The company said it has taken down five different networks with ties to China, a sign that the country could be ramping up its propaganda efforts ahead of the U.S. election.

China has become one of the most aggressive actors attempting to sway U.S. public opinion through fake accounts on social media, Meta said Thursday, despite still finding little success in those efforts.

In a quarterly report on inauthentic account behavior on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Meta said it had taken down five distinct Chinese networks targeting foreign audiences this year, more than from any other country.

“For comparison, between 2017 and November 2020, we took down two networks from China, and both mainly focused on the Asia-Pacific region,” the company said in its report. “This represents the most notable change in the threat landscape, when compared with the 2020 election cycle.”

An Arizona grand jury indicted two local Republican officials who balked at certifying their county’s general election results by the legal deadline in 2022 – in a standoff with state officials that drew national attention at the time.

Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd, 61, and Tom Crosby, 64, each were charged with two felonies: interference with an election officer and conspiracy, according to the indictment.

“The repeated attempts to undermine our democracy are unacceptable,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday, announcing the indictment.

Republican county supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd initially refused to certify their county’s election results

Two elected officials in a rural Arizona county who stalled certifying election results have been charged by Arizona’s attorney general with conspiracy and interfering with an election officer.

Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, Republican county supervisors in Cochise county, face two felony counts for their initial refusal to certify the county’s election results in 2022. A grand jury convened earlier this month to discuss the potential charges, which were filed on Wednesday.

Crosby and Judd had to be ordered by a court to certify the November 2022 election results, passing the statewide deadline for counties to canvass results. Even after the court order, Crosby did not show up to vote on the canvass.

Taiwan's health ministry on Thursday urged the elderly, very young and those with poor immunity to avoid travel to China due to the recent increase in respiratory illnesses there, a move some experts said was ineffective to manage public health risks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) last week requested China provide detailed information on the spike, which a WHO official said was not as high as before the COVID-19 pandemic and that no unusual or novel pathogens had been detected.

Taiwan has been wary of disease outbreaks in its giant neighbour since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that started in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002-2003.

China, whose government claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own, initially tried to cover up that outbreak.

mother and son who aided in the theft of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) laptop when they participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were sentenced Wednesday.

Maryann Mooney-Rondon, 57, was sentenced to five years of probation, with the first 12 months to be served in home incarceration. She must also pay $3,657.51 in restitution, a fine of $7,500 and perform 350 hours of community service.

Her son, Rafael Rondon, 25, was sentenced to five years of probation, with the first 18 months to be served in home incarceration. He must pay $2,000 in restitution and perform 350 hours of community service. His sentence is to be served consecutive to a separate one in New York for possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun that he was convicted of seizing with several other firearms.

Of more than 8 million deaths worldwide from outdoor air pollution, 61% linked to fossil fuels, finds study

Air pollution from fossil fuel use is killing 5 million people worldwide every year, a death toll much higher than previously estimated, according to the largest study of its kind.

The stark figures, published on the eve of the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, will increase pressure on world leaders to take action. Among the decisions they must make at the UN conference will be whether to agree, for the first time, to gradually “phase out” fossil fuels.

Research has shown that switching from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources would save many lives from air pollution and help combat global heating. However, until now, mortality estimates have varied widely.

A new modelling study suggests air pollution, from the use of fossil fuels in industry, power generation, and transportation, accounts for 5.1 million avoidable deaths a year globally. These findings were published in The BMJ.

A federal watchdog will investigate how the Biden administration chose a site for a new FBI headquarters following a contentious competition marked by allegations of conflict of interest.

The Inspector General for the General Services Administration is probing the decision to locate the facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, over a site in Virginia., according to a letter released Thursday by Virginia lawmakers. The new building would replace the FBI’s crumbling headquarters in nearby Washington, D.C.

Virginia’s senators and representatives said in a joint statement that there was “overwhelming evidence” suggesting the process was influenced by politics and called on the GSA to pause anything related to the relocation until the review is complete.

The acting inspector general said that his office would immediately begin evaluating the GSA’s process and procedures for selecting the site and share a copy of any report that results, according to a letter sent to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

Finland has closed the last crossing on its long Russian border, prompting the Kremlin to condemn an "absolutely redundant measure".

The northern crossing at Raja-Jooseppi closed for two weeks at 14:00 (12:00 GMT) on Wednesday, after Helsinki accused Russia of channelling asylum seekers towards Finland.

Finland says it has become the target of a Russian "hybrid operation".

Some 900 asylum seekers have crossed the border this month.

The influx is dramatically higher than the previous number of barely one a day and Finland's border guard says before August 2023 Russian authorities barred foreign citizens from travelling to the area without the necessary visas.

The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.

“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.

Former President Donald Trump’s renewed focus on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, has alarmed some Republicans scarred by the GOP’s failure to deliver on promises to dismantle the law and who view the issue as a political loser with the American people.

Many on Trump’s team said they were surprised by the former president’s recent declaration on his social media website Truth Social that replacing Obamacare would be a priority of his administration, as Obamacare had not been a focal issue in ongoing policy conversations and the campaign has not yet drafted any kind of health care policy alternative. One Trump adviser told CNN the post came “completely came out of nowhere,” and said the team “has not been talking to him about health care.”

Some Trump advisers who spoke with CNN also conceded that calling for the termination of a health care law that provides millions of Americans coverage and is largely viewed favorably by the public is a political loser going into 2024. Republicans have tried and failed for years to implement substantial changes to Obamacare and the party has largely abandoned efforts to campaign on the issue.

The wife of the New York judge overseeing former President Trump’s ongoing civil fraud trial is the latest target of Trump’s rage online.

Trump took aim at Judge Arthur Engoron’s wife in a series of posts Tuesday afternoon, purporting that an account on X — formerly Twitter — that made several anti-Trump posts belongs to her.

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a case that could end up deciding whether abortion in the state should be protected under its constitution when it’s provided for medical reasons. Also at stake is the issue of how much agency doctors have to exercise their medical judgment in the treatment of the most complicated pregnancies — a power that the case’s plaintiffs claim has been lost under Texas’ current abortion laws.

The case was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents two OB-GYNs and 20 patients who were denied abortions because their doctors weren’t sure they were legally allowed to perform them, even if the doctors thought the procedure was medically appropriate to treat their patients’ serious complications. Some of the plaintiffs denied abortions said they were forced to carry a pregnancy to term only to have a stillbirth, watch their newborn die gasping for air, or wait to go into sepsis so that their condition was severe enough that the abortion was warranted.

The plaintiffs don’t blame their doctors. Instead, they are suing the state of Texas because they say the law’s wording, which bans abortions after six weeks except in case of “medical emergencies,” is too vague and doesn’t allow doctors to follow their medical judgment freely, leaving pregnant people vulnerable when facing complications that present serious risks to their own health or preclude the survival of the fetus.