Holy shit this thread is a good example of why Lemmy is quite far from mainstream still. The army form one instance is strong here, quite fascinating and amusing to read.
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Click here to see the summaryIn March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Lvova-Belova, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on charges of committing a war crime by forcibly deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine and taking them to Russia. She has said vulnerable children were taken to Russia to shelter them from violence and protect them from a leadership in Ukraine that she has described as “Fascists” who have allowed “the virus of Nazism” to make a comeback. A London-based private intelligence service called Molfar disclosed publicly in a Jan. 3, 2023 report about Russia’s removal of children from Ukraine that Petrov’s Skype handle is wotan_jugend8989. A Dec. 16, 2022 European Union decision imposing sanctions on Petrov said he is “involved in the illegal transportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and their adoption by Russian families.” When Russia gave a presentation on April 5 this year to the United Nations Security Council to rebut allegations about its treatment of Ukrainian children, Petrov was among the speakers. The administrator said the group promotes a right-wing world view, and many of its followers back Ukraine in its war with Russia because they want to overthrow the Russian state.
JAKARTA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Indonesia’s capital Jakarta topped the list as the world’s most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.
Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children’s health at risk.
Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and coal-fired power plants.
Some of them launched and won a civil lawsuit in 2021 demanding the government take action to control air pollution.
Still, Nathan Roestandy, co-founder of air quality app Nafas Indonesia, said the pollution level has continued to deteriorate.
Indonesia is set to name Nusantara as the new capital next year and at least 16,000 civil servants, military and police are due to move there.
The mercury could also rise to 40 C in the Basque Country in northeastern Spain, an area less accustomed to such high temperatures, the state weather agency AEMET said.
Southern European countries have been grappling with record-breaking temperatures this summer, prompting authorities to warn of health risks, particularly for the elderly and those with medical conditions.
Temperatures in some areas in the southern half of Spain remained above 27 C on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, AEMET spokesperson Ruben del Campo said.
“Wednesday will be the most intense day in terms of extension and temperatures,” Del Campo said, adding that the heatwave will continue until the weekend.
Tourists said they were keeping to the shade, drinking lots of water and eating ice cream to stay cool.
The Cryosphere, a scientific journal focused on frozen water and ground, published a peer-reviewed paper on Tuesday showing how the Aneto Glacier, the largest in the Pyrenees, is melting and could disappear altogether.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has staked his international reputation on improving Brazil’s environmental standing, had been pushing for the region to unite behind a common policy of ending deforestation by 2030 - one he has already adopted.
Instead, the joint declaration issued on Tuesday in the Brazilian city of Belem created an alliance for combating forest destruction, with countries left to pursue their own individual deforestation goals.
It is not possible that, in a scenario like this, eight Amazonian countries are unable to put in a statement - in large letters - that deforestation needs to be zero," said Marcio Astrini of environmental lobby group Climate Observatory.
This week’s summit brought together the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) for the first time in 14 years, with plans to reach a broad agreement on issues from fighting deforestation to financing sustainable development.
Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River and the country’s northern coast, which is dominated by rainforest.
The final joint statement, called the Belem Declaration, strongly asserted indigenous rights and protections, while also agreeing to cooperate on water management, health, common negotiating positions at climate summits, and sustainable development.
Catalonia’s authorities last week imposed new water usage restrictions on 22 villages around the reservoir, near the French border, as the aquifer supplying them is also emptying.
Several heatwaves recorded in Spain and wider Europe this summer have worsened the drought, lowering reservoirs’ levels as water evaporation and consumption increased, said Ruben del Campo, spokesperson for Spain’s meteorological agency AEMET.
The 22 villages, plus two others in southern Catalonia, which account for around 25,000 residents in total, are in a state of water emergency.
This means they must lower their consumption to a daily average of 200 litres of water per resident from a prior cap of 230.
The village of Agullana with 900 residents has been keeping its water usage below the 200-litre cap for several months, but its mayor said further steps will be implemented.
“We’ll reduce to zero the irrigation of gardens, the football field, the grass by the swimming pool, which we’ll see turning yellow as if burnt,” Josep Jovell said.
Aug 4 (Reuters) - The United States is discussing what support it would be prepared to offer a Kenya-led multinational force to help police in Haiti fight armed gangs amid a worsening humanitarian crisis there, a State Department official said on Friday.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Caribbean Affairs and Haiti Barbara Feinstein told reporters that U.S. contributions would depend on the outcome of a Kenyan assessment expected to take place in the Haitian capital in coming weeks.
She said the U.S. would seek contributions such as personnel, equipment, training, financing or other support from countries across the world.
Close to 200,000 people have been internally displaced in Haiti, according to recent U.N. estimates, largely in the Ouest department as residents face frequent shootings, kidnappings and sexual violence as rival gangs wage wars for territory.
Aid groups and food producers have struggled to move personnel and basic supplies to parts of the country, causing hospitals to shut and millions of people to live in famine-like conditions.
Broadening political inclusion and establishing conditions for free elections remained of “great urgency,” she said.
The need for credible options was reinforced after the Swiss central bank stepped in with a liquidity backstop for Credit Suisse in March, before it was taken over by rival UBS (UBSG.S).
The European Banking Authority (EBA) said on Thursday that it will begin checking next year whether national regulators are testing the assumptions banks have on finding liquidity after a collapse, particularly in light of the “potential speed of deposit withdrawals, a crucial element that emerged in the context of the recent crisis event in the US and Switzerland”.
Liquidity refers to readily available cash or short-term debt with a ready buyer to fund a bank’s day-to-day operations without having to sell assets.
The EBA on Thursday published findings from its first report looking at how regulators across the 27-country EU apply ‘resolution’ rules introduced after the global financial crisis to avoid taxpayer bailouts of banks.
“Strategies and actions suggested by institutions to support liquidity in resolution remained limited and mostly focused on accessing central bank facilities,” EBA said in its report.
"Technical complexities, partnership strains and pollution concerns are hampering companies' ability to wrest market share away from China"
This is a main reason China has a large market share in the first place. There are a number of rare earth deposits around the world but clean extraction and refining is expensive. China has been willing to go the cheap and dirty route. So everyone let china sell it to the rest of the world cheaper than local deposits could be exploited due to environmental regulations.
There are only three options:
Buy from China. Which may no longer be possible.
Local extraction but more expensive. With supply issues as production ramps up.
Local extraction but the environmental regulations get tossed aside due to National Security. Still likely to be more expensive than china and slow to scale, plus the added joy of pollution.
I’m sure the Chinese would be more than happy to sell but the US needs to learn how to cooperate and share instead of constantly trying to control and dominate. The rest of the world is fed up with America plundering their resources and telling it how to run their affairs. Especially as it can barely run its own
Counterpoint: The Chinese can develop the tech themselves, they obviously have the raw materials. They want to move themselves up the value chain as their labour costs rise, this is the perfect opportunity.
It’s also an opportunity for the US to dial back the ludicrous propaganda, learn to compromise and cooperate. Imagine what could be achieved if the two countries worked together.
Indeed it does, funny you should ask. The Taiwan authorities not only agree with and support the nine-dash line, but they also still claim all of Mongolia as well as parts of Russia, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Beijing government, much to Taiwan’s dismay, has long since signed treaties with all of them except for a small part of India which is still in dispute.
Of course, you wouldn’t know about that because the AP/Reuters/AFP cabal doesn’t tell you. It doesn’t sit well with the approved narrative. When it comes to global news they are the ones that cherry-pick what they think you should know.
reuters.com
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