Facebook bans Indian politician over hate speech

Hasan Chowdhury,
The Telegraph•September 3, 2020
  

Raja Singh, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party led by incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi, was blocked from Facebook - SAJJAD HUSSAIN /AFP

Facebook has banned a politician from India’s ruling party over alleged hate speech on the social media service after facing strong condemnation over its inaction and handling of similar posts.

Raja Singh, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party led by incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi, was blocked from Facebook over posts in which he suggested Rohingya refugees in the country should be shot and incited hate towards Muslims.

The ban marks a significant move by Facebook in India, its largest market with over 300m users and a country where it has faced a growing political storm from critics who have accused it in the past of failing to take down extremist posts to protect its business.

On Wednesday, Ajit Mohan, the head of the Silicon Valley giant’s India division, faced a series of questions from a parliamentary committee over reports in the Wall Street Journal that Facebook refused to apply its policy on hate speech to posts from BJP politicians.


The paper claimed that Facebook deemed posts from the politician violated its rules on hate speech back in March, but left the posts up after a top executive of the firm in India was alleged to have waived the call for them to be taken down.
Profile | Narendra Modi

The Hindu nationalist party has faced growing criticism in recent months both at home and internationally over the spread of propaganda on Facebook and its sister apps such as WhatsApp that promote violence against Muslims and other minorities in the country.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said: “We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform.”

The company claimed its process for evaluating potential violators is “extensive”. Mr Singh has claimed he was not responsible for the posts that went on his page.

It comes as Facebook has upped its efforts in recent months to make further inroads into the India market, after it announced a $5.7bn (£4.6bn) investment in April into Reliance Jio, the telecoms empire owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst promoted a far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims coronavirus cases are inflated by healthcare providers

Oma Seddiq,Eliza Relman Business Insider•September 2, 2020

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, speaks with reporters.

Associated Press


Republican Sen. Joni Ernst pushed a conspiracy theory that coronavirus deaths in the US are being drastically overcounted because healthcare providers want to be paid more.

During a campaign stop in Iowa, her home state, Ernst said she was "so skeptical" of the reported national figures and noted that medical professionals are compensated at higher rates for COVID cases.

The unsubstantiated claim has been promoted by the far-right conspiracy group QAnon and President Donald Trump.

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, pushed a baseless conspiracy theory on Monday claiming that US deaths from the coronavirus have been vastly over-reported by medical professionals.

During a Monday campaign stop in Black Hawk County, an attendee told Ernst he believed coronavirus cases and deaths are being overcounted in the US, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.

Ernst replied that she's similarly "so skeptical" of the official figures, which are currently at 6 million infections and 185,000 deaths in the US, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. And the senator baselessly suggested the numbers have been vastly inflated by medical professionals, who receive more money from the federal government for handling COVID-19 patients.

"These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they're doing?" Ernst told the crowd.


"They do get reimbursed higher amounts if it's a COVID-related illness or death," she told the Falls Courier after the event. "I heard the same thing on the news. ... They're thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19. ... I'm just really curious. It would be interesting to know that."

The claim that case counts and deaths are fraudulently tallied has been widely debunked by medical professionals and public health experts.

The official coronavirus numbers are most likely significantly undercounted, according to experts. Researchers at Yale University reported in July that nearly 30,000 likely coronavirus deaths in the US had not been reported.

Ernst, who's facing a competitive race for reelection this year, made these comments a day after the White House announced Iowa is currently suffering from the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the country.

"Rural and urban counties in Iowa continue to have increases in case and test positivity. Common sense preventive measures must be implemented to stop further spread," White House coronavirus task force officials wrote.

President Donald Trump promoted the same conspiracy over the weekend in a tweet that was later removed by Twitter for violating the platform's rules about spreading misinformation.

On Sunday, the president retweeted QAnon follower "Mel Q," who shared a message falsely claiming that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported only 9,000 people — or just 6% of the more than 180,000 reported deaths — were actually killed by the virus.

In reality, the CDC reported that 94% of those who've died of COVID-19 in the US also suffered from another disease that contributed to their death. These so-called "co-morbidities" include obesity, diabetes, and asthma.

Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci fact-checked the conspiracy this week, explaining that while the vast majority of people who've died from the coronavirus in the US had underlying conditions, it was COVID-19 that killed them.

"That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn't die of COVID-19. They did," Fauci said. "It's not 9,000 deaths from COVID-19, it's 180-plus thousand deaths."

Young Belarusians are turning away from Russia and looking towards Europe

Félix Krawatzek, Senior Researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies and Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford,
The Conversation•September 3, 2020

Since Belarus’s disputed presidential elections on August 9, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have taken to the streets. Their protests have been met with extreme police brutality.

According to the country’s electoral commission, Alexander Lukashenko won 80% of the vote share, and his principal opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, received 10%.

While some older people, particularly women, have taken to the streets, young people have been at the forefront of the protests. In early September, teenagers were even filmed being removed from school by security services amid student protests.

At the Berlin-based Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), we’ve been conducting surveys among young Belarusians since 2019. One survey in late June 2020, just before the election, found that support for Lukashenko was around 10% among young people.


Our survey results also show that young people are turning away from Russia to look towards Europe.
Between Russia and Europe

Separate research from early 2020 found that Belarusians appear content with their country being slightly pro-Russian. But people under 40 were significantly more likely to want closer relations with the west.

The ZOiS’s own online surveys have been asking young people what kind of relationship they want Belarus to have with the EU and Russia. Our surveys include 2,000 young people aged between 16 and 34, though the June 2020 survey included young people of voting age between 18 and 34. The respondents, who live in the country’s six largest towns, were included based on quotas for age, gender and city of residence.

Since the ZOiS survey was first conducted in 2019, young Belarusians have significantly shifted away from wanting closer relations with Russia and instead are seeking closer relations with EU countries. Facing the trade-off between closer EU relations and worsening relations with Russia, 55% of young people now wish for closer relations with the EU.

Graph showing shift towards Europe of young Belarusians.

Asked whether Russia and Belarus should unite as one state, more than 70% of young Belarusians were opposed to the prospect. A union between the two countries was the ultimate aim of the 1999 Union State treaty which intends to create a federation between Belarus and Russia that would harmonise their laws, state symbols, economy and politics.

Graph showing reluctance among young Belarusians for the country to unite with Russia

Our results showed a clear division of views between those living in the east and west of Belarus, with those living in the east, near the Russian border, is significantly more critical of the EU and favourable to Russia. We also found that the better-educated respondents and those who don’t use any state media were particularly in favour of closer relations with the EU. Those with a lower level of education and no political interest were more likely to want closer relations with Russia.
Language and identity

The growth in political interest and discontent predates the August election and can be linked to the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which laid bare the ineffectiveness of the Belarusian state.

Read more: Belarus election: why strongman Alexander Lukashenko faces unprecedented resistance

But the current protests also represent a national awakening. Many of the protesters have draped themselves in red and white, colours reminiscent of the independent Belarusian People’s Republic that existed for less than a year after March 1918. Its white-red-white flag returned briefly after the Soviet Union’s collapse, but after a referendum in 1995 it was replaced by the country’s current green-red flag resembling the Soviet Belarusian flag.

The question of Belarusian identity is, therefore, crucial to the current protests. The Belarusian language has been largely marginalised since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lukashenko himself prefers speaking Russian, and Belarusian has become a statement of opposition. The young Belarusians we’ve surveyed overwhelmingly speak Russian in their daily interactions, although a third consider both to be their native languages.

Still, we found that young people have no strong desire to speak more Belarusian. Instead, more than a quarter of our respondents said they didn’t care, suggesting that the language issue was not a crucial political and social question for young people. People living in towns in the east were even less likely to have a desire to speak more Belarusian. But those respondents over 25-years-old, the better educated ones and women were significantly more likely to express a desire to speak more Belarusian.

Still, protesters are calling for the autonomy to make a political choice. They have expressed this using traditional Belarusian symbols, including elements of medieval history such as a knight, which refer to the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th-18th centuries.
Visions of Europe

In June 2020, we also asked our respondents what country Belarus should resemble, both politically and economically. Our initial analysis shows that economically, Switzerland was the most frequently mentioned country and was also the second most desired in political terms. Germany came second economically, and first politically, with Sweden third in economic terms.

Graph showing which other country young Belarusians think their country should resemble.

All this shows how young Belarusians are increasingly oriented towards European countries. Their turn away from Russia, and the Soviet values associated with it, is striking. The continuing mobilisation is, therefore, part of a new political awakening which is seeking to establish Belarus’s independence both politically and symbolically.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Félix Krawatzek is Senior Researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), an independent research institute funded by the German government. The institute also receives funding from German and international research councils. The survey this article refers to was supported by ZOiS.

How Japan, which has the world's oldest population, has so far managed to keep its nursing homes safe during the pandemic
James Pasley Business Insider•September 1, 2020

A nursing home with care offers the visit through a glass window to prevent infection in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo on May 12, 2020, amid an outbreak of COVID-19.

The Yomiuri Shimbun/Reuters

Japan, which has the oldest population in the world, has about 1 million people living in nursing homes, while the US has about 1.2 million, Reuters reported.


Despite similar numbers, 14% of Japan's 1,225 COVID-19 deaths by August 30 were elderly people in nursing homes.


In comparison, 40% of the US's 180,000 COVID-19 deaths were people living in nursing homes, according to the Washington Post.


One of the reasons for Japan's success is that there is an expectation that the elderly will be looked after and not neglected, and because of this nursing homes are closely monitored.

Despite a huge elderly population, Japan has had few COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. Experts say it comes down to a culture that respects the elderly, and because people took the pandemic seriously from the beginning.

Japan has the oldest population in the world — more than 28% of its population is older than 65, equating to about 36 million people, the average life expectancy is over 81 years old, and the average age is 47.

About 1 million people in Japan live in nursing homes, compared to 1.2 million people in the US, Reuters reported.

Despite that similarity, 14% of Japan's 1,225 COVID-19 deaths by August 30 were people living in nursing homes, according to the Washington Post.


In comparison, 40% of the US's 180,000 COVID-19 deaths were people living in nursing homes. In the US, it's gotten to the point where nursing homes are described as "death pits."

Not that Japan's nursing home response has been perfect. In April, the system was inundated with a wave of coronavirus infections, and there have been more than 100 clusters in nursing homes.

In August, Business Insider's Rhea Mahbubani reviewed inspections reports for 220 US care facilities that were flagged for violations. Numerous reports said nursing homes had a lack of hygiene and infection control, unmet medical and nutritional needs, and neglect.

One of the reasons the coronavirus has not hit Japan's nursing homes harder is that Japanese society expects the elderly to be looked after, not neglected, and that nursing homes are closely monitored, the Post reported.

National Institute of Population and Social Security Research deputy director-general Reiko Hayashi told the Post that Japan's quick reaction helped early in the year, restricting the movements of visitors and staff at nursing homes when the pandemic was spreading.'

A nursing home in Toho, Fukuoka, Japan, in 2017.
The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

Since early March, the majority of Japan's nursing homes banned family visits, Reuters reported.

National Center for Global Health and Medicine infectious-disease expert Kayoko Hayakawa told the Post that Japan's nursing homes also have high expectations for hygiene, and strict "day-to-day precautions" were already in place to stop infections.

"Japan's elderly care facilities have taken great care in protecting the elderly, not just from this virus but from norovirus, influenza, and other germs," she said.

At one nursing home near Tokyo, called Cross Heart home, staff members took their own temperatures, filled out medical history forms, disinfected themselves, and ensured access to residents was closely monitored.
The only time some family members were allowed in was if a patient was close to dying.

Cross Heart home's head caregiver Chihiro Kasuya told the Post: "The very basic principle of elderly care is washing your hands at each step of your work: Take care of someone, wash your hands, do another job, wash your hands. But now it is even more thorough."

Staff members don't all wear masks, since it's detrimental for communication with patients. The focus is instead to keep the coronavirus out from the beginning.

Duped by Russia, freelancers ensnared in disinformation campaign by promise of easy money
Jack Stubbs, Reuters•September 2, 2020

Duped by Russia, freelancers ensnared in disinformation campaign by promise of easy money
Freelance journalist Walters is pictured near her home after speaking to Reuters in London

By Jack Stubbs

LONDON (Reuters) - When freelance journalist Laura Walters submitted a 1,000 word article about Chinese political influence in New Zealand to her new editors at non-profit media outlet Peace Data, the response was emphatic.

"I'd like to express our deep gratitude for your work," wrote Peace Data communications manager Alice Schultz in a June 15 email seen by Reuters. "It's hard to believe how totalitarian countries like China (or Russia) are finding their ways to meddle even in the strongest democracies around the globe."

But that email, from a person claiming to be Schultz, now appears to have been a small part of one such meddling attempt.


Acting on a tip from the FBI, Facebook and Twitter said on Tuesday they had identified Peace Data as the center of a Russian political influence campaign targeting left-wing voters in the United States, Britain and other countries.

The website succeeded in tricking and hiring freelance journalists to write articles about topics including the U.S. presidential election, the coronavirus pandemic and alleged Western war crimes, Facebook said.

Email correspondence reviewed by Reuters and interviews with six journalists commissioned by the website show how the writers were approached on social media, paid up to $250 per article and some times encouraged to insert political angles into their work.

A person who identified themselves as Bernadett Plaschil, an associate editor at Peace Data, told Reuters via email: "We're really confused by these accusations and deny all of them." The person declined to speak via phone or video call.

The news about Peace Data follows warnings that Russia is attempting to sway the outcome of November's election after what U.S. intelligence officials have said was a concerted effort to boost the campaign of President Donald Trump in 2016.

Russia has repeatedly denied those allegations and the Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Peace Data on Wednesday.

"I actually referenced the Russian 2016 interference in the article I wrote," UK-based Walters, who was paid $250 to write the story for Peace Data in June, told Reuters. "I appreciate the irony right now."

OLD SCHOOL TACTICS

Peace Data "staff" approached Walters and other authors online, usually in private messages on Twitter or business networking site LinkedIn. They offered between $100 to $250 for an article and paid promptly via internet money transfers, the writers said.

All of the writers contacted by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity due to fears of professional repercussions, said they had no knowledge about the website's Russian backing before Tuesday.

Some of the journalists said they viewed the work as an easy way to earn money during the coronavirus outbreak. Others were aspiring reporters looking for a break. "My first published article on an independent news source," one of the writers said when posting their work on social media in May.

While some of the authors said there was no overt political direction from the Peace Data staff, others said the website's editorial line made them uncomfortable.

"There was an over-stated political angle put into my stories," said one journalist who wrote for Peace Data about Turkey and the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"It rapidly stopped being a news article as they kept asking for more focus on political topics with a particular spin," the person added.

Russia's use of fake organizations to ensnare unwitting agents and activists as part of its propaganda efforts dates back to the Soviet Union, said Thomas Rid, a professor at John Hopkins University and author of Active Measures, a book about political warfare.

As efforts to catch online influence operations have increased since 2016, "defaulting back to some of the old school tactics appears to be what they are doing to try to stay hidden," he said.

Walters said her experiences showed the importance of improving public awareness about efforts to deceive people online.

"The level of sophistication, the effort that's gone into it... they obviously think it's worth it and it's going to amount to something," she said.

"So I feel like if I can be fooled by something like this, anyone could be," she added. "But it's probably the most interesting thing that's going to happen to me for a very long time."

US jobless claims drop sharply as government changes counting method

Dominic Rushe,The Guardian•September 3, 2020

Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/AP

The number of people filing claims for unemployment benefits dropped sharply last week as the US labor department switched to a new method of counting weekly jobless claims figures.

For the week ending 29 August, 881,000 claims for benefits were filed, down from just over 1m the previous week. It was only the second time since the pandemic hit the US economy that claims had dipped below 1m.

However, last week the labor department announced it was switching its statistical model to better reflect the extraordinary number of unemployment claims made during the pandemic.

Government bodies routinely use “seasonal adjustments” to smooth out annually occurring events that can cause spikes in numbers, such as the January layoffs of retail workers hired for the holiday season. The unprecedented nature of the coronavirus has meant the old method of seasonal adjustments may have overstated the actual number of weekly unemployment claims.

While the fall in the latest claims numbers suggests firings are slowing, the job market remains deeply troubled. The labor department said the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 15 was over 29 million, an increase of 2m from the previous week.
On Friday, the August jobs report will be released. The government’s broadest look at the labor market is expected to show another dip in the unemployment level to below 10% as workers are rehired following the lifting of quarantine measures. The level, however, is expected to remain close to the peak witnessed in the Great Recession.

Trump looks alone on the world stage as international leaders line up to condemn the poisoning of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny

Thomas Colson,Adam Bienkov Business Insider•September 3, 2020




Getty

Donald Trump remained silent on Wednesday as world leaders called on Russian president Vladimir Putin to explain the poisoning of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny.


Navalny was taken ill on a plane in August after drinking a cup of tea at an airport in Siberia and is now being treated at a hospital in Germany.


German chancellor on Wednesday said that Navalny had been poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent, similar to one which was previously used to poison a former Russian spy in England in 2018.


Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, said Trump's silence on the matter made him complicit.

World Leaders, including Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson offered vocal condemnation of Navalny's poisoning and said that the Russian government should explain its actions in relation to the incident.


But Trump did not yesterday mention the incident, either in Twitter or in a statement, despite tweeting dozens of times throughout the day, and nor did US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Donald Trump looks increasingly alone on the world stage, as he fails to join the growing international outrage over the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader, and leading critic of President Putin, Alexey Navalny.

German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday said that Navalny, a politician and activist whose vocal criticism of Putin's government has made him a celebrity in Russia, had last week been poisoned in August with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group.

Navalny was taken ill on a plane in August after drinking a cup of tea at an airport in Siberia and is now being treated at a hospital in Germany.

Speaking at a press conference, Merkel said Navalny had been the "victim of a crime" and said his attackers "wanted to silence him."


She added: "There are very serious questions now which only the Russian government can and must answer. The fate of Alexey Navalny has received a lot of attention worldwide. The world will wait for an answer."

The poison was from the same group of agents used to poison former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018, an attack for which the UK and other governments hold the Russian government responsible.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson joined Merkel in offering vocal condemnation of Navalny's poisoning.

"It's outrageous that a chemical weapon was used against Alexey Navalny," Johnson said on Wednesday.

"The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny – we will work with international partners to ensure justice is done."

Johnson's spokesman called on other world leaders come together to act against those responsible.

"The international community must come together and use all the tools at our disposal to hold the perpetrators accountable," he said on Thursday.

Countries, including Canada, Italy and France also joined the condemnation, with French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian saying that he condemned, "in the strongest possible terms the shocking and irresponsible use of such an agent."

The European Union also issued a statement, with the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell saying in a statement that "The use of chemical weapons under any circumstances is completely unacceptable and a breach of international law."

Yet despite these growing calls, both in the US and abroad, to condemn the poisoning, Trump has yet to personally address it.

Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, on Wednesday said that Trump's silence amounted to "complicity" in the attack.

"Once again, the Kremlin has used a favorite weapon – an agent from the Novichok class of chemicals – in an effort to silence a political opponent," Biden said in a statement. "It is the mark of a Russian regime that is so paranoid that it is unwilling to tolerate any criticism or dissent."

"His silence is complicity," Biden said of Trump. "As president, I will do what Donald Trump refuses to do: work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes."

The administration did address the incident on Wednesday with a statement on Twitter by John Ullyot, the National Security Council spokesperson.

"The United States is deeply troubled by the results released today. Alexei Navalny's poisoning is completely reprehensible," Ullyot said.

"Russia has used the chemical nerve agent Novichok in the past. We will work with allies and the international community to hold those in Russia accountable, wherever the evidence leads, and restrict funds for their malign activities.

"The Russian people have a right to express their views peacefully without fear of retribution of any kind, and certainly not with chemical agents."

However, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who held a press conference after Merkel's announcement, didn't mention the poisoning, according to CNN.

John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, called on Trump to issue an "urgent statement ... demanding a full explanation from the Russians."

However, despite the growing pressure on Trump to speak out against the apparent poisoning of a Russian opposition figure, the president remains conspicuously silent on the issue.

Fact check: Antifa.com redirects to Joe Biden's website, but Biden campaign not involved

Miriam Fauzia, USA TODAY•September 3, 2020

The claim: Antifa.com redirects to Joe Biden's campaign website

Viral Facebook posts insinuate ties between Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and the left-wing, anti-fascist political movement antifa.

"if you go to Antifa.com, it takes you directly to joe bidens webpage. ... whats that tell ya ... try it yourself," Facebook user Johnathan Thurman wrote in a post that has been shared more than 80,000 times since Aug. 28. Several other Facebook posts claim the same, and videos show the redirect to viewers.

Thurman, whom USA TODAY reached out to via Facebook Messenger, said he knew no further details about the redirect. - ADVERTISEMENT -


Fact or fiction: We're fact checking the news and sending it right to your inbox. Sign up here
Breaking down the domain's history

A search through the digital internet archive Wayback Machine reveals the antifa.com domain has existed since 1999, although no content appears until Dec. 4, 2000. It is unclear who registered the domain, but the content appears to be a predominantly European anti-fascist newsletter available in English and Dutch.

The domain lapsed. It was renewed April 24, 2002, according to domain registration databases Whois.net and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Lookup. It was never made into an active website.

On Nov. 21, 2008, the domain was offered for $14,410 and remained on sale until May 6, 2017, at which point, a blank page replaced the sale offer. The blank page persisted until another "domain for sale" notice appeared Aug. 10, 2019.

The website was probably bought before or around May 31. Twitter user The Rude Pundit noticed the domain's sale price was nearly $37,000.

"We Are Antifa: Join Us & Take Action Antifa.com," declares text at the top of the home page. Hashtags sympathetic to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement are also visible. Below, a symbol used by the original anti-fascist group, Antifaschistische Aktion, founded by the Communist Party of Germany in 1932, appears in red, black and white.

Days later, more information was added in an extensive paragraph rebutting President Donald Trump's tweet May 31 vowing to designate "ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization." For a brief time, the website redirected to a YouTube channel before announcing June 25 that an updated website was coming soon.
Biden's site gets tied to antifa

Traffic redirecting to JoeBiden.com began around Aug. 8 before stopping Aug. 13.

On Aug. 16, the domain resumed but forwarded instead to a website called "It's Going Down."

On Aug. 21, traffic redirected to KamalaHarris.org, which was being forwarded to JoeBiden.com. On Aug. 22, it went back to "It's Going Down"; and on Aug. 28, it returned to KamalaHarris.org before settling on JoeBiden.com on Aug. 31.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has condemned protest violence, no matter what the political ideology.

Domains and redirection

Antifa.com has been registered through NameCheap, a Phoenix-based domain registrar – a company that manages internet domain names, as well as IP address assignments for those domains – since April 2002.

Redirecting a domain to any website is not hard to do. According to Mashable writer Matt Binder, all it requires is "that you type in the URL you want your domain to redirect to in your registrar’s administration panel."

Since NameCheap offers a privacy protection service to its clients, it is impossible to know who exactly owns the domain and set the redirection. USA TODAY was unable to reach NameCheap CEO Richard Kirkendall for comment.
Biden not connected

Matt Hill, deputy national press secretary for the Biden campaign, referred USA TODAY to a tweet Monday from Biden's digital director, Rob Flaherty.

"So whoever owns http://antifa.com is redirecting it to our website as a troll. … The VP very obviously has/wants nothing to do with fringe groups," Flaherty said.
Our ruling: Missing context

We rate this claim as MISSING CONTEXT. It is true the antifa.com domain redirects to JoeBiden.com. It is unknown who exactly owns the domain and has been redirecting traffic to the Biden campaign's website. The claim lacks context given that the Biden campaign denies any association with the antifa.com website.
Our fact-check sources:


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Dec. 4, 2000.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Nov. 21, 2008.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 10, 2019.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, May 31.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 8.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 16.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 21.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 22.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 28.


Antifa.com via Wayback Machine, Aug. 31.


NameCheap, Jan. 11, 2017, "Where is your company located?"


Cloudflare, "What is a Domain Name Registrar?"


Vox, June 8, "Antifa, explained."


The Rude Pundit, June 1, Twitter thread.


NameCheap, "WhoisGuard."


Donald J. Trump, May 31, Twitter thread.


Mashable, Aug. 12, "No, this doesn't mean that Joe Biden owns antifa.com."


Rob Flaherty, Aug. 31, Twitter thread.


New York Times, June. 29, 2019, "Trump Consultant Is Trolling Democrats With Biden Site That Isn’t Biden’s."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Antifa.com redirects to Joe Biden site; he's not involved

US slaps sanctions on war crimes court prosecutor
US SANCTIONS NUREMBERG COURT IT CREATED TO TRY NAZI'S FOR WAR CRIMES

Paul HANDLEY, AFP•September 2, 2020


US slaps sanctions on war crimes court prosecutor
Judges of the International Criminal Court preside over the trial of former Congolese militia leader Bosco Ntaganda in The Hague in 2019

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday slapped sanctions on the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court -- a move that The Hague-based tribunal called a "serious" attack against the rule of law.

The economic sanctions against Fatou Bensouda and another senior ICC official, Phakiso Mochochoko, after earlier visa bans on Bensouda and others failed to head off the court's war crimes probe into US military personnel in Afghanistan.

"Today we take the next step, because the ICC continues to target Americans, sadly," Pompeo said.

The ICC quickly fired back.


"These coercive acts, directed at an international judicial institution and its civil servants, are unprecedented and constitute serious attacks against the court, the Rome Statute system of international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally," it said in a statement.

The sanctions freeze the US assets of the two officials, and bar any US individuals from doing business with them.


- 'Kangaroo court' -


President Donald Trump had authorized sanctions on the ICC on June 11 over its investigation of US troops.

Pompeo at the time referred to the ICC as a "kangaroo court" and warned that if US soldiers were targeted, those of US allies in Afghanistan risked the same treatment.

Despite the new sanctions, the ICC appeared to give no ground on the issue, saying it "continues to stand firmly by its personnel and its mission of fighting impunity for the world's most serious crimes."

And the head of the ICC's Assembly of States Parties, O-Gon Kwon, said the oversight body would meet to discuss how to support the tribunal in the face of the US measures.

The US measures "only serve to weaken our common endeavor to fight impunity for mass atrocities," Kwon said.


- Challenge to court's legitimacy -


The sanctions were announced just two months before US elections, in which Trump is running for re-election in part on his record of standing up to international institutions that don't bow to US demands.

But Washington's move also added to the broader pressure on the ICC to shore up its legitimacy, 18 years after it was founded to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The United States -- like Russia, China, Israel, Syria and a number of other countries -- is not a member of the ICC, and its opposition to the court is longstanding.

In 2002, the US Congress even passed the so-called "Hague Invasion Act" allowing the US president to authorize military force to free any US personnel held by the ICC, in theory making an invasion of Dutch shores a possibility.

- 'New low' -


But the investigation into alleged wartime atrocities in Afghanistan possibly involving US military and civilian officials has turned Washington's low-level opposition into a concerted campaign against the institution.

The United States argues that it has its own procedures in place to investigate accusations against troops.

Trump, however, used his executive powers last year to clear three military members over war crimes, including in Afghanistan.

Also underpinning Washington's enmity is the ICC's investigation into alleged war crimes by US ally Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Last year the Trump administration revoked Bensouda's US visa, but the court has continued with the probe, leading to the president's June decision to permit economic sanctions against the court.

Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said his country was disappointed over the US move.

Balkees Jarrah, senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the sanctions move "marks a shameful new low for US commitments to justice for victims of the worst crimes."

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Russia released secret footage of history's largest man-made explosion — a nuclear blast thousands of times stronger than HiroshimaAria Bendix Business Insider•September 1, 2020

A cloud of smoke and dust rises in the sky after the Tsar Bomba was detonated in October 1961. Ministry of Medium Machine Building of USSR/Rosatom


Russia just declassified footage of the moments leading up to the Tsar Bomba blast — the world's largest nuclear-bomb explosion.

he blast was equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT, making it nearly 1,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined.

For decades, footage of history's most powerful nuclear weapon was kept top-secret.

Now, Russia is offering a behind-the-scenes look at the moments leading up to the detonation of that hydrogen bomb, known officially as RDS-220 and informally as Tsar Bomba.

Russia tested Tsar Bomba over a remote archipelago in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961 — during the height of a nuclear arms race with the US. The country declassified documentary footage of that explosion on August 20, in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Russian nuclear industry.

The 40-minute video, uploaded to YouTube, shows the explosion — a blast equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT. That makes it nearly 1,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. Russia reported that the flash could be seen from more than 600 miles away.


The video starts as the bomb is transported by rail to the detonation site. From there, viewers get a peek inside the giant weapon — though the documentary doesn't divulge technical secrets about how the bomb was created, Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, told the New York Times.

Just before the detonation, the video shows two aircrafts fly to the testing range: One carries the bomb, while the other prepares to film the explosion. At best, there was a 50% chance the planes would survive, the BBC reported. The plane carrying the bomb is painted bright white to reflect the heat from thermal radiation.

When the weapon is released from the plane, a parachute helps it drift to the desired elevation: 13,000 feet above ground. That gives the plane enough time to fly a safe distance away.

At 22:44 in the video, the bomb explodes. The footage shows a burst of light, followed by a giant orange fireball and mushroom cloud.


Though not shown in the footage, the shock of the blast forced the plane to drop 3,000 feet (the aircraft recovered before it landed). The explosion flattened the surrounding terrain, leaving nothing but scorched earth in its wake.
Cold War competition between the US and Russia

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev personally commissioned the weapon, so Tsar Bomba was nicknamed for him — translated, it means the Tsar's bomb. Krushchev originally planned to produce a 100-megaton weapon that would far and away exceed anything the US had built. But Russian scientists feared the radioactive fallout would be too destructive, so the Tsar Bomba wound up being less powerful than initially intended.

Prior to the Tsar Bomba explosion, the US had pulled ahead in the Cold War arms race: In 1954, the US tested the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb, its most powerful to date. That blast was equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II, was 15 kilotons, and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was 21 kilotons.

A 1994 issue of the Cold War International History Project Bulletin quotes a Russian cameraman who witnessed the Tsar Bomba blast.

"It seemed to suck the whole Earth into it," the cameraman said. "The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural."

Read more: Scientists describe setting off the world's first nuclear bomb 75 years ago

The blast destroyed homes in the nearby military town of Severny, about 35 miles from Ground Zero. The shockwave resembled a 5.0-magnitude earthquake, shattering windows and collapsing roofs hundreds of miles away.

Still, the video suggests that the altitude and meteorological conditions at the time Tsar Bomba exploded reduced the shockwave's impact. Russia's nuclear agency, Rosatom, says none of the nearby settlements "recorded any significant explosion consequences."

According to the Norwegian newspaper The Barents Observer, radioactive fallout from the blast was measured across Scandinavia. But because the fireball never made contact with Earth, that radiation was relatively minimal — especially considering the size of the bomb.

To this day, the explosion remains the largest nuclear bomb blast the world has ever seen.