Author: News Desk

The House select committee investigating the deadly invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6 said Friday it is demanding a trove of records from 15 social media companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Google and a slew of pro-Trump platforms. The requests for records stretching back to the spring of 2020 are related to “the spread of misinformation, efforts to overturn the 2020 election or prevent the certification of the results, domestic violent extremism, and foreign influence in the 2020 election,” the committee said in a press release.

Moscow : At least nine people are known to have died and four are still unaccounted following a series of explosions at an ammunition depot in Kazakhstan, the country’s Emergency Situations Ministry announced on Friday. Around 90 people, all military and emergency services personnel, were injured in the blast, which took place on Thursday evening at a military facility in the Jambyl region of southern Kazakhstan, dpa reported. According to Kazakh state media, the ammunition depot is used to store more than 500 tons of explosives. Debris from the explosions was found as far as 2 kilometres from the blast…

Bahrain :  His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, sent a congratulatory cable to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, HE Ismail Sabri Yaakob, on the occasion of his swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister. His Royal Highness highlighted the strong cooperation between the two nations and wished His Excellency success in his new role.

Riyadh : Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister, HH Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdulla, today held a telephone call with Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Nasser Bourita. The two ministers reviewed bilateral relations, and ways to enhance them to achieve the interests of the two brotherly countries and peoples. They also discussed the latest regional and international developments of mutual interest.

Melbourne : Ash Barty’s brilliant year on the tennis tour has not shielded her from bouts of homesickness but the Australian is determined to keep working and stay world number one through the U.S. Open and beyond, coach Craig Tyzzer said. The 25-year-old stayed home in Queensland in 2020 as COVID-19 spread around the world but she returned to the tour this year to claim Wimbledon and four other titles. Now in New York warming up for the U.S. Open starting Monday, Barty will meet Vera Zvonareva in the first round, Reuters reports. With Australia’s strict quarantine rules quashing any…

Rome :  Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital on Thursday evening. “He had to be admitted for a thorough clinical check-up,” the source said, giving no further details, reports Reuters today. Berlusconi, 84, has been in and out of hospital since contracting coronavirus last September. He said at the time that it was “the most dangerous challenge” of his life. The four-times prime minister and billionaire businessman underwent major heart surgery in 2016 and has also survived prostate cancer. He was last hospitalised in May, when he spent five days at San Raffaele.

Nigeria : Gunmen in Nigeria have freed a number of pupils who were kidnapped from an Islamic school in May, according to their head teacher. Some 136 students from the school in Tegina, Niger state, were seized by gunmen demanding a ransom. School officials say 15 students escaped in June and a further six died while in captivity. Mass abductions for ransom have become increasingly common across Nigeria in recent months. Head teacher Abubakar Alhassan said he could not give an exact number of how many students had been freed, but “none of the pupils are in captivity”. Last month,…

U.S. Treasury yields rose slightly on Friday morning, ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s highly anticipated speech at the central bank’s Jackson Hole symposium. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note added less than a basis point, advancing to 1.346% at 4 a.m. ET. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond rose less than a basis point to 1.941%. Yields move inversely to prices and 1 basis point equals 0.01%.

China is not done with curbing the influence local internet services have assumed in the world’s largest populous market. Following a widening series of regulatory crackdowns in recent months, the nation on Friday issued draft guidelines on regulating the algorithms firms run to make recommendations to users the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) proposed forbidding companies from deploying algorithms that “encourage addiction or high consumption” and endanger national security or disrupt the public order. The services must abide by business ethics and principles of fairness and their algorithms must not be used to create fake user accounts or create other false impressions,…

Apple announced  it has reached a proposed settlement in a lawsuit filed against it by developers in the United States. The agreement, which is still pending court approval, includes a few changes, the biggest one being that developers will be able to share information on how to pay for purchases outside of their iOS app or the App Store—which means they can tell customers about payment options that aren’t subject to Apple commissions. The settlement also includes more pricing tiers and a new transparency report about the app review process. The class-action lawsuit was filed against Apple in 2019 by app developers Donald…