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European lawmakers have agreed on new rules which they hope will curb the dominance of Big Tech companies.

Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), giants such as Google and Apple will be forced to open up their services and platforms to other businesses.

Major technology firms have long faced criticism that they use their market dominance to squeeze out competition.

“What we want is simple: fair markets…in digital,” said EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.

“Large gatekeeper platforms have prevented businesses and consumers from the benefit of competitive digital markets,” she said.

The announcement is the biggest regulatory move yet from the EU to act against what it defines as “anti-trust” or anti-competitive behaviour from mainly US technology businesses.

“The agreement ushers in a new era of tech regulation worldwide,” said German MEP Andreas Schwab, who led the negotiations for the European Parliament.

Under the proposed Digital Markets Act, Apple would be forced to open up its App Store to third-party payment options instead of users being forced to use Apple’s own payment system.

It is something Apple has been fighting in the US during a high-profile court battle with Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite.

Google will be asked to offer people who use smartphones which run on the company’s Android operating system alternatives to its search engine, the Google Maps app or its Chrome browser.

Apple would also be forced to loosen its grip on the iPhone, with users allowed to uninstall its Safari web browser and other company-imposed apps that users cannot currently delete.

The targets of the law include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, the App Store, Google Play and many other services belonging to large tech firms.

The EU wants to give users more choice over how people send messages. The new rules would require that technology make their messaging services interoperable with smaller competitors.

However, Apple said it was “concerned that some provisions of the DMA will create unnecessary privacy and security vulnerabilities for our users”.

Meanwhile, Google said: “While we support many of the DMA’s ambitions around consumer choice and interoperability, we’re worried that some of these rules could reduce innovation and the choice available to Europeans.”

The law will only affect companies with a value of more than €75bn (£63bn), annual sales of €7.5bn and at least 45 million monthly users.

Legislation was originally proposed by Ms Vestager just over a year ago in reaction to what she felt was monopolistic behaviour from Big Tech. She was known to be frustrated by how mainly large, US tech companies had managed to delay and even thwart EU attempts to fine them.

“The gatekeepers – they now have to take responsibility,” Ms Vestager said on Thursday.

Once implemented, the law will give Brussels unprecedented authority in regulating major tech companies.

Many major US tech companies have huge lobbying operations in Washington, and have been emphasising that such laws punish successful American companies.

However many US politicians are also keen to clip the wings of Big Tech, with bills currently going through Congress that would also rein in their power.

With the deal reached by negotiators, the DMA now faces final votes in the European Parliament as well as by ministers from the EU’s 27 member states.

Hundreds of organisations that rely on Okta to provide access to their networks may have been affected by a cyber-attack on the company.

Okta said the “worst case” was 366 of its clients had been affected and their “data may have been viewed or acted upon” – its shares fell 9% on the news.

It says it has more than 15,000 clients – from big companies, including FedEx, to smaller organisations, such as Thanet District Council, in Kent.

Cyber-gang Lapsus$ is behind the hack.

The ransomware group “is a South American threat actor that has recently been linked to cyber-attacks on some high-profile targets”, according to Ekram Ahmed, of cyber-security company Checkpoint .

“The cyber-gang is known for extortion, threatening the release of sensitive information, if demands by its victims are not made” he said.

The group has previously claimed to have broken into some high-profile companies, including Microsoft.

In a blog post, Microsoft said Lapsus$ had gained only limited access, after compromising a single account, but no customer code or data was involved.

Concern mounted
Okta initially said the attack, in January, involved a third-party contractor, a “sub-processor”, and “the matter was investigated and contained”.

“There is no evidence of ongoing malicious activity beyond the activity detected in January,” it said.

But as concern mounted, Okta published a series of updated blog posts providing more detail.

Chief security officer David Bradbury revealed the hackers had accessed the computer of a customer-support engineer working for the sub-processor, over a five-day period in mid-January.

The attack had been “analogous to walking away from your computer at a coffee shop, whereby a stranger has – virtually, in this case – sat down at your machine and is using the mouse and keyboard”, he said.

But the engineer’s computer had not provided “god-like access”, the hackers had been constrained in what they could do, Okta itself had not been breached and remained fully operational.

“There are no corrective actions that need to be taken by our customers,” Mr Bradbury added.

‘Extreme vigilance’
The contractor employing the engineer, Sykes, part of the Sitel Group, said it was “confident there is no longer a security risk”.

But in collaboration with external cyber-security experts, it would “continue to investigate and assess potential security risks to both our infrastructure and to the brands we support around the globe”.

Lapsus$ said, in online posts, it had not stolen “any databases from Okta” and was focused only on its customers.

None of Okta’s clients has reported any issues – but Mr Ahmed urged “extreme vigilance and cyber-safety practices”.

“The full extent of the cyber-gang’s resources should reveal itself in the coming days,” he added.

Multiple applications
One of Okta’s clients, Cloudflare, said, in a blog post, it did not believe it had been compromised.

FedEx told the Reuters news agency it had “no indication that our environment has been accessed or compromised”.

Thanet, which uses Okta to simplify the way staff manage and sign on to multiple applications, told BBC News the hack “has not compromised the security of the council’s data” but it “will continue to monitor the situation”.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre said it had “not seen any evidence of impact in the UK”.

A number of Apple services experienced outages on Monday, Apple’s support page has confirmed.

The areas affected included the App Store, iMessage, Maps, Apple Arcade, the iTunes store, podcasts and Apple TV+.

Apple’s system status page now shows that all of its services are back up and running.

Some of Apple’s network was down for three hours.

A number of iCloud services had been affected, including calendar and mail.

Apple confirmed to the BBC its systems had faced outages but has not commented on the reason for the issue.

According to outage tracking website Downdetector.com, more than 4,000 users had reported issues with accessing Apple Music, while nearly 4,000 reported problems with iCloud.

Apple iMessage was also down for a short period.

People aged 75 and over, residents in care homes and those with weakened immune systems can now book an extra booster jab against Covid in England.

It comes as official figures show infection rates are rising in all age groups – including the over-70s.

The roll out follows recommendations from the UK’s vaccine advisors who say additional jabs will help boost protection for the most vulnerable.

Spring boosters are already being rolled out in Wales and Scotland.

A wider booster programme – involving more people – is expected this autumn.

While vaccines have been shown to provide good protection against severe disease, protection wanes over time.

And as many of the oldest received their last jab in autumn 2021, their immunity may now be declining, experts say.

Dr Nikki Kanani, GP and deputy lead for the NHS’s vaccination programme, urged everyone eligible to book their boosters as soon as possible.

She said: “With infections rising this is a really important opportunity for people who are eligible to come forward and get booked and get their spring booster.”

Adults eligible for the jab will be offered the Moderna or Pfizer/BionNTech vaccine
Young people aged 12 to 18 will be offered the Pfizer/BioNTech jab
The extra jabs will be given around six months after the last dose of vaccine.

Across the UK more than two-thirds of people aged over 12 have had two Covid vaccines plus a single booster jab.

A first booster dose is currently available for everyone aged 16 and over, and at-risk children aged 12 to 15.

But up until now only people with severely weakened immune systems had been eligible for a fourth dose – three doses plus a booster.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization has suggested further boosters will be offered to a wider group of people in autumn.

Experts believe winter is likely to be the season when the threat from Covid is greatest – for individuals, the NHS and care homes.

Olena Kurilo became the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bloodied and bandaged, the 53-year-old teacher said she couldn’t believe what had happened to her and her town of Chuhuiv.

Her picture was on the front pages of newspapers across the world.

Over the next few days, Russia’s government social media accounts began to post a video claiming that Olena hadn’t been injured at all.

“Great photos by the way, they were all over the news,” the Russian narrator says.

The video then claims Olena was photographed two days later, uninjured.

“A couple of days later, good for her, not a scratch.”

This claim is baseless, the BBC has verified the photo as genuine, as has Reuters. Wild conspiracy theories like these are not uncommon on social media.

But what makes this conspiracy theory so odd is that it was shared by an official Russian government Twitter account – the Russian Mission in Geneva. Two weeks on, the tweet is still live.

The Russian Government has a huge network of official Twitter accounts – the BBC found more than 100 of them. They range from accounts that represent foreign missions or embassies, with a few thousand followers, to accounts with more than a million followers. President Putin has his own account. Many of the accounts are labelled as Russian Government organisations by Twitter.

Yet, while many of these accounts have spread disinformation, Twitter deals with them differently to Russian state media – like RT or Sputnik.

On 28 February, Twitter announced it would prevent tweets from Russian state-affiliated media outlets from being eligible for “amplification” – meaning they wouldn’t be recommended in the Home timeline, notifications, and other places on Twitter. But Twitter has confirmed to the BBC that this policy does not include Russian government accounts.

Tim Graham, a social media analyst at QUT Digital Media Research Centre in Australia, describes this as a “loophole” in Twitter’s moderation policies which lets the Russian government pump out misinformation.

“It’s certainly a blind spot in Twitter’s defences against disinformation,” he says.

Intrigued by this spider web of Russian government accounts, Mr Graham – who specialises in analysing coordinated activity on social media – decided to investigate further. He analysed 75 Russian government Twitter profiles which, in total, have more than 7 million followers. The accounts have received 30 million likes, been retweeted 36 million times and been replied to 4 million times.

He looked at how many times each Twitter account retweeted one of the other 74 profiles within an hour. He discovered that the Kremlin’s network of Twitter accounts work together to retweet and drive up traffic. This practice is sometimes called “astroturfing” – when the owner of several accounts uses the profiles they control to retweet content and amplify reach.

“It’s a coordinated retweet network,” Mr Graham says.

“If these accounts weren’t retweeting stuff at the same time, the network would just be a bunch of disconnected dots. So what the network shows, very clearly, is that there’s a very dense amount of connections to the way these accounts are retweeting.

“They are using this as an engine to drive their preferred narrative onto Twitter, and they’re getting away with it,” he says.

Coordinated activity, using multiple accounts, is against Twitter’s rules.

“You can’t artificially amplify conversations through the use of multiple accounts,” Twitter’s rules state.

But Twitter doesn’t treat all accounts equally. Tweets from government and elected officials can be given more leeway when it comes to moderation. The company says on its website that there may be a public interest in seeing tweets that would otherwise violate its rules.

However, the company doesn’t treat official accounts differently when it comes to coordinated behaviour – there is no exemption.

New tools will allow parents to stop teenagers accessing inappropriate games and experiences via Meta’s virtual reality (VR) headset.

Questions have been raised about whether it was doing enough to protect children from inappropriate content.

Meta-owned Instagram has also rolled out further parental controls, the plans for which were revealed last year.

It comes as the UK government legislates to protect children online.

Strip clubs
The Quest headset’s terms of service say users should be over 13.

“Providing age-appropriate and safe experiences for teens while also empowering them to explore in VR is a balancing act”, Oculus, the Meta-owned company that makes the Quest, blogged.

BBC News has previously reported a researcher posing as a teenager was able to access virtual strip clubs in a popular VR app – not made by Meta- using a Quest headset.

Now, Oculus is rolling out tools to:

allow parents to lock specific apps directly from VR to stop teenagers accessing them
block teenagers from downloading or purchasing age-inappropriate apps in the Quest Store
release a “Parent Dashboard”, accessible from the Oculus mobile app, to – if both adult and teenager agree – allow parents to link to their child’s account
Using the dashboard, parents will be able to:

view all the apps their child owns
be notified when their child makes a purchase in VR
know how much time their child is spending in VR
view their child’s list of Oculus Friends
The new controls in Instagram and VR are part of what Meta calls its “Family Center”.

Launching in the US, and then globally in the coming months, these will let parents:

see how much time their teenager spends on Instagram
set the hours during which their child can use the app
receive updates on what accounts they follow and are followed by
Initially, teenagers themselves will have to initiate these controls.

Later, parents will be able to do so – with their child’s consent.

US President Joe Biden has labelled Russian leader Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a move likely to escalate diplomatic tensions even further.

Mr Biden delivered the remark off-the-cuff in response to a reporter’s question at the White House.

It is the first time he has used such language to condemn President Putin, and the White House later said he was “speaking from his heart”.

The Kremlin, however, said it was “unforgiveable rhetoric”.

“We believe such rhetoric to be unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state, whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news agency Tass.

The exchange in Washington happened Wednesday when a reporter asked the US president: “Mr President, after everything we have seen, are you ready to call Putin a war criminal?”

The President replied “no” before being challenged, and then changed his reply: “Did you ask me whether I would tell ….? Oh, I think he is a war criminal.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki later said the president had been speaking from his heart after seeing “barbaric” images of the violence in Ukraine, rather than making any official declaration.

She noted that there was a separate legal process, run by the State Department, to determine war crimes – and that was ongoing separately.

The president’s official Twitter account posted: “Putin is inflicting appalling devastation and horror on Ukraine – bombing apartment buildings and maternity wards… these are atrocities. It is an outrage to the world.”

One by one, diplomatic bridges between the United States and Russia are being set ablaze.

Mr Biden’s statement was an odd one, albeit not out of keeping for a politician who has a history of making monumental policy shifts in seemingly off-the-cuff remarks (see, for instance, his comments on gay marriage in 2012).

After initially telling a reporter he did not think Mr Putin was a criminal, he came back and reversed himself. If there had been an internal debate at the White House over how to handle the growing calls in Congress and the press to condemn Mr Putin in this way, the president settled it in an aside, not a set-piece speech.

This, of course, will make it harder for Mr Biden and his administration to work with the Russians going forward. Every concession or negotiated agreement, on whatever topic, will invite the rejoinder: How can you associate with a criminal?

Perhaps Mr Biden, in his comments, was simply acknowledging the new reality – that the world’s political order has irrevocably shifted, and there’s no going back to the way things were.

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It came after a busy day of political theatre in both the US and Russia over Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier gave a speech by video link to the US Congress, receiving a standing ovation. Hours later, Mr Biden approved additional weapons aid for Ukraine, bringing the total US contribution to $1bn (£760m).

On the other side of the world, President Putin also gave a televised speech laden with anti-Western rhetoric.

He accused the West of trying to divide Russia with lies, and railed against those he called “traitors” inside of Russia.

“Of course they will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors – on those who earn their money here, but live over there. Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking,” Mr Putin said.

The term “fifth column” is often used for a group that tries to undermine a nation or organisation from the inside.

“Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors, and just to spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths,” Mr Putin said. Such a “self-purification” of society would strengthen Russia, he added.

Mr Putin also accused the West of trying to provoke civil conflict with the goal of “the destruction of Russia”.

His speech was greeted with concern by some Russia-watchers and journalists.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst, told the New York Times that Mr Putin was signalling authorities across Russia to target “all spheres of society that show any sympathy to the Western way of life”.

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian Prime Minister who also worked in Mr Putin’s first government before becoming one of his fiercest critics, tweeted that Mr Putin “is intensifying his actions to destroy Russia”.

He is “essentially announcing the start of mass repressions against those who don’t agree with the regime,” Mr Kasyanov wrote. “This has happened in our history before, and not only ours.”

Germany’s cyber-security authority has warned against using anti-virus software from Russian headquartered company Kaspersky.

The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) issued the statement in light of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian information-technology businesses could be spied on or forced to launch cyber-attacks, it said.

Kaspersky told BBC News the warning had been “made on political grounds” and it had no ties to the Russian government.

‘Offensive operations’
The BSI made no allegation of current problems with Kaspersky’s products but said the conflict in Ukraine and Russian threats against the European Union, Nato and Germany brought with them the risk of cyber-attacks.

“A Russian IT manufacturer can carry out offensive operations itself, be forced against its will to attack target systems, or be spied on as a victim of a cyber operation without its knowledge or as a tool for attacks against its own customers,” the warning said.

The BSI recommends Kaspersky anti-virus products are replaced with alternatives – but carefully, to avoid weakening defences.

In 2017, President Donald Trump signed legislation banning Kaspersky software’s use within the US government

The same year, UK’s National Cyber Security Centre announced it would write to all government departments, warning against using Kaspersky products for systems related to national security.

‘Resolving conflicts’
Following the BSI’s warning, Eintracht Frankfurt football club spokesman Axel Hellmann told Bloomberg: “We have notified Kaspersky management that we are terminating [our] sponsorship agreement effective immediately.

“We very much regret the development.”

Kaspersky said it would seek clarification from the BSI on its decision, which was “not based on a technical assessment of Kaspersky products”, and how to address its concerns.

As a private global cyber-security company it “does not have any ties to the Russian or any other government”.

Its data-processing infrastructure had been relocated to Switzerland in 2018

And “the security and integrity of our data services and engineering practices have been confirmed by independent third-party assessments”.

“We believe that peaceful dialogue is the only possible instrument for resolving conflicts,” it said.

“War isn’t good for anyone.”

Similar remarks by founder Eugene Kaspersky two weeks ago attracted strong criticism.

“Better to have stayed silent than to have called an invasion a ‘situation’ that requires a ‘compromise’,” Rik Ferguson, of rival cyber-security company TrendMicro, tweeted.

Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor says Instagram will be blocked in the country due to “calls for violence” against Russian soldiers.

Instagram owner Meta said it would let its users in some countries call for violence against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian soldiers.

It will temporarily allow some violent posts such as “death to the Russian invaders” that usually break its rules.

However, it says it won’t permit calls for violence against Russian civilians.

In response to Meta’s shift in policy, Russia called on the US to stop the social media giant’s “extremist activities”.

On Friday, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office called for a criminal investigation to be launched against Meta, citing Russian propaganda and extremism laws, according to a statement quoted by privately-owned news agency Interfax.

The agency added that the Prosecutor General’s Office had asked state media watchdog Roskomnadzor to restrict access to Instagram over the “distribution of information materials containing calls to carry out violent actions against Russians, including servicemen”.

On 4 March, Roskomnadzor said it was blocking access to Facebook in Russia over “discrimination” against Russian media.

Meta owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

However, WhatsApp is not currently being blocked in Russia as it is a messaging platform rather than a social network.

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Analysis
by Olga Robinson, BBC Monitoring

This was a long time coming. The Russian authorities have been threatening to ban platforms such as Facebook and Instagram for a long time.

But declaring a major tech company an “extremist organisation” is a drastic move, even by Russian standards.

Many ordinary Russians are unlikely to feel the implications of today’s announcement straight away.

After all, access to Facebook and Instagram has already been restricted in the country over what Moscow sees as “fake news” about its invasion of Ukraine.

But the long-term implications of this are significant.

Instagram is extremely popular in Russia and – as some experts point out – crucial to small businesses as well as lifestyle bloggers.

Besides, not many Russians know how to use a VPN, which means potentially huge swaths of the population could be cut off from some of the major Western social media platforms.

There is also the issue of WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta and is the most popular messenger in Russia.

So far, indications in the Russian media suggest that it may be spared.

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Policy shift
Meta announced it had changed its policy after the Reuters news agency said it had seen internal emails outlining the policy shift.

“In light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, we made a temporary exception for those affected by the war, to express violent sentiments toward invading armed forces,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

Under the amended policy, users in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland will also be able to call for the deaths of Mr Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The emails reportedly said calls for the leaders’ deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets, or included a location or methods.

Could Putin be prosecuted for war crimes?
Calls for violence against Russians are also allowed when the post clearly references the invasion of Ukraine, the emails reportedly said.

“We demand that US authorities stop the extremist activities of Meta, take measures to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Russia’s embassy in the US tweeted.

“Users of Facebook and Instagram did not give the owners of these platforms the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other,” it added.

Russia announced last week that it was blocking Facebook and its platforms, citing 26 cases of “discrimination” against Russian media by Facebook since October 2020.

While access to the site had already been restricted in Russia, it was not completely unavailable.

Moscow has cracked down on several social media platforms as it pursues what it calls a “special operation” in Ukraine.

Two non-executive directors of Huawei UK have resigned over the company’s stance on the conflict in Ukraine.

The BBC understands Sir Andrew Cahn and Sir Ken Olisa felt the firm’s failure to quickly condemn the Russian invasion had made their positions untenable.

Huawei UK thanked both men for their “invaluable guidance”.

Asked by BBC News if Huawei would continue to do business with Russia, the company said: “We are not commenting any further.”

Strong support
The BBC understands both directors felt Huawei should have quickly condemned the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

It is believed that both felt that, although this was a complex situation for the company, the firm’s stance was at odds with their expectations as UK board directors.

A Huawei official said: “Sir Andrew Cahn and Sir Ken Olisa brought considerable experience from the world of business and technology to Huawei UK’s board of directors when they were appointed, in 2015 and 2018 respectively.

“Both have shown strong support for Huawei’s commitment to the UK and have helped uphold the highest standards of corporate governance.”

‘Devastating’ action
News of the resignations comes as the US warned Chinese companies not to breach restrictions on technology exports to Russia.

China abstained on a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion but its government has also recently expressed “regret” about the military action, saying it was extremely concerned about the harm to civilians.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the New York Times Washington could take “devastating” action against Chinese companies that defied Russian sanctions, prohibiting the use of US equipment and software needed to make their products.

Russia “is certainly going to be courting other countries to do an end run around our sanctions and export controls”, Ms Raimondo told the newspaper.

The threats echo measures taken against Huawei in 2020, when Donald Trump’s administration added the company to its “entity list”, which bans it from acquiring technology from US companies without government approval.

The US government said at the time it believed Huawei posed a national security threat, something the company strongly denied.

But the restrictions hit the company’s earnings hard and deprived it of access to key technologies.