French airlines expect to lose business as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend travel from Europe to the United States for a month because of the coronavirus outbreak. Transatlantic flights are among the most profitable parts of  Air France-KLM’s business.Air France alone serves more than 20 American cities and operates more than 200 flights to the United States per week. The alliance between Air France-KLM, Delta and Virgin Atlantic produces combined annual revenue of $13 billion. With the U.S. decision, hope vanishes for tourism officials who wanted to see a reverse in the travel decline from Asia and Europe to North America.About 100,000 French nationals were set to travel to the U.S. in March and April.Shocking developmentValerie Boned, the secretary-general of Enterprises de Voyage, an advocacy group representing travel agencies in France, told VOA the U.S. move was a disaster.She said professionals were quite shocked by the announcement because the United States is one of the main destinations for French people. According to Boned, 1.8 million French citizens travel to the U.S. each year, for leisure or business. It is the No. 1 long-haul destination for the French. Others fear the travel ban for EU citizens to the United States will affect employment, as the travel sector has been fragile for weeks because of the outbreak. René-Marc Chikli, president of SETO, the French union for tour-operating companies, said he was expecting America’s decision to implement a travel ban on EU citizens, because the virus has no boundaries. But it’s still an economic shock. Tour operators represent 3,000 companies and 35,000 employees in France. He indicated that more 10% of the companies might not survive if the crisis lasts for months. Tourism industry leaders will be meeting Friday with French government officials to try to find ways to get relief to the travel sector.
 
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Speculation about the political future of Russian President Vladimir Putin became somewhat clearer this week.  He threw his weight behind proposals to amend Russia’s current constitutional cap on presidential term limits  — a move that would allow him to stay in power beyond the end of his current term in 2024. Charles Maynes reports.
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German authorities are formally placing parts of the far-right Alternative for Germany party under surveillance after classifying it as extremist, the country’s domestic intelligence agency said Thursday.Thomas Haldenwang, head of the BfV intelligence agency, said that after more than a year of examination his office has concluded that a radical faction within Alternative for Germany, known as “The Wing,” meets the definition of a “right-wing extremist movement.”“This is a warning to all enemies of democracy,” said Haldenwang, noting that it was his agency’s duty to prevent growing far-right extremism from overthrowing the country’s democratic order the way the Nazis did in the 1930s.Alternative for Germany immediately criticized the move, which allows authorities to use covert methods to observe The Wing and its estimated 7,000 supporters. They make up about 20% of the party’s overall membership but hold significant sway over its direction, according to former party members including its one-time leader Frauke Petry.The Wing is led by AfD’s regional chiefs in the eastern states of Thuringia and Brandenburg, Bjoern Hoecke and Andreas Kalbitz.Haldenwang described Hoecke and Kalbitz as “right-wing extremists,” noting Hoecke’s historical revisionism, his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant rhetoric and his close ties to other known extremists outside of the party. Hoecke has described Berlin’s memorial to the victims of the Nazi Holocaust a “monument of shame” and called for a “180-degree turn” in the way Germany remembers its Nazi past.“We mustn’t just keep an eye on violent extremists but also watch those who use words to spark fires,” said Haldenwang, adding that anti-Semitism, hatred of Islam and racism spread online or in political arenas provides the “breeding ground” for violence.Germany has been shaken by a series of far-right killings over the past year, including the slaying of a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the attack on a synagogue in Halle and a deadly mass shooting targeting people with migrant backgrounds in Hanau.“Right-wing extremism and terrorism are currently the biggest threats to democracy in Germany,” Haldenwang told reporters, adding that more than 200 people have been killed by right-wing extremists in the country since 1990.Kalbitz, the AfD leader in Brandenburg, called the intelligence agency’s decision “factually unfounded and completely politically motivated.”Putting The Wing under increased surveillance could strengthen calls for it to be banned. Germany’s top court rejected a bid to outlaw the far-right NPD party in 2017, deeming it too insignificant in part because it had no presence in parliament. Alternative for Germany, by contrast, has seats in all 16 state assemblies and the federal parliament.Intelligence scrutiny of the The Wing could also have consequences for any supporters who are civil servants or state employees. “They will get into trouble” with their superiors in the future because the AfD faction’s aims run counter to the German Constitution they swore to uphold, Haldenwang said.
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The European Central Bank deploying new stimulus measures to cushion the economic pain inflicted by the virus outbreak, but avoided cutting interest rates in a situation where economists say monetary policy can do little more than limit the damage.The central bank for the 19 countries that use the euro decided Thursday to buy up to 120 billion euros ($132 billion) more in bonds this year.The money is newly created and injected into the financial system. It comes on top of purchases worth 20 billion euros a month it is already carrying out, and would be aimed at corporate bonds, which should help keep credit available to companies.The ECB is also providing additional cheap, long-term loans to banks to make sure they have the liquidity they need. And the ECB will temporarily ease some capital requirements for banks to help them keep lending.It’s all aimed at helping businesses get the financing they need and stimulating activity to offset the downturn from all the closings and restrictions due to the virus outbreak.The central bank did not cut interest rates as many analysts had expected. Rates are already low and economists have said deeper cuts might not help much.Thursday’s steps “will do no more than cushion the blow to the economy from the coronavirus,” said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics. “Monetary policy is powerless to prevent a deep downturn and, unlike in the U.S. and China, it has little scope to support the recovery afterwards.”The move comes as the eurozone is forecast to slide into recession and financial markets keep falling over concerns about the virus outbreak’s hit to the economy. Concerns deepened after the U.S. decided to halt travel from 26 European countries.The bank’s policy meeting was held without several members of the 25-seat governing council physically present and participating by remote conferencing. Italian central bank head Ignazio Visco is among them since his country, so far the hardest hit in Europe by the virus outbreak, has restricted movement. The central bank governors of Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are also taking part by remote.Economists are saying that the impact of the virus outbreak is difficult to address with monetary policy, since it first and foremost deals a shock to the supply of goods and services. Monetary policy is better equipped to stimulate demand, not supply, by making credit more widely available.Central bank action is aimed at limiting the damage from knock-on effects of business interruption. More abundant and targeted credit could help businesses get through a period of interruption without going out of business.The Bank of England cut its key benchmark to 0.25% from 0.75% on Wednesday; the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its benchmark by a half-percentage point to 1.0-1.25% on March 3.Meanwhile governments are developing plans for targeted stimulus through tax breaks or labor market assistance programs.Italy is earmarking 25 billion euros ($28 billion) in new spending and Britain said it would make 30 billion pounds ($39 billion) available.The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has decided to ease eligibility requirements for a program in which the government helps pay workers who are put on shorter hours by their companies. That could help companies rebound quickly after the outbreak passes because they will have avoided layoffs and would not need to reassemble a trained workforce.Yet European rules limiting debt and deficits for members of the euro currency may restrict what governments can do. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that the maximum flexibility available in the rules will be applied.The commission has started a longer-term review of the rules themselves, but economist Rosie Colthorpe at Oxford Economics said any changes would not come before 2021. “This leaves the eurozone ill-prepared to deliver a forceful and coordinated fiscal response to the looming coronavirus-related downturn.”“There is a chance that a serious recession would trigger meaningful reform, but for now the onus will remain on the ECB, despite its increasingly depleted arsenal,” Colthorpe said. 
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A Las Vegas wedding with an Elvis impersonator: Canceled. A 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) trans-America road trip, a voyage of a lifetime that took months to prepare: On ice, too.The new anti-virus travel ban announced by U.S. President Donald Trump threw Europeans’ best-laid plans — family reunions, birthday celebrations, vacations, trips for both business and pleasure — into utter disarray Thursday.For Europeans brought up on imports of American television, music, sports and fast food, the idea of suddenly being temporarily unwelcome on the other side of the Atlantic was a psychological shock, too, akin to being spurned by an old and familiar friend.“We were going to get married in Las Vegas, with Elvis. It was going to be epic,” said Sandrine Reynaert, a Parisian who was having to cancel the ceremony on April 20, a date that Gael, her future husband, already has engraved on the inside of his ring.“It’s strange,” she said of the travel ban. “Perhaps an overreaction compared to the epidemic.”Reynaert said she’d take a day off work Friday to devote herself to canceling or adjusting reservations, unraveling the road trip that, as well as Las Vegas, also would have taken them to other iconic spots of Americana: Route 66, Joshua Tree National Park, the Grand Canyon.Likewise, retired French teacher Jean-Michel Deaux spent months planning the 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) trans-America road trip that has now evaporated just when it was within touching distance, with a flight into New Orleans that had been booked for March 24.The March-May voyage with his wife, Christiane, would have taken them through multiple states, on a giant south-north loop. They planned to follow in the footsteps of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who fought with American colonists against the British. They wanted to see Amish communities in Pennsylvania, take in music in Memphis and ride a boat on the Mississippi. They even bought extra suitcases to carry gifts and souvenirs back to France.“We’ve been preparing this trip for years,” Jean-Michel Deaux said. “It was going to be a pilgrimage.”“I’ve been studying the maps every night,” he added. “I had already pictured myself on the boat.”As the pandemic grips Europe and the U.S., it continues to ebb in China, where the first cases of COVID-19 emerged in December. China reported a record low of just 15 new cases Thursday and was cautiously monitoring new arrivals who were returning with the virus from elsewhere.More than three-fourths of China’s patients have recovered. Most people have only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, though symptoms can be severe, including pneumonia, especially in older adults and people with existing health problems. Recovery for mild cases takes about two weeks, while more severe illness may take three to six weeks, the World Health Organization says.Trump, in a rare Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday night, said the monthlong restriction on travel from Europe would begin at midnight Friday.While Trump said all European travel would be cut off, Homeland Security officials later clarified that the new travel restrictions would apply only to most foreign nationals who have been in the “Schengen Area” at any point for 14 days prior to their scheduled arrival to the United States. The area includes France, Italy, German, Greece, Austria, Belgium and others in the zone that has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of China.On the receiving end of the restrictions, Europeans struggled to make sense of them. A Parisian mother said she got woken during the night by her 19-year-old daughter calling from Los Angeles to say that she wouldn’t be coming home for a visit this month because she feared that she wouldn’t then be allowed back into the United States to finish her course of schooling there.There were immediate howls of concern from the travel industry. Americans also scrambled to leave Europe too, even though the travel ban shouldn’t stop them from getting home.“I’ve been hysterical for two days, so a complete panic attack about getting home,” said Helen Neumann from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, who was flying to Boston on a direct flight from Rome on Thursday. “I was like, I’ve got to get out of here.”Reynaert expects to postpone her trip and the Elvis wedding in Vegas to next year.“We didn’t want to do something conventional in France,” she said.Deaux said he’d try to reschedule their voyage for later this year, in hopes the virus passes.“When I heard this morning, I was very disappointed but not surprised,” he said. “All the preparations, ruined.”
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President Donald Trump’s 30-day ban on most Europeans entering the United States is the latest calamity for a global travel industry already reeling from falling bookings and canceled reservations as people try to avoid contracting and spreading the coronavirus.The ban, announced Wednesday and set to begin at midnight Friday, won’t apply to Americans trying to return home — though they will be subject to “enhanced” health screening — or to citizens of the United Kingdom.But coming on top of similar restrictions imposed by many other governments, Trump’s move is bound to drastically escalate the upheaval facing global airlines and travelers on some of the most heavily traveled routes.The disruptions to air travel are rippling through economies in a blow to hotels, car rental companies, museums and restaurants.Lucrative business travel was already down sharply because conferences have been canceled and companies have instructed employees to skip all but essential trips. And travel from and within Asia has been restricted for weeks as authorities try to stop the spread of the virus there.People wait to check in to a flight to Chicago at the United Airlines counter in the main terminal of Brussels International Airport in Brussels, Thursday, March 12, 2020.Airlines scrambled Thursday to adjust to the new restrictions, with many telling customers they were still assessing options and asking for patience from those trying to contact them.French retirees Jean-Michel and Christiane Deaux were among those weighing their options. They had spent months planning a 3,500-kilometer (2,200-mile) road trip across America and planned to fly to New Orleans later this month. Now they’re trying to reschedule for later in the year.“When I heard this morning, I was very disappointed but not surprised,” Jean-Michel Deaux said. “All the preparations, ruined.”There are usually about 400 flights a day from Europe to the United States, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Airlines have already been slashing their flight schedules, especially on international routes, to cope with a sharp decline in travel demand among fearful customers.About 72.4 million passengers flew from the U.S. to Europe in the year ended last June, making it the most popular international destination, according to Transportation Department figures. About one-third of those passengers fly on U.S. airlines, the rest on foreign carriers. Trump didn’t mention restrictions on Americans traveling to Europe.Passengers rest at the Barcelona airport, Spain, Thursday, March 12, 2020.Even before Trump’s announcement, the International Airline Travelers Association was forecasting a 24% fall in Europe’s passenger traffic this year and $37 billion in lost potential ticket sales. Italy, which is all but closed off as authorities try to control the spread of the virus there, has been particularly hard hit.In his address from the Oval Office, Trump said U.S. restrictions on people coming from China and other countries with early outbreaks of COVID-19 had held down the number of cases in the United States compared with Europe. He blamed the European Union for failing to immediately stop travel from China “and other hot spots,” which he said had led to clusters of outbreaks in the U.S being “seeded by travelers from Europe.”Trump has called the disease a “foreign virus” and claimed that U.S. clusters were “seeded” by European travelers. He announced that all European travel would be cut off, but U.S. officials later said that restrictions would apply only to most foreign citizens who have been in Europe’s passport-free travel zone at any point for 14 days prior to their arrival to the United States.“The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement.The new U.S. restrictions apply to most foreign nationals who have been in the 26-nation Schengen area of Europe in the 14 days before their scheduled arrival in the United States. The Schengen countries, which do not restrict travel among each other, include Germany, France, Italy and Spain.The World Health Organization on Wednesday labeled COVID-19 a pandemic, citing its alarming spread and severity. Some experts have raised doubts over the effectiveness of tight border controls now that it has spread to so many countries.In Asia, where the virus was first reported, governments have been imposing various restrictions on arrivals, requirements for health certificates and other precautions for more than a month.An industry trade group warned that airlines worldwide could lose up to $113 billion in revenue from the virus — several times the damage caused by the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. Since mid-February, shares of American Airlines have dropped by nearly half, United Airlines by more than one-third, and Delta Air Lines more than one-fourth.A Delta Air Lines jet is parked at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)It isn’t just U.S. airlines feeling the pain. Germany’s Lufthansa plans to cut up to half its flights because of a “drastic” drop in bookings. Cathay Pacific Airways warned Wednesday that it faces a “substantial loss” in the first half of this year. The Hong Kong-based airline canceled 90% of its flight capacity to the mainland at the start of February after Beijing told the public to avoid travel as part of efforts to contain the outbreak centered on the city of Wuhan.Airlines, hotels and other travel businesses in East Asia already suffered a painful blow in January when demand plunged after China canceled group tours, told businesspeople to avoid foreign trips and imposed restrictions on foreign visitors.China is the No. 1 source of foreign tourists for Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries and a growing source of business travel. Airlines canceled thousands of flights. Hotels and other businesses closed.With air travel and airline revenue plummeting, airlines are losing their appetite for new planes. On Wednesday, Boeing’s stock fell 18% — its biggest one-day percentage drop since 1974 — and the iconic airplane manufacturer announced a hiring freeze.In China, more than three-fourths of virus patients have recovered and most suffered only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. The illness can be severe and lead to pneumonia, especially in older adults and people with existing health problems.More than 126,000 people in more than 110 countries have been infected. But the World Health Organization has emphasized the vast majority are in just four countries: China and South Korea, where new cases are declining, and Iran and Italy, where they are not.Trump’s Homeland Security secretary acknowledged that the ban will further upend the airline industry.“While these new travel restrictions will be disruptive to some travelers, this decisive action is needed to protect the American public from further exposure to the potentially deadly coronavirus,” DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement issued shortly after the president’s address.Nicholas Calio, president of Airlines for America, a trade group for many large U.S. carriers, said the ban “will hit U.S. airlines, their employees, travelers and the shipping public extremely hard. However, we respect the need to take this unprecedented action.”Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst in San Francisco, said the ban will push airlines including American, Delta and United to reduce flights between the U.S. and Europe, and will cast a long shadow over the peak summer travel season.“This is going to cause a lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic to reconsider where they are going to spend their summer vacation,” he said. “Leisure travelers will stay close to home,” while people traveling on business will be grounded by corporate restrictions, he said.In January, the U.S. issued a similar ban on people coming into the country from China. That policy was later extended to people who had been in Iran.
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The World Health Organization Wednesday declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, with 114 countries confirming cases, while the United States announced a European travel ban and the National Basketball Association said its games are on hold for now.“In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a daily press briefing on COVID-19 virus at the WHO headquarters, March 11, 2020, in Geneva.Tedros warned that the worst is yet to come with the WHO “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.“In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of COVID-19 cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries to climb even higher,” he said.Tedros said his organization has “rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” and that countries “can still change the course of this pandemic.”U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday night, declaring “the virus will not have a chance against us,” and announcing a 30-day suspension of all travel from Europe to the United States, starting Friday. Travel from the United Kingdom is exempt, as are U.S. citizens, legal residents and their immediate families.Trump also announced financial relief for people and businesses affected by the virus.The U.S. State Department issued updated guidance Wednesday advising Americans to “reconsider travel abroad” because of the coronavirus outbreak.Dr. Anthony Fauci, left, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies at a House committee hearing on preparedness for and response to the coronavirus outbreak on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 11, 2020.There are more than 1,200 confirmed cases in the United States. When there were just 15 cases last month, Trump said that number would soon drop to zero. It has since spread to about 40 of the 50 U.S. states. Thirty-eight people have died.The first confirmed case in Capitol Hill offices was reported Wednesday with a staffer in Senator Maria Cantwell’s office testing positive.“Bottom line, it’s going to get worse,” the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, said Wednesday.Fauci says how much worse depends on the U.S. government’s ability to control the number of travelers coming into the U.S. and local efforts to contain the virus.Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $728 million package to fight the virus, much of which will be used to develop a vaccine.Medical staff checks a passenger in a car for the novel coronavirus at the border crossing with Italy in Vrtojba, Slovenia, March 11 , 2020.Some European nations are taking more drastic steps. Italy, Europe’s hardest-hit country, is under a nationwide lockdown.All museums and schools in Spain are closed. Denmark has also shuttered schools and Britain announced a multibillion-dollar package to boost the country’s health care system and to also help businesses taking an economic hit.Festivals and any kind of event that attracts large crowds and brings people close together have been canceled across much of Europe.The NBA announced late Wednesday it is suspending its season until further notice after a player for the Utah Jazz tested positive for coronavirus.That followed a decision earlier by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to play its popular annual “March Madness” basketball tournaments without fans.As of late Wednesday, there were more than 126,000 coronavirus cases in 114 countries and more than 4,600 deaths.
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The president of France and the king of Spain paid homage Wednesday to victims of terrorism in a special ceremony prompted by attacks that hit both their countries and changed Europe’s security posture.France’s Emmanuel Macron and Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia led a ceremony on Trocadero plaza overlooking the Eiffel Tower with survivors of terrorist attacks and families of victims.The European Union chose March 11 as a day of continent-wide commemoration of terrorism victims after the Madrid train bombing on March 11, 2004 that killed nearly 200 people and woke Europe up to 21st century threats of Islamic extremism.Macron paid tribute to the victims of a string of attacks in France, starting with shootings in 2012 that killed children at a Jewish school, a rabbi and paratroopers in the Toulouse region.Extremists claiming links to the Islamic State group or Al-Qaida hit France repeatedly in 2015 and 2016. Among their victims: cartoonists at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, shoppers at a kosher market, concert-goers at the Bataclan, diners in Paris cafes, an elderly priest at the altar, holiday revelers on the seaside of Nice, and several police officers.
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The conviction of the only man ever found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing has been referred for an appeal to Scotland’s High Court, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said on Wednesday.Pam Am flight 103 was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 en route from London to New York, an attack that killed 270 people, mostly Americans on their way home for Christmas.In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was jailed for life after being found guilty of carrying out the attack. He died in Libya in 2012 after being released three years earlier by Scotland’s government on compassionate grounds following a diagnosis of terminal cancer.Chairman of the Commission Bill Matthews said it was the second time they had reviewed Megrahi’s conviction. “We note that since our last review further information has become available, including within the public domain, which the Commission has now been able to consider and assess,” he said in a statement.”I am satisfied that the matter is now returning to the appropriate forum – the appeal court – to consider fully all of the issues raised in our statement of reasons.”
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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has included pro-Kremlin social-media users, Russia’s communications regulator, and an Iranian state body tackling cybercrime on its list of press freedom’s 20 “worst digital predators” that it says represent a “clear danger for freedom of opinion and expression.”The Paris-based media freedom watchdog unveiled the list ahead of the World Day Against Cybercensorship to be marked on March 12.This list, which RSF says is not exhaustive, includes “state offshoots” and government agencies in authoritarian countries. It also covers private-sector companies specializing in targeted cyberespionage that are based in Western countries such as the United States and Britain.
“The authoritarian strongmen behind predatory activity against press freedom are extending their tentacles into the digital world with the help of armies of accomplices, subordinates, and henchmen who are organized and determined digital predators,” RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.
“These accomplices sometimes act from or within democratic countries,” Deloire said, adding that “opposition to despotic regimes also means ensuring that the weapons for suppressing journalism are not delivered to them from abroad.”In Russia and Iran, the “Kremlin’s troll army,” Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor, and the Iranian Cyberspace Supreme Council use digital technology to “spy on and harass” journalists and thereby “jeopardize” people’s ability to get news and information, according to RSF.It said pro-Kremlin actors use social media to spread “false” reports and videos, publish personal information, and attack the reputation of journalists.One of their targets includes Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro, who in a recently published book “shed light on the propaganda they spread about those who denounce their activities.”For instance, Russian journalist Igor Yakovenko and the Moscow-based foreign reporters Isabelle Mandraud and Shaun Walker are “often targeted by this troll army,” according to RSF.Meanwhile, Roskomnadzor has “blocked more than 490,000 websites without warning and without respecting legal procedure and has a secret blacklist of banned sites,” the group said.The government agency’s targets have included Ferghana and other news agencies, investigative sites such as Listok and Grani.ru, and political magazines including ej.ru and mbk.news.Roskomnadzor also “blocks platforms and apps that refuse to store their data on servers in Russia or provide the Russian authorities with keys to decrypt messages,” RSF said, citing the example of the encrypted messaging service ProtonMail, which was partially blocked earlier this year.RSF said the Iranian Cyberspace Supreme Council uses “online selective access and control,” and blocks news websites, platforms, and apps such as Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter to enforce state censorship.Created in 2012 and consisting of senior military and political figures, the council “is constructing a firewall using Internet filtering techniques,” the watchdog said.
“Internet shutdowns are increasingly used to contain and suppress waves of street protests, and to restrict the transmission and circulation of independent information regarded as ‘counter-revolutionary’ or ‘subversive’ in nature,” it added.
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