My biased quotes:

The government says a Liquefied Natural Gas import facility in Taranaki will save New Zealanders about $265 million a year.

Energy Minister Simon Watts on Monday announced a contract was expected to be signed by the middle of the year, with construction finishing next year or early 2028.

"We need to get rid of the dry risk," Luxon told reporters on Monday.

"I'm not going to guarantee, based on the advice I've been given the benefits outweigh the costs."

A factsheet supplied by the government said the infrastructure costs would be paid for through a levy on electricity of between $2 and $4 /MWh.

The facility was expected to cut future prices by at least $10/MWh, and curb an expected 1.25 percent reduction in Gross Domestic Product from higher energy prices.

Procurement started in October in response to the independent Frontier report, which the government largely rejected.

The government largely rejected the recommendations of the review carried out by Frontier Economics, with sector players including Simon Bridges criticising a lack of bold action.

"It would make no economic sense to develop an LNG import terminal to meet just dry year risk as the large fixed costs would be spread over a relatively small amount of output," the Frontier report said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50538886

Archived

On January 29, 2026, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) participated in an event at the National Endowment for Democracy which launched former City University of Hong Kong Professor Hon-Shiang Lau’s book “Tibet Was Never Part of China Since Antiquity.” The book launch included a panel of Tibetan leaders and experts who discussed Tibet’s historical sovereignty and refuted the People’s Republic of China (PRC) narrative that Tibet has always been a part of China. Professor Lau’s groundbreaking scholarship clearly dispels PRC propaganda that Tibet has been a part of China by analyzing official Chinese documents and definitively establishing the historical fact that Tibet had for centuries until 1950 been independent and sovereign.

Former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom (and United States Senator and Governor of Kansas) Sam Brownback delivered keynote remarks highlighting Tibet’s long history as a free and sovereign nation and warning about the growing cultural genocide the PRC is committing against the Tibetan people. On a panel moderated by the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin that included Lau, Sikyong Penpa Tsering of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), and ICT Research and Monitoring Head Bhuchung K. Tsering, Brownback contextualized the importance of Lau’s scholarship within the larger Tibetan movement. The PRC’s forcible assimilation of historically independent Tibet lays bare the hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s anti-colonial rhetoric. The CCP fears religious freedom more than any weapon, Brownback observed, because it undermines the weak foundation of the state.

Lau noted his purposeful choice of publicly available, Chinese-sourced official documents created before the 1950 occupation in hopes of credibly refuting the CCP’s false narrative around Tibet’s historical sovereignty. For example, China has not historically played, or sought to play, any role in the selection process of the Dalai Lama.

[...]

Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado said political leader Juan Pablo Guanipa was taken by force in Caracas.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said her opposition colleague Juan Pablo Guanipa had been kidnapped just hours after being released from detention.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said on Sunday that Guanipa, leader of the Justice First party, was taken in the Los Chorros neighbourhood of the capital Caracas.

"Heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes arrived in four vehicles and took him away by force," she wrote on social media early on Monday.

MBFC
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When metaphysicians wish to persuade a naturalist that the intellectual and emotional life of man unfolds according to “the inherent laws of the Spirit,” the naturalist shrugs his shoulders and continues his patient study of the phenomena of life, of intelligence, and of emotions in order to prove that all can be reduced to physical and chemical phenomena. He seeks to discover their natural laws.

Results mean coalition of recently installed PM has supermajority in lower house of parliament

Japan’s conservative governing coalition has dramatically strengthened its grip on power after a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections in what will be seen as an early public endorsement of the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

Her Liberal Democratic party (LDP) had won 316 seats by early Monday, comfortably surpassing the 261 it needed for an absolute majority in the 465-member lower house and the highest number since the party was founded in 1955. With her coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, which won 36 seats, Takaichi now has a supermajority of two-thirds of seats, easing her legislative agenda as she can override the upper chamber, which she does not control.

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Russian forces carried out a series of attacks overnight on Feb. 8-9, killing one person and injuring two others amid a targeted missile and drone attack on multiple Ukrainian cities.

The southern city of Odesa was subject to large-scale drone attack, which local officials reporting damage to "residential infrastructure" in the city.

. . .

Odesa City Military Administration head Serhiy Lysak said that a fire broke out at multi-story residential building, adding that a gas pipeline was damaged in the attack. Car fires were also reported in the city.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported that a 35-year-old man was killed, and two others, including a 19-year-old woman, were injured in the attack. A total of 21 apartments were damaged in the strike on the residential building in the Prymorskyi district of the city.

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A Russian magazine editor claims his publisher demanded he censor a book that mentions homosexuality in animals because it violates the country’s “LGBT propaganda” law.

Viktor Kovylin, editor of the scientific journal Batrachospermum, wrote on Telegram that his publisher told him the descriptions of same-sex behavior in a book on animal sexual behavior were against the law because they did not express “disgust or criticism” for the acts.

“Apparently, neutral scientific descriptions of homosexual behavior, without disgust or criticism, now fall under the category of propaganda for non-traditional relationships!” Kovylin wrote on Telegram, according to a translation.

Archived

Here is the entire report: Tightening the net: China's infrastructure of oppression in Iran (pdf)

The Iranian regime has been accused of deploying Russian and Chinese technology to aid its brutal crackdown on recent protests, and proliferate a near total internet shutdown, including disrupting satellite internet. This networked authoritarianism has equipped Iran with the technical capacity and political will to impose unprecedented infrastructure control to suppress the flow of information, as the regime massacred thousands of protesters and arrested many more.

[...]

The report outlines how China, Iran’s largest trading partner, has been providing material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, supercharging its surveillance and censorship capabilities. Despite international sanctions, Chinese companies including ZTE, Huawei, Tiandy and Hikvision continue operations in Iran, often through front companies, providing surveillance and monitoring technologies that directly contribute to the regime’s ability to perpetuate gross human rights violations.

The research also charts the way in which China’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ doctrine appears to influence Iran’s approach to internet governance – best exemplified in the country’s efforts to replicate the Great Firewall of China through Iran’s National Information Network. Both systems intend to block free access to the global internet, centralising censorship and embedding surveillance deep into their infrastructure. Iranian officials have publicly praised China’s normative and technical capacity, and supported China’s global push for separation from ‘foreign’ internet regulation in international fora, including the United Nations.

[...]

Iran's suppression was combined with door-to-door seizure of satellite dishes, aided by arial drones, and criminal penalties of up to 10 years' imprisonment under a 2025 law in Iran criminalising the possession of hardware like Starlink terminals. Such multifaceted methods significantly complicate countermeasures to protect freedom of expression and information.

[...]

Despite international sanctions and legal penalties, Chinese firms have sought means of continuing operations in Iran, often through front companies, complicating accountability. The involvement of Chinese vendors in supplying censorship and surveillance technologies to Iran has contributed to the government's ability to perpetrate human rights abuses, often disproportionately against ethnic and religious minorities and women.

[...]

An internet safety campaign backed by US tech companies has been accused of censoring two teenagers they invited to speak out about the biggest issues facing children online.

Childnet, a UK charity part-funded by companies including Snap, Roblox and Meta, edited out warnings from Lewis Swire and Saamya Ghai that social media addiction was an “imminent threat to our future” and obsessive scrolling was making people “sick”, according to a record of edits seen by the Guardian.

Swire, then 17, from Edinburgh, and Ghai, then 14, from Buckinghamshire, had been asked to speak at an event to mark Safer Internet Day in 2024 in London in front of representatives from government, charities and tech companies.

The tech-backed charity also edited out references to children feeling unable to stop using TikTok and Snap, social media exacerbating a “devastating epidemic” of isolation, and a passage questioning why people would want to spend years of their lives “scrolling TikTok and binge-watching Netflix”, the edits show.

Childnet denied making edits to keep tech funders happy and insisted it would not stop young people making their points. Aspects of the approved speech did acknowledge that excessive screen time had led to depression and anxiety, and that social media companies should reduce the use of devices such as notifications, autoplay and streaks to prolong user engagement.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/58750124

The Stellantis-backed Automotive Cells Company (ACC) told unions it had dropped plans to build gigafactories in both Italy and Germany, the Italian metalworkers' union UILM said in a statement on Saturday.

Bad Bunny's halftime show at the Superbowl ended with him listing all the nations of America (South to North order).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42890299

Havana. — The energy crisis in Cuba has reached a critical level that is now directly affecting civil aviation. An official aeronautical notice (NOTAM) from José Martí International Airport in Havana confirms that the terminal is out of Jet A-1 fuel, which is standardly used by commercial aircraft.

The NOTAM, identified as A0356/26 and classified as international, explicitly states: “JET A-1 FUEL NOT AVBL” (no Jet A-1 fuel available). The notice has been active since February 10, 2026, at 05:00 UTC and will remain in effect at least until March 11, 2026, at 05:00 UTC, representing a full month without guaranteed supply at the country's main airport.

These types of official notices are issued to alert pilots, airlines, and air operators about critical operational conditions. In this case, the lack of fuel means that airplanes cannot refuel in Havana, an extremely serious situation for an international airport that handles the majority of Cuba's air traffic.

Veteran center-left politician Antonio Jose Seguro has won 66% of the vote, seeing off a challenge from the far-right.

The media tycoon, who was first arrested in 2020, could face life in prison in blow for press freedom following conviction in December

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy figure, is set to be sentenced on Monday in the financial hub’s most high-profile national security case, amid growing calls to free the longstanding critic of the Chinese Communist party whose health is frail.

The sentence comes after a legal saga spanning almost five years for the founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper after he was convicted in December of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious materials. He was first arrested in 2020.

Sentencing guidelines under the national security law stipulate that Lai, who was deemed a “mastermind” of a conspiracy to engage with foreign activists, politicians and others to solicit foreign sanctions against Hong Kong and China, could come under the most severe penalty “band” of 10 years to life imprisonment for offences of a “grave nature”.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/60059065

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24650125

Because nothing says "fun" quite like having to restore a RAID that just saw 140TB fail.

Western Digital this week outlined its near-term and mid-term plans to increase hard drive capacities to around 60TB and beyond with optimizations that significantly increase HDD performance for the AI and cloud era. In addition, the company outlined its longer-term vision for hard disk drives' evolution that includes a new laser technology for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), new platters with higher areal density, and HDD assemblies with up to 14 platters. As a result, WD will be able to offer drives beyond 140 TB in the 2030s.

Western Digital plans to volume produce its inaugural commercial hard drives featuring HAMR technology next year, with capacities rising from 40TB (CMR) or 44TB (SMR) in late 2026, with production ramping in 2027. These drives will use the company's proven 11-platter platform with high-density media as well as HAMR heads with edge-emitting lasers that heat iron-platinum alloy (FePt) on top of platters to its Curie temperature — the point at which its magnetic properties change — and reducing its magnetic coercivity before writing data.