese app store users' access to the FreeWeibo app on November 28 following a request by Beijing, said Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW), which co-developed the software with Chinese cyber-activists.

Attempts by AFP in Beijing to locate the app on a Chinese app store account on Friday returned a message saying it could not be found, but it was located and downloadable from devices with overseas app store functionality.

Company representatives in China did not immediately respond to requests for comment from AFP by phone and email.

Apple has seen its global smartphone market share slip and has made China one of its top priorities.

A co-founder of FreeWeibo, who uses the pseudonym Charlie Smith, linked the move to Apple's "big business interests" in China.

"Apple's image of being a hip and trendy company is eroding -- the brand will hold little cachet for the consumer because of actions like these and in the long run that means less Apple devices will be sold," he told AFP.

"Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his grave. This is a 'bad karma' move on Apple's part," he said.

Original post:
Apple removes censorship bypass app on Chinese orders

Apple has reportedly pulled a censorship-circumventing app from the Chinese iOS App Store. The app, titled FreeWeibo and developed through collaboration with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, is said to have worked around the government's censorship filters for content posted on the Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo.

The app is believed to have been removed due to pressure from the Chinese government, according to a Agence France-Presse report that was spotted by AppleInsider. Apple's app review board allegedly told the developer that its app was pulled because it violates local laws.

Apple has been criticized for allegedly bowing to government pressure rather than maintaining consistent App Store content guidelines. The company removed several other titles from the Chinese App Store in recent months, including an app with banned books and a utility that bypassed the government's Internet firewall.

"Apple's image of being a hip and trendy company is eroding -- the brand will hold little cachet for the consumer because of actions like these and in the long run that means less Apple devices will be sold," said a FreeWeibo co-founder who goes by the pseudonym Charlie Smith. "Apple makes it impossible for apps concerned with issues such as free speech or human rights to find a home in the Chinese App store."

by MacNN Staff

Originally posted here:
Apple pulls censorship-circumventing iOS app from Chinese App Store

A Syrian man looks at his mobile phone in a neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria. (Image: Associated Press)

Random disconnections, mass censorship, and widespread online surveillance that could see activists' doors kicked down at any time by forces loyal to the country's oppressive leader.

It's just another day in the life of the Syrian Internet.

Little is known (and even less has been reported in mainstream media) about the state of Internet access in the troubled, war-torn state, or how technology is used to fight the despotic President Bashar al Assad.

Declared a civil war by the United Nations almost exactly two years ago in December 2011, the vast majority of those living, working, and fighting on the ground call it something else a "revolution" much in the way that those in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt declared during their own uprisings in the so-called Arab Spring.

The fighting in Syria has not subsided. It has intensified, and has no end in sight. And make no mistake; the opposition forces are not winning the war. They are however far ahead in the war of words on the Western front by way of old-fashioned propaganda, thanks to a technological embrace.

But it's not fooling everyone.

Though the U.N. has previously said there is mounting evidence to show Assad and senior officials have beeninvolved in war crimes, the global body has alsovoiced concerns over the opposition's actions during the course of the conflict.

This once developed and burgeoning economy has in the last two years been ravished by fighting, where almost every city block can be a micro-battlefield. But culturally and societally it is not so far removed from the Western world. The Syrian people have kept perhaps surprisingly as up to date with modern technological advances as they can be, in spite of foreign embargoes and severed trade routes.

In speaking to ordinary civilians, media activists, opposition members, and the occasional ground fighter over the course of the last four months, it became clear the war was fought not just with weapons and words, but also over the Web.

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Censorship, surveillance, and Android phones: Syria's tech revolution, from the cutting room floor