Leftovers

• James G ☛ JUnited

  JUnited, proposed by Robert Birming, is a challenge described as a "blog love letter". Throughout the month of June, participants are invited to share one blog post a day from another blogger that they have read and enjoyed and collect them in a list for others to read. Robert suggests collecting one's JUnited entries on a single page, so as to make it easy for others to see what you have listed for the month.

• Rlang ☛ Public Pinball Machines per Capita: A new global indicator

  There are tons of well-known global indicators. We’ve all heard of gross domestic product, life expectancy, rate of literacy, etc. But, ever since I discovered pinballmap.com, possibly the world’s most comprehensive database of public pinball locations, I’ve been thinking about a potential new global indicator: Public Pinball Machines per Capita. Thanks to Pinball Map’s well-documented public API, this indicator is now a reality!

• Jan Lukas Else ☛ My fluctuating interests

  It seems like my interests fluctuate a lot. I have a topic that interests me, do a lot of research, learn many new things, get excited. And then suddenly another topic pops up, which at the same time reduces my interest in the previous topics.

  Am I just curious and my curiosity is simply sated after a while?

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: JF Martin

  This is the 41st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have JF Martin and his blog, blog.numericcitizen.me

• Bryan Lunduke ☛ Leaked documents from Disney's Club Penguin (Over 800 MB)

  Yesterday, I was made aware of a leaked archive of internal documents from within Disney -- specifically focusing on Club Penguin (the extremely popular, online children's game which ran from 2005 through 2017).

  This leak -- consisting of over 800 MB of PDFs and archived, internal documentation webpages -- was posted anonymously to 4chan. So, naturally, I fired up a virtual machine (better safe than sorry when dealing with files from unknown sources) and downloaded every byte.

• Bryan Lunduke ☛ New York Times Source Code Leaked (and verified)

  Over 3.6 Million files totaling over 334 GB. And it's real. Source code. Documentation. Markdown files. The works.

• Citizen Lab ☛ Op-ed by Kate Robertson and Ron Deibert in The Globe and Mail

  The Parliament of Canada is expected to move forward with Bill C-26, which aims to improve the country’s cyber readiness.

• New York Times ☛ Bertien van Manen’s Glimpses of the World

  Using point-and-shoot cameras, she traveled to China, Russia and the coal mines of Kentucky to capture everyday life.

• Citizen Lab ☛ Op-ed by Kate Robertson and Ron Deibert in The Globe and Mail

  The Parliament of Canada is expected to move forward with Bill C-26, which aims to improve the country’s cyber readiness.

• Tedium ☛ Let’s Bring Back Small Tools

  Thoughts on the misadventure of udm14, or what I hope to gain from successfully reviving the single-serving site for a couple of weeks.

  In the past two and a half weeks or so, I’ve found the interest in my pseudo-search engine udm14 fascinating. It solved one simple issue for a lot of people—the type of folks who see digging into the settings on their web browser as scary—and it was simple and clean enough that a lot of regular people could figure it out.

  And as a result it’s seen close to 250,000 unique visits in two and a half weeks, a number that blows my mind. (It finally appears to be slowing down somewhat, making now a good time for a postmortem.) It usually takes me six months to hit a number like that with Tedium, and that’s with posts that get shared semi-frequently.

• The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's young shamans revive ancient tradition with social control media

  More than half of South Korea's population of 51 million is not religiously affiliated, polls show.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ The Night Time Sky

  When I was a kid, my Dad used to take us outside to look for what he called “UFOs”. It’d take a moment, but after enough searching we’d eventually spot one.

  One night, all of us kids were outside with our uncle. We saw a star-like light moving in a slow, linear fashion across the night sky. One of us said, “Look, a UFO!” My uncle, a bit confused, said “That’s not a UFO, that’s a satellite.”

  Dad, you sneaky customer.

  Fast forward to 2024. I was recently in the mountains in Colorado where the night sky was crisp and clear. I squinted and started looking for “UFOs”.

  They were everywhere!

  It seemed as though any patch of sky I looked at, I could spot four to six satellites whose paths were cross-crossing at any given moment. It made me think of Coruscant from Star Wars.

• Standards/Consortia

  • New York Times ☛ Japan Runs on Vending Machines. It’s About to Break Millions of Them.

    But the machine’s days are numbered. Japan is set to introduce a new set of bank notes this summer, something it does every 20 years or so to thwart counterfeiters. The machine, already too old to accept recent coin designs, won’t accept the new bills, Mr. Nishitani said.

    “There’s nothing wrong with the vending machine,” he said, expressing frustration with the need to buy an expensive new unit compatible with the new notes. Image

• Science

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Is the diamond losing its sparkle?

    Jewellery startups like Adaida Diamonds by Darshana Balagopal contribute to lab-grown diamond sales rising from 2% in 2018 to 10% last year (data from diamond analyst Paul Ziminsky). Darshana shares, “We had humble beginnings, hoping to craft 50 rings in our first year but the demand was so big that in our first few months itself we had a massive surge in our numbers.” She adds, “It’s a digital age, so customers are coming to us with a strong understanding of what they want. Many of them have ethical concerns about mined diamonds, while for others it’s about budget and achieving high impact.”

    Lab-grown diamond market to hit USD 37.32 billion by 2028. NAC focuses on quality and affordability.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Have Discovered a New Way to Levitate Water

    "Our results defied even our own imaginations."

• Education

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Over 13.4 million Chinese students sit university entrance exams in biggest ‘gaokao’ ever

    Mothers in crimson dresses and fathers clutching umbrellas huddled together in drizzly Beijing after sending their children into an exam hall on Friday, the first day of China’s biggest ever “gaokao” tests that will shape the futures of millions of high school kids.

  • France24 ☛ Record number of Chinese high schoolers start all-important ‘gaokao’ exams

    Mothers in crimson dresses and fathers clutching umbrellas huddled together in drizzly Beijing after sending their children into an exam hall on Friday, the first day of China's biggest "gaokao" tests that will shape the futures of millions of high school kids.

  • The Hindu ☛ A writer in Wayanad sets a model for setting up village libraries

    Harris Nenmeni, a Malayalam writer from Wayanad, is in an elated mood as he has accomplished his mission: to collect maximum number of worthy books to set up a library in his village for the young generation.

    The one-man army travelled nearly 2,642 km across the State to collect as many as 1,430 books, worth more than ₹4 lakh, from his literary circle, friends, readers, and well-wishers.

  • Olimex ☛ If you are near Amsterdam tonight at 20:00 there is great event at Pakhuis de Zwijger with Frederico Faggin – the father of the first processor Intel 4004 and later Intel 8080 Intel 8080 and Z80! It’s a one in a lifetime opportunity to meet one of the most influencing person in Computer industry.

    Frederico Faggin is mostly known as the father of the first ever microprocessor Intel 4004 back in 1971.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Do students need facts or stories?

    Somehow, Neil Postman saw it coming. His 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, predicted that people would become so consumed by entertainment that they would be rendered unable to have serious discussions about serious issues. Postman was worried about television; he didn’t live to see social media kick those fears into hyperdrive. Now Amusing Ourselves to Death has become a stock reference for commentators trying to explain life amid an onslaught of memes and influencers.

  • Vox ☛ College presidents struggled under the pressure of Israel-Palestine

    The role of the college president has always been complex and difficult. The sheer breadth of stakeholders they manage, from students and faculty to alumni, trustees, donors, and state and federal regulators, illustrates the magnitude of their responsibilities.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ UP Xtreme i14 SBC offers defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra 5/7 Meteor Lake SoC, up to 64GB LPDDR5 for robotics and AIoT applications

    AAEON has launched the UP Xtreme i14 SBC based on a choice of defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra 5/7 Meteor Lake SoCs, up to 64GB LPDDR5, M.2 PCIe sockets and a SATA port for storage, 2.5GbE and GbE interfaces, four 8K capable video output ports (HDMI, DP, and USB-C), a MIPI CSI camera interface, and more. The 14th defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra 5/7 SoC features up to 16 cores, defective chip maker Intel Arc graphics, and an defective chip maker Intel Hey Hi (AI) Boost NPU that deliver up to 32 TOPS combined and make the UP Xtreme i14 board especially suitable for applications such as Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR), Smart Retail, and AI-assisted healthcare imaging.

  • CNX Software ☛ Fibocom FG370 dual-band WiFi 7 and 5G cellular module targets 5G FWA routers

    Fibocom FG370 is a compact module that combines WiFi 7 and 5G cellular connectivity designed for 5G FWA routers for the home, SMB (Small and Medium-sized Business), and industrial applications. Based on the MediaTek T830 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 SoC, the FG370 supports 5G NR sub-6GHz, two 10Gbps USXGMII interfaces, and dual-band BE7200 WiFi 7 achieving an MLO (Multi-link operation) speed of up to 7.2Gbps. Note this is not the first “FG370 announcement” from the company, as global operators have used the 5G-only FG370 since October 2023, and the company introduced the FG370 with 5G and tri-band BE19000 WiFi 7 at MWC2024.

  • Hackaday ☛ An MXM Take On The 3dfx Voodoo

    [sdz] of Vogons forum brings us an unexpected device for the 21st century – a 3dfx Voodoo 4 card in MXM format, equipped with 64MB of RAM. This isn’t just a showpiece – this card actually, properly works when installed into our hacker’s Dell Precision M4800, and [sdz] tells us more on how the card came to be.

  • Hackaday ☛ Make Your Code Slower With Multithreading

    With the performance of modern CPU cores plateauing recently, the main performance gains are with multiple cores and multithreaded applications. Typically, a fast GPU is only so mind-bogglingly quick because thousands of cores operate in parallel on the same set of tasks. So, it would seem prudent for our applications to try to code in a multithreaded fashion to take advantage of this parallelism. Or so it would seem, but as [Marc Brooker] illustrates, it’s not as simple as one would assume, and it’s very easy to end up with far worse overall performance and no easy way to fix it.

  • Hackaday ☛ The IBM PC: Brainchild Of A Misfit

    We’ve read a number of histories of the IBM PC and lived through that time, too. But we enjoyed [Gareth Edwards’] perspective in a post entitled The Misfit who Built the IBM PC. The titular character is Don Estridge, a decidedly atypical IBM employee who was instrumental in creating the personal computer market as we know it.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ WHO Awaits Genetic Results After First Human H5N2 Bird Flu Death

  • Science Alert ☛ Expert US Panel Rejects MDMA For Treating PTSD. Here's Why.

    Grave concerns.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Hanoi issues directive to tighten dog, cat meat trade amid Vietnam’s recent rabies outbreak

    The directive emphasises the urgent need to prevent a public health crisis in Hanoi.

  • JURIST ☛ 9 out of 10 Gaza children experiencing severe food poverty: UNICEF report

    Nine out of 10 children in Gaza could not eat nutrients from enough food groups to ensure healthy growth and development, a United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report published on Thursday found.

  We’ve discovered a gene for trust – here’s how it could be linked to good health

  For decades, the study of trust has been the domain of social and political sciences, viewed primarily as a societal construct. Two main theories have emerged to explain why some people are more trusting than others. One suggests that trust is a stable trait shaped by early life experiences.

• TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Lisa Jarvis: Zyn is following Big Tobacco’s playbook for teens – Twin Cities

  And then there’s the gamification and memeification of Zyn. Phillip Morris has hooked users on a points-based rewards system that promises Amazon gift cards and iPads to the most devoted users.

  Even if the research ends up proving nicotine pouches help smokers quit, regulators must find a sweet spot where the products are accessible to current tobacco users, but far less attractive to teens and nonusers. That might mean getting rid of those palatable low doses, limiting the flavors, and reining in the ads and games.

• Nebraska Examiner ☛ For some rural communities, a stripped-down hospital is better than none at all • Nebraska Examiner

  Under the new federal program, rural hospitals with fewer than 50 beds can become a “rural emergency hospital” to unlock additional government funding — about $3.3 million extra per year plus a 5% increase in Medicare reimbursements.

  But there’s a catch: Participating hospitals must stop all inpatient services. No labor and delivery, no inpatient surgeries, no inpatient psychiatric units.

  Instead, they must become 24-hour emergency departments that offer some outpatient services but, on average, keep patients for 24 hours or less. They can only stabilize patients who need more acute care and transfer them out of the community to larger hospitals.

• Futurism ☛ CEO Suggests That Humans Could Be "Adversarially Attacked" Like Neural Networks

  Crivello cited the "Pokémon" episode that induced seizures in audiences across Japan in the 1990s when a strong electric attack from Pikachu resulted in strobing blue and red lights. Despite being parodied on "The Simpsons" stateside, the episode was never aired outside of Japan due to concerns that it might be harmful for audiences abroad as well — and as Crivello notes, that sort of thing could set a precedent for anyone wanting to use "very simple" imagery like that in the "Pokémon" episode to hurt the unsuspecting.

  "No reason in principle why humans couldn’t be vulnerable to the same kind of adversarial examples," he wrote, "making a model think that a panda is a gibbon with 99.7% confidence because some seemingly random noise was added to it."

  For the most part, to be clear, the idea of a deadly sensory input has mostly been constrained to the realm of science fiction.

• Latvia ☛ Blood tests in Latvia will get costlier

  As of June, the State has reduced the tariffs, or the costs the State pays for blood tests and other laboratory tests, so customers will have to pay more, Latvian Television reported on June 6.

• JURIST ☛ Native Americans allocated further healthcare funding following US Supreme Court dispute with Federal Government

  The US Supreme Court decided Thursday that when Native Americans administer healthcare through their own programs, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service must pay for costs associated with the operation of the healthcare program.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Arca Noae ☛ Server status update for June 7, 2024

  We are pleased to announce that email and our bug tracker are back online. This includes subscription renewal notifications, new ISO download notifications, and incoming contact submissions from our contact page. We appreciate everyone’s patience while we addressed the hardware problem we experienced.

• New York Times ☛ A Conversation With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and an Proprietary Chaffbot Company Whistle-Blower Speaks Out

  It turns out Hey Hi (AI) is surprisingly Canadian.

• Public Knowledge ☛ ScarJo Oh No! Unraveling Scarlett Johansson’s Claims Against OpenAI [Ed: Public Knowledge has a conflict of interest: Microsoft in the Board]

  The drama around Proprietary Chaffbot Company using a Scarlett Johansson soundalike for its new digital assistant has caused a spirited new debate online.

• Futurism ☛ AI Systems Are Learning to Lie and Deceive, Scientists Find

  "GPT- 4, for instance, exhibits deceptive behavior in simple test scenarios 99.16% of the time," the University of Stuttgart researcher writes, citing his own experiments in quantifying various "maladaptive" traits in 10 different LLMs, most of which are different versions within OpenAI's GPT family.

  Billed as a human-level champion in the political strategy board game "Diplomacy," Meta's Cicero model was the subject of the Patterns study. As the disparate research group — comprised of a physicist, a philosopher, and two AI safety experts — found, the LLM got ahead of its human competitors by, in a word, fibbing.

• Wired ☛ The Snowflake Attack May Be Turning Into One of the Largest Data Breaches Ever

  Amid the claims, there remains uncertainty about the scope and scale of the attempted attack against Snowflake customers, who the attackers may be, and how an attack tool callously named “rapeflake” operates. It also highlights the growth in the use of infostealer malware in recent years and underscores the need for third-party software providers and companies to turn on multifactor authentication to reduce the chances of accounts being compromised.

• Matt Webb ☛ My personal AI research agenda, mid 2024 (and a pitch for work) (Interconnected)

  I want to show you some new work around AI agents.

  Then I want to summarise my current interests, and pitch you on a project.

• Benjamin Sandofsky ☛ Clever Hans and the Uncanny Valley

  In reality, Hans had no idea what it was doing. Horses are good at watching people's reactions, and the people asking questions had a "tell" when Hans tapped the right answer. Hans wasn't trying to fool people, he just knew he'd be praised and rewarded if he stopped tapping his hoof when, say, the questioner slightly smiled. Hans' answers were only correct if the person asking the question already knew the answer.

  When you type into your iPhone and its keyboard suggests the next word, your phone is a Clever Hans. It doesn't understand the meaning behind your sentence. It just knows that when a sentence starts with "I love to drink," the word "coffee" gets a better reaction than "bleech." ChatGPT is a complex iPhone autocomplete, where instead of single words, it takes sentences and spits out paragraphs.

• Axios ☛ TikTok fixes flaw that hackers were using to take over high-profile accounts

  Between the lines: The TikTok accounts look a lot like zero-click spyware attacks that target high-profile government officials, political activists and journalists.

  • However, the end result is different: In spyware attacks, the goal is to track users' phone calls, text messages and other activities.

• New York Times ☛ Real Teenagers, Fake Nudes: The Rise of Deepfakes in American Schools

  A disturbing new problem is sweeping American schools: Students are using artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit images of their classmates and then share them without the person depicted even knowing.

• The Atlantic ☛ OpenAI’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Moment

  The letter tells a familiar story of corporate greed: AI could be dangerous, but tech companies are sacrificing careful safety procedures for speedy product launches; government regulation can’t keep up, and employees are afraid to speak out. Just last month, Vox reported on a nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreement that OpenAI employees were asked to sign upon leaving the company. Violators risk losing all their vested equity in the company, which can amount to millions of dollars—providing a clear reason for workers to remain silent, even about issues of significant societal concern. (An OpenAI spokesperson told me in an emailed statement that all former employees have been released from the non-disparagement clause, and that such an obligation has been scrubbed from future offboarding paperwork.)

• Vox ☛ OpenAI and Google's AI systems are powerful. Where are they taking us?

  Among the most prominent skeptics of this perspective are two AI experts who otherwise rarely agree: Yann LeCun, Facebook’s head of AI research, and Gary Marcus, an NYU professor and vocal LLM skeptic. They argue that some of the flaws in LLMs — their difficulty with logical reasoning tasks, their tendency toward “hallucinations” — are not vanishing with scale. They expect diminishing returns from scale in the future and say we probably won’t get to fully general artificial intelligence by just doubling down on our current methods with billions more dollars.

• Reuters ☛ NewsBreak: Most downloaded US news app has Chinese roots and 'writes fiction' using AI

  The problem was, no such shooting took place. The Bridgeton, New Jersey police department posted a statement on Facebook on December 27 dismissing the article - produced using AI technology - as "entirely false". "Nothing even similar to this story occurred on or around Christmas, or even in recent memory for the area they described," the post said. "It seems this 'news' outlet's AI writes fiction they have no problem publishing to readers." NewsBreak, which is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, told Reuters it removed the article on December 28, four days after publication.

• Axios ☛ PR professionals abandon X for LinkedIn

  By the numbers: Muck Rack surveyed 1,116 public relations professionals from April 4 to May 10, 2024, and found that most viewed LinkedIn as the social media platform they valued most — more than X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok combined.

• The Register UK ☛ AI models trained on human speech to help us understand dogs

  But while human language AI models are trained on a huge corpus of written text, dogs are less well known for typing, and their voices are recorded less often than humans.

  To overcome the problem, the researchers are repurposing an existing model that was originally designed to analyze human speech. The foundation from various voice-enabled technologies has been trained to pick out important features of human speech, such as tone, pitch, and accent.

• Licensing / Legal

  • The Register UK ☛ Adobe users upset to find company has been scanning content

    "I can't use Photoshop unless I'm okay with you having full access to anything I create with it, INCLUDING NDA work," Santala posted, tagging Adobe for an explanation. A corporate representative did respond, but first – the offending passages.

Security

• Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

  • The Straits Times ☛ Authorities warn of bogus marriage agents amid rise in Malaysians getting married in southern Thailand

    One man paid $576 to an agent who disappeared without providing a valid marriage certificate.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia defends eviction of sea nomads, citing security concerns

    Some sea nomad homeowners had burned their own houses to gain sympathy, said a Malaysian minister.

  • WhichUK ☛ 100ml liquid rule reintroduced at UK airport security

    Passengers at Aberdeen, Newcastle, Leeds/Bradford, London City, Southend, and Teesside airports affected

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • JURIST ☛ European Court of Human Rights rules French judge in Monaco violated lawyers’ right to privacy in investigation

    The European Court of Human Rights held unanimously in the case of Bersheda and Rybolovlev v. Monaco on Thursday that the conduct of a judge failed to effectively limit the scope of the investigation into a lawyer who was accused of secretly recording a conversation.

  • Qt ☛ Qt Group Achieves ISO 27001:2022 Certification, Strengthening Data Security and Privacy

    Qt Group has successfully achieved the ISO 27001:2022 certification. This achievement is a significant milestone in the company’s cybersecurity strategy and underscores its commitment to ensuring the highest levels of information security management (ISMS).  

  • Microsoft faces EU complaints over children’s data privacy

    Microsoft has been accused of likely tracking hundreds of thousands of European schoolchildren’s data through its education software deployed in schools across the continent, according to advocacy group NOYB.

  • India Times ☛ Why Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has disabled this advertisement tool in EU

    Microsoft-owned professional networking site LinkedIn has shut down its advertisement tool in the European Union (EU) to comply with the region’s new data rules, the Digital Services Act (DSA). This tool allowed advertisers to target users based on sensitive data like political views or ethnic origin obtained from group memberships.

  • European Commission ☛ Statement by Commissioner Breton on steps announced by Microsoft's Surveillance Arm LinkedIn to comply with DSA provisions on targeted advertisement

    The Commission takes note of LinkedIn's announcement that it has fully disabled the functionality allowing advertisers to target Microsoft's Surveillance Arm LinkedIn users with ads...

  • EFF ☛ EFF Covers Secrets in Your Data on NOVA

    That’s the reality we’re in today. As EFF’s Associate Director of Legislative Activism Hayley Tsukayama puts it, “That puts people in a really difficult position, when we’re supposed to manage our own privacy, but we’re also supposed to use all these things that are products that will make our lives better.”

    Watch EFF’s Cory Doctorow, Eva Galperin, Hayley Tsukayama, and others in the digital rights community explain how your data gets scooped up by data brokers—and common practices to protect your privacy online—in Secrets in Your Data on NOVΛ. You can watch the premier or read the transcript here below:

  • EFF ☛ Surveillance Defense for Campus Protests

  • New York Times ☛ Can I Opt Out of Meta’s Hey Hi (AI) Scraping on Instagram and Facebook? Sort Of.

    Social media users voiced worries about a move by Meta to use information from public Instagram and Facebook (Farcebook) posts to train its Hey Hi (AI) But the scraping has already begun. Here’s what to know.

Defence/Aggression

• The Straits Times ☛ Vietnam speeding up South China Sea island-building pace, US researchers say

  China claims sovereignty over vast swathes of the South China Sea.

• RFA ☛ Vietnam decries China’s ‘illegal’ activities in Tonkin Gulf

  A spokesperson said a Chinese naval survey ship has been operating without permission in Vietnam’s waters.

• RFA ☛ Rudd says China using ‘gray zone’ tactics against Taiwan

  The Australian diplomat said Beijing wants Taipei to capitulate to a ‘One Country, Two Systems' deal.

• RFA ☛ Elite power balance in Cambodia thwarts US efforts to wean it from China dependency

  Phnom Penh is open to modest cooperation with Washington , but Chinese money keeps local elite networks in line.

• The Straits Times ☛ Chinese fighter jets approached Dutch ship 'unsafely', Netherlands says

  AMSTERDAM - Chinese air force jets circled a Dutch frigate and approached a Dutch helicopter in the East China Sea in a way that "caused a potentially unsafe situation," the Netherlands' Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

• RFERL ☛ Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, China Sign Agreement On Railway Project

  China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan have signed an agreement on a new railway project to connect the three nations that Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping called "strategic" for his country and Central Asia.

• CS Monitor ☛ Jail time for leaving gun in an unlocked car? Cities nudge states on firearm laws.

  Local and state officials are increasingly at odds over which gun laws – if any – will improve citizen safety. One divide: whether states will even allow cities to try some policies on their own.

• Reason ☛ Police Flew Drones Over One California City Nearly 20,000 Times in 6 Years

  A WIRED investigation reveals the extent to which residents of Chula Vista are subjected to surveillance from the sky.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Viral video of ‘puberty’ comments takes speech out of context, Chief Exec. John Lee’s office says

  The Chief Executive’s Office has defended comments about puberty by leader John Lee, after videos went viral of him referring to Executive Council member Ronny Tong.

• Reason ☛ Review: This DRM spreader Netflix Drama Depicts North Korean Refugees' Tribulations

  My Name is Loh Kiwan dramatizes the experiences of refugees escaping oppressive regimes.

• Mint Press News ☛ Former Israeli Captive Held In Gaza Says Biggest Fear Was Israeli Airstrikes

  In a candid interview with Haaretz, a former Israeli soldier reveals his greatest fear in captivity – and it's not what you'd expect.

• New York Times ☛ Israel Strikes Another School Building as It Pushes On in Gaza

  The Israeli military said it killed militants in the central part of the enclave on Friday, a day after a strike on a former school, where Gazan officials say civilians were killed.

• New York Times ☛ What We Know About Israel’s Deadly Strike on U.N. School Complex in Gaza

  Israel said it struck three classrooms used by 20 to 30 Palestinian militants. Gazan health authorities said that many women and children were among the dozens killed.

• JURIST ☛ Germany chancellor promises deportations following Mannheim knife attack

  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed Thursday that Germany will start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant last week left one police officer dead and four more people injured, in a speech to the country’s parliament.

• CS Monitor ☛ Biden echoes Reagan at Normandy, speaking on the price of freedom

  In a D-Day trip to Normandy, President Joe Biden ​c​alled on Americans to defend democracy globally, echoing Ronald Reagan’s “boys of Pointe du hoc” speech.

• New York Times ☛ Long Before the Woke, There Were the Wide Awake

  In a democracy, how far is too far?

• New York Times ☛ Kari Lake Delivered a Speech in Front of a Confederate Flag

  Appearing at a Trump-themed merchandise store in Show Low, Ariz., Ms. Lake repeated lies about the 2020 election’s having been stolen from former President Donald J. Trump.

• RFA ☛ North Korea recalls documentary about Kim Jong Un’s mother

  Most North Koreans don’t know Ko Yong Hui’s name or that she was born in Japan.

• Latvia ☛ Latvian football player dies in stabbing attack in Netherlands

  Žanuels Skopenko, former striker of Valmiera football club and Latvian U-19 national indoor football team, has died at the age of 24, the Latvian Football Federation (LFF) reports. Latvian Television reported on June 6 that Skopenko was stabbed in the Netherlands and later died in hospital.

• France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Israel pounds Gaza as Benny Gantz expected to resign from war cabinet

  Israel continued to pound large parts of the Gaza Strip on Saturday as the country waited for Benny Gantz, a leading member of Israel's war cabinet, to potentially announce his resignation in a press conference this evening. Gantz had previously threatened to step down from Binyamin Netanyahu’s government over the prime minister’s refusal to draw up postwar plans for Gaza. Follow our liveblog for all the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war.

• The Straits Times ☛ South Korea on alert for more trash balloons from the North

  The North has promised a response to groups from the South sending 'anti-Pyeongyang' balloons.

• Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Reconstructing Ukraine at war: The journey to prosperity starts now

    Rebuilding the Ukrainian economy after Russia's full-scale invasion will be a monumental task. Reconstruction can’t wait for peace and must be a well-coordinated, inclusive process.

  • Latvia ☛ Security Service wants Kremlin fanboy and former MEP Mamikins prosecuted

    On June 7, Latvia's State Security Service (VDD) said it had made a decision to urge the prosecutor's office to initiate criminal prosecution against a former member of the European Parliament "for possible glorification and justification of war crimes committed by the aggressor Russia in Ukraine."

  • France24 ☛ Macron hosts Biden for talks on Gaza, Ukraine on fanfare-filled state visit to France

    Fresh from commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, French President Emmanuel Macron will host U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday for a state visit marked by pomp and a parade as well as talks on trade, Israel and Ukraine.

  • France24 ☛ Macron wants Ukraine's EU accession talks to start 'by end of month'

    French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that he wanted Kyiv's EU accession talks to start "by the end of the month" as he hosted Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for discussions in Paris. Macron added that he wanted to "finalise" the creation of a coalition of military instructors for Ukraine in the coming days and lashed out at what he called a "camp of pacifists" and the "spirit of defeat". Read our live blog to see how all the day's events unfolded.

  • France24 ☛ France charges Ukrainian-Russian man with terror-related crimes

    A Ukrainian-Russian man detained in France was on Friday charged with plotting to commit a violent act in a "terrorist" plot, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office said.

  • France24 ☛ Russian warships en route to Cuba for military exercise expected to arrive next week

    Four Russian ships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, will arrive in Havana next week, Cuban officials said Thursday, citing “historically friendly relations” between both nations and as tensions escalate over Western military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Lindsey Hilsum: Sudan civil war overlooked because of Ukraine and Gaza

    The Channel 4 News international editor said her coverage could help future criminal prosecutions.

  • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Downs Majority Of Russian Drones Over 4 Regions

    Ukrainian air defenses shot down nine out of 13 Russian drones in the early hours of June 8, Air Force commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk said in a statement.

  • RFERL ☛ French, U.S. Leaders To Discuss Ukraine In Paris

    President Emmanuel Macron will host U.S. President Joe Biden in Paris on June 8 for a state visit, with Ukraine at the top of the agenda.

  • RFERL ☛ U.S.-Russian Citizen Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy To Export Weapon Parts To Russia

    A dual U.S.-Russian citizen pleaded guilty on June 7 to conspiracy to exporting firearm parts, components, and ammunition to Russia without the required authorization.

  • RFERL ☛ France Close To Forming Coalition Of Military Instructors For Ukraine, Macron Says

    French President Emmanuel Macron says he wants to finalize the creation of a coalition of military instructors for Ukraine and begin Kyiv's EU accession talks by the end of the month.

  • RFERL ☛ European Commission Recommends Opening Accession Talks With Ukraine, Moldova

    The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, recommended opening accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, saying they are sufficiently prepared for the formal opening of the process, which would eventually lead to their becoming members of the European Union.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Occupation Authorities Claim 22 Killed In 'Double Tap' Attack In Kherson Region

    The head of Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine's southern Kherson region said 22 people were killed and 15 were injured in the town of Sadove in shelling by Ukrainian forces.

  • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says It Shot Down Massive Wave Of Drones And Missiles

    Russia launched 50 drones and five cruise missiles on nine Ukrainian regions on June 7, but the large attack was almost completely repelled by Ukraine's air defenses, air force commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk said.

  • CS Monitor ☛ In Ukraine’s south, marines are waging a grueling battle that could decide the region

    Initially seen as a launching point to reclaim Crimea, the east bank of the Dnieper River is now a bastion against Russian incursion into Kherson.

  • New York Times ☛ Macron Hosts Biden in Paris, Honoring a Not Always Easy Bond

    The friendship between France and the U.S. endures. But tensions have mounted over the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and how Europe can step out of America’s shadow.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Apologizes to Zelensky in France

    The president said “echoes of 1944 are summoning us” during his address that honored the valor of D-Day fighters.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts

    China’s expansion and Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and in space have changed a U.S. drive to reduce nuclear weapons.

  • New York Times ☛ As Fighting Rages in Ukraine, a Struggle Is On for Artillery Supremacy

    Ukrainian forces say U.S. shells are making a difference. Across the border, they say, Russia is trying to get its artillery nearer targets like the city of Kharkiv.

  • New York Times ☛ Ukraine-Russia War: Photos From the Border

    Photographs from two trips along Ukraine’s northeastern border regions, in the months before Russia renewed an offensive there, reveal loss and transformation.

  • France24 ☛ Macron hosts Biden for talks on Gaza, Ukraine on fanfare-filled state visit

    Fresh from commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, French President Emmanuel Macron will host U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday for a state visit marked by pomp and a parade as well as talks on trade, Israel and Ukraine.

  • LRT ☛ Why pacifism kills – opinion

    In spite of Ukraine’s continued fight against Russian aggression, there are still many voices calling for peace at any cost. While such proposals may appear attractive on the surface, they ultimately benefit Moscow’s clear desire for further violence and terror on its own terms.

  • JURIST ☛ Pro-Russia cyber attack targets Netherlands parties on first day of European elections

    Several Dutch political parties reported a cyber attack on their websites Thursday, on the first day of the European Parliament elections. Three parties were specifically targeted in an attack claimed by a pro-Russian hacker collective. Early on Thursday morning, several party websites were inaccessible to Dutch voters.

  • LRT ☛ ‘I hope Lithuania will never experience the same’

    Serhiy, Genadiy, and Maksym survived almost two years in Russian captivity. In an interview with LRT.lt, they shared their first-hand experiences of torture. “I hope that Lithuania will never experience what our country has gone through these years,” said one of the soldiers, Genadiy.

  • LRT ☛ Belarus summons Lithuanian, EU representatives over border queues

    The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has summoned the temporary charge d’affaires of the Lithuanian and EU missions over the queues at the Lithuania-Belarus border, the Russian state news agency TASS reports.

  • RFERL ☛ French Citizen Arrested In Moscow On Charge Of Violating 'Foreign Agent' Law

    A court in Moscow has sent French citizen Laurent Vinatier to pretrial detention until at least August 5 on charge of violating the law on "foreign agents."

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Supreme Court Bans Nonexistent Separatist Movement

    The Supreme Court of Russia on June 7 banned what it called the Anti-Russia Separatist Movement, a group that does not appear to exist. The move was made at the Justice Ministry's request.

  • RFERL ☛ Another Jehovah's Witness Imprisoned In Russia

    A court in Russia’s Far Eastern region of Primorye has sentenced a Jehovah's Witness to 6 years and 2 months in prison amid a continued crackdown on the religious group.

  • RFERL ☛ 2 Detained Over Deadly Tram Collision In Siberia

    Russia's Investigative Committee said on June 7 that two people have been detained over the collision of two trams that killed one person and injured more than 140 others in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.

  • RFERL ☛ Biden Ties Sacrifices Made By WWII Heroes To Defense Of Democracy Today

    U.S. President Joe Biden drew on the heroism of U.S. soldiers who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in the D-Day invasion 80 years ago to rally for the defense of democracy at home and abroad and "stay true to what America stands for."

  • France24 ☛ Russia jails French national accused of collecting military data

    A court in Moscow on Friday ordered a French citizen accused of collecting information on military issues in Russia be held in jail pending investigation and trial.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Every country has its problems’: Why are Western tourists and expats returning to Russia? — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ A risky venture What a nuclear weapon in space is capable of — and why Russia might want one — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ French citizen arrested in Russia pleads guilty to felony charges of gathering military information — Meduza

  • RFERL ☛ Belarus Convictions Continue As Lukashenka's Crackdown Nears 4-Year Mark

    Three members of a family were convicted in Belarus for participating in protests following an August 2020 presidential election that saw authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka handed victory despite opposition claims the vote was rigged.

  • LRT ☛ Calm situation on Lithuania-Belarus border, as migrants go to Poland

    Thursday marked yet another day of no recorded attempts by irregular migrants to cross into Lithuania from Belarus, the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) has said.

  • RFERL ☛ Uzbekistan Outlaws Karakalpak Group Amid Crackdown

    Uzbek authorities labeled a Karakalpak group as extremist and banned it in February, the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said citing Moscow-based human rights defender Vitaly Ponomaryov.

  • France24 ☛ Biden asks Americans to recommit to democracy in speech in Normandy

    Atop the cliff that US Army Rangers scaled 80 years ago on D-Day, President Joe Biden on Friday compared the threats posed by Nazi Germany to those facing the world today by dictators and authoritarianism, and urged Americans to resist isolationism.

  • LRT ☛ Suspect in Navalny aide attack cannot be extradited to Lithuania, Polish court rules

    A Polish court ruled on Friday that one of the two men suspected of attacking Russian opposition activist Leonid Volkov in Vilnius cannot be extradited to Lithuania, Reuters reports.

  • France24 ☛ Putin threatens to expand the war to Western strategic targets – but can he deliver?

    President Vladimir Putin said this week that he reserves the right to supply long-range weapons to Russian allies for possible use against Western strategic interests – a response to Ukraine getting the green light to use NATO-supplied weapons for limited attacks inside Russia. But some military experts say Putin’s latest threat might be limited on the ground.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: David Beito

• Federal News Network ☛ There’s a new Hatch Act and whistleblower retaliation sheriff in town

  There's a new Hatch Act sheriff in town. Attorney Hampton Dellinger was recently confirmed as Special Counsel, leading the Office of Special Counsel.

Environment

• Democracy Now ☛ Deadly Heat: Record Scorching Temperatures Kill the Vulnerable, Worsen Inequality Across the Globe

  As we enter the month of June, scorching temperatures are already making deadly heat waves around the world. Data confirmed last month was the hottest May on record, putting the Earth on a 12-month streak of record-breaking temperatures. On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization announced there is an 80% chance the average global temperature will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for at least one of the next five years. “We’re going to see a more chaotic planet as the climate heats up,” says Jeff Goodell, a journalist covering the climate crisis. Goodell describes “the heat wave scenario that keeps climate scientists up at night”: a major power outage that could cut off air conditioning and cause thousands of deaths from extreme temperatures.

• BIA Net ☛ German climate activist nears death after three months of hunger strike

  Activists of the initiative “Starving until you’re honest” want to pressure German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to a public statement about climate change based on science. Medical staff have renounced responsibility more than a week ago. Now, they want to give Olaf Scholz one more week to meet their demands.

• Energy/Transportation

  • DeSmog ☛ The False Claims on Food and Farming That May Sway EU Elections

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Signals to make drivers behave

    This post is dedicated to Rebecca, who’s insistence that Clara and I exercise to help our mental states have helped tremendously… and also lead me to finally shed all my COVID-19 lockdown weight! You could say we could all benefit from getting out of cars.

  • The Strategist ☛ China’s control and coercion in critical minerals

    This is the first of two parts of an article on coercive threats to critical minerals supply and what Australia and its critical minerals partners are doing and should do to counter them.

  • Hackaday ☛ Reverse Engineering Keeps Early Ford EVs Rolling

    With all the EV hype in the air, you’d be forgiven for thinking electric vehicles are something new. But of course, EVs go way, way back, to the early 19th century by some reckonings. More recently but still pretty old-school were Ford’s Think line of NEVs, or neighborhood electric vehicles. These were commercially available in the early 2000s, and something like 7,200 of the slightly souped-up golf carts made it into retirement communities and gated neighborhoods.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Science Alert ☛ Marine Biologist Shocked to See a Shark Vomit a Famous Aussie Icon

    Be careful what you eat.

  • Science Alert ☛ Alien-Looking Species Seen For First Time Ever in Ocean's Darkest Depths

    Practically another world.

• Overpopulation

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean firms to allow up to 6 days leave for infertility treatment

    Despite this progress, women’s representation in leadership and political roles remained low.

Finance

• European Commission ☛ EIF partners with leading Finnish banks to provide €1 billion in financing for sustainable investment

  European Commission Press release Brussels, 07 Jun 2024 The European Investment Fund (EIF) has finalised agreements with eight leading banks and financial institutions in Finland to assist small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), small mid-caps and housing associations. The agreement is supported by InvestEU.

• The Straits Times ☛ As cheap, illegal imports gain ground in Indonesia, concerns mount over job losses

  Business groups track the gaps in figures of China's exports and Indonesia's imports that may indicate illegal imports.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s uneven economic recovery continues as exports jump in May but imports slow

  China’s exports accelerated far more than expected in May but imports slowed, official figures showed Friday, in further evidence of an uneven recovery for the world’s number two economy.

• Mexico News Daily ☛ Annual headline inflation rate went up for third consecutive month in May

  However, the annual core inflation rate, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, has maintained its 16-month decline to reach 4.21%.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Pro Publica ☛ Clarence Thomas Acknowledges He Should Have Disclosed Free Trips From Harlan Crow

  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow.

  The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not need to disclose such gifts. “Justice Thomas’s critics allege that he failed to report gifts from wealthy friends,” his lawyer previously said in a statement issued on the justice’s behalf. “Untrue.”

• New York Times ☛ U.N. Adding Israel, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to List of Countries and Groups That Harm Children

  The report will be presented to members of the Security Council next week and released publicly on June 18, the U.N. said.

• New York Times ☛ Canadian Auto Parts Billionaire Faces Sexual Assault Charges

  A police force outside Toronto said that charges against Frank Stronach, 91, relate to episodes from as long ago as the 1980s and as recent as last year.

• NYPost ☛ Canadian auto parts billionaire Frank Stronach, 91, arrested on sexual assault charges

  Peel Regional Police Constable Tyler Bell said there is more than one accuser but declined to say how many.

• RFA ☛ Episode 8: What we talk about when we talk about talking (and writing)

Censorship/Free Speech

• Reason ☛ Journal of Free Speech Law: "True Defamation," by Prof. Jeffrey S. Helmreich

  An article from the Defamation: Philosophical and Legal Perspectives symposium, sponsored by the Center for Legal Philosophy at UC Irvine.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Press Gazette ☛ Advertising, philanthropy and AI: How the AP is diversifying its revenue streams

  AP revenue boss says "not all" diversification efforts will work but "we have to experiment".

• Press Gazette ☛ Sky News journalist and psychotherapist shares mental health tips

  James Scurry spoke about why he was encouraged to take himself off covering the murder of baby Jacob Crouch.

• New York Times ☛ Vietnam Arrests Prominent Journalist for Facebook (Farcebook) Posts

  Truong Huy San was accused of “abusing democratic freedoms,” a charge that rights groups say has been frequently used against critics of the government.

• The Straits Times ☛ Vietnam arrests two well-known Facebook (Farcebook) users over ‘abusing democratic freedoms’

  The two users were often critical of the Vietnam administration and the law enforcement authorities.

Civil Rights/Policing

• France24 ☛ Being a feminist in China: A battle lost in advance

  In China, the ruling Communist Party encourages women to focus on motherhood and the home, rather than self-emancipation. While some Chinese feminists have tried to denounce the inequality and discrimination they face, their numbers are dwindling amid a crackdown by authorities. Our correspondents report.

• France24 ☛ Samsung workers in South Korea stage first-ever strike over pay

  Workers at tech giant Samsung Electronics in South Korea staged the first strike at the company on Friday, the head of a major union representing tens of thousands of people told AFP.

• Democracy Now ☛ “VOICES: A Sacred Sisterscape”: Poet aja monet & V on New Audio Play Centering Black Women’s Stories

  Democracy Now! speaks with the creators of a new arts campaign grounded in Black women’s stories. VOICES: a sacred sisterscape is an audio play directed by award-winning poet aja monet weaving together Black feminist poems and perspectives. “Art is an invitation to expand our participation in the world and the ways that we see the world,” says monet, who hopes the project inspires action beyond aesthetics. “Solidarity is about us being not just spectators, but actors in the reality of our lives.”

• EFF ☛ The UN Cybercrime Draft Convention Remains Too Flawed to Adopt

  The February 2024 language continues to risk criminalizing protected speech, granting broad surveillance powers without robust safeguards, and raising serious cybersecurity concerns. Despite continuous advocacy from civil society and industry, these key issues remain unaddressed. A new version of the Convention is expected soon, but without addressing these critical flaws, the risks to human rights remain.

  In a joint letter with over 100 NGOs, we state that the Cybercrime Convention must not advance without addressing critical flaws. The letter outlines clear requirements: the Convention must focus solely on cyber-dependent crimes, incorporate comprehensive human rights safeguards, and ensure robust protections for security researchers, whistleblowers, activists, and journalists. Absent these minimum requirements, we call on state delegations to reject the draft Convention and refuse to advance it to the UN General Assembly for adoption.

• Papers Please ☛ “Who Lacks ID in America Today?”

  As we discussed in our previous article, the issue in the current stage of the lawsuit challenging a Texas law requiring ID to visit some websites is what standard — “strict scrutiny” or “rational basis” review —  courts should use to evaluate the Constitutionality of government-imposed restrictions on the exercise of First Amendment rights.

  But legal briefs in the case also address the adverse and discriminatory impact of ID requirements on people without ID, and spotlight some important recent research on how many people in the US don’t have government-issued ID or don’t have ID that would satisfy ID-verification procedures and criteria, including those that include address verification.

  A friend-of-the-court brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation cites an analysis by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland of the results of a survey of a scientifically-selected national panel conducted in September and October of 2023.

• CS Monitor ☛ Bringing Rebuilding Trust to a close

  Today, The Christian Science Monitor ends its four-month-long Rebuilding Trust project. Along the way, we explored why trust is essential to progress.

• Reason ☛ California YouTuber Faces 10 Years for Having Too Much Fun With Fireworks

  The feds charged Alex Choi with “causing the placement of explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft” after he shot fireworks out of a helicopter into an empty desert.

• BIA Net ☛ Constitutional Court says deportation of Protestants based on intelligence report is "not a violation with freedom of religion"

  Protestants, who have more than 170 churches or communities in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, have been facing problems in Turkey since 2019. Their visa requests have been denied, their residence permits revoked and deportations have been imposed.

• JURIST ☛ New South Wales premier apologizes for laws criminalizing homosexuality

  New South Wales Premier Chris Minns formally apologized in Parliament House on Thursday to all those convicted or affected by laws that criminalized homosexuality, which was decriminalized 40 years ago. New South Wales is the last Australian state to apologize for these laws.

• RFA ☛ 2 more British judges resign from Hong Kong final appeals court

  Jonathan Sumption, Lawrence Collins quit in the wake of a second security law extending a political crackdown.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong 47: 14 days allocated for 40 democrats to enter mitigation pleas in city’s largest nat. security case

  The court has allocated 14 days to hear the mitigation pleas from 40 prominent Hong Kong democrats involved in the city’s largest national security case. When the submissions begin on July 2, most of the defendants will have already been detained for over three years.

• Latvia ☛ Detective, police officer suspected of position abuse

  The Internal Security Bureau (IDB) has detained an official of the Riga Regional Directorate of the State Police as well as a certified detective, the IDB said in early June.