Popular internet pundit Paul Joseph Watson is mulling legal action after being banned from Facebook for spreading “hate,” telling RT that it’s clear social media platforms are cracking down on dissident political speech.

Facebook kicked Watson off its platform on May 2 – along with conservative commentator Laura Loomer, Infowars founder Alex Jones, and black nationalist leader Louis Farrakhan. The group was accused of spreading “hateful” content, although no warnings or concrete reasons were provided for their seemingly arbitrary bans.

Watson, who runs a YouTube channel that boasts more than 1.5 million subscribers, has become a well-known but polarizing commentator on culture and politics. A long-time Infowars contributor, Watson now has his own outlet, Summit News.

Although he’s been labeled as an “alt-right” conspiracy theorist, Watson insists that he’s been smeared – and de-platformed – simply because he holds contrarian views.

“There is clearly no future for dissident personalities on any major social media network. We will have to go back to mailing lists and websites as our primary, and perhaps only platforms for delivering content,” he said.

He told RT that he’s hired the “best media lawyers in London” who “have taken on numerous media giants in the past and won” and will advise him about what legal recourse he has against Facebook.

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The first step towards suing Facebook over his ban, according to Watson, is to initiate a written request, called a Subject Access Request, which requires the company to release all information relevant to the individual’s case under Section 7 of the Data Protection Act. 

The information would be needed to verify if an individual violated community standards or if the company merely made a politically-motivated decision. Watson also intends to put Facebook on notice about the harm they have caused to his reputation by putting him under the category of “dangerous individuals,” which is one of Facebook’s stated reasons for banning people under the company’s community standards. 

The list Facebook has made for what counts as “dangerous individuals” includes: Terrorist activity, organized hate, mass or serial murder, human trafficking, and organized violence or criminal activity. Facebook would have to verifiably prove that the banned person engaged in any of these activities, or the decision could count as defamation of character.

The hate watchdog organization Southern Poverty Law Centre (SLPC) has publicly admitted it was behind the censorship. In its statement, the SPLC writes how the banning of these individuals shows that social media companies are responding to their “pressure,” but adds that they nonetheless haven’t done enough, claiming they “have more work to do against hateful content.”

“The SPLC is not a fact-checker, it’s a hyper-partisan political attack dog which solely exists to demonize its ideological adversaries. There is no way to hold them accountable, they are accountable only to their own agenda and bias,” Watson said.

Twitter has reportedly dropped the SPLC as a reliable source for detecting hate content online and to police its platform, but other social media giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have continued to use the watchdog to decide what content should be kept on their sites.

Facebook has also recently come under fire from its co-founder Chris Hughes, who wrote an exclusive op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday calling for Facebook’s monopoly to be broken up, as its CEO Mark Zuckerberg has “unilateral control over free speech,” adding that his power is “unprecedented and un-American.”

“Personally, if and when I am banned on everything, I will probably just move into the background until the environment is once again fertile and if big enough alternative platforms exist which actually support free speech,” Watson added.

Facebook isn’t the only social media platform to face accusations of shutting down political speech it doesn’t like: In April, the company banned two conservative British candidates running for European Parliament, Tommy Robinson and Carl Benjamin, less than a month before the election.

The site banned Alex Jones and all Infowars accounts in September 2018.

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A makeshift pyrotechnics factory near Bogota, Colombia has exploded, killing four and injuring at least 30 more. The blast tore through both floors of the house and also damaged nearby buildings and vehicles.

Several gas cylinders exploded around 1pm in a house in the La Estrada neighborhood of Engativà, a town west of Bogota, according to Cablenoticias news agency, which reported the building was being used to manufacture wicks and gunpowder for “tejo,” a game that involves throwing a metal disc at packets of gunpowder.

At least 16 of the injured were minors, according to district health authorities, who said most of the injuries were caused by the shock wave from the blast.

Authorities have ruled out a deliberate attack but are still investigating what caused the explosion.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have expressed sharp differences of opinion on how to pick the next president of the EU executive, creating internal tension within the bloc ahead of elections.

Merkel backs the current system, known as the ‘Spitzenkandidaten process’, in which the European political party that can muster the most parliamentary support selects the president of the EU Commission.

Germany has the most MEPs of any EU state, giving it an edge over other bloc members when deciding who will serve as Commission president. Notably, the current system all but guarantees that the next Commission president will be Merkel ally Manfred Weber.

Macron, however, sees things differently, and would prefer that heads of states negotiate over who occupies the Commission presidency.

“France doesn’t have as many [MEPs] as Germany in the EU parliament. And France does not have a federal model [like Germany], it’s more of a nation-state model, and they value more the European Council,” political analyst Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann told RT.

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The US Air Force released images of B-52 Stratofortress bombers landing in Qatar. The deployment is part of a larger US military build-up in the region touted as a countermeasure to an unspecified threat from Iran.

The strategic bombers arrived at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Thursday night, the Air Force said. They were provided by the 20th Bomb Squadron of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Other B-52s were moved to an unspecified location in “southwest Asia,” the statement said.

Earlier, the US Air Force released a video showing the bombers taking off from Barksdale for the CENTCOM area of responsibility.

The deployments come as the US threatens Iran with retaliation for a claimed plan to attack “American interests.” The White House earlier trumpeted the move of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group towards the Persian Gulf, which was touted as a strong warning to Iran. Washington is reportedly acting on a vague tip from Israel.

Officials in Tehran rejected Washington’s rhetoric and mocked the statements about the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying its movements are old news.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a veteran strategic aircraft designed with the capability to drop nuclear weapons. The current B-52H version has been in production since 1961, with dozens of aircraft delivered to the USAF. The bomber was used for Cold War era patrols as well as delivering strikes as part of numerous wars starting with Vietnam.

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US President Donald Trump has ordered to kick-start the process of cranking up tariffs on “all remaining Chinese goods” worth $300 billion. That is in addition to a fresh 15 percent tariff hike on $200 billion worth of imports.

In a statement Friday, Trump’s chief trade negotiator Robert E. Lighthizer announced that the US eyes increasing import tariffs on virtually all Chinese goods.

Earlier on Thursday, the US increased tariffs on some $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent as the negotiations over the trade deal stalled after Bejiing reportedly walked back on some of the terms of the draft agreement.

As the high-level US-China trade talks that kicked off on Thursday ended on Friday with no breakthrough, Lighthizer said that Trump decided to slap tariffs on additional $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.

“The President also ordered us to begin the process of raising tariffs on essentially all remaining imports from China,” he stated.

Although the Chinese and the US sides seem to be miles away from thrashing out a deal, Trump appears not concerned with the negotiations hitting a brick wall.

Ahead of the final round of talks on Friday, Trump tweeted that tariffs “are much easier and quicker to do” than a traditional deal, arguing that the US might be better off without one.

“Tariffs will bring in FAR MORE wealth to our Country than even a phenomenal deal of the traditional kind,” he said.

Summarizing the outcome of two-day talks in the US capital late Friday, Trump struck an optimistic note, calling the negotiations “candid and constructive” and his relationship with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping “a very strong one.”

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The US president did not rule out that he might reverse the 15 percent hike, depending on the outcome of the future negotiations.

China has yet to respond to the latest tariff hike proposal. Beijing earlier vowed to take “necessary countermeasures” in retaliation to the tariff increase already in effect. 

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Over 20 new giant viruses have been discovered in sewage and pre-filtered water in Mumbai, India. They are able to hoard and pass on new genes when hopping from one host to another, a 5-year study claims.

Despite its ominous-sounding notion, there is no evidence that ‘Giant Viruses’ are causing disease in people. Or at least that is what we all would like to believe!

“There isn’t enough evidence to suggest that they are directly linked to infections in humans,” Dr. Anirvan, one of the lead researchers on the paper, told India Science Wire.

While posing no danger to humans, the viruses are of great interest to scientists, who believe they could help solve the riddle of evolution.

It is believed that when a virus infects a life form, it harvests genes as it develops and then passes them to other life forms that it infects afterwards. Researchers think the process can ultimately pave the way for the creation of a new species.

It is not that the viruses are ‘giant’ in the traditional sense of the word, but they are certainly gigantic in the world of microbiology – several times larger than their peers, other microorganisms.

The biggest of the ‘Giant Viruses’ unearthed by the researchers is Bandra megavirus (BMV), measuring 465 nanometers. One nanometer is 1,000 times smaller than a micrometer, which is 1,000 times smaller than a millimeter.

The other viruses discovered by the scientists are Powai Lake megavirus (PLMV), Mimivirus bombay (MVB), and Kurlavirus (KUV).

The find was made by researchers from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), who used modern identification and isolation techniques as well as Big Data analysis in cooperation with the Technical University of Denmark to ‘catch’ over 20 new viruses in samples from pre-filtered water of a household water purifier and from a wastewater treatment plant.

The original research was published in March in the Scientific Reports journal.

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The French government is pushing for greater regulation of Facebook and other platforms in order to combat what it calls ‘hate speech’, according to a state-commissioned report published as CEO Mark Zuckerberg visits Paris.

The report, issued by the French Minister for Digital Economy Cedric O, found that social media companies were allowing “abuses” to take place on their platforms, particularly in the area of hateful or bigoted speech, and that the companies had not done enough to address the problems.

“Public intervention to ensure that the major players adopt a more responsible attitude protecting the cohesion of our societies is therefore legitimate,” the report said.

Though the report noted the government would “aim for minimum intervention,” it said that previous attempts at private self-regulation were not sufficient. The regulators added the government should look to strike a balance between “repressive” policies that react to ‘hate speech’ after the fact, and more preventative ones that start with the companies’ policies.

The report said the “lawfulness” of content would be decided in the courts, and specifically requested closer oversight of social media platforms’ algorithms which auto-detect supposedly hateful content.

French President Emmanuel Macron, a major advocate for greater regulation of the web, met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday to discuss some of the issues touched on in the report. Zuckerberg has also called for more government controls over the internet.

After the meeting, Zuckerberg hailed the French government’s approach as a model for other countries to follow.

“If more countries can follow the lead of what your government has done here, that will likely end up being a more positive outcome for the world in my view than some of the alternatives,” he told reporters at Facebook’s Paris office.

In January, the French digital economy minister said he was “one hundred percent in agreement” with Zuckerberg’s previous calls for regulation, but complained that Facebook’s growing size and power was creating a “huge democratic problem.”

“Facebook decides that something online is legal or not legal” and “plays the role of justice,” O told AFP last year.

Facebook took steps on its own in 2018 to censor “misleading” content it said contributed to violence, and more recently announced that ‘white nationalist’ content would be wiped from the site. The company also faced claims of censorship this month when it banned controversial figures including Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Louis Farrakhan, citing violations of its community standards.

Facebook has seen heavy criticism on a number of other fronts in recent years. Some were outraged when the company struggled to keep videos of the Christchurch massacre off its website, while lawmakers in countries around the world have called for tighter control of the platform over the spread of ‘fake news’

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The US’ continuous military buildup in Japan, namely deployment of missile defense systems, is a direct threat to Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after meeting his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono.

“We’ve yet again drew attention to certain actions of Washington, including the deployment of the global missile defense systems’ elements to Japan, bolstering of its military presence in the region and activities in the arms control sphere, where the US is demolishing all the existing agreements. We perceive such actions as a threat for our country,” Lavrov said on Friday.

The bilateral Russia-Japan relations are still riddled with multiple issues, including the significant differences in Moscow’s and Tokyo’s approach to the peace treaty issue, Lavrov noted.

The two countries never signed a proper peace treaty after the end of WWII, and Japan has unresolved territorial claims on four Russian Kuril Islands. After the war, the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and Habomai – known in Japan as the ‘Northern Territories’ – were handed over to the USSR under the 1945 Potsdam Declaration.

Last year, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe agreed to continue discussions of the peace treaty, based on the 1956 declaration signed by Japan and the USSR. The document envisioned a possibility of handing over the island of Shikotan and islets of Habomai to Japan, yet any territorial swaps were possible only after a peace treaty was signed. Tokyo, on its part, insists that the territorial dispute must be “solved” first – preferably with Russia handing over all the contested territories.

The 1956 document was denounced by the Soviet Union in 1960 after Japan signed a security treaty with the US. While the defunct declaration was taken as a basis for the reinvigorated negotiations, it should not be taken at face value, given the heavy – and growing – US military presence in Japan.

“The joint declaration was adopted under particular historical and geopolitical circumstances. Since then, the situation has changed drastically. We have to consider the active security treaty between Japan and the US,” Lavrov noted.

Despite the outstanding “differences” Moscow is looking forward to continue negotiations, Lavrov stated. Any agreement must “fully reflect interests of our two countries and should be unambiguously accepted by the two nations.” Last year, for example, mere rumors of a potential secession of some of the islands to Japan sparked protests across Russia.

“Such task is not an easy one. Obviously it can be achieved only through continuous, meticulous and creative work,” Lavrov stressed.

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The US has imposed restrictions on two companies, involved in oil trade between Caracas and Havana, as well as threatened Venezuelan security services with sanctions over their continuous support to President Nicolas Maduro.

The sanctions were imposed on two transport companies, registered in Marshall Islands and Liberia, as well as two oil tankers belonging to them, the US Treasury said Friday. Both vessels, flying Panama flags, have been allegedly involved in transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba.

Such transfers are a payment for Cuban support towards Maduro, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin claimed, vowing to “take further action if Cuba continues to receive Venezuelan oil in exchange for military support.” Aside from that, the official threatened Venezuelan military and intelligence services with more sanctions if they would not defect from the legitimate government.

“Treasury’s action today puts Venezuela’s military and intelligence services, as well as those who support them, on notice that their continued backing of the illegitimate Maduro regime will be met with serious consequences,” Mnuchin warned.

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According to the Treasury statement, all of the US sanctions against the country are not “permanent” and are merely designed to bring a “positive change of behavior.” Basically, the restrictions are designed to encourage defection of Venezuelan government and military officials from the legitimate leadership of the country towards the US-backed self-styled “interim president” Juan Guaido.

Despite receiving broad support from Washington and its allies, Guaido did not manage to achieve much and failed to snatch real power from Maduro since his self-enthronement earlier this year. A widely publicized “military coup” announced by Guaido last week flopped, as it failed to attract any sizable number of army defectors nor massive civilian support.

A GPS tracker used as a panic alarm has major security flaws that can leak users’ real-time location and allow it to be remotely deactivated, say UK cyber-security researchers. They are calling for an immediate recall.

Manufactured in China, the devices are bought in bulk and resold by several companies around the world. While the device itself doesn’t have internet connectivity, it does use a SIM card to connect to a cell network for location tracking. However, almost anyone can give the device commands by knowing its phone number and sending it a text.

Commands can allow the device’s current location to be divulged and its built-in microphone to be listened to remotely. It can also be turned off completely – all without the user’s knowledge.

READ MORE: US indicts Chinese national in biggest known healthcare hack in its history

The staggering security breach was uncovered by researchers at British cybersecurity firm Fidus Information Security, who have published a report about their astonishing findings. The researchers note that while the SIM can be protected with a PIN, that setting it not enabled by default and the device can still be reset without needing a PIN.

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Marketed as an alarm and panic button for the elderly, a monitoring device for children or a car tracker, the device is utilized by thousands of vulnerable people who think it’s keeping them safe, wrote Fidus.

“This device is marketed at keeping the most vulnerable safe and yet anybody can locate and listen into thousands of people’s lives without their knowledge,” warns Fidus director Andrew Mabbitt, TechCrunch reports.

Mabbitt explained, in the organization’s blog, that while the team have informed manufacturers of the major security flaws, the only way to fix the issue is to recall tens of thousands of units already in use around the world. There are at least 10,000 in use in the UK alone, according to Fidus.

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