Facebook parent will no longer ban Trump’s access to its platforms
SAN FRANCISCO — Just over two years after Donald Trump’s accounts were suspended from Facebook and Instagram, Meta, the owner of the platforms, said Wednesday that it would reinstate the former president’s access to the social media services.
Trump, who had the most followed account on Facebook when he was barred, will in the coming weeks regain access to his accounts that collectively had hundreds of millions of followers, Meta said. In November, Trump’s account was also reinstated on Twitter, which had barred him since January 2021.
Meta suspended Trump from its platforms Jan. 7, 2021, the day after hundreds of people stormed the U.S. Capitol in his name, saying his posts ran the risk of inciting more violence. Trump’s accounts on other mainstream social media services, including YouTube and Twitter, were also removed that week.
But Meta, which critics have accused of censoring Trump and other conservative voices, said Wednesday that it had decided to reverse the bans because it had determined that the risk to public safety had “sufficiently receded.” The company also said it would add guardrails to “deter repeat offenses.”
“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs. “But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real-world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act.”
It is unclear whether Trump, who is seeking the White House again in 2024, will again become active on Facebook and Instagram. He has started his own social network, Truth Social, in which he has a financial stake.
A former Afghan soldier seeking U.S. asylum who was detained for months after being arrested while trying to cross the southern border has been freed from immigration detention and reunited with his brother, his attorney said Wednesday.
Abdul Wasi Safi’s release from custody in Eden, Texas, came after a judge dropped an immigration charge against him at the request of federal prosecutors.
Wasi Safi fled Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August 2021, fearing reprisals from the Taliban because he had provided U.S. forces with information on terrorists while working as an intelligence officer for the Afghan National Security Forces. Last summer, he began a treacherous journey from Brazil to the U.S.Mexico border, where he was arrested in September near Eagle Pass, Texas.
On Monday, a federal judge in Del Rio, Texas, dismissed the charge after prosecutors had filed a motion asking her to do so “in the interest of justice.”
Zachary Fertitta, one of his criminal defense attorneys, said Wednesday that Wasi Safi planned to speak at a news conference on Friday in Houston.
Afghan soldier freed: Abortion pill lawsuits:
Supporters of abortion rights filed separate lawsuits Wednesday challenging two states’ abortion pill restrictions, the opening salvo in what’s expected to a be a
protracted legal battle over access to the medications.
The lawsuits argue that limits on the drugs in North Carolina and West Virginia run afoul of the federal authority of the Food and Drug Administration, which has approved the pill as a safe and effective method for ending pregnancy.
The cases were brought by a North Carolina physician who prescribes the pill, mifepristone, and GenBioPro, which makes a generic version of the drug and sued in West Virginia.
The litigation turns on a longstanding legal principle that federal law, including FDA decisions, preempt state laws.
Ricin-laced letter: A Canadian woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to mailing a threatening letter containing the poison ricin to then-President Donald Trump at the White House.
The letter from Pascale Ferrier directing Trump to “give up and remove your application for this election,”
was intercepted at a mail sorting facility in September 2020, before it could reach the White House.
The 55-year-old Quebec woman also pleaded guilty to sending similar threatening letters to Texas law enforcement officials. She is expected to be sentenced in April to nearly 22 years in prison.
Cholera outbreak: Malawi’s cholera outbreak has claimed more than 1,000 lives, according to the country’s health minister, who warned that some cultural beliefs and hostility toward health workers were slowing efforts to curb infections.
Cholera had killed 1,002 people as of Tuesday, while 1,115 people were hospitalized from the outbreak that started last March, Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said.
Last weekend, angry villagers beat up health workers and damaged a facility at the Nandumbo Health Centre in the Southern Region’s Balaka district.
Residents accused health workers of denying them an opportunity to conduct dignified burials.
Mideast tensions: Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian who allegedly tried to stab a soldier in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, while a Palestinian teenager was shot dead after brandishing what Israeli police said was a fake pistol during an operation in east Jerusalem, according to Palestinian officials.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as Aref Abdel Nasser Lahlouh, 20. The Israeli military said he was carrying a knife and was shot after he attempted to attack a soldier at a military post.
Earlier Wednesday, Israeli forces demolished the home of a Palestinian gunman who allegedly killed a female Israeli soldier at an east Jerusalem checkpoint last year. Police said some 300 officers and troops entered the Shuafat refugee camp to demolish the home of Uday
Tamimi. Police said they opened fire on a Palestinian who they suspected was armed and aiming at forces, but the weapon turned out to be fake.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 17-year-old Mohammed Ali was killed.
Letter bomb suspect: Spanish authorities have arrested a retired man on suspicion he sent six letters containing explosive material to Spain’s prime minister and the U.S. and Ukrainian embassies in the country, police said in a statement.
The 74-year-old Spanish national was arrested in the northern city of Miranda de Ebro and was “very active” on social media, police said. They added that authorities “do not rule out the participation or influence of other people” in the case, and a search of the man’s home was still underway.
An employee at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid was slightly injured while handling a letter bomb in November.