Category: World

The European Commission has accused Bluesky of violating the Digital Services Act by failing to provide mandatory information. The company has engaged lawyers to resolve the issue of compliance with EU requirements.

The social network Bluesky, in the wake of the growing number of users around the world, violates the rules of the digital services law in the EU. The EU executive recently provided details of the claims.

Reports UNN with reference to Bloomberg.

Details

The new favorite of social networks Bluesky is being criticized by the EU supervisory authority for non-compliance with transparency obligations. that is, it violates the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The EU executive said on Monday that Bluesky did not provide information that it is required to share under the block's Digital Services Act, which regulates content on social media sites.

for Reference

According to the DSA, platforms that can be used in the EU must provide complete information about the operator and user numbers. The latter requirement is primarily due to the fact that a platform with 45 million or more daily users becomes the so-called VLOP (a very large online platform), which is subject to even stricter requirements.

All platforms in the EU must have a dedicated page on their websites indicating how many user numbers they have in the EU and where they are legally established

– Thomas Rainier, a spokesman for the Digital Commission, told reporters.

Bluesky's Response

Bluesky said it was working to comply with European Union rules after the bloc accused the fast-growing social media platform of violating digital rules.

The company is consulting with its lawyer on compliance with EU disclosure rules, a Bluesky spokesperson wrote in an email on Tuesday.

recall

Bluesky, a social network created by former Twitter CEOJack Dorsey, abandoned the invitation system and opened registration to all users to encourage them to participate more actively.

The social network Bluesky recorded a significant increase in new users. This happened against the background of an outflow of users from Platform X (formerly Twitter) after the US presidential election. The platform reached 14.5 million users.

Celebrities active at Bluesky include rapper Lizzo and comedian Ricky Gervais, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who recently created an account.

Google and Meta urge Australia to postpone bill to ban social media for childrenNov 26 2024, 03:26 AM • 16166 views

On Tuesday, 26 November, Lithuania presented Russian charge d'affaires Alexander Elkin with a letter of protest against Russia's war crimes in Ukraine.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Lithuania invited Elkin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 26 November and presented him with a note expressing a strong protest against Russia's continued war crimes against Ukraine and its people, the ministry said.

Quote: "As Russia continues its aggression against Ukraine and increasingly shells Ukrainian cities, their residents and the critical infrastructure, reports of unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war being shot by Russian forces and other war crimes committed by the aggressor appear with appalling regularity," the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry stated.

According to the government, at least three such cases involving over 20 Ukrainian military personnel were reported in October and November of 2024 alone.

"Today, during the meeting, the representative of the Russian Federation was told that if the Russian leadership and country’s law enforcement agencies did not take action to investigate and prevent these crimes, they would be considered complicit in these crimes," Lithuania informed.

The statement said that Russian diplomats who defend Russia's military aggression against Ukraine and who actively or passively absolve the Russian Federation of culpability for a number of war crimes will also be held accountable.

Background:

• On 26 November, Ukrainian law enforcers uncovered another war crime by the Russians and opened an investigation into the execution of five Ukrainian prisoners of war on the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk Oblast.
• A representative of the Russian Embassy was summoned to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry on 18 November and presented with a note of protest over Russia's full-scale, 1,000-day-old invasion on Ukraine.
• Western leaders, members of governments and ambassadors issued statements of solidarity with Ukraine on the 1,000th day since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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The yacht Sea Story with 44 passengers sank near the Egyptian resort of Marsa Alam. 31 people were rescued, 4 died, 9 are missing, and their search continues.

After the sinking of a pleasure yacht with European tourists on board in the Red Sea, 9 people are still missing. Authorities believe they may not have had time to get out of their cabins and drowned along with the boat. UNN writes about this with reference to the Air Force.

Details

Rescuers found 28 survivors at the wreck of the Sea Story yacht near the Egyptian resort of Marsa Alam. According to updated data, 44 people were on board, including 13 crew members. At first, 16 people were reported missing. Then three were found alive, in addition, 4 bodies were taken out of the sea. Thus, 9 people still remain on the missing persons list.

Egyptian rescue services continue to search, but the chances of finding survivors are decreasing by the minute.

On Sunday, the Sea Story vessel left the port near the eastern city of Marsa Alam and embarked on a five-day diving tour.

According to preliminary information, the yacht went to sea despite warnings of an impending storm. The Egyptian prosecutor's office has launched an investigation into the Hurghada-based operator, suspecting that it may have ignored weather warnings. One of the crew members said that the ship capsized due to an unusually strong wave that suddenly hit it. According to local governor Amr Hanafi, the yacht sank within five to seven minutes, and that some people probably could not get out of their cabins.

On board were tourists from Germany, Great Britain, the USA, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, China, Spain and Slovakia.

Recall

In August, the Bayesian superyacht crashed off the coast of Sicily by Mike Lynch, a technology entrepreneur from the United Kingdom. A day later, divers who examined the sunken yacht found the bodies of the entrepreneur and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah inside one of the cabins . In total, 7 people died, 15 people, including Lynch's wife and the yacht's captain, were rescued.

The Prosecutor's Office is considering charges of shipwreck, disaster and multiple murders in connection with the sinking. This can lead to imprisonment for up to 12 years.

Tourist bus overturned in Egypt: Ukrainians among the victimsNov 10 2024, 02:02 PM • 23187 views

The Embassy of Ukraine in the Czech Republic has facilitated the delivery of 11 ambulances to the Ukrainian defence forces.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Facebook, reported by European Pravda

Details: Embassy diplomats took part in the delivery of Czech aid to the Ukrainian defence forces. This time, 11 ambulances equipped with medical equipment were delivered, and they will serve on various fronts in Ukraine.

The total value of the aid is 13 million Czech crowns (about US$522,900). The initiative was implemented by the Czech NGO Post Bellum in coordination with the Embassy.

Ambulances that were sent by the Czech NGO Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

According to the ministry, Post Bellum has been collecting and sending various types of aid to the Ukrainian defence forces in coordination with the embassy since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Background:

• At the end of October, 18 ambulances and medical kits were sent from Slovakia to medics in Kyiv and Sumy oblasts.
• In late November, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) handed over 63 water generators to water suppliers in several oblasts of Ukraine.

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The Macquarie Dictionary has chosen the term “enshittification” as the word of the year for 2023, which describes the deterioration of service quality due to excessive commercialization. The term was coined by blogger Cory Doctorow in 2022.

The word "enshittification", which describes the process of deterioration of the quality of a service or product, was recognized by the Australian Macquarie Dictionary as the word of the year, UNN reports with reference to The Guardian.

Details

In 2022, Canadian-British blogger Corey Doctorow coined the word "enshittification" to describe the process of deterioration of a service or product due to excessive commercialization or abuse. The word was recognized as the word of the year by the Macquarie Dictionary this year.

Social media users, even if they don't know the word, will deeply understand the concept, how trolls, extremists, fools and empty people have taken over social media.

To explain this term, we can take Instagram, for example, which once was mostly about cute videos of dogs and cats. And now it has turned into a platform full of salespeople, jocks, and insta-hotties.

Or think of Twitter, which was once a useful microblogging site that has now been turned into a post-truth platform.

The Dictionary Committee described the word "enshittification" as "a very simple Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes that make it almost official, almost respectable.

"This word reflects what many of us feel is happening to the world and to many aspects of our lives," the committee said.

The author is optimistic about how this can all end.

Actions on competition to prevent market dominance, regulation of things like digital privacy, more power for users to decide how they use platforms, and a crackdown on worker exploitation can reverse the process, he wrote, because "everyone has a stake in desensitization.

Recall

The Cambridge Dictionary has chosen "manifesto" as the word of the year 2024.

Ukrainian law enforcers have uncovered another war crime by the Russians and opened an investigation into the execution of five Ukrainian prisoners of war on the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk Oblast.

Source: Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office; Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office

Details: Early reports indicate that in November 2024, the Russians attacked Ukrainian defence forces near the village of Petrivka on the Pokrovsk front. During the assault, five Ukrainian soldiers were forced to retreat and sought shelter in a house.

After surrounding the building, Russian forces captured the Ukrainian defenders, ordered them to leave the shelter unarmed, and lie face down on the ground. In blatant violation of international humanitarian law, the Russians then executed the prisoners using automatic weapons.
Quote: "Investigators are working to determine the full circumstances of the crime and identify those responsible.

The execution of prisoners of war is a severe breach of the Geneva Conventions and constitutes a serious international crime.

The pre-trial investigation is being led by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts."

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A bill has been introduced in the State Duma of the Russian Federation to end the ban on terrorist organizations. The initiative is aimed at removing the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations.

The Russian State Duma has introduced a bill that would allow the ban on the activities of terrorist organizations to be lifted. This will make it possible to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorists, Russian media write, UNN reports .

According to rosmedia, a group of deputies and senators introduced amendments to the state Duma that would allow suspending the ban on the activities of organizations recognized as terrorist in Russia. The relevant draft law was published in the database of the lower house of parliament.

The explanatory note states that the mechanism of judicial prohibition of the activities of terrorist organizations and their inclusion in the relevant register is provided for by the federal law “On Countering Terrorism.

At the same time, the deputies and senators assume that “over time, a situation may arise” in which an organization declared a terrorist organization in Russia has ceased its activities “aimed at propaganda, justification and support of terrorism or the commission of the above crimes.” But, as the authors of the initiative note, Russian legislation does not provide for a mechanism that allows for “suspension of the ban on the activities of such an organization.

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The authors of the amendments propose to terminate the ban on the activities of a terrorist organization by a court decision based on a statement by the Prosecutor General or his deputy “if there is relevant information.” After the court decision comes into force, the organization will be removed from the list of terrorist organizations.

It is noted that the draft law will allow to exclude the Taliban movement from the register of terrorist organizations.

Russian authorities have repeatedly spoken in recent years about plans to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations. In particular, in October 2021, after the US withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban seized power in the country, Vladimir Putin said that Russia was approaching a decision to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations, but that this should be done first by the UN Security Council.

Taliban delegations have visited Moscow many times.

On November 25, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu, during a meeting with Afghan Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, reiterated his plans to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations.

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The Russian troops continue to target people in Kherson Oblast, dropping explosives on civilians from UAVs. A resident of Beryslav and two residents of Kherson were injured on the morning of 26 November as a result of the Russian attack.

Source: Kherson Oblast Military Administration on Telegram; Roman Mrochko, Head of Kherson City Military Administration, on Telegram

Quote: "At about 07:00, the Russian military attacked a resident of Beryslav. As a result of explosives dropped from a UAV, a 59-year-old man sustained a blast injury, along with facial and head wounds."

Details: The casualty was taken to hospital.

Updated: Later, the Kherson Oblast Military Administration reported that the Russians also dropped explosives from a drone on a civilian car in the Dniprovskyi district of Kherson.

Quote from Kherson Oblast Military Administration: "A woman, 57, sustained a mine-blast injury and head abrasion. She sought medical treatment on her own. Doctors are examining the injured and providing the necessary aid."

Later, Roman Mrochko reported a third person injured as a result of a Russian drone attack. He stated that a man, 63, sustained a mine-blast injury.

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Elon Musk gained $119 billion in 2024. The ten richest people in the world increased their wealth by $585 billion due to the growth of their companies' shares.

Elon Musk , the owner of the social platform X, became richer by $119 billion this year, and the 10 richest people gained $585 billion. This was written by Business Insider and reported by UNN.

Details

Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg have reportedly earned more than $70 billion each.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the three Walmart heirs are at the top of the list of the rich.

Ten individuals increased their wealth this year by a total of $585 billion, an amount that exceeds the market value of Exxon Mobil ($535 billion), Oracle ($533 billion), or Mastercard ($478 billion).

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the richest people in 2024 include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The excitement around artificial intelligence and the market rush after Donald Trump's re-election boosted their companies' share prices, benefiting them as the largest shareholders.

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Russian attack drones damaged a critical infrastructure facility in Ternopil Oblast on the night of 25-26 November.

Source: Viacheslav Nehoda, Head of Ternopil Oblast Military Administration, on Telegram

Quote: "During the night attack, enemy UAVs damaged one of the critical infrastructure facilities. Fortunately, there were no casualties. Firefighters and police are working at the scene."

Details: Currently, Ternopil and other settlements have no stable electricity supply.

Relevant services are already working to fix the problem, Nehoda said.

Background: On the night of 25-26 November, Russian troops attacked Ternopil, causing problems with electricity and water supply in the city.

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