Miscellaneous News

plawolf said:

Because this is a game between China and America. What the people living in Taiwan wants and chose are frankly irrelevant and entirely ignorable at this point.

Even if a pro-reunification candidate wins with a 99% majority, the CIA will just assassinate him/her and stage a coup or similar other crisis to justify direct military intervention to stop peaceful reunification.

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In the Treasure pawn shop in Kyiv, Oleksandra, 40, a well turned out woman in a hooded wool coat and Nike trainers, has come to redeem her sewing machines. Like all those visiting the store, she does not want to give her family name.

She says that when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, she was working as an accountant for a firm that employed 14 people, who were all laid off because of the conflict. Since then she has struggled to find regular work. With savings running out, like many others in Kyiv, she turned to pawning her possessions to get by, only finding a job a year later that allowed her to claim back her machines.

As Oleksandra leaves clutching her belongings, save for a mobile phone she has decided not to redeem, the cashier, Oleksandr Stepanov, remarks from behind his hardened glass window that on a busy day the shop can get 50 people coming in to surrender mobile phones and household appliances.

Those who can afford it, he says, will come back to get their goods within two weeks. Almost half, he adds, will not, leaving Treasure to sell on the items from a back room with displays of phones and watches. “People are struggling because of the war. They don’t have money.” Many have lost their jobs, he says, while prices have skyrocketed even for those who have jobs.

The scene in the pawn shop illustrates the crisis of growing poverty in Ukraine, the reality of which stands in contrast to the surface bustle of Kyiv’s busy restaurants and bars where it is often hard to get a table, with many living a precarious existence.

Poverty increased from 5.5% to 24.2% in Ukraine in 2022, pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty with the worst impact out of sight in rural villages, according to a recent report by the World Bank. With unemployment unofficially at 36% and inflation hitting 26.6% at the end of 2022, the institution’s regional country director for eastern Европа, Arup Banerji, had warned that poverty could soar.

Behind his window in Treasure, Stepanov describes the hardships experienced even by those who have work. “The price of everything has gone up. Food is the most expensive and then it is fuel for the car. Some things have gone up by 40-50%. Before the war my wife would go to the supermarket to shop and it would cost 200 hryvnia, now the same shop costs 400-500.”

For those in the most difficult circumstances that has meant relying on handouts, no matter how small. In the town of Irpin just outside Kyiv, the most visible sign of the poverty crisis can be found at a protestant church in the town where priests have set up six distribution centres for free bread across the area.

There, on most days, about 500 people can be found queuing for a free loaf, with tables and a tent also set up outside the centre on the day the Guardian visits, offering free secondhand shoes, secondhand clothes and children’s toys.

One resident of Irpin, Veronika Pravyk is looking through the clothes and trying to find free nappies and baby milk for her toddler, which are sometimes available but not today. She tells a typical story. Working in retail before the war, the 30-year-old lost her job and fled with her family to Spain for six months where she burned through her savings before returning to Ukraine in the autumn.

“I’m not working but my husband is,” she says. “But all the prices have gone up because of the war and my husband’s salary buys less than it used to because of the falling exchange rate with the dollar. We still have to find the money to pay for our apartment and to heat it during this past winter. I just never imagined we would be living like this. Before the war we managed everything. It’s very difficult and everyone is suffering the same.”

The economist Olena Bilan sees a deepening crisis, but says that without a huge package of financial support from the international community, including pledges worth $43bn (£34bn), the situation would be worse.

“We’ve seen GDP decline by 30% in large part because Ukraine exports 80% of its goods through ports it no longer has access too. We’ve had inflation of 26% – again which could have been worse – but people’s salaries have also been flat and the currency has devalued against the dollar by 20%. The biggest challenge is going to be how to create new jobs.”

In Irpin, the long queue, snaking under the trees, to pick up loaves imprinted with the word “victory” is thinning. At one of the clothes stalls, a church volunteer, Larysa Kuzhel, 58, is not optimistic.

“I think it is going to get more difficult especially for the younger people. The pensioners who you see here get support. It’s only $50 a month but it is something. But it is the younger people who have lost their jobs who are really suffering.”

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US military is tracking another mysterious balloon​

May 1, 2023, 12:56 PM MDT
The U.S. military is tracking a mysterious balloon that flew over American soil, but it’s not clear what it is or whom it belongs to, according to three U.S. officials.

The object flew across portions of Hawaii but did not go over any sensitive areas, the officials said.

The U.S. military has been tracking it since late last week and has determined that it poses no threat to aerial traffic or national security and is not communicating signals, one official said.

It's not clear if it's a weather balloon or something else, the official said, adding that the U.S. could still shoot it down if it nears land.

The object, which does not appear to have maneuverability, is moving slow

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Will US politicians be able to throw a spanner into the works of other Chinese cloud service providers? Perhaps. They could force US companies including Salesforce, IBM, VMware and Fortinet to sever their ties with Alibaba Cloud, just as they forced Oracle to sever its ties with Huawei.

That prompted Huawei to develop its own

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, which it announced in April. Something similar would probably happen if Alibaba Cloud were put on the Entity List managed by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).

Being put on the list can be a serious problem, but it also forces the targeted company to try harder. In the Global South and other parts of the world where US sanctions are not recognized, it might be called the BIS Certificate of Quality.

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US religious freedom panel again recommends India for blacklist​

The commission said the Afghan group “violates the freedom of religion or belief of religious minorities; women; members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community; and Afghans with differing interpretations of Islam”.

In Nigeria, the report focused on several blasphemy convictions in 2022 as well as mob violence related to allegations of blasphemy.

In Syria, the panel highlighted government violence against the Druze communities amid the country’s ongoing civil war.

In Vietnam, the commission said, “authorities intensified their control and persecution of religious groups”, including Montagnard and Hmong Protestants, Cao Dai followers, Hoa Hao Buddhists, Unified Buddhists and other religious groups not registered with the government.

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ansy1968 said:

The new guidelines focus on military coordination across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace, while the administration will also transfer three C-130 aircraft and look to send additional patrol vessels.

I bet you those C-130 are surplus aircraft and a flying coffin and three only three, Yup Filipino soldiers lives are cheap and I said before those US promises and pledges are full of shit and there will be regrets and recrimination and guess who will bear the brunt of those anger.

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Jul 4, 2021 — The Lockheed C-130 Hercules was one of two ex-US Air Force aircraft handed over to the Philippines as part of military assistance this year.

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KYli said:

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solarz said:

What's up with all these Wumao articles from Yahoo? Did Yahoo get infiltrated by the SeeSeePee?

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plawolf said:

I wonder if the entitled smoothbrain that wrote that piece will get a 50% pay cut?

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