Here’s how Facebook’s local news algorithm change led to the worst riots Paris has seen in 50 years

Here’s how Facebook’s local news algorithm change led to the worst riots Paris has seen in 50 years

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BuzzFeed reports: This week, protesters scaled the Arc de Triomphe, burned cars, and clashed with police in the third consecutive weekend of riots in France. More than 300 people were arrested in Paris last weekend alone, and 37,000 law enforcement officers have been deployed around the country to restore order. The “Gilets Jaunes” or “Yellow Jackets” protests have only gotten more violent since they began last month. Three people have died, hundreds more have been injured. To hear the protesters…

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Brexit legal advice warns UK could be trapped in endless negotiations

Brexit legal advice warns UK could be trapped in endless negotiations

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CNN reports: Britain could be trapped in endless negotiations with the European Union by Theresa May’s Brexit deal, the British government’s top legal adviser has warned. In the full written advice by the attorney general, which the government was forced to publish after lawmakers found it in contempt of parliament, ministers are warned that the “backstop” insurance policy relating to Northern Ireland could last “indefinitely” if relations with the EU break down. The six-page document, dated November 13, was described…

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Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s hotel after 2016 election

Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s hotel after 2016 election

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The Washington Post reports: Lobbyists representing the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at President Trump’s D.C. hotel within a month of Trump’s election in 2016 — paying for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel in just three months, according to organizers of the trips and documents obtained by The Washington Post. At the time, these lobbyists were reserving large numbers of D.C.-area hotel rooms as part of an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free…

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Inside the North Carolina Republican vote machine: cash, pills — and ballots

Inside the North Carolina Republican vote machine: cash, pills — and ballots

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BuzzFeed reports: The allegations that Republicans tampered with absentee ballots in a close North Carolina election represent the most serious federal election tampering case in years, one that allegedly stole votes from elderly black voters in the state’s rural south. Now two women intimately involved with the McCrae Dowless’s absentee ballot machine have revealed to BuzzFeed News its grim and chaotic workings, in which Dowless tracked votes on yellow paper and paid his workers, including family members, from stacks of…

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‘If the Crown Prince went in front of a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes,’ said Sen. Bob Corker

‘If the Crown Prince went in front of a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes,’ said Sen. Bob Corker

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump and senior members of his administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, have insisted that no single piece of evidence irrefutably links [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed [bin Salman] to the killing [of journalist Jamal Khashoggi]. But [after a briefing from CIA Director Gina Haspel] the senators, in effect, said that doesn’t matter, because the evidence they heard convinced them beyond the shadow of a doubt. “If the Crown…

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Mueller is laying siege to the Trump presidency

Mueller is laying siege to the Trump presidency

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Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes write: “Today is the first day I actually thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office,” said the legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin on CNN last Thursday. “This is the beginning of the end for Trump,” declared Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general, on MSNBC. “The deal may be among the biggest news in the nearly 18-month investigation,” wrote Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder, and Norman Eisen in The New York Times. It happens…

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Beto O’Rourke met with Barack Obama as he ponders a 2020 presidential campaign

Beto O’Rourke met with Barack Obama as he ponders a 2020 presidential campaign

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The Washington Post reports: Beto O’Rourke, weighing whether to mount a 2020 presidential bid, met recently with Barack Obama at his post-presidency offices in Washington. The meeting, which was held on Nov. 16 at the former president’s offices in Foggy Bottom, came as former Obama aides have encouraged the Democratic House member to run, seeing him as capable of the same kind of inspirational campaign that caught fire in the 2008 presidential election. The meeting was the first sign of…

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There is no greater national security threat to the U.S. than climate change

There is no greater national security threat to the U.S. than climate change

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Michael H Fuchs writes: Imagine that US leaders were told that hundreds of nuclear weapons were set on a timer to detonate across the planet, progressively and in increasing numbers, over the coming years and decades. The lives of millions would be upended, if not made nearly impossible to survive, by transformed weather patterns and resource scarcity. Tens of millions would become migrants as regions became uninhabitable. Millions would die, more and more as time went on. If this science…

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United States ranks as 3rd worst country in the world for sexual violence against women

United States ranks as 3rd worst country in the world for sexual violence against women

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A Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of 548 experts focused on women’s issues including aid and development professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, non-government organisation workers, journalists, and social commentators, finds: The United States ranked as the 10th most dangerous country for women, the only Western nation to appear in the top 10. The United States shot up in the rankings after tying joint third with Syria when respondents were asked which was the most dangerous country for women in terms of…

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Britain can legally cancel Brexit. That’s EU advice – but will parliament agree?

Britain can legally cancel Brexit. That’s EU advice – but will parliament agree?

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Jolyon Maugham writes: We can cancel Brexit. That’s what the advocate general to the court of justice of the EU, Europe’s highest court, advised this morning. The advocate general, Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona, said that the UK can cancel its article 50 notice unilaterally. This means that if our own parliament decides that our interests are best served by remaining, the EU cannot stand in our way. His decision is not certain to be followed by the full court – which…

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Collapse of civilisation is on the horizon, says David Attenborough

Collapse of civilisation is on the horizon, says David Attenborough

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The Guardian reports: The collapse of civilisation and the natural world is on the horizon, Sir David Attenborough has told the UN climate change summit in Poland. The naturalist was chosen to represent the world’s people in addressing delegates of almost 200 nations who are in Katowice to negotiate how to turn pledges made in the 2015 Paris climate deal into reality. As part of the UN’s people’s seat initiative, messages were gathered from all over the world to inform…

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Mueller is building a conspiracy case that’s likely to ensnare Trump and his family

Mueller is building a conspiracy case that’s likely to ensnare Trump and his family

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Peter Zeidenberg writes: It appears that the Mueller investigation is reaching its endgame. After a two-month hiatus for the midterms, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is prepared to once again show its work. These developments are ominous for President Donald Trump. In short order, expect to see a case of conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election to be laid out in court. Defenders of the president have, despite the obvious progress of the Mueller investigation — more than 30…

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Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering

Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump took to Twitter Monday morning, haranguing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and witnesses to his ongoing Russia investigation. His tweets have become a common morning occurrence, particularly in recent weeks. But legal experts are calling Monday’s missives a newsworthy development that amounts to evidence of obstructing justice. Trump’s first statement went out after Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney who pleaded guilty last week for lying to Congress about the president’s real estate…

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Trump’s skepticism of climate science is mostly echoed across GOP and those who know better remain silent

Trump’s skepticism of climate science is mostly echoed across GOP and those who know better remain silent

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The Washington Post reports: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has become a staunch Trump ally since running against him for president in 2016, has consistently attempted to push his party to address climate change. He worked in 2010 with then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to try to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation, an effort that ultimately failed. Graham has endorsed a carbon tax and challenged his party to stop giving credence to the out­liers who question the science….

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