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A successful Canadian-founded tech company may have helped the Egyptian government block upwards of 34,000 internet domains in Egypt, as part of a co-ordinated state effort to silence opposition during Egypt’s constitutional referendum.

Citizen Lab’s investigation found “devices matching … Sandvine PacketLogic fingerprints were being used to block political, journalistic, and human rights content” in Egypt. Sandvine ultimately denied Citizen Lab’s findings, characterizing the research as “false, misleading, and wrong.” Citizen Lab, however, continued to express confidence in its conclusions, which it claimed had been confirmed by two independent peer reviews.

internet-monitoring organization Netblocks observed the blockage of Batel’s website in realtime. After 12 hours, the website was completely blocked on all four major Egyptian internet-service providers. The speed and efficiency with which the site was blocked rivals censorship regimes only in China and Turkey.

"This week, Blizzard tightened up its procedures to ensure compliance with these laws, and players connecting from the affected nations are restricted from access to Blizzard games and services," read the statement. Unfortunately, said Blizzard, the same sanctions meant it could not give refunds to players in Iran or help them move their account elsewhere. "We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and will happily lift these restrictions as soon as US law allows," it added. Although the block on Wow has been imposed by Blizzard, other reports suggest a wider government ban might have been imposed. Players of Wow and other games, including Guild Wars, said when they had tried to log in they had been redirected to a page saying the connection had been blocked because the games promoted "superstition and mythology". Blizzard said it had no information about Iranian government action against online games.

Maroc Telecom, Meditel and Inwi, the three telecommunication service providers in Morocco, welcomed the New Year of 2016 with the ban of free mobile internet calls made through mobile phone connections.Skype, Viber, Tango, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are among the applications whose VoIP calls have been blocked by telecom operators on 3G, and 4G connections in January and ADSL connections in February.

Morocco’s Telecommunications Regulatory National Agency (ANRT), which was behind the ban, justified its decision by stating that none of the services providing voice over IP (VoIP) or other "free internet calls" had the required licenses.

a move to boost operators’ revenues from international calls

the history of automation goes back some 900 years, when Ismail al-Jazari, a Muslim scholar, invented the first robotics, water clocks and other mechanical devices.

his outstanding machines have now been recreated for The Magnificent Machines of al-Jazari, an exhibition at the UNIQ Expo in Istanbul

“The impact of al-Jazari's inventions is still felt in modern contemporary mechanical engineering,” wrote 20th-century English engineer and historian Donald Hill in his book Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology.

Badani is part of a network of at least 19 fake personas that has spent the past year placing more than 90 opinion pieces in 46 different publications. The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon. 

“This vast influence operation highlights the ease with which malicious actors can exploit the identity of real people, dupe international news outlets, and have propaganda of unknown provenance legitimized through reputable media,” Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar who first noticed suspicious posts by members of the network, told The Daily Beast. “It’s not just fake news we need to be wary of, but fake journalists.”

placed articles critical of Qatar and supportive of tougher sanctions on Iran in conservative North American outlets like Human Events and conservative writer Andy Ngo’s The Post Millennial, as well as Israeli and Middle Eastern newspapers like The Jerusalem Post and Al Arabiya, and Asian newspapers like the South China Morning Post.