Russia, after Twitter slowdown, accuses US of using IT to engage in unfair competition

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MOSCOW: Russia on Saturday accused the United States of using IT opportunities to engage in unfair competition and of social media platforms arbitrarily and indiscriminately censoring content.

Russia this week said it was slowing down the speed of Twitter in retaliation for what it described as a failure to remove banned content. It threatened to block the U.S. platform outright, a move which escalating a row between Moscow and U.S. social media firms.

Twitter currently labels some Russian media “state-affiliated media”, a move decried by Moscow. President Vladimir Putin signed laws in December handing Russia new powers to restrict U.S. social media giants.

“[The platforms] do not, in principle, have unified standards for managing themselves. This is a semantic and technological stalemate,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

“Digital content is arbitrarily and indiscriminately censored by certain moderators without the decision of a court or a relevant, competent authority.”

Twitter on Tuesday said it was deeply concerned by increased attempts to block and throttle online public conversation and that it was worried about the impact on free speech of the Russian action to slow down its service.

“Washington’s goal is obvious – to use IT opportunities for unfair competition in all spheres,” Zakharova said.

Jennifer Lopez, Alex Rodriguez break off engagement

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MIAMI, United States: Singer Jennifer Lopez and former New York Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez have called off their engagement, US media reported on Friday.

Lopez, 51, and Rodriguez, 45, had been a couple for nearly four years and had just last year bought a $40 million home in Miami.

The pair yet not confirmed the break up reported by the New York Post’s Page Six and TMZ.

Lopez was in the Dominican Republic filming a movie and posted Thursday on social media saying “Find a good reason to laugh today.”

Rodriguez, for his part, posted a picture of himself aboard a boat in Florida.

While the news caught many fans by surprise, the split had apparently been in the works for a while.

“This has been a long time coming,” a source told People magazine.

“They are tied in their business worlds so it’s not a cut and dry break up. It’s taken a while for them to even think about untangling it all.”

India drafts e-commerce policy with focus on impartiality

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NEW DELHI: India will require e-commerce firms to treat sellers equally on their platforms and ensure transparency, according to a draft policy seen by media on Saturday that follows criticism against business practices of big online companies.

India has been deliberating a new e-commerce policy for months amid complaints from brick-and-mortar retailers who allege online giants like Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart flout federal regulations. The companies have denied the allegations.

A media special report last month revealed that Amazon has for years given preferential treatment to a small group of sellers on its India platform and used them to circumvent the country’s foreign investment rules.

The latest draft of the policy document says operators should be impartial in their dealings with sellers.

“E-commerce operators must ensure equal treatment of all sellers/vendors registered on their platforms and not adopt algorithms which result in prioritizing select vendors/sellers,” it says.

A spokesman for the commerce ministry declined to comment.

The policy will apply to Amazon and Flipkart – two top e-commerce players in India – as well as domestic players like Reliance Industries, which has plans to expand its JioMart online platform. All three firms did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Separately, India is also considering changes to foreign investment rules that could prompt players including Amazon to restructure their ties with some major sellers, media reported in January.

Government officials are set to hold talks next week with industry executives on such rules, according to people with direct knowledge.

On Saturday, top government officials from various departments, including the commerce ministry, met to discuss the e-commerce policy. The timeline of publication and whether it will be subject to further changes were not immediately clear.

Indian traders have also complained about steep discounts offered by online companies which smaller retailers have not been able to match. Amazon and Flipkart have said they comply with all laws.

E-commerce firms must “bring out clear and transparent policies” on online discounts, the draft document says.

A media special report last month – based on internal Amazon documents dated between 2012 and 2019 – showed the company helped a small number of sellers prosper on its India platform, giving them discounted fees and helping one cut special deals with big tech manufacturers.

Amazon has said it “does not give preferential treatment to any seller on its marketplace,” and that it “treats all sellers in a fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory manner.”

Buyer behind $69m record-breaking art sale revealed

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The buyer of a digital artwork sold for $69 million was named as a crypto asset investor known by the pseudonym “Metakovan,” auction house Christie’s confirmed on Friday.

“Everydays: The First 5000 Days” — the first virtual Non-Fungible Token (NFT) artwork to be sold at a major auction house — closed at $69,346,250 during an online auction on Thursday.

On Friday, Christie’s announced that Metakovan, founder and funder of Metapurse, the largest NFT fund in the world, was behind the astronomical purchase.

Chinese cryptocurrency creator Justin Sun revealed on Twitter that he was outbid on the artwork, having put down a final effective bid of $60 million, only to be “outbid by another buyer in the last 20 secs by $250k.”

Sun said he had been leading the bidding throughout most of the last 20 minutes of the auction — but his attempt to update his bid failed during the last 30 seconds.

The record-breaking sale catapults the artwork’s creator, Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple, near the summit of the most expensive living artists to date, placing him just below David Hockney and Jeff Koons. Hockney’s painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million in 2018, while Koons’ stainless steel sculpture “Rabbit” topped the list at $91.1 million in 2019.

Bolivia: Ex-interim president arrested over coup

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The former interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, and several ex-ministers have been arrested.

Prosecutors say she and the ministers took part in a coup against the then President Evo Morales in 2019.

Mr Morales resigned and fled Bolivia after protests and allegations of electoral fraud.

Ms Áñez has said she is the victim of a political vendetta by Mr Morales’s Mas Socialist party, which has since returned to power.

The party won a landslide victory in presidential and congressional elections in October last year, paving the way for Mr Morales to return to Bolivia from Argentina and take over the leadership of the Mas party.

His colleague Luis Arce was elected president, though Mr Arce stressed in a BBC interview last year that he would pursue his own political path, saying he was not Evo Morales.

As the most senior senator, Ms Áñez became caretaker president after Mr Morales fled. But members of the Mas party accused her, in cahoots with police and military figures, of engineering his overthrow.

She was detained in the early hours of Saturday in the city of Trinidad, government minister, Eduardo Del Castillo Del Carpio, announced on Facebook. She was then taken by plane to the city of La Paz.

Chinese ‘polar bear hotel’ starts bookings

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SHANGHAI: A hotel that bills itself as the world’s first “polar bear hotel” has opened in China’s far northeastern Heilongjiang province, drawing both guests and criticism for its central feature: live polar bears.

The Polar Bear Hotel, part of the Harbin Polarland theme park in Heilongjiang’s capital and largest city, Harbin, opened its doors on Friday with the promise of round-the-clock polar bear viewing from all 21 guest rooms.

“Whether you’re eating, playing or sleeping, polar bears will keep you company,” Harbin Polarland’s official WeChat account said in a post dated Thursday.

Photos and videos from Chinese state media showed people watching two polar bears in an indoor enclosure featuring artificial ice and small pools of water.

Yang Liu, a spokeswoman for Harbin Polarland, told media that the indoor area is only part of the bears’ total enclosure, and that they are let outdoors when temperature and air quality permit.

She said interest in staying at the hotel, where rooms range from 1,888 to 2,288 yuan ($290.10 to $351.56) per night was “very high”, adding that it is fully booked through a trial period.

Conservationists criticised the hotel.

“Polar bears belong in the Arctic, not in zoos or glass boxes in aquariums – and certainly not in hotels,” Jason Baker, senior vice president at animal rights group PETA told media on Saturday. “Polar bears are active for up to 18 hours a day in nature, roaming home ranges that can span thousands of miles, where they enjoy a real life.”

In 2016, a shopping mall in the southern city of Guangzhou attracted global condemnation after videos emerged of a polar bear, Pizza, lying on her side in a glass-walled enclosure.

Harbin Polarland, established in late 2005, calls itself the world’s first polar performing arts amusement park.

‘Old is Gold’: 89-year-old looks forward to dance parties

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Eighty-nine-year-old New Yorker Bob Holzman received his  as soon as he could, hoping it would allow him to get back to his favorite activity – dancing.

Over the last 75 years, Holzman has danced his way around the city’s events to the rhythms of swing, fox-trot, samba, and salsa.

And until last year, he had never missed a Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing opening and had been a fixture at city dance parties.

When the pandemic struck in March of 2020, Holzman found himself stuck at home. He occupied himself reading electronic books on loan from the New York Public Library and playing scrabble online with friends.

But now he is looking forward to getting back to normality.

“It was a joke from, I think, probably Betty Davis, she says, ‘Old age is not for sissies,’” said Holzman, sitting on a wooden chair in the shadow of a large umbrella spread in Bryant Park.

“I consider myself lucky and fortunate that I’m still able to dance and jump around and take my shopping cart and do everything else.”

Across the United States, COVID-19 vaccinations have changed seniors’ daily lives in ways large and small a year after the pandemic drove many in the high-risk group into forced isolation.

Older Americans are again visiting family members, eating at their favorite restaurants, and shopping in stores without fear of death or hospitalization.

“I have no doubt … that I’ll be able to do whatever I did before,” Holzman said. “And I’ll do it with a sense of gratitude that, you know, I was able to get through it.”

Man kills sons for insurance income, gets 200-year jail

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A California man was sentenced to more than 200 years in prison on Thursday after drowning his two autistic sons by driving his car off a pier in order to collect on life insurance policies he had taken out on them.

Ali Elmezayen, 45, drove the family´s Honda sedan — with his ex-wife and two sons inside — off a wharf in San Pedro, south of Los Angeles, on April 9, 2015. His sons, aged eight and 13, drowned but his ex-wife, Raba Diab, was saved by a fisherman who threw her a flotation device. Elmezayen escaped through an open driver´s side window and swam to a ladder on the dock.  Following the deaths of his sons, Elmezayen, an Egyptian national, collected more than $260,000 on insurance policies from two companies. Authorities said

Elmezayen transferred most of the money to Egypt and about $80,000 was seized from his US account. Elmezayen was convicted in October 2019 of federal charges of mail and wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering. US District Judge John Walter sentenced him to 212 years in prison and denounced what he called the “vicious and callous nature of his crimes.” “He is the ultimate phony and a skillful liar,” Walter said. “The only regret that the defendant has is that he got caught.” Elmezayen still faces state charges for the murder of his two sons and attempted murder of his ex-wife.

Pakistani couple expelled for embracing, engagement at university campus

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A private university in Lahore expelled two students who embraced after getting engaged on campus, after a video of the incident spread on social media. In the clip, a female university student gets down on one knee and proposes to her boyfriend; the couple can then be seen hugging and holding bouquets of flowers as onlookers cheer them on and film the scene.

The university said the pair had acted “in violation of university rules”. It added in a statement on Friday that they had failed to appear before a disciplinary hearing and were later expelled for “serious infraction of the code of conduct”. Public displays of affection between couples — whether married or not — are viewed as unacceptable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG0_7P10Yr0&t=5s

“We did nothing wrong, and we are not sorry for this,” the engaged girl tweeted. “Can anyone explain to us what wrong we did by proposing each other in public in the university “, her fiance said, adding that couples had previously proposed to each other on campus. They said they had received online threats for the show of affection.

Ransom-seeking hackers having advantage of server flaws: Microsoft

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WASHINGTON: Ransom-seeking hackers have begun taking advantage of a recently disclosed flaw in Microsoft’s widely used mail server software, the company said early Thursday – a serious escalation that could portend widespread digital disruption.

The disclosure, initially made on Twitter by Microsoft Corp security program manager Phillip Misner and later confirmed by the Redmond, Washington-based company, is the realization of worries that have been coursing through the security community for days.

Since March 2, when Microsoft announced the discovery of serious vulnerabilities in its Exchange software, experts have warned that it was only a matter of time before ransomware gangs began using them to shake down organizations across the internet.

Misner didn’t immediately respond to follow-up messages and Microsoft did not return emails seeking further comment. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI also didn’t immediately respond. Even though the security holes announced by Microsoft have since been fixed, organizations worldwide have failed to patch their software, leaving them open to exploitation.

Experts attribute the sluggish pace of many customers’ updates in part to the complexity of Exchange’s architecture and lack of expertise. In Germany alone, officials have said that up to 60,000 networks remained vulnerable. All manner of hackers have begun taking advantage of the holes – one security firm recently counted 10 separate hacking groups using the flaws – but ransomware operators are among the most feared. Those groups work by locking users out of their devices and data unless the victims cough up big chunks of digital currency.  They now potentially have access “into a huge number of vulnerable systems,” said Brett Callow of cybersecurity company Emsisoft. He said more modest companies – many of which lack the ability or awareness to update their software – could be particularly affected by the latest variant of ransomware. “This is a potentially serious risk to small businesses,” he said.