DUBLIN: Twitter’s lead European Union privacy regulator said on Tuesday she was concerned that the Elon Musk-owned US firm had launched its Twitter Blue subscription service in the region without consulting her office, despite a pledge to do so.
Twitter, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has in recent days launched the service in several EU markets, offering the kind of blue check mark previously free for verified accounts of public figures to anyone prepared to pay. It was launched last year in the United States.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon, Twitter’s lead EU regulator due to the location of its European headquarters in Dublin, said the service raised privacy issues including around verification of accounts to prevent users posing as public figures.
“We’re a little bit more concerned this week now that we see that the blue tick subscription service is rolling out here in EU countries having been reassured that it wasn’t going to roll out in the EU and certainly not before there have been discussions with our office,” Dixon said in an interview.
While no formal inquiry has been launched “we’re at a heightened state of contact with Twitter,” she said, describing consultation prior to a product launch as “best practice.”
Dixon in November expressed concern about the impact of steep job cuts on Twitter’s ability to meet privacy obligations following billionaire Musk’s takeover the previous month.
Twitter now has a “very strong” data protection officer, she said.
“But beyond the data protection office, there are clearly other forces at play. And we need to understand a little bit more about those,” Dixon added.
Twitter’s lead EU regulator concerned over blue tick roll-out
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Twitter’s lead EU regulator concerned over blue tick roll-out
- Feature raises privacy issues, Helen Dixon said
Palestinian journalist seriously wounded by rubber bullet
RAMALLAH: Moamen Sumreen, 22, a Palestinian journalist who was convering the Israeli raid, was seriously wounded after being hit in the head by a rubber bullet, his family told AFP.
Israeli troops on Thursday demolished the West Bank home of a Palestinian accused of carrying out twin bombings in Jerusalem last November that killed two Israelis, including a teenager.
His uncle Mohammed Sumreen, also a journalist, said they had been among a group of reporters watching events unfold from the roof of a nearby building.
“Throughout the coverage, the soldiers were shining laser lights on us, targeting us with gas bombs and firing live bullets in our direction,” he said.
“Moamen wanted to change his position, he stood up and was directly hit by a bullet in the area under the ear,” he said, noting that Sumreen was wearing a jacket marked “press” when he came under fire.
The Israeli army said that the incident was “under review.”
The army used explosives to make the first floor apartment in Ramallah where Aslam Faroukh lived uninhabitable, an AFP journalist reported.
Faroukh was arrested in December and accused of carrying out the November 23 bombings at Jerusalem bus stops that killed a 15-year-old Israeli-Canadian and an Israeli in his 50s. They were the first bombings to have targeted Israeli civilians since 2016.
“The home was demolished after an appeal to the Supreme Court against the demolition was rejected,” the army said in a statement.
Originally from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, where he held an Israeli residency permit, Faroukh had lived in Ramallah for some years.
According to the army, he is alleged to have acted alone, “identifying with the Daesh (Daesh group) organization.”
Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, routinely demolishes the homes of individuals it blames for deadly attacks on Israelis.
Human rights activists say the policy amounts to collective punishment, as it can render non-combatants, including children, homeless.
But Israel says the practice is effective in deterring some Palestinians from carrying out attacks.
Faroukh’s mother, Um Aslam, told AFP that the demolition would only “increase their hatred and (desire for) revenge.”
Microsoft to offer OpenAI’s GPT models to government cloud customers
- Company said GPT technology will be integrated into Azure Government, which offers cloud solutions to government agencies
LONDON: Microsoft Corp. is bringing the powerful language-producing models from OpenAI to US federal agencies using its Azure cloud service, it said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The Redmond, Washington-based company has added support for large language models (LLMs) powering GPT-4 the latest and the most sophisticated of the LLMs from OpenAI, and GPT-3, to Azure Government.
Use of LLMs have boomed since the launch of ChatGPT from OpenAI, in which Microsoft holds a stake, and businesses of all shapes and sizes are racing to build features on top of them.
It is the first time Microsoft is bringing the GPT technology to Azure Government, which offers cloud solutions to US government agencies, and marks the first such effort by a major company to make the chatbot technology available to governments.
Microsoft generally offers it to Azure commercial cloud users through Azure OpenAI Services, which had 4,500 customers as of May.
Microsoft said government customers can adapt the language models for specific tasks including content generation, language-to-code translation and summarization.
Meta introduces broadcast tool Channels on WhatsApp
- New feature users will allow users to follow content on their hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials
LONDON: Meta Platforms on Thursday introduced WhatsApp Channels, a feature that the social media giant said would help make the app a “private broadcast messaging product.”
Users in Colombia and Singapore will be the first to receive access to Channels. Over the coming months, Meta will expand the availability of the tool for users in more countries, it said.
The company said users will be able to follow content on their hobbies, sports teams, updates from local officials and others.
Profile photos and contact information of the channel admin would not be visible to followers. Similarly, followers will not have their phone numbers revealed.
Global launch partners for the feature will include the World Health Organization, FC Barcelona and Manchester City.
Fox News says Tucker Carlson breached his contract - Axios
- Fox News accused Carlson of the violation in a letter to his legal team after he posted a clip of his new show on Twitter on Tuesday
- Carlson was taken off the air by Fox last April following a damaging defamation lawsuit over false claims of election fraud
WASHINGTON: Fox News on Wednesday notified Tucker Carlson’s legal team that the former prime-time host violated his contract with the network when he launched his own Twitter show on Tuesday, Axios reported, citing a copy of a letter obtained by the news website.
Carlson released the first episode of his new show on Twitter on Tuesday, weeks after being taken off the air by Fox following a damaging defamation lawsuit over false claims of election fraud.
Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar sent a letter to Carlson’s legal team saying Carlson “is in breach” of his contract agreement after he posted a clip of his new show on Twitter on Tuesday evening, according to Axios.
Carlson’s legal team could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters. His lawyer told Axios that any legal action by Fox would violate his First Amendment rights to free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution.
“Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds. Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events,” Carlson’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement cited by Axios.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter quoted by Axios refers to Carlson’s contract, and said its former prime time star was “prohibited from rendering services of any type whatsoever, whether ‘over the Internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution whether now known or hereafter devised.’“
Chris Licht steps down as CNN chief following series of grave missteps
- The chief executive officer of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, informed CNN staff of Licht’s departure during the network’s daily editorial call
- The departure of 51-year-old Licht came after The Atlantic recently published an extensive article headlined “Inside the Tremendous Meltdown at CNN”
LONDON: CNN chief Chris Licht on Wednesday announced that he would be leaving the network after a one-year tenure marked by serious programming missteps.
The chief executive officer of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, informed CNN staff of Licht’s departure during the network’s daily editorial call, according to CNN Business.
The departure of 51-year-old Licht, CNN’s chairman and CEO, came after The Atlantic recently published an extensive article headlined “Inside the Tremendous Meltdown at CNN,” highlighting the muddles and low ratings the company had experienced in the last year.
The most recent of his missteps, which attracted backlash, was the network’s town hall meeting with former US President Donald Trump, which the Financial Times described as “controversial.”
During the meeting, Trump’s supporters cheered as he insulted the event’s moderator Kaitlan Collins, who attempted to fact-check the ex-American leader. Although CNN journalists were angered, Licht said: “America was served very well by what we did.”
On Monday, Licht apologized to CNN employees, describing his experience as “tremendously humbling.”
But on Wednesday, Zaslav said: “For a number of reasons things didn’t work out and that’s unfortunate. It’s really unfortunate. And ultimately that’s on me. And I take full responsibility for that.”
Licht will leave his role within 48 hours, Puck News reported on Wednesday.
