X requests it be reinstated in Brazil after complying with judge's orders, sources say

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X requests it be reinstated in Brazil after complying with judge's orders, sources say

2024-09-27 07:39 Last Updated At：07:41

SAO PAULO (AP) — In the high-stakes showdown between the world’s richest man and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, Elon Musk blinked.

Musk’s social media site X has complied with Alexandre de Moraes’ orders and requested its service be reestablished in the country, two sources said Thursday.

X complied with orders to block certain accounts from the platform, name an official legal representative in Brazil, and pay fines imposed for not complying with earlier court orders, his lawyers said in a petition filed Thursday, according to the sources, who are familiar with the document. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

On Saturday, de Moraes ordered the platform to submit additional documentation about its legal representative for court review, which the sources said has been done.

X was blocked on Aug. 30 in the highly online country of 213 million people, where it was one of X's biggest markets, with more than 20 million users. De Moraes ordered the shutdown after sparring with Musk for months over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. The company said at the time that de Moraes' efforts to block certain accounts were illegal moves to censor “political opponents" and that it would not comply. Musk called the judge an enemy of free speech and a criminal. But de Moraes' decisions have been repeatedly upheld by his peers — including his nationwide block of X.

In a twist, X’s new representative is the same person who held the position before X shuttered its office in Brazil, according to the company’s public filing with the Sao Paulo commercial registry. That happened after de Moraes threatened to arrest the person, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if X did not comply with orders to block accounts.

In an apparent effort to avoid her getting blamed for potential violations of Brazilian law — and risk arrest — a clause has been written into the representation agreement that any action on the part of X that will result in obligations for her requires prior instruction in writing from the company, according to the company’s filing at the registry.

Associated Press emails and calls to her office were not returned. The Supreme Court’s press office has not confirmed receipt of X's documents, and X did not immediately respond to a request from the AP.

It’s still early to know whether the feud between X and Brazil’s top court is over, said ⁠Bruna Santos, a lawyer and global campaigns manager at nonprofit Digital Action. However, the platform's decision to appoint a representative indicates the company has entered “a state of good-faith cooperation with Brazilian authorities.”

And the fact that Brazilian users migrated in droves to rival platforms BlueSky and Threads may have played into X's backstep, Santos added.

“There must be a genuine concern on the platform that they are losing users, the core users from the early Twitter days, or the loyal ones, who stick around for good,” she said.

At a university in Rio de Janeiro, some students told the AP they were heartened by the news.

“I used it a lot as a way to search for information and news, and I missed it,” said João Maurício Almeida Raposo, a 19-year-old economics student. He started using Threads, but doesn’t like it.

Brazil is not the first country to ban X — far from it — but such a drastic step has generally been limited to authoritarian regimes. The platform and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan, for instance. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

X’s dustup with Brazil has some parallels to the company’s dealings with the Indian government three years ago, back when it was still called Twitter and before Musk purchased it for $44 billion. In 2021, India threatened to arrest employees of Twitter (as well as Meta’s Facebook and WhatsApp), for not complying with the government’s requests to take down posts related to farmers’ protests that rocked the country.

Unlike in the U.S., where free speech is baked into the constitution, in Brazil speech is more limited, with restrictions on homophobia and racism, for example, and judges can order sites to remove content. Many of de Moraes’ decisions are sealed from the public and neither he nor X has disclosed the full list of accounts he has ordered blocked, but prominent supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro and far-right activists were among those that X earlier removed from the platform.

Some belonged to a network known in Brazil as “digital militias.” They were targeted by a yearslong investigation overseen by de Moraes, initially for allegedly spreading defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices, and then after Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss for inciting demonstrations across the country that were seeking to overturn President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory.

In April, de Moraes included Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation into the U.S. business executive for alleged obstruction.

In that decision, de Moraes noted that Musk began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court’s actions, and that Musk continued the following day — most notably with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court’s orders to block certain accounts.

Musk, meanwhile, accused de Moraes of suppressing free speech and violating Brazil’s constitution, and noted on X that users could seek to bypass any shutdown of the social media platform by using VPNs. In an unusual move for a democratic country, de Moraes also set exorbitant daily fines for anyone using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access the platform.

X’s defiant stance appears to have softened following the shutdown.

On Sept. 18, after X became accessible to some users in Brazil despite the ban, the Government Affairs account posted that this was due to a change in network providers and was “inadvertent and temporary.” But, it added, “we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”

The score is 1-0, but the game isn’t necessarily over, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Technology and Society, a Rio-based think tank.

“The first round ends with a victory for de Moraes, who adopted drastic measures, but which wound up producing the effect of making X do a reversal and comply with orders,” Affonso Souza said.

Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Helene strengthens to a Category 4 hurricane as it nears Florida's Gulf Coast

2024-09-27 07:35 Last Updated At：07:41

CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene strengthened into a Category 4 storm hours ahead of its expected landfall on Florida’s northwest coast Thursday night as forecasters warned that the enormous system could create a “nightmare” storm surge and bring dangerous winds and rain across much of the southeastern U.S.

Helene, which had strengthened into a Category 3 storm earlier Thursday, prompted hurricane and flash flood warnings extending far beyond the coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina. Strong winds already cut power to over 320,000 homes and businesses in Florida, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. The governors of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and Virginia all declared emergencies in their states.

The hurricane was about 110 miles (175 kilometers) west of Tampa and had sustained winds of 130 mph (215 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Accelerating through the Gulf of Mexico, it was moving north-northeast at 23 mph (37 kph), and life-threatening storm surges of up to 20 feet (6 meters) were expected in the Big Bend area of Florida.

Hurricane warnings and flash flood warnings extended far beyond the coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina, with heavy rains and strong winds reported in much of Florida and Georgia Thursday evening.

Helene arrives barely a year since Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida’s Big Bend and caused widespread damage. Idalia became a Category 4 in the Gulf of Mexico but made landfall as a Category 3 near Keaton Beach, with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph (205 kph).

The storm's wrath was felt Thursday afternoon, with water lapping over a road on the northern tip of Siesta Key near Sarasota and covering some intersections in St. Pete Beach along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Lumber and other debris from a fire in Cedar Key a week ago was crashing ashore in the rising water.

Beyond Florida, up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain had fallen in the North Carolina mountains, with up to 14 inches (36 centimeters) more possible before the deluge ends, setting the stage for flooding that forecasters warned could be worse than anything seen in the past century.

Heavy rains began falling and winds were picking up in Valdosta, Georgia, near the Florida state line. The National Weather Service said more than a dozen Georgia counties could see hurricane-force winds exceeding 110 mph.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that models suggest Helene will make landfall further east than earlier forecast, lessening the chances for a direct hit on the capital city of Tallahassee, whose metro area has a population of around 395,000.

The shift has the storm aimed squarely at the sparsely-populated Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet.

“Please write your name, birthday, and important information on your arm or leg in a PERMANENT MARKER so that you can be identified and family notified,” the sheriff's office in mostly rural Taylor County warned those who chose not to evacuate in a Facebook post, the dire advice similar to what other officials have dolled out during past hurricanes.

Still, Philip Tooke, a commercial fisherman who took over the business his father founded near the region’s Apalachee Bay, planned to ride out this storm like he did during Hurricane Michael and the others – on his boat. “If I lose that, I don’t have anything,” Tooke said. Michael, a Category 5 storm, all but destroyed one town, fractured thousands of homes and businesses and caused some $25 billion in damage when it struck the Florida Panhandle in 2018.

Many, though, were heeding the mandatory evacuation orders that stretched from the Panhandle south along the Gulf Coast in low-lying areas around Tallahassee, Gainesville, Cedar Key, Lake City, Tampa and Sarasota.

Among them was Sharonda Davis, one of several gathered at a Tallahassee shelter worried their mobile homes wouldn’t withstand the winds. She said the hurricane’s size is “scarier than anything because it’s the aftermath that we’re going to have to face.”

Federal authorities were staging search-and-rescue teams as the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee forecast storm surges of up to 20 feet (6 meters) and warned they could be particularly “catastrophic and unsurvivable” in Apalachee Bay.

“Please, please, please take any evacuation orders seriously!” the office said, describing the surge scenario as “a nightmare.”

This stretch of Florida known as the Forgotten Coast has been largely spared by the widespread condo development and commercialization that dominates so many of Florida’s beach communities. The region is loved for its natural wonders — the vast stretches of salt marshes, tidal pools and barrier islands.

“You live down here, you run the risk of losing everything to a bad storm,” said Anthony Godwin, 20, who lives about a half-mile (800 meters) from the water in the coastal town of Panacea, as he stopped for gas before heading west toward his sister’s house in Pensacola.

School districts and multiple universities canceled classes. Airports in Tampa, Tallahassee and Clearwater were closed Thursday, while cancellations were widespread elsewhere in Florida and beyond.

While Helene will likely weaken as it moves inland, damaging winds and heavy rain were expected to extend to the southern Appalachian Mountains, where landslides were possible, forecasters said. The hurricane center warned that much of the region could experience prolonged power outages and flooding. Tennessee was among the states expected to get drenched.

Helene had swamped parts of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday, flooding streets and toppling trees as it passed offshore and brushed the resort city of Cancun. In western Cuba, Helene knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it brushed past the island.

Areas 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the Georgia-Florida line expected hurricane conditions. Most of Georgia’s public school districts and several universities canceled classes. The state opened its parks to evacuees, and their pets, including horses. Overnight curfews were imposed in many cities and counties in south Georgia, including Albany, Valdosta and Thomasville.

“This is one of the biggest storms we’ve ever had,” said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

For Atlanta, Helene could be the worst strike on a major Southern inland city in 35 years, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.

Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

In further storm activity, Tropical Storm Isaac formed Wednesday in the Atlantic and was expected to strengthen as it moves eastward across the open ocean, possibly becoming a hurricane by the end of the week, forecasters said. Officials said its swells and winds could affect parts of Bermuda and eventually the Azores by the weekend.

In the Pacific, former Hurricane John reformed Wednesday as a tropical storm and strengthened Thursday back into a hurricane as it threatened areas of Mexico’s western coast with flash flooding and mudslides. Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador raised John’s death toll to five as the communities along the country’s Pacific coast prepared for the storm to make a second landfall.

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.