China is likely to have loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles across three silo fields and has no desire for arms control talks, according to a draft Pentagon report which highlighted Beijing's growing military ambitions.

China is expanding and modernizing its weapons stockpile faster than any other nuclear-armed power. Beijing has described reports of a military buildup as efforts to "smear and defame China and deliberately mislead the international community."

A St Petersburg court has sentenced a 19-year-old woman to nearly three years in a penal colony after she was accused of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army, including by gluing a quotation on a statue of a Ukrainian poet.

Darya Kozyreva was sentenced to two years and eight months, the Joint Press Service of Courts in St. Petersburg said in statement Friday.

Kozyreva was arrested on February 24, 2024, after she glued a verse by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko onto his monument in St Petersburg, according to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights group.

China will impose provisional duties of up to 42.7% on dairy products imported from the European Union, the latest in a series of measures against EU exports widely seen as retaliation for the bloc's electric vehicle tariffs.

The duties, to be collected from Tuesday, will range from 21.9% to 42.7%, although most companies will pay just under 30%. They target unsweetened milk and cream and fresh and processed cheeses, including the iconic French Roquefort and Camembert.

China's Ministry of Commerce said it had found evidence that EU dairy imports were subsidised and hurting Chinese producers.

The European Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, said the investigation was based on "questionable allegations and insufficient evidence" and called the measures "unjustified and unwarranted".

Change in attitudes has been stoked by disinformation, viral videos and the election of rightwing populist president

Valeriia Kholkina was out buying ice-cream with her husband and four-year-old daughter when a man overheard them speaking Ukrainian. “Teach your daughter to speak Polish,” said the stranger. Then he physically assaulted both parents.

The incident, which happened in the city of Szczecin in north-west Poland, reflects an increasingly hostile atmosphere for Ukrainians in the country, a dramatic turnaround from the mood in 2022. Then, in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, hundreds of thousands of Poles put on a show of support and hospitality for their neighbours, volunteering at the border and offering up their homes to refugees.

Now, that outpouring of goodwill is wearing thin, as the war approaches its fourth anniversary, and surveys show an increasingly negative perception of Ukrainians in Poland, stoked by a political debate that has moved further to the right on migration and the resurfacing of historical grievances.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40540685

Trade war with Canada has contributed to a significant decline in U.S. liquor sales

Jim Beam, owned by Suntory Global Spirits, is one of Kentucky’s biggest bourbon producers.

Kentucky went for tRump by 64.47%. Guess they're getting what they voted for.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/32123431

The UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) will add an AI chatbot to its GOV.UK app in early 2026, before rolling it out across the GOV.UK website

Ideally it creates a CSV file and stores it on an SD card or something. I'll even use on that requires an app as long as that app doesn't make me create an account.

UPDATE:

I went with a Withings BP cuff. It doesn't meet the above criteria at all, but I already had a Withings account from years ago before I was concerned about privacy so I wasn't giving my info to someone who didn't already have it.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55485315

Why would I want AI to play the game other than for testing?

https://nitrogen.minedojo.org/

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55485027

German car exports to the United States dropped by nearly 15 percent in the first three quarters of 2025

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55484035

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44098631

Payment arrears by Russian state-owned companies to domestic businesses have surged in 2025, rising nearly threefold year-on-year, the Vedomosti business daily reported Monday, citing data from the state-backed SME Corporation.

The increase concerns contracts awarded under Russia’s public procurement law for state-owned enterprises known as 223-FZ.

According to the SME Corporation, 548 complaints worth nearly 4.03 billion rubles ($51 million) were filed this year compared with 200 complaints totaling 1.5 billion rubles ($19 million) in 2024.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said in November that it had opened 1,173 administrative cases over non-payment in public procurement since the start of the year, a 20% increase from the total number of such cases in 2024.

...

“The problem of non-payments by state corporations is systemic and very serious,” Alexei Kuchmin, founder of the AIR Group, told Vedomosti. He said companies often delay payments for one to three months, effectively using suppliers’ funds as interest-free loans.

Kuchmin added that companies most active under 223-FZ operate in IT and telecommunications, as well as construction and industrial manufacturing.

Delayed payments under 223-FZ became widespread from late 2024, driven by falling revenues at state companies and the high cost of borrowing amid elevated interest rates, Alexander Kalinin, president of the Opora Russia business association, told Vedomosti.

...

Several major state-controlled companies have reported deteriorating financial results:

• Rosneft, Russia’s largest state oil producer, saw its profit fall threefold in the first half of the year
• Gazprom posted a net loss of 170 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) in its core gas business over the first nine months
• Russian Railways (RZhD) became loss-making for the first time in five years, cutting spending on construction and procurement by 40%.
• Uralvagonzavod, the country’s largest tank manufacturer, has begun mass layoffs due to financial difficulties
• Sberbank has announced plans to cut about 20% of its workforce.

The government has decided to set up a working group to monitor the situation amid the surge in payment arrears, Vedomosti reported, citing two sources present at a Dec. 16 meeting of the SME Corporation’s board.

...

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40648087

Recently on 19 December, 2025, India decomissioned its Sindhughosh Class Submarine (Kilo Class), INS Sindhughosh, which was also the lead submarine of its class. This submarine has been decomissioned after 4 decades of its roaring service.

This Submarine was commissioned in 1986 as a variant of Soviet Kilo Class. This is a proof of long Indo-Soviet cooperation, friendship and brotherhood.

As it is decommisioned now 9 remain of this same class in Indian Navy, which are set to be decommisioned soon.

This is a time to take pride but also worry, because if this remains the pace, India will find it hard to increase the number of its submarine fleet. India has achieved self-reliance in the case of destroyers, frigates and corvettes. It would not be wrong to call Indian Navy as the most efficient and effective among Indian Army, Navy and Airforce.

Recently the Cabinet Committee for Security (CCS) passed the funds for indigenously building 2 Nuclear Attack Submarines (SSN) and furthermore the funds ofr remaining 4 will also be cleared and passed. This shows that India has achieved self-reliance in the case of Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine (SSBN) and SSN, but disel electric submarines and Air Independednt Propulsion System (AIP) remain significant challeneges to be overcomed.

The Navy does say that all of this will be fixed after Project 75-I through which India will gain all necessaary technologies especially the AIP system to build its first own fully designed and developed, Made In India submarine.

We just need to make sure that we don’t lag behind in timeline due to delays.

What do you think, do let me know in the comments.

If you like the Idea of this community please join “BharatDefense”. Its a humble request to all Indians.

Thanks

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6252199

Archived version

[UK] General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the first sea lord, [said] that Moscow was renewing investment in the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (GUGI) team and that Britain could not afford to ignore the threat posed by Russia’s advanced underwater capabilities, which were “improving all the time”.

The unit of expert submariners is responsible for mapping and potentially disrupting seabed infrastructure — such as internet cables and gas pipelines — on which Britain and its Nato allies rely for communications and power supplies.

“We’ve seen GUGI’s subsurface capabilities restarting,” Jenkins said in an interview. “We know that they’ve had some issues with that programme. It appears that they have reset that programme. So we’re expecting them to deploy again.”

GUGI can operate submersibles at extreme depths, which “gives [Moscow] the option for physical action, if they want it,” he added.

While GUGI has been conducting underwater missions for several decades, its actions are highly classified and UK naval chiefs have, until recently, refused to acknowledge its existence or discuss what they know of its activities.

...

Jenkins — who was appointed first sea lord and chief of the naval staff in May this year — declined to say exactly what “physical action” by GUGI might constitute.

But naval experts have suggested that Moscow could plant explosives at the nodes where cables meet.

“You have an aggressive regime with an acknowledged capability, an acknowledged desire to implement sabotage and transition towards points of tension, and you have a facility that enables them to go to depths with submersibles on mapped infrastructure that is sensitive to us,” Jenkins said. “That doesn’t seem like a good combination to me.”

...

“The Russians continue to invest in these [naval] capabilities, and they’re improving all the time . . . we should take that threat very seriously, because the comfort that we take from being an island that is separated from continental Europe is a false comfort,” added Jenkins.

...

His comments come as spies and defence chiefs have drawn attention to the increasing threat of Russian sabotage in the UK and across Europe.

In her first public remarks since taking the helm of the Secret Intelligence Service in October, MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli last week accused Moscow of “testing” Britain with “grey zone” activities including state-sponsored sabotage, cyber attacks and drone harassment at airports and military bases.

...

Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlefield.

Intelligence findings seen by The Associated Press say the so-called “zone-effect” weapon would seek to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets, potentially disabling multiple satellites at once but also risking catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems.

Analysts who haven’t seen the findings say they doubt such a weapon could work without causing uncontrollable chaos in space for companies and countries, including Russia and its ally China, that rely on thousands of orbiting satellites for communications, defense and other vital needs.

The suspected gunmen in the Bondi Beach attack threw explosives at the start of the deadly incident and had practised shooting weeks before, according to new court documents.

They allege the pair "meticulously" planned the attack for months and, two days prior to the shooting, visited Bondi for reconnaissance.

Fifteen people were killed and dozens more injured when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration on 14 December. Explosives, including a "tennis ball bomb", failed to detonate, the documents said.

Naveed Akram, 24, has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of terror. A second gunman - his father, Sajid Akram - was shot dead by police at the scene.

Donald Trump named Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Sunday as his special envoy to Greenland, reigniting Danish and Greenlandic alarm over Washington's plans for the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island.

Trump has said several times over the years that Greenland, a Danish territory that is now largely self-governing, should become part of the U.S., citing security reasons and an interest in the island's mineral resources. Landry has praised the idea.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Monday he would summon the U.S. ambassador to Copenhagen, saying he had been particularly upset by Landry's support for Trump's aim of making Greenland part of the United States. Greenland's prime minister reiterated that the island would decide its own future.