The milestone in arrests includes suspects in 90 homicides, Barr told a news conference in Kansas City, Mo.

Operation LeGend was launched last month and brought more than 200 federal agents to Kansas City to help stem violent crime.

The federal initiative was named after LeGend Taliferro, a 4-year-old who was shot while sleeping in his bedroom on June 29.

The Operation LeGend anti-crime operation has expanded to St. Louis, Memphis, Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee.

—McClatchy Washington Bureau

Facebook removes hundreds of QAnon groups, limits thousands more

Facebook Inc. has removed or restricted hundreds of Pages, accounts and Groups from its main social network and Instagram that are linked to the far-right conspiracy group QAnon, saying the accounts violate a newly expanded version of its policy regarding “dangerous individuals and organizations.”

As part of the update, the company said it will forbid groups that have “demonstrated significant risks to public safety” from using Facebook’s products to discuss violence. The company removed more than 790 Groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon from Facebook as a result. The company also added restrictions to over 1,950 QAnon Groups and 440 Pages on Facebook and more than 10,000 accounts on Instagram, its photo-sharing app, which block them from running ads or appearing in search results.

Facebook didn’t ban QAnon entirely. The group spreads misinformation related to what participants call a “deep state” conspiracy against President Donald Trump. Facebook said it also removed more than 1,000 Pages and Groups for being “militia organizations and those encouraging riots,” some of which are linked to the far-left antifa movement.

Fires explode across San Francisco Bay Area, burning homes and sparking mass evacuations

SAN FRANCISCO — A series of fast-moving fires in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California — many caused by intense lightning storms — exploded overnight, burning homes and causing thousands to flee.

The newest fires stretched from the wine country to the Santa Cruz Mountains, moving with ferocious speed amid an intense heat wave that also has brought rolling blackouts. Smoke from the fires has caused terrible air quality across the region.

Many of the fires were believed to have been caused by lightning strikes. Northern and Central California began experiencing an unusually active sequence of largely dry lightning strikes Sunday morning, the most widespread and violent in recent memory in the Bay Area on one of the hottest nights in years, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Over the last 72 hours, there have been more than 10,800 lightning strikes statewide, causing roughly 367 new fires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

The rapid outbreak of new blazes has stretched the state’s firefighting resources to their limit.

EU rejects Belarus election, stops short of calling for new vote

The European Union held back from asking for fresh elections in Belarus as German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she tried and failed to get hold of President Alexander Lukashenko by phone.

Despite many of the EU’s 27 leaders backing a new vote during a private conference call on Wednesday, the bloc managed only to call for “dialog” between the two sides in the disputed election, and for a peaceful transition of power. It said that previously announced sanctions on people responsible for violence and vote-rigging would be introduced as soon as possible.

The EU is treading a fine line in trying to move more aggressively in assuring its geopolitical stability in the region without inciting a strong reaction from the Kremlin, which has warned the bloc not to interfere. The bloc wanted to make clear its disapproval without being seen to be forcing Belarus to choose between Europe and Russia, officials said.

“The elections were neither free nor fair and we cannot therefore recognize the results of these elections,” Merkel told reporters after the talks. “President Lukashenko has denied every phone call, which I regret. You can only mediate when you’re in contact with all sides.”

Protesters have taken to the streets in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, since Lukashenko, authoritarian president for 26 years, claimed a landslide victory in the disputed poll 10 days ago. Riot police violently cracked down on demonstrators. Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has called for a second vote, fled to Lithuania, an EU member state.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.