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After decades of relative peace in Europe following the end of World War II, with a few notable exceptions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine served as a stark reminder that the specter of war is still alive. Within a few days in February 2022, millions of lives were turned upside down and Europe’s sense of safety was deeply rattled.

The longer the war dragged on, the more aware Europeans became of the looming threat that Putin’s Russia poses to European peace, especially after Donald Trump was re-elected and immediately threatened to withdraw support for Ukraine and questioned the U.S. commitment to NATO, which had effectively shielded Western Europe from Russian aggression for decades.

According to a new YouGov survey, many Europeans even consider World War III a possibility, with at least 30 percent of respondents in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK saying that it’s very or fairly likely that there will be another world war in the next 5-10 years. With respect to Europe, tensions with Russia are seen as the biggest threat by far. Around 50 percent of respondents from Germany, France and the UK said that Russia poses a major threat to peace in Europe, while tensions between Europe and the U.S. and between European nations are not perceived as an imminent threat.

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To be clear, if the value of your package is $100, you now only pay an additional $54 in Trumpariffs, before shipping and other taxes, instead of $120.

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“In light of the evidence that Russian intelligence services were behind the reprehensible act of sabotage at the shopping centre on Marywilska Street, I have decided to revoke the operating permit of the Russian Federation’s Consulate in Krakow,” Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski wrote on [social media].

The move follows the arrest of several suspects and an international investigation involving Lithuanian authorities, which uncovered similar sabotage efforts.

The closure of the consulate comes just a month after local media reported that authorities had quietly renewed the building’s lease, triggering protests in Kraków.

The fire, which broke out in May last year, destroyed 90% of the centre, but fortunately there were no casualties. It is now seen as part of a wider pattern of Russian-backed sabotage across central and eastern Europe.

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In related news, Poland says Russia recruited arsonists for Warsaw fire on social media.

"We have evidence that they commissioned people living in Poland, they commissioned them on Telegram and paid them to set fire to this huge shopping mall," Sikorski said on Monday ...

The May 2024 fire destroyed 1,400 small businesses, with many of the staff there belonging to Warsaw's Vietnamese community ...

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High-level talks between the United States and China have begun in Geneva, Switzerland, Chinese state media reported on Saturday, in a possible thaw in the trade war sparked by President Donald Trump’s massive tariffs.

Vice Premier He Lifeng will lead the talks on the Chinese side, while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be America’s chief representative, state broadcaster CCTV said in a brief report.

Same wifi network. On my laptop I can access the website, no issues without VPN. On my phone, there's just no way unless I activate my VPN.

I tried searching about it but the closest results I found say it's an ISP issue, some apparently block the Archive. If that was the case then I'd need VPN for both devices, right? So it's got to be another reason, yes?

I didn't find anyone saying they experience the same as I am, I suppose because I suck at searching I guess.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34454453

The new Pope, Leo XIV, should direct an urgent review of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with the Chinese government that allows Beijing to appoint bishops for government-approved houses of worship, Human Rights Watch said today. He should also press the government to end the persecution of underground churches, clergy, and worshipers.

The Chinese government has continued to install Chinese Communist Party-compliant clergy. AsiaNews reported that during the mourning period for Pope Francis, who died on April 21, 2025, that the Chinese government had moved forward on the appointments of an auxiliary bishop in Shanghai and the bishop of Xinxiang, Henan province.

“Pope Leo XIV has an opportunity to make a fresh start with China to protect the religious freedom of China’s Catholics,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The new Pope should press for negotiations that could help improve the right to religious practice for everyone in China.”

The Chinese government has long restricted the country’s estimated 12 million Catholics to worship in official churches under the leadership of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and has persecuted Catholics who have attended underground “house churches” or pledged allegiance only to the pope. The government has conducted frequent raids on underground churches and arrested unapproved clergy and congregants.

Pope Leo should press the Chinese government to immediately free several Catholic clergy who in recent years have been imprisoned, forcibly disappeared, or subjected to house arrest and other harassment, Human Rights Watch said. They include James Su Zhimin, Augustine Cui Tai, Julius Jia Zhiguo, Joseph Zhang Weizhu, Peter Shao Zhumin, and Thaddeus Ma Daqin, as reported by the Hudson Institute.

The 2018 Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops, the full text of which has never been made public, ended a decades-long standoff over who had the authority to appoint bishops in China. Under the agreement, Beijing proposes future bishops, and the pope has veto power over those appointments.

Since the 2018 agreement, the two parties have agreed on the appointment of 10 bishops, covering about a third of the over 90 dioceses in China that remained without a bishop. The Vatican has never exercised its veto power, however, even when the Chinese government violated the agreement by unilaterally appointing bishops in 2022 and 2023, appointments that Pope Francis later accepted.

In a 2024 news statement renewing the 2018 agreement, the Vatican stated that it aimed to “benefit … the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese people as a whole.” The Holy See and the Chinese government have renewed the agreement three times.

The Chinese government, which restricts all religious practice in China to five officially recognized religions, regulates official church business and retains control over personnel appointments, publications, finances, and seminary applications.

Originally Posted By u/origutamos At 2025-05-12 08:45:31 PM | Source

It's super frustrating to see. I mean seriously, if you don't care enough to even write a post on social media, what are you doing here? It's the literal least you could do. I don't mean to come here and talk about how everyone needs to be pushing themselves to their absolute limits or else they're worthless. That is not my intention. However, I do want things created by human hands to be prioritized over robot generated slop.

The vast majority of AI proponents are right wing grifters and reactionaries. I seriously think we should not be associated with it whatsoever. Plus it undermines the humanity behind the movement.

I apologize if I used the wrong flair.

Written by a human, with no help from biased slop-bots.

Originally Posted By u/basil_baby At 2025-05-13 12:44:00 AM | Source

Originally Posted By u/Bloberta221 At 2025-05-12 09:28:58 PM | Source

inspired by: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorcesterMA/comments/1kizuwn/posters/_if/_anyone/_wants/_em/_now/_without/_typos/

Originally Posted By u/saviorofGOAT At 2025-05-12 05:57:00 PM | Source

Bananas are the world’s most consumed fruit – and the fourth most important food crop globally, after wheat, rice and maize. About 80% of bananas grown globally are for local consumption, and more than 400 million people rely on the fruit for 15% to 27% of their daily calories.

And the climate crisis is threatening the future of the world’s most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found.

Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid’s new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World’s Favourite Fruit.

The first group of white South Africans granted refugee status by Donald Trump’s administration has arrived in the US, stirring controversy in South Africa as the US president declared the Afrikaners victims of a “genocide”.

The Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists, were met at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC by US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, and deputy secretary of homeland security, Troy Edgar, with many given US flags to wave.

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At the beginning of March 2025, non-governmental government (NGO) sources confirmed that Zhang will soon be tried on the charge of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’, a charge often used by Chinese authorities to suppress journalists, writers and human rights defenders. The date of her trial is still unknown, as she remains detained in the Pudong Detention Center in Shanghai, facing an additional up to five years in prison if convicted.

Zhang Zhan was apprehended by the police on 28 August 2024, only three months after completion of an earlier four-year sentence under the same charge, while travelling to her hometown in the Shaanxi province in northwest China. In the weeks leading up to this incident, Zhang kept reporting on the harassment of activists in China on her social media accounts.

Her first detention was deemed arbitrary under international human rights law by the United Nation’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a 2021 opinion. In a November 2024 letter to the Chinese government, nine UN Special Procedures mandates raised lengthy concerns about patterns of repression against Zhang Zhan, alongside 17 other human rights defenders, requesting the government take measures to prevent any irreparable damage to life and personal integrity, and halt the violations of her human rights. The government’s three-line response on Zhang Zhan’s status merely asserted that ‘her legitimate rights and interests have been fully protected’.

China remains one of the most repressive countries for freedom of speech and press, ranks 178th out of 180 in the 2025 Reporters without Borders (RSF)’s World Press Freedom Index, and is the world’s leading jailer of journalists and writers, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, RSF, and PEN America.

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A Democratic National Committee subcommittee on Monday recommended that the organization invalidate one of its February vice-chair votes over claims that it unfairly disadvantaged female candidates.

The move, which won't be official unless the entire DNC votes to approve it, could open up new races for the positions held by David Hogg, a Florida activist, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a Pennsylvania state legislator.

The challenge by Oklahoma Democratic Committeewoman Kalyn Free, who unsuccessfully ran against Hogg and Kenyatta in the February race for vice chair, is not related to the ongoing tension between Hogg and the national party over his push to support primary challenges against incumbent Democrats.

Instead, it was based off Free's claim that the handling of the vice-chair vote gave the two men an unfair advantage amid the national party's requirements that its executive committee achieve gender balance.

House Republicans are moving forward with plans to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $4 trillion as part of a larger plan to advance President Trump’s tax agenda.