Arts & Entertainment/Economy & business
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BBC, Journalist Bashir Criticized Over 1995 Princess Diana Interview 

An inquiry into how the BBC secured the 1995 interview with Britain’s Princess Diana in which she disclosed intimate details of her failed marriage concluded on Thursday that the journalist involved had acted deceitfully. The BBC set up the investigation, headed by former senior Court judge John Dyson, in November following allegations from Diana’s brother Charles Spencer that forged documents and “other deceit” were used to trick him to introduce Diana to journalist Martin Bashir. FILE – Martin Bashir, then one of the anchors of the ABC news program ‘Nightline’, taking part in a panel discussion at the ABC television network Summer press tour for television critics in Beverly Hills, California, July 26, 2007. ​Dyson’s report found that Bashir, then a little known reporter, had shown Spencer fake bank statements to induce him to arrange a meeting with Diana. “Mr Bashir acted inappropriately and in serious breach of the 1993 edition of the Producers’ Guidelines on straight dealing,” the report said. He also concluded the BBC had fallen short of “the high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark” in its response to allegations of impropriety. During the explosive interview, watched by more than 20 million viewers in Britain, Diana shocked the nation by admitting to an affair and sharing details of her marriage to the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. It came at a nadir for the royal family and was the first time Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997, had made public comments about her doomed marriage. Her remark that “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded” — a reference to Charles rekindling his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, now his second wife — was particularly damaging to the Windsors. Last week, the BBC announced that Bashir was leaving his current job as the publicly-funded broadcaster’s religious affairs editor because of ill health. Bashir apologized but said he did not believe the faked statements had prompted Diana to give the interview, PA Media reported. Spencer says Bashir had persuaded him to get his sister to agree to the interview by telling him Diana was being bugged by the security services and that two senior aides were being paid to provide information about her. Both Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, have welcomed the investigation as a chance to find out the truth of what had happened. “While the BBC cannot turn back the clock after a quarter of a century, we can make a full and unconditional apology. The BBC offers that today,” BBC director-general, Tim Davie, said in a statement. 

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Arts & Entertainment/Economy & business
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Ivory Coast Strives to Save Architectural Treasures in Former Colonial Capital

The Ivory Coast resort town of Grand-Bassam is known for its beaches and French colonial architecture. Recent flooding and the passage of time have taken a toll on the city’s historic buildings, but some people are determined to fix things, as Yassin Ciyow found in this report narrated by Carol Guensberg.Camera: Yassin Ciyow 
Produced by: Robert Raffaele 

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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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Hackers Targeted Solarwinds Earlier than Previously Known

The hackers who carried out the massive SolarWinds intrusion were in the software company’s system as early as January 2019, months earlier than previously known, the company’s top official said Wednesday. SolarWinds had previously traced the origins of the hack to the fall of 2019 but now believes that hackers were doing “very early recon activities” as far back as the prior January, according to Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the company’s president and CEO. “The tradecraft that the attackers used was extremely well done and extremely sophisticated, where they did everything possible to hide in plain sight, so to speak,” Ramakrishna said during a discussion hosted by the RSA Conference. The SolarWinds hack, which was first reported last December and which U.S. officials have linked to the Russian government, is one in a series of major breaches that has prompted a major cybersecurity focus from the Biden administration. By seeding the company’s widely used software update with malicious code, hackers were able to penetrate the networks of multiple U.S. government agencies and private sector corporations in an apparent act of cyber-espionage. The U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia last month. Also Wednesday, Ramakrishna apologized for the way the company blamed an intern earlier this year during congressional testimony for poor password security protocols. That public statement, he said, was “not appropriate.” “I have long held a belief system and an attitude that you never flog failure. You want your employees, including interns, to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes and together we become better,” he added. “Obviously you don’t want to make the same mistake over and over again. You want to improve.” 

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