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US and Cuba set to re-open their embassies in each other’s capitals


USAWashington: The US and Cuba are on Wednesday scheduled to announce the reopening of embassies in Washington and Havana for the first time in over 50 years.

“We will formally announce on Wednesday that the US and Cuba have reached an agreement to re-establish formal diplomatic relations and open embassies in each other’s capitals,” a US official said.

In Havana, the American embassy is likely to occupy the same building where the Interests Section currently operates, a news portal quoted a White House official as saying.

That’s the same structure, situated on the Havana waterfront, which housed the American embassy prior to the severing of diplomatic ties after the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s.Cuba_flag

“We expect President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry to address this publicly Wednesday morning,” the official added.

The re-establishing of embassies is a final step in the full diplomatic thaw President Obama initiated in December.

Since then, the US has eased some travel restrictions to Cuba and allowed for some new economic ties.

In April, Obama met with Cuban President, Raul Castro, during a summit meeting in Panama, the first time the leaders of Cuba and the US had met in over 50 years.

The US officially removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terror earlier in June. (IANS)

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Facebook Removes 3.2 Billion Fake Accounts

Facebook removes 3.2 billion fake accounts and 11.4 million hate speech posts

Facebook kills 3.2bn fake accounts and11.4 million hate speech posts. Pixabay

As the US Presidential election approaches, Facebook said that it has removed more than 3.2 billion fake accounts in the April-September period along with taking action on 11.4 million hate speech posts in the same period.

In total, Facebook removed 5.4 billion fake accounts and 15.5 million hate speech posts since January.

“Over the past two quarters, we have improved our ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts. We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems,” the social networking giant said on Wednesday.

The majority of such accounts were caught within minutes of registration, before they became a part of Facebook monthly active user (MAU) population.

“Our proactive rate remained above 99 per cent for both quarters. Prevalence for fake accounts continues to be estimated at approximately 5 per cent of our worldwide monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook,” said the company.

In total, Facebook removed 5.4 billion fake accounts since January. Pixabay

Earlier this year, Facebook began allowing its hate speech algorithms to begin automatically removing content that violates its policies.

“One result of that decision has been a sharp spike in the amount of hate speech taken off Facebook,” said the company.

Facebook said It is using machine learning-based detection technology that can find and flag hate speech using several different methods.

Also Read- ‘Project Nightingale’ of Google Confronts a Federal Inquiry in the US

“Starting in Q2 2019, our systems began removing posts automatically when they received very high scores or matched existing hate speech in our database. In all other cases when our systems detect potential hate speech, they send the post to our review team to determine if it should be removed,” explained the company. (IANS)