Science & Technology

Facebook announced new efforts Monday to curb the spread of false information on its platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

But, in an acknowledgement of the struggle the social network faces to stay ahead of groups intent on manipulating its users, Facebook said it had taken down another set of disinformation networks, this time tied to Iran and Russia. That adds to the more than 50 such networks the company said it has already removed in the past year.

On a cold, sunny October day on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, a group of men dressed in black gathers outside Brondby Stadium to shoot off a couple of rockets, raise their fists and shout about how the home team will soon beat — and beat up — the visiting archnemesis, FC Copenhagen.

Police are out in force, riot helmets at the ready. Brondby-Copenhagen matches have a history of leading to vandalism, arrests and general mayhem.

Pinyo Pukpinyo, 50, remembers the first time he was sent to remove a snake from someone's house. It was a 14 1/2-ft. python, high up in the rafters waiting for its prey 16 years ago.

"There were four of us, and I was really scared," he says. "We didn't have any experience, but we wrestled him down and got the hoop around his neck" — a kind of snare — "but he was very strong. And after we put him in the sack, we had to remove the hoop from his head, and that's the dangerous part, because at any time he's ready to bite you."

New evidence indicates that Boeing pilots knew about "egregious" problems with the 737 Max airplane three years ago, but federal regulators were not told about them.

Investigators say the plane's new flight control system, called MCAS, is at least partially to blame for 737 Max crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia this year that killed 346 people. Acting on data from a single, faulty angle-of-attack sensor, MCAS repeatedly forced both planes into nosedives as the pilots struggled, but failed to regain control.