World
Twitter strips check mark from New York Times
![Twitter strips check mark from New York Times](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/AP23092580448319.jpg?resize=1920,1440)
Twitter has eliminated the verification test mark on the principle account of The New York Occasions, one in every of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s most despised information organisations.
The elimination comes as a lot of Twitter’s high-profile customers are bracing for the lack of the blue test marks that helped confirm their id and distinguish them from impostors on the social media platform.
Musk, who owns Twitter, set a deadline of Saturday for verified customers to purchase a premium Twitter subscription or lose the checks on their profiles. The Occasions stated in a narrative Thursday that it could not pay Twitter for verification of its institutional accounts.
Early Sunday, Musk tweeted that the Occasions’ test mark could be eliminated. Later he posted disparaging remarks concerning the newspaper, which has aggressively reported on Twitter and on flaws with partially automated driving techniques at Tesla, the electrical automobile firm, which Musk additionally runs.
Different Occasions accounts, akin to its enterprise information and opinion pages, nonetheless had both blue or gold test marks as of Sunday, as did a number of reporters for the information organisation.
“We aren’t planning to pay the month-to-month payment for test mark standing for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the Occasions stated in an announcement Sunday. “We additionally is not going to reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for private accounts, besides in uncommon cases the place this standing could be important for reporting functions,” the newspaper added.
The Related Press, which has stated it additionally is not going to pay for the test marks, nonetheless had them displayed on its accounts as of noon Sunday.
Twitter didn’t reply the Related Press’ emailed questions concerning the elimination of The New York Occasions test mark.
The prices of preserving the test marks vary from $8 a month for particular person net customers to a beginning value of $1,000 month-to-month to confirm an organisation, plus $50 month-to-month for every affiliate or worker account. Twitter doesn’t confirm the person accounts to make sure they’re who they are saying they’re, as was the case with the earlier blue test doled out to public figures and others through the platform’s pre-Musk administration.
Whereas the price of Twitter Blue subscriptions may appear to be nothing for Twitter’s most well-known commentators, movie star customers from basketball star LeBron James to Star Trek’s William Shatner have baulked at becoming a member of. American sitcom Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander pledged to depart the platform if Musk takes his blue test away.
The White Home can also be passing on enrolling in premium accounts, in keeping with a memo despatched to workers. Whereas Twitter has granted a free gray mark for President Joe Biden and members of his cupboard, lower-level workers received’t get Twitter Blue advantages until they pay for it themselves.
“In the event you see impersonations that you simply imagine violate Twitter’s acknowledged impersonation insurance policies, alert Twitter utilizing Twitter’s public impersonation portal,” stated the workers memo from White Home official Rob Flaherty.
Alexander, the actor, stated there are greater points on the earth, however with out the blue mark, “anybody can allege to be me”.
After shopping for Twitter for $44bn in October final 12 months, Musk has been attempting to spice up the struggling platform’s income by pushing extra individuals to pay for a premium subscription. However his transfer additionally displays his assertion that the blue verification marks have turn out to be an undeserved or “corrupt” standing image for elite personalities, information reporters and others granted verification without cost by Twitter’s earlier management.
Together with shielding celebrities from impersonators, one in every of Twitter’s essential causes for marking profiles with a blue test mark beginning about 14 years in the past was to confirm politicians, activists and individuals who had abruptly discovered themselves within the information, in addition to little-known journalists at small publications across the globe, as an additional device to curb misinformation coming from accounts impersonating individuals. Most “legacy blue checks” are usually not family names and weren’t meant to be.
One in all Musk’s first product strikes after taking on Twitter was to launch a service granting blue checks to anybody prepared to pay $8 a month. However it was shortly inundated by impostor accounts, together with these impersonating Nintendo, pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter needed to briefly droop the service days after its launch.
The relaunched service prices $8 a month for net customers and $11 a month for customers of its iPhone or Android apps. Subscribers are presupposed to see fewer advertisements, be capable to submit longer movies and have their tweets featured extra prominently.
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World
GameStop is becoming a poorly run bank
![GameStop is becoming a poorly run bank](https://www.reuters.com/resizer/v2/QT5C6M6Y6VI7NL6YKOW4AV2HGE.jpg?auth=12a898e1299152d7771b0a39faa970bf912d17ca8f8436c35794cc9b056ab368&height=1005&width=1920&quality=80&smart=true)
World
WikiLeaks’ Assange is free after pleading guilty in deal with Justice Department
![WikiLeaks’ Assange is free after pleading guilty in deal with Justice Department](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/06/Assange.jpg)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty Tuesday in connection with a deal with federal prosecutors to close a drawn-out legal saga related to the leaking of military secrets that raised divisive questions about press freedom, national security and the traditional bounds of journalism.
The plea to a single count of conspiring to obtain and disclose information related to the national defense was entered Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory in the Pacific.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, second from right, arrives at the United States courthouse where he is expected to enter a plea deal in Saipan, Mariana Islands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) (AP )
Assange said that he believed that the Espionage Act under which he was charged contradicted his First Amendment rights but that he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication can be unlawful.
“I believe the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances,” he reportedly said in court.
Under the terms of the deal, Assange is permitted to return to his native Australia without spending any time in an American prison. He had been jailed in the United Kingdom for the last five years, while fighting extradition to the United States.
A conviction could have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence.
AUSTRALIAN LAWMAKERS SEND LETTER URGING BIDEN TO DROP CASE AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE ON WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY
![Julian Assange after being released from prison](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/06/1200/675/AP24177259949151.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Screen grab taken from the X account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange following his release from prison on Tuesday June 25, 2024. Assange has arrived in Saipan ahead of an expected guilty plea in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will set him free to return home to Australia. (@WikiLeaks, via AP)
WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website that Assange founded in 2006, applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
Federal prosecutors said Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, to steal diplomatic cables and military files published in 2010 by WikiLeaks. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in 2017 in the final days of his presidency.
Assange has been celebrated by free press advocates as a transparency crusader but heavily criticized by national security hawks who say he put lives at risk and operated far beyond the bounds of journalism.
SUPPORTERS OF JULIAN ASSANGE RALLY AT JUSTICE DEPT. ON 4-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF DETAINMENT
![Julian Assange boarding a plane](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/06/1200/675/image-3.png?ve=1&tl=1)
Julian Assange seen boarding an airplane. (Getty Images)
Weeks after the 2010 document cache, Swedish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Assange for allegedly raping a woman and an allegation of molestation. The case was later dropped. Assange has always maintained his innocence.
In 2012, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there.
The Ecuadorian government in 2019 allowed the British police to arrest Assange and he remained in custody for the next five years while fighting extradition to the U.S.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
France elections: Germans prepare for seismic change in EU politics
![France elections: Germans prepare for seismic change in EU politics](https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/08/52/91/96/1200x675_cmsv2_3ce71c54-b68b-565a-a182-48f95d7051f6-8529196.jpg)
As France gears up for the shocking snap elections that French President Emmanuel Macron called during the EU elections, Germans are preparing for a seismic change in EU politics.
With the upcoming French elections just around the corner, Germany is bracing itself for the results, which are expected to swing to the right.
Climate, migration and gender equality policies are likely to be affected on a national level in France if far-right Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party wins. Yet, political scientist Prof Dr Miriam Hartlapp warned the effects could ripple across the European Union.
“Policymaking in Brussels will change because members of this right-wing populist party could sit in the Council of Ministers. This creates a different situation for countries like Germany and other European nations,” Hartlapp said.
“France is not a small member state, but a large and important one. We can expect that European climate policy, asylum and migration policy, and gender equality policy at the European level will then look different,” she added.
Hartlapp said the swing to the right has spread across Europe as the dissatisfaction with current governments is reflected in the political climate.
Germans are aware of the changes and this “causes concern,” Harlapp said, pointing at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s recent interview where he said he hopes “that parties that are not [Marine] Le Pen, to put it that way, are successful in the election. But that is for the French people to decide.”
Hartlapp added that the EU can expect immigration-related cases to be brought to the European Court of Justice.
“Some points in the National Rally‘s program clearly contradict the fundamental rights of the European constitution. For example, immigrants in France not having the same rights as French citizens when it comes to housing and social benefits. This directly contradicts EU law,” she said.
Meanwhile, in Germany, individual politicians from the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and extreme-right Die Heimat announced their plans to form factions in the eastern state of Brandenburg this week, after AfD outperformed all of the parties in the ruling coalition government during the EU elections.
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