USA

A purge of pro-U.S. bot accounts on Facebook and Twitter has given way to an inside look at covert propaganda on social media. In a new report, the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and Graphika analyze these pro-America accounts, including the kind of content they shared and the paltry influence they had.

In July and August, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram removed more than 100 accounts spreading pro-U.S. messages in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The accounts—including fake people with images generated through artificial intelligence as well as sham news outlets—were kicked off Twitter for violating its policies on “platform manipulation and spam” and off Facebook for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

As the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas prepared to take questions from members of the rightwing legal advocacy group the Federalist Society, a few years back, he turned to the moderator.

Thomas joked that the nondescript man in the blue suit and white shirt was the “No 3 most powerful person in the world”, and then fell about laughing. The target of the judge’s mirth, Leonard Leo, grinned and remarked: “God help us.”

The sport as we know it is changing forever.

On Thursday night, 69,000 people watched the Pittsburgh Panthers defeat the West Virginia Mountaineers in a hard-fought football game. The 38–31 contest was a throwback to another era, and not just in style of play. The “Backyard Brawl” always has an electric atmosphere, but this game was especially raucous—perhaps because fans have to get their licks in while they still can. The two schools are close to one another geographically, and their fans mutually disdainful, which makes for a heated rivalry.

The menacing actions of Trump and his acolytes are a reaction to the left-wing ideology wrecking American institutions

You don’t need to leave the country these days to get a sense of what the rest of the world makes of America. Despite the rise of alternative sources of global power, the world’s obsession with the US is greater than ever, and everyone on the planet with access to a phone can share their views of the condition of the once unrivalled superpower.

But it can still be instructive to travel abroad to get a proper sense of what others are seeing and hearing and, after a couple of delightful weeks in old Europe, I can confirm that the rest of the world clearly thinks the United States has gone mad.

Covid, suicide and drug overdoses blamed for decline

American life expectancy has fallen for a second year, and is down by almost three years since the start of the pandemic due to Covid, drug abuse, record suicides and stubborn levels of chronic disease.

In 2019, the average US life expectancy was more than 79 years. In 2020, because of the pandemic, that dropped to 77 years. According to provisional official data released today, Americans born in 2021 will on average now live to 76 years and one month — a level last seen in 1996.

More than two-fifths of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years, according to a new survey – a figure that increases to more than half among self-identified “strong Republicans”.

Amid heated rhetoric from supporters of Donald Trump, the findings, in research by YouGov and the Economist, follow similar results in other polls.

On Sunday night, the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham predicted “riots in the streets” if Trump is indicted over his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, materials recovered by the FBI at Trump’s home this month.