While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 7
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Twitter owner Elon Musk has threatened to sue Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta over its new rival messaging app, Threads.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Musk threatens lawsuit as Twitter rival Threads takes off
Twitter threatened to sue Meta just hours after the Instagram parent company launched Threads, an app it hopes will beat out the struggling site owned by Elon Musk.
In a letter to Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, published by online news outlet Semafor on Thursday, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro accused the company of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
The letter accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.”
Threads is the biggest challenger yet to Musk-owned Twitter, which has seen a series of potential competitors emerge but not yet replace one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, despite its struggles.
Ex-US officials held ‘unsanctioned’ meetings with Russians
President Joe Biden’s administration did not sanction or support secret meetings that former top US national security officials held with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russians on potential talks to end the war in Ukraine, the White House and State Department said on Thursday.
NBC News reported that the former US officials met Mr Lavrov in New York in April, joined by Mr Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and two former White House aides.
It was not clear how frequently the group, which included former Pentagon officials, held discussions with other prominent Russians thought to be close to the Kremlin, NBC News reported.
Zelensky urges Nato summit to send membership ‘clear signal’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Nato leaders to take concrete steps towards Ukrainian membership at a summit next week, and he received support during a visit to Prague from the Czech president, who backed Kyiv’s bid to join the alliance.
He said his country, engaged in the 17th month of a war against Russian invaders, needed much more than the general statement of more than 10 years’ standing that the door to Nato was merely “open”.
Ukraine is seeking a clear indication from Nato at a July 11-12 summit in Vilnius that it can join the military alliance when the war ends.
Passenger endures 7-hour flight with smell of rotting blood
For seven hours, a journalist on an Air France flight had to endure the smell of rotting blood mixed with traces of faeces after the airline’s crew failed to thoroughly clean up when a passenger on a previous flight suffered a haemorrhage.
Mr Habib Battah is now talking to his lawyers to make Air France account for what he said was an “egregious” oversight.
Mr Battah was flying from Paris to Toronto on June 30 with his wife Anna and their two cats when he noticed an awful smell coming from the footwell in front of their seats. The cats were in separate carriers that were tucked into the footwell.
World No. 4 Ruud dumped out of Wimbledon by wild card
World number four Casper Ruud crashed out in the second round of Wimbledon on Thursday at the hands of British wildcard Liam Broady.
Broady held his nerve when trailing two sets to one against the French Open finalist, rallying to win the Centre Court clash 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-0.
Norway’s Ruud, who has been runner-up at Roland Garros in the past two years, was also the beaten finalist at the US Open last year.
