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Friday, February 7, 2014

Journalist Badly Wounded by Flare During Rio Protest

Santiago Andrade, a cameraman for a Brazilian network, was struck in the head by an explosive device while covering clashes between protesters and the police in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday.Domingos Peixoto/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Santiago Andrade, a cameraman for a Brazilian network, was struck in the head by an explosive device while covering clashes between protesters and the police in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday.

Santiago Andrade, a Brazilian cameraman, was badly injured when he was struck in the head by an explosive device while covering clashes between protesters and the police in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday evening. He remained in critical condition on Friday, after four hours of neurosurgery, according to the local Globo news site.

The grave injury to Mr. Andrade was captured on video by colleagues from the BBC, who rushed to save him.

A BBC News video report on fare-price protests in Rio on Thursday showed a Brazilian cameraman being badly injured.

A Russian state news agency later published footage which showed a flare burning on the pavement before suddenly becoming airborne and striking the journalist in the head.

Video from the Russian state news agency Ruptly showing a Brazilian journalist being wounded at a protest in Rio on Friday.

Globo reported that a photographer who also captured the sequence of events leading up to the injury said that the firework burning on the ground near Mr. Andrade had been thrown there by a masked man in a gray T-shirt, pictured running away just before the explosion.

However, another witness, a videographer for the activist news collective Jornal Zona de Conflito Mídia Independente, insisted in a Facebook post that showed the incident from yet another angle that the projectile seemed to have come from police lines.

Post by Jornal Zona de Conflito Mídia Independente.

More footage of the clashes, posted online by another group that supports the protests, the Jornal A Nova Democracia, appeared to show similar flashes coming from an object hurled or fired at protesters at another stage.

Video of protesters and the police clashing in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday.

Wyre Davies, the BBC News correspondent who rushed to help Mr. Andrade with his own cameraman Chuck Tayman, noted in a conversation on Twitter with Gabriel Elizondo of Al Jazeera that it was difficult to be certain were the flare had come from, in the absence of images of it being thrown or fired.

As Mr. Davies reported, the protest was over increased public transport fares in Rio, and demonstrators complained that promised improvements to their city’s infrastructure from spending on next summer’s World Cup had yet to materialize. Graffiti asked the World Cup organizers, FIFA, to pay the increased fares, and protesters also chanted “We want FIFA-standard hospitals too.”

One young protester told the Guardian correspondent Jonathan Watts, “When the World Cup comes there will be more demonstrations. The World Cup is worsening inequality.”

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.



As Olympics Open, Social Media Is a Prism for Protests Against Russia’s Ant-Gay Law

t.A.T.u performing at the MTV Music Awards in 2003.

As my colleagues in Sochi write in their live-blog, the Winter Olympics have officially begun with the completion of the opening ceremony, and social media is again being used as a stage for expressions of L.G.B.T. rights.

Many on social media remarked about the irony of one of the opening musical acts, which was performed by a Russian female pop duo known as t.A.T.u., who were popular with the song “Not Gonna Get Us” in the early part of the last decade. In a video for the song, they had shared a kiss and professed to protect their love despite opposition from society.

But as The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Both members of the duo are, however, known to be heterosexual.”

Themes of unity and rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were aired in creative ways on social media, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and in corporate logos and diplomacy.

The official United Nations Twitter account shared a quotation from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, complete with rainbow gloves.

“Many professional athletes, gay and straight, are speaking out against prejudice,” Mr. Ban said at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, according to a statement issued on Friday. “We must all raise our voices against attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people. We must oppose the arrests, imprisonments and discriminatory restrictions they face.”

As the Winter Olympics got underway, many international sponsors were urged to speak out against the homophobia and discrimination.

Google created a logo, called a doodle, reflecting an array of athletes performing in the rays of a rainbow and quoted parts of the Olympic Charter:

AT&T, while not a sponsor, posted a statement on its consumer blog earlier in the week voicing its opposition:

The Olympic Games in Sochi also allow us to shine a light on a subject that’s important to all Americans: equality. As you may know, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community around the world is protesting a Russian anti-LGBT law that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” To raise awareness of the issue, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has called on International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsors to take action and stand up for LGBT equality.

AT&T is not an IOC sponsor, so we did not receive the HRC request. However, we are a longstanding sponsor of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), we support HRC’s principles and we stand against Russia’s anti-LGBT law.

On Friday, a live advertisement creation event, called One Minute Briefs, hosted on the Twitter account @oneminutebriefs, called on writers to share their own designs that Olympic sponsors might use to reflect diversity and recognition of L.G.B.T. rights.

The concept was started by an agency in Britain called Bank of Creativity, which regularly hosts the program to encourage an exchange of ideas through interaction on social media.

A singing group based in Toronto, Choir Choir Choir, released a video remake of “Russians,” a 1980s song by Sting. The song, originally a protest against nuclear war, was transformed by the Toronto group into a protest against L.G.B.T. discrimination, and posted on their Twitter and YouTube accounts.

Choir! Choir! Choir! remade a Sting song with lyrics reflecting LGBT equality.

The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion encouraged its Facebook followers to change their profile pictures to that of two male luge athletes lying down in such a way as to form an equal sign, and created what it called a video public service announcement for the occasion.

The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion created a public service announcement to coincide with the opening of the Winter Olympics.

And then there was “Mother Russia,” a parody video created by a Canadian production team intended as a “rebuttal to the Russian government’s homophobic attitude ahead of the Olympics.”

It was published in The Advocate, Elite Daily and the CBC’s “George Stroumboulopoulos Show,” as well as its own YouTube and Facebook accounts.

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



Angry Protesters Sack Government Offices Across Bosnia

Video of a government building in the Bosnian city of Tuzla in flames on Friday. Graffiti sprayed on its facade read “Stop Nationalism.”

As protesters fed up with economic and political stagnation sacked government buildings in cities across Bosnia on Friday, journalists and bloggers shared images and firsthand accounts of the unrest on social networks.

Video posted online by the Bosnian news site Klix showed flames engulfing a municipal building in Tuzla, where unemployed workers protested the botched privatization of state-owned factories, and demonstrators forcing riot police officers to retreat outside the regional government headquarters in Sarajevo, the capital.

Video of protesters overwhelming the police in Sarajevo on Friday.

Haris Alisic, an Al Jazeera correspondent in Sarajevo captured the descent into mayhem as the riot police fell back in clouds of tear gas. Video posted on Instagram from the scene by the Dutch journalist Marcel van der Steen showed protesters storming the government building before moving on to the office of the Bosnian presidency, which was also set alight.