Facebook banning groups that openly support QAnon
OAKLAND, Calif. — Facebook said it will ban groups that openly support QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and “deep state” government officials.
The company said Tuesday that it will remove Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts for “representing QAnon” — even if they don’t promote violence. The social network said it will consider a variety of factors to decide if a group meets its criteria for a ban, including its name, the biography or “about” section of the page, and discussions within the page, group or Instagram account.
Mentions of QAnon in a group focused on a different subject won’t necessarily lead to a ban, Facebook said. Administrators of banned groups will have their personal accounts disabled as well.
The company said it started to enforce the policy Tuesday but cautioned that it “will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks.”
“We’ve seen several issues that led to today’s update,” Facebook said in a blog post. “While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public.”
Iran ordered to pay: A U.S. judge has ordered Iran to pay $1.45 billion to the family of a former FBI agent believed to have been kidnapped by the Islamic Republic while on an unauthorized CIA mission to an Iranian island in 2007.
The judgment this month comes after Robert Levinson’s family and the U.S. government now believe he died in the Iranian government’s custody, something long denied by Tehran, though officials over time have offered contradictory accounts about what happened to him on Kish Island.
In a ruling last week, the U.S. District Court in Washington found Iran owed Levinson’s family $1.35 billion in punitive damages and $107 million in compensatory damages for his kidnapping. The court cited the case of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died in 2017 shortly after being freed from captivity in North Korea, in deciding to award the amount of punitive damages to Levinson’s family.
Candidate’s death: A North Dakota state legislative candidate who won the June primary over the longtime incumbent and target of Gov. Doug Burgum has died due to complications from COVID-19, his mother said Tuesday.
David Andahl, 55, died Monday. His mother, Pat Andahl, told the Bismarck Tribune that her son had been hospitalized with the coronavirus disease and died after being sick for about four days.
David Andahl and fellow District 8 House candidate Dave Nehring won the Republicans’ endorsements and voters’ nominations to defeat one of North Dakota’s most powerful lawmakers, Rep. Jeff Delzer, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
The June primary drew the attention of Burgum, a Republican, who gave more than $1.8 million to a political action committee that successfully targeted Delzer’s seat. Delzer did not advance to the Nov. 3 general election.
Texas police shooting: A white police officer has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a Black man following a reported disturbance at a convenience store in a small East Texas town, authorities said.
Jonathan Price was walking away from Wolfe City police Officer Shaun Lucas on Saturday night when Lucas opened fire, killing Price, the Texas Rangers said in a statement released by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Lucas, 22, remained jailed Tuesday. Jail records show bail was s et at $1 million.
EU plastics: The European Union is facing a growing waste problem and is at risk of missing its plastic recycling targets for 2025 and 2030 as more stringent export rules will be implemented next year, the bloc’s independent auditor warned Tuesday.
As part of its strategy adopted in 2018, the European Commission set itself the goal that at least 50% of all plastic packaging waste will be recycled by 2025, and to reach 55% by 2030. The EU’s executive arm also wants to ensure that all plastic packaging on the EU market will be either reusable or recyclable by 2030.
But while the European Commission has vowed to make the fight against climate change a priority, EU countries are still incinerating more than they recycle, releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Samo Jereb, the auditor in charge of the review, said reversing that trend is a “daunting challenge,” especially amid the coronavirus crisis.
Poisoning confirmed:
The global chemical watchdog group has confirmed Germany and other countries’ findings that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was the victim of an attack with a Soviet-era nerve agent, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said Tuesday.
Steffen Seibert said in a statement that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, had carried out its own analysis of samples taken from Navalny, and they “agree with the results already from special laboratories in Germany, Sweden and France.”
Navalny, a corruption investigator who is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, was flown to Germany two days after falling ill Aug. 20 during a domestic flight in Russia. German officials said last month that labs found traces of a chemical agent from the Novichok family in the Russian politician’s system.
Nurse convicted: A German court convicted a male nurse Tuesday of three cases of murder for injecting elderly patients with fatal doses of insulin because he was tired of caring for them or wanted to steal their belongings.
The Munich regional court sentenced the defendant, previously identified as Grzegorz Stanislaw Wolsztajn, 38. to life imprisonment. It ordered him to remain imprisoned beyond the minimum 15-year term.
Prosecutors had accused him of killing six of his patients, but later acknowledged that not all of the deaths could be conclusively attributed to him, the dpa news agency reported.
Easter Island: About 25 residents from remote Easter Island who have been stranded far from their loved ones for more than six months because of the coronavirus will be able to return home this week on a French military plane.
The group has been stranded on Tahiti. Many arrived in March planning to stay for just a few weeks, but they got stuck when the virus swept across the globe and their flights back home were canceled.