New app developed by Facebook and WhatsApp owner is due to launch in the UK and US on Thursday
Mark Zuckerberg’s rival to Twitter will not launch in the EU on Thursday amid regulatory uncertainty about the service’s use of personal data.
Sources at Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said regulations were behind the postponement of an EU launch, amid a series of clashes between the social media group and the bloc.
Continue reading...Kremlin spokesman says there have been ‘certain contacts on the subject’ with the US but says any discussion will be held in secret
The Kremlin has suggested it could be open to a possible prisoner exchange involving jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, but reaffirmed that such talks must be held away from the public eye.
Asked whether Monday’s consular visits to Gershkovich, who has been held behind bars in Moscow since March on charges of espionage, and Vladimir Dunaev, a Russian citizen in US custody on cybercrime charges, could potentially herald a prisoner swap, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow and Washington had touched on the issue.
Continue reading...Mattel says the Barney movie will be inspired by Charlie Kaufman, while Barbie director Greta Gerwig is planning two Narnia movies for Netflix
The Daniel Kaluuya-produced movie featuring Barney the Dinosaur will be an “adult”, “surrealistic” and “A24-type” film inspired by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, it has been revealed.
In a wide-ranging report on the film-making plans of toymaker Mattel in the New Yorker, Mattel Films executive Kevin McKeon said of the project: “We’re leaning into the millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids. It’s really a play for adults. Not that it’s R-rated, but it’ll focus on some of the trials and tribulations of being thirtysomething, growing up with Barney – just the level of disenchantment within the generation.”
Continue reading...Ambassador Lynne Tracey was allowed to meet the journalist in a Moscow jail in her second such visit since his arrest in March
Russia has granted the US consular access to jailed Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich after a more than two-month gap, with the US ambassador reporting him in good health.
The state department said ambassador Lynne Tracey met Gershkovich at the Lefortovo prison in Moscow on Monday, only her second such meeting with him since he was arrested on 29 March during a reporting trip in the Urals.
Continue reading...National broadcaster embroiled in a real-life drama over clandestine payments to its star presenter
It has become Ireland’s top-rated show – a tale of celebrity, secrets and lies that has entranced the public and dominated the airwaves. Some reckon it is the most gripping drama ever produced by RTÉ.
Unfortunately for the national broadcaster, it is an all too real scandal over clandestine payments that has engulfed its star presenter and senior managers and planted a question mark over RTÉ’s future.
Continue reading...Ex-producer had also accused network’s lawyers of pressuring her to make misleading statements in Dominion Voting Systems case
Fox Corporation has settled for $12m a lawsuit by the former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who had made claims of gender discrimination.
She also accused the network’s lawyers of pressuring her to make misleading statements in the Dominion Voting Systems case, her lawyer Tanvir Rahman said on Friday.
Continue reading...The Sun will have to print a front-page statement explaining that its columnist was found to have discriminated against the duchess
Jeremy Clarkson discriminated against the Duchess of Sussex when he used an article in the Sun to describe his “hatred” of her with a series of sexist tropes, a press regulator has ruled.
Clarkson used his national newspaper column to describe how he hated Meghan on a “cellular level” and suggested she had used “vivid bedroom promises” to transform Prince Harry into a “warrior of woke”.
Continue reading...‘He understands Julian is suffering and is concerned,’ says Stella Assange after audience with pontiff
Pope Francis has met Stella Assange, the wife of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder, who said the pope’s gesture in receiving her was evidence of his “ongoing show of support for our family’s plight” and concern over the suffering of her husband, Julian.
After the audience, Stella Assange said Francis had sent a letter to her husband in March 2021, during a particularly difficult period. “He has provided great solace and comfort and we are extremely appreciative for his reaching out to our family in this way,” she told the Associated Press. “He understands that Julian is suffering and is concerned.”
Continue reading...Citizens’ Radio to close on third anniversary of national security law that has led to demise of several other liberal media outlets
Hong Kong’s pro-democracy online Citizens’ Radio station will cease operations on Friday owing to what its founder described as a “dangerous” political situation and the freezing of its bank account.
Launched in 2005 by veteran activist Tsang Kin-shing, the Cantonese-language broadcaster gained a steady following for its hard-hitting talkshows that were critical of authorities, as well as its years-long campaign for press freedom.
Continue reading...Tory party’s deputy chair used parliamentary rooftop setting to publicise TV show, in apparent contravention of rules
The Conservative MP Lee Anderson faces a telling off for using a parliamentary rooftop to film a promotion video for his GB News TV show, with unauthorised photography or filming not permitted on the parliamentary estate.
The serjeant at arms, who is responsible for upholding order in the Commons, will contact Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chairman, over the Twitter footage.
Continue reading...Nature series Our Big Blue Backyard drew one complaint to media watchdog that it should not have given the program a G, or general, classification
New Zealand’s media watchdog has reprimanded public broadcaster TVNZ for not giving a higher classification to a documentary with “dramatised” scenes of dolphin mating.
The nature series Our Big Blue Backyard drew the ire of one viewer who successfully complained to the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA). In the offending scene, a female dolphin is targeted by a pack of male dolphins that mate with her.
Continue reading...Former chancellor and ex-shadow chancellor will discuss and analyse the state of the British economy
George Osborne is launching an economics podcast with his “frenemy” Ed Balls in an attempt to capitalise on the success of shows such as The Rest is Politics.
Osborne, the architect of the Conservatives’ austerity policies which imposed deep cuts on British public services, spent four years opposite Balls in the House of Commons. But since leaving frontline politics the pair have become a marketable media double act, appearing together on political shows to debate the state of the economy.
Continue reading...Mirror Group Newspapers says it has ‘sympathy’ for royal but he has no ‘hard evidence’, court told
Prince Harry should receive only £500 in damages at the end of his phone-hacking trial, Mirror Group Newspapers has argued at the high court.
The Duke of Sussex wants a judge to award him more than £200,000 over allegations that he was the victim of illegal activity by journalists working for the Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Channel 4 film says officials contacted the palace in 2020 owing to concerns about Lord Lebedev’s father’s links to Putin regime
Government officials asked whether the late Queen would block Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage because of concerns that he could be a national security risk due to his father’s links to the Putin regime, a documentary has claimed.
The aides contacted Buckingham Palace in July 2020 to request that the monarch intervene, which she was constitutionally entitled to do, after Boris Johnson decided to press ahead with the controversial peerage despite warnings from the intelligence agencies, according to the film-makers.
Continue reading...Official TV usually ignores inconvenient news – during the 1991 coup attempt it showed a tape of Swan Lake. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s action was different
Russians who watched television on Saturday actually saw the reports about the attempted coup, as state news agencies covered the armed insurrection led by Yevgeny Prigozhin while downplaying the potential chaos threatening Russia.
Prigozhin’s 24-hour uprising was perhaps the most direct internal threat to the Kremlin since the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, when communist hardliners detained Mikhail Gorbachev and sought to seize control of the country.
Continue reading...Parliament hears media in Asia and the Pacific are being courted by Beijing in an ‘unprecedented campaign’
China is spending billions to win the information war in the region, a committee inquiry has heard, and greater funding for the ABC would allow it to be a stronger presence in the Asia-Pacific.
Claire Gorman, the ABC’s head of international services, told the inquiry into supporting democracy in the region that China is spending at least $3bn a year on international media, compared with $11m for the ABC.
Continue reading...Campaigners say bill in ‘serious peril’ of passing without powers to make platforms more transparent
Online safety experts will struggle to sound the alarm about harmful content if landmark legislation does not allow independent researchers to access data from social media platforms, campaigners have warned.
The government is being urged to adopt amendments to the online safety bill enabling researchers to access platform data in order to monitor harmful material. Access would be overseen by Ofcom, the communications watchdog, and would protect user privacy.
Continue reading...Writer of comic medical memoir This is Going to Hurt reveals surrogacy on BBC’s Desert Island Discs
Adam Kay, the author of This is Going to Hurt, the bestselling “secret diary” of a junior doctor, is now the father of two babies, he has revealed.
Kay, who was portrayed by Ben Whishaw in the Bafta-winning BBC1 adaptation of his comic memoir, said life with his husband, TV producer James Farrell, has been “absolutely transformed for the better” by the arrival through surrogacy of their two children.
Continue reading...Ruling dismays free speech activists who accuse Modi government of systematically shrinking space for dissent
An Indian court has blocked the screening of an Al Jazeera documentary about the country’s Muslim minority, fuelling fears that the right to criticise the government is being eroded.
The Allahabad high court was acting on a public interest petition filed by Sudhir Kumar, an activist, who said he had learned from media reports that the documentary Who Lit the Fuse? portrayed India’s 172-million Muslims as living in fear of the Narendra Modi government. He also alleged that it showed state agencies acting against the interests of Muslims.
Continue reading...José Rubén Zamora, 66, convicted and sentenced on money-laundering charges press freedom groups say were trumped up
A veteran journalist and founder of one of Guatemala’s oldest newspapers has been sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering, in a case widely condemned as politically motivated.
José Rubén Zamora, 66, was convicted on Wednesday by a three-judge panel in Guatemala City, who ruled that there was “no doubt” the outspoken critic of government corruption masterminded the laundering of almost $40,000 in 2022. The court absolved Zamora of blackmail and peddling influence charges.
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