TWENTY EIGHTH DAY

Sudan's military rulers and opposition reach power-sharing deal

Rule will rotate between civilian and military members of governing council
The military rulers of Sudan have reached a power-sharing deal with opposition members to cover the next three
years until elections are held.
The new sovereign council agreed upon on Friday morning will rule the country by rotation, according to an
African Union official mediating in the crisis that has rocked the country for the past six months.
The uprising of the Sudanese people, demanding democracy, freedom, justice and an end to human rights
violations, has lasted through the removal of the country’s long-term president, a military takeover and the brutal
killing on 3 June by heavily armed paramilitary forces of at least 128 protesters who were staging a peaceful sit-
in, as well as the rape of many more.
Under the agreement, the military will lead the council first, with the head of the junta, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, as
its chair, and then civilians will take over.
The council will be made up of five military and five civilian members, as well as a sixth so-called civilian agreed
upon by both sides who will actually be a retired military officer, according to reports.
An independent investigation into the killings was also announced, and anyone found guilty will not be allowed to
sit on the sovereign council. The African Union suspended Sudan’s membership after the attack.
Beginning in the eastern city of Atbara in December, the uprising is often said to have been triggered by a rise in
bread prices, but has much deeper roots: it follows in a long tradition of revolution in Sudan, before the 30-year
presidency of Omar al-Bashir. In 1964 and 1985, unpopular leaders were forced from power by popular revolts.
Bashir was forced out in April, and is in jail charged with corruption, but the transitional military council,
which seized power after Bashir’s ousting, was unable to stop the demonstrations.
Despite the violence against them, protesters have returned to the streets again and again, including last weekend
when seven were killed and hundreds wounded in the first major demonstrations since the 3 June massacre.
As well as a civilian government, protesters are calling for violent paramilitary forces to be withdrawn from cities,
help for unarmed civilians who were attacked, an end to an internet blackout and the release of all political
prisoners.
However, the agreement made no mention of resuming internet service or removing the Rapid Support Forces,
who are responsible for most of the abuses, from the streets.
Despite leading the revolution, women were hardly represented in the negotiation room, the prominent Sudanese
journalist Yousra Elbagir pointed out.
Human Rights Watch’s EU director, Lotte Leicht, said Sudan’s armed forces had “a history of broken promises,
atrocities and impunity”, and the UN should carry out an inquiry into the abuses.
2020 census: Trump administration still seeking grounds for 'citizen' question
Supreme court rejected justice department’s justification
President says he is considering executive action
The US justice department has said it will continue to look for legal grounds to force the inclusion of a
controversial citizenship question on the 2020 census, hours after Donald Trump said he is “very seriously”
considering an executive order to get the question included.
Trump said his administration is exploring a number of legal options, but the justice department did not say
exactly what options it has after the supreme court rejected its official justification for the question.
Pro-democracy advocates have warned that asking a question on citizenship in the US census would suppress
participation among immigrant communities and disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters. By some estimates,
up to 4 million people might be deterred from taking part.
A census is conducted once in a decade, and a citizenship question has not been asked since 1950.
Trump, speaking as he departed the White House for a weekend in New Jersey, said he might take executive
action.
“It’s one of the ways that we’re thinking about doing it, very seriously,” he said.
Lack of clarity over exactly how the government plans to move forward on the issue caps a week in which
administration officials first promised to abide by a supreme court order that blocked the question, then reversed
after Trump described their statements about dropping plans to add the question as “fake”.
The administration’s focus on asking about citizenship reflects the enormous stakes in the once-a-decade
population count that determines the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives for the next 10 years, as
well as the distribution of about $675bn in federal spending.
The government has already begun the process of printing the census questionnaire without that question. It is not
clear that an executive order would be enough to settle the inclusion of the citizenship question since it would not
override court rulings. Trump has reportedly said he believes the question should be included on a separate sheet
on paper.
But such an action from Trump would perhaps give administration lawyers a new basis to try to persuade federal
courts that the question could be included.
On Friday afternoon, justice department lawyers formally told a federal judge in Maryland that the administration
is not giving up the legal fight to add the citizenship question to the next census.
But they also said it was unclear how they will proceed, according to a court filing.
On Tuesday, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s senior counsel, Denise Hulett,
described the administration’s disregard of court orders as “appalling”.
Hulett warned that government’s position would “result in the same kind of misinformation that leads our
communities to be reluctant to participate in the census, at a time when the Census Bureau should be actively
encouraging everyone’s full participation”.
Late on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court in New York to block the Trump
administration from delaying the printing of 2020 census forms or changing the forms to include the citizenship
question.
A US district judge in Maryland also issued an order on Friday saying a court case would move forward over
whether officials pushing the citizenship question were motivated by racial bias.
The Census Bureau’s own experts have said the question would discourage immigrants from participating and
result in a less accurate census that would redistribute money and political power away from cities where
immigrants tend to cluster to whiter, rural areas.
The Trump administration had said the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act,
which protects minority voters’ access to the ballot box, an argument the supreme court rejected.
But the question’s opponents say recently discovered evidence from the computer files of a Republican
redistricting consultant who died last year shows that, far from helping minority voters, discrimination against
Hispanics was behind the push for the citizenship question.

'Adults don't get it': why TikTok is facing greater scrutiny

Success of video-sharing app among young has brought with it investigations over child safety
The most downloaded app on the App Store for the last year makes almost no money, is barely understood by
anyone over 25, and has already faced investigations, fines and bans on three continents.
TikTok’s success has taken regulators, parents and its competitors by surprise. But with the Information
Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK now investigating the company over its handling of young users’ private
data, can reality catch up with the viral smash?
At its core, TikTok is a video-sharing app. Users film themselves in 15-second clips, typically set to music, and
upload them to be viewed by followers and strangers alike. If it seems like it came out of nowhere, that’s because
in part, it did: the app as it is today is a merger of the original TikTok, which was launched internationally in
September 2017, and the earlier viral sensation Musical.ly.
The latter had already become one of the most popular social media platforms for UK and US teenagers by the
time it was purchased by TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, in November 2017, and its influence still pervades the
platform to this day. More importantly, the merger meant TikTok ended up on the smartphones of more than 60
million users overnight.
ByteDance had experience of that sort of scale, however. The Chinese startup was already famous in its homeland
for viral news app Toutiao, which hit 120 million daily users in 2017, as well as Douyin, the China-only version
of TikTok that has been kept separate to comply with Beijing’s strict censorship regime.
That pre-existing scale also gave TikTok another weapon: a huge war chest. Before ByteDance was even earning
revenue from the app, the company was the single largest advertiser on Snapchat, spending nearly $1bn (£800m)
on app install ads on the messaging platform, according to the Wall Street Journal. That spending was recreated
on Facebook, Instagram, poster campaigns and TV adverts.
As a result, according to analytics firm SensorTower, TikTok has been the No 1 app on the worldwide App Store
for five consecutive quarters, with an estimated 500 million users worldwide. Even if TikTok’s spending dies off,
it now has the momentum to survive, according to Emma Worth of the marketing firm Ralph Creative.
“The app itself offers something no other app does and that’s why it has become so successful: paid acquisitions
just help more people know about it,” she said. “Young people are fed up with the narcissistic influencer
movement on other channels, seeing ‘the perfect life’, ‘the perfect body’, the ‘perfect relationship’ and that’s why
they’ve moved to TikTok.”
But with increased scale has come increased scrutiny. In February, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the
US fined the company $5.7m) £4.2mfor collecting the personal data of children under 13 without parental
consent. In April, TikTok was banned in India, where it claims to have more than 120 million monthly active
users, over concerns that the app was being used to share sexually explicit material. The ban was lifted a week
later.
The ICO is investigating because of the same data protection concerns as the FTC, but with additional focus on
the controls available on the app’s direct messages. The UK watchdog fears that adults are able to send private
messages to children they do not know.
It is the ability to live stream that worries the NSPCC and others.
“We know that a worrying number of children are being contacted via livestreaming apps, such as TikTok, by
adults who use them as a gateway to groom and harm young people,” said a spokesperson for the charity. “Our
research found that that a quarter of 40,000 children (seven- to 16-year-olds) have livestreamed online with
someone they have never met, and one in 20 children had been asked to take their clothes off.”
The NSPCC’s research has been backed up by other investigations. Young, female users of TikTok regularly
report creepy or intrusive replies to their videos, according to BuzzFeed news site, and bemoan the failure of
ByteDance to respond.
The problem is worsened by the nature of the app: rather than prioritising the videos of people you follow, it
instead guides users to the fully algorithmic “for you” feed. “If some creepy guy just keeps liking videos of
younger girls doing similar audios or soundtracks or hashtags, those are going to keep coming up on his ‘for you’
page,” one user told BuzzFeed.
While the lack of moderation is concerning some users, particularly when it comes to child safety, it is the
opposite that concerns others. As a Chinese startup, ByteDance has a very different conception of what it means
to be a social media company than the Californian tech firms that have dominated the field until now.
Worth said TikTok may be being unfairly singled out due to the lack of adults on the platform. It is no worse than
other apps, but adults just do not “get” like they did Instagram or Snapchat, she continued. “Other social media
channels are riddled with porn and indecent images and all open up a world of the unknown and risky. Tiktok is
feeling the hit because it’s attracted a younger audience.
“I think because of its raging success, people who don’t ‘get it’ or don’t use it, are more inclined to want to take it
down.”
Virgin Atlantic flight makes emergency landing in Boston after fire onboard
Flight 138 from New York to London landed at Logan international after suspected faulty battery charger
sparked blaze
A fire aboard a Virgin Atlantic flight headed to London has forced the plane to make an emergency landing in
Boston.
Massachusetts state police said that the crew extinguished the fire caused by a suspected faulty battery charger on
board the A330 Airbus plane on Thursday night local time.
All 217 passengers on flight 138 from JFK airport in New York to Heathrow were safely evacuated after landing
along with the crew. One passenger refused treatment for a smoke-related complaint.

An external phone charger appears to have caused the fire. Massachusetts state police bomb disposal officers
examined the aircraft after it landed and found a device between the cushions of a seat which had ignited.
“Preliminary investigation suggests it is a battery pack consistent in appearance with an external phone charger,”
a police spokesman said.
Virgin Atlantic said it was “investigating” what led to smoke appearing in the cabin.
“The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our top priority and we are currently investigating to
fully understand the circumstances,” a company spokeswoman said.
“We’d like to thank our customers for their patience as we work with them to provide local accommodation or to
rebook alternative flights to their final destination.”
It was the second unusual landing at Boston’s Logan international airport on Thursday. Earlier, an American
Airlines jetliner from Chicago declared an emergency as it approached the city but landed without incident.
The airline says the pilot of Flight 1172 called in an emergency when a cockpit light indicated an unspecified
potential mechanical problem as the plane approached Boston.
Facebook ads funded by 'dark money' are the right's weapon for 2020
The right and conservative media are using the untraceable ads to push a rightwing agenda and get Donald
Trump re-elected
In the weeks leading up to a tightly contested 2018 midterm election in Virginia, a Facebook page called “Wacky
Wexton Not” ran an ad that pictured Democratic congressional candidate Jennifer Wexton next to Nazi
troops. Another labeled her an “evil socialist”. Yet another referenced Nazi uniforms, stating, “Wexton and her
modern day brown shirts. They Are Evil. They Hate America. They Hate You.” Who spent $211 launching 24
anti-Wexton ads? It’s unclear. The ads state they were “Paid for by a freedom loving American Citizen exercising
my natural law right, protected by the 1st Amendment and protected by the 2nd Amendment.” But there’s nothing
in them – or in Facebook’s new ad library that’s designed to shine light on who’s funding political adss – that
provides personal information about the person or group behind the attack on Wexton (who won her race).
This small incident highlights a bigger problem as the 2020 election looms. How so-called untraceable “dark
money” Facebook ads persist via easily exploitable loopholes in the ad archive, a database created in response to
foreign interference and disinformation campaigns during the 2016 election. Now heading into the 2020 election,
dark money ads remain a potent political weapon that the Republican party and conservative media in particular
are using to push a rightwing agenda and get Donald Trump re-elected.
“You can still have a huge impact by spending very little,” said Anna Massoglia, a researcher with the Center For
Responsive Politics (CPR) who tracks dark money spending on Facebook ads. Over $600m has been spent on
political Facebook ads since the platform made data public in May 2018. It’s unclear how much was spent on
dark money ads, though CPR and other groups are in the process of tallying it up.
The most common dark money ads can be placed into two categories. One includes more traditional political ads
from household names of dark money nonprofits like Judicial Watch, America First Policies or even Planned
Parenthood on the left. Those are typically linked to the political establishment, and though the nonprofit names
are attached to the ads, the groups don’t reveal their donors. But those like the “Wacky Wexton” ads can be
launched by anyone, domestic or foreign, group or person. Facebook rules require those who run political pages
to provide government identification so they can be “verified”, but there’s nothing to stop foreign interests from
hiring an ad buyer with a US ID, or using an affiliate company in the US. Facebook then protects its ad buyers by
not divulging any personal information.
“Even though you are required to put something in the disclaimers, it’s not meaningful. You don’t get the name of
who’s writing the text,” Massoglia said.
The right and left also use dark money ads to push their agendas and content. Most such pages on the right are
small operations that run multiple Facebook pages pushing a conservative agenda, praising Trump and attacking
liberal politicians.
The anonymous individual or groups behind the pages also sometimes misrepresent their purpose. They are what
Laura Edelson, a New York University researcher with the Online Political Ads Transparency Project, calls
“inauthentic communities”.
Such pages are usually centered around an identity. “On the right, the identity is ‘conservative’,” Edelson said,
and “what they’re really trying to do is get your email address – they’re building lists.”
Among those is I Love My Freedom, which sends out ads attacking Democratic politicians like Nancy Pelosi and
ultimately attempts to solicit users’ names and email addresses. Its pages – with names like “President Trump’s
Patriot Army” and “President Donald Trump Fan Club” – also hawk “limited edition” Trump coins and other
gear, which sources say is a common practice in the right’s dark money advertising.
Another group of Facebook pages that are less clearly linked include Patriot News Alerts, Breaking Patriot News,
The Daily Conservative and The Conservative Institute.
Anatomy of a dark money Facebook ad network
On 4 April, the Patriot News Alert Facebook page sent out fewer than 100 ads that largely targeted women over
55, many of whom were in Florida, Texas and California. The ads showed a picture of congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with text that called her Green New Deal plan not just “crazy”, but “scary”. The text
continues with false claims that the Green New Deal would “ban air travel, get rid of gasoline cars, eliminate
meat, remodel all existing homes, and guarantee income to all Americans too lazy to work”.
Around the same time, Breaking Patriot News and The Daily Conservative sent out about 85 nearly identical ads
largely micro-targeting carefully selected demographics of Facebook users throughout the country.
The pages spent between about $1,660 and $15,000 to buy the ads, reaping between 112,000 and 418,000
impressions.
The three pages didn’t reveal their relation to those that they targeted, and there’s nothing in the ads that provides
an idea of who paid for them. In her research, Edelson found that the three pages used the same ad, and
Facebook’s archive shows that they share other ads that attack Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Clicking on an ad reveals some clues about the network of pages’ goals, which is to funnel Facebook users to
rightwing blogs running largely pro-Trump stories and pushing conservative ideas.
The ad that women over 55 in Florida may have clicked on takes one to PatriotNewsAlerts.com where the reader
is encouraged to sign a petition “To say ‘No’ to the Green New Deal,” but the “signature” it requires is a name
and email address.
A Guardian reporter who submitted a name and email address later received an email from Patriot News Alerts
with a link to a story on the Patriot News Alert blog. There’s no information about who runs the blog, but the
Guardian searched the name and found it appears to be linked to conservative bloggerShaun Connell.
Connell signs several blogposts as the pages’ founder, and Patriot News Alerts shares the same Connecticut
address as several other blogs. Connell is also behind Breaking Patriot News and The Daily Conservative, and the
blogs are presented in a similar layout to and include some of the same writers as other right wing blogs that can
be linked to Connell, like Daily Christian News.
While one end goal seems to be to push Connell’s rightwing viewpoint, another seems to be to drive traffic to his
pages. It’s unclear if Connell funds the Facebook ads himself, if there are other funders involved, or whether
there’s a more commercial purpose at play – some pages sell the Facebook data they collect.
Connell didn’t return an email from the Guardian seeking comment. ……….