US Business

Whistleblower Frances Haugen — a former Facebook engineer who leaked documents suggesting the firm put profits before safety — on Thursday launched an organization devoted to fighting harm caused by social media.

The new Beyond the Screen nonprofit said that its first project will be to document ways big tech is failing in its “legal and ethical obligations to society” and help come up with ways to solve those problems.

“We can have social media that brings out the best in us, and that’s what Beyond the Screen is working toward,” Haugen said in a statement.

“Beyond the Screen will focus on tangible solutions to help users gain control of our social media experience.”

Haugen last year leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of their site’s potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation.

Haugen contended the tech titan, which has since rebranded itself as Meta, put profits over safety. Meta has fought back against the accusation.

Haugen’s nonprofit said it will collaborate with groups including Common Sense Media and Project Liberty that share a “commitment to supporting healthier social media.”

Beyond the Screen’s first project “represents a bold, inclusive, and much-needed effort to drive a seismic shift in how social media operates,” Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt said, according to Beyond the Screen’s statement.

“We look forward to working with Frances and her team to launch this new initiative and advance our shared goal of enabling healthier digital communities and stopping harmful business models.”

Since leaving Facebook in 2021, Haugen has advocated in the US and other countries for legislation meant to make social media platforms safer, particularly for young people.

CIA Director Bill Burns said in the US spy agency’s first-ever podcast Thursday that his life is nothing like Jason Bourne and James Bond, ripping hot cars through crowded cities and deploying unimaginable lethal gadgets.

Popular spy films show “a world of heroic individuals who drive fast cars and defuse bombs and solve world crises all on their own every day,” Burns said.

“That, I have to tell you, is a constant source of amusement for my wife and daughters.”

“I’m most comfortable driving our 2013 Subaru Outback at posted speed limits and, for me at least, the height of technological daring is when I can finally get the Roku remote to work at home,” he admitted.

Burns, 66, a veteran diplomat who has run the Central Intelligence Agency since March 2021, made the comments in the first episode of “The Langley Files,” a podcast that pledges to demystify the super-secret agency.

Burns’ main point was to stress that while the CIA has many officers undercover in the field, they are not dramatic solo operators like Bond, Bourne or Jack Ryan of Hollywood fame.

“The truth is that intelligence is very much a team sport. It’s a profession of hard collective work and shared risks,” Burns said.

And besides field operators, it involves teams of people — scientists, digital specialists and other analysts — sifting information in offices.

He held up the operation that found and killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in July, as well as CIA intelligence in December and January showing Russia planned to invade Ukraine, as important successes.

“Our successes are often obscured, our failures are often painfully visible, and our sacrifices are often unknown. But a certain amount of discretion certainly comes with the territory,” Burns said.

The podcast is hosted by “Dee” and “Walter,” but a CIA spokesperson would not give their last names or even say if the first names were authentic.

Asked how often the podcast would appear, the spokesperson said, “Periodically.”

Moscow began its mandatory troop call-up Thursday to try to bolster a stumbling war effort in Ukraine, with authorities saying thousands had volunteered even as Russian men fled the country to avoid being forced to fight.

Amateur footage posted on social media since President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilisation of reservists on Wednesday purported to show hundreds of Russian citizens across the country responding to military summons.

The call-up came as Moscow-held regions of Ukraine are to vote in coming days on whether to become part of Russia in referendums that have been called an unlawful land grab by Kyiv and its allies. 

Moscow took these steps after Ukrainian forces seized back most of the northeastern Kharkiv region, which has been seen as a possible turning point in the seven-month war that had fallen into stalemate.

The Russian military said Thursday that at least 10,000 people had volunteered to fight in 24 hours since the order, but men also rushed to leave Russia before they were made to join.

Flights out of Russia to neighbouring countries, mainly former Soviet republics that allow Russians visa-free entry, are nearly entirely booked and prices have skyrocketed, pointing to an exodus of Russians wanting to avoid going to war.

“I don’t want to go to the war,” a man named Dmitri, who had flown to Armenia with just one small bag, told AFP. “I don’t want to die in this senseless war. This is a fratricidal war.”

Military-aged men made up the majority of those arriving off the latest flight from Moscow at Yerevan airport and many were reluctant to speak.

The Armenian capital has become a major destination for Russians fleeing since war began on February 24, drawing fierce international opposition that has aimed to isolate Russia.

Looking lost and exhausted in Yerevan airport’s arrivals hall, 44-year-old Sergei said he had fled Russia to escape being called up.

“The situation in Russia would make anyone want to leave,” he told AFP.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Russians to resist Putin’s partial mobilisation during his daily address on Thursday evening.

“Protest. Fight back. Run away. Or surrender” to the Ukrainian army, he said. “You are already complicit in all these crimes, murders and torture of Ukrainians. Because you were silent. Because you are silent.”

More than 1,300 people were arrested during anti-mobilisation demonstrations across Russia on Wednesday, a monitoring group reported.

– Annexation ‘vote’ –

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday demanded Putin be held to account as he faced Russia in a Security Council session in which the United Nations catalogued abuses in Ukraine.

“We cannot — we will not — let President Putin get away with it,” Blinken said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — whom Blinken has refused to meet individually since the February invasion — lashed out at Western accusations.

“There’s an attempt today to impose on us a completely different narrative about Russian aggression as the origin of this tragedy,” Lavrov told the Security Council.

The confrontation on the diplomatic stage escalated as Kremlin-installed officials in Ukrainian regions controlled by Moscow’s forces vowed on Thursday to press ahead with annexation polls this week.

Four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine — Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south — announced that they would hold the votes over five days, beginning on Friday.

Western leaders convening in New York this week unanimously condemned the ballots. 

Speaking at the United Nations, US President Joe Biden accused Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of “shamelessly” violating the UN Charter with a war aimed at “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state”.

– Nuclear threat –

The integration of the war-scarred regions into Russia would represent a major escalation of the conflict, as Moscow could then try to say it was defending its own territory from Ukrainian forces.

After the votes were announced by his proxy officials in Ukraine, Putin announced that Russia would call up some 300,000 reservists to bolster the war effort and cautioned that Moscow would use “all means” to protect its territory.

Former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said in a statement on social media that those means included “strategic nuclear weapons”. He predicted the voting regions “will integrate into Russia”.

For most observers, the results of the concurrent votes are already a foregone conclusion and were rushed because Ukrainian forces were making sweeping gains in a counter-offensive to recapture the east.

The referendums are reminiscent of a similar ballot in 2014 that saw the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine annexed by Russia. Western capitals said the vote was fraudulent and hit Moscow with sanctions in response.

Election officials in the Donetsk region, partially controlled since 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists, said voting would take place door-to-door for the first days. But it would only be possible in polling stations on the final day, Tuesday.

Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice on the US Supreme Court, and his wife Ginni, an activist tied to Donald Trump’s bid to challenge his 2020 defeat, are adamant there is a firewall between their careers.

But with Ginni Thomas facing mounting questions over her role in the former president’s crusade, cracks are appearing in that wall.

Married for 35 years, the conservative Washington power couple are under new scrutiny after text messages and emails appear to show Ginni Thomas involved in possibly illegal efforts to keep Trump in the White House.

With Trump-related cases possibly headed to the high court, this has raised doubts that her husband Clarence Thomas can rule fairly and independently.

After stalling for months, Ginni Thomas is now expected to testify in the coming weeks to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 assault on Congress by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election.

“Mrs. Thomas is eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election. She looks forward to that opportunity,” her attorney, Mark Paoletta, told US media.

– Conservative influencers –

At 65, Ginni Thomas has wielded significant influence in ultra-conservative circles in Washington for years.

After Trump’s defeat in November 2020, communications show she encouraged officials in some states and the White House to reject Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

Thomas exchanged at least 29 text messages with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks before January 6, urging him to not concede the election.

“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” she wrote in one.

“The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

On the morning of January 6 she attended a White House rally at which Trump urged Congress to reject Biden’s victory. But she has said that she left before the assault on the Capitol.

– Conflict of interest? –

In the same period, Thomas was the sole member of the nine-justice court to support a Trump-backed petition that sought to overturn the election results in a state.

And in January 2022, he again was the only justice to support a Trump petition to prohibit the release of White House records related to the January 6 Capitol assault.

Democrats say that, because of his wife’s involvement, Clarence Thomas has a deep conflict of interest and should recuse himself from cases related to Trump’s effort to reverse the election.

Ginni Thomas though insists that her activities don’t influence his.

“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” she told the Washington Free Beacon. 

“But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said.

– ‘Trial by fire’ –

As prominent Washington figures and as an interracial, African American (him) and white (her) couple, the Thomases have weathered more than a few storms. 

The two were married in 1987, when she was an attorney at the US Chamber of Commerce. It was her first marriage, and his second.

In 1991 president George H.W. Bush chose Clarence Thomas, with his impeccable conservative credentials, to join the Supreme Court. 

In his confirmation hearing he was accused of sexually harassing a former assistant, Anita Hill.

As Ginni sat by his side during the explosive hearings, Clarence Thomas denied everything, claiming he was the victim of a “high-tech lynching.”

She called it a “trial by fire.”

The two have a close life together. Both are pious Catholics, and in summers hit the road for long trips in a massive recreational vehicle, which they take to campgrounds where few recognize him.

– Quiet on the court –

Wounded by the confirmation ordeal and his experiences as a relatively rare Black figure in the conservative space, Thomas spent most of his Supreme Court career in silence, speaking almost only through his votes and written opinions in thousands of cases.

But since Trump named three more conservatives to the court, giving them a solid 6-3 majority, Thomas has become more lively, and forceful.

He led a landmark judgement in June that enshrined the right of Americans to carry guns outside the home.

And when the court overturned a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion in the same month, he went even farther than his colleagues, opining that there were no constitutional guarantees to contraception or same-sex marriage.

His opinions align closely with his wife’s activism. For example, Ginni Thomas has worked closely with anti-abortion groups. 

A strong believer in self-reliance, Clarence Thomas is opposed to programs, in college admissions for instance, which give Black and other disadvantaged minorities preferences over whites.

Ginni Thomas has taken similar stances: in the early 1990s as a Labor Department attorney she argued against making it law that women should be paid as much as men in comparable jobs.

Moscow began its mandatory troop call-up Thursday to try to bolster a stumbling war effort in Ukraine, with authorities saying thousands had volunteered even as Russian men fled the country to avoid being forced to fight.

Amateur footage posted on social media since President Vladimir Putin ordered the mobilisation of reservists on Wednesday purported to show hundreds of Russian citizens across the country responding to military summons.

The call-up came as Moscow-held regions of Ukraine are to vote in coming days on whether to become part of Russia in referendums that have been called an unlawful land grab by Kyiv and its allies. 

Moscow took these steps after Ukrainian forces seized back most of the northeastern Kharkiv region, which has been seen as a possible turning point in the seven-month war that had fallen into stalemate.

The Russian military said Thursday that at least 10,000 people had volunteered to fight in 24 hours since the order, but men also rushed to leave Russia before they were made to join.

“I don’t want to go to the war,” a man named Dmitri, who had flown to Armenia with just one small bag, told AFP. “I don’t want to die in this senseless war. This is a fratricidal war.”

– Annexation ‘vote’ –

Military-aged men made up the majority of those arriving off the latest flight from Moscow at the Armenian airport and many were reluctant to speak.

Yerevan has become a major destination for Russians fleeing since war began on February 24, drawing fierce international opposition that has aimed to isolate Russia.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday demanded Putin be held to account as he faced Russia in a Security Council session in which the United Nations catalogued abuses in Ukraine.

“We cannot — we will not — let President Putin get away with it,” Blinken told the Security Council in a special session as leaders met at the United Nations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — whom Blinken has refused to meet individually since the February invasion — lashed out at Western accusations.

“There’s an attempt today to impose on us a completely different narrative about Russian aggression as the origin of this tragedy,” Lavrov told the Security Council.

The confrontation on the diplomatic stage escalated as Kremlin-installed officials in Ukrainian regions controlled by Moscow’s forces vowed on Thursday to press ahead with annexation polls this week.

Four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine — Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south — announced that they would hold the votes over five days, beginning on Friday.

Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed head of Kherson, which fell early into the Russian invasion, said the referendum would go ahead in his region regardless of the criticism.

“The date has been set. We have the green light. Voting begins tomorrow and nothing can prevent this,” he told Russian state-run media.

“People have been waiting and they’re demanding that this vote is held soon,” he added.

Western leaders convening in New York this week unanimously condemned the ballots. 

Speaking at the United Nations, US President Joe Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “shamelessly” violating the UN Charter with a war aimed at “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state”.

– ‘Anyone would want to leave’ –

The integration of the war-scarred regions into Russia would represent a major escalation of the conflict, as Moscow could then try to say it was defending its own territory from Ukrainian forces.

After the votes were announced by his proxy officials in Ukraine, Putin announced that Russia would call up some 300,000 reservists to bolster the war effort and cautioned that Moscow would use “all means” to protect its territory.

Former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said in a statement on social media that those means included “strategic nuclear weapons”. He predicted the voting regions “will integrate into Russia”.

For most observers, the results of the concurrent votes are already a foregone conclusion and were rushed because Ukrainian forces were making sweeping gains in a counter-offensive to recapture the east.

The referendums are reminiscent of a similar ballot in 2014 that saw the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine annexed by Russia. Western capitals said the vote was fraudulent and hit Moscow with sanctions in response.

Election officials in the Donetsk region, which has been partially controlled since 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists, said that voting would take place door-to-door for the first days. But it would only be possible in polling stations on the final day, Tuesday.

Putin’s move this week to call up reservists for Ukraine sparked small protests across Russia, resulting in more than 1,300 people being detained.

Flights out of Russia to neighbouring countries, mainly former Soviet republics that allow Russians visa-free entry, are nearly entirely booked and prices have skyrocketed, pointing to an exodus of Russians wanting to avoid going to war.

Looking lost and exhausted in the arrivals hall of the airport in the capital of Armenia, 44-year-old Sergei said he had fled Russia to escape being called up.

“The situation in Russia would make anyone want to leave,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.