BBC Verify has confirmed the location of US aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln near Iran using satellite imagery, as Washington continues to put pressure on the country over its military program and recent deadly crackdown on protesters.

US and Iranian officials are set to meet in Swizerland on Tuesday for a second round of talks. Iran says the meeting will focus on its nuclear programme and the potential lifting of economic sanctions imposed by the US. Washington has previously indicated it wants to discuss other issues as well.

The Abraham Lincoln, which leads a strike group with three guided missile destroyers, carries 90 aircraft including F35 fighters, and 5,680 crew, was reportedly deployed to the Gulf region in late January but has not been seen in satellite imagery until now. It has been located off the coast of Oman, around 700km from Iran.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43265073

Chaser: 📺 ¡Nunca Pensé! featuring Mariachi Arcoiris

LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — She says she was let down at every step. By a partner who abandoned her when she was pregnant. By a health service that denied her a legal abortion. And by a justice system that sent her to a maximum-security prison for illegally terminating her pregnancy on her own.

Violet Zulu, a house cleaner in Zambia earning $40 a month, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2024 after representing herself in court with little understanding of the consequences of her actions. She didn’t see her two children or other family members for nearly two years.

After word of her case reached international rights groups that helped her file an appeal, Zulu was freed last month. Activists say she represents many women in Africa who take desperate decisions when facing barriers to legal abortion services.

Her story has drawn little sympathy in her southern African nation, where parts of society view abortion harshly. Her own mother said she agreed with her daughter’s prison sentence, but said it should have been shorter.

Zulu spoke with The Associated Press as she pieces her life together again at the age of 26.

In January 2011, Jeffrey Epstein received an email inviting him to join a freshman congressman for breakfast at a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan.

The billionaire pedophile was promised the chance to rub shoulders with Rep. Allen West, a “rising star” Florida Republican, whose district encompassed Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion.

For Epstein, this type of offer was far from unusual. After he pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008 and served a 13-month stint in jail, the convicted sex offender received offers to meet with over a dozen current or former members of Congress, according to The Independent’s analysis of documents released by the Department of Justice.

Exclusive: First meeting to be held over domestic payments system aimed at reducing reliance on US networks

UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems.

The meeting, chaired by Barclays’ UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur.

The City-funded, but government-backed, initiative has been under discussion for years. However, Trump’s recent threats against Nato allies over Greenland have amplified concerns that an over-reliance on US companies could put UK payments – and the wider economy – at risk.

About 95% of UK card transactions are made using payment systems owned by Mastercard and Visa, according to a 2025 report by the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator. That dominance has become far more relevant as cash use across the country continues to decline.

MBFC
Archive

Hey!

I made this thread on Reddit recently at /r/TankieTheDeprogram and crossposted it a few times.

My question is: Do you think the suggestions and alternatives will be enough for now?

And what others do you recommend?

Also, anything that I missed?

Here's the whole post in full:

"Here you go:

https://gizmodo.com/reddit-meta-and-google-voluntarily-gave-dhs-info-of-anti-ice-users-report-says-2000722279

I am just trying to get everyone to consider switching to Lemmygrad or some other Reddit alternative (and especially a Discord alternative, goodness gracious!).

I don't know if you all want to make the jump, but there's also Bluesky from Twitter / X, though Bluesky has the same problems as "old Twitter," not to mention Zionist administration.

I think it's still worth it to have at least a foothold or account on one of these platform.

I myself am on one Internet forum (like those message boards that were popular in the 2000s).

I think that Discourse is also an alternative too (not to be confused with Discord).

I'm making an Internet forum for it right now.

Here you go:

https://lemmygrad.ml/

And then there's Stoat or Revolt, which can be downloaded here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.revolt&hl=en%5C_US

I don't know that it has any "Windows 11 app" yet. It's just web browser and the actual app on mobile.

I don't recommend Element or Matrix... Too... janky? Hard to explain. It's just not easy to use.

Signal might be fine, but it's based in the United States.

I would recommend getting Proton Mail, though they have in the past, if asked, revealed info, though it may be the best email alternative there is right now.

I wouldn't worry too much about the email client right now, but if you have Linux, that is a great way to be secure. Windows 11 uses telemetry and other programs that gather your data.

Never too late to switch to Linux.

There's also Hexbear, not just Lemmygrad (both Lemmygrad and Hexbear are for communists, but you can use the wider Lemmyverse without being a political minority or communist; you can use other Lemmy instances without being a communist or anarchist at all).

Use Firefox or Zen browser as an alternative to your Edge or Chrome browser. I prefer Zen.

None of this is full-proof and there's always a risk.

Still, if you're an activist or organizer, it may be needed. If you're a political minority or gender minority, it may be needed. If you're an immigrant, even here legally, it may be needed. Don't forget that ICE is killing U.S. citizens and kidnapping them too.

Just be carefdul, folks.

Watch this for more on the Discord situation:

https://youtu.be/qhxsE8dvbs4

Mullvad VPN may be the better VPN but there are others out there as well. Avoid NordVPN and other big ones, imho.

Don't be afraid of speaking the truth, but also, don't pre-comply. These are just to keep you extra safe, but if you need to speak on a public platform, maybe do so at your discretion.

There's also Mastodon, which ebbs and flows in terms of its usage.

UpScrolled is also an alternative to TikTok, which is now Zionist-controlled and has had a noticeable algorithm change.

Read this too:

https://www.972mag.com/wp-content/themes/rgb/newsletter.php?page%5C_id=section%5C_id%3D190353

Let me know of any more alternatives or what you can do to protect yourself from state terrorism.

Lawyers and firms, other services, and maybe ways to not rely on the Internet too much.

Take care! This is not just for communists. If you happen to be reading this, please consider using these alternatives and then some."

Let me know if these occasional promotions I do are worth it and if they help out!

Also, I posted the PC Gamer article from here.

Again, let me know if this all helps.

Source

Context

My only content on reddit nowadays is pretty much only posting about lemmy and the link join-lemmy.org, to drive attention to lemmy.

I have noticed that my lemmy comments are removed. This happens on several accounts.

Can some of you please try, and let me know if your post is also removed?

That would be hilarious. Fuck them.

I spent the long weekend setting up a home dashboard and thought I would share with this community.

I checked out a few options for this and settled on using Glance which takes a YAML as input, transforms it into a dashboard, and serves it. Its nice because it's a single executable. I have this set to run on startup on an old RPi 2, which also runs a fullscreen Chrome session pointed to localhost for display on an old monitor I had sitting around. The RPi 2 is able to run glance comfortably, it's a little slow to run Chrome but that's OK, this is not interactive. The monitor is on a remote so I can flick it on/off from my desk. I also made a "homescreen webapp" on my phone so I can jump to the same dashboard and click into any news that is interesting.

A few things I learned

• with the HEAD property you can set the page to auto-refresh. Each widget caches internally so this can be set to the quickest refresh rate needed, and only some feeds will re-populate
• you can combine multiple Lemmy community post streams into a single time-sorted "feed" using the RSS widget and the RSS link from each Lemmy community. You can also mix in other non-social news sources by adding their RSS (this worked better than the standard Lemmy community widget) So in the end I can have a nice mix of sources and there are enough of them to even populate when Lemmy isn't so active.
• to supplement the weather widget, I added live satellite and radar loops. You can get them here: satellite (look for the *.gif under GEOCOLOR for each location) and radar (click the "image loop" link to get a radar loop after picking your local radar station). Applies to US only for radar. The US runs other satellites which cover the whole world, but GOES-19 is the US east coast, pictured roughly every 20 min.
• my router (Microtik) provides nice graphs I could include so the dashboard includes a network bytes TX/RX graph for my home (this is below what is visible in the screenshot)

Here's my config

I hope this is helpful to someone!

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israeli prosecutors said Monday that they plan to charge a settler in the killing of a Palestinian activist during a confrontation that was caught on video, opening a rare prosecution of violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Attacks from settlers and home demolitions by authorities have spiked dramatically over the past two years, but the death in July of Awdah Hathaleen has drawn particular attention due to his involvement in the 2025 Oscar-winning film “No Other Land,” which chronicled Palestinian villagers’ fight to stay on their land. The case also stands out because the confrontation between Palestinians and Yinon Levi, an internationally sanctioned settler, was captured on video from multiple vantage points.

In a video that family members say was taken by Hathaleen himself, Levi could be seen firing toward the person holding the camera. Another showed Levi firing two shots without showing where the bullets struck.

An Israeli judge released Levi from custody six months ago, citing a lack of evidence that he fired the shots that killed Hathaleen.

Israel’s State Attorney General’s office confirmed in a statement Monday that it had initiated proceedings to indict Levi. It did not specify the charges.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Abdul-Razzaq Ahmad Saryoul began publishing books in Syria in 2003 but he used to abstain from participating in the annual International Damascus Book Fair because of tight measures by the country’s security agencies and bans on many books under Bashar Assad’s rule.

In the first post-Assad book fair to be held in Damascus, which wrapped up Monday, Saryoul was surprised when he was issued a permit the day he applied to take part without being asked what his books are about. The wide range of titles available made this year’s fair “unprecedented,” he said.

Another publisher, Salah Sorakji, was proud to offer Kurdish books in the Syrian capital for the first time in decades. During the Assad era, ethnic Kurds suffered from discrimination, including bans on their language.

The first book fair since Assad was unseated in December 2024 witnessed high turnout, with state media reporting that 250,000 people attended on the first day, Feb. 6, trekking out to fairgrounds where it was held about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the city center. The fair’s director, Ahmad Naasan, said about 500 publishing companies from some 35 countries took part.

CONCORDIA, Mexico (AP) — Deep in the coastal mountains above the sparkling Pacific resort of Mazatlan, towns spaced along a twisting road appear nearly deserted, the quiet broken only by the occasional passing truck.

It was near one of these towns, Panuco, that 10 employees of a Canadian-owned silver and gold mine were abducted in late January. The bodies of five were located nearby and five more await identification.

Most residents of these towns have fled out of fear as two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have been locked in battle since September 2024, said Fermín Labrador, a 68-year-old from the nearby village of Chirimoyos. Others, he said, were “invited” to leave.

The abduction of the mine workers under still unclear circumstances has raised fears locally and more widely generated questions about the security improvements touted by President Claudia Sheinbaum. She signaled her more aggressive stance toward drug cartels in Sinaloa with captures and drug seizures after she took office in late 2024. It has been one year since she sent 10,000 National Guard troops to the northern border to try to head off U.S. tariffs over the cartels’ fentanyl trafficking, much of which comes from Sinaloa.

In January, Sheinbaum held up a sharp decline in homicide rates last year as evidence that her security strategy was working.

“What these kinds of episodes do is demolish the federal government’s narrative that insists that little by little they are getting control of the situation,” said security analyst David Saucedo. He said Sheinbaum had tried to “manage the conflict” while the Sinaloa Cartel’s internal war spread and split the state by obliging people “to take a side with one of the two groups.”

SYDNEY (AP) — A man accused of killing 15 people in a mass shooting at a Jewish festival on Sydney’s Bondi Beach appeared in court Monday for the first time since his release from the hospital.

Naveed Akram appeared in Sydney’s Downing Center Local Court via a video link from the maximum security Goulburn Correctional Center 200 kilometers (120 miles) away.

He did not enter pleas to the charges against him, including murder and committing a terrorist act. The brief court appearance focused on extending a gag order that suppresses the identities of victims and survivors of the attack who have not chosen to identify themselves publicly.

• Widespread Errors: An expanded federal tool for identifying noncitizens on voter rolls is making persistent mistakes, particularly in assessing citizenship for people born outside the U.S.
• Banned From Voting: In Missouri, state officials told local clerks to temporarily ban flagged voters from casting ballots, even though hundreds turned out to be citizens.
• Texas Confusion: As errors emerged in SAVE data, local clerks said the state hadn’t provided them with clear guidance and worried about disenfranchising eligible citizens.

Japan’s economy expanded at an anemic 0.2% annual pace in the last quarter, the government reported Monday, with growth for all of 2025 at just 1.1%.

Private consumption rose at a 0.4% annualized pace in October-December, but that was offset by a 1.1% drop in exports, the latest seasonally adjusted preliminary data show.

Japan’s export-reliant economy has been shaken by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but has been growing at a lackluster pace for years. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is expected to roll out policies to help revive the economy after a landslide victory in a general election earlier this month.

Takaichi has promised to spend more and to suspend Japan’s sales tax on food, among other measures.

On February 13, a memorandum issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outlined the agency’s plan for a massive permanent expansion of detention facilities across the United States involving tens of billions of dollars, thousands of new federal agents and the construction of “mega-centers” to hold human beings for months at a time.

The memo states that by the end of November 2026, the same month the midterm elections are scheduled to be held, the agency will be overseeing “eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites, as well as the acquisition of 10 existing ‘turnkey’ facilities where ICE ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] already operates.”

While there is “no money” for social services, public healthcare, education or housing, ICE estimates $38.3 billion will be spent on the “Detention Reengineering Initiative.” The plan makes clear that despite the ending of “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the US government plans to continue mass arrests and removals of those it deems “illegal” throughout 2026 and beyond.

GENEVA (AP) — Iran’s top diplomat met with the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Monday, ahead of a second round of negotiations with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and said he would also meet with Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi of Oman, which is hosting the U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva on Tuesday.

“I am in Geneva with real ideas to achieve a fair and equitable deal,” Araghchi wrote on X. “What is not on the table: submission before threats.”

As U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an additional aircraft carrier to the region, Iran on Monday launched a second naval drill in weeks, state TV reported. It said the drill would test Iran’s intelligence and operational capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.