The United Arab Emirates “embarked on a lobbying blitz” of European Parliament members to ensure its involvement in the war in Sudan was not mentioned in a resolution calling for the conflict's end, Politico reported on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Dutch Member of European Parliament (MEP) Marit Maij told DW News about plans to “call on the European Commission to stop the trade negotiations with the UAE for as long as we see that weapons are going through the UAE to the RSF,” referring to Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The call comes in the wake of the widespread atrocities committed by the RSF during its siege and eventual capture of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in western Sudan, which were abetted by advanced weaponry from the UAE.

But following a lobbying effort from an Emirati delegation to Strasbourg led by envoy Lana Nusseibeh, the final resolution passed on Thursday included no references to the UAE’s role in the war.

Before talking about what I played this week, I think I forgot to mention a game I played couple of weeks ago.

After finishing Judgment, and seeing that Dark Souls (next game in my list) isn't on sale yet, I started Bioshock Infinite. I had played the first Bioshock but never got around to playing Infinite.

The visuals felt like late PS3 games, specially the camera and movement, but it didn't feel that jarring, specially after couple of mins of playing it, didn't notice that again during the whole game.

The game was beautiful, the gameplay and shooting was fun. And the story was "Bioshocky". As someone who didn't like the first Bioshock too much (I blame Rapture for that, just not my kind of place), I loved Bishock Infinite.

There are some lore elements that connects it to the first game, so you'll enjoy the background story more if you know that, but you can easily play it without that. Not a very long game too, I think took somewhere between 10-15 hours.

Highly recommended to those who like shooters and haven't played it yet.

Now to this week!

Finally started Dark Souls Remastered have been meaning to play it for the last few months but always end up starting something else.

I have said this about soulslike games before, but the game isn't that tough. You just have to be deliberate about your actions, and can't just button mash through everything. Also, the game doesn't tell you half the things, you have to experiment to figure those things out, and you die, many times, but you also die in other games, I have died many times in Ratchet & Clank and they aren't considered that difficult. Oh and just to be clear, it's by no definition an easy game, but I think the difficulty is over-hyped.

Anyways, have been playing only Dark Souls since I got it, the only place where I got stuck was the Bell Gargoyle boss, died more than a dozen times, then my friend suggested to go to another area first before coming back to boss, so doing that and leveling up, and getting a better weapon / equipment made killing the boss much easier.

Have taken care of pretty much all the surface stuff now and have entered Blightdown. Ended last session when I reached the bottom, got poisoned and died with over 12K souls! Let's hope I can reach it when I play next.

Didn't really play anything else. Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Hyrle Warriors: Age of Calamity and Cozy Grove all are on temporary hiatus.

Played a bit of Mutant Mudd Collection, mainly in bite sized times, which are usually reserved for Picross. Each "world" has 4 levels, I think I was in 2-1 before, and have reached 4-4 now. I can only see 5 worlds in the current screen, but no idea how many screens this hub world has.

The disappearing platforms are the most annoying aspect yet, but I think that's only because they removed the limit of 5 mins from each level. I play slowly killing everything, so take more than that sometimes, even when I do clear it before that, it's only because I don't have to worry about any time limit, I doubt I would have cleared them if I had to try to go fast so that I can reach end before time.

Having fun with it. It's pretty good for those small-breaks.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

Merz has previously said he would do all he could to ensure the 2035 deadline was softened. He has now argued it is vital that hybrid cars are allowed to still be made after 2035.

The planned takeover of the insolvent solar glass manufacturer collapsed unexpectedly, leaving approximately 215 remaining employees facing layoffs.

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9892085/7366041

Background from noyb:

In December 2019, noyb had filed complaints against three providers of French websites, because they had implemented cookie banners that turned a clear “NO” into “fake consent”. Even if a user went through the trouble of rejecting countless cookies on the eCommerce page CDiscount, the movie guide Allocine .fr and the fashion magazine Vanity Fair, these websites sent digital signals to tracking companies claiming that users had agreed to being tracked online. CDiscount sent “fake consent” signals to 431 tracking companies per user, Allocine to 565, and Vanity Fair to 375, an analysis of the data flows had shown.

CNIL sanctions Conde Nast. Today, almost six (!) years after these complaints had originally been filed, the French data protection authority CNIL has finally reached a decision in the case against Vanity Fair: Conde Nast, the publisher behind Vanity Fair, has failed to obtain user consent before placing cookies. In addition, the company failed to sufficiently inform its users about the purpose of supposedly “necessary” cookies. Thirdly, the implemented mechanisms for refusing and withdrawing consent was ineffective. Conde Nast must therefore pay a fine of €750.000.

Information published about the show by London Palladium included further warnings of ‘imitation blood' and 'some violence'
Fan Gerald Dixon told The Sun: “What next? A warning that the hit musical includes catchy tunes?

“This nonsense is enough to make anyone utter the Lord's name in vain.”

While welcoming voluntary CSAM scanning, scientists warn that some aspects of the revised bill "still bring high risks to society without clear benefits for children."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/53932397

Lyrics:

1. I mourned the Tiananmen martyrs
2. Whose free speech was so brutally quelled
3. And I cheered when Mandela walked freely
4. After so many years in a cell
5. But mister Assange can rot in prison
6. Those secrets were not his to tell
7. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
9. I attend sensitivity trainings
10. And I leave feeling so reassured
11. I love Oprah and Magic and Foreman
12. It’s great seein’ blacks become entrepreneurs
13. The economy’s become so inclusive
14. Revolution would just be absurd
15. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
17. I cheered when Obama was chosen
18. My faith in the system restored
19. And I'll never forgive Ralph Nader
20. For the race he stole from Al Gore
21. And I love hard-working Latinos
22. As long as they don't move next door
23. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
25. Something happened to working class voters
26. They’ve disgraced America’s name
27. Someone’s controlling the way that their minds work
28. And Vladimir Putin’s the man who’s to blame
29. But if you think you can win Single Payer
30. You must be completely insane
31. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
33. I listen to All Things Considered
34. I’d consider anyone’s views
35. I watch Colbert and Rachel Maddow
36. I use irony in everything I do
37. But when Trump set his sights on Maduro
38. There was no one more red, white and blue
39. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
41. I vote for the Democratic Party
42. They’re strengthening NATO command
43. I saw Bono at the Live Eight Concert
44. I’d buy anything endorsed by his brand
45. We’re gonna make poverty history
46. I’m on Facebook, taking a stand!
47. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
49. Sure once I was young and impulsive
50. I wore every conceivable pin
51. I fought for a socialist future,
52. Which I actually thought we could win
53. Ah, but I've grown older and wiser
54. And that's why I'm turning you in
55. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

As measles cases continue to rise around the globe, the World Health Organization warns it's a signal that other disease outbreaks could soon follow.

The surging number of measles cases around the world is a stark warning sign that outbreaks of other vaccine-preventable diseases could be next, the World Health Organization warned Friday.

“It’s crucial to understand why measles matters,” said Dr. Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals. “Its high transmissibility means that even small drops in vaccine coverage can trigger outbreaks, like a fire alarm going off when smoke is detected first.”

That is, measles is often the first disease to pop up when vaccination rates overall drop.

The Prime Minister of Lithuania said the country will seek action through international judicial institutions in response to Belarus’ ongoing use of smuggler balloons, which continue to drift into Lithuanian territory.

According to LRT on November 27, Inga Ruginienė explained that several ministries are now collecting evidence and evaluating the possibility of filing a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the risks and damage caused by these balloon flights. Over recent months, Vilnius Airport has been forced to shut down multiple times because of them.

...

As the UK paper The Telegraph reports, the balloons, which contain GPS trackers and around £3,000 worth of cigarettes each, are released high into the air in Belarus before floating across the border into Lithuania. Moscow is using Belarus to unleash these swarms of balloons into Lithuania to create air-traffic chaos and find weak spots on Nato’s eastern flank.

These smugglers have a more sinister goal than profit: creating air traffic chaos on Nato’s eastern flank, in what Lithuania says is a new phase of Moscow’s hybrid war on the West.

Since October the Baltic region’s second-largest airport, in Vilnius, has been forced to close nine times due to the swarms of balloons, which also reached neighbouring Latvia for the first time this week.

There have even been reports of balloon launches from Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania, Poland and key Russian ally Belarus.

Lithuania also warned that the balloon launches pose a “serious” threat to Nato security on its eastern flank, and were being “perpetrated in the broader context of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine.”

...

Paris's Louvre museum said on Thursday, November 27, it would raise ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, meaning US, British and Chinese tourists among others will have to pay $37 to get in.

The museum told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the 45% price hike aims to boost annual revenues by up to $23 million to fund structural improvements at the world's most-visited art museum, which is reeling from the daylight theft of priceless treasures last month.

From 2026, visitors from outside the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway will have to pay €32 – an extra €10 – from January 14, the museum and staff unions said after the measure was approved at a museum board meeting.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42636072

Archived link

Here is the original report by the Bank of Finland.

Chinese exporters have been raising prices for Russian military-industrial buyers, exploiting the Kremlin’s reliance on their supplies as western sanctions restrict imports, new research has revealed.

Prices of export-controlled products shipped from China to Russia rose 87 per cent between 2021 and 2024 on average, according to a new paper from the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (Bofit). The price of similar goods shipped elsewhere rose only 9 per cent.

The research shows that while Russia has been able to use Chinese suppliers to get around western restrictions on the purchase of products that have potential military uses, the wave of sanctions imposed in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has pushed up costs for the Kremlin.

...

The authors, Iikka Korhonen and Heli Simola, focused on a major pinch point: the trade in goods listed as “machinery and mechanical appliances”, a category that includes a large number of items identified as being of importance to the war-industry push.

They concluded sanctions have “limited Russia’s technological capabilities by making the importing of critical goods more expensive”.

In some cases, they found that increases in the value of export-controlled imports from China to Russia had been driven entirely by price rises rather than an increase in trade flows. By 2024, Russia’s imports of Chinese ball bearings had surged 76 per cent since 2021 in dollar terms. But the volume of exports dropped 13 per cent over that time.

...

Relief from sanctions remains a critical goal of the Kremlin. In the original 28-point peace plan devised by the US and Russia and presented last week to Ukraine, the document states “the lifting of sanctions will be discussed and agreed upon in stages and on a case-by-case basis”.

...

What if they were awake this whole time but couldn't tell the difference? I think mods should sell their father's modding fortune to a Japanese business man. Or, more accurately, they think they should do that.

Archived link

Here is the original report by the Bank of Finland.

Chinese exporters have been raising prices for Russian military-industrial buyers, exploiting the Kremlin’s reliance on their supplies as western sanctions restrict imports, new research has revealed.

Prices of export-controlled products shipped from China to Russia rose 87 per cent between 2021 and 2024 on average, according to a new paper from the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (Bofit). The price of similar goods shipped elsewhere rose only 9 per cent.

The research shows that while Russia has been able to use Chinese suppliers to get around western restrictions on the purchase of products that have potential military uses, the wave of sanctions imposed in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has pushed up costs for the Kremlin.

...

The authors, Iikka Korhonen and Heli Simola, focused on a major pinch point: the trade in goods listed as “machinery and mechanical appliances”, a category that includes a large number of items identified as being of importance to the war-industry push.

They concluded sanctions have “limited Russia’s technological capabilities by making the importing of critical goods more expensive”.

In some cases, they found that increases in the value of export-controlled imports from China to Russia had been driven entirely by price rises rather than an increase in trade flows. By 2024, Russia’s imports of Chinese ball bearings had surged 76 per cent since 2021 in dollar terms. But the volume of exports dropped 13 per cent over that time.

...

Relief from sanctions remains a critical goal of the Kremlin. In the original 28-point peace plan devised by the US and Russia and presented last week to Ukraine, the document states “the lifting of sanctions will be discussed and agreed upon in stages and on a case-by-case basis”.

...