US Business

Former US president Donald Trump’s Truth Social app is unwelcome in Google’s app store until it abides by rules regarding content moderation including violent threats, the company said Wednesday.

The internet giant made the statement after the Trump camp argued that it didn’t know why its social network app had yet to be approved for the Google Play Store, which offers content for Android-powered smartphones.

A Google spokesperson said the company notified Truth Social on August 19 that its app violated Play policies and required “effective systems for moderating user-generated content” in order to be offered on the platform.

The app breaks rules barring content that incites physical threats and violence, according to the tech firm.

“Last week Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues,” the Google spokesperson said.

Truth Social would still be able to make its app available on its website or other online venues that don’t involve Google’s online shop.

As of Wednesday a version of Truth Social was still available on Apple’s App Store, which is the lone gateway onto the company’s mobile devices.

Truth Social is Trump’s answer to platforms such as Twitter, from which he was ejected after a mob he egged on assaulted the US Capitol in January 2021.

Signs are growing meanwhile that Truth Social is in financial trouble.

Fox Business Network reported last week that the platform had halted payments to the company that hosts it, RightForge, and owes $1.6 million.

Trump Media and Technology Group said in a regulatory filing that it has raised some $15 million in additional funding that it believes will enable it to pay its bills until the end of April of next year.

Meanwhile, a merger between Trump Media and Technology with blank check company Digital World Acquisition Corp, which was formed specifically to carry out the merger, has yet to take place 10 months after the announcement that it would happen. This fusion is supposed to bring in fresh funding for the Trump platform.

Regulators are reported to be scrutinizing the merger to determine if anything was amiss.

US officials Wednesday authorized updated Covid-19 vaccinations by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech that specifically target the latest strains of the Omicron variant, hoping to contain a new wave of feared contagions this winter.

The two new booster shots are approved for people age 12 and above for the Pfizer shot and 18 and older for Moderna, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a statement.

This new generation of so-called “bivalent” vaccines protects against both the original strain of Covid and the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages — the subvariants of Omicron which account for about 90 percent of all new cases in the United States.

“Although the current Covid-19 surge is waning overall, it’s predicated that we’ll enter yet another surge as we spend more time indoors later this fall and winter,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf told reporters.

“These update boosters present us with an opportunity to get ahead” of the curve, he said.

While the intense focus on coronavirus has largely faded from daily life for Americans, the United States still records some 80,000 new cases — and 400 deaths — from Covid every day.

Earlier this summer the US health department announced it had purchased 105 million doses from Pfizer and 66 million from Moderna for use over the fall and winter.

The vaccines must still receive a recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s health protection agency, before injections can begin.

An independent panel of experts is scheduled to be convened by the CDC on Thursday to discuss the updates. 

– Low booster uptake –

The two companies indicated their updated vaccines could be available for distribution in the United States as early as next week.

“Receiving a booster that specifically targets the Omicron BA.4/.5 variant… is an important public health measure that people can take to help protect themselves,” Moderna chief executive Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

Many Americans will need convincing to take the new shots, as how only about half of those eligible have received a first booster dose.

The vaccines currently in circulation target the initial strain of the virus that first appeared in Wuhan, China. They have gradually proven to be less effective against the variants that have appeared over time, due to rapid evolution of the virus. 

The FDA still recommends people get the original vaccine in order to receive “a foundation of that basic immune response,” Califf said.

In contrast to the Alpha and Delta variants, which eventually waned, Omicron and its subvariants have come to dominate infections worldwide in 2022.

Pfizer and Moderna have also filed for approval of their updated vaccines with the European Medicines Agency.

Stanley Kubrick once famously said that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy of novels was unfilmable.

It is hard to imagine what the great director would have made of Amazon’s $1 billion gamble on “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” a 50-hour television series based on the dry historical footnotes published at the end of book three.

The show, out Friday globally on Prime Video, aims to tap into the huge and enduring appeal of works still regularly voted the world’s best-loved novels of all time, as well as Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning film adaptations.

It is central to Amazon’s bid to stand out in the “streaming wars” with Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max — whose own “Game of Thrones” prequel just launched — and is bankrolled by multi-billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, a Tolkien mega-fan.

But populated by heroes and villains who are barely — if at all — referenced in Tolkien’s trilogy and its “Appendices” of fictional mythology, and featuring a largely unknown cast and creators, there is no doubting the scale of the gamble.

“It is quite nerve wracking — we’re building something from the ground up that’s never been seen before,” said Sophia Nomvete, who plays Princess Disa, the first female and first Black dwarf depicted on screen in Tolkien’s world.

“There’s definitely a few nerves. We want to get it right,” she told AFP at the Comic-Con fan event last month.

– ‘True colors’ –

“The Rings of Power” is set in Tolkien’s “Second Age” — a period of history in his fictional Middle Earth world thousands of years before the events of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

So while a handful of characters from Jackson’s films reappear in Amazon’s show — mostly younger versions of elves such as Galadriel and Elrond, who are of course immortal — there is no Frodo, Gollum or Aragorn in sight.

Most characters from Tolkien lore are appearing on screen for the first time, and some have even been created entirely from scratch for the show.

“Tolkien hasn’t really written much about who he is as a person,” said Maxim Baldry, whose character Isildur was briefly seen fighting the evil lord Sauron in a flashback at the start of Jackson’s trilogy.

Here, Baldry plays a younger version of the tragic hero, struggling with the death of his mother, overbearing pressure from his father, and a romantic yearning for adventure.

“What a gift, firstly, to explore someone’s beginnings, finding their true colors, understanding who they really are,” said Baldry.

He added: “Season one is purely about setting up characters and introducing new characters to the family… fleshing out a pretty skeletal world that Tolkien just created in the Second Age.”

– ‘Wonderfully crazy’ –

The fate of the series rests in the hands of creators — or “showrunners” — Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, who pitched their concept to Amazon after it bought the rights in 2017, but had only a handful of previous projects credited on their CVs.

“We wanted to find a huge Tolkienian mega epic. And Amazon were wonderfully crazy enough to say ‘yes, let’s do that,” McKay said at Comic-Con.

At the London premiere Tuesday, Bezos admitted that “some people even questioned our choice” to bring in “this relatively unknown team.”

“But we saw something special,” he said, according to Variety.

Early reviews have been generally positive. Variety said the show slots “neatly into Peter Jackson’s preexisting cinematic universe.”

Critics universally praised its lavish costumes, backdrops, visual effects and set-pieces, as well as Morfydd Clark’s central performance as Galadriel.

However, Time said it was “filled with beautiful images and tired archetypes,” and the Times of London said it “has the vibe of terrified executives carrying an exceedingly expensive vase across a slippery floor.”

– $1 billion –

The show has been dubbed the most expensive ever for television.

Amazon splurged $250 million on the rights from Tolkien’s estate, and some $465 million on the first season alone. It has committed from the start to making five full seasons, meaning the final cost is expected to pass $1 billion.

With high stakes has come considerable secrecy — even its actors have not been told the fates of their characters.

“No idea! I don’t even know what’s happening next season,” said Megan Richards, who plays Poppy Proudfellow, a character whose Harfoot race are ancestors of the hobbits.

“There’s an arc that Tolkien has given us for the Second Age. So there are certain things we know,” Daniel Weyman, who plays a mysterious man billed simply as “The Stranger,” told AFP.

“The thing that I hold on to is that our showrunners, they definitely know their arc. They know their arc already.”

Snapchat’s parent company confirmed Wednesday it is cutting 20 percent of staff, as the troubled messaging app attempts to dig itself out amid competition and revenue woes, as well as recent quarterly losses.

A hit with young internet users in its early days, Snapchat has remained a small player in the social networking space as competition from other apps, such as TikTok, has grown ever more intense.

“We must now face the consequences of our lower revenue growth and adapt to the market environment,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a note to employees Wednesday announcing the decision “to reduce the size of our team by approximately 20 percent.”

In July, the company reported that quarterly losses nearly tripled to $422 million amid conditions “more challenging” than expected.

Tech news website The Verge first reported the southern California-based company would be making the steep cuts to its approximately 6,400 staff.

Restructuring, Spiegel said, would focus on “three strategic priorities: community growth, revenue growth and augmented reality” with unrelated projects to “be discontinued or receive substantially reduced investment.”

Snap said it would discontinue its Snap Originals show programming, third-party app integration known as Minis, its games, and its lightweight drone offering called Pixy. 

It also said it was “winding down” its standalone geolocation app Zenly and music creation app Voisey, which it acquired through takeovers.

Like other social networks, Snap has taken a hit as advertisers have tightened their belts, as well as from new privacy changes by Apple that have bitten into firms’ sales of costly but highly-targeted ads.

“The company is facing layoffs as it works to restructure its ad business and cut costs,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.

“Even so, I wouldn’t count Evan Spiegel out.”

Snap has a growing and loyal user base, and is well-positioned to capitalize on advertising and commerce in its augmented reality offerings over the long-term, the analyst reasoned.

Enberg expected Snapchat to end this year with nearly $5 billion in net ad revenue worldwide in a 43 percent increase from 2021. Insider Intelligence projected that ranks of Snapchat users would be up more than 10 percent to 493.7 million by the end of this year.

“We are encouraged by stabilizing user trends, as well as the large shopping and e-commerce advertising opportunity, healthy margins, and perspective and experience from recent upgrades to the management team,” Baird analysts said of Snap in a note to investors.

Snap announced a new chief operating officer, Jerry Hunter, who is being promoted from senior vice president of engineering. Google executive Ronan Harris will become president of the company’s Europe, Middle East and Africa division in October.

Meanwhile, Snap’s chief business officer Jeremi Gorman and Peter Naylor, the vice president of ad sales for the Americas, will be going to work for streaming  television titan Netflix in September, according to the companies.

Snap shares were up more than 10 percent in mid-day trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Back home in South Carolina, “Rockstar” was doing a bit of gardening. Today he’s scrabbling around in the trenches with a handful of foreign fighters as Ukraine stages an offensive to retake Russian-held areas.

Some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the frontline, the lanky 26-year-old is roaming the streets of a Ukrainian village looking for cigarettes.

Despite the curly mullet that earned him his “Rockstar” nickname, Gideon Rinehardt spent four years serving with the US National Guard.

And that experience is probably what made him worthy of joining what he calls the “very special forces” where he’s now serving under a Ukrainian command alongside two other Americans, a Briton, a Frenchman and a Finn.

Getting there was a funny story, he says, recalling how he showed up at a recruitment centre in the western region of Lviv to join the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine (ILDU). 

“I’m not in great shape but I was still the best one there. So they asked me: do you want to join the normal army or do you want to be a badass?” he told AFP. 

“I’ve never been with the Special Forces, so put me with the normal people,” he told them. 

“But they still sent me here.”

– ‘Pretty intense’ –

Currently they are staying near a still-inhabited village in the southern Mykolaiv region, their barracks full of weaponry, from Czech assault rifles to anti-tank missiles. 

With his comrades out getting supplies in Mykolaiv, the nearest city, Rinehardt is killing time listening to some Def Leppard heavy metal. 

Other volunteers with the ILDU, which was created at the start of the war after an international appeal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, have complained about being badly equipped.

But Rinehardt says the Ukrainians are treating them “very well”.

Before joining in July, he was back in South Carolina “doing some gardening”, he says, without elaborating. 

Since then, it’s been pretty intense, he says. 

“It is a lot of moving in the trenches and into areas that we think the Russians are going to take.”

“There has been a couple of times when they shoot at us and we shoot back. I don’t know if I have killed anyone out here. I try not to think about it.”

– ‘This is trench warfare’ –

Many foreigners weren’t ready for this type of fight, he says. 

“Nothing can prepare you for this war. Some are like, ‘I went to Iraq, I went to Afghanistan’, but this is completely different.

“This is trench warfare, like in World War I, and some Russian soldiers are awfully good at it.”

Ukraine this week launched a counter-offensive to retake southern areas held by Russia, notably around Kherson city and the region of the same name. 

In a town near the frontline, the streets are buzzing with soldiers moving to and from the battlefield.

Some are waiting for a repair truck by an armoured vehicle that overheated. Others, just back from the front, are sitting in the shade under some trees.

“We really pushed them back yesterday,” smiles one soldier with a Ukrainian trident tattooed on his arm, who says his name is Victor. 

But his commanding officer, an Afghan war veteran, is more prudent, warning the battle to retake Kherson will be “long and difficult”. 

Although the foreign fighters are not taking part in the offensive itself, Rinehardt is pleased Ukraine has gone on the offensive. 

“I think we do need to take initiative. That’s the best option right now.”

He decided to join up after being “disgusted” by the atrocities he saw on cable television.

Over the next two months, he’ll have to decide whether or not he will stay longer — and that depends on whether he receives winter gear. 

Despite not speaking a word of Ukrainian, he says he’s careful to maintain good relationships with residents of the village where he is staying.

“This is a moral war, a war of public opinion. We need to behave respectfully. We’re going to leave, and they’re going to stay.”

Top secret documents found at Donald Trump’s Florida home were “likely concealed” to obstruct an FBI probe into the former president’s potential mishandling of classified materials, the Department of Justice said in an explosive new court filing.

The filing released late Tuesday provides the most detailed account yet of the motivation for the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — which was triggered by a review of highly classified records that he had previously surrendered to authorities.

Before the raid, the FBI uncovered “multiple sources of evidence” showing that “classified documents” remained at Mar-a-Lago, the filing says, despite the assertion by Trump’s representatives that all sensitive materials had been handed over.

The filing made clear that prosecutors are seeking to determine whether Trump or anyone in his immediate orbit acted criminally to prevent federal agents from retrieving classified documents.

“The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room (at Trump’s estate) and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the filing adds.

When agents conducted their court-ordered search on August 8, they found material so sensitive that “even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents,” it says.

In total, the filing says, agents recovered more than 100 documents with classification markings, in 13 boxes or containers, during the raid.

In a striking image sure to reverberate around Washington, the filing included a photograph of color-coded documents spread out over a carpet, marked “SECRET” and “TOP SECRET.”

Trump fired back Wednesday at the photo’s release in a post on his Truth Social network.

“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see,” he wrote. 

“Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified.”

– ‘Delayed access’ –

Trump, who is weighing another White House run in 2024, has accused the Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden of conducting a “witch hunt” and said the judge “should never have allowed the break-in of my home.”

Trump has taken legal action to seek the appointment of an independent party, or “special master,” to screen the seized files for materials protected by personal privilege.

The government’s filing argues that such an appointment, which would potentially block investigators’ access to the documents, is “unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”

The Justice Department said it provided the detailed background on the build-up to the raid “to correct the incomplete and inaccurate narrative” set forth by Trump’s lawyers.

Its investigation began after the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) received 15 boxes of records in January that had been improperly removed from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago.

According to the affidavit used to justify the raid, sensitive national defense information was among the “highly classified” records surrendered at that time, including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 as secret and 25 as top secret.

In its filing, the Justice Department says “the former president delayed the FBI’s access to the fifteen boxes” once they had been surrendered to NARA.

The Mar-a-Lago search warrant, personally approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland, authorized the FBI to access the “45 office” — a reference to the 45th US president’s private office — and storage rooms.

The extraordinary search was partly based on suspicions of violations of the US Espionage Act related to the illegal retention of sensitive defense documents, the warrant showed.

Tuesday’s filing detailed how FBI agents in a previous operation traveled to Mar-a-Lago on June 3 and took into custody several documents turned over by a Trump custodian — who provided “sworn certification” that they represented the last of the material.

Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the actions outlined in the brief were “reckless in the extreme” and showed “deliberate” deception.

In addition to investigations in New York into his business practices, Trump faces legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn results of the 2020 election, and for the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Trump was impeached for a historic second time by the House of Representatives after the Capitol riot — he was charged with inciting an insurrection — but was acquitted by the Senate.