Or they could just give the money to non profits that are already helping kids but that wouldn't curry favor with their master.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42894131

Web archive link

Mykhailo Lebedev was just 16 years old when Russians captured his city, having subjected it to a relentless campaign of bombardment lasting three months, razing residential areas, hospitals, schools and universities alongside killing tens of thousands of residents. An orphan, Mykhailo was forbidden from leaving his private guardian, because he was a minor. “Mariupol, it was like another world,” Mykhailo recalls. “You saw people walking with satisfied faces, and you were happy to walk along the street. And now there are almost no people in the city, and you see everything is destroyed.”

He attended eighth grade at Mariupol School No. 38. During the Russian occupation he was briefly forced to study at another school as his was one of some 52 that were damaged or destroyed in the city. His school was later restored, and the children returned. However, the circumstances were very different.

The teenager said that at School No. 38, the Ukrainian language stopped being taught and Russian propaganda was widespread. Textbooks were replaced, and teachers were forced to talk about how the Russian Federation came to “liberate” Ukrainians. “Ukraine is bad, Russia came to “liberate” you, that now everything will be good, everything will be good, everything will be wonderful,” he said. Meanwhile, Russians were establishing artillery positions on the school grounds to shoot at Ukrainian soldiers (and which no doubt created another level of psychological distress to both teachers and students). “The Russian army drove onto the school grounds. We had a huge field there – they brought in tanks and armoured personnel carriers and started shelling Azovstal,” he said.

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Russia has systematically and intentionally been attempting to erase the very idea of Ukrainian national identity and culture. This has been true in the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas since 2014, and across a wider area following the full-scale invasion of 2022. The occupation authorities have clearly been committing acts in areas under their control which are prohibited in international law – including in the genocide convention – such as forcible transfer. Children are subjected to these Russian methods seemingly aimed at destroying their national group, and nowhere is this more evident than in Russia’s re-education campaigns.

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In Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories, Russia has been purposefully erasing Ukrainian language, culture and identity while promoting a cult of war, glorifying the former USSR (at School No. 65, which Russians destroyed, and then rebuilt, occupiers erected a large Lenin monument), and installing teachers who often bully Ukrainian students (Russian propaganda has been calling Ukrainians “Nazis” since 2014). School administrations quickly try to eradicate all traces of Ukrainian identity, while imposing Russian as the language of instruction.

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Russia’s mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children is widely known, with both the Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, both wanted by the ICC for the unlawful deportation and transfer of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

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A Russian strategy document signed by Putin, and published on November 25, explicitly laid out the country’s intentions to force those located in the temporarily occupied territories to become Russian, by adopting “additional measures to strengthen overall Russian civic identity” there. The aim is to ensure “no less than 95 percent” of the country’s population identify as Russian by 2036 (Russia claims that the eastern Ukrainian lands it invaded are its “historical territories”).

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Web archive link

The Russian occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ has sentenced Larysa Malovychko, a 57-year-old midwife from Enerhodar, to 11 years for ‘pro-Ukrainian views’ and supposed spying. According to Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov, Larysa Malovychko was abducted back in September 2023 and held prisoner for some time both in Russia and in occupied Crimea.

Russia has imposed a near total information blockade on most occupied territory, with next to nothing more known about Malovychko, or her so-called ‘trial’. The verdict was reported on the so-called ‘court’ Telegram channel on 20 November 2025, with nothing to indicate how many (if any) hearings there were, before the predetermined guilty verdict and 11-year sentence.

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‘Spying’ or ‘treason’ charges have become extremely common since Russia first launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Such ‘trials’ are held behind closed doors, with convictions and long sentences guaranteed. Both men and women are targeted, and there are also no bars as far as age is concerned. Very young people have been seized and, later, sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, for example, when they were underage, while equally horrific sentences have been passed against Ukrainians in their 70s. This is all of particular concern given the very real danger of being subjected to torture in Russian captivity.

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In June 2025, 74-year-old Oleksandr Markov from Enerhodar died in Russian captivity. He had been abducted on 8 May 2024, with his family knowing nothing about his whereabouts until March 2025. It was only then that they learned that a fake occupation ‘court’ had sentenced the 74-year-old to 14 years in a maximum-security [‘harsh-regime’] prison colony on ‘treason’ charges.

Dmytro Orlov reported then that at least 26 other residents of Enerhodar were illegally held in Russian captivity, including seven women. 13 of them are employees of the neighbouring Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, with Russia having begun abducting and torturing employees soon after it seized control of the plant in early March 2022. It is quite possible that the real figure is much higher.

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Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/metroid-prime-4-beyond/

Opencritic: https://opencritic.com/game/16868/metroid-prime-4-beyond

Looks like it's hovering around 80-82. I read a couple of them and the TL;DR seems to be "yeah, it's not as good as the previous games but still worth playing".

DF review has very high praise for the technical aspects, though so far they only tested in on the Switch 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhVJ_P6dzFg

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42893098

Chinese authorities have arrested several activists and issued a stern warning to “anti-China and pro-chaos elements” amid criticism of the government’s response to Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in a generation.

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[Among ohers] authorities arrested Miles Kwan, a 24-year-old student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, after he created an online petition calling for greater transparency and accountability from the government, multiple reports said.

The petition included four demands, including the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to probe the circumstances of the fire, including whether potential conflicts of interest may have contributed to the disaster.

Before it was removed from the internet on Saturday, the petition had garnered more than 10,000 supporters.

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China’s national security office in Hong Kong appeared to condemn the petition before its removal, accusing activists of using “the banner of ‘petitioning the people’ to incite confrontation and tear society apart.”

Hong Kong’s Office for Safeguarding National Security also accused figures with “sinister intentions” of exploiting the fire to return the city to the “black-clad violence” that erupted during mass antigovernment protests in 2019.

On Monday, a commentary in the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper called on the public to be vigilant against “anti-government elements” with “malicious intentions”.

“They have even gone so far as to ‘act as representatives’ to establish a so-called ‘concern group,’ put forward so-called ‘four demands,’ distribute leaflets, and launch a petition, all in an attempt to incite public unrest,” the commentary said.

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"place” itself contributes to differences in weight across the country.

Product of our environment? Place effects on Body Mass Index

Authors: Alan Duncan, Astghik Mavisakalyan, Loan Vu, Michael Windsor

Gaza Strip, Palestine/London, Ontario, Canada – In an unprecedented breakthrough for medical innovation under siege, Glia, a medical solidarity organization, has developed and deployed the first external fixator (a critical orthopedic device for severe fractures) ever designed and manufactured entirely inside the Gaza Strip. Created using local materials, 3D printing, recycled plastics, and solar power, the device has already saved three patients from possible amputation or permanent disability amid the near-total collapse of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and blockade on medical imports.

This achievement comes as over 90% of Gaza’s health facilities are damaged or destroyed, and conventional external fixators — costing upwards of $500 and requiring specialized imports — have become unobtainable due to the Israeli blockade. With hospitals overwhelmed, electricity scarce, and supply chains severed, Glia’s fixator represents a lifeline born from necessity.

In a 26th floor courtroom overlooking Manhattan’s frigid winter skyline, dozens of immigrants sat in on the trial of their former president, the once untouchable symbol of a “narco-dictatorship” that reorganized of the government’s judicial, police, and military leadership to collude with drug traffickers.

It wasn’t Nicolás Maduro — though the Venezuelan president had likewise been indicted in the Southern District of New York. It was Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president who, as U.S. prosecutors said in their closing arguments in 2024, “paved a cocaine superhighway” to the United States. In a monthlong trial we covered from New York that winter, Hernández was convicted of three counts of drug trafficking and weapons charges, earning him a 45-year prison sentence.

Japan's coast guard said two Chinese coast guard patrol ships entered Japan's territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in the early hours of Tuesday, and left a few hours later.

The Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, have been a regular flashpoint between the two nations over the decades.

Why are unscented after-shave so uncommon, most of after-shave I can find at a reasonable price have that typical cheap cologne smell which is going to wreck any perfume you wear.

But when looking in most shop, most of them still have some fragance in-it and often, so looks like that people shaving their face buy-it

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54194025

https://archive.is/1hnqw

“Today, it’s not competitive any more to bring [products] into China when there’s local competition,” said Conrad Keijzer, chief executive of Swiss chemical maker Clariant.

The company is spending SFr180mn ($226mn) expanding its plant in China’s Daya Bay petrochemical hub, where last year Germany’s BASF and Shell also announced big investments.

German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen, for example, recently announced job cuts of 7,600 in Europe by 2030, less than a year after announcing its latest expansion in Shenyang, north-eastern China. Automotive parts maker Schaeffler, which told state media in China it planned to double its business in the country in six to seven years, has announced the closure of some of its European operations and gross job cuts of 4,700.

French engineering group Schneider, Danish power-train maker Danfoss and wind turbine maker Vestas and pharmaceutical companies including Swiss drugmaker Roche and AstraZeneca have all also recently announced China expansions or factory upgrades.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54194958

The flooding and landslides killed at least 1,338 people: 744 in Indonesia, 410 in Sri Lanka, 181 in Thailand and three in Malaysia

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54194898

https://www.oglaf.com/muster/

https://archive.is/1hnqw

“Today, it’s not competitive any more to bring [products] into China when there’s local competition,” said Conrad Keijzer, chief executive of Swiss chemical maker Clariant.

The company is spending SFr180mn ($226mn) expanding its plant in China’s Daya Bay petrochemical hub, where last year Germany’s BASF and Shell also announced big investments.

German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen, for example, recently announced job cuts of 7,600 in Europe by 2030, less than a year after announcing its latest expansion in Shenyang, north-eastern China. Automotive parts maker Schaeffler, which told state media in China it planned to double its business in the country in six to seven years, has announced the closure of some of its European operations and gross job cuts of 4,700.

French engineering group Schneider, Danish power-train maker Danfoss and wind turbine maker Vestas and pharmaceutical companies including Swiss drugmaker Roche and AstraZeneca have all also recently announced China expansions or factory upgrades.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under increasing fire for a double-tap strike, first reported by The Intercept in early September, in which the U.S. military killed two survivors of the Trump administration’s initial boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2.

The Washington Post recently reported that Hegseth personally ordered the follow-up attack, giving a spoken order “to kill everybody.” Multiple military legal experts, lawmakers, and now confidential sources within the government who spoke with The Intercept say Hegseth’s actions could result in the entire chain of command being investigated for a war crime or outright murder.

“Those directly involved in the strike could be charged with murder under the UCMJ or federal law,” said Todd Huntley, a former Staff Judge Advocate who served as a legal adviser on Joint Special Operations task forces conducting drone strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere, using shorthand for the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “This is about as clear of a case being patently illegal that subordinates would probably not be able to successfully use a following-orders defense.”

Archive

Several crisis pregnancy helplines covertly run by anti-abortion groups have been given free ads throughout 2025 via Google Ad Grants – a scheme which gives nonprofits up to £7000 per month of free search advertising.

One of the most active recipients was Pregnancy Crisis Helpline, which is running a series of ads that look like real search results claiming to offer ⁦a “safe” and “confidential place” if you’re considering an abortion.

“Wanting to end your pregnancy? We’re here to talk,” another advert – which was shown throughout this week – stated.

But the helpline was actually co-launched with Christian Concern, a right-wing evangelical organisation that wants abortion to be banned. One of its trustees, according to its latest accounts, is Christian Clive Copus, a former director of anti-abortion group ProLife Alliance.

I've emailed my representatives. Have you?