Facebook parent Meta is reinstating former President Donald Trump’s personal account in the coming weeks, ending a two-year suspension it imposed in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The company said in a blog post Wednesday it is adding “new guardrails” to ensure there are no “repeat offenders” who violate its rules, even if they are political candidates or world leaders.

“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s vice president of global affairs.

Clegg added that when there is a “clear risk” of real-world harm, Meta will intervene.

Facebook suspended Trump on Jan. 7, 2021, for praising people engaged in violent acts at the Capitol a day earlier. But the company had resisted earlier calls — including from its own employees — to remove Trump’s account.

Facebook is not only the world’s largest social media site, but had been a crucial source of fundraising revenue for Trump’s campaigns.

Responding to the news, Trump blasted Facebook’s decision to suspend his account as he praised Truth Social, his personal social-media platform.

“FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since “deplatforming” your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” he wrote.

Civil rights groups and others on the left were quick to denounce Meta’s move.

Farmworker charged in seven Calif. killings

A farmworker accused of killing seven people in back-to-back shootings at two Northern California mushroom farms was charged Wednesday with seven counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

Chunli Zhao, 66, was set to make his first court appearance Wednesday but it was postponed until Feb. 16, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. His two attorneys did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Wagstaffe, speaking outside the courthouse, declined to share any additional details on Zhao’s alleged motive in the killing of his current and former coworkers. Sheriff’s officials have said it was workplace violence.

Dallas officer shot, suspect killed

A murder suspect was shot and killed and a Dallas officer was shot Wednesday, Dallas police said.

Dallas police say the suspect shot at police and officers returned fire. The officer was shot in the foot and the released from the hospital.

Multiple officers responded to the shooting just after 3 p.m. when police were attempting to serve an arrest warrant for the man who was killed by police.

The suspect was in the passenger side of a vehicle that police followed, police spokeswoman Kristin Lowman said.

When the vehicle pulled in to a residential complex, officers yelled for the suspect and the driver to exit the vehicle, but only the driver got out, Lowman said. The suspect opened fire and struck one officer, Lowman said. Officers returned fire, hitting the suspect. Both the suspect and officer were then hospitalized, she said.

Pelosi attack evidence ordered released

A California judge on Wednesday ordered the release of evidence related to the October attack on former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, including a recording of his 911 call and police body-camera footage.

David DePape is accused of breaking into the lawmaker’s San Francisco home and attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer, fracturing the 82-year-old’s skull and causing other serious injuries.

A coalition of at least a dozen news organizations asked the court to order the San Francisco district attorney’s office to release copies of the records already submitted into evidence.

DePape’s lawyers opposed making that evidence public.

Dems mull primary election cycle changes

A Democratic National Committee panel voted Wednesday to give New Hampshire and Georgia more time to make changes that would allow both to be part of a revamped group of five states leading off the party’s presidential primary starting next year.

But even as they voted 25-0 to extend the compliance deadline until June 3, members of the DNC rules committee complained about New Hampshire’s ongoing feud with the national party because the new calendar would cost it the chance to hold the nation’s first primary.

French troops to decamp Burkina Faso

French troops in Burkina Faso will leave the West African country within a month, officials in France said Wednesday afternoon, in the latest deterioration of relations between France and a onetime African ally.

Anne-Claire Legendre, the spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry, said France had been notified by Burkina Faso’s government Tuesday that it was withdrawing from a military accord struck in 2018, and that therefore France had a month to leave the country. France would “respect the terms” of the accord, she said.

Around 400 French troops, including 200 special forces, are thought to be stationed in the landlocked country, which has been turned upside-down in the past seven years by jihadi attacks and the fallout, including thousands of killings, mass displacement and hunger.

GOP House panel plans COVID deep dive

The new chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is planning a wide focus on future pandemic preparedness and the impacts of the pandemic on the economy, education and the national supply chain.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, , a podiatric surgeon who serves on the Ways and Means Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, categorized the panel’s mission as an “after-action review” and “lessons learned.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested the origins of COVID would play a prominent role in the panel’s work, saying the members would “finally get answers ... and the federal government’s gain of function research that contributed to the pandemic.”

Gain-of-function research involves strengthening different components of a virus in order to study ways to treat or prevent it, but whether the experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health in Wuhan, China, qualify as gain-of-function are hotly debated.

Old McCartney Beatle photos to go on display

A trove of previously unseen photos taken by Paul McCartney as the Beatles shot to global stardom will go on display in London this year.

The National Portrait Gallery announced Wednesday that the exhibition, titled “Eyes of the Storm,” will help mark the gallery’s reopening in June after a three-year refurbishment.

Gallery director Nicholas Cullinan said McCartney, approached the gallery in 2020 saying he had rediscovered a batch of photos from late 1963 and early 1964 that he had thought were lost. The pictures cover a brief, transformative time when the Beatles rose from sensations in their own country to a worldwide phenomenon.

Cullinan said they were an “extraordinary” set of images “taken by someone who was really, as the exhibition title alludes, in the eye of the storm.”

— From news services