Russia fines Google $20 decillion, a record-breaking penalty
Russia fines Google $20 decillion, a record-breaking penalty/node/2577576/media
Russia fines Google $20 decillion, a record-breaking penalty
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, conceded that the massive fine, which he said he cannot even pronounce, is purely symbolic. (AFP/File)
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Updated 31 October 2024
Arab News
Russia fines Google $20 decillion, a record-breaking penalty
The amount — 20 followed by 33 zeros — exceeds the estimated total global GDP of $110 trillion, a figure with a mere 13 zeros
Unpaid fine dates back to 2020 when Google began banning Russian YouTube channels, and has grown exponentially due to compound penalties
Updated 31 October 2024
Arab News
LONDON: A Russian court has fined Google a staggering $20 decillion, the largest financial penalty ever issued.
In fact, $20 decillion (20 followed by 33 zeros), which in Russia’s own currency is equivalent to 2 undecillion rubles (a 37-digit figure), far exceeds the combined gross domestic product of every country in the world, which is estimated to be about $110 trillion (a figure with a mere 13 zeros).
The amount dwarfs the $206 billion paid by tobacco companies to the US government in 1998, which remains the largest civil lawsuit settlement.
Google said: “We have ongoing legal matters relating to Russia. For example, civil judgments that include compounding penalties have been imposed upon us in connection with disputes regarding the termination of accounts, including those of sanctioned parties. We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect.”
The fine, which a judge said contained “many, many zeros,” relates to a dispute that began in 2020 when Google-owned YouTube banned Tsargrad, a Russian ultra-nationalist, pro-Kremlin channel, from the platform in compliance with US sanctions.
Since then, Google has blocked more than 1,000 YouTube channels and more than 5.5 million videos from Russia, halted advertising services in the country in March 2022, and paused monetization of content that supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In response, a number of relatively small fines were imposed by Russian courts but they went unpaid and Russian business newspaper RBC reported that the amounts owed have grown immensely as result of compound penalties initially set at $1,025 a day and doubling each week.
Details of the current total of the fine emerged on Tuesday, as Google reported quarterly earnings of $88.3 billion for the three months to September. Based on that amount, it would take the company more than 56 septillion (a figure with 24 zeros) years to pay off the fine, which is more than 4 trillion times the age of the universe.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, urged Google parent company Alphabet to stop blocking Russian YouTube channels. However, he conceded that the massive fine, which he said he cannot even pronounce, is purely symbolic.
“These demands, they simply demonstrate the essence of our channels’ claims against Google,” Peskov said. “Google should not restrict the activities of our broadcasters, but Google is doing this.
“Probably, this (growing fine) should be a reason for Google’s management to take notice and rectify the situation. It’s the best thing the company can do.”
Taliban blocks fiber-optic internet ‘to prevent immoral activities’
Government offices, businesses, public institutions, and homes have been left without internet access
Rights groups warn of catastrophic, far-reaching consequences for Afghan society, economic crisis
Updated 19 September 2025
Arab News
LONDON: Taliban authorities have blocked fiber-optic internet across northern provinces of Afghanistan, claiming the move was necessary “to prevent immoral activities.”
Local media report that as many as 10 provinces — including Kunduz, Badakhshan, Baghlan, Takhar, and Balkh — have been affected, leaving government offices, businesses, public institutions, and homes without fiber-optic access.
The ban applies only to connections via fiber-optic cable, while mobile internet remains available, according to officials.
“The measure was taken to prevent immorality, and an alternative will be developed inside the country for essential needs,” said Haji Attaullah Zaid, a Taliban provincial spokesman.
He added that the ban was ordered by Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
No explanation was given for why Balkh was among the first provinces targeted, or for how long the restrictions would remain in place.
Local news outlet Afghanistan International reports that the fiber-optic ban could be extended nationwide, with further provinces such as Kandahar, Uruzgan, Helmand, and Nimroz already experiencing disruptions.
Rights groups have expressed alarm, urging the Taliban to reverse the block due to far-reaching consequences for Afghan society.
Many nongovernmental organizations say the measure has especially affected women and girls, who rely on online education following Taliban bans on school and university attendance.
Fiber-optic internet is a vital resource for companies, banks, and government agencies, and its loss risks deepening the country’s existing economic crisis.
Beh Lih Yi, regional director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, called the blockade “an unprecedented escalation of censorship that will undermine journalists’ work and the public’s right to information.”
Writer, actor unions say suspension attacks free-speech rights
Updated 19 September 2025
Reuters
LOS ANGELES: US President Donald Trump on Thursday celebrated the suspension of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves and said TV broadcasters should lose their licenses over negative coverage of his administration, adding fuel to a national debate over free speech.
Kimmel has been embroiled in the effort by Trump and his supporters to punish critics of assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot while speaking to a crowd at a Utah university on September 10. Since then, allies of Trump and Kirk have warned Americans to properly mourn the divisive figure or face the consequences.
The Walt Disney-owned broadcaster ABC announced on Wednesday that it was yanking the late-night comedy show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely following conservative uproar over his Monday monologue. Writers, performers, former US President Barack Obama and others condemned Kimmel’s suspension, calling it capitulation to unconstitutional government pressure.
About 150 demonstrators gathered on Thursday outside the Hollywood studio where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is recorded to protest the decision to suspend the show. Some raised signs saying, “Don’t Bend a Knee to Trump,” “Resist fascism,” “Douse the mouse” and “Cancel Disney+.”
The debate followed Trump on his state visit to Britain on Thursday.
While standing alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump called Kimmel untalented and denounced him for saying a “horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.”
Kimmel, a comedian who frequently lampoons Trump, said during his nine-minute opening monologue on Monday that allies of Kirk were using his assassination to “score political points.” He also poked fun at Trump after the president turned a question about his personal mourning of Kirk into promotion for his new White House ballroom.
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,” Kimmel said.
A 22-year-old technical college student from Utah was charged with Kirk’s murder on Tuesday.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used his office and the courts to attack unflattering speech about him that he has called defamatory or false.
Throughout both his terms, Trump has threatened to rescind licenses for local broadcast affiliates of the national networks — licenses that are approved by the Federal Communications Commission, a nominally independent regulatory body.
Kimmel’s suspension came after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to investigate Kimmel’s commentary about Kirk, and owners of local TV stations had said they would stop broadcasting his celebrity-filled late-night show.
Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to the US, complained about receiving bad publicity from broadcasters, saying, “That’s something that should be talked about for licensing. ... All they do is hit Trump.”
“I would think maybe their license should be taken away,” Trump said. “It will be up to Brendan Carr.”
Federal law prohibits the FCC from revoking a broadcaster’s license for negative coverage or other speech disliked by the government.
In the week since Kirk’s murder, Kimmel is the most famous American to face professional blowback for comments condemned by conservatives as disrespectful of Kirk, alongside media figures, academic workers, teachers and corporate employees.
Prominent Democrats said Trump was mounting an assault on free speech rights guaranteed in the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Republicans have said they are fighting against “hate speech” that can spiral into violence, and accuse some Kirk critics of trying to justify his murder.
Obama joins chorus of critics
Obama urged media companies not to capitulate to government coercion.
“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama said in a statement.
This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
Writers’ and actors’ labor unions called the targeting of Kimmel an unconstitutional attack on the right to disagree. The American Civil Liberties Union called it an unconstitutional attempt by the Trump administration to “silence its critics and control what the American people watch and read.”
At the Hollywood demonstration, motorists honked their horns in support as protesters spilled out from the busy sidewalk and into the streets.
“This country is going in a really wrong direction,” protester Laura Brenner said. “When people can’t make fun of the administration, you know that we’re really going down a dark road.”
Kirk’s death spurred an outpouring of grief among fans who saw him as a staunch advocate for public debate and conservative values. Others have challenged or derided Kirk’s support for right-wing politics and Christian nationalism and his derogatory comments about immigrants, African Americans and transgender people.
Hours before Kimmel’s suspension, Carr, while speaking on the Benny Johnson podcast, urged local broadcasters to stop airing the show.
Two of the largest owners of local broadcasters — Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group, both of which have merger deals pending before the FCC — responded by announcing they would stop airing Kimmel’s show.
ABC said it was suspending Kimmel’s show indefinitely. ABC owns eight local TV channels subject to FCC licensing, including broadcasters in the major markets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.
Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment Co-Chair Dana Walden made the decision to suspend Kimmel’s show, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
Foreign disinformation about Charlie Kirk’s killing seeks to widen US divisions
Russian voices have tried to tie Kirk’s death to US support for Ukraine, spreading a conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian government killed Kirk
Pro-Iranian groups took a different tack, claiming Israel was behind Kirk’s death and that the suspect was set up to take the fall
Bots linked to Beijing claimed that Kirk’s death shows that the US is violent, polarized and dysfunctional
Updated 18 September 2025
AP
WASHINGTON: Russia moved to amplify online conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s killing just hours after it happened, seeding social media with the frightening claim that America is slipping into civil war.
Chinese and pro-Iranian groups also spread disinformation about the shooting, with those loyal to Iran’s interests backing antisemitic conspiracy theories while bots linked to Beijing claimed that Kirk’s death shows that the United States is violent, polarized and dysfunctional.
America’s adversaries have long used fake social media accounts, online bots and disinformation to depict the US as a dangerous country beset with extremism and gun violence. Kirk’s killing has provided another opportunity for those overseas eager to shape public understanding while inflaming political polarization.
“Charlie Kirk’s Death and the Coming Civil War,” tweeted Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin, whose influence earned him the moniker ” Putin’s brain,” referring to Russia’s president.
Pro-Russian bots blamed Democrats and predicted more violence. Russian state media published English-language articles with headlines claiming a conspiracy orchestrated by shadowy forces: “Was Charlie Kirk’s Killer a Pro?”
Foreign disinformation makes up a tiny fraction of the overall online discussion about Kirk’s death, but it could undermine any efforts to heal political divisions or even spur further violence.
“We’ve seen multiple Russian campaigns attempting to exploit” Kirk’s killing, said Joseph Bodnar, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. In many cases, the campaigns aren’t adding new claims but are recycling ones that emerged from American users. “They’re picking up domestic actors and amplifying them.” Adversaries tailor disinformation
In each case, those spreading the disinformation have tailored it for their own ends. Chinese propaganda has focused on the violent nature of Kirk’s death, painting the US as a nation of violent gun owners and political extremists.
Russian voices have tried to tie Kirk’s death to US support for Ukraine, even spreading a conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian government killed Kirk because of his criticism of that aid.
Pro-Iranian groups took a different tack, claiming Israel was behind Kirk’s death and that the suspect was set up to take the fall. This conspiracy theory caught on with white supremacist groups in the US, showing how corrosive claims can easily spread online despite oceans and linguistic and cultural barriers.
The influence campaigns come as the US has rolled back government efforts to expose foreign disinformation.
On Wednesday the State Department announced it was ending its remaining efforts to counter foreign disinformation, following a decision earlier this year to shutter the Global Engagement Center, an office that had called out Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation in the past. Republicans had targeted the center and its mission because of what they said was its censorship of conservative ideas.
False and misleading claims can spread quickly following big news events as people go online to look for information. Artificial intelligence programs that can create lifelike video and audio can make it even harder to find the truth, as can AI chatbots that routinely offer up false information.
It happened again following Kirk’s killing, when misinformation about the shooting and the suspect quickly spread online.
In recent years, groups looking to spread confusion or distrust have seized on hurricanes, wars, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disasters, as well as the attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump.
The details vary, but the conspiracy theories pushed by foreign adversaries all suggest American institutions — the government, the media, law enforcement, health care — are failing and can no longer be trusted, and that more violence is likely. Calls for social media companies to crack down
Regardless of the source of the information, social media companies should do more to stop both foreign disinformation and domestic calls for violence, said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which tracks online disinformation.
Posts calling for retaliatory violence following Kirk’s death have been seen 43 million times on X alone, according to the center’s research, though it can’t say which posts came from foreign sources.
Platforms like X “are failing catastrophically to limit the reach of posts that celebrate murder and mayhem,” Ahmed said.
Russia, China and Iran have all denied targeting Americans with disinformation. Officials in China have pushed back on claims that Chinese social media bots are being used to amplify false claims about the Kirk shooting.
“China condemns all unlawful and violent acts. That said, we firmly oppose some US politicians accusing China of ‘instilling disinformation and encouraging violence,’” a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry posted on X.
Russia likewise rejected the accusations of spreading misinformation about Kirk’s death. A.V. Bondarev, a spokesperson for Russia’s embassy in Washington, wrote in an email to The Associated Press that “Russia does not interfere and does not intend to interfere in the internal affairs of other states, including the United States.”
“We consider it unacceptable that this tragedy is being used as a pretext to fuel anti-Russian hysteria,” Bondarev wrote.
For authorities trying to keep the public informed, the false claims about Kirk’s death are a potentially dangerous effort to hijack American discourse.
“There is a tremendous amount of disinformation we are tracking,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said at a recent press conference about Kirk’s killing. “What we are seeing is our adversaries want violence. We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence.”
Cox urged people to ignore bogus claims that seem designed to elicit fear — and suggested that Americans log off social media and spend time with family instead.
Jimmy Kimmel show off air ‘indefinitely’ after Charlie Kirk comments
Updated 18 September 2025
AFP
LOS ANGELES, US: Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night television show has been taken off the air “indefinitely” after the host was criticized for comments about the motives behind the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, US network ABC said.
The stunning decision to suspend one of the United States’ most popular and influential late-night shows comes as President Donald Trump has widened his legal attacks on media organizations that he accuses of bias against him.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson told AFP, using a television industry term for when a show is replaced or removed from the schedule.
Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was shot dead last week during a speaking event on a Utah university campus.
Authorities said 22-year-old Tyler Robinson used a rifle to shoot Kirk with a single bullet to the neck from a rooftop. He was arrested and has been formally charged with his murder.
On Monday, Kimmel spoke about the shooting in his popular late-night show’s monologue.
“We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it,” said Kimmel.
“MAGA” refers to the president’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
The White House this week said it would be pursuing an alleged left-wing “domestic terror movement” in the wake of Kirk’s killing, prompting alarm that such a campaign could be used to silence political dissent.
ABC’s decision came shortly after Nexstar — one of the country’s biggest owners of ABC affiliate stations — said it would not broadcast “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for “the foreseeable future.”
In a statement, Nexstar broadcasting president Andrew Alford said the company “strongly objects” to Kimmel’s comments.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” he said.
“Continuing to give Mr.Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”
Kimmel did not immediately comment, and representatives for the entertainer did not respond to AFP queries.
The decision to suspend Kimmel’s show comes as Trump has intensified his long-established hostility toward the media.
Since his return to the White House, the president has repeatedly badmouthed journalists critical of his administration, restricting access and bringing lawsuits demanding huge amounts of compensation.
The US president filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times on Monday, alleging a “decades-long pattern” of smears driven by feelings of “actual malice.”
While broad constitutional protections exist for US media, Trump has found success in similar lawsuits brought against other news organizations, winning multi-million dollar settlements from Disney-owned ABC and Paramount-owned CBS.
The settlements in those cases — which are to be paid to Trump’s future presidential library — were seen as being motivated by the desire of the news organizations’ parent companies to stay in Trump’s good graces.
Snapchat launches local Bitmoji wardrobe for Saudi National Day
Updated 18 September 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: Snapchat has launched a localized wardrobe for Bitmojis that includes abayas and thobes in celebration of Saudi National Day on Sept. 23.
The localization is the first of its kind for Snapchat internationally, the company said in a statement.
Snapchat has previously introduced local attire through augmented reality lenses; however, this is the platform’s first time launching a dedicated wardrobe for Bitmojis.
“We are proud that ֱ is the first country in the world where we are launching a localized Bitmoji wardrobe,” said Abdulla Al-Hammadi, managing director of Snap Inc. in ֱ.
He added: “This milestone reflects the Kingdom’s position as a global hub for digital innovation, while also aligning with Vision 2030’s ambitions to empower youth and celebrate national identity.”
Last year, Snap opened a new office and the Kingdom’s first creator hub, named Majlis Snap for Content Creators, in Diriyah’s JAX District, near Riyadh.
Such initiatives along with the latest launch reflect the company’s commitment to “continued investment in the Kingdom,” Al-Hammadi said.
“ֱ is one of Snap’s most important and influential markets globally, home to a passionate and creative community that has been an integral part of our story for over a decade,” he added.
Globally, Snapchat users have created more than 2.7 billion Bitmojis. The new wardrobe aims to enable Saudi Snapchat users to showcase their national pride by dressing their Bitmojis in clothing that reflects the Kingdom’s culture and heritage.
The launch is line with Snapchat’s plans for the region, with more localized features planned for the future, the company said.
The platform has 25 million monthly active users in the Kingdom who open the app more than 50 times a day on average, according to Snap.
