[News] News From Other Places!

It's news you can use from places with different views! (Don't misuse or abuse you yahoos.)

South Africa load-shedding: The roots of Eskom's power problem

Late one Thursday afternoon, last November, a maintenance contractor reached his hand under a huge rotating shaft at an ageing power station in South Africa.

It took the man just a few seconds to unscrew a steel plug, smaller than a coffee mug.

As he moved away from the scene, precious lubrication oil quickly began seeping from the innards of the shaft. The steel bearings inside overheated and before long the coal mill, and with it one of the station's eight turbines, ground to a sudden, and expensive, halt.

If you are looking to understand South Africa's current struggles - its soaring crime and unemployment rates, its stubborn inequality and stagnant economy, its relentless corruption and crippling power cuts, and its broader drift towards what some fear could become "gangster state" or even "failed state" territory - then this one act of industrial sabotage, at a coal-fired power station on the high plains east of Johannesburg, is a good place to start.

The alleged saboteur, Simon Shongwe, 43, was working as a sub-contractor at Camden - a plant that was built back in the 1960s, bombed by anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s, mothballed in the 1990s, and more recently brought out of retirement to help a country now battling to keep the lights on.

There are several theories about the alleged sabotage.

It could have been designed to break the coal mill in order to enable a corrupt repair company to come and fix it at an inflated cost.

It might have been done as a way of threatening Camden's management in to accepting some other corrupt contract.

Or it may have been part of a broader political conspiracy to damage South Africa's energy infrastructure and undermine an ANC government increasingly seen as floundering after nearly three decades in power.

What is certain is that the sabotage at Unit 4 was not an isolated event.

Instead, it was one relatively small act in a vast, ongoing, and highly successful criminal enterprise that involves murders, poisoning, fires, cable theft, ruthless cartels and powerful politicians.

It is an enterprise that risks derailing international attempts to nudge South Africa away from its dependence on coal and towards renewable energy sources.

Over the past decade it has brought South Africa's once-world-class public power utility, Eskom, to the brink of collapse and left most homes around the country in darkness for many hours each day.

Prederick wrote:

China’s loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse

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.

An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia — found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. And it’s draining foreign currency reserves these countries use to pay interest on those loans, leaving some with just months before that money is gone.

Behind the scenes is China’s reluctance to forgive debt and its extreme secrecy about how much money it has loaned and on what terms, which has kept other major lenders from stepping in to help. On top of that is the recent discovery that borrowers have been required to put cash in hidden escrow accounts that push China to the front of the line of creditors to be paid.

Countries in AP’s analysis had as much as 50% of their foreign loans from China and most were devoting more than a third of government revenue to paying off foreign debt. Two of them, Zambia and Sri Lanka, have already gone into default, unable to make even interest payments on loans financing the construction of ports, mines and power plants.

In Pakistan, millions of textile workers have been laid off because the country has too much foreign debt and can’t afford to keep the electricity on and machines running.

In Kenya, the government has held back paychecks to thousands of civil service workers to save cash to pay foreign loans. The president’s chief economic adviser tweeted last month, “Salaries or default? Take your pick.”

Since Sri Lanka defaulted a year ago, a half-million industrial jobs have vanished, inflation has pierced 50% and more than half the population in many parts of the country has fallen into poverty.

Experts predict that unless China begins to soften its stance on its loans to poor countries, there could be a wave of more defaults and political upheavals.

“In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight,” said Harvard economist Ken Rogoff. “ China has moved in and left this geopolitical instability that could have long-lasting effects.”

Belt and Road Initiative is going great.

Several pieces today:

US may restrict visas for Ugandan officials in wake of anti-LGBTQ+ laws

The US may restrict visas issued to Ugandan officials in its latest condemnation to the African country’s enactment of stringent – and highly controversial – anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that Joe Biden’s White House is “deeply troubled” by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was signed into law by Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, on Monday. Blinken said that he was looking to “promote accountability” for Ugandan officials who have violated the rights of LGBTQ+ people, with possible measures including the curtailment of visas.

“I have also directed the department to update our travel guidance to American citizens and to US businesses as well as to consider deploying existing visa restrictions tools against Ugandan officials and other individuals for abuse of universal human rights, including the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons,” Blinken said in a statement.

Uganda’s government has faced widespread criticism over the new laws, with the EU, human rights groups and LGBTQ+ organizations all calling for it to be reversed. Biden, who has raised the possibility of sanctions against Uganda, has called the law a “tragic violation of universal human rights” while Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, described the law as “devastating”.

Homosexual acts were already illegal in Uganda but now those convicted face life imprisonment under the new laws, with the legislation imposing the death penalty for “aggravated” cases, such as gay sex involving someone below the age of 18. People convicted of “promoting” homosexuality face 20 years in prison, with Human Rights Watch noting the bill essentially criminalizes “merely identifying” as LGBTQ+.

Anita Among, Uganda’s parliamentary speaker, said on the Twitter the new law will “protect the sanctity of the family”.

“We have stood strong to defend the culture, values and aspirations of our people,” Among said.

But the measure appears to have bipartisan disapproval in the US, with the Republican senator Ted Cruz calling the law “horrific and wrong”. Cruz wrote on Twitter: “Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque & an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.#LGBTQ”

Japan government under renewed pressure to end same-sex marriage ban

I am always entertained when weebs whose only experience of Japan is via anime and other weebs find out that, for all the yaoi, same-sex marriage is not legal.

Pressure is building on Japan’s government to legalise same-sex unions after a court ruled that a ban on them was unconstitutional.

Rights advocates said the ruling on Tuesday by Nagoya district court was a step forward in the campaign to end Japan’s status as the only G7 country not to fully recognise same-sex unions.

It is the second time a court in Japan has ruled the ban unconstitutional, while two other courts have decreed the ban is in line with the postwar constitution, which defines marriage as based on “the mutual consent of both sexes”.

But the Nagoya court, ruling on a lawsuit filed by two men who are in a relationship, rejected the couple’s demand that the state pay each of them 1m yen (£5,715) in compensation for denying them the right to marry.

“This ruling has rescued us from the hurt of last year’s ruling that said there was nothing wrong with the ban, and the hurt of what the government keeps saying,” the couple’s lawyer, Yoko Mizushima, told journalists and supporters outside the court.

Mizushima was referring to a ruling in Osaka last year that the ban was not unconstitutional. A court in Tokyo later reached a similar conclusion but said the lack of legal protection for same-sex families violated their human rights.

While the courts cannot compel the government to act, the latest ruling is expected to reignite the debate over same-sex unions, less than a fortnight after it submitted an LGBTQ+ rights bill designed to avert criticism ahead of the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima.

The government had promised to pass a law to promote “understanding” of LGBTQ+ people before the G7, but opposition from conservatives in the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP) forced it to submit a watered-down bill the day before the summit began.

The bill initially said “discrimination is unacceptable” but now says that “unfair discrimination” should not be tolerated – wording that campaigners said had rendered the legislation meaningless.

While lifting the ban on same-sex unions is opposed by “family values” conservatives in the LDP, opinion polls show public support for same-sex marriage as high as 70%.

More than 300 municipalities in Japan allow same-sex couples to enter partnership agreements – covering about 65% of the population – but their rights are limited.

Same-sex couples are unable to inherit their partner’s assets – such as the house they may have shared – and have no parental rights to any children their partners may have. Hospital visits are often possible only at the discretion of medical staff.

The prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has provoked anger by claiming that Japan’s ban on same-sex marriage was “not discriminatory” and that legalising it would “fundamentally change society” and challenge so-called traditional family values.

In February, he sacked a senior aide who said he “would not want to live next door” to an LGBTQ+ couple and did “not even want to look at them”.

China’s Young People Can’t Find Jobs. Xi Jinping Says to ‘Eat Bitterness.’

(NYT Paywall)

Gloria Li is desperate to find a job. Graduating in June with a master’s degree in graphic design, she started looking last fall, hoping to find an entry-level position that pays about $1,000 a month in a big city in central China. The few offers she has gotten are internships that pay $200 to $300 a month, with no benefits.

Over two days in May she messaged more than 200 recruiters and sent her résumé to 32 companies — and lined up exactly two interviews. She said she would take any offer, including sales, which she was reluctant to consider previously.

“A decade or so ago, China was thriving and full of opportunities,” she said in a phone interview. “Now even if I want to strive for opportunities, I don’t know which direction I should turn to.”

China’s young people are facing record high unemployment as the country’s recovery from the pandemic is fluttering. They’re struggling professionally and emotionally. Yet the Communist Party and the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, are telling them to stop thinking they are above doing manual work or moving to the countryside. They should learn to “eat bitterness,” Mr. Xi instructed, using a colloquial expression that means to endure hardships.

Many young Chinese aren’t buying it. They argue that they studied hard to get a college or graduate school degree only to find a shrinking job market, falling pay scale and longer work hours. Now the government is telling them to put up with hardships. But for what?

“Asking us to eat bitterness is like a deception, a way of hoping that we will unconditionally dedicate ourselves and undertake tasks that they themselves are unwilling to do,” said Ms. Li.

People like Ms. Li were lectured by their parents and teachers about the virtues of hardship. Now they are hearing it from the head of state.

“The countless instances of success in life demonstrate that in one’s youth, choosing to eat bitterness is also choosing to reap rewards,” Mr. Xi was quoted in a front-page article in the official People’s Daily on the Youth Day in May.

The article, about Mr. Xi’s expectations of the young generation, mentioned “eat bitterness” five times. He has also repeatedly urged the young people to “seek self-inflicted hardships,” using his own experience of working in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.

“Why would he want young people to give up a peaceful and stable life and instead seek suffering?” Cai Shenkun, an independent political commentator, wrote in a Twitter post, calling Mr. Xi’s proposal “a contemptuous act toward young people.”

“What kind of intention is behind this?” he asked. “Where does he want to lead the Chinese youth?”

China’s 11.6m graduates face a jobs market with no jobs

With a master’s degree in applied linguistics from one of Australia’s top universities, Ingrid Xie did not expect to end up working in a grocery store. But that was where she ended up after graduating from the University of Queensland in July last year.

Xie did her undergraduate degree in China, studying English in the shade of palm trees at Hainan Tropical Ocean University. She went abroad for her master’s because she thought that would help her find a better job.

But after working at a Korean supermarket in Brisbane for several months after graduating, in February she decided to return to her home city of Kunming, in the south-west province of Yunnan, to find a job as an English teacher.

Xie soon discovered that “a lot of people studied abroad and want the same thing”. She says a friend in the same city recently sat an English teacher recruitment test, along with about 100 other people. Her friend did not get the job.

Youth unemployment in China hit a record high in April, with 20.4% of 16- to 24-year-old jobseekers unable to find work. Xie is 26 and has not managed to find a job in China since leaving higher education. “It makes me really frustrated,” she says.

Nearly 11.6 million students are set to graduate in June, facing a labour market that looks increasingly hostile.

The problem of overeducated unemployed youths has become so acute that people have started comparing themselves to Kong Yiji, a fictional character from a story by Lu Xun, one of the greats of Chinese literature. Kong is a scholar turned beggar who is mocked by the locals at a tavern he drinks at for his pretentious airs.

State media has criticised these memes, accusing them of being self-indulgent. In March a commentary in state media said youths were “unwilling to engage in jobs that are lower than their expectations”.

China’s economy is suffering from a mismatch between the jobs available and the qualifications of jobseekers. Between 2018 and 2021 the number of graduates majoring in sports and education increased by more than 20%, according to Goldman Sachs.

But in 2021 the government suddenly banned for-profit tutoring, decimating an industry that had previously been worth $150bn. That eased the homework burden for schoolchildren but torpedoed jobs for young graduates, including Xie, who had previously looked at tutoring as a way of getting teaching experience.

The country is also struggling to fill jobs in the right places. Xie has seen job advertisements that require the teacher to work in a rural school for a year. “I don’t like [the idea of] teaching in a rural area as it is hard to survive in that environment, especially for girls,” she says.

Eric Fish, the author of a book about Chinese millennials, says the value of an international degree has diminished in China’s jobs markets. “Some recruiters think that students might have inflated expectations or are too westernised.”

The government is aware of the problem. In April it published details of a set of policies designed to stimulate the jobs market, including subsidies for companies that hire unemployed university graduates. The government wants state-owned enterprises to recruit 1 million trainees in 2023, and has set an overall target of creating 12m urban jobs this year, up from 11m in 2022.

This year the government also abandoned the use of the employment and registration certificate, a document that was used for decades to approve a graduate’s transfer from a university to an employer.

Although the certificate was mostly a bureaucratic relic, its cancellation would “make it more convenient for college graduates to seek employment”, the ministry of human resources and social security said in a notice on 12 May.

China is not alone in struggling to rebalance its economy after being battered by the Covid pandemic. Researchers at Goldman Sachs noted that in 2021 youth unemployment in several European countries was more than 20%, while in the US it was close to 10%.

But the dearth of opportunities also creates pressure to take any job regardless of interest, says Xie. “You don’t even know what you want to do when you’re 25.” For now she is resigned to spending a long time with her parents and looking after her cat, Shrimp. “What I’m looking for is enough private time and a job with work-life balance but I can’t find that.”

Brics ministers call for rebalancing of global order away from West

A meeting of foreign ministers of the Brics group of nations in South Africa has called for a rebalancing of the global order away from Western nations.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said the group's vision was to provide global leadership in a world fractured by geopolitical tension, inequality and global insecurity.

Brics is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Allegations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine have clouded the talks.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the allegations and, as a member of the court, South Africa would be obliged to arrest him if he attends a Brics summit scheduled for Johannesburg in August.

The Brics is seen by some as an alternative to the G7 group of developed nations, which held its annual summit in the Japanese city of Hiroshima last month, and was also attended by the leaders of Brazil and India. G7 members have been highly critical of Russia and China.

Brics countries have a combined population of more than 3.2 billion people, making up about 40% of the world's roughly 8 billion people.

On the first of two days of talks in Cape Town, Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the gathering must "send out a strong message that the world is multipolar, that it is rebalancing and that old ways cannot address new situations".

"At the heart of the problems we face is economic concentration that leaves too many nations at the mercy of too few," he said.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira described the Brics as an "indispensable mechanism for building a multipolar world order that reflects the devices and needs of developing countries".

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said the Brics group could be expanded to provide assistance to developing countries and emerging market economies.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said "more than a dozen" countries including Saudi Arabia had expressed interest in joining the group.

His presence at the event was met with protests, with demonstrators holding a picture of Mr Lavrov with the words "child murderer".

One protester told AFP news agency it was difficult to see South African officials "shaking the hand of a person who is part of these systemic war crimes against Ukrainian children", a reference to the ICC case against Mr Putin.

South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) has long-standing ties with Russia that go back to the years of white-minority rule before 1994, and the country has refused to criticise Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Would love to "Yeah, but..." them, but goodness, the glass-est of houses to be throwing stones in.

India train crash: More than 260 dead after Odisha accident

At least 261 people have been killed and 650 are injured in a crash involving three trains in India's eastern Odisha state, officials say.

One passenger train derailed and its coaches fell on to the adjacent track where they were struck by an incoming train on Friday evening. A freight train was stationary.

The rescue operation at the crash site has ended, officials said.

The cause of India's worst train crash this century is not yet clear.

Officials said several carriages from the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express derailed at about 19:00 (13:30 GMT) in Balasore district, hit a stationary goods train and several of its coaches ended up on the opposite track.

Another train - the Howrah Superfast Express travelling from Yesvantpur to Howrah - then hit the overturned carriages.

"The force with which the trains collided has resulted in several coaches being crushed and mangled," Atul Karwal, chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) told news agency ANI.

It was the third deadliest crash in the history of Indian railways, he said.

More than 200 ambulances and hundreds of doctors, nurses and rescue personnel were sent to the scene, the state's chief secretary Pradeep Jena said.

Sudhanshu Sarangi, director general of Odisha Fire Services, had earlier said` 288 had died.

The rescue operation recovering people from the wreckage has finished and work to restore the site of the crash begun, India's South Eastern Railway company said on Saturday.

Unmasking the men who sell subway groping videos

Women who are groped on trains in East Asia face the further threat of their assault being filmed and uploaded for sale online. In a year-long investigation, the BBC World Service's investigative unit, BBC Eye, has gone undercover to unmask the men cashing in on sexual violence.

Why is Japan redefining rape?

Days after their rape, Megumi Okano says, they already knew the attacker would get away scot-free.

Megumi, who uses they as a personal pronoun, knew the man who did it, and where to find him. But Megumi also knew there would be no case, because Japanese authorities were not likely to consider what happened as rape.

So the university student decided not to report the incident to the police.

"As I couldn't pursue [justice] that way, he got to live a free and easy life. It is painful to me," Megumi says.

But change may be coming. The Japanese parliament is now debating a landmark bill to reform the country's sexual assault laws, only the second such revision in a century.

The bill covers a number of changes, but the biggest and most significant one will see lawmakers redefine rape from "forcible sexual intercourse" to "non-consensual sexual intercourse" - effectively making legal room for consent in a society where the concept is still poorly understood.

Current Japanese law defines rape as sexual intercourse or indecent acts committed "forcibly" and "through assault or intimidation", or by taking advantage of a person's "unconscious state or inability to resist".

This is at odds with many other countries which define it more broadly as any non-consensual intercourse or sexual act - where no means no.

Activists argue that Japan's narrow definition has led to even narrower interpretations of the law by prosecutors and judges, setting an impossibly high bar for justice and fostering a culture of scepticism that deters survivors from reporting their attacks.

Taiwan sees MeToo wave of allegations after Netflix show

Taiwan is being rocked by a wave of sexual harassment and assault allegations - sparked by a Netflix show which many say has ignited a local MeToo movement.

More than 90 people have spoken out in the past fortnight, accusing people across the island.

The allegations at first centred on politics and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) - where several senior officials have resigned.

But they have spread across Taiwanese society, with allegations being made against doctors, professors, sporting umpires and YouTubers.

On Saturday, a Polish diplomat was accused of sexual assault by a think tank researcher.

For many women, the moment is long overdue in a Taiwanese society otherwise praised globally for its progressive politics and commitment to gender equality.

President Tsai Ing-wen, the island's first female leader, has apologised and vowed reform.

"Previously we had single cases around sexual harassment, but never in such magnitude," social commentator Dr Liu Wen from Taiwan's Sinica Academia told the BBC.

"It's the first time a lot of the underlying issues in different industries are being revealed all at the same time."

One woman in her 30s told the BBC she had felt the momentum to seek justice again after she was sexually harassed by her boss, a celebrated environmental activist.

When Ms Tseng, as she wishes to be known, first sought redress last year, she said she was stone-walled and rebuffed.

But when she spoke out online last week, she received an apology from the workplace and the activist. He also resigned, saying he was sorry for some of his conduct. Meanwhile her inbox filled up with messages from other women relaying their own complaints about him.

South African taps run dry after power shortages

The peace of a normally tranquil suburban road near South Africa's capital, Pretoria, is being shattered by the sound of drilling.

These are not prospectors looking for a new source of the country's mineral wealth, but workers digging for an arguably more precious resource: water.

Private boreholes - like this one being excavated in Garsfontein - are springing up across the wealthier neighbourhoods in the country's economic heartland, where taps have been running dry.

"I am tired of not knowing when we will have water and when we won't," the frustrated homeowner says.

"Having a borehole means we won't have to depend on the government so much, it's what's best for my family."

Much of the domestic water supply here depends on electricity to pump it from the source to the vast high plain on which the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria sit.

South Africa's recent electricity woes - with regular lengthy scheduled blackouts - have had a knock-on effect on the supply of water.

"All of our stations, they need electricity, they need power. You have to pump water everywhere where it is needed," says Sipho Mosai, the head of state-owned Rand Water, one of the country's main water providers.

"Electricity is really at the heartbeat of what we do and if we don't have it externally, at least for now, it becomes a problem."

"Some days I don't have both water and electricity, and this can be for days at a time. It makes daily life insufferable," says Zizi Dlanga, a 35-year-old private wealth manager.

Well! This is the worst thing I'll read today.

Global network of sadistic monkey torture exposed by BBC

A year-long BBC investigation has uncovered a sadistic global monkey torture ring stretching from Indonesia to the United States.

The World Service found hundreds of customers in the US, UK and elsewhere paying Indonesians to torture and kill baby long-tailed macaques on film.

The torture ring began life on YouTube, before moving to private groups on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

Police are now pursuing the buyers and several arrests have already been made.

BBC journalists went undercover in one of the main Telegram torture groups, where hundreds of people gathered to come up with extreme torture ideas and commission people in Indonesia and other Asian countries to carry them out.

The sadists' goal was to create bespoke films in which baby long-tailed macaque monkeys were abused, tortured and sometimes then killed on film.

The BBC tracked down both the torturers in Indonesia, and distributors and buyers in the US, and gained access to an international law enforcement effort to bring them to justice.

At least 20 people are now under investigation globally, including three women living in the UK who were arrested by police last year and released under investigation, and one man in the US state of Oregon who was indicted last week.

Mike McCartney, a key video distributor in the US known by his screen name, "The Torture King", agreed to speak to the BBC - and described the moment he joined his first Telegram monkey torture group.

"They had a poll set up," McCartney said. "Do you want a hammer involved? Do you want pliers involved? Do you want a screwdriver?" The resulting video was "the most grotesque thing I have ever seen," he said.

Adding this one to the "we are the absolute worst species to ever grace this planet" column.

Monkey torture videos are still easily accessible on Telegram and now Facebook, where the BBC recently found dozens of groups sharing extreme content, some with more than 1,000 members.

"We've seen an escalation in this extreme, graphic content, which used to be hidden but is now circulating openly on platforms like Facebook," said Sarah Kite, co-founder of animal charity Action for Primates.

Facebook told the BBC it had removed the groups we brought to the company's attention. "We don't allow the promotion of animal abuse on our platforms and we remove this content when we become aware of it, like we did in this case," a spokesperson said.

Telegram said it was "committed to protecting user privacy and human rights such as freedom of speech", adding that its moderators "cannot proactively patrol private groups".

......gotta say, deploying the Freedom of Speech defense in THIS situation is... a choice!

The full investigation is here.

I think I'm gonna be sick.

The torture king is, to the surprise of nobody, a very fine person:

IMAGE(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6364/production/_130144452_dsc04028-3-4.jpg.webp)

I saw the baby monkey story and just... I got nuthin'. It broke my brain. The nonchalant sadism is incomprehensible.

Seth wrote:

The torture king is, to the surprise of nobody, a very fine person:

IMAGE(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6364/production/_130144452_dsc04028-3-4.jpg.webp)

Boyz n the Hood lol

The VW logo threw me for a sec, but he must like OG VW

Bet the 82nd is really pleased to see their division banner there...

Manipur: Fears grow over Indian state on brink of civil war

Last week, a retired lieutenant general in India's army bemoaned the volatile situation in his native Manipur, a violence-wracked state in the north-east of the country.

"The state is now 'stateless'," tweeted L Nishikanta Singh. "Life and property can be destroyed anytime by anyone just like in Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria etc."

Nearly two months after it was convulsed by ethnic violence, Manipur is teetering on what many believe is the brink of a civil war. Clashes between the majority Meitei and Kuki communities have left more than 100 dead and over 400 wounded.

Nearly 60,000 people have been displaced and taken shelter in some 350 camps. Some 40,000 security forces - army soldiers, paramilitaries, police - are struggling to quell the violence. Only a quarter of the more than 4,000 weapons looted by mobs from police armouries have been voluntarily returned since the violence began.

The level of mistrust between the warring communities has sharpened, with both accusing security forces of being partisan. More than 200 churches and 17 temples have been destroyed or damaged by mobs. Homes of local ministers and legislators have been attacked and set on fire.

I do think some of the discourse online about the Titanic submersible is whataboutery, but it's not entirely without merit. I mean, kinda summarizes it neatly:

IMAGE(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/829908288602505221/1121623242860400690/whataboutery.JPG)

(Bottom right. Although I guess, at least they're on the front page!)

"true explorers"? What a load of horsesh*t.

Harding and Nargeolet were actual explorers, and gained membership in the famed Explorer's Club as a result. Hamish Harding held a number of world records including fastest circumnavigation of the globe via both poles by airplane. He'd travelled to space, and into the Marianas Trench. He'd also financially supported a number of expeditions.

Paul Nargeolet had a career as an officer in the French Navy, rising to the rank of Commander. He was involved in mine-sweeping, submersible operations and deep sea rescue and recovery missions all over the world, including ship and plane wrecks. He piloted recovery dives all over the world for decades, and dived 35 times on the Titanic, participating in the recovery of around 6000 objects from the wreckage. He located a Roman wreck and a missing French ship while performing this work. He became the expert on the Titanic wreckage as a result, while still filming deep sea documentaries, helping to find the Air France 447 black box, leading a number of deep sea submersible expeditions, and holding a directorship of underwater studies at Michigan State University.

Explorers for sure. Whatever you think of the others, these guys earned the title.

Maybe the dingo ate your booty.

I believe you mean "bouty", sir... (French tourist)

Anger in Japan as report reveals children were forcibly sterilised

Campaigners in Japan have reacted angrily to a government report revealing that children as young as nine were among thousands of people who were forcibly sterilised under a eugenics law that was not repealed until the 1990s.

The 1,400-page report, submitted to parliament this week, details how, between 1948 and 1996, about 16,500 people were operated on without their consent under the law, which aimed to “prevent the birth of poor-quality descendants … and to protect the life and health of the mother”. Most of the victims were women.

Another 8,000 other people gave their consent – almost certainly under pressure – while almost 60,000 women had abortions because of hereditary illnesses.

Again... "It's not eugenics; it's us-genics."

Honduras adopts El Salvador-style tactics in anti-gang crackdown on prison inmates

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Authorities in Honduras forced inmates to sit half-naked in tight rows while they searched for contraband in a sweep of prisons Monday, similar to the harsh tactics of neighboring El Salvador. They also arrested a suspect in a weekend pool hall shooting that killed 11 people.

The prison sweep demonstrated the Honduran government’s resolve to crack down on gangs following last week’s gang-related massacre of 46 female inmates in the worst atrocity at a women’s prison in recent memory. Police said they were considering the possibility that the pool hall shooting on Saturday was related to the prison violence.

On Monday, the military police — who have taken charge of the nation’s prisons — fanned out across several prisons, emptying cell blocks and forcing inmates to sit in rows, spread-legged and nestled against one another. Some were forced to keep their heads bowed and their hands on the back of their necks.

Such tactics — with inmates clad only in shorts, their heads bowed onto the backs of the men in front of them — were made famous last year by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during his crackdown on gangs. Bukele’s harsh tactics have led to allegations of human rights abuses but also proved popular with residents in the Central American country where communities are emerging from the oppression of gang extortion and violence.