Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longstanding authoritarian president, agreed to step down on Tuesday, according to the speaker of the nation’s parliament.

The announcement comes a little less than a week after the country’s military seized power, setting in motion an end to the 37-year rule of the world’s oldest serving president.

Impeachment proceedings against Mugabe had already begun early Tuesday, but the speaker of parliament read a letter to lawmakers later in the day that he said came from the president and offered a formal resignation.

“I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, in terms of section 96 of the constitution of Zimbabwe, hereby formally tender my resignation,” the speaker said, reading from what he said was Mugabe’s letter.

Mugabe has yet to appear or speak publicly since the letter was read, and it marks a reversal from a long-winded speech he gave on Sunday when he refused to address the push for his resignation. Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party had fired Mugabe as its leader earlier that day and expelled his politically powerful wife, Grace, from its ranks.

Crowds of Zimbabweans gathered at Unity Square in the capital of Harare following the announcement of Mugabe’s resignation, cheering his ouster and waving signs.

Once a celebrated freedom fighter, Mugabe has been accused of orchestrating human rights abuses against impoverished black Zimbabweans, white farmers and thousands of LGBTQ people while amassing vast wealth as the nation spiraled into poverty.

His resignation is the culmination of a military action that began last week, when Zimbabwe’s armed forces seized control of state television, surrounded government buildings and detained the president in his home on Wednesday. 

Military officials denied at the time that they were attempting to depose the 93-year-old president, arguing that they were only targeting “criminals” around him. But as time went on and Mugabe kept silent, it became increasingly clear the leader’s days in power were numbered. Zimbabwe’s state-run newspaper released photos on Thursday purporting to show negotiations between military officials and the president. 

Tension and uncertainty dominated the days that followed, as Mugabe officially remained president but the military was effectively in control. Mugabe further confused observers when he made a public appearance last Friday, attending a graduation ceremony for Zimbabwe Open University.

Mugabe has governed Zimbabwe since 1980, winning the presidency after he helped the country gain independence after a long struggle against colonial rule and governance by its white minority. Throughout his tenure, the strongman held onto power through crackdowns on opposition and dissent. Even as Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed in the past decade and the regime drew harsh international condemnation, Mugabe found ways to remain in control.

In recent years, however, Mugabe’s advanced age and mental lapses grew increasingly apparent. He often slept through public events, had been oblivious while delivering the wrong speech to Parliament and seemed unfit for even basic ceremonial duties. Sensing an impending end to his rule, the country’s power brokers had begun a bitter jockeying over who would replace him.

The current crisis began when Mugabe fired his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, on Nov. 6, a move widely seen as a means to consolidate power within the president’s family and potentially clear the way for his wife to become his successor. The move upset Mnangagwa’s supporters in the military.

Instead of waiting for a transition of power to Grace Mugabe, Gen. Constantino Chiwenga, the head of the nation’s military, issued a statement on Nov. 13 threatening to step in if Mugabe failed to halt purges against Mnangagwa loyalists. The army ultimately took action late the following night, bringing troops and military vehicles into the streets of the capital. 

The U.S. State Department’s top official for Africa told Reuters on Thursday that the country was seeking “a new era,” and encouraged Mugabe to step aside.

“It’s a transition to a new era for Zimbabwe, that’s really what we’re hoping for,” Donald Yamamoto, acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told the news outlet.

Mnangagwa, who issued a statement from an undisclosed location on Monday night calling for Mugabe to resign, now stands to become the country’s next leader. But there is concern among rights groups over both the nature of the change in leadership and Mnangagwa’s past.

The military and 75-year-old Mnangagwa played key roles in asserting Mugabe’s authoritarian rule over the country, and have been implicated in orchestrating killings, disappearances and other rights abuses.

This article has been updated with more details on Mugabe’s resignation. Willa Frej, Nick Visser and Lydia O’Connor contributed reporting.

A new calendar portrays Asian men in a way that they’re rarely seen. 

Writer Ada Tseng reached out to a number of Asian men, ranging from actors to media professionals, and got them to pose as magazine cover models for her annual “Haikus For Hotties” calendar.

Though readers get a healthy dose of eye candy, Tseng ultimately wants to show that Asian guys deserve to be on covers ― regardless of what the entertainment industry might think. 

The calendars are a “nod to the fact that Asian men are now sometimes featured inside the magazines, but still rarely on the cover,” Tseng told HuffPost in an email. 

The project features big names including “Into the Badlands” and “Iron Fist” star Lewis Tan, “The Walking Dead” actor Sunkrish Bala, and Kevin Wang, fashion editor of GQ Taiwan. Along with the steamy photos that were edited into magazine covers, each image is accompanied by a haiku about the respective model. The calendar is currently available for pre-order and will be officially released on Nov. 29 at a panel featuring many of the models. 

“Haikus For Hotties” might be a super fun, lighthearted project, but the larger message behind it is one that Hollywood needs to hear. The shock and praise surrounding the recent Entertainment Weekly cover featuring “Crazy Rich Asians” stars Constance Wu and Henry Golding showed how uncommon it is to see Asians splashed across magazines, Tseng said. People of Asian descent commented on how momentous the cover felt to them, with many saying the image felt like proof that Asians have a chance in Hollywood. 

And though the cover may not have felt like a big deal to some, it’s this symbolism that speaks volumes, Tseng said. 

“In some ways, it feels very old-school, since everyone reads things online now, but it represents an old-school prestige and legitimacy,” Tseng said.

But the underrepresentation of Asians goes beyond just magazine covers. The group made up less than 6 percent of speaking characters in Hollywood films from 2007-2016, according to a 2017 USC Annenberg study. Asian men especially still have a difficult time being seen as desirable or worthy of leading roles ― something that Aziz Ansari has spoken out about in the past. Earlier this year, Steve Harvey even laughed at the idea that anyone would be attracted to an Asian man. 

And that’s why Tan said the project was important to him. 

“I normally wouldn’t have much interest in being a part of a calendar, but I feel very strongly about the message behind this and thought it would be a fun way to add to the narrative we are pursuing of ending stereotypes and false imagery of the Asian American man,” he told HuffPost in an email. 

The 30-year-old actor was applauded back in March for his performance in Netflix’s “Iron Fist” as well as his criticism of the series’ decision to cast a white actor as the lead in the series, which has undeniably Asian elements. When it comes to Hollywood, Tan told HuffPost that it’s crucial to speak out and challenge the status quo. 

“These things take time. That is why having these conversations is so important, [as well as] using your talent or gifts to create something that will oppose these old stigmas and inspire the changes we want to see,” he said. “Times have changed and Hollywood will have to change too if they want to stay relevant and make money ... I believe in the next few years we will see much more POC in leading roles, magazine covers and much more.”

Indeed, research shows that diverse movie casts bring in profit, outperforming white ones at “every budget level.” But diversity doesn’t just matter when it comes to money ― on-screen representation affects how we see ourselves. For people of color who aren’t often seen in media, they could question whether they’re truly valued in society, Ana-Christina Ramón, assistant director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, previously told HuffPost. 

Tan mentioned to HuffPost that he’s witnessed the power of representation himself. 

“I have seen it firsthand and spoke to kids and teens at events like Comic-Con and heard their personal stories of how being unrepresented has made them feel,” he told HuffPost. “Moments like this have had a tremendous effect on me and inspired me even more to be the best influence possible, to push the boundaries of my own art.”

Tseng said that she hopes the calendar will not only get people to make a conscious effort to include more diverse voices in media, but also push others to support Asians in the entertainment industry. 

“I hope that people are inspired to look up every one of the creative folks on the calendar to learn about their work,” Tseng said.

A little after 11 a.m. Friday, Vice Media CEO Shane Smith beamed into the Vice offices in the form of a slickly produced 45-minute video. It was his state of the union presentation. As a pre-recorded Smith put on his most earnest face and promised employees a new era of transparency, “clear lines of reporting” and accountability the likes of which Vice had never seen, staffers were learning from their phones that Jason Mojica, the head of Vice’s documentary films unit, had been suspended in the wake of a Daily Beast article two days prior that detailed the company’s indifference to sexual harassment claims. Mojica himself had learned about his suspension just slightly earlier, because Variety had called to ask him for comment. 

Staffers were already furious about the meeting. They’d hoped it would address the recent sexual harassment claims, perhaps even give some indication of what the company was doing to regain their trust. The video did nothing of the sort. It opened with a jokey “Desus & Mero” sketch, followed by a supercut of various employees — filmed at least a month prior — asking questions about largely unrelated issues. 

“I think by about 10 minutes in, people started to realize they just weren’t going to talk about harassment at all,” one Vice employee told HuffPost. 

“There was a hope that they would at least make the accusations a small focus,” said another current employee who asked to not be named. “Like, give us the outline of what steps are being taken, and give us some transparency about the process even if you can’t talk about specifics.” Yet another confirmed the Daily Beast’s report that toward the end of the video an employee stood and shouted, “When the fuck are they going to address sexual harassment?” before walking out amid applause. Smith, for his part, wasn’t in the New York or the Los Angeles office that day. As one staffer noted, “They all thought it was going to go well, so why be there?”

HuffPost spoke with seven current Vice employees, all of whom spoke of mounting frustrations with Vice management that have been compounded by the threat of a Times story that’s been in the works for what appears to be months. They’ve been granted anonymity in order to speak freely about their current employer without fear of retaliation.

In the past, these quarterly state-of-the-union addresses would involve little more than Smith talking into a camera, flipping through slides about growth and offering a few encouraging words to his growing staff. This time, though, the Vice state-of-the-union video took over a month and a half to produce, included interviews with both the staff and senior management and acted as the announcement for a new, vaguely explained all-female advisory board that includes Gloria Steinem and former Michelle Obama chief of staff Tina Tchen, among other high-profile names. In a vacuum, and particularly if your taste runs toward high-production-value infomercials starring doughy rich men and their ferns, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the video, a copy of which was viewed by HuffPost. But for Vice employees, whipsawed as they are between last week’s damning account of harassment and neglect and a supposedly imminent New York Times article that employees are certain will be far, far worse, the presentation was a nightmare. It was denial and obliviousness, in high-def.

“How do you expect to regain the trust of your staff if you spend months and months on this kind of video, and then when this horrible major news breaks, you don’t even bother addressing it in this big moment when everyone’s listening?” said one current employee.

The Daily Beast article, based on accounts from over a dozen women, depicted a culture at Vice that fostered sexist comments, inappropriate touching and pressure for women to have sex with their superiors. When some of the women tried to report the behavior, they were effectively told to suck it up. 

In response to a request for comment on Shane Smith’s handling of the past few days, a Vice spokesperson said, “Our ongoing focus is to take all necessary actions to ensure Vice is a safe and inclusive workplace where all of our employees can flourish — one that is free of any bias, disrespectful behavior, sexual harassment, and assault — and are investigating all allegations of inappropriate conduct. We are working closely with both our employees and our advisory board.” 

Mojica has not responded to requests for comment.

The Awl news site was the first to bring the rumors about the Times story out in the open last week. Employees at Vice have been whispering about it for much longer than that. Senior management certainly seems to have known about it for at least as long as it took to plan and produce Friday’s video. As one employee put it, “Upper management hasn’t addressed the Times story at all, but everyone knows it’s coming. I mean, you don’t announce Gloria Steinem over the Daily Beast story.” 

“That story is a shadow over all of us,” said another employee. “Every day you think, is this the day that it’s going to break?” One said that “there is a sense of, like, is this going to be so bad and is the company’s response going to be so insufficient that we’ll have to quit? It’s making it impossible to focus.”

It’s hard to know exactly how damaging the Times story will be or if it will ever see the light of day, but we do know that at least some of the reporting has focused on Smith, Vice’s notoriously “edgy” past and possible lawsuits. One former Vice employee who’d been contacted several weeks ago by the Times’ Emily Steel, Bill O’Reilly’s least favorite reporter, gave us a rundown of some of the questions she’d been asked: “What was the culture like back then? What was my impression of Shane? How much was he in the office? Did anything ever happen to me? Do I know of any settlements? Was there HR when I worked there?”

Steel told HuffPost she could not comment on her reporting.

Many of the issues touched on in those questions now fall under the remit of the newly formed all-female council. In damage-control meetings with various editors in New York on Monday, Smith elaborated on what he’d described in the video as a board that “has teeth” that “will make sure we’re making the right decisions.” According to multiple employees, those decisions involve pay parity, revising its nontraditional workplace agreement, overhauling Human Resources (including mandatory HR training) and improving the parental leave policy. Crucially, Smith also revealed that Vice would be conducting an outside audit of any HR complaints, past or present.

The employees we spoke to were hopeful after Monday’s promise of change but, because of their experiences with Smith, only cautiously so. “Shane returns to the same analogies and the same rhetoric that’s lost its bite,” one employee explained. “It’s not enough to talk about how you will apologize for the past and how you want to make the future better. It’s not enough to say that, now that you have daughters, you think differently. There’s been a serious disconnect between what he thinks is effective leadership — even just in terms of language — and what we actually need to hear.”

After the disastrous state-of-the-union meeting Friday, senior editorial members from across the sites, which include Vice.com, Noisey, Motherboard and Broadly, began drafting a statement to collectively denounce both Vice management’s refusal to reckon with its problematic past and its insufficient response to the recent sexual harassment claims. Waypoint, Vice’s gaming site, had published its own statement the night before. Vice executives quickly asked for a meeting. Smith, not being in the office, had to call in from wherever he was (no employees we spoke with knew his whereabouts). 

While Smith apparently tried to emphasize that Vice was going to work toward more transparency, he also emphasized that certain issues — like the nontraditional workplace agreement cited in the Daily Beast article, which essentially asks employees to agree not to be offended by “highly provocative material” — were standard across all of media. (The workplace agreement is not an industry standard.) “They were pivoting really quickly back and forth between being very defensive and very open,” one employee noted. 

After quite a bit of discussion, a group of 22 people, including editors-in-chief, union representatives, managing editors and even Vice’s global head of content, settled on the following internal statement that went out to the staff via email:

Last night, EICs and senior editors met to discuss the company’s inadequate response to sexual harassment and abuse. We hoped today’s State of the Union would speak to these ongoing problems, but the company’s internal and external communications have failed to address the concerns of its employees. The company has also not acknowledged its past in any meaningful way.

We all agree the current situation needs to change.

After the State of the Union, a group of 22 people in editorial and the digital video department including Sara Rodriguez, Derek Mead, Dory Carr-Harris, and Ciel Hunter met with Shane Smith, Suroosh Alvi, Sarah Broderick, Andrew Creighton, Jon Lutzky, Susan Tohyama, Alex Detrick, and Ariel Wengroff to discuss how our company is dealing with current and past misconduct, and how to change VICE’s culture for the better. The conversation was a first step. VICE executive management has committed to better informing all VICE employees of the processes through which sexual harassment complaints can be filed, to providing more consistent training, and to taking direct action against offenders.

After Waypoint posted a statement last night, members of all verticals discussed whether we should put out a more collective and comprehensive statement. But the handful of employees in that meeting can’t speak for all employees across all departments of this company globally, and we realized that any action we take must be informed by your input. Given this, we decided not to release a statement at this time, and to open up a dialogue.

We encourage you to reach out to managers at this company, including any of those undersigned, to weigh in on changes you want to see here and issues you want addressed. From there, we will work with the new HR leadership to put together a list of changes that must happen.

Together we will hold executive management accountable. All of us deserve an environment where we feel safe to do work we are proud of.

Signed,

Adam Banicki
Dory Carr-Harris
Mike Darling
Greg Eggebeen
Emilie Friedlander
Olivia Gattuso
Mark Guiducci
Helen Hollyman
Ciel Hunter
Ellis Jones
Jason Koebler
Emanuel Maiberg
Ryan McCarthy
Derek Mead
Eric Nusbaum
Ankita Rao
Sara Rodriguez
Lindsay Schrupp
Jonathan Smith
Eric Sundermann
Matt Taylor
Austin Walker

About an hour later, Smith followed up with his own email:

My apologies for the Friday evening note, but I wanted to address some of the feedback we have been getting on today’s State of the Union. While we attempted to cover a wide range of issues impacting the company, I’m sorry that we missed the mark, especially when it came to clearly addressing issues around sexual harassment at VICE.

I’d like to make it abundantly clear here and now: the behavior outlined in the recent Daily Beast article is unacceptable, and the fact that anything like this could happen at VICE is my and my senior management’s responsibility. VICE does not tolerate sexual harassment, abusive behavior, assault or retaliation, and just as we have in connection with the allegations in the Daily Beast, we will investigate and discipline inappropriate behavior of any kind. We will continue to investigate all allegations brought to the company’s attention, enlisting outside independent counsel when necessary.

We’ve built this company by hiring the best and most talented voices of a generation. It’s my job to make sure that everyone who walks through the door is treated respectfully and has a chance to thrive without intimidation or harassment.

Following the State of the Union, I spoke with the heads of editorial to express that going forward we are committed to working lockstep with all of you to improve VICE’s workplace culture. This includes enacting everything that we outlined today, continuing to communicate with you about these issues in the coming days, and discussing how we can best solve them.

Yes, we can change the world, but first we have to start at home.

Thank you for your time and your patience.

Shane

Smith’s email only enraged an already livid staff, according to Vice staffers. The issue wasn’t just that the video didn’t address sexual harassment; it’s that in neither the presentation nor his subsequent email did Smith seem to understand what the issue was.

“Yeah, great, you’ve made something that’s really beautiful,” one employee said. “You’ve made something that’s well-produced. But the heart of it is toxic, and that’s one of the fears about all of us at Vice. Is the work we’re doing being undermined by the culture at Vice and this reputation that it feels like Shane refuses to reckon with?”  

Myanmar’s brutal and internationally-condemned purge of Rohingya Muslims amounts to “dehumanizing apartheid,” Amnesty International said in a scathing report released on Tuesday.

Security forces in the Buddhist-majority country have waged a gruesome crackdown against the minority Muslims living in Rakhine State over the past three months, driving well over half a million refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. Amnesty has documented violent persecution of Rohingyas including rape, torture and other forms of abuse by state officials.

“In the case of the Rohingya this is so severe and extensive that it amounts to a widespread and systemic attack on a civilian population, which is clearly linked to their ethnic (or racial) identity, and therefore legally constitutes apartheid, a crime against humanity under international law,” the human rights organization explained in its report.

It describes the bloody campaign against Rohingya villages as an “unlawful and grossly disproportionate” response to coordinated attacks on government security posts by the armed group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in late August. “Instead of attempting to bring the assailants to justice, it targeted the entire Rohingya population on the basis of their identity,” Amnesty said.

The humanitarian situation in Rakhine State ― which the United Nations describes as a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing ― is deteriorating on a staggering scale. The crisis has drawn international attention to the state-sanctioned discrimination Rohingyas have endured for decades by successive governments in Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and many basic rights.

Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said Tuesday that she was working toward an agreement with Bangladesh for the “safe and voluntary return” of Rohingyas to Rakhine State. The Nobel laureate has come under fire for her conspicuous silence and inaction as the crisis has worsened.

Tensions in Myanmar flared between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012, which led to deadly riots as well as mass arson and displacement. In the intervening years, Rohingyas have been systematically segregated and abused in an “open-air prison,” Amnesty charged in its report, which concluded a two-year investigation into the Rakhine State crisis.

“Since 2012 there has been such a lack of everything. We don’t have access to healthcare, to education, there are restrictions on traveling. We can’t go anywhere on the road because there are checkpoints along the way. We are struggling for survival, our children are struggling for their future,” a 34-year-old Rohingya man told Amnesty. “It’s like being caged without a roof.”

Rohingyas have long been targeted by openly discriminatory laws in Rakhine and beyond, including arbitrary curfews and a regulation that states “foreigners” and “Bengali races [a pejorative term for the Rohingya]” need special permits to travel between townships.

Such restrictions of movement often create barriers to education and health care services, and push Rohingyas “to the brink of survival,” according to Amnesty. One Rohingya man told the organization that he was forbidden from traveling to a hospital in Myanmar, so he had to seek medical care in Bangladesh, which was very expensive.

“I was lucky,” he said. “Most people cannot afford this, so they just end up dying.”

The system appears designed to make Rohingyas’ lives “as hopeless and humiliating as possible,” said Anna Neistat, Amnesty’s senior director for research. “The security forces’ brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the past three months is just another extreme manifestation of this appalling attitude.” 

Learn how you can support Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims here.

CBS and PBS have both cut ties with TV host Charlie Roseamid allegations he sexually harassed and groped multiple women.

In a memo sent to staffers Tuesday, CBS News President David Rhodes said the company cut ties with the “This Morning” co-host over the “extremely disturbing and intolerable behavior said to have revolved around his PBS program.”

“Despite Charlie’s important journalistic contribution to our news division, there is absolutely nothing more important, in this or any organization, than ensuring a safe, professional workplace — a supportive environment where people feel they can do their best work,” Rhodes wrote. “We need to be such a place.” 

Read Rhodes’ full memo here.

PBS, which airs Rose’s eponymous interview program, is also ending its relationship with Rose and canceling its distribution of his show.

“PBS expects all the producers we work with to provide a workplace where people feel safe and are treated with dignity and respect,” the network said in a statement. 

As The Washington Post reported Monday, eight women have accused Rose of making unwanted sexual advances, including groping them and making lewd phone calls, from the late 1990s to 2011. Some of the women accusing Rose of the behavior worked for Rose on his interview show, which aired on PBS and Bloomberg. (Bloomberg TV has suspended distribution of the program.) Other accusers aspired to work for Rose.

CBS previously announced it was suspending Rose as the network “look[ed] into the matter.”

Later Tuesday, CBS Evening News reported that three women who work at the network came forward after The Washington Post report to say Rose harassed them as well.

Rose has co-hosted the CBS morning talk show since 2012. Rose is also a longtime contributor to “60 Minutes,” CBS’s popular news magazine program.

The talk show host issued a statement Monday in response to the allegations, apologizing for some of his actions while claiming not all of the accusations in the Washington Post story are “accurate.” 

“It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed,” Rose wrote. “I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.”

Rose’s former “This Morning” co-hosts addressed the allegations during Tuesday’s broadcast.

“These allegations are extremely disturbing and we take them very seriously,” Norah O’Donnell said. “This is a moment that demands a frank and honest assessment about where we stand and more generally the safety of women.”

This story has been updated with more information on the allegations and the responses to them, as well as PBS’s decision.

Jubilant crowds filled the streets of Zimbabwe’s cities on Tuesday, after the country’s speaker of parliament announced that President Robert Mugabe had resigned after decades in power.

Just shy of a week ago, Zimbabwe’s military took power in the capital and detained Mugabe in his home. Since then, the military and the ruling ZANU-PF party steadily increased pressure on the longtime ruler to leave office until it seems he finally relented. 

But while Zimbabweans express their joy and relief over what appears to be the end of Mugabe’s 37-year authoritarian rule, the nature of his downfall and the ruthless past of his successor are troubling signs for a country that has seen years of repression.

‘These People Were Mugabe’s Enforcers’

The military and ZANU-PF will soon install Mugabe’s former deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, as Zimbabwe’s new president. The development has human rights groups deeply worried, as both Mnangagwa and the military that backs him have been key players in the country’s past abuses. 

“These people were Mugabe’s enforcers for the last 37 years,” said Dewa Mavhinga, the Southern Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

In the 1980s, Mnangagwa served as national security minister and controlled the Central Intelligence Organization under Mugabe. Mnangagwa has long-standing ties to the army as a result, including sharing culpability for some of the government’s worst atrocities.

“The military has been implicated in some of the most serious human rights abuses in Zimbabwe’s past,” Mavhinga said.

Mnangagwa was security minister at the time of Mugabe’s “Gukurahundi” campaign that, from 1983 to 1987, saw security forces kill thousands of people whom the ruling government perceived as political opponents or accused of fostering dissent.

In 2008, the military launched yet another crackdown in which armed forces killed or disappeared at least 200 opposition supporters during the country’s election. Mnangagwa is reported to have been a key go-between for the military and ZANU-PF in orchestrating those attacks.

There has been no accountability for these abuses, according to Mavhinga, and since many of the officials active or complicit in carrying them out now stand to rule Zimbabwe, it seems extremely unlikely that they will answer for their actions anytime soon. 

“It’s a change in leadership of individuals, but the authoritarian system remains intact,” Mavhinga said.

Fears For The Future Of Zimbabwe

The army’s takeover has so far seen a reshuffling of the country’s elite power brokers, but massive reforms are needed to change a political system with an entrenched history of human rights abuses and authoritarianism. 

Rights groups fear that there’s no guarantee the military coup will lead to much-needed transition toward free and fair elections, and could instead further deteriorate democracy and the rule of law in the country.

The ruling ZANU-PF party’s chief whip, Lovemore Matuke, said on Tuesday that Mnangagwa would stay on as leader until elections in 2018, but it remains to be seen whether that vote is conducted fairly and without a crackdown on political opposition as there has been in the past.

“Zimbabwean elections for many years have relied on limiting the number of people who are allowed to participate,” said Piers Pigou, senior consultant for Southern Africa for the International Crisis Group think tank.

The progression of events that led to the president’s ouster also contained numerous red flags for the country’s future, as Mugabe’s last years saw the nation’s politics decline in parallel with its leader’s health. Mugabe’s repressive policies and economic mismanagement had wreaked havoc on the country, and at 93 years old he had lost the ability to perform even some basic ceremonial duties ― leading to bitter infighting over who would succeed him.

After Mugabe removed Mnangagwa from office earlier this month, which seemingly paved the way for Mugabe’s wife, Grace, to assume power, the military and Mnangagwa moved to pre-empt such a transition. In seizing power and detaining Mugabe, the military proved it was willing to go to great lengths and violate democratic norms.

“This is a major overreach by the military in terms of a direct violation of the constitution,” Pigou said.

“There is a huge danger associated with this military intervention.” 

The takeover could potentially set a poor precedent for future military action against the government, as research has found coups often create an unstable political climate that leads to more coups in the future. 

The Need For Reform

It’s possible the removal of Mugabe could pave the way for necessary economic and political changes that are needed to save Zimbabwe, Pigou said, as Mugabe’s presence prevented any sort of reform. But although there is optimism in Zimbabwe over the potential for change after so many years, there is also cause for caution.

There’s still an abundance of uncertainty surrounding the military takeover and Zimbabwe’s political future. Even Mnangagwa, the supposed future leader of the country, has been largely publicly absent during the crisis ― leaving it unclear what kind of president he intends to be.

In recent years Mnangagwa has attempted to play the role of economic reformer, and worked closely with the country’s finance minister to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund. 

Mnangagwa issued a statement on Monday night from an undisclosed location, saying he would return to Zimbabwe once he could be assured that it was safe  to do so. 

Mnangagwa and the new government in Zimbabwe will soon face the immense task of dealing with the effects of Mugabe’s mismanagement, which has ruined the country’s economy and caused its gross domestic product to plummet. There has been a downturn in purchasing power for ordinary Zimbabweans, as well as runs on banks as cash reserves have dried up. 

Uber confirmed Tuesday that it paid hackers $100,000 to keep quiet after an October 2016 attack led to the disclosure of 57 million customers’ personal data, Bloomberg first reported.

The breach included the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers related to accounts of people around the world, the company said. About 600,000 Uber drivers also had their names and driver’s license numbers stolen. More sensitive information, including trip location history, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth, was not accessed.

More troubling than the hack itself: Instead of disclosing the breach to the affected customers and proper government authorities, Uber decided to pay the unnamed hackers to keep quiet.

That was likely the decision of chief security officer Joe Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor Uber hired from Facebook. Sullivan and an additional team member were fired this week.  

Most states have laws requiring that companies notify consumers who are affected by a data breach. Although not all require customers to be notified in a specific timeframe, many mandate that it happen as soon as possible. For example, in California, where Uber is based, the disclosure must happen in “the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay.”

There’s currently no evidence that the leaked data has been used for nefarious purposes, Uber told customers Tuesday.

“We do not believe any individual rider needs to take any action,” the company said in a statement. “We have seen no evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident. We are monitoring the affected accounts and have flagged them for additional fraud protection.” 

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who joined the company in September, addressed the breach in a blog Tuesday.

“None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes. We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”

“We have to be honest and transparent as we work to repair our past mistakes,” he said.

Khosrowshahi said the company is providing affected drivers with free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

A UN war crimes tribunal has convicted Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic of genocide and sentenced him to life imprisonment. 

Mladic, who became known as the “butcher of Bosnia”, was found guilty after a dramatic courtroom climax in which he was ejected over an angry outburst.

He screamed “this is all lies, you are all liars” after returning from what his son described as a blood pressure test which delayed the reading-out of the judgment.

The 74-year-old was convicted of 10 out of 11 charges.

He was found guilty of the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and the siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 people died.

“The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity,” Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said in reading out a summary of the judgment.

“Mladic is the epitome of evil, and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about,” UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said.

“Today’s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take.”

Who is Ratko Mladic?

“I am General Ratko Mladic. The whole world knows who I am,” he told a pre-trial hearing in 2011. “I am here defending my country and people, not Ratko Mladic.”

Mladic was charged with genocide for the slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys rounded up in the town of Srebrenica, and his forces’ 43-month-long siege of Sarajevo in which thousands of civilians were killed by artillery, mortar, tank and sniper fire from the rugged hills ringing the capital. 

From the time of his ICTY indictment in mid-1995, before the war ended, it took 17 years to bring him to trial in The Hague - a testament to the loyalty he inspired among Serbs who helped conceal him and to the resilience of their nationalist cause.

But as Serbia evolved after Bosnia’s war from authoritarian rule to democracy seeking integration with the European Union, Mladic lost his sanctuary.

When Serbian police acting on an ICTY arrest warrant finally traced Mladic to a cousin’s farmhouse in May 2011, they found a penniless, shambling and ill old man.

The son of a World War Two Yugoslav partisan killed in 1945, Mladic was a general in the old communist Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) when the multinational Balkan republic began to disintegrate in 1991 with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia.

When Bosnia’s Serbs rose up in response to a referendum for independence by Muslims and Croats, Mladic took over Belgrade’s forces in Bosnia which swiftly overran 70 percent of the country with a combination of daring, ruthlessness and brutality.

Serb paramilitaries entered the conflict with a campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and expulsion mainly against Bosnian Muslims. Dozens of towns were besieged with heavy weapons and villages were burned down as 22,000 UN peacekeeping troops stood by more or less helplessly, with orders not to take sides.

Mladic had a cameraman film the blitz of the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, showing him bronzed and fit at 53, extolling his “lads” and haranguing hapless Dutch UN peacekeepers who took his soldier’s word that the inhabitants would be safe.

Instead, 8,000 of them were systematically executed in a massacre that took several days in July 1995.

TV footage showed Mladic asserting that he had “liberated” Srebrenica and gifted it to Serbs as revenge against “Turks” who ruled the region when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

What happened at Srebrenica?

Muslim men and boys were separated from women, stripped of identification then shot. The dead were bulldozed into mass graves. The remains were later dug up and hauled away in trucks to be better hidden from the world in more remote mass graves.

Over 6,900 victims have since been identified by DNA tests. 

The massacre was the grim culmination of a 3-1/2-year conflict in which the beefy general had pounded Sarajevo daily with the entire Bosnian Serb arsenal, killing over 11,000 people, until local sports fields were overflowing with graves.

His goal, ICTY prosecutors said, was ethnic cleansing - the forcible extermination or expulsion of Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs to clear Bosnian lands for a “Greater Serbia”.

Prosecutors said it was a conspiracy in which Mladic and Karadzic were aided, armed and abetted by Milosevic.

Only a combination of Western pressure and covert American arms and training for Croats and Muslims turned the tide in 1995 against Mladic’s army, ultimately depriving it of equipment and fuel supplies from Serbia. NATO air strikes did the rest.

He spent only half his time at large as a hunted fugitive. Even after Milosevic fell to a pro-democracy uprising in 2000, Mladic remained well protected in various Belgrade apartments until 2005.

He received treatment at a top military hospital. Sporadic sightings put him at a Belgrade horse race or soccer match.

When finally arrested in the shabby rural farmhouse, he put up no resistance. His right arm was lame, the apparent result of an untreated stroke.

His trial had to be delayed over and over because of his shaky health. Yet in court, Mladic grinned as a judge read out the charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Srebrenica massacre survivors attending one hearing were shocked when he made a throat-slitting gesture towards a Muslim woman who had lost her husband, son and several brothers.

In 2014, he refused to give evidence in support of old ally Karadzic, calling the tribunal a “satanic court”.

Whatever the verdict on Wednesday, Mladic’s trial is unlikely to further post-war reconciliation in Bosnia.

The US-brokered Dayton Accords of 1995 halted the bloodshed by dividing Bosnia into a semi-autonomous Serb Republic entity and a Bosniak-Croat Federation. This did not heal ethnic splits or prevent a resurgence of Serb separatism.

Most Bosnian Serbs remain convinced that Mladic is innocent. If he is found guilty, it will only prove their conviction that the Hague tribunal is utterly biased against Serbs.

“I am a very old man ... and I am not important,” Mladic told the tribunal. “It matters what kind of legacy I will leave behind, among my people.”

There’s a new princess in the kingdom and his story is unlike any previously told by Disney.

In a recent episode of “Star Vs. The Forces Of Evil,” the first animated series created by a woman, Daron Nefcy, for the Disney XD channel, one of the lead characters, Marco Diaz, assumes the identity of “Princess Turdina” to help save St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses from the evil grip of the schoolmaster, Ms. Heinous.

All is going well until Ms. Heinous returns to the school and outs Marco as ... a boy! Her proof? A single curly chest hair hidden beneath Princess Turdina’s resplendent purple gown.

“That doesn’t prove anything! Princesses can be hairy!” a princess in the crowd responds.

“Yah, we believe in you, Turdina,” another princess, who is remarkably hirsute herself, adds.

Even after Marco admits he’s a boy, the crowd refuses to see gender as the basis for who can and can’t be a princess.

“Why does it matter if he’s a boy?” one princess asks. “Nothing he said was wrong!”

“He can be a princess if he wants to,” another asserts.

“Turdina is a state of mind!” someone else yells before a rallying cry of “free will!” fills the room and the princesses attack the schoolmaster and her minions.

It’s a beautiful moment and one that could be incredibly influential for kids who are soaking up social cues about what it means to be a boy or a girl ― or any gender in between ― and what supposedly is or isn’t possible because of how they identify.

No stranger to offering groundbreaking content, “Star Vs. The Forces Of Evil” had the honor of debuting Disney’s first same-sex kiss earlier this year. 

Last month, an anonymously sourced spreadsheet full of “Shitty Media Men” began circulating. The list, which sprang up shortly after the first Harvey Weinstein story broke, was live for only about 12 hours, but it was exhaustively covered and discussed in media circles thereafter.

I spoke to both women and men in my professional life about the list and its implications for our industry. Over the course of these conversations, one thing that stuck out to me was that most of the men I spoke toadmitted to having a moment of panic ― to wondering whether they were one of the shitty media men. They didn’t seem to be panicking about a particular “shitty” incident that could have made it onto the list. Theirs was more of a generalized fear: What if theyhad unwittingly crossed a line? What if they’d committed a violation and never even registered it as out of the ordinary?

I’ve thought about these conversations as men across industries ― Hollywood, politics, media, academia, tech, the list goes on ― have begun speaking out about past violations, taking varying degrees of responsibility. Several of these men have used language that suggests they don’t remember (Roy Moore: “If did, you know, I’m not going to dispute anything but I don’t remember anything like that.”), misremember (Al Franken: “While I don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit as Leeann does…”; Charlie Rose: “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings...”) or never thought critically about (Louis CK: “I didn’t think that I was doing any of that because my position allowed me not to think about it.”) their behavior toward the women who say their boundaries, trust and bodies were violated.  

We can’t ever know whether the men who say they don’t remember X incident of sexual harassment or assault or misconduct truly don’t remember it, or are simply lying out of self-preservation. (Some of them almost certainly are.) But the question remains: Why is the language of “misremembering” so common?

The answer feels more complicated than just that men are dirtbags who lie about assaulting women. In some ways, it seems unfathomable that a person could sexually assault or harass another person without the incident leaving a strong impression on the perpetrator. But if this sort of behavior feels “normal,” why would it stand out?

As a society, we generally agree that brutal, violent rape is wrong and criminal. But what about a casual ass grab? Or a sexual comment after a work meeting? Or a kiss one person takes while another tenses up in shock? Or a hookup where one party never says yes, but also never cries out no? Or all of the many types of violations that don’t rise to the level of violent rape but can still leave the victim feeling coerced and powerless?

“When you have a sexually harmful behavior, we have the assumption that people view these behaviors in the same way,” Maia Christopher, executive director of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, told HuffPost. “They don’t necessarily. If you don’t view something as out of the norm, you might not view it as an infringement.”

Indeed, not all assaults or all cases of harassment look the same. But the “good” behavior bar is often set so low that men are able to pat themselves on the back for not being rapists and move along ― even if they have engaged in other forms of abusive behavior. Kristen Houser, chief public affairs officer at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), describes this ability to detach from abusive behavior as “distorted thinking”: “[These men] might know what they did is socially unacceptable, but they know it wasn’t rape.”

Hence why only now are (some) powerful men being forced to confront the fact that they have perpetrated damaging behaviors for years ― or even decades ― and to confront the reality that they have been able to skim over or willfully ignore their own patterns of abuse.

As actor and writer Pia Glenn put it on Twitter: “When these men say ′ I don’t remember [sexually assaulting her], I believe them… I wish they had the introspection to connect the fact that they don’t remember to the fact that they *wouldn’t* remember because it’s so commonplace.”

In the United States, sexual assault and harassment are certainly commonplace. A 2015 Cosmopolitan survey found that one in three women between the ages of 18 and 34 said they had been sexually harassed in the workplace. One in six American women has survived a rape or a rape attempt in their lifetimes, most of them before they turned 35. Trans women, women with disabilities and women who identify as bisexual face even higher rates of sexual assault. And though women can certainly be predatory, the majority of assaults and incidents of harassment are committed by men.

As a result, women and gender non-conforming people are taught basically from birth that our bodies are a liability. As we grow up, we become acutely aware of our surroundings. We make ourselves small. We learn to read other people; to sense if they pose a threat to us or if they feel any discomfort around us. We try to appear friendly without inviting unwanted attention; to use our resting bitch faces as armor and then soften them when that armor fails to keep strange men at a distance. We modulate our own actions to keep the people around us comfortable ― especially male people ― lest they get offended and ruin our professional reputations, or scream at us on the subway, or harm us in more physical ways.

In contrast, boys and men are taught that they deserve to take up space, and to receive attention and recognition and affirmation, especially from the women and girls around them. And if that attention or recognition or affirmation is not freely given, they should feel entitled to take it, by whatever means available.

“Male entitlement is the backbone of our culture,” Houser said. “It is what allows people to not think about” their behavior.

It’s this dynamic that allowed Louis C.K. to convince himself that jokingly asking women if they want to see his dick served as asking for consent. It’s what let Charlie Rose believe that walking around naked in front of unsuspecting younger women in his employ was akin to “pursuing shared feelings.” It’s what makes men in my own life terrified that they don’t have the ability to discern what was consensual and what was violating.

As Rebecca Traister outlined in New York Magazine, a backlash of some kind to this widespread moment of reckoning feels inevitable. Women are on anxious high alert ― waiting for one false allegation or one misinterpreted story to halt the momentum of this flood, and return the balance of power back to “normal.” But while we are waiting, as more and more stories are told, those stories are reaching men. I have had more men talk to me thoughtfully about sexual violence over the last two months than in the entirety of my life before. I have seen men ― everyday, non-famous, 20- and 30-somethings ― begin to grapple with their own horror at a culture they were able to willfully ignore before, and their own complicity in upholding that culture.

The same did not happen when Cosby’s accusers came forward. It did not happen when Trump’s did either.

The beauty of the #MeToo movement is that it’s near impossible to ignore. So many women’s accounts of past events make it harder for the men who perpetrated them to delude themselves any longer. Women are angry, and angry women are a hell of a lot harder to misremember.

Melissa Schuman, an original member of the pop group Dream, has accused Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys of raping her in 2002. 

In an essay she published Tuesday night on her personal website, Schuman said Carter raped her while she and a friend were hanging out at his Santa Monica apartment. According to Schuman, she was 18 at the time, Carter was 22. 

In a statement to HuffPost, Carter denied Schuman’s accusations and said he was “always respectful and supportive” of her during the time they worked together.

“I am shocked and saddened by Ms. Schuman’s accusations. Melissa never expressed to me while we were together or at any time since that anything we did was not consensual,” the statement reads. “We went on to record a song and perform together, and I was always respectful and supportive of Melissa,  both personally and professionally. This is the first that I am hearing about these accusations, nearly two decades later. It is contrary to my nature and everything I hold dear to intentionally cause someone discomfort or harm.” 

Schuman in her essay said that a small group of friends were having drinks at Carter’s apartment when he asked if she wanted to go to his office to hear some new music. While listening, the two began kissing and Carter led her into the bathroom.  

“I asked him what we were doing in there. He didn’t respond and continued to kiss me,” Schuman wrote. “He then pick (sic) me up, put me on the bathroom counter and started to unbutton my pants. I told him I didn’t want to go any further. He didn’t listen. He didn’t care.”  

Schuman wrote that she was a virgin at the time and held herself “to religious conservative christian values,” which she was “vocal about” during her stardom.

She said that Carter forced oral sex on her and later pressured her to perform oral sex on him. 

“I felt scared and trapped. He was visually and clearly growing very angry and impatient with me,” she wrote. “It was evident to me, that I couldn’t leave. He was stronger and much bigger than me, and there was no way I would be able to open that door or have anyone help me.”

According to Schuman, Carter took her into a bedroom where he raped her despite her protests. 

“He threw me on the bed and climbed on top of me,” she wrote. “He was relentless, refusing to take my no’s for an answer. He was heavy, too heavy to get out from under him. Then I felt it, he put something inside of me. I asked him what it was and he whispered in my ear ... ‘It’s all me baby.’ It was done.” 

Schuman said she considered pressing charges at the time, but decided against doing so for several reasons. “I didn’t have the money, the clout or access to an attorney who was powerful enough to stand up against my abuser’s legal counsel,” she wrote. “I was told I would likely be buried in humiliation, accused of being fame hungry, and it would ultimately hurt me professionally as well as publicly.”

She said she’s coming forward now in the wake of the #MeToo movement to show other victims of sexual assault they’re not alone. 

“I feel I have an obligation now to come forward with the hope and intention to inspire and encourage other victims to tell their story,” she wrote. “We are stronger in numbers. If you are reading this and you have been assaulted, know you don’t have to be silent and you are not alone. I know it’s scary. I’m scared.”

The statute of limitations in California for rape cases had been 10 years, unless new DNA evidence emerged. Last year, the state enacted a law doing away ―  as of 2017 ― with the time limit for prosecuting alleged rapes.

Hayley Miller contributed reporting. 

Communicating electronically in China just got a little tougher.

Skype, the internet phone and messaging service owned by Microsoft, has been scrubbed from app stores in China, becoming the latest product to vanish amid the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on cyber content.

Apple, which confirmed the program’s removal from its own app store, told Reuters in a statement published Tuesday that the Chinese government had accused the program of violating a local cyberlaw.

“We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over internet protocol apps do not comply with local law,” Apple’s statement read.

Microsoft, reached by the BBC, called the removal temporary and said it is “working to reinstate the app as soon as possible.”

As of Tuesday, Skype itself was still functioning in China despite its removal from app stores, The New York Times reported.

Other Western social media sites like Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter are banned by the so-called “Great Firewall” of China, which prohibits access to unapproved online content. Chinese authorities have said that such bans are designed to protect personal privacy and prevent online terrorist activity. 

Locals have turned to using virtual private networks to access such restricted sites, though China’s cyber crackdown has included removing VPN access as well.

This week, Apple admitted to having complied with removing 674 VPN apps in 2017 at the request of the Chinese government, the Financial Times reported.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in a letter published Tuesday, urged Apple and other tech companies to “push back on Chinese suppression of free expression.”

“American tech companies have become leading champions of free expression. But that commitment should not end at our borders,” Leahy’s letter read. “Global leaders in innovation, like Apple, have both an opportunity and a moral obligation to promote free expression and other basic human rights in countries that routinely deny these rights.”

News of Skype’s removal, which some users say began gradually in October, comes amid reports that Lu Wei, China’s former head of the Cyberspace Administration, was recently detained under suspicion of violating party discipline, as Variety reported citing Chinese and Hong Kong media.

Lu had been tasked with deciding which foreign tech companies could operate in China during his 2013-2016 term in office.

Though he was removed from the position last year, he continued to serve as the deputy director of the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department until as recently as October.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.