Deutsche Welle: Putin pulls out his latest bag of tricks

Not only, they allege, did Russia hack the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) emails, collaborate with WikiLeaks to release unfavorable emails, and influence the FBI to drop its bombshell about reopening the investigation into Clinton just days before the vote, but it is also the source of untold numbers of false tweets and fake news stories that were systematically infused into social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to maneuver voters away from the democratic candidate.

Estimates vary on just how many tweets and fake stories were released but some say it could be in the hundreds of thousands which emanated either from Russia's army of shift-working trolls or the government controlled news outlets like Russia Today or Sputnik. A group called PropOrNot, which includes researchers with military, technology and foreign policy backgrounds, identified some 200 websites and social media outlets that were routinely publishing tweets and fake stories that they traced back to Russia. They estimate the audience of those sites to be around 15 million and the number of views to be in excess of 213 million. While no one knows exactly just how many eyeballs were attracted, one thing is certain - no outside force will be doing the same on Russian territory.

Over the past few years the Kremlin as systematically reduced the access to free media and external influences in all its forms. It started about eight years ago with the Kremlin ensuring that its oligarchs took over previously independent media outlets like, for example, Kommersant, a business newspaper formerly owned by Boris Berezovsky, a Kremlin friend-turned-foe of President Vladimir Putin who criticized the leader until his death in 2013.

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The Huffington Post: From Paraguay, a history lesson on racial equality

It was March 1 1814, and José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, was about to become “Supreme Dictator”, a title he would hold until his death in 1840.

Many credit Francia with modern Paraguay’s pluriethnic, plurilingual, and multicultural. He remains a mysterious figure, who had a doctorate in theology but in politics behaved as a French Jacobin. Running an austere and orderly iron-fisted government, Francia secured Paraguayan independence by isolating his nation from the outside world.

In 1814, Francia issued a decree forbidding marriages between “European men” (namely, Spaniards) and women “known as Spanish” (born in Spain or of Spanish descent). European men would only be allowed to marry indigenous, mixed-race or black Paraguayan women. [...]

Francia never questioned these principles on a moral basis. On balance, his regime consolidated the political hegemony of the mestizo class, with policies such as land redistribution and universal education also benefiting large indigenous groups. But black, mixed-race people and certain nomadic native tribes were left out of the equation.

It is difficult to evaluate whether Francia’s marriage decree has had an impact on present-day Paraguay. On the one hand, it quickly fell into disuse after his death and nearly all of Paraguay’s male population was annihilated in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870). On the other, today Paraguay proudly considers itself a mestizo nation, with Francia as its founder.

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The Washington Post: Think of America as one people? The census begs to differ

With the clock winding down on its final term, the Obama administration is rushing to institute changes in racial classifications. Yet with all eyes glued to President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team, the move will likely get little notice.

That’s a shame, because the proposal will only aggravate the volatile social frictions that created today’s poisonous political climate in the first place.[...]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) slipped notice of the proposed rule under the door just one day after Congress went on recess in September. It calls for the creation of a new ethnic group out of an estimated 10 million Americans who trace family origins back to the swath of land between Morocco and the Iran-Afghanistan border. Now classified as white, they would form part of a new Middle East and North Africa (MENA) ethnic group in the 2020 Census.

A second change would affect 56 million Americans who are now told by the census to classify themselves as “Hispanics” ethnically. The proposed rule would eliminate a second question that lets them also choose their race.In 2010, more than half (26.7 million of 50 million) of these people identified themselves as both Hispanic and white, while others chose other races. A new, single question would effectively make “Hispanic” their sole racial identifier. [...]

MENA would say nothing about “Muslim Americans,” as Pakistanis, among many others, would not be counted. (They’re “Asian.”) Most Arab Americans are Christian, by contrast, and include people whose families largely began to arrive here in the 1890s. Among their descendants are many Americans we don’t usually associate with minorities, such as former quarterback Doug Flutie and the late journalist Helen Thomas.

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Quartz: Holiday gingerbread cookies have a dark and violent past

Today, gingerbread’s greatest use seems to be in the most-delightful holiday activity: building gingerbread houses. But its history goes back much further.

People have prescribed ginger as medicine for millennia, but it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that it was was used in baking—at least as far as historians have been able to gather. And it wasn’t until the 1800s that they were used to make confectionery houses.

Watch the video above to follow gingerbread’s journey from Indonesia’s Spice Islands to the house-making kit sold at your local craft store. But a warning: gingerbread houses haven’t always been such wholesome morsels. Digging into their history may change the way you think about the iconic Christmastime creations.

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University of Sheffield: Data from 130 million commuters reveal US ‘megaregions’

The daily commutes of more than 130 million Americans have been used to identify commuter-based megaregions in the United States for the first time, a new paper published in PLOS ONE revealed today (30 November 2016).

While the division into 50 states is how many think of the US, geographers have for the last 50 years also studied networks of closely connected metropolitan areas, known as ‘megaregions’, which often cut across state lines. [...]

Using algorithmic ‘community partitioning’ software developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and cloud computing powered by Amazon Web Services, these commuter flows were mapped out and revealed massive labour market areas across the US that form distinct megaregions. [...]

Dr Rae added: “In addition to identifying broad US megaregions, we also conclude that there is no replacement for a common sense interpretation of any results generated through computational approaches. We believe the megaregions we identify are a true reflection of the economic geography of the United States but of course they need to be tested and validated in the real world for them to have real use.”

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Politico: Liberal mayors launch fightback against populism

A group of more than 20 city leaders — led by Bart Somers of Mechelen in Belgium — will adopt a manifesto Friday afternoon on how to protect liberal cities, based on “openness, opportunity and livability” and to call for a different, “bottom-up European Union,” according to a draft seen by POLITICO.

The group includes the mayors of six European capitals — including Prague and Tallinn — the Dutch seat of government The Hague, and François Decoster, the mayor at the heart of the Calais migration crisis. Decoster has another credential that the group sees as important: he helped stitch together a coalition that kept Marine Le Pen’s National Front out of government in her own Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region of France. [...]

Somers says the trick is to treat people as individuals with many identities. “If I see a young Muslim man doing something wrong, I don’t speak to his Imam. I speak to him, the police speaks to him, not as a Muslim but as a citizen … You can’t reduce people to one dimension.”

For Liberals gathered in Warsaw, it’s clear that radicalization won’t be tackled if it is left to national governments and the EU. “What can stop radicalization? Cities and local government,” Somers said.

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BBC News: Nie Shubin: China clears man 21 years after execution

Nie Shubin was killed by firing squad in 1995 at the age of 20 after being found guilty of killing a woman in Shijiazhuang, in Hebei province.

The supreme court ruled that the facts used in Mr Nie's trial were "unclear and the evidence insufficient".

Mr Nie's family, who have been campaigning for two decades to clear his name, have thanked his supporters.

Eleven years ago another man also said he had carried out the crime but the claim was rejected.

Chinese courts have a conviction rate of more than 99%. The official number of executions are a state secret, but is believed to be in the thousands every year.

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