The Full Belmonte, 11/25/2022
Musk says granting ‘amnesty’ to suspended Twitter accounts
FILE - The Twitter splash page is seen on a digital device, Monday, April 25, 2022, in San Diego. New Twitter owner Elon Musk says he is granting ‘amnesty’ for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation. The billionaire’s announcement Thursday, Nov. 24, came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not ‘broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.’ (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting ‘amnesty’ for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation.
The billionaire’s announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not ‘broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.’ The yes vote was 72%.
‘The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,’ Musk tweeted using a Latin phrase meaning ‘the voice of the people, the voice of God.’
Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last last weekend before reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Trump has said he won’t return to Twitter but has not deleted his account.
Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.
In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, anti-Semitic and other toxic speech say it’s been on the rise on the world’s de facto public square. That has included a surge in racist abuse of World Cup soccer players that Twitter is allegedly failing to act on.
The uptick in harmful content is in large part due to the disorder following Musk’s decision to lay off half the company’s 7,500-person workforce, fire top executives, and then institute a series of ultimatums that prompted hundreds more to quit. Also let go were an untold number of contractors responsible for content moderation. Among those resigning over a lack of faith in Musk’s willingness to keep Twitter from devolving into a chaos of uncontrolled speech were Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth.
Major advertisers have also abandoned the platform.
On Oct. 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a ‘content moderation council’ with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases.
On Tuesday, he said he was reneging on that promise because he’d agreed to at the insistence of ‘a large coalition of political-social activists groups’ who later ‘broke the deal’ by urging that advertisers at least temporarily stop giving Twitter their business.
A day earlier, Twitter reinstated the personal account of far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,which was banned in January for violating the platform’s COVID misinformation policies.
Musk, meanwhile, has been getting increasingly chummy on Twitter with right-wing figures. Before this month’s U.S. midterm elections he urged ‘independent-minded’ people to vote Republican.
A report from the European Union published Thursday said Twitter took longer to review hateful content and removed less of it this year compared with 2021. The report was based on data collected over the spring — before Musk acquired Twitter — as part of an annual evaluation of online platforms’ compliance with the bloc’s code of conduct on disinformation. It found that Twitter assessed just over half of the notifications it received about illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021.” Read more at AP News
Twitter Exodus Hits Teams Tasked With Regulatory, Content Issues Globally
Regulators have asked the company about ability to comply with privacy and content laws after losing significant staff
Staffers have left from Twitter hubs in Dublin, Singapore and San Francisco.PHOTO: NIALL CARSON/PA WIRE/ZUMA PRESS
“Elon Musk’s move to purge Twitter Inc. employees who don’t embrace his vision has led to a wave of departures among policy and safety-issue staffers around the globe, sparking questions from regulators in key jurisdictions about the site’s continued compliance efforts.
Scrutiny has been particularly close in Europe, where officials have in recent years assumed a greater role in regulating big tech companies.
Staff departures in recent days include dozens of people spread across units such as government policy, legal affairs and Twitter’s ‘trust and safety’ division, which is responsible for functions like drafting content-moderation rules, according to current and former employees, postings on social media and emails sent to work addresses of people who had worked at Twitter that recently bounced back. They have left from hubs including Dublin, Singapore and San Francisco.
Many of the departures follow Mr. Musk’s ultimatum late last week that staffers pledge to work long hours and be ‘extremely hardcore’ or take a buyout. Hundreds or more employees declined to commit to what Mr. Musk has called Twitter 2.0 and were locked out of company systems. That comes after layoffs in early November that cut roughly half of the company’s staff.
Twitter conducted another round of job cuts affecting engineers late Wednesday, before the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., people familiar with the matter said. The exact scope couldn’t be immediately learned, though some of the people estimated dozens of employees were let go.
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Twitter sent fired engineers an email saying their code wasn’t satisfactory and offering four weeks of severance, some of the people said. Some other engineers received an email warning them to improve their performance to keep their jobs, the people said.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said this week it was asking Twitter whether it still had sufficient staff to assure compliance with the European Union’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The company last week told the Irish data regulator that it did, but is still reviewing the impact of the staff departures, a spokesman for the Irish regulator said.
He said Twitter has appointed an interim chief data protection officer, an obligation under the GDPR, after the departure of Damien Kieran, who had served in the role but left shortly after the first round of layoffs.
In France, meanwhile, the country’s communications regulator said it sent a letter last Friday asking that Twitter explain by this week whether it has sufficient personnel on staff to moderate hate speech deemed illegal under French law—under which Twitter could face legal orders and fines.
The staff departures come as Twitter holds talks with the EU about the bloc’s new social-media law, dubbed the Digital Services Act, which will apply tougher rules on bigger platforms like Twitter by the middle of next year. Didier Reynders, the EU’s justice commissioner, is slated to attend a previously scheduled meeting with Twitter executives in Ireland on Thursday. He plans to ask about the company’s ability to comply with the law and to meet its commitments on data protection and tackling online hate speech, according to an EU official familiar with the trip.
Věra Jourová, a vice president of the EU’s executive arm, said she was concerned about reports of the firing of vast amounts of Twitter staff in Europe. ‘European laws continue to apply to Twitter, regardless of who is the owner,’ she said.
Mr. Musk has said that he would follow the laws of the countries where Twitter operates and that it ‘cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.’
Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Late Wednesday, Mr. Musk tweeted that the number of views of tweets he described as ‘hate speech’ had fallen below levels seen before a spike in such views in late October. ‘Congrats to the Twitter team!’ Mr. Musk wrote.
Some of the people who either departed or declined to sign on to Twitter 2.0 appear to include Sinead McSweeney, the company’s Ireland-based vice president of global policy and philanthropy, who led government relations and compliance initiatives with regulations worldwide, as well as the two remaining staffers in Twitter’s Brussels office.
Ms. McSweeney and the two Brussels employees declined to comment, but emails to their work addresses started bouncing back undeliverable in recent days according to checks by The Wall Street Journal. Four other Brussels-based employees were earlier this month told they were being laid off, according to social-media posts and people familiar with the matter.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Walmart shooting suspect had note in phone railing against colleagues
“The Walmart supervisor who authorities say fatally shot six colleagues in Chesapeake, Va., before taking his own life had a note in his phone that railed against people he perceived to have harassed or betrayed him and hinted at what was to come.
‘God forgive me for what I’m going to do ...’ Andre Bing concluded in the note, which the City of Chesapeake released Friday on Twitter.
It was not clear when the note was written, and portions in which Bing seemed to have named particular people were redacted. On Tuesday night, police have said, Bing — a Walmart employee since 2010 who had most recently been working as a team lead — attacked colleagues working at the store, targeting some in a break room.
Police also revealed Friday that Bing had purchased the gun used in the attack that very morning from a local store, which they did not identify.” Read more at Washington Post
Donald Trump sued as New York Adult Survivors Act takes effect
Image caption, Writer E Jean Carroll has also sued Donald Trump for defamation after he accused her of lying when she came forward about the alleged assault.
“Writer E Jean Carroll has sued Donald Trump in the US state of New York for allegedly raping her in the 1990s.
Ms Carroll, 78, is among the first to sue under the Adult Survivors Act, which came into effect on Thursday.
The state law allows a one-year period for victims to file sexual assault lawsuits in New York over claims that would have otherwise exceeded statute limitations.
The former president has denied the allegations against him.” Read more at BBC
GOP Candidate for Arizona Attorney General Sues to Reverse Election
Republican Abraham Hamadeh alleges errors by poll workers may have influenced results of the race
Abraham Hamadeh, shown at an event in Phoenix last month, is seeking to be certified as the winner of the Arizona attorney general’s race.PHOTO: REBECCA NOBLE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
“The Republican candidate for attorney general in Arizona, joined by the Republican National Committee, has filed a lawsuit alleging errors by poll workers may have influenced the results of the race.
The lawsuit, brought jointly by Republican Abraham Hamadeh and the RNC, requests an order that he be certified as the winner of the race, among other forms of injunctive relief.
The race is heading for an automatic recount after a final tally showed Mr. Hamadeh narrowly losing to his Democratic opponent, Kris Mayes. That recount will take several weeks to complete.
Mr. Hamadeh finished 510 votes, or 0.02 percentage point, behind Ms. Mayes, according to the final tally released by the Arizona secretary of state’s office on Monday.
Defendants in the case include Ms. Mayes and Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state who defeated Republican Kari Lake in a hotly contested race for governor of Arizona.
Ms. Hobbs’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, Mr. Hamadeh and the RNC alleged procedural and tabulation errors were made by elections workers. If those errors were addressed, they claimed, Mr. Hamadeh would finish on top.
Mr. Hamadeh alleged that after ballot readers malfunctioned, election workers gave incomplete instructions to hundreds of voters and made other missteps that resulted in votes not being properly tabulated.
Mr. Hamadeh’s lawsuit said he and the RNC ‘are not, by this lawsuit, alleging any fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing.’
Dan Barr, a lawyer for Ms. Mayes, said the lawsuit doesn’t provide any facts to support its claims.
‘It’s devoid of any facts,’ Mr. Barr said of the case. ‘It fails to identify even one person by first and last name who was disenfranchised.’
On Election Day, Nov. 8, vote-tabulation machines in about 20% of 223 voting centers in Maricopa County were malfunctioning.
Bill Gates, chairman of the county board of supervisors, said that day that about one in five ballots weren’t being accepted by the malfunctioning machines in Arizona’s most populous county, which includes Phoenix.
Voters who encountered the problem were asked to deposit their completed ballot in a secure drop box on the tabulating machine, Mr. Gates said, characterizing the drop box as a redundancy.
That day, a Maricopa County judge denied an 11th-hour request from Republicans to extend voting hours to 10 p.m., finding no evidence of specific voters being disenfranchised.
‘This court finds no evidence that voters were precluded from turning in ballots, although there was some confusion and some difficulties,’ Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Tim Ryan said during a court hearing.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Bombed, not beaten: Ukraine’s capital flips to survival mode
By JOHN LEICESTER, HANNA ARHIROVA and SAM MEDNICK
“KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Residents of Ukraine’s bombed capital clutched empty bottles in search of water and crowded into cafés for power and warmth Thursday, switching defiantly into survival mode after new Russian missile strikes a day earlier plunged the city and much of the country into the dark.
In scenes hard to believe in a sophisticated city of 3 million, some Kyiv residents resorted to collecting rainwater from drainpipes, as repair teams labored to reconnect supplies.
Friends and family members exchanged messages to find out who had electricity and water back. Some had one but not the other. The previous day’s aerial onslaught on Ukraine’s power grid left many with neither.
Cafés in Kyiv that by some small miracle had both quickly became oases of comfort on Thursday.
Oleksiy Rashchupkin, a 39-year-old investment banker, awoke to find that water had been reconnected to his third-floor flat but power had not. His freezer thawed in the blackout, leaving a puddle on his floor.
So he hopped into a cab and crossed the Dnieper River from left bank to right, to a café that he’d noticed had stayed open after previous Russian strikes. Sure enough, it was serving hot drinks, hot food and the music and Wi-Fi were on.
‘I’m here because there is heating, coffee and light,’ he said. ‘Here is life.’
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 70% of the Ukrainian capital was still without power on Thursday morning.
As Kyiv and other cities picked themselves up, Kherson on Thursday came under its heaviest bombardment since Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city two weeks ago. The barrage of missiles killed four people outside a coffee shop and a woman was also killed next to her house, witnesses said, speaking to Associated Press reporters.
In Kyiv, where cold rain fell on the remnants of previous snowfalls, the mood was grim but steely. The winter promises to be a long one. But Ukrainians say that if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention is to break them, he should think again.
‘Nobody will compromise their will and principles just for electricity,’ said Alina Dubeiko, 34. She, too, sought out the comfort of another, equally crowded, warm and lit café. Without electricity, heating and water at home, she was determined to keep up her work routine. Adapting to life shorn of its usual comforts, Dubeiko said she uses two glasses of water to wash, then catches her hair in a ponytail and is ready for her working day.
She said she’d rather be without power than live with the Russian invasion, which crossed the nine-month mark on Thursday.
‘Without light or you? Without you,’ she said, echoing remarks President Volodymyr Zelenskky made when Russia on Oct. 10 unleashed the first of what has now become a series of aerial attacks on key Ukrainian infrastructure.
Western leaders denounced the bombing campaign. “Strikes against civilian infrastructures are war crimes,” French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov acknowledged Thursday that it targeted Ukrainian energy facilities. But he said they were linked to Ukraine’s military command and control system and that the aim was to disrupt flows of Ukrainian troops, weapons and ammunition to front lines. Authorities for Kyiv and the wider Kyiv region reported a total of 7 people killed and dozens of wounded….
Mindful of the hardships — both now and ahead, as winter progresses — authorities are opening thousands of so-called “points of invincibility” — heated and powered spaces offering hot meals, electricity and internet connections. More than 3,700 were open across the country of Thursday morning, said a senior official in the presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.” Read more at AP News
Iran government supporters confront protesters at World Cup
By ISABEL DEBRE and CIARÁN FAHEY
“AL RAYYAN, Qatar (AP) — Tensions ran high at Iran’s second match at the World Cup on Friday as fans supporting the Iranian government harassed those protesting against it and stadium security seized flags, T-shirts and other items expressing support for the protest movement that has gripped the Islamic Republic.
Some fans were stopped by stadium security from bringing in Persian pre-revolutionary flags to match against Wales at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium. Others carrying such flags had them ripped from their hands by pro-government Iran fans, who also shouted insults at fans wearing T-shirts with the slogan of the protest movement gripping the country, ‘Woman, Life, Freedom.’
Unlike in their first match against England, the Iran players sang along to their national anthem before the match as some fans in the stadium wept, whistled and booed.
The national team has come under close scrutiny for any statements or gestures about the nationwide protests that have wracked Iran for weeks.
Shouting matches erupted in lines outside the stadium between fans screaming ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ and others shouting back ‘The Islamic Republic!’
Small mobs of men surrounded three different women giving interviews about the protests to foreign media outside the stadium, disrupting broadcasts as they angrily chanted, ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran!’ Many female fans appeared shaken as Iranian government supporters shouted at them in Farsi and filmed them close-up on their phones.
One 35-year-old woman named Maryam, who like other Iran fans declined to give her last name for fear of government reprisals, started to cry as shouting men blowing horns encircled her and filmed her face. She had the words ‘Woman Life Freedom’ painted on her face.
‘We want to raise awareness about his arrest and about the women’s rights movement. Simple,’ said Maryam, who lives in London but is originally from Tehran. ‘I’m not here to fight with anyone, but people have been attacking me and calling me a terrorist. All I’m here to say is that football doesn’t matter if people are getting killed in the streets.’
Maryam and her friends had worn hats emblazoned with the name of an outspoken Iranian former soccer player Voria Ghafouri, who had criticized Iranian authorities and was arrested in Iran on Thursday on accusations of spreading propaganda against the government. She said Iranian government supporters had taken the hats from their heads.” Read more at AP News
“French lawmakers backed a proposal to enshrine abortion rights in their Constitution, a response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.” Read more at New York Times
Space diversity: Europe’s space agency gets 1st parastronaut
By THOMAS ADAMSON
“PARIS (AP) — The European Space Agency made history Wednesday by selecting an amputee who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident to be among its newest batch of astronauts — a leap toward its pioneering ambition to send someone with a physical disability into space.
John McFall, a 41-year-old Briton who lost his right leg when he was 19 and went on to compete in the Paralympics, called his selection at Europe’s answer to NASA ‘a real turning point and mark in history.’
‘ESA has a commitment to send an astronaut with a physical disability into space ... This is the first time that a space agency has endeavored to embark on a project like this. And it sends a really, really strong message to humanity,’ he said.
The newly-minted parastronaut joins five career astronauts in the final selection unveiled during a Paris news conference — the conclusion of the agency’s first recruitment drive in over a decade aimed at bringing diversity to space travel.” Read more at AP News
“The screws are tightening on Iran’s government.
First, the country’s football team refused to sing the national anthem at their opening World Cup game — a gesture seen as a pledge of support for anti-government protests that have swept across the country since September.
Yesterday, the United Nations human rights council issued a scathing admonishment from dozens of countries, condemning Tehran for the deadly crackdown on the demonstrators.
Led by Germany, whose foreign minister attended the vote in person, 25 countries agreed to start an ‘independent fact-finding mission’ to establish the scope of the killings, arrests and torture that have taken place since unrest erupted over the death of a young woman detained for allegedly breaching Islamic dress codes.
It’s highly unlikely UN rights monitors will have access to Iran — previous requests to visit have been snubbed — but UN missions have conducted remote investigations before, including into Myanmar.
The regime isn’t without some friends — China, Russia and Venezuela criticized the vote for its ‘double standards’ and ‘hypocrisy.’ There were notable abstentions too, including from two close neighbors of Iran that happen to be US allies: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The rebuke at the UN is the latest in a raft of recent diplomatic censures targeting Tehran’s policies, including supplying military drones to Russia, its expanding atomic activities, foot-dragging in the nuclear talks and air strikes on northern Iraq.
The upshot is that the Islamic Republic probably hasn’t been this isolated since it cut ties with the West in 1979.” — Golnar Motevalli Read more at Bloomberg
Protests in Tehran on Oct. 8. Source: AFP/Getty Images
“Covid impact | A surge in Covid-19 cases in Beijing has left streets deserted and grocery-delivery services running out of capacity. Almost every district of the Chinese capital of 22 million people is seeing targeted lockdowns, and residents have been asked not to leave the city unless necessary.
The spike in cases didn’t stop a maskless President Xi Jinping from meeting his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel in Beijing, resuming his flurry of in-person summits.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Power down | Russian missile strikes on critical civilian infrastructure in Ukraine continue to frustrate authorities’ ability to restore power to most of the country and more than half of its regions still have problems with water supplies, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. The war has entered its ninth month.
Germany’s defense minister rejected a request from Poland to station surface-to-air Patriot missiles in western Ukraine, saying such a deployment would have to be agreed by NATO.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Fresh blow | Liz Truss and Boris Johnson joined a parliamentary rebellion to overturn Britain’s effective ban on onshore wind farms, creating a fresh headache for new UK leader Rishi Sunak. Both former prime ministers signed an amendment to government legislation that would ease current restrictions on onshore wind. It’s their first public act of dissent against Sunak’s administration.” Read more at Bloomberg
“An Islamist party that made unprecedented gains in Malaysia’s elections will discuss Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s offer to join his unity government as it positions itself as the key representative of the Malay community.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The number of American companies with regional headquarters in Hong Kong has dropped below mainland Chinese firms for the first time in at least 31 years.” Read more at Bloomberg
“An Australian court has blocked a proposal for a huge coal mine, saying the emissions produced by the fuel would threaten the rights of future generations.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Peru’s President Pedro Castillo said that he’ll reshuffle the cabinet after accepting the resignation of his latest prime minister, a sign of the country’s deepening political impasse.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Authorities in Taiwan carried out raids and questioned a group of people on suspicion they were buying votes on behalf of China in tomorrow’s island-wide election.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The devastation that cyclone Idai caused in Mozambique in 2019 helped galvanize the world to take action against climate change, much as deadly floods in Pakistan did this summer. Three years later, the impoverished southeast African nation has given up waiting for help from abroad and this month joined the club of gas-exporting countries. As its example shows, international assistance that comes too slowly or in half measures won’t incentivize countries to move away from climate-damaging fossil fuels.” Read more at Bloomberg
Buildings destroyed by Cyclone Idai in Beira on April 1, 2019. Photographer: Guillem Sartorio/AFP/Getty Images
Alarming manatee death toll in Florida prompts calls for endangered status
Mammals were downgraded from endangered to threatened in 2017, even as pollution and habitat loss drive starvation
“The deaths of almost 2,000 manatees in Florida’s coastal and inland waterways over the last two years has provoked an alliance of environmental groups to demand an urgent reclassification of the species to officially endangered.
The advocates, led by the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, insist the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) made a critical error in 2017 by prematurely downgrading the status of the giant aquatic mammals from endangered to merely threatened.
The move, they say, removed crucial federal protections to the species, sometimes also known as the sea cow, and allowed an almost unchecked decline in numbers after a previous revival.
During 2021, 1,015 manatees were killed, according to the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission, largely through starvation as pollution and habitat loss destroyed huge areas of seagrass vegetation they rely on for food.
Another 745 deaths have been recorded this year to 18 November, a two-year drop in numbers that represents 19% of the Atlantic population, and 13% of all manatees in Florida, the alliance states.” Read more at The Guardian
WORLD CUP
Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates after scoring against Ghana.Manu Fernandez/Associated Press
“Results: Portugal held off Ghana in yesterday’s highest profile match, 3-2. Brazil beat Serbia, 2-0, Switzerland bested Cameroon, 1-0, and Uruguay and Korea drew, 0-0. Here’s a recap.
Talent: He scored both goals to bring Brazil to victory yesterday. Meet Richarlison, Brazil’s new star.
The new recruits: More than 130 players at the tournament represent a country other than that of their birth. A few of them committed only months before the World Cup.
Matchups: The face-off between the U.S. and England may just be the biggest American soccer game in a decade. The English haven’t lost to the U.S. since 1993. They play each other at 2 p.m. Eastern. Here are today’s other games and results.” Read more at New York Times
1 furry thing: Out of the bag
Photo: TSA via AP
“An alert TSA agent at JFK airport noticed tufts of orange fur poking out of a slightly unzipped suitcase on Nov. 16.
As the bag went through the X-ray, the agent saw four paws and a tail belonging to a feline stowaway, AP reports.
‘The traveler said that the cat belonged to someone else in the household, implying that he was not aware that the cat was in the suitcase,’ TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said.
The stowaway cat, identified by the N.Y. Post as ‘Smells,’ was returned to its owner.
The cat's owner told the Post that Smells must have crawled into the suitcase of a visiting friend. She didn't know her tabby was missing until airport officials reached her.” Read more at Axios
“Lives Lived: Harriet Bograd helped Jews in Africa and elsewhere feel connected to their origins by helping them start businesses and open synagogues and schools. She died at 79.” Read more at New York Times