cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29994139

May 12, 2025 at 2:58 pm

"“For over two months, #Israel has enforced a total siege, blocking food, water, medicine and aid, while thousands of trucks filled with life-saving supplies ready for swift distribution, are waiting at the border, metres away, blocked from entering.”

He added that families are “wasting away from hunger”, while children are “malnourished” and “too weak to cry” as entire communities are surviving “without food or clean water”. #Oxfam’s field teams reported that in one displacement camp, only five of 500 families had any flour left to make bread."

US road border crossings by Canadians down 35.2%

Canadian returns from the US by air down 19.9%

Data from Statistics Canada

Ukrainian authorities claim to have busted a Hungarian spy ring operating on its territory, alleging that Budapest was collecting sensitive military data with one eye on a possible future incursion into the west of the country.

Hungary’s foreign minister dismissed the accusations as “propaganda” and announced the expulsion of two Ukrainians described as “spies working under diplomatic cover” at the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest.

The allegations will further test already fraught relations between the two neighbouring countries. While Hungary is a member of Nato and the EU, its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been an outlier among European leaders, strongly critical of Kyiv and neutral towards Russia.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29823642

Brett Wilkins
May 08, 2025

"Israeli occupation forces enforced a ban on the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday by storming three schools in East Jerusalem, terrorizing children and staff as they shuttered the facilities and drawing condemnation from human rights defenders.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, heavily armed Israeli security forces raided the schools in the Shu'fat refugee camp in illegally occupied East Jerusalem, detaining one UNRWA employee and forcing around 550 children out of their classrooms as the invaders closed the facilities."

On May 3, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, called for the prosecution of leading European Union officials for complicity in the war crimes committed by Israel.

In a series of interviews and reports, Albanese accused in particular the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kalla. Albanese condemned the EU leaders for aiding and abetting gross violations of international law through their unconditional support for Israel. “The fact that the two highest figures of the EU continue business-as-usual engagements with Israel is beyond deplorable,” Albanese stated. “Immunity cannot equate with impunity. They will have to be judged before history does.”

In an interview with The Intercept Albanese reiterated: “I’m not someone who says, ‘History will judge them’—they will have to be judged before then.”

The Trump administration suspended the use of military aircraft for deporting migrants to Guantanamo Bay on March 1.

Europe has welcomed news of the de-escalation of the trade conflict between China and the United States. "We've been very clear that tariffs are a retrograde step for the global economy. We want to lower barriers, not increase them," an EU spokesperson said.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250512143718/https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/are56644ba

By MEE staff
Published date: 11 May 2025 21:07 BST

"In a statement issued on Sunday, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya announced the move following direct contact between the group and the United States in recent days. He said the decision came amid mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey.

“The movement affirms its readiness to immediately start intensive negotiations and make serious efforts to reach a final agreement to end the war, exchange prisoners in an agreed-upon manner,” al-Hayya said."

I want to start by saying I'm not sure this is the right community, if off-topic please remove it.

I recently took a Rayanir flight from Germany, I always always remember to check-in the day before but this time I was very busy and slipped through my head.

I said, well no big deal, I'm going to the desk and just check in there (no luggage, just me and my backpack) like always.

Nope. So, apparently now Ryanair charges you 55 EURO to check in at the airport if you forgot to check in for free the day before.

Is there an European aviation authority/office I can submit my complains to? I want to talk to the manager, yes.

The US Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors is preparing to name David Steiner, a current member of FedEx’s Board of Directors, as the next Postmaster General (PMG), according to a report in the Washington Post. The selection is reportedly being made at the behest of Donald Trump.

The move signals a massive escalation of attacks on the post office, especially its privatization, which both Trump and Elon Musk, head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE) support. But privatization would be the culmination of decades of bipartisan attacks, beginning with its demotion from a cabinet level department to an independent, self-funding agency under President Richard Nixon.

The situation urgently requires organized resistance by postal workers and their allies in the working class. As the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee explained in a statement in March: “This requires new organizations, rank-and-file committees, to mobilize ourselves independently of Trump’s collaborators in the Democrats and the union tops. We must safeguard our own initiative and begin organizing now rather than waiting for ‘permission’ from the top which will never come.”

United States has pushed some nations facing tariffs imposed by Donald Trump to approve Elon Musk's Starlink, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing State Department cables.

The cables show how U.S. embassies and the department pushed countries to clear hurdles for satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name, the Post reported.

The documents do not show that the Trump administration has demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs, the newspaper reported. But they indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk's satellite firm, it reported.

In testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins confirmed that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now looking to fill critical positions, after agreeing to pay more than 15,000 employees' salaries and benefits through September in exchange for their resignations.

"We are actively looking and recruiting to fill those positions that are integral to the efforts and the key frontlines," Rollins told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

But the need to fill positions so soon after letting people go has raised questions, including from Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"So you let people go and you're looking for new people to fill the positions that they had experience in?" Murray asked.

Ministers are weighing up proposals for a Chinese company to supply wind turbines for a major offshore windfarm in the North Sea.

The government is in discussions with Green Volt North Sea over whether Mingyang, China’s biggest offshore wind company, should supply the wind turbines. Mingyang has emerged as the preferred manufacturer, but the company has sought advice from ministers on whether to proceed.

Green Volt, which is jointly owned by Flotation Energy, a Scottish company and Vårgrønn, a Norwegian one, is constructing the first commercial-scale floating offshore windfarm in Europe. The project will deliver electricity to oil and gas platforms, replacing power currently generated by gas and diesel turbines, and provide electricity to the UK grid.

The decision over whether to source its wind turbines from Mingyang will be closely scrutinised after the government stepped in to take control of British Steel amid claims that its Chinese owner, Jingye Group, wanted to shut down its Scunthorpe plant to make the UK a dumping ground for Chinese steel.

THE NIGHT Zachary Green responded to the call that sidelined him for six months with post-traumatic stress, he was asked if he wanted to finish his shift. It was May 2021, and he had just witnessed the death of a child.

Green chose to go home but found his deputy commander’s question “ridiculous.” Most paramedic services pull staff from duty, which “is how it should be.” Instead, there was the expectation he would keep working. “This call is going to stick with me for the rest of my career,” he says. “You shouldn’t be going back to the ambulance after something traumatic.”

That choice, however, reflects the harsh reality of working in Rainy River, a remote Northwestern Ontario town near the Minnesota border. Even by the standards of a province where paramedic services are regularly short staffed, Rainy River paramedics face gruelling conditions. Covering four communities over 15,000 square kilometres, paramedics often drive more than an hour to meet patients, longer if one of their ambulatory stations is closed or down staffed—which was the case for 170 days last year. Sometimes, they must respond to calls alone, operating equipment meant for two, increasing the risk of physical injury.

Absolutely disgusting tweet by the owner of the Florida Panthers. Here is more context.

Filmmakers behind a new documentary on the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces say they have uncovered the identity of the soldier who pulled the trigger.

Who Killed Shireen?, a 40-minute investigative documentary released on Thursday by Washington, DC-based media company Zeteo, identifies the killer as a 20-year-old Israeli soldier who was on his first combat tour in the occupied West Bank and lifts the lid on attempts by the United States to avoid holding ally Israel accountable for the murder.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed."