Bill C-3, which came into effect Dec. 15, removes the first-generation limit to citizenship

A new piece from CBC on the coming into force of the legislative changes to Canadian citizenship by descent.

A couple of interesting points from further down the article:

Vermette says many Franco-Americans have long felt invisible on both sides of the border.

He believes Bill C-3 presents Quebec with a unique opportunity to repatriate or reclaim those who feel a connection to the province’s culture and language, even amid heightened controversy surrounding immigration and pressures linked to cultural and linguistic preservation.

"The Franco-American population is an untapped natural resource for Quebec," he said. . .

In a statement to CBC, the IRCC said it does not have an exact estimate of how many people might be affected by Bill C-3, but says it expects tens of thousands of requests for Canadian citizenship certificates over time. 

According to the IRCC website, at the beginning of March, almost 48,000 people were waiting for a decision pertaining to their certificate application, with an estimated processing time of 11 months.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60387085

Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data for defendtheatlantaforest@protonmail.com — the account linked to Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta. The FBI obtained this information through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request on January 25, 2024, identifying the activist behind the anonymous account through their credit card identifier.

I posted this over at https://discuss.tchncs.de/c/navidrome, but I thought I'd post it here, maybe someone has had experience with this.

I've been noticing demo.navidrome.org showing up in my firewall:

pFsense:

abuseipdb.com:

As with anything entering or exiting my network, I am cautious and curious why my instance of Navidrome has the need to contact demo.navidrome.org.

I am running Navidrome as a Docker Instance. I have combed my compose file and can find nothing in that itself that would trigger Navidrome to 'call home'.

Is this for stats, or other? As of right now, I have demo.navidrome.org blocked until I've gathered some information.

BTW, sweet piece of opensource software. I tip my hat to the dev team(s).

The FBI manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to kill him, while Israel and its administration allies exploited the president’s deepest fears to keep him on the war path. “I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026. With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the […]

Crosspost from https://altmedia.house/post/216748

Overthrow your own governments, then talk

https://lemmy.ml/comment/24384826

Then he gets [redacted] by the Israelis

Wang Yi cautioned against a return to the ‘law of the jungle’ but stopped short of criticising Trump directly

War in the Middle East “should never have happened”, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has declared, even as he struck a more conciliatory tone with the US ahead of a highly anticipated visit by Donald Trump.

Regime change, a key stated aim of the US president as the US and Israel continue to attack Iran, “will find no popular support”, Wang said on Sunday. “A strong fist does not mean strong reason. The world cannot return to the law of the jungle,” he added.

Speaking on the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary and political gatherings, known as the Two Sessions, the country’s top diplomat and foreign affairs official notably avoided directly criticising the US.

United States customs officers conducted a record number of searches of electronic devices last year of people travelling to the U.S., and a recent update to its directives adds new devices such as smart watches, SIM cards and flash drives to the list of things subject to search.

Officers searched 55,318 computers, cellphones and other devices in 2025, up 17.6 per cent from the 47,047 devices searched in 2024 and up 32.4 per cent from the 41,767 devices searched in 2023, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Reddit.

When Wikipedia first emerged in 2001, it was still a time when most had to be patient for information — waiting for the high-pitched scree and its answering cry as the computer connected, painstakingly, to the internet via dial-up.

And the idea of an open source encyclopedia that could be updated by anyone in real time — or its equivalent in those pre-fibre-optic days — sparked questions and plenty of criticism about how accurate that information could be.

Fast-forward 25 years and Wikipedia is now the ninth most visited site on the internet, with nearly 15 billion visitors each month, searching and editing its more than 65 million articles.

But despite its speedy ascent in the early years and steady growth thereafter, Wikipedia isn’t as visible as it used to be. Now, when you Google a question, the top search result will likely be a Wiki link, but its AI will also handily synthesize the answer for you above it. And ChatGPT? That cuts Wikipedia out altogether.

Now, human visitors to the site are on the decline, dropping by roughly eight per cent in parts of 2025, while large language models (LLMs) — chatbots or other forms of AI that can condense words and information — are hammering Wikipedia’s servers and using it as a training ground.

If these trends continue, alongside the decline in local news outlets that are Wikipedia’s main sources, the future is “more dire than you think,” says Zachary McDowell, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the author of Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality.

Go on, brush your teeth. Enjoy the spoils of capitalism.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43990476

Your daily reminder that by supporting Big Tech, you are contributing to the insane wealth disparity.

Rather support smaller businesses, where your money helps create actual jobs and grow the working class.

If you haven't started your journey, please check out: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/

There are so many excellent choices out there that give you a similar or better experience.

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/195854

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has dropped 5,000 bombs on Iran since the United States and Israel launched an attack last week, according to a statement by the IAF on March 4.

Bellingcat has monitored weapons used in the first few days of the war, and strikes across the region, including those that caused civilian harm. Some weapons, such as the US Precision Strike Missile, have seen their first use in combat. A variant of the Tomahawk missile, previously unknown to the public, was also used.

On March 3, the IAF posted three images in three separate posts showing a bomb not publicly seen in Israeli service before. The Israel Air Force released these photos accompanied with claims they were of jets participating in the strikes on Iran. Experts told Bellingcat that this bomb appears to have an incendiary component, and may be one intended to destroy chemical or biological warfare agents.

Photo of an Israeli Air Force jet purportedly participating in strikes, equipped with two of these bombs (far left and far right). Source: Israeli Air Force.

The images appear to show 2,000-pound-class air-delivered bombs fitted with Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit with a red band around the nose. Red is commonly used to denote an incendiary, while yellow indicates high explosive effect.

Image of a bomb with the body of a MK 84 2,000-pound-bomb, but with a red band near the nose, and a US JDAM guidance kit. The image is cropped by Bellingcat to focus on the bomb. Source: Israeli Air Force.

We identified key details about the munition and shared the images with two weapons experts.

Apparent Similarities to the MK 84

Dr N.R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services (ARES), a weapons intelligence consulting company, told Bellingcat these images show a 2,000-pound-class air-delivered bomb fitted with a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit.

Frederic Gras, an Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) expert, also told Bellingcat that the bomb could be of the US MK 80 series, or an Israeli copy, and has a JDAM guidance kit.

Left: 2,000-pound bomb with red band and US JDAM guidance kit posted by the IAF. Right: Standard MK 84 2,000-pound bombs with US JDAM guidance kits. Sources: IAF and SrA Karalyn Degraffenreed/DVIDS.

The US JDAM bomb guidance kit is designed for use with bombs that use the MK 80 series bomb bodies, and the closely related BLU-109 “bunker buster” body.

The Open Source Munitions Portal added the munition to their website on March 3, describing it as “visually similar to a MK 84 general purpose aerial bomb”, while noting that “the marking scheme is distinctly different”. The War Zone also reported on these distinct markings, and possible munitions it could be.

Open Source Munitions Portal’s (OSMP) entry on the bomb, with an analyst note. The OSMP is jointly run by Airwars and ARES, and entries undergo a review by at least two experts. Source: Open Source Munitions Portal.

“The combination of yellow and red bands probably indicates both a high explosive and incendiary payload, which would be consistent with a 2,000-pound-class bomb of MK 84 form factor known as the BLU-119/B Crash Prompt Agent Defeat (CrashPAD),” Dr Jenzen-Jones told Bellingcat.

Frederic Gras, an Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) expert said that the US and Israel both use red markings to indicate an incendiary payload, or effect. The bomb could be a full incendiary payload, with the yellow band indicating a bursting charge, or it could be a bomb primarily with a high explosive component, and a secondary incendiary effect, Gras added.

Red Bands on Israeli Weapons

It’s not the first time the Israeli Air Forces has published weapon images with red bands marking the warhead or payload section of a munition. Shortly after the start of the Gaza War in 2023, the IAF posted a photo which included an Apache attack helicopter with a Hellfire missile with a red band. The IAF deleted the post and replaced it with a similar photo of an Apache without this missile.

Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache with Hellfire missiles, including one with a red band. Source: Israeli Air Force.

This fueled speculation online that this could be an incendiary or the thermobaric variant of the Hellfire missile, the AGM-114N. It has been approved by the US for sale to Israel.

M825A1 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles, munitions designed to create smoke, used by Israel also have a red band and a yellow band around the nose.

Israeli munitions which are not incendiary have also been spotted with light red bands over the fuel tanks for munitions with jet engines, such as the Delilah cruise missile.

Israeli Delilah Cruise Missile. Source: KGyST, Wikimedia.

Designed To Target Chemical or Biological Weapon Stockpiles

The markings are consistent with the US-produced CrashPAD, but “given the possible CBW [chemical and biological warfare] threats Israel has long faced from Iran, it is entirely plausible that an Israeli analogue was developed,” Dr Jenzen-Jones told Bellingcat.

The CrashPAD contains white phosphorus and high explosives, and is designed to destroy biological and chemical warfare agents according to US government documents.

Components of a BLU-119/B (CrashPAD). Source: US Department of Defense.

Dr Jenzen-Jones told Bellingcat that the CrashPAD is the only publicly known weapon of this type utilising a MK 84 bomb body although there are several programs producing similar munitions. A penetrating variant is known as the Shredder but it uses a modified BLU-109 bomb body, which is visually different from the MK 84 bomb body visible in the IAF photos.

BLU-109 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs equipped with JDAM guidance kits. Source: OSMP.

CrashPAD has been in the US inventory for nearly two decades. “Chemical Agent Defeat weapons, such as Crashpad, are not illegal”, and they must undergo a legal review to ensure compliance with US domestic and international law, Michael Meier, former Senior Advisor to the Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War and current Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told Bellingcat.

“The express purpose for the reservation is that these weapons, such as Crashpad, are the only weapons that can effectively destroy certain targets such as biological weapons facilities, for which high heat would be required to eliminate bio-toxins,” Meier said.Dr Arthur van Coller, Professor of International Humanitarian Law at the STADIO Higher Education, told Bellingcat that “if the CrashPAD is used as designed, i.e. to target chemical or biological weapon stockpiles sufficiently removed from civilian populations, then its use is consistent with IHL [International Humanitarian Law] and treaty law, even under CCW [Certain Conventional Weapons], Protocol III.”

Dr Arthur van Coller also said that the “United States and Israel are State Parties to the CCW itself,” but only the US is also a party to Protocol III on incendiary weapons, albeit with reservations, which means that Israel “is not legally bound by Protocol III’s restrictions on incendiary weapons (including those applying to CrashPAD) under treaty law”. Iran is not a party to the CCW at all.

The US is a major supplier of weapons to Israel, and has sent thousands of MK 80 series and BLU-109 bombs to the country. Israel also produces some MK 80 series bombs.

Israel and US Responses

The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which publishes details of some major arms sales, does not mention any transfers of the CrashPAD. Bellingcat asked the Department of State if the CrashPAD or weapons with similar capabilities were transferred to Israel. Bellingcat also asked the Department of State if they assessed that Iran had a chemical weapons program. A State Department Spokesperson told Bellingcat that “The Trump administration backs Israel’s right to self-defense” and referred Bellingcat to the IDF for questions about procurement and munitions used.The US Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Bellingcat asked the IDF what the bomb was, if it was supplied by the US, if it contained white phosphorus, thermobaric or fuel air explosives, and if the IDF assessed that Iran had a chemical weapons program. The IDF told Bellingcat that it “will not be able to provide details regarding the types of munitions it uses. With that said the IDF uses only legal weapons and ammunition.”

Bellingcat’s Carlos Gonzales contributed research to this article. Livio Spaini from Bellingcat’s Volunteer Community also contributed to this piece.*Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel* here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky here, Instagram here, Reddit here and YouTube here.

The post The Incendiary Bomb Never Seen in Israel Before appeared first on bellingcat.

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The flight corridors from Europe to Asia are extremely narrowed by the two wars in Ukraine and Iran. However, there is one airline that still benefits from this –.

So far, Lufthansa has been at a disadvantage compared to its competitors from the Persian Gulf. Despite the war in Ukraine, Gulf airlines continued to fly over Russia, allowing them to use shorter routes and save fuel depending on their flight route.

But now crude oil prices are rising, and that too is leading to higher costs for kerosene. Although Lufthansa claims to have largely secured itself through forward transactions for the current year – airlines typically plan kerosene consumption many months in advance and secure it through price contracts. Nevertheless, customers must prepare for rising ticket costs because they have to circumnavigate the restricted airspace, which often leads to higher consumption.

"We don't know how long this effect will last in the Gulf. Whether this is a turning point or just a temporary phenomenon," the Lufthansa CEO said. Nevertheless, the 100-year history of his company also teaches one thing: travel flows are likely to shift only in the short term if the war ends quickly. The Gulf region will certainly remain attractive as a travel destination: "There are people who quickly forget and buy the cheapest ticket again."