World News

Billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE team is expanding use of his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok in the U.S. federal government to analyze data, said three people familiar with the matter, potentially violating conflict-of-interest laws and putting at risk sensitive information on millions of Americans. Such use of Grok could reinforce concerns among privacy advocates and others that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team appears to be casting aside long-established protections over the handling of sensitive data as President Donald Trump shakes up the U.S. bureaucracy.

Hospitals and orphanages that care for HIV/AIDS patients in Haiti fear the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's move to slash more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall aid worldwide.

More than 150,000 people in Haiti have HIV or AIDS, although the number is believed to be much higher.

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35280453

Russian forces launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, officials said.

The dead included three children in the northern region of Zhytomyr, local officials there said.

[...]

In northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said early on Sunday that drones hit three city districts and injured three people. Blasts shattered windows in high-rise apartment blocks.

Drone strikes killed a 77-year-old man and injured five people in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. He published a picture of a residential apartment block with a large hole from an explosion and rubble scattered over the ground.

In the western region of Khmelnytskyi, many hundreds of kilometres away from the frontlines of fighting, four people were killed and five others wounded, according to the governor.

"Without pressure, nothing will change and Russia and its allies will only build up forces for such murders in Western countries," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.

[...]

crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35284114

Archived

Army recruiters in Moscow are tricking Russians into signing military contracts with fake job listings that promise no front-line combat, the exiled news outlet Vyorstka reported Friday.

[...]

Dozens of ads seeking “drivers, security guards and construction workers in the rear” have reportedly appeared on platforms like Avito since at least March. But according to sources in the Moscow Mayor’s Office, these listings are part of a Defense Ministry contractor campaign to inflate recruitment numbers and secure bonus payouts.

[...]

Sources said the contractors behind the fake job listings don’t have the authority to assign recruits to non-combat roles. “It’s a lure to attract more people,” one recruiter, whose number appeared in an ad, told Vyorstka. An official called it “the most obvious 100% scam.”

Once recruits arrive at a military enlistment center on Yablochkova Street in northern Moscow, they rarely turn down the contract.

One man from Krasnodar said he was promised a 12-month contract and given a free flight to Moscow — only to discover upon arrival that the terms were indefinite. He signed anyway.

“The typical portrait of someone who has been deceived is provincial, naive, willfully ignorant, and one who has not previously served,” said a Moscow official.

Russia has lost around 980,850 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on May 25.

The number includes 1,020 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day.

According to the report, Russia has also lost 10,854 tanks, 22,633 armored fighting vehicles, 49,751 vehicles and fuel tanks, 28,269 artillery systems, 1,396 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,169 air defense systems, 372 airplanes, 336 helicopters, 37,367 drones, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine.

Comparisons were quickly made with - and expectations tied to - last year's Pelicot mass rape trial in southern France and the massive global attention it garnered.

Instead, the trial of France's most prolific known paedophile, Joel Le Scouarnec - a retired surgeon who has admitted in court to raping or sexually assaulting 299 people, almost all of them children - is coming to an end this Wednesday amid widespread frustration.

"I'm exhausted. I'm angry. Right now, I don't have much hope. Society seems totally indifferent. It's frightening to think [the rapes] could happen again," one of Le Scouarnec's victims, Manon Lemoine, 36, told the BBC.

Soft power is increasingly central to China’s global dominance, no longer limited to economic prowess or military ambitions. This subtle yet key asset is reshaping Asian culture through the likes of food, film and online content.

China's cultural exports are changing its image abroad, wielding a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they have the potential to foster unity and commonality across the vast Asian continent. On the other, they threaten regional uniqueness and act as a vehicle for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda.

Jorge Humberto Figueroa Benítez, identified by the United States government as a key member of the “Los Chapitos” criminal organization, died during an operation aimed at capturing him in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, the country’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Omar García Harfuch said Saturday.

The operation against Figueroa Benitez, known by the nickname “El Perris,” took place in Navolato, 32 kilometers (19 miles) from Culiacán, the state’s capital, according to local media.

• Ukraine became the world’s largest importer of major arms in the period 2020–24, with its imports increasing nearly 100 times over compared with 2015–19. European arms imports overall grew by 155 per cent between the same periods, as states responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and uncertainty over the future of US foreign policy.

• The United States further increased its share of global arms exports to 43 per cent, while Russia’s exports fell by 64 per cent, according to new data on international arms transfers published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), available at

• The top 10 arms exporters in 2020–24 were the same as those in 2015–19 but Russia (accounting for 7.8 per cent of global arms exports) fell to third place behind France (9.6 per cent), while Italy (4.8 per cent) jumped from 10th to sixth place.

• At least 35 states sent weapons to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and substantial further deliveries are in the pipeline. Ukraine received 8.8 per cent of global arms imports in 2020–24.

• Arms imports by the European NATO members more than doubled between 2015–19 and 2020–24 (+105 per cent). The USA supplied 64 per cent of these arms, a substantially larger share than in 2015–19 (52 per cent). The other main suppliers were France -which became the world’s second largest arms supplie -and South Korea (accounting for 6.5 per cent each), Germany (4.7 per cent) and Israel (3.9 per cent).

• Arms exports by Russia fell sharply (–64 per cent) between 2015–19 and 2020–24. The decline started before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022: in 2020 and 2021 export volumes were much smaller than in any year in the previous two decades. Russia delivered major arms to 33 states in 2020–24. Two thirds of Russian arms exports went to three states: India (38 per cent), China (17 per cent) and Kazakhstan (11 per cent).

• China was the fourth largest exporter of arms in 2020–24, with 5.9 per cent of global arms exports. Despite China’s efforts to increase its arms exports, many large importers do not buy Chinese arms for political reasons.

• India was the world’s second largest arms importer, with its imports reflecting perceived threats from both China and Pakistan.

• Japan (+93 per cent) was the only East Asian state that saw an increase in its arms imports.

• Arms imports by states in the Middle East fell by 20 per cent between 2015–19 and 2020–24. Four of the top 10 global importers in 2020–24 were in the Middle East: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait. Qatar was the world’s third largest arms importer in 2020–24 (up from 10th largest in 2015–19). Between 2015–19 and 2020–24, Saudi Arabia’s arms imports decreased by 41 per cent.

• African arms imports fell by 44 per cent between 2015–19 and 2020–24. This was mainly due to large decreases in imports by Algeria (–73 per cent) and Morocco (–26 per cent). Arms imports by states in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 4.2 per cent.

Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s youngest-ever president and heir to a prominent banana-exporting fortune, has been sworn in for his first full term in office, pledging to intensify his government’s battle against powerful drug gangs while reviving the struggling economy.

In a ceremony at the National Assembly in Quito on Saturday, the right-wing president was sworn in by Assembly President Niels Olsen Peet, who draped the presidential sash across his shoulders before the two raised clasped hands in a symbolic gesture of unity.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30214343

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30209166

The Marubo tribe of the remote Javari valley, a community of about 2,000 people, filed the defamation lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages this week in a court in Los Angeles.

It also names TMZ and Yahoo as defendants, alleging that their stories amplified and sensationalized the Times’s reporting and smeared the tribe in the process.

"The longer Russia wages war, the tougher our response," High Representative Kaja Kallas declared this week after foreign ministers of the European Union formally adopted a new round of sanctions against Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The measures blacklisted 189 vessels belonging to Moscow's so-called "shadow fleet", bringing the total number of ships under restrictions to almost 350.

The following day, Poland made a startling announcement.

"A Russian ship from the 'shadow fleet' under sanctions was performing suspicious manoeuvres near the power cable connecting Poland and Sweden," Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media.

"After effective intervention by our military, the ship sailed to one of the Russian ports."

An attempt by the US to deport South Asian migrants to South Sudan has cast a spotlight on the world’s youngest country, which is experiencing a renewed outbreak of the political tensions that have plagued it over the years.

The president of Paraguay, the only South American country with official ties to Taiwan, has offered to act as a facilitator for countries that seek high-level interactions with Taipei, including the United States and Japan.

“I have told the U.S. president that if he ever wants to meet (Taiwanese) President Lai (Ching-te), he's more than welcome to do it in Paraguay,” the country’s leader, Santiago Pena, told The Japan Times on Thursday.