Guardian Reporter

Agency is investigating 250 people affiliated with networks that manipulate and threaten young victims in cyberspace

The name of the group sounds innocuous enough: 764.

But the ordinary-seeming number hides one of the most disturbing trends in the US’s criminal landscape, disguising a brutal and sinister online group that exploits its victims in cyberspace and is now a top target for US law enforcement.

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Hundreds of media workers have been detained, often on terror charges, or forced into exile by Abiy Ahmed’s regime

When Ethiopia was chosen by the United Nations to host the global celebrations for World Press Freedom Day in May 2019, it held a glitzy ceremony in the capital, Addis Ababa, attended by nearly 1,000 people.

The prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had come to power a year earlier promising to end decades of repression and usher in an unprecedented era of freedom. Exiled news outlets were invited back to Ethiopia, journalists were released from prison and a host of new publications sprang up.

Attacks and self censorship, draconian anti-terror laws and tycoons’ control over the media, are all seen as eroding the country’s democracy

At her home in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Harleen Kapoor* reflects with melancholy on how, since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, she has spent a lot of time in the office instead of out on the powerful human rights exposés she used to work on.