● 06.06.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• I’ve been using System76′s Pop!_OS Linux for about five years now. Prior to that, my distribution of choice was elementary OS. Why the change? Mostly because I purchased System76 desktop machines (first the Leopard Extreme and then the Thelio) and Pop!_OS was the default distribution. I took to Pop!_OS almost immediately. Essentially, it was System76′s take on GNOME, which offered a few extras that made perfect sense.

• But over time, a couple of things happened. First off, System76 started focusing on its own in-house OS, Cosmic desktop, with the goal of creating something altogether new. The problem with that was updates started to become few and fewer and then System76 decided to skip the 23.04 update completely. Of course, that’s not a terrible thing, as 23.04 was not an LTS (Long Term Support) release. And Pop!_OS 22.04 was still getting security updates.

Audiocasts/Shows

• We attempt to swap Linux distributions live on our production server, to prove that new tooling makes the Linux distro model obsolete.

• Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 57th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she discusses the Contributor Mentorship Program to help increase the success of new contributors over time.

Graphics Stack

• I’ve been monitoring the issues everyone’s been reporting for GAMES THAT DON’T RENDER GOOD, and before I got sucked into doing this (huge) thing that I’m totally gonna talk about at some point, I was actually organizing some of the reports into tables and such. And investigating them. And one of the ones I was looking at was some broken sampling in Wolfenstein:

• Some weird grid lines being rendered there. And so I took out my trusty

• chainsaw renderdoc, and I looked at the shaders, and, well, I’m not about to bore you with the details, but they were totally unreadable. It turns out that all the “free” bitcasting zink does during SPIRV translation isn’t actually free when you gotta read it.

Applications

• The KeePass password manager released version 2.54 few days ago. Here are the new features and PPA repository for all current Ubuntu releases. KeePass 2.54 now uses the enforced configuration file for the triggers, global URL overrides, password generator profiles and a few more settings. See more about enforced configuration.

• The third stable release of Angie, a drop-in replacement of the popular Nginx web server, comes with some exciting new features.

Instructionals/Technical

• From advertising to e-commerce, images play a crucial role in attracting and engaging customers. However, manipulating images can be a complex and time-consuming process that requires specialized skills and tools.

• Here are two ways to install the latest mainline Kernel in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Ubuntu releases (including LTS) and Linux Mint usually ships stable mainline Linux Kernel, whichever is available before the change freeze during the development phase.

• Leave the system for five minutes and it goes into sleep mode? Here’s what you can do to get rid of this annoyance.

• In an increasingly digitized world, the demand for efficient, scalable, and interactive web applications is on the rise. As a result, developers across the globe are turning to powerful tools and frameworks to build these applications.

• As a recent Qubes OS user, but also a NixOS user, I want to be able to reproduce my system configuration instead of fiddling with files everywhere by hand and being clueless about what I changed since the installation time.

• Since its creation, Git has become an essential tool for programmers worldwide. It aids in source code management, collaborative development, and version control, among other things.

• In the wide array of commands offered by Git, a popular version control system, git restore stands as a crucial command for developers worldwide. Introduced in Git 2.23 as a new experimental command, it has become widely used for discarding changes in the working directory and the staging area.

• With the incredible versatility of the Raspberry Pi, it’s no longer surprising how popular this single-board computer is. It’s at the core of tons of cool and weird projects, like the Raspberry Pi-based Waldo finder, International Space Station tracker, and even drive-thru signages.

• But it’s not only the board’s versatility that makes it a go-to choice among hobbyists and professionals alike. Both beginner and advanced learners love how generally easy it is to start developing with Raspberry Pi. It features a user-friendly OS with a setup wizard. There are also tons of guidebooks and official tutorials available, on top of a starter kit that comes complete with everything you’d need to build a basic Raspberry Pi desktop.

• Read More: https://www.slashgear.com/1301035/how-to-use-the-raspberry-pi-imager/

Desktop Environments/WMs

• If you ever want to up your efficiency game in Linux, a tiling window manager might be the ticket. Here’s how these mysterious desktop GUIs work.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• There’s a little RISC-V board on my desk – little in size, but it has 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage – which is going to do some KDE build work.

• For some background, The Register has a bit on what the Linux Foundation is doing in this space.

• It’s a modern-ish Linux kernel: [...]

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• Version 5.3.1 was released on May 24:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202305/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-531.html

• 5.3.2 release notes:

• http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.3.2/release-notes.htm

• …if updating from an EasyOS installation prior to 5.3, please read the 5.2.4 release notes.

• An extra note about the prior-5.3 update process: After downloading the 5.3.2 difference-file, and subsequently reboot, there may be a dropout to the console early-bootup. Just type “exit” to continue the bootup.

• EndeavourOS Cassini Nova R2 brings Calamares bugfixes, Linux kernel 6.3, and an updated package base. The Galileo release is on the horizon.

• It’s been a while since we have been in touch with you, so I thought it was time to give you a small update on what is happening behind the scenes.

• We’ve been very busy behind the scenes and we’re now happy to announce the availability Kodi v20 for all OSMC supported devices. All devices supported by OSMC on Kodi v19 remain supported for Kodi v20.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Extending the unmatched coverage of TuxCare’s live patching solution, this new development enables organizations to further enhance security and minimize vulnerability exposure across their Linux systems. KernelCare Enterprise delivers automated live patching for all popular enterprise Linux distributions, uniquely eliminating the need for reboots, downtime, or scheduled maintenance windows.

• Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open source solutions, is introducing an expanded set of management capabilities to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, designed to help reduce enterprise Linux complexity across the hybrid cloud without slowing innovation.

• In our previous article, we demonstrated how to automate the process of creating an EC2 instance on AWS using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We demonstrated how Ansible Automation Platform can streamline the process of deploying virtual machines (VMs) in AWS, making it more efficient and less error-prone. In this final installment, we will take things a step further by exploring how to simplify the process of creating EC2 instances in AWS using workflow templates.

• Workflow templates can help standardize the process of creating instances and reduce the amount of manual intervention. In this article, we will dive into the details of how to use a workflow template to further optimize our infrastructure management in AWS.

• If you are following along with our series, you may recall that we previously discussed the importance of an execution environment and setting up credentials. These are essential steps to complete before deploying a workflow template. In case you missed the previous articles, we recommend you to check them out to ensure you are ready to move forward with the next steps.

• In our previous article, we explored how to use the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform CLI to create an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This time, we will take things a step further and leverage the power of the Ansible Automation Platform to automate the process. Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful tool that enables you to manage your infrastructure more efficiently with less manual intervention.

• Part 1: How to create an EC2 instance on AWS using Ansible CLI

• Part 2: How to create an EC2 instance in AWS using Ansible Automation

• Part 3: How to create EC2 instance on AWS using Ansible workflow

Debian Family

• Debian 12 “Bookworm” should arrive in a little over a week from now, with a raft of updated components – and no nasty surprises.

• Debian 12, code-named Bookworm after one of the more obscure Toy Story characters, is scheduled for release on June 10. The developers have put out Release Candidate 4 of the new version’s installation medium, and it seems to be working pretty well, so at this point there shouldn’t be any big changes before the ship date.

• Generally, around the time that a new Linux distribution ships, we try to do a preview story which highlights some of the exciting new features in the forthcoming version. Unfortunately for us, that approach doesn’t work so well for Debian, because “exciting” is not really what Debian does.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• If you’re looking for a Linux distribution with a decidedly old-school feel, Ubuntu Mate might be the ticket.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• I subscribed to the selfcare.tech bot on Mastodon a few days ago. The bot has provided messages that have been of particular meaning at a time when, on reflection, I have been a lot harder on myself than I should be.

• File Centipede is a multifunctional internet file manager that offers a comprehensive set of features to satisfy all your file management needs. This all-in-one solution allows you to easily upload and download files, and provides support for a wide range of protocols, including BitTorrent, WebDAV, FTP, and SSH.

• In addition

• Ketchup is a free and open-source developer-first CMS written using the Go programming language. It uses React for the frontend.

• * BYO (bring your own) version-controlled templates. Develop your templates outside of Ketchup, and pull them in with built-in support for git.

• GoBlog is a fantastic and user-friendly blogging system that is written in the Go language. It is open source and free to use for anyone. One of the amazing features of GoBlog is that it uses a powerful SQLite database to store most of the data, such as posts, comments,

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Now that Mozilla officially released the Firefox 114 web browser earlier today, which will be coming soon to the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions, it’s time to take a closer look at the next major release, Firefox 115, which entered public beta testing today.

• Firefox 115 looks to bring two new features that were supposed to land in Firefox 114, but, for some reason, they didn’t make it. I’m talking about Cookie Banner Reduction, a feature implemented in the Privacy & Security panel that, when enabled, tries to reject cookie requests on cookie banners on supported websites automatically.

• It’s somewhat scary how fast the time flies by. I can remember that I wrote a post for my 15th Bugzilla anniversary (as it feels not that long ago). But now the next mark has been reached with using Bugzilla for 20 years! A lot has happened in those last 5 years, and I’m sure that the 25th anniversary will come as well.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• By Gustavo Pacheco Early 2023 , all TDF members in the 2022 Latin America LibreOffice Conference meeting organization received at home a beautiful tribute to the success of the event: a piece in wood and mosaic glass made in Mexico especially created for this homage.

GNU Projects

• Guix is a handy tool for developers; guix shell, in particular, gives a standalone development environment for your package, no matter what language(s) it’s written in. To benefit from it, you have to initially write a package definition and have it either in Guix proper, in a channel, or directly upstream as a guix.scm file. This last option is appealing: all developers have to do to get set up is clone the project’s repository and run guix shell, with no arguments—we looked at the rationale for guix shell in an earlier article.

Programming/Development

• Hull is a free open-source Next.js starter for anyone who is interested in building a content rich eCommerce shop with full SEO support.

• It is easy to deploy on Vercel platform, and simple to setup. Developers can also deploy it on Sanity or their own servers.

• You can read the original post in its original format on Rtask website by ThinkR here: Mastering file download in shiny

• The Next.js Enterprise Boilerplate is an incredible open-source template designed specifically for enterprise projects. This powerful template is packed with amazing features and functionalities, carefully selected and curated to help you build high-performance, maintainable, and enjoyable applications that are both scalable and efficient. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or

• I (Jonah) am excited to be teaching a 2-day Stan workshop preceding the NYR Conference in July. The workshop will be July 11-12 and the conference July 13-14.

Leftovers

• It’s worth its own post, but Clara and I were chuffed at the number of incredible second-hand music stores in Japan, especially vinyl. We got immaculate Japanese Odeon pressings of Rubber Soul, and Paul McCartney’s 1982 masterpiece Tug of War, for half of what JB Hi-Fi in Australia are charging for a single re-issue! There’s something special about having an English album with Japanese inserts and sleeves.

• An obsessed fan, claiming the grocer wasn’t properly cleaning New York’s last public Banksy, took matters into his own hands. But could he be won over with babka?

• I had a bit of an epiphany today. I’m not frustrated at my computers for not doing what I want, or for behaving unexpectedly, or for having increasingly-hostile interfaces and design. I’m frustrated at the people who designed them, made them, and/or signed off on them.

• It’s going to be a busy summer season air travel. It could also be extraordinarily unruly.

• A city in Peru is debating the reactivation of its foundry. With a population of 33,000 and an altitude of 3,750 metres, La Oroya is South America’s former smelting capital. It was also formerly one of the most polluted cities in the world. Closed in 2009, the metallurgic complex found new owners last year, when 1,270 former workers became shareholders. The new owners intend to reactivate the site in coming months. La Oroya’s residents are now divided between dreams of renewed prosperity and fears of a return to life in a massively polluted environment. Report by Juliette Chaignon and Guillaume Gosalbes.

• Doctor of Communication Science, Mārtiņš Kaprāns, recently published some fascinating research into the lives of Latvians living in the United Kingdom.

Science

• Homo naledi, despite having tiny brains, may have lit fires and decorated walls around the graves of their dead, according to controversial new research.

• Hello? Is anyone out there?

• The James Webb Space Telescope spotted complex organic molecules in a galaxy that existed only 1.5 billion years after the birth of the universe.

• Here’s my second blog post on papers we presented during the first year of PCAS. Emma Dodoo is an Engineering Education Research PhD student working with me and co-advised with Lisa Lattuca. When she first started working with me, she wanted a project that supported STEM learning in high school.

• So many things are wrong!

• Holy smokes!

Education

• Oxford Business College and others like it make millions, largely by recruiting immigrants. They operate in an opaque corner of the British education system.

• The school will offer online, Roman Catholic instruction funded by taxpayers. Its approval is certain to tee off a legal battle over the separation of church and state.

• What’s the best way to help community college students who want a four-year degree? In California, a proposal hopes to offer transfer students access to universities that have typically been out of reach.

• Current culture wars are just one more manifestation of the reality that public education routinely devolves into indoctrination and imposition of majoritarian ideology on dissenters. But school choice can help mitigate that problem.

• A tenth of Latvian schools could be closed or ‘reorganized’ in Latvia in the coming years. This is provided for by the draft action plan of the Ministry of Education and Science (IZM). In Latgale, this causes concerns that only three high schools might be left in the eastern border area, Latvian Radio reported on June 5.

Hardware

• TSMC has been discussing price rises with many large clients, indicating that those agreeable to the rises will be better placed to reserve production.

• Last Friday I talked about the potential to repurpose Wi-Fi card slots on motherboards for other uses. This would be silly on a regular motherboard, but on a slot-constrained environment like Mini-ITX it offers a rare potential for internal expansion.

• Initially launched with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor last year, the CHUWI LarkBox X mini PC is now available with an Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N CPU and sold on Amazon for $199. The mini PC also got its RAM bumped from 8GB DDR4 to 12GB RAM, and its storage capacity has been doubled with 512GB NVMe SSD. The rest of the specifications look to be identical with triple 4K display support, two Ethernet ports, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2, as well as four USB 3.0 ports.

• France is ploughing 2.9 billion euros ($3.1 billion) of public money into a factory to make microchips, officials said on Monday, heating up a global race for the lucrative market.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Every year in the US, nearly 50 million people are affected by food-borne disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those incidents lead to almost 130,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.

• NAIROBI– Survivors of sexual violence in Kenya face barriers to quality mental health services in their communities, according to a new assessment co-published today by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Survivors of Sexual Violence in Kenya Network (SSVKenya), which is convened by the Wangu Kanja Foundation.

• Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has vowed to enhance mental healthcare in the city after two women were killed in a brutal stabbing at a Diamond Hill mall last Friday. A 39-year-old man with the surname Szeto was arrested soon after the incident, in which two women aged 22 and 26 died.

• Supported by a $3. 1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, U-M researchers will focus on how stroke affects two fundamental properties of the ankle joint during human walking.

• The H5N1 virus poses “a great unknown threat” to birds and humans alike. Understanding and thwarting it begins with excrement collection.

• Yesterday, the Telegraph reported on “new research” which claims that lockdowns saved only 1700 lives in England and Wales. A “drop in the bucket” compared to the harms done: The science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the deaths saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.”

• Number of UK people with heart rhythm condition rises by 50% in a decade

• A federal judge has yanked the U.S. government’s approval for a phosphate mining project in southeastern Idaho. The decision comes five months after the judge ruled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated environmental laws when it approved the Caldwell Canyon Mine in 2019. Those include a failure to consider the indirect impact of processing ore at a nearby plant and the impact on sage grouse. The mine has been proposed by P4 Production, a subsidiary of German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG. Bayer says vacating the approval was excessive and it is considering its next steps.

• I was unaware of pizza’s therapeutic value until I had kids, our essayist writes. But now I firmly believe in the “pizza cure.”

• “For some reason we’ve found ourselves in a situation where many people think masculinity requires a certain amount of steak on a plate,” the researcher noted.

• The potential is huge.

Proprietary

• Ah, the Windows update. Normally people love software updates because they bring new features with them on top of fixing bugs. However, the Windows update has never been popular, especially with techies, for various reasons. One of those reasons is that they seem to break stuff more often than not.

Linux Foundation

• The Linux Foundation has published its best seller The Open Source Opportunity for Microgrids: Five Ways to Drive Innovation and Overcome Market Barriers for Energy Resilience. The punchy-titled research explains how microgrids could be the next big thing.

Security

• Gigabyte has announced BIOS updates that remove a recently identified backdoor feature in hundreds of its motherboards.

• Welcome to the May 2023 report from the Reproducible Builds project

• In our reports, we outline the most important things that we have been up to over the past month. As always, if you are interested in contributing to the project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.

• Holger Levsen gave a talk at the 2023 edition of the Debian Reunion Hamburg, a semi-informal meetup of Debian-related people in northern Germany. The slides are available online.

• Zyxel urges customers to update ATP, USG Flex, VPN, and ZyWALL/USG firewalls to prevent exploitation of recent vulnerabilities.

• IoT cybersecurity company Sternum has identified a security vulnerability affecting Zyxel Networks’ Linux-operated NAS drives, including NAS326, NAS540, and NAS542 models, running on firmware version 5.21.

• The recent MOVEit zero-day attack has been linked to a known ransomware group, which reportedly stole data from dozens of organizations.

• If after eighteen months, meaningful use of SBOMs is unachievable, we need to ask what needs to be done to fulfill Biden’s executive order.

• If we should face a Dead-End AI future, the cybersecurity industry will continue to rely heavily on traditional approaches, especially human-driven ones. It won’t quite be business as usual though.

• Security researchers have identified over 30 malicious extensions with millions of installs in the Chrome web store.

• In 2018, I read about the perfect crime of stealing the money of credit card fraudsters by making fake carding sites.

• At the time, this felt genius to me; the attackers were apparently making a decent living while nobody was presumably coming after them. (Except maybe now someone will, as they got Krebs’d by Brian).

• Although the malware analysis is still underway, the cybersecurity firm noted that the ‘Operation Triangulation’ malware campaign uses an unknown zero-day exploit on iMessage to perform code execution without user interaction and elevated privileges.

• This allows the attack to download further payloads to the device for further command execution and information collection.

• It should also be noted that the FSB, Russia’s intelligence and security service, linked the malware to infections of high-ranking government officials and foreign diplomats.

• Open Sauce outfit worried about the closed firmware

• Linux computer vendor System76 has said that it prefers to disable the Intel Management Engine wherever possible to reduce the amount of closed firmware running on System76 hardware.

• Phoronix reports that the move will “benefit their latest Intel Core 13th Gen ‘Raptor Lake’ wares and prior generation devices.”

• Intel ME is disabled for their latest Raptor Lake laptops and most older platforms, with some exceptions, like having a silicon issue with Tiger Lake.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (linux-5.10), Red Hat (cups-filters, curl, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, and webkit2gtk3), SUSE (apache-commons-fileupload, openstack-heat, openstack-swift, python-Werkzeug, and openstack-heat, python-Werkzeug), and Ubuntu (frr, go, libraw, libssh, nghttp2, python2.7, python3.10, python3.11, python3.5, python3.6, python3.8, and xfce4-settings).

• Google has removed from the Chrome Web Store 32 malicious extensions that could alter search results and push spam or unwanted ads. Collectively, they come with a download count of 75 million.

• The extensions featured legitimate functionality to keep users unaware of the malicious behavior that came in obfuscated code to deliver the payloads.

• British Airways, the BBC, and UK pharmacy chain Boots are among the companies whose data has been compromised after miscreants exploited a critical vulnerability in deployments of the MOVEit document-transfer app.

• That Pacific Union College (PUC) experienced a cyberattack is not a secret. The college even posted a notice on their website on April 7 stating that they were experiencing “Additional complications relating to the ongoing cybersecurity issue, which has recently affected some of our internal networks, phone systems, and web services. The remainder of the notice provided the status of various types of systems and services and assured the community of updates “as new information becomes available.”

• On June 5, 2023, in the U.S. case against Diogo Santos Coelho (“Omnipotent” of RAIDForums), Lauren Pomerantz Halper was added as an attorney for the U.S.

• On June 5, 2023, in the U.S. case against Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (“Pompompurin” of BreachForums), Lauren Pomerantz Halper was added as an attorney for the U.S.

• That the same prosecuting attorney would be involved in both cases is no surprise given how the forums were run and the alleged interactions between Coelho and Fitzpatrick. But why was Halper’s appearance announced yesterday in both cases? Is something up or about to be announced?

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• On Monday, June 5, morning, shortly after taking off from the Rīga International Airport, an airBaltic flight on its way to Split in Croatia, returned to Rīga after identifying a technical defect, Latvian Television reported.

• [Guest dairy submitted by Gebhard]

Privacy/Surveillance

• They are his first comments on his two-day visit, which saw him meet senior officials in Beijing.

• Prince Harry’s individual case against Mirror Group Newspapers opened on Monday.

• This article was written on the basis of information relating to the so-called “8 December” case.

Defence/Aggression

• Disclosure of suicide notes criticizing country shocks officials, source tells RFA

• MintCast co-host Alan MacLeod reveals how the military exploits teens’ horniness, exposing the military’s influence in video games, movies, and partnerships with influencers. Unveiling a hidden agenda in this eye-opening discussion.

• “…the vigilante group visited the Azam village to caution the residents…”

• The government forces have intensified their attacks against al-Shabab since President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared an all-out war against the militants in August 2022.

• Military seeks to instill fear in those who oppose its rule.

• Much of the AUKUS discussion to date has focused on Pillar 1, the trilateral effort to support Australia acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines.

• U.S. leaders rarely have been noted for being able to gauge changing sentiment in the international arena and adjusting their foreign policy accordingly. The Biden administration, however, may be setting new records for the tone-deaf quality of its policies. Three incidents in the past few weeks illustrate the problem.

• Woman’s son was hit by teacher’s car – and then blasted online

• “Don’t let the truth be hidden in the dust.”

• The trip comes amid an uptick in near-collisions between the two militaries.

• Armed men killed 30 people in weekend raids on six villages in Nigeria’s north, a region regularly hit by criminal violence and clashes between communities, local  police have said.

• The third South African government group to visit the United States (US) in a short space of time touches down on Wednesday (7 June), but not much should be expected from it, a defence expert cautions. Unlike those before it, this group is not on a lobbying mission.

War in Ukraine

• The essential purpose of the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius is to address geopolitical problems, not to increase Lithuania’s visibility, President Gitanas Nauseda has said.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

Environment

• Pressure is mounting in Germany on the Last Generation climate collective, whose members specialise in gluing themselves to tarmac. Following a series of police raids last month, activists say they are being unjustly criminalised but that the police action has led to a recruitment spike. As the international community marks World Environment Day, FRANCE 24 reports on a group sparking controversy in Germany.

• Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has unveiled a plan to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon, a critical step in addressing the country’s significant carbon emissions from the region. This strategy, set to be implemented over four years, provides a roadmap to achieve the ambitious goal of halting illegal deforestation by 2030. Lula also announced his government will return Brazil’s international carbon reduction commitment to that set in 2015 during the Paris Agreement. At the time, Brazil committed to reducing carbon emissions by 37% by 2025. Lula’s predecessor, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, had scaled back Brazil’s commitments.

• Brazil’s government on Monday unveiled how it plans to meet a pledge to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, using strengthened law enforcement against environmental crimes and other measures in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

• The government must step up climate leadership to achieve its carbon neutrality goal, an environmental NGO has said, amid a heatwave in the city that has seen the death of a 66-year-old construction worker. “Extreme weather is becoming an unwanted new normal under climate change,” Friends of the Earth said in a statement last Thursday…

• The UN-backed scheme aims to reduce the amount of plastics in the capital, as well as increase demand for recycled plastic.

• All 19 people caught in a landslide in southwestern China’s Sichuan province on Sunday have been confirmed dead, state media reported, announcing the end of rescue efforts. Part of a mountain collapsed at around 6 am (2200 GMT Saturday) near a state-owned forestry station in Jinkouhe, near the city of Leshan, state broadcaster CCTV said.

• Officials said that western portions of the country appeared to be the most affected by the flooding caused by heavy rain over the weekend.

• At least 42 people were dead and 11 missing in Haiti after heavy rains at the weekend triggered flooding and landslides, civil protection officials said Monday.

• The UN’s annual World Environment Day on Monday comes days after negotiations on an international treaty against plastic pollution concluded Friday in Paris with 170 nations agreeing to produce a first draft of an accord by November. FRANCE 24 takes a look at the scale of the problem and its implications through 10 crucial statistics.

• The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season began June 1. Forecasters and experts are predicting 12 to 17 named storms could form, with five to nine developing into hurricanes. Here’s what residents along the U.S. southeastern coastline should know.

Energy/Transportation

• Hydrogen has successfully been produced via the electrolysis of seawater on a floating offshore platform in east China’s Fuijan Province, according to multiple sources.

• The restoration of service could help more families reach the area to identify the dead. Officials said about 100 victims were still unclaimed.

• India’s official investigation into its deadliest rail crash in over two decades began on Monday, after preliminary findings pointed to signal failure as the likely cause for a collision that killed at least 275 people and injured 1,200.

• The S.E.C. said the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange mixed billions of dollars in customer funds and secretly sent them to a separate company controlled by Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao.

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, alleging that the company sold unregistered securities in the US.

• Fundraising in the cryptocurrency world has slowed to a crawl in the first half of this year. Just eight venture capital funds focused on crypto had raised a combined $500 million globally as of May 16, according to a report from Fortune citing PitchBook data.

• The pilot of the business jet that flew over Washington and crashed in Virginia appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, the fighter jet pilots reported, according to three US officials briefed on the matter. The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities say four people were killed in the crash in a remote part of Virginia Sunday. The identities of the four people weren’t immediately released. Federal investigators say it will take a few days to solve the mystery of why the plane veered off course and slammed into a mountain.

• The pilot of the business jet that flew over Washington and crashed in Virginia appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, the fighter jet pilots reported, according to three US officials briefed on the matter. The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities say four people were killed in the crash in a remote part of Virginia Sunday. The identities of the four people weren’t immediately released. Federal investigators say it will take a few days to solve the mystery of why the plane veered off course and slammed into a mountain.

• The United States scrambled F-16 fighter jets in a supersonic chase of a light aircraft with an unresponsive pilot that violated airspace around Washington D.C. and later crashed into the mountains of Virginia, officials said.

• “…Ashwini Vaishnaw, has been camping at the location of the railway accident…”

• Bell Bay Powerfuels has signed a term sheet with Hydro Tasmania for the sale of a decommissioned power station that is set to serve as the site for a A$1.2bn ($790m) green hydrogen and green…

Wildlife/Nature

• The number of American kestrels has dropped sharply. That goes against the trend for birds of prey, broadly seen as a conservation bright spot.

• Mexico’s legal and political fight to save more than 1,000 varieties of native corn from commercial farming has been a passionate one.

• According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada is expected to have enough resources to cover the summer months.

• “…divers and Canadian Armed Forces personnel are providing…”

• The alert is in response to smoke particles coming from wildfires in Quebec, Canada, on Friday and Saturday.

• Each spring, opalescent icebergs from the Greenland ice sheet pass through Iceberg Alley, off the eastern edge of Canada, on a slow-motion journey southward.

• Peregrine falcons have been spotted at Stanford since 2011, but biologists have yet to observe a successful nesting season. Although incredibly urban-tolerant birds, the falcons still face the challenges of human disturbances.

• A year after the killing of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest, loved ones are gathering in several Brazilian cities to honor their memory. Dozens of people showed up on Monday at demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, capital Brasilia and Bahia state’s Salvador. Gatherings also took place in London, U.K. and in the small Amazonian town of Atalaia do Norte, where both men were killed. Phillips had been conducting research for his book that was years in the making. Ahead of the first anniversary of Phillips’ disappearance, his family and friends have launched a fundraiser to complete his work.

Finance

• Turkey’s annual inflation rate dropped below 40 percent in May for the first time in 16 months, pushed down by a temporary offer of free gas to households, official data showed on Monday.

• Ahmad Khawaja, a former billionaire wanted by the United States, was detained in Lithuania in 2020. Released on a record-high bail, he is now living in a luxury hotel in Vilnius.

• The furniture production sector in Lithuania is shrinking, with companies putting staff on furlough. Raimundas Beinortas, director of the Association Lithuanian Forest, says the tools to help the sector are at the government’s disposal.

• Two insurance industry giants have stepped back from the California marketplace. They say that wildfire risk and soaring construction costs have prompted them to stop writing new policies. State Farm announced last week it would stop accepting applications for all business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance. Allstate announced in November it would pause new homeowners, condo and commercial insurance policies in the state. California’s unsettled market aligns with trends across the country. Insurance companies are boosting rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters.

• France’s left-wing forces and labour unions will stage another day of strikes on Tuesday to try to derail President Emmanuel Macron’s pensions overhaul, insisting that the fight to thwart the changes is not over even after it became law.

• Progress roundup: From Argentina to Benin, governments and industry boost employment with free education and by smoothing the path to entrepreneurship. And, we highlight a discovery for the future of electricity

• The ads sound hostile to congestion pricing but Uber claims to support it.

• Regularly putting the entire economy at risk is in no way “fiscally responsible.”

• Pakistan’s prime minister said he is “very hopeful” of finalizing a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June.

• The Postal Service is telling lawmakers that rural carriers have the resources they need to ensure fair compensation under a new pay system that’s been in the works for more than a decade.

• Data published on June 5 by the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia show that, compared to April 2022, in April 2023 industrial production output reduced by 7.0 % (according to calendar adjusted data at constant prices).

• Six whistleblowers came forward alleging they worked as many as 142 hours in two weeks without time-and-a-half pay.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Given his extensive experience in intelligence and relations with foreign countries, Fidan’s appointment indicates a continuation of Turkey’s assertive foreign policy.

• More and more people are realizing the People’s Republic of China is not America’s friend.

• Last month, the White House quietly released the United States government national standards strategy for critical and emerging technology, a new whole-of-US-government approach to addressing China’s expanding influence in international technology standards-setting bodies.

• The bottomline from Washington is clear: putting money in China is going to become riskier, and de-risking is only going to become more commonplace.

• Ms. Ardern, who stepped down as prime minister in January, said she had considered declining the title, but accepted it as a way to show gratitude.

• F.B.I. officials briefed lawmakers on an unsubstantiated bribery allegation against Joe Biden when he was vice president, but did not let them leave a secure area with a document detailing it.

• Three lawyers representing the former president spent nearly two hours there after requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns about the department’s handling of the investigation.

• The evidence submitted in the Michael Sussmann trial showed that those in the Cyber Division who first assessed the anomalies made clear errors and unconvincing claims about their awareness of the DNC’s involvement. And yet, John Durham covered that up.

• Mr. Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison in 2002, bringing to a close one of the most lurid and damaging espionage cases in American history.

• Former President Donald J. Trump told a judge that he could not have defamed E. Jean Carroll by denying her rape accusation because a jury had found him liable only for sexually abusing her.

• On May 9, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative nonresident senior fellow Alexander Alden was hosted by the Rome-based Center for American Studies to discuss United States-European Union relations on the occasion of “Europe Day”.

• To sustain the ongoing recovery against short-term headwinds and boost inclusive, productive, and sustainable development in the long term, governments cannot, and should not, act alone. The private sector can strengthen the hard and soft infrastructure supporting Latin America and the Caribbean’s economies, while drawing them closer together through trade, regulatory, and other integration.

• A French Parliamentary report leaked to the French press Thursday claimed Marine Le Pen’s far-right party “Rassemblement Nationale” knowingly spread Kremlin talking points. Le Pen called the report “sectarian, dishonest and politicized,” despite the fact that it was Le Pen herself who demanded an investigation into foreign interference in French politics.

• A French court on Monday sentenced two men to jail after convicting them on charges of beating up the great-nephew of French first lady Brigitte Macron last month outside her family’s chocolate shop.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Mr. Kennedy, a long-shot Democratic presidential candidate with surprisingly high polling numbers, said he wanted to close the Mexican border and attributed the rise of mass shootings to pharmaceutical drugs.

• Two Indian sisters who are professional wrestlers were arrested on May 28 during a protest against the wrestling federation chief, who is accused of sexual harassment. The wrestling chief, however, is also a prominent member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ruling party. In the wake of the arrest, BJP supporters criticized the women for staging their arrest, circulating, as proof, a photo of the two women smiling in a police van. However, it turns out that this photo was digitally altered using a mobile application.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The surveillance technology is just one example of the proliferation of ‘predictive policing’ in the country.

• A British flag-waving protester and an opposition party leader are arrested and a journalist is held

• Hundreds of moderators are shutting down their massive subreddits in protest of new fees that threaten apps like Apollo, Narwhal, and BaconReader.

• Hong Kong police have deployed en masse at key sites on the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, apprehending several people in Causeway Bay, including Tsui Hong-kwong, who was among the organisers of the Tiananmen vigils, unionist Leo Tang and chairperson of pro-democracy group the League of Social Democrats (LSD), Chan Po-ying.

• A 53-year-old woman has been arrested for allegedly obstructing police officers after she refused to show her identity card outside Victoria Park, the site where annual candlelight vigils for victims of the Tiananmen crackdown were once held, on the 34th anniversary of the crackdown.

• Vigils to remember those who died during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown have been held in cities across the world, as the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese diaspora marked the 34th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

• A Hong Kong press group has urged the city’s police to provide an explanation after its former chairperson was led away by officers while she was reporting on the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Mr. Licht, the network’s chief executive, said on an internal call on Monday that he would “fight like hell” to win back the trust of the network.

• Khan has long been the most televised politician in Pakistan.

• In order to ensure independent, adequate and predictable funding for public service media – Latvian Television (LTV) and Latvian Radio (LSM is also part of the public media framework) – at the European average level, the Public Electronic Mass Media Council (SEPLP) urges the Saeima to raise public media funding to 0.16% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Civil Rights/Policing

• Asian students lose out with this college admissions system, but so do low-income ones.

• How should colleges and universities replace affirmative action if the Supreme Court does indeed strike it down?

• Snoop Dogg announces postponing his 30th anniversary ‘Doggystyle’ shows with Dr. Dre at the Hollywood Bowl shows in solidarity with the WGA writers’ strike. Snoop Dogg postponed plans to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his legendary album Doggystyle with two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl now rescheduled in solidarity with the WGA strike.

• Currently, many U.S. journalists earn so little that they need public assistance and private charity to make ends meet.

• Belarusian poet Dzmitry Sarokin, 37, has died in police custody in the country’s western city of Lida.

• The United Nations claims that the purpose of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) is to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and to provide access to justice for all. Hiding behind the rhetoric is the real objective: to strengthen and consolidate the power and authority of the “global governance regime” and to exploit threats—both real and imagined—in order to advance regime hegemony.

• Hundreds of activists are at Atlanta’s City Hall ahead of a council vote over whether to approve tens of millions in public funding for a police and firefighter training center. Monday’s meeting is a culmination of nearly two years of activism against the project that activists decry as “Cop City.” The training center was approved by the City Council in September 2021 but requires an additional vote for more funding. More than 350 people signed up to speak by early Monday afternoon, with hundreds more unable to sign up in time, including a large crowd prevented from entering City Hall due to capacity concerns.

• The Turkish commando battalion requested by NATO arrived on June 5 in Kosovo to assist in quelling recent violent unrest in the Balkan country.

• A new Code of Practice for UK Police came into effect Saturday that will ensure officers document hate incidents that do not constitute crimes only when absolutely necessary. The new law introduces a threshold whereby, once reached, police must record the personal information of someone for a non-crime hate incident.

• Leeth Singhage ’26, who has been awarded “Best Emerging Actor” by the United Solo Theater Festival, performs his solo play, the coming-of-age story of a Sri Lankan youth amid political instability. The play makes one question the meaning of community-specific art outside its original context, writes Kongtaveelert.

• “Repeated online threats culminated in the physical presence of a suspect on campus,” write Britney Tran, Dwight Hua and Kyle Nguyen. “However, despite the severity of the event, Stanford has yet to issue a University-wide announcement about what occurred or denounce this act of racial hate and intolerance.”

• A Florida commission says the judge who oversaw the penalty trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz should be publicly reprimanded for showing bias toward the prosecution. The Judicial Qualifications Commission said Monday that Circuity Judge Elizabeth Scherer sometimes allowed her emotions to overcome her judgement and violated several rules governing judicial conduct in her actions toward Nikolas Cruz’s attorneys. Those included unfairly chastising them after they rested their case. It will now be up to the Florida Supreme Court to decide her punishment. She is retiring June 30. Cruz received a life sentence at the conclusion of the six-month penalty trial for murdering 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.

• As California officials accused Florida of shipping migrants to its capital city last week, about 20 more people, mostly from Venezuela, arrived on Monday on the same chartered plane.

• A plane transporting more than a dozen migrants landed in Sacramento, Calif., on Monday, according to state officials, who say it appears the flight was organized by Florida.  Monday’s flight, which arrived in California’s capital city with 20 migrants from Texas, is the second instance of a private plane transporting migrants to the Golden State…

• California officials say the state of Florida has twice picked up asylum-seekers on the Texas border and flown them by private jet to California’s capital. The latest flight arrived Monday with about 20 migrants. It follows the earlier arrival Friday of 16 others from Colombia and Venezuela. They are the latest apparent instances of a Republican-led state transporting migrants to one controlled by Democrats. DeSantis and other Florida officials have not confirmed their involvement in the transport. California officials are investigating the migrants’ arrival while local officials and faith-based groups seek to provide them food and shelter.

• The number of mothers incarcerated dropped during the pandemic, but as prison regulations return, families are once again being separated. Some programs such as the Reunification Ride hope to strengthen family connections by supporting monthly visits.

• On Sunday, half a million Poles marched to defend the country’s democracy against a ruling party that has just granted itself ominous new powers.

• A march on Sunday drew hundreds of thousands of Poles to the nation’s capital to protest a conservative government that critics say has eroded democratic norms. The march was held on the 34th anniversary of the country’s first democratic elections in 1989.

• Racist insults toward Real Madrid soccer player Vinícius Júnior expose a persistent worldwide problem in the sport, but federations are slow to sanction teams for racism. Education and stricter penalties are needed to tackle this issue, experts say.

• In contrast to women leading mass protests for rights, female sports teams provide a model for freedom and equality.

• Police in Leipzig, Germany on Saturday broke up a protest orchestrated by left-wing groups involving over 700 people over the sentencing given to one of four far-left activists who attacked Neo-Nazis over a period of two years. More demonstrations are expected despite local court bans on protests.

• Previously, Bjorn Hocke has also called for the removal of articles criminalizing incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial from the German penal code.

• Michael Tisius, convicted in the murders of two jail guards, is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday.

• After graduating from Stanford, David Breaux struggled to find his path — until he found his calling as “the Compassion Guy.”

• While some may have funded the resistance, many belong to civilian business owners.

• She says her home is under surveillance and questioned whether she would be able to attend.

• Authorities in North Macedonia on June 5 said 10 men were arrested as suspected members of an international people smuggling ring following an investigation that lasted nearly two years.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Fourteen thousand poor households and 30,000 government offices of the southern Indian state of Kerala today (June 5) were provided with high-speed internet. But the aim is higher.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Amid an aggressive push for podcasting profitability, Spotify has announced yet another round of layoffs – affecting about 200 individuals working in and around its “global podcast vertical.” The Stockholm-headquartered platform unveiled the personnel reduction today, towards the end of a lengthy “adaptation of an internal update” penned by podcast exec Sahar Elhabashi.

• Spotify is laying off 200 employees in its podcast division. The downsizing, announced on Monday (June 5), affects roughly 2% of the streaming service’s in-person workforce.

Monopolies

Patents

• Poland’s justice minister called the E.U. court of justice “corrupt,” after it ruled a judicial overhaul was illegal. He vowed not to comply, though that could cost Poland billions.

• The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) ruled Monday that Poland’s 2019 court reforms violated EU laws on effective judicial protection, judicial independence and the rule of law. The court sided with the EU Commission, which launched infringement proceedings against Poland over the reforms in 2019.

• Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Monday denounced the Court of Justice of the European Union as ‘corrupt’ and rejected its ruling that a controversial Polish judicial reform violated EU law.

• Distinguished European speakers hail a new era for innovation in Europe.

• Washington Post has published a long article titled, “Colleagues want a 95-year-old judge to retire. She’s suing them instead,” by Rachel Weiner.  Judge Pauline Newman, the oldest active federal judge in the country, has been embroiled in controversy as she resists her colleagues attempts to urge/force her to retire. The article ends with a noteworthy quote from Newman that rings true to her characteristic resilience and dedication: “I want to spend my last five years correcting my colleagues’ mistakes.” In a career spanning four decades and more than 300 dissenting opinions, Newman’s resolve is clear.

• On May 31, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 11,185,738, owned and asserted by Fitistics, LLC, an NPE. The ‘738 patent is generally directed to tracking exercise using a handheld device to obtain data from an exercise machine or body monitoring device. The patent has been asserted against Huawei and Fossil.

• On May 31, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,228,910, owned by Entropic Communications, LLC, an NPE and a Fortress IP entity. The ’910 patent relates to aggregating packets for transmission to a destination node and has been asserted against Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, and Dish.

Trademarks

• This quixotic attempt to register PET C COLA, in standard form, as a trademark for animal supplements was swept aside by Opposer PepsiCo, owner of the “exceedingly famous” mark PEPSI-COLA for soft drinks. Applicant’s “test mode”  website indicated that it would be marketing itself as “the pet drink specialist” and it asserted that “Pet C Cola is the nutritional and super tasty drink for dogs and cats.” “Applicant’s adoption of a color, font, and stylization with virtually identical elements to those used by Opposer for its PEPSI-COLA script mark is ‘eyebrow raising,’ … and is strong evidence of Applicant’s intent to copy and create an association with Opposer’s mark.” And so, the Board sustained Pepsico’s Section 43(c) dilution-by-blurring claim.  PepsiCo, Inc. v. Pet C Cola Corporation, Opposition No. 91255530 (June 1, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Robert H. Coggins).

• The US Supreme Court announced Monday it will take up the trademark case Vidal v. Elster, to determine whether the application of Section 2(c) of the Lanham Act to political figures violates the First Amendment.

Copyrights

• The Fugees reunited during Lauryn Hill’s headlining set at the Roots Picnic music festival for what may be the group’s final performance as Pras Michel faces a 20-year prison term. Concertgoers were in for a special treat during Lauryn Hill’s headlining performance at the Roots Picnic music festival.

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