AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

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Facebook froze as anti-vaccine comments swarmed users

WASHINGTON (AP) — In March, as claims about the dangers and ineffectiveness of coronavirus vaccines spun across social media and undermined attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they had found a way to help.

By altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people’s newsfeeds, researchers at the company realized they could curtail the misleading information individuals saw about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization.

“Given these results, I’m assuming we’re hoping to launch ASAP,” one Facebook employee wrote, responding to the internal memo about the study.

Instead, Facebook shelved some suggestions from the study. Other changes weren't made until April.

When another Facebook researcher suggested disabling some comments on vaccine posts in March until the platform could do a better job of tackling anti-vaccine messages lurking in them, that proposal was ignored at the time.

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FDA panel backs Pfizer’s low-dose COVID-19 vaccine for kids

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. moved a step closer to expanding COVID-19 vaccinations for millions more children as a panel of government advisers on Tuesday endorsed kid-size doses of Pfizer's shots for 5- to 11-year-olds.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted unanimously, with one abstention, that the vaccine’s benefits in preventing COVID-19 in that age group outweigh any potential risks — including a heart-related side effect that's been very rare in teens and young adults despite their use of a much higher shot dose.

While children are at lower risk of severe COVID-19 than older people, ultimately many panelists decided it's important to give parents the choice to protect their youngsters — especially those at high risk of illness or who live in places where other precautions, like masks in schools, aren't being used.

The virus is “not going away. We have to find a way to live with it and I think the vaccines give us a way to do that,” said FDA adviser Jeannette Lee of the University of Arkansas.

“I do think it’s a relatively close call,” said adviser Dr. Eric Rubin of Harvard University. “It’s really going to be a question of what the prevailing conditions are but we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.”

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Sudan's prime minister, detained after coup, returns home

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan's deposed prime minister and his wife were allowed to return home Tuesday after being detained when the military seized power in a coup, officials said,

The release of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and his wife followed international condemnation of the coup and calls for the military to release all the government officials who were detained when Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan seized power on Monday.

Burhan had said earlier Tuesday that Hamdok had been held for his own safety and would be released. But he warned that other members of the dissolved government could face trial as protests against the putsch continued in the streets.

Hamdok and his wife were returned to their home in Khartoum's upscale Kafouri neighborhood, and the house was under “heavy security,” said a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official did not say whether they were free to leave or make calls. An official at Hamdok’s office and pro-democracy activist Nazim Siraj confirmed his return home.

The military seized power Monday in a move that was widely denounced abroad. On Tuesday, pro-democracy demonstrators blocked roads in the capital of Khartoum with makeshift barricades and burning tires. Troops fired on crowds a day earlier, killing four protesters, according to doctors.

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Enforcement of indoor vaccine mandates proves uneven in US

HONOLULU (AP) — Go out for a night on the town in some U.S. cities and you might find yourself waiting while someone at the door of the restaurant or theater closely inspects your vaccination card and checks it against your photo ID. Or, conversely, you might be waved right through just by flashing your card.

How rigorously vaccination requirements are being enforced varies from place to place, even within the same state or city.

Proof of vaccination is required in several American cities to get into restaurants and bars, enjoy a concert or a play, catch a movie or go to a ballgame.

Ticket agents dutifully ascertain the vaccination status of everyone passing through the turnstile at pro sports venues in some cities from Seattle and New York, and restaurant hosts do the same in many places. In other locations, vaccine checks are cursory at best. Sometimes it's practically done on the honor system.

“There are some businesses that say they check for vaccination proof, but they are not even checking,” said Jay Matsler, of Palm Springs, California, who was visiting San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf with his partner during a stop of their cruise along the California coast.

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White House eyes new climate change strategies in Biden bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is zeroing in on a package of clean energy strategies for President Joe Biden's big domestic policy bill that officials believe could reach similar greenhouse gas emission reduction goals as an initial proposal that was quashed by opposition from a centrist Democrat.

The Biden administration discussed the proposals Monday at the White House with the leaders of about a dozen environmental and justice groups, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to share the plans. A new approach was needed after coal-state Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., rejected the White House's earlier clean energy plan.

The emerging proposals would expand grants and loans in the agriculture and industrial sectors to help them shift to clean energy providers with fewer greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, the official said. There would also be new, refundable home improvement tax credits for tapping solar and other renewable energy sources. The official said momentum was building as the group coalesced around the new ideas.

The new strategies come as the president and Democrats in Congress are struggling to wrap up talks on Biden's now-scaled-back package of at least $1.75 trillion in social services and climate change investments before he departs later this week for two global summits overseas.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited the afternoon meeting with the leaders of some of the nation's leading environmental and justice organizations and reiterated the president's commitment to the goals of the package — even as she acknowledged the sometimes grueling process to achieve consensus in the party.

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Virus cut access to courts but opened door to virtual future

Just two reporters were allowed inside a Georgia courtroom to serve as the eyes and ears of the public when jury selection began for the men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery. Pandemic restrictions also kept reporters and the public out of the courtroom during the sex-trafficking trial of music star R. Kelly.

And in an Ohio courtroom, a federal judge relegated the press to an overflow room to listen to an audio feed for the trial of a Chinese national charged with trying to steal trade secrets from U.S. companies.

A year-and-a-half into the coronavirus pandemic, courts across the U.S. are still grappling with how to balance public health concerns with the constitutional rights of a defendant and the public to have an open trial. There's no standard solution. Some courts are still functioning entirely virtually. Others are back in person. And many are allowing only limited public access.

“This is a fundamental constitutional right that the public has — to have open courts and to be able to see what’s happening in real time in a courtroom,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, which has prodded California courts to improve public access during the pandemic.

COVID-19 space constraints have led judges across the U.S. to exclude or limit public and media attendance at trials.

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’70s radical David Gilbert granted parole in Brink’s robbery

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Former Weather Underground radical David Gilbert has been granted parole after 40 years behind bars for his role in a deadly 1981 Brink’s robbery that was a violent echo of left-wing extremism born in the 1960s, the state corrections department said Tuesday.

Gilbert, 76, has been imprisoned since shortly after the infamously botched armored car robbery in which a guard and two police officers were killed. He became eligible for parole only after his 75 years-to-life sentence was shortened by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in August, hours before he left office.

Gilbert appeared before the state parole board Oct. 19 and was subsequently granted parole, Thomas Mailey, a spokesperson for the New York state corrections department, said Tuesday.

He will be able to leave Shawangunk Correctional Facility in the Hudson Valley next month.

Supporters — including his son, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin — lobbied to have Gilbert join other defendants in the case who have been released from prison.

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Potential legal woes mount after 'Rust' shooting tragedy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alec Baldwin the actor, who pulled the trigger on a prop gun while filming “Rust” in New Mexico and unwittingly killed a cinematographer and injured a director, likely won’t be held criminally or civilly liable for the tragedy.

But Alec Baldwin the producer might be, along with several others in leadership positions for the Western.

Experts predict a tremendous legal fallout from the tragedy, definitely in civil lawsuits and potentially in criminal charges. In addition to Baldwin, a call sheet for the day of the shooting obtained by The Associated Press lists five producers, four executive producers, a line producer and a co-producer. They, as well as assistant director Dave Halls and armorer Hannah Gutierrez, could all face some sort of liability even if they weren't on location Thursday.

The payouts — which could be covered in part by insurance held by the production company, Rust Movie Productions — would likely be in the “millions and millions” of dollars.

“There was clearly negligence on the set," said Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and a gun policy expert. "The producers had a duty to preserve the safety of the crew. There were obvious hazards on the set.”

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Civil rights pioneer seeks expungement of '55 arrest record

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. Convicted of assaulting a police officer while being arrested, she was placed on probation yet never received notice that she'd finished the term and was on safe ground legally.

Now 82 and slowed by age, Colvin has asked a judge to end the matter once and for all. She wants a court in Montgomery to wipe away a record that her lawyer says has cast a shadow over the life of a largely unsung hero of the civil rights era.

“I am an old woman now. Having my records expunged will mean something to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it will mean something for other Black children,” Colvin said in a sworn statement.

Supporters sang civil rights anthems and clapped as Colvin entered the clerk’s office and filed the expungement request Tuesday. Her attorney, Phillip Ensler, said he was seeking all legal documents to be sealed and all records of the case erased.

Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey later said he agreed with the request to clear Colvin’s record, removing any doubt it would be approved.

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150 people arrested in US-Europe darknet drug probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — Law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Europe have arrested 150 people and seized more than $31 million in an international drug trafficking investigation stemming from sales on the darknet, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The arrests are connected to a 10-month investigation between federal law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Europol in Europe. Prosecutors allege those charges are responsible for tens of thousands of illegal sales in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The Justice Department says investigators have seized over $31.6 million in cash and virtual currency and 45 guns.

The darknet is a part of the internet hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through specialized anonymity-providing tools, most notably the Tor Browser.

Investigators also recovered a slew of illegal drugs, including counterfeit medication and opioid pills, along with more than 152 kilograms of amphetamine, 21 kilograms of cocaine and 32.5 kilograms of MDMA, according to prosecutors.

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