Alsephina

The People’s Liberation Army will take part in joint military exercises in Brazil, a rare step for the Chinese military in the western hemisphere.

A detachment of the PLA Marine Corps will travel to take part in Exercise Formosa 2024 at the invitation of the Brazilian military, the Chinese defence ministry said on Thursday.

The exercises, with a focus on joint landing and anti-landing combat drills, would “deepen friendship and cooperation between the Chinese and participating militaries and enhance their ability to jointly respond to security risk challenges”, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

Exercise Formosa is an annual exercise hosted by the Brazilian Marine Corps that last year also included the United States, Germany, France and South Africa. The US Marine Corps has been a regular participant in previous drills. It is not clear which countries will take part in the exercise this year.

In recent years, China has hosted military medicine forums, senior military officer seminars and defence forums for Latin American countries, but it is not common for the Chinese military to travel to the region to take part in operations.

This year has seen an improvement in relations between China and Brazil. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced in July that his administration planned to join the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s flagship infrastructure and investment project.

Also in July, Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun met visiting Brazilian army commander Tomás Ribeiro Paiva in Beijing.

Dong said during the meeting that the two militaries should “strengthen exchanges and learn from each other” to “jointly improve capabilities and take military relations to a new level”.

Brazil took part in Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac), a multinational military exercise led by the United States, from June 27 to August 1.

Archive link

When libraries across the country temporarily closed in the early days of the pandemic, the Internet Archive, an organization that digitizes and archives materials like web pages and music, had the idea to make its library of scanned books free to read in an online database.

The question of that library’s legality became a long-running saga that may have finally ended on Wednesday, when an appeals court affirmed that the Internet Archive violated copyright laws by redistributing those books without a licensing agreement.

The decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, is a victory for the major book publishers that brought the lawsuit in 2020, and could set a precedent over the lawfulness of broader digital archives.

A federal court ruled against the Internet Archive in March 2023, and the archive removed many works from its online library of books. It appealed the decision last September.

A final appeal could potentially be taken to the Supreme Court. In a statement, the Internet Archive said it was “reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend and preserve books.”

In its appeal, the nonprofit argued that its Free Digital Library was protected by so-called fair use laws, and that scanning the books was a transformative use of the material done in the public interest. The court firmly rejected that claim.

“People are worried about book bannings and the defunding of libraries, but I don’t know that there is really an awareness of what’s going on in the movement toward license-only access to electronic material,” Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Libraries are “not just a Netflix reseller of books to their patrons,” he added. “Libraries have always been more than that.”

Unlike traditional libraries, which pay licensing fees to publishers to make their books available for lending, the Internet Archive acquires copies through donated or purchased books to scan and put online. The nonprofit is also known for the Wayback Machine, a popular database of past web pages.

Archive link

Chinese investment in Brazil grew by 33 per cent in 2023, reaching US$1.73 billion, according to a study by the Brazil-China Business Council (CBBC) released on Tuesday.

Although the number of confirmed Chinese projects in the country fell from 32 in 2022 to 29 in 2023, it was still the third largest total since 2007. Most of the financing went to the electricity sector, which accounted for 39 per cent of the total investment amount, equivalent to US$668 million. These investments focused on renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydropower.

The highlight was electric vehicles. According to CBBC, Chinese investment in the automotive sector increased by 56 per cent compared with 2022, reaching US$568 million.

Tulio Cariello, research director at CBBC, said the entry of EV companies into the Brazilian market was not new – BYD, for example, has been manufacturing electric buses in the state of São Paulo – but the establishment of factories to produce vehicles for the end consumer represented an increase in the overall investment share.

Cariello said that previously, “Chinese investors favoured entering Brazilian sectors through acquisitions or mergers with already well-established local companies”.

Despite this increase, the amount remains at historically low levels; it is the second-lowest figure since 2009 and only exceeded the US$1.3 billion recorded in 2022.

According to the researcher, the growth in investment in 2023 took place against the backdrop of a sharp devaluation of Brazil’s currency, the real. In 2010, when investment peaked at US$13 billion, the dollar was trading at an average of 1.76 reals. Between 2020 and 2023, that average rose to 5.18 reals, which affected the conversion of Chinese investment volume.

Despite the drop in values, the study identified opportunities for the future, such as renewable energy, electromobility and high-end manufacturing. CBBC also measured trends in other global regions and reported that although investment in the United States, Australia and the European Union fell significantly (36 per cent, 57 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively), China invested 37 per cent more in Belt and Road Initiative member countries.

For Brazil, which is negotiating with Beijing to become part of China’s infrastructure and trade project, this figure could mean a tangible gain. In July, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he was looking into what benefits the country could get by joining the belt and road.

“Chinese capital is finding it difficult to invest in these regions due to geopolitical tensions and protectionism in strategic sectors. In this context, it is only natural that the Global South, especially those countries allied with the BRI, offer more security to investors,” Cariello said.

“I think we are entering an era where the Chinese presence is no longer concentrated in geographically and economically isolated companies, but on projects with a much broader impact on the value chain,” Arbache said.

Archive link

A woman in Texas, United States has been formally indicted by a grand jury in the attempted drowning of a three-year-old Palestinian American girl earlier this year that police said was motivated by racial hatred.

The suspect, identified as Elizabeth Wolf, aged 42, was charged by a grand jury in Tarrant County in an indictment filed last month that included a hate crime enhancement, according to court records that came to light on Tuesday.

According to a police report, the attack in May occurred at an apartment complex swimming pool in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Euless.

At the time, the suspect approached the mother of the three-year-old girl, who was also at the pool with her six-year-old son, and asked where they were from. The suspect then tried to drown the three-year-old and also attempted to grab the six-year-old boy, the police report said.

The mother was able to pull her daughter from the water, police said, and local medics responded to the scene and the children were medically cleared. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) said earlier this year that the accused approached the mother of the children “with racist interrogations” and then grabbed the children – who were in the shallow end of the pool – and pulled them into the deep end in the alleged drowning attempt.

Human rights advocates have warned about rising threats against Palestinian Americans, Muslims, Arabs and Jews since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

In late November, three Palestinian men in their early 20s were shot near a university campus in Vermont in the US, injuring all three of them.

A month earlier, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death in Illinois. Police charged a 71-year-old man with murder and a hate crime for stabbing the child to death and seriously injuring his mother.

According to the police, the elderly attacker targeted the victims as a response to the war in Gaza and their religion.

Endeavour Mining Plc and Lilium Mining have resolved their legal dispute over the sale of two gold mines in Africa, agreeing to transfer the assets to the Burkina Faso government.

The conflict arose after Lilium acquired the Wahgnion and Boungou projects in Burkina Faso last June, Bloomberg reported.

Endeavour had previously claimed that Lilium missed over $100 million in payments, while Lilium accused the London-listed gold producer of misrepresenting the "financial position and operating capabilities" of the mines.

As part of the settlement, Lilium will transfer ownership of the mines to the Burkina Faso government. In return, the government will pay Endeavour $60 million and a 3% royalty on up to 400,000 ounces of gold produced at the Wahgnion mine, according to a statement released on Tuesday.

Endeavour and Lilium “have agreed to cease the current legal proceedings against each other,” the statement said. The firms have been involved in an arbitration case in London since March.

Endeavour said “both parties would like to thank the Government of Burkina Faso for its mediation efforts”.

Lilium declined to comment on the matter. The company is a subsidiary of Lilium Capital, an investment firm founded by US-Burkinabe businessman Simon Tiemtore. Endeavour, meanwhile, continues to operate gold mines across Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.

The nationalization of the mines by Ouagadougou marks a new chapter in a growing trend across Africa, where governments, particularly those under military regimes, are taking steps to assert greater control over their natural resources.

For instance, in June, Niger's military junta revoked the mining license of French state-owned company Orano at the Imouraren mine, which is one of the largest uranium mines in the world

Archive link

Google's campaign against ad blockers across its services just got more aggressive. According to a report by PC World, the company has made some alterations to its extension support on Google Chrome.

Google Chrome recently changed its extension support from the Manifest V2 framework to the new Manifest V3 framework. The browser policy changes will impact one of the most popular adblockers (arguably), uBlock Origin.

The transition to the Manifest V3 framework means extensions like uBlock Origin can't use remotely hosted code. According to Google, it "presents security risks by allowing unreviewed code to be executed in extensions." The new policy changes will only allow an extension to execute JavaScript as part of its package.

Over 30 million Google Chrome users use uBlock Origin, but the tool will be automatically disabled soon via an update. Google will let users enable the feature via the settings for a limited period before it's completely scrapped. From this point, users will be forced to switch to another browser or choose another ad blocker.

Archive link

The UN general assembly has voted overwhelmingly to back the Palestinian bid for full UN membership, in a move that signalled Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage amid global alarm over the war in Gaza and the extent of the humanitarian crisis in the strip. The move drew an immediate rebuke from Israel. Its envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, delivered a fiery denunciation of the resolution and its backers before the vote, and fed pages of the UN charter into a shredder. The Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, highlighted that the vote was being held at a time when Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city that is the last haven for many people, faced attack from Israeli forces

• Trade between the two countries was worth $6.8 billion in 2023

Turkey stopped all trade with Israel as of Thursday, according to two Turkish officials familiar with the matter, adding to already high-running tensions between the once-close allies over the war in Gaza.

The move expands last month’s restriction on some Turkish exports to Israel, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan steps up criticism of the Jewish state and tries to consolidate support among conservative voters at home.

Ankara hasn’t formally announced the suspension and it wasn’t clear under what conditions trade would resume. Trade between the countries was worth $6.8 billion in 2023, of which 76% was Turkish exports, according to the Turkish statistical institute.

The move came a day after Turkey announced plans to join South Africa’s case at the United Nations’ highest court as a plaintiff accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Palestinian territory.

Erdogan hosted Hamas’s political leader in Istanbul on April 20, calling for immediate aid to Gaza.

Archive link

The United States House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would expand the federal definition of anti-Semitism, despite opposition from civil liberties groups.

The bill passed the House on Wednesday by a margin of 320 to 91, and it is largely seen as a reaction to the ongoing antiwar protests unfolding on US university campuses. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

If the bill were to become law, it would codify a definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities”.

According to the IHRA, that definition also encompasses the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.

The group also includes certain examples in its definition to illustrate anti-Semitism. Saying, for instance, that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” would be deemed anti-Semitic under its terms. The definition also bars any comparison between “contemporary Israeli policy” and “that of the Nazis”.

Rights groups, however, have raised concerns the definition nevertheless conflates criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

In a letter sent to lawmakers on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged House members to vote against the legislation, saying federal law already prohibits anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment.

“Instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.”

Archive link