A week after authorities discovered a woman bound and beaten in a southwest Oregon home, the kidnapping suspect has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a CNN affiliate reports.
Benjamin Obadiah Foster, 36, died in a hospital after an hourslong standoff with law enforcement Tuesday evening in Grants Pass, Oregon, CNN affiliate KTVL reported, citing a police spokesperson.
The standoff concluded after authorities had surrounded the home – under which they believed Foster was hiding – and were trying to convince the suspect to surrender, KTVL reported.
In a statement Tuesday night, Grants Pass police said Foster was “in custody” after the standoff but provided no additional details. The department said it will hold a press conference Wednesday.
Foster was wanted on suspicion of attempted murder, kidnapping and assault after officers found a woman restrained and beaten until she was unconscious in a Grants Pass home on January 24, police said.
Prosecutors have accused Foster of torturing the woman with the intention of killing her, according to charging documents.
The victim was still hospitalized in critical condition as of Sunday, according to Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman.
Foster knew his victim before the attack, Hensman told CNN, saying the two had a “prior relationship.” He did not elaborate but said, “This was not a random attack.”
The suspect had already fled by the time officers arrived at the scene last week, prompting a sweeping multi-day search for Foster which drew a flood of tips from the public and included federal, state and local agencies, police said.
As they searched for Foster, police warned he was “extremely dangerous” and potentially armed. Hensman said he was “definitely a threat to others,” particularly those who might try to befriend him.
Investigators said Foster likely received help fleeing law enforcement. They also warned he could be may have been using dating apps to find potential new victims or lure people into aiding his escape.
When officers responded to a 911 call from a friend of the victim, they were confronted with “an absolutely disgusting scene,” Hensman told CNN. The victim had been suffering the alleged abuses for a “protracted amount of time” before she was discovered, he said.
“This will stay stained in my memory for many years to come,” the police chief said, describing images of the scene as “horrific.”
At least two women who have had relationships with Foster have accused him of attacking and abusing them, according to Clark County court records from cases in Las Vegas.
In the first case, his ex-girlfriend testified that in 2017 Foster flew into a rage and strangled her after seeing that another man had texted her. Foster was charged with felony battery constituting domestic violence, the records show.
While that case was still pending, he was charged with felony assault, battery and kidnapping after his then-girlfriend told police that he had strangled her multiple times and kept her tied up for most of a two-week period, according to the documents.
The woman was finally able to escape by convincing Foster they needed to go shop for food and fleeing through a store, a Las Vegas police report said. When she reached a hospital, she had seven broken ribs, two black eyes and abrasions to her wrists and ankles from being tied up, the report said.
Foster accepted plea deals in both cases. In the first case, he was sentenced to a maximum of 30 months in prison but given credit for 729 days served.
Karam Ali Ahmad Salman, 18, was shot dead near the settlement of Kedumim amid rising tensions.
Israeli guards have killed a Palestinian teen near an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said amid rising tensions after Israeli forces killed at least nine people in a Jenin refugee camp earlier this week.
Karam Ali Ahmad Salman, 18, was shot dead by “the Israeli occupation near the settlement of Kedumim”, the Palestinian health ministry reported on Sunday.
More than 30 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces so far this year.
The ministry added that Kedumim was built on privately owned Palestinian land.
The Israeli army claimed Salman was “armed with a handgun” and was shot by a “civilian security team”.
Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli raid, during their funeral in Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank [Raneen Sawafta/Reuters]
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 War and settlements are regarded as illegal under international law.
The shooting follows a slew of attacks after Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp during a raid on Thursday.
On the same day, a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces in the town of al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, marking one of the deadliest days in the occupied West Bank.
The United Nations said 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2005, with at least 170 people killed including more than 30 children, and 9,000 others injured.
Meanwhile on Saturday, a Palestinian family’s home was set on fire by Israeli settlers north of Ramallah. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Maher said no one was in the house when it was torched.
“We learned the family have left the occupied Palestinian territories,” he added, speaking from Ramallah. “Activists and eye witnesses say there has been a rise in attacks since Friday night.”
On Friday, a Palestinian attacker shot dead seven people near a synagogue in occupied East Jerusalem before being fatally shot.
In response to the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans on Saturday to make it easier for Israelis to get firearms, a move seen as “collective punishment” and one that could further increase the violence.
Israel also launched multiple air attacks on the blockaded Gaza Strip on Friday. Local sources in Gaza told Al Jazeera that Israeli warplanes had hit the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the territory, with at least 13 attacks in the early hours of Friday.
The Israeli army said the air attacks on Gaza – one of the most densely populated areas in the world with 2.1 million residents – followed after two rockets were fired towards Israel at about midnight (22:00 GMT).
Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has said a decades-old photograph of Prince Andrew with his sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is “fake,” in a series of interviews from prison.
The disgraced British socialite is currently serving a 20-year sentence in US federal prison for carrying out a years-long scheme with her longtime confidante Jeffrey Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
Speaking from a Florida jail to UK broadcaster TalkTV, which aired a special program on Monday night, the 61-year-old – who also appears in the photograph – said she doesn’t “believe it happened.”
“I don’t believe it is real for a second, in fact, I’m sure it’s not. There has never been an original. I don’t believe it happened and certainly, the way it’s described would have been impossible. I don’t have any memory of going to Tramp [nightclub],” Maxwell said.
Prince Andrew, who is one of King Charles III’s younger brothers, has strenuously denied Giuffre’s allegation that he was introduced to her at London’s Tramp nightclub in 2001 with Maxwell, before then-17-year-old Giuffre was allegedly forced to perform sex acts with the British royal.
Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in a US court in 2021 against Andrew, who is also known as the Duke of York, alleging sexual abuses while she was a minor on multiple occasions. Andrew later settled out of court for an undisclosed figure without admitting any wrongdoing and the case was dismissed. Still, the allegations against the senior royal severely tarnished his reputation. He stepped back from royal duties in late 2019 and was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages last year.
Maxwell appeared to show little remorse to Epstein’svictims and offered no apology in the interviews broadcast Monday. Instead, she said the victims should “take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities who allowed” the billionaire pedophile to die in prison.
Maxwell also told TalkTV that she believes Epstein was murdered – a conspiracy theory for which she offered no evidence. Authorities ruled Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing underage girls.
Regarding the victims, Maxwell said, “I hope they have some closure via the judicial process that took place.”
Maxwell acknowledged during her sentencing hearing last year that she had been convicted in the sex trafficking scheme but stopped short of taking responsibility. She did not testify in her defense during the trial in late 2021, which ended with her conviction on five counts, including sex trafficking of a minor.
WASHINGTON—The Senate Finance Committee has opened an inquiry into whether auto makers including
Tesla Inc.
and
General Motors Co.
are using parts and materials made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region.
In a letter sent Thursday, the committee asked the chief executives of eight car manufacturers to provide detailed information on their supply chains to help determine any links to Xinjiang, where the U.S. government has alleged the use of forced labor involving the Uyghur ethnic minority and others.
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The U.S. bans most imports from the region under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The letter to car companies cited a recent report from the U.K.’s Sheffield Hallam University that found evidence that global auto makers were using metals, batteries, wiring and wheels made in Xinjiang, or sourcing from companies that used Uyghur workers elsewhere in China.
According to that report, some car manufacturers “are unwittingly sourcing metals from the Uyghur region.” It said some of the greatest exposure comes from steel and aluminum parts as metals producers shift work to Xinjiang to take advantage of Chinese government subsidies and other incentives.
The U.S. ban on products linked to Xinjiang has already caused disruptions in the import of solar panels made there.
China has called Washington’s claim baseless. It disputes claims by human-rights groups that it mistreats Uyghurs by confining them in internment camps, with Beijing saying its efforts are aimed at fighting terrorism and providing vocational education.
Besides
Tesla
and GM, the letter signed by Finance Committee Chairman
Ron Wyden
(D., Ore.), was sent to
Ford Motor Co.
,
Mercedes-Benz Group AG
,
Honda Motor Co.
,
Toyota Motor Corp.
,
Volkswagen AG
and
Stellantis
NV, whose brands include Chrysler and Jeep.
GM said its policy prohibits any form of forced or involuntary labor, abusive treatment of employees or corrupt business practices in its supply chain.
“We actively monitor our global supply chain and conduct extensive due diligence, particularly where we identify or are made aware of potential violations of the law, our agreements, or our policies,“ the company said.
A Volkswagen spokesman said the company investigates any alleged violation of its policy, saying “serious violations such as forced labor could result in termination of the contract with the supplier.” A Stellantis spokesperson said the company is reviewing the letter and the claims made in the Sheffield Hallam study.
Other companies didn’t immediately provide comments.
“I recognize automobiles contain numerous parts sourced across the world and are subject to complex supply chains. However, this recognition cannot cause the United States to compromise its fundamental commitment to upholding human rights and U.S. law,” Mr. Wyden wrote.
The information requested includes supply-chain mapping and analysis of raw materials, mining, processing and parts manufacturing to determine links to Xinjiang, including manufacturing conducted in third countries such as Mexico and Canada.
General Motors says its policy prohibits forced or involuntary labor, abusive treatment of employees or corrupt business practices in its supply chain.
Photo:
mandel ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The lawmakers are also asking the auto makers if they had ever terminated, or threatened to terminate, relations with suppliers over possible links to Xinjiang, and if so, provide details of the cases.
The committee’s action comes as the Biden administration and bipartisan lawmakers increase their focus on alleged forced-labor practices in China as a key component of their confrontation with Beijing over its economic policy. The United Auto Workers has called on the auto industry to “shift its entire supply chain out of the region.”
The State Department has said more than one million Uyghurs and other minorities are held in as many as 1,200 state-run internment camps in Xinjiang. Chinese authorities “use threats of physical violence” and other methods to force detainees to work in adjacent or off-site factories, according to the department.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigated 2,398 entries with a total value of $466 million during the fiscal year ended September, up from 1,469 entries in the previous year and 314 cases in fiscal 2000.
Analysts expect the CBP’s enforcement activity to further increase this year, with a strong bipartisan push for a tougher stance on the forced-labor issue.
The researchers at Sheffield Hallam University found that more than 96 mining, processing, or manufacturing companies relevant to the auto sector are operating in Xinjiang. The researchers used publicly available sources, including corporate annual reports, websites, government directives, state media and customs records.
Twitter on Wednesday permanently suspended an account that tracked the location of Elon Musk’s private jet, despite the social media company’s owner last month vowing, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”
The @ElonJet account, which had amassed more than 500,000 followers, was removed as the company posted a new set of edicts that appeared to be designed specifically to justify the removal of the jet-tracking account. The move comes after Musk has reinstated previous Twitter rule-breakers and stopped enforcing the platform’s policies prohibiting Covid-19 misinformation.
The @ElonJet account, run by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old Florida college student, used publicly available flight tracking information to build a Twitter bot that tweeted every time Musk’s Gulfstream took off and landed at an airport. The last post from the account prior to the suspension showed Musk’s jet taking off from Oakland, California, on Monday and landing in Los Angeles 48 minutes later.
Sweeney woke up Wednesday morning to a message from Twitter informing him @ElonJet had been permanently suspended. Later in the day his personal account and other jet-tracking accounts he ran were also shut down by the company.
The account had long been a thorn in Musk’s side. According to screenshots Sweeney shared with CNN, Musk reached out to him last December through a Twitter private message asking, “Can you take this down? It is a security risk.”
Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, recalled his surprise receiving the message in an interview with CNN Wednesday.
“I was about to go to sleep, and I was in a normal college dorm and I remember telling my roommate, ‘Hey, Elon Musk just direct messaged me.”
The billionaire then offered Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the account. Sweeney countered the offer, raising it to $50,000, writing, “It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a [Tesla] Model 3.” After some back and forth, Musk responded, “Doesn’t feel right to pay to shut this down.”
Sweeney said he setup @ElonJet initially because he was a Musk fan. “It gives you just another view that a lot of people don’t know about where [Musk] is going and might give you clues into what new business is going on,” he said.
The enterprising student believes he was tipped off Saturday that his account was being targeted by the social media company’s management.
Sweeney said he received an email from an anonymous person purporting to be a Twitter employee that included a screenshot showing an internal company message from Ella Irwin, Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, asking staff to “apple heavy VF to @elonjet immediately.”
In Twitter parlance, “VF” means “visibility filtering” which throttles the reach of certain accounts.
CNN has attempted to reach Irwin and Twitter for comment.
As part of its new policy announced Wednesday, Twitter said it will “prohibit sharing someone else’s live location in most cases.”
“You can still share your own live location on Twitter,” it said. “Tweets that share someone else’s historical (not same-day) location information are also not prohibited by this policy.”
Musk also posted his justification for the new policy. “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok,” he wrote.
The restrictions around location sharing were not part of Twitter’s existing policies until this week.
Data from the Internet Archive shows the company updated its “private information and media policy” to add a clause that prohibited the sharing of live location data, ” we will remove any tweets or accounts that share someone’s live location,” it read.
Asked if he planned to comply with the new policy, Sweeney told CNN he would begin delaying posting the whereabouts of Musk’s jet for 24 hours, “but just on Twitter.”
Iran’s national soccer team faces retribution in the Islamic Republic after coming up short in Tuesday’s showdown against the United States, experts told The Post.
Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, said the Iranian players are stuck in an “untenable position” after their much-hyped match against the United States, which defeated Iran 1-0 to advance to the knockout round of 16.
“Given what we’ve seen from the Iranian regime … they’ve shown themselves to be brutal and there’s no reason to believe they’re going to suddenly become rational,” Baker said.
In their opening match against England last week, Iran’s players declined to sing their national anthem in an apparent protest over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten in police custody for failing to properly wear a hijab in September.
And although Iran’s players sang their national anthem Tuesday, a win against the US would have helped ease their prior transgression, Baker said.
After Iran’s soccer players failed to sing their national anthem before facing off with England in the World Cup last week, their families were reportedly threatened with imprisonment and torture if the team failed to “behave” in Tuesday’s match.APUS forward Christian Pulisic scored the winning goal against Iran on Tuesday, forcing the Islamic Republic out of the World Cup.REUTERS
“The regime would have used them for their own purposes,” Baker told The Post. “They would have spent all the focus on the victory, defeating ‘The Great Satan’ or whatever clever phrases they come up with.”
On Monday, CNN reported that families of the Iranian team were threatened with imprisonment and torture if the players failed to “behave” before their match against the US. Iranian players were forced to meet with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps after demonstrating before the England game, the report added.
Protests have erupted across Iran since Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old aspiring lawyer, was arrested for failing to properly wear a hijab and died in police custody in September.Getty ImagesIran’s match against the US kicked off with sportsmanlike handshakes despite reported threats to the players and unrest roiling their country back home.REUTERS
Elnaz Rekavi, an Iranian rock climber, is reportedly under house arrest in her home country for competing abroad in October without a mandatory hijab — which many perceived as a gesture of support for Amini. Rekabi, 33, was threatened with the seizure of her family’s property unless she made a “forced apology,” according to reports.
Now, the Iranian team could face fines or even arrest in the wake of Tuesday’s defeat once they arrive home — as retaliation for their disloyalty and their failure to beat the enemy, Baker said.
Iranian rock climber Elnaz Rekavi is reportedly under house arrest for competing abroad without a mandatory hijab.INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF SPOR
“Neither is good if you’re an Iranian player upon returning home,” he added.
The Iranian players endured a “tremendous amount of pressure” prior to the game, including criticism from protesters in Iran who believe they have not been vocal enough against the regime, according to Baker, who now works as CEO at Portman Square Group, a global intelligence firm.
The Iran soccer team was in an “untenable position” going into the game against the US, experts told The Post.REUTERS
Iran has been rocked by furious anti-government protests since Amini’s death. As of Monday, 451 protesters have died during clashes with authorities, including 64 children, according to nonprofit group Human Rights Activists in Iran. Iran’s ruling clerics are singularly focused on ending the rampant unrest that has erupted in 157 cities across the country since mid-September.
The Iranian players could possibly defect to other nations, although that isn’t likely as leaving relatives behind would be especially difficult, Baker said.
Some protesters in Iran have criticized their soccer players for not being vocal enough in support of their cause, one expert told The Post.AFP via Getty ImagesNonprofit group Human Rights Activists in Iran estimates that 451 protesters have died since Monday in clashes with authorities.AFP via Getty Images
“It’s hard to put ourselves in that position,” he continued. “You’re putting your family and friends at risk when you do that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of the players have been thinking about it.”
Kenneth R. Timmerman, an author and Iran expert, said the fate of the Iranian players had already been decided prior to Tuesday’s match, “because they’ve already committed that sin” of not singing the anthem.
“I would be afraid of arrest,” Timmerman said. “Even if they had won, they would have been arrested, soundly beaten and warned, ‘Don’t ever do this again.’”
Iran expert Kenneth R. Timmerman said he fears the team could be arrested for disrespecting their country when they return home.Shutterstock
Fatemeh Aman, a fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said she didn’t believe Iran’s team will face any kind of retribution after Tuesday’s loss. That may have been different if one or two players had refused to sing the anthem prior to the US match, but she believes the team’s unity, all singing together, will protect them.
“You can’t arrest the entire national team at the same time, you can’t do that,” Aman said.
However, if any single player is deemed to be supportive of the demonstrations in Iran, he could see his passport confiscated or face potential fines, Aman said.
“I think the Iranians feel sorry for them,” Aman said of the national team. “They are in a really, really hard position, a really bad position.”
Elon Musk on Monday claimed that Apple has “threatened” to pull Twitter from its iOS app store, a move that could be devastating to the company Musk just acquired for $44 billion.
“Apple
(AAPL) has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk said in one of several tweets Monday taking aim at Apple
(AAPL) and its CEO for alleged moves that could undermine Twitter’s business.
In another tweet, Musk claimed that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. “Do they hate free speech in America,” he said, in an apparent reference to his oft-stated desire to bolster his idea of free speech on the platform. “What’s going on here [Apple CEO Tim Cook]?” Musk added in a follow-up tweet. He also criticized Apple’s size, claimed it engages in “censorship,” and called out the 30% transaction fee Apple charges large app developers to be listed in its app store.
The tweetstorm highlights the tenuous relationship between Musk and Apple, which along with Google serves as the major gatekeepers for mobile applications. Long before taking over Twitter, the Tesla CEO said that when the car company was struggling, he considered selling the company to Apple, but that Cook refused to take a meeting with him.
Removal from Apple’s app store, or that of Google, would be detrimental to Twitter’s business, which is already struggling with a loss of advertisers following Musk’s takeover and a rocky initial attempt at expanding its subscription business.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk’s tweets. The company has previously shown it’s willing to remove apps from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate harmful content or if they attempt to circumvent the cut Apple takes from in-app purchases and subscriptions.
In January 2021, Apple removed Parler, an app popular with conservatives, including some members of the far right, from its app store following the US Capitol attack over concerns about the platform’s ability to detect and moderate hate speech and incitement. Parler was returned to Apple’s app store three months later after updating its content moderation practices.
In its official app store review guidelines, Apple lists various safety parameters that apps must adhere to in order to be included in the store, including an ability to prevent “content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy” such as hate speech, pornography and terrorism. “If you’re looking to shock and offend people, the App Store isn’t the right place for your app,” the guidelines state.
Various civil society groups, researchers and other industry watchers have raised concerns about Twitter’s ability to effectively moderate harmful content and maintain the platform’s safety following widespread layoffs and mass employee exits at the company. Musk has also claimed he wants to amplify “free speech” on the platform and has begun to restore some accounts that were previously banned or suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s rules. Musk himself has shared a conspiracy theory and several other controversial tweets since taking over as Twitter’s owner.
Musk, long a prolific and antagonistic tweeter, has not let up at all since taking over the company. And what it may have lost in revenue, he has claimed it has made up for in engagement. Part of the strategy appears to be relentlessly taking aim at enemies, either of him personally or of “free speech.”
In an interview with CBS earlier this month, Cook was asked whether there are any ways in which Twitter could change that would cause Apple to remove it from the app store. “They say that they’re going to continue to moderate and so … I count on them to do that,” Cook responded. “Because I don’t think that anybody really wants hate speech on their platform. So I’m counting on them to continue to do that.”
In an op-ed published in the New York Times last week, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who left the company earlier this month, suggested that Twitter had already begun to receive calls from app store operators following Musk’s takeover. Roth said the company’s failure to adhere to Google and Apple’s app store rules could be “catastrophic.”
And last weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.
While the state of Apple and Twitter’s relationship is unclear, the iPhone maker was running Black Friday ads on the platform as recently as last Thursday, according to posts viewed by CNN.
Many companies have pulled back on digital ad spending in recent months as the economy declined, and Twitter has likely always only been a small portion of Apple’s ad budget. Apple’s impact on Twitter, however, could be much more significant, including if Musk succeeds in shifting its core business to being more reliant on subscription revenue, and potentially has to pay a 30% cut to Apple.
In one tweet Monday, Musk asked his nearly 120 million followers if they know “Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?” In another tweet, he posted a picture of a highway exit: one lane headed toward “pay 30%,” the other pointed toward “go to war.” An old car labeled “Elon” skidded toward the latter.
Edward Lawrence, a journalist at the BBC, was arrested by police in Shanghai at the scene of protests on Sunday night, according to the BBC and as captured on what appears to be mobile phone footage of the arrest.
While he has since been released, a BBC spokesperson has expressed extreme concern about his treatment, saying he was “beaten and kicked by the police.”
Protests have erupted across China in a rare show of dissent against the ruling Communist Party, sparked by anger over the country’s increasingly costly zero-Covid policy.
Among the thousands of protesters, hundreds have even called for the removal of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who for nearly three years has overseen a strategy of mass-testing, brute-force lockdowns, enforced quarantine and digital tracking that has come at a devastating human and economic cost.
Hear protesters in China call for Xi Jinping’s resignation
The BBC statement reads in full: “The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai. He was held for several hours before being released. During his arrest, he was beaten and kicked by the police. This happened while he was working as an accredited journalist.”
The statement continues, “It is very worrying that one of our journalists was attacked in this way whilst carrying out his duties. We have had no official explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond a claim by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd. We do not consider this a credible explanation.”
At a regular press briefing Monday, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian acknowledged the detention of Lawrence, but claimed that he did not identify himself as a journalist before he was led away by police.
“China always welcomes foreign journalists to report in the country in accordance with the law and has provided lots of assistance,” Zhao said. “At the same time, foreign journalists should comply with Chinese regulations when they are reporting in China.”
Public protest is exceedingly rare in China, where the Communist Party has tightened its grip on all aspects of life, launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, wiped out much of civil society and built a high-tech surveillance state.
At least two clips of the arrest were posted online by a Twitter user who says they witnessed the scene. One clip, filmed from above, shows at least four police officers standing over a handcuffed man whose face is obscured.
In a second clip of a man wearing the same clothing, Lawrence’s face is clearly identifiable, as police quickly led him away, and then shouts, “Call the consulate now.”
The witness who shared the videos said they saw the journalist get “sieged and dragged to the ground by several cops.”
It is unclear what happened in the lead-up to Lawrence’s arrest. The video available online begins with his arrest and does not show what happened prior.
In an interview with Sky News on Monday, the UK government called Lawrence’s arrest a “considerable concern.”
“There can be absolutely no excuse whatsoever for a journalist that was simply covering the process going on for being beaten by police,” said UK Business Secretary Grant Shapps.
Lawrence wasn’t the only foreign journalist detained by Chinese police on Sunday. Michael Peuker, China correspondent for Swiss broadcaster RTS, was also briefly detained while reporting live from a protest in Shanghai, RTS said.
“The tension is at its peak here. As a proof, I am now surrounded by three police officers, I will be taken to the police station after this live hit,” Peuker said on air. “I will leave you now and go to the police station,” he added.
Peuker said on Twitter that he was released moments later.
move to purge Twitter Inc. employees who don’t embrace his vision has led to a wave of departures among policy and safety-issue staffers around the globe, sparking questions from regulators in key jurisdictions about the site’s continued compliance efforts.
Scrutiny has been particularly close in Europe, where officials have in recent years assumed a greater role in regulating big tech companies.
Staff departures in recent days include dozens of people spread across units such as government policy, legal affairs and Twitter’s “trust and safety” division, which is responsible for functions like drafting content-moderation rules, according to current and former employees, postings on social media and emails sent to work addresses of people who had worked at Twitter that recently bounced back.They have left from hubs including Dublin, Singapore and San Francisco.
Many of the departures follow Mr. Musk’s ultimatum late last week that staffers pledge to work long hours and be “extremely hardcore” or take a buyout. Hundreds or more employees declined to commit to what Mr. Musk has called Twitter 2.0 and were locked out of company systems. That comes after layoffs in early November that cut roughly half of the company’s staff.
Twitter conducted another round of job cuts affecting engineers late Wednesday, before the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., people familiar with the matter said. The exact scope couldn’t be immediately learned, though some of the people estimated dozens of employees were let go.
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Twitter sent fired engineers an email saying their code wasn’t satisfactory and offering four weeks of severance, some of the people said. Some other engineers received an email warning them to improve their performance to keep their jobs, the people said.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said this week it was asking Twitter whether it still had sufficient staff to assure compliance with the European Union’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The company last week told the Irish data regulator that it did, but is still reviewing the impact of the staff departures, a spokesman for the Irish regulator said.
He said Twitter has appointed an interim chief data protection officer, an obligation under the GDPR, after the departure of Damien Kieran, who had served in the role but left shortly after the first round of layoffs.
In France, meanwhile, the country’s communications regulator said it sent a letter last Friday asking that Twitter explain by this week whether it has sufficient personnel on staff to moderate hate speech deemed illegal under French law—under which Twitter could face legal orders and fines.
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The staff departures come as Twitter holds talks with the EU about the bloc’s new social-media law, dubbed the Digital Services Act, which will apply tougher rules on bigger platforms like Twitter by the middle of next year.
Didier Reynders,
the EU’s justice commissioner, is slated to attend a previously scheduled meeting with Twitter executives in Ireland on Thursday. He plans to ask about the company’s ability to comply with the law and to meet its commitments on data protection and tackling online hate speech, according to an EU official familiar with the trip.
Věra Jourová, a vice president of the EU’s executive arm, said she was concerned about reports of the firing of vast amounts of Twitter staff in Europe. “European laws continue to apply to Twitter, regardless of who is the owner,” she said.
Mr. Musk has said that he would follow the laws of the countries where Twitter operates and that it “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.”
Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Late Wednesday, Mr. Musk tweeted that the number of views of tweets he described as “hate speech” had fallen below levels seen before a spike in such views in late October. “Congrats to the Twitter team!” Mr. Musk wrote.
Some of the people who either departed or declined to sign on to Twitter 2.0 appear to include Sinead McSweeney, the company’s Ireland-based vice president of global policy and philanthropy, who led government relations and compliance initiatives with regulations worldwide, as well as the two remaining staffers in Twitter’s Brussels office.
Ms. McSweeney and the two Brussels employees declined to comment, but emails to their work addresses started bouncing back undeliverable in recent days according to checks by The Wall Street Journal. Four other Brussels-based employees were earlier this month told they were being laid off, according to social-media posts and people familiar with the matter.
Twenty Air Street, London, the home of Twitter’s U.K. office.
Photo:
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Damien Viel, Twitter’s country manager for France, was also among a wave of staffers who posted publicly this week that they had left the company. He declined to comment when reached by the Journal.
At least some of the departures occurred in teams that reported to
Yoel Roth,
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who resigned earlier this month. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Mr. Roth said he resigned because Mr. Musk made it clear that he alone would make decisions on policy and the platform’s rules and that he had little use for those at the company who were advising him on those issues.
The team included Ilana Rosenzweig, who worked as Twitter’s senior director and head of international trust and safety. She has left the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Based in Singapore, Ms. Rosenzweig led Twitter’s trust and safety teams across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, along with Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries, according to her profile.
“I decided not to agree to Twitter 2.0,” Keith Yet, a Twitter trust and safety worker based in Singapore, wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. Mr. Yet worked on child sexual exploitation issues and handling legal escalations from Japan and other countries, according to his LinkedIn profile. Attempts to reach Ms. Rosenzweig and Mr. Yet were unsuccessful.
The departures come amid a wave of new tech regulation, particularly in Europe. The Digital Services Act, which will by the middle of next year require tech companies like Twitter with more than 45 million users in the EU to maintain robust systems for removing content that European national governments deem to be illegal.
The layoff announcements just keep coming. As interest rates continue to climb and earnings slump, WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains why we can expect to see a bigger wave of layoffs in the near future. Illustration: Elizabeth Smelov
The act also requires these companies to reduce risks associated with content that regulators consider harmful or hateful. It mandates regular outside audits of the companies’ processes and threatens noncompliance fines of up to 6% of a company’s annual revenue.
Political leaders had warned that Mr. Musk’s Twitter would have to comply with EU rules. “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” tweeted the EU’s commissioner for the internal market,
Thierry Breton,
hours after Mr. Musk completed his Twitter deal in late October tweeting, “the bird is free.”
A spokesman for the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said this week that it had active contacts with the company regarding the regulation and tackling disinformation and illegal hate speech, but declined to comment on the substance of Twitter’s compliance plans.
Activists and researchers are also concerned that the departures could undermine Twitter’s ability to block state-backed information operations aimed at spreading propaganda and harassing adversaries. The wave of departures “raises questions about how Twitter will moderate tweets and comments in a professional and neutral manner,” said Patrick Poon, an activist turned scholar at Japan’s Meiji University, who analyzes free speech.
—Liza Lin, Alexa Corse and Sarah E. Needleman contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com, Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com and Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com
It was a moment so brief that the thousands of fans inside the Khalifa International Stadium on Wednesday could easily have missed it.
But a moment, the time it took for the photographers amassed in front of Germany’s World Cup team to snap a picture, was all it needed for the four-time winners to send a message to soccer’s world governing body.
Germany’s starting 11 all posed with their right hands in front of their mouths, and within minutes, the image was circulating widely on social media.
And as Germany kicked off their World Cup campaign against Japan in Group E, the team’s social media feed confirmed that the gesture was designed as a protest to FIFA’s decision to ban the “OneLove” armband that many European captains had been hoping to wear in Qatar.
It was a game that produced another World Cup shock as Japan came from behind to win 2-1.
Before the tournament, captains from England, Wales, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark had planned to wear the armbands at the World Cup – – which features a striped heart in different colors to represent all heritages, backgrounds, genders and sexual identities – before FIFA made it clear on Monday players would be yellow carded.
On Wednesday, the German Football Federation (DFB) released a series of tweets shortly after the game had kicked off indicating that FIFA had prevented them from using their voices to speak up at the World Cup for issues they felt passionate about, hence the protest.
“We wanted to use our captain’s armband to take a stand for values that we hold in the Germany national team: diversity and mutual respect,” the DFB said. “Together with other nations, we wanted our voice to be heard.
“It wasn’t about making a political statement – human rights are non-negotiable. That should be taken for granted, but it still isn’t the case. That’s why this message is so important to us.
“Denying us the armband is the same as denying us a voice,’ added the DFB. “We stand by our position.”
CNN has contacted FIFA for comment.
Prior to countries announcing their captains would not wear the armband in Qatar, FIFA had brought forward its own “No Discrimination” campaign and said all 32 captains would have the opportunity to wear an armband linked to the campaign.
Germany fan Nick Boettcher told CNN that it was “sad” that FIFA had taken the stance to deny players the opportunity to wear the armband.
“FIFA is making a lot of questionable decisions and so it’s good that people speak up,” said Boettcher. “I’m very proud that they did that. People will talk about this for sure, and the attention will grow. The pressure on FIFA and Qatar is definitely increasing.”
England fan Samir Cordell told CNN inside that stadium that he was “over the moon” with the protest.
“Germany and the German fans should be proud,” he said. “I’m an England fan and I didn’t like seeing England not wearing the armband. I would have loved to see Harry Kane wear it and get the booking. I think it’s great, I think it’s fantastic. Hats off to them.”
A handful of the starting 11 for Germany, including Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and İlkay Gündoğan, wore rainbow flags on their boots.
Germany’s protest comes after both Kane and Wales’ Gareth Bale took to the field on Monday in their respective games without the “OneLove” rainbow armband. Germany captain Manuel Neuer also did not wear the armband on Wednesday.
While Neuer chose not to wear the armband, Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser was seen with it on her arm while in attendance for the team’s game against Japan.
In a tweet, Faeser posted a picture of herself with the armband while in the stands, in what appeared to be a show of solidarity with the national team.
Before the game, Faeser had criticized FIFA, slamming the threat of sanctions for wearing the armband.
“This is not alright, how federations are being put under pressure,” she said during a visit to a German FA event, according to Reuters.
“In today’s times it is incomprehensible that FIFA does not want people to openly stand for tolerance and against discrimination. It does not fit in our times and it is not appropriate towards people.”
In the buildup to the World Cup, Qatar – where sex between men is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison in the country – has come under criticism for its stance on LGBTQ rights.
A report from Human Rights Watch, published last month, documented cases as recently as September of Qatari security forces arbitrarily arresting LGBT people and subjecting them to “ill-treatment in detention.”
However, the country has insisted that “everyone is welcome” at the tournament, adding in a statement to CNN this month that “our track record has shown that we have warmly welcomed all people regardless of background.”
And since the beginning of the tournament, some people attending World Cup matches in Qatar have said they have experienced difficulties when trying to enter stadiums wearing clothing in support of LGBTQ rights.
At the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium on Monday, ahead of the United States Men’s National Team’s (USMNT) match with Wales, US football journalist Grant Wahl and former Wales captain Laura McAllister both said they had been told to remove rainbow-colored items of clothing by security staff.
