POLAND: A writer is facing up to three years in prison for calling the president a “moron” on social media.

Jakub Zulczyk criticised President Andrzej Duda’s reaction to Joe Biden’s US presidential electoral victory last year.

Mr Zulczyk said on Monday that a district prosecutor in Warsaw had filed an indictment against him based on an article in the penal code making it a crime to insult the head of state.

UNITED STATES: A report by advocacy group Avaaz has found that Facebook allowed far-right groups to glorify violence during the 2020 election and in the weeks leading up to the deadly riots on the US Capitol.

Avaaz says it identified 267 pages aligned to extremist movements on the platform, with a combined following of 32 million users.

On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are due to testify before Congress about extremism and misinformation on their platforms.

NEW ZEALAND: Jacinda Ardern’s government is to spend billions of dollars to encourage more home-building and remove some tax breaks for speculators in an effort to slow soaring house-price inflation.

Average prices in New Zealand have risen by more than 20 per cent since the pandemic, making the country’s housing among the  least affordable in the world.

The new measures include an extra $3.8 billion (£1.9bn) of government spending on housing infrastructure to encourage new builds.

SYRIA: The World Health Organisation will oversee a coronavirus vaccination campaign in the war-torn country that is expected to start in April, with the aim of inoculating 20 per cent of the population by the end of 2021.

The announcement came amid a sharp increase in cases in government-held parts of the country. State media says that intensive-care units in Damascus are full, and medical staff have been called to stay on alert to deal with coronavirus patients.