3 injured after man with knife enters Montreal-area mosque
Three men were injured after trying to subdue a man armed with a knife during afternoon prayers at a Montreal-area mosque Friday afternoon.
New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he is granting "amnesty" for suspended accounts, which online safety experts predict will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation.
The billionaire's announcement came after he asked in a poll posted to his timeline to vote on reinstatements for accounts that have not "broken the law or engaged in egregious spam." The yes vote was 72%.
"The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk tweeted using a Latin phrase meaning "the voice of the people, the voice of God."
Musk used the same Latin phrase after posting a similar poll last last weekend before reinstating the account of former U.S. president Donald Trump, which Twitter had banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Trump has said he won't return to Twitter but has not deleted his account.
Such online polls are anything but scientific and can easily be influenced by bots.
In the month since Musk took over Twitter, groups that monitor the platform for racist, antisemitic and other toxic speech say it's been on the rise on the world's de facto public square. That has included a surge in racist abuse of World Cup soccer players that Twitter is allegedly failing to act on.
The uptick in harmful content is in large part due to the disorder following Musk's decision to lay off half the company's 7,500-person workforce, fire top executives, and then institute a series of ultimatums that prompted hundreds more to quit. Also let go were an untold number of contractors responsible for content moderation. Among those resigning over a lack of faith in Musk's willingness to keep Twitter from devolving into a chaos of uncontrolled speech were Twitter's head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth.
Major advertisers have also abandoned the platform.
On Oct. 28, the day after he took control, Musk tweeted that no suspended accounts would be reinstated until Twitter formed a "content moderation council" with diverse viewpoints that would consider the cases.
On Tuesday, he said he was reneging on that promise because he'd agreed to at the insistence of "a large coalition of political-social activists groups" who later "broke the deal" by urging that advertisers at least temporarily stop giving Twitter their business.
A day earlier, Twitter reinstated the personal account of far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which was banned in January for violating the platform's COVID misinformation policies.
Musk, meanwhile, has been getting increasingly chummy on Twitter with right-wing figures. Before this month's U.S. midterm elections he urged "independent-minded" people to vote Republican.
A report from the European Union published Thursday said Twitter took longer to review hateful content and removed less of it this year compared with 2021. The report was based on data collected over the spring -- before Musk acquired Twitter -- as part of an annual evaluation of online platforms' compliance with the bloc's code of conduct on disinformation. It found that Twitter assessed just over half of the notifications it received about illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021.
Three men were injured after trying to subdue a man armed with a knife during afternoon prayers at a Montreal-area mosque Friday afternoon.
A 15-year-old boy who was the subject of an emergency alert in New Brunswick has been arrested.
Police have arrested an 18-year-old woman who allegedly stole a Porsche and then ran over its owner in an incident that was captured on video.
Since she was a young girl growing up in Vancouver, Ginny Lam says her mom Yat Hei Law made it very clear she favoured her son William, because he was her male heir.
The search for a missing six-year-old boy in Shamattawa is continuing Friday as RCMP hope recent tips can help lead to a happy conclusion.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday issued a warning to any potential home intruder: 'If somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot.'
What Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of Hungary-based BAC Consulting, says she hasn't done is make the exploding pagers that killed 12 people and wounded more than 2,000 in Lebanon this week.
Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander and other senior figures in the Lebanese movement in an airstrike on Beirut on Friday, vowing to press on with a new military campaign until it is able to secure the area around the Lebanese border.
An 11-year-old boy died Monday after subway surfing in New York City. He's the fourth person to die from subway surfing in the city this year.
Getting a photograph of a rainbow? Common. Getting a photo of a lightning strike? Rare. Getting a photo of both at the same time? Extremely rare, but it happened to a Manitoba photographer this week.
An anonymous business owner paid off the mortgage for a New Brunswick not-for-profit.
They say a dog is a man’s best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.
A growing group of brides and wedding photographers from across the province say they have been taken for tens of thousands of dollars by a Barrie, Ont. wedding photographer.
Paleontologists from the Royal B.C. Museum have uncovered "a trove of extraordinary fossils" high in the mountains of northern B.C., the museum announced Thursday.
The search for a missing ancient 28-year-old chocolate donkey ended with a tragic discovery Wednesday.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is celebrating an important milestone in the organization's history: 50 years since the first women joined the force.
It's been a whirlwind of joyful events for a northern Ontario couple who just welcomed a baby into their family and won the $70 million Lotto Max jackpot last month.
A Good Samaritan in New Brunswick has replaced a man's stolen bottle cart so he can continue to collect cans and bottles in his Moncton neighbourhood.