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☆ A Russian pilot was detained by civilians in occupied Kherson. A Ukrainian city councilman released him — and now faces charges of treason.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A Kherson city councilman has been accused of treason for releasing a Russian pilot. The case highlights an issue facing Ukraine as it investigates accused Russian collaborators. Kherson, a southern port, was the first major Ukrainian city taken by Russian forces after the invasion in February. "They couldn't hand him over to Ukrainian forces — there were no Ukrainian forces in the city at that time. The case highlights a challenge facing Ukrainian authorities after Russian forces retreat.

☆ You may think Twitter was wrong to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story but it wasn't a violation of the First Amendment
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Twitter, as a private company and not the government, can choose what it does and does not publish. But whether or not the decision was wrong, it wasn't a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. "Twitter is not a state actor and the First Amendment applies only to state actors." So whether or not Twitter could violate the First Amendment, depends on whether or not it can be considered the government. "Both the state, the Trump White House, and the Biden team were asking Twitter, and Twitter was under no obligation to either oblige or refuse those requests," Kalir said.

☆ Brooklyn man claims landlord is trying to push him out of his $450 apartment with live chickens running in yard and green liquid seeping from the ceiling
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Toonkel said the landlord couldn't gain access to Roberts' apartment because of a "hoarding problem." He didn't specifically address the chickens near Roberts' apartment. Roberts' rent is regulated by New York City rent-stabilization laws, which generally cover buildings built between 1947 and 1974. Roberts told Legal Services NYC, an advocacy group working on his case, that he'd voiced concerns about the state of the building to previous owners. This is heartless," Roberts told Legal Services NYC.

☆ Ben Affleck says Netflix's 'assembly line' approach to making quality films is
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Dan Heching | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Ben Affleck is sounding off on how movies are being made in today’s age of Netflix and other streaming platforms, which offer an ever-expanding glut of content. “[Netflix’s head of original films] Scott Stuber is a really talented, smart guy who I really like…but it’s an impossible job,” he added. There aren’t enough – you just can’t do it.”Affleck acknowledged that “there’s (a) bigger audience for action movies than there is for small dramas. As seen in Variety, Artists Equity already has a first project in production – a yet-to-be-titled drama about the beginnings of Nike’s incredibly popular Air Jordan sneaker brand. Written and directed by Affleck, the film stars Damon as the executive who landed the endorsement deal for the shoe with Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan.

☆ Amazon plans to resume advertising on Twitter and spend about $100 million a year, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon will resume advertising on Twitter and spend around $100 million a year, Platformer reported. Platformer said the move would require "some security tweaks" to its ads platform. Apple has "fully resumed" advertising on Twitter, Elon Musk said on Saturday. According to her tweet, the online retail giant was waiting for "some security tweaks" to Twitter's ads platform before returning. They collectively spent $750 million on Twitter ads this year alone and accounted for almost $2 billion of the company's ad revenue since 2020.

The answer is simple, according to more than a dozen Washington insiders, FTX employees, and crypto industry observers who spoke with Insider. I don't think anyone believed that he was going to fund candidates who were, quote unquote, committed to ending pandemics who were also hostile to the crypto industry." Alex Wong/Getty ImagesRebuffed by the SEC, Bankman-Fried turned his attention to Congress. "It's not that he was welcoming regulation," says the senior figure in the crypto industry who attended meetings with Bankman-Fried. But while Bankman-Fried was busy wooing Washington, FTX was about to become Exhibit A in the case for more effective oversight of the crypto industry.

☆ Skyrocketing slurs, racism, and antisemitic content on Twitter may encourage domestic terrorists, report warns: 'Violence is inevitable'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tweets with slurs, antisemitic, and racist content have skyrocketed since Elon Musk's takeover. Federal officials have warned that Twitter posts will translate to real-world acts of violence. Musk claims the total number of impressions on tweets containing hate speech are down. The New York Times reported antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the first two weeks while accounts supporting ISIS came roaring back. Researchers have consistently found that online rhetoric feeds real-world behavior, with hate speech online being linked to increases in violence toward minorities, "including mass shootings, lynchings, and ethnic cleansing," according to the nonpartisan think tank Council for Foreign Relations.

☆ I visited the American Girl Doll Cafe in NYC and ate lunch with a few of the iconic toys. The experience was unforgettable — if a bit overpriced.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Ann Matica | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Only a few tables were occupied, which seemed expected for a Monday afternoon. Most of the diners were parents with their children, and I felt a little out of place being there as a 22-year-old, even though the American Girl Cafes have reportedly started to become a popular spot for influencers to visit. Ann Matica/InsiderSource: The New York Times

☆ Anna Sorokin says Sam Bankman-Fried's media apology tour is a scam: 'He's just trying to save himself'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Sam Bankman-Fried has been on a media apology tour following the collapse of his crypto firm. Convicted scammer Anna Sorokin (AKA Anna Delvey) thinks "he's just trying to save himself." 'He's just looking for pity'Through his media interviews, Bankman-Fried is trying to cultivate a more innocent image in the public eye, Sorokin speculated. Sorokin acknowledged that Bankman-Fried's narrative that he was blindsided, rather than willfully preying on FTX's customers, may be legitimate. "I don't know which one is worse — that he actually was not in control, or if he's trying to cover it up now.

☆ Elon Musk speaks out on 'Twitter Files' release about platform inner workings
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

During a two-hour long Twitter Spaces session, Musk said a second “Twitter Files” drop will again involve Taibbi, along with journalist Bari Weiss, but did not give an exact date for when that would be released. It showed employees on several Twitter teams debating over whether to restrict the article under the company’s hacked materials policy, weeks before the 2020 election. Musk also said Twitter should program and monetize native long audio and video posting. He is quoted as saying that some of the investment may have been sold before Twitter went private in October, but he wasn’t sure. Musk also said that Twitter will roll out its new account verifications within the next week, which had been halted.

☆ Crypto exchange Gemini trying to recover $900 million from crypto lender Genesis, Financial Times reports
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Dec 3 (Reuters) - Crypto broker Genesis and its parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) owe customers of the Winklevoss twins' crypto exchange Gemini $900 million, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. Crypto exchange Gemini is trying to recover the funds after Genesis was wrongfooted by last month’s failure of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto group, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. Venture capital company Digital Currency Group, which owns Genesis Trading and cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale, owes $575 million to Genesis' crypto lending arm, Digital Currency Chief Executive Barry Silbert told shareholders last month. Gemini, which runs a crypto lending product in partnership with Genesis, has now formed a creditors' committee to recoup the funds from Genesis and its parent DCG, the report added. Genesis Global Capital suspended customer redemptions in its lending business last month, citing the sudden failure of crypto exchange FTX.

Despite police, county executives and national pundits falsely labeling bail reform a disaster, in the few places like New York state that have tried it, bail reform has been a win for freedom. Bail reform has been a win for fiscal responsibility, saving taxpayers millions of dollars by avoiding the costs of unnecessary mass detention. Laura Gillen, a Democrat and fierce opponent of bail reform who lost her Long Island congressional race, took to Twitter to argue that bail reform was a reason Democrats lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats lost because they ran from the truth about bail reform, amplifying lies instead of championing what should have been their policy win. The truth about bail reform isn’t just a political game — it is a moral imperative.

☆ Twitter is now relying more on AI to identify harmful content, says its new trust and safety chief
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter's new trust and safety chief said it was relying more on AI to identify harmful content. Ella Irwin told Reuters Twitter favors restricting distribution rather than deleting certain content. Ella Irwin, the new head of trust and safety, is the first Twitter executive to give an interview since Elon Musk took over the company on October 27. "The biggest thing that's changed is the team is fully empowered to move fast and be as aggressive as possible," Irwin told the news agency. Irwin said that Twitter, in collaboration with cybersecurity group Ghost Data, took down about 44,000 accounts involved in child safety violations.

☆ Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna reached out to Twitter as it suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story to voice concerns about violating free speech and press freedom principles
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In October 2020, Twitter initially blocked users from sharing a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop. Rep. Ro Khanna sent Twitter concerns about the decision, according to materials published Friday. Less than a month before the 2020 election, the Post published a story that claimed to contain emails retrieved from a laptop that belonged to President Joe Biden's son Hunter. Giving an example, Khanna said if materials uncovering a war crime were hacked and obtained by The New York Times, the Times should be able to publish them. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan established that public figures suing for defamation must establish "actual malice."

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried was the poster boy for 'effective altruism.' Now, its followers are heartbroken and critics are questioning its 'weird' funding setup.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Sam Bankman-Fried was a proponent of effective altruism: earning as much as possible to give your wealth away. He had a huge influence on the effective-altruism movement, which counts Silicon Valley tech workers and Oxford University academics among its fans. 'Devastated'Bankman-Fried was the main funder of Future Fund, a charitable project run by the FTX Foundation. "We joined the Future Fund to support incredible people and projects," they said, "and this outcome is heartbreaking to us." Science groups that had received money from the Future Fund told the magazine Science in mid-November that they were unsure of their funding's future.

☆ Trump has just a handful of vocal 2024 supporters in Congress. We asked them why they back him over Ron DeSantis and others.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Trump has just a handful of open supporters of his 2024 presidential bid in Congress. We asked some of them why Trump was preferable to DeSantis, who's been heralded as a savvier alternative. DeSantis, who's increasingly caught the former president's ire amid speculation that the popular governor could mount his own 2024 campaign, is viewed as a savvier, less problematic alternative to the twice-impeached former president. I think DeSantis will run, I think Trump will run, I think you'll have two or three of my friends here in the Senate will run," he added. "DeSantis hasn't announced he's running," said Greene, who's offered praise for his performance as Florida governor.

Dec 2 (Reuters) - More than 1,000 union employees at the New York Times Co (NYT.N) have pledged to walk out if the news publisher does not agree to a "complete and equitable contract" by Dec. 8, according to a tweet by the union on Friday. "We will walk out and stop work for 24 hours, on Thursday, Dec. 8, if we do not have a deal for a complete and equitable contract by then," the letter read. The members of the union are also asking for remote work flexibility, among other demands. Earlier in March, a group of nearly 600 tech employees at the New York Times voted to unionize as the company faced claims it unlawfully interfered with labor organizing. read moreReporting by Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ The UFO Bubble Goes Pop
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Holman W. Jenkins | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Call it the buildup to a letdown, as the latest of the required intelligence reports to Congress on the UFO question undergoes a prolonged and likely angst-filled vetting before being delivered to the relevant committees. Its findings will be surprising only to those who imbibed previous official disinformation on so-called UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena. The most credible and widely trumpeted sightings by Navy pilots now are explained as illusions. Though Chinese surveillance drones do operate in areas where U.S. training flights occur, these are conventional drones, with no unusual capabilities. They aren’t the uncannily speedy, supernaturally maneuverable objects mentioned in previous accounts.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried Chucks the Crisis Communications Playbook
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Nat Ives | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

The interviews could be a case study in what not to do in a crisis, some communications executives said. “He’s basically breaking every rule that somebody in the crisis communications field would advise,” said Andrew Gilman, president and chief executive at CommCore Consulting Group, a public relations and communications firm. Asked at the DealBook conference whether his lawyers thought it was wise for him to be speaking, Mr. Bankman-Fried said no. If Mr. Bankman-Fried is determined to say something now, Mr. Gilman said he would have advised putting a statement online and declining to take questions yet. But Mr. Sitrick said he couldn’t fully gauge the results of the mini-media tour because he didn’t know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s goals.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried said it's 'not who I am' to shun the press. But legal experts say his recent interviews could come back to haunt him.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In new media appearances, Sam Bankman-Fried openly mused about his culpability in FTX's crash. Bankman-Fried told Sorkin at one point that "I didn't knowingly commingle funds," between FTX and his other company, the hedge fund Alameda Research. "Like, I wasn't spending any time or effort trying to manage risk on FTX," he told the "Good Morning America" anchor. Greg Joseph and Stanford Law professor David Mills, who Semafor reported last month represent Bankman-Fried, didn't respond to Insider's email for comment Thursday evening. Representatives for FTX did not respond to a request for comment, and Bankman-Fried did not respond to a Twitter DM seeking comment.

☆ The New York Times News Quiz, December 2, 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The New York Times News Quiz, December 2, 2022Did you follow the news this week? Take our quiz to see how well you stack up with other Times readers.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried says figuring out how to pay his lawyers is a 'concern' after his fortune fell to 'close to nothing'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Sam Bankman-Fried says he's "trying to figure out" how to pay his lawyers, calling it a "concern." After FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried's fortune plummeted from around $16 billion to "close to nothing." After FTX collapsed in November, Bankman-Fried's fortune plummeted from $16 billion to $1 billion, with Bloomberg putting the value of both FTX and sister company Alameda at just $1. When asked by Chet Long, chief security officer at International Blockchain Consulting, how he was paying his lawyers, Bankman-Fried said: "That's something I'm trying to figure out right now." In response to a question about whether he had the lawyers on retainer, Bankman-Fried said: "I can't go into the details."

☆ The US Justice Department wants the fraud allegations against FTX to be investigated
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

US Justice Department is pushing for an independent examiner to look into allegations of fraud against FTX. Authorities were already investigating FTX, and are now seeking a probe of alleged wrongdoing that led to its crash. But ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has tried to deflect those accusations, stating he "didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone." The Justice Department and US regulators were already probing Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire before FTX filed for bankruptcy November 11. But Bankman-Fried has tried to deflect allegations of fraud, saying he wasn't aware of what was going on at his companies.

The Georgia voters who delivered Mr. Kemp a comfortable victory over his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, in November did not show the same enthusiasm for Mr. Walker. Neither Mr. Walker nor Mr. Warnock cleared the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright, sending voters to the polls again for a runoff on Tuesday. The outcome of Tuesday’s runoff with Mr. Walker, who was pressed to run by Mr. Trump, will shed more light on Mr. Trump’s influence in Georgia. Mr. Walker has spent more time campaigning in Atlanta’s suburbs and has embraced Mr. Kemp as a surrogate. Mr. Warnock has sought to portray Mr. Walker as unfit for office and as an ally of Mr. Trump.

☆ China's sophisticated censorship engine is being pushed to 'its max' as it struggles to keep protest videos off the internet, experts say
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

China is struggling to censor videos of protests against the country's zero-COVID policy, experts say. The country's censorship apparatus has been overwhelmed by the high volume of protest content. Experts told the Times that the high volume of videos has overwhelmed China's censorship software and teams of human censors. Protesters in Chengdu were seen shouting "Step down, Xi Jinping"and "Opposition to dictatorship," according to videos reviewed by CNN. Some internet users are reportedly evading content censorship by flipping videos on their side, adding filters, and recording videos of videos to confuse the censorship algorithms, reported the Times.

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