The EU has a "long history" of moving "aggressively" to regulate Big Tech and halt any attempts at "abusing" their "market power", said Yahoo Finance.

In its latest move, the European Commission (EC) has hit Microsoft with an "antitrust charge", accusing the US company of "illegally bundling" its Teams app into its other software packages. This was said to have given Teams an "undue advantage" that was "harming rivals such as Slack and Zoom", said the Financial Times.

These are some of the biggest charges ever brought against Microsoft, and came just a day after the EU presented similar charges against Apple. Brussels is gradually "turning up the heat on US tech giants".

What did the commentators say?
The EU is eager to be seen to be monitoring US tech firms, following "years of complaints from start-ups and campaigners" that regulators have responded too slowly to "anti-competitive behaviour", said the FT. The 2022 Digital Markets Act (DMA) now requires Big Tech to "run their platforms fairly or face hefty fines".

Unsurprisingly, Big Tech is pushing back. Companies are "expected to put up a fight" in EU courts, while European consumers may experience delays in new releases. Apple has already delayed the rollout of three new artificial intelligence features until 2025, citing the DMA as "the reason", said Semafor.

This creates a dilemma for the EU: its regulation is "forcing tech giants" to "create more user-focused and privacy-aware products" but could see Europe "falling behind in the global push for AI technology".

What next?
Big Tech is focused on generative AI, which will undoubtedly be the "big technological upheaval" of the near future, said The Economist. Regulators need to strike a delicate balance when monitoring firms' interests in AI, and a "light touch" may be necessary.

But tech giants would surely "use their imperial might to try to bend it to their advantage" if they were left "to their own devices". Regulators must "move fast" and act on their "duty" to "prevent them quashing competition".

Usually associated with "sun, sand and snorkelling", the Pacific island of Saipan was a surprising location for the culmination of Julian Assange's long legal battle with the US.

Yet the "string of tiny dots in the Pacific Ocean" that make up the Northern Mariana Islands have this week been at the centre of a "geopolitical chessboard", said the BBC. 

After agreeing a plea deal, Assange made clear that he would only face "a court close to his home of Australia but not on the continental United States", Reuters reported. Saipan fits the bill, as the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the US captured during the Second World War.

Battle of Saipan
Perhaps serendipitously, the end of Assange's legal fight falls at a time when the "echoes of history" are particularly loud for this remote island, said The Sydney Morning Herald.

This week, the island marked 80 years of peace since the "bloody" Battle of Saipan during WWII that "claimed the lives of 3,000 American soldiers and many, many more Japanese casualties".

Directly referencing the conflict, US District Court Judge Ramona Manglona told Assange: "We've been celebrating a peace here with a former enemy. And now there's some peace that you need to restore yourself when you walk out and pursue your life as a free man."

Geopolitical importance
The Northern Mariana Islands may continue to play an important, albeit relatively silent, role in geopolitics.

The archipelago is "popular with Korean and Chinese tourists", said Reuters, and is the only part of the US that Chinese citizens can enter without a visa.

This "has been a point of contention" for US lawmakers with national security concerns, who have urged authorities to "impose a visa requirement for Chinese visitors to the islands", said the BBC.

The islands are "under the threat of China's economic subversion", said The Diplomat in 2021, so little wonder that Washington continues to stress their strategic importance.

For showbiz documentaries to claim audiences will "never have seen their star like this before" is standard procedure. But in the case of "I Am: Celine Dion", it's "actually true", said Neil McCormick in The Telegraph. 

Prime Video's film chronicles Dion's 17-year battle with stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes stiffness and painful muscle spasms. Perhaps worst of all for "one of the most technically gifted singers of our time" is the devastating impact the chronic condition can have on the voice. 

The "Queen of Power Ballads" is seen in the throes of a "full-blown existential crisis" as she struggles to come to terms with the implications of the illness. Forgoing her usual glam attire, the Dion we see is make-up free with "granny glasses" and a bun, "wobbling precariously between denial, despair and defiance" that the "version of her life and self" as a singer is over.

Directed by Oscar-nominated documentary-maker Irene Taylor, "I Am: Celine Dion" brings together archival material spanning the star's four-decade career, with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage dating back to 2021, when she was forced to cancel her Las Vegas residency.

This isn't your average "vanity project" deceptively palmed off as a documentary, said Suzannah Ramsdale in the London Evening Standard. It is a "raw, heartbreaking and deeply moving" glimpse into the isolated life of an exceptionally talented singer "cut down in her prime". 

The film's starkest and "most shocking" insight into Dion's condition is an almost 10-minute "unvarnished" recording of the Canadian singer experiencing an agonising spasm. "At the risk of being cliche", said Adrian Horton in The Guardian, the only word that sprang to mind when watching Dion consent "via grunt" to being filmed when she is being immobilised by a seizure is "brave". 

All in all, said Lovia Gyarkye in The Hollywood Reporter, the film is "as much about the singer" as the realities of living with a chronic illness. The "visceral glimpse" into her pain offers a "jolting reminder" of the impact that the condition has had on Dion, "not just as a star, but as a person".

Which is the real party of business?
Alys Denby in City A.M.
Rishi Sunak has been praised for "finally distancing himself from his short-lived predecessor", Liz Truss, but "what should the City make of the Conservative leader drawing such a firm line under his party's experiment with free market ideology?" asks Alys Denby. Many will be "wondering which is the real party of enterprise". And with the field "wide open for politicians who unashamedly champion free markets" and "celebrate the City as an engine of growth", Reform could "very easily step into that role".

Iran's new president will shift nuclear calculus
Roger Boyes in The Times
Iran holds its snap presidential election this week and the two favourites are "hardliners", writes Roger Boyes. The "most intriguing" is Saeed Jalili, who "stonewalled the West" while Tehran secretly pressed ahead with its nuclear programme. He could press the "ailing" supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to "ease the fatwa" banning nuclear weapons. The nation will "build the bomb sooner or later", and "this much is clear: week by week, the region is becoming more dangerous".

Now the National Trust is wrecking the Cotswolds
Ysenda Maxtone Graham for The Spectator
"Gawping" at the sights of the Cotswolds has been a "popular pastime for centuries", writes Ysenda Maxtone Graham. In the "enchanting and peaceful" Cotswold village of Sherborne, residents have been "thrown into a state of dread", because the National Trust, which owns the surrounding land, plans a site "on which future coach loads will soon be disgorged", with "paths for mountain biking and three visitor 'hubs'". Rather than "getting on with the unglamorous tasks they're meant to be doing", the charity's staff "want to 'reimagine'" the area.