Lawmakers warn Google, Facebook, Twitter more regulation is coming
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers lit into the leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter for the role of their companies in the U.S. Capitol riots and a failure to fairly and effectively police content on their platforms, in a tense hearing Thursday during whichthe firms were warned a crackdown is coming.
The charged back and forth between the staid company executives and angry lawmakers was a familiar scene in Congress. Butit comes at a moment when bipartisan consensus around the need for new regulations is rapidly building.
The executives, worried about losing some of the legal protections they currently enjoy, were very much on the defensive.
“It is not possible to catch every piece of harmful content without infringing on people’s freedoms in a way that I don’t think we would be comfortable with as a society,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, warning lawmakers against overreach.
But the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee were largely unsympathetic. The lawmakers expressed frustration with the reluctance of the witnesses to accept responsibility for the role their platforms played in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and accused the companies of inflaming tensions and amplifying disinformation to generate profits.
“How is it possible for you not to admit Facebook played a central role in facilitating the recruitment, planning and executionof the attack on the Capitol?” Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., asked Zuckerberg. “Your choices put our lives and democracy at risk.”
—Los Angeles Times
Ex-NYPD officer in Eric Garner's death loses appeal to get his job back
NEW YORK — Former police Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was fired from the New York Police Department two years ago over thechokehold death of Eric Garner, has lost his appeal to get his job back.
The state appellate panel ruled Thursday that Pantaleo was lawfully fired in August 2019 for the deadly Staten Island confrontation over loose cigarettes, court records show.
“We do not find the penalty ‘so disproportionate to the offense, in light of all the circumstances, as to be shocking to one’s sense of fairness,’” the panel wrote.
“Conduct far less serious than petitioner’s has been found by the Court of Appeals to have a ‘destructive impact ... on the confidence which it is so important for the public to have in its police officers.’”
Pantaleo’s lawyer Stuart London said: “Obviously, my client is disappointed in the judges’ reasoning as well as the decision.We’re examining our options on whether to move forward with the Court of Appeals.”
Pantaleo sued the NYPD two months after his firing to get his job back, and argued that the penalty was excessive.
The lives of Pantaleo and Garner collided on July 17, 2014, outside a bodega on Staten Island. Garner was approached by cops for selling loose cigarettes. The encounter ended with Pantaleo putting Garner in a chokehold.
“I can’t breathe,” Garner said repeatedly before falling unconscious. Those words became a rallying cry for the Black LivesMatter movement.
—New York Daily News
Yemen’s Houthis say they're ready for peace but won’t bargain over siege
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels are ready for an “honorable peace” but Saudi Arabia must end its attacks and lift its siege,group leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said Thursday.
“We’re ready for peace, but we cannot compromise on our people’s right to freedom, independence, dignity or their legitimate rights to the delivery of fuel products and humanitarian needs,” he said in a speech to mark the sixth anniversary of the start of a Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign in Yemen. “We’re not the attackers. We’re being attacked.”
The speech was al-Houthi’s first official statement after a peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia on Monday. The kingdom intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 in an attempt to restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government and counter the influence of regional rival Iran.
President Joe Biden has pushed for an end to the war — which has devolved into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and brought the poorest Arab country to the brink of famine — and Saudi Arabia is also keen to exit the conflict. But analysts say that as the Houthis make military advances on they ground, they appear less willing to compromise.
As well as a comprehensive cease-fire under United Nations supervision, the Saudi peace plan called for depositing taxes and customs revenue from ships carrying oil to Hodeidah port into a joint account of the central bank, reopening the international airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, and the start of U.N.-mediated peace talks.
The Houthis, who now control Sanaa and swaths of the country, have repeatedly said that they will not agree to talks unless Saudi Arabia lifts an air and sea blockade that’s compounding rising starvation and implements a full cease-fire first. Saudi officials say there is no blockade.
—Bloomberg News
