Such considerations might even induce anti-Putin elements in the military to refuse to undertake such a clearly immoral order as to use even tactical nuclear weapons in a war that is not existential for Mother Russia. It would certainly revivify internal opposition to Putin within Russia, depleted somewhat recently by the exodus of the intelligentsia and educated middle classes, but still bravely led by the political prisoner Alexei Navalny.

In retrospect, for all that Ukraine was lauded internationally for giving up her nuclear weapons under the Budapest Agreement in , it proved an appalling misjudgment. Were Putin to use a nuclear weapon, the message would go out to every country that could build one — Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt among them — that they needed nukes as soon as possible.

If today President Zelensky pictured on November 3 was presented with an opportunity to have the highly capable Ukrainian secret services and special forces smuggle a dirty bomb into Red Square in Moscow, he would not take it. The consequences for global proliferation, and thus Armageddon, would be incalculable. All this is before considering what Nato might have to undertake in response to such a monstrous escalation of the war, or indeed what the Ukrainians themselves might do.

Certainly, surrender is not an option because they have seen what comes of Russian occupation in places where mass graves have been unearthed, such as Bucha, Mariupol and Izyum. If today President Zelensky was presented with an opportunity to have the highly capable Ukrainian secret services and special forces smuggle a dirty bomb into Red Square in Moscow, he would not take it.

After Putin had let off a nuclear weapon against his homeland, why would he hesitate? Vladimir Putin is faced with what for him might genuinely be an existential decision. We know he has practised and wargamed the use of nuclear weapons, and now he is openly discussing their use with a Western leader who one hopes was at least eloquent in dissuasion.

The fact that no leaders in the world today beyond Kim Jong-un and the Iranian mullahs make such nuclear threats shows us where Putin has now reached in his terrifying descent into evil. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

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But Harry and Meghan's morality play is perfectly in sync with the A footnote in Microsoft's submission opens in new tab to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority CMA has let slip the reason behind Call of Duty's absence from the Xbox Game Pass library: Sony and Activision Blizzard have a deal that restricts the games' presence on the service. The footnote appears in a section detailing the potential benefits to consumers from Microsoft's point of view of the Activision Blizzard catalogue coming to Game Pass.

What existing contractual obligations are those? Why, ones like the "agreement between Activision Blizzard and Sony," that places "restrictions on the ability of Activision Blizzard to place COD titles on Game Pass for a number of years". It was apparently these kinds of agreements that Xbox's Phil Spencer had in mind opens in new tab when he spoke to Sony bosses in January and confirmed Microsoft's "intent to honor all existing agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard". Unfortunately, the footnote ends there, so there's not much in the way of detail about what these restrictions are or how long they'd remain in effect in a potential post-acquisition world.

Given COD's continued non-appearance on Game Pass, you've got to imagine the restrictions are fairly significant if they're not an outright block on COD coming to the service. Either way, the simple fact that Microsoft is apparently willing to maintain any restrictions on its own ability to put first-party games on Game Pass is rather remarkable, given that making Game Pass more appealing is one of the reasons for its acquisition spree.

The irony of Sony making deals like this one while fretting about COD's future on PlayStation probably isn't lost on Microsoft's lawyers, which is no doubt part of why they brought it up to the CMA. While it's absolutely reasonable to worry about a world in which more and more properties are concentrated in the hands of singular, giant megacorps, it does look a bit odd if you're complaining about losing access to games while stopping them from joining competing services.

We'll find out if the CMA agrees when it completes its in-depth, "Phase 2" investigation opens in new tab into the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which is some way off yet. For now, we'll have to content ourselves with poring over these kinds of corporate submissions for more interesting tidbits like this one. So far, we've already learned that Microsoft privately has a gloomy forecast for the future of cloud gaming opens in new tab , and that the company thinks Sony shouldn't worry so much since, hey, future COD games might be as underwhelming as Vanguard opens in new tab.

Who knows what we'll learn next? Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.

By Jonathan Rose For Mailonline. Published: GMT, 6 November Updated: GMT, 6 November The US is privately encouraging Volodymyr Zelensky to drop his ban on talks with Vladimir Putin and negotiate an end to the fighting with the Russians amid growing fears of nuclear war , a new report has claimed. US officials have said that the request by the Biden administration is not to push Ukraine to the negotiating table, but ensure Kyiv maintains the support of its international backers.

Several nations are worried about fuelling a war for many years which has already taken a toll on the world economy and had devastating consequences on the cost and availability of food and fuel. It comes after the US admitted it is 'increasingly concerned' over Moscow's nuclear sabre-rattling after it emerged top Russian military officials discussed nuking Ukraine. The New York Times report, which cited unnamed US officials, said Putin did not take part in the discussions, and there was no indication that the Russian military had decided to deploy the weapons.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said: 'We have grown increasingly concerned about the potential as these months have gone on. Kirby did not confirm the report that said high-level Russian military officials recently discussed when and how they might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

But Kirby said any comments on the use of nuclear weapons by Russia are 'deeply concerning,' and said the US takes them seriously. He pointed to recent Putin comments talking about nuclear weapons and referencing the bombs US forces dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II. Pictured: A Russian nuclear missile is fired during testing drills last week.

At the same time, Kirby reiterated, Washington sees no indications that Russia is making preparations to use nuclear weapons, adding that US intelligence does not necessarily see or know everything. The US has been warning Moscow for weeks over public comments from top Russian officials that they could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in certain cases, particularly if they felt there was a threat to Russian territorial integrity.

The most recent threat came from former Russian president and senior security council official Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev said on Tuesday that Ukraine's objective to reclaim all its territories occupied by Russia, which include the Donbas region and Crimea, would be a 'threat to the existence of our state. That, Medvedev said, would be 'a direct reason' to invoke nuclear deterrence. In September, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security advisor, said that the US has warned Russia at 'very high levels' of 'catastrophic consequences' for using nuclear arms.

However, early Wednesday Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Western media was 'deliberately pumping up the topic of the use of nuclear weapons. Moscow does 'not have the slightest intention to take part in this,' he said, calling the Times report 'very irresponsible. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on October 13 that Russian forces would be 'annihilated' by the West if Putin uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Russia's nuclear stockpile, the largest in the world, consists of 'tactical', lower-yield bombs and strategic weapons that can annihilate cities and population centres. Its tactical nukes, with a yield of between ten and kilotons, are designed for use on the battlefield in contested territory. In comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in was approximately 18 kilotons.

Ukrainian servicemen fire artillery from a self-propelled howitzer toward Russian positions near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire a self-propelled howitzer at Russian positions on Tuesday. Last week, Putin spoke at length about nuclear weapons, having threatened the West several times with an atomic strike — sparking fears he may also use one in Ukraine. The despot denied he has any plans to use one on his neighbour, saying there is 'no political or military justification' for doing so.

But he also referred back to Russia's nuclear doctrine which allows them to be used in the event the country is threatened which — at least according to the Kremlin — now includes occupied parts of Ukraine. Fears of escalation have been building as the war in Ukraine grinds into its ninth month, with Kyiv on the front foot and Putin nowhere near achieving his aims.

Though the official purpose of the invasion remains the 'liberation' of the eastern Donbas region, according to Putin, in reality his troops have stopped advancing almost everywhere besides the town of Bakhmut, in Donetsk. Meanwhile they are being pushed back in the northern Kharkiv region and southern region of Kherson — the latter of which Putin has declared to be part of Russia.

That has sparked fears he could resort to nukes, after he said he would use 'all available means' to defend the territory. It comes after Moscow alleged that Ukraine is preparing to detonate a so-called 'dirty bomb' on its territory , meaning a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material to cause contamination.

Kyiv said accusations it would use such tactics on its own territory are absurd, but that Russia might be planning such actions itself to blame Ukraine. The UN's atomic watchdog has been dispatched to two areas of Ukraine where Putin alleges the bomb is being prepared — at Kyiv's insistence — as President Volodymyr Zelensky and his allies dismiss the claims as fiction.

Instead, they said Russia may be preparing the ground to use one of its own nukes as a pretext for escalating the conflict. US President Joe Biden, asked about Putin's assertion he would never use nukes in Ukraine, responded last week: 'Why does he keep talking about it?

He's been very dangerous in how he's approached this and he should just get out. Putin's deranged Hiroshima threat: Russian leader tells Macron the atom bomb is proof 'you don't have to launch nuclear strike on a major city to win a war'. By Glen Owen Political Editor and Peter Allen In Paris For The Mail On Sunday. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has alarmed Western leaders by referencing the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a conversation with French president Emmanuel Macron , diplomatic sources have said.

The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, , respectively. The bombings killed between , and , people, most of whom were civilians. Japan surrendered to the Allies on August Russian leader Vladimir Putin pictured on June 23 has alarmed Western leaders by referencing the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The reported remarks come amid growing concern that the Russian leader could be prepared to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, where Russian forces have suffered increasing setbacks in the conflict.

It sounded like a very heavy hint that Putin might detonate a tactical nuclear weapon in the east of Ukraine, while leaving Kyiv intact. That appeared to be the thrust of his remarks. Putin wants to get the message across that all options are on the table, in line with Russian doctrine relating to nuclear weapons. Ms Truss had been told by the intelligence agencies that Putin might explode a weapon in the air above the Black Sea, which would show the West what he was capable of without triggering a full-scale nuclear war.

The comments took place in a conversation with French president Emmanuel Macron pictured on June 28 , diplomatic sources have said. These would not be at stake if there was a nuclear ballistic attack in Ukraine or in the region.

At least 70, people are reported to have been moved already from Kherson, with Russian soldiers also reported to be leaving the city. Officials in Ukraine have admitted privately that they are wary, saying it could be an attempt to lure their troops into a trap. Putin also claimed that , military recruits had signed up for duty during the recent mobilisation — exceeding his target of , — of which 49, were already involved in active fighting in Ukraine.

The news that Vladimir Putin has openly discussed using nuclear weapons against Ukraine with President Macron should shock but not surprise us. The Russian dictator has crossed so many red lines in the course of this war — the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets such as residential flats and hospitals, the repeated breaking of ceasefire agreements over humanitarian corridors, the use of white phosphorus and thermobaric weapons. Little can genuinely shock us now.

Nuclear warfare is a Rubicon. And if Putin crosses it, that must mark him as an international pariah whose ousting will be the duty of any world leader worthy of the name. Of course, as ever with him, the remarks that Putin made about the precedents for his intended action were couched in ignorance. Similarly, Berlin suffered huge casualties before the war was won against Germany.

The signs are that the Russian high command knows it will have to give up Kherson in the south, the only major Ukrainian city it has captured in this war so far. Senior commanders are evacuating, leaving only untrained conscripts to try to hold up the relentless Ukrainian advance.

Kherson is nearly miles to the east of the disputed Donbas region, and when it falls — which many experts are predicting will happen before Christmas — there will be no Russian-occupied city to the west of the Dnipro river. On occasion he and his defence minister Sergei Lavrov have brought up the nuclear option to try to split Nato. So far, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and several other major countries upon which what is left of the Russian economy depends, have indulged Putin to a far greater degree than they would have if it had been a democratic Western-leaning nation that had transgressed so foully against every decent international norm.

Selling huge amounts of cheap oil and gas, buying weapons, and generally acting as a thorn in the side of the West, Putin has been a useful friend for these countries, which have not yet denounced him in the United Nations.

Yet were Putin to let off a nuclear bomb, all of those countries except Iran would be forced to sever ties with Russia — partly because of their own on-the-record denunciation of nuclear first-use, but also because the revulsion would be felt strongly by their own populations.

Putin only has four allies in the United Nations today — the paradises of Syria, Belarus, North Korea and Eritrea — but 30 that regularly abstain in votes rather than condemn what is happening in Ukraine.

A nuclear bomb would force them off the fence, and declare Putin an international leper. All it would take would be for the wind to change direction after a nuclear attack for leukaemia-inducing clouds of fallout to drift towards Belarus, Russian-held Crimea, or south-western Russia itself.

Such considerations might even induce anti-Putin elements in the military to refuse to undertake such a clearly immoral order as to use even tactical nuclear weapons in a war that is not existential for Mother Russia. It would certainly revivify internal opposition to Putin within Russia, depleted somewhat recently by the exodus of the intelligentsia and educated middle classes, but still bravely led by the political prisoner Alexei Navalny.

In retrospect, for all that Ukraine was lauded internationally for giving up her nuclear weapons under the Budapest Agreement in , it proved an appalling misjudgment.

Were Putin to use a nuclear weapon, the message would go out to every country that could build one — Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt among them — that they needed nukes as soon as possible. If today President Zelensky pictured on November 3 was presented with an opportunity to have the highly capable Ukrainian secret services and special forces smuggle a dirty bomb into Red Square in Moscow, he would not take it.

The consequences for global proliferation, and thus Armageddon, would be incalculable. All this is before considering what Nato might have to undertake in response to such a monstrous escalation of the war, or indeed what the Ukrainians themselves might do. Certainly, surrender is not an option because they have seen what comes of Russian occupation in places where mass graves have been unearthed, such as Bucha, Mariupol and Izyum.

If today President Zelensky was presented with an opportunity to have the highly capable Ukrainian secret services and special forces smuggle a dirty bomb into Red Square in Moscow, he would not take it. After Putin had let off a nuclear weapon against his homeland, why would he hesitate?

Vladimir Putin is faced with what for him might genuinely be an existential decision. We know he has practised and wargamed the use of nuclear weapons, and now he is openly discussing their use with a Western leader who one hopes was at least eloquent in dissuasion.

The fact that no leaders in the world today beyond Kim Jong-un and the Iranian mullahs make such nuclear threats shows us where Putin has now reached in his terrifying descent into evil. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Argos AO. com River Island Groupon Debenhams Wayfair Very eBay Boohoo Nike Currys Virgin Media ASOS TUI My Profile Logout Login. Breaking News World Cup Russia-Ukraine Meghan Markle Prince Harry King Charles III UK Weather World News Most read My Profile Logout Login. Privacy Policy Feedback. Sunday, Dec 18th 8PM 27°C 11PM 26°C 5-Day Forecast.

Could the end of the Ukraine war be in sight? RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next. Share this article Share. Read more: www. Share or comment on this article: US 'is pressuring Zelensky to drop his ban on talks with Putin and negotiate an end to the fighting' e-mail Comments Share what you think.

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Additionally, personalized portfolio management will become available to more people with the implementation and advancement of AI. Prior to joining PPIC, she was a research assistant with the social and demographic trends team at the Pew Research Center. Prince Harry is set for fresh media blitz in America to promote his 'Spare' Afterwards, Congress passed a new law, using the decisions from judges in this court and the D. Dyck Co-Director Center for Public Opinion University of Massachusetts, Lowell Lisa García Bedolla Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division University of California, Berkeley Russell Hancock President and CEO Joint Venture Silicon Valley Sherry Bebitch Jeffe Professor Sol Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California. D espite privacy, ethics, and bias issues that remain to be resolved with AI systems, the good news is that as large r datasets become progressively easier to interconnect, AI and related natural language processing NLP technology innovations are increasingly able to equalize access. Some customers are doing some belt-tightening.

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