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Mark Zuckerberg’s exceptional ability to retract his own words

Mark Zuckerberg’s exceptional ability to retract his own words

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TechCrunch reports: You can’t remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspiculously remain. An email receipt of a Facebook message from 2010 reviewed by TechCrunch proves Zuckerberg sent people messages that no longer appear in their Facebook chat logs or…

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These messages show Julian Assange talked about seeking hacked files from Guccifer 2.0

These messages show Julian Assange talked about seeking hacked files from Guccifer 2.0

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BuzzFeed reports: Twitter DMs obtained by BuzzFeed News show that in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was working to obtain files from Guccifer 2.0, an online hacktivist persona linked to by Russian military intelligence, the clearest evidence to date of WikiLeaks admitting its pursuit of Guccifer 2.0. “[P]lease ‘leave,’ their conversation with them and us,” WikiLeaks asked journalist Emma Best, who was also negotiating with Guccifer 2.0 for access to what it had teased on its blog as “exclusive access”…

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The demise of the nation state

The demise of the nation state

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Rana Dasgupta writes: What is happening to national politics? Every day in the US, events further exceed the imaginations of absurdist novelists and comedians; politics in the UK still shows few signs of recovery after the “national nervous breakdown” of Brexit. France “narrowly escaped a heart attack” in last year’s elections, but the country’s leading daily feels this has done little to alter the “accelerated decomposition” of the political system. In neighbouring Spain, El País goes so far as to…

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Shell scientists foresaw a storm like Sandy, as well as climate lawsuits

Shell scientists foresaw a storm like Sandy, as well as climate lawsuits

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E&E News reports: Two decades ago, a group of researchers envisioned a violent storm ripping through the East Coast with such force that it would transform young people into climate activists, spark lawsuits and cause government leaders to turn on fossil fuel companies. They were only off by two years. They also worked for Shell Oil Co. In 1998, Shell researchers wrote an internal memo about future scenarios that could harm their business. They determined that “only a crisis can…

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The unnoticed rise of America’s white gangs

The unnoticed rise of America’s white gangs

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Donna Ladd reports: Surveys of young Americans have shown that 40% identifying as gang members are white, but police tend to undercount them at 10% to 14% and overcount black and Hispanic members, says Babe Howell, a criminal law professor at City University of New York who focuses on crime and race. “Police see groups of young white people as individuals, each responsible for his or her own conduct, and hold young people of color in street gangs criminally liable…

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Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters

Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters

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Center for Responsive Politics reports: As the final weeks of the 2016 elections ticked down, voters in swing states like Nevada and North Carolina began seeing eerie promotional travel ads as they scrolled through their Facebook feeds or clicked through Google sites. In one, a woman with a French accent cheerfully welcomes visitors to the “Islamic State of France,” where “under Sharia law, you can enjoy everything the Islamic State of France has to offer, as long as you follow…

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Foreign visas plunge under Trump

Foreign visas plunge under Trump

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Politico reports: The United States is granting fewer visitor visas to people from around the world — not just Muslims — as President Donald Trump ratchets up his anti-immigration rhetoric. By one measure, the U.S. granted 13 percent fewer visitor visas over the past 12 months when compared with fiscal year 2016, according to State Department data analyzed by POLITICO — a downward trend that appears to have accelerated in the past six months. It’s unclear whether the drop is…

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Thousands of internal documents help explain how ISIS stayed in power so long

Thousands of internal documents help explain how ISIS stayed in power so long

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The New York Times reports: Weeks after the militants seized the city, as fighters roamed the streets and religious extremists rewrote the laws, an order rang out from the loudspeakers of local mosques. Public servants, the speakers blared, were to report to their former offices. To make sure every government worker got the message, the militants followed up with phone calls to supervisors. When one tried to beg off, citing a back injury, he was told: “If you don’t show…

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Has the world given up on the Palestinians?

Has the world given up on the Palestinians?

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Joshua Keating writes: International attention briefly returned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after 18 Palestinians were killed and at least 750 wounded by Israeli fire during mass protests on the Gaza-Israel border Friday, according to Gaza authorities. It was the worst day of violence in the enclave since the 2014 Gaza war. The idea for the marches originally came from a local social media activist several months ago but was then promoted by Hamas, which rules Gaza, as part of what…

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The guy who wrote the book on the deep state wishes Trumpworld would shut up about the deep state

The guy who wrote the book on the deep state wishes Trumpworld would shut up about the deep state

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BuzzFeed reports: Mike Lofgren wrote the book on the deep state — literally. The longtime Republican aide, who worked for three decades on Capitol Hill, published The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government in January 2016. Its jacket copy touts Lofgren’s “gripping portrait of the dismal swamp on the Potomac and the revolution it will take to set us back on course.” So you might think the 64-year-old Lofgren is gratified that…

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How Lyme disease the first epidemic of climate change

How Lyme disease the first epidemic of climate change

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Mary Beth Pfeiffer writes: In the tally of species that will evolve or perish as temperatures rise, now consider the moose. The lumbering king of the deer family, known for antlers that can span six feet like giant outstretched fingers, the moose faces a litany of survival threats, from wolves and bears to brain worms and liver fluke parasites. But in the late 1990s in many northern states and Canada, something else began to claim adult cows and bull moose…

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It’s not my fault, my brain implant made me do it

It’s not my fault, my brain implant made me do it

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Probes that can transmit electricity inside the skull raise questions about personal autonomy and responsibility. Hellerhoff, CC BY-SA By Laura Y. Cabrera, Michigan State University and Jennifer Carter-Johnson, Michigan State University Mr. B loves Johnny Cash, except when he doesn’t. Mr. X has watched his doctors morph into Italian chefs right before his eyes. The link between the two? Both Mr. B and Mr. X received deep brain stimulation (DBS), a procedure involving an implant that sends electric impulses to…

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China’s tariffs test the political patience of farm country

China’s tariffs test the political patience of farm country

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Politico reports: China’s latest trade actions in response to U.S. tariffs are striking right at the heart of Trump country. Just the mere mention of the threat to slap tariffs on key U.S. exports threatens to further upend a farm economy already suffering from low prices. It also risks further alienating an important base that has long been frustrated with the administration’s trade policies. U.S. farmers preparing to plant soybeans this season are now facing the prospect of losing money…

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Facebook said the personal data of most of its 2 billion users has been collected and shared with outsiders

Facebook said the personal data of most of its 2 billion users has been collected and shared with outsiders

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The Washington Post reports: Facebook said Wednesday that most of its 2 billion users likely have had their public profiles scraped by outsiders without the users’ explicit permission, dramatically raising the stakes in a privacy controversy that has dogged the company for weeks, spurred investigations in the United States and Europe, and sent the company’s stock price tumbling. The acknowledgment was part of a broader disclosure by Facebook on Wednesday about the ways in which various levels of user data…

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As Malaysia moves to ban ‘fake news,’ worries about who decides the truth

As Malaysia moves to ban ‘fake news,’ worries about who decides the truth

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The New York Times reports: In highway billboards and radio announcements, the government of Malaysia is warning of a new enemy: “fake news.” On Monday, the lower house of Parliament passed a bill outlawing fake news, the first measure of its kind in the world. The proposal, which allows for up to six years in prison for publishing or circulating misleading information, is expected to pass the Senate this week and to come into effect soon after. The legislation would…

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