SYDNEY — Elon Musk lashed out at Australia’s prime minister (PM) on Tuesday after a court ordered his social media company X to take down footage of an alleged terrorist attack in Sydney, and said the ruling meant any country could control “the entire internet.”

At a hearing overnight, Australia’s Federal Court ordered X, formerly called Twitter, to temporarily hide posts showing video of the incident a week earlier, in which a teenager was charged with terrorism for knifing an Assyrian priest and others.

X said it had already blocked the posts from Australian users, but Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner had said the content should be taken down since it showed explicit violence.

“Does the PM think he should have jurisdiction over all of Earth?” Mr. Musk wrote in a post, referring to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The billionaire, who bought X in 2022 with a declared mission to save free speech, posted a meme on the platform that showed X stood for “free speech and truth” while other social media platforms represented “censorship and propaganda.”

Mr. Musk also wrote that “if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian ‘eSafety Commissar’ is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire internet?”

The pushback by the world’s third-richest person sets up a new front in the battle between the world’s largest internet platforms and countries and nonprofits seeking more oversight of the content hosted on them.

Last month, a US judge threw out a lawsuit by X against the hate speech watchdog, Center for Countering Digital Hate. In Australia, the e-Safety Commissioner fined X A$610,500 last year for failing to cooperate with a probe on anti-child abuse practices; X is fighting that penalty in court.

Albanese hit back at Mr. Musk, saying the country would “do what’s necessary to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency.”

“The idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out-of-touch Mr. Musk is,” Mr. Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Spokespeople for X and the e-Safety Commissioner were not immediately available for comment.

Although Mr. Musk wrote in another post that X had “blocked the content in question for Australian IP addresses,” the video could be seen on the platform by a Reuters journalist in Australia. A far-right senator also reposted the video on his X account.

On Tuesday, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said it had used “internal tools” to detect and block copies of videos of the church attack and an unrelated, deadly stabbing at a shopping mall in Sydney two days earlier.

Meta said it was removing posts containing “any glorification or praise” of the incidents.

Alice Dawkins, executive director of internet policy non-profit Reset.Tech Australia, said Mr. Musk’s comments fit “the company’s chaotic and negligent approach to the most basic user safety considerations that under previous leadership, the platform used to take seriously.” — Reuters

The U.S. is drafting sanctions that threaten to cut some Chinese banks off from the global financial system, which officials hope will stop Beijing’s commercial support of Russia’s military production, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits China this week, the question is whether this potent financial threat can dent the China-Russia trade enabling Moscow to rebuild its military after losses in Ukraine, the report says.

Blinken on Friday criticized Chinese support for Russia’s defense industry, saying Beijing was the primary contributor to Moscow’s war in Ukraine through its provision of critical components for weaponry.

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have intensified pressure on China, warning Washington stands ready to take action against Chinese financial institutions facilitating trade in goods that have both civilian and military applications.

The People’s Bank of China and the National Financial Regulatory Administration, China’s top banking regulator, didn’t immediately reply to Reuters’ requests for comments.

China and Russia have fostered more trade in yuan instead of dollar in the wake of the Ukraine war, an effort that could shield their economies from potential escalating U.S. sanctions. — Reuters

NEW YORK — New York prosecutors said on the first day of Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial that the former president broke the law and corrupted the 2016 election by trying to cover up sexual encounters with a porn star and a Playboy model, while his defense lawyer said he committed no crime.

Jurors in the historic trial also heard briefly from the prosecution’s first witness: former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who prosecutors say participated in a “catch and kill” scheme to suppress unflattering stories about Mr. Trump and help him get elected.

In the first-ever trial of a former US president, Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says they had 10 years earlier. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies the encounter took place.

Prosecutors portrayed the payment as a criminal effort to deceive voters at a time when Mr. Trump was facing other accusations of crude sexual behavior.

“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Mr. Colangelo told the jury that they would hear Mr. Trump working out the details of the scheme in recorded conversations and see an extensive paper trail to back up the testimony of witnesses.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer told the jury that the former president did not commit any crimes and said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should not have brought the case.

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy. They put something sinister on this idea, as if it’s a crime,” Mr. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said.

Wearing a blue tie and dark blue suit, the Republican presidential candidate watched the court proceedings and occasionally spoke to his lawyer. A Secret Service agent wearing an earpiece sat directly behind him.

The lawyers made their opening statements in what may be the only one of Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to go to trial before his Nov. 5 election rematch with Democratic President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

The case is seen by many legal experts as the least consequential of the Trump prosecutions, based on facts that have been public since 2018. A guilty verdict would not bar him from taking office, but it could hurt his candidacy.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows half of independent voters and one in four Republicans say they would not vote for Mr. Trump if he is convicted of a crime.

Before proceedings got under way, Mr. Trump called on his supporters to peacefully protest nationwide, but few greeted him when he arrived at the downtown Manhattan courthouse. Mr. Trump blamed security restrictions for the poor turnout, though the surrounding streets were open to the public.

Mr. Trump faces three other criminal indictments stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty in those cases, and he portrays all of them as a broad-based effort by Mr. Biden’s Democratic allies to undercut his campaign.

With the 2024 election campaign in full swing, Mr. Trump now must juggle courtroom appearances and rallies.

34 CRIMINAL COUNTS
Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors say he falsified checks and invoices to disguise $420,000 in payments to his personal lawyer Michael Cohen as legal services, when in fact they were meant to reimburse him for paying off Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Colangelo said those payments were part of a broader pattern by Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker to tamp down other unflattering stories and help him defeat Democrat Hillary R. Clinton.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Pecker agreed during an August 2015 meeting with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen to act as the campaign’s “eyes and ears” by looking out for negative stories about Mr. Trump.

“Pecker was not acting as a publisher, he was acting as a co-conspirator,” Mr. Colangelo said.

Mr. Pecker has not been charged with a crime.

American Media, which published the National Enquirer, in 2018 admitted that it paid $150,000 to former Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal for rights to her story about a months-long affair with Mr. Trump in 2006 and 2007. American Media said it worked “in concert” with Mr. Trump’s campaign, and it never published a story.

The tabloid reached a similar deal to pay $30,000 to a doorman who was seeking to sell a story about Mr. Trump allegedly fathering a child out of wedlock, which turned out to be false, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Trump has said the payments were personal and did not violate election law. He has also denied the affair with Ms. McDougal.

Mr. Cohen’s credibility as a witness is likely to be a crucial aspect of the trial, which could last six to eight weeks. He has pleaded guilty and served prison time on federal campaign-finance charges related to his role in the scheme.

“He has a goal — an obsession — with getting Mr. Trump,” Mr. Blanche said, adding that Mr. Cohen had lied under oath in other cases. “I submit to you that he cannot be trusted.”

Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. Cohen and others involved in the case, including prosecutors, Justice Juan Merchan and his daughter.

Mr. Merchan has imposed a limited gag order and will consider on Tuesday whether to penalize Mr. Trump for violating that order.

On Monday evening, Mr. Trump said in an interview to Real America’s Voice that the jury “was picked so fast” and that the area was mostly Democrat. — Reuters