BRICS should create their own internet – MP

Russia should develop an alternative internet in collaboration with the other BRICS nations, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Control Committee, Dmitry Gusev, has proposed.

According to a document seen by RIA Novosti, the official submitted a request to work on creating “a single inclusive BRICS+ cyberspace” to Maksut Shadaev, the head of Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media.

  • The proposal to develop “an internet where traditional values and goodness prevail” could be implemented “using technical, organizational and civilizational capabilities common to the entire association.”

According to Gusev, the 5th International Municipal Forum BRICS+, which is currently underway in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, is a good opportunity to discuss a unified internet for the BRICS countries.

BRICS currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but will be joined by Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in January. The expanded group, referred to as BRICS+, is projected to represent nearly half of global GDP by 2040.

Earlier this week, China’s President Xi Jinping also called for changes in the way the global internet works, to benefit people of all countries.

“We advocate prioritizing development and building a more inclusive and prosperous cyberspace,” he said at the opening ceremony of the 2023 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit.

Source: RT

Musk to provide Starlink access to Gaza

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he will provide satellite internet access to “internationally recognized aid organizations” in Gaza via his Starlink network.

  • Phone and internet lines went down in the enclave after a heavy Israeli bombardment on Friday.
  • Musk made his announcement on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, stating that SpaceX’s Starlink division would “support connectivity” with the besieged strip.

There are apparently a number of Starlink terminals in Gaza, but in a separate post on Saturday, Musk said that none of these devices had attempted to communicate with the satellite network.

  • “It is not clear who has authority for ground links in Gaza, but do we know that no terminal has requested a connection in that area,” he wrote on X.

Internet and cell phone services stopped working in Gaza on Friday night after a wave of Israeli airstrikes. Gaza’s largest telecommunications operator, Paltel, announced that its infrastructure had been totally destroyed in the bombing, which preceded the deployment of Israeli ground troops to the enclave.

  • “The intense bombing in the last hour caused the destruction of all remaining international routes linking Gaza to the outside world,” the company said.
  • The outage left news organizations and aid groups unable to reach their workers, with the UN children’s agency and Doctors Without Borders both reporting no contact from their employees. RT Arabic was also temporarily unable to contact its correspondents and photographers in Gaza.

Musk’s announcement marks the second time that he has deployed Starlink to a combat zone. Shortly after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the tech tycoon announced that he would deliver Starlink terminals to the Ukrainian side and pay for their upkeep. However, he fell out of favor with Kiev when he barred the Ukrainian military from using the network to guide drone strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea.

“If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he explained last month. The Pentagon has since announced a deal to lease Starlink satellites for military use.

Source: RT

NASA

NASA has switched its primary World Wide Web addresses to a beta version of the new NASA.gov and science.nasa.gov websites, continuing the long-term development and consolidation of its public web presence. The new sites will offer visitors an improved, intuitive web design and elevated user experience.

The ongoing work on the agency’s upgraded website is the first step to a broad new digital experience from NASA, which will include a new on-demand streaming service called NASA + and an updated NASA app. This enhanced digital presence will allow the space agency to share science, research, exploration, and innovation with the world through cohesive platforms, encouraging users to spend more time experiencing the universe through the eyes of NASA.

This new site will be the foundation of a one-stop-shop for the agency’s missions and research, climate data, Artemis updates and more. The new, topic-driven experience will ensure easier, integrated access to NASA information currently found across the agency’s many websites.

Design features of the new site include enlarged image formats and NASA’s collection of imagery covering all agency research and programs. NASA will continue to update and improve the site on a rolling-basis as it receives feedback from website visitors.

This is the eighth significant update for NASA’s website, which first launched in 1993. The site won the Webby Award for best government website four times, and received the People’s Voice, voted on by the public 10 times.

The agency will continue to connect NASA websites and multimedia libraries into this new digital experience to further streamline the information shared across its centers, missions, and programs.

Source: NASA

Sounds and ringtones

WhatsApp cancels new Russia scheme

Russian users of Meta’s WhatsApp messenger will not receive access to a new feature that would allow them to create and view media channels, the Moscow Times reported on Monday, citing a Meta spokesperson.

“The product will not be available to users within Russia anytime soon,” the spokesperson said, noting that the feature will, however, be launched in a total of 150 countries.

In a blog post in June, WhatsApp described ‘Channels’ as “a one-way broadcast tool for admins to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls” to their followers. The platform has invited celebrities, sports teams, artists, creators, and “thought leaders” to take advantage of the new feature.

According to the Moscow Times, Meta decided to scrap the feature in Russia to avoid being blocked in the country, as was done to Facebook and Instagram. Both apps were banned after Meta was designated as an extremist organization for allowing hate speech against Russian nationals and distributing what Moscow deemed to be false information about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

  • At the time, lawmakers made an exception for WhatsApp, arguing that the messenger is a means of communication rather than posting information.

Earlier this month, Russia’s media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, and the State Duma threatened to reconsider the exception if the app expands its functionality to become more than a simple messaging platform.

  • “If the product of the extremist company Meta begins to expand its functionality towards mass dissemination of information, the official position regarding its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation may be revised,” the first deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Anton Gorelkin, said.

Senator Viktor Bondarev, a member of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, wrote that WhatsApp’s Channels feature would cause “particular concern,” as it could turn the app into a “means of information warfare.”

Bondarev said the exception for WhatsApp should be reviewed and that Moscow should instead follow in the steps of China, which has its own WeChat app, and create a “fully local messaging platform.”

  • Meanwhile, the senator urged Russian users to use alternatives to WhatsApp such as Yandex Messenger and Telegram, which he described as “friendly to the Russian information space.”

Source: RT

All cell phones pose radiation threat – regulator

Radiation from all cell phones is dangerous to human health and the devices should be used sparingly, Russia’s consumer rights and human wellbeing agency said on Monday.

The agency was responding to speculation that Russia would follow France’s lead and ban the iPhone 12.

  • “Radiation from all cell phones is dangerous for humans, especially for children. It is important to follow safety rules when talking on a mobile phone: the call should not last more than two minutes, and the minimum pause between calls should be at least 15 minutes,” a spokesman for Rospotrebnadzor said, according to Russia’s Gazeta news site.

The spokesman added that cell phones should be placed aside while the user is sleeping, and should ideally be carried in bags rather than pockets.

  • Earlier this month, France’s National Frequency Agency (ANFR) demanded that Apple withdraw the iPhone 12 from sale in the country after it found that the device emits more electromagnetic radiation than European Union regulations allow.

The ANFR said that tests at an accredited laboratory revealed that the phone exceeded the specific absorption rate (SAR) value mandated by the EU, which is four watts-per-kilogram (W/kg), when held in hand or in a trouser pocket.

  • The “body” SAR – measured when the phone is in a jacket pocket or a bag at least 5mm away – was within the 2 W/kg limit, however.

Rospotrebnadzor is not considering such a ban. The regulator’s spokesman said that Russia measures electromagnetic radiation using the PES scale rather than the SAR system, the results from which “cannot be compared.”

The iPhone 12 was introduced in October 2020 and has continued to be popular due to a lower price point than the subsequent models. Apple disputes the French findings, claiming that the model has a SAR of 0.99 W/kg when measured by the EU standard.

  • However, the American tech giant has been accused of violating radiation standards before. In the US, Apple and Korean manufacturer Samsung were sued in 2019 after research found that the iPhone 8, iPhone X, and Galaxy S8 exceeded federal radiation limits by up to 500%.

Source: RT

France bans iPhone over radiation concerns

Apple must withdraw all iPhone 12 models from the French market immediately, the National Frequency Agency (ANFR) announced on Tuesday, accusing the popular smartphone of emitting far more electromagnetic radiation than European Union regulations allow.

  • “The ANFR expects Apple to deploy all available means to put an end to the non-compliance. Failure to act will result in the recall of equipment that has already been made available to consumers,” the agency said.

According to the regulator, tests at an accredited laboratory revealed that the phone exceeded the specific absorption rate (SAR) value mandated by the EU, which is four watts-per-kilogram (W/kg), when held in hand or in a trouser pocket. The “body” SAR, when the phone is in a jacket pocket or a bag at least 5mm away, was within the 2 W/kg limit, however.

Apple must immediately stop the sale of iPhone 12 models and get ANFR approval if it makes updates to them to ensure compliance, the regulator added. ANFR inspectors have been authorized to check “all distribution channels in France” for the banned device, starting Tuesday.

  • The iPhone 12 was introduced in October 2020 and has continued to be popular due to a lower price point than the subsequent models. Apple says the model has a SAR of 0.99 W/kg when measured by the EU standard.

Earlier on Tuesday, the California-based Apple announced the iPhone 15 line of devices, featuring the USB-C connector in order to comply with an EU mandate adopted in 2022.

The US Federal Communications Commission has yet to comment on the French announcement. The FCC has a SAR limit of 1.6 W/kg.

France’s radiation crackdown comes after several months of bad news for Apple.

  • Last week it was reported that China has banned government employees from bringing iPhones or any other foreign devices into the office or using them for work purposes.
  • Russian officials were advised to stop using iPhones in July, while the state military industry banned them outright, citing security concerns. Later that month, a class action suit in the UK accused the US-based company of monopolistic behavior regarding fees charged by the app store.

Spurcw: RT

Users of X report problems with the site

Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was down for thousands of users in the US on Monday evening.

Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including users, said that as of 7:24 p.m. ET, there were more than 17,000 reports of outages in the United States.

  • Users said that they could not load messages on the platform, receiving an error message instead.

A reader based in Canada told Israel National News that he, too, temporarily experienced issues on the site around 7:00 p.m. ET, but the issue had since resolved itself.

In February, users of Twitter reported widespread problems, saying they received error messages as they tried to post tweets.

More than an hour after the disruptions started, the company said on one of its accounts that it was aware of the problems and was working to fix them.

While Twitter has had some outages in the past, including a major outage that lasted about an hour and a half in 2020, the February outage marked the first major issue reported with the site since it was purchased by Elon Musk.

Source: Arutz Sheva

Russian tech giant returns home

VK Group, which owns a top Russian social media platform with the same name, will move its business back to Russia and quit the London Stock Exchange, the company said in a press-release on Friday.

VK announced that its shareholders and board of directors have decided to terminate its activities in the British Virgin Islands, where the company is currently registered, and re-register as an international firm in one of Russia’s “offshores.”

  • “Following the official registration in the Russian Federation, VK will become an international company – Public Joint Stock Company ‘VK’ with its seat in a special administrative district on Oktyabrsky Island, Kaliningrad region,” the firm stated.

The company’s board also decided to quit the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and to list VK’s shares instead on the Moscow Exchange, its first listing there. The trading of its securities on the LSE was suspended amid Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia on March 3, 2022.

VK’s Board of Directors had initially announced plans to redomicile the business in Russia back in February, saying at the time that it was only natural as the vast majority of its assets “are based in and generate revenue in Russia.”

Last year, the head of VK, Vladimir Kiriyenko, said the company was working on a new long-term business strategy which would “take into account external restrictions.” Kiriyenko was targeted by US and UK sanctions last year, which prompted Apple to remove VK’s apps from its App Store in mid-2022. However, they have since been restored.

VK Group is one of the largest firms in the Russian telecom and IT sector, owning, among others, Mail.Ru, VKontakte, and Odnoklassniki social networks, and Skillbox educational platform.

  • According to VK’s financial results report published on Thursday, the company’s revenue for the first six months of the year amounted to 57.3 billion rubles ($581 million), a 36% increase compared to the same period in 2022.

However, the company’s pre-tax profit was down by 42% at 3.9 billion rubles. VK attributed the revenue decline to the development costs of the so-called “new business areas” related to the replacement of various digital services like Tinder and Spotify that have left Russia due to Western sanctions.

Source: RT

Musk makes it official: Twitter changes its logo to ‘X’

Elon Musk made it official on Monday, replacing Twitter’s famous blue bird icon with a white X, AFP reported.

Musk and the company’s new chief executive Linda Yaccarino announced the rebranding Sunday, scrapping one of technology’s most iconic logos in the latest move since Musk took over Twitter nine months ago.

  • Musk’s connection to the letter X goes back 24 years when he founded X.com, which later was renamed PayPal despite his objections. His space company is called SpaceX and the parent company of Twitter was changed to X earlier this year.

He described the logo as “minimalist art deco,” and updated his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which now redirects to twitter.com, according to AFP.

  • If that wasn’t enough, Musk also tweeted that under the site’s new identity, a post would be called “an X,” challenging the public to stop referring to “tweeting” or “tweet.”

Musk has made a series of controversial changes to the platform. One of his first product moves was to launch a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, but the social media platform was quickly inundated by impostor accounts, causing Twitter to temporarily suspend the service days after its launch.

The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps.

In April, Twitter removed blue checkmarks from many high-profile users who did not pay the monthly fee to keep them.

Earlier this month, Twitter announced that its users will soon need to be verified in order to use TweetDeck, which was previously free and is widely used by businesses and news organizations.

  1. That move came days after Musk announced that unverified accounts in the Twitter Blue program (that do not pay for a monthly subscription) will be limited to reading only 600 posts per day, compared to verified accounts which will be able to read 6,000 posts per post per day. That number was later increased.

Musk explained that the reason for the move is “to deal with large volumes of information mining, or ‘scraping,’ and system malfunctions.”

In a later post, Musk explained that the new limitations placed on Twitter usage are meant to combat addiction to social media and encourage people to look up from their phones.

  • Twitter responded by threatening legal action against Meta, accusing Mark Zuckerberg’s company of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app.

Source: Arutz Sheva

AI will bring sex dolls to life – former Google exec

The latest advances in artificial intelligence could soon lead to sex dolls that are “alive” and dating sites being flooded with realistic AI avatars, former Google X chief business officer Mo Gawdat has claimed.

  • The former executive at Google’s R&D department told the Impact Theory podcast that the convergence of AI, virtual and augmented reality may end up altering the very fabric of society and creating a “very significant redesign of love and relationships.”

Asked by host Tom Bilyeu about the near-term disruptions that AI cold cause, especially regarding sex, Gawdat noted that alternative sexual activity is already here and that people need only to obtain a VR headset and see how incredibly realistic sex simulations have become.

“Just think about all the illusions that we are now unable to decipher,” Gawdat stated, adding that “sex happens in the brain at the end of the day and the physical aspect of it is not that difficult to simulate.”

“If we can convince you that this sex robot is alive or that sex experience in a virtual reality headset or an augmented reality headset is alive, then there you go. Go a few years further and think of Neuralink and other ways of connecting directly to your nervous system, why would you need another [human] being in the first place?” Gawdat asked.

The former CBO argued that the joy of companionship and sexuality are “all signals in your brain” and suggested that such activity could be simulated, much like scientists can now “very easily” simulate how to move muscles and copy other brain signals.

Gawdat went on to dismiss the “huge debate” about AI sentience or how people should interact with it. “Does it matter if the Morgan Freeman talking to you on the screen is actually Morgan Freeman or an AI-generated avatar if you’re convinced that it is Morgan Freeman?”

He also noted the big business incentives in further developing AI technology, especially in the realm of dating, where apps like Replica – an AI chatbot that learns to mimic users’ writing styles in order to develop bonds with them – already boast some 2 million users.

“Because there is money in it, what would prevent the next dating app from giving you avatars to date?” he asked.

“A lot of people will try it,” Gawdat claimed, admitting that he doesn’t know if such “eerie” advancements are for better or worse.

Source: RT

Interest in Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival collapses

Threads reached 100 million sign-ups within just five days of launch, with Mark Zuckerberg celebrating every step of the way, but the actual usage of Meta’s Twitter clone appears to have fallen off the proverbial cliff, data analysis has shown.

Zuckerberg chose to launch Threads as an Instagram spinoff, prompting the photo platform’s user base to register for the text app when it launched on July 6.

  • The cross-promotion helped the new platform reach ten million users in just seven hours, with Zuckerberg excitedly live-posting the growth.

Within a week, Threads made it to 150 million downloads globally, with India accounting for 33% of the new users and Brazil another 22%, according to Data.ai. Americans made up just 16% of downloads, with Mexico (8%) and Japan (5%) following suit.

In the same time frame, however, Threads saw its daily active users (DAU) collapse by 40% and the average daily time per user dropping fourfold, according to data from SensorTower. Only 16% of users came back on the seventh day after downloading, and time spent on Threads over the weekend was down 60% from its July 6 launch high.

  • Even at its peak, on July 6, Threads had 85% lower user engagement than Instagram, and underperformed Twitter by 60% in the same metric, SensorTower analysts Abraham Yousef and Seema Shah told The Atlantic last week.
  • Additional data showed Threads usage collapsing from neatly 20 minutes a day on launch to just five after a week. Meanwhile, Twitter and Instagram both held steady at 30 and 60 minutes, respectively.
  • “I think there should be a public conversation app with 1 billion+ people on it,” Zuckerberg boasted after the launch of Threads. He also said Meta would be “focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place.”

In practice, this has translated into the kind of censorship already practiced on Facebook and Instagram, with the added prospect of people losing their Instagram accounts if they get banned for Threads posts.

Online data analysts have speculated that an audience interested in photos may not cross over well to text posts, while the Instagram integration has discouraged the anonymous meme accounts that have traditionally been the lifeblood of Twitter.

Fleeting user interest is not the only teething problem affecting Threads. Zuckerberg has already received a cease-and-desist letter from Twitter accusing him of plagiarizing their platform. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee notified Zuckerberg that all of its subpoenas pertaining to Meta colluding with the government to censor people should be considered applicable to Threads as well.

The Atlantic also poured cold water on Threads’ 100-million milestone, noting that the first social network to reach it was Google+, which launched in 2011 but was shuttered in 2019 due to lack of interest.

Source: RT

Twitter threatens legal action over Meta’s new app

Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new, text-based app called Threads, which aims to be an alternative to Twitter, The Associated Press reported on Thursday, citing a letter obtained by Semafor.

In a Wednesday letter addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a “copycat” app.

Threads was launched on Wednesday night and has thus far collected tens of millions of sign ups.

The app, which was created by the company’s Instagram team, arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives in the wake of owner Elon Musk’s changes to the platform.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone responded to the report of the letter on Threads on Thursday afternoon, writing, “no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”

Musk hasn’t directly tweeted about the possibility of legal action, but he has replied to several snarky takes on the Threads launch, noted AP. The Twitter owner responded to one tweet suggesting that Meta’s app was built largely through the use of the copy and paste function, with a laughing emoji.

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has also not publicly commented on Wednesday’s letter, but seemingly appeared to address Threads’ launch in a Thursday tweet.

  • “We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” Yaccarino wrote.

Musk recently caused an uproar after he announced that unverified accounts in the Twitter Blue program (that do not pay for a monthly subscription) will be limited to reading only 600 posts per day, compared to verified accounts which will be able to read 6,000 posts per post per day. That number was later increased.

  • Musk explained that the reason for the move is “to deal with large volumes of information mining, or ‘scraping,’ and system malfunctions.”

In a later post, Musk explained that the new limitations placed on Twitter usage are meant to combat addiction to social media and encourage people to look up from their phones.

Earlier this week, Twitter announced that its users will soon need to be verified in order to use TweetDeck

Previous controversial moves by Musk included changes to the blue checkmark. One of Musk’s first product moves was to launch a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, but the social media platform was quickly inundated by impostor accounts, causing Twitter to temporarily suspend the service days after its launch.

  • The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps.

In April, Twitter removed blue checkmarks from many high-profile users who did not pay the monthly fee to keep them.

Musk has also implemented an authentication scheme for users. In addition to blue checkmarks for individuals, the new scheme includes a gold checkmark for companies and a grey checkmark for government accounts.

Source: Arutz Sheva

China unveils first domestic open-source operating system

China has launched its first domestic open-source desktop operating system, which has been hailed as a software development breakthrough, amid Beijing’s technological stand-off with Washington.

On Wednesday, Kylinsoft, a subsidiary of state-owned China Electronics Corporation, unveiled the Linux-based OS known as OpenKylin 1.0.

  • It was created by a community of about 4,000 developers and is currently being used by around 850,000 users, according to OpenKylin’s official website.

China’s first domestically grown OS can be installed on computers, servers, and smartphones and could even support Beijing’s deep space exploration program, according to CGTN.

While the global desktop OS market is currently dominated by the Western-designed Windows (74%) and MacOS (15%), these two systems are close-source, which means that most third parties cannot view the programming code.

  • OpenKylin gives users the opportunity to see the coding and customize the software for their specific needs.

Speaking at the release event, Ni Guangnan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, touted the new OS, noting that OpenKylin marks a milestone in the development of domestic software, while stressing the need to “gradually get rid of dependence on foreign technologies.”

OpenKylin was released amid the increasingly heated tech stand-off between China and the US.

  • On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration of US President Joe Biden is preparing to restrict Chinese companies’ access to American cloud-computing services.

In October last year, Washington issued wide-ranging restrictions on the export of advanced chips and chip-making technology to China without a license, while limiting the ability of US nationals to provide support for the “development or production” of chips at certain manufacturing facilities in China.

In March, then-Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stressed the importance of boosting the nation’s technological self-reliance, while noting that Beijing had managed to resist external attempts to suppress China’s development.

Source: RT

Musk explains new Twitter limits

Twitter owner Elon Musk announced on Saturday that users of the platform will be limited to viewing a maximum of 8,000 posts per day, claiming that the measure would cut down on “data scraping and system manipulation.”

Musk’s announcement came hours after Twitter users around the world found themselves unable to view their timelines or read comments under tweets.

  • “To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits,” Musk tweeted, explaining that verified accounts would be limited to reading 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts to 600 posts per day, and new unverified accounts to 300 per day.

Shortly afterwards, Musk posted an update saying that the limits would be increased to 8,000, 800, and 400 respectively. He did not say for how long the “temporary” limits would remain in force.

  • Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion last October, Musk has repeatedly promised to clamp down on non-human use of the platform, for example by data-mining companies. As of Friday, Twitter has not been viewable to anyone without an account, a decision that Musk said was made as “several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience.”

Concurrently, Musk has been encouraging users to shell out for verification, which costs $8 per month.

The prospect of ten times more tweets, however, has not gone down well with users, and as of Saturday evening, “#RIPTwitter” and “Goodbye Twitter” were trending topics in the US.

American whistleblower Edward Snowden explained that he could no longer use Twitter effectively as, for security reasons, he often browses the platform without logging in. Other users who follow breaking news stories on Twitter – for example updates from the conflict in Ukraine – complained that even when verified they burn through their allocated tweets in a matter of hours.

It remains unclear whether Musk will keep the new restrictions in place. Shortly after purchasing Twitter last year, the billionaire said that he would end up doing “lots of dumb things” in his bid to overhaul the platform, and would “keep what works and change what doesn’t.”

Source: RT

Russia blocks Wagner-linked news outlets

Russia has blocked access to several news websites linked to businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, whose private military company, Wagner Group, was involved in a short-lived mutiny last week.

Public access has been restricted to riafan.ru and four other websites operating under the umbrella of the Patriot Media Group, according to the database run by the regulator Roskomnadzor (RKN). The group’s website has also been blacklisted.

The websites mostly focus on covering Russia’s standoff with the West and Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

News agency TASS cited employees of the affected outlets as saying that their parent company would be closed and all of its subsidiaries cease operations.

  • Prigozhin, who initially made his fortune as a restaurateur and catering tycoon, was listed as the head of the Patriot Media Group’s board of trustees until May.

Earlier, the RKN ordered popular Russian social media platform VK to take down web pages associated with Wagner to “prevent the spread of calls to armed rebellion.”

On June 23, Prigozhin, who accused the Defense Ministry of mishandling the operation in Ukraine, declared a ‘march for justice’ on Moscow.

His fighters halted their advance on Saturday evening and returned to their bases after a deal was struck with the authorities. Charges of leading an armed rebellion were dropped as part of the arrangement, and Wagner members were given a choice to sign contracts with the Russian military, return to civilian life, or move to Belarus.

Source: RT

Header: A serviceman of Russian private military company Wagner Group is seen during the execution of a combat mission in the course of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, in the Lugansk People’s Republic, Russia. © Sputnik / Viktor Antonyuk

Widespread malfunction in WhatsApp Web

Many users are reporting a widespread malfunction on WhatsApp Web, the desktop browser version of Meta’s popular messaging app WhatsApp. Reports of the malfunction began late Wednesday evening.

Attempts to connect to WhatsApp by desktop browser are met with a pop-up message saying, “Something went wrong while displaying this web page.”

  • Reuters reported that last Friday, more than 12,000 users encountered access problems to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Source: Arutz Sheva