Social Media

Chinese-owned video streaming app TikTok says it will offer text-only posts as competition between social media giants heats up. The platform says the new feature gives users "another way to express themselves". Earlier this month, TikTok launched a new music streaming service to rival platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. And on Monday, Elon Musk's Twitter ditched its famous blue bird logo and switched to a black and white X. TikTok users will now be offered three options on the app - whether to post photos, videos or text. They will also be able to customise posts by adding sound, location or Duets, which are video reactions to posts by other TikTok users. "These features make it so your text posts are just as dynamic and interactive as any video or photo post," TikTok said. Is Musk right to ditch the Twitter logo? Twitter rebranded as X as blue bird logo killed off TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, recently launched a new music streaming service, TikTok Music, in Brazil and Indonesia. FULL STORY

Do you believe the government is hiding something? What about if we asked if you think the government is hiding something about UFOs? "I believe there is something else out there," said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., at a recent press conference. "Dadgumit, whatever the truth may be, we're done with the cover-up." Burchett leads the House’s second big hearing on UFOs in 15 months Wednesday. GOVERNMENT ‘100%’ COVERING UP UFO INFORMATION: REP. TIM BURCHETT Burchett certainly falls into the category of believing the government is hiding something. He says his constituents do, too. "I’m stopped every weekend back in Knoxville," said Burchett. "People will stop me and tell me about their experiences (with UFOs). Decorated veterans. Why would they risk their reputations and careers over something that they’re lying about?" Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is an Air Force veteran who aligns with Burchett when it comes to UFOs. "If we continue to get stonewalled, if we smell that they’re giving us a bunch of BS, we are going to do the field hearings directly at those locations," said Luna of the military. "Full transparency really is what we need in this situation." Toss Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., into the camp of those who are skeptical about what the government is saying about UFOs – or UAPs as they’re sometimes called. That’s short for unidentified aerial phenomena. FULL STORY & VIDEO

Special counsel Jack Smith’s office has asked former US officials about a February 2020 Oval Office meeting where then-President Donald Trump praised improvements to the security of US elections, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. In the meeting with senior US officials and White House staff, Trump touted his administration’s work to expand the use of paper ballots and support security audits of vote tallies. Trump was so encouraged by federal efforts to protect election systems that he suggested the FBI and Department of Homeland Security hold a press conference to take credit for the work, four people familiar with the meeting told CNN. Those details offer a stark contrast to the voter-fraud conspiracy theories Trump began spreading publicly just weeks later and continued to use to question the 2020 election results. Smith’s office has in recent months interviewed multiple former US officials with knowledge of the February 2020 Oval Office briefing, sources said, though not everyone who attended the meeting and has talked to the special counsel was asked about it. In their questions to at least one of those former officials, investigators were interested in how Trump reacted to information from his advisers that US election systems were secure, and whether Trump was well informed on the topic, one of the sources said. FULL STORY

Former President Trump on Monday criticized Senate Republican leaders for not being as critical of President Biden as House Republicans have been. GOP House members have made a concerted effort to paint Biden and the Department of Justice as corrupt, using the DOJ prosecution of Hunter Biden for ammunition. They argue Hunter Biden received too lenient a sentence, among other things. There have been staunch critics of both Bidens in the Senate GOP, as well, but the Senate GOP’s leadership tends to be much more muted than the House on the issue. “Joe Biden is the most corrupt President in the history of the United States, which is being undeniably proven in the House of Representatives every single day,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday. “But with all of these horrible revelations and facts, why hasn’t Republican ‘leadership’ in the Senate spoken up and rebuked Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats, Fascists, and Marxists for their criminal acts against our Country, some of them against me. How long does America have to wait for the Senate to ACT?” Trump added. FULL STORY

Israeli MPs have passed into law a highly controversial bill despite mass protests which aimed to thwart it. The law removes the power of the Supreme Court to overrule government actions it considers unreasonable. It is the first to be approved in a series of bitterly contested reforms aimed at curbing the power of courts. The planned reforms have triggered some of the biggest protests in Israel's history, with opponents warning they imperil Israel as a democracy. The government argues that the measures are necessary to correct an imbalance in power which has seen the courts increasingly intervene in political decisions in recent decades. The so-called "reasonableness" bill was approved by 64 votes to 0, after the opposition boycotted the final vote. In remarks to the Knesset (parliament), opposition leader Yair Lapid called the step "a takeover by an extreme minority over the Israeli majority". But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted the court would remain independent. He said the bill was necessary for the government to "carry out policy in line with the decision of the majority of the citizens of the country". FULL STORY

A heatwave baking the US Southwest for weeks is set to expand into central and eastern regions. Beginning in the Midwest, the hot weather will extend east as far as the southern tip of Florida by Wednesday, say meteorologists. Temperature records were surpassed in several major cities over the weekend, and some 59 million Americans began Monday under extreme heat advisories. July is now expected to be the Earth's hottest month since records began. On Sunday, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, extended its streak of temperatures above 43C (110F) into a 24th day, well past the previous record of 18 days set in 1974. It is on course to be the first major US city to average over 100F (38C) for an entire month, according to NOAA statistics and a Washington Post analysis. At least 18 heat-related deaths have occurred in surrounding Maricopa County since April, with 69 more deaths under investigation. Is climate change causing heatwaves and wildfires? Millions under smoke advisory due to Canada fires FULL STORY

When Jean-Pierre Dube saw the news that billionaire Elon Musk was scrapping Twitter's blue bird logo in favour of an Art Deco-style black and white X, the marketing professor thought it was a joke. "Why take a recognised brand, with a lot of brand capital around it and then completely throw it away and start from scratch?" said Prof Dube, who teaches at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. "In the short-term, it seems weird." But in the long term, could it work? Mr Musk's takeover of Twitter last year has been punishing for the social media platform. Advertising revenue has dropped by half, Mr Musk said this month, as big brands pulled back, wary of changes he has made, including how the firm handles verified accounts and moderates content. Abrupt layoffs and unpaid bills have also led to bad press and lawsuits. Estimates by Fidelity, which has a stake in the company, suggest it is now worth just a third of the $44bn ($34.3bn) that Mr Musk paid for Twitter in October. FULL STORY

The number of modern slavery cases reported within the UK care industry has more than doubled in the past year. There were 109 potential victims, exploited for personal or financial gain, between January and March - twice as many as the same period in 2022. BBC File on 4 obtained the figures from the government-approved anti-slavery helpline, run by charity Unseen. Investigators trying to protect workers from being exploited say the care industry is now a "top priority". The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) - whose role is to protect workers from labour exploitation across the UK - told us it had more than 300 ongoing care sector investigations. Unseen says the rise in calls about the care sector in the past 12 months is because the government has made it easier for overseas social care staff to work in the UK post-Brexit - and fill thousands of job vacancies. As the supply chain gets bigger, there's more chance for exploitation - says the charity. In the year to March, the government had issued 102,000 skilled worker, health and care visas to foreign workers - that's up 171% on the previous year. In a statement, it told File on 4 that more than £17.8m had been spent policing modern slavery since 2016. It's very rare to hear from a victim of modern slavery in person, but one woman who came to the UK on a work visa - and was forced to work gruelling hours as a carer - has told us her story. FULL STORY

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Russian drones have attacked Ukrainian ports on the River Danube, destroying grain storage infrastructure, local officials say. The facilities are just across the river from Nato-member Romania. The Danube is a key export route for Kyiv since Russia pulled out of a deal allowing Ukraine to ship wheat, corn and other products via the Black Sea. A grain depot was also destroyed in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, which has come under almost nightly attack. Officials say more than 60,000 tonnes of grain have been destroyed in the past week. Global markets have seen the price of grain rise by 8% within a day of Russia's pullout from the grain deal, on 17 July. The collapse of the deal also means that Russia has resumed targeting of port locations in Ukraine which had been suspended during the deal. Odesa head Oleh Kiper, whose region also covers the Danube ports of Reni and Izmail, said in his Telegram channel that Russia had attacked the infrastructure there for four hours with Iranian-made drones. He said a grain hangar and tanks for storage were destroyed. Other local officials say three warehouses were bombed. FULL STORY

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Top Gun: Top Gun: Maverick and the new Mission: Impossible share the same message: that Tom Cruise, and Tom Cruise alone, is the last line of defence against the AI invasion. At a time like this, when a sudden panic over the profitability of digitised entertainment has seen streaming services slash and burn their own content while Hollywood’s writers remain on strike, Cruise has cunningly positioned himself as the idealistic (and no doubt patriotic) alternative. He is all that is human in the face of a cold and robotic future. Pure muscle and sweat. In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is the only man on Earth capable of defeating a seemingly sentient, AI-powered virus that possesses the ability to infiltrate any top-secret infrastructure it sets its sights on, like, say, the CIA or the World Bank. Finally, the super spy’s greatest asset – the limitless pool of technology that has, over the course of six earlier films, allowed him to wear other people’s faces as masks and scale the Burj Khalifa – has turned against him. Dead Reckoning can, admittedly, feel a little too immaculate and calculated when held up against the more lofty, idea-driven blockbusters of our age (say, a Dune or an Across the Spider-Verse). But any simplicity here is outweighed by the sheer force of Cruise’s brand. FULL REVIEW

Feature is not available in the UK and EU, where regulators have shown concern about company’s data gathering practices OpenAI has launched new “custom instructions” for ChatGPT, aimed at letting the system know who you are and what you want. The tool allows users to “share anything you’d like ChatGPT to consider in its response”, the company said. That might mean always starting conversations with the chatbot being aware that you are a teacher of young children, for instance, so that it can word its responses accordingly. Or a user might set an instruction that they are a computer programmer in a specific language, so that it can know how to format its responses. They can also be more specific instructions to the chatbot itself. Users might opt to tell it what tone to use in its responses, for instance, or to keep to a word limit. The new tool comes with a range of warnings about the way that the data itself is used. Those instructions might be shared with the developers of any plug-ins, for instance, and it will also be used gathered by OpenAI. FULL ARTICLE

Apple’s upcoming iPhone 15 Pro could be delayed or in short supply, rumours are increasingly suggesting. The phone might not arrive until October – and even then could be hit by stock shortages, according to a run of leaks. The potential shortage is at least in part the result of issues with making the new screens used in the premium, Pro and larger Pro Max models, according to a new report from The Information. Apple has been working to shrink the bezel around the display, and the new manufacturing process has made it harder to make the new device, it reported. Even if the phone does arrive on time, it is likely to be hit by stock shortages, the same report suggested. The manufacturing issues come at the point when the display is attached to the metal shell of the phone, but the process is failing in some cases. Apple is tweaking the design so that it can be more efficiently made, and can also rely on other manufacturers to build the phone. FULL STORY

Researchers have come up with a new way to generate electricity with solar panel technology by harvesting the energy produced by raindrops. The method, proposed by a team from Tsinghua University in China, involves a device called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that creates electrification from liquid-solid contact. These are typically used to harvest energy from waves, as droplet-based TENGs (D-TENGs) have previously faced technical limitations that prevented them from working at any significant scale. By using solar panel bridge arrays, the researchers discovered such barriers could be overcome “Referring to the design of solar panels in which multiple solar power generation units are connected in parallel to supply the load, we are proposing a simple and effective method for raindrop harvesting,” said Professor Zong Li, who led the research. “The peak power output of the bridge array generators is nearly five times higher than that of the conventional large-area raindrop energy harvesting. The results of this study will provide a feasible scheme for large-area raindrop energy harvesting.” FULL ARTICLE

Former Vice President Mike Pence, a Republican presidential contender, said Sunday that Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, were “reckless” but that he’s “not yet convinced” they were crimes. “While his words were reckless, based on what I know, I am not yet convinced that they were criminal,” Pence said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Trump said last week that special counsel Jack Smith notified him in a letter that he is the target of an investigation by a Washington-based grand jury examining the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which he said effectively means he will be indicted for a third time. The letter mentions three federal statutes related to the deprivation of rights, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and tampering with a witness, two attorneys with direct knowledge of the document have said. “I hope it does not come to that,” Pence said, arguing that it should be left up to the American people to judge Trump’s conduct around Jan. 6" FULL STORY

GOP presidential candidates have started to go after the president for his lack of a relationship with one of Hunter Biden’s daughters. President Joe Biden’s family story has long been one of his greatest strengths politically. Republicans are starting to think they can turn it into a liability. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has had no shortage of issues on which he’s attacked Biden — immigration, the military or “woke” policies. But speaking to a group of Republicans about parental rights in Tennessee last weekend, he made it more personal. “Why don’t you spend some time with your granddaughter in Arkansas, or at least recognize her existence before you start worrying about our kids?” DeSantis said. He also tweeted a jab at Biden on the issue on Friday. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley floated this attack on Thursday as well when she talked about her call for mental competency tests of presidents and quipped that they should include a question about “how many grandchildren you have.” FULL STORY

Twitter owner Elon Musk has said he wants to get rid of the Twitter bird logo, and replace it with an "X". However, Mr Musk also has a history of making statements that fail to happen or are not serious. Mr Musk, who has changed the name of the business to X Corp, said the replacement "should have been done a long time ago". According to reports, the billionaire wants to create a "super app" called "X" which is similar to China's WeChat. He said on Sunday he was looking to change Twitter's logo, tweeting: "And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds." He then said that an interim logo would go live later the same day. Mr Musk posted an image of a flickering "X" on Twitter, and later in a Twitter Spaces audio chat, replied "Yes" when asked if the Twitter logo will change, adding that "it should have been done a long time ago". FULL STORY

The Ukraine Grain Deal. 22 July 2022 - 17 July 2023. A short life, with its flaws, but the only diplomatic light in the darkness of Russia's invasion. It had allowed Ukraine to export its grain to the world through the Black Sea. A third less than normal, but still 33 million tonnes. However, in recent months, its health had deteriorated. Russia was accused of slowing the route with naval blockades and long inspections, and the deal finally succumbed. Last week saw Moscow's official withdrawal. Russia then launched a wave of missile strikes on ports it once promised to leave alone. EXPLAINED: What was the Ukraine grain deal? One site destroyed was a grain terminal owned by one of Ukraine's biggest producers, Kernel. Officials say more than 60,000 tonnes of grain has been destroyed in the past week. "We stopped our exports for the first two to three months of the war," explains Yevhen Osypov, Kernel's CEO. FULL STORY

Corfu has become the latest Greek island to issue an evacuation order, as the country grapples with wildfires. Photos uploaded to social media show flames engulfing Corfu. A fire broke out on the northern part of the island which is popular with British tourists. It comes after some 19,000 people were evacuated on the island of Rhodes, which has also been hit by fires. Many were forced to flee their hotels as the flames continued to spread from the centre of the Greek island. Greece has been grappling with searing heat, with temperatures exceeding 40C across the country, and fires have blazed for nearly a week in some areas. A national holiday that had been planned for Monday has been cancelled "in view of the extraordinary conditions prevailing in the country due to the fires", the Greek presidency said. Late on Sunday evening Greece's Emergency Communications Service published evacuation orders for a number of areas of Corfu. People in the areas of Santa, Megoula, Porta, Palia, Perithia and Sinies on the island have been told to evacuate. Boats in the area had been dispatched to evacuate residents by sea, a government official said. FULL STORY

Tensions between Russia and Poland are heating up after Poland moved troops near its border with Belarus amid concerns about the Wagner Group's presence in the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin exiled the Wagner Group, a paramilitary unit, to Belarus following an attempted mutiny by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin against Moscow's military leadership last month, fueling concerns about stability across Eastern Europe. Poland, which shares a strategically critical northeastern border with Belarus, transferred 1,000 troops near its border earlier this month due to these concerns as a Russian lawmaker suggested the Wagner Group could attempt to seize the Suwalki Gap and cut off the Baltic states from the rest of Europe.

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China has sent nearly 40 warplanes toward Taiwan just days before the island plans to hold military exercises to practise defending itself from a potential invasion. Taiwan is set to conduct annual military exercises next week, including combat readiness drills, and to prepare its civilians for evacuations in the case of a possible air raid. The evacuation exercise has drawn attention because it represents a significant departure from previous years – while normally people are just asked to go indoors for 30 minutes while the air raid sirens sound, this week police will escort anyone out on the street at the time of the drill to their nearest bomb shelter. The drills are also covering a much greater sample of the population than previously, covering districts that account for a combined three million of Taiwan’s 23 million people, according to the Financial Times. FULL STORY

Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took another swipe at former President Trump on Friday, claiming he’s a “con artist” amid his legal woes. The Trump campaign’s financial disclosures for the first quarter revealed that just over half of the money he raised for his 2024 bid has been used to pay legal fees, the Washington Post reported. Christie called the move “ridiculous,” and claimed the former president’s supporters were likely left in the dark. “You really need to have people who are donating $10, $20, $50 to your campaign, pay for your high priced lawyers for indictments that you’ve all put on yourself by paying off a porn star by holding back classified documents, despite the fact that they’ve been asked for voluntarily for 18 months?” Christie said in an interview on CNN. “I mean, this is ridiculous. And he is using these people in a way that I don’t think that they completely know about.” “People are giving to him and because they think it’s going to help him get reelected president when all he’s doing is grifting off these people,” he continued. “He is a con artist, who is conning them out of their money, pretending he wants to be their president. Well, what he wants is a free ride for the legal defense he’s getting for the criminal charges he personally faces.” FULL STORY