World News

The ongoing discourse surrounding the repatriation of Naga ancestral human remains from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK, has sparked critical reflections among the Naga community.

Eight people on a boat trying to cross from France to England have died after the vessel got into difficulties. Almost 50 people have died so far this year attempting the perilous journey, French authorities say.

You’d think eventually Israel’s enablers (us Americans, Brits, and Europeans) would realize Israel’s actions are motivating more and more war and we’d stop kowtowing to Netanyahu. Have we not already collected enough data on how effective our various munitions are at blowing off children’s limbs?

It probably won’t happen until the people who confuse Netanyahu with Anne Frank are out of power.

The world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle, has removed a series of sensational articles relating to the Gaza war after claims that the material was fabricated by a “freelance journalist” who had also misrepresented his résumé.

Founded in 1841, the JC – as it is familiarly known – has long been a respected institution in British Jewish life, attracting prominent Jewish journalists and writers to contribute. But the recent events have caused consternation about the direction of the paper as it has drifted further right under its editor, Jake Wallis Simons, and amid question over who owns it.

In recent months, there have been suggestions in the Israeli media that stories have been placed in European newspapers, including one in the German tabloid Bild, that are based on fake or misrepresented intelligence, planted as part of an effort to support prime minister Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s negotiating position over Gaza.

A woman in Austria was found guilty of fatally infecting her neighbor with COVID-19 in 2021, her second pandemic-related conviction in a year, according to local media. A judge sentenced the 54-year-old on Thursday to four months’ suspended imprisonment and an 800-euro fine ($886.75) for grossly negligent homicide.

The victim, who was also a cancer patient, died of pneumonia that was caused by the coronavirus, according to Austrian news agency APA. A virological report showed that the virus DNA matched both the deceased and the 54-year-old woman, proving that the defendant “almost 100 percent” transmitted it, an expert told the court.

“I feel sorry for you personally -- I think that something like this has probably happened hundreds of times,” the judge said Thursday. “But you are unlucky that an expert has determined with almost absolute certainty that it was an infection that came from you.”

A place this size, especially one in a historically red state, was unlikely to have an abortion clinic before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Since then, Kansas has become one of five states that people are most likely to travel to in order to get an abortion when they’re unable to at home, said Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who researches abortion policies.

Abortions spiked in Kansas by 152% after Roe, according to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Using Myers’ count, six of the clinics in Kansas, Illinois, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia that have opened or relocated post-Roe are in communities with fewer than 25,000 people. Two others are in communities of fewer than 50,000.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20310478

By Dania Akkad

Published date: 13 September 2024 19:12 BST

The Kremlin is working to systematically instill “patriotic” values in children and teenagers through a Soviet-style propaganda campaign as it looks toward preparing the next generation for a life shaped by conflict with Ukraine and the West.

Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade.

Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine.

During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb.

British sources indicated that concerns were aired about Iran’s trade for nuclear technology, part of a deepening alliance between Tehran and Moscow.

It’s almost as if the threat of long range missiles is scaring the shit out of Russia.

I hope NATO reply that if Russia turns Kiev into a melted spot, Moscow will follow. But to be fair it’s all ego saber rattling.

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday seized about $3 million from bank accounts belonging to social media platform X and satellite-based internet service provider Starlink, both companies controlled by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

The move by Justice Alexandre de Moraes was aimed at collecting funds that are equivalent to the amount that X owes to the country in fines. The bank accounts of the two companies have since been unfrozen.

Legal analysts have questioned de Moraes’ prior decision to freeze Starlink’s bank account to pay for cases related to X. While Musk owns both X and SpaceX, which operates Starlink, the two companies are separate entities.

[...] BBC World Service has seen documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.

On the streets of Iranian cities, it’s becoming more common to see a woman passing by without a mandatory headscarf, or hijab, as the second anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini and the mass protests it sparked approaches. 

There’s no government official or study acknowledging the phenomenon, which began as Iran entered its hot summer months and power cuts in its overburdened electrical system became common. But across social media, videos of people filming neighborhood streets or just talking about a normal day in their life, women and girls can be seen walking past with their long hair out over their shoulders, particularly after sunset.

When school started this year for Mikalay in Belarus, the 15-year-old discovered that his teachers and administrators no longer called him by that name. Instead, they referred to him as Nikolai, its Russian equivalent.

What’s more, classes at his school — one of the country’s best — are now taught in Russian, not Belarusian, which he has spoken for most of his life.

Belarusians like Mikalay are experiencing a new wave of Russification as Moscow expands its economic, political and cultural dominance to overtake the identity of its neighbor.

It’s not the first time. Russia under the czars and in the era of the Soviet Union imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus. But with the demise of the USSR in 1991, the country began to assert its identity, and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the red hammer and sickle.

Russian officials have threatened that a possible decision by the West to allow Kyiv to use donated weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory would result in a major escalation of its war against Ukraine that could include the use of nuclear weapons.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, warned on September 14 that Kyiv could be turned into a "gray melted spot" if restrictions against Ukraine's use of Western weapons were loosened.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13315099

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20297056

Patrick Wintour

Diplomatic editor

Fri 13 Sep 2024 11.38 EDT

The United States on September 13 said the Russian news outlet RT is taking orders directly from the Kremlin and working with Russian military intelligence to spread disinformation around the world to undermine democracies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States has gathered new evidence that exposes cooperation between RT and four other subsidiaries of the Rossia Segodnya media group, and it intends to warn other countries of the threat of the disinformation.

In addition to RT, Rossia Segodnya operates RIA Novosti, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik, but the announcement on September 13 focused largely on RT. The outlet, formerly known as Russia Today, has previously been sanctioned for its work to allegedly spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.

The “inhumane” treatment of migrants rounded up in a “futile” operation for the now scrapped Rwanda scheme, has been laid bare in testimonies from Home Office staff that reveal force was used against distressed detainees.

Dozens of migrants facing removal to Rwanda under the previous Conservative government were detained as part of a surprise initiative, Operation Vector, launched days before the 2 May local elections in England and Wales in what critics say was an “act of political theatre”.

Home Office accounts show the department paid out £56.8m in compensation for more than 2,700 wrongful detentions in the five years before the Rwanda raids.

(Fran Heathcote, general secretary for the Public and Commercial Services union) added: “What also concerns us is the likelihood Rishi Sunak knew full well the Rwanda scheme was futile and causing distress to individuals but continued to push it ahead of the general election to make a political point.”