Miscellaneous News

tokenanalyst said:

This entire region is getting closer and closer on seeing average 50 degree celsius weeks long heat waves. That will be Death Valley temperatures

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That is not counting the risk that AMOC could collapse that would bring brutal Canadian type winters and Sahara type summers.

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Chevalier said:

I can’t help but wonder if this whole “Chinese caste” thing wasn’t a sanctioned Indian cyber task force op as a ploy to attack China, only to have it backfire and lead to the vast majority of the world look st Indias caste system.

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siegecrossbow said:

Time to invest in air conditioning.

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Critics denounced the RN plan as opportunistic and uncosted. They say the populist right was the last to recognise the reality of climate change, so it has little credibility today when it talks about its effects.

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French hospitals and schools are also only rarely equipped. Thousands of schools have had to shut this week, and medical and nursing staff complain of conditions fast becoming intolerable.

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Air conditioning creates political divide after France records hottest day​

With temperatures soaring, France is being forced to re-think its longstanding reservations about one possible answer to climate change: air-con.

This week debate about la clim (climatisation) has once again burst out, with Marine Le Pen on the populist right urging a mass subsidised roll-out and traditionally hostile Greens conceding that some air-conditioning may now be inevitable.

Currently the country has a low take-up, with only 25% of households equipped with an air-con unit. In Spain and Italy the figure is 50%, and in the US and Japan 90%.

French hospitals and schools are also only rarely equipped. Thousands of schools have had to shut this week, and medical and nursing staff complain of conditions fast becoming intolerable.

But with temperatures nudging 40C - Tuesday was France's hottest day on record - there has been a rush to buy portable air-conditioning appliances, just to let children enjoy a few hours in class, or for suffocating apartment-dwellers to make it through the night.

And more and more, it seems, long-standing opponents of air-conditioning - mainly on the environmentalist left - recognise that it is bound to be part of the country's response to global warming.

This week the head of the Ecologists party Marie Tondelier broke something of a taboo when she said that air-conditioning would be needed in schools and hospitals.

"There are places where we just can't do without it now," she said.

Her break with what she called "anti-clim dogma" is significant because until now the Green movement in France has regarded air-conditioning as the worst of solutions to climate change.

Far from attacking the root causes of global-warming, activists said, recourse to la clim was merely attenuating the effects of global-warming.

And by making those effects more bearable, it distracted from the essential fight against the causes.

Not only that, but air-conditioning is often criticised by environmentalists for aggravating climate change.

This is because it requires electricity to run - and though most of France's electricity comes from nuclear power, elsewhere it means more fossil-fuels being burned.

There is also the question of the refrigerant gases used in air-conditioning, which are greenhouse gases and often leak.

And there is the urban heating effect, caused by the expulsion of hot air onto the street.

Arguments rage, but some studies suggest this can raise city temperatures by two or three degrees.

Suspicion of air-conditioning has also infiltrated government policy.

New building and renovation norms focus quite naturally on insulation, greenery and hi-tech methods for air-circulation - with the express aim of making air-conditioning unnecessary.

A giant new hospital being built in the Brittany city of Nantes for example will have air-conditioning in only half its rooms, provoking the wrath of medical trade unions.

"In the environmental context, we should have la clim everywhere," said Olivier Terrien of the CGT union.

According to Valerie Pécresse, the conservative president of the Paris regional council, "The state operates under an anti-clim ideology. But air-conditioning has got to be brought into the picture, along with other methods for creating cool."

Pécresse, who controls Paris regional transport, hopes to have all buses and trains equipped with aircon by 2032, and she castigates her Socialist predecessor for failing to see its importance.

The political right has always been more pro-clim than the left - and none more so than the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen.

This week she has been calling for a nationwide "plan clim" to equip all schools and hospitals with air-conditioning.

According to RN spokesman Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the plan would also include government-backed interest-free loans worth €20bn ($22.7bn; £17.2bn) to allow 30 to 40 million householders to install cooling units.

Critics denounced the RN plan as opportunistic and uncosted. They say the populist right was the last to recognise the reality of climate change, so it has little credibility today when it talks about its effects.

But the truth is that with temperatures approaching danger levels in France, with lives at stake and schools and hospitals at risk of breakdown - everyone is coming to the same conclusion: that more clim is inevitable.

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FriedButter said:

Meanwhile, this is apparently a major political problem in France. The political left faction is hesitant for air conditioning meanwhile the political right faction wants air conditioning after denying climate change for decades.

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Thecore said:

French people needed AC a LONG TIME AGO. I went to Paris in the mid-2000's and rode the metro before they started adding AC (which apparently has only been added to 50% of the network as of today). I will NEVER forget the combination of intense Frenchman B.O. combined with migraine inducing heavy perfumes and colognes that everyone wore. It was really noticeable in indoor buildings like stores and restaurants as well. Most French do not wear deodorant, despite having the Caucasian apocrine gland genes that would necessitate it, and most French women do not shave their pits. I've never been to India (and never plan to) but I would not be surprised if the olfactory delights one can experience from both countries are comparable.

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Ringsword said:

Just wondering ...how much RE's can one stuff up one's Japanese rectum or swallow condoms full of RE's before the pain/toxic effects or simple agonizing discomfort is apparent to all -especially Chinese Border Security??Tenno Heika Banzai indeed.

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‘China Initiative 2.0’: US crackdown on Chinese scholars intensifies​

Published: 7:11am, 24 Jun 2026Updated: 7:12am, 24 Jun 2026​

Immigration lawyers and activists claim the Trump Administration has ramped up its targeting of Chinese scientists and researchers in US​

Leading immigration lawyers and activists say the US government has intensified its crackdown on Chinese scientists and researchers – a campaign they argue is even more aggressive than the controversial “China Initiative” launched during US President

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first term. “I think now we are clearly in an era of China Initiative 2.0,” said Robert Fisher, a former Assistant US Attorney and a partner at Nixon Peabody, a Boston-based international law firm.​

The initiative, launched by the Trump administration in 2018 to counter alleged Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft, was scrapped in 2022 after drawing criticism for disproportionately targeting Chinese scholars and

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researchers. Speaking at an online panel hosted by the Asian-American Scholar Forum on Tuesday, Fisher said he was witnessing a “large uptick” in federal and state investigations involving China-linked researchers, scientists and professors, though he noted that most had not yet resulted in indictments or prosecutions.​

“I have many, many folks who are under investigation, whether a search warrant was executed on their home or they’ve been stopped at the border,” he added. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has intensified its scrutiny of Chinese scholars on national security and health safety grounds through a series of arrests, investigations, border stops and visa restrictions.

Chinese researchers arrested, charged by FBI in recent months​

In recent months, the

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arrested and charged several Chinese researchers connected to American universities, including the University of Michigan and Indiana University, accusing them of smuggling biological materials and hiding research ties to China’s state institutions.
The

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secured at least three guilty plea deals, including the latest case involving Indiana University research scholar Youhuang Xiang.

In November, the FBI arrested Xiang at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on allegations that he smuggled samples of Escherichia coli (E coli) bacteria into the

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and concealed his membership in the Communist Party. His J-1 scholar visa was subsequently revoked, and he spent the next four months in detention. In April, Xiang entered a guilty plea agreement with prosecutors and was ordered deported to

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. “Xiang intentionally exploited his access to laboratory facilities at one of Indiana’s flagship research universities, and the privileges of his J‑1 visa status, to illegally smuggle biological materials into the United States,” said Tom Wheeler, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana in April.

However, Indiana University Bloomington Association of University Professors (AAUP) disputed the government’s contention. “Colleagues of Dr Xiang note that the charges against him reflect a troubling mischaracterisation of a common and routine method of obtaining research samples,” it said in a statement. “It should outrage everybody,” said Justin Sadowsky, legal director at the Chinese-American Legal Defence Alliance. “This guy ends up spending four months in prison because he didn’t disclose something on a customs form.” The crackdown has also led to more severe consequences. In March, Chinese semiconductor researcher

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shortly after being questioned by US federal law enforcement.

The Chinese government publicly raised concerns over the issue, saying that the US had “overstretched” the concept of national security. “We are deeply distressed by this tragedy,”

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, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, told the South China Morning Post. Legal experts also pointed to the geopolitical dimension of the current situation, noting that researchers in sensitive fields of US-China competition, including

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,

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,

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, biotech and materials science, face increased scrutiny.

US Congress looks to limit research ties with China-linked entities​

Beyond executive action, a powerful bipartisan consensus in

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is driving the push to limit research ties with China-linked entities.
Lawmakers have introduced multiple bills specifically targeting economic espionage and intellectual property theft, mirroring the framework of the original 2018 China Initiative.

“The message is very clear and loud. Do not work with China,” said Clay Zhu, a California-based lawyer. “It has created an atmosphere of fear, and the chilling effect has been working so far.” Zhu compared the administration’s current approach with China Initiative 1.0, arguing that enforcement has shifted from criminal prosecutions to civil actions. “I think it’s achieving its goal. It has not attracted so much public attention. It’s quieter, but it’s more effective,” he emphasised.

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Iran and Pakistan share deep commonalities in their aspirations and hopes. Pakistan's tireless efforts to promote peace in the region are rooted in the rich culture of this country. During my trip to Pakistan to appreciate Pakistan's mediations, we discussed expanding interactions with my brothers Asif Zardari, Shehbaz Sharif, and Asim Munir.

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Ringsword said:

Just wondering ...how much RE's can one stuff up one's Japanese rectum or swallow condoms full of RE's before the pain/toxic effects or simple agonizing discomfort is apparent to all -especially Chinese Border Security??Tenno Heika Banzai indeed.

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