Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Ukraine has banned government officials, military personnel and other defense and critical infrastructure workers from installing the popular Telegram messaging app on state-issued devices.

Two people who prosecutors say were motivated by white supremacist ideology have been charged with using the messaging app Telegram to encourage acts of violence against minorities, government officials and critical infrastructure in the United States.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is promising stepped-up efforts to fight criminality on the messaging app.

Ukrainian officials say two Russian ballistic missiles blasted a military academy and nearby hospital in Ukraine, killing more than 50 people and wounding more than 200 others.

Five people have been killed by Russian shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar as Moscow’s troops push ahead in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

French President Emmanuel Macron is defending his government’s decision to give special fast-track citizenship to Telegram messaging app CEO Pavel Durov.

Over more than a decade, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram has amassed various different citizenships.

French authorities have handed Telegram CEO Pavel Durov preliminary charges for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation.

French prosecutors say an investigative judge has extended police custody for the Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov.

French President Emmanuel Macron says the arrest in France of the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, wasn’t a political move but part of an independent investigation.

French broadcast media reports say the founder and CEO of the popular messaging service Telegram has been detained at a Paris airport.

Emergency officials say at least four people have died and dozens are feared buried under rubble after an apartment block in Russia's Ural Mountains collapsed following a gas explosion.

Iran’s foreign minister has accused the United States of giving Israel the “green light” for a strike on its consulate building in Syria that killed seven Iranian military officials, including two generals.

Russia’s Belgorod region has come under increasing Ukrainian attacks this month as the invasion by Moscow grinds into its third year.

Ukrainian officials have launched an investigation into allegations that Russian forces killed surrendering Ukrainian soldiers, after grainy footage on social media appeared to show two uniformed men being shot at close range.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has slammed Turkey and blamed Ankara for the uptick in violence in his war-torn country.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's Facebook account has been reactivated, three weeks after he announced he was forsaking the social media giant in favor of posting on the Telegram messaging app.

Cambodia’s long-serving, tough-talking leader, Hun Sen, says he is considering banning Facebook in his country, largely because he is fed up with the abuse he receives on it from his political foes abroad.

A quasi-independent review board is recommending that Facebook temporarily suspend the social media accounts of Cambodia's prime minister.

Malaysia’s government says it will take legal action against Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, for failing to remove undesirable and harmful content from its social media platform.

Internet providers and wireless carriers in Brazil have stopped blocking Telegram after a federal judge partially revised a ruling suspending the social media app over its failure to surrender data on neo-Nazi activity.

Telegram’s CEO says the company will appeal a Brazilian judge’s decision to block access to the social media platform in Brazil for failing to hand over data on neo-Nazi activity.

A federal judge in Brazil on Wednesday ordered a temporary suspension of messaging app Telegram, citing the social media platform’s alleged failure to provide all information Federal Police requested on neo-Nazi chat groups.

The rioters who stormed Brazil's capital buildings on Sunday used coded language on social media to coordinate and carry out their plans in plain view.

Govs.

Germany has announced that it is issuing fines of 5.125 million euros ($5 million) against the operators of the messagging app Telegram for failing to comply with German law.

Ethiopia’s Tigray rebels say Eritrea has extended its offensive into their region, as diplomats scramble to convene peace talks to resolve the almost two-year-long conflict.

White nationalists and supremacists are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok.

A justice of Brazil's top court has ordered the messaging app Telegram to be shut down.

TikTok videos, propagandized headlines and tweets being shared on smartphones and screens around the globe are confusing millions about the reality of how Russia's invasion of Ukraine is unfolding on the ground.

Metadata from two videos posted by Russia-backed separatists announcing an immediate evacuation of women, children and the elderly from Ukraine’s tense border regions shows the files were created two days ago, The Associated Press has confirmed.

A Russian organization that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid to detainees says government regulators have blocked its website.

The leading human rights group in Belarus says a court has sentenced a neighborhood activist to four years in prison for creating an “extremist group” on the messaging app Telegram.

YouTube says it has shut two German channels of Russian state broadcaster RT in a move centering on alleged coronavirus misinformation.

German authorities have launched proceedings against Telegram that could see the messenger app’s operators fined for failing to abide by laws requiring social media sites to police their users’ actions.

Russian authorities have ordered Facebook and messaging app Telegram to pay steep fines for failing to remove banned content.

FILE - This Friday, March 10, 2017, file photo shows the WhatsApp communications app on a smartphone, in New York. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)OAKLAND, Calif. – Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram are seeing huge upticks in downloads from Apple and Google’s app stores. Mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower said Wednesday that Signal saw 17.8 million app downloads on Apple and Google during the week of Jan. 5 to Jan. 12. WhatsApp, meanwhile, saw downloads shrink to 10.6 million, down from 12.7 million the week before. In that same period Telegram has seen about 755.2 million installations and WhatsApp a whopping 5.6 billion — almost eight times as many as Telegram.

Both Signal and Telegram offer encryption services. The idea behind using an app with encryption capabilities is to keep prying eyes and ears from seeing and hearing your conversations. “If you don’t properly vet the people you’re sending your message to, then you’re defeating the point of encryption,” Hamer said. A Sensor Tower representative told Business Insider that “Signal saw approximately 7.5 million installs globally from across the App Store and Google Play” from Wednesday to Sunday. CNBC reports that “Telegram saw 5.6 million downloads globally” during the same time frame, according to Apptopia.

TEHRAN – Iran on Saturday executed an exiled journalist over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, a little more than a year after authorities tricked him into traveling to Iraq where he was abducted. Kidnapping and executing Zam, who lived in Paris under what Iran described as French government protection, likely will further chill an already-scattered Iranian opposition across the West. The initial spark for the 2017 protests was a sudden jump in food prices. The 2017 protests reportedly saw some 5,000 people detained and 25 killed. Zam himself had fled Iran after the 2009 protests, heading first to Malaysia and then to France.

Thai authorities worked Monday to stem a growing tide of protests calling for the prime minister to resign by threatening to censor news coverage, raiding a publishing house and attempting to block the Telegram messaging app used by demonstrators. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)BANGKOK – Thai authorities worked Monday to stem a growing tide of protests calling for the prime minister to resign by threatening to censor news coverage, raiding a publishing house and attempting to block the Telegram messaging app used by demonstrators. Police also searched the office of a publishing house that handles books by Thai and foreign scholars with sometimes controversial perspectives. At least one local cable TV provider, however, has been censoring international news broadcasts during their segments on the Thai protests. Despite the spread of protests outside the capital, Prayuth, the prime minister, told reporters the state of emergency will remain only in Bangkok for now.

(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)HONG KONG Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram will deny law enforcement requests for user data in Hong Kong as they assess the impact of a new national security law enacted last week. The legislation criminalizes some pro-democracy slogans like the widely used Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time, which the Hong Kong government has deemed has separatist connotations. That framework gives Hong Kong and its people freedoms not found in mainland China, such as unrestricted internet access. Spokesman Mike Ravdonikas said Monday that Telegram understands the importance of protecting the right to privacy of our Hong Kong users. Telegram has been used broadly to spread pro-democracy messages and information about the protests in Hong Kong. That retreat has extended to the streets of Hong Kong as well.

In this June 2, 2020 photo, journalist Ruhollah Zam speaks during his trial at the Revolutionary Court, in Tehran, Iran. The judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, announced Tuesday, June 30, 2020 that Zam, a journalist whose online work helped inspire the 2017 economic protests and who returned from exile to Tehran was sentenced to death. (Ali Shirband/Mizan News Agency via AP)TEHRAN Iran sentenced a once-exiled journalist to death over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests that began at the end of 2017, authorities said Tuesday. The initial spark for the 2017 protests was a sudden jump in food prices. The 2017 protests reportedly saw some 5,000 people detained and 25 killed.