Archives for June 2021

Woman recovers wallet lost 46 years ago in California

VENTURA, Calif. (AP) — A woman from Ventura was reunited with a wallet she lost 46 years ago after an employee working on remodeling Southern California’s historic Majestic Ventura Theater discovered it inside a crawl space.

“I would have never imagined,” said Tom Stevens after locating the wallet among old candy bar wrappers, ticket stubs and soda cans.

Stevens told the Ventura County Star he then went on social media to try to locate the owner based on clues in the wallet, including old photos, a 1973 Grateful Dead concert ticket and a California driver’s license for Colleen Distin that expired in 1976. There was no money in the wallet.

“Does anyone know Colleen Distin?” he asked on the theater’s Facebook page. “While doing some maintenance we have found her wallet. There are a bunch of pictures of people, and they are super cool from that era also. Someone may want them. So if you are, or if you know Colleen, drop us a line and we will have it here for you!”

Stevens’ boss, Loanne Wullaert, suggested posting the information on social media.

“We’re at almost 1,000 shares, a ridiculous amount of comments and then it went to all these other sites,” Wullaert said Monday. “I think it’s cool that people care and are interested.”

Distin, who grew up in Ventura and remains a resident, said she heard from a lot of people online and received a call about the post on social media. She responded May 25, a couple of hours after the posting, that the wallet was hers.

Distin on Friday went to pick up the red wallet, now brownish with age, and said it was like opening a “time capsule.”

Distin said she lost the wallet in 1975, when she was in her early 20s, at what was then a movie theater.

Distin said it must have fallen through a hole in her purse, which she had placed on the theater floor. At the time, her wallet held a $200 check and family photos.

“I remember calling the next day when I realized it was gone. They said no one found it, but to call back, which I did,” Distin said.

“I’m shaking,” Distin told KCAL-TV as she looked through the wallet. It contained poetry and notes, photographs of high school friends, the $5 ticket to a Grateful Dead concert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and photos of Distin’s mother, who died several years ago.

“It’s really wonderful,” Distin said in an emotional voice.

Distin said she was initially reluctant to talk publicly about her experience but she said there was such a positive response that she gave in.

“It says a lot about our society, that people are looking for a human story and something to feel good,” she told the Star. “People need to see the gratitude. I think there’s so much other negative stuff that I think this is what touched people.”

Biden taps groups to help pick asylum-seekers to come to US

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has quietly tasked six humanitarian groups with recommending which migrants should be allowed into the United States to pursue asylum as it faces mounting pressure to lift public health rules that have barred people from seeking protection.

The consortium of groups is determining who is most vulnerable out of those waiting in Mexico to get into the U.S., and the criteria they are using has not been made public. It comes as large numbers of migrants are crossing the southern border and the government has been rapidly expelling them from the country under a public health order instituted by former President Donald Trump and kept in place by President Joe Biden during the coronavirus pandemic.

Several members of the consortium revealed details about the new system to The Associated Press. The government is aiming to admit up to 250 asylum-seekers a day who are referred by the groups, agreeing to that system only until July 31. By then, the consortium hopes the Biden administration will have lifted the public health rules, though the government has not committed to that.

So far, nearly 800 asylum-seekers have been let into the country since May 3, and members of the consortium say there is already more demand than they can meet.

The groups have not been publicly identified except for the International Rescue Committee, a global relief organization. The others are London-based Save the Children; two U.S.-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense; and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to two people with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for public release.

Asylum Access, which provides services to people seeing asylum in Mexico, characterized its role as minimal.

The effort started at the border in El Paso, Texas, and is expanding to Nogales, Arizona.

A similar but separate system led by the American Civil Liberties Union began in late March and allows 35 families a day into the United States at places along the border. It has no end date.

The twin tracks are described by participating organizations as an imperfect transition from so-called Title 42 authority, named for a section of an obscure 1944 public health law that Trump used in March 2020 to effectively end asylum at the Mexican border. With COVID-19 vaccination rates rising, Biden is finding it difficult to justify the expulsions on public health grounds and faces demands to end it from the U.N. refugee agency and members of his own party and administration.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it’s in “close coordination with international and non-governmental organizations in Mexico” to identify vulnerable people and that it has the final say on who gets in. The agency described its work with the groups as fluid and said it hasn’t identified them to avoid giving them exposure.

Some consortium members are concerned that their offices in Mexico could be mobbed by asylum-seekers, overwhelming their tiny staffs and exposing them to potential threats and physical attacks from extortionists and other criminals.

Critics of the new selection processes say too much power is vested in a small number of organizations and that the efforts are secretive without a clear explanation of how the groups were chosen. Critics also say there are no assurances that the most vulnerable or deserving migrants will be chosen to seek asylum.

The consortium was formed after the U.S. government asked the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees’ office in Mexico for the names of organizations with deep experience and capacity in Mexico, said Sibylla Brodzinsky, a U.N. office spokeswoman.

“We’ve had long relationships with them and they’re trusted partners,” she said.

The groups say they are merely streamlining the process but that the vulnerable migrants’ cases can come from anywhere.

In Nogales, Arizona, the International Rescue Committee is working with local organizations and using a program that connects to migrants via social media and smartphones to find those “facing extreme life-threatening situations,” said Raymundo Tamayo, the group’s director in Mexico. It plans to refer up to 600 people a month to U.S. officials.

Special consideration is being given to asylum-seekers who have been in Mexico a long time, are in need of acute medical attention or who have disabilities, are members of the LGBTQ community or are non-Spanish speakers, though each case is being weighed on its unique circumstances, Tamayo said.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said advocacy groups are in “a very difficult position because they need to essentially rank the desperation” of people, but he insisted it was temporary. The government, he said, “cannot farm out the asylum system.”

The most vulnerable migrants may be too scared or uninformed to bring attention to themselves, said Margaret Cargioli, managing attorney for Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based group that got involved with the ACLU-led effort after “more organizations became aware of it.” She called the approach a “Band-Aid” while the health rules remain in place.

Migration experts not involved in the process have questioned why the government has not been more transparent.

“It has been murky,” said Jessica Bolter, an analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute who believes the administration is quietly trying to be humane without encouraging more people to come, a balancing act she doubts will succeed.

“Setting out clear and accurate information about how and who might get in might lead to fewer migrants making the trip, so there’s not this game of chance that kind of seems to be in place right now,” Bolter said.

U.S. border authorities recorded the highest number of encounters with migrants in more than 20 years in April, though many were repeat crossers who had previously been expelled from the country. The number of children crossing the border alone also is hovering at all-time highs.

Against that backdrop, some advocates are seeing the makings of the “humane” asylum system that Biden promised during his campaign. Details have been elusive, with administration officials saying they need time.

Susana Coreas, who fled El Salvador, was among those identified as vulnerable and allowed into the United States last month. Coreas spent more than a year in Ciudad Juarez waiting to apply for asylum but was barred by the public health order.

She and other transgender women refurbished an abandoned hotel to have a safe place to stay after they felt uncomfortable at a number of shelters in the rough Mexican city and got help from the International Rescue Committee.

But they continued to have problems. One transgender woman had a knife pointed at her. Another had a gun pulled on her.

“There was so much anxiety,” Coreas said. “I now feel at peace.”

Reports: Facebook to end rule exemptions for politicians

Facebook plans to end a contentious policy championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that exempted politicians from certain moderation rules on its site, according to several news reports.

The company’s rationale for that policy held that the speech of political leaders is inherently newsworthy and in the public interest even if it is offensive, bullying or otherwise controversial. The social media giant is currently mulling over what to do with the account of former President Donald Trump, which it “indefinitely” suspended Jan. 6, leaving it in Facebook limbo with its owners unable to post.

The change in policy was first reported by the tech site The Verge and later confirmed by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Facebook has had a general “newsworthiness exemption” since 2016. But it garnered attention in 2019 when Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs and communications, announced that speech from politicians will be treated as “newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard.”

The newsworthiness exemption, he explained in a blog post at the time, meant that if “someone makes a statement or shares a post which breaks our community standards we will still allow it on our platform if we believe the public interest in seeing it outweighs the risk of harm.”

This hasn’t given politicians unlimited license, however. When Facebook suspended Trump in January, it cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as the reason. The company says it has never used the newsworthiness exemption for any of Trump’s posts.

Facebook declined to comment.

Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein reach trade deal with UK

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway and two other non-EU European nations on Friday have reached a trade deal with Britain following the country’s departure from the bloc last year.

Britain is Norway’s largest trading partner outside the bloc. The deal also covers Iceland and Liechtenstein.

In Oslo, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg called the deal “ambitious and comprehensive.”

“When Norway is speeding up on its way out of the pandemic, then good export agreements are important,” she said.

Talks between Britain and Norway have been going on since 2020. Negotiators had to tackle sticky issues including the import to Norway of agricultural goods such as meat and cheese, and exports of fish to Britain, Norwegian media said.

The three nations’ membership in the European Economic Area grants them access to the EU’s vast common market, and most goods are exempt from duties. However, obstacle-free trading across the North Sea ended when Britain left the bloc’s economic rules at the end of 2020.

“Although it is not as good as the EEA agreement, this is the most comprehensive free trade agreement ever,” Solberg told a press conference.

Britain said total trade with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein was worth 21.6 billion pounds ($30.5 billion) in 2020. Solberg said Norway’s exports to Britain are worth close to 200 billion kroner ($24 billion).

Britain said British farmers will benefit from lower tariffs and more duty-free access for goods like cheese, pork and poultry. They also stressed that reduced import tariffs on shrimps, prawns and haddock will lower costs for British fish processing.

Also, it will support 18,000 jobs in Scotland and northern England by creating new opportunities for the British fish-processing industry, London said.

Britain’s International Trade Secretary Liz Truss called the deal “a major boost for our trade with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein,” while International Trade Minister Ranil Jayawardena said it “shows that the United Kingdom will continue to be a trade partner of choice.”

However, the deal contains some barriers as Britain had completely free trade with the three countries when it was a member of the EU.

Solberg said that at least two issues remain. “One is that (the deal) is not dynamic. That means that when rules are changed, they don’t follow everywhere.”

“The second is the veterinary rules at the border, which have not been fully cleaned up,” she said.

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Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Facebook suspends Trump for 2 years, then will reassess

Facebook announced Friday that former President Donald Trump’s accounts will be suspended for two years, freezing his presence on the social network until early 2023 following a finding that Trump stoked violence ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

At the end of the suspension, the company “will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post.

The former president called Facebook’s decision “an insult.”

“They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!” he said in a news release.

Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become indispensable tools for politicians to get their messages out and to raise small-dollar donations. Without the megaphone of Twitter and the targeted fundraising appeals his campaign mastered on Facebook, Trump could be at a serious disadvantage relative to other politicians.

Trump has teased running for president again in 2024. His aides say that he has been working on launching his own social media platform to compete with those that have booted him, but one has yet to materialize. A blog he launched on his existing website earlier this year was shut down after less than a month. It attracted dismal traffic.

On Facebook, Trump’s suspension means that his account is essentially frozen. Others can read and comment on past posts, but Trump and other account handlers are unable to post new material. Twitter, by contrast, has permanently banned Trump from its service and no trace of his account remains.

Also Friday, Facebook also said it will stiffen penalties for public figures during times of civil unrest and violence. In a color-coded chart on its blog post Friday, the company said those who violate policies during such a time can be restricted from posting for a month (yellow) or as long as two years (red). Future violations, it said, will be met with “heightened penalties, up to and including permanent removal.”

Facebook also plans to end a contentious policy championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that automatically exempted politicians from rules that banned hate speech and abuse. The company has said it has never applied this policy to Trump.

The social media giant said it will still apply this “newsworthiness” exemption to certain posts it deems to be in the public interest, even if they violate Facebook rules. But it will no longer treat material posted by politicians any differently from that posted by anyone else. In addition, Facebook said it will make public whenever it does apply the exemption to a post.

The announcements are in response to recommendations from the company’s quasi-independent oversight board. Last month, that panel upheld a decision by Facebook to keep Trump suspended, but the board said the company could not merely suspend him indefinitely. It gave the company six months to decide what to do with his accounts.

In its decision last month, the board agreed with Facebook that two of Trump’s Jan. 6 posts “severely violated” the content standards of both Facebook and Instagram.

“We love you. You’re very special,” Trump said to the rioters in the first post. In the second, he called them “great patriots” and told them to “remember this day forever.”

Those comments violated Facebook’s rules against praising or supporting people engaged in violence, the board said, warranting the suspension. Specifically, the board cited Facebook’s rules against “dangerous individuals and organizations,” which prohibit anyone who proclaims a violent mission and bans posts that express support or praise of these people or groups.

The two-year suspension is effective from Jan. 7, so Trump has 19 months to go.

A group calling itself the Real Facebook Oversight Board, which is critical of Facebook and its oversight panel, said in a statement Friday that the ban brings Trump back just in time for the 2024 presidential election and shows “no real strategy to address authoritarian leaders and extremist content, and no intention of taking serious action against disinformation and hate speech.”

Jim Steyer, the founder and CEO of Common Sense Media and a member of the Real Oversight Board, said the ban should have been made permanent to send a clear message about protecting American democracy.

“It’s pretty straightforward. Donald Trump incited an insurrection, and the biggest attack on the Capitol in 150 years that left people dead and injured. And Facebook still doesn’t have the courage to ban him permanently from the platform,” he said.

Facebook has had a general “newsworthiness exemption” since 2016. But it garnered attention in 2019 when Clegg announced that speech from politicians will be treated as “newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard.”

In some ways, though, the newsworthiness exemption is a bit of a red herring. Even though Facebook never applied it to Trump’s post, it did give the former president special treatment and free reign for years to spread misinformation and threats on the platform. Outside critics and even Facebook’s own employees had called for the company to remove Trump long before the Jan. 6 comments.

Last summer, for instance, Zuckerberg decided to leave up posts by Trump that suggested protesters in Minneapolis could be shot, using the words “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump’s comment evoked the civil-rights era by borrowing a phrase used in 1967 by Miami’s police chief to warn of an aggressive police response to unrest in Black neighborhoods.

The former president also used his social media megaphone to attack critics and spread misinformation about elections. While Facebook put labels on many of Trump’s election posts, Trump did not face other penalties such as suspension for repeatedly and falsely claiming victory in 2020.

In Friday’s post, Clegg anticipated criticism from both sides of the political aisle.

“We know that any penalty we apply — or choose not to apply — will be controversial. There are many people who believe it was not appropriate for a private company like Facebook to suspend an outgoing President from its platform, and many others who believe Mr. Trump should have immediately been banned for life,” he wrote.

Facebook’s job, he said, is “to make a decision in as proportionate, fair and transparent a way as possible, in keeping with the instruction given to us by the Oversight Board.”

But by staying in the middle, some experts said Facebook had once again punted the decision instead of taking a firm stance.

“It’s the wait-and-see approach,” said Sarah Kreps, a Cornell professor and director of the Cornell Tech Policy Lab. “I think they’re hoping this can just resolve itself with him not being kind of an influential voice in politics anymore.”

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Associated Press writers Tali Arbel, Matt O’Brien and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

Archives for June 2021

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