The Russian military is seeing an influx of older contract soldiers who are largely seen as detrimental to its war effort in Ukraine, the investigative news outlet Vyorstka reported Wednesday, citing anonymous military and parliamentary sources.

Volunteer fighters aged 45 and over now make up half of new recruits in Moscow, a senior Mayor’s Office source was cited as saying. The average age of recruits has risen from 40 at the start of the year to about 50, said another Moscow Mayor’s Office source.

“They’re all sick,” a Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine was quoted as saying of these troops. “Their legs hurt, their heads hurt, and they’re slow.”

Authorities said the instant messaging platform refused to hand over requested information over "criminal content." The move comes a day after Russia also banned the platform.

In some areas, the WWF's Living Planet report noted that wildlife populations had fallen by up to 95%. The Amazon rainforest is particularly vulnerable.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)published its latest Living Planet report on Thursday, showing that wild populations of animal species have plunged over 70% since 1970.

In some highly biodiverse areas, such as Latin America and the Caribbean, that number is closer to 95%.

"The picture we are painting is incredibly concerning," Kirsten Schuijt, director general of WWF International, told a press conference.

There was an average of four incidents of settler violence per day in the occupied West Bank since October 7.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3629367

Chinese authorities are seeking to intimidate people from China living in Japan who take part in activities critical of the Chinese government, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Chinese government’s harassment of people from China, including those from Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, and their family members back home, appears aimed at deterring members of the diaspora from protesting against the government or engaging in events deemed politically sensitive. The Chinese authorities have also sought out diaspora members to provide information on others in Japan.

“Chinese authorities appear to have few scruples about silencing people from China living in Japan who criticize Beijing’s abuses,” said Teppei Kasai, Asia program officer at Human Rights Watch. “The Japanese government should make clear to Beijing it won’t tolerate the long arm of China’s transnational repression in Japan.”

[...]

Most of those interviewed said that the Chinese police have contacted them or their relatives back home, pressuring them to end their activities in Japan. Several provided logs of messages from the Chinese social media platform WeChat, recordings of video calls, and CCTV footage that corroborated their accounts.

One person said they stopped participating in any politically sensitive in-person and online activities after receiving a call from Chinese authorities in 2024. Another who initially agreed to be interviewed later decided not to participate out of fear that Chinese authorities would retaliate.

[...]

A brief exemplified summary:

• Several ethnic Uyghurs from Xinjiang said that Chinese authorities contacted them through their relatives back home.
• Several people from Inner Mongolia involved in promoting language rights and peaceful self-determination for Inner Mongolians, an ethnic minority, said that Chinese authorities had contacted them, often through their relatives back home.
• A person from Tibet who promotes Tibetan culture in Japan said that when they went to the Chinese embassy in Tokyo to renew their passport, embassy officials told them they needed to return to Tibet to do so. -A person from Taiwan previously involved in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activism in a third country said the Chinese embassy sent them multiple invitations to “retrieve important documents.”

[...]

A person from Taiwan previously involved in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activism in a third country said the Chinese embassy sent them multiple invitations to “retrieve important documents.”

[...]

In recent years, the Japanese government has become increasingly vocal about the Chinese government’s human rights violations, including raising the issue with Chinese officials, and with resolutions in parliament to monitor the cases.

[...]

The Japanese government should recognize the threat posed by the Chinese government’s repression of Chinese nationals abroad, and help protect their basic rights by establishing a system for residents in Japan to report such incidents, Human Rights Watch said.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3630108

Archived link

The [Chinese economic] model that has powered four decades of breakneck economic growth was reliant on cheap exports and wasteful state-led investment in property and infrastructure. It is no longer sustainable. It has led to soaring debt and diminishing returns, with China littered with ghost cities, containing 60 to 100 million empty or incomplete homes, while companies accounting for 40% of China’s home sales have defaulted. It is widely agreed that China needs to rebalance its economy, that consumers need to spend more, since private consumption accounts for just 39% of the economy – extremely low by world standards (the figure in the US is 68%). But there is no consumer confidence, with 80% of family wealth tied up in property and no meaningful social safety net.

China's leader Xi Jinping hopes renewable energy tech can replace property as a new motor of growth, and mouth-watering subsidies have been thrown at industries ranging from solar panels to electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries, leading to massive over-capacity and vicious price wars. Yet the benign global environment that accompanied China’s earlier export splurges has gone; the world is much more wary, and both the US and EU have imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels they allege are being dumped at below cost.

[,,,]

China has never provided a level playing field for foreign business, but under Xi, the environment has become increasingly hostile. Last year, direct foreign investment into China fell to a 23-year-low. In Western boardrooms, once so bewitched with capturing a share of the mythical China market that they would put normally rational decision-making aside and suffer almost any indignity, ‘resilience’ has become the watchword. The Ukraine war has exposed the danger of over dependence on autocrats with hostile ambitions.

[...]

Russia has sustained over 600,000 casualties since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Defense News reported on Oct. 9, citing senior Pentagon officials.

. . .

The accelerating losses are disproportionate with Moscow's territorial gains, a senior U.S. defense official said on Oct. 9.

"Russian losses, again both killed and wounded in action, in just the first year of the war exceeded the total of all Soviet losses in any conflict since World War II combined," the official said.

The mounting casualties at the front may hinder the Russian military's recruitment efforts, the official said, putting pressure on the Kremlin to initiate a new wave of mobilization.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21228762

By Brett Wilkins October 9, 2024

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza remain trapped by the latest Israeli offensive centred on Jabaliya refugee camp, according to UN agencies and human rights groups.

“At least 400,000 people are trapped in the area,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, posted on X on Wednesday, amid witness accounts of bodies lying uncollected in the streets because of the renewed fighting.

“Recent evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities are forcing people to flee again & again, especially from Jabaliya camp,” added Lazzarini. “Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe.”

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Saudi Arabia was defeated for a seat in the U.N.’s premier human rights body Wednesday after a campaign by rights groups that accused the Saudis of serious rights violations.

The 193-member General Assembly elected 18 new members to serve on the 47-nation Human Rights Council, which allocates seats to regional groups to ensure geographical representation.

The Geneva-based council reviews the human rights records of all countries periodically, appoints independent investigators to examine and report on issues like torture and situations in countries like North Korea, Iran and Myanmar, and sends fact-finding missions to investigate rights violations, including in Ukraine.

...

Before the vote, Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, called Saudi Arabia “unfit to serve on the Human Rights Council.”

He pointed to the rights group's documentation of Saudi border guards opening fire and likely killing hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross the Yemen-Saudi border in 2022 and 2023, and the lack of accountability for the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).

The request was filed last week by a group of 20 complainants, most of whom are Palestinian, asking the Dutch prosecution service to examine allegations Israel tried to derail the ICC’s inquiry into alleged crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to lawyers for the group, the criminal complaint was filed in response to an investigation by the Guardian revealing how Israeli intelligence attempted over a nine-year period to undermine, influence and allegedly intimidate the ICC chief prosecutor’s office.

The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call prompted the Dutch government to raise concerns earlier this year with Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands.

As the host state of the ICC, which is in The Hague, the Netherlands is obliged under an agreement with the court to protect the safety and security of ICC staff, and must ensure it is “free from interference of any kind”.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has just released a documentary on Israeli war crimes, based in part on social media posts from Israeli soldiers themselves. The documentary begins with the Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, as well as footage of the Al-Awda school massacre in July, when Israeli troops killed at least 31 people at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians. The moment the bomb exploded was captured on video by someone recording a youth soccer game in the Al-Awda school courtyard.

After ordering most of northern Gaza to evacuate, Israeli forces fired on Palestinians desperately trying to flee

In a joint statement on Wednesday, a coalition of 18 aid groups warned that the ongoing Israeli assault “will worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in the north” and has already “prevented international and national humanitarian organizations from carrying out already very limited lifesaving aid operations.”

Najia and Hammam Malaka have been stuck at opposite ends of the Gaza Strip, with their young children, for most of the yearlong conflict. The emotional toll has been devastating.

The war has shredded many families since Israel attacked the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel. Fighting and bombing have killed tens of thousands. Many of Gaza’s roughly two million people have had to flee again and again, scattering families across the strip. Just moving around the tiny territory involves great risk, sometimes death.

For the Malakas, the war is a wall. They have been trapped, less than 20 miles apart, for almost a year.

“My heart aches every single morning,” said Mr. Malaka, 30. “I feel so awful, just missing them and wanting to hear their voices.”

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An international summit on Ukraine where Volodymyr Zelenskyy was going to present a “victory plan” to western leaders has been formally postponed – though the Ukrainian president will try to organise a tour of European capitals instead.

. . .

Ukrainian sources said that Zelenskyy would travel to meet the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Friday – and potentially go on to visit other leaders as part of what sources described as a “European tour”.

German officials also promised that another leaders’ meeting to discuss Ukraine would be held soon, though it is not clear if it will happen before the US presidential election in November, which pits military aid sceptic Donald Trump against a more supportive Kamala Harris.

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Plans to fingerprint passengers entering the EU from 10 November are to be delayed for a third time after concerns were raised by France, Germany and the Netherlands, it has emerged.

The introduction of the entry-exit system (EES) requiring non-EU citizens to have their fingerprints or photos taken before entering the Schengen area has already been delayed twice.

It was due to be introduced in summer last year but France expressed concerns it would have an adverse impact on that autumn’s Rugby World Cup and this summer’s Olympics. It was rescheduled for 6 October this year, then put back again until November amid concerns about disruption to school trips into the EU.

EU diplomat sources said on Wednesday there was very little chance that any version of the new entry-exit system would be ready to be implemented in four weeks’ time despite an official announcement of its launch date by the European Commission last month.

More than two-thirds of Taiwanese people would be willing to fight off a Chinese invasion of their island, a new survey found. Just over half of respondents believe that the United States would send its military to help.

Most Taiwanese people would be willing to defend their island against a Chinese attack, according to a poll published Wednesday. Most also believe that such an attack is highly unlikely in the next five years.

The poll, commissioned by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, was released a day before Taiwan's National Day.

Should Beijing attack, 67.8% of the 1,214 people surveyed said they would be "very willing or somewhat willing" to fight in defense of Taiwan; 23.6% said they would not be.

Almost 64% said China's "territorial ambition" in Taiwan represents "a serious threat." At the same time, 61% said it was not likely China would invade soon.

Some 52% of respondents said that they believed key ally the United States would come to their aid in the invent of a Chinese invasion. Yet, only 40% believed that the US would send its navy to "break" a potential blockade.