YouTube suspends comments
on videos of kids
SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube said Thursday it will turn off comments on nearly all videos featuring kids — potentially affecting millions of posts on the site — after reports last week that pedophiles were leaving inappropriate comments on innocuous videos of children.
The change comes as YouTube grapples with moderating content across its platform as concerns about hate speech, violence and conspiracy theories continue to plague it.
It will take YouTube several months to disable comments on all videos featuring minors, the company said. It already started the process last week when it turned off comments from tens of millions of videos.
Advertisers including Nestle, AT&T and Fortnite-maker Epic Games pulled ads from YouTube last week after the inappropriate comments about children were unearthed by a popular YouTuber and media reports. At least one company, Nestle, was satisfied with YouTube’s response and reinstated ads late last week.
A small number of channels which have videos featuring kids will be allowed to keep comments turned on. But they must be known to YouTube and must actively monitor the comments beyond the standard monitoring tools YouTube provides.
Israel’s Netanyahu jolted by corruption recommendations
JERUSALEM — Israel’s attorney general on Thursday recommended criminal charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a series of corruption cases, shaking up an already tumultuous election campaign and threatening to end the Israeli leader’s decades-long political career.
The potential charges stretch across an array of embarrassing scandals that have painted Netanyahu as a hedonistic, and sometimes petty, leader with a taste for expensive gifts and an obsession over his public image. They include allegations he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of champagne and cigars from billionaire friends, and allegedly used his influence to help a wealthy telecom magnate in exchange for favorable coverage on a popular news site.
While a final decision on charges is still months away, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s recommendations threatened to hurt Netanyahu’s standing in the heat of a tight re-election battle. Netanyahu quickly faced calls to immediately step aside while he deals with the distraction of trying to clear his name.
Appearing on national TV late Thursday, Netanyahu dismissed the allegations as an “unprecedented witch hunt” by political opponents intent on seeing him lose the April 9 election.
He called the timing of the recommendations “outrageous” and accused prosecutors of caving in to pressure from “the left.” Appearing emotional at times, he called the case a “blood libel,” said he would debunk all charges and vowed to remain prime minister for many years.
Democrats eye new inquiries, witnesses after Cohen testimony
WASHINGTON — After three days of grilling Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Democrats are quickly using his words as a roadmap to open new lines of investigation into the president’s ties to Russia and summon additional witnesses.
Cohen completed a third day of testimony on Capitol Hill Thursday, one day after publicly branding his former boss a racist and a con man who lied about business dealings in Russia and directed him to conceal extramarital relationships. He was interviewed behind closed doors by the House Intelligence Committee for more than eight hours.
As he left the House intelligence interview, Cohen said he would be returning to Capitol Hill on March 6 for another round of questioning with that panel.
The weeklong gauntlet of interviews with Cohen launched what is expected to be months of investigations of Trump and those connected to him. Multiple Democrat-led House committees are pledging to investigate not only Trump’s campaign’s ties to Russia, which are also the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, but presidential conflicts of interest, possible money laundering and other oversight matters that Democrats say were ignored under GOP control.
House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff called the closed-door session with Cohen productive and said lawmakers were able to “drill down in great detail” on issues they are investigating. Another Democratic committee member, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, said Cohen “has been asked, based on a lot of new evidence we learned today, to bring corroborating materials that he believes he has.”
Trump border emergency foes close in on needed Senate votes
WASHINGTON — Senate opponents of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border moved within a hair Thursday of having enough votes to prevail, and one Republican suggested he risks a rebuff by the GOP-led chamber if he doesn’t change course.
Trump’s move would “turn a border crisis into a constitutional crisis,” veteran Sen. Lamar Alexander said on the Senate floor. But he stopped just short of saying he’d support a resolution blocking the president’s move. Had Alexander pledged his vote, it would probably be enough for the Senate to pass a measure repealing the emergency declaration.
Speaking later to reporters, Alexander, R-Tenn., warned what might happen if Trump doesn’t settle for using other money he can access without declaring an emergency.
“He can build a wall and avoid a dangerous precedent and I hope he’ll do that,” Alexander said. “So that would change the voting situation if he would agree to do that.”
The Democratic-led House voted Tuesday to upend Trump’s declaration, which he declared to circumvent Congress and funnel billions of extra dollars to erecting his proposed wall.
From wire sources
Report says Trump demanded top-secret clearance for Kushner
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump last year ordered officials to grant top-secret security clearance to his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, according to a report published Thursday by The New York Times.
Kushner was granted the high-level clearance last May after a lengthy background check.
The Times, citing anonymous sources, said Trump demanded Kushner’s clearance despite the concerns of intelligence officials, then-Chief of Staff John Kelly and then-White House counsel Don McGahn.
The newspaper said Kelly wrote in an internal memo that he had been “ordered” to give top-secret clearance to Kushner. McGahn wrote a memo in which he advised against such clearance.
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell, responded Thursday to the Times story with a statement, saying: “In 2018, White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone. That was conveyed to the media at the time, and new stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time.”
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California residents survey damage as historic floods recede
GUERNEVILLE, Calif. — Tom Orr began moving lyrics and scripts, clothes and photo albums from his apartment as authorities ordered evacuations along a rising Northern California river threatening to hit a historic crest.
But the actor and writer couldn’t move costumes, computers and performance videos. So he shifted those to his loft bed about 10 feet up and prayed they would survive. On Wednesday, television news footage showed muddy brown water nearly swallowing his ground-level unit and much of the tiny town of Guerneville, part of Sonoma County’s famed wine country and a popular tourist destination.
Residents awoke Thursday to sunshine and began assessing the damage while the water started receding. Orr, 48, was among those still unable to get into his house after the rain-swollen Russian River reached nearly 46 feet (14 meters) Wednesday night, its highest level in more than 20 years.
“I feel so helpless just sitting here and waiting before I can go back and start salvaging whatever I can,” Orr said in text messages to The Associated Press before preparing for a friend to take him by canoe to work at the Main Street Bistro, one of the few places in town that did not flood.
Sonoma County officials said they expected the communities of Guerneville and Monte Rio to be accessible by car Friday. The two-day storm rendered the towns reachable only by boat on Wednesday.
