For the third Friday in a row, journalists working for Spain’s public broadcaster have worn black on screen to protest against alleged political interference, gender bias and unequal pay. The campaign, known as viernes negro (black Friday), is intended to highlight the Spanish government’s continuing refusal to approve a transparent process to appoint an independent board at RTVE.

Protesters argue that the ruling conservative People’s party (PP) meddles in media coverage and has a vested interest in appointing the RTVE chair directly. “For the third consecutive week, RTVE workers are wearing black this Friday to protest against the parliamentary impasse that is hindering the establishment of a public competition to choose the leadership team and restore RTVE’s professional judgment,” the group RTVE Women said in a statement.(theguardian)…[+]

Thanks to its glittering mosques, breathtaking landscapes, ancient ruins and, believe it or not, ski resorts, Iran’s tourism industry underwent an extraordinary boom after the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Tourists flocked to the Middle Eastern country to discover cultural treasures largely unseen by western eyes since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and found the cost of staying there relatively cheap.

But this week’s decision by Donald Trump to pull the US out of the agreement, which could trigger its collapse and inflame an already tense region, is stoking fears that Iran’s tourism sector could slide back into the doldrums. “After Barjam [the Persian acronym for the joint comprehensive plan of action on Iran’s nuclear programme] we saw a huge growth in our tourism sector – I worked as a guide all year long,” said Ali Sheibani, a 30-year-old Iranian tour guide.

He has been operating for seven years in Isfahan, the country’s top tourist destination, and Shiraz, close to Persepolis, with its relics of a proud ancient civilisation. “Before [the deal],” he said, “if you’d see a foreign tourist, it was as if you were seeing an alien, someone from space, and people would encircle them to talk to them. Foreign tourists would be treated as celebrities – but now it’s less like that. It has become common to see tourists.”(theguardian)…[+]

Brazil’s former dictator Ernesto Geisel personally approved the summary execution of his regime’s perceived enemies, according to a newly unearthed CIA memo that has reopened a bitter debate over one of the darkest chapters of contemporary Brazilian history.  Matias Spektor, the São Paulo-based academic who discovered and distributed the document on Thursday, called it “the most disturbing I have read in 20 years of research”.

The memorandum, sent to then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, by the CIA director, William Colby, on 11 April 1974, details a meeting it said had taken place a few days earlier between Geisel and three Brazilian generals. One tells Geisel, who ruled Brazil from 1974 until 1979, the regime “cannot ignore the subversive and terrorist threat” it faces. “Extra-legal methods should continue to be employed against dangerous subversives,” Gen Milton Tavares de Souza is quoted as saying.

De Souza informs Geisel that 104 such “subversives” were summarily executed by military intelligence in the previous year – a policy a second general insists should continue. According to the US account, Geisel notes that such killings could be “potentially prejudicial” and asks for a few days to consider whether such tactics are appropriate. The following week Brazil’s president concludes “the policy should continue but that great care should be taken to make certain that only dangerous subversives were executed”.(theguardian)…[+]