Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes issued a forceful call for regulators to break up the company he helped build in a New York Times op-ed published Thursday.

Hughes, who left Facebook to work for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, said that from his own experience building and working inside the company, Facebook now has more power than a private sector entity is due. While emphasizing his belief that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has good intentions overall, he said the executive has far too much unchecked power, aided by his majority voting stake in the company.

"The most problematic aspect of Facebook's power is Mark's unilateral control over speech," Hughes wrote. "There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people."

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it's not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile "investigative reports" and other "information."

The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel's office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.

They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller's operation - and even had a hand in his final report - because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller's lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media.

Iran's foreign minister has issued a scathing response to the EU's joint statement on the crumbling nuclear pact, saying the bloc has been bullied by the US "for a year" and needs to uphold its obligations under the deal.

Earlier Thursday, the EU and Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, and the UK issued a joint statement reaffirming their collective commitment to the Iran deal while also strongly hinting that US intrusion on Iran is unwelcome.

That statement came a day after Tehran announced it would suspend some of its commitments under the 2015 deal, a year after the US pulled out of the agreement. Other signatories to the deal have 60 days to negotiate with Iran over its concerns, including that the European members of the deal haven't done enough to uphold their own end of the deal and protect Iran from US sanctions.

Since April 30, the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington has been under siege by pro-coup activists who have repeatedly stated their intention to prevent the access of food to the people inside, who are living there at the invitation of the elected government of Venezuela. The U.S. Secret Service is outsourcing its desires to remove the Embassy Protection Collective to the violent and bigoted protesters.

The Secret Service has said that it will not prevent those in the building from accessing food or supplies, but on Monday morning that proved to be a lie. Instead of merely abetting the opposition's war of attrition, the Secret Service now serves as a second line of defense against the delivery of food, having now denied its entry themselves. Embassy protectors say it is a violation of their human rights.

The Embassy Protection Collective is holding down the embassy in order to prevent the United States from violating international law, as it seeks to hand over the Maduro government's diplomatic location to the illegitimate shadow government of Juan Guaidó, which is unable to provide to Venezuelans in the U.S. diplomatic services such as the issuance of visas or passports because it holds no tangible power in the country.

The acting U.S. defense chief has vowed to hold Iran "accountable for any attack on U.S. forces or our interests," as Washington stepped up its rhetoric and said it was deploying an aircraft carrier battle group to waters near Iran.

In a post to Twitter on May 6, Patrick Shanahan, the acting secretary of defense, also accused Tehran of unspecified provocations. "We call on the Iranian regime to cease all provocation. We will hold the Iranian regime accountable for any attack on U.S. forces or our interests," he wrote.
Shanahan's comments came a day after White House national-security adviser John Bolton said that the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and accompanying ships, along with a bomber task force, was intended to send Iran "a clear and unmistakable message."

He said the United States is "not seeking war with the Iranian regime" but that it is "fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or regular Iranian forces."

The deployment of the carrier and bomber groups sends "a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force," Bolton said in a May 5 press briefing.

Barack Obama admitted 'this stings' after the 2016 election result and spent the night watching the movie Dr Strange to try and distract himself, a new book claims.

The former president went from being confident that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump to seeing it as a 'personal insult' that she lost. Obama could not believe the American people had 'turned on him' for a man he had written off as a 'cartoon'.

As the dust settled Obama told his family that 'this hurts' and blamed Clinton who 'brought many of her troubles on herself' and ran a 'scripted, soulless campaign'.

The eye-popping details are in the new edition of Obama: The Call Of History by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. The book was originally released in July 2017 but has been updated with extensive new reporting throughout Obama's time in office - and the run through of election day is electrifying.

Pope Francis issued a landmark decree on Thursday making bishops directly accountable for sexual abuse or covering it up, requiring clerics to report any cases to Church superiors and allowing anyone to complain directly to the Vatican if needed.

Tackling sexual abuses that have battered the Catholic Church's reputation has been a major challenge for Francis since his 2013 election, with victims demanding a crackdown on bishops at the diocese level accused of concealing or mismanaging cases.

The papal change in Church law, covering abuse of children and adults alike, also obliges every diocese worldwide to set up simple, accessible reporting systems within a year and spurs local churches to involve lay experts in investigations.

Although such systems are already in place in some countries including the United States, they are lacking in many others.

Francis's edict obliges the world's one million priests and nuns to report all suspicion of sexual abuse by clerics of any level. Before, it was just a matter of individual conscience as to whether to report cases.

It calls for whistleblower protection, saying bishops with conflicts of interest in cases of cover-up should recuse themselves from investigations and that bishops can also be held accountable for abuse of power in sexual relations with adults.

President Trump is questioning his administration's aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.

The president's dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.

Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him "into a war" - a comment that he has made in jest in the past but that now betrays his more serious concerns, one senior administration official said.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation, sources with direct knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: It's the first congressional subpoena - that we know about - of one of President Trump's children. The subpoena sets up a fight that's unprecedented in the Trump era: A Republican committee chair pit against the Republican president's eldest son.

• It's also a sign that the Russia investigations in Congress aren't over despite the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it's time to move on from the Russia probe.
• A Senate Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Axios: "We do not discuss the details of witness engagements with the Committee. Throughout the investigation, the Committee has reserved the right to recall witnesses for additional testimony as needed, as every witness and witness counsel has been made aware."
• "Don and Senate Intel agreed from the very beginning that he would appear once to testify before the committee and would remain for as long as it took to answer all of their questions. He did that. We're not sure why we're fighting with Republicans," a source close to Trump Jr. told Axios.

Despite the lack of visible preparation for war, the Lebanese authorities consider it important to take all necessary precautions for a possible Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel is not alone; this time its forces enjoy unlimited military support from the US administration through the US forces stationed in Israel and in various bases in the Middle East. Israel also enjoys financial support from Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, in case of a punitive war against non-state allies of Iran. Indeed, Israel sent a sharp message to the Lebanese authorities revealing its intention to bomb selected targets in the country, considered threatening by Israel. Lebanon answered: "a bombing of targets in Lebanon will be met with a similar bombing in Israel and we are ready for a possible escalation if it is imposed on us".

The US and Israel are working side-by-side against Iran and its allies/partners in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Lebanese authorities received an official warning, via France, revealing the intention of Israel to bomb specific locations in Lebanon, claimed to host missile factories. The local authorities answered:

"Lebanon shall not initiate a war against Israel. But if any location in Lebanon is bombed, a similar and equivalent and precise location in Israel will be bombed. If Israel bombs several locations, Lebanon will respond by bombing an equivalent number of locations and objectives. If Israel escalates, Lebanon will follow and the response may spill over the borders of Lebanon where its allies may not hesitate to take part in a war against Israel."

"Unlike the US military, Israel has air force superiority in the Middle East. The US forces can only offer military advice, intelligence, interception missiles batteries, supply of weapons and ammunition, exert pressure on Middle Eastern countries (mainly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) to finance a military campaign with the objective to cripple Iran's allies in the region, and make sure the UN is not taking any resolution against any possible Israeli aggression. But real attacks are normally carried out by the Israel Air Force."

Notwithstanding the non-state militant leadership in Lebanon who "personally estimate that the possibility of war is unlikely", "worst-case scenarios have been laid down by the high military command", as the leader of Hezbollah said in his last speech, reminding his listeners of "the treacherous capacity of Israel" (to start a sudden war).