World News

Here in the Netherlands, citizens regularly tear up sealed surfaces and plant flowers in an effort to combat overheating and flooding. The government not only accepts this practice, which is known as tegelwippen — it actually provides support.

Tegelwippen is about more than just planting pretty flowers. As the climate crisis increases heat, drought and heavy rainfall, urban, concrete-covered areas can’t easily adapt to the changes. Buildings and sealed surfaces heat up and contribute to further warming of the climate. Yet more and more ground is sealed over, preventing rainwater from seeping into the ground. New houses are built, along with parking lots, roads, shopping centers, airports and commercial buildings. According to the European Environment Agency, between 2000 and 2018, around 6,178 square miles were sealed in the European Union, more than twice the area of the London metropolitan region.

Though the annual increase has fallen slightly in recent years, around 270 square miles are still added every year — the equivalent of over 90,000 soccer pitches. In Asia, the growth rate is even higher. And in North America, the area covered by impervious surfaces nearly doubled between 1985 and 2020.

The more cities are paved over, the greater their need for cooling and areas where rainwater can seep away and be stored. This is why in the Netherlands, citizens are taking matters into their own hands.

Tegel means tile in English. Wippen means rocking or picking up. In the last five years, Tegelwippen has developed into a mass movement across the country. The aim is to unseal as many surfaces as possible, whether in private gardens, schoolyards, driveways, public squares or sidewalks, as in the Katendrechtse Lagendijk.

On April 28, Erika Mateo, a 24-year-old Guatemalan woman who was 9-months pregnant, was found wandering alone in the Arizona desert after crossing the Mexican border and seeking asylum in the US.

Mateo was immediately taken into custody and, after going into labor the following morning, was hospitalized at Tucson Medical Center (TMC) under armed guard by the Department of Homeland Security. She was immediately placed under expedited removal—a process to quickly remove her without the right to have her case brought before a judge.

After giving birth, Mateo was swiftly transferred into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who stood watch outside her hospital room. During her recovery she was denied access to her attorney, family and friends. Mateo stated that she refused to let go of her newborn baby, Emily, for fear that she would be taken away.

Mateo had traveled 2,000 miles to escape a violent and unsafe living situation in Guatemala, where she feared for her own life and that of her unborn baby. After crossing the US-Mexico border she was accidentally separated from her group and got lost in the Sonoran Desert. Mateo told USA Today that she feared she was going to die. “I walked and walked, but everything looked the same,” she said. “It was like walking in place. I would burst into tears pleading with God to help me find a way or for someone to find me.”...

Something a little lighter. Lighter than a witch, if you will.

A radar image of a speed offender caught in central Switzerland last month has revealed that the culprit was not only a duck but probably a repeat offender, local authorities have said.

Police in the town of Köniz, near Bern, were astounded when they went through radar images snapped on 13 April to discover that a mallard was among those caught in the speed trap, the municipality said on its Facebook page at the weekend.

The duck was caught going 52km/h (32mph) in a 30-km/h zone, the post said.

This is just all-around confusing. Iran working with Saudi is like the proverbial "cats and dogs living in harmony."

With the context of what Israel is up to, it makes some modicum of sense, but I think the larger point is to get the U.S. out of their business by presenting a regional solution. Expect more of this, as we've lost any pretense of rationality, let alone authority, in global affairs.

But hey ... free espionage jet from Qatar, right?

Iran has floated the idea of a consortium of Middle Eastern countries – including Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – to enrich uranium, in a effort to overcome US objections to its continued enrichment programme.

The proposal is seen as a way of locking Gulf states into supporting Iran’s position that it should be allowed to retain enrichment capabilities.

Tehran views the proposal as a concession, since it would be giving neighbouring states access to its technological knowledge and making them stakeholders in the process.

It is not clear if Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, made the proposal in relatively brief three-hour talks with the US in Oman on Sunday, the fourth set of such talks, but the proposal is reportedly circulating in Tehran.

After the talks, Araghchi flew to Dubai where he spoke to the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The UAE currently does not enrich uranium for its own nuclear programme.

The consortium would be based on Iranian facilities with enrichment returned to the 3.67% levels set out in the original 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers, which Donald Trump unilaterally ended in 2018.

As the White House convened its new World Cup task force, Vice President JD Vance threatened to deport World Cup tourists who come to the U.S. next summer. He then kicked it to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose face is already quite familiar to World Cup fans. A disgusting Homeland Security ad starring Noem has been airing during major soccer matches in Mexico. Her message to our World Cup co-host? "We will hunt you down," she says in the ad. "Criminals are not welcome in the United States."

On May 3, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, called for the prosecution of leading European Union officials for complicity in the war crimes committed by Israel.

In a series of interviews and reports, Albanese accused in particular the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kalla. Albanese condemned the EU leaders for aiding and abetting gross violations of international law through their unconditional support for Israel. “The fact that the two highest figures of the EU continue business-as-usual engagements with Israel is beyond deplorable,” Albanese stated. “Immunity cannot equate with impunity. They will have to be judged before history does.”

In an interview with The Intercept Albanese reiterated: “I’m not someone who says, ‘History will judge them’—they will have to be judged before then.”

A Kurdish militia group that has waged a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state for four decades said on Monday that it would lay down its arms and disband, a decision that could reshape Turkish politics and reverberate in neighboring countries.

The announcement by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish acronym, P.K.K., came a few months after its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, urged the group to disarm and disband. In his February message, he said the group’s armed struggle had outlived its initial purpose and that further progress in the struggle for Kurdish rights could be achieved through politics.

The P.K.K. began as a secessionist group that sought to create an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. More recently, it has said that it sought greater rights for Kurds inside Turkey. It is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and other countries.

In a statement on Monday, the group echoed Mr. Ocalan’s call, saying that it had “carried the Kurdish issue to a level where it can be solved by democratic politics, and the P.K.K. has completed its mission in that sense.”

A recent congress by the group’s leaders in northern Iraq had decided to end “the work under the name of P.K.K.’’

Length: 1:39:20

Immigrants, populism, border fences, electoral autocracy.

If you are interested about how and why Hungary is as it is, this is a documentary just released by Partizán, the most viewed Hungarian news outlet independent from the Hungarian government.

The subtitles are not autogenerated but hand-made by the news outlet.

The outlet has a decidedly leftist slant even by European standards, but are considered mainstream in Hungary.

The odds were against Edgar Feuchtwanger reaching the age of 100. He was born on 28 September 1924 into a time of poverty and political turmoil in post-first world war Germany. He was also born into a Jewish family in a society that was about to turn to National Socialism, an ideology that would ultimately be responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews. In 1929, when Feuchtwanger was five, something happened that made his long life even more unlikely. He got a new neighbour: Adolf Hitler.

In October that year, Hitler moved into the grand second-floor flat at Prinzregentenplatz 16 in Munich. His previous flat, on the other side of the Isar, the river that divides Munich, had become too small. Munich to him was the “Capital of the Movement”, a title he awarded the city officially in 1935. From 1929 on he lived in nine rooms in this corner building, with its long balconies and baroque facade. His staff moved in with him, and, soon, devotees and high-ranking SS officers were flocking to the flats nearby. Diagonally opposite, at Grillparzerstrasse 38, with a direct view of Hitler’s flat, lived the Feuchtwanger family.

Edgar Feuchtwanger, whom his parents called Bürschi, grew up in a respected and wealthy family that employed a chef and a nanny. His father, Ludwig, was a publisher and lawyer; his mother, Erna, a pianist. Intellectuals of the early 20th century were constantly in and out of the family home: the writer Thomas Mann; the lawyer Carl Schmitt, who later became a Nazi legal theorist and party member. And, of course, Ludwig’s brother, and Edgar’s uncle, Lion Feuchtwanger, the author of the novels Jew Süss and Success.

It's rather crazy to read about his story in an era where the U.S. is just disappearing anyone they don't much care for.

Last December, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist militant group, launched a sudden offensive that sent shockwaves through the region. One by one, major cities began to fall—first Aleppo, then Hama, and soon Homs—as the rebels pushed their way closer to Damascus, Syria’s capital. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which had survived well over a decade of civil war thanks to the likes of Iranian and Russian backing, found itself increasingly unable to deter the rebels’ advances; Iran was tangled up in its own proxy battles with Israel, while Russia was stretched thin with its war in Ukraine. In other words, Assad was on his own. The rebels, it seemed, understood this, and so they seized their chance. Damascus fell in a matter of days, and Assad fled to Moscow.

Initially, the ousting of Assad—a ruthless authoritarian notorious for using chemical weapons on his own people and overseeing a network of brutal political prisons, like the infamous “human slaughterhouse” at Sednaya—was widely celebrated across much of Syria.

While HTS and its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa—now Syria’s de facto president—originated as an al-Qaeda affiliate with early ties to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, their story is more complicated, especially today. Since Assad’s fall, Sharaa has undergone a strategic political makeover, rebranding himself as a moderate who promises to form an inclusive government that represents the country’s mosaic of different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. The move to distance himself from his jihadist past is a calculated political one aimed at convincing the world — particularly the U.S. and Europe—to lift sanctions on Syria, the harshest of which have been in place since the start of the civil war in 2011. The oil, construction, and banking sectors have taken an especially hard blow, which, in turn, has stymied efforts to rebuild both Syria’s infrastructure and economy. If Sharaa is successful in convincing global powers of his reformed government, it could give Syria a chance to address its hyperinflation and widespread poverty as well as regain the public’s trust.

And to be fair, Sharaa’s new government has made some notable moves as of late. It appointed several women to key positions, including Maysaa Sabreen as the first-ever female head of Syria’s Central Bank, Aisha al-Dibs to lead the newly established Women’s Affairs Office, and Mushina al-Mahithawi, the first woman to ever serve as governor of Suwaida.

Still, some remain worried that Sharaa’s new government might revert to the strict, conservative Sharia law–style governance it imposed while controlling Idlib during the war.

The woman I spoke to at the bar most definitely felt this way. She said that at least under Assad, women had the legal right to vote, access to education, and could work. HTS-controlled Idlib, however, was a different story. Women’s rights were largely erased. Political participation was nonexistent, while social and economic freedom was severely restricted. Education, too, was gender-segregated and revolved primarily around religious studies.

I'm not going to say the story backs the hed. Nonetheless, this isn't what you want to read happening. Selecting the correct excerpt is usually an easy task.

Here, it isn't.

The full story should be read, but the best I can do is this:

For the former US secretary of state Antony Blinken, Donald Trump’s indifference to alienating allies is an act of vandalism. He said diplomats around the world were asking: “What the fuck is going on?”

Blinken said America had spent 80 years building up trust, strong economic partnerships and military and political alliances, and if that was then taken down in a matter of 100 days it would be incredibly hard to rebuild.

“It means countries look for ways to work around us, to work together but without the US,” he said. “The possibility that what will be said today will be reversed tomorrow, and will be reversed again, means they simply cannot count on us. Joe Biden used to say it is never a good idea to bet against America. The problem we now have is people are no longer betting on America.”

I don't think anyone is arguing that there's any remaining U.S. hegemony, but this is stark. Get ready for everything you've known about the postwar era to go away. What comes next? Likely not anything good.

Seriously: Read the full piece. This is a five-alarm shitshow, and we're worrying about Barbie imports.

During Friday’s mass with cardinals, Leo began his homily in English, before switching to Italian. In the English passage he quoted words from the psalms, saying “I will sing a new song to the Lord, because he has done marvels”.

“Not just with me,” he continued. “But with all of us, my brother cardinals, as we celebrate this morning, I invite you to recognise the marvels that the Lord has done, the blessings that the Lord continues to pour out upon all of us.”

Switching to Italian, he said he hoped the church could “illuminate the dark nights of this world”. He said he would be a “faithful administrator” of the church, and that it should be judged by the holiness of its members and not “the grandeur of her buildings”.

In a later passage referring to evangelisation, Leo said there were many settings in which the Christian faith was considered “absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.”

He added: “These are contexts where it is not easy to preach the gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed.”

It's almost like he's familiar with American evangelism and the backlash thereto.

I'm rather surprised no one has posted pope news yet. So here you go. His past writings suggest a liberal bent, but popes are wont to surprise.

Robert Francis Prevost has become the first clergyman from the United States to lead the Roman Catholic church, ending the Vatican’s longstanding opposition to the idea of a US pontiff.

The 69-year-old from Chicago has taken the papal name Pope Leo XIV, a senior cardinal announced from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Thursday evening.

The announcement, which followed white smoke billowing from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, prompted raucous celebration and delight among the 50,000 pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square.

I'll respectfully avoid the reference to guys from Chicago in Star Trek: Picard.

Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” or the “Gulf of Arabia”, according to two US officials.

The move has prompted a push back from Iranian leaders.

On Wednesday, Iran’s current foreign minister weighed in, saying that names of mideast waterways do “not imply ownership by any particular nation, but rather reflects a shared respect for the collective heritage of humanity”.

What is it with Trump's obsession with renaming gulfs? These aren't your gulf courses.

We appear to have a full-fledged war between nuclear-armed powers. I think they'll back down, as with the Cuban missile crisis. The problem is there's a nonzero chance I'm wrong.

Indian forces have attacked Pakistan with missiles in three locations, Pakistan's military spokesman is quoted by the country's state TV as saying. There are also reports of intense shelling and loud explosions in border areas of the Pakistan-administered state of Kashmir, according to Reuters news agency. Relations between India and Pakistan have declined sharply following a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir last month. India accuses Pakistan of backing cross-border terrorism - a charge Islamabad flatly denies.

The Indian government says its forces have launched "Operation Sindoor", "hitting terrorist infrastructure" in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir "from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed". In a statement, the Indian government says "nine sites have been targeted".

"Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution.

A senior Hamas official told AFP on Tuesday the group was no longer interested in truce talks with Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced a new “intensified” offensive in Gaza that will involve Israeli troops holding on to seized territory and significant displacement of the population.

“There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip,” Basem Naim told the news agency, urging the international community “to pressure the Netanyahu government to end the crimes of hunger, thirst, and killings” in Gaza.

His comments come a day after Israel’s military said expanded operations in Gaza would include displacing “most” of its residents, and amid Israeli strikes on Yemen and Lebanon.

This will surely go well. Bibi is doing the same thing as Trump and seeing how far he can push before everything fails spectacularly.

The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) is calling for public pension funds to divest from Tesla. To show solidarity with American workers facing attacks from Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the union says it’s time for the Canadian Public Sector Pension Investment Board (CPSIB) to dump its Tesla shares.

Despite holding no elected position in United States President Donald Trump’s administration, Musk and his DOGE are firing public servants with reckless abandon, placing the entire American federal public sector in jeopardy. Essential workers at the departments of education, health and human services, energy, veterans affairs and defense, as well as the Internal Revenue Service, the National Park Service, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have been summarily fired, furloughed, or pressured to accept dubious buyouts.

In response, CAPE, which represents more than 27,000 Canadian federal public servants, is leading the charge to pull Canadian public pension investments from the controversial electric automobile maker.

Labor will form a majority government after recording strong swings in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia and a small swing in Victoria, while Peter Dutton has conceded his own seat of Dickson.

The ABC has called 86 seats for Labor, but it is leading in several more, and ABC election analyst Antony Green has said it could end the count with a "thumping" majority.

It will make Anthony Albanese the first prime minister elected twice since John Howard.

As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) – the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda – he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration.

...

In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT described it as an “awesome decision”. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese state media publication, crowed that the broadcasters had been discarded by the White House “like a dirty rag”, ending their “propaganda poison”. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, whose regime has been accused of repressing political opposition, described Trump’s move as “very promising”.

Domestically, Trump has continued to target the media, whether by taking outlets including CBS News and ABC to court, attempting to block political access to the White House by the Associated Press, or defund National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service – institutions he has described as “radical left monsters”.

For many senior media figures around the world, there has been a tipping of the scales as authoritarian regimes are emboldened by a US administration not only attacking the media at home, but also withdrawing from the fight for free information overseas.

...

Jonathan Munro, global director of BBC News , says: “Three-quarters of countries around the world don’t have free media, and that figure is getting worse, not better.

“It’s not just the lack of free media. It’s the proactive and aggressive march of disinformation and misinformation, which arrives on people’s phones 24 hours a day. That’s a cocktail for a very badly informed, or misinformed, global population.”

Munro says authoritarian regimes were already reacting to the withdrawal of the west and growing their own presence.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2631767

Archived version

The European Union has not signaled any reciprocation as China announces lifting of sanction from several members of the EU Parliament, imposed in 2021 as a response to EU’s sanctions on some Chinese officials, citing human rights violations in Xinjiang.

The lifting of sanctions means that the MEPs will now be able to travel to China. The move is being perceived as a potential kick starter for better relations between China and the European countries.

[...]

The diplomatic battle between China and the European Union peaked in 2021 when EU took the first step, sanctioning Chinese officials. China responded in kind and sanctioned some MEPs. This rift dimmed the chances of signing of a trade and investment deal between China and EU which was finalized at the end of 2020.

[...]

Over the years, China and the EU have maintained difficult ties, in which the EU has consistently criticized China for not fulfilling human rights obligations.

[...]

While Beijing is courting Europe portraying itself as a friend as Trump's tariffs policy threatens its economy, the Chinese propaganda at home shows Chinese troops rehearsing in Moscow for the parade with Russia that invaded Ukraine.

Here is an Invidious link of a footage reportedly captured a Chinese student in Russia (original YT link is here).