Category: Western Media

BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday that Beijing will send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible “political settlement” to Russia’s war with the country.

Beijing has previously avoided involvement in conflicts between other countries but appears to be trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force after arranging talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March that led them to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

Xi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that a Chinese envoy, a former Chinese ambassador to Russia, would visit Ukraine and “other countries” to discuss a possible political settlement, according to a government statement.

It made no mention of Russia or last year’s invasion of Ukraine and didn’t indicate whether the Chinese envoy might visit Moscow.

The Xi-Zelenskyy phone call was long anticipated after Beijing said it wanted to serve as a mediator in the war.

BEIJING — China’s military has dispatched a pair of navy ships to take part in joint drills with Singapore’s navy and join in a regional maritime security exhibition.

The exercises starting Friday in the Southeast Asian city state come amid China’s growing presence in the South China Sea, which it claims sovereignty over virtually in its entirety.

Concerns are especially pronounced in the U.S., which on Wednesday joined with forces from the Philippines in major exercises in Philippine waters facing the South China Sea that are likely to anger China. Beijing’s more assertive stance comes as its relations with the U.S. and its allies have hit historic lows.

State television’s military channel identified the ships being sent as the guided missile frigate Yulin and the minesweeper hunter Chibi. They will also be present for the May 3-5 IMDEX Asia National Defense and Maritime Security Show, which will feature 25 warships and attendees from 62 countries.

Senator Brian Schatz is one of the more thoughtful Senators we have, and he and his staff have actually spent time talking to lots of experts in trying to craft bills regarding the internet. Unfortunately, it still seems like he still falls under the seductive sway of this or that moral panic, so when the bills actually come out, they’re perhaps more thoughtfully done than the moral panic bills of his colleagues, but they’re still destructive. His latest is… just…

KYIV, Ukraine — NATO allies and partner countries have delivered more than 98% of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine during Russia’s invasion and war, the military alliance’s chief said Thursday, giving Kyiv a bigger punch as contemplates launching a counteroffensive.

Along with more than 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, Ukraine’s allies have sent “vast amounts of ammunition” and also trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian brigades, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

More than 30,000 troops are estimated to make up the new brigades. Some NATO partner countries, such as Sweden and Australia, have also provided armored vehicles.

Two decades of misconduct records will be now trickling out of the NYSP’s hands. One assumes it will be a very slow drip, one perhaps interrupted by last-minute admissions the NYSP has, say, destroyed records it was required to retain. A lot can happen over twenty years, but hopefully it won’t take twenty years for records requesters to obtain what they’re entitled to possess.

The Superior Court (basically the first level of state courts in New York) decision [PDF] is short and sweet. It not only directs the NYSP to comply with the law, but draws some other helpful legal conclusions along the way, like this one, which says cop shops can’t withhold information about officers who were investigated for misconduct, but later cleared of wrongdoing.

It is clear that the mere fact that the complaint was determined to be unsubstantiated does not categorically exempt the records from disclosure.

  Ah, remember Parler? They were the first of the “alternative” social media companies targeting the Trumpist crowd, in which I pointed out that their whole “we don’t moderate” schtick wasn’t going to work. The company speed ran the content moderation learning curve faster than most. But even from the beginning, the Trumpists who joined admitted it was just no fun when they couldn’t whine about how victimized they were. Anyway, the site is dead now. You may recall there…

Canada’s public broadcaster CBC and its French-language version Radio-Canada said Monday they were effectively quitting Twitter over a new “government-funded” label it says questions its editorial independence.

The exit follows that of National Public Radio in the United States over the same tag, which had also been applied to the BBC before the British broadcaster successfully petitioned to have it changed to “publicly-funded.”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under investigation over allegations he failed to disclose shares his wife owns in a child care business that stands to benefit from his government’s budget, a parliamentary watchdog disclosed. Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg opened an inquiry last week for possible violations of the code of conduct that calls on members to be “open and frank” in declaring relevant financial interests, according to an update given to members of Parliament who returned Monday…

So, we’re just handing out top secret security clearance to everyone, I guess. It was clear from the documents posted to Discord (before spreading everywhere), the person behind them would soon be located.

The folded security briefings were obviously smuggled out of secure rooms in someone’s pocket and then photographed carelessly, in one case on top of a hunting magazine. I mean, that narrows it down to people who still buy stuff printed on physical media, a number that shrinks exponentially by the day.

On top of that, the entry level for the leaked info — much of it related to the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia — was Discord, which no one has considered to be the equivalent of Signal or any other secure site for the dissemination of sensitive material.

It doesn’t look like Fox News is going to get away with badmouthing Dominion Voting Systems for weeks following Donald Trump’s unsurprising loss in the 2020 election. Evidence already handed over to Dominion in its libel lawsuit shows many Fox News executives — as well as anchors and commentators — were aware the claims were false but chose to give them airtime anyway.   That led to the recent decision in a Delaware state court where the judge made two…

Various treaties and multi-national proposals to combat cybercrime have been around for years. I’m not exaggerating. These have been floating around for more than a decade. (Do you want to feel old? This cybercrime treaty proposal would be old enough to legally obtain a social media account in the United States if it were still viable.)

The UN has been pushing its own version. But its idea of “crime” seems off-base, especially when it’s dealing with a conglomerate of countries with varying free speech protections. The “Cybercrime Treaty” proposed by the UN focuses on things many would consider ugly, distasteful, abhorrent, or even enraging. But it’s not things most people consider to be the sort of “crimes” a unified world front should be addressing — not when there’s plenty of financially or personally damaging cybercrime being performed on the regular.

In a preliminary victory in the continuing fight against privacy-invasive software that “watches” students taking tests remotely, a French administrative court outside Paris suspended a university’s use of the e-proctoring platform TestWe, which monitors students through facial recognition and algorithmic analysis.

TestWe software, much like Proctorio, Examsoft, and other proctoring apps we’ve called out for intrusive monitoring of exam takers, constantly tracks students’ eye movements and their surroundings using video and sound analysis. The court in Montreuil, France, ruled that such “permanent surveillance of bodies and sounds” is unreasonable and excessive for the purpose preventing cheating.

The European Union’s top justice official said he hopes to discuss with Group of Seven partners plans to set up a special tribunal to prosecute Russia over the war in Ukraine.

“We’ll continue, maybe during the Japanese presidency (of the G7) to see whether it’s possible to have the same approach about a proposal,” European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders said in a recent interview with Kyodo News and ahead of a G7 justice ministers’ meeting in July in Tokyo.

Ten Chinese aircraft crossed the Ten Chinese aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, normally an unofficial barrier between the two sides, Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Saturday, as Beijing continues its military activities near the island.

Nine Chinese fighter jets and one military drone crossed the median line in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on Saturday, the ministry said in its daily report on Chinese military activities.

Taiwan sent aircraft to warn away the Chinese aircraft, while missile systems monitored them, the ministry said, using standard wording for its response.median line of the Taiwan Strait, normally an unofficial barrier between the two sides, Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Saturday, as Beijing continues its military activities near the island.

Japan’s antitrust watchdog on Thursday ordered three major utilities to pay a total of 101 billion yen in fines for forming cartels over electricity sales, in a move that goes against the nation’s efforts to free up the electric power market. The amount of the penalty, to be collected from electricity companies based in central, western and southwestern regions, is the highest ever imposed by the Japan Fair Trade Commission for a violation of the antimonopoly law. Chugoku Electric Power…

French President Emmanuel Macron sought to rally citizens around a plan to save water on Thursday and stressed that protests will not stop reforms, in a nod to both climate change and an unpopular pension bill.

The water-saving plan includes 50 measures, such as fixing leaking pipes, adapting the way farmers and the nuclear industry use water and making water more expensive for those who use it in excess of basic needs.

“In the face of change, there are necessarily constraints, we must explain them, share them and make each and every one aware of their responsibilities,” Macron said.

This was the president’s first major policy announcement and public outing after weeks focused on the pension bill, which has triggered fierce protests across the country. With the water plan, Macron and his government are looking to move to other topics.

“There are protests, but it does not mean everything must stop,” Macron said.