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‘The real smugglers are rarely on the boat’: activists in Greece question jailing asylum seekers
Fri, 17 May 2024 05:00:29 GMT
Hundreds of people – including children – face lengthy prison sentences under harsh Greek anti-smuggling law
Mohanad was 15 years old when he was arrested by the Greek authorities in November 2022 after arriving in Crete on a vessel that had departed from Libya. He has now been charged with smuggling 476 people and is awaiting trial later this year.
He is one of hundreds of people, including children and people travelling with their families, who have been arrested under Greece’s harsh anti-smuggling law that came into force in 2014 with jail sentences of up to 25 years.
Continue reading...Republican congressman travels to New York to support former president and says he is ‘standing back, and standing by’
Matt Gaetz echoed Donald Trump’s infamous remarks about the far-right Proud Boys on Thursday, as the Florida Republican congressman and other rightwing supporters of the former US presidentattended his criminal trial in Manhattan.
“Standing back, and standing by, Mr President,” Gaetz wrote on social media, with a photo of his group of supporters standing behind Trump outside the court where Trump is on trial on election subversion charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star during the 2016 campaign.
Continue reading...Leaky Old Trafford roof was almost a too perfect sign of neglect by owners who love the money but don’t seem to like the club
In February, the NFL players’ union carried out its second annual survey of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and let’s just say it wasn’t pleasant reading. Tampa Bay players reported that the changing room was “not clean, constantly smelly and has a persistent bug issue”. The sauna was described as “dirty and/or mouldy”. This barely a decade after an MRSA outbreak infected three Buccaneers players, two of whom never competed again.
In addition, players complained about being forced to pay $90 (£72) for childcare on match days (most teams offer this for free), being charged $1,750 a season for the privilege of having their own hotel room on away trips and being made to sit at the back of the plane while club staff travelled first class. Most of the blame for this state of affairs was laid squarely at the team’s ownership, whom the survey ranked 29th out of the 32 NFL franchise owners, and who go by the name of the Glazer family.
Continue reading...If you can get past the QR code and the long wait for something close to food, you’ve still got to work out where the hell to put it
Modern life presents many challenges: filing electronic tax returns, getting hold of Virgin Media customer services, not drenching the passive-aggressive pedant on the neighbourhood WhatsApp group with digital expletives. But none of that comes even close to the trauma of trying to have a quiet dinner in a modern city-centre hotel room. Every element has been engineered by a disciple of the Marquis de Sade, only one with more spite, and a misunderstanding of ergonomics. Let’s start with the room service menu, which of course now means a QR code. But only if you have a phone signal, which you don’t because the building is a Faraday cage designed to keep out even the slightest waft of 2G. Use the hotel wifi instead, although that means being scraped for every last byte of intimate data you possess and the sweet promise of marketing emails for decades to come. In return for which, it probably won’t work.
But let’s say you get on to the wifi and the QR code does its thing, and the site doesn’t freeze, which it will because it always does. Who knows if the food will arrive? Certainly not the hotel operator. Because the kitchen only takes orders online and no, they can’t put you through and please don’t talk to me like that. Still, after 45 minutes dinner turns up and there’s a green sulphurous ring around the yolk of the over-boiled egg in your Caesar salad, and the over-emulsified dressing looks like it needs a course of antibiotics. But it’s food. Kind of. I wasn’t expecting Le Gavroche.
Continue reading...The 71-year-old veteran peace activist discusses the war on Gaza, the Biden administration, and shaking up Congress.
The post Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine appeared first on The Intercept.
Whether it’s in segregated America or the glory days of postwar France, Omar Victor Diop appears in photographs of worlds he was previously shut out from
Continue reading...The 22-year-old woman and her child were civilian casualties of a U.S. drone strike, but the Pentagon won't return the family's messages.
The post Pentagon Compensated Zero Civilian Victims in 2022 — Despite Evidence That the U.S. Killed a Mom and Child in Somalia appeared first on The Intercept.
“We’re continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel and with the government of Egypt to work on this issue,” the State Department said.
The post American Medical Missions Trapped in Gaza, Facing Death by Dehydration as Population Clings to Life appeared first on The Intercept.
A new anti-terrorism bill would allow the government to take away vital tax exemptions from nonprofit news outlets.
The post Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process appeared first on The Intercept.
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...As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
Leader visits city known for historically large Russian population on second day of visit
Former US president Donald Trump has accused Putin and Xi of getting together to “do damage”. Speaking after the end of the day’s proceedings at his hush money trial in New York on Thursday, Trump said:
President Xi of China, I know well, President Putin of Russia, know him well, they’re right now together working on plans where they … get together and do damage, because that’s ultimately what they’re thinking about doing, damage.
Ties between the two countries have strengthened dramatically following North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia’s far east in September and a summit with President Vladimir Putin.
But Kim Yo Jong said the North Korea-Russia arms deal “theory” made up of prejudice and fiction was the “most absurd theory” that does not deserve anyone’s evaluation or interpretation, according to KCNA quoting her press statement, calling it a false rumour spread by its hostile forces.
Continue reading...Targeting posts boasting of personal wealth appears to be part of campaign to ‘purify the internet cultural environment’
Chinese social media companies have launched a new crackdown on user content, targeting posts that show off personal wealth and financial extravagance.
In a statement posted online on Wednesday, Weibo said it had spent this month carrying out special management work on “undesirable value-orientated content”, including content “showing off wealth and worshipping money”.
Continue reading...Hotline set up in Japan’s capital to report sightings of raccoons, which became popular as pets after success of 1970s TV anime series
Having won the battle to tackle Tokyo’s population of giant, ravenous crows, the city’s authorities are now embroiled in an even tougher campaign: to rein in another animal menace, the North American raccoon.
The number of raccoons caught in the capital every year has increased fivefold over the past decade, according to media reports, amid concern about the damage the animals are inflicting on the local ecosystem.
Continue reading...Ukrainian military says its has forced Russia to reduce tempo of offensive; Russian president thanks Xi Jinping for ‘trying to solve Ukraine crisis’. This live blog is closed
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia-China cooperation is not directed against any other power and is a stabilising factor for the world, during his meeting with Xi Jinping.
It is of crucial significance that relations between Russia and China are not opportunistic and are not directed against anyone. Our cooperation in world affairs today acts as one of the main stabilising factors in the international arena.”
In our new journey we intend to remain good neighbours, trusted friends and reliable partners, consistently strengthening the relationship between our two nations … defending international equality.”
Continue reading...Russian leader praises ‘comradely’ talks with Chinese president ahead of concert to mark 75 years of ‘friendship’
Russia and China have announced they will deepen their already close military ties, as Vladimir Putin met Xi Jinping in Beijing on his first foreign trip since being inaugurated for a new term as Russia’s president.
It is the latest in a string of statements and signals that the warm relationship between the two countries is as strong as it has ever been.
Continue reading... submitted by /u/Maxie445 [link] [comments] |
During the Russian leader’s two-day visit, the war in Ukraine, energy and trade will be on the agenda
President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart and “old friend” Xi Jinping as he seeks to deepen ties after launching some of Russia’s most significant incursions into Ukraine since its invasion in 2022.
It is Putin’s second visit to Beijing in less than a year, and his first foreign visit since being sworn in for a new term that will keep him in power until at least 2030. The visit will also celebrate 75 years since the Soviet Union recognised the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Continue reading...Since Dobbs, state-level Republicans have sought to strip power from DAs elected in Democratic cities who won't prosecute abortion care.
The post Republicans Can’t Decide: Do They Hate Prosecutors Because of Bail Reform or Abortion? appeared first on The Intercept.
For 40 years, Amit Shah has been at Narendra Modi’s side – his confidant, consigliere and enforcer. Today he is India’s second-most powerful man, and he is reshaping the country in radical ways
Late one night in November 2005, a small group of plain-clothed police officers pulled over a bus in western India. They escorted off a man named Sohrabuddin Sheikh, who was joined on the side of the road by his wife, Kausar. Sheikh and Kausar were put into separate police cars and driven 600 miles away, across state lines, into Gujarat. They would never see each other again.
Sheikh had not been charged with anything. The Gujarat police did not have any legal grounds to detain him, let alone his wife. Upon reaching Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s most populous city, Sheikh and Kausar were not taken to a police station. They were instead detained in separate bungalows in a residential neighbourhood. Two days later, on 26 November, Sheikh was driven to a highway intersection in south Ahmedabad and shot dead. Police claimed that Sheikh was a member of an Islamist terrorist group and had been shot while trying to escape. Four days after Sheikh’s death, on 29 November, Kausar was killed. Policemen allegedly poisoned her, then carried her body to the Narmada River, where they burned it and dumped the remains in the water.
Continue reading...Opposition say ruling party undermining democracy by using police to harass candidates into not contesting in elections
When the people of Gujarat cast their votes last week in India’s six-week-long election, there was one constituency in the state that stood silent. There were no polling stations or impatient queues of people, and no one with the tell-tale inky finger. In Surat, no voting was necessary – the outcome was already decided.
Mukesh Dalal, from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), won the seat by default after every other candidate was either disqualified or dropped out of the race. It was the first time in 73 years that Surat’s candidate was appointed, not elected.
Continue reading...“We’re continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel and with the government of Egypt to work on this issue,” the State Department said.
The post American Medical Missions Trapped in Gaza, Facing Death by Dehydration as Population Clings to Life appeared first on The Intercept.
Sometimes it’s fruity, sometimes it’s syrupy. It’s usually very sweet. And it’s always full of … tapioca. How did Taiwan’s ‘boba tea’ become such a hit everywhere from Cardiff to Glasgow?
On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the Covent Garden branch of Gong cha is doing a roaring trade. Staff behind the counter are busy preparing drinks for a string of customers, all ordering from an electronic pad in the corner. One leaves with a purple concoction flavoured with the root vegetable taro; another sips on a milky tea laced with brown sugar “pearls”. A third grabs a bright drink tasting of passion fruit and adorned with floating coconut jelly.
It’s a scene being played out more and more as bubble tea shops like Gong cha pop up around the UK. Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, has just got its first (called Just Poppin); in Canterbury, Kent, there are six shops to choose from; and a new branch of American bubble tea brand CoCo recently had dozens of people queueing down Glasgow’s Bath Street.
Continue reading...Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village in Samut Prakan province, Thailand, has been slowly swallowed by the sea over the past few decades. This has led to the relocation of the school and many homes, resulting in a dwindling population. Currently, there are only four students attending the school, often leaving just one in each classroom. The village has experienced severe coastal erosion, causing 1.1-2km (0.5-1.2 miles) of shoreline to disappear since the mid-1950s
Continue reading...Supreme court judges order Arvind Kejriwal’s release until 1 June and question timing of his arrest on corruption charges
One of India’s best-known opposition leaders, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, has been granted bail by the country’s supreme court to allow him to take part in general election campaigningafter being kept behind bars for almost two months.
Kejriwal, who heads the Aam Aadmi party (AAP), has been held in jail since March when he was arrested on money-laundering charges. He has maintained that his arrest and detention was politically motivated to prevent him taking part in the election, which began in April and will continue until June.
Continue reading...As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
Four lawsuits alleging Hamas ties against Students for Justice in Palestine, the AP, UNRWA, and a cryptocurrency exchange share many of the same plaintiffs.
The post October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division” appeared first on The Intercept.
It is the NHS’s worst treatment disaster – with 30,000 patients infected. Two survivors, Ade Goodyear and Andy Evans, explain why it took so long for it to be brought to light
Ade Goodyear was 15 when he was told he had contracted HIV. Like about 30,000 other NHS patients – including more than 300 children – who were given blood transfusions or commercial blood products before 2019, he was infected by contaminated blood. Some patients got HIV and hepatitis C from blood transfusions after childbirth or other medical procedures. Ade was infected with HIV at the medical centre of his school.
Pupils at his Treloar’s college, which had a specialist haemophilia unit, were among those given injections of a blood plasma product called factor VIII concentrate. Concerns had been raised a decade before by the World Health Organization because it was a commercial product that mixed plasma from tens of thousands of often high-risk donors. If one had an infection such as HIV, it could contaminate the whole batch.
Continue reading...At least seven schools have reached an agreement with students around investment transparency and exploring divestment from Israel.
The post Some Universities Chose Violence. Others Responded to Protests by Considering Student Demands. appeared first on The Intercept.
Tenth-grader who participated in social media challenge ingested too much chile pepper extract and died of cardiopulmonary arrest
A Massachusetts teen who participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge on social media died from eating a large quantity of chile pepper extract and also had a congenital heart defect, according to autopsy results obtained by the Associated Press.
Harris Wolobah, a 10th grader from the city of Worcester, died on 1 September 2023 after eating the Paqui chip as part of the manufacturer’s “One Chip Challenge”.
Continue reading...If you can get past the QR code and the long wait for something close to food, you’ve still got to work out where the hell to put it
Modern life presents many challenges: filing electronic tax returns, getting hold of Virgin Media customer services, not drenching the passive-aggressive pedant on the neighbourhood WhatsApp group with digital expletives. But none of that comes even close to the trauma of trying to have a quiet dinner in a modern city-centre hotel room. Every element has been engineered by a disciple of the Marquis de Sade, only one with more spite, and a misunderstanding of ergonomics. Let’s start with the room service menu, which of course now means a QR code. But only if you have a phone signal, which you don’t because the building is a Faraday cage designed to keep out even the slightest waft of 2G. Use the hotel wifi instead, although that means being scraped for every last byte of intimate data you possess and the sweet promise of marketing emails for decades to come. In return for which, it probably won’t work.
But let’s say you get on to the wifi and the QR code does its thing, and the site doesn’t freeze, which it will because it always does. Who knows if the food will arrive? Certainly not the hotel operator. Because the kitchen only takes orders online and no, they can’t put you through and please don’t talk to me like that. Still, after 45 minutes dinner turns up and there’s a green sulphurous ring around the yolk of the over-boiled egg in your Caesar salad, and the over-emulsified dressing looks like it needs a course of antibiotics. But it’s food. Kind of. I wasn’t expecting Le Gavroche.
Continue reading...Sometimes it’s fruity, sometimes it’s syrupy. It’s usually very sweet. And it’s always full of … tapioca. How did Taiwan’s ‘boba tea’ become such a hit everywhere from Cardiff to Glasgow?
On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the Covent Garden branch of Gong cha is doing a roaring trade. Staff behind the counter are busy preparing drinks for a string of customers, all ordering from an electronic pad in the corner. One leaves with a purple concoction flavoured with the root vegetable taro; another sips on a milky tea laced with brown sugar “pearls”. A third grabs a bright drink tasting of passion fruit and adorned with floating coconut jelly.
It’s a scene being played out more and more as bubble tea shops like Gong cha pop up around the UK. Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, has just got its first (called Just Poppin); in Canterbury, Kent, there are six shops to choose from; and a new branch of American bubble tea brand CoCo recently had dozens of people queueing down Glasgow’s Bath Street.
Continue reading...After inquiries from The Intercept, Duane Kees stepped down from his ethics panel position.
The post This U.S. Attorney Resigned Amid an Ethics Investigation. Yet He Wound Up Overseeing Judges’ Ethics. appeared first on The Intercept.
“We’re continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel and with the government of Egypt to work on this issue,” the State Department said.
The post American Medical Missions Trapped in Gaza, Facing Death by Dehydration as Population Clings to Life appeared first on The Intercept.
Survivors pick through debris-littered streets and damaged buildings as rescue workers dispatched amid warning some areas cut off by flooding
More than 300 people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple provinces in Afghanistan, the UN’s World Food Programme said, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured.
Many people remained missing after heavy rains on Friday sent roaring rivers of water and mud crashing through villages and across agricultural land in several provinces, causing what one aid group described as a “major humanitarian emergency”.
Continue reading...South Africa's case against Israel over allegations of genocide before the international court of justice has raised a central question of international law: what is genocide and how do you prove it? It is one of three genocide cases being considered by the UN's world court, but since the genocide convention was approved in 1948, only three instances have been legally recognised as genocide. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back on these historical cases to find out why the crime is so much harder to prove than other atrocities, and what bearing this has on South Africa's case against Israel and future cases
What is the genocide convention and how might it apply to the UK and Israel?
‘Famine is setting in’: UN court orders Israel to unblock Gaza food aid
A weekly email from Yotam Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, Felicity Cloake and Rachel Roddy, featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas
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Continue reading...At least seven schools have reached an agreement with students around investment transparency and exploring divestment from Israel.
The post Some Universities Chose Violence. Others Responded to Protests by Considering Student Demands. appeared first on The Intercept.
“The reality for kids living there is shocking, honestly,” said an official who recently returned from Gaza. “People are living in really squalid conditions.”
The post 600,000 Palestinian Kids in Rafah Can’t “Evacuate” Safely, UNICEF Official Says appeared first on The Intercept.
On the last day of his Huginn mission, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen takes us on a tour of the place he called home for 6 months: the International Space Station. From the beautiful views of Cupola to the kitchen in Node 1 filled with food and friends and all the way to the science of Columbus, the Space Station is the work and living place for astronauts as they help push science forward.
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, direct to your inbox every Thursday
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday
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Continue reading...Imagine a world in which you can do transactions and many other things without having to give your personal information. A world in which you don’t need to rely on banks or governments anymore. Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what blockchain technology allows us to do.
It’s like your computer’s hard drive. blockchain is a technology that lets you store data in digital blocks, which are connected together like links in a chain.
Blockchain technology was originally invented in 1991 by two mathematicians, Stuart Haber and W. Scot Stornetta. They first proposed the system to ensure that timestamps could not be tampered with.
A few years later, in 1998, software developer Nick Szabo proposed using a similar kind of technology to secure a digital payments system he called “Bit Gold.” However, this innovation was not adopted until Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to have invented the first Blockchain and Bitcoin.
A blockchain is a distributed database shared between the nodes of a computer network. It saves information in digital format. Many people first heard of blockchain technology when they started to look up information about bitcoin.
Blockchain is used in cryptocurrency systems to ensure secure, decentralized records of transactions.
Blockchain allowed people to guarantee the fidelity and security of a record of data without the need for a third party to ensure accuracy.
To understand how a blockchain works, Consider these basic steps:
Let’s get to know more about the blockchain.
Blockchain records digital information and distributes it across the network without changing it. The information is distributed among many users and stored in an immutable, permanent ledger that can't be changed or destroyed. That's why blockchain is also called "Distributed Ledger Technology" or DLT.
Here’s how it works:
And that’s the beauty of it! The process may seem complicated, but it’s done in minutes with modern technology. And because technology is advancing rapidly, I expect things to move even more quickly than ever.
Even though blockchain is integral to cryptocurrency, it has other applications. For example, blockchain can be used for storing reliable data about transactions. Many people confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Blockchain already being adopted by some big-name companies, such as Walmart, AIG, Siemens, Pfizer, and Unilever. For example, IBM's Food Trust uses blockchain to track food's journey before reaching its final destination.
Although some of you may consider this practice excessive, food suppliers and manufacturers adhere to the policy of tracing their products because bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella have been found in packaged foods. In addition, there have been isolated cases where dangerous allergens such as peanuts have accidentally been introduced into certain products.
Tracing and identifying the sources of an outbreak is a challenging task that can take months or years. Thanks to the Blockchain, however, companies now know exactly where their food has been—so they can trace its location and prevent future outbreaks.
Blockchain technology allows systems to react much faster in the event of a hazard. It also has many other uses in the modern world.
Blockchain technology is safe, even if it’s public. People can access the technology using an internet connection.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had all your data stored at one place and that one secure place got compromised? Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to prevent your data from leaking out even when the security of your storage systems is compromised?
Blockchain technology provides a way of avoiding this situation by using multiple computers at different locations to store information about transactions. If one computer experiences problems with a transaction, it will not affect the other nodes.
Instead, other nodes will use the correct information to cross-reference your incorrect node. This is called “Decentralization,” meaning all the information is stored in multiple places.
Blockchain guarantees your data's authenticity—not just its accuracy, but also its irreversibility. It can also be used to store data that are difficult to register, like legal contracts, state identifications, or a company's product inventory.
Blockchain has many advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about blockchain in this section.
Blockchain is not a cryptocurrency but a technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. It's a digital ledger that records every transaction seamlessly.
Yes, blockchain can be theoretically hacked, but it is a complicated task to be achieved. A network of users constantly reviews it, which makes hacking the blockchain difficult.
Coinbase Global is currently the biggest blockchain company in the world. The company runs a commendable infrastructure, services, and technology for the digital currency economy.
Blockchain is a decentralized technology. It’s a chain of distributed ledgers connected with nodes. Each node can be any electronic device. Thus, one owns blockhain.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is powered by Blockchain technology while Blockchain is a distributed ledger of cryptocurrency
Generally a database is a collection of data which can be stored and organized using a database management system. The people who have access to the database can view or edit the information stored there. The client-server network architecture is used to implement databases. whereas a blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, stored in a distributed system. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, timestamp and transaction information. Modification of data is not allowed due to the design of the blockchain. The technology allows decentralized control and eliminates risks of data modification by other parties.
Blockchain has a wide spectrum of applications and, over the next 5-10 years, we will likely see it being integrated into all sorts of industries. From finance to healthcare, blockchain could revolutionize the way we store and share data. Although there is some hesitation to adopt blockchain systems right now, that won't be the case in 2022-2023 (and even less so in 2026). Once people become more comfortable with the technology and understand how it can work for them, owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs alike will be quick to leverage blockchain technology for their own gain. Hope you like this article if you have any question let me know in the comments section
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