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Ukraine war briefing: US sanctions China firms over ‘complete attack drones made for Russia’
Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:11:19 GMT
First ever action over a ready-to-use weapons system made in China rather than parts for Russia to build one, says Washington; Zelenskiy touts victory plan. What we know on day 968
The US has unveiled its first ever sanctions against China-based companies for “directly developing and producing complete weapons systems in partnership with Russian firms” for use in Ukraine. The sanctions are for the alleged production of drones that Russia has deployed in its war against Ukraine, according to the US Treasury. Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US state department, claimed: “This was the first time we actually saw a Chinese company manufacturing a weapon itself that then was used on the battlefield by Russia.”
The action relates to the Garpiya series long-range attack drone. The Treasury said the drone was “designed and developed by” China-based experts, and produced at Chinese factories in collaboration with Russian defence firms, then transferred to Russia for use against Ukraine. The two China-based companies sanctioned are Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co and Redlepus Vector Industry Shenzhen Co. Also targeted are Russia-based Limited Liability Company Trading House Vector and Artem Mikhailovich Yamshchikov. Previous US sanctions have hit Chinese entities providing components to Russian firms to make weapons.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged European leaders to issue an “immediate invitation” for Ukraine to join Nato as he pitched the “victory plan” that he said would end the war in 2025 at the latest. At EU leaders’ Brussels summit, Ukraine’s president outlined his five-point plan, which urges allies to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons on military targets inside Ukraine’s occupied territories and Russia, as well as to help increase air defences. An immediate invitation to join Nato, albeit with membership later, is widely seen as unrealistic in the transatlantic alliance, Jennifer Rankin reports from Brussels.
Zelenskyy claimed on Thursday to have intelligence that Russia is preparing to deploy 10,000 North Korean soldiers in the war against Kyiv, as he called it “the first step to a world war”. Western officials said they were aware of the reports but treating them with caution, the AFP news agency said. One official cited reports of between 2,000 and 12,000 North Koreans, but if verified “it’s probably towards the lower number”.
Norway will supply six F-16 jets to Ukraine “in the near future”, the Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov, said on Thursday after talks with his Norwegian counterpart, Bjoern Arild Gram.
An artillery ammunition drive spearheaded by the Czech Republic for Ukraine must continue into 2025, the Czech, Danish and Dutch prime ministers have declared. The scheme is set to hand Ukraine 500,000 shells this year. Eighteen countries including Canada, Germany and Portugal have signed up to help. The drive makes up in part for the EU’s failure to meet its promise to supply one million shells to Ukraine by the end of March this year. Ukraine’s western allies are competing with Russia for the purchase of ammunition in markets outside Europe.
Dozens of countries committed on Thursday to help clear Ukraine of massive amounts of mines and explosives, which contaminate nearly a quarter of its territory. During a two-day conference in Switzerland, more than 40 countries backed the Lausanne Call for Action, the organisers said. The World Bank has estimated that demining Ukraine will cost around US$37bn.
Continue reading...In lawsuits filed across the country, attorneys who worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat are alleging rampant voting fraud.
The post Trump’s Big Lie Attorneys Are Back appeared first on The Intercept.
Dr Guy Standing is worried about the implications of Wes Streeting’s suggestion that weight-loss drugs could be given to people who are unemployed and deemed to be obese
The proposal by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, that weight-loss drugs could be provided to unemployed people deemed to be obese, as a way to help them get back to work and ease the demands on the NHS caused by obesity, should raise ethical alarms (Employers should be fined for unhealthy workplaces, says thinktank, 16 October).
Would taking the drug be voluntary, or would it become a condition for entitlement to benefits? Recalling Labour’s previous support for conditionality and sanctions, one can guess which way it would go.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Group of UK MPs says foreign secretary must ‘engage with China as it really is’ amid rapprochement drive
David Lammy must “engage with China as it really is under the leadership of Xi Jinping” and raise human rights concerns during his trip to the country, UK parliamentarians who have been hit with sanctions by Beijing have said.
The foreign secretary is expected to hold high-level meetings in China this week. The visit forms part of an effort by Labour to improve relations with China after they deteriorated under successive Conservative governments. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, plans to travel to the country next year and restart high-level economic dialogue.
Continue reading...Millions are pouring into the race to unseat Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has resisted loosening crypto regulations.
The post Crypto Billionaires Could Flip the Senate to the GOP. Here’s What They Want. appeared first on The Intercept.
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Here are some key takeaways from Kamala Harris’s Fox News interview, the Guardian’s Helen Sullivan reports:
1. Immigration
Continue reading...Rifle association workers wrote letter warning that inaction against Doug Hamlin will ‘destroy’ NRA’s comeback chances
The board of the National Rifle Association (NRA) is facing pressure to suspend the gun rights group’s chief executive, Douglas Hamlin, following revelations that Hamlin was involved in the sadistic killing of a cat.
The news broke as Donald Trump cancelled a planned appearance with Hamlin next week in Savannah, Georgia, where the Republican nominee for president was meant to give a keynote address to an NRA convention. Organizers said Trump had a scheduling conflict.
Continue reading...Report by independent panel convened by DHS secretary criticises ‘lack of critical thinking’ by agency
An independent investigation into the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump has warned that further such episodes will occur unless the Secret Service undergoes “fundamental reform”.
In a sometimes scathing 51-page report, a panel commissioned by the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, lambasted the agency for a spate of failings, including a “lack of critical thinking”, and said it had not engaged in sufficient “self-reflection” over the episode.
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Reform UK leader received support for his American activities after becoming an MP but has not declared the services as a benefit
Nigel Farage has used a team of three US advisers to help him with “perception management” and public relations in America, as well as with settling a $3,500 hotel bill this summer, new documents show.
The official filings, made in the US, reveal that the leader of Reform UK and MP for Clacton has been assisted at least 15 times by CapitalHQ, a firm led by Alexandra Preate, who is a former press spokesperson for the controversial former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Continue reading...Lucky Loser, by two New York Times journalists, reveals just how much Donald owes to his father (spoiler alert: everything)
The singular piece of publicity most helpful to The Apprentice, a film about Donald Trump that opened in the US last week and opens in the UK this Friday, is the fact its subject tried to block the movie’s release. The title refers to Trump’s adventures as a young man under the informal mentorship of the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn – former chief counsel for Joseph McCarthy, among other things – and from whom, the movie suggests, Trump picked up much of his conniving and ruthlessness. Trump is so lurid in life that he may be impossible to fictionalise, but the movie has a good crack. That it fails leaves one feeling vaguely cheated of an opportunity to deepen one’s loathing for Trump with a little more background and insight.
With the US election two and half weeks away, any representation of Trump, if it’s not up to scratch, risks looking like either an act of hubris or total obliviousness. The Apprentice, which languished in development for years before getting a boost when the actor Jeremy Strong agreed to play Cohn, is at best a tabloid romp in which Trump-as-playboy is compellingly rendered and at worst a piece of counterintuitivism so obvious it’s more predictable than a straightforward hatchet job. Sebastian Stan, as the young Trump, injects just the right level of nascent tics into his performance – the pursed lips, the flapping hands, the constant faffing with the hair – so that he appears physically very convincing. At the front end of the movie, the film-makers also make Trump appear gauchely, winningly, absurdly sympathetic.
Continue reading...Bret Baier interrupted Harris so much she could barely finish a sentence. She still injected some reality into Fox News’s world
Bret Baier started off his Wednesday evening interview with Kamala Harris with a barrage of combative questions about immigration, designed less to elicit substantive answers than to prove what a tough guy the Fox host could be.
His aggressive approach was understandable, in a way, since Baier had been under pressure for days from the Donald Trump faithful; they were convinced he was going to go easy on the Democratic nominee for president, and maybe even allow her campaign to edit the interview or see the questions in advance.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
Continue reading...During this election season there have been multiple extreme weather events, which continue to intensify as the climate crisis worsens. But paradoxically, many of the communities that are being battered by natural disasters are still choosing to back Donald Trump, a vocal climate denier. The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to south-west Louisiana to find out why
Continue reading...Trump has repeatedly threatened to deploy the military inside major cities run by Democrats. Senior officials nationwide are preparing to defend their communities from his threats
Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers.
Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called “sanctuary” cities.
Continue reading...Polls that show Kamala Harris losing Black support have Democrats in a panic. The reality is more complicated
Are Black voters gravitating towards Donald Trump in meaningful numbers? Recent polls and articles, most notably the New York Times/Siena College poll, have set off alarm bells across the country with their survey results finding the former president garnering historic levels of support among African American voters.
The short answer is no, there is little credible evidence showing a meaningful shift in the levels of support Black voters give to Democrats. The longer answer is that the current chorus of media concern illuminates serious shortcomings in polling methodology, political interpretation of polling data, and the responsible communication of information to the public in an ostensible democracy.
Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good
Continue reading...An incident in Mississippi provides a window into a dystopian future where postal workers and local cops can block people from accessing reproductive care.
The post Drug-Sniffing Police Dogs Are Intercepting Abortion Pills in the Mail appeared first on The Intercept.
Elon Musk is donating huge amounts to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. What might he want in return? Adam Gabbatt reports from New York City
Continue reading...Goal seems to be for people ‘to lose confidence in the system’, says head of industry body after devices found in Birmingham and Leipzig
If Russia is proved to be behind an incendiary device plot that caused fires at two parcels warehouses in July, it will be evidence that Moscow is aiming to disrupt western confidence, an expert has said.
The dangerous packages, which caught light at DHL sites in Birmingham and Leipzig, are not thought to have been sophisticated but in both cases appear to have evaded security checks. German authorities warned this week that a plane could have been downed if the devices, which were both sent by air, had ignited in flight.
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Ukrainian membership would be part of five-point ‘victory plan’ to end war, president tells Brussels summit
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged European leaders to issue an “immediate invitation” to Ukraine to join Nato as he pitched his “victory plan”, which he said would end the war in 2025 at the latest.
Addressing the EU’s 27 leaders at a Brussels summit, Ukraine’s president outlined his five-point plan, which urges allies to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons on military targets inside Ukraine’s occupied territories and Russia, as well as to help increase air defences.
Continue reading...Inspector dismissed emergency services’ concerns that incident was similar to Skripal poisonings, KC says
Police officers urged paramedics and firefighters to treat the second novichok incident in 2018 as a drug overdose despite warnings from the ambulance and fire services that it had similarities to the first poisoning four months earlier in Salisbury, a public inquiry has heard.
The UK government believes the novichok was brought into Britain by agents tasked by Vladimir Putin to target the former spy Sergei Skripal, who had been settled in Salisbury after a spy exchange, the inquiry heard earlier this week. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned on 4 March 2018 and both survived.
Continue reading...The Department of Defense wants technology so it can fabricate online personas that are indistinguishable from real people.
The post The Pentagon Wants to Use AI to Create Deepfake Internet Users appeared first on The Intercept.
Organisations assisting deserters hope France’s decision will lead to more soldiers fleeing war
Six Russian soldiers who fled the war in Ukraine have been granted temporary entry permits as they apply for political asylum in France, in what human rights activists describe as the first major case of a group of deserters being admitted to a EU country.
The men arrived in Paris on separate flights over the last few months after initially fleeing Russia to Kazakhstan in 2022 and 2023, according to an organisation that assists soldiers in fleeing, and to accounts from the deserters.
Continue reading...The destruction in northern Italy has ignited debate in a country where just 6% of homes are insured against natural disaster
It was 2am when the parish priest, Giovanni Samorì, was woken by a phone call from the mayor of Traversara ordering him to start ringing the church bells. The traditional call now forms part of the civil protection procedure deployed by many Italian towns. Its aim: to warn residents of impending calamity.
As torrential rain pounded the village, Samorì sprang into action, a task he compares to “sounding the death knell”. It worked: the evacuation of Traversara’s 480 residents was swift and, despite the priest’s foreboding, there were no deaths.
Continue reading...Leaders can only spend limited political capital on Euro initiatives while weighed down by domestic troubles
It has become a wry joke in Brussels that the most stable country in the EU is Italy, once infamous for its succession of short-lived governments.
France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz have been humbled by punishing electoral defeats. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, presides over a minority government in a country riven by division after a controversial amnesty bill. In Poland, Donald Tusk enjoys a much stronger position, but grapples with an unwieldy coalition and an opposition-allied president.
Continue reading...Monopoli, south-east of Bari, is home to PhEST, an ambitious photo festival that sees dozens of exhibitions and events take over the old town and features artists from around the world working in different media
Continue reading...Perfectl in an impressive piece of malware:
The malware has been circulating since at least 2021. It gets installed by exploiting more than 20,000 common misconfigurations, a capability that may make millions of machines connected to the Internet potential targets, researchers from Aqua Security said. It can also exploit CVE-2023-33246, a vulnerability with a severity rating of 10 out of 10 that was patched last year in Apache RocketMQ, a messaging and streaming platform that’s found on many Linux machines.
The researchers are calling the malware Perfctl, the name of a malicious component that surreptitiously mines cryptocurrency. The unknown developers of the malware gave the process a name that combines the perf Linux monitoring tool and ctl, an abbreviation commonly used with command line tools. A signature characteristic of Perfctl is its use of process and file names that are identical or similar to those commonly found in Linux environments. The naming convention is one of the many ways the malware attempts to escape notice of infected users...
(Atlantic)
This concept album based on Walter Hill’s 1979 film features megastar rappers, Hamilton alumni and styles from metalcore to salsa – it is pulled off with breathtaking brio
The bravura title sequence of the 1979 thriller The Warriors builds up a head of steam by following waves of gangs as they hit the streets of New York. There’s a posse of dandies sporting pink waistcoats, an army in fatigues, even a bunch dressed as mimes. Like Coney Island’s leather vest-wearing Warriors, each leaves their home turf for a midnight meeting in the Bronx to unite every crew in the city through a truce. Within minutes, director Walter Hill has set out his stall: the film’s turnstile-vaulting energy, grimy vistas, jangling tension and puckish comedy are all here.
In their adaptation, a concept album that raises the tantalising prospect of a future staging, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis achieve something similar. The blistering, kaleidoscopic opener is presided over by dancehall dynamo Shenseea as a DJ introducing MCs for each borough. Amid punchy fanfares, they are deftly delineated: Chris Rivers as a raspy Bronx, Nas cranking up intrigue as Queens, Cam’ron smoothly humorous as Manhattan (“when you say New York, we’re actually what you mean”), Busta Rhymes’ explosively gruff Brooklyn and Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and RZA spinning ethereal suspense for Staten Island, repeating the detail of their arduous route to the Bronx, “taking a train to a boat to another train”.
Continue reading...The script is thick with jokes, Simon Bird and co are a joy to behold and scenes just zip along. This take on an ultra-conservative church is reinvigorating old-school comedy
How do you make the old-school sitcom – with its improbable plotlines, cartoonish characters and gimmicky setting – feel fresh and relevant in 21st-century Britain? Apparently, the answer is to shun the modern world altogether. Following the devout Lewis family, Everyone Else Burns pitches up in a Manchester-based evangelical church (and doomsday cult) where misogyny, homophobia and a shockingly dated sense of community are all alive and well. It’s deliberately unrelatable material presented in doggedly artificial, stupid hairdo-heavy style. As a contemporary comedy it shouldn’t work, but – by God – it really does.
The brilliance of Everyone Else Burns – now returning for a second series – is partly the result of a script thick with quirky jokes, but mainly down to a cast who are simply a joy to behold. As pathologically incompetent patriarch David, The Inbetweeners’ Simon Bird somehow walks the line between heinously oppressive and heart-rendingly naive: a devotee of his sect’s misogynistic creed, he has zero qualms about being a dinner table despot, yet his unworldliness (he believes that gazing upon the Sun-Maid girl constitutes marital infidelity) and Bird’s utterly un-alpha energy mean he’s more fool than tyrant.
Continue reading...National energy company, which launched this week, is Labour’s strategy to end dependence on fossil fuels
Aberdeen, the centre of the UK’s North Sea oil and gas industry for the past six decades, witnessed the launch of a new company this week that aims to sweep away Britain’s dependence on fossil fuels for ever.
Great British Energy is at the heart of the recently elected Labour government’s pitch to decarbonise the UK’s power sector by 2030. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, told an audience in Aberdeen on Thursday that the company would “harness the potential we have to truly lead the world in renewables jobs”.
Continue reading...Oil majors’ conduct can constitute reckless endangerment due to fossil fuels’ effect on global heating, advocates claim
New York state prosecutors could press criminal charges against big oil for its role in fueling hurricanes and other climate disasters, lawyers wrote in a new prosecution memorandum that has been endorsed by elected officials across the state.
The 50-page document, published by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and the progressive prosecutors network Fair and Just Prosecution on Thursday, comes as the US south-east struggles to recover from the deadly hurricanes Helene and Milton, both of which scientists have found were exacerbated by the climate crisis. It details the havoc wrought on New York by 2021’s Hurricane Ida and 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, and other deadly climate events such as extreme heatwaves across the US this past summer.
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Without massive, unconditional U.S. military subsidies, Israel would have had to practice diplomacy with their neighbors years ago.
The post U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Genocidal Israel appeared first on The Intercept.
Jeremy Loffredo was taken into custody on suspicion of “assisting an enemy in war” for his reporting on Iran’s missile attack.
The post U.S. Journalist Jeremy Loffredo Released After Being Detained by Israel for Four Days appeared first on The Intercept.
At oral arguments Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito appeared indifferent to the state AG’s insistence that Glossip’s conviction is unconstitutional.
The post The Supreme Court May Force Oklahoma to Kill Richard Glossip appeared first on The Intercept.
With border crossings reaching record highs in recent years, US immigration has returned as the election’s most toxic issue. As Donald Trump continues to push a policy of mass deportation, and Kamala Harris responds by shifting further to the right, what happens to the people caught in the middle trying to seek a better life? The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to Arizona’s southern border with Mexico to investigate
Continue reading...In a new series of Anywhere but Washington, the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to the crucial swing state of Georgia, where election deniers and rightwing conspiracy theorists are facing a new generation of Gen Z candidates and voters who could tip the race in favor of the Democrats
Continue reading...Advocates hope the graphic videos, which were shared with The Intercept, will help rally support for the ballot initiative.
The post Secret Recordings Show Ugly Conditions Ahead of Denver’s Slaughterhouse Ban Referendum appeared first on The Intercept.
Kate, 49, and Abby, 52, struck up a conversation on a flight from New York to London in the 90s. They have been close friends ever since
As a friendly student who loved to travel, striking up a conversation on a flight wasn’t unusual for Kate. But when she boarded a plane headed from New York to London in January 1996, she had no idea she would be making a friend for life. “I’d spent the previous summer interning for Rolling Stone magazine and a publishing company in New York, and I was returning for New Year to visit pals,” she says. “I was then going back to university in London.”
She introduced herself to Abby, in the neighbouring seat. “I’d studied in Bristol during my junior year in college and fallen in love with a British boy,” says Abby. “After completing my studies in the States and training at culinary school, I was on my way back to the UK to gain experience working in restaurants for three months.” She was also “incredibly excited” to be seeing her boyfriend again.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Party drops plan for formal recognition laid out last year by David Lammy, who will visit Beijing on Friday
Labour has backtracked on plans to push for formal recognition of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide in the run-up to David Lammy’s trip to the country this weekend.
The foreign secretary is expected to arrive in Beijing on Friday for high-level meetings before travelling to Shanghai on Saturday.
Continue reading...State courts refused to review Roberson’s case, clearing the way for his execution based on the junk science of shaken baby syndrome.
The post Texas Is About to Execute Robert Roberson for a Crime That Never Happened appeared first on The Intercept.
Exclusive: Group of UK MPs says foreign secretary must ‘engage with China as it really is’ amid rapprochement drive
David Lammy must “engage with China as it really is under the leadership of Xi Jinping” and raise human rights concerns during his trip to the country, UK parliamentarians who have been hit with sanctions by Beijing have said.
The foreign secretary is expected to hold high-level meetings in China this week. The visit forms part of an effort by Labour to improve relations with China after they deteriorated under successive Conservative governments. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, plans to travel to the country next year and restart high-level economic dialogue.
Continue reading...The Biden administration has consistently said Israel should not kill civilians as it sends Israel more weapons to kill civilians.
The post One Year of Empty Rhetoric From the White House on Israel’s Wars appeared first on The Intercept.
Majdi Fathi is a freelance photojournalist living and working from al-Aqsa hospital, the only functioning facility in central Gaza. Along with many other journalists based there, he evacuated from northern Gaza and now works in incredibly difficult conditions, with dwindling food, water and electricity, and the constant threat of missile strikes from Israel.
He documented his past year living and reporting from the war, travelling all around the Gaza Strip, and also looking after his young family, in a conflict that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 people according to local authorities.
Continue reading...In a new series of Anywhere but Washington, the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to the crucial swing state of Georgia, where election deniers and rightwing conspiracy theorists are facing a new generation of Gen Z candidates and voters who could tip the race in favor of the Democrats
Continue reading...What would you do if you won the Euromillions jackpot? Would you keep it quiet? We all say we would, including writer Ben Henry – but apparently that wouldn’t stop him from building a full-scale replica of the Gladiators assault course
I’ve often wondered what I would do if I won the EuroMillions jackpot. In those moments of procrastination throughout the day – and believe me, there are many – it’s a daydream I regularly fall into. What would I give to friends and family? Which dream holiday would I go on first? How much money would I realistically have to win in order to buy a home in London that’s not in zone 84 with a bed directly above the cooker? All of which is to say, I think I’m something of an expert on the subject matter. I’m not sure if I’d actually tell people I’d won the jackpot – but there would be signs. What would I spend my money on in my first week as a EuroMillions winner? I’m so glad you asked.
I think my main goal is to live one of those soft and gentle lives you see blasted all over TikTok, so my first port of call is day-to-day travel and I’m going big: I want to buy a tube carriage on every Victoria line train. I like to think I’d remain modest, down to earth and humble if I won a life-changing chunk of money, so you wouldn’t catch me paying for chauffeur-driven cars or anything like that. I’ll happily take the tube. I just don’t want to be shoved under a stranger’s armpit at 9:30am on a Monday morning while basking in the aroma of someone’s Saturday night rosé breath that they’ve tried to conceal with a double espresso, all while stewing in a climate identical to the seventh circle of hell. A personal tube carriage should do the trick. I’m thinking a couple of sofas, some decorative cushions, the fancy incense from Diptyque. I might even buy some LED screens to cover the windows and make it look like I’m frolicking through the Swiss countryside instead of hurtling towards the darkest depths of central London. Phase one of living a gentle life, complete!
Continue reading...From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...Lucky Loser, by two New York Times journalists, reveals just how much Donald owes to his father (spoiler alert: everything)
The singular piece of publicity most helpful to The Apprentice, a film about Donald Trump that opened in the US last week and opens in the UK this Friday, is the fact its subject tried to block the movie’s release. The title refers to Trump’s adventures as a young man under the informal mentorship of the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn – former chief counsel for Joseph McCarthy, among other things – and from whom, the movie suggests, Trump picked up much of his conniving and ruthlessness. Trump is so lurid in life that he may be impossible to fictionalise, but the movie has a good crack. That it fails leaves one feeling vaguely cheated of an opportunity to deepen one’s loathing for Trump with a little more background and insight.
With the US election two and half weeks away, any representation of Trump, if it’s not up to scratch, risks looking like either an act of hubris or total obliviousness. The Apprentice, which languished in development for years before getting a boost when the actor Jeremy Strong agreed to play Cohn, is at best a tabloid romp in which Trump-as-playboy is compellingly rendered and at worst a piece of counterintuitivism so obvious it’s more predictable than a straightforward hatchet job. Sebastian Stan, as the young Trump, injects just the right level of nascent tics into his performance – the pursed lips, the flapping hands, the constant faffing with the hair – so that he appears physically very convincing. At the front end of the movie, the film-makers also make Trump appear gauchely, winningly, absurdly sympathetic.
Continue reading...Studios usually twist themselves into pretzels to avoid confusing movie titles. But this Christmas, unwary fans of the CBBC show should beware
Great news, parents! In just a few short weeks, a new Horrible History DVD will be released. Imagine the look of absolute delight on the faces of your children as they giddily unwrap their present and realise that their favourite CBBC show has created new material.
And then imagine the growing look of horror on their faces as they scan the cover of the DVD case and see that the main image is a clenched fist and some spiked knuckledusters. And then their violent disappointment as they slowly put two and two together and realise that instead of buying them Horrible Histories (a DVD of sophisticated yet child-friendly historical parody sketches from most of the people behind Ghosts), you have actually bought them Horrible History (the new limited edition four-DVD boxset of violent, decades-old kung fu movies by the Chinese director Chang Cheh).
Continue reading...With Gladiator II thrusting into cinematic arenas next month, we hand out laurels to the greatest sword-and-sandal movies of them all
In this heavy-going British Technicolor adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Claude Rains’s oddly relaxed Julius Caesar plays father figure to Vivien Leigh’s implausibly girlish Cleopatra, schooling her in the art of power with just a hint of May to December flirtation. The two leads are just about charismatic enough to compel interest despite Shaw’s ponderous dialogue.
Continue reading...We must make this moment a watershed that quenches the hellfire that threatens to envelop Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and the entire region
Last Sunday night, as I was getting ready for bed, my friend Ali from the South Hebron Hills of Palestine sent me a text which read, “Israel is burning sleeping people alive in the refugee camps.” I clicked on the accompanying video and I could not believe what I saw: an inferno blazing, people running around screaming, and there, amidst the flame, a body writhing, crackling; a raised arm, reaching out for help, still attached to an IV. I waited for the following morning to share the video, until the event had been reported by reputable news outlets, because the images appeared too gruesome to be real – like they were something out of a movie – but they were real: an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah and killed at least four people. The man that we saw burning alive? His name was Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student.
In the 24 hours since this attack, my social media feed was filled with videos of and reactions to this attack. The reel posted on Instagram by the Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi has been shared more than 455,000 times. The CNN Instagram post has been viewed more than 1.2m times. Randa, a Palestinian friend of mine whose grandparents were born in Gaza, shared that this event was clear proof that Israel was waging a war of “annihilation”. Survivors of the attack said the fires were caused by gas cooking canisters. Israel blamed “secondary explosions” in a statement.
Zak Witus is the young leadership and education coordinator at the New Israel Fund
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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
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