People or profit? Facebook papers show deep conflict within

Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — not to mention the last shreds of its carefully crafted, decade-old image as a benevolent company just wanting to connect the world.

Thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by a former employee depict an internally conflicted company where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions, much less the will to act on them, are halting at best.

The crisis exposed by the documents shows how Facebook, despite its regularly avowed good intentions, appears to have slow-walked or sidelined efforts to address real harms the social network has magnified and sometimes created. They reveal numerous instances where researchers and rank-and-file workers uncovered deep-seated problems that the company then overlooked or ignored.

Final responsibility for this state of affairs rests with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds what one former employee described as dictatorial power over a corporation that collects data on and provides free services to roughly 3 billion people around the world.

“Ultimately, it rests with Mark and whatever his prerogative is — and it has always been to grow, to increase his power and his reach," said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor who's followed Facebook closely for years.

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EXPLAINER: How months of tensions led to Sudan's coup

CAIRO (AP) — Monday’s military coup in Sudan threatens to wreck the country’s fragile transition to democracy, more than two years after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

The move comes after months of mounting tensions between the military and civilian authorities. Protesters are in the streets denouncing the takeover, and troops have opened fire, killing some of the marches, opening the door for greater turmoil in the country of 40 million.

Here is how Sudan reached this point:

WHAT HAPPENED MONDAY?

The military dissolved the transitional government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok as well as the Sovereign Council, a power-sharing body of military officers and civilians that had been ruling Sudan since late 2019.

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Billionaire tax hits critics as Biden pushes for budget deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democrats' idea for a new billionaires’ tax to help pay for President Joe Biden's social services and climate change plan quickly ran into criticism as too cumbersome with some lawmakers preferring the original plan of simply raising the top tax rates on corporations and the wealthy.

Biden said Monday he’s hopeful the talks with Congress can wrap up overall agreement on the package this week. It's tallying at least $1.75 trillion, and could still be more. Biden said it would be “very, very positive to get it done” before he departs for two overseas global summits.

“That’s my hope,” the president said before leaving his home state of Delaware for a trip to New Jersey to highlight the child care proposals in the package and a related infrastructure measure. “With the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors.”

Resolving the revenue side is key as the Democrats scale back what had been a $3.5 trillion plan, insisting all the new spending will be fully paid for and not pile onto the debt. Biden vows any new taxes would hit only the wealthy, those earning more than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples.

The White House had to rethink its tax strategy after one key Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., objected to her party's initial proposal to raise tax rates on wealthy Americans by undoing the Trump-era tax cuts on those earning beyond $400,000. Sinema also opposed lifting the 21% corporate tax rate. With a 50-50 Senate, Biden has no votes to spare in his party.

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Lawmakers defer some Jan. 6 document requests, seek others

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol “deferred” its requests for several dozen pages of records from former President Donald Trump's administration at the White House's urging, but President Joe Biden again rejected the former president's invocation of executive privilege on hundreds of additional pages.

In a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration, Biden counsel Dana Remus repeated that the president has “determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified” for two tranches of documents sent to the White House for review last month.

The panel is investigating the violent Capitol siege by Trump's supporters that day and has sought documents connected to the former president, who has falsely said he won the presidential election and that morning urged his crowd of followers to “fight like hell."

Obtained Monday by The Associated Press, the letter from Remus reveals that the committee “deferred” its request for nearly 50 pages of documents as a result of an “accommodation” process with the Biden White House. That process allows the White House to protect some records that may be privileged without formally blocking their release.

The letter from Remus came two weeks after the White House said it would not block an earlier, more sweeping tranche of documents after Trump sought to shield them. Biden has made clear that he does not want to block the committee's work, and Remus wrote in both letters that the documents could “shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committee’s need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War.”

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COVID cases falling, but trouble signs arise as winter looms

Tumbling COVID-19 case counts have some schools around the U.S. considering relaxing their mask rules, but deaths nationally have been ticking up over the past few weeks, some rural hospitals are showing signs of strain, and cold weather is setting in.

The number of new cases nationally has been plummeting since the delta surge peaked in mid-September. The U.S. is averaging about 73,000 new cases per day, dramatically lower than the 173,000 recorded on Sept. 13. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has plummeted by about half to around 47,000 since early September.

In Florida, Miami-Dade County's mask mandate could be loosened by the end of October if the encouraging numbers continue, and nearby Broward County will discuss relaxing its requirement on Tuesday. The superintendent in metro Atlanta said he will consider waiving mask requirements at individual schools.

A high school outside Boston became the first in Massachusetts to make masks optional after it hit a state vaccination threshold. With about 95% of eligible people at Hopkinton High inoculated, school leaders voted to allow vaccinated students and staff to go maskless for a three-week trial period starting Nov. 1.

Still, there are some troubling indicators, including the onset of cold weather, which sends people indoors, where the virus can more easily spread.

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Police: 2 die, 4 injured in Idaho mall shooting

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A suspect is in custody after two people were killed and four injured — including a police officer — in a shooting at a shopping mall Monday in Boise, Idaho, police said.

At a news conference, authorities said officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.

Police on Monday evening said in a news release that the suspect was in critical condition at a hospital and that the officer who was hurt had been treated and released. Police haven't released any other information about the victims, officer or the suspect.

The mall had been secured by Monday evening, and police said it would remain closed as the investigation continues.

Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee said the shooting was reported to law enforcement about 1:50 p.m. on Monday — including a report that one person was “shot and down” at that time.

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Facebook profits rise amid revelations from leaked documents

Amid fallout from the Facebook Papers documents supporting claims that the social network has valued financial success over user safety, Facebook on Monday reported higher profit for the latest quarter.

The company's latest show of financial strength followed an avalanche of reports on the Facebook Papers — a vast trove of redacted internal documents obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press — as well as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Monday testimony to British lawmakers.

Facebook said its net income grew 17% in the July-September period to $9.19 billion, buoyed by strong advertising revenue. That’s up from $7.85 billion a year earlier. Revenue grew 35% to $29.01 billion. The results exceeded analyst expectations for Facebook's results.

The company's shares rose 2.5% in after-hours trading after closing up 1% for the day.

“For now, the revenue picture for Facebook looks as good as can be expected,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. But she predicted more revelations and described the findings so far as “unsettling and stomach-churning.”

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Ex-Liberty spokesman says he was fired for raising concerns

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A former spokesperson for Liberty University is suing the evangelical Virginia school after being fired, alleging in a lawsuit filed Monday that his termination came in retaliation for voicing concerns that sexual misconduct accusations were mishandled.

Scott Lamb, a vice president-level executive at the school where he was hired in 2018, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he pushed for answers about what was being done to investigate claims raised in a lawsuit filed over the summer by 12 women, and was continually dissatisfied.

The women's lawsuit, which is still ongoing, alleged the school had a pattern of mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment and had fostered an unsafe campus environment. A student-led movement has since been established to advocate for systemic reforms, and the nonprofit investigative journalism outlet ProPublica published a deeply reported investigation Sunday with findings similar to the allegations raised in the lawsuit.

Lamb said in the interview that the university, which has a gleaming campus in Lynchburg, has plenty of resources and should have used them to open a third-party investigation of the women's claims.

“We put $300 million in the bank last year, and some change. We have two-point-something-billion in the endowment, and we can’t afford to just deal righteously with these people. Why?” Lamb said.

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Assistant director of Baldwin film fired after 2019 mishap

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The assistant director who handed Alec Baldwin the gun that killed a cinematographer last week had been fired from a previous job after a gun went off on a set and wounded a member of the film crew, a producer said Monday.

The disclosure emerged as producers of Baldwin's movie officially halted filming, and court records showed that investigators seized more than two dozen items from the set on the day after the shooting.

In an email statement to The Associated Press, a producer for the movie “Freedom’s Path” confirmed that Dave Halls was fired from the 2019 production after a crew member suffered a minor injury "when a gun was unexpectedly discharged.” The producer, who asked not to be identified by name, wrote that Halls “was removed from the set immediately." Production did not resume until Halls was gone.

His firing from “Freedom’s Path” was first reported by CNN. Halls has not returned phone calls and email messages seeking comment.

The producer is the second person to air doubts about Halls' safety record. On Sunday, another crew member who worked with Halls said she raised concerns about him in 2019.

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Vilified in sports world, Astros begin another World Series

HOUSTON (AP) — Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman whipped the ball around during a crisp infield drill, then came together for a group hug near second base after finishing up Monday.

High above the diamond at Minute Maid Park, the sun gleamed off an oversized banner attached to a light tower.

“World Series Champions,” it said, along with “17? and the Astros logo. And it was solid gold.

Nope, no tarnish on that tribute. Not here in Houston, anyway.

Because if the stain of their sign-stealing scandal on the way to the 2017 crown is hanging over them, the Astros aren’t showing it. Let the rest of the sports world condemn them forever as baseball’s biggest cheaters — they’re focused, they say, on putting another shiny flag on that tower.

News from © The Associated Press, 2021