Linux laptops are still considered pretty niche since not a lot of people are interested in using Linux, let alone purchasing a fully-fledged Linux machine. Although, we have seen the trend shifting lately with more people switching to Linux now than ever before. If you are one of those who’s been using Linux for quite some time and want to buy a Linux laptop, here are all the options you have in the market right now.
There are not many Linux laptop manufacturers out there, but the ones that are already there are doing an excellent job with the hardware selection. This list contains laptops from the likes of System76, KDE, Star Labs, and others.
If you are dissatisfied with Windows 11 or macOS, and intrigued by Linux, deepin, a distro from China, could be a great choice to switch to. It's one of the most beautiful operating systems around, and sports a well-designed user interface.
The newest version of that operating system, deepin V23 Beta, is now ready to be downloaded. This updated version of deepin comes with a number of new features including DDE changes, terminal, cross-version upgrades, and application compatibility.
This week, Linux Out Loud chats about improving onboarding for new linux users. Welcome to episode 63 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.
The 2018 Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory-Management (LSFMM) conference included a session on get_user_pages(), an internal kernel interface that can, in some situations, be used in ways that will lead to data corruption or kernel crashes. As the 2023 LSFMM+BPF event approaches, this problem remains unsolved and is still the topic of ongoing discussion. This patch series from Lorenzo Stoakes, which is another attempt at a partial solution, is the latest focus point.
Linus Torvalds released 6.4-rc1 and closed the merge window on May 7. By that time, 13,044 non-merge changesets had found their way into the mainline repository for the 6.4 release. A little over 5,000 of those changesets came in after our summary of the first half of the merge window was written. Those changes brought a long list of new features and capabilities to the kernel.
The Yocto Project has published its new release: 4.2, also known as "Mickledore". It features improved Rust support, BitBake engine improvements, support for Linux 6.1 (the latest Long Term Support kernel), new QEMU features, testing improvements and of course many other new features and package updates. See the release notes for all details.
Hector Martin, one of the lead developers of Asahi Linux, is warning that Wayland is the future of graphical desktops on Apple Silicon Macs.
In a lengthy post on Mastodon, one of the lead developers of the Asahi Linux project to port Linux to Apple Silicon-powered Mac computers has asked users not to use X.org, saying: "we absolutely do not have the bandwidth to spend time on it."
Martin warns that the future of graphical desktops on Apple Silicon is Wayland and nothing but Wayland. Xwayland will be supported, so that X.org apps will run under Wayland based desktops, but the developers hope that people will use only Wayland-based environments on Asahi Linux and related distros.
Up to a point, this is not such a shock for the nascent Linux ecosystem on Arm-ISA-based Macs. These machines have a single family of GPUs, which is closely integrated with the main processor, so there are no questions about which GPU vendor to choose, or what drivers a machine is running – because you have no choice. Additionally, the laptop models' displays, as well as Apple's own external screens, are all hi-DPI devices, or as Apple calls them "retina displays". These effectively mandate the use of fractional scaling – something that X.org does not support well. The Apple Silicon market is a closed one, without the free choice of mix-and-match GPUs and displays found in commodity PCs.
This is a bugfix release that is API and ABI compatible with previous 0.3.x releases.
libei 1.0.0 RC1 is now available. libei is a library to send Emulated Input (EI) to a matching Emulated Input Server (EIS) which can receive those events with libeis, also part of this project.
Mike nerdsniped me into wondering how hard sparse memory support would be in lavapipe.
The answer is unfortunately extremely.
Sparse binding essentially allows creating a vulkan buffer/image of a certain size, then plugging in chunks of memory to back it in page-size multiple chunks.
This works great with GPU APIs where we've designed this, but it's actually hard to pull off on the CPU.
Currently lavapipe allocates memory with an aligned malloc. It allocates objects with no backing and non-sparse bindings connect objects to the malloced memory.
When you launch a virtual machine on an OpenStack-managed network, the VM generally receives a random address in the active subnet. A researcher at work, however, needed a system for launching instances that have static addresses so he could preconfigure the local
/etc/hosts
file with all his machines.
If you want to simulate how your filesystem behaves with a bad drive underneath you have a few options like the kernel dm-flakey device, writing a bash nbdkit plugin, kernel fault injection or a few others. We didn’t have that facility in nbdkit however so last week I started the “evil filter”.
The GRand Unified Bootloader, or GRUB, is a crucial component that manages the boot process for Linux systems. Sometimes, due to system errors, updates, or disk corruption, GRUB may malfunction, leading to boot issues. Fortunately, reinstalling GRUB can resolve these problems and get your system up and running again.
In the realm of Linux, the `tr` command is a vital tool that users can employ for text processing. TR, short for translate, is utilized to translate or delete characters from standard input, writing to standard output. It may seem simple on the surface, but the `tr` command offers a great depth of functionality.
Building a container image for your Node.js application might sound like a trivial task, but there are some pitfalls you’ll want to avoid along the path to containerizing your application. It is all too easy to accidentally include sensitive files, run more than one process in the container, run as root, or ship bloated container images. Because all of these mistakes reflect an image constructed without due care, reducing bloat reduces them all.
This post focuses on the “bloated container images” mistake that’s pretty easy to make when building Node.js application container images. Keep reading to learn about container image layers, how you can slim down a Node.js container image based on Red Hat’s Universal Base Images by over 70% (see Figure 1), and even more best practices for building containers.
The GRand Unified Bootloader, more commonly known as GRUB, is the default bootloader for most Linux distributions. It's the first software that runs when a computer starts and is responsible for loading the operating system into memory. GRUB is especially useful in multi-boot setups, as it allows users to choose from multiple operating systems during startup.
Learn dependency management using the ldd command to better administer your Linux machine and installed packages.
Zombie and orphan processes are popular concepts that are commonly discussed among system programmers and operating system developers. So what are zombie processes and why does the kernel maintain them? To answer this question, we have to first understand the basics of process cleanup/termination in the Linux kernel.
In Linux, a process is a running instance of a program or application. It can be seen as an individual task that is being executed on the system. Every process in Linux has a unique process ID (PID), which is a number assigned to it by the operating system. The PID can be used to identify and manage the process. If we close or terminate a program or application, the process exits/terminates.
You might have used which, whereis, and whatis commands on Linux several times. All three commands help you find information about other Linux commands. These commands look similar, but they do have some differences.
Here's a detailed comparison of the which, whereis, and whatis commands on Linux.
The Linux command line traces its family tree all the way back to 1969, and it’s still the most efficient way to perform certain tasks. Just make sure you avoid these common mistakes, if you’re just starting out.
Between 2023-05-10 and 2023-05-17 there were 19 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients.
A new version of Lutris, the open-source game launcher for Linux, is available to download.
For those not acquainted with it, Lutris makes it easier to install, launch, and play games on Linux by integrating multiple gaming platforms, including Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle (amongst others), into a swish-looking, unified “interface”.
Lutris supports native Linux games, Windows games run through compatibility layers like Wine and Proton, and games run using emulators. Through one UI, gamers can manage their libraries, install dependencies, configure graphics settings, and apply tweaks to improve gaming on Linux.
What is a Document Management System?
A Document Management System (DMS) is a software system that enables organizations to store, manage, and track electronic documents and images of paper-based information.
Some things, it seems, just cannot be hurried. Back in 2007, your editor first started considering alternatives to the proprietary accounting system that had been used by LWN since the beginning. That search became more urgent in 2012, and returned in 2017 with a focused effort to find something better. But another five years passed before some sort of conclusion was reached. It has finally happened, though; LWN is no longer using proprietary software for its accounting needs.
The system used until now — QuickBooks — was a legacy from the beginnings of the company in 1997. It has long exhibited a full litany of the sorts of misbehaviors endemic to proprietary systems. Regular (paid) updates were forced, despite the fact that new versions brought little in the way of new capabilities. Crashes were frequent; QuickBooks users know to make backups every few minutes to avoid losing work. The software had arbitrary limits meant to force "upgrades" to the "enterprise" version. More recently, Intuit has discontinued support for the desktop version entirely in an effort to force all users to its online, paid-by-the-month service.
Enough was finally enough; your editor took some time to go back and review the various systems that had been considered in the past. It turned out that the scripts developed to pry data out of QuickBooks still worked — at least, after a somewhat belated update to Python 3. In the end, the option that won out was GnuCash.
Practical tutorial on how to use the strcpy() function to copy the strings, its input and output arguments, and the data types that are used by each one.
How to implement the decimal precision in C to adjust the precision of floating-point variables and set it in the functions of the standard inputs and outputs.
Practical tutorial on what the case-insensitive string in C++ language is and how we compare the case-insensitive strings in C++ programming language.
Tutorial on what bit masking is and how to implement it in C++ programming language and the different operators to carry out the various bit masking operations.
How to utilize the "call base class” function capability to call a method from a derived class to avoid code repitition and make the new class more efficient.
The different formats to use for the cout object in C++ to calculate the sum of two variables in cout by utilizing it with the stream insertion operator.
Tutorial on the use of multiple inheritance in C++ by implementing the basic implementation of multiple inheritance and performing the arithmetic operations.
The concept of if-else-if conditional statements in C++ to check multiple conditions and the value of a variable that is already declared in the program.
Practical guide on how to use the unary sizeof() operator in C language to determine the size of an object and how to use the operator in the most common cases.
Various methods of appending of vector to vector with the same data type, either “integer” or as “string”, using the vector.insert() and std::copy() methods.
Practical tutorial on what the static method in C++ programming language is, how to use it in the C++ language, and how to define the static method in C++.
Practical tutorial on how to use the memcpy() function in the C++ programming language to transfer a certain number of bytes from one memory address to another.
Guide on how to create a Fibonacci sequence in C++: using the for-loop to generate the Fibonacci series and using the while-loop to create the Fibonacci series.
Practical tutorial on how to use random access file function in C++ to randomly access any random file which lacks the order rather than those sequential ones.
How to use the Postgres dblink extension to facilitate the connection to a remote PostgreSQL database and creating the dblink connection on the client machine.
The MicroPython programming language implements a sizable subset of Python that can run on microcontrollers, thus bringing Python's easy-to-learn syntax, readability, and versatility to the embedded world. With its recent 1.20 release, MicroPython introduces a new package manager, reduces its code size, and adds support for many new boards, including the Raspberry Pi Pico W. The project has come a long way since its inception ten years ago, making it an easy-to-use tool for developing software for resource-constrained environments.
The MIT-licensed MicroPython was created in 2013 by Damien George as a Kickstarter project, along with the pyboard, a microcontroller board to run it on. LWN looked at MicroPython on the pyboard in 2015. There are still updated versions of the pyboard available in the MicroPython store; they are the official MicroPython boards and their sales support the ongoing development of the project.
Two members of the Faster CPython team, which was put together at Microsoft at the behest of Guido van Rossum to work on major performance improvements for CPython, came to PyCon 2023 to report on what the team has been working on—and its plans for the future. PEP 659 ("Specializing Adaptive Interpreter") describes the foundation of the current work, some of which has already been released as part of Python 3.11. Brandt Bucher, who gave a popular talk on structural pattern matching at last year's PyCon, was up first, with a talk on what "adaptive" and "specializing" mean in the context of Python, which we cover here in part one. Mark Shannon, whose proposed plan for performance improvements in 2020 was a major impetus for this work, presented on the past, present, and future of the Python performance enhancements, which will be covered in part two.
While working in Python programming language, if we have a robust IDE (Integrated Development Environment) according to needs, it can surely enhance the coding experience, productivity as well as efficiency of a developer. Well, it is not like you have to be on Windows or MacOS to use the popular Python IDEs, even Ubuntu Linux users can have that because most of them are compatible and support Linux systems as well.
Environment variables are essential elements in Python programming that store key-value pairs at the system level. They play a crucial role in enhancing the security and flexibility of applications.
To slice a sequence efficiently in Python, use the “itertools.islice()” function with “start”, “stop”, and “step” values.
Bash allows you to map whole strings of text to single variables, simplifying its use and script writing.
Practical tutorial on method of comparing two values using the “!=” and “-ne” operators to check the equality or inequality of two strings or numbers.
"rustypaste" is a self-hosted and minimal file upload/pastebin service written in Rust. In this post, I will be talking about its features and telling the story behind how I deployed it to shuttle.rs to make it publicly available for free use.
Andes Technology has just announced the AndesAIRE product line, where AndesAIRE stands for Andes AI Runs Everywhere, comprised of the€ AndesAIRE AnDLA I350 (Andes Deep Learning Accelerator) AI/ML hardware accelerator intellectual property (IP) and the AndesAIRE NN SDK with neural network software tools and runtimes.
I often get asked the question, “So, a vegetarian doesn’t eat meat, but what exactly do you mean by ‘vegan’?” My go-to answer is a pretty standard definition: As a vegan, I do not intentionally consume any animal products.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu announced a $229 million settlement with Walgreens on Wednesday after winning a lawsuit against the company in 2022. The case was in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Minnesota says it settled its lawsuit against e-cigarette maker Juul Labs and tobacco giant Altria for $60.5 million. Attorney General Keith Ellison said Wednesday that it works out to two to four times more per-capita than any other state that sued Juul over youth vaping and marketing practices. The state’s lawsuit is the first and still the only case to reach trial of the thousands of cases nationwide against the e-cigarette maker. It settled just ahead of closing arguments last month, but the terms were confidential until the formal papers were filed with the court. Ellison says Minnesota got the big settlement precisely because the state took Juul to trial.
Attorneys for the federal government, Mississippi and the state’s capital city have agreed to request to delay litigation from a complaint filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that says the city hasn't been meeting standards for providing reliable drinking water. In a Wednesday court filing, Government attorneys asked for a six-month stay, which would be the second such order. It’s part of a broader federal push to fix Jackson’s water system, which nearly collapsed last summer and continues to have problems with broken pipes and leaks. If Judge Henry Wingate approves the stay, it will be extended until November 29, 2023.
Michigan Medicine has launched a first-of-its-kind program to identify and address equity issues for young patients and their families receiving care at U-M Health, throughout Michigan and across the nation.
Over the past decade, the per-degree funding for higher education in social and health care fields has been halved. Meanwhile, there is an acute shortage of professionals in the industry. "If the funding for education is not corrected, we will soon run out of nurses," says Elina Juntunen, CEO and Rector of Diakonia University of Applied Sciences.
Universities of Applied Sciences provide education for various roles in the social and health care sector, including nurses, public health nurses, and social workers.
The quality of life among the working-age population has significantly deteriorated in recent years. Only every other working-age individual now considers their quality of life good, whereas four years ago, over 60 percent of working-age individuals felt the same way. Quality of life refers to a person's perception of their own situation, including their health, well-being, social relationships, and living environment.
In their meeting Tuesday night, the GSC passed a bylaw change to allow for greater leeway on the application of election sanctions. Members of the GSC also received updates on a committee related to Cardinal Care affordability.
Despite the Veterans Health Administration remaining on track to reach year-end targets to increase health care staff, problems persist in VHA’s recruitment and onboarding processes, the House Veterans Affairs Committee said.
Currently, not everyone in Latvia has an opportunity to receive hospice care as a state-guaranteed service. It was expected that it could be provided from budget resources from next year, but there is hope that the service will be introduced from October 1 this year, Ministry representatives told Latvian Radio on May 17.
European Commission Speech Brussels, 17 May 2023 Today is an important day for EU-US relations in the area of health and for global health cooperation.
A Hong Kong activist charged with violating the mask mandate while rallying support for defendants outside court as the city’s largest national security trial began has said he would plead not guilty. Appearing at Kowloon City Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday morning, Dickson Chau said he intended to deny the charge, local media reported.
We are happy to announce a Qt Insight 1.2 release.
Besides Trento's existing cluster and cloud best practices validations, Trento 2.0 highlights streamlining the implementation requirements and enables integration. With a new engine that addresses one of the main concerns of security teams, the requirement of an SSH connection to the SAP systems.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium and libapache2-mod-auth-openidc), Fedora (clevis-pin-tpm2, greetd, keyring-ima-signer, libkrun, mirrorlist-server, nispor, nmstate, qt5-qtbase, rust-afterburn, rust-below, rust-bodhi-cli, rust-cargo-c, rust-coreos-installer, rust-fedora-update-feedback, rust-git-delta, rust-gst-plugin-reqwest, rust-pore, rust-rpm-sequoia, rust-sequoia-octopus-librnp, rust-sequoia-policy-config, rust-sequoia-sq, rust-sevctl, rust-tealdeer, and rust-ybaas), Oracle (apr-util, curl, emacs, firefox, kernel, libreswan, mysql, nodejs and nodejs-nodemon, openssh, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (apr-util, emacs, firefox, git, jenkins and jenkins-2-plugins, kernel, kpatch-patch, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (apr-util, firefox, and thunderbird), Slackware (curl), SUSE (cups-filters, curl, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel, mysql-connector-java, and ovmf), and Ubuntu (cups-filters, git, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, node-minimatch, ruby2.3, ruby2.5, ruby2.7, and runc).
A new and increasingly active ransomware group that’s attacked nearly 200 organizations in less than two months has a different spin on its extortion efforts: Don’t pay us, pay a charity.
So far, this unnamed group that is at least publicly claiming to be driven by anti-capitalist sentiment and its own brand of cyber benevolence is largely targeting users Zimbra, an online workplace collaboration tool.
“Unlike traditional ransomware groups, we’re not asking you to send us money,” read the text of one ransom note posted April 2 on an online forum for Zimbra users. “We just dislike corporations and economic inequality. We simply ask that you make a donation to a non-profit that we approve of. It’s a win-win, you can probably get a tax deduction and good PR from your donation if you want.”
The group is using ransomware dubbed MalasLocker by Bleeping Computer, the tech news site that also hosts forums where users began reporting in April that Zimbra had suffered a series of compromises. Separately, users of a dedicated Zimbra forum began complaining about ransomware issues beginning in late March, Bleeping Computer reported.
A boastful teenage hacker has been charged with orchestrating a break-in to the sports betting website DraftKings, which led to $600,000 being drained from hundreds of customer accounts.
Joseph Garrison, 18, of Madison, Wis., is accused of using stolen log-in and password combinations he bought on the dark web to hack his way into 60,000 accounts on DraftKings last November. He then sold the information to others who used it to drain 1,600 customer accounts, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said.
Multiple Louisiana state agencies are experiencing a statewide network outage which is causing issues at their field offices across the state.
The network outage has crippled state agencies including The Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Department of Health among a growing list of state offices and services.
Ransomware groups often promise to keep everything confidential if their victim pays them. They can’t do that if their chats are not secure and someone is able to shoulder-surf or otherwise get access to the negotiations and any files provided by the attackers as proof — or any bitcoin wallet addresses. If victims think or hope that they will be able to keep a breach under wraps and not have to tell anyone, they may be in for a rude awakening. DataBreaches does not know what the victim in this incident intended or intends, but the attack they experienced was publicly revealed by SuspectFile.
Each year, hundreds of institutions across the US and Canada ask their first-year, transfer, and older students to participate in a survey about their prior academic and co-curricular experiences. They also ask them to share their expectations from the coming year.
The survey isn’t anonymous – students are asked to enter their full names and student card numbers. What’s more, participants are asked to specify where they’re going to live during their studies, their sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. Some of the questions are designed to learn about the psychological well-being of the students.
[...]
Our researchers stumbled upon two unprotected Azure Storage blogs with over 1.3 million exposed files.
Some cybersecurity experts have expressed concerns about two new top-level domains that became generally available earlier this month. The two top-level domains were released by Google LLC on May 3 along with six others.
On May 3rd, Google Registry launched eight new top-level domains (TLDs) “for dads, grads and techies”, including a .zip TLD. While these new TLDs come with benefits such as automatic inclusion on the HSTS preload list, the launch of new TLDs has always presented cyber criminals with the opportunity to register domains in bad faith.
Kubernetes co-founder€ Craig McLuckie and Sigstore founder Luke Hinds today announced the launch of a new software supply chain company called Stacklok, after the company raised $17.5 million in venture capital funding ahead of its reveal.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Australian Cyber Security Centre have issued a joint warning€ about a change in tactics from a well-known ransomware group from traditional ransomware encryption to exfiltration-based extortion. The group, called BianLian, is believed to have first emerged in 2021.
CISA, FBI, and ACSC warn critical infrastructure organizations of the BianLian ransomware group’s attacks.
Technological equipment supplier Lacroix has closed three production sites after experiencing a ransomware attack.
AWS is open sourcing its Cedar policy language and authorization engine and Snapchange, an open source snapshot-based fuzzing tool.
The Security Profiles Operator (SPO) is a feature-rich operator for Kubernetes to make managing seccomp, SELinux and AppArmor profiles easier than ever. Recording those profiles from scratch is one of the key features of this operator, which usually involves the integration into large CI/CD systems. Being able to test the recording capabilities of the operator in edge cases is one of the recent development efforts of the SPO and makes it excitingly easy to play around with seccomp profiles.
Recording seccomp profiles with
spoc record
The v0.8.0 release of the Security Profiles Operator shipped a new command line interface called
spoc
, a little helper tool for recording and replaying seccomp profiles among various other things that are out of scope of this blog post.
Google has released a Chrome 113 update to patch 12 vulnerabilities, including a critical use-after-free flaw.
Lawmakers advanced four on Wednesday that would broaden the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's portfolio.
The Supreme Court of Delaware state ruled on Wednesday that an earlier judgment made by the Delaware Court of Chancery in its memorandum opinion of 6 September 2022 and affirmed in a final order on 13 October 2022 should stand.
Threat actors have been selling access to energy sector organizations, including ICS and other OT systems, according to a new report from Searchlight Cyber.
Apple says it rejected 1.7 million applications from being published in the App Store in 2022.
Former Sunday Mirror investigations editor Graham Johnson denied being a liar and said he wanted to help victims.
An FTC order bars app maker Easy Healthcare from sharing additional personal health data with third parties for advertising.
In our submission, we have recommended that the Rules should not be adopted.
Data Breach in Malta: Company must disclose source within 20 days or face penalties
The Maltese Data Protection Authority (IDPC) has taken decisive action against C-PLANET, the IT company responsible for a voter data breach in Malta.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday refused to clear a path for victims of attacks by militant organizations to hold social media companies liable under an anti-terrorism law for failing to stop the groups from using their platforms, handing a victory to Twitter.
The court in a separate case involving Google sidestepped a bid to weaken legal protections for internet firms.
The justices in a 9-0 decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that had revived a lawsuit against Twitter by the American relatives of Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian man killed in a 2017 attack during New Year’s celebration in a Istanbul nightclub claimed by the Islamic State militant group.
Election of new Karen National Union leaders will likely to lead to more fighting, experts say.
Discover the untold truth behind US military presence in Somalia, its impact on the region, and the strategic interests at play in Mnar Adley and Alan Macleod's eye-opening interview with journalist Ann Garrison.
By Amber Wang Britain’s former prime minister Liz Truss on Wednesday urged her successor Rishi Sunak to get tough with China on Taiwan, describing the democratic island as “an enduring rebuke to totalitarianism.
The number of judicial executions recorded globally in 2022 reached the highest figure in five years, according to Amnesty International’s annual review of the death penalty, released Monday.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong says any deal with China shouldn’t devalue rights of individual claimant states.
The US Supreme Court declined to enjoin the Illinois assault rifle ban on Wednesday while the case is pending appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The appeal was presented to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The court denied the plaintiffs’ application for a writ of injunction pending appeal.
NATO’s new defence plans for the Baltic countries look promising, members of Lithuania’s parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence (NSGK) said on Wednesday.
In 1975, Philip Agee published his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary. In the introduction he wrote,"When I joined the CIA, I believed in the need for its existence.
A Royal Navy frigate in the Arabian Sea has seized $6 million worth of hashish while a US Coast Guard cutter has seized $80 million worth of heroin in the Gulf of Oman in yet more large drug seizures in the region.
A month after clashes began between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces, air strikes continue to pummel Sudan’s major cities while on the ground street battles rage. Bodies of both soldiers and civilians are piling up in the streets of the capital Khartoum, many of them remaining unclaimed due to the unstable security situation. Sudanese volunteers have launched an initiative to bury civilian victims of the civil war and locate the missing, dead or alive.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. The military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) has a huge advantage over its critics. Its proponents are united by greed and power. They know exactly what they want. Like Johnny Rocco in “Key Largo,” they want MORE.
Central Asian heads of state converged in China's historic city of Xian on May 18 for meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to seal pledges of "enduring" friendship, paving the way for a summit expected to result in a regional pact with Beijing.
Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been sent to re-education camps in China since 2017. Today, the repression continues, but less conspicuously. The Xinjiang region appears to be in a significant stage of transition.
China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China.€ Sign up€ to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. It’s been a while. I just got back from several weeks in China. It was my first visit since the pandemic, and I noticed some changes: half the cars running on the streets of Shanghai…
The Kuomintang nominated Hou Yu-ih, a popular mayor who has said little about geopolitical issues, as the party tries to appeal to voters wary of Beijing.
A Pacific€ island nation had gone to great lengths to host the U.S. president. Now a region is left to wonder again about American steadfastness.
Countering the threat from China will require Japan to get off the sidelines and share more of the military burden.
“A gigantic wave washed away my family,” said one survivor.
Planet A Australia’s 2023–24 budget allocates $4 billion to combat the impacts of climate change and turn Australia into a ‘renewable energy superpower’.
Another group says the€ next 5 years will almost certainly be the warmest on record.
Data:€ NOAA, via Zeke Hausfather; Chart: Alice Feng/Axios
There is a 66% probability that global average surface temperatures will exceed the Paris Agreement's 1.5€°C target during one of the next five years, the UN's World Meteorological Organization warned Wednesday.
California wildfires have made headlines in recent years for their notable size and intensity. According to scientists, increased underbrush growth from this past winter’s rainfall may further fuel the wildfire season this year. California’s state parks are preparing for flood events and an especially intense wildfire season.
The Lithuanian Energy Ministry has proposed that the government end subsidising electricity prices for households, but extend subsidies for natural gas in order to keep the tariffs at their current levels, Renatas Pocius, chairman of the National Energy Regulatory Council (VERT), said on Wednesday.
A coalition battle cry for the gas industry to stand up for itself in the push to decarbonise the economy has been taken up by the boss of a major Australian energy company.
Attorneys for a Wisconsin Native American tribe are set to present their arguments that a federal judge should order an energy company to shut down an oil pipeline because rapid erosion could expose it and cause a massive oil spill on reservation land
Automaker Stellantis warned UK lawmakers that it may be forced to shut some of its operations in the country, jeopardizing thousands of jobs, unless Brexit’s trade rules are renegotiated.
The UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero outlined his department's plans for implementing the Powering Up Britain package that aims to help the country enhance its energy security and deliver on its net-zero commitments.
The government has proposed a ban on feral pigeons feeding, according to a paper submitted by Environment and Ecology Bureau to the Legislative Council on Monday that seeks amendments to the Wild Animals Protection Ordinance.
The promotion is part of Hong Kong’s plan to lure tourists back to the city.
Jobs data has come in a little softer than expected and has likely diluted the case for another interest rate hike.€ € The jobless rate rose to 3.7 per cent from 3.5 per cent last month, ticking up against expectations it would hold firm./blockquote>
Shares of Kyndryl Holdings Inc., the former services business unit of IBM Corp., fell more than 10% in early trading today as the company’s full-year revenue forecast issued Tuesday fell below analysts’ expectations.
Asia-Pacific share indexes rallied on Thursday, following Wall Street’s lead, and the US dollar held just below a two-month high versus the yen amid signs the United States might be close to a deal to raise the debt ceiling and avert a disastrous default.
A major home-building body has poured cold water on the federal government’s aspiration to build one million homes as new construction stalls. Home construction has fallen sharply and new forecasts from the Housing Industry Association suggest the number of dwelling builds will be slow for at least the next 12 months.
The future looks promising for Jenny Craig as administrators field bids to buy the brand, a consulting firm says. FTI Consulting last week took the reins of the€ weight management service’s Australian and New Zealand operations after they slipped into voluntary administration. Days before, the Melbourne-founded business filed for bankruptcy in the US.
Swiss bank UBS estimated a $17 billion loss from its pending takeover of Credit Suisse in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday (May 16), including an estimated $4 billion cost from litigation and regulatory costs related to the merger.
When big spending Barrack Obama left the White House the national security budget properly measured totaled a staggering $822 billion. That included $600 billion for defense, $46 billion for security assistance and international operations and $177 billion for veterans compensation and services, which reflects the deferred cost of prior wars.
Despite closing three rural bank branches this week, ANZ executives deny the company has sped-up shut downs before tougher rules about closures in regional Australia come into force.
China will resume Australian timber imports as Beijing and Canberra now work towards stripping punitive tariffs from barley, wine and meat.€ The Chinese ambassador to Australia€ Xiao Qian confirmed China would resume imports on Thursday after notifying the Australian government the day before.
Australia's timber trade with China had been largely suspended since late 2020.
China will resume the importation of Australian timber. “Yesterday, the Chinese customs has formally notified the Australian minister of agriculture that starting from today China will resume import of Australian timbers,” ambassador Xiao Qian told reporters in Canberra on Thursday. The trade has been in limbo since late 2020.
A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China
The former board chairperson of a Connecticut energy cooperative and estranged husband of a California congresswoman has been sentenced to six months in prison
The recently announced deal by publicly traded Latch to acquire Jamie Siminoff’s startup Honest Day’s Work essentially gives Latch investors a well-regarded executive to manage the flagging public company, and Siminoff a public company to run where he can test out his plans for a new tech startup.
"Special forces travel" refers to seeing and doing as much as possible with little money.
As writer Belen Fernandez has put it, "greedy capitalism" is the institutional force behind worsening social security in the U.S., Professor Doster noted.
China’s ambassador to Australia has attacked the Quad and the G7 for fuelling anti-China sentiment and stoking regional tensions. Xiao Qian has accused Western nations of misleading the international community about China’s ambitions in the Pacific,€ in a rare address to Australian media.
Controversial former Liberal minister Stuart Robert has formally resigned from federal parliament. Mr Robert, who announced he would step down earlier this month, tendered his resignation on Thursday. The resignation will trigger a by-election in his Gold Coast seat Fadden.
On May 17, 2023, Global China Hub deputy director Colleen Cottle was quoted in Nikkei Asia, providing insights on what signs China will be watching for during the G7 Summit, particularly as it pertains to the US trying to bring Japan and Europe on board with its campaign against China’s “economic coercion.
Doctors, dentists, builders and legal professionals from overseas and mainland China will be able to obtain speedy Hong Kong work permits, after the government announced an expansion to the city’s talent list on Tuesday.
Seen by some as spoiler but by others as a kingmaker, Sinan Ogan, the far-right candidate who came in third in the vote, says he is being courted by the two finalists: the sitting president and his challenger.
Sinan Oßan has not explicitly declared his support for Kñlñçdaroßlu or Erdoßan, and demands both candidates to distance themselves from the Kurdish-focused parties that supported them.
Despite allegations of voter fraud and irregularities that may flip certain seats, the ruling People Alliance likely maintains a parliamentary majority with 322 representatives, while the strategy of the CHP to include members of the table of six under its list did not yield successful results.
As President Erdoßan and main opposition leader Kñlñçdaroßlu gear up for the second round of the presidential election on May 28, we bring you updates on the aftermath of the parliamentary and presidential elections, along with the latest developments leading up to the decisive runoff.
A resolution to expel New York Republican Rep. George Santos from Congress is being referred to the House Ethics Committee. Republicans successfully sidestepped an effort Wednesday to force them into a vote that could have narrowed their already slim four-seat majority. California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia introduced a resolution in February to expel Santos. He sought to force a vote on that resolution under a process that left three options for Republicans: a vote on the resolution, a move to table or a referral to committee. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy chose the third option, much to the chagrin of Democrats who described it as a “complete copout.”
Growing up in Seoul, all of the information that I was fed about North Korea compelled me to fear the country.
News dissemination on Chinese social media is already heavily controlled.
A man who spent a night in jail for smacking Rudy Giuliani on the back and calling him a “scumbag” is suing him and several New York City police officers for false arrest and defamation. The federal lawsuit stems from a June 2022 incident in which Giuliani claims he was attacked for political reasons by an irate supermarket employee. But video of the incident showed the incident was less violent than Giuliani claimed. The supermarket employee is now suing Giuliani for defamation, while accusing the New York City police department of going along with the deception.
Chinese authorities fined a comedy company millions of yuan on Wednesday and threatened further legal action after one of its members made an oblique joke about the People’s Liberation Army during a stand-up act.
Stand-up artist House is targeted after being denounced for insulting the People's Liberation Army
The penalty came after a popular comedian joked about a military slogan often used by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has strictly curbed expression.
All data regarding the vote counting was promptly shared with political parties and the results are subject to objections, the official has said.
Anger about social media censorship should be directed at repressive governments, not the companies they threaten.
A group of Iranian artists has called on the country's cultural figures to reject the legitimacy of the Islamic republic's "unjust" Ministry of Guidance and produce their works, including exhibitions, book and magazine publications, and film productions without seeking permission.
Hundreds of Iranian students are said to be facing disciplinary committees and possible suspensions at Al-Zahra University in Tehran over issues related to the mandatory wearing of hijabs on campus.
Gumatji leader Yunupingu has been honoured at a ceremony in Arnhem Land as a fierce fighter for land and sea rights€ for Aboriginal people across Australia. In his tribute, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described Yunupingu as a giant who had a vision for a more equal and just world.
A Tunisian court sentenced Rached Ghannouchi in absentia to one year in prison Monday following indictment charges after his arrest in April. Ghannouchi is the opposition figure in Tunisia heading the Ennahda party.
Fresh data published by Eurostat May 17 show that young people in Latvia are rarely employed on short-term contracts, compared to the rest of the European Union.
From Monday's decision in People v. Bourdage, by Illinois Appellate Court Justice Michael Hyman, joined by Justices Aurelia Pucinski and Mary Ellen Coghlan: A grand jury indicted Sherri Bourdage for violating a single provision of a no-stalking-no-contact order by "indirectly communicat[ing] about Joseph Peila to his employer[.]"
Zhou Shifeng had repeatedly accused a former security chief of wrongdoing.
While not legally binding, rulings provide documentation that diplomats can bring up with Beijing
Delta-dwelling ethnic group has faced discrimination from Vietnamese and Cambodians.
The University of Michigan is working with departments and faculty to enter missing grades from the winter semester in the midst of the Graduate Employees’ Organization’s ongoing strike, despite GEO’s claims that this violates principles of academic integrity.
Bekzat Maqsutuly, a Kazakh activist known for his criticism of the expected introduction of visa-free travel for Chinese citizens coming to the country, was detained in Almaty on unspecified charges on May 17, one day before the China-Central Asian summit in China's ancient city of Xi'an.
Last week, the European Parliament backed the EU’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. What does it mean for Lithuania, which has not ratified the document yet?
Two dozen ambassadors based in Vilnius have issued a statement on the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), calling for ensuring equal rights for LGBTQI+ people and legally recognising same-sex partnership.
Taiwan’s parliament passed an amendment on Tuesday allowing gay couples to jointly adopt children, a move hailed by activists as “another big step forward” for marriage equality. Taiwan is at the vanguard of Asia’s burgeoning LGBTQ rights movement, becoming the first place in the region to legalise marriage equality in 2019.
Hong Kong has strongly disapproved of the US 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom, in which US officials raised concerns about the arrest of religious figures and the shrinking space for civil society.
A Hong Kong man has been charged with rioting in Admiralty, almost four years after the protest took place in June 2019. Twenty-seven-year-old assistant designer Leung Chi-kin appeared before Magistrate Philip Chan at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts on Wednesday.
The Editorial Board describes Stanford's administrative overreach and gives actionable steps to the Stanford community to keep admin accountable. "Stanford stakeholders need to act collectively to hold administrators at all levels responsible to the community they serve," the Board writes.
Sixty per cent of Hong Kong people now agree with same-sex marriage, according to a joint study published by three universities on Wednesday, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT).
Healthcare providers in states with abortion bans are unable to meet the standard of care, resulting in negative health outcomes for their patients, a new study reveals. The report was published by Care Post-Roe, a project aimed at studying the impacts of narrowing abortion rights across the United States.
Illinois is more protective of abortion access than most any state. But Democrats are looking for ways to bolster its practice and availability. And that includes approving legislation to prevent penalizing out-of-state residents who come to Illinois. The General Assembly has adopted proposals to require insurers in Illinois to cover medication to end pregnancies and for hormonal therapy, require universities to provide emergency contraception on campus and to prohibit crisis pregnancy centers from distributing false information. Another bill that needs Senate approval would require other states to promise in interstate compacts not to use automatic license-plate reader technology to track people leaving the state for Illinois.
An 8-year-old girl died in Texas while in Border Patrol custody Wednesday following a "medical emergency," officials said.
In response to a CIC order in a Second Appeal filed by IFF, MIB furnished a list of 3,101 digital news media publishers and 57 OTT platforms that submitted their details to MIB.
The Unified Patent Court has published an update on the problems with the CMS and the opting out of patents of the jurisdiction of the court before the starting date of 1 June 2023.
In the US, registered patent practitioners are required to have a science or engineering background. Over the past few years, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been refining the qualification process. Nearly all incoming patent attorneys qualify by either (A) possessing a specific degree (such as mechanical engineering) or (B) accumulating a sufficient number of university science or engineering credits. These two methods are referred to as Category A and Category B in the General Requirements Bulletin for Admission to the Examination for Registration to Practice in Patent Cases (GRB).
Sting reportedly sold his solo catalog and The Police catalog for an estimated $300 million, as reported by The New York Times in early 2022, and he began this year by performing a private concert for Microsoft executives the night before the company announced sweeping layoffs.
However, Sting will not sell out to AI, and he fears the impact it may have on human job security moving forward.
“The building blocks of music belong to us, to human beings,” Sting recently told the BBC. “That’s going to be a battle we all have to fight in the next couple of years — defending our human capital against AI.”