Snapchat Internally Testing Its Paid Subscription Called Snapchat Plus: Report

Snapchat is reportedly testing for its paid subscription called Snapchat+ internally, as confirmed by Snap spokesperson Liz Markman. The paid subscription from Snapchat is said to provide users an early access to features as well as other abilities announced on the app. As reported earlier, the one-month subscription for Snapchat+ is expected to cost EUR 4.59 (roughly Rs. 370), while the users can buy six-months plan at EUR 24.99 (roughly Rs. 2,000). The one-year subscription plan is said to come with a price tag of EUR 45.99 (roughly Rs. 3,700).

The social network Snapchat is working internally on its paid subscription service, claimed Snap spokesperson Liz Markman in a statement to The Verge. In a statement to the website, Markman shared that the company is currently busy doing early internal testing of Snapchat+. “We’re excited about the potential to share exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features with our subscribers, and learn more about how we can best serve our community,” he added.

As reported previously, app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi shared the expected subscription costs for the Snapchat+ on Twitter. As the tweet indicated, Snapchat+ one-month subscription is said to be priced at EUR 4.59 (roughly Rs. 370), while the subscription for costs EUR 24.99. Moreover, the paid service for one year will cost users EUR 45.99 (roughly Rs. 3,750). In addition, the company could offer a one-week free trial for users to encourage paid subscription. The payment will reportedly be linked to the user’s Play store account, and the service will be auto-renewed after a selected interval until the user cancels it.

Snapchat+ is also said to offer users custom Snapchat icons and a special badge. Users are said to be allowed to pin a conversation with a friend.


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Magic Internet Money token depegs as Terra (LUNA) domino effect persists

Magic Internet Money (MIM), a US dollar-pegged stablecoin of the Abracadabra ecosystem, joins the growing list of tokens losing their $1 value amid an untimely crypto winter. The sudden de-pegging of the MIM token commenced roughly on June 17, 7:40 pm ET, which saw the token’s price drop to $0.926 in just three hours.

Terra’s LUNA and TerraUSD (UST) death spiral not only affected the investors but also had a negative impact on numerous crypto projects, including Abracadabra’s MIM token ecosystem — as alleged by Twitter handle @AutismCapital.

Depegging of Magic Internet Money (MIM) token price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

Citing an insider scoop, AutismCapital claimed that Abracadabra accrued $12 million in bad debt as a direct result of Terra’s sudden downfall “because liquidations couldn’t happen fast enough to cover the protocol’s MIM liabilities.”

Daniele Sestagalli, the founder of Abracadabra, however, refuted the claims of insolvency by ensuring to have enough funds to pay back the piling debts — which has been attributed to the falling MIM prices. Sestagalli stated:

“[The Abracadabra] Treasury has more money than the debt and $CRV are valuable for the protocol.”

Doubling down on his stance, Sestagalli further publicly shared the treasury address holding $12 million in assets while asking concerned investors to verify the same using on-chain data.

On the other hand, Autism Capital alleged that Sestagalli’s bad debt was created five days ago and shared the below screenshot showing his conversation about the same on MIM’s Discord group.

Sestagalli’s conversation on MIM Discord group. Source: @AutismCapital

While the risk of insolvency continues to threaten the Abracadabra protocol, either through the MIM treasury continuing to dump in value or more bad debt created, investors are advised to keep track of market fluctuations and do their own research (DYOR) before making investment decisions. 

Related: USDD stablecoin falls to $0.97, DAO inserts $700M to defend the peg

Five days ago, on June 13, Stablecoin protocol USDD’s price dipped to $0.97 on major crypto exchanges.

To help out during the market fluctuations, the Tron DAO Reserve announced that it received 700 million USD Coin (USDC) to defend the USDD peg. As a result of the fund infusion, the team behind the stablecoin explained that the collateralization ratio of USDD is now boosted to 300%.



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YouTube Removes US Capitol Riot Probe Video, Cites ‘Election Misinformation’ as the Reason

YouTube on Friday pulled a video posted by the congressional committee probing last year’s attack on the US Capitol because it contained election misinformation spread by then president Donald Trump.

“Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, if it does not provide sufficient context,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in response to an AFP inquiry.

“We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and have removed the video uploaded by the January 6th Committee channel.”

The committee, which is in the middle of a series of public hearings investigating the attack on the seat of US government on January 6, 2021 in a bid to overturn the presidential election results in Trump’s favor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

YouTube did not specify which video was taken down at the channel, but media reports indicated the nixed clip contained Trump making baseless claims challenging the integrity of the election.

Trump pressured his vice president Mike Pence to go along with an illegal plot to overturn the 2020 US election and whipped up a mob that put his deputy’s life in danger when he refused, congressional investigators and former administration aides said Thursday.

The committee probing the attack detailed how the former president berated Pence for not going along with the scheme both knew to be unlawful – even after being told violence had erupted as Congress was meeting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

At its third public hearing into the insurrection, the panel detailed a “relentless” pressure campaign by Trump on Pence – as cornerstone of a criminal conspiracy to keep the defeated president in power.

The committee maintains that Trump’s pursuit of this scheme led to the violence at the Capitol, which was linked to at least five deaths.


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Verizon, AT&T Delays Part of 5G Rollout Near Airports Until Mid-2023 to Ensure Equipment Safety

Federal regulators say Verizon and AT&T will delay part of their 5G rollout near airports to give airlines more time to ensure that equipment on their planes is safe from interference from the wireless signals, but the airline industry is not happy about the deal.

An airline industry trade group said federal regulators are taking a “rushed approach” to changing equipment on planes under pressure from the telecommunications companies.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that the wireless companies agreed to delay some of their use of the C-Band section of the radio spectrum until July 2023.

“We believe we have identified a path that will continue to enable aviation and 5G C-band wireless to safely co-exist,” said the FAA’s acting administrator, Billy Nolen.

However, aviation groups say the C-Band service could interfere with radio altimeters — devices used to measure a plane’s height above the ground. Pilots use altimeters for landing in bad weather, when visibility is poor.

Nolen said planes most susceptible to interference — smaller, so-called regional airline planes — must be retrofitted with filters or new altimeters by the end of this year. Components to retrofit larger planes used by major airlines should be available by July 2023, when the wireless companies expect to run 5G networks in urban areas “with minimal restrictions,” he said.

Airlines for America, a trade group for the largest US carriers, said the FAA hasn’t approved necessary upgrades and manufacturers have not yet produced the parts.

“It is not at all clear that carriers can meet what appears to be an arbitrary deadline,” trade group CEO Nicholas Calio said in a letter to Nolen. He said safety is jeopardized “by the rushed approach to avionics modifications amid pressure from the telecommunications companies,” and warned that if replacement parts aren’t ready in time, airline service could be disrupted.

Verizon said the agreement will let the company lift voluntary limits on its 5G rollout around airports “in a staged approach over the coming months.” AT&T said it agreed to take “a more tailored approach” to controlling the strength of signals near runways so airlines have more time to retrofit equipment.

Friday’s developments were the latest in a long-running dispute between airlines and wireless companies and their respective regulators, the FAA and the Federal Communications Commission, which determined that C-Band service posed no risk to planes.

Verizon and AT&T spent $68 billion (roughly Rs. 5,30,140 crore) between them at an FCC auction of 5G spectrum last year. The companies began activating new 5G networks in January but agreed to delay powering up some towers for six months, until July 5, because of concerns raised by the FAA and airlines.


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TikTok Migrates US Users’ Data to Oracle Servers, Ensures Safety of Information

TikTok said it has completed migrating information on its US users to servers at Oracle, in a move that could address US regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app.

The move, which was first reported by Reuters, comes nearly two years after a US national security panel ordered parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that US user data could be passed on to China’s communist government.

TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media apps, with more than 1 billion active users globally, and counts the US as its largest market.

The United States has been increasingly scrutinising app developers over the personal data they handle, especially if some of it involves US military or intelligence personnel.

The order to sell off TikTok was not enforced after Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as US president last year.

The panel, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), however, has continued to harbor concerns over data security at TikTok that ByteDance is now hoping to address, Reuters previously reported.

The White House had no immediate comment while the US Treasury declined to comment.

In March, Reuters reported that TikTok was nearing a deal for Oracle to store its US users’ information.

Oracle had discussed acquiring a minority stake in TikTok in 2020, when ByteDance was under US pressure to sell the app. The cloud computing giant now stores all of TikTok’s US user data on Oracle data servers in the United States under the new partnership, TikTok said.

Oracle declined to comment.

Data security team

TikTok had previously been storing its US user data at its own data centres in Virginia, with a backup in Singapore. It will now delete private data on US users from its own data centres and rely fully on Oracle’s US servers, it said.

The Virginia and Singapore centres are still being used to back up the data, the company said.

TikTok has also set up a dedicated US data security team known as “USDS” as a gatekeeper for US user information and ringfencing it from ByteDance, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

Led by Andrew Bonillo, who was an executive at TikTok’s global security department, the USDS currently reports to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, the spokesperson said.

The company is discussing a structure under which the team would operate autonomously and not be under TikTok’s control or supervision, a source told Reuters.

Another senior executive at USDS is Will Farrell, who was previously working under TikTok’s Chief Security Officer Roland Cloutier. The USDS team includes content moderation personnel, engineers, and members from user and product operations.

ByteDance is one of China’s fastest growing startups. It owns the country’s leading news aggregator, Jinri Toutiao, as well as TikTok’s Chinese counterpart Douyin.

In June 2021, Biden withdrew Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok. The Commerce Department is writing new rules on app data security that could potentially lead to restrictions on how apps based abroad use US user data or even ban apps deemed serious security risks.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last year the administration is “very serious about protecting Americans’ data,” but criticised Trump’s approach.

“Doing some executive order that’s meaningless on TikTok is not the way to do it,” she said.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Google Urged by US Lawmakers to Fix Abortion Searches That Steer Women to ‘Fake Clinics’

US lawmakers urged Alphabet’s leading Google search engine to give accurate results to people seeking abortions rather than sometimes sending them to “crisis pregnancy centres,” which steer woman away from the procedures.

The request came in a letter, whose top signatories were Senator Mark Warner and Representative Elissa Slotkin, sent to Google on Friday and first reported by Reuters.

The letter was prompted by a study released last week by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study found that 11 percent of the results for a search for an “abortion clinic near me” or “abortion pill” in some states were for centres that oppose abortion.

The research was conducted in the 13 states with laws that would ban abortion if, as expected, the US Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized it nationwide as soon as this month.

Google declined to comment on the letter to Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai, but said of the report: “We’re always looking at ways to improve our results to help people find what they’re looking for, or understand if what they’re looking for may not be available.”

The letter was signed by 14 senators and seven members of the US House of Representatives. All are Democrats.

Crisis pregnancy centres, which have been around in one form or another for years, reflect disagreements in the United States over the right to terminate a pregnancy. Some of the centers have been accused of giving women inaccurate information about their pregnancy, which can jeopardize their access to abortion.

“Google should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centres,” the lawmakers wrote. “If Google must continue showing these misleading results…the results should, at the very least, be appropriately labeled,” they wrote.

Google has dealt with other health concerns differently. Searches regarding suicide or sexual assault are topped by a curated list of resources and trusted sources.

The research group also found that in the states that it studied that 28 percent of Google Ads were for the anti-abortion centres, as were 37 percent of the results on Google Maps. The letter said that some of the centres had disclaimers but not all.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Plotting a route towards democracy in The Gambia — Global Issues

For Isatou Ceesay and Tombong Njie, the term “witch hunt” is not metaphorical. Under the regime of former dictator Yahya Jammeh, they were both literally condemned as witches.

“He held people in custody, tortured them, and that was the end of them,” says Ms. Ceesay. “We were so embarrassed to go out. We are not witches,” adds Ms. Njie.

During his 22 years in power, former President Jammeh severely weakened the country’s institutions and security apparatus. The regime was characterized by harassment; torture; the murder of political figures, journalists, activists, and students; and significant sexual and gender-based violence against women and children. 

Ms. Ceesay, Ms. Njie, and many other Gambians still carry the scars of the abuses of the witch hunt campaign, which began in 2009 and lasted several years. Victims struggled to escape the stigma associated with witches.

UNDP Gambia

Isatou Ceesay, a victim of the Gambian ‘witch hunt’ campaign.

Supporting a difficult transition

In 2016, the Gambians voted out President Jammeh, and the new President, Adama Barrow, was sworn into office in February 2017. However, the nation of two million people faced a severe political and social crisis with the absence of independent or effective justice institutions and rampant human rights abuses.

The political transition required urgent reforms to overhaul the country’s institutions, promote democratic governance, address past human rights abuses and establish respect for the rule of law. 

One of the ways that the UN has helped to support this transition is through the UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund, which provided funds aimed at critical areas, such as security sector and justice reform.

The UN’s close collaboration with the authorities, under President Barrow, laid the foundations for two major institutions in December 2017: The National Human Rights Commission and the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), which is made up of eleven people, and designed to reflect the diverse ethnic, religious, and gender make-up of the country.

UNDP Gambia

Tombong Njie suffered as a result of the ‘witch hunts’ instigated by former President of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh.

Bringing back hope to The Gambia

In January 2019, public truth and reconciliation hearings began, with victims and perpetrators giving their personal testimonies. The hearings and outreach activities generated great public interest and broad popular participation, including youth and civil society. 

“The TRRC is very important. I have seen how it has helped people empathize with us, knowing that we were deliberately and wrongfully accused,” said Pa Demba Bojang, a victim of the witch hunt campaign.

“People now aspire to live in peace in this country. Victims’ lives have become better thanks to the help they got from the project. The project has brought back hope in The Gambia,” said another victim.

The hearings were broadcast live to on television, radio, and online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. They would not have made for easy viewing, covering incidents of human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention/killings, and sexual and gender-based violence.

UNDP The Gambia

Ya Jai Bahoum, a victim of the repressive regime of Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh

Supporting the victims

The UN Peacebuilding Fund played a key role in enabling the hearings to take place. It enabled the Commission’s office to open, provided key equipment, technical support to the Commissioners and the staff, and helped ensure victims access to the TRRC proceedings, which involved reaching out to those in the most remote areas of the country.

Some 2,000 people benefitted from the Victim Participation Support Fund, which provided psychosocial support and essential medical interventions. In addition, 30 persons were provided with comprehensive witness protection. 

Beyond the hearings, over 34,000 Gambians have involved in outreach missions on the transitional justice process, and taken part in workshops, held in close partnership with civil society organizations, religious and traditional leaders.

Since it began holding hearings, the Commission’ participatory and accessible process has helped to foster national reconciliation. “We were wrongfully accused. Some pointed fingers at us, but TRRC helped us overcome this shame,” said another victim of the witch hunt campaign.

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‘Late Show’ Staffers Arrested at U.S. Capitol While Filming

The police Thursday night arrested seven people at the United States Capitol, saying they were unaccompanied and lacked proper identification at a time when the building was closed to visitors.

The group was part of a production team that was at the Capitol building Wednesday and Thursday to record interviews for a comedy segment featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a barb-spewing canine puppet, for “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” according to a statement from CBS.

The United States Capitol Police received a call around 8:30 p.m. Thursday about a disturbance in the Longworth House Office Building, the authorities said Friday. Officers saw seven people who did not have Congressional identification and were unescorted in a sixth-floor hallway, they said.

The Capitol Police said the group had been told to leave the building earlier in the day. Group members were charged with unlawful entry.

“This is an active investigation, and may result in additional criminal charges after consultation with the U.S. attorney,” a statement from Capitol Police said.

Congress has been holding hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the building, when supporters of President Donald J. Trump violently stormed the complex.

In a statement released after Thursday’s arrests, CBS said the interviews at the Capitol had been authorized and prearranged through Congressional aides of the members who were interviewed.

“After leaving the members’ offices on their last interview of the day, the production team stayed to film stand-ups and other final comedy elements in the halls when they were detained by Capitol Police,” the statement said.

The names of the group members were not released by the Capitol Police or CBS. The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia could not immediately be reached late Friday to discuss the arrests.

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Kim Kardashian Reveals Why Pete Davidson Got Reign’s Name Wrong

In Pete Davidson‘s defense, when it comes to keeping up with the Kardashians, there is a lot to know.

And though the Saturday Night Live alum has been dating Kim Kardashian since last fall, he apparently doesn’t have the family tree memorized just yet.

Kim took to Twitter on June 17 to share a “funny fact” about Pete, revealing he didn’t know the real name of Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick‘s youngest child.

“Pete thought Reign’s name was Raymond for the longest time,” she wrote, “because that’s what @ScottDisick calls him all the time.”

Fans got to see the nickname firsthand during the season finale of Hulu’s The Kardashians. While filming in the yard, Scott did in fact call his youngest son Reign Disick “Raymond” many times while the 7-year-old played on the trampoline with his 9-year-old sister, Penelope Disick.

Kim had plenty more post-show commentary to give to fans on Twitter. The SKIMS founder also called out Scott for saying Pete brings out a “different” side to her when she is around him. As he told Khloe Kardashian in the finale, “[Kim] says, like, young slang words” when she’s around the comedian.



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Midterm Primary Elections: News and Updates

The stakes in Thursday’s Democratic debate for governor of New York State were relatively low for Gov. Kathy Hochul, the race’s front-runner. She had to withstand an onslaught of attacks from her rival candidates, while making no major errors. She appeared to achieve those modest aims.

The stakes for her two rivals, on the other hand, were substantially higher. Early voting for the June 28 primary begins Saturday, and this was one of their last opportunities to change the trajectory of a race that appears all but certain to award her the nomination.

Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, who is running to Ms. Hochul’s right as a tough-on-crime, fiscally responsible Democrat, tried his mightiest to land a punch. So did Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate, who is running to Ms. Hochul’s left.

They attacked the governor’s record on crime, aid for undocumented immigrants, the environment, and affordable housing.

And they frequently touched on real sore spots for the Hochul campaign.

Ms. Hochul did align herself with the National Rifle Association when it was politically advantageous, before turning against it. She did use state funds to finance a new Buffalo Bills stadium in a deal that sports economists describe as flawed, and she did choose a less-than-ideal lieutenant governor in Brian A. Benjamin, who had to step down to fight federal corruption charges.

But Ms. Hochul is a formidable fund-raiser wielding the powers of incumbency. She has nearly a year in office and a $220 billion budget under her belt to defend against attacks from her opponents.

Here’s a recap of some of the most memorable moments of the debate.

A clash over environmental policy

Credit…Pool photo by Craig Ruttle

Ms. Hochul’s first days as governor were punctuated by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which caused severe flooding that killed at least 13 New York City residents, many in their basements.

On Thursday, the debate moderators asked her and her Democratic competitors what they were doing to combat climate change, which is expected to make future hurricanes more devastating.

The governor pointed to her support for a $4.2 billion environmental bond act, which will go before voters in November and, if passed, will help finance climate-related infrastructure.

But Mr. Williams quickly pointed out that on some other climate-related measures, Ms. Hochul has seemed more equivocal.

During a debate last week, Ms. Hochul said that the state’s long-delayed congestion pricing plan for New York City was “not going to happen over the next year under any circumstances.”

The plan would demand a toll of drivers entering Manhattan’s central business district, and is expected to reduce traffic and the pollution that comes with it. Ms. Hochul blamed the federal government for the delays.

Following her remarks last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority she controls issued a statement asserting it was moving full-speed ahead on congestion pricing, and Ms. Hochul hewed to that line on Thursday.

But Mr. Williams attacked her on another climate-related front, too. Ms. Hochul has yet to sign legislation that would institute a two-year moratorium on a particularly energy-intensive form of cryptocurrency mining.

A super PAC backed by a cryptocurrency billionaire is also supporting her running mate’s bid for lieutenant governor.

Conflicting views on how to address the housing crisis

Credit…Pool photo by Craig Ruttle

Each of the three candidates on the debate stage agreed that the housing crisis was a major problem facing New Yorkers — but the question of how to solve it opened the first three-way spat of the night.

Ms. Hochul pointed to the steps already underway — from a recently signed bill that would convert distressed hotels into housing, to a plan to build 100,000 new affordable units, to a new funding stream for New York’s beleaguered public housing stock — as proof that she has the issue under control.

Ms. Hochul also mentioned her rental assistance program, which the state contributed $800 million to in its last budget, and which she described as a “short-term solution,” to help with housing and utility costs during the pandemic.

Mr. Suozzi agreed that the city’s public housing needed support, and new affordable housing ought to be built. He suggested that there should be a replacement for 421a, a section in the tax law that offered developers tax relief in exchange for creating affordable units. It has just expired; Ms. Hochul tried to replace it in the last legislative session, but lawmakers balked, calling it a giveaway to real estate.

But more broadly Mr. Suozzi knocked the governor for what he described as her “irresponsible” use of federal funds. “We already have the highest taxes in the United States of America. When a downturn comes, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble because of the irresponsible spending by this governor,” he said.

Mr. Williams, for his part, said that the state needed to build many times the number of affordable units suggested by Ms. Hochul, and to pass “Good Cause” eviction legislation, which would make it more difficult for landlords to remove tenants from their homes. Neither Mr. Suozzi nor Ms. Hochul said that they would support such legislation.

“The real estate industry dumps millions of dollars to buy policy that has you facing eviction,” Mr. Williams said directly to the camera.

Repeated interruptions from Suozzi

Credit…NBC 4 New York — WNBC

One of the more contentious moments of the evening involved Mr. Suozzi’s attacks on Ms. Hochul’s record on gun control.

After her 2011 election to Congress, where she represented an upstate district, Ms. Hochul got an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, and the organization endorsed her in 2012 against a Republican opponent.

She has since become an ardent proponent of gun control. Mr. Suozzi cast her evolution as hypocrisy.

When Ms. Hochul tried to respond to Mr. Suozzi’s argument, he interrupted her twice.

“Please stop interrupting me,” Ms. Hochul said, with evident irritation. “People want to hear my answer.”

It was not the only time Mr. Suozzi spoke over Ms. Hochul. A short while later, Ms. Hochul was trying to respond to a question about elementary school curriculums dealing with sexual orientation and gender identity.

Mr. Suozzi interrogated her directly.

“Excuse me, I’m giving an answer,” she said.

“I’d like to hear the answer,” he said.

“I will answer the moderator,” she responded.

The fight over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ comes to New York

Across the country, parents have moved to scrub public school curriculums of the history of racism, as well as of information on gender and sexuality.

Most recently, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida trumpeted a law — known to detractors as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — that bars teachers from sharing lessons on L.G.B.T.Q. history or gender identity with children before the fourth grade.

Mr. Suozzi drew controversy in April when he said that he found the law to be reasonable. Though he later recanted, he said Thursday night that he wouldn’t teach children “about sexual orientation or about genitalia or about sexuality” before the fifth grade. “I think that that’s up to parents to do that,” he said.

Ms. Hochul attempted to seize on Mr. Suozzi’s comments, which she said were “discriminatory.” But when asked whether she would support a mandate for a curriculum in elementary school, Ms. Hochul demurred, saying that such a decision should be made in conjunction with teachers, school boards and parents.

Mr. Williams, who has in the past drawn criticism for his own stance on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, said that he would support such a curriculum, so long as it was taught so that young people could understand it. He later suggested that such education could also help children seek help for sexual abuse.

Agreement on tackling crime, but not on how to do it

Credit…Pool photo by Craig Ruttle

New York City has seen an uptick in certain violent crimes and on Thursday, Mr. Suozzi blamed neither the pandemic, nor the economy, nor Mayor Eric Adams. He blamed Ms. Hochul.

“This is the No. 1 issue we face in the state and the governor has not treated it like the No. 1 issue that it is,” Mr. Suozzi said.

A recent Siena poll found that 70 percent of New York City residents feel less safe today than they did before the pandemic.

Mr. Suozzi has made crime central to his campaign for governor. He routinely argues that the state needs to pass laws that keep criminals in jail longer, and casts himself as a proven executive capable of doing so. He says that as governor, he would remove district attorneys who fail to enforce state law.

So when the question turned to subway crime, and Ms. Hochul started explaining her joint city-state effort to combat it, Mr. Suozzi attacked.

“People are not safer,” he said. “Under this administration, they are not safer. They don’t feel safe. And the governor has not made crime a priority.”

Mr. Williams agreed that safety was of critical importance to the city, acknowledging that as a new father he worried about his daughter taking the subway.

Instead of seeking to add police officers, however, Mr. Williams said that the state should invest in housing, mental health, and “responsible” policing to create what he has called a “holistic” approach to public safety.

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