- Helldivers 2 drops PSN account linking requirement for Steam players after widespread backlash Rock Paper Shotgun
- PlayStation Reverses Course on Helldivers 2 PSN Account Requirement IGN
- As Helldivers 2’s Steam reviews begin to recover, Arrowhead’s CEO shares an ‘accidental’ cape design based upon its Overwhelmingly Negative rating, and of course the community wants it added to the game PC Gamer
- Sony Is Making A Truly Terrible Mistake With ‘Helldivers 2’ — Update: Sony Reverses Course Forbes
- Sony backtracks, now says it won’t make Helldivers 2 players on Steam link a PSN account. The Verge
Tag Archives: linking
Helldivers 2 has been pulled from sale in 177 countries as its PSN linking requirement rolls out – Eurogamer.net
- Helldivers 2 has been pulled from sale in 177 countries as its PSN linking requirement rolls out Eurogamer.net
- Helldivers 2 has been pulled from Steam in 170 countries without PSN access, while Valve ignores its own policy to issue refunds for players with over 100 hours Gamesradar
- ‘Tarkov’ And ‘Helldivers’ Controversies Prove Devs Should Talk To Fans Forbes
- Steam’s biggest game just became unplayable for millions of us, refunds issued GAMINGbible
- With over 84 thousand negative Helldivers 2 Steam reviews in two days, developer Arrowhead seems to be grappling with Sony over its controversial PSN sign-in requirement PC Gamer
Turkey ‘seriously upset’ over Washington linking F-16 sales to Sweden’s NATO membership – Al-Monitor
- Turkey ‘seriously upset’ over Washington linking F-16 sales to Sweden’s NATO membership Al-Monitor
- Turkey’s Big Pro-Russia Push At G20; Erdogan Asks West To Accept Putin’s Demands On Grain Deal Hindustan Times
- Sweden’s NATO accession and Turkey’s bid to buy F-16 jets should be kept separate, Erdogan says Reuters
- Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan At G20: “India Our Greatest Trade Partner In South Asia” NDTV
- Excluding Russia From Grain Deal Talks Will Not Be Sustainable, Erdogan Says Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
- View Full Coverage on Google News
“There will be a defamation case in Guwahati after PM Modi’s Assam visit”: Says Himanta Biswa Sarma over Rahul Gandhi’s tweet linking him to Adani – OpIndia
- “There will be a defamation case in Guwahati after PM Modi’s Assam visit”: Says Himanta Biswa Sarma over Rahul Gandhi’s tweet linking him to Adani OpIndia
- Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma says he will file defamation case against Rahul Gandhi over ‘Adani’ tweet The Indian Express
- ‘Will sue Rahul Gandhi for defamatory Adani tweet’: Himanta Sarma Hindustan Times
- Assam CM Himanta to file defamation case against Rahul over ‘Adani’ tweet Deccan Herald
- Assam CM to sue Rahul Gandhi for Adani link charge The Hindu
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Twitter to suspend accounts linking to other social media sites
He then launched a Twitter poll, surveying users on whether he should step down. Musk had abided by past polls, despite them being unscientific and unrepresentative.
“Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” he wrote. He added shortly after: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Respondents leaned heavily toward “Yes” in Musk’s poll, indicating Musk should step down, after nearly an hour of voting: 58 percent of more than 3 million votes were in favor of him handing over the reins. The poll was set to expire Monday morning before the opening of the stock market. The value of Tesla’s stock — the source of much of Musk’s net worth — has recently plunged. Investors have said Musk stepping aside from Twitter would improve Tesla’s outlook
Musk’s sudden reversal came after Twitter earlier in the day said it would start suspending accounts linking to “prohibited platforms” such as Facebook and Instagram if those accounts are “used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform,” according to the announcement Sunday.
The policy, dated this month and tweeted Sunday afternoon, said tweets promoting accounts on some sites may be removed if users urge their Twitter followers to join them elsewhere.
“At both the tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms,” the policy said. It lists several examples of such social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and Truth Social, which former president Donald Trump co-founded.
Musk’s ownership of Twitter — which he bought in October for $44 billion — has plunged the site into turmoil. He ousted the company’s executives and installed a team of loyalists, laid off more than half the staff and dialed back Twitter’s content moderation. He has engaged in misinformation as the site’s owner and hastily rolled out new and confusing changes, courting controversy and alarming advertisers, some of whom paused their spending on the site.
His sudden and sometimes arbitrary decisions have grated on many of Twitter’s core users and staff, but also some of his own supporters who pushed his ownership bid rooted in a “free speech” driven approach.
Already Sunday, Musk appeared to be losing the support of some who had backed his management moves at Twitter over the new policy.
George Hotz, a software developer whom Musk hired for an internship at the company after he tweeted enthusiastically about the business mogul’s takeover, tweeted a link to his Instagram account Sunday night.
“If saying that is banned, this isn’t somewhere I want to be anymore. That’s so far from free speech,” he wrote in a tweet.
It was a far cry from just weeks ago, when Musk issued an ultimatum to Twitter staff saying they would need to commit to an “extremely hardcore” pace to build the new Twitter.
“This is the attitude that builds incredible things. Let all the people who don’t desire greatness leave,” Hotz had written.
Meanwhile, Twitter users criticized the suspension of Paul Graham, who had spoken highly of Musk’s leadership, but also promoted his Mastodon handle on Twitter, screenshots on the site showed.
“This is the last straw,” he wrote, according to screenshots posted to the site. Graham’s account was suspended shortly after.
That prompted hordes of users, including National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, to weigh in. “This is a bad policy and should be reversed,” he wrote in a tweet.
The moves put Musk on the defensive, and he appeared to respond to the backlash, a rare move for the leader of Twitter since he took over in October.
“Paul’s account will be restored shortly,” he wrote in a tweet.
Twitter has slashed most of its public relations team since Musk took over the company in October, and Musk did not respond to an emailed list of questions about the new rule earlier in the day.
Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, recently suspended and reinstated a slew of high-profile journalists who he said had violated Twitter’s rules.
In the weeks since Twitter’s sale was finalized, Musk has dialed back enforcement of many of the site’s previous policies regarding hate speech and misinformation, while turning in some cases to unscientific polls to make decisions, like reinstating former president Donald Trump.
The new policy banning links to some other social media sites follows many prominent Twitter users promoting their alternate accounts, often expressing the opinion that staying on Twitter may become untenable as Musk overhauls the platform.
On Sunday, the company’s announcement prompted debate about whether the move could create legal challenges for Twitter.
“This is the clearest declaration of weakness I’ve ever seen from a major US tech platform, and a transparent declaration of anticompetitive intent that a GC would set themselves on fire to prevent (if somebody had that job at Twitter),” tweeted former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, using an abbreviation for “general counsel.” He now leads the Stanford Internet Observatory, “a research, teaching and policy program focused on abuse in information technology,” according to its website.
In addition to linking to Facebook, Instagram and Truth Social, promoting the social media sites Mastodon, Tribel, Post and Nostr is restricted under Twitter’s new policy announced earlier Sunday. Third-party link aggregators such as linktr.ee and lnk.bio are also prohibited. Listing a social media handle without a URL is not allowed.
Twitter said a first violation of this policy may range from requiring deletion of a tweet to temporarily locking an account. An account may be suspended if the violation is in the bio or account name, the company said. Subsequent breaches of the policy could lead to permanent suspension.
Twitter’s abrupt suspension of several high-profile journalists last week, including one from The Washington Post, came as Musk claimed that they had shared “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family — an apparent reference to tweets about the platform suspending an account using public flight data to track Musk’s private plane. Twitter allowed several of the journalists to return to the platform Saturday.
Musk also temporarily suspended, and then reinstated, a second Post reporter this weekend.
“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee said in a statement Sunday. “Post journalists should be reinstated immediately, without arbitrary conditions.”
On Sunday, Musk was at the World Cup finale in Qatar, tweeting posts from the match.
James Webb Space Telescope: No evidence linking namesake to firings of LGBTQ staff
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
—
Despite numerous calls from astronomers to rename its powerful new telescope, NASA officials stood by the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope before its launch.
With the telescope nearly a year into its stint in space, the agency has released its chief historian’s investigation into the namesake of the telescope. James Webb, NASA’s second-ever administrator, worked at the US State Department during the Lavender Scare, a period in which LGBTQ federal employees were often fired or forced to resign, and the decision to name the telescope for him courted criticism from researchers.
There’s no evidence that proves Webb was directly involved in those firings in the 1950s or in the 1963 firing of gay NASA employee Clifford Norton, according to Brian Odom, the NASA historian who completed the investigation.
Officials at NASA announced in 2002 that the telescope would be named for Webb, who oversaw the Apollo moon landing program in the 1960s and helped burnish the fledgling agency’s reputation. It was considered an unusual choice at the time, since Webb was an administrator and not a scientist.
Months before the telescope was set to finally launch, though, several astronomers called on NASA to remove Webb’s name from the telescope, which has since recorded several never-before-seen images of the universe.
In a 2021 piece for Scientific American, a group of astronomers wrote that Webb’s legacy “at best is complicated and at worst reflects complicity in homophobic discrimination in the federal government.”
Even scientists who work on the telescope have expressed their dissatisfaction with its name. Earlier this summer, Dr. Jane Rigby, the operations project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, tweeted that “a transformative telescope should have a name that stands for discovery and inclusion.”
Officials at NASA have refused to rename it, though, citing an investigation into Webb’s career. The results of that investigation weren’t made public until now, almost a year after the telescope launched.
In his report on his investigation into Webb, Odom acknowledged the pain caused by the Lavender Scare but said that “no available evidence directly links Webb to any actions or follow-up related to the firing of individuals for their sexual orientation.”
The findings of that investigation, Odom wrote, were based on more than 50,000 pages of historical documents from various archives, including NASA headquarters, the Truman Presidential Library and the National Archives.
Odom investigated two meetings that predated Webb’s time at NASA: In 1950, then-undersecretary Webb met with President Harry S. Truman and later two White House aides and Democratic Sen. Clyde Hoey of North Carolina to discuss the Hoey Committee, a Senate subcommittee created to investigate how many LGBTQ people worked for the federal government and whether they were “security risks.”
In his meeting with Truman, Webb discussed with the president how the committee and the White House “might ‘work together on the homosexual investigation,’” according to historian David K. Johnson, author of “The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government,” one of the many documents Odom cites in his report.
No evidence links Webb to any action that followed those discussions, Odom said.
The historian also investigated the firing of Norton, a budget analyst at the space agency. Norton sued the Civil Service Commission after his firing, and his case, Norton v. Macy, was one of several that helped overturn the executive order that allowed federal agencies to fire LGBTQ employees for their sexuality, Odom wrote.
Odom said he found no evidence to show that Webb was aware of Norton’s firing; since it was federal policy at the time to oust LGBTQ employees, Odom wrote, Norton’s departure was “highly likely — though sadly — considered unexceptional.”
No documents could prove that Webb was directly linked to firings of LGBTQ employees, Odom said.
Kerch Bridge linking Russia to Crimea on fire after explosion
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that the government had no timeline for repairing the 12-mile bridge.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement body, said a truck explosion had ignited fuel tankers as a freight train crossed the bridge. The cause of the truck blast was not immediately clear. After the explosion, thick plumes of smoke and flames could be seen from a distance.
Putin in 2018 personally opened the $4 billion bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge because it spans the Kerch Strait between the Black and Azov seas. The commissioning of the bridge was intended to symbolize Russia’s ownership of Crimea.
Russia’s invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 turned out to be a precursor to the invasion Putin launched this year, in which the peninsula has been used as a major base of operations for Russian forces. Russia has claimed to have annexed four other Ukrainian regions.
The blast was celebrated in Kyiv, where government officials hailed it and posted images on social media of collapsed concrete spans of the bridge and footage of the apparent moment of the blast, showing vehicles driving across the bridge just seconds before a giant fireball consumed the area.
Mykhailo Podoloyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “the beginning.” “Everything illegal must be destroyed,” Podolyak added on Twitter. The Ukrainian government provided no immediate official statement on the cause of the blast. But in a taunt, the government’s official Twitter account posted: “sick burn.”
A Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Saturday that Ukrainian special services were behind the bridge attack. The Ukrainska Pravda news site first reported the government’s purported role, citing an unidentified law enforcement official who said Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, was involved.
Ukraine previously has mounted daring attacks deep in Russian-held territory, including on an air base in Crimea and on military targets across the border in Russia’s Belgorod region. But if the bridge explosion is confirmed to have been planned, it would be the most stunning strike yet by Ukraine, which has been under invasion since late February by Russia’s far larger and better-equipped military.
Russian authorities said the blast occurred around 6 a.m. local time. A video posted by government newspaper Izvestia appeared to show it at 6:03 a.m. Initial information suggested three people had been killed, including the driver of the truck that appeared to explode and two people whose bodies were recovered from the water, the Investigative Committee said.
The Investigative Committee said the truck’s driver had been identified as a resident of the Krasnodar region of Russia. “The investigation has begun at his place of residence,” it said. “The route of the truck and the relevant documentation is being studied.”
Russian officials have long warned of severe retaliation for strikes on Russian territory.
The explosion injects a new element of tension into the war at a time when Putin and those around him have repeatedly warned that Russia could use nuclear weapons. President Biden warned this week of possible nuclear “Armageddon,” reflecting heightened alarm in the United States, which has the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal after Russia’s.
Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, tweeted a picture of the damaged bridge and said: “@Crimea, long time no see” along with a heart emoji. And the head of Ukraine’s postal service said the agency would issue a new stamp showing a damaged bridge reading: “Crimean Bridge — Done.”
Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, addressed the spate of memes and mocking social media posts from Ukraine. “The Kyiv regime’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure demonstrates its terrorist nature,” Zakharova posted on Telegram. Throughout the war, Russia has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, including railroad stations, residential housing blocks, hospitals, schools and theaters.
Leonid Slutsky, a lawmaker in the Russian Duma, said reprisal was “unavoidable” if Ukrainian responsibility was confirmed. “The answer must be harsh, but not necessarily head-on,” he said. “Russia has extensive experience in combating terrorists, and those who use their methods should also understand this very well.”
Peskov said that Putin had been briefed by ministers and government authorities about the “emergency” on the bridge and had ordered the establishment of an investigative commission including Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, officials in Crimea, and the FSB, Russia’s security service.
The commission has been directed “to find out the reasons behind the accident and eliminate consequences as soon as possible,” Peskov said, according to Interfax, the Russian news agency.
The Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case regarding the incident and had sent forensic experts to the scene.
The bridge is the only direct road and rail connection to Crimea from mainland Russia. The crippling of such a key artery will affect Russia’s ability to reinforce and resupply its troops as Ukraine presses a counteroffensive to reclaim occupied territory in the southern Kherson region.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have accelerated their advance into towns and villages seized by Russia, in the northeast Kharkiv region, and Donetsk to the east, and in Kherson to the south.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces would receive “continuous support” in areas north of Crimea.
“The Russian group of troops involved in the special military operation in the Nikolaev-Kryvorozhsk and Zaporozhsk operational directions are continuously supplied in full by land corridor and partially by sea transport,” the defense ministry said, according to Ria Novosti, a state-controlled news agency.
The extent of the damage to the bridge, and whether any of it would remain passable to vehicles, was not immediately clear. Peskov told Ria Novosti there were “no forecasts on the timing of the reconstruction” of affected areas.
While Russian Railways canceled all passenger service to and from Crimea and said that tickets would be refunded without charge, the Transport Ministry later said train service was expected to resume by Saturday evening.
Russian authorities immediately sought to head off fears that the explosion would cause shortages of fuel, food and other essentials in Crimea, noting that Russia’s military occupation had created Putin’s long-sought “land bridge” to Crimea.
“A land corridor through the new regions has been established,” said Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to the head of Crimea.
Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev initially cited a rush to buy gasoline and announced a limit on grocery purchases of three kilograms, or three packs of products per person but later said the restrictions were lifted.
Sergey Aksyonov, who heads the Crimea region, said reconstruction of the bridge would begin as soon as the investigation was completed. “There are no risks in this regard, as well as no reason for panic,” he said, according to Tass. “By our joint efforts we will overcome everything. There is no doubt about that.”
Abbakumova reported from Riga, Latvia. Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv contributed to this report.
Polio may make a comeback – and it started with falsely linking autism to vaccination | Paul Steiger
One of my earliest memories, perhaps the earliest of all, goes back to when I was about four years old, in 1946, living in the Bronx borough of New York City. I awoke to a searing headache and fiery fever, aching all over. I remember a tube being inserted into my privates, to help withdraw urine. I awoke again, I don’t know how much later, hours or days, in a hospital ward. In the bed next to me was a man engaged with a terrifying contraption I now know was an iron lung, to help him breathe.
I could breathe OK, and the terrible fever and headaches had subsided. But I couldn’t move my legs.
My disease, I soon learned, was called infantile paralysis, poliomyelitis, or just polio. I had a relatively mild version. Within two or three weeks, when the acute stage ended, I was taken across the Hudson River to a rehabilitation hospital in a place called Haverstraw, New York. Over a period of months there, helped by a determined staff, I gradually regained some strength in my legs. I could walk but not yet run. Still, I could go home to our apartment in the Bronx, reconnect with my brother and parents, and start kindergarten, on time, with my age mates.
Like much of America, we moved to the suburbs, to Connecticut and then to New Jersey. But summer after summer, fear of the virus followed us, particularly for my mother. Her brother as a young man had contracted a version of the disease that left him in a wheelchair for the remaining decades of his life. She lived in continuing terror that one or both of her younger sons would be afflicted, perhaps more seriously than her eldest.
The emergence of effective vaccines, starting in 1954, miraculously released such fears.
That left me as the lone member of our family with a continuing connection with polio. For me, having been spared the more serious consequences of partial or total paralysis, the lifelong after-effects of polio have been occasionally quite painful but mostly an annoyance.
Up to now. The advent of new viral agents of disease, most particularly the coronavirus, and my own experience with polio’s manifestations in later life, have made me more sensitive to the risks the polio virus may hold in the future. Unless we humans can commit to greater discipline in eradicating the virus altogether, polio conceivably might have a new day in the sun. More broadly, other viruses may prove harder to control, because vaccines, by far the most effective tool against them, work best when everyone is treated.
Just a few years ago, things were looking a lot more encouraging.
David M Oshinsky’s 2005 book, Polio, An American Story, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history, dramatically lays out how individual scientists, universities, drug companies, private charities, and government at all levels – working separately and together in the 1940s and 1950s – proved the safety and effectiveness of two competing anti-polio vaccines. The vaccines then became part of the routine for countless children in the United States and most other economically developed countries, largely eliminating new polio infections there.
Next efforts turned to less-developed countries in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.
In 1988, the World Health Organization, Rotary International, and what is now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched their Global Polio Eradication program, aimed at eliminating polio, the way predecessor efforts had done with smallpox. At the time, 350,000 children in 125 countries were infected with the disease, according to Rosemary Rochford, a virologist and professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, writing in The Conversation. By 2021, the number was down to six cases around the world, she wrote.
Meanwhile, the success with polio elimination had helped pave the way in the United States for development and introduction of vaccines for measles in 1963, then for such other diseases as mumps and rubella. The combined “MMR” vaccines became standard for babies in the United States.
Then trouble emerged. Some reports, though definitively discredited, gave rise to the belief in a link between vaccination and autism. When the coronavirus struck, researchers and drug companies rapidly produced safe and effective vaccines to repel several versions of the mutating Covid virus. But the other side of the vaccine-versus-virus equation – getting everyone vaccinated – was no longer so readily achieved.
Whether for politics, religion, fear of side effects, or a prioritization of individualism, some people no longer embraced the collaborative spirit that made other massive vaccination drives so successful.
The commitment to social good necessary to meet public health challenges became apparent not just in the coronavirus, but also in seemingly conquered diseases like polio. An unvaccinated adult in one of New York’s suburbs was diagnosed with the disease. Polio virus samples were detected in the city’s wastewater.
These are small signs so far. But these are my neighbors, my nearby neighborhoods. And we know that viruses mutate, and that they can cause long-term damage.
I empathize with people struggling with long Covid, because polio is a disease that can re-emerge with age. I was in my 60s when I first began to notice my leg muscles atrophying. For a time, exercise helped. But as I turned 80 this summer, my leg weakness has increased. I have trouble with slightly hilly sidewalks, for instance. My doctor is the same age. No polio. No trouble with hills.
As a species, we are slowly beginning to take actions in order to keep our physical world livable. We’re also learning how the tiniest organisms – insects, and yes viruses – adapt to our changing environment. Inventing vaccines may no longer be enough. We may well have to adapt our behavior to help the vaccines work.
The scratch and scar I got on my arm as a kid was enough to assure my age cohort didn’t have to worry about smallpox, so long as we all got the same scar. It is time to recognize that personal wellbeing depends on individual investment in the greater good.
Paul Steiger is the founder of ProPublica and the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. Dean Rotbart’s biography of him is scheduled for publication next year
Netflix starts linking iPhone and iPad users to an external sign-up page
Netflix has started directing users on iPhone and iPad to an external webpage where they can sign up for the service, as first reported by 9to5Mac. The change comes just months after Apple started letting “reader” apps that provide access to digital content, like Netflix and Spotify, link out to account sign-up pages on their own websites.
For as far back as 2018, Netflix didn’t provide an external signup link — or even tell users where they could sign up — in its iPhone and iPad apps. Users had to instead navigate to Netflix’s website from their web or mobile browser to sign up for the service before accessing the app. This was done to comply with Apple’s rules, which made it difficult for apps to get around its up to 30 percent commission on in-app purchases and barred developers from offering a link to an external sign-up page. The setup made it confusing for new users who would (logically) think they would be able to sign up to Netflix using the app.
But now, it looks like that’s changing — 9to5Mac reports that iPhone and iPad users are now seeing an external link within the Netflix app that they can use to sign up for the service, and The Verge’s Richard Lawler noticed the same. Users who tap on the link see a message that warns they’re “about to leave the app” and go to an external website. It also notes any transactions on the external page aren’t affiliated with Apple:
Any accounts or purchases made outside of this app will be managed by the developer “Netflix.” Your App Store account, stored payment methods, and related features, such as subscription management and refund requests, will not be available. Apple is not responsible for the privacy or security of transactions made with this developer.
Tapping through the warning redirects users to an account sign-up page on Netflix’s website where they can input payment information and choose a subscription plan. It’s not clear when Netflix started introducing this new option, and the company didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. Currently, Netflix’s support page still states that users can’t access Netflix’s signup page from its iPhone or iPad app.
Although Apple has begun to relax its policies for reader apps, it still has a strict set of guidelines that developers must follow, such as not including any pricing information with a link to external sign-up pages. Developers must also submit an “entitlement” to get permission to add the external link to their app.
Apple has faced criticism over its policies that force most developers to use the App Store billing system, which Apple charges a commission to use. In response to a new law passed in South Korea, Apple started allowing developers to use third-party payment processors in apps released in the country. It has also made some changes for dating apps released in the Netherlands following a lengthy battle with the country’s regulator.
But Apple will have even more adjusting to do when the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) legislation passes, as it would force Apple to allow the use of third-party payment systems, side-loading, and third-party app stores. Google has already started preparing for the new laws by giving developers the option to use an alternative billing system for apps distributed in Europe.
Update July 23rd, 12:42PM ET: Added confirmation that the external link is present in the Netflix app.
Russia Hints at Linking Griner’s Case to Fate of ‘Merchant of Death’
WASHINGTON — She is an American professional basketball star, accused of carrying hashish oil in her luggage.
He is a notorious Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for conspiring to sell weapons to people who said they planned to kill Americans.
And the Kremlin appears interested in linking their fates, in a potential deal with the Biden administration that would free both.
The vast disparity between the cases of Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout highlights the extreme difficulty President Biden would face if he sought a prisoner exchange to free Ms. Griner, the detained W.N.B.A. player, from detention in Moscow. The Biden administration, reluctant to create an incentive for the arrest or abduction of Americans abroad, would be hard-pressed to justify the release of a villainous figure like Mr. Bout.
At the same time, Mr. Biden is under pressure to free Ms. Griner, who was arrested at a Moscow-area airport in February and whom the State Department classified in May as “wrongfully detained.” That reflects concern that the Kremlin considers her leverage in the tense confrontation between the United States and Russia over Ukraine. Last week, dozens of groups representing people of color, women and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans sent a letter urging Mr. Biden to “make a deal to get Brittney back home to America immediately and safely.”
Ms. Griner’s trial started on Friday.
Mr. Bout, 55, a former Soviet military officer who made a fortune in global arms trafficking before he was caught in a federal sting operation, could be the price for any deal. Russian officials have pressed Mr. Bout’s case for years, and in recent weeks Russian media outlets have directly linked his case to Ms. Griner’s. Some, including the state-owned Tass news service, have even claimed that talks with Washington for a possible exchange are already underway, something that U.S. officials will not confirm.
Mr. Bout’s New York-based lawyer, Steve Zissou, said in an interview that Russian officials are pressing to free Mr. Bout, who was convicted in 2011 of offering to sell weapons, including antiaircraft missiles, to federal agents posing as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Mr. Zissou said that he met with Anatoly I. Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, in June in Washington and that Mr. Antonov told him the release of Mr. Bout was a very high priority for the Russian government.
“It has been communicated to the American side very clearly that they’re going to have to get real on Viktor Bout if they expect any further prisoner exchanges,” Mr. Zissou said. “My sense of this is that no American is going home unless Viktor Bout is sent home with them.”
U.S. officials have declined to substantiate that notion and won’t discuss any potential deal to free Ms. Griner. The State Department as a matter of practice dismisses questions about prisoner exchanges around the world, warning that they set a dangerous precedent.
“Using wrongful detention as a bargaining chip represents a threat to the safety of everyone traveling, working and living abroad,” the department’s spokesman, Ned Price, recently said.
Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine War
Mr. Biden did agree to a prisoner exchange in April, in which Russia released Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine from Texas who had been held since 2019 on charges of assaulting two police officers. The United States in return freed Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot sentenced in 2011 to 20 years in prison for drug smuggling. But White House officials stressed that Mr. Reed’s failing health made his case exceptional.
Many people have expressed support for Ms. Griner, a star athlete and basketball icon. Less obvious is the Russian government’s solidarity with an organized crime titan linked to terrorists and war criminals. In December, a government building in Moscow exhibited two dozen of Mr. Bout’s pencil sketches and other artwork produced from his cell in a federal penitentiary building near Marion, Ill.
By the time of his arrest in 2008, Mr. Bout (pronounced “boot”) was so known that an arms-trafficking character played by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 film “Lord of War” was based on his life.
Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, he attended a Russian military college and served as a Soviet air force officer.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Bout began making money ferrying cargo between continents. U.S. officials say he soon became one of the world’s top arms dealers, transporting weapons from the former Soviet military in Ilyushin transport planes, with a particularly lucrative business in war-torn African countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone. Mr. Bout denies that he knowingly trafficked arms.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the United States and European nations were sure that Mr. Bout’s weapons shipments were not only fueling death and misery but also violating United Nations arms embargoes. They were particularly alarmed by intelligence suggesting he may have done business with the Afghan Taliban and even Al Qaeda, charges he denies.
Eventually, the United States lured Mr. Bout into a trap. In 2008, a pair of Drug Enforcement Administration agents posing as members of Colombia’s leftist FARC rebel group arranged a meeting in Bangkok with Mr. Bout to buy weapons including 30,000 AK-47 rifles, plastic explosives and surface-to-air missiles for use against Colombia’s government and the American military personnel supporting its campaign against the FARC.
“Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of some small countries,” Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said after his conviction. “He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans.”
The FARC’s official status at the time as a foreign terrorist organization meant that Mr. Bout drew a mandatory federal minimum sentence of 25 years.
One former U.S. official familiar with Mr. Bout’s situation said the Russian government’s interest in his freedom appeared to be personal and that he has ties to powerful people close to President Vladimir V. Putin.
Another former American official pointed to a somewhat more principled reason: Mr. Bout was arrested in Thailand and extradited from there to New York. Russian officials have complained about what they call the growing “practice used by the U.S. of actually hunting down our citizens abroad and arresting them in other nations,” as Grigory Lukyantsev, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, said in August, according to the Russian news outlet RT.
The first former U.S. official said it was highly unlikely that, given the magnitude of his crimes, Mr. Bout would be freed in any deal for Ms. Griner — even if, as some have speculated, the trade were to include Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine imprisoned in Moscow since December 2018 on espionage charges. The former official said Russia had sought Mr. Bout’s release in even higher-profile cases in the past and had been firmly rejected.
Both former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss their knowledge of Mr. Bout’s case publicly.
Danielle Gilbert, an assistant professor of military and strategic studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy who specializes in hostage diplomacy, agreed that releasing Mr. Bout would be a difficult political proposition. But she did not rule out the idea. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re at least considering the possibility,” she said, noting that she does not speak for the U.S. government.
Mr. Bout has at least one advocate for his release in the United States: Shira A. Scheindlin, the judge who presided over his case. In an interview, Ms. Scheindlin said that swapping Mr. Bout for Ms. Griner would be inappropriate, given the scale of his offense in relation to her alleged violation.
But she said a deal that also included Mr. Whelan might even the scales. Mr. Bout has already served 11 years in prison, she noted, saying that “he was not a terrorist, in my opinion. He was a businessman.” Although she was required to impose his mandatory 25-year sentence, she added: “I thought it was too high at the time.”
“So, having served as long as he has, I think the United States’ interest in punishing him has been satisfied,” she said, “and it would not be a bad equation to send him back if we get back these people who are important to us.”
Even if the United States were open to such a deal, Mr. Zissou said it would not be imminent. He said he believed that Russia — which insists Ms. Griner faces legitimate charges and is not a political pawn — was determined to complete her trial before negotiating her release. “And that is likely to take a few months,” he said.