cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47623628

The U.S. on Friday dropped its effort to deport a Chinese national who helped document Beijing's alleged abuses against Uyghur Muslims to Uganda.

[...]

Guan Heng, a Chinese citizen-journalist, fled the U.S. in 2021 after taking video of alleged concentration camps in China's western Xinjiang region. He released the video after arriving in the U.S., where he applied for asylum.

[...]

Guan was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in August for illegally entering the country, part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. He remains in a New York state detention center.

His detention and threatened deportation to Uganda has stirred controversy, not least because he helped document abuses in China that the U.S. government during Trump's first term deemed "genocide."

His supporters and lawyer say Guan faced almost certain persecution if deported to Uganda. The East African country, where Beijing has considerable political and economic clout, this year entered into an agreement with the U.S. to take in nationals from third countries. "We just got a letter informing that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) will not seek to remove Mr. Guan to Uganda," his lawyer Allen Chen [said].

[...]

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43978801

Web archive link

The British government said Friday it is investigating a “cyber incident” following news reports that hackers linked to China have gained access to thousands of confidential documents held by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Trade Minister Chris Bryant said the investigation began in October and the government believes there is a “fairly low risk” that anyone’s personal information has been compromised.

...

The allegations come at a sensitive time in Britain’s relationship with China as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government tries to rebuild trade and diplomatic links that have been strained by concerns about Chinese spying and human rights abuses.

Starmer reportedly plans to travel to China in late January, the first time a British prime minister will visit the country since 2018. Meanwhile, the government has delayed a decision on China’s plans to build a massive new embassy in London amid criticism that it could be used as a base for espionage.

The destruction of food supplies by crop pests is being supercharged by the climate crisis, with losses expected to surge, an analysis has concluded.

Researchers said the world was lucky to have so far avoided a major shock and was living on borrowed time, with action needed to diversify crops and boost natural predators of pests.

The key global crops, wheat, rice and maize, are expected to see the losses to pests increase by about 46%, 19% and 31% respectively when global heating reaches 2C, the scientists said.

Web archive link

Russia carried out cyberattacks against infrastructure and websites in Denmark in 2024 and 2025, Danish authorities say in a new assessment published this week describing new cases not previously reported.

Moscow was responsible for “destructive and disruptive” cyberattacks on a Danish water utility company in 2024 and a series of denial of service attacks which overwhelmed Danish websites ahead of regional and local elections last month, Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service said in a statement Thursday. The water company said the attack caused pipes to burst, leaving homes temporarily without water.

Jan Hansen, the head of the Tureby Alkestrup Waterworks southwest of the capital Copenhagen, said his advice to other companies was not to cut costs on cybersecurity and to take out cyber insurance. The attack happened, he said, because the waterworks switched to cheaper cybersecurity, which was not as secure as that previously.

...

The Danish intelligence service said the attacks were part of Russia’s “hybrid war” against the West and an attempt to create instability. It said Moscow’s cyberattacks are part of a broader campaign to undermine and punish countries which support Ukraine. Russian hackers have previously been accused of carrying out hacks on other water facilities in Europe — including on a Norwegian dam where Norwegian authorities said hackers opened valves to allow water to pour out.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43977487

Web archive link

...

Russia’s lower-house State Duma on Thursday passed a package of bills exempting government officials from filing annual public financial declarations, a move lawmakers said would modernize oversight.

Under the legislation, financial monitoring of officials and their close relatives would instead be carried out through a closed state information system known as Poseidon, which tracks income, assets and property in real time. The system is integrated with other government databases, including those of the Federal Tax Service and the financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring.

...

In December 2022, Putin suspended the mandatory publication of officials’ financial declarations for the duration of the war in Ukraine. Soon afterward, disclosures, including those filed before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, began disappearing from official websites.

Before that decree, Russian law had required civil servants to publicly disclose their income and assets, as well as those of immediate family members, under an anti-corruption framework introduced in 2008.

I went to a pc building shop and the price of 64 RAM DDR5 was over $1000. I could have built an entire PC with that price a year ago.

Ursula von der Leyen had hoped to sign the agreement in Brazil this week.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43977802

Web archive link

...

According to data cited by industry outlet Funeral Trust, the top five funeral businesses in Russia earned a combined 14.872 billion rubles ($184 million) in 2024, up 2.923 billion rubles ($36 million), or 24%, from the previous year.

Moscow-based state enterprise Ritual led the market, increasing revenue by 22% to 5.5 billion rubles ($68.2 million).

St. Petersburg entrepreneur Valery Larkin, who controls more than three dozen companies including the Memory Eternal center, reported 5.463 billion rubles ($67.8 million) in revenue, a 21% increase.

In the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, funeral operators Anatoly Glukhov and Dmitry Khazov grew revenue across their eight companies by 18%, to 1.433 billion rubles ($17.8 million).

The Center for Memorial Services saw revenue jump 41% to 1.268 billion rubles ($15.7 million), while the Krasnodar market leaders Oleg Makarevich and Razmik Tazagulov recorded a 48% increase, reaching 1.208 billion rubles ($15.0 million).

Makarevich, who has been wanted for alleged tax evasion since 2021, resides in Austria but continues to manage his assets remotely, Funeral Trust reported.

The surge in funeral revenue comes amid rising demand and record inflation in funeral services.

According to state statistics agency Rosstat, the cost of a coffin has risen 84% and grave digging 51% since early 2022.

...

https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(25)00278-8

World Cup 2026 ticket holders are owed thousands of pounds by Fifa for tickets they resold on the tournament's official marketplace, BBC Sport has found.

Fifa's terms indicate payment should be made within 60 calendar days of a transaction, but some people who sold tickets on the website in early October have still not received their money.

Fifa, which has come under criticism for its World Cup ticket pricing, declined to provide a statement explaining the delays.

FBS, which promotes an extreme version of free birth in which women abandon any form of prenatal care and give birth without doctors or midwives present, is estimated to have generated more than $13m in revenues since 2018. A recent Guardian investigation identified 48 cases of late-term stillbirths or neonatal deaths or other forms of serious harm involving mothers or birth attendants who appear to be linked to FBS.

(Yolande) Norris-Clark has not responded to repeated requests for comment about the Guardian’s investigation, which is told through The Birth Keepers podcast series. She has previously defended her partnership with Saldaya, saying FBS is “the most ethical kind of business you can run”. Critics of FBS, she has said, fail to understand the commitment to women taking “radical responsibility” for their births. And she has said it is unfair to hold her responsible for the choices of a mother who consumes her content.

Many of the women who follow Norris-Clark on social media, seeking advice in their pregnancies, are unaware of her more extreme views, which she sometimes revealed to FBS students. “I actually don’t believe that gravity is true,” she told FBS students in 2024, adding: “Maybe that just makes me crazy and that’s totally OK.” In another class, she told students they could cut a baby’s umbilical cord with an “old rusty fork”. “I don’t believe in germ theory,” she said, “I don’t believe in contagion,” adding: “But even if contagion were real … there would be a pretty much 0% chance of anything happening.”

It is a daily onslaught. Every morning, teenage Israeli settlers drive a herd of goats from their outpost in the hills down into the valley towards the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja.

The local men, women and children retreat inside their huts and tents. Any hint of resistance from a Palestinian is likely to bring in the Israeli army or the border police, confiscation of property and disappearance into the maw of “administrative” detention without trial, for months or years.

Instead, a small group of volunteers step forward each morning to face the descending settlers whose stated aim is to overrun and trample the village with their livestock, and drive Palestinians out.

On this particular Saturday, the defenders of Ras Ein al-Auja are four Israeli Jews, a Hungarian and an American, who make a screen around Palestinian homes to shoo away the encroaching animals.

Yes, this article is a little old but I really believe it's something we should never forget. Every single person who donated to Trump must be held accountable unless they sincerely change. Every single one of these people should be constantly reminded of all the damage they've done to this country and all their companies should face a complete and total boycott.

Remember: these are the people who helped inflict terror on innocent Americans and people all throughout the world. These are the people who helped cause 600,000+ people to die due to cuts to USAID. These are the people who hurt our economy and made it even more difficult to afford basic goods like groceries. These are the people who helped elect a man who made us all worry each day about what global catastrophe Trump would cause. We must never forget and we must never forgive these people and we must reform our system so large donations like this can never happen again.

PS: This article has more names: https://www.businessinsider.com/which-billionaires-support-donald-trump-campaign

Apologies if this is not the correct community for this question, happy to post elsewhere if that is the case.

In English, it feels common place for fantasy novels to use Latin inspired words for their spells or magic languages - unfortunately Harry Potter is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more! Sci-fi can also fall into this 'trope' using Latin themed titles or names - such as "Augustus", "Primus", military titles, names etc.

Is this common for other languages in Europe to pull from Latin for their fantasy/sci-fi books? Do novels in the eastern hemisphere pull from dead/uncommonly spoken/ritualistic languages for this purpose? Does one languages pull straight from other living languages?

Is Sanskrit used in South-Eastern Asia? Are there extinct Chinese dialects that live on in the fantasy/sci-fi genres? Do novels written in an Arabic language use a dead sister language from the Arabic continuum? Do books in South American pull from the wealth of languages spoken before European colonization? Do languages with multiple alphabets (looking at you Japanese, but would love to learn about other languages with multiple alphabets) use only a specific alphabet for magic spells? Is Swahili used for magic words in Somalian media?

I'm not looking for answers on these questions explicitly (not that they wouldn't be appreciated), just giving examples of the theme.

A notable (English) exception I recently read - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - which uses names from the native language(s?) of the Americas, primarily Aztec if I'm remembering correctly.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/55347416