A Tesla influencer randomly caught his odometer double-counting mileage on video. Wild.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33305222

The number of writers jailed reached a new high in a wider range of countries, with at least 375 behind bars in 40 countries during 2024, compared to 339 in 2023, according to the international writers' association PEN. China, already the world’s top jailer of writers, registered another significant increase.

Archived version

• The number of writers jailed reached a new high in a wider range of countries, with at least 375 behind bars in 40 countries during 2024, compared to 339 in 2023, says PEN, the Worldwide Association of Writers NGO, in its Freedom-To-Write Index.

• China, already the world’s top jailer of writers, registered another significant increase of 11 cases, to 118 writers behind bars. The majority were jailed under the pretense of “national security” charges, oftentimes for criticism of the government and official policies, pro-democracy viewpoints, and the promotion of ethnic minority languages and culture. Uyghur writers and intellectuals continue to face particularly harsh treatment.

• War and conflict continued to have a negative impact on writers in 2024, as the crackdown on dissent in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and in Russia resulted in further upticks in the number of jailed and threatened writers, keeping both countries in the Top 10.

**Top 10 Countries of Concern: **

1. China
2. Iran
3. Saudi Arabia
4. Vietnam
5. Israel
6. Russia
7. Türkiye
8. Belarus
9. Egypt
10. Myanmar

Other key countries of concern—which each jailed seven writers during 2024—are Cuba, Eritrea, and Morocco.

Over the past six years of producing the Writers at Risk Database and Freedom to Write Index, the trend is clear: writers are being jailed at a steadily increasing rate over that time period, from 238 cases counted in 2019 to 375 in 2024. This time span has also seen significant negative political developments in a number of key countries currently included in our Top 10 jailers of writers that have had an outsized impact on the climate for free expression and have resulted in sharp upticks in writers being jailed, most notably: the flawed August 2020 presidential election and widespread protest movement in Belarus, the February 2021 coup and anti-military civil disobedience movement in Myanmar, the “Woman, Life, Freedom” demonstrations that erupted following the custodial death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the fall of 2022 in Iran, the Russian-instigated war in Ukraine which began in February 2022, and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28675950

When a Spanish fancier released his eight-month-old pigeon for its very first race, the plan was for it to fly to Majorca from Ibiza, approximately 120 kilometres over the Mediterranean Sea.

Instead, the bird ended up some 5,000 kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean on Sable Island, a remote sandbar off Nova Scotia.

Kristina Penn is used to all sorts of wildlife living on Sable Island: hundreds of wild horses, thousands of seals and numerous seabirds.

Pigeons don't typically visit Sable Island, which is located about 290 kilometres southeast of Halifax. Penn could only recall one other time it happened, when a racing pigeon from the U.S. ended up on the island in 2017.

Allegations come days after Japanese authorities increased efforts to deter crimes by US servicemen on island

Two US marines based on the Japanese island of Okinawa are being investigated for alleged rape, days after local authorities stepped up efforts to deter sexual and other crimes by US service personnel.

A marine in his 20s is suspected of raping a Japanese woman in a bathroom at a US military base last month, while a second man, also a marine in his 20s, allegedly raped a woman at a base in January, according to media reports.

The men, who were not named publicly, had been referred to Japanese prosecutors, the Kyodo news agency said.

Russian officials routinely make saber-rattling remarks about Moscow's nuclear posture. Sergei Shoigu, a former defense minister who now heads Russia's powerful national security council, made his comments on April 24 in an interview with the TASS state news agency.

Archived

[Analysis by Nomura, a financial services group.]

• Some USD560 bn of China’s annual exports may need to find new markets, which can be disruptive to economies
• 45 countries that experienced large increases in their shares of imports from China are generally the ones that experienced the sharpest slowdowns in manufacturing growth and where evidence of disinflation was strongest
• This year, with a US-China trade war raging, the results illuminate just how exposed economies are to the flood of China imports turning into a deluge

With the US-China trade war in full force, many emerging economies, particularly those in Asia, are exposed to the flood of inexpensive Chinese imports turning into a deluge.

[...]

Statistics suggest that China’s highly competitive manufacturers, far from retreating, have penetrated new markets around the globe to make up for lost orders in the US. Local manufacturers in countries outside the US – from EVs in Germany and steel in Brazil to toys in Vietnam and electronics in India – have been facing increasing competition from goods imported from China.

Over 2017-24, China’s exports to the US grew by a cumulative 21% to US$524 billion, whereas China’s exports to the rest of the world grew three times as fast, by 67% to US$1.2 trillion. We estimate some US$100 billion of this was then re-exported to the US via Mexico and ASEAN, as a way for companies in China to circumvent US tariffs.

Against this backdrop, and using 2024 data, if we assume that all of China’s indirect exports to the US via Mexico and ASEAN (US$100 billion), half of China’s direct exports to the US (US$262 billion) and a smaller, one-quarter of China’s total exports to the EU, UK, Canada and Japan (US$198 billion) are at risk, then in aggregate some US$560 billion of China’s annual exports would need to find new markets.

A sudden flood of Chinese imports into emerging market economies can be very disruptive. Faced with growing cut-throat import competition, the likely initial response by local firms would be to cut prices to maintain market share, but at the cost of reduced profits. This can be good news for consumers but over time, as local firms accumulate financial losses, they would need to downsize, cut back on jobs and capex, and ultimately many may need to close down.

[...]

Going forward, these economies might become more vulnerable to cut-throat competition from China. The drum beat of anecdotes of this China shock is growing louder.

My first blog series on headscale with traefik through podman quadlets was pretty well received on here. I'm just getting started with this blog, and thought the second topic I recently worked on might be popular in this crowd too: a lower resource method of centralizing logs for OPNSense with Grafana Loki (and Alloy) including geoIP!

Okay, in certain cases this has an obvious answer. Former dog lover, one bit me, now I would rather they be happy and healthy far away from me. Direct bad experiences can ruin things for you.

But I'm wondering. I've never been hurt by a spider but I'm still scared of them. Meanwhile, other people absolutely love this type of critter. I like !snakes@lemmy.world. Why do I see them as cute; why am I not afraid? Danger does not really explain it, because both animals have species that can hurt people and that are harmless. There are probably folks who love mosquitoes and don't like cats. Aside from "this animal has personally hurt me or someone I know before," I wonder what determines what causes some animals to fall in some people's "good" bucket and others in their "bad." Why some people like what others do not and vice versa. (Yes, personal preference, but I'm curious as to the reason behind these preferences.)

Yale University has become the latest top institution in the United States to ban a pro-Palestine group, this time for protests against a visit by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Ben-Gvir’s stop near the university in New Haven, Connecticut, on Wednesday sparked outrage as protesters criticised the minister’s support for surging attacks on Gaza, and most recently, his calls to bomb “food and aid depots” in the Palestinian territory.

The administration also said the student organisation Yalies4Palestine would lose its official status for sending “out calls over social media for others to join the event” and for later taking credit for the event.

Israel has completely wiped out Rafah, turning a fifth of Gaza's territory into a giant buffer zone. This is part of Israel's plan to permanently remain in Gaza and facilitate the ethnic cleansing of its people.

Two Belgian teenagers who were found with thousands of ants valued at more than €8,000 and allegedly destined for European and Asian markets will be sentenced in two weeks, a Kenyan magistrate has said.

Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya's main airport, said she would not rush the case but would take time to review environmental impact and psychological reports filed in court before passing sentence on 7 May.

In this election, voters are more distrustful than ever of politicians, and the political heroes of 2022 have fallen from grace, swept from favour by independent players.

A Roy Morgan survey has found, for the first time, that Australians are driven more by who they distrust than who they trust.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is the most distrusted figure, outranking even US President Donald Trump. [!!!!!!!!!!!!] He’s three times more distrusted than Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

You get what you voted for.

Though it does suck really bad to be beshear.