MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader’s plane crashed with no survivors two months after he led a mutiny against army chiefs. Two US officials told Reuters that Washington believed a surface-to-air missile originating from inside Russia likely shot down the plane, though they said the information was preliminary and under review. They spoke on condition of anonymity and offered no evidence.
Russian investigators opened a criminal probe but there has been no official word from Moscow on what may have caused Wednesday evening’s crash. Until Putin’s comments there had been no official confirmation of Prigozhin’s death beyond a statement from the aviation authority saying he was on board.
Breaking his silence, Putin described Prigozhin as a talented businessman whom he had known since the 1990s and said the investigation into the crash would take time.
Prigozhin, 62, was head of the Wagner mercenary group and a self-declared enemy of the army top brass over what he said was its incompetent prosecution of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Putin earlier made a virtual statement to a summit of the BRICS nations in South Africa which his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was attending. Neither referenced the plane crash in which 10 people were said to have been killed.
State media gave the disaster low-key coverage.
The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, which had been flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg and was reported to have also been carrying senior members of Prigozhin’s team, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of Moscow.
A Reuters reporter at the crash site on Thursday morning saw men carrying away black body bags on stretchers. Part of the plane’s tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent.
The Baza news outlet, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, reported that investigators were focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board.
Prigozhin spearheaded the mutiny against the army leadership on June 23-24 which Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war.
The mercenary leader also spent months criticizing the conduct of Russia’s war in Ukraine — which Moscow calls a “special military operation” — and had tried to topple Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff.
The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighboring Belarus. But he had appeared to move freely inside Russia.
Prigozhin posted a video address on Monday which he suggested was made in Africa. He turned up at a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg in July.
Putin sends condolences to family of Wagner boss Prigozhin
https://arab.news/4uwnr
Putin sends condolences to family of Wagner boss Prigozhin
- Putin described Prigozhin as a talented businessman whom he had known since the 1990s and said the investigation into the crash would take time
- A Russian news outlet suggested a bomb was planted on the plane carrying Prigozhin, who spearheaded the mutiny against the army leadership on June 23-24
Zuckerberg says Meta no longer designs apps to maximize screentime
- Meta Platforms CEO faces questioned at a landmark trial over youth social media addiction
- It was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users
LOS ANGELES: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back in court on Wednesday against a lawyer’s suggestion that he had misled Congress about the design of its social media platforms, as a landmark trial over youth social media addiction continues.
Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its apps.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to the amount of time users spent on the app, it has since changed its approach.
“If you are trying to say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.
The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.
While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s longstanding legal defense against claims of user harm.
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health.
Australia has prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs. In the US, Florida has prohibited companies from allowing users under age 14. Tech industry trade groups are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child. She alleges the companies sought to profit by hooking kids on their services despite knowing social media could harm their mental health. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable.
Meta and Google have denied the allegations, and pointed to their work to add features that keep users safe. Meta has often pointed to a National Academies of Sciences finding that research does not show social media changes kids’ mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits in the US accusing the companies of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Over the years, investigative reporting has unearthed internal Meta documents showing the company was aware of potential harm.
Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally, according to the document shown at trial.
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at the trial that the woman’s health records show her issues stem from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.
