casi rules There is an absence of a clear legal framework and proper definitions when it comes to cyber violence against women, speakers said at an event yesterday.They urged for specific legislation to combat such crimes. The roundtable, titled "Scanning the Horizon: Addressing Cyber Violence against Women and Youth Through Policy and Awareness", was jointly organised by UNDP and The Daily Star at The Daily Star Centre. Anowarul Haq, assistant resident representative at UNDP, said digital violence is a reality we cannot ignore. "As the legal framework is weak and there is no clear definition of cyber violence, this issue must be addressed under specific legislation," he said. He urged the government to strengthen law enforcement agencies through specialised training, recruit gender-sensitive personnel, and incorporate cyber violence awareness into school curricula. Supreme Court lawyer Barrister Jyotirmoy Barua criticised the lack of clarity regarding digital rights and laws. "Our laws fail to define and address globally recognised forms of cyber violence, let alone ensure justice... We haven't even established the National Telecommunication Monitoring Center," he said. He called for judicial training on sensitive gender-related issues. Rezwan Islam, regional editor at Global Voices, stressed the absence of institutional policies on cyber violence. "A comprehensive policy is urgently needed in organisations," he said. Investments are necessary to create safer digital spaces, he added. Sharmin Ahmed, senior vice president at Mutual Trust Bank, linked a lack of digital literacy to harassment and fraud in cyberspace. She called for private sector involvement in enhancing digital literacy. UNDP Research Analyst Faisal Bin Majid urged women to remain vigilant and resilient against growing cyber violence. Sharmin Islam, gender team lead at UNDP, said her organisation is working to bridge the digital divide. "Women face new forms of harassment regularly, even while engaging in e-commerce. When they seek police help, a lack of expertise often worsens their problems," she said. She advocated for smarter policing and victim counselling services. Misinformation and disinformation targeting women, particularly during elections, were also discussed. Qadaruddin Shishir, fact-check editor at AFP, said such tactics are used for personal vengeance or political gain. "Alarmingly, the state was previously involved in spreading disinformation, and now political parties and groups are adopting these tactics," he said. The lack of counselling services for victims was highlighted by Maliha Tabassum, assistant professor at the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at Bangladesh University of Professionals. She called for culturally driven programmes and a shift in the mindset of law enforcement. Golam Sarwar, a UNDP consultant, identified unequal power dynamics as the root cause of women's online harassment. He stressed genuine empowerment to create safer online spaces. Barrister Tazkia Labeeba Karim highlighted inadequacies in current laws. "There is no clear definition of digital sexual harassment, and a specific law is needed to tackle this issue," she said. Supreme Court lawyer Barrister Tasnuva Shelley underlined the importance of digital forensic expertise and educating lawyers and judges on cyber violence nuances. The event also showcased a virtual documentary on cyber violence against women, presented by Shahreen Tilottoma, programme officer at UNDP. Moderated by Tanjim Ferdous, in-charge of NGOs and Foreign Missions at The Daily Star, the discussion saw participants stressing collaboration between government bodies, social media platforms, and institutions to ensure a safer online environment. Speakers also recommended a national campaign to raise awareness, challenge victim-blaming, and promote respect for women in digital spaces.

From VOA Mandarin: China’s ‘lifeless’ millennials struggle with rising cost of livingOne of my top shows of 2024 actually premiered in 2021. That’s because it took a couple of years for the Australian series “The Newsreader” to make its way Stateside. Alas, it was only legal to stream in the U.S. for a handful of weeks in September and then — pffft! — it was gone before most people had even heard of it. Well, I have great news. The show will be available once again, this time via Sundance Now (accessible through the AMC+ streaming platform), which has licensed the first season. Premiering Dec. 19, it stars Anna Torv (“Fringe”) and Sam Reid (“Interview with the Vampire”) as TV reporters in Melbourne, circa 1986. At the outset, Reid’s character exudes big loser energy, which is such an amusing contrast to his work as Lestat. The show is unexpectedly funny and terrifically Machiavellian in its portrayal of small-time office politics, and I’m thrilled audiences in the U.S. will get another shot at watching it. Overall, 2024 offered a modestly better lineup than usual, but I’m not sure it felt that way. Too often the good stuff got drowned out by Hollywood’s pointless and endless pursuit of rebooting intellectual property (no thank you, Apple’s “Presumed Innocent” ) and tendency to stretch a perfectly fine two-hour movie premise into a saggy multi-part series (“Presumed Innocent” again!). There were plenty of shows I liked that didn’t make this year’s list, including ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and CBS’ “Ghosts” (it’s heartening to see the network sitcom format still thriving in the streaming era), as well as Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” (Ted Danson’s charisma selling an unlikely premise) and Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown” (a high-concept parody of racial stereotypes and cop show tropes, even if it couldn’t sustain the idea over 10 episodes). Maybe it just felt like we were having more fun this year, with Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple” (Nicole Kidman leading a traditional manor house mystery reinterpreted with an American sensibility) and Hulu’s “Rivals” (the horniest show of 2024, delivered with a wink in the English countryside). I liked what I saw of Showtime’s espionage thriller “The Agency” (although the bulk of episodes were unavailable as of this writing). The deluge of remakes tends to make me cringe, but this year also saw a redo of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” on Netflix that was far classier than most of what’s available on the streamer. Starring Andrew Scott, I found it cool to the touch, but the imagery stayed with me. Shot in black and white, it has an indelible visual language courtesy of director of photography Robert Elswit, whether capturing a crisp white business card against the worn grain wood of a bar top, or winding stairways that alternately suggest a yawning void or a trap. As always, if you missed any of these shows when they originally premiered — the aforementioned titles or the Top 10 listed below — they are all available to stream. Top 10 streaming and TV shows of 2024, in alphabetical order: The least cynical reality show on television remains as absorbing as ever in Season 4, thanks to the probing questions and insights from the show’s resident therapist, Dr. Orna Guralnik. Everything is so charged. And yet the show has a soothing effect, predicated on the idea that human behavior (and misery) isn’t mysterious or unchangeable. There’s something so optimistic in that outlook. Whether or not you relate to the people featured on “Couples Therapy” — or even like them as individuals — doesn’t matter as much as Guralnik’s reassuring presence. Created by and starring Diarra Kilpatrick, the eight-episode series defies categorization in all the right ways. Part missing-person mystery, part comedy about a school teacher coming to grips with her impending divorce, and part drama about long-buried secrets, it has tremendous style right from the start — sardonic, knowing and self-deprecating. The answers to the central mystery may not pack a satisfying punch by the end, but the road there is as entertaining and absorbing as they come. We need more shows like this. A comedy created by and starring Brian Jordan Alvarez (of the antic YouTube series “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo”), the show has a sensibility all its own, despite a handful of misinformed people on social media calling it a ripoff of “Abbott Elementary.” There’s room enough in the TV landscape for more than one sitcom with a school setting and “English Teacher” has a wonderfully gimlet-eyed point of view of modern high school life. I’m amused that so much of its musical score is Gen-X coded, because that neither applies to Alvarez (a millennial) nor the fictional students he teaches. So why does the show feature everything from Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” to Exposé’s “Point of No Return”? The ’80s were awash in teen stories and maybe the show is using music from that era to invoke all those tropes in order to better subvert them. It’s a compelling idea! It’s streaming on Hulu and worth checking out if you haven’t already. A one-time tennis phenom accuses her former coach of coercing her into a sexual relationship in this British thriller. The intimacy between a coach and athlete often goes unexplored, in real-life or fictional contexts and that’s what the show interrogates: When does it go over the line? It’s smart, endlessly watchable and the kind of series that would likely find a larger audience were it available on a more popular streamer. There’s real tenderness in this show. Real cruelty, too. It’s a potent combination and the show’s third and strongest season won it an Emmy for best comedy. Jean Smart’s aging comic still looking for industry validation and Hannah Einbinder’s needy Gen-Z writer are trapped in an endless cycle of building trust that inevitably gives way to betrayal. Hollywood in a nutshell! “Hacks” is doing variations on this theme every season, but doing it in interesting ways. Nobody self-sabotages their way to success like these two. I was skeptical about the show when it premiered in 2022 . Vampire stories don’t interest me. And the 1994 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt wasn’t a persuasive argument to the contrary. But great television is great television and nothing at the moment is better than this show. It was ignored by Emmy voters in its initial outing but let’s hope Season 2 gets the recognition it deserves. Under showrunner Rolin Jones, the adaptation of Anne Rice’s novels is richly written, thrillingly inhabited by its cast and so effortlessly funny with a framing device — the interview of the title — that is thick with intrigue and sly comedy. I wouldn’t categorize the series as horror. It’s not scary. But it is tonally self-assured and richly made, rarely focused on the hunt for dinner but on something far more interesting: The melodrama of vampire existence, with its combination of boredom and lust and tragedy and zingers. Already renewed for Season 3, it has an incredible cast (a thrilling late-career boost for Eric Bogosian) and is well worth catching up with if you haven’t already. It’s been too long since the pleasures of banter fueled a romantic comedy in the spirit of “When Harry Met Sally.” But it’s all over the place in “Nobody Wants This,” one of the best shows on Netflix in recent memory. Renewed for a second season, it stars Kristen Bell as a humorously caustic podcaster and Adam Brody as the cute and emotionally intelligent rabbi she falls for. On the downside, the show has some terrible notions about Jewish women that play into controlling and emasculating stereotypes. You hate to see it in such an otherwise sparkling comedy, because overall Bell and Brody have an easy touch that gives the comedy real buoyancy. I suspect few people saw this three-part series on PBS Masterpiece, but it features a terrific performance by Helena Bonham Carter playing the real-life, longtime British soap star Noele “Nolly” Gordon, who was unceremoniously sacked in 1981. She’s the kind of larger-than-life showbiz figure who is a bit ridiculous, a bit imperious, but also so much fun. The final stretch of her career is brought to life by Carter and this homage — to both the soap she starred in and the way she carried it on her back — is from Russell T. Davies (best known for the “Doctor Who” revival). For U.S. viewers unfamiliar with the show or Gordon, Carter’s performance has the benefit of not competing with a memory as it reanimates a slice of British pop culture history from the analog era. The year is 1600 and a stubborn British seaman piloting a Dutch ship washes ashore in Japan. That’s our entry point to this gorgeously shot story of power games and political maneuvering among feudal enemies. Adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 novel by the married team of Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, it is filled with Emmy-winning performances (for Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada; the series itself also won best drama) and unlike something like HBO’s far clunkier “House of the Dragon,” which tackles similar themes, this feels like the rare show created by, and for, adults. The misfits and losers of Britain’s MI5 counterintelligence agency — collectively known as the slow horses, a sneering nickname that speaks to their perceived uselessness — remain as restless as ever in this adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels. As a series, “Slow Horses” doesn’t offer tightly plotted clockwork spy stories; think too deeply about any of the details and the whole thing threatens to fall apart. But on a scene-by-scene basis, the writing is a winning combination of wry and tension-filled, and the cumulative effect is wonderfully entertaining. Spies have to deal with petty office politics like everyone else! It’s also one of the few shows that has avoided the dreaded one- or two-year delay between seasons, which has become standard on streaming. Instead, it provides the kind of reliability — of its characters but also its storytelling intent — that has become increasingly rare. Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

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HARTFORD, Conn. — It’s well known that Steve Cohen wanted a Picasso, Le Reve, badly enough to pay $139 million for it. When the seller put an elbow through the canvas, Cohen pulled his offer and waited, but once the painting was suitably restored he ponied up $155 million to get it for his Greenwich, Conn., home. Couple of things there. When Cohen wants something badly enough, for his mansion or the Mets, he will not be denied. And since Cohen didn’t go for the banana taped to the wall that recently sold for $6.2 million, it’s clear he knows the difference between trendy gimmicks and timeless art. So it was when Juan Soto, a hitter of rare beauty, hit the open market. Listen, every top free agent feels like more than just the top free agent, more like the last great player who is ever going to be available. The very first sweepstakes, for Catfish Hunter 50 years ago this month, felt like that, as did Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield and countless others. In the last three years, Aaron Judge, who stayed with the Yankees, Shohei Ohtani, who signed with the Dodgers, had that kind of cachet. And now Soto, who left the Yankees to sign a 15-year contract reportedly worth $765 million, with clauses that could bump up north of $800 million, has joined Cohen’s growing collection of stars with the Mets with the potential to realign the game. It can certainly shifts the terrain under a state so long dominated by the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. All the whys and wherefores are still to come, but safe to say that Cohen is all he was advertised to be when he bought the Mets in 2020 — aggressive, persuasive, relentless in pursuit of the championship that has eluded his favorite team since 1986. That’s Le Reve, which in English is “The Dream.” There are those who shudder at how the money he can spend will impact baseball, but so be it. He wants to win, he’s going for it. He had to have Juan Soto. Now the pressure to make this work will be enormous for all and history shows such signings do not always produce the desired results, but Cohen didn’t get where he is in the hedge-fund jungle by being risk-averse. Soto is certainly a generational game-changer, if not the first or last. He made the difference between the Yankees missing the playoffs altogether in 2023 and reaching the World Series in 2024. He is 26, younger than most free agents, and can be counted on to put up Soto stats, .419 on-base, 41 homers, 109 RBI last season, for years to come. And he has proven he can handle New York and perform in the postseason. The Yankees, who reportedly upped their offer to $750 million for 16 years, were not trying to finish a strategic second and tell their fans they gave it their best shot. Hal Steinbrenner fully understood the ramifications of this loss, and not because the other team in New York. Nope, not going down the Mets-own-New-York path. There is no such thing. The Yankees and Mets don’t have to worry about each other unless both reach the World Series, and if they do, both will profit immensely and the city will be delirious. Unlike George Steinbrenner and the previous Mets owners, Hal and Cohen get this: The team that’s more successful will be more popular in the moment, but it’s better for both when both are good. The Red Sox were in on Soto, too, and although there are skeptics in Boston, they apparently did make a competitive bid. The Yankees can at least take solace he’s out of the AL East and The Rivalry, and baseball can at least take solace in that he didn’t join all those megastars in Los Angeles. So the bomb hit Sunday night, the earth shifted, and it’s time for all the franchises we watch in Connecticut to pick up the pieces and move on, mindful that the goal line is moving. The Mets pair Soto with their MVP runner up, Francisco Lindor. The one-two punch that can really get them the title is Cohen and president of baseball operations David Steans. The Mets have a GM with experience in finding undervalued talent, developing young players and building contenders with limited resources in Milwaukee. His brainstorm to make overvalued reliever Clay Holmes into a potential bargain of a starter, is an example of his resourcefulness. Couple that with an owner willing to spend big when quality is up for auction, and that’s a hard combination to beat. That’s the Dodgers’ formula. Neither the Yankees nor Red Sox appear to have both at the moment. The Red Sox do have the deep farm system left by Chaim Bloom, though, and if current GM Craig Breslow can pry enough resources from the owners to go after a few solid veterans, they can be right back in contention. The Yankees are in a more difficult space. In years gone by, the three-quarters of a billion left behind by Soto could be used to upgrade a roster in a dozen areas. But those kind of players are not really out there, and that strategy can yield a team of mediocre, past-their-primers. GM Brian Cashman will have to sort those out now. Putting Judge back in right field where he belongs and getting a legit centerfielder could help, beefing up starting and relief pitching will help, there are many holes that were covered up by the historic productivity of Soto and Judge in 2024 that must now be addressed starting at the Winter Meetings. To get back to the World Series, the Yankees will have to get past a number of AL teams loaded with young talent. In the NL, they face the Mets, Dodgers and Padres, teams with multiple high-end stars, where they have only Judge still at that level. To be sure, pinstripe prestige took a major blow Sunday night, but they still have resources to repair it to full value, like that Picasso. The overarching fact Monday is that the way we watch and perceive baseball will be different now. The Greenwich art collector is throwing his billions around as promised (and feared), and has turned baseball on its head. It should be quite a summer around here. ©2024 Hartford Courant. Visit courant.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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