ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 1, 2023--

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For most teenagers Minecraft remains just a hobby, but one Ukrainian schoolboy’s love for the game has meant he can now afford to buy his homeless mother a house. Lomond School pupil Maksym Gavrylenko has made a “substantial” sum after selling the server he ran from his bedroom, which allows gamers from all over the world to connect to and play together on, with friends. The 17-year-old boarding school pupil said: “I am very proud that I was able to turn my passion into a profitable business and I plan on treating my mother. “As a result of the war, she was forced to flee her home, leaving her homeless, so to buy her a property will make all the hours spent on this project worthwhile.” She is currently staying with friends in Portugal, but intends to settle close to her son. Other family members of Maksym’s remain in his war-torn homeland. His grandparents would not leave Kyiv, having lived there their whole lives, and his sister stayed in the country as her partner had to sign up to defend Ukraine. Making enough money from selling the gaming company he set up to buy his mother a house was something he never expected, the teenager said, with he and his friends embarking upon the project for fun. “We never imagined it would develop into a viable business opportunity, but with guidance from my brother who works in tech, and the school, I was encouraged to explore the possibilities to turn it into something bigger,” Maksym said. His success comes after he moved from Ukraine to Scotland in 2021 and bought a little-used Minecraft server for £1,000, and in the years that followed he and two friends made changes which resulted in a huge rise in players. Along with this, advertisers were attracted to the server, and its value increased. And because of the influx, Lomond School said a lucrative offer was made by a tech firm, which was accepted in May this year. I have no doubt that this won’t be the last we hear about one of Maksym’s business ventures Johanna Urquhart, Lomond School principal Now with one business success under his belt, Maksym wants to expand on his knowledge by going to university and has applied to a mixture of UK and overseas universities. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I’ve always had an interest in business having worked as a part-time translator and a writer in Ukraine,” said the student, who studies at the school in Helensburgh, in Argyll and Bute. “As well as having a passion for gaming, I really enjoyed the entrepreneurial side of our project, and I have applied to universities around the world to study business management.” His preferred choice for university is south of the border in England. Johanna Urquhart, Lomond School principal, said what Maksym had achieved was “absolutely incredible”. “I have no doubt that this won’t be the last we hear about one of Maksym’s business ventures,” she said. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Legislation needed to protect data from AI ‘ghostbots’, say researchers Banking app feature allows economic abuse survivors to mute malicious messages Augmented reality headset Vision Pro is ‘most advanced device ever’ – Apple

When authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes feel threatened by their public, they often shut down the internet. But such disruptions are not without costs. And one advocacy group has devised a way of calculating that cost.

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An eight-count indictment against Israeli professor and think tank co-founder Gal Luft appeared in a small, 137-word item on page 10 of the New York Post. Under the headline “Anti-Biden witness indicted”, it described Mr Luft, 57, as “a key figure in House Republicans' investigation of the Biden family” and said the charges against him are for “arms trafficking and conspiring to flout US sanctions on Iran”. It ended with a line about how Mr Luft claims the case is an attempt to stop him “testifying to Congress about allegations the first family received payments from individuals with ties to Chinese military intelligence and that the Bidens had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their Chinese benefactors”. The low-key treatment was a far cry from how the anti-Biden tabloid covered Mr Luft just days earlier, when Post columnist Miranda Devine – a frequent purveyor of conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter – wrote a column exclusively on a video on which Mr Luft claims he is being “hunted” by the FBI and facing “the rest of his life on the run”. Mr Luft’s dispatch to the Post came from parts unknown – as he has been a fugitive since February. He disappeared shortly after posting bail following his arrest by Cypriot authorities pursuant to an Interpol warrant on suspicion of arms trafficking. At the time, he tweeted that the arrest was part of a “politically motivated extradition request” by the US. “I've been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the US … claiming I'm an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren't tragic. I've never been an arms dealer. DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim [and] Hunter Biden,” he said. Mr Luft’s Israeli lawyer, Mordechai Tzivin, told Ynet that his client was being targeted because he provided derogatory information about the Bidens to the FBI in 2019. The accusations "would be a good way to shut him up," Mr Tzivin said, “because he knows a lot of information on Hunter”. He added that it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that prominent Democrats would try to have his client killed. “If this would have happened in Russia, they would have carried out a 'diplomatic car crash,' but luckily, he is in a safe location where no one can hurt him,” he said. Despite Mr Luft’s claim that the arms charges coincide with his emergence as a figure in the Republican-led crusade to tar the Bidens with corruption allegations, it’s not clear from the public record that he ever said a word about Mr Biden or his son prior to his arrest. But the Israeli-American academic – who was once a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces and more recently served as co-director of the DC-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security – has been critical of US foreign policy since Mr Biden took office with the aim of restoring relations with America’s democratic allies. In January, his think tank released a report that accused the US of “pursuing illegal economic policies” by way of an "extremely trigger-happy" use of sanctions, most notably against Russia. And last year, he appeared on CNBC to criticise the Biden administration’s efforts to impose a worldwide oil price cap on Russian oil to keep Moscow from using petrodollars to finance the war in Ukraine. “It's kind of a ridiculous idea in my view,” Mr Luft said. "That's not how the oil market works," he said. "This is a very sophisticated market, you cannot force the prices down." He also spoke to the South China Morning Post in August last year about who the Chinese government would tap to lead its foreign ministry after that year’s Communist Party Congress and last September penned an op-ed for the same publication in which he complained that the Ukraine war had become “a quagmire” and ridiculed Mr Biden’s prediction that US sanctions would have an effect on Moscow’s economy. “To date, Russia’s economy has contracted by 4 per cent – a far cry from President Biden’s suggestion at the beginning of the war that it would halve. If anyone is nearing implosion, it is probably Europe’s heavily indebted economies, facing an unprecedented pre-winter energy crisis, inflation, deindustrialisation and a growing social unrest already causing fissures in the Western alliance,” he said. Indeed, the first mention of Mr Luft’s claims against the Bidens came in his February post-arrest tweet. And though Republicans have now embraced his claims to have been speaking out against the president and his family since 2019, there’s no evidence he voiced his alleged concerns to anyone, even though unproven claims about the Bidens have been a fast-track to stardom in GOP media circles since Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Based on that pattern, it might be reasonable to conclude that Mr Luft is hoping to garner himself enough goodwill in the GOP that, should he remain a fugitive, a future Republican president — perhaps Mr Trump — will pardon him. Read More ‘Whistleblower’ who accused Bidens of corruption is charged with arms trafficking and violating Iran sanctions GOP cries foul over spy charges for Biden ‘whistleblower’ Top Republicans are gearing up to investigate the Hunter Biden case. Here's what to know. Dems call for probe into whether Gal Luft made claims about Biden to help China Biden and Zelenskyy praise each other despite divisions over Ukraine war Finland's new finance minister apologizes for racist comments in 2008 blog post

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