U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday, led by gains in Apple and Amazon, as investors judged the latest tit-for-tat tariffs between the United States and China as less damaging than expected.
(AFP) — Russians who refuse to take down online information that has been judged “false” by a court could be sentenced to up to a year in prison under a bill approved by MPs Tuesday in a key second reading.
Deputies in parliament’s lower house voted to approve the measure that would apply to individuals on social media as well as to those working for media groups.
Senators and President Vladimir Putin still have to sign off on the bill following a formal third reading in parliament.
Two women who dated Brett Kavanaugh during his high school and college years issued a joint statement in support of the judge, describing him as a "perfect gentleman" in the wake of a sexual misconduct allegation leveled by a California psychology professor.
Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus signed a letter in support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who claims she was sexually assaulted by President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh's while they were in high school.
Enlarge / Buying this innocuous-looking Overwatch loot box could be considered a form of gambling.
Thus far, the fight to regulate video game loot boxes has been a piecemeal effort moving forward in very different ways in different jurisdictions. Today, though, an international group of regulators from 15 European regulation bodies and Washington state in the US signed a declaration stating their increasing concern "with the risks being posed by the blurring of lines between gambling and other forms of digital entertainment such as video gaming."
The declaration identifies four specific areas of concern:
Loot boxes—In-game purchases that offer randomized rewards. Some loot boxes have already been ruled as illegal in the Netherlands and Belgium, and there have been some attempts to do the same from some US lawmakers.
Social casino gambling—Apps like Big Fish Casino in which users can optionally spend money on virtual gambling chips if they don't feel like waiting for the in-game currency to replenish. A US District court ruled Big Fish Casino constituted illegal gambling earlier this year, and there are multiple active lawsuits surrounding other such games.
"The use of gambling themed content within video games available to children."—In addition to the above, this would seemingly apply to games with poker or slot-machine-style minigames (or, uh, Casino Kid for the NES).
The declaration says that the types of games and services listed above have "similar characteristics to those that led our respective legal frameworks and authorities to provide for the regulation of online gambling." But the signatories don't commit to any specific actions against such games for now, beyond "working together to thoroughly analyze the characteristics of video games and social gaming." The declaration also notes that there are different frameworks for gambling regulation in different countries.
Enlarge / This picture, taken on September 14, 2018, shows the Spiez Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute for NBC-Protection (nuclear, biological, chemical), in Spiez, 40km from the capital Bern, as Swiss newspapers reported that two Russian agents suspected of trying to spy on the laboratory were arrested in the Netherlands and expelled early this year. At the time, Spiez was analyzing data related to poison gas attacks in Syria, as well as the March 4 attack using the nerve agent Novichok on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, Swiss newspapers reported. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP) (credit: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)
Last Friday, Dutch officials revealed that they had arrested and expelled two alleged Russian intelligence agents who were caught attempting to hack into the Spiez Laboratory, a Swiss national laboratory that is home to the Swiss Federal Institute for NBC (Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical) Protection.
The Spiez lab was testing two sets of samples that were of interest to the Russian government on behalf of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW): the "Novichok" agent used in an attack in the UK against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and samples from a poison gas attack in Syria. The OPCW's headquarters is in The Hague in the Netherlands, which may explain why the attack on the Spiez lab was launched from there.
The incident, reported both by Joep Dohmen of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and by Thomas Knellwolf and Titis Plattner of the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, occurred this spring. The circumstances of the arrests were not shared. An investigation carried out jointly by the two papers found that the pair were arrested as the result of a joint operation by multiple European intelligence services in Europe, including the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD). The Swiss intelligence service, the NDB, issued a statement confirming a "case of Russian spies discovered in The Hague and then expelled."
