Germany warned Tuesday of a rise in cyber attacks orchestrated by Russia in a bid to disrupt next year's election, a day after Europe's top economy suffered its biggest hacking strike.

Facebook has built a tool for geographically censoring posts at the leading social network as it seeks a path back into China, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The New York Times cited three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity, as saying that the tool could filter news feeds at the social network in specific places.

It only takes a few seconds for an employee of one of the world's leading hacking companies to take a locked smartphone and pull the data from it.

Israeli firm Cellebrite's technology provides a glimpse of a world of possibilities accessible to security agencies globally that worry privacy advocates.

The Twitter account of Jack Dorsey, the social network's CEO and co-founder, was briefly suspended Tuesday night because of what he called "an internal mistake."

"Just setting up my twttr...again (account suspension was an internal mistake)," Dorsey tweeted late Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton was about to be indicted, Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump: the battle over fake news is heating up after a White House campaign in which the misinformation industry may have swung the outcome of the vote.

Eight-year-old Sejal Yadav was pulled from the wreckage of a derailed train in northern India and rushed alone to hospital. Hours later she was reunited with her brother -- thanks to WhatsApp.

Facebook on Wednesday said that it has bought facial recognition startup FacioMetrics, potentially using the technology for photo or video effects to better challenge rival Snapchat.

"How people share and communicate is changing and things like masks and other effects allow people to express themselves in fun and creative ways," a Facebook spokesperson said in an email reply to an AFP inquiry.

A Dutchman accused of launching an unprecedented 2013 cyberattack that reportedly "nearly broke the internet" escaped jail Monday even though he was sentenced to some eight months in prison as most of the term was suspended.

Internet freedom declined for a sixth consecutive year in 2016 as governments around the world cracked down on social media and messaging applications used to express dissent, a watchdog group said Monday.

The Freedom on the Net report by the activist group Freedom House said a growing number of regimes are restricting or censoring messaging platforms such as WhatsApp in addition to popular social networks.

President-elect Donald Trump credited his provocative use of Twitter and other social media with helping him win the US elections, saying it gave him a way of "fighting back."

In an interview that airs in full on Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes," Trump said with some reluctance that he would be more restrained in his use of social media once in the White House, but said it was nothing to be ashamed of.