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In the heart of Xinjiang, the Chinese region where more than one million Uyghurs are believed to be detained in re-education camps, two carefree British travel vloggers cheerfully introduce their viewers to “one of the most controversial areas” of the country.

Journalists are harassed and heavily monitored in the rugged western province, where Western governments and rights groups have accused the authorities of suppressing Muslim minorities through mass surveillance, abuse and political indoctrination.

But foreign YouTube influencers are warmly welcomed by the normally censor-happy Chinese government, which seizes on their happy-go-lucky content to legitimise its own narrative that no human rights abuses are taking place.

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As the country reopens for travel after years of pandemic isolation, foreign influencers, including many Brits, are heading East armed with cameras and tripods, eyeing an increasingly lucrative YouTube market with an eager audience ready to increase their ratings.

The Chinese government has given them a helping hand with a raft of new visa-free policies, and the country received over 17 million foreign travellers in the first seven months of this year, up by almost 130% year-on-year, according to foreign ministry figures.

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But a growing number are entering lesser-known regions including Xinjiang, which for years has been beset by allegations of severe human rights abuses and repression that Beijing justifies as necessary to fight terrorism.

Some YouTubers setting foot in the rugged region attempt to draw viewers with sensational titles about exposing Western media “lies” about Xinjiang or by alluding to the risks of travelling there.

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There is no suggestion any of the vloggers are acting at the behest of the Chinese government or receiving its money, but titles about media deception echo official state messaging about the West’s perceived anti-China narrative, particularly on fundamental rights.

For China, the influx of influencers offers the opportunity to rebut overseas criticisms and reinforce its stance through highlighting the unimpeded visits of awestruck foreigners.

The footage, amplified by Chinese social media platforms and state-run outlets, receive hundreds of thousands of views and screeds of favourable comments.

An increasing number of international vloggers were visiting Xinjiang “with great curiosity,” noted a recent article in the [state-controlled] Global Times.

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Daria Impiombato, a cyber analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has co-written several reports on China’s multilayered ways of folding local and foreign influencers into its propaganda strategy.

She said vloggers with large platforms had a responsibility to inform themselves and to be sceptical.

“There needs to be a reckoning with that type of platform,” she said. “It’s like influencers who are going to Syria, just doing travel vlogs from Syria without talking about years and years of war and devastation. You can’t do that, and you can’t do that in Xinjiang either.”

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Maya Wang, the associate China director at Human Rights Watch, urged travellers to be more aware in societies suffering human right abuses and “not be complicit in the censorship and disinformation that the Chinese government hopes to achieve.”

South Kesteven District Council (SKDC) contracted Leisure Energy Limited to procure and supply solar panels for Grantham Meres Leisure Centre, which subcontracted the work to Geo Green UK.

However, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), the panels were being supplied by PV manufacturer Canadian Solar - a company facing allegations of using forced labour in China, which they have strongly denied.

The LDRS has contacted Canadian Solar for comment on the council opting for a new supplier.

The panels will now be supplied by JA Solar, which the council said uses more "transparent" supply chain practices.

In May 2022, CEO and chairman of Canadian Solar Dr Shawn Qu insisted that no evidence of forced labour within the company’s supply chain had been found.

British adults in their 30s and 40s are healthier than their counterparts in the US – but are more likely to think their health is poor, a study has suggested.

The health of the US “acts as a warning” of what Britain could be like without the “safety net” of the NHS, researchers said, with differences potentially down to access to healthcare, diet and levels of poverty.

For the study, academics from the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, University of Oxford, Syracuse University and University of North Carolina used data from the 1970 British Cohort Study and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.

Analysis included 9,665 British people born in 1970 and 5,381 US adults.

It found adults in the US were more likely to have high cholesterol and high blood blood pressure, while four in 10 US adults were obese compared to 34.5% of Brits.

However, 18% of British adults were likely to report their health as poor compared to 12% of adults in the US.

Britons were also more likely to smoke every day, with 28% reporting cigarette use compared to 21% in the US cohort.

Police have found no evidence that a gunshot struck the back window of a taxi carrying the Private Eye editor Ian Hislop in Soho, after the driver reported it had been fired at.

An investigation was launched after the cab’s driver told the Met Police he was stuck in traffic when a suspected shot was fired towards his vehicle, striking the window just after 10am on Tuesday.

Have I Got News For You panelist Mr Hislop was sat in the back seat of the cab, the Guardian reported.

Providing an update on Wednesday afternoon the Met said: “Urgent CCTV and forensic examinations have been conducted. While enquiries are ongoing, police have found no evidence of a firearms discharge at this time.

“Initial indications suggest a mechanical fault might have caused the window to shatter. We await further tests.”

Scotland Yard is investigating a suspected gunshot that hit the back window of a taxi containing the Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop.

The black-cab driver told detectives he had come to a standstill in traffic in Soho, central London, just after 10am on Tuesday morning when he heard what he believed was a bullet hitting and damaging his window.

Both the driver and Hislop, who was in the rear of the cab, escaped without injury.

What can a German do but a Briton cannot? What can a New Yorker, a Chicagoan and a San Franciscan do, but a Londoner cannot? What can Canadians, Dutch, Portuguese, Chileans, Uruguayans, Maltese all do? The answer is they can legally smoke cannabis. In California there are now courses for cannabis sommeliers. In Britain they would be thrown in jail.

Half a century ago, Britons prided themselves on being in the vanguard of social progress. In such matters as health care, sexuality, abortion, crime and punishment, they considered their country ahead of the times. Now it limps nervously in the rear.

I don’t use illegal drugs, neither am I addicted to nicotine or alcohol or fatty foods. Having sat on two drugs-related committees, I accept that narcotic substances can, in varying degrees, cause harm to their users and, through them, to others. If after half a century of a “war” on drugs, banning had solved or even reduced this harm, I could see the argument for banning. It has not.

Roughly a third of adults in England and Wales aged under 60 have tried cannabis. Almost 8% use it occasionally and 2% regularly. Far fewer use hard drugs. But nearly one in five residents of English and Welsh prisons are estimated to have been jailed for a drug-related offence. Half of all homicides are drugs-related. In many prisons, more than half the inmates use drugs regularly. The authorities turn a blind eye for the sake of peace and quiet.

Successive home secretaries have a terror of even discussing the issue. Tony Blair delegated drugs – as so much of his policy – to the Daily Mail and the Sun. While other countries researched, experimented and piloted innovation, Britain simply shut down debate. When, in 2009, the government’s chief drugs adviser, Prof David Nutt, evaluated the relative harm of different narcotics, he was sacked.

The climate is changing British gardens everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. The Royal Horticultural Society has modelled how global heating will affect its property until 2075 and discovered that summers will be hotter and drier in all its gardens – except in Manchester.

Greater Manchester’s renown as a rain trap – there is even a website tracking rainfall, called Rainchester – means that the RHS Bridgewater garden in Salford is being earmarked for species that thrive in a cooler, wetter climate.

Trees including oaks, birches and beeches that have been part of the British landscape for centuries are starting to suffer in southern England, so are being considered for RHS Bridgewater’s new arboretum, a botanical garden aiming to preserve a wide range of species...

RIP professor McGonagall

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20203174

A man with a facial disfigurement says he was asked to leave a restaurant in south London because staff said he was "scaring the customers". 

Oliver Bromley has Neurofibromatosis Type 1, a genetic condition that causes non-cancerous tumours to grow on his nerves.

Speaking to the BBC, he said when he had gone to place an order at a restaurant in Camberwell, staff told him there had been complaints about him.

"It's a horrible thing to happen. I took it very personally on the day," he said.

"The wi-fi has been hacked at 19 UK railway stations to display a message about terror attacks.

Network Rail confirmed that the wi-fi systems at stations including London Euston, Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Central were affected.

People reported logging on to the wi-fi at the stations on Wednesday and being met with a screen about terror attacks in Europe.

A Network Rail spokesperson confirmed the wi-fi was still down and said: "We are currently dealing with a cyber-security incident affecting the public wi-fi at Network Rail’s managed stations."

The affected stations include:

In London, London Cannon Street, London Bridge, Charing Cross, Clapham Junction, Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo

In the South East, Reading and Guildford

In the North West, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street

In the West Midlands, Birmingham New Street

In West Yorkshire, Leeds

In the West and South West, Bristol Temple Meads

In Scotland, Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Central

British Transport Police was investigating, Network Rail said.

The rail provider said it believed other organisations, not just railway stations, had also been affected..."

... Big Brother Watch slammed the new powers. Director Silkie Carlo said: "Starmer's benefits bank spying proposals sound alarmingly similar to the powers Labour fought just a few months ago in opposition. Everyone wants fraud to be dealt with, and the government already has strong powers to investigate the bank statements of suspects.

"But to force banks to constantly spy on benefits recipients without suspicion means that not only millions of disabled people, pensioners, and carers will be actively spied on but the whole population's bank accounts are likely to be monitored for no good reason."

Carlo said a "financial snoopers' charter" designed to automate suspicion of the UK's poorest people was intrusive, unjustified, and risks the kind of injustice seen during the Post Office Horizon scandal.

"This is yet another insult to pensioners, an attack on Britain's poorest people, and an assault on the presumption of innocence," she said.

Elon Musk has managed to decimate Twitter’s UK users since taking over the platform and rebranding it as X, Financial Times analysis shows.

Millions of users have abandoned the platform after the Tesla man appeared at the social media platform’s HQ carrying a kitchen sink in 2022.

Once a thriving space for political discourse, news updates, and cultural engagement, Twitter’s UK usage has dropped by a significant margin, as users seek alternative platforms.

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In the UK, where Twitter had been a crucial forum for political debates, this shift has led to a considerable drop in engagement.

Graphical data shared online clearly illustrates the stark drop in UK user numbers, confirming that Musk’s promises to revive Twitter have instead accelerated its decline.

With no signs of reversing the trend, the platform’s future in the UK looks increasingly uncertain.

The former cabinet minister Michael Gove has been named as the new editor of the Spectator magazine, weeks after the GB News backer Paul Marshall completed a £100m takeover of the rightwing magazine.

Gove, who will take over from Fraser Nelson on 4 October, will be joined by the former Daily Telegraph and Spectator editor Charles Moore, who has been named as chair.

Nelson, who joined the Spectator in 2006 and became editor in 2009, said in a blogpost that Gove was his “clear successor”, having been tipped as a future editor during his time as a journalist on titles including the Times and as a contributor to the Spectator.

Adverts for Nike and Sky have been banned by the regulator for using “dark pattern” tactics designed to lead consumers to unintentionally spend money.

Nike had advertised a shoe at a low price, causing consumers to click through only to find that it was for a children’s size, while Sky did not make it clear that a free trial for Now TV would automatically renew with a charge unless cancelled.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said both rulings were part of its wider work investigating “online choice architecture” (OCA).

Concerns around OCA include price transparency, hidden fees and “drip pricing”, as well as fake and misleading reviews.