A Brazilian businessman has been killed and three people injured in an apparent gangland assassination at São Paulo’s international airport in Guarulhos.

The victims were caught in a hail of bullets when a gunman with a rifle opened fire from inside a black car parked outside the airport’s terminal 2, which is mainly used for domestic flights.

Police identified the dead man as Antônio Vinícius Lopes Gritzbach, who had previously received death threats from the First Capital Command (PCC), Brazil’s most powerful crime syndicate.

Prosecutors reportedly describe Lopes Gritzbach as a businessman who worked with bitcoin and cryptocurrency. He had reportedly been accused of money laundering, and had recently entered into a plea bargain with local prosecutors to speak about his ties to the criminal organization, police said.

Chinese and Indonesian firms will sign business agreements totaling more than $10 billion on Sunday, President Prabowo Subianto said as he met his counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing during a state visit.

Prabowo, on his first foreign trip since his inauguration last month, said the relationship between China and Indonesia is getting “stronger and stronger,” according to a pool report of Saturday’s welcoming ceremony. Xi said Prabowo’s decision to visit China first is a reflection of the Indonesian leader’s emphasis on developing ties between the two sides.

Xi and Prabowo presided over the signings of several documents and memorandums of understanding between their governments. They include the joint development of fisheries and oil and gas in maritime areas of overlapping claims between the two countries as well as on maritime safety, and deepening cooperation on the blue economy, water and mineral resources and green minerals.

China, which was also Prabowo’s initial foreign destination as president-elect in April, is a priority as Indonesia’s biggest trading partner and the source of more than $7 billion of investment in commodity processing capacity and infrastructure.

“Indonesia considers China not only as a great power, but as a great civilization,” Prabowo said. “It is only natural that now in the present situation — geopolitical and geoeconomic — that Indonesia and China have become very close partners and in many, many fields.”

Prabowo said he will attend a meeting on Sunday between the Indonesian Trade and Industry Chamber of Commerce and top Chinese corporations, where billions of dollars of deals will be inked.

“This is a very significant milestone in our relationship,” he said. “Over a decade of comprehensive strategic partnership, our cooperation stretches all sectors.”

Prabowo will be in Beijing until Sunday before heading to the US to meet President Joe Biden and, possibly, his successor Donald Trump, balancing relations with the world’s two biggest economies.

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Chinese authorities banned a popular blogger known for his strong anti-Western comments, according to the South China Morning Post.

Sima Nan, who has more than 3 million followers on China’s social media site Weibo, has been banned across different platforms for a year, according to the paper, which cited two unidentified sources. Sima last posted on Nov. 5 to voice support for Donald Trump during the US election, saying his victory will be more beneficial for China.

According to the paper, Sima Nan is seen by many as “a symbolic voice on the nationalistic left.” He frequently accused groups or individuals of betraying China’s interests and colluding with the US. In 2021, he accused Lenovo Group Ltd. of selling state assets for less than they were worth and paying top executives unreasonably high salaries.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has notified Chinese chip design companies that it will suspend production of their most advanced artificial intelligence chips, as Washington continues to impede Beijing’s AI ambitions.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, told Chinese customers it would no longer manufacture AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometres or smaller as of this coming Monday, three people familiar with the matter said.

Two of the people said any future supplies of such semiconductors by TSMC to Chinese customers would be subject to an approval process likely to involve Washington.

TSMC’s tighter rules could reset the ambitions of Chinese technology giants such as Alibaba and Baidu, which have invested heavily in designing semiconductors for their AI clouds, as well as a growing number of AI chip design start-ups that have turned to the Taiwanese group for manufacturing.

The US has barred American companies like Nvidia from shipping cutting-edge processors to China and also created an extensive export control system to stop chipmakers worldwide that are using US technology from shipping advanced AI processors to China. There have been reports that a new US rule would ban foundries from making advanced AI chips designed by Chinese firms, according to analysts at investment bank Jefferies.

TSMC is rolling out its new policy as the US Commerce Department investigates how cutting-edge chips the group made for a Chinese customer ended up in a Huawei AI device. The Chinese national tech champion is subject to multiple US sanctions and export controls.

People familiar with TSMC’s move said its decision was driven by a “combination” of the need to improve internal controls in the wake of that ongoing probe and the next wave of US export controls on chip supplies to China, expected before US President Joe Biden leaves office.

“We want to start mitigating before there are solid, structured regulations,” one of the people said.

The company is understood to be particularly wary of being targeted as unreliable or uncooperative as Donald Trump is set to become the next US president.

This year, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” the US chip industry, and suggested TSMC could move its production back home after pocketing billions of dollars in subsidies from Washington for building fabrication plants in the US.

A person close to TSMC said its move was “not a show for Trump but definitely designed to underscore that we are the good guys and not acting against US interests”.

Being cut off from TSMC could hurt Chinese tech giants that have bet on making their most advanced AI chips in Taiwan. Search giant Baidu, in particular, is aiming to build a full stack of software and hardware to underpin its AI business.

Near the centre of those efforts is its Kunlun series of AI chips. Its Kunlun II processor is made by TSMC on its 7-nanometre level of miniaturisation, according to Bernstein Research.

“Kunlun chips are now especially well-suited for large model inference and will eventually be suitable for training,” Baidu founder Robin Li told a conference last year. Li added that the group had been effective in cutting costs by designing its own chips.

The people briefed on the situation said TSMC’s new rules were clear in targeting AI processors, but it was so far unclear how widely that would be applied to other chips. China has a number of leading start-ups designing AI chips for self-driving, including Hong Kong-listed Horizon Robotics and Black Sesame International Holding.

Executives and company materials at both groups have indicated their newest generation of chips would be made by TSMC on the 7-nanometre node.

The people close to TSMC said its new restrictions would not have a major impact on its revenue. TSMC’s October revenue increased 29.2 per cent to NT$314bn ($9.8bn), a slight deceleration of growth compared with preceding months.

In a statement, TSMC said it was a “law-abiding company and we are committed to complying with all applicable rules and regulations, including applicable export controls”.

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The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives.

Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime-change operations and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions).

Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony.

https://archive.is/LMRYh

Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since the Labour government took power in July, officials in Kyiv have told the Guardian, voicing frustration over Britain’s failure to supply additional long-range missiles.

The UK prime minister is yet to visit Ukraine four months after taking office and a frustrated Kyiv has said that a trip would be worthless unless Keir Starmer committed to replenishing stocks of the sought-after long-range Storm Shadow system.

“There’s no point in his coming as a tourist,” one senior figure in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration said at a time when Ukraine is acutely concerned about the impact that Donald Trump’s US election victory will have on its war effort.

Ukraine is growing increasingly unhappy with London as Russian troops advance in the east of the country at their fastest rate since 2022, with US officials concluding that the frontlines can no longer be considered static. Ukrainian commanders said they were heavily outgunned.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22287939

Brett Wilkins
Nov 08, 2024

GENEVA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Friday nearly 70% of the fatalities it has verified in the Gaza war were women and children, and condemned what it called a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

The U.N. tally since the start of the war, in which Israel's military is fighting Hamas militants, includes only fatalities it has managed to verify with three sources, and counting continues.

The 8,119 victims verified is a much lower number than the toll of more than 43,000 provided by Palestinian health authorities for the 13-month-old war. But the U.N. breakdown of the victims' age and gender backs the Palestinian assertion that women and children represent a large portion of those killed in the war.

Europe won’t be able to finance Ukraine’s defenses against Russia’s invasion on its own if the US withdraws support under Donald Trump’s next presidency, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Friday.

Orban said recent events vindicated the conclusions from his controversial July diplomatic mission to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing and showed Ukraine was losing the war.

“The Americans are going to get out of this war,” Orban, who is hosting a European Union summit in Budapest on Friday, said on public radio. “Europe can’t finance this war on its own.”

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The European Union and China said they made some progress after a week of technical talks in Beijing aimed at scaling back or reversing tariffs that the bloc applied to electric vehicles made in China.

The EU and China have been seeking an agreement on so-called price undertakings — a complex mechanism to control prices and volumes of exports, used to avoid tariffs.

China’s invitation to negotiate in person was seen a sign of some momentum in the talks, according to people familiar with the matter.

Several rounds of talks didn’t yield a solution that meet the EU’s strict requirements, including alignment with WTO rules and compensating for the full effect of the duties. The 27-nation bloc also wants to ensure it can monitor compliance.

Negotiations will continue at a technical level next week, both sides said.

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BUENOS AIRES, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Argentina's President Javier Milei on Wednesday replaced Foreign Affairs Minister Diana Mondino after she voted in favor of lifting the U.S. embargo against Cuba at the United Nations.

Milei, a libertarian who took office in late 2023, is unabashedly pro-United States and has taken a cooler stance toward leftist trade partners in the region and overseas, including by taking steps to distance Argentina from Cuba and Venezuela.

Earlier on Wednesday, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly called on the United States to end its decades-long sanctions regime on Cuba, in a non-binding resolution opposed only by the U.S. and Israel.

Milei, who has said that he wants Argentina to be in line with the U.S. and Israel, shared a post on social media from a lower house lawmaker praising his government for "not supporting nor being an accomplice of dictators."

Israeli hooligans provoked clashes with Dutch youth in Amsterdam on Thursday after they chanted racist anti-Arab slogans, tore down Palestinian flags and ignored a minute of silence for the Spanish flood victims.

The attacks by some of the travelling Maccabi Tel Aviv fans occurred on Wednesday and Thursday in different parts of of the Dutch capital ahead of their Uefa Europa League match against Amsterdam club Ajax.

Hooligans were seen removing at least two Palestinian flags from what appeared to be the front of locals' homes a night before the match, according to the AD daily newspaper.

An Arab taxi driver was also attacked by mobs who appeared to be with the Israeli fans, although police said they couldn't identify the nationality of the attackers as no arrests were made.

A group of Israeli fans gathered in the Dam Square on Wednesday were filmed sparking confrontations with locals, shouting “Fuck you” at some of them and “Fuck you Palestine”.

Ahead of match on Thursday, fans heading to the Johan Cruyff Arena stadium were seen shouting: “Let the IDF (Israeli army) fuck the Arabs”.

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof called the clashes “unacceptable antisemitic attacks” but failed to mention the assaults by the hooligans against Dutch citizens.

Stronger Law Needed to Govern Weapon with Cruel Effects

Geneva - Countries concerned by the severe physical, psychological, socioeconomic, and environmental harm caused by incendiary weapons should work to strengthen the international law that governs them, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. States party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) should condemn the use of incendiary weapons and agree to assess the adequacy of the treaty’s Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons when they hold their annual meeting at the United Nations in Geneva from November 13 to 15, 2024.

“Governments should seize the moment to reiterate their concerns about incendiary weapons and discuss ways to strengthen the law to better protect civilians. A complete ban on incendiary weapons would undoubtedly have the greatest humanitarian benefits.”