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In a video posted online, Lt Col Roman Venevitin, who called himself the “already former commander”, also accused Wagner soldiers of stealing arms, forcing mobilised soldiers to sign contracts with Wagner, and attempting to extort weapons from the Russian defence ministry in exchange for releasing kidnapped (Russian)...

At least 150 tons of oil have been released into the Dnipro River with the risk of further leakage of more than 300 tons. This may lead to the Nyzhniodniprovskyi National Nature Park, which comprises more than 80 000 hectares of protected land, to disappear.

Many foreign companies released statements about leaving Russia soon after the invasion of Ukraine. Almost a year and a half later, it can be stated that only a small part of foreign companies left Russia. According to calculations made by the Kyiv School of Economics, only 7% of Western companies halted all operations in...

Bluetooth, AirDrop and such file-sharing services are crucial tools in China, where the so-called Great Firewall has resulted in one of the mostly tightly-controlled internet regimes. In recent years, anti-government protesters have often turned to AirDrop to organise and share their political demands. For instance, some...

Big things are happening apparently!

Posts from fake accounts claimed: “The UAE’s commitment to being the perfect host for Cop28 is a testament to its leadership in tackling climate change,” and that Cop28 president Al Jaber, who is also CEO of the state oil firm, is “the ally the climate movement needs”. Others retweeted or reposted UAE government tweets...

'Operation Fox Hunt’ trial started in New York City.

Stumbled upon this on Mastodon.

Scores of police were stopping people to search their belongings and question them. By late afternoon local time, reporters witnessed at least eight people taken away by police in vans – including Alexandra Wong, a well-known pro-democracy activist better known as Grandma Wong. The 67-year-old was carrying flowers as police...

Hong Kong’s US and EU consulates light candles to mark Tiananmen crackdown anniversary. hongkongfp.com/…/in-pictures-hong-kongs-us-and-eu…

The removal of the memorials in Hong Kong came after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, leading the local government to essentially ban public commemorations of the 1989 killings. The 2,000-square-foot display includes newspaper clippings, letters written to protesters who were sent to jail, a...

Erin O’Toole says the Canadian spy agency informed him that Beijing’s campaign used social media, specifically the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat. “My parliamentary caucus and myself were the target of a sophisticated misinformation and voter suppression campaign orchestrated by the People’s Republic of China,”...

Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old certified fitness instructor and artist who frequently promoted female empowerment on her social media accounts, was accused by Saudi authorities of using a hashtag – translated to #societyisready – to call for an end to male guardianship rules.She has not yet been convicted or sentenced and...

Stories told to children who lived under the Russian occupation in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province were designed to terrify them. When the fast-approaching Ukrainian forces came into Kherson, people added, they would hurt anyone who had been in contact with the Russians. The web of lies were often spun by the children’s...

While many analysts believe – or perhaps hope – that western countries would not weaponise hunger against China in the event of a conflict with Taiwan, the war in Ukraine has shown that energy is highly likely to be hit with sanctions. And unlike Russia, with its vast reserves of natural gas, China is dependent on other...

Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.

A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them borrowed from China under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). An analysis has found paying back this debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open,...

Alexander Shiplyuk, head of Siberia’s Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017. The 56-year-old maintains his innocence and insists the information in question wasn’t classified and was freely available...

The daughter of Nikolai Gusev, director of the Vympel Design Bureau, which designs and produces the missiles used by the Russian army, has been living in Florida since 2021. The 20-year-old student Natalia Guseva rents an appartment in Miami for $3,500 a month, while a year of study at the University of Miami costs the family...

The China Labour Bulletin recorded 108 factory workers’ protests since early January, more than twice the amount recorded in all of 2022. Reduced orders from international buyers and poor economic conditions have led factories to lay off workers, relocate to reduce costs, or shut down altogether, the Bulletin says.

In theory, the import of drones into Russia should have been choked off by Western sanctions. In practice, however, it is clear that avenues for their procurement remain open for drones as well ad advanced microchips - used in everything from missiles to demining robots. They are flowing into Russia from abroad through companies...