Facebook fights court order over access

Facebook fights court order over access

WASHINGTON

Facebook is fighting a court order that blocks the social media giant from letting users know when law-enforcement investigators ask to search their online information, particularly their political affiliations and comments.

Major technology companies and civil liberties groups have joined Facebook in the case, which resembles legal challenges throughout the country from technology companies that oppose how the government seeks access to internet data in emails or social media accounts during criminal investigations, The Washington Post reported.

Facebook is arguing in the D.C. Court of Appeals that the order violates First Amendment protections of the company and individuals.

Teen charged in acid attacks as UK plans crackdown

LONDON

British police have charged a teenager with a spate of London acid attacks, as authorities considered whether tougher sentences would curb a spike in assaults with corrosive liquids.

The Metropolitan Police force said late Saturday that a 16-year-old boy faces 15 charges, including grievous bodily harm. The boy, who can’t be named because of his age, was arrested after five moped riders were sprayed with a corrosive substance during a 90-minute period last week.

Police say the number of reported attacks with corrosive liquids in London rose from 261 in 2015 to 454 in 2016. Some appear related to gang activity or the theft of cars and motorbikes.

Amid mounting public concern, the British government said it is considering increasing sentences for acid attacks to a maximum of life.

Woman killed, 4 hurt as violence erupts at Venezuela vote

CARACAS, Venezuela

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans lined up across the country and in expatriate communities around the world Sunday to vote in a symbolic rejection of President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to rewrite the constitution, a proposal that’s raising tensions in a nation battered by shortages and anti-government protests.

A 61-year-old woman was killed and four people wounded in shooting that erupted after government supporters on motorcycles swarmed an opposition polling site in a church in the traditionally pro-government Catia neighborhood of western Caracas.

The opposition mayor of the Caracas borough of Sucre, Carlos Ocariz, said pro-government paramilitary groups attacked voters outside the Our Lady of Carmen Church around 3 p.m. The chief prosecutor’s office said Xiomara Soledad Scott, a nurse, had been killed and three hurt in the incident.

Egypt says 1 killed, 50 hurt in clashes on Nile island

cairo

Egyptian police Sunday fired tear gas to disperse a rock-pelting crowd of residents defending their homes on a Nile River island against bulldozers sent by the government to demolish their illegally-built dwellings. The clashes left one person dead and 50 others injured.

The violence on the island of el-Waraq on the southern fringes of Cairo is likely to stain a nationwide campaign launched this summer by Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt’s general-turned-president, to restore government control over state-owned land.

El-Sissi has vowed in televised comments to show no lenience to anyone taking illegal advantage of state-owned property, saying the law would prevail regardless of how powerful or wealthy the offenders were. Anyone using land that does not rightfully belong to them, he angrily said, is a “common thief.”

Associated Press