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Tajikistan Blocks U.S.-Funded Website

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Tajikistan has blocked a popular U.S.-funded news website, only days after barring access to Facebook for featuring content allegedly insulting to the nation's president.

State communications service chief, Beg Zukhurov, said Friday that the block on Ozodi, the Tajik-language service of Radio Free Europe, was in response to public complaints that the site featured content detrimental to the national interest.

Zukhurov drew withering online mockery earlier in the week after demanding to know who the owner of Facebook was and asking that he travel to Tajikistan to meet with him in person.

Radio Free Europe's English-language site subsequently published a photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg holding up a sign in Tajik reading: "I own this network."

(AP)

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