HellsBelle

Facebook is testing a system that charges users for sharing web links, in a move that could prove to be a further blow to news outlets and other publishers.

Meta, the social media platform’s owner, said it is carrying out a “limited test” in which those without a paid Meta Verified subscription, costing at least £9.99 a month, can only post two external links a month.

The test appears to involve a subset of Facebook pages and user profiles on Professional Mode, which includes features used by content creators to monetise their posts.

News organisations are not included in the test. However, the move could hit newsrooms and other media publishers as it may stop their users from sharing their content.

The latest trial is part of a campaign to find ways of encouraging Facebook users to sign up to Meta Verified, which costs from £9.99 up to almost £400 per month per profile depending on the tier. It offers extra account features and security.

Congress has mandated that the Trump administration release a trove of Epstein-related files by tomorrow – and the Justice Department is racing to process thousands of pages of documents and images.

In an exclusive, CNN reports that the Justice Department is racing to redact thousands of pages in oder to protect victims, and address executive and legal privacy concerns. Per CNN, counterintelligence specialists “ were asked to drop nearly all of their other work”.

Pipeline companies won’t be getting a massive property tax break for Christmas at the expense of some rural homeowners. At least not this year.

BC Assessment has backpedalled on a plan to slash the assessed values of transmission pipelines. The move would have resulted in pipeline companies paying significantly less taxes in several municipalities and regional districts, and resulted in local governments significantly increasing property taxes for homeowners and business owners to make up the revenue difference.

But after two months of protest and warnings by local government officials, officials in Victoria have announced they won’t be overhauling the pipeline assessments for the coming year. In a news release issued Wednesday afternoon, the Thompson Nicola Regional District said it had been informed that BC Assessment won’t be changing pipeline values for 2026.

Prosecutors have withdrawn a second-degree murder charge against a man who spent 23 years in prison for the killing of a 10-year-old girl in 1989.

Ontario’s court of appeal set aside the conviction against Timothy Rees, 62, last month and ordered a new trial into the complex case, which includes recanted confessions, accusations of police conspiracy and mishandled evidence.

It came after two former federal justice ministers said a “miscarriage of justice” had likely occurred during Rees’s original trial more than 30 years ago.

Prime Minister Mark Carney reaffirmed he'll protect Canada's supply management system, as the United States signalled it's ready to fight over this country's dairy rules at the negotiating table.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told members of U.S. Congress Wednesday that Washington is not prepared to extend the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement (CUSMA) without addressing "specific and structural issues."

In remarks made public after Greer met with lawmakers behind closed doors, President Donald Trump's point-person on trade said Americans have concerns about "dairy market access in Canada" and "Canada's exports of certain dairy products."

"We've been clear about our approach to supply management. We continue to stand by that. We will continue to protect supply management," the prime minister said.

We're driven blindfolded to a secret location where Ukraine is making one of its latest weapons.

We're told to turn off our phones - such is the secrecy around the production of Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missile.

For Ukraine, dispersing and hiding the production of weapons like this is key to survival. Two factories belonging to the company that makes it - Fire Point - have already been hit.

Even under fire, Ukraine is ramping up its arms industry. President Volodymyr Zelensky says the country now produces more than 50% of the weapons it uses on the front line. Almost its entire inventory of long-range weapons is domestically made.

At the start of the war Ukraine mostly relied on its old Soviet-era arsenal. Western military support helped modernise the country's armed forces, but it now leads much of the world in developing unmanned systems – like robots and drones.

One of the first white-tailed eagles to fledge in England for hundreds of years has vanished in suspicious circumstances, alongside two more “devastating” disappearances of the reintroduced raptor.

The eagles have gone missing in Sussex, Wales and Scotland. The chick, which hatched in the wild earlier this year in Sussex, was one of the first white-tailed eagles to fledge in England for hundreds of years.

It is thought someone could have harmed or killed the birds, as the satellite trackers that allow the reintroduction team to track their location and movements had been cut off. Two of the eagles had their trackers cut off with a sharp instrument with the equipment found dumped near their last recorded location. In the third case, the tag stopped sending information on 8 November and no sighting of the bird has been recorded since.

Still, let’s give it a go. Bill Gates, very much in contact with Epstein from 2011, has suffered no apparent ill effects from the association.

No one expects anything of Steve Bannon, so he’s fine, despite exchanging hundreds of texts and emails with Epstein right up to the year of his death.

Ditto Martin Nowak, the professor of maths and biology who was placed under sanctions by Harvard for two years after the extent of his personal and financial association with Epstein was revealed, but has since had all his privileges restored.

Anyway, Woody Allen! An occasional dining companion of Epstein’s who showed up in the latest Epstein photo dump relaxing with him over coffee and on set, and who recently said of the man: “He couldn’t have been nicer.”

And still among these men the most brazen escaper surely has to be Michael Wolff, the journalist who offered Epstein PR advice while recording more than 100 hours of interviews with him. Wolff has not only escaped unscathed but has successfully leveraged the association by claiming unique insight into Epstein in his endless podcast and social-media appearances.

It will go down in history as the “Bah! Humbug!” address.

But this was not an address by a self-confident man dishing out Christmas presents to the nation. It smacked of desperation from one who can feel the December windchill of opinion polls – a Reuters/ Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed just 33% of US adults approve of how Trump has handled the economy – dissent in his own Republican ranks and the Jeffrey Epstein files looming on Friday.

The speech also revealed Trump’s need for a reliable foil. Over the years Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been useful nemeses for a man and movement defined less by what they are for than what they are against.

US alt-rock band Jane’s Addiction has announced they are parting ways after a tumultuous 15 months of fisticuffs, accusations and lawsuits.

The veteran Californian group, who have a history of drama, dust-ups and bust-ups, prematurely terminated the US leg of their reunion tour in September last year after an onstage altercation in Boston between frontman Perry Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro led to blows and, ultimately, a $10m lawsuit.

Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships, as part of a multimillion-pound investment to tackle misogyny in England’s schools, the Guardian understands.

On the eve of the government publishing its long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade, David Lammy told the Guardian that the battle “begins with how we raise our boys”, adding that toxic masculinity and keeping girls and women safe were “bound together”.

As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.

British Columbia’s shortfalls in its response to the unregulated toxic drug crisis were strongly criticized during the first three weeks of the Drug User Liberation Front’s constitutional challenge.

Compassion club co-founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx are in court arguing the criminalization of their club violated members’ Charter rights.

Some of the sharpest criticism came from B.C.’s former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe, who held her position for 13 years before retiring last year.

Lapointe told the court that the province has taken an “issue management approach” to “give the impression positive matters were being taken,” without ever meaningfully evaluating if the money it was spending on the crisis was actually reducing overdoses or overdose fatalities.