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Texas judge says he cannot approve deal between families who won suits over false remarks about 2012 mass shooting
A bankruptcy judge has blocked a proposed settlement between the families of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting victims who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his false remarks about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school.
On Wednesday, judge Christopher Lopez of the US bankruptcy court for the southern district of Texas said he was unable to approve the proposed settlement between the families and Jones’s bankruptcy trustee. Lopez claimed that their efforts to divide Jones’s assets exceeded his court’s authority.
Read MoreIn an exclusive interview, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa tells the Guardian she is surprised at Trump’s pick for health secretary and criticised anti-vaxxers for their part in 2019 measles crisis
Samoa’s prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, has criticised Robert F Kennedy Jr’s views and the spread of vaccine misinformation related to the deadly 2019 measles outbreak that claimed the lives of at least 83 people, mostly babies in her country.
It comes as Kennedy, who is president Donald Trump’s pick to lead the top US health agency, faced attacks in Senate confirmation hearings this week with Democratic lawmakers accusing him of covering up his anti-vaccine views.
Read MoreMicrosoft co-founder and philanthropist calls fellow tech titan ‘super-smart’ but guilty of ‘overreach’
Bill Gates has labelled Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians and attempt to interfere in the politics of other countries – including the UK – as “insane shit”.
Musk has in recent weeks launched a series of unfounded smears at British politicians for supposedly covering up a rape scandal over a decade ago. The UK is currently preparing a new online safety law that would restrict some of Musk’s businesses, including the social media site X.
Read MoreFridays for Future organiser warns conspiracy theories are increasingly taking hold despite effects of global heating
The rise in extreme weather is not generating political support for climate action, Germany’s best-known climate activist has warned, as conspiracy theories increasingly circle after disasters made worse by global heating.
“Like many, I did buy into the idea that big catastrophes would do something to politics,” said Luisa Neubauer from Fridays for Future Germany. “I bought into that – and I’m glad about it – because I was naively believing there was a democratic responsibility that would live through coalition changes and climate changes.”
Read MoreMore voters think tech tycoon’s comments on grooming gangs are unhelpful than those who back him
More than half of voters think Elon Musk is having a negative effect on British politics following his criticism of Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
The South African-born billionaire has spent much of the past week using his social media platform X to attack Starmer and the Labour government for their opposition to another national inquiry into grooming gangs. He accused Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, of being a “rape genocide apologist” and falsely claimed Starmer was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”. Despite strong suggestions that Musk is preparing to make a large donation to Reform UK, he also recently tore into Nigel Farage, saying he was not up to the job of leading the party.
Read MoreAs factchecking attempts end, Meta’s platforms will become a wasteland of fake news and misinformation
Mark Zuckerberg craves one metric more than any other: engagement, the statistic that tracks how long social media users spend scrolling, clicking, commenting, and viewing ads. More engagement, more profit. The Meta CEO will do almost anything to keep users online for an extra two minutes – even, it seems, surrender his websites to a flood of fake news.
On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that his company plans to fire its US factcheckers and weaken its ability to moderate disinformation on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. This new policy is meant to curry favor with the coming Trump administration. It’s also a desperate attempt to boost engagement across all Meta’s social networks.
Read MoreLoosening the grip of a conspiracy theory is a complex task, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Aim to change the relationship with your friend, not their mind
My friend has started sending me lots of links and articles on UAPs [unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UFOs]. I’ve tried to gently assert that I don’t find the sources reliable or credible and that I do not believe respectable news outlets are conspiring to conceal the truth but they still persist. Should I ask them to stop? I think these conspiracy theories are really harmful.
Eleanor says: One question is: can you stop your friend believing these conspiracy theories? Regrettably, almost certainly not, at least not without a huge investment of time and patience. People are free to think whatever they want and some of us put that freedom to the weirdest uses. At least we can be thankful the conspiracies your friend has latched on to are about objects in the sky and not, say, which reptilian species is secretly controlling things.
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