Hey all! Friendly neighborhood mod here!

I've just been added to this group, "Worldnews", in addition to my existing group "World", along with @[email protected] (HEY SQUID!)

The reason being, the mods here had effectively retired. Hurts, the lead mod, stepped away and hadn't been active for MONTHS, and post and comment reports were PILING up, to a point where the Admins asked in our Discord chat going "Hey, what's going on with worldnews?"

Which left ME confused, because "world" has a friendly name of "World News" and is generally up to date on the report queue unless two users are engaging in:

https://youtu.be/17ocaZb-bGg

Which, (sigh), happens way more often than I'd like, but what are you going to do?

Before they left 5 months ago, Hurts had pinned a question asking, basically, "Do we NEED world AND worldnews?" which I think is a valid question.

There are some key differences, world doesn't accept video links or text pieces, but there's no rule against that in worldnews, so it's a little more free-form than world, although both require legitimate news sources.

So for now, consider the discussion OPEN! Keep them both? Close one or the other?

The volume difference is pretty dramatic:

world:

worldnews:

"Looking at Gaza, it almost appears that the four horsemen are galloping across it."
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2024-03-24/secretary-generals-press-encounter-the-foreign-minister-of-egypt

@worldnews

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/21905961

By Matthias Williams and John Irish March 19, 20244:34 AM GMT+5:30Updated 17 hours ago

Putin wins 87% of vote in weekend election, says Kremlin Western governments say election was rigged, undemocratic Condemn holding of election in occupied Ukraine regions China, North Korea, India, Iran congratulate Putin

LONDON, March 18 (Reuters) - Western governments lined up on Monday to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin's landslide reelection as unfair and undemocratic, but China, India and North Korea congratulated the veteran leader on extending his rule by a further six years.

The contrasting reactions underscored the geopolitical fault lines that have gaped wider since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, triggering the deepest crisis in relations with the West since the end of the Cold War.

Arriving in Brussels on Monday, EU foreign ministers roundly dismissed the election result as a sham ahead of agreeing sanctions on individuals linked to the mistreatment and death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

"Russia's election was an election without choice," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at the start of the meeting.

Playing on Moscow's reference to its war in Ukraine as a "special military operation", French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said Paris had taken note of the "special election operation". Advertisement · Scroll to continue "The conditions for a free, pluralistic and democratic election were not met," his ministry said.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the election outcome highlighted the "depth of repression" in Russia.

"Putin removes his political opponents, controls the media, and then crowns himself the winner. This is not democracy," Cameron said. France, Britain and others condemned the fact that Russia had also held its election in occupied regions of Ukraine that it claims to have annexed during the war.

The Kremlin dismissed such criticism, saying the 87% of the vote won by Putin during the three-day election showed the Russian people were consolidating around him. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia's election had no legitimacy. President Vladimir Putin speaks after polling stations closed in Moscow. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab "It is clear to everyone in the world that this figure (Putin)... is simply sick for power and is doing everything to rule forever," Zelenskiy said. U.S. President Joe Biden has not yet commented but a White House spokesperson on Sunday said Russia's election was "obviously not free nor fair".

OUTSIDE WEST, PUTIN CONGRATULATED In sharp contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Putin, and said Beijing would maintain close communication with Moscow to promote the "no limits" partnership they agreed in 2022, just before Russia invaded Ukraine. "I believe that under your leadership, Russia will certainly be able to achieve greater achievements in national development and construction," Xi told Putin in his message, according to Xinhua News. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered his congratulations on Putin's "decisive" victory and the Kremlin said the two men expressed readiness on the telephone to pursue their "effective coordination" in the OPEC+ oil producers group. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi echoed that message, saying he looked forward to strengthening New Delhi's "time-tested special and privileged strategic partnership" with Moscow. India and China, along with Russia, are members of the BRICS group of emerging economies that aims to challenge U.S. domination of the global economy. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, accused by the West of supplying weapons to Russia, also extended congratulations to Putin, stressing their desire for further expansion of bilateral relations with Moscow. In Africa, where the West has been struggling to win support for its efforts to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine war, some newspapers saw Putin's re-election as reinforcing the stance of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Those three states in the Sahel region have strengthened ties with Russia following coups in recent years at the expense of their traditional French and U.S. allies. "In Africa, this re-election could sound like a non-event, but given the context in the Sahel it takes on a particular meaning, because Putin embodies the new geopolitical balance of power on the continent with a growing (Russian) presence and influence," said Burkina Faso daily Aujourd'hui au Faso". The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here. Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Matthias Williams in London and John Irish in Paris Editing by Gareth Jones and David Gregorio.

Nobody seems to be talking about the continuing genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar nor India's heartless and illegal current actions.

“Refoulement is against international human rights law, regardless of if you’ve signed the refugee convention" - John Quinley III, director of international rights group

"The times of peace are over, the post-war era is over. We live in new times - in the pre-war era; for some of our brothers, this is no longer even the pre-war era, but the period of full-scale war in its most cruel version," Tusk said.

Israel’s documented torture and abuse of Palestinians may evoke comparisons to US tactics employed during the Iraqi occupation, but a closer look reveals their distinct origins rooted in the Zionist entity.

Police in Australia have charged a 45-year-old man with assault after a video clip went viral appearing to show him standing in front of young Indigenous children whom he'd restrained with zip ties.

Western Australia Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Rod Wilde said police received a call Tuesday afternoon from a resident in the town of Broome, who reported that children — later said to be aged six, seven and eight — were swimming without permission in an "unoccupied pool" at a neighboring property.

Ten minutes later, the police said they received a second call from the man, telling them he'd restrained the children for causing damage at the same location.

The two leaders were a few hundred metres away when the port of Odesa was struck in lethal attack

Heavily armed gangs tried to seize control of Haiti’s main international airport on Monday, exchanging gunfire with police and soldiers in the latest attack on key government sites in an explosion of violence that includes a mass escape from the country’s two biggest prisons.

The Toussaint Louverture International Airport was closed when the attack occurred, with no planes operating and no passengers on site.

Associated Press journalists saw an armored truck on the tarmac shooting at gangs to try and prevent them from entering airport grounds as scores of employees and other workers fled from whizzing bullets.

Kremlin claims audio of officers discussing UK help with missiles shows involvement of ‘collective west’

British soldiers are “on the ground” in Ukraine helping Kyiv’s forces fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles, according to a leak in Russian media of a top-secret call involving German air force officers.

The Kremlin said the leak demonstrated the direct involvement of the “collective west” in the war in Ukraine, while former British defence ministers expressed frustration with the German military in response to the revelations.

Released on Friday by the editor of the Kremlin-controlled news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, the audio recording – confirmed as authentic by Germany – captures Luftwaffe officers discussing how Berlin’s Taurus missiles could be used to try to blow up the Kerch Bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea.

Penalty for breaching competition law is four times higher than forecast as Brussels looks to send message to tech firms

Apple has been fined €1.8bn (£1.5bn) by the EU after an investigation found it had limited competition from music streaming services such as Spotify.

The fine is nearly four times higher than expected as the European Commission attempts to show it will act decisively on tech companies who abuse their dominant position in the market for online services.

The European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said a smaller fine would have been nothing more than the equivalent of a parking fine and the €1.8bn was designed to act as a deterrent against a repetition of such practices by Apple or others.

Eiffel Tower lit up to mark change, seen as way of protecting law that decriminalised abortion in 1975

The French parliament has enshrined abortion as a constitutional right at a historic joint session at the Palace of Versailles.

Out of 925 MPs and senators eligible to vote, 780 supported the amendment, which will give women the “guaranteed freedom” to choose an abortion.

There was thunderous applause in the chamber as the result was announced on Monday; in central Paris, the Eiffel Tower was illuminated to mark the occasion.

The measure had already been passed by the upper and lower houses, the Sénat and the Assemblée Nationale, but final approval by parliamentarians at the joint session at Versailles was needed to effect constitutional change.

Photographer Kirsty Mackay’s project The Magic Money Tree explores the impact of poverty in the Black Country, South Shields and Bristol

In 2023 I set out to document the UK’s cost of living crisis. I had a picture in my mind that what we were experiencing was the culmination of 13 years of Conservative governments. The work is titled The Magic Money Tree after Theresa May’s words on BBC Question Time: “There isn’t a magic money tree that suddenly delivers all the money everybody wants.”

A 500 percent fuel price hike will take effect in Cuba this week, a month later than initially planned, the government of the cash-strapped island nation said Wednesday.

Finance Minister Vladimir Regueiro announced via government mouthpiece Granma that the higher prices will enter into force on Friday, March 1.

The price of electricity will rise by 25 percent from the same date for the country's biggest consumers, he added.

Havana had announced a five-fold increase in the fuel price from February 1 as part of a series of measures seeking to cut the communist-run nation's budget deficit.

Emmanuel Macron sure knows how to make a headline.

But did the French president, who once called Nato brain dead, really mean it when he said this week that Europe shouldn’t rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine to prevent Russia winning the war? Was it a trial balloon, an off-the-cuff soundbite uncoordinated with allies, or the start of a real strategic debate?

As ever, Macron’s bazooka had several targets: forcing European partners to consider how far they are prepared to go to avert a Russian victory; pressuring the US to go on arming Ukraine; keeping the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, off balance; hitting back at German criticism of France’s modest spending on assistance to Kyiv; and trying to wrongfoot domestic opponents in the forthcoming European parliament election campaign.

Above all, the French leader was grasping for the mantle of leadership of European and western support for Ukraine, just as US assistance is stymied by a Republican blockade in Congress at the behest of Donald Trump before the presidential election campaign.

A Russian-American detained in Russia on a treason charge carrying up to 20 years in prison told her boyfriend "it's safe there" before she travelled to see relatives in Yekaterinburg, the woman's former mother-in-law said.

A Russian court on Thursday rejected an appeal by Ksenia Karelina, a 32-year-old resident of Los Angeles, who was detained by the FSB security service on suspicion of raising funds for Ukraine's armed forces.

Karelina's lawyer had asked the court to lift her detention and replace it with house arrest, state news agency RIA said.

Global carbon pollution from energy hit a record high last year, driven partly by increased fossil fuel use in countries where droughts restricted hydropower production, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) report published Thursday.

Steep cuts in carbon emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, will be needed in the coming years if targets to limit a global rise in temperatures and prevent runaway climate change are to be met, scientists have said.

“Far from falling rapidly — as is required to meet the global climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement — CO2 emissions reached a new record high,” the IEA said in the report.

Global emissions from energy rose by 410 million metric tons, or 1.1%, in 2023 to 37.4 billion metric tons, the IEA analysis showed.

France shut several schools in October last year over concern about bedbug infestations. France has blamed the Kremlin for spreading misinformation about the pests.

The panic that gripped France in the fall of 2023 over the alleged spread of bed bugs was amplified by disinformation on social media accounts linked to the Russian state, a French minister said Friday, March 1.

The comments by Europe Minister Jean-Noël Barrot followed growing warnings from France about the dangers of Russian disinformation particularly aimed at undermining support for Ukraine as it fights the invasion.

"The issue of bedbugs was artificially amplified on social networks by accounts that have been established to be of Russian inspiration or origin," he told TF1 television. "It was very largely amplified by accounts linked to the Kremlin," he added.