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At Vilnius Summit, NATO to Seek Concrete Actions on China

WHITE HOUSE – As the war on Ukraine rages, Russia remains the biggest and most immediate threat for NATO. However, as allied leaders meet for their summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next week, a key agenda item will be to implement the Strategic Concept adopted during the Madrid summit in 2022, where the alliance recognized security challenges emanating from China.

NATO’s strategic concept states that the alliance faces “systemic competition” from Beijing’s “ambitions and coercive policies” that challenge members’ “interests, security and values.”

While allies may agree that the China challenge is real, they differ in how to address it. Many European countries rely heavily on Chinese investment and trade. China makes up almost 10% of Europe’s exports and about 20% of its imports.

In Vilnius, those differences will need to be hammered out and leaders will need to forge a common approach in dealing with the China threat, said Anca Agachi, associate director and resident fellow for Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.

“The big question that exists right now within the transatlantic community is what is NATO’s role when it comes to China, and how far exactly should the alliance go,” she told VOA.

Ukraine-Taiwan

NATO leaders have warned that what is happening in Europe today can happen in Asia tomorrow.

“If [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin wins in Ukraine, this would send the message that authoritarian regimes can achieve their goals through brute force,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Tokyo earlier this year. “This is dangerous. Beijing is watching closely, and learning lessons, which may influence its future decisions.”

Stoltenberg was referring to Beijing’s future decisions on Taiwan, a self-governing island Beijing considers its wayward province.

U.S. President Joe Biden has on several occasions said that American forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. That would create a risk of NATO allies and other U.S. partners being drawn into the conflict – a contingency plan the alliance would need to plan for.

Such war is “neither inevitable nor imminent,” Army General Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in March.

Hybrid and cyber operations

Beyond Taiwan and freedom of navigation concerns, NATO is anxious about other potential threats, including what it calls Beijing’s “malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation.”

The alliance views China as seeking to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure such as 5G, and strategic materials and supply chains. It accuses Beijing of using economic leverage to “create strategic dependencies and enhance its influence.”

“More generally, Chinese political influence in Europe is, of course, a growing concern,” Agachi added, particularly considering Beijing’s growing partnership with Russia.

Beijing insists that it “stands on the side of peace” on Ukraine. It has hit back on NATO, including on floated plans to establish a NATO office in Japan.

“Asia lies beyond the geographical scope of the North Atlantic and has no need for a replica of NATO. However, we have seen NATO bent on going east into this region, interfering in regional affairs and inciting bloc confrontation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said last month. “What is NATO really up to? This calls for high vigilance among countries in the world, particularly in Asia.”

Indo-Pacific partners

Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea attended the NATO summit last year and will again participate in Vilnius.

“These Indo-Pacific countries, they have a unique experience engaging with the PRC and can bring some valuable perspective to that discussion,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview with VOA on Thursday.

NATO has said it remains “open to constructive engagement” with Beijing.

Biden Heads to UK, Seeks to Bolster ‘Close Relationship’

THE WHITE HOUSE – President Joe Biden will seek to grow his “close relationship” with the United Kingdom, the White House says, when he pays his first visit to newly crowned King Charles III and meets with Britain’s political leader to strengthen the bond between the two nations ahead of a critical NATO summit that could determine the course of the conflict in Ukraine.

London is the first stop on Biden’s three-nation tour, which begins Monday. He will then go to Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, for a summit of NATO leaders, and then to Helsinki, the capital city of NATO’s newest member, Finland.

“The president is very much looking forward to this,” John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, told VOA. “As you know, the United Kingdom is our strongest ally, in so many ways, on so many levels.”

Kirby said Biden will discuss issues such as the war in Ukraine with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and will discuss environmental challenges with the monarch, who was an early advocate for climate action.

“Not to downplay the U.K. trip, but this is not a full-fledged visit to the country but rather a stop on the way to Lithuania,” Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA, via email.

And, he said, London noticed when Biden heaped praise on his ancestral home of Ireland, which he has described as “part of his soul.” The southern two-thirds of the Irish island is not part of the United Kingdom and has historically opposed the monarchy.

“For a host of reasons, British Conservative commentariat and political class feel constantly slighted by Biden – from his expressions of Irishness, through his absence at the king’s coronation, to Ben Wallace’s unsuccessful bid to lead NATO,” Rohac said. “That sense of neglect and of being snubbed is not going away, even if Rishi Sunak’s personal relationship with Biden appears good and even if the U.K. and the U.S. work extremely closely on a range of topics from Ukraine to security in the Indo-Pacific.”

Still, there is some symbolism to the American leader meeting amicably with the British king. Charles III is a direct descendant of King George III, the distant sovereign against whom a group of American colonists leveled a litany of complaints in the Declaration of Independence.

“So it’s to kind of recognize the pomp and circumstance of the unique head of state in the U.K. and of course, the unique history between these two great nations,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“But also on a more substantive policy front, President Biden has met with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a number of times in recent months, and they will be looking to move forward that agenda that they agreed recently, during Sunak’s last visit here, the so called Atlantic Declaration, which promises closer cooperation on a range of issues from trade, to defense, and elsewhere.”

Commonwealth changing

King Charles III remains head of state – mostly in a ceremonial sense – for more than 2.6 billion people, spread across the globe as citizens of the 56 Commonwealth nations. The voluntary political association consists mostly of former territories of the British Empire. Their collective goals include supporting democracy, government and the rule of law and promoting liberal values like gender equality. The United States is not a member, but 13 nations in the Americas are.

In recent years, members have questioned Britain’s right to rule them and interrogated their painful colonial past. Constitutional scholar Richard Albert is a member of Jamaica’s constitutional reform committee, which will help the nation set up a post-Commonwealth framework.

Albert, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said he recently returned from a trip to New Zealand – another Commonwealth member state – where “they corrected me when I called it the Commonwealth,” he said.

“They called it the Commontheft, the idea being that the Commonwealth has gained and accumulated all of its power and money on theft, of peoples, of lands, of possessions, of culture,” he told VOA. “And so I thought that was a very powerful statement on the part of the people there in New Zealand.”

The king, in his first Commonwealth Day message earlier this year, described the alliance as “an association not just of shared values, but of common purpose and joint action.”

“Its near-boundless potential as a force for good in the world demands our highest ambition; its sheer scale challenges us to unite and be bold,” he said.

Albert, who is Canadian – and who supports the idea of Ottawa withdrawing from the group – said “it’s possible to imagine the Commonwealth now and into the future, being a force for good for democracy, for constitutionalism, for the rule of law.”

But first, he says, something big has to happen.

“I wish the president would ask the king whether he plans to make amends for the wrongdoings of the monarchy over the past centuries,” he said. “But of course, if the president were to ask King Charles that, he’d have to ask himself the very same question, wouldn’t he?”

Proposed Chemical Waste Reservoir in Azerbaijan Prompts Standoff  

A former Azerbaijani parliamentarian was arrested and charged with extortion this week because he has been speaking out about recent environmental protests against a planned disposal site for chemical waste, he and his lawyer said.  

 

Nazim Baydamirli, who represented the Gadabay district in Azerbaijan’s west, was detained Tuesday and placed on four months of pre-trial detention. He called the accusations of extortion fraudulent. Instead, he told the court that his imprisonment was related to his support of protests against the planned chemical waste reservoir in the Soyudlu village of the Gadabay district.   

 

“He said in court that the charge had nothing to do with the reasons behind his arrest. Baydamirli brought to the court’s attention that the reason for his arrest was related to his activities,” lawyer Agil Lajic told VOA. 

 

The country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs contends that Baydamirli has been brought under investigation because of an unrelated complaint. 

 

“A citizen came to the police and said that Nazim Baydamirli demanded $29,000 [50,000 manats] from him, saying that he had inappropriate photos of him. Although he gave Baydamirli $5,800 (10,000 manats) on June 14 of this year, Baydamirli continued blackmailing the complainant and his family, threatening to spread the images, because he failed to pay the remaining amount,” the Press Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs alleged. 

 

A number of activists and political figures have called Baydamirli’s arrest a political order and have called for his release. 

 

“Nazim Baydamirli’s arrest on an obviously false and absurd charge is a violation of rights and justice. By sending a well-known social and political figure to prison on a long term for such an absurd charge, the authorities tell the society that ‘we are trampling on law and justice,'” Ali Karimli, chairman of the Azerbaijan People’s Front Party (APFP),  wrote in a Facebook post. “Freedom to Nazim Baydamirli!” 

Standoff over gold mine waste 

 

Residents of the Soyudlu village protested on June 20 against the proposed construction of another artificial lake to hold chemical waste from a nearby gold mine. The mine’s existing waste reservoir is nearly full, and protesters say it has been leaking into a nearby lake, causing health problems.  

 

In response, police were deployed to the area. There was a confrontation between police and the protesters, with police using tear gas against the villagers, including elderly female protesters. At least 10 people were reported injured, including six journalists. 

According to Samad Rahimli, a member of the “Soyudlu” working group, 11 village residents were arrested in connection with the protests. He said eight of them have been placed in administrative detention for violating rules of assembly, while three others are facing drug-related charges.   

 

Access to the village has since been restricted. A local resident told VOA that law enforcement has set up checkpoints and will let in only villagers. 

 

The resident, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity around the standoff, told VOA that since the protest, government officials have often come to the village to speak with residents about the situation. 

 

“We are waiting for the results from the monitoring commission. But the work around the cyanide lake has resumed. Nothing has changed,” the resident said. 

 

In an interview with VOA before his arrest, Baydamirli said the village residents’ complaints have been ignored by the authorities for years, leading them to stage protests. He suggested the authorities’ response has worsened the situation. 

 

“Blockade of the village and taking so-called ‘measures’ to prevent the information from spreading led to more people becoming aware of these events. Similarly, these behaviors angered the population, angered residents, and users on social networks also reacted to it,” he said.  

Azerbaijan’s Prime Minister Ali Asadov established a commission on June 21 to monitor and assess the reservoir’s situation in the village, but results have not yet been announced. 

 

VOA’s Nigar Mubariz and Parvana Bayramova contributed to this report.

Meta’s New Twitter Competitor, Threads, Boasts Tens of Millions of Sign-Ups

Tens of millions of people have signed up for Meta’s new app, Threads, as it aims to challenge competitor platform Twitter.

Threads launched on Wednesday in the United States and in more than 100 other countries.

In a Thursday morning post on the platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 30 million people had signed up.

“Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build out the app,” he said in the post.

Threads is a text-based version of Meta’s social media app Instagram. The company says it provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”

The high number of sign-ups is likely an indication that users are looking for an alternative to Twitter, which has been stumbling since Elon Musk bought it last year. Meta appears to have taken advantage of rival Twitter’s many blunders in pushing out Threads.

Like Twitter, Threads features short text posts that users can like, re-post and reply to. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos that are up to five minutes long, according to a Meta blog post.

Unlike Twitter, Threads does not include any direct message capabilities.

“Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji. He said the app had 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours.

Kim Kardashian, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are among the celebrities who have joined the platform, as well as politicians like Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Brands like HBO, NPR and Netflix have also set up accounts.

Threads is not yet available in the European Union because of regulatory concerns. The 27-country bloc has stricter privacy rules than most other countries.

Threads launched as a standalone app, but users can log in using their Instagram credentials and follow the same accounts.

Analysts have said Threads’ links to Instagram may provide it with a built-in user base — potentially presenting yet another challenge to beleaguered Twitter. Instagram has more than 2 billion active users per month.

Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared to respond to the debut of Threads in a Twitter post Thursday.

“We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated,” she said in the post that did not directly mention Threads.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

Turkey Resists NATO Pressure to Admit Sweden Ahead of Summit

Turkey is facing mounting pressure from its NATO allies to lift its opposition to Sweden’s membership bid. But Ankara says it will not change its position until its demands are met, and analysts say the impasse will probably have to be solved at the approaching NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.

American Journalist Gershkovich Marks 100 Days in Russian Jail 

Jailed American journalist Evan Gershkovich on Friday marks his 100th day in detention in Russia on espionage accusations. 

The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested March 29 while on assignment in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Russian authorities have accused the Moscow-based reporter of spying. 

Gershkovich, the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny the espionage charges. 

Media watchdogs say his arrest marked a new low in Russia’s declining press freedom environment under President Vladimir Putin. 

“Evan’s detention marked a new escalation in Putin’s war on the free press, expanding his crackdown beyond Russia’s domestic media which has already been totally hollowed out,” Clayton Weimers, executive director of the U.S. office of Reporters Without Borders, told VOA.

“One hundred days in jail is 100 days too long to punish a journalist for simply doing journalism,” he said. 

The first American reporter to be charged with espionage in Russia since the end of the Cold War, Gershkovich faces 20 years in a penal colony if convicted. 

“It is vital to keep Evan’s story front and center, particularly as we reflect on this difficult milestone,” The Wall Street Journal said in a statement.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Moscow and Washington have discussed a possible prisoner swap, in an apparent reference to the American journalist and Vladimir Dunaev, a Russian citizen in U.S. custody on cybercrime charges. 

“We have said that there have been certain contacts on the subject, but we don’t want them to be discussed in public,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, without naming any specific detainee. “They must be carried out and continue in complete silence.” 

Peskov added that “the lawful right to consular contacts must be ensured on both sides.” 

In response to a question Wednesday about a potential prisoner swap, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “Sadly, we do not have any news to share.”

“What I can say is Evan, along with Paul Whelan, who are both wrongfully detained, as you know, should be home. They should be home with their families. I just don’t have anything to share at this time,” she added.

Whelan, a former U.S. marine, is also detained in Russia on espionage charges that the U.S. views as baseless. 

Russia’s Washington embassy did not respond to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Gershkovich’s detention has taken a toll on his friends and colleagues in the community of journalists who cover Russia.

“Knowing that it’s been 100 days that Evan has been in Lefortovo prison, an FSB-run prison that is very isolating, known for being really psychologically challenging for its inmates — it’s just really hard to know that Evan has been in those circumstances for so long already,” Financial Times reporter Polina Ivanova told VOA.

Ivanova has known Gershkovich since 2017, when they both started reporting jobs in Moscow — Gershkovich at the Moscow Times and Ivanova at Reuters.

“It’s a very tight-knit community, so we’ve always been good friends,” said Ivanova, now based in Berlin and still covering Russia and Ukraine.

Since Gershkovich’s arrest in March, the journalist has been granted only two consular visits.

The latest visit took place Monday, when U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy was allowed to visit Gershkovich for the first time since April. 

“Ambassador Tracy reports that Mr. Gershkovich is in good health and remains strong, despite his circumstances,” a State Department spokesperson said about the latest visit. “We expect Russian authorities to provide continued consular access.” 

In a statement about Gershkovich’s 100-day marker, the press freedom group the Committee to Protect journalists said it was concerned about the lack of due process and the denial of consular access to the journalist.

“One hundred days is obviously just incredibly difficult to get your head around — to imagine yourself in such a small space for so long with so little contact with the outside world,” Ivanova said. 

Gershkovich’s original pre-trial detention was set to expire on May 29, but a Russian court lengthened that period to August 30. 

Russia Expels Finnish Diplomats, Shuts Down Consulate in Tit-for-Tat Move

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday announced the expelling of nine Finnish diplomats and shutting down of Finland’s consulate in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Finland expelling nine Russian diplomats last month.

The ministry said in a lengthy statement that it summoned Finland’s ambassador to Russia, Antti Helantera, on Thursday, and relayed its “strong protest in connection with the confrontational anti-Russian policy pursued by the Finnish authorities.”

The statement also noted that “the parameters of Finland’s accession to NATO create a threat” to Russia’s security, and “encouraging the Kyiv regime to (go to) war and pumping it with Western weapons means clearly hostile actions against our country.” The statement concluded that “this line of the Finnish authorities cannot remain unanswered.”

It said nine Finnish diplomats would be expelled from Russia, and a permit allowing the Finnish consulate in St. Petersburg — the country’s second-largest city — to operate will be revoked starting from Oct. 1.

Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, joined NATO in April as the military alliance’s 31st member. Interaction between Helsinki and Moscow has become restrained in recent months.

Finland’s veteran politician and then foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, announced in May that Russia has frozen the bank accounts of Finland’s diplomatic representations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, disrupting money flow and forcing the Nordic country’s missions to resort to cash payments.

In June, Finland expelled nine Russian diplomats, suspected of working in intelligence operations at Russia’s embassy in Helsinki.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto tweeted that he considered Moscow’s move on Thursday as “a tough and asymmetric” response to Helsinki’s decision to expel Russian diplomats.

Niinisto said the Finnish government was mulling counter-measures including a possible closure of Russia’s consulate in the western Finnish port city of Turku.

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said on Twitter that Moscow’s move was “out of proportion” and that “Finland will react” to Russia’s decision.

Romania Assumes Leading Role in West’s Support for Ukraine

Sharing a border with Ukraine, Romania has become one of the European Union countries most exposed to the conflict and a key NATO supplier of weapons to Kyiv. Despite Romania’s support of Ukraine, its historically troubled relations with Ukraine still pose difficulties. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Bucharest.

Wagner Leader Back in Russia, Lukashenko Says

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was no longer in Belarus and had returned to Russia.

Prigozhin went to Belarus as part of a deal to end an armed mutiny by his Wagner mercenary group last month.

Lukashenko brokered the agreement, which included security guarantees for Prigozhin and his fighters.

Lukashenko told reporters Thursday that his offer to allow some Wagner fighters to be stationed in Belarus still stood.

“At the moment the question of their transfer and setup has not been decided,” Lukashenko said. “I am absolutely not worried or concerned that we will host a certain number of these fighters here,” he added.

Prigozhin and his fighters launched their mutiny June 23 in a challenge to Russia’s military leadership.  They captured military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Roston-on-Don before moving toward Moscow.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 

Ariane 5 Blasts Off for Final Time Amid Europe’s Rocketing Challenges

Europe’s workhorse Ariane 5 rocket blasted off for a final time on Wednesday, with its farewell flight after 27 years of launches coming at a difficult time for European space efforts.   

Faced with soaring global competition, the continent has unexpectedly found itself without a way to independently launch heavy missions into space due to delays to the next-generation Ariane 6 and Russia withdrawing its rockets. 

The 117th and final flight of the Ariane 5 rocket took place around 2200 GMT on Wednesday from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. 

The launch had been postponed twice. It was originally scheduled on June 16, but was called off because of problems with pyrotechnical lines in the rocket’s booster, which have since been replaced. 

Then Tuesday’s launch was delayed by bad weather. 

The Wednesday night flight went off without a hitch, watched by hundreds of spectators, including former French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, and was greeted with applause. 

Marie-Anne Clair, the director of the Guiana Space Centre, told AFP that the final flight of Ariane 5 was “charged with emotion” for the teams in Kourou, where the rocket’s launches have punctuated life for nearly three decades. 

The final payload on Ariane 5 is a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite.  

The satellite “marks a major turning point for our armed forces: better performance and greater resistance to jamming,” French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu tweeted.  

Though it would become a reliable rocket, Ariane 5 had a difficult start. Its maiden flight exploded moments after liftoff in 1996. Its only other such failure came in 2002. 

Herve Gilibert, an engineer who was working on Ariane 5 at the time, said the 2002 explosion was a “traumatic experience” that “left a deep impression on us”. 

But the rocket would embark on what was ultimately a long string of successful launches.  

The initial stumbles had “the positive effect of keeping us absolutely vigilant,” Gilibert said. 

Reputation for reliability

Ariane 5 earned such a reputation for reliability that NASA trusted it to launch the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope in late 2021. 

The rocket’s second-last launch was in April, blasting the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft on its way to find out whether Jupiter’s icy moons can host alien life. 

Daniel Neuenschwander, the ESA’s head of human and robotic exploration, said that in commercial terms, Ariane 5 had been “the spearhead of Europe’s space activities.” 

The rocket was able to carry a far bigger load than its predecessor Ariane 4, giving Europe a competitive advantage and allowing the continent to establish itself in the communication satellite market. 

While waiting for Ariane 6, whose first launch was initially scheduled for 2020, Europe had been relying on Russia’s Soyuz rockets to get heavy-load missions into space. 

But Russia withdrew space cooperation with Europe in response to sanctions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  

The number of launches from Kourou fell from 15 in 2021 to six last year. 

Another blow came in December, when the first commercial flight of the next-generation Vega C light launcher failed. Last week, another problem was detected in the Vega C’s engine, likely pushing its return further into the future. 

Attention shifts to new rocket 

The launcher market has been increasingly dominated by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. firm SpaceX, whose rockets are now blasting off once a week. 

Lacking other options, the ESA was forced to turn to rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for the successful launch of its Euclid space telescope on Saturday.  

The ESA will also use a SpaceX rocket to launch satellites for the EarthCARE observation mission. 

It remains unclear how the agency will launch the next round of satellites for the European Union’s Galileo global navigation system. 

At the Paris Air Show earlier this month, ESA chief Josef Aschbacher acknowledged that these were “difficult times,” adding that everyone was “working intensely” to get Ariane 6 and Vega-C ready.  

Ariane 6 was unveiled on a launch pad in Kourou earlier this month ahead of an ignition test of its Vulcain 2.1 rocket engine. 

Because the new rocket requires less staffing and maintenance, 190 out of 1,600 positions are being cut at the Kourou spaceport. 

US Says Russian Jets Harassed Drones Over Syria

The U.S. military said a group of three Russian fighter jets harassed three U.S. drones that were taking part in a mission Wednesday against Islamic State group targets in Syria.

Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, commander of the U.S. 9th Air Force in the Middle East, said the Russian jets dropped flares attached to parachutes in front of the U.S. drones, which forced the drones to take evasive action.

Grynkewich also said one of the Russian pilots maneuvered in front of a drone and engaged the jet’s afterburners, which affected the drone operator’s ability to safely operate the aircraft.

“We urge Russian forces in Syria to cease this reckless behavior and adhere to the standards of behavior expected of a professional air force so we can resume our focus on the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Grynkewich said in a statement.

The U.S. military did not specify where in Syria the incident took place.

There are about 900 U.S. forces deployed to Syria to advise and assist Kurdish-led forces in the fight to defeat the Islamic State group.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.

Reuters to Appeal Turkey Ban on Web Article

Reuters this week said that it will appeal a move by Turkey to block access to more than 90 web links and social media posts that used reporting by the news agency.

The ban relates to an article that said that Swedish and American anti-corruption authorities were reviewing a complaint that named the Turkish president’s son, Bilal Erdogan.

The Reuters article was translated into Turkish by several media outlets, including VOA’s Turkish Service.

An Istanbul Court on June 26 issued an order that blocks access to 93 web addresses that used the Reuters news article, its Turkish translations or information from the news agency. VOA’s Turkish Service is among those affected.

“This is the first time that access to a Reuters news article was banned within 24 hours [in Turkey],” Yaman Akdeniz, a cyber law professor at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, told VOA.

Reuters on Monday said it would appeal the ruling, which it said “runs contrary to Turkish legal protections for freedom of the press and expression.”

In its reporting, Reuters cited a lawyer for Bilal Erdogan as denying involvement and describing the allegations as “a web of lies.”

Reuters also noted that it could not “confirm independently whether Erdogan and his son Bilal were aware of or had involvement” in the alleged scheme.

A Reuters spokesperson told VOA that the agency stands by its story.

“Our story was prepared in keeping with the Thomson Reuters’ Trust Principles and our commitment to the publication of fair and accurate reporting in the global public interest,” the spokesperson said.

Ruling

The Turkish court ruling, seen by VOA, defined the Reuters article as “far from reality, unconfirmed, and far from goodwill,” adding that citing it in other media outlets “will not justify and legitimize the content.”

The ruling said, “Freedom of the press obliges those concerned to respect professional ethics, to provide accurate and reliable information, and to act in good faith. Malicious distortions of truth may exceed the limits of acceptable criticism.”

But media critics say that the ruling goes too far.

“The court ruled that Reuters’s article should not be credited, and its coverage should not be published,” Akdeniz said.

Yusuf Kanli, the director of the E.U.-funded Media for Democracy project, said, “The Turkish Constitution clearly states that the press is free and cannot be censored.”

“Instead of banning access to the reporting of the bribery claim, the request to ban access to these allegations should be prevented,” Kanli added.

Gurkan Ozturan, the coordinator of Media Freedom Rapid Response team at the European Center for Press and Media Freedom, thinks that blocking access to articles in Turkey has become a problem.

“In recent months, there has been an apparent increase in blocking access to news articles and content removal orders targeting local media organizations. This threatens people’s right to access information and media freedom deeply,” Ozturan told VOA.

In June 2022, for example, access to VOA Turkish was blocked after it declined to get a broadcasting license from Turkey’s media regulator, the Radio and Television Supreme Council.

Several Turkish authorities condemned the Reuters article and described it as disinformation.

And several pro-government media outlets under the Albayrak Media Group and TurkMedya said on social media they had ended their contract with Reuters.

Fahrettin Altun, the Turkish presidency’s director of communication, on Twitter condemned Reuters for what he said is a “false news story,” which he said made “baseless claims.”

“They have once again demonstrated to the entire world just how crucial our struggle against disinformation is,” Altun said.

Last year, Turkey’s parliament adopted a law that carries prison terms of up to three years for spreading “disinformation” online.

Asli Aral of VOA’s Turkish Service contributed from Ankara to this report, which originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.

France Urged to Tackle Racism in Policing

As the weeklong unrest in France subsides, the United Nations and several other international human rights organizations have called on the French government to reform its police forces and stop their controversial racial profiling practice.

“The government should take urgent action to reform the system of police stops,” six human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a statement on Wednesday.  

“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  

The calls were reiterated in the aftermath of the June 27 fatal shooting of Nahel Merzouk, 17, a French youth of Algerian descent, by a police officer outside Paris. The incident sparked widespread protests in nearly 200 cities and towns across France over the past week.  

“Nahel’s killing is another example of the effects of systemic racism,” Amnesty International has said.   

French authorities have defended the police, saying racism has no place in their ranks.  

“Any accusation of racism or systemic discrimination in the police force in France is totally unfounded,” France’s foreign ministry said in a statement last week.

Bruno Le Maire, France’s economy minister, said on Tuesday that it is “unacceptable” to say French police are racist.

The French government deployed 45,000 police officers to restore calm. More than 3,400 people have been arrested for various crimes, chiefly physical assault and vandalism. Businesses in France have suffered more than $1 billion in losses caused during the protests, according to a French business association.  

The controversy surrounding racial profiling by the French police is not new, with critics decrying the use of generalizations based on race, ethnicity, religion and national origin as a discriminatory practice. Despite being illegal in France and facing legal challenges, the practice has persisted through a lack of executive action, according to human rights groups. 

“These practices are not only illegal under French and international human rights law, but they are above all violent, humiliating and degrading, and make those who experience them feel like second-class citizens,” read the statement from the six human rights organizations.  

In addition to deploying massive police forces to control the situation, the French government has reportedly considered banning access to social media to prevent organized rioting and violence.  

“We have to think about the social networks, about the bans we’ll have to put in place. When things get out of control, we might need to be able to regulate or cut them off,” French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted saying in a meeting on Tuesday.  

The French government’s response has also been criticized by some as both heavy-handed and ineffective.  

While human rights groups call for addressing systemic and institutional racism, some French politicians have demanded tougher actions against the rioters.

Environmental Activists Arrested at Wimbledon After Disrupting Match

Two environmental activists were arrested at Wimbledon on Wednesday after getting on court and disrupting a match by scattering orange confetti and puzzle pieces on the grass.

A woman and a man wearing T-shirts from Just Stop Oil — a protest group that wants the British government to stop new oil, gas and coal projects — made it onto the field of play at Court 18 before being taken away by security. Later, during a different match at the same court, another man representing the same organization also threw orange confetti on the grass before security guards corralled him and dragged him away.

The initial interruption happened as three-time Grand Slam semifinalist Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, who is seeded 21st in the men’s bracket, was about to hit a serve in the second set of a first-round match against Sho Shimabukuro of Japan.

Before the debris could be cleared from the court to allow the players to continue, action was halted by a rain delay.

“Following an incident on Court 18, two individuals have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass and criminal damage and these individuals have now been removed from the grounds,” an All England Club spokesperson said in a statement. “Play on the court was temporarily paused and, following a suspension in play due to a rain delay, play [resumed].”

One of the activists sat down on the court before being removed.

The All England Club coordinated with London police and other agencies to increase security for this year’s tournament, in part as a result of protests at other major sports venues in Britain this year.

“Based on what has happened at other sporting events, and on the advice from our key partners, we have reviewed our security plans, which have now been uplifted for The Championships accordingly,” All England Club operations director Michelle Dite said last week.

“We have plans in place to mitigate the risks working in partnership with specialist agencies and the Metropolitan Police and should an incident occur, the appropriate specialist teams will respond,” Dite said.

Her comments came a day after people representing Just Stop Oil briefly disrupted play about five minutes after the start of a cricket match between England and Australia in London. Players from both teams intervened when the protesters attempted to spread orange powder on the field.

Earlier in June, protesters held up the England cricket team bus briefly during the test against Ireland in London. Activists also have targeted Premier League soccer matches, the Premiership rugby final at Twickenham and the world snooker championship in Sheffield this year.

China Cancels Visit by European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief

The European Union says China has canceled a planned visit by Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

EU spokesperson Nabila Massrali said in a written statement Wednesday that Beijing did not give a reason. Massrali said China told the EU that “the envisaged dates next week are no longer possible” and that the bloc “must now look for alternatives.”  

“We welcome Representative Borrell to visit China as soon as possible at the convenience of both sides,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing Wednesday, adding that China will maintain communications with the EU.  

Borrell was due to visit China July 10 for talks with Foreign Minister Qin Gang for talks on trade, human rights and China’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The 27-nation bloc has been pressuring Beijing to increase its efforts to persuade Russia to end its nearly 17-month-old invasion of neighboring Ukraine.  

The EU issued a statement last week after a summit, describing China as both a “competitor and a systemic rival.”

Jorge Toledo, the EU’s ambassador to China, told reporters Sunday that Brussels and Beijing are scheduled to hold two summits in September, one on the economy and the other on digital cooperation. 

This is the second time a planned visit by Borrell to China has been scrapped. A trip planned for April was called off after he tested positive for COVID-19.   

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters.

 

Indian Court’s Dismissal of Twitter’s Petition Sparks Concerns About Free Online Speech

In India, a recent court judgement that dismissed a legal petition by Twitter challenging the federal government’s orders to block tweets and accounts is a setback for free speech, according to digital rights activists.  

The Karnataka High Court, which delivered its judgement last week, also imposed a fine of $ 61,000 on the social media company for its delay in complying with the government’s takedown orders.  

“The order sets a dangerous precedent for curbing online free speech without employing procedural safeguards that are meant to protect users of online social media platforms,” Radhika Roy, a lawyer and spokesperson for the digital rights organization, Internet Freedom Foundation, told VOA.  

Twitter’s lawsuit filed last year was seen as an effort to push back against strict information technology laws passed in 2021 that allow the government to order the removal of social media posts.  

The government has defended the regulations, saying they are necessary to combat online misinformation in the interest of national security, among other reasons, and says social media companies must be accountable. Critics say the rules enable the government to clamp down on online comments that authorities consider critical.   

In court, Twitter argued that 39 orders of the federal government to take down content went against the law. It is not known which content it referred to, but media reports have said that many of these contained political content and dissenting views against farm laws that sparked a massive farmers protest in 2020.  

The government told the court the content was posted by “anti-India campaigners.” 

The court ruled that the government has the power to block not just tweets, but entire accounts as well.   

“I would disagree with that. The court had an opportunity to ensure that while illegal speech is taken down, free speech for individuals is not restricted,” Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a digital news portal told VOA. “But the court has reiterated that the government has full authority to censor whatever they want and whatever they deem illegal and that is a challenge for free speech in India.”  

The government has welcomed the decision of the Karnataka High Court. “Honourable court upholds our stand. Law of the land must be followed,” Minister of Communications, Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said in a tweet. 

Twitter had also told the court the grounds for taking down content had not been spelled out by the government and that those whose tweets or accounts were blocked had not been informed. But the court said that the user did not necessarily have to be informed. 

Digital rights activists say this raises concerns because there is no way to ascertain whether the government’s takedown requests are legal.   

“This excessive power (of blocking whole accounts) coupled with the lack of transparency surrounding the blocking orders, spells trouble for any entity whose content has the potential of being deemed unfavourable to the government,” according to Roy.   

Pahwa said the fine imposed by the court on Twitter would also discourage social media companies from going to court to protect their users right to free speech. “We are at a moment of despair for free speech in India. This does not bode well for users who might be critical of the government and its actions and inactions leading up to next year’s general elections,” according to Pahwa. 

Expressing concerns that India is moving towards imposing greater restrictions on online speech, Roy says that “the Karnataka judgement ends up perpetuating the misuse of laws restricting free speech rather than countering its rampant abuse.”  

Last month, Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as chief executive in 2021, said that during his tenure, Twitter had been issued with threats of a shutdown down in India and raids at the homes of its employees if it refused to agree to takedown requests. The government dismissed his comments as an “outright lie.”  

Twitter has said that India ranked fourth among countries that requested removal of content last year — behind Japan, Russia and Turkey. 

India, with an estimated 24 million Twitter users, is one of the largest markets for the social media company.  

Under Elon Musk, the company has complied with takedown orders. Musk, who met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to the United States last month, has said the company has no choice “but to obey local government laws” in any country or it risks getting shut.  

State of Human Rights in Belarus ‘Catastrophic,’ UN Told

The human rights situation in Belarus is catastrophic, and only getting worse, the United Nations special rapporteur on the country said Tuesday.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Minsk is deliberately purging civil society of its last dissenting voices, Anais Marin told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“The situation remains catastrophic. Unfortunately, it keeps on worsening,” said the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Belarus. “The Belarusian government amended an already restrictive legislation aimed at dismantling civic freedoms, leading to a surge in politically motivated prosecutions and sentencing.

“The lack of accountability for human rights violations fosters a climate of fear among victims and their families,” Marin said.

‘Totalitarian turn’ 

Marin has been in post for five years and reminded the council that she alerted them two years ago to the “totalitarian turn” taken by Minsk, evidenced by the “disregard for human life and dignity” during the crackdown on peaceful protesters in 2020.

In her annual report, the French political scientist said more than 1,500 individuals were still being detained on politically motivated charges, with a daily average of 17 arbitrary arrests since 2020.

“I have good reasons to believe that prison conditions are deliberately made harsher for those sentenced on politically motivated grounds, by placing them in punishment cells for petty infraction to prison rules,” said Marin.

“No one has been held accountable in Belarus for arbitrarily detaining tens of thousands of peaceful protesters in 2020, nor for the violence or torture many of them have been subjected to.

“This general impunity, and the climate of fear resulting from ongoing repression, have compelled hundreds of thousands of Belarusians into exile.”

Media called ‘extremist’

Human rights defenders face ongoing persecution, she said, with more than 1,600 “undesirable organizations forcibly dissolved, including all remaining independent trade unions.

“This illustrates a deliberate state policy of purging civic space of its last dissenting elements,” she said.

Marin said independent media outlets had been labelled as “extremist organizations,” while academic freedom is “systematically attacked.”

“Ideological control and disciplinary measures restrict freedom of opinion and their expression,” she said.

Primary and secondary education is also subject to “ideological control,” with children “discouraged from expressing their own opinions” and facing “threats and consequences” for holding dissenting views.

Consequences for speaking out 

As for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, individuals face challenges when trying to speak out against it or question Belarus’s role in facilitating the 2022 invasion.

“Anti-war actions led to numerous detentions and arrests, some on charges of planning terrorist attacks — a crime which can now be punished by death,” she said.

Belarus was immediately offered the Human Rights Council floor to respond to Marin’s comments but was not present.

Belarus Opposition Leader Says Anonymous Message Alleges That Her Husband Died in Prison

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Tuesday that she had received an anonymous message alleging that her imprisoned husband, also an opposition figure, died behind bars. 

Siarhei Tsikhanouski, 44, a popular blogger and opposition activist, was arrested in 2020 after announcing plans to run against Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in presidential elections that year. His wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, ran against Lukashenko in his stead after the arrest, rallying large crowds of people in her support across the country. 

Official results of the election handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as fraudulent. Amid unprecedented protests that broke out in the aftermath of the vote, Tsikhanouskaya left the country under pressure from the authorities. Her husband was later sentenced to 19 1/2 years in prison on charges of organizing mass riots. 

Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she hadn’t received any news from her husband since early March — letters to him are no longer being delivered, and his lawyer hasn’t been allowed to see him. 

“I don’t know anything about him. I haven’t received a single letter, and there’s been no communication through his lawyer,” Tsikhanouskaya told the AP in written comments. She added that at the same time she didn’t have any proof the claim in the anonymous note was true but demanded the authorities “provide proof that Siarhei is alive and show him.” 

The Belarusian authorities have not commented on the situation.  

On Monday, Tsikhanouskaya tweeted that she had received the anonymous note.

 

Tsikhanouski is not the only imprisoned opposition figure whose fate is shrouded in mystery.  

It’s been 67 days since anyone heard anything from Viktar Babaryka, a former banker who also planned to run for president in 2020. His supporters worry that he was beaten and put in a prison hospital. He was due to appear in court and testify in the trial of his son, which began on May 22, but missed the hearing. 

It’s been over five months since any news emerged about Maria Kolesnikova, Babaryka’s campaign manager, who also was arrested in 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. According to a recent statement by Amnesty International, Kolesnikova hasn’t been allowed to make phone calls, write letters or see her family or lawyers since mid-February. 

Another opposition figure, Nikolai Statkevich, is serving a 14-year sentence and hasn’t been heard from for 145 days. 

“It’s a new deliberate policy by the authorities to keep opposition leaders in full information isolation,” Pavel Sapelko, from Belarus’ prominent rights group Viasna, told the AP. “It’s an attempt by the authorities to pressure not just political prisoners, who are being deprived of contact with the outside world and are held in horrible conditions, but their families, as well, who are forced to live without any information about their loved ones.” 

According to Viasna, a total of 1,501 political prisoners are currently behind bars in Belarus. 

From Iranian Jail to Wimbledon Royal Box, Thanks to Andy Murray

Andy Murray said he had an emotional meeting with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who spent six years in an Iranian jail cell, after inviting her to watch him from the royal box at Wimbledon on Tuesday.

British-Iranian Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Murray became friends after she said in an interview last year that watching the Scot win Wimbledon on television in 2016 helped sustain her during solitary confinement.

She had been accused of spying while in the country visiting her parents and held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison until her release last year.

“She hadn’t been to Wimbledon before,” Murray said.

“After the story she told me about watching my Wimbledon final while she was in a cell, I felt like I wanted to invite her to come along and watch the tennis in totally different circumstances.

“Hopefully, a much more enjoyable experience. It was very emotional talking to her and hearing her story. It was brilliant that she was able to come along and watch.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe said in the interview that prison officials allowed her access to a TV that only had two channels.

One broadcast an Iranian soap opera while the other was a sports channel showing Wimbledon when Murray was winning his second title at the tournament.

“They had no idea what they had given me,” she said.

On Tuesday, she was able to at last see Murray in the flesh on Centre Court and the two-time champion didn’t disappoint his guest as he eased past fellow Briton Ryan Peniston.

Former world number one Murray, who won his first Wimbledon title in 2013, came through to win 6-3, 6-0, 6-1.

Ukrainians Honor Award-winning Writer Killed in Russian Missile Attack on Restaurant

Dozens of people with flowers, many unable to hold back tears, bid farewell Tuesday to an award-winning Ukrainian writer who was among those killed by a Russian missile attack on a popular restaurant in eastern Ukraine.

The memorial service for Victoria Amelina, 37, was held in the crowded main hall of Saint Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv, where ceremonies are usually held for soldiers who were killed on the battlefield.

Amelina died in a hospital from injuries sustained in the June 27 strike on a popular restaurant frequently visited by journalists and aid workers in the city of Kramatorsk. Twelve other people also died in the attack.

“Usually, we gather here to say goodbye to the most deserving,” said Archimandrite Lavrentii, the Orthodox priest leading the service. “Considering the times we live in, leading a worthy and dignified life for each of us is the best tribute we can offer in memory of those who have passed away into eternity.”

Around 100 people, including representatives from the Ukrainian literary community, relatives and residents of Kyiv gathered at the church to honor Amelina, a prominent writer who had turned her attention from literature to documenting Russian war crimes after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Mourners approached the closed casket, gently touching the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag covering it. Many couldn’t hold back tears. To the left of the casket, people laid flowers, some of which were adorned with ribbons in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. At the end of the farewell, a mountain of flowers stood next to a portrait of Amelina, a red-haired woman with a pale face and a penetrating gaze pictured against a dark background.

A funeral will be held Wednesday in Amelina’s hometown of Lviv.

Dmytro Kovalchuk, 31, was having dinner with Amelina at the restaurant when a Russian Iskander missile struck the building. He worked as a producer for a team of writers — Amelina and a group of Colombian authors.

He said Amelina was the first one to be evacuated to the hospital. She sustained an injury when the roof collapsed, and a piece of iron reinforcement struck her head.

Amelina is one of more than 60 artists killed in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war, said Tetiana Teren, the head of PEN Ukraine.

“She had doubts about whether literature and culture could have an impact and support the country during such a horrific genocidal war. And she began to search for her own role, what she could contribute,” Teren, holding a Ukrainian flag, said about Amelina’s decision to document war crimes.

“Victoria strongly believed that we not only have to win this war, but we must bring to justice and hold accountable all those who committed crimes, who continue to kill Ukrainians and undermine our culture.”

Amelina was born January 1, 1986, in Lviv. In 2014 she published her first novel, The November Syndrome, or Homo Compatiens, which was shortlisted for the Ukrainian Valeriy Shevchuk Prize.

She went on to write two award-winning children’s books and another novel. In 2017, her novel Dom’s Dream Kingdom received national and international accolades — including the UNESCO City of Literature Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature.

Her fiction and essays have been translated into many languages, including English, Polish, Italian, German, Croatian, Dutch, Czech and Hungarian.

In 2021, she founded the New York Literature Festival, which takes place in a small town called New York in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

Since the start of the invasion, Amelina had devoted herself to documenting Russian war crimes in eastern Ukraine, PEN America said. In Kapytolivka, near Izium, she discovered the diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a Ukrainian writer killed by the Russians.

She also began writing her first work of English nonfiction shortly before her death. In War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, Amelina recounts stories of Ukrainian women collecting evidence of Russian war crimes. It is expected to be published soon, according to PEN Ukraine.

NATO Summit: Will Allies Agree to Fast-Track Ukraine’s Membership?

NATO allies are preparing for their annual two-day summit July 11 and 12 in Vilnius, Lithuania — as Ukraine urges the alliance to fast-track its proposed membership. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed Tuesday that he will extend his term for another year, as the West seeks to maintain unity amid Russia’s aggression. Henry Ridgwell reports.

EU Asylum Applications Hit Six-Year High

Asylum applications in the EU hit 996,000 in 2022, the highest level in six years, according to an annual report from the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) published on Tuesday.

The largest groups of people seeking protection in Europe were from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Venezuela and Colombia.

Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war in their homeland were counted apart. Some 4 million of them are living in the EU with a special temporary protection status.

Taken together, the numbers were putting “acute pressure on already strained reception places in many countries,” the EUAA said.

Several of the EU’s 27 member countries, among them Italy, Poland and Sweden, are taking increasingly hardline stances against irregular migration.

That trend could deepen as the bloc’s economic growth stalls on the back of hiked interest rates, imposed in a bid to address persistently high inflation.

The EU saw a peak in irregular migration in 2015 and 2016, when 2.5 million asylum-seekers arrived, many of them Syrians escaping the conflict in their country.

The EUAA’s data covers the EU’s 27 countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The four are members of the borderless Schengen area alongside most of the EU states.

The report was published at a time when the EU is negotiating a reform of its asylum and migration rules.

The overhaul seeks to share the burden of hosting asylum-seekers across all member states, to accelerate vetting of asylum demands at the EU’s external border to weed out ones least likely to have viable grounds, and to speed up the return of denied asylum-seekers to their country of origin or transit.

According to the EUAA, the five principal EU countries receiving asylum applications were Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Italy.

Of all the applications, 39 percent received a positive response — the highest recognition rate since 2017.

All but a small fraction of those lodged by Syrians, Ukrainians and Eritreans succeeded.

Across the bloc, 71 percent of applications were lodged by men.

Twitter Chaos Leaves Door Open for Meta’s Rival App

Elon Musk spent the weekend further alienating Twitter users with more drastic changes to the social media giant, and he is facing a new challenge as tech nemesis Mark Zuckerberg prepares to launch a rival app this week.

Zuckerberg’s Meta group, which owns Facebook, has listed a new app in stores as “Threads, an Instagram app”, available for pre-order in the United States, with a message saying it is “expected” this Thursday.

The two men have clashed for years but a recent comment by a Meta executive suggesting that Twitter was not run “sanely” irked Musk, eventually leading to the two men offering each other out for a cage fight.

Since buying Twitter last year for $44 billion, Musk has fired thousands of employees and charged users $8 a month to have a blue checkmark and a “verified” account.

On the weekend, he limited the posts readers could view and decreed that nobody could look at a tweet unless they were logged in, meaning external links no longer work for many.

He said he needed to fire up extra servers just to cope with the demand as artificial intelligence (AI) companies scraped “extreme levels” of data to train their models.

But commentators have poured scorn on that idea and marketing experts say he has massively alienated both his user base and the advertisers he needs to get profits rolling.

In another move that shocked users, Twitter announced Monday that access to TweetDeck, an app that allows users to monitor several accounts at once, would be limited to verified accounts next month.

John Wihbey, an associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern University, told AFP that plenty of people wanted to quit Twitter for ethical reasons after Musk took over, but he had now given them a technical reason to leave too.

And he added that Musk’s decision to sack thousands of workers meant it had long been expected that the site would become “technically unusable”.

‘Remarkably bad’

Musk has said he wants to make Twitter less reliant on advertising and boost income from subscriptions.

Yet he chose advertising specialist Linda Yaccarino as his chief executive recently, and she has spoken of going into “hand-to-hand combat” to win back advertisers.

“How do you tell Twitter advertisers that your most engaged free users potentially will never see their ads because of data caps on their usage,” tweeted Justin Taylor, a former marketing executive at Twitter.

Mike Proulx, vice president at market research firm Forrester, said the weekend’s chaos had been “remarkably bad” for both users and advertisers.

“Advertisers depend on reach and engagement yet Twitter is currently decimating both,” he told AFP.

He said Twitter had “moved from stable to startup” and Yaccarino, who remained silent over the weekend, would struggle to restore its credibility, leaving the door open to Twitter’s rivals to suck up any cash from advertisers.

‘Open secret’

The technical reasons Musk gave for limiting the views of users immediately brought a backlash.

Many social media users speculated that Musk had simply failed to pay the bill for his servers.

French social data analyst Florent Lefebvre said AI firms were more likely to train their models on books and media articles than social network content, which “is of much poorer quality, full of mistakes and lacking in context”.

Yoel Roth, who stepped down as Twitter’s head of security weeks after Musk took over, said the idea that data scraping had caused such performance problems that users needed to be forced to log in “doesn’t pass the sniff test”.

“Scraping was the open secret of Twitter data access,” he wrote on the Bluesky social network — another Twitter rival.

“We knew about it. It was fine.”

 

London Fights Legal Challenge Over Expanding Clean-Air Zone

London’s expansion of a fiercely debated scheme that charges the most polluting vehicles in the city should be blocked, local authorities bringing a legal challenge over the plan argued on Tuesday.

The British capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) levies a $16 daily charge on drivers of non-compliant vehicles, in order to tackle pollution and improve air quality.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan last year decided to extend the scheme to cover almost all of the Greater London area, encompassing an extra five million people in leafier and less-connected outer boroughs, from the end of next month.

The decision has pitched Khan and health campaigners against those who say they cannot tolerate another economic hit at a time of soaring living costs.

Khan, who is running for a third four-year term in the 2024 London mayoral election, has said he is determined to face down his critics.

But his plan, which echoes hundreds of others in place in traffic-choked cities across Europe, came under challenge at London’s High Court on Tuesday as five local authorities argued the decision to expand ULEZ into their areas was unlawful.

London’s transport authority – Transport for London (TfL) – had launched a public consultation on the plan, which said 91% of vehicles driven in outer London would not be affected.

However, the local authorities’ lawyers argue that TfL provided no detail on how it calculated the 91% figure, which they say was fundamental to justifying the expansion.

The local authorities are also challenging Khan’s decision to not extend a 110 million pound scrappage scheme to those living just outside the expanded ULEZ. The scheme subsidises the cost of buying a replacement vehicle for those affected.

Lawyers representing Khan and TfL argued in court filings that TfL provided sufficient information for the consultation and said that extending the scrappage scheme beyond London was rejected in order to target those directly affected.