AFP, Beijing
Chinese authorities have ordered a major social media platform to curb “harmful content” more effectively as they intensify oversight of online expression-even taking aim at rap music, crude cartoons, dirty jokes and celebrity gossip.
The campaign is intended not just to stamp out dissent but to ensure that all media “serves the direction of socialism”.
North Iran gets massive snow dump
AFP, Tehran
After months of waiting for the snow to arrive, Tehranis were hit by massive snowfall overnight on Sunday that shut airports and schools but delighted the ski community.
The capital’s Imam Khomeini International and Mehrabad airports were shut due to poor visibility “until further notice”, state television said.
Some 20 provinces in the west and north of Iran were affected by the snowfall that began on Thursday and peaked on Saturday night, with some mountainous areas receiving as much 1.3 metres (more than four feet) of snow according to official news agency IRNA.
Syria envoy to attend Russia confce
AFP, United Nations
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will send his Syria peace negotiator to a conference in Russia next week, a spokesman said Saturday, despite the Syrian opposition’s boycott of the meeting.
Guterres “is confident that the congress in Sochi will be an important contribution” to reviving the peace talks held under UN auspices in Geneva, a UN spokesman said in a statement.
US concerned’ over China detention of Swede
AFP, Washington
The United States on Saturday expressed deep concern about the case of Hong Kong book publisher Gui Minhai, allegedly snatched by Chinese police while being accompanied by Swedish diplomats.
His disappearance has sparked a diplomatic row between Stockholm and Beijing.
“We are deeply concerned that Swedish citizen Gui Minhai was detained on January 20,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.
Woman shot dead by police in US
Reuters, Mississippi
A Jackson, Mississippi, woman was shot and killed by police early Saturday after she fled a traffic stop and tried to hit two officers with her car, police said.
The woman, identified by police as Crystaline Barnes, 21, was shot around 7:30 a.m. Saturday after she reportedly forced another motorist off the road, local media including CBS affiliate WJTV reported. When police stopped her, she tried to flee in her car, reversed direction, and then drove at the officers, according to the WJTV report.
