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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7132100

A Serbian court has convicted a Chinese citizen of human trafficking for the first time, sentencing him to prison as authorities report a rise in reported trafficking cases involving Chinese nationals amid deepening economic ties between Belgrade and Beijing.

Court documents ... show that a 52-year-old Chinese citizen was sentenced to four years in prison for trafficking two Chinese women. According to the sealed ruling, finalized in late 2025, the women were forced to provide sexual services to Chinese men under threats of death.

"The verdict is only the final step," Zoran Pasalic, Serbia's ombudsman and national rapporteur on human trafficking, [said]. "The key question is what conditions allowed this to happen, and whether others were involved."

...

The verdict was welcomed by ASTRA, an NGO that supports victims of human trafficking.

"The fact that both the perpetrator and the victims are foreign nationals, in this case Chinese, further confirms that the court did not allow identity or citizenship to be used as an excuse to relativize the crime," Marija Andelkovic, the organization's director, said.

...

A Serbian court has convicted a Chinese citizen of human trafficking for the first time, sentencing him to prison as authorities report a rise in reported trafficking cases involving Chinese nationals amid deepening economic ties between Belgrade and Beijing.

Court documents ... show that a 52-year-old Chinese citizen was sentenced to four years in prison for trafficking two Chinese women. According to the sealed ruling, finalized in late 2025, the women were forced to provide sexual services to Chinese men under threats of death.

"The verdict is only the final step," Zoran Pasalic, Serbia's ombudsman and national rapporteur on human trafficking, [said]. "The key question is what conditions allowed this to happen, and whether others were involved."

...

The verdict was welcomed by ASTRA, an NGO that supports victims of human trafficking.

"The fact that both the perpetrator and the victims are foreign nationals, in this case Chinese, further confirms that the court did not allow identity or citizenship to be used as an excuse to relativize the crime," Marija Andelkovic, the organization's director, said.

...

Age verification for all.

I posted this report to highlight this often neglected conflict. It's important especially right now, when the Kurds are set to loose their right to self-determination again.

One-to-one and group messaging, encrypted VoIP calls, video conferencing – the open protocol handles them all

Pretty much what it says on the tin, but for more context. My friends and I use Discord to play D&D and other TTRPGs. We also use it to send memes and just have conversations. We mostly do the chat, text, images, gifs, etc. But we also use the voice and video chat pretty regularly too. Screen share sometimes as well. So I'd like to try to find something that has all those features if possible.

The new ID or facial recognition requirement they are implementing is a deal breaker for a few of us, and so if I can set up some kind of alternative to make it a non-issue, I'd like to.

I'm running Ubunutu 22.04 LETS, AMD 3700X, 64GBRAM, 10x 6TB HDD, and and 2 4TB NVmE. Have a 2gb up/down internet connection. So I don't think we should have any issues making it work smoothly for 7 people.

Dealing the final blow has never been this fun

Iran’s architecture of internet control is built on technologies from China, according to an analysis published by a British human rights organisation.

The report by Article 19 says the technologies include facial recognition tools used on Uyghurs in western China and a Chinese alternative to the US-based GPS system, BeiDou.

The report outlines the policies and imported hardware behind the growth of Iran’s fine-tuned censorship regime, which allowed authorities to almost entirely cut off its 93 million people from the global internet during the height of January’s anti-government protests.

The internet blackout has helped to obscure grave human rights violations, including mass killings. The death toll from the protests is still being reckoned.

Iran’s internet is still not back to where it was. Rather, a patchy censorship regime appears to be allowing users sporadic access. The capabilities that underpin this blackout are the culmination of a decades-long project, one that involved the collaboration of Chinese authorities.

US ambassador to Nato Matthew Whitaker is responding to some of the report’s findings now, saying he “completely rejects everything I just heard,” after the Munich Security Conference report editors warned that the greatest challenge to the liberal international order is “coming from within” through the dramatic shift in the US administration’s thinking about its alliances.

But Whitaker insists the US does not want to dismantle Nato or undermine the existing alliances as implied by the report’s authors, but merely to “balance” the way the defence burden lies on different Nato countries by pushing European allies to “do more and to be capable and strong, because that strength is what guarantees the peace.”

“That’s the first thing I reject; we’re trying to make Nato stronger, not to withdraw or reject Nato, but make it work like it was intended as an alliance of 32 strong and capable allies,” he said.

Whitaker also said that on trade, the US wanted to challenge the “unfair” trade arrangement with Europe, which “turned into Europe taking advantage and running huge trade surplus with the US.”

The government has been urged to re-examine a British company’s contract to export hi-tech machinery to Armenia, after the Guardian uncovered links to the supply chain for Russia’s war machine.

Sanctions experts and the chair of the House of Commons business committee questioned the government’s decision to award an export licence to Cygnet Texkimp.

The engineering company makes machines that produce carbon fibre “prepreg”, a lightweight and durable material that can be used in a wide range of civil and military applications.

The machines are understood to be undergoing final assembly at the company’s warehouse in Northwich, Cheshire, and could be just weeks away from being exported to a newly formed company in Armenia called Rydena LLC.

Rydena was established two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by former executives of a company that has emerged as one of the Kremlin’s important military suppliers.

Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults.

Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

Direct messages and servers that are not age-restricted will continue to function normally, but users won’t be able to send messages or view content in an age-restricted server until they complete the age check process, even if it’s a server they were part of before age verification rolled out. Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, said in an interview with The Verge that those servers will be “obfuscated” with a black screen until the user verifies they’re an adult. Users also won’t be able to join any new age-restricted servers without verifying their age.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is due to brief parliament on Wednesday on the failures in the rail system.

...

The union says the rail system is deteriorating and is demanding stronger safety and maintenance guarantees.

In an August letter to rail operator Adif, the union warned of severe wear on several lines, including the site of January's crashes.

"It's a vicious circle," union leader Diego Martin told Reuters. "Track defects damage trains, and train defects further damage the track."

There is also a question of whether maintenance of the network is keeping pace with passenger demand.

...

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is due to brief parliament on Wednesday on the failures in the rail system.

...

Jaime Castañeda said he identified the body of his 43-year-old geologist brother on Sunday by viewing photographs presented to him by officials at the federal attorney general's local headquarters in the coastal Mexican city of Mazatlán, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

José Manuel Castañeda Hernández was working for Vancouver-based mining company Vizsla Silver Corp. when he was kidnapped on Jan. 23, along with nine other employees, from Concordia, a municipality that sits about 50 kilometres east of Mazatlán.

"In truth, this has been very painful to be here, in a place where we don't want to be," said Jaime Castañeda, in a telephone interview with CBC News.

The identities of two other kidnapped Vizsla Silver Corp. workers, from the state of Zacatecas, were also confirmed by a family member and a federal politician on Sunday.

All three men were found dead late last week by federal authorities near a rural village called El Verde, about 15 kilometres north of Concordia.

As reported by Gematsu: Arc System Works has confirmed to Gematsu the official English title is River City Saga: Journey to the West as initially guessed.

“They are like blind kittens,” a Ukrainian General Staff commander tells POLITICO.

Two days after Elon Musk's SpaceX launched Starlink verification and blocked unverified terminals in Ukraine, the pace of Russia's offensive appears to be slowing, a Ukrainian military official told POLITICO.

“Currently, such a trend is indeed observed. But it will be necessary to monitor further whether it will continue, whether there will be other factors,” said the official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“However, at some places, Ukrainian military Starlinks which have not been registered yet have also been disconnected. But the registration process is ongoing,” the official added.

I'm going to break out of here and strike it rich, you'll see!

Need for greater military autonomy also accepted, says report for Munich Security Conference, which takes place this week

Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference asserts.

The report sets the scene for an all-out ideological confrontation with the Trump White House at the high-level annual meeting of security policy specialists, which starts on Friday.

In a now infamous speech to last year’s MSC, the US vice-president, JD Vance, claimed European elites were suppressing free speech and “opening the floodgates” to mass migration. The address marked the moment Europe realised the Trump administration would no longer be a reliable trading and security partner.

A Meta spokesperson said the EU had "no reason" to intervene over it changing the app in January.