After “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which counts Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara as executive producers, received a nearly 23-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere in September, filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania took a slew of meetings with potential North American distributors.

Executives praised the film, which follows the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s failed attempt to save Hind, a Palestinian child who was killed in Gaza in 2024 after being trapped in a car under Israeli fire.

But not a single major studio or streamer made an offer on the movie, the official Oscar submission of the Tunisian Culture Ministry, Ben Hania said.

“People never say, ‘I’m afraid to pick up a movie,’” Ben Hania said. “Maybe they are. I don’t know. They can’t openly talk about it, because it’s a shame to be afraid of talking about the killing of a child.”

At Bosaso Airport in Somalia’s Puntland state, the thunderous sound of large aircraft hitting the tarmac echoes out across the port city.

Minutes after landing, the aircraft can be identified. It is a white IL-76 heavy cargo transport plane, and it is parking next to a very similar aircraft.

For local residents, the sound of such planes was unusual two years ago, when they first began landing in Bosaso. Not anymore. Moments later, undisclosed heavy logistical materials are seen being offloaded from the aircraft.

“They’re frequent and the logistics are transferred immediately to another aircraft that is on standby and is destined for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan through the neighbouring countries,” said Abdullahi, a senior Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) commander at Bosaso Airport, who spoke to Middle East Eye using a different name for security reasons.

For years, the UAE has been funding Puntland’s PMPF, a regional force established to combat piracy. The soldiers there say none of the materiel arriving on transport aircraft is brought to their camp, as the shipments are large and beyond their requirements.

https://archive.is/xNzJI

Meloni’s allies are contemplating a proposal to dole out all seats proportionally, but with a majority bonus for the leading coalition to give it a stable voting bloc, the people said. Under one scenario, a coalition winning 40% of the vote would get up to 55% of the seats.

Pretty much only played Fire Emblem: Three Houses this week.

I am at Chapter 16, and went with the Black Eagle's Church route. I have figured out some gameplay and character stuff, and can think of some things I would like to do differently, but as I am playing on Normal, I don't think the min-maxing matter too much, and most classes work fine on most characters. So have stopped worrying and just having fun with it.

The story is good, and it was interesting to see end of Part 1 and start of Part 2. Some of the plot twists were pretty obvious, but would love to play the other routes and see thing from their point of view. Also, thinking about buying the DLC after finishing the game once.

Since I am kinda smitten with Fire Emblem these days, wanted more of that, something to play in bed at night, when Switch 2 is back in the dock. Tried the mobile FE games but couldn't get into them, so thought about Fire Emblem Warriors, but don't want to do it while still playing Three Houses, not to mention don't want to play another Warriors games when I never finished Hyrule Warriors.

So, resumed my playthrough of Hyrle Warriors: Age of Calamity, I was at last mission of Chapter 4, tried a random timed mission where I had to beat a Lynel and a Hinox, and failed the mission, apparently the game isn't as easy as I remember.

Cleared Chapter 4 now. It's fun to see so much new stuff showing up on map after doing the main mission.

No Judgment or Dimension Drive this week. And since FE: Three Houses is scratching my dungeon crawling itch, have officially dropped Moonlighter once again.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

Google wants 'AI mode' on Search to be as personal as possible, and it'll soon tap into services like Gmail or Drive to know more about you.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52118037w

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37808020

At some point (in a galaxy, long long time ago) I learned to turn jeans, shorts and hoodies inside out when putting them into washing machine. For some reason, I don't do the same with smaller, simple things like T-shirts and underwear.

I forgot what was the reasoning behind it, but when I think about it, can't seem to come to a conclusion which way is better.

Is one way better than another and why?

Archived at https://archive.is/AQBUm

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5377829

Archived link

The two-day Group of Seven meeting in Toronto opened hours after US President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping signed an extendable one-year deal on China’s supply of rare earths.

Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katherina Reiche, told reporters the Trump-Xi deal marked “a good sign,” noting German reliance on Chinese critical mineral exports. But she stressed the agreement “can’t prevent us” from moving forward on broadening supply chains for the materials used in everything from solar panels and mobile phones to precision missiles. “We need diversification of our import routes on raw materials,” Reiche said.

With concern growing about China’s overwhelming dominance in rare earth refining and processing, G7 leaders announced a “Critical Minerals Action Plan” at a summit in western Canada in June.

Canada’s Energy Minister Tim Hodgson said the Toronto meeting will aim to formally launch a new initiative designed to curb China’s market influence. The Critical Minerals Production Alliance will “secure transparent, democratic, and sustainable critical mineral supply chains across the G7,” he said. Under the alliance, the governments of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States would mobilize private investment to expand critical mineral production that bypasses China.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5377829

Archived link

The two-day Group of Seven meeting in Toronto opened hours after US President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping signed an extendable one-year deal on China’s supply of rare earths.

Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katherina Reiche, told reporters the Trump-Xi deal marked “a good sign,” noting German reliance on Chinese critical mineral exports. But she stressed the agreement “can’t prevent us” from moving forward on broadening supply chains for the materials used in everything from solar panels and mobile phones to precision missiles. “We need diversification of our import routes on raw materials,” Reiche said.

With concern growing about China’s overwhelming dominance in rare earth refining and processing, G7 leaders announced a “Critical Minerals Action Plan” at a summit in western Canada in June.

Canada’s Energy Minister Tim Hodgson said the Toronto meeting will aim to formally launch a new initiative designed to curb China’s market influence. The Critical Minerals Production Alliance will “secure transparent, democratic, and sustainable critical mineral supply chains across the G7,” he said. Under the alliance, the governments of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States would mobilize private investment to expand critical mineral production that bypasses China.

The Third-Worldists was always right, the problem is the West and capitalism by extension of it.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5377713

Archived link

The latest findings on the Westminster espionage scandal that has sent shockwaves through British politics — and this podcast (75 min) draws the lines connecting that case to Canada’s own national-security crisis.

In the case, President Xi Jinping’s powerful ally and reported spymaster, Cai Qi, is alleged to have overseen a covert Ministry of State Security operation inside the U.K. Parliament. According to British parliamentary records and corroborating media leaks, Cai’s network cultivated a young British teacher while he was living in China, recruiting him through a front company run by the MSS. The recruit allegedly secured access to Westminster through another young Brit — a researcher and adviser who was reportedly tasked with gathering real-time intelligence on Conservative MPs critical of Beijing’s human-rights abuses in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan.

The explosive Cash and Berry prosecution was pursued under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, but was later quietly abandoned by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Documents and sources cited in London suggest that senior political advisers close to Starmer, including a former banker known for pro-China trade advocacy, may have influenced the decision to collapse the case — raising profound questions about ethical interference in Britain’s judicial process.

The transnational case is not just a scandal but a systemic warning: the same dynamic of political suppression, elite capture, and economic dependency that has compromised the United Kingdom’s response to CCP [Chinese Communist Party] influence has already unfolded in Ottawa.

[...]

Similar patterns that troubled Justin Trudeau’s government on Chinese election interference could persist under Mark Carney’s leadership. And in the case of Starmer, the powerful U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP has directly lodged concerns with the British Ambassador, questioning whether the Cash and Berry case was cancelled due to pressure from China or trade and development considerations between Beijing and London.

[The podcast also discusses] the Bureau’s reporting from Vancouver and Toronto, where Chinese and Mexican cartel networks have built a global hub for synthetic-opioid production and shipment. These networks, operating through Canadian ports and logistics channels, are now targeting Australia and New Zealand, demonstrating how the same state-linked criminal and intelligence systems driving espionage in Westminster are simultaneously fueling a deadly global trade in fentanyl and methamphetamine.

The Brazilian government said on Thursday that deforestation in its portion of the Amazon rainforest has fallen for the fourth consecutive year.

Brazil is home to the largest part of the Amazon River system, which spans nine countries and is considered crucial in the fight against climate change.

According to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which uses satellites to track forest cover, 5,796 square kilometers (2,238 square miles) — an area nearly four times the size of Greater London — was destroyed between August 2024 and July 2025. This was 11% less deforestation than the previous year.

Israeli officials inserted into the Nimbus deal a requirement for the companies to a send coded message – a “wink” – to its government, revealing the identity of the country they had been compelled to hand over Israeli data to, but were gagged from saying so.

Leaked documents from Israel’s finance ministry, which include a finalised version of the Nimbus agreement, suggest the secret code would take the form of payments – referred to as “special compensation” – made by the companies to the Israeli government.

According to the documents, the payments must be made “within 24 hours of the information being transferred” and correspond to the telephone dialing code of the foreign country, amounting to sums between 1,000 and 9,999 shekels.

Giorgia Meloni's allies are exploring changes to Italy's election laws to boost her reelection odds, as internal polls show she may struggle to retain a majority in the upper house of parliament.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/44938574

Archived

Two Siberian regions have become the 26th and 27th Russian regions to adopt legislation this week banning the “coercion” of pregnant women into terminating a pregnancy amid efforts by conservative figures to expand state pressure to boost birth rates.

The neighboring Kemerovo region and Altai republic adopted laws Monday and Tuesday banning “persuasion, requests, offers, deception, bribery or other actions” aimed at encouraging a woman to have an abortion.

[...]

Officials say the measure is designed to “protect pregnant women in a situation of reproductive choice” and improve demographic trends.

Both laws take effect on Jan. 1, 2026.

The initiatives are backed by the pro-life Orthodox-aligned foundation Women for Life, which launched a chatbot encouraging women to report relatives, partners or medical workers who “advised” them to terminate a pregnancy.

[...]