The Bollywood superstar Salman Khan has been sentenced to five years in jail for poaching a protected species of Indian antelope, in the latest twist to an off-screen life almost as dramatic as the epics he has starred in.

A court in Rajasthan state on Thursday found Khan, one of the world’s best-paid actors, guilty of illegally hunting the two blackbucks from his car window while filming in Jodhpur in 1998. Public prosecutors alleged that Khan, 52, and four other actors in the car with him fled the scene when they were spotted, leaving the animals’ carcasses behind. The other actors, among them Saif Ali Khan and Sonali Bendre, were acquitted by the court in Jodhpur for lack of evidence.

India’s wildlife protection act bans the hunting of all but a few species of wild animals without a special permit. As well as the five-year sentence the court also fined Khan 10,000 rupees (£109). His lawyers said they would appeal against the decision. and an urgent bail hearing had been scheduled for 10.30am on Friday. Khan was taken to Jodhpur central jail after visiting a local hospital for a medical examination.

Hundreds of police had surrounded the courtroom in Jodhpur to keep back fans of the actor, known for his bad-boy image and macho film roles. Khan has long maintained that he was framed by forest officials “for publicity” and that the blackbucks could have died from natural causes such as overeating.(theguardian)…[+]

Twitter removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017, according to the company’s latest transparency report. The number of accounts permanently suspended for sharing what the firm called extremist content between July and December represents a drop for the second period in a row.

The social network puts this down to “years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism”. Nick Pickles, Twitter UK’s head of public policy, said: “The overwhelming majority of these accounts were detected by our own technology, with just 0.2% of the accounts we suspended in 2017 being flagged by the police.” Almost 75% of accounts were suspended before they sent their first tweet, according to the report, and 93% were discovered by tools that Twitter engineers had built.

Twitter is understood to also use a combination of US and EU lists of terrorist organisations as well as research from academics and experts to identify terrorists on its network. The number of reports of abusive behaviour submitted by government representatives also dropped amid a marked change in the type of abusive behaviour reported. Two-thirds of the 10,000 reports concerned violated rules over impersonation, with only 16% of the reports for harassment and 12% for hateful conduct. Harassment and hateful conduct each accounted for a third of reported accounts in the first half of 2017.(theguardian)…[+]

Europe’s powerful centre-right alliance, the European People’s Party, has been accused of providing political cover for the autocratic rule of Viktor Orbán on the eve of Hungary’s elections. The EPP, a bloc that includes the parties of Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, is accused of sheltering Fidesz despite Hungary’s democratic backsliding, hostile stance on migration, misinformation about Brussels and alleged misuse of EU funds. Fidesz and its Christian Democratic ally in Hungary, KDNP, are members of the EPP, which boasts nine heads of EU governments and the largest number of MEPs in the European parliament. Hungary’s former European commissioner László Andor said the EPP had provided “absolutely essential” cover for Orbán, and he highlighted the role of Bavaria’s powerful CSU, the sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. “The German CSU has played a pivotal role in whitewashing the autocratic rule of Orbán, and only pushed him back in cases when he was going to the wildest extremes like discussing the need to reintroduce the death penalty.”(theguardian)…[+]