Dance music superstar Avicii dead at 28

Yahoo – AFP, Shaun TANDON, April 21, 2018

Avicii, seen here performing in the southern Swedish city of Malmo in 2016, was
among the first DJs to break through in the mainstream as electronic dance music
grew over the past decade from nightclubs to Top 40 radio (AFP Photo/Bjorn Lindgren)

New York (AFP) - Avicii, one of the world's most successful DJs who helped usher in the global boom in electronic music but struggled to cope with the hard-partying lifestyle, died Friday in Oman, his representative said. He was 28.

Two years after his unusually early retirement from touring amid recurring health scares, the Swedish DJ was found dead in the Gulf sultanate's capital Muscat.

"It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii," his management said in a statement, without specifying the cause of death.

"The family is devastated and we ask everyone to please respect their need for privacy in this difficult time. No further statements will be given."

Maitrai Joshi, a DJ at the Muscat Hills Resort, said he had spotted Avicii and understood the dance superstar was on vacation in Oman for the first time and had extended his stay.

"I saw him again the next day and again he was friendly, humble and took some photos," Joshi told AFP by email.

Avicii was among the first DJs to break through in the mainstream as electronic dance music grew over the past decade from nightclubs to Top 40 radio. He created a global hit out of Coldplay's "A Sky Full of Stars," to which he added a layer of energetic electronica.

He also helped produce Madonna's last album. On Instagram, the pop icon posted a picture of herself in the DJ booth with Avicii and wrote: "So Tragic. Goodbye Dear Sweet Tim. Gone Too Soon."

His biggest individual hits included "Wake Me Up," which went to number one across Europe in 2013 and featured the soul singer Aloe Blacc.

Avicii was one of the world's most successful 

DJs (AFP Photo/Jason Merritt)

In 2015, he DJ-ed the wedding reception of Sweden's Prince Carl Philip and his bride Sofia. The couple mourned him in a statement, saying: "We had the honor to have known him and admired him both as an artist and the beautiful person that he was."

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven called Avicii "one of the greatest names of music in Sweden in modern times."

Scene 'not for me'

Avicii has spoken publicly in recent years about his health problems, including pancreatitis, triggered in part by excessive drinking.

The condition forced him to cancel shows in 2014 as he had to have his gallbladder and appendix removed.

In 2016, Avicii stunned fans by retiring from touring when he was just 26.

"The scene was not for me," he told music magazine Billboard after his decision.

"It was not the shows and not the music. It was always the other stuff surrounding it that never came naturally to me. All the other parts of being an artist," he added.

"I'm more of an introverted person in general. It was always very hard for me. I took on board too much negative energy, I think."

Avicii later returned to the more quiet life of a studio artist. Last year, he put out a six-song EP that featured British pop singer Rita Ora.

'Genius and musical innovator'

The son of Anki Liden, a prominent Swedish actress, Avicii had his start uploading tracks on the internet and was discovered by Dutch superstar Tiesto, who invited him to play at his residency in the clubbing hub of Ibiza.

Avicii, seen here at the Sziget festival in Budapest in 2015, took his stage name 

from the Sanskrit word for the lowest level of hell in Buddhism, adding an 

additional "i" at the end (AFP Photo/Attila KISBENEDEK)

His breakthrough single, "Levels," adapted a sample of soul singer Etta James and earned him one of his two Grammy nominations.

He took his stage name from the Sanskrit word for the lowest level of hell in Buddhism, adding an additional "i" at the end.

In 2014, he was tied with Tiesto as the third top-grossing DJ in the world on the list of Forbes magazine, which estimated his earnings for the year at $28 million.

Pop star Charlie Puth paid tribute to Avicii as "a genius and a music innovator" and said he "really opened my eyes to what my production could one day sound like."

Deadmau5 -- an outspoken top DJ who had mocked Avicii when he quit touring so young -- offered his "sincerest and most heartfelt condolences."

"Banter aside, nobody can deny what he has accomplished and done for modern dance music and I'm very proud of him," Deadmau5 tweeted.

Fellow star DJ David Guetta, who collaborated with Avicii on "Sunshine," wrote: "We lost a friend with such a beautiful heart and the world lost an incredibly talented musician

Electronic producer Diplo on Instagram called Avicii "the gold standard" in setting musical trends.

"I know you had your demons and maybe this wasn't the right place for you sometimes, but we need to protect true artists like you at all costs because there are not enough left and we are losing too many," Diplo said.

Assange claims victory after Sweden drops rape probe

Yahoo – AFP, May 19, 2017

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks on the balcony of the Embassy of
Ecuador in London on May 19, 2017 (AFP Photo/Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS)

London (AFP) - Julian Assange claimed victory Friday after Swedish prosecutors dropped a seven-year rape allegation against the WikiLeaks founder, but insisted the "proper war" over his future was only just beginning.

Assange gave a clenched fist salute as he stepped into the daylight on the balcony of Ecuador's London embassy, where he has been holed up since 2012.

But the 45-year-old Australian said the road was "far from over" and declined to reveal whether he would leave the embassy after five years cooped up inside.

British police would arrest him immediately for breaching earlier bail conditions if he left the embassy, while US authorities have warned they regard WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service".

"Today is an important victory," Assange told reporters and a small band of supporters crowded around the tiny balcony, after emerging wearing a black shirt and jacket.

"But it by no means erases seven years of detention without charge. In prison, under house arrest and almost five years here in this embassy without sunlight.

"That is not something that I can forgive. It is not something that I can forget."

Uncertain future

Earlier in Stockholm, Marianne Ny, Sweden's director of public prosecutions, said the rape investigation had been dropped because there was "no reason to believe that the decision to surrender him to Sweden can be executed in the foreseeable future".

"It is no longer proportionate to maintain the arrest of Julian Assange in his absence," she said.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange raises his fist prior to addressing the media on

 the balcony of the Embassy of Ecuador in London on May 19, 2017 (AFP Photo/

Justin TALLIS)

Despite the probe in Sweden being dropped, Assange would still face arrest if he set foot outside the embassy, a flat located just behind the plush Harrods emporium.

Assange jumped British bail by entering the embassy and claiming asylum, saying he feared he would eventually be extradited to the United States.

US justice authorities have never confirmed that they have Assange under investigation or are seeking his extradition.

But US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last month that "we will seek to put some people in jail", when asked if arresting Assange was a "priority" for Washington.

US prosecutors have been drafting a memo that looks at charges against Assange and WikiLeaks members that possibly include conspiracy, theft of government property and violations of the Espionage Act, according to The Washington Post.

US President Donald Trump's administration has put heat on WikiLeaks after it embarrassed the Central Intelligence Agency in March by releasing files and computer code from the spy agency's top-secret hacking operations.

"While today was an important victory and an important vindication, the road is far from over. The war, the proper war is just commencing," Assange said.

He said his lawyers were in touch with the British authorities and hoped to begin a dialogue about the "best way forward".

And the former computer hacker said that despite the "extremely threatening remarks" emanating from Washington, he was "always ready to engage with the Department of Justice".

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks on the balcony of the Embassy 

of Ecuador in London on May 19, 2017 (AFP Photo/Adrian DENNIS)

The department said Friday it had no comment "at this point" on Assange.

Asked if London would now support a request to extradite Assange to the United States, British Prime Minister Theresa May said: "We look at extradition requests on a case-by-case basis."

Assange's Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said his client plans to move to Ecuador because "it's the only nation where he is safe".

Decision a 'scandal'

In Sweden, Assange's accuser was left stunned by the prosecutors' decision.

"It is a scandal that a suspected rapist can escape justice and thereby avoid the courts," her lawyer, Elisabeth Fritz, told AFP in an email.

"My client is shocked and no decision to (end the case) can make her change (her mind) that Assange exposed her to rape," she said.

The accusation against Assange dates from August 2010 when the alleged victim, who says she met him at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm a few days earlier, filed a complaint.

She accused him of having sex with her -- as she slept -- without using a condom despite repeatedly having denied him unprotected sex.

Assange always denied the allegations, which he feared would lead to him being extradited to the United States and facing trial over the leak of hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents in 2010, which brought WikiLeaks to prominence.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addresses the media holding a printed report

of the judgement of the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on his case

 from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in central London on February 5,

2016 (AFP Photo/Niklas Halle'n)

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German anti-hate speech group counters Facebook trolls

Media outlets' Facebook pages are often dominated by haters, but the German group #ichbinhier is talking back. It now has tens of thousands of members who are helping restore civility to social media.

Deutsche Welle, 9 April 2017

Logo No Hate Speech Movement

It's Friday evening, a couple of hours after the truck attack in Stockholm, and the Facebook page of a major German TV news station is filling up with comments inveighing against refugees and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It's an all too familiar scene in an age when anyone can play pundit on social media and hateful tirades are part of political discourse.

But in this case, other users suddenly appear on the station's Facebook page to confront the haters. What evidence is there that the Stockholm attacker was a refugee, they ask. How do we know he was religiously motivated? What does Merkel have to do with a one-off event in Sweden? Shouldn't people wait for all the facts?

What might look like a series of individual responses is actually a loosely coordinated action by a closed Facebook group called #ichbinhier (the English equivalent is #iamhere). Yan, an event coordinator from Berlin, is one of those who helped contain the trolls.

"We usually go to the big media sites because they're either unmoderated or, if they are, it's only for 10 or 15 minutes," Yan told Deutsche Welle. "I can understand that. It's not like we work against the media. And sometimes we get nice feedback. I recently got an email from an intern at a major German newspaper who thanked us for helping to deal with hate speech that came in the middle of the night and overwhelmed him."

Yan took to Facebook to
counter hate speech about
the Stockholm attack

The idea is a bit like a volunteer neighborhood watch for the digital age, with users patrolling the internet to enforce minimum standards of civilized speech on issues that get people hot under the collar. And it originally comes from Sweden.

Feels like team spirit

Hannes Ley, a digital communications expert, founded #ichbinhier in late December, basing it on the Swedish Facebook initiative #jagärhär, which currently has more than 67,000 members. The German version of the initiative has had similar success, attracting almost 30,000 members in well under four months.

The key, says Ley, is that people who used to write comments on the internet alone as individuals now do so as a group. That makes them more confident.

"There's a sense of being part of a team," Ley told DW. "Users say that they now feel capable of expressing their opinions again and feel strong."

#ichbinhier stages three interventions per day. Ley says the group's activities don't just make haters think twice about spewing bile on Facebook pages, but also raise general public awareness on issues.

"For example in Holland, a journalist filmed two male politicians holding hands in response to an attack on a homosexual couple," Ley recalls. "It elicited the classic homophobic comments. We called upon the community to do something. That attracted a lot of attention, and some of our comments had over 500 likes."

Right-wing extremists use
Facebook to advance their agenda

#ichbinhier responses to haters fall into two general categories. Members can simply express contrary views, or they can use fact dossiers on certain issues drawn from sources like the German government's Office for Statistics to argue empirically against irrational points of view. The only thing that's forbidden is trading insults - "Don't feed the trolls" remains a guiding principle.

Calling the fire department

Traditionally, providing the public with facts was the job of journalists. But Ley says he sees a "negative spiral" of distortion in which media outlets, with their often tight personnel resources, fail to monitor their Facebook platforms, so that hate speech not only becomes more and more dominant, but also more and more radical.

Counterspeech initiatives like #ichbinhier, say experts, are a useful and appropriate tool for news outlets to prevent trolls from monopolizing the discussion. André Kroll, a social-media training instructor and a journalist who works for German public TV, says that there's no shame in calling for emergency help from outside.

"For me it's like a kind of volunteer fire department for social media," Kroll told DW. "If a post - be it about refugees or foreigners or anything else - has gotten out of control, it's perfectly legitimate to invite others to come in and join the discussion. #ichbinhier has demonstrated that it can achieve results."

Perhaps the clearest mark of #ichbinhier's success is that right-wing extremists themselves now complain on Facebook that the group is trying to deprive them of their right to free speech.

A challenge for Facebook

Facebook has struggled to control hateful posts

And what about Facebook itself? Germany recently introduced legislation requiring social media platforms to combat hate speech. What does the Californian company think of initiatives like #ichbinhier? Would it be willing to help them?

In an email response, a Facebook spokeswoman told DW that Facebook supported a number of counterspeech initiatives, including the company's own Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI), which organizes anti-hate speech seminars for NGOs. Ley took part in one of those seminars earlier this year but came away unimpressed.

"I thought it was like a minor advertising campaign for Facebook," Ley said. "As a response to my criticism about the event, I was given a coupon for 100 euros in ad credits. Honestly, that's laughable."

Ley added that his initiative could use technical support and help in campaigning from Facebook.

Toning down the aggression

Counterspeech groups are a way
of coping with right-wing populism

Leaving aside Facebook's official policies, counterspeech initiatives succeed or fail on the commitment of their members. Yan says he spends at least one and probably two hours a day on #ichbinhier actions. So what motivates people to volunteer significant chunks of their time to trying to talk reason to haters?

Yan says he signed up after wandering around in a state of "shock" following Donald Trump's election as US president. The group, he adds, gave him the sense that he could do something to alter what he felt was the growing irrationality and hatefulness in the world.

He also says that engaging with haters in the virtual universe of the internet has changed the way he behaves and uses language in the real world.

"If someone calls me a 'gay a**hole' on the street, I no longer turn around and say 'f**k you,'" he told DW. "I'll say something like, 'You seem to know quite a lot about homosexuals.' I'll say something that's not at the bottommost level. That's a much better way to react."

#ichbinhier has not only made people like Yan feel empowered. They say it's taught them that there are better ways of asserting one's presence than hurling injurious language at others.

Related Article:

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Swedish prosecutors drop Assange sexual assault probe

Yahoo – AFP, Hugues Honore, 13 Aug 2015

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has always denied the sexual assault

allegations (AFP/John Stillwell)

Swedish prosecutors said on Thursday they had dropped a sexual assault probe against Julian Assange because the time limit on the case had expired.

Two of the four allegations against the WikiLeaks founder -- who has been holed up at Ecuador's London embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition -- have reached their statute of limitations after five years.

"Now that the statue of limitations has expired on certain offences, I am obliged to drop part of the investigation," prosecutor Marianne Ny said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has

 been holed up inside Ecuador's London 

embassy since 2012

However she said she still wanted to question the 44-year-old Australian over a more serious claim of rape.

The accusations dropped involve one count of sexual assault and another of unlawful coercion. A separate allegation of sexual molestation will run out on August 18.

The Australian can still however be prosecuted for rape, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations and expires in 2020.

Assange has always denied the allegations brought by two Swedish women, and insists the sexual encounters were consensual.

Under Swedish law, if a suspect is not questioned before the deadline expires, they can no longer be tried for the alleged crimes.

Despite repeated attempts, prosecutors have been unable to gain access to Ecuador's embassy.

They initially insisted Assange return to Sweden for interrogation -- a condition he rejected on fears Stockholm could deliver him to US authorities, who may try him for leaking nearly 750,000 classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

In a U-turn in March, prosecutors agreed to Assange's compromise offer to question him inside the London mission but say they have yet to see their request approved by Ecuador because of procedural issues -- leading critics to suspect Quito of playing the clock.

Swedish chief prosecutor Marianne Ny is heading the investigation 

into Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

'Weight lifted'

Attorneys for Assange however say suspicions that Ecuador is using delaying tactics are unfounded.

"The (Swedish) request came in late and is being processed by Ecuador, which will certainly approve it after following its own procedures," Assange's Swedish lawyer Per Samuelsson told AFP earlier this month.

Claes Borgstrom, a lawyer for one of the two women accusing Assange of having assaulted them in 2010, said his client was trying to come to terms with the likelihood that the case will never be tried.

"She has always been ready to stand by her accusations and wanted to bring the case to court. But at the same time a weight has been lifted. This has been dragging on for five years and she wants to go back to her normal life," he told the daily Dagens Nyheter earlier this week.

Assange has compared living inside the embassy -- which has no garden but is in the plush Knightsbridge district, near Harrods department store -- to life on a space station.

His 15 feet by 13 feet (4.5 by 4 metre) room is divided into an office and a living area. He has a treadmill, shower, microwave and sun lamp and spends most of his day at his computer.

He is subject to a European arrest warrant and Britain has vowed to detain him if he sets foot outside the embassy, which is under constant police surveillance.