World News

Diplomats and other officials walked out of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Friday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to defend his nation's slaughter of more than 41,000 people in the Gaza Strip during the past year and over 700 in Lebanon this week.

Journalists and critics of the "global pariah" shared photos and videos of people filing out of the hall before Netanyahu's address—which came just a day after 25 anti-genocide protesters were arrested for blocking his motorcade in Manhattan.

While there was some audience applause from the sparsely populated room on Friday, Al Jazeera Arabic's Rami Ayari explained that "the people you hear cheering the PM during the speech are in the gallery who he brought for that purpose.".

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Slovenia Prime Minister Robert Golob: "I want to say this out loud and clear to the Israeli Government: Stop the bloodshed. Stop the suffering. Bring the hostages home and end the occupation. Mr. Netanyahu, stop this war now!"

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Israel faces a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court prosecutor has sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—one of whom Israel recently assassinated in Iran. Israel also claims to have killed a second Hamas leader, which the group has denied.

Bibi Nazdana [have been granted divorce] after a two-year court battle to free herself from life as a child bride [which] a Taliban court has invalidated.

Nazdana is a victim of the group’s hardline interpretation on Sharia (religious law) which has seen women effectively silenced in Afghanistan’s legal system.

Nazdana’s divorce is one of tens of thousands of court rulings revoked since the Taliban took control of the country three years ago this month. It took just 10 days from them sweeping into the capital, Kabul, for the man she was promised to at seven to ask the courts to overturn the divorce ruling she had fought so hard for.

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The Taliban have also systematically removed all judges – both male and female – and replaced them with people who supported their hardline views.

Women were also declared unfit to participate in the judicial system. "Women aren't qualified or able to judge because in our Sharia principles the judiciary work requires people with high intelligence," says Abdulrahim Rashid, director of foreign relations and communications at Taliban's Supreme Court.

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Former Supreme Court judge Fawzia Amini - who fled the country after the Taliban returned - says there is little hope for women’s protections to improve under the law if there are no women in the courts.

"We played an important role," she says. "For example, the Elimination of Violence against Women law in 2009 was one of our achievements. We also worked on the regulation of shelters for women, orphan guardianship and the anti-human trafficking law, to name a few."

She also rubbishes the Taliban overturning previous rulings, like Nazdana's.

"If a woman divorces her husband and the court documents are available as evidence then that's final. Legal verdicts can't change because a regime changes," says Ms Amini.

Archived version

Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) has unveiled a leaked audit report, sent to their Washington, D.C., address, that exposes Volkswagen’s (VW) blatant attempts to whitewash its complicity in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) genocidal policies in Urumchi. The audit, conducted by Guangdong Liangma Law and overseen by Berlin-based consultancy Löning, failed to meet the most basic international social accountability standards. Volkswagen’s claims of being cleared of forced labor allegations are not just misleading–they are part of a deliberate cover-up that implicates VW in one of the world’s worst human rights atrocities.

VW’s December 2023 assertion that their audit found “no indication of forced labor” in their Urumchi factory has now been thoroughly discredited by this leaked audit report, which CFU exclusively received in August 2024.

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The leaked audit shows that interviews were live-streamed to law offices in Shenzhen, directly enabling Chinese state surveillance. In addition, the report showed that only managers were asked questions related to forced labor. Volkswagen’s Urumchi plant, which operates in partnership with state-owned SAIC Motor Corporation, employs 197 staff, nearly a quarter of whom are Uyghur. However, the audit’s failure to directly question workers about forced labor practices undermines the integrity of the findings, further implicating VW in the region’s human rights abuses.

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Volkswagen has yet to provide a detailed response to these allegations, citing “contractual confidentiality obligations.”

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Sentiment in NATO is growing to give Ukraine more scope for action. This month the European Parliament asked European Union members to “immediately” lift deep strike restrictions, and so have top U.S. House Republicans and several leading congressional Democrats. Nonetheless, the U.S. approach remains hesitant.

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Over the past three decades, Jimmy Lai’s name has become synonymous with Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy: his newspaper Apple Daily, which was launched in the mid-90s, morphed from a local tabloid to what was widely considered a bold pro-democracy voice and critic of Beijing — until it was shut down by authorities in 2021.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed back to China in 1997. The civil liberties and freedoms enjoyed in the special administrative region were to be preserved for at least 50 years under the "one country, two systems" framework, however, Beijing has made increasing efforts to control Hong Kong’s political system and silence dissent in the less than 30 years since.

Lai has experienced China's encroachment first-hand.

He was first arrested during the Umbrella Movement of 2014 when tens of thousands of people took to the streets and staged a months-long sit-in in protest against the Chinese government's plan to restrict elections.

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Jimmy Lai was arrested in August 2020 and has since been held in a maximum-security prison in Hong Kong on a number of charges under the national security law.

"They’re drawing out his trial and it’s inhumane because, at almost 77, he is being kept in a cell in solitary confinement for more than 1300 days; he doesn’t get any natural light," Sebastien [Lai, who is Jimmy Lai's son] says.

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The Seoul Metropolitan Government said on Sept 27 it has conducted secret inspections into recent allegations of forced shopping, with findings confirming that such practices exist on some level among tourism packages there.

The city hired several foreign nationals to pose as tourists in seven low-priced package tours – three that were sold in China and four sold in Vietnam – to check the programmes’ quality.

Most of the packages focused more on shopping than tourism, which the city government’s agents said hindered them from enjoying Seoul’s history and culture.

Archived version

A new report obtained by Ukraine's allies points to a Chinese company sending a range of purpose-built military drones to Russia for testing, with the ultimate destination being Ukraine.

The deal occurred last year, according to a western official, who was unable to disclose the name of the company. However, they said there was “clear evidence now that Chinese companies are supplying Russia with deadly weapons for use in Ukraine”.

“While the Chinese government might not admit it, they are going to struggle to keep their increasing support under wraps,” added the official, appearing to accuse Beijing of being involved or aware of the delivery.

They also confirmed a Reuters report from earlier in the week that Russia is believed to have established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine. [...]

Weyland is one of hundreds of thousands of people across Germany who have embraced balkonkraftwerk, or balcony solar. Unlike rooftop photovoltaics, the technology doesn’t require users to own their home, and anyone capable of plugging in an appliance can set it up. Most people buy the simple hardware online or at the supermarket for about $550 (500 euros.)

More than 550,000 of them dot cities and towns nationwide, half of which were installed in 2023. During the first half of this year, Germany added 200 megawatts of balcony solar. Regulations limit each system to just 800 watts, enough to power a small fridge or charge a laptop, but the cumulative effect is nudging the country toward its clean energy goals while giving apartment dwellers, who make up more than half of the population, an easy way to save money and address the climate crisis.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3235819

Archived link

Openly defending one’s decision not to have children will be prosecuted in Russia. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is preparing a bill under which authorities will impose fines of up to €50,000 ($55,580) for supporting “the refusal to have children.” The measure affects all areas of life — from casual conversation to films and books — and is a serious threat to the Russian feminist movement.

The crackdown on what the Kremlin calls the “childfree” movement will result in fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals (around $4,300), 800,000 rubles for civil servants ($8,600), and up to five million rubles ($55,580) for companies or other legal entities. Foreigners will also be deported.

There are thousands of reasons why a person may decide not to have children, but the Cabinet of ministers has asked the State Duma to make only three exceptions to the law: religious reasons, medical reasons or in the case of rape. It also alleges that there is a mass-organized childfree movement, even though the websites on this subject are little more than a curiosity; Russian newspapers cite the existence of groups on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which barely have 5,000 members.

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3244714

A Hong Kong court on Thursday sentenced Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen to 21 months in prison, while former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam was released after his sentence was reduced because of ill health.

Last month, the two were the first journalists to be convicted under a colonial-era sedition law since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Chung and Lam were found guilty of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications.

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[The court] He ruled that 11 articles that were published under Chung and Lam's leadership carried seditious intent.

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Chung and Lam were held behind bars for nearly a year after their arrests, before being released on bail in late 2022. Their trial began in October that year and lasted some 50 days.

Stand News, which has now closed down, was one of the last news outlets in Hong Kong to voice criticism of authorities amid a crackdown from Beijing after the 2019 protests.

The latest World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders ranked Hong Kong as the 135th out of 180 territories, down from 80th place in 2021 and 18th place in 2002.

[...]Using technology not unlike the regenerative braking found in hybrids and electric vehicles, the trains they rode generated some of the power flowing to the EV chargers in the nearby parking lot, the lights illuminating the station, and the escalators taking them to the platforms.

Every time a train rumbles to a stop, the energy generated by all that friction is converted to electricity, which is fed through inverters and distributed throughout the subway system. One-third of that powers the trains; the rest provides juice to station amenities and a growing network of EV chargers.

Each year, residents and tourists take 440 million trips on Barcelona’s subway system, which includes 165 stations linked by 78 miles of track. The transit agency has installed three inverters so far; 13 more are in progress. Once they’re all in place by the end of September, it expects regenerative braking to provide 41 percent of the energy needed to power the trains, a renewable source of energy it says will save about 3.9 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually.

Lots of meme potential here!

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3233057

China's latest nuclear submarine sank during its construction earlier this year, senior US defense officials said on Thursday.

Satellite images from June showed cranes at the Wuchang shipyard where the Zhou-class attack submarine would have been docked.

These images indicate that the vessel likely sank between May and June, US officials told news agencies including the Associated Press and Reuters.

China has not confirmed the current status of the submarine.

Reports of a submarine sinking during construction could be a potential setback for China as it continues to expand its naval capacity.

"We are not familiar with the situation you mentioned and currently have no information to provide," a Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington said.

A US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters it was "not surprising" that China's navy would hide the sinking of the submarine.

"In addition to the obvious questions about training standards and equipment quality, the incident raises deeper questions about the PLA's internal accountability and oversight of China's defense industry — which has long been plagued by corruption," they added, using the acronym for the People's Liberation Army.

Travellers described being subjected to lawlessness, looting and brutality in a conflict that the UN says has forced more than 10.5 million people to flee their homes.

But it is sexual violence that has become a defining characteristic of the protracted conflict, which started as a power struggle between the army and the RSF but has since drawn in local armed groups and fighters from neighbouring countries.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has said rape is being used as “a weapon of war”.

A recent UN fact-finding mission documented several cases of rape and rape threats from members of the army, but found that large-scale sexual violence was committed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its allied militias, and amounted to violations of international law.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3247781

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Instead of spearheading China’s liberalisation, Western universities that benefit from Chinese money are increasingly vulnerable to pressure from its government.

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Through a combination of pressure tactics – including a global censorship regime, the weaponisation of informal Chinese networks, questionable party-state funding, and dependencies on “official China” – students and researchers are silenced, and higher education institutions are influenced.

Within many universities outside China, academic freedom has been compromised by Chinese funding. Dependent on the large funds that have been allocated to them, they are more inclined to do research in line with the CCP’s programme. More recently, the much publicised Hong Kong National Security Law allows anyone to be charged who challenges China’s national unity, regardless of nationality or territory. The Hong Kong National Security Law purports to have extraterritorial effect and therefore it is not limited to Chinese citizens or even those physically in Hong Kong. This inevitably contributes to a climate of self-censorship among academics.

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Unfortunately, rising authoritarianism, if not actual totalitarianism, in China has turned the tables on Western universities. Instead of spearheading the liberalisation of China, they have become vulnerable to Chinese pressure in the opposite direction. Their partnerships with Chinese universities have turned into potential liabilities as professors come under fire for not properly declaring Chinese funding, research grants are linked to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and universities’ technology breakthroughs are being used to improve China’s system of mass surveillance.

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The Irish Centre for Human Rights and the University of Galway showed courage in accepting this gift of memory to [Chinese human rights activist] Liu. Statements of support by the university’s president and the director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights are significant. It is our hope that this example will encourage other universities to resist the pressure from Chinese money that might compromise their academic freedom.

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3229591

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The Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) presents unique challenges for air infrastructure superiority, with its high altitude and rugged terrain. While the expansion of airports and deployment of fighter jets and sophisticated radar systems have been traditional measures of this superiority, a less recognised but equally critical aspect is China's increasing rotary-wing capabilities at extreme altitudes.

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China's critical military infrastructure at higher altitudes is rapidly expanding in the challenging environment of the TAR. A vital part of this expansion is the proliferation of high-altitude heliports and helipads, which are quickly becoming crucial nodes in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ground and air operations strategy.

These helipads, strategically placed near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China, disputed areas with Bhutan, and critical infrastructure like surface-to-missile (SAM) sites and military barracks, serve as logistics hubs. Their role in facilitating rapid troop and equipment movement underscores their strategic significance.