U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 2 as part of the U.S. effort to advance negotiations aimed at ending Russia's war in Ukraine.

Top Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, who took part in the talks, called the meeting "very useful, constructive, and highly substantive" but said no concrete deal was agreed upon — a statement suggesting that a final peace agreement remains far off.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen

Welcome to the National Assembly of the French People

Today, we will expose the worst scumbags inside the French Parliament.

During your visit, make sure to avoid giving bananas to the monkeys. You can take pictures as a souvenir.

1. Eric Ciotti

This bald head was elected by the people of Southern France.

In November 2024, he celebrated the election of Donald Trump. He said the election of Trump was "a wonderful event and a source of inspiration""

2. Sophia Chikirou

This woman was elected by the people of Paris

She says her motivation is helping poor people. She is known for screaming at people until they cry.

Chikirou says "China isn't a dictatorship"

She is currently criminally indicted for financial fraud.

3. Aurelien Taché

This man jumps from one party to the next.

He was in the Socialist Party. Then, he joined La Republique en Marche. Then, he created Les Nouveaux Democrates party. Then he joined the Green Party which ended up kicking him due to bad behavior. Then, he joined la France Insoumise.

He recently said "Taiwan belongs to China because the Taiwanese are also part of the Han Race"

He is a known alcoholic that was involved in numerous incidents.

4. Guillaume Bigot

Bigot, from the Rassemblement National, says there is "No real evidence that climate change is linked to carbon emissions"

5. Hervé de Lépinau

Lépinau wants to ban abortion. He said "abortion is similar to the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, ISIS and the Holocaust"

6. Jérôme Legavre

Member of France Insoumise. He is a former leader of the Parti Ouvrier Independant, an actual trotkyst-maoist organization. This isn't a label he rejects. He is proud to be called trotskyist-maoist.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, he refused to vote a resolution condemning the invasion:

https://www.liberation.fr/politique/pourquoi-ce-depute-lfi-a-vote-contre-une-resolution-en-soutien-a-lukraine-20221202_TWZXXJP7DVHBPF6YF75ASYSWUM/

When Zelensky visited the French Parliament, he said "He is NOT welcome in France":

https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/politique/article/volodymyr-zelensky-n-etait-pas-le-bienvenu-en-france-pour-le-depute-jerome-legavre-lfi_235144.html

7. Marine Lepen

This woman received millions of euros from Russian banks to fund her political party.

She is accused of defrauding the European Parliament.

A court found her guilty of fraud and banned her from running. Immediately, Russia denounced the decision.

__________________________________________________

I watch Parliament regularly. There are actually decent smart people inside. Thank god.

People around the word are murdered, raped, tortured, because they want democracy.

🔴 You know what's the greatest thing about democracy? Anyone can be elected.

🔴 You know what's the worst thing about democracy? Anyone can be elected.

So my message to french people: get involved. Stop assuming democracy works magically.

Fucking get involved. Vote at every single election. Some of these dumb clowns were elected with only 500 or 1000 votes which is a total disgrace.

A Russian spaceflyer was pulled from SpaceX's next astronaut mission for violating U.S. national security regulations, according to a media report.

This morning, The Insider reported that Artemyev, 54, was apparently removed from Crew 12 for violations of ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), a U.S. law that seeks to safeguard national security by restricting the dissemination of sensitive information and technology.

"The cosmonaut allegedly photographed SpaceX documentation and then 'used his phone' to export classified information," The Insider wrote (in Russian; translation by Google), citing the work of launch analyst Gregory Trishkin.

Sanae Takaichi’s not-so-catchy remarks about everyone working like a horse did not go down well in a country notorious for its demanding work culture

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Hi everyone, I wanted to share something new about our family project, Safebox. I’ve posted about it here before, but this time I finally wrote my first full article about it. If you're into running your own services, managing domains, SSL, proxies, backups, or just want to see how we approach automated self-hosting, you might find it interesting.

I’ll be publishing more pieces soon, covering both technical and non-technical aspects of self-hosting and the software itself, so hopefully it will be useful for some of you.

If you check it out, thank you and I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Here’s the post:

Take control of your data: How Safebox makes self-hosting easier

https://medium.com/@domjanrebeka2000/take-control-of-your-data-how-safebox-makes-self-hosting-easier-268deefa75ed

Kohler Can Access Data and Pictures from Toilet Camera It Describes as "End-to-End Encrypted": But emails exchanged with Kohler's privacy contact clarified that the other "end" that can decrypt the data is Kohler themselves: "User data is encrypted at rest, when it's stored on the user's mobile phone, toilet attachment, and on our systems. Data in transit is also encrypted end-to-end, as it ...

Tasmanians got fucked hard by the AFL and complicit politicians today. Apparently a whistleblower has just revealed that the AFL is looking to pull out of managing People First Stadium on the Gold Coast because it's too hard to operate in the black & we are going to be taking on 100% of the operational risk of this abortion of a project.

• China's industry had built capacity for 20 million EVs and plug-in hybrids annually but remained saddled with enough factories for 30 million gasoline vehicles
• Fossil-fuel vehicles accounted for 76% of China's auto exports since 2020 with annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely >6.5 million in 2025

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China's electric vehicle (EV) industry captured half its domestic market in just a few years, crushing sales of gasoline-powered vehicles from once-dominant global automakers.

But foreign players were not the only losers. Many Chinese legacy automakers also watched their sales collapse – and responded by flooding the world with fossil-fuel vehicles they could not sell at home.

While Western policymakers have focused on the threat of China's heavily subsidised EVs, protecting their markets with tariffs, US and European automakers face greater competition from China's gas-guzzlers in countries from Poland to South Africa to Uruguay. Fossil-fuel vehicles have accounted for 76% of Chinese auto exports since 2020, and total annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely more than 6.5 million this year, according to data from China-based consultancy Automobility.

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The boom in China's gasoline-powered exports is driven by the same EV subsidies and policies that wrecked the China businesses of automakers including Volkswagen, General Motors (GM) and Nissan by underwriting scores of Chinese EV makers and igniting a devastating price war, a Reuters examination found. The phenomenon highlights the far-reaching impacts of Chinese industrial policy, as foreign competitors struggle to keep pace with government-backed firms chasing Beijing's goals to dominate critical sectors nationally and globally.

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China's gasoline-vehicle exports alone – not including EVs and plug-in hybrids – were enough last year to make it the world's largest auto-exporting nation by volume, industry and government data show.

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Chinese carmaker SAIC's exports – mostly of its own brands, without [former joint venture partner] GM – soared from nearly 400,000 annually in 2020 to more than a million last year.

Dongfeng's exports of nearly 250,000 vehicles last year, up almost four-fold in five years, proved critical as sales of its China partnerships with Honda and Nissan entered a "downward spiral," said Jelte Vernooij, Dongfeng's Central Europe manager.

Dongfeng's annual global sales have fallen by a million vehicles since 2020, to less than 2 million, company filings show. Yet Vernooij is not worried about Dongfeng's future – because it has Beijing's backing.

"The fact that we're state-owned is key," he said. "There's no question that we will survive."

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China's top auto exporter is Chery, whose global sales rocketed from 730,000 vehicles to 2.6 million between 2020 and 2024. Chery, which has both state and private owners, grew annual exports over the period by about a million units – relying mostly on the gasoline-powered vehicles that comprise four-fifths of its sales. China's top 10 exporters include five other state-owned automakers and two private ones, Geely and Great Wall Motor (GWM), that also sell more gasoline vehicles than EVs.

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Only two of China's top 10 auto exporters focus exclusively on battery-powered vehicles. One of them is US electric-car pioneer Tesla. The other is BYD, which sells only EVs and plug-in hybrids.

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Chinese automakers' rush to export gasoline cars can be traced to government policies that created a glut of factory capacity to build them.

China's rapid EV growth idled assembly lines capable of producing up to 20 million gasoline-powered cars annually, estimates Automobility CEO Bill Russo. Such unproductive overhead raises costs, pressuring automakers to repurpose capacity for exports.

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[Chinese] automakers got cheap EV factories financed by [Chinese] cities and provinces eager to demonstrate development.

"Local governments even prepare the land and build the factories, allowing companies to 'move in with just a suitcase,'" said Liang Linhe, chairman of Sany Heavy Truck, among China's largest truck makers.

The result: massive overcapacity. At a March EV conference, Su Bo, China's former vice minister of industry, urged regulators to promote the conversion of gasoline-car factories to build battery-powered models. He estimated China's industry had built capacity for 20 million EVs and plug-in hybrids annually but remained saddled with enough factories for 30 million gasoline vehicles – far more than its domestic market needs.

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