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● Leftover Links 01/09/2023: University of Michigan Pays Massive Price for Using Microsoft

Posted in News Roundup at 12:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Super NES Cartridge Pulls A Sneaky, Plays Minecraft

• Sometimes it’s the little touches and details that make a project. That’s certainly the case with [Franklinstein]’s Super Nintendo (SNES) Cartridge Hard Drive. It might only be an enclosure for a solid-state hard drive with a USB interface, but the attention to detail is what really makes it worth checking out.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ U.S. Aquifers Are Running Dry, Posing Major Threat to Drinking Water Supply

• A major New York Times investigation reveals how the United States’ aquifers are becoming severely depleted due to overuse in part from huge industrial farms and sprawling cities. The Times reports that Kansas corn yields are plummeting due to a lack of water, there is not enough water to support the construction of new homes in parts of Phoenix, Arizona, and rivers across the country are drying up as aquifers are being drained far faster than they are refilling. “It can take millions of years to fill an aquifer, but they can be depleted in 50 years,” says Warigia Bowman, director of sustainable energy and natural resources law at the University of Tulsa College of Law. “All coastal regions in the United States are really being threatened by groundwater and aquifer problems.”

Science

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ New study sheds light on plant’s genetic memory transmission

• Beyond the fundamental DNA code, organisms also transmit chemical cues that instruct cells on gene utilization. This transmission, known as epigenetic inheritance, is particularly prevalent in plants. The implications of significant findings in this realm extend to agriculture, food security, and environmental preservation.

Education

=> ↺ Jim Nielsen ☛ Book Notes: “Out of the Software Crisis” by Baldur Bjarnason

• But alas, there’s no time. So it will have to suffice to say: I enjoyed the book, here are a few excerpts I want to note for future reference.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Aalto University plans to cut English language teaching

• These changes are being made in response to a complaint filed by students at the university in October 2021, which criticised the dominance of Englishlanguage instruction.

• The complaint was particularly focused on finance studies and pointed out that these were not available in Finnish or Swedish at the master’s level. It also highlighted that the Bachelor of Finance degree was no longer primarily taught in Finnish or Swedish.

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Taliban stop women scholars from studying in Dubai

• Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor is a successful Dubai businessman who has granted scholarships to some 100 Afghan women to continue their studies in the United Arab Emirates. However, the Taliban have barred women in Afghanistan from attending university.

• Some scholarship recipients planned to fly from Kabul to Dubai last week to study abroad, where Al Habtoor would have welcomed them. But the Taliban refused to allow the young women to leave shortly before their scheduled departure.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ ‘A huge issue’: US colleges work to shore up student math skills

• At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. As more students are placed in pre-college math, professors blame the pandemic.

Hardware

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ 3D Printed Engine Gets Carburetor

• 3D printed materials have come a long way in the last decade or so as printers have become more and more mainstream. Printers can use all kinds of different plastics with varying physical characteristics, and there are even printers now for other materials like concrete and metal. But even staying within the realm of the plastic printer can do a lot of jobs you might not expect. [Camden Bowen] recently 3D printed a single-piston engine which nearly worked, and is back with some improvements to it thanks to a small carburetor.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ PC GPU Sales Up 11% in Q2, But Remain Slower Than Last Year

• Intel continues to dominate the GPU market as AMD regains some share from Nvidia in Q2 2023.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ The Neo6502 Is A Credit-Card Sized Retro Computer

• The venerable MOS Technology 6502 turned up in all kinds of computers and other digital equipment over the years. Typically, it was clocked fairly slow and had limited resources, but that was just how things used to be. Today, the 6502 can run at an altogether quicker pace, and the Neo6502 was the board built to take it there.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ An Unexpected Appearance Of An Iconic Motorola Chip

• Generally when you crack open a cheap car-to-USB charger unit that came with some widget, you do not expect to find anything amazing inside. That’s why it was such a surprise to [Big Clive] when said car USB charger revealed a blast from the past in the form of an MC34063. This is a switching regulator that supports buck, boost and inverting topologies, but perhaps it most notable feature is that it was first produced by Motorola in the early 1980s.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Biden Makes Lower Drug Prices a Centerpiece of His 2024 Campaign

• President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate some drug prices, a change that the pharmaceutical industry and Republicans have opposed for decades.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Biden Administration Unveils First Drugs for Medicare Price Negotiations

• The price negotiation program, established by Democrats as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is projected to save the government tens of billions of dollars in the coming years.

=> ↺ Vox ☛ Marijuana could be classified as a lower-risk drug. Here’s what that means.

• HHS’s recommendation, which was based on a review by the Food and Drug Administration, comes as marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, even as 23 states have legalized the use of recreational marijuana and 38 states have approved access to medical marijuana.

• The DEA hasn’t signaled how it will respond to the HHS recommendation. But if it does reschedule the drug, marijuana businesses are among those most likely to benefit. That’s because rescheduling would likely mean access to federal financial benefits meant to help businesses, including tax breaks that marijuana companies currently aren’t able to use.

=> ↺ International Business Times ☛ Cannabis detrimental to teens, pregnant women and mentally ill people: study

• The findings of the review were published by the BMJ Medical Journal on Wednesday. The umbrella review was conducted by an international team of experts.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Biden admin announces first 10 drugs facing Medicare price negotiation [Ed: Why not mention the word "patent" even once?]

• The blood-thinners Eliquis and Xarelto are among the 10 prescription medicines the Biden administration will seek lower Medicare prices for as part of a new program allowing the government to negotiate drug prices for America’s seniors.

• Why it matters: The administration’s landmark announcement Tuesday detailed the first-ever set of drugs subject to Medicare price negotiations, a longtime Democratic priority included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act over drug companies’ fervent objections.

=> ↺ Diziet ☛ Conferences take note: the pandemic is not over

• Many people seem to be pretending that the pandemic is over. It isn’t. People are still getting Covid, becoming sick, and even in some cases becoming disabled. People’s plans are still being disrupted. Vulnerable people are still hiding.

• Conference organisers: please make robust Covid policies, publish them early, and enforce them. And, clearly set expectations for your attendees.

• Attendees: please don’t be the superspreader.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ COVID-19: Commission authorises adapted COVID-19 vaccine for Member States’ autumn vaccination campaigns *

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 01 Sep 2023 The Commission has authorised the Comirnaty XBB.1.5-adapted COVID-19 vaccine, developed by BioNTech-Pfizer.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Public freakouts, burnout, and bullying are all here to stay

• Concertgoers throwing things at performers, people talking on their cell phones through movies, tourists defacing historical landmarks in pursuit of the perfect selfie — the first truly post-pandemic summer has shown the bad behaviors unleashed during the stress of COVID aren’t slowing down.

• Why it matters: A mix of worsening mental health and decaying societal connections, both exacerbated by the pandemic, may be driving this trend in rude behavior that could extend far beyond COVID’s upheaval, mental health experts told Axios. Though other factors are also at play, they said.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Omicron was the deadliest pandemic wave for cancer patients

• The Omicron wave of the pandemic was the deadliest for cancer patients, reinforcing how much high-risk individuals can succumb to COVID-19 strains that pose less severe threats to the rest of the population, according to research in JAMA Oncology

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Experts Worry That AI-Generated Books About Mushroom Foraging Will Get Someone Killed

• That’s not much of a stretch. Some types of mushrooms are extremely poisonous, and as far as hobbies go, fungi foraging can be a dangerous pastime. Generative AI is known to get its facts wrong. What happens when a non-expert looking for a quick cash grab publishes an AI-generated fungi guide, and a piece of bad information — be it outright wrong or even just a little too vague — finds its way onto the pages?

• “There are hundreds of poisonous fungi in North America and several that are deadly,” Sigrid Jakob, president of the New York Mycological Society, told 404′s Samantha Cole. “They can look similar to popular edible species.”

• “A poor description in a book,” Jakob added, “can mislead someone to eat a poisonous mushroom.”

=> ↺ BBC ☛ Brain fog after Covid linked to blood clots – study – BBC News

• A UK study links two proteins in the blood of hospital patients to thinking and memory problems.

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ How Health Insurers Have Made Appealing Denials So Complicated

• Have you ever had a health care claim denied by your insurer? Ever tried to appeal it? Did you wind up confused, frustrated, exhausted, defeated?

• I’ve been a health care reporter for more than 40 years. And when I tried to figure out how to appeal insurance denials, I wound up the same way. And I didn’t even try to file an actual appeal.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ “Doomsday” seed vaults are on the rise as a response to climate change

• “Doomsday” seed vaults are becoming an increasingly popular tool in the race to insure global crop and agricultural production against the damaging impacts of climate change.

• Why it matters: In an era of simultaneous climate disasters, long-term solutions that bolster the future of food supply are gaining momentum among governments, scientists and small-scale farmers.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ NYPost ☛ AI-generated Trump rap song mocking latest arrest tops iTunes chart: ‘My mugshot worth a billi’

• “Out on bail, out on bail. I won’t see inside a cell,” the eerily-accurate AI-generated voice chants.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ A Deep Dive Into the World of AI Voice Cloning

• AI voice cloning, or voice synthesis, leverages sophisticated machine learning algorithms to recreate a specific human voice. To accomplish this voice recreation, algorithms are trained using vast volumes of the target voice data, honing in on unique aspects such as tone, pace, accent, and more nuanced vocal idiosyncrasies.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ DataTech Digital Inc ☛ UMinn sued, accused of taking insufficient action to prevent data breach

• A lawsuit filed on behalf of a former student and former employee at the University of Minnesota accuses the university of not doing enough to protect personal information from a recent data breach.

• Attorneys for the two plaintiffs said in the lawsuit filed in federal court Friday that the university “was fully capable of preventing” the breach, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Wednesday.

Security

=> ↺ LWN ☛ Security updates for Thursday

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, json-c, opendmarc, and otrs2), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-ibm and kpatch-patch), Scientific Linux (kernel), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (haproxy, php7, vim, and xen), and Ubuntu (elfutils, frr, and linux-gcp, linux-starfive).

=> ↺ Data Breaches ☛ One month later, Ranhill still hasn’t fully recovered from cyberattack

• More than one month later, it appears that Ranhill has still been unable to fully recover. DataBreaches previously reported complaints on Facebook about the payment app not working. It still isn’t working, and Ranhill does not even reply Facebook to customers who are frustrated and complaining about the inability to pay, as a “Wake up, Ranhill” message posted a few days ago suggests. Another customer complains because they have not received their bills for the past three months and can’t get them because the website is (still) down.

=> ↺ Data breach could affect more than 100,000 in Pima County

• More than 100,000 Pima County residents could be affected by a nationwide data breach that affected the company that handled COVID-19 case investigations and contact tracing here, officials say.

• The company, Maximus Health Services Inc., notified the county earlier this month that data stolen from a breach of Progress Software Corporation’s MOVEit Transfer application in May included information on about 110,000 Tucson area residents, a news release from the county health department said.

=> ↺ [Repeat] DataTech Digital Inc ☛ UMinn sued, accused of taking insufficient action to prevent data breach [Ed: Windows TCO]

• The FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating.

• The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Geoff Dittberner, who studied at the university and worked as a government relations office assistant there; and Mary Wint, who worked as a university nutrition educator for about 20 years and was a patient of its health care system. Attorneys are seeking class-action status.

=> ↺ Singing River Health System still recovering from recent cyberattack

• Surgeries delayed, prescriptions needing to be written by hand, and some patients being transferred to other hospitals. These are all affects of the recent cyberattack at Singing River Health System.

• “We still deliver great patient care,” said Dr. Randy Roth, Singing River Chief Medical Officer. “It’s a little bit slower. For us guys with the gray hair, we’re back to paper. We’re practicing like we did in 2011, 12, before we got on EPIC.”

• EPIC is Singing River’s medical record system. The system that was hacked.

=> ↺ TechCrunch ☛ LogicMonitor customers who didn’t change default passwords were hit by hackers

• Some customers of the network security company LogicMonitor have been hacked due to the use of default passwords, TechCrunch has learned.

• The incident is due to the fact that, until recently, LogicMonitor was assigning customers default — and weak — passwords such as “Welcome@” plus a short number, according to a source at a company that was impacted by the incident, and who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak to the press.

=> ↺ University of Michigan ☛ Q&A about internet issues for employees [Ed: The issue is that the university had its whole system/infrastructure breached/paralysed, not “internet [sic] issues for employees”; way to distract from Microsoft saboteurs who should be held accountable for bringing in the back-doored mess]

• Questions and answers to some key questions for U-M faculty and staff.

=> ↺ U. Michigan restores campus internet after cyberattack disrupts first week of classes [Ed: Well, "cyberattack" just means complete, catastrophic breach, but they don't want to admit it]

• The University of Michigan announced it has restored internet to its three campuses after a cyberattack over the weekend.

• [...]

• University leaders opted to shut down [Internet] access and many of its online services after detecting a “significant security concern” on Sunday, just ahead of the fall semester’s first week of classes. The university also noted that it was working with cybersecurity consultants and federal law enforcement agencies.

=> ↺ University of Michigan ☛ Q&A: Monthly payroll to be paid on time, and other issues [Ed: Microsoft TCO]

• Questions and answers to some key questions for U-M faculty and staff.

=> ↺ University of Michigan ☛ Internet service restored to all U-M campuses [Ed: They do not bother explaining what happened and who was held accountable]

• Internet connectivity and WiFi has been restored on all U-M campuses. Users should be able to connect as normal from any device.

• While some issues are expected in the short term with select U-M systems and services, they should be resolved over the next several days.

• Any service interruptions will be posted on the ITS status page. Please contact the Service Center for technical assistance if needed.

• Q&A: Monthly payroll to be paid on time, and other issues

=> ↺ University of Michigan ☛ CSG holds first meeting of the semester amid campus-wide internet outage [Ed: Central Student Government affected by Microsoft TCO]

• The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government convened Tuesday evening in the Michigan Union to discuss the campus Wi-Fi outage and various resolutions. While CSG is usually hybrid, their first meeting of the fall semester was held entirely in person due to the lack of internet.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ ‘Earth Estries’ Cyberespionage Group Targets Government, Tech Sectors

• Earth Estries, a cyberspy group possibly linked to China, has targeted governments and tech firms in the US, Germany, South Africa and Asia. 

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Healthcare Organizations Hit by Cyberattacks Last Year Reported Big Impact, Costs

• Roughly 78% of the healthcare organizations in North America, South America, the APAC region, and Europe experienced a cyberattack over the past year, according to a new report.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ Recent Juniper Flaws Chained in Attacks Following PoC Exploit Publication

• Four recent vulnerabilities in the J-Web component of Junos OS have started being chained in malicious attacks after PoC exploit code was published.

=> ↺ Security Week ☛ DreamBus Botnet Exploiting RocketMQ Vulnerability to Delivery Cryptocurrency Miner

• The DreamBus botnet has resurfaced and it has been exploiting a recently patched Apache RocketMQ vulnerability to deliver a Monero miner.

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ DOE launches cyber contest to benefit rural utilities

• A Department of Energy contest aims to help under-resourced rural utilities beef up their cybersecurity defenses.

=> ↺ Defence Web ☛ Africa cyber threats exposed

• That digital insecurity and cyber threats in Africa are real was forcibly brought to light by a joint Interpol/Afripol operation across 25 of the continent’s 54 countries. The four-month Africa Cyber Surge II operation focused on identifying cybercriminals and compromised infrastructure.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ The Protecting Kids On Social Media Act Is A Terrible Alternative To KOSA

• We have covered the Protecting Kids On Social Media Act a few times, when it was first introduced back in April, where we highlighted how it was both unconstitutional and the rationale behind it was not supported by any actual evidence, and then again just recently when Senator Chris Murphy (one of the bill’s co-sponsors) wrote a ridiculously confused op-ed for the NY Times, claiming it was necessary because kids these days get too many music recommendations and no longer could discover new music on their own.

=> ↺ [Repeat] NYOB ☛ Your Fitbit is useless – unless you consent to unlawful data sharing

• No way around the transfer of personal data. When creating an account with Fitbit, European users are obliged to “agree to the transfer of their data to the United States and other countries with different data protection laws”. This means, that their data could end up in any country around the globe that does not have the same privacy protections as the EU. In other words: Fitbit forces its users to consent to sharing sensitive data without providing them with clear information about possible implications or the specific countries their data goes to. This results in a consent that is neither free, informed or specific – which means that the consent clearly doesn’t meet the GDPR’s requirements.

=> ↺ The Verge ☛ IBM promised to back off facial recognition — then it signed a $69.8 million contract to provide it

• Despite these announcements, last month, IBM signed a $69.8 million (£54.7 million) contract with the British government to develop a national biometrics platform that will offer a facial recognition function to immigration and law enforcement officials, according to documents reviewed by The Verge and Liberty Investigates, an investigative journalism unit in the UK.

• A contract notice for the Home Office Biometrics Matcher Platform outlines how the project initially involves developing a fingerprint matching capability, while later stages introduce facial recognition for immigration purposes — described as “an enabler for strategic facial matching for law enforcement.” The final stage of the project is described as delivery of a “facial matching for law enforcement use-case.”

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ Twitter, now X, will begin collecting users’ biometric data

• Elon Musk’s X Corp., the company formerly known as Twitter, released an updated privacy policy stating that it will start seeking user consent to collect biometric data for “safety, security and identification purposes.”

• The policy, which takes effect Sept. 29, follows intense scrutiny over X’s lack of account authentication and rampant fraud across the platform.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Twitter says it may harvest biometric, employment data from users, per privacy policy

• As August and summer in the northern hemisphere draw to a close, Elon Musk’s Twitter is making several changes to its platform, including a privacy policy update noting that it plans to begin collecting biometric data and employment information from the people still using the site, if provided.

• The website’s latest privacy policy, set to go into effect on September 29, adds both types of data to the “information we collect” category, neither of which are present in the current policy that’ll be superseded come the end of next month.

=> ↺ Alan Pope ☛ Alan Pope: ZeroTier is my personal VPN

• Back in July, Martin introduced us to ZeroTier on the Linux Matters podcast, episode 8. He detailed why he’s using the tool and how. Worth a listen.

• Per their website, ZeroTier “lets you build modern, secure multi-point virtualized networks of almost any type. From robust peer-to-peer networking to multi-cloud mesh infrastructure, we enable global connectivity with the simplicity of a local network.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong man sentenced to 2-month detention in psychiatric hospital over inciting random killings online

• A man who praised the suspect of a double murder in a Hong Kong shopping mall has been sentenced to two months of detention in a psychiatric hospital, after he pleaded guilty to inciting others to wound.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Israel dispatch: do Arab lives matter?

• Israeli law students are reporting for JURIST on law-related developments in and affecting Israel. This dispatch is from Mayan Lawent, a law student in the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University and a JURIST Staff Correspondent in Israel.  

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ In Syria, new economic protests take an anti-government turn

• In the government-controlled province of Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druze, protests that were initially driven by surging inflation quickly shifted focus, with marchers calling for the fall of the Assad government.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Military Coup in Gabon Seen as Part of Broader Revolt Against France & Neo-Colonialism in Africa

• Military leaders in Gabon seized power on Wednesday shortly after reigning President Ali Bongo had been named the winner of last week’s contested election. Bongo and his family have led the country for close to 60 years, during which they have been accused of enriching themselves at the expense of the country. The military junta announced General Brice Oligui Nguema would serve as transitional leader in what is the latest military coup in a former French colony, joining recent power shifts in Niger, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Chad. “The independence of Gabon has never been real,” says Thomas Deltombe, French journalist and expert on the French African empire. “I think we might be witnessing a second independence, a new decolonization process.” We also speak with Daniel Mengara, a professor of French and Francophone studies and founder of the exiled opposition movement Bongo Must Leave, which he continues to head. “This is a rare opportunity for the Gabonese people to engage in national dialogue,” says Mengara, who warns that the intentions of the coup leaders are still unclear.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Palau, United States expand maritime security arrangements after Chinese incursions

• The new agreement allows the U.S. to enforce regulations in Palau’s waters without a Paluan officer present.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ IL: Supo blocked Purra’s choice for media advisor role due to China links

• The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) highlighted a number of issues during the preferred candidate’s security check, including his partner’s former Chinese nationality.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Jacksonville Shooting: Rep. Maxwell Frost Blasts DeSantis for Pushing Bigotry & Ignoring Gun Violence

• Congressmember Maxwell Frost of Florida says this weekend’s shooting in Jacksonville, carried out by a white supremacist who targeted Black people at a dollar store, did not happen in isolation. He points to Republican efforts to loosen gun laws and racist rhetoric from party leaders as part of the problem of far-right violence. “All of these things are connected,” says Frost, who also applauded people for booing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at a prayer vigil in Jacksonville. “In moments like these, we have to stand strong on ensuring that leaders who contributed to the problem can’t use our communities as campaign stops.”

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ North Carolina campus shooting that killed faculty member reignites student calls for stricter gun laws

• Local police announced Monday that an active shooter on the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) Chapel Hill campus shot and killed a faculty member. Active shooter alerts and sirens caused students, staff and faculty members at the famed southern US university to barricade themselves into classrooms and offices Monday afternoon. >

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Switzerland indicts former Algeria defense minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity

• Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) announced Tuesday that it has formally charged former Algerian defense minister Khaled Nezzar in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the Algerian Civil War.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ US Army Brags About Plans to Mount Rifle on Robot Dog

• First reported earlier this month by the intelligence service Janes, the Army’s desire to slap a weapon on one of Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60 Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) — which is robotics manufacturing-speak for a competitor to Boston Dynamics’ infamous robodog used by the likes of the New York Police Department — seemed to be softly confirmed by a spokesperson Military.com talked to.

=> ↺ Janes ☛ US Army experimenting with weaponised Q-UGV for infantry

• The Ghost Robotics-made Vision 60 Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) is currently being integrated with different sensors to see how well it can perform reconnaissance and other missions, Bhavanjot Singh, senior scientific technical manager for autonomy and automation for armaments systems at Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), told Janes on 26 July.

• However, the service is exploring integrating the robot with a Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW), a new Sig Sauer XM7 Rifle, he said during a reception for lawmakers where the robot was displayed.

=> ↺ The Gray Zone ☛ ‘Obama’s man in Africa’: under house arrest as popular coup rocks Gabon

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Switzerland Follows EU With New Sanctions Against Belarus

• The Federal Council of Switzerland adopted further sanctions against Belarus on August 30 to align it with the measures taken by the European Union.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ ‘Red Army go home’: how Lithuania expelled Russian troops 30 years ago

• Initially, there were negotiations not only on troop withdrawal but also a political condemnation of the occupation. Russia demanded proof of the economic damage caused by the occupation, and the Lithuanians were quick to come up with estimates. When the Russians saw the numbers, they did not want to talk about it anymore.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Putin’s Russia must not be allowed to normalize nuclear blackmail

• Much of Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling has been deliberately ambiguous in nature and highly choreographed for maximum impact. In the first days of the war, Putin very publicly announced that he was placing his country’s nuclear forces on special alert, while warning that anyone who attempted to interfere with the Russian invasion of Ukraine would face consequences on a scale “you have never seen in your history.”

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘I won’t abandon my state’: Zelensky commits to running for president if there’s a wartime election — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Blogger Andrey Kurshin arrested in Moscow on suspicion of spreading ‘fakes’ about Russian army — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Prominent Buryatia activist who was arrested for ‘striking’ policemen with ballpoint pen sentenced to nearly three years in prison — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russian Volunteer Corps claims responsibility for attack on military airfield in Russia’s Kursk region — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Two Ukrainian military helicopters crash in Donetsk region, killing six pilots — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ FSB says two ‘Ukrainian saboteurs’ killed and five arrested in Russia’s Bryansk region — Meduza

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Doorstep by Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi at the informal meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers (Gymnich) in Toledo

• We are here today to discuss our further support to Ukraine.

=> ↺ European Commission ☛ Factsheet on EU-Ukraine Solidarity Lanes Joint Coordination Platform

• European Commission Factsheet Brussels, 01 Sep 2023 Factsheet on EU-Ukraine Solidarity Lanes Joint Coordination Platform Factsheet EU-Ukraine Joint Coordination Platform

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Target hit 700 kilometers away!’ Zelensky celebrates Ukraine’s defense industry, possibly hinting at Russia’s Pskov airport — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Vladimir Putin to give open lesson as part of Russia’s mandatory patriotism class on September 1 — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘We wanted what’s best, but it turned out as always’ In this very brief history of the ruble, historian Ekaterina Pravilova explains how Russia’s national currency got coopted by the state’s autocratic and imperial ambitions — Meduza

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Iran and targeted human rights sanctions update: Providing military equipment to Iran security forces and Russia

• The UK and Canada designated Iranian individuals and entities for the provision of military supplies to Russia and Iranian security forces.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Russian War Report: Russia deploys revamped cruise missile warship

• Russia has deployed one of its biggest warships, which serves as a cruise missile launch platform, from a Black Sea port.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Indonesia’s economy will surpass Russia’s sooner than expected. Here’s what that says about the global economy.

• In 2026, Indonesia is expected to surpass Russia to become the world’s sixth largest economy

=> ↺ The Strategist ☛ The five-domains update

• Sea state The Russian and Chinese navies held a joint patrol exercise last month involving manoeuvres near the US Pacific coast.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Pope visits Mongolia for first time amid strained relations with China, Russia

• Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday morning on a visit to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Pope arrives in Mongolia, sends message of ‘unity and peace’ to China

• September 01, 2023 4:35 PM

• The papal visit is seen as a strategic move to improve Vatican ties to Beijing and Moscow.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ LRT English Newsletter: Escape to Russia

• LRT English Newsletter – September 1, 2023.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Court rules in favour of Russian national denied Lithuanian residence over ‘national security’

• Having worked in a Russian prison is not a sufficient reason to be deemed a threat to national security, a court in Vilnius decided in a case of Russian national who has been denied a residence permit.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ US issues sanctions over North Korean missile program

• A North Korean and a Russian national have been sanctioned following Pyongyang’s Aug. 23 failed satellite launch.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian National Granted Asylum In Bulgaria After Being Rejected Earlier

• Bulgaria will allow a Russian national to stay in the country, after earlier rejecting three asylum requests.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Kazakh Aviation Authorities Warn Of Threat To Flight Safety In Russia

• The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly confirmed drone attacks that have affected flights at Russian airports.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Russia Vetoes Renewal of Mali Sanctions Regime

• To be adopted, a UN Security Council resolution needs no veto from Britain, China, France, Russia, and the U.S.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ UN renewal of sanctions on Mali fails after Russia veto

• The UN sanctions on Mali are set to end Thursday after the Security Council failed to renew them. In August 2022, the UN renewed its travel ban and asset freeze on some individuals in the West African nation resulting from political unrest in 2015.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Pope Visits Mongolia, With an Eye on Russia and China

• The pontiff arrived Friday on a trip that the Vatican said was meant to encourage the fewer than 1,500 Catholics there. But it also brings him close to two great powers that have vexed him.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ With Robotyne Recaptured, Ukraine Takes Next Step in Counteroffensive

• After penetrating Russian defenses to retake the village of Robotyne, Ukrainian forces have pushed the fight a few miles east, but formidable obstacles lie ahead.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Textbooks for Russian High Schoolers Try to Justify Ukraine War

• The textbooks, which cover Russian history from 1945 to present, also reimagine the brutality of Joseph Stalin’s policies.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ As Ukraine’s Fight Falters, It Gets Even Harder to Talk About Negotiations

• Discussion of a negotiated Plan B, should Ukraine fail to win a total victory, has become more unseemly than ever and is now nearly a taboo, say those who have tried.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ UN chief sends Russia bid to revive Black Sea grain deal

• United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday that he had sent Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov \”a set of concrete proposals\” aimed at reviving a deal that allowed the safe export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ US lawmaker says Washington has ‘obligation’ to fulfil military sales backlog to Taiwan

• Taiwan has complained of delays to US weapon deliveries as manufacturers turned supplies to Ukraine.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Attacks on Pskov Area Not to Go Unanswered: Zakharova

• She pointed out that Ukraine would not have been able to hit targets deep inside the Russian territory without satellite data obtained from the West.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Over 20,000 Ukrainian Troops Get Training in UK

• Launched in the summer of 2022, Operation Interflex is a UK-led international training program for Ukrainian recruits.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Russia is losing in Ukraine but winning in Georgia

• If Putin is able to reassert Russian dominance over Georgia while continuing to occupy 20% of the country, he will be encouraged to believe that a similar outcome will eventually prove possible in Ukraine, writes Giorgi Kandelaki.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Has Developed A Long-Range Weapon, A Day After A Strike Deep Inside Russia

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says his country has developed a weapon that hit a target 700 kilometers away, in an apparent reference to the previous day’s strike on an airport in western Russia.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Turkish Foreign Minister Stresses Importance Of Reviving Grain Deal In Meeting With Lavrov

• Turkey’s foreign minister has emphasized how important reviving the Black Sea Grain Initiative is to global food security during a meeting in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Three Wounded In Russian Missile Strike In Central Ukraine As More Drone Attacks Reported In Russia

• Three people were wounded in a Russian missile attack in central Ukraine as Russia reported more drone attacks early on September 1, including near Moscow and a nuclear power plant as Ukraine’s military said its counteroffensive was continuing in the country’s east and south.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania to build school in Ukraine’s Bucha

• Lithuania will build a school in Bucha and invest 18 million euros in the reconstruction of educational infrastructure in the Ukrainian town.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ UN Chief Sends Russia New Proposals To Revive Black Sea Grain Deal But Moscow Isn’t Satisfied

• United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent Russia a new proposal aimed at getting grain and fertilizer to international markets in hopes of reviving a deal that allowed Ukraine to ship almost 33,000 tons of grain at a time of growing global hunger.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Ukraine Ready To Store And Re-Export Gas To EU This Winter, Operator Says

• Ukraine is ready to store and re-export European gas for the 2023/2024 winter, the country’s gas transmission operator said.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ British Defense Giant BAE Sets Up Base In Ukraine

• “BAE Systems…has established a local legal entity and signed agreements with the Ukrainian government to ramp up the company’s support to Ukraine’s armed forces and to explore the supply of light guns to Ukraine,” the company said a statement.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Russian missile hits central Ukraine as Moscow reports drone attacks

• Russian forces struck a private enterprise with a long-range cruise missile overnight in the central Ukrainian region of Vinnytsia, causing an unspecified number of injuries, the local governor said Friday. Earlier, Russian officials said a drone attack damaged a building in a southwestern town near the Kursk nuclear power station.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Prigozhin’s Right-Hand Man In Wagner Buried Quietly Near Moscow

• The co-founder and military commander of the Russian mercenary group Wagner was buried near Moscow on August 31, after dying in an unexplained plane crash that also killed his boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ What do we know about the videos allegedly showing ‘destroyed’ Wagner cemeteries?

• A few days after the plane crash that killed Russian oligarch and head of the Wagner private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin, two videos emerged online showing the destruction of cemeteries for Wagner mercenaries – or so social media users claimed. Some people are saying that this destruction is part of a Russian campaign to erase any sign of the powerful Wagner Group in Russia after Prigozhin led a short-lived rebellion against the country’s military leadership. Our research currently shows no link between what is happening in the cemeteries and the plane crash.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Wagner Group’s second-in-command buried quietly near Moscow

• Dmitry Utkin, cofounder and military commander of the Wagner Group, was buried Thursday in a quiet ceremony at a military cemetery near Moscow after dying in a plane crash that also killed his boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The ceremony came as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow for talks in a bid to revive the Black Sea grain deal.

=> ↺ Fidan, Lavrov discuss revival of Ukraine grain deal

• The top diplomats evaluated the efforts to revive the deal, as well as discussing an alternative plan proposed by Putin.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russia-Ukraine War: Putin and Erdogan Will Meet Next Week, Kremlin Says

• The Kremlin’s spokesman said the leaders of Russia and Turkey will hold talks in Sochi on Monday.

=> ↺ CS Monitor ☛ Putin rebounds at home, but global ambitions stymied

• Vladimir Putin has strengthened his domestic position in the wake of a June mercenary mutiny, but Russia’s overall geopolitical standing is falling.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Chile: The Secrets the US Government Continues to Hide

• But Nixon had access to far more detailed and dramatic intelligence. A special CIA “CRITIC”—Critical Advance Intelligence Cable—that would have been distributed on an urgent basis to the highest levels of the White House on September 10, provided concrete reporting on the date, time, and place of the planned coup; another top secret CIA memo that reached the White House the morning of September 11 contained an urgent request from “a key officer in the military group planning overthrow President Allende” who asked “if the U.S. Government would come to the aid of the Chilean military if the situation became difficult.” How the president of the United States responded to that request is one of the details of the history of the coup that remain unknown.

Environment

=> ↺ Breach Media ☛ A group of B.C. towns want to sue Big Oil over the climate crisis

• It was a sunny afternoon on the aptly-named Sunshine Coast in B.C., when residents Dawn Allen and Alaya Boisvert approached the Gibsons town council in their chamber.

• It was late winter and, for nearly a year prior, Allen and Boisvert had spent long hours in Zoom meetings. They had collected petition signatures at fairs, farmers markets, and outside grocery stores. They had trudged door to door, through stifling heat waves, asking their neighbours to back them.

=> ↺ Common Dreams ☛ As Idalia Threatens Florida, It’s Time to Hold Big Oil Accountable for Climate Disasters

• The threats posed this week to Florida by Hurricane Idalia are just the latest in a string of extreme weather and disasters exacerbated by the climate crisis this summer. July was the hottest month on record, within the hottest year on record – a year that has been marked by deadly and tragic disasters ranging from the devastating wildfires in Maui, a searing heat wave across much of Europe and United States, and record flooding in Italy, Cuba, Brazil, India and beyond.

• Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry has continued to drive up prices and rake in massive profits, all while walking back their own climate commitments. Just this week, ExxonMobil announced that it predicted the world would fail to meet its 2050 climate targets, while taking no responsibility for its own role in the failure.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Australia settles climate lawsuit over systemic risks to sovereign bonds

• Under the terms of the settlement, the government will have to issue a notice saying its sovereign bonds carry climate-related risks.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ Scientist Peter Kalmus: The Hurricanes, Floods & Fires of 2023 Are Just the Beginning of Climate Emergency

• As Hurricane Idalia left a wake of destruction Wednesday, President Joe Biden said, “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore.” Climate activist and scientist Peter Kalmus calls for Biden to declare a climate emergency in order to unleash the government’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels. “The public just doesn’t understand, in my opinion, what a deep emergency we are in,” says Kalmus. “This is the merest beginning of what we’re going to see in coming years.” Kalmus blasts the fossil fuel industry for manipulating politics through campaign contributions, and GOP presidential candidates for misleading the public about climate science. “As a parent, as a citizen and as a scientist, I find it appalling and disgusting,” declares Kalmus. “I can’t mince words anymore.”

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Hurricane Idalia is yet another test of America’s aging power infrastructure

• By the numbers: The average U.S. electricity customer experienced 7.3 hours of power outages in 2021 — down from 8.2 hours in 2020, but more than double 2013′s rate.

• That’s per the latest available data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an agency within the Department of Energy.

=> ↺ DeSmog ☛ Marathon Refinery Fire Illustrates How Industry Goes Quiet During a Crisis

• Thick black smoke billowed and flames rose from two chemical storage tanks at the Marathon Petroleum refinery between Reserve and Garyville, Louisiana, on Friday. Geraldine Watkins saw the towers of smoke through the passenger seat window of a car that morning, while she was on her way to a court hearing about whether another tract of land in St. John the Baptist Parish, where Garyville is located, would be zoned for heavy industrial use.

• Despite the alarming view, no community-wide alarms had sounded when a naphtha leak started a fire at the refinery earlier that morning. While parish officials declared a mandatory evacuation for all residents within two miles of the refinery, including two nearby schools, DeSmog’s Julie Dermansky got inside the two-mile evacuation zone across the river from the plant without encountering a road block. Cars continued to pass by the facility and workers at the neighboring Cargill plant stood on the Mississippi River levee and recorded the scene live on Facebook for more than an hour.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Hoverboard Turned Into Bonkers Omniwheeled Bike

• Segways stunned the world when they first hit the market in 2001. Hoverboards then terrified the world with nasty accidents and surprise fires. [James Bruton] loves hoverboards regardless, and set out on a mighty upgrade regime turning the ride-on toy into a giant omniwheeled bicycle.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Finnish court rejects appeal by taxi firm’s Russian owner

• Finland’s Data Protection Ombudsman earlier this month ordered taxi service Yango, owned by Russian tech giant Yandex, to stop transferring and processing customer’s personal data in Russia.

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ A Three Seas Chamber of Commerce could enhance energy diversification across Central and Eastern Europe

• The Three Seas Initiative (3SI) Summit in Bucharest takes place next week. To catalyze investment and diversify away from Russian energy, the summit should establish a Three Seas Chamber of Commerce, capable of sustaining progress and unleashing the region’s full potential.

=> ↺ teleSUR ☛ Egypt: Last Unit of Nuclear Power Plant Allowed to Be Built

• The program is based on an agreement between Egypt and Russia that entered into force in December 2017, with the building of 4 reactor units, each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts, at a total construction cost of 28.75 billion U.S. dollars.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ The Death Toll From Climate Change Will Be Catastrophic, Scientists Say

• This somber analysis was arrived at by researchers in Canada and Austria who analyzed 180 studies on climate change and mortality, as laid out in a new paper published in the journal Energies. From the analysis, they converged on a “1000-ton rule,” which means for every 1,000 tons of fossil fuel burned, a person dies. Calculating with this rule in mind, the researchers concluded that roughly 1 billion people will die if the planet warms up to 2 degrees celsius or higher by 2100.

Finance

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Americans are saving less, earning less — but spending more [Ed: Debt crisis growing. It'll implode very badly.]

• Americans saw income growth that slowed to a crawl in July, but their spending rate decidedly did not.

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Swedish payments major Klarna hits monthly profitability ahead of target as losses shrink

• Swedish payments group Klarna Bank reported on Thursday a much smaller six-month operating loss than a year earlier and said it had reached profitability on a monthly basis ahead of target.

• The January-June operating loss at the privately held (BNPL) fintech, which last made a full-year profit in 2018, was 2.01 billion crowns ($185 million) against a year-earlier loss of 6.17 billion crowns.

=> ↺ Daniel Miessler ☛ Why and How I Believe We’ll Attain AGI by 2025-2028

• I have a strong intuition about how we’ll achieve both AGI and consciousness in machines.

• Keep in mind: it’s just an intuition. And I’m not a triple Ph.D. in AI or anything. But I don’t think I—nor anyone else—has anything solid to stand on with this stuff, so intuition / hypothesis is what you’ll get here. So what that throat-clearing out of the way, let’s get into it.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Parisians Want to Bring Their Neighbors Closer Together. But First, Cheese.

• A grass-roots movement aims to recast urban living in Paris and other cities around the world through a hyperlocal prism of neighborliness.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ UK Replaces Defense Secretary Ben Wallace With Grant Shapps

• Mr. Wallace, a former soldier, had come to symbolize Britain’s steadfast support for Ukraine in the war against Russia.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Mongolian woman eager to welcome Pope Francis keeps up tea-spilling tradition

• Perlimaa Gavaadandov offers a tribute to the sky by splashing a cup of freshly boiled milk tea just outside her yurt on the edge of Mongolia’s grasslands, following an age-old tradition.

=> ↺ Federal News Network ☛ Pope arrives on first visit to Mongolia as Vatican relations with Russia and China remain strained

• Pope Francis has arrived in Mongolia on a visit to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities. It’s the first time a pope has visited the landlocked Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained. Francis arrived in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar on Friday morning after an overnight flight passing through Chinese airspace. That gave the pontiff a rare opportunity to send a note of greetings to President Xi Jinping. Following a welcoming ceremony, Francis planned to rest for the remainder of the day. His official program begins Saturday and lasts through Monday.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Denmark joins Lithuania-led cyber rapid response force

• The cyber rapid response team will consist of nationally delegated experts from Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Belgium, Slovenia, and Denmark.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Cybersecurity compliance: What companies need to know about the new SEC rules

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently updated its rules on cyber risk management, governance and incident disclosure. The new rules will take effect in December 2023.

• Given that the guidelines have only been out for a month, how are companies responding to its stipulations so far, and what major challenges are they facing on that path?

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Clarence Thomas Filing Acknowledges Harlan Crow Real Estate Deal, Private Jet Travel

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for the first time acknowledged that he should have reported selling real estate to billionaire political donor Harlan Crow in 2014, a transaction revealed by ProPublica earlier this year. Writing in his annual financial disclosure form, Thomas said that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be publicly disclosed.

• In the form, which was made public Thursday after he’d received an extension on the filing deadline, Thomas also disclosed receiving three private jet trips last year from Crow. ProPublica reported on two of those trips.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Elon Musk’s X lifts ban on political ads, reversing Twitter policy on halting misinformation

• Elon Musk on Tuesday lifted a ban on political ads put in place at Twitter to thwart misinformation before the billionaire bought the platform now called X.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Books To Boots: Critics Say New Russian History Textbook Is Propaganda, Preparation For War

• Critics say the new textbook has little to do with history but rather is a return to Soviet-style practices of ideological indoctrination aimed at youths who could soon find themselves drafted into the military. With some exceptions, boys become eligible for one year of mandatory service when they reach the age of 18.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Can a Controversial User Really Get Kicked off the Internet?

• In theory, yes; in practice, perhaps soon.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Iran Bans Weightlifter For Life After Photo Shows Him With Israeli Rival

• Iran on August 30 banned weightlifter Mustafa Radschaie Langrudi for life, claiming he acted “contrary to the ideals of the Islamic republic” when a photo of him by a medals stand showed him together with an athlete from Israel.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong pro-democracy singer jailed for 2 years and 2 months over sedition and money-laundering charges

• Yuen’s online posts, the magistrate said, were taunts and mockery aimed at inciting citizen’s “scorn” towards the Hong Kong government and the legal system.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Texas Ruling Shows You Can’t Regulate Online Pornography Like A Public Health Crisis

• A Texas federal district judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of a controversial age verification law set to enter force September 1.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Culture Ministry official says Barbie and Oppenheimer movies do not promote Russia’s ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ — Meduza

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Ministry Rejects Move To Allow Showing Of Blockbusters Barbie And Oppenheimer

• Russia’s Culture Ministry said blockbuster films Barbie and Oppenheimer do not meet the traditional and moral values of Russia and therefore has rejected an appeal by lawmaker Vladislav Davankov to issue the movies with “compulsory” licenses for products from “unfriendly countries.”

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Court Says Texas’ Adult Content Age Verification Law Clearly Violates The 1st Amendment

• One down, many more to go.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Belarus Sentences Journalist To 3 1/2 Years In Prison For ‘Extremism’

• A court in Belarus has sentenced journalist Larysa Shchyrakova to 3 1/2 years in prison after finding her guilty of “facilitating extremist activities” and “discrediting” Belarus as a crackdown on dissent by the country’s authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Russian Comedian Who Opposes Ukraine War Says Kazakhstan Is Blocking His Concerts

• Russian comedian and TV presenter Maksim Galkin, who has been vocal in his criticism of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, says Kazakh authorities have been blocking his plans to try and hold concerts in the Central Asian nation for “some fictitious reasons.”

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ BIA Net ☛ Prosecutors dismiss journalist’s complaint against radical Islamist threats

• The threats were related to a video that Gönültaş reported on in May 2022, in which a woman allegedly affiliated with ISIS threatened those who did not want sharia with a knife in her hand. The woman was detained in a house raid targeting suspected ISIS members.

• Gönültaş, a journalist who specializes in ISIS and refugee issues, said she received threats from members of the radical Islamist group Tevhid after this report.

=> ↺ PBS ☛ Kansas reporter files federal lawsuit against police chief who raided her newspaper’s office

• Deb Gruver believes Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody violated her constitutional rights when he abruptly snatched her personal cellphone out of her hands during a search where officers also seized computers from the Marion County Record’s office, according to the lawsuit. That Aug. 11 search and two others conducted at the homes of the newspaper’s publisher and a City Council member have thrust the town into the center of a debate over the press protections in the First Amendment.

=> ↺ Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas reporter sues Marion police chief, alleging retaliation in newsroom raid

• As Gruver read the search warrant, she told Cody she needed to call her publisher and editor, Eric Meyer. The police chief, who was ostensibly investigating another reporter’s computer use, snatched the phone out of Gruver’s hand.

• The scene is recounted in a lawsuit Gruver filed Wednesday in federal court that says Cody had no legal basis for taking her personal cellphone. She is seeking damages for “emotional distress, mental anguish and physical injury” as a result of Cody’s “malicious and recklessly indifferent violation” of her First Amendment free press rights and Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.

• “Although I brought this suit in my own name, I’m standing up for journalists across the country,” Gruver said. “It is our constitutional right to do this job without fear of harassment or retribution, and our constitutional rights are always worth fighting for.”

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Haitian radio journalist’s home destroyed in arson attack

• On August 23, unidentified armed individuals set fire to Pierre’s home and several other houses in the Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ, and his employer, the local independent broadcaster Radio Télé Galaxie.

• The journalist and his family were able to escape the home unharmed.

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Two exiled Russian journalists sentenced to 11 years for disseminating ‘fake’ news on Ukraine war

• On Tuesday, August 29, the Basmanny Court in Moscow sentenced Leviev, founder of the Russian independent investigative project Conflict Intelligence Team, and Nacke, a Lithuania-based video blogger, to 11 years each in a penal colony for distributing “fake” information about the Russian military. Leviev was also issued a five-year ban on managing a website, and Nacke was given a four-year ban, Nacke told CPJ via messaging app.

=> ↺ Project Censored ☛ Time to Take Away Fox’s Broadcast Licenses – Dispatches from Project Censored: On Media and Politics

• Although stripping an established TV station of its broadcast license may seem like an extreme measure, the Fox Corporation’s record of malfeasance and its repeated betrayal of the public trust justifies the action in this case. Indeed, an argument can be made that the FCC should take away every single one of the corporation’s broadcast licenses.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Craig Murray ☛ The Scottish Gestapo

• On 28 July a gender critical woman demonstrator, Julie Marshall, was “punched in the face” by a political opponent in Aberdeen. The man who struck her was questioned and issued with a police caution not to punch people.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Kansas State Police Tell Court It’s Too Much To Ask For Troopers To Respect The Constitution

• Given enough time and attention, informal parlance just becomes… parlance. And so it is for the Kansas State Police. For years, troopers have evaded the Constitution and applicable Supreme Court decisions to make the Fourth Amendment irrelevant.

=> ↺ Common Dreams ☛ President Biden: Don’t Give Wall Street Control of Our Public Water Systems

• This week, President Biden’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council issued a report recommending the privatization of the nation’s water systems. The chair of the advisory council is the CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, an infrastructure investment bank with an estimated $100 billion in assets under management that targets energy, transportation, digital and water infrastructure.

• The report recommends, among other things, that the federal government “[r]emove barriers to privatization, concessions, and other nontraditional models of funding community water systems,” and open up all federal grant programs to support privatized utilities.

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ German police under critique for training mass murderers in Saudi Arabia

• Under a 2009 “security agreement” between the German government and Riyadh, the German Federal Police trained thousands of officers from security agencies in Saudi Arabia. As such, it may have played a larger role in human rights abuses than previously known. This is according to new research by the ARD magazine “Monitor“.

• Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had confirmed in a study that Saudi officials had shot dead hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers since last year as they tried to cross the Yemeni-Saudi border. Artillery weapons had also been used in the process.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Afghan Woman Who Fled Taliban Dies After Fall From Building In Islamabad

• Officials in Islamabad say a 22-year-old Afghan refugee woman identified as Mariam, died after allegedly jumping from the fifth floor of a building on August 31. [...]

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ ‘Illogical And Inhumane’: Taliban’s Ban On Women Entering National Park Sparks Widespread Anger

• The ban is seen as the latest attempt to erase Afghan women from public life. Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban has banned women from education and most forms of employment and imposed strict limitations on their freedom of movement and appearances.

=> ↺ The Dissenter ☛ US Government Sued For Hiding Information On Afghan Refugees In Detention Camps

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Entertainment PR firms take major hit amid Hollywood strike

• Entertainment public relations professionals are caught in the middle of Hollywood’s current labor battle.

• Why it matters: Entertainment publicity is at a standstill, and mid-sized PR firms are taking bigger financial hits than they did during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• State of play: Unlike COVID-19 — during which clients could Zoom into talkshow interviews or shoot creative content on their iPhones — talent promotion is at a complete halt.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Are California’s New ‘Woke’ DEI College Standards Illegal?

• Join Reason on YouTube at 1 p.m. Eastern for a discussion about a lawsuit against California Community Colleges’ new DEI standards with FIRE attorney Jessie Appleby and the plaintiff

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ A Banana Puts The Final Nail In The Coffin Of 5G Hype

• We’ve long noted how 5G wireless is more of an evolution than a revolution. Yes, it results in faster, better networks, but it’s not a technology that’s truly transformative.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Australian Government, Of All Places, Says Age Verification Is A Privacy & Security Nightmare

• In the past I’ve sometimes described Australia as the land where internet policy is completely upside down. Rather than having a system that protects intermediaries from liability for third party content, Australia went the opposite direction. Rather than recognizing that a search engine merely links to content and isn’t responsible for the content at those links, Australia has said that search engines can be held liable for what they link to. Rather than protect the free expression of people on the internet who criticize the rich and powerful, Australia has extremely problematic defamation laws that result in regular SLAPP suits and suppression of speech. Rather than embrace encryption that protects everyone’s privacy and security, Australia requires companies to break encryption, insisting only criminals use it.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Diving Into Starlink’s User Terminal Firmware

• The average Starlink user probably doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about their hardware after getting the dish aligned and wiring run. To security researchers, however, it’s another fascinating device to tinker with as they reverse-engineer the firmware and try to both find out what makes it tick, as well as how to break it. This is essentially the subject of [Carlo Ramponi]’s article over at Quarkslab as he digs into the firmware architecture and potential weaknesses in its internal communication.

Monopolies

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Official: Microsoft unbundles Teams in Europe

• Microsoft has blinked first in its dispute with the EU over bundling Teams with Microsoft 365 and Office 365, and will now allow European customers to buy the two software suites without it. It also pledged to make it easier for rival meeting tools to work with the two suites.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft to unbundle Teams from Office in Europe amid antitrust probe

• Microsoft currently sells Teams as part of its Microsoft 365 software bundle, which includes the Office productivity suite. Three years ago, Salesforce Inc.’s Slack unit filed a complaint over the practice in the European Union. Germany-based videoconferencing provider Alfaview submitted a similar complaint in early July.

• The concerns raised by Microsoft’s rivals prompted the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, to launch an antitrust probe into the matter. The commission believes that the fact Teams is bundled with Office may give the former service an unfair “distribution advantage” over competitors.

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Microsoft to unbundle Teams from Office in bid to allay EU antitrust concerns

• Microsoft’s preliminary concessions failed to address concerns.

Patents

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Major Sports Leagues Want ‘Instantaneous’ Site Blocking, ISPs To Be Real Time Copyright Police

• Back in May of this year, the USPTO put out a request for public comments from interested parties in how to modernize its policies and/or copyright law to combat counterfeiting and online piracy. The world’s easiest prediction would have been that the copyright industries would request more stringent copyright rules and heavier and faster policing of copyright by literally anyone other than those from the copyright industries. That they did so is simply par for the course.

=> ↺ JUVE ☛ Italy IP law revision allows new coexistence of national and unitary patents [Ed: No, unitary patents are illegal and unconstitutional. This is systemic corruption wherein they try to legalise their crimes post hoc.]

• Following several months of deliberation, the Italian goverment has made several revisions to its Industrial Property Code (IIPC) with the support of the Italian Trademark and Patent Office (UIBM).

Trademarks

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Arm wrestles assembly language guru’s domains away citing trademark issues

• “I wrote my thesis about Arm security features and exploit mitigations for Arm’s internal use, [have] given internal presentations, keynoted their conference, advocated for them, visited them at their HQ in Cambridge – all without compensation because I wanted this to be a mutually beneficial relationship instead of a gig.”

• Markstedter, who runs the Arm programming training’n’tutorial outfit Azeria Labs, therefore asked Arm what all the fuss was about – only to meet radio silence. Then, on Monday, blogs and websites owned and operated by Markstedter were taken down by her hosting provider after it received another cease and desist letter. These websites included: [...]

=> ↺ TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Posts September 2023 Hearing Schedule

• The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled nine oral hearings for the month of September 2023. Seven of the hearings will be held via video conference; two will be “In Person,” as indicated below. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.

=> ↺ TTAB Blog ☛ Precedential No. 23: As Used on Applicant’s Specimen, Depiction of Computer Game Character Fails to Function as a Trademark

• The Board upheld a refusal to register the mark shown below, for video and computer game software, finding that the proposed mark fails to function as a source indicator for the identified goods. Reviewing Applicant Stallard’s webpage specimen of use, the Board concluded that “prospective consumers viewing the proposed mark on the webpage would have no reason to think that the cropped image of Maria’s head identifies the source of the goods.” In re Joseph A. Stallard, Serial No. 97115036 (August 28, 2023) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Thomas V. Shaw).

Copyrights

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Paramount DMCAs ‘Star Trek’ Fan Project, Apparently Deaf To The History Of ‘Star Trek’

• Of all the things we cover here at Techdirt, content producers going legal on pure fan-made productions that amount to fans expressing their fandom will always be the most befuddling for me. All the more so when it comes to content that was essentially kept alive by this same sort of fan-made work. Take the Star Trek franchise, for instance. Viacom/CBS and Paramount has gone after fan-made works playing off of the franchise for years and years. Even Paramount’s release of guidelines by which fans could create fan films served mostly as a giant middle finger to the fandom, so stringent were the rules. This apparently represents the owners of Star Trek‘s IP being completely deaf to the history of Star Trek and the internet and what the fans have meant to the franchise.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Lithuania’s Media Watchdog Issues First-Ever ‘Fines’ to Torrenting Movie Pirates

• Since the summer, the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania (LRTK) has had the legal authority to fine online pirates. This week, the media watchdog announced that it has used its newly gained power to fine three users of popular private torrent site Linkomanija.net, which appears to be actively monitored.

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Govts. Must ‘Encourage or Compel’ Internet Companies to Fight Piracy

• A massive coalition of major rightsholders says governments must encourage or even compel companies doing business on the internet to collaborate in the fight against piracy. The USPTO submission from the IIPA coalition contains direct criticism of ICANN on domains and Cloudflare by implication; the U.S. government must stop pirate sites from using reverse proxy services, IIPA says.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ ChatGPT Developer OpenAI Moves To Dismiss Majority of Sarah Silverman Lawsuit, Says Claims ‘Misconceive the Scope of Copyright’

• Beginning with the suit’s second claim, OpenAI in its dismissal motion expressed the belief that the plaintiffs had failed to describe the direct infringement, right and ability to supervise the alleged infringement, and direct financial interest required to demonstrate vicarious infringement.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald’s machines always broken?

• In reality, what might be a simple fix is obfuscated behind “passwords and cryptic error messages,” and control of these is what forms the bulk of the manufacturer’s revenues through pricey callouts.

• But bypassing such software locks is a no-no under the US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

• So, in the name of sweaty punters who might visit the golden arches in the hope of a frozen treat but are turned away by an ashen-faced crew member, iFixit and IP law non-profit Public Knowledge are soft serving the US Copyright Office with a petition [PDF] to “expand the repair exemption for consumer electronic devices to include commercial industrial equipment.”

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ U.S. Copyright Office launches study on the impacts of generative AI on copyright law

• The Copyright Office claims that it will use this information to “analyze the current state of the law, identify unresolved issues and evaluate potential areas for congressional action,” according to the office’s website.

• The inquiry includes questions that the office has about generative AI but welcomes comments that are outside of those pertaining to the specific questions. These include inquiries about the public’s view on copyrighted generative AI work, research that is relevant to the study’s purposes, perspectives on whether open-source AI models raise unique considerations and others.

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Scientologists Tell Feds They Don’t Want Randos Repairing Their E-Meters

• The letter is dated Aug. 10 and was sent to the U.S. Copyright Office to contest the renewal of an exemption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowing people to hack into consumer device software for the purpose of maintenance or repair. This refers to Section 1201 of the DMCA, also the “anti-circumvention” provisions that have allowed tech companies, tractor makers, and more to restrict users from repairing devices dependent on software. In 2021, The U.S. Copyright Office changed the rules allowing users to fix far more of their own software-enabled devices.

=> ↺ 404 Media ☛ Scientologists Ask Federal Government to Restrict Right to Repair

• Author Services Inc., a group “representing the literary, theatrical, and musical works of L. Ron Hubbard,” told the U.S. Copyright Office that it opposes the renewal of an exemption to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes it legal for consumers to hack their personal electronics for the purposes of repair.

• This exemption to copyright law is needed because many electronics manufacturers put arbitrary software locks, Digital Rights Management systems, or other technological prevention measures that stop consumers from diagnosing or repairing devices unless they are authorized to do so. Special exemptions to copyright law make it legal for farmers to hack past John Deere’s DRM to fix their tractors, consumers to use software tools to help them repair certain parts of game consoles, or use third-party software to circumvent repair locks on printers, air conditioners, laptops, etc.

=> ↺ India Times ☛ Google hit with copyright lawsuit by Danish online job-search rival

• Alphabet’s Google was hit with a lawsuit on Thursday by Danish online job-search rival Jobindex, a year after the latter complained to EU antitrust regulators that the US tech giant unfairly favoured its own job-search service.

• The Danish Media Association on behalf of Jobindex sued Google at a Danish court alleging copyright violations.

=> ↺ Creative Commons ☛ Exploring Preference Signals for AI Training

• What’s more, our engagement revealed that people were motivated to share not merely to serve their own individual interests, but rather because of a sense of societal interest. Many wanted to support and expand the body of knowledge and creativity that people could access and build upon — that is, the commons. Creativity depends on a thriving commons, and expanding choice was a means to that end.

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ ChatGPT Developer OpenAI Moves To Dismiss Majority of Sarah Silverman Lawsuit, Says Claims ‘Misconceive the Scope of Copyright’

• Last month, Sarah Silverman (who wrote 2010’s The Bedwetter) joined multiple other authors in suing OpenAI for allegedly training ChatGPT on copyrighted writing without authorization. Now, the defendant entity has moved to dismiss the majority of the suit.

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