Twitter removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017, according to the company’s latest transparency report. The number of accounts permanently suspended for sharing what the firm called extremist content between July and December represents a drop for the second period in a row.

The social network puts this down to “years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism”. Nick Pickles, Twitter UK’s head of public policy, said: “The overwhelming majority of these accounts were detected by our own technology, with just 0.2% of the accounts we suspended in 2017 being flagged by the police.” Almost 75% of accounts were suspended before they sent their first tweet, according to the report, and 93% were discovered by tools that Twitter engineers had built.

Twitter is understood to also use a combination of US and EU lists of terrorist organisations as well as research from academics and experts to identify terrorists on its network. The number of reports of abusive behaviour submitted by government representatives also dropped amid a marked change in the type of abusive behaviour reported. Two-thirds of the 10,000 reports concerned violated rules over impersonation, with only 16% of the reports for harassment and 12% for hateful conduct. Harassment and hateful conduct each accounted for a third of reported accounts in the first half of 2017.(theguardian)…[+]

Europe’s powerful centre-right alliance, the European People’s Party, has been accused of providing political cover for the autocratic rule of Viktor Orbán on the eve of Hungary’s elections. The EPP, a bloc that includes the parties of Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, is accused of sheltering Fidesz despite Hungary’s democratic backsliding, hostile stance on migration, misinformation about Brussels and alleged misuse of EU funds. Fidesz and its Christian Democratic ally in Hungary, KDNP, are members of the EPP, which boasts nine heads of EU governments and the largest number of MEPs in the European parliament. Hungary’s former European commissioner László Andor said the EPP had provided “absolutely essential” cover for Orbán, and he highlighted the role of Bavaria’s powerful CSU, the sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. “The German CSU has played a pivotal role in whitewashing the autocratic rule of Orbán, and only pushed him back in cases when he was going to the wildest extremes like discussing the need to reintroduce the death penalty.”(theguardian)…[+]

Millions of French commuters faced a second day of transport chaos on Wednesday as rail workers continued what is expected to be three months of intermittent strikes – the first major test to Emmanuel Macron’s pro-business plan to reshape the French economy and loosen labour rules in the state sector. Rail strikes are scheduled for two days out of every five until 28 June against Macron’s proposed sweeping changes to SNCF, France’s vast state rail network. It is the biggest industrial action against the centrist president since he took office last year.

About half of essential rail staff and a large majority of train drivers were expected to walk out. SNCF management said 29.7% of staff were taking part in the strike on Wednesday compared with 33.9% the previous day, but unions have given much higher figures of 60% or more on the first day. Regional and local trains were severely limited, while one in seven high-speed TGV trains were running. International trains to Italy and Spain were stopped but three out of four Eurostar trains to London were operating.(theguardian)…[+]

Israel’s airports authority has refused to display adverts informing female passengers that it is illegal for airline staff to ask them to move seats at the behest of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.

The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) had planned to display the billboard ads at Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv, during Passover, the Jewish holiday that ends on Saturday. IRAC’s ad campaign follows a court ruling in June in favour of an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, Renee Rabinowitz, who sued Israel’s national airline, El Al, for gender discrimination. Cabin crew had asked her to move when an ultra-Orthodox man refused to take his seat next to her. In a case supported by IRAC, the judge ruled that “under absolutely no circumstances can a crew member ask a passenger to move from their designated seat because the adjacent passenger doesn’t want to sit next to them due to their gender”. El Al was given 45 days to amend its policies and was ordered to pay compensation to Rabinowitz. Women travelling on the airline have been frequently asked to move seats in recent years.(theguardian)…[+]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before a House oversight panel on 11 April amid a privacy scandal that has roiled the social media giant, the panel announced Wednesday.

Representatives Greg Walden and Frank Pallone said the House energy and commerce committee hearing will focus on Facebook’s “use and protection of user data”. Announcement of the hearing date comes as Facebook faces scrutiny over its data collection following allegations that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users to try to influence elections. Walden is the committee’s Republican chairman and Pallone is the panel’s top Democrat. “This hearing will be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online,” Walden and Pallone said. Their committee is the first of three congressional panels that have requested Zuckerberg’s testimony to announce a hearing date. The Senate commerce and judiciary committees also have called for Zuckerberg to appear before them.

Walden and Pallone said last month that they wanted to hear directly from Zuckerberg after senior Facebook executives failed to answers questions during a closed-door briefing with congressional staff about how Facebook and third-party developers use and protect consumer data.

Zuckerberg said during a 21 March interview on CNN that he would be “happy” to testify before Congress, but only if he was the right person to do that. He said there might be other Facebook officials better positioned to appear, depending on what Congress wanted to know. Walden and Pallone said a day later that as Facebook’s top executive, Zuckerberg is indeed the “right witness to provide answers to the American people”.(theguardian)…[+]

The fate of Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in the balance as the country’s supreme court prepares to hand down a ruling that could lead to him being jailed before October elections for which he is currently the frontrunner.  Tensions are running high with Brazil rocked by the recent killing of a Rio councillor, Marielle Franco, and Wednesday’s judicial decision seems likely to further polarise an already bitterly divided country. If Lula is jailed, his supporters will cry political persecution; if not, his detractors will allege corruption.

Lula’s conviction for corruption and money laundering was upheld by an appeals court in January and his sentence increased to 12 years. On Wednesday the supreme court must decide whether to uphold a 2016 ruling that defendants should begin prison sentences after the first appeal is rejected. Lula’s Worker’s party says the conviction was politically motivated to prevent the former president, who remains popular with poorer Brazilians, from running again in October. The case was part of Brazil’s sprawling “Car Wash” investigation that has jailed dozens of top executives and politicians.(theguardian)…[+]

French rail workers have launched three months of rolling train strikes in what threatens to become the largest and most chaotic industrial action against Emmanuel Macron’s drive to overhaul state transport and liberalise the economy. Called “Black Tuesday” in the media, the opening day of train strikes was expected to cause disruption for France’s 4.5 million rail passengers around 33% of all train staff and more than 75% of drivers walked out.

Only one regional train in five and one high-speed TGV train out of eight was running. Commuter lines into Paris were severely affected, and international train services were cut, with no trains between France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain and three out of four trains running on the Eurostar service connecting to London. Stoppages are planned across the country’s rail network for two days out of every five until 28 June. Unions are protesting against the centrist French president’s plan to push through sweeping changes to the vast state rail system.The rail sector is traditionally one of France’s riskiest political issues; a battleground on which Macron is refusing to budge in order to prove that he can face down strikes and continue with a liberalising overhaul of other sectors.(theguardian)…[+]

Justin Kapitu is dying. He does not know it yet, and the doctors treating the 22-year-old rebel fighter are unlikely to tell him soon, but his chances of surviving more than a few months are virtually non-existent.

Kapitu was wounded in a clash between his rebel group and a rival faction in December. Even in the remote green forested valleys and hills of the far east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the battle took place, few paid much attention. Such scrappy, bloody confrontations have become an almost daily occurrence. Bullets shattered Kapitu’s right arm and damaged his intestines. Emaciated and traumatised, he is being treated at the single hospital serving the half million inhabitants of Masisi territory, about a thousand miles east of Kinshasa, the capital. Kapitu weighs only 30kg (4st 7lb), is in constant pain and can absorb just a fifth of the nutritional value of the small amount of food he can ingest. Abandoned by his former comrades, he is unsure of the whereabouts of his family. “I was just a foot soldier so I don’t really know why we were fighting,” he said. “There are lots of reasons I think …. I don’t think the wars here will ever stop. They will probably get worse.”(theguardian)…[+]

Personal details of about 150 million users of the MyFitnessPal app were compromised in one of the biggest hacks in history, its owner has confirmed.

US sportswear brand Under Armour said user names, email addresses and scrambled passwords were among the stolen data. However, payment card data was not affected. It urged customers to change their passwords immediately. The company said on Thursday that the accounts were compromised in February, sending shares of the company down 3% in after-hours trade. The breach was not discovered until 25 March and users were informed four days later.

Under Armour said: “We do not know the identity of the unauthorised party. Our investigation into this matter is ongoing.” The app allows customers to monitor their calorie intake and measure it against the amount of exercise they are doing using a database of more than 2 million foods. It was founded in 2005 by brothers Mike and Albert Lee. The data breach is the largest this year and one of the top five to date, based on the number of records compromised, according to SecurityScorecard, a risk management consultancy.(theguardian)…[+]

The Vatican has scrambled to clarify comments made by Pope Francis to a well-known Italian journalist that appeared to deny the existence of hell. The Holy See issued a terse statement saying a lengthy article published in La Repubblica on Wednesday by Eugenio Scalfari, 93, the newspaper’s founder, was “the fruit of his reconstruction” and not “a faithful transcription of the Holy Father’s words”.

While the Vatican conceded that Scalfari, an atheist who struck up a friendship with Francis in 2013, had held a private meeting with the pontiff before the Easter weekend, it said an interview had not been granted. During the meeting Scalfari asked the pope where “bad souls” go, to which he was quoted as responding: “They are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. A hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of sinning souls exists.”(theguardian)…[+]