Days after an unusually violent weekend in Chicago left 17 dead – including two children – and 70 wounded, the Justice Department is launching Operation Legend, named for a toddler shot to death while he slept in his home in Kansas City.“President Trump has made clear: the federal government stands ready and willing to assist any of our state and local law enforcement partners across the nation responding to violent crime,” Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday.Barr said Operation Legend will combine the efforts of federal law enforcement agencies with state and local officials to fight what he said is the “sudden surge of violent crime.”The initial efforts will be carried out in Kansas City, where 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro was shot in the face as he slept in his bed in his Kansas City home on June 29.Witnesses say the bullet that killed LeGend came from gunfire outside his apartment house. Police say the building was targeted. Aside from surveillance video of a car that may have been involved, they have no further clues.LeGend’s funeral is set for Friday. Football star Frank Clark of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs is paying for the funeral. The Chiefs are playing their first home game against the Houston Texans on September 10 in LeGend’s name.LeGend loved football and basketball. He was born with a heart defect and survived open heart surgery when he was 4 months old, only to lose his life to senseless violence.“LeGend’s death is a horrifying reminder that violent crime left unchecked is a threat to us all and cannot be allowed to continue,” Barr said.  
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Facebook Inc. on Wednesday removed 50 personal and professional pages connected to U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone, who is due to report to prison next week.The social media platform said Stone and his associates, including a prominent supporter of the right-wing Proud Boys group in Stone’s home state of Florida, had used fake accounts and followers to promote Stone’s books and posts.Facebook moved against Stone on the same day it took down accounts tied to employees of the family of Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro and two other networks connected to domestic political operations in Ecuador and Ukraine.Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said the removals were meant to show that artificially inflating engagement for political impact would be stopped, no matter how well-connected the practitioners.“It doesn’t matter what they’re saying, and it doesn’t matter who they are,” Gleicher told Reuters before the announcement on the company’s FILE – Roger Stone arrives for his sentencing at federal court in Washington, Feb. 20, 2020.Stone was convicted last year of witness tampering and lying to Congress as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.Stone did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. He told the far-right website Gateway Pundit: “We have been exposing the railroad job that was so deep and so obvious during my trial, which is why they must silence me. As they will soon learn, I cannot and will not be silenced.”In search warrant documents released this April, the FBI said a Stone assistant told interviewers in 2018 “that he purchased a couple hundred fake Facebook accounts as part of this work.”Facebook said its probe was influenced by the April search documents. But the company said that its unit guarding against coordinated inauthentic behavior had already been looking into Stone’s pages after a referral from a separate Facebook team monitoring dangerous organizations, which was tracking the Proud Boys.Proud Boys bannedFacebook marked the Proud Boys as dangerous and banned their content in 2018. Members have been charged with violence in multiple instances and recently clashed with anti-racism protesters.One of the accounts connected to the Proud Boys was operated by Jacob Engels, Facebook said. Stone testified last year that Engels could post on Instagram on his behalf and had access to his phone.Engels, who writes for far-right sites, told Reuters he is not a member of the Proud Boys but has “embedded” with them to research the group.Graphika analyst Ben Nimmo, a disinformation specialist, said the Stone network had been most active in 2016 and 2017, among other things promoting stories about the Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks as part of the Russian interference effort.Many of the accounts were later deleted, and in recent weeks they have mostly reflected Stone’s quest to receive a pardon from Trump for his crimes, according to Nimmo.“The inauthentic accounts were amplifying various Stone assets, like his page, or advertising one of his books,” Nimmo said.Stone has been stepping up his efforts to get a pardon from Trump before he reports to prison, where his family fears the spread of COVID-19. Trump has said that Stone was treated unfairly, and his attorney general intervened to seek a lesser sentence, prompting four career prosecutors to resign from the case.
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President Donald Trump rebuffed the country’s health experts on Wednesday, saying their recommendations for schools to reopen in the coming weeks in the face of the surging coronavirus pandemic are too tough, expensive and “very impractical.” Trump, who on Tuesday pressed the country’s 50 state governors and local school officials to restart in-person classes in August and September, said he disagrees with the guidelines produced by the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning that normal classrooms full of students would pose the “highest risk” of spreading the disease. “While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things,” Trump said. “I will be meeting with them!!!” Trump said on Twitter. I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2020He earlier said, “In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!” On Tuesday, at a White House meeting with health and education officials, Trump said, “We want to reopen the schools. Everybody wants it. The moms want it, the dads want it, the kids want it. It’s time to do it.” Amid Pandemic, Trump Pushes for Schools to Reopen Medical doctors and others agree it’s important for kids to go back to school, but there is a risk they will transmit the coronavirus to those more vulnerable to fall seriously ill or die At the White House on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said it was “absolutely essential we get our kids back in classrooms.” He said many children from impoverished families rely on schools for midday lunches for essential nutrition, along with after-school programs. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said schools “must be fully open and operational.” She said it was “not a matter of if…but how” they would be reopened. Trump’s push to reopen schools comes as community and university officials in the country grapple with what to do. Schools were almost uniformly shut across the country in March in favor of online instruction as the initial wave of the pandemic swept the U.S. Some are calling for a mix of options and leaving it up to parents to decide whether to keep their children home with continued online classes or allow them to return to school for limited in-class instruction a couple days a week. The country’s biggest city, New York, unveiled such a plan Wednesday for a mix of at-home and in-class instruction, but teachers in some communities are balking at any plan that calls for in-person instruction. Trump criticized Harvard, one of the world’s leading universities, for its plan that all students will learn remotely, even as 40 percent of students will be invited to live on campus. 40% of Harvard Students to Return to Campus for Remote ClassesIncoming freshmen and students who most need internet and other campus resources will return to Harvard’s campus in the fall, but all classes will remain online”They ought to be ashamed of themselves, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “That’s called the easy way out.” On CNN, the head of the National Education Association, a large teachers union, dared Trump to visit a classroom full of young pupils if health precautions have not been taken. “I double dog dare Donald Trump to sit in a class of 39 sixth-graders and breathe that air without any preparation for how we’re going to bring our kids back safely,” association president Lily Eskelsen García said. The National Education Association has called for more personal protective equipment, revamping classrooms to provide for social distancing and frequent deep cleaning of classrooms with disinfectants. But she said school systems do not have enough money to cover such additional public health initiatives. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show that Trump is right about parents wanting school to open, but added, “The question isn’t, ‘Do we want schools open?’ The question is, ‘What do we need to do to keep schools open?’ And the single biggest thing we need to do is keep the level of virus low in the community.” Jha said schools in Arizona, Florida and Texas, three states that have recorded recent surges in coronavirus cases, wouldn’t be able to remain open because too many people, including teachers and staff, would become ill and force another shutdown. The CDC, in school reopening guidelines it posted in mid-May, said, “The more people a student or staff member interacts with, and the longer that interaction, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spread.” The disease is caused by the coronavirus. It said the “lowest risk” would be for students and teachers to “engage in virtual-only classes, activities, and events.” Fauci Warns of ‘Multiple Outbreaks’ if US Opens Prematurely Top health officials testify before Senate committee Tuesday The CDC said there was “more risk” with small, in-person classes, activities, and events, with groups of students staying together and with the same teacher throughout school days and groups not mixing. It said in this scenario, students would have to remain at least two meters apart from each other and not share objects in the classroom. Classes would have to be staggered or limited in size. In the “highest risk” category, the CDC said there would be full sized, in-person classes, activities, and events, with students not spaced apart, as they share classroom materials and supplies and mix between classes and activities. At the White House news briefing, CDC director Robert Redfield said the agency’s guidelines for safe school reopenings are not “requirements” and should not be used by local officials to keep schools closed. The U.S. has now recorded more than 131,590 coronavirus deaths and more than 3 million confirmed cases, with both numbers being the biggest national figures across the globe. The latest model produced by health experts at the University of Washington says that overall, more than 208,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by November. The number of new cases in the U.S. has surged past 50,000 a day in the last week, particularly fueled by businesses that reopened too soon across the southern tier of U.S. states and younger people who began socializing in public again without taking any precautions, such as wearing face masks or socially distancing themselves from others.
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Tibet has become the latest flashpoint in worsening relations between the United States and China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhou Lijian told reporters Wednesday in Beijing that China will impose visa restrictions on U.S. citizens who engage in “egregious” conduct in regards to the Himalayan region.   The move by Beijing is in apparent retaliation to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement Tuesday that Washington would restrict visas for an unspecified number of Chinese officials. Pompeo accused China of obstructing travel to Tibet by U.S. diplomats, journalists and tourists, while Chinese officials and tourists “enjoy far greater access to the United States.” US Restricts Visas on Chinese Officials Over Tibet China obstructs travel to the Tibetan Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas by US diplomats, journalists and tourists, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on TuesdayPompeo said access to Tibet and Tibetan areas “is increasingly vital to regional stability” due to Beijing’s human rights abuses, as well as its “failure to prevent environmental degradation near the headwaters of Asia’s major rivers.” China has controlled the majority-Buddhist region since 1950 when its forces entered the region under what it calls “a peaceful liberation.” Zhou Lijian warned the U.S. “to stop interfering in China’s internal affairs with Tibet-related issues” or risk creating further damage to bilateral relations. Ties between the world’s biggest economies have become frayed in recent months over a host of issues, including trade and human rights concerns involving Hong Kong and the incarceration of some one million ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang.   
 
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A two-year audit of Facebook’s civil rights record found “serious setbacks” that have marred the social network’s progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias.
 
Facebook hired the audit’s leader, former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. Its 100-page report released Wednesday outlines a “seesaw of progress and setbacks” at the company on everything from bias in Facebook’s algorithms to its content moderation, advertising practices and treatment of voter suppression.
 
The audit recommends that Facebook build a “civil rights infrastructure” into every aspect of the company, as well as a “stronger interpretation” of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias. Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in place to hold Facebook accountable for any of the audit’s findings.
 
“While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights,” the audit report states.
 
Those include Facebook’s decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking, even when President Donald Trump posted false information about voting by mail. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cited a commitment to free speech as a reason for allowing such posts to remain on the platform, even though the company has rules in place against voter suppression it could have used to take down — or at least add warning labels to — Trump’s posts.
 
Last month, Facebook announced it would begin labeling rule-breaking posts — even from politicians — going forward. But it is not clear if Trump’s previous controversial posts would have gotten the alert. The problem, critics have long said, is not so much about Facebook’s rules as how it enforces them.
 
“When you elevate free expression as your highest value, other values take a back seat,” Murphy told The Associated Press. The politician exemption, she said, “elevates the speech of people who are already powerful and disadvantages people who are not.”
 
More than 900 companies have joined an advertising boycott of Facebook to protest its handling of hate speech and misinformation.
 
Civil rights leaders who met virtually with Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders Tuesday expressed skepticism that recommendations from the audit would ever be implemented, noting that past suggestions in previous reports had gone overlooked.
 
“What we get is recommendations that they end up not implementing,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color for Change, one of several civil rights nonprofits leading an organized boycott of Facebook advertising. 
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