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A month-long competition to increase the number of Arab author pages on Wikipedia is starting on June 1.

The initiative by Emirates Literature Foundation's Kateb Maktub, in collaboration with Google, calls on the public to write more articles about Arab authors in the Arabic language.

Ahead of its launch, the foundation is offering free webinars on Sunday, May 30, on how to create author pages on Wikipedia, so people with no prior experience can also take part.

The person with the most articles will be awarded $500, with runners-up getting $400 and $300 for second and third place, respectively.

A second round of the competition will start on August 1, when the person with the most articles across both cycles will get the Grand Slam Prize, which is an all-expenses-paid trip to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai in 2022. Runners-up will receive subscriptions to Abjjad, a social network for readers, authors and bloggers in the Middle East, which gives access to more than 30,000 Arabic books.

Participants will be split into two categories: one for experts and one for novices. Each article would need to be between 300 to 500 words and structured according to Wikipedia guidelines, including an introduction to the author, notable works, awards, biography and references to reliable sources.

The foundation has a list of 6,000 authors participants can choose from. Once they've picked a name, they'll have 48 hours to upload the article to ensure there are no duplicates.

Many of these Arab authors have no trace online. We want to see their body of work and their biographies, but the information is often lacking or of poor quality

Ahlam Bolooki, director of Emirates Airline Festival of Literature

It will be judged by a committee of experts, certified editors and administrators from the Arab Wikipedia community.

The Kateb Maktub initiative is an important step in the right direction for bringing Arab literature to a wider audience and shining a light on Arab authors," said festival director Ahlam Bolooki. "The Grand Slam prize is a unique chance for literature lovers to meet some of the greatest authors at our festival, and I am sure we will see fierce competition.

The project first launched in December 2020, when the foundation announced its bid to promote the work of Arab authors within and outside the region by building an army of Wikipedia editor volunteers to share the region's literary culture with the world.

Between September 2019 and September 2020, the number of Arab author pages on Wikipedia grew by 100, but within four months of the initiative launching, the number of pages increased by 4,800, according to the foundation.

The goal of Kateb Maktub is to publish 15,000 Wikipedia pages dedicated to Arab authors in English and Arabic by December 2022.

We always want to invite new talent and future stars of Arabic literature and, each year, we face the same problem, Bolooki said when the initiative first launched.

Many of these Arab authors have no trace online. We want to see their body of work and their biographies, but the information is often lacking or of poor quality. Sometimes it is even questionable if the information is related to the right person.

Bolooki said such a situation warrants alarm.

If a literature foundation in the heart of the Arab world is having difficulties finding Arab authors, can you imagine how difficult it would be for regular readers to find them?

If you havent heard of a book or author, you will simply not read them.

More information is at katebmaktub.org

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Emirates Literature Foundation launches competition to increase the number of Arab authors on Wikipedia - The National

The female rapper known as Boog the Bandit from Ohio got a shot on Thursday night during a robbery attempt. The news is getting viral in Columbus. She was a famous rapper and her real name is Courtney Bruce,She was seen in the hospital around 6:10 p with her wounds of a gunshot. She entered the hospital alone for her treatment, sated Ohios police.

While Bruce was inside his car when he got shooted multiple times and he wasnt alone, he is with one of his friends who is 26 years old, this is confirmed by Columbus Dispatch. This man was drop Bruce at the hospital and that man who droves the car was fine and not injured,Bruce recently released one of her new albums titled Heart Away the album received lots of views and highly appreciated by the people. While other two videos Hot Topic: and Risky of her also getting viral and received views in millions.

Bruce was the model for urban clothing brands including Rob Kardashians Arthur George Socks and Blck Pyramid Clothing of R&B singers. She was a model for clothing before she became a fan as a rapper and a singer.

Here some precious words from Boog, I dont have to reach any destination in my life neither I have been there, I just want happiness, hence Im feeling so frank, open and familiar, Im all want to pursue the real happiness..

She also added, you never go anywhere without Gid as he is the one who already destined your life and you must follow that path.

Lacey Crisp, tweeted, My heart is devastated when I get to know about Boog The Bandit this is the most disheartening news of my life. Boog was shoot during a robbery act last night. Boogs mother told me that she was tensed about the mothers who lost their childrens in the Columbus city.

Courtney Bruce was so hardworking and she follows her passion which provides her success and made her famous. She was one of the finest and well-known rappers of Columbus. She was shot in numerous albums.

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Boog the Bandit (Columbus Rapper) Real Name, Age, Instagram, IG, Wikipedia, Bio! - Get India News

By Christopher M. Finan |

Can we talk?

In last weeks Publishers Weekly, I summarized the principles of The Freedom to Read, a statement essential to the ethical foundation of the library and publishing community since 1953. The statement did more than expound principles: It committed the signatories to fight for them.

Today this commitment is being questioned by people within the library and publishing communities. Many do not believe that publishers should release books that express dangerous ideas or books that are written by bad people. They reject the idea that the best answer to a bad book is a good one.

How are we to resolve these differences? So far, there have been Twitter debates. Petitions have been circulated. There has been a lot of talk about harmful books, but much less about how demands for suppression conflict with the commitment to publish a broad range of ideas. There has been little dialogue and almost no give-and-take. Yet there is strong evidence that conversation works, if not to fully resolve differences at least to build greater interpersonal understanding and lower the temperature of conflict, opening the way to further communication.

The National Coalition Against Censorship has some experience in this area. In 2017, building on groundwork by the American Booksellers Association, we launched a pilot program, the Open Discussion Project, that sought to bring liberals and conservatives together in independent bookstores to discuss the issues that divide them. This seems even more foolhardy today than it was four years ago, but we did our homework. We learned that political polarization was not new. Researchers had identified the problem in the 1970s, and nonprofits have been trying to find a solution ever since.

There were some encouraging results from experiments with groups that were small enough to let the members get to know one another. They developed empathy, making it possible for them to discuss their differences.

We were surprised by the large turnout at the initial meetings in the six stores participating in the pilot. We had hoped that the groups would be small, but 80 people showed up at the first meeting at Gibsons Bookstore in Concord, N.H. The pilot established that many people are eager to engage with those who hold different viewsnot to punish or convert them but to find a place where they can discuss their differences.

While we were unable to proceed with a national rollout of the program, two of the stores continue to hold meetings and others are considering restarting their groups. The Bipartisan Book Club, which began at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., includes liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Now operated by its members, the club meets every six weeks to discuss books that present different perspectives. The topics include policing, gender identity, social cohesion, capitalism, antifa, and diversity.

More evidence of success is the response to Nadine Strossens book Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship. As the president of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008 and a prominent defender of civil liberties, Strossen has always had a busy speaking schedule. But between the publication of her book in May 2018 and the beginning of the pandemic, she made more than 300 appearances, mostly to talk about hate speech.

Though Strossen often speaks to junior high and high school students, many of her events were on college campuses where activists were organizing against racism. Instead of fearing the wrath of students, she urged those who had invited her to actively reach out to students who disagree with her. Many did attend speeches and rejected her argument that restrictions on hate speech are ineffective, but other students were convinced by her argument that the best way to fight hate is to continue to organize and protest against it.

There is so much that is encouraging about our new age of protest and its promise for eliminating the injustices suffered by people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. Inevitably, this has put pressure on all of our major institutions to change. It is particularly difficult for publishers, who must balance their desire to be more inclusive with a commitment to promote free expression.

To maintain this balance, we must commit ourselves to talking about the problem. NCAC is ready to do whatever it can to help. My email is chris@ncac.org.

Christopher M. Finan is the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America.

A version of this article appeared in the 05/31/2021 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Talking About Censorship and Publishing

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Talking About Censorship and Publishing - Publishers Weekly

A woman walks below a Google sign on its campus in Mountain View. (Associated Press)

Russian authorities appear to like the new tool they've developed to pressure foreign tech companies. It made its debut two months ago, when authorities used it to throttle Russian internet users' connections to Twitter after the social media outlet failed to remove content the Kremlin didn't like. Now Russia's internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, is threatening to slow down traffic to Google sites for the same reason.

According to Roskomnadzor, Google wouldn't delete up to 30% of the links to information prohibited by the Russian government that the regulator instructed the company to remove. On Monday Roskomnadzor said that it would give Google 24 hours to comply with Russian laws. The company didn't react, and the next day it was fined $81,600. Two days later, it was fined again, $47,600. These are minuscule fines for Google, which collected more than $44 billion in advertising revenue just in the first three months of the year. And so far, there has been no indication that Google is taking down the links. So the Russian government may be motivated to take more drastic actions against Google.

But why is Google not rushing to remove information the Russian government wants to ban? Roskomnadzor described prohibited content in nefarious terms, such as "sites of terrorist and extremist organizations, sites with pornographic images of minors, and also online stores selling drugs." The implication is that Russian authorities are looking out for their vulnerable constituents and that Google is just an evil, profit-hungry American corporation.

What Roskomnadzor neglected to mention, however, is the government also demanded that Google delete videos on its YouTube subsidiary that called on Russians to participate in peaceful unsanctioned protests in support of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Google evidently is not ready to give up easily. In April, the company filed its first-ever lawsuit against Roskomnadzor over the censorship.

Story continues

It's important to understand the context for these fights. The Kremlin started to tighten control over the internet after the anti-government protests of 2011, the biggest ones since the fall of the Soviet Union. Then in 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the "sovereign internet" law, a step toward enabling Russia to disconnect its internet from the rest of the world. The government portrayed the move as a way to protect Russians if the U.S. and other western countries decided to cut the country off from the internet. Technically, however, no country or entity controls access to the sites that make up the internet; that's managed by international organizations and the companies operating domain name servers. And Russian authorities have other reasons for seizing more control over internet use: to increase censorship and silence dissent, the scenario Kremlin critics were afraid of.

The "sovereign internet" law opened the door for Russian authorities to test their new website-throttling technology. Major protests in January and April in support of Navalny might have triggered the government to ramp up pressure on tech companies, including social media networks, the primary place for opposition groups to coordinate rallies.

Roskomnadzor started with Twitter. In March, the internet regulator started to slow the speed for uploading photos and videos to Twitter in response to the company's failure to delete content targeted by the government. At the same time, Russian courts imposed fines on Twitter, including a $117,000 penalty for not deleting posts that contain calls to participate in anti-Kremlin protests. "We are deeply concerned by increased attempts to block and throttle online public conversation," a Twitter spokesperson said to Reuters in March.

Roskomnadzor appears to be winning that battle. After two months of slowing down the platform, the Russian internet regulator declared that Twitter removed 91% of the prohibited information. Roskomnadzor promised to keep slowing down social media until it censors 100% of the material unwanted by the government.

Although these developments are discouraging, Telegram's ability to resist government pressure can serve as an example for other tech companies. Telegram is an anonymous mobile messaging app with plenty of channels used by Russian opposition groups. Roscomnadzor tried in vain to block it for two years before giving up because Telegram kept providing users with tools to circumvent the ban.

Nevertheless, the government's moves against Twitter and Google are a dangerous trend, and they show that the Kremlin is becoming more experienced in eliminating content that doesn't support its goals. It is important for tech giants to stay committed to the open internet and do everything in their power not to allow the manipulation of information.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Opinion: Russia prepares to test its new censorship tool on Google. Tech giants should not give in - Yahoo News

Is there something in the California water that makes Silicon Valleys censorious dweebs so damned shameless?

On Wednesday, Facebook revised its policy of banning posts suggesting the coronavirus was man-made because the COVID situation is, er, evolving, as a spokesman told Politico.

Gee, thanks. The flip-flop comes more than a year after the social-media giant banned a well-reasoned Post opinion column by China scholar Steven Mosher that speculated about a potential lab leak. Will our columnist receive an apology? Of course not. But its the American people who should be holding the Menlo Park tyrants to account.

Think about it: If you were Xi Jinping, and you wanted to deploy an information-control operation over the origins of COVID-19, you couldnt have done better than to just let Facebook, working in conjunction with Americas bottom-feeding fact-checking industry, do its thing.

The Chi-Coms, after all, were held in odium in the US eye long before the first COVID cases arrived: How much more effective and devious to have a gazillion-dollar US tech firm shut down public inquiry into the virus origins, and that with the help of well-credentialed experts and fact-checkers.

Its worth returning to what Mosher wrote to see how shameful Facebooks censorship was. For starters, note that Mosher didnt definitively claim that COVID-19 had leaked from a lab. What he argued, rather, is that a lab leak should be plausible to anyone familiar with Chinese realities. Among the pieces of evidence he marshaled:

The fact that Xi himself had, in the early days of the crisis, warned about lab safety as a national-security priority.

The fact that, following Xis guidance, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled: Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.

Above all, the fact that the Middle Kingdom has only one Level 4 microbiology lab that can handle deadly coronaviruses and that lab just happens to be located at the epicenter of the epidemic.

Set aside any other scientific questions about the virus (many remain unresolved): Didnt it at least merit some thought that the countrys sole coronavirus lab is located at the outbreaks ground zero?

Even if Mosher were wrong and a growing number of US security officials and top scientists are coming around to his side didnt Americans and their policy makers have the right to consider the possibility? The virus true origins, after all, would inform any number of concrete decisions, not least whether Beijing and the curiously Beijing-subservient World Health Organization deserved US cooperation.

But no. Facebook and its experts knew better and moved to suppress a vital column, distorting the US debate when it mattered most.

Oh, about those experts, whose testimony was used to justify the ban: At least one of them Danielle E. Anderson, an assistant professor at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore regularly collaborated with the Wuhan virologists, hardly an unconflicted source.

Another expert insisted that no responsible government would permit such deadly leaks, and the quaint assumption that China ranks among responsible governments was enough to merit banning Moshers column to her mind.

Similarly dubious expert claims, amplified by partisan fact-checking outfits like Politifact, were used to frame as conspiracy nuts anyone who dared warn of a potential lab leak. (Politifact has now quietly taken down its denunciation of Fox News Tucker Carlson as a leading conspiracy theorist on this issue.)

This pattern of Big Tech censorship, enabled by unaccountable fact-checkers, poses a catastrophic danger to Americas ability to govern herself and respond to crises.

The problem isnt just that it leaves ordinary Americans in the dark, but that it insulates elites themselves from uncomfortable realities such as the possibility that their beloved Chinese trading partner might be responsible for a pandemic that cost millions of lives.

Enough is enough. Facebook and the other Big Tech giants are irreformable. Only political action in the form of removing the special status that allows them to act like publishers without any of a traditional publishers liabilities can save us from this private tyranny.

Sohrab Ahmari is The Posts op-ed editor and author of the new book The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos.

Twitter: @SohrabAhmari

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Facebook's lab-leak censors owe The Post, and America, an apology - New York Post