BRAZIL – A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has opened an inquiry into Elon Musk after the multi-billionaire said he would reactivate accounts on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that the judge had ordered to be blocked.
Mr Musk posted on the platform that the restrictions had been lifted because the court order was unconstitutional.
He also called for Justice Alexandre de Moraes to “resign or be impeached”.
If X fails to comply with the order, it will be fined 100,000 reais ($19,774; £15,670) a day.
In his decision, Justice Moraes wrote that Mr Musk had launched a disinformation campaign against the Supreme Court.
The platform’s Global Government Affairs team said the company was not allowed to say which accounts were affected.
But Mr Musk has since posted that “X will publish everything demanded by [Moraes] and how those requests violate Brazilian law”.
The profiles are believed to have been linked to far-right movements which posted content related to riots on 8 January last year when thousands of supporters of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace.
Justice Moraes gained prominence after his decisions to restrict social media platforms in the country.
He is also investigating Mr Bolsonaro and his supporters for their roles in an alleged attempted coup d’état.
Last Saturday, the former president posted a video of a meeting he had with Mr Musk in May 2022.
Hours earlier, Mr Bolsonaro also called on his supporters to gather on 21 April.
Meanwhile, Brazil’s communication minister Paulo Pimenta criticised Mr Musk, posting in capital letters that “social networks are not a lawless land”.
“We will not allow anyone, regardless of the money and power they have, to affront our homeland,” he added.
If X decides to disobey the order, the platform could be blocked temporarily according to Bruna Santos who is the global campaigns manager at non-profit organisation Digital Action.
“Musk acted to provoke the Brazilian judiciary,” she said. “I think there is a real chance that X might get blocked.”(BBC)…[+]

MYANMAR – Myanmar’s military appears to have abandoned the strategically important border town of Myawaddy on the eastern border with Thailand, after a sustained assault by an alliance of anti-coup fighters.
Thai PBS reported yesterday that more than 600 Myanmar nationals, including 67 military officers and 410 non-commissioned officers as well as their family members, were waiting for entry to Thailand after the regime in Naypyidaw requested permission for an aircraft to land on the Thai side to collect the group.
The Karen National Union (KNU) earlier said that soldiers from its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army, in alliance with anti-coup fighters from the People’s Defense Force (PDF), had taken control of the military base in the town, sharing photos of weapons and ammunition they said they had seized.
Myawaddy lies just across the border from Mae Sot in Thailand and is a major trading route.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said that even with the renewed fighting since the February 2021 coup, bilateral trade across the checkpoint between April 2023 and March 2024 amounted to more than $1bn and Myawaddy’s loss was significant.
“This is a major blow to the Myanmar military junta,” he told Al Jazeera. “This is the largest and most important of the six official Thai-Burma border crossings.” Myanmar was previously known as Burma.
The generals led by army chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering a crisis that has displaced thousands and left millions in need of humanitarian assistance.
The military has come under increasing pressure across the country since the Three Brotherhood Alliance, another coalition of ethnic armed groups, launched a major offensive in northern Shan and western Rakhine states at the end of last October, seizing hundreds of military outposts.
Forced to fight on multiple fronts, the generals have intensified air strikes and announced a policy of forced conscription.
“The military has really backed itself into a corner, waging a very unpopular war against the people of Myanmar who refuse to go back to a military dictatorship and all that that entails,” Robertson said.
Last week, the National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel government of elected politicians overthrown in the coup, said their forces carried out a drone attack on Naypyidaw, the military’s remote, purpose-built capital.
The KNU is Myanmar’s oldest ethnic armed group and was one of the first to condemn the coup.
It has provided training and expertise to members of PDFs, which were established by the NUG. (Al Jazeera)…[+]

QUITO – Mexican embassy staff departed after Mexico broke diplomatic relations with Ecuador following Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican embassy to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, who has been convicted of corruption.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry confirmed embassy staff and their families were returning to Mexico in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Friendly countries and allies supported Mexico in ensuring the safety of Mexican citizens by accompanying them on the journey to the airport in the Ecuadorian capital, the ministry said.
The Mexican embassy in Ecuador “will remain closed indefinitely, as will consular services,” it said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador deemed the police raid on the Mexican embassy a violation of Mexico’s sovereignty and international law and severed diplomatic relations with Ecuador.
He also instructed Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena to coordinate the return of diplomatic personnel accredited in Ecuador, along with their families, after the “violent attack” on the Mexican embassy. (Xinhua)…[+]

UKRAINE – The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine was damaged in a drone attack, the United Nations’ energy watchdog said, as both Russian and Ukrainian officials denied responsibility for the strike and accused the other of carrying it out.
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported the attack at the Russian-controlled facility, but said the damage “has not compromised nuclear safety.”
The drone attack included three direct hits against the facility’s main reactor containment, the agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, said on X. One person died as a result of the attack, he added.
“This is a clear violation of the basic principles for protecting Europe’s largest (nuclear power plant). Such reckless attacks significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident and must cease immediately,” Grossi said.
Russian authorities accused the Ukrainian military of carrying out a series of attacks against the plant using “self-exploding” drones, according to a statement posted on ZNPP’s official Telegram channel.
But Ukrainian officials denied responsibility and accused Russia of endangering the nuclear facility and surrounding population.
“The incidents at ZNPP are also a form of Russian nuclear blackmail aimed at both Ukraine and the international community,” a Ukrainian government agency said yesterday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned Ukraine’s denial of involvement yesterday and said that the drone attack is “a very dangerous practice that has very bad, negative consequences.”
A truck unloading food was damaged, and another hit was registered in the cargo port area of the facility, according to the ZNPP statement.
“Shelling of Zaporizhzhia NPP and its infrastructure is unacceptable. No nuclear power plant in the world is designed to withstand full-fledged fire from the armed forces.
Damage to infrastructure facilities may affect the safe operation of the NPP,” the statement added, using an acronym for the nuclear power plant.
Following Russia’s accusations, Ukraine denied any involvement in the attack, the spokesperson for the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, Andriy Yusov, told Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
“The aggressor state is once again endangering the nuclear facility, civilians and the environment of the whole of Europe,” Yusov said, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
CNN cannot independently verify Russia’s or Ukraine’s claims.
“No one can conceivably benefit or get any military or political advantage from attacks against nuclear facilities. This is a no go. I firmly appeal to military decision makers to abstain from any action violating the basic principles that protect nuclear facilities,” Grossi said.
CNN has reached out to Energoatom, Ukraine’s largest power producer, and to the Ukrainian Armed Forces for comment. (CNN)…[+]

LEBANON – The Israeli military says it has killed a Hezbollah commander in an overnight air strike in Lebanon, as the United Nations warns that shelling was spreading and urges a halt to the cycle of violence.
Ali Ahmad Hussein of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force was “eliminated” by Israeli jets in the area of as-Sultaniyah in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said in a statement yesterday, accusing him of attacks against Israeli targets in recent months.
At least three other Hezbollah fighters were also killed in the strike, Al Jazeera has learned.
Meanwhile, dozens of rockets have been launched from Lebanon into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Hezbollah fighters said they were targeting an army base and air defence posts in the area.
Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire across Lebanon’s southern frontier in parallel with the Gaza war, adding to fears of a wider regional conflict.
Israeli strikes have killed about 270 Hezbollah fighters in the last six months, as well as around 50 civilians, including children, medics and journalists.
Hezbollah’s rocket fire has killed around a dozen Israeli soldiers and half as many civilians.
The shelling has displaced more than a hundred thousand people on each side of the border, and hit the farming economy in southern Lebanon particularly hard, with bombed-out fields left unplanted or unharvested.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Kafra in southern Lebanon, said the cross-border fighting and strikes illustrate the “changing dynamics in the past months” since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“At the beginning, the conflict was contained. But now, we can’t say that anymore,” he said, citing as an example the “unprecedented” Hezbollah attack in the occupied Golan Heights.
In a joint statement yesterday, UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, and the commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, Aroldo Lazaro, said the violence must stop.
“The unrelenting cycle of strikes and counterstrikes in breach of the cessation of hostilities constitute the most serious violation of Security Council Resolution 1701 since its adoption in 2006,” they said.
That UN decision ended a monthlong war between Hezbollah and Israel nearly two decades ago but many of its points – including a withdrawal of armed groups from the south and deployment of Lebanese army troops – were never implemented.
(Al Jazeera)…[+]