● 06.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 14/06/2023: Reddit Latest Social Control Network to Wane, Microsoft Targeted by FTC

Posted in News Roundup at 12:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• We cover user groups that are running in Serbia. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.

Audiocasts/Shows

• A great way to access documentation offline, moving Windows installations to new disks without breaking them, streaming VR games from a PC, replacing Pocket with a proper open source solution, living with Google’s flagship phone for a few months, and more.

• Videos from the 2022 Tracing Summit are now available on YouTube. They include talks about Visual eBPF, Perfetto, the state of Linux tracers, libpatch, hardware trace, and more.

Applications

• Anyone looking to adopt Linux as their daily operating system should give Feren OS a try.

• We’ll discuss the poker tools that will help you improve your hand while playing this favorite game of chance.

• cli-chess is a command-line chess program that lets you play online against human players and offline against the computer.

• The developers of ONLYOFFICE Docs rolled out a new version of their collaborative office suite that comes with a lot of new features and improvements for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fillable forms. Let’s take a deep look at what’s new in this version of the ONLYOFFICE online and desktop editors.

• ONLYOFFICE Docs v7.4 offers new drawing tools allowing you to draw whatever you want in your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and fallible forms. Using the newly added Draw tab on the top toolbar, you can choose a pen or a highlighter as well as the desired colour and line thickness. If you don’t like what you get, you can always use the Eraser tool to scrub your drawings.

Instructionals/Technical

• Soon, users of RHEL-based Linux distributions (such as Fedora, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux) will find an important piece of software missing from the official repositories…the LibreOffice office suite.

• There’s no need to panic, as this is not an end-of-the-world scenario (far from it). Not only is this not cataclysmic, but there will also always be the means to install LibreOffice on your favorite RHEL-based operating system. On top of that, there are other office suites you can install (such as WPS Office and Softmaker Office).

• Herrod Technology, a leading provider of technology solutions, is pleased to announce the release of a comprehensive guide on setting up an email server on Ubuntu. Titled “How to Setup Email Server on Ubuntu: A Comprehensive Guide,” this blog post provides detailed instructions and insights for individuals and businesses seeking to configure a fully functional and secure email server on the Ubuntu operating system.

• As a Linux user, it can be frustrating to not know what your system’s true limits are. Sure, you can take a guess based on the specs of your processor, but what if you want to truly push your CPU to its maximum potential? This is where Stress-Terminal UI comes in.

• Stress-Terminal UI is a powerful tool for Linux users that allows you to stress-test your CPU and other system components. It is a simple command-line application that runs stress tests on different parts of your system, including your CPU, RAM, and disk I/O. This allows you to determine the true limits of your system and identify any performance bottlenecks that may be hindering its performance.

• One of the biggest advantages of Stress-Terminal UI is that it is incredibly easy to use. Once you have installed the application, simply launch it from the command line and select the stress test you wish to run. You can choose from tests that focus solely on your CPU, or you can opt for more comprehensive tests that include RAM and disk I/O stress tests.

• Setting up aliases on Linux systems can save you a lot of time and trouble on the command line. This post shows how to set up and manage aliases and provides a number of examples on how and why to use them.

• Learn how to add users to the sudoers list in Linux, granting them administrative privileges securely and maintaining a robust security framework.

• For a long time, most Linux distros have slowly been transitioning their users away from Xorg and into Wayland. In most cases, this is a good thing. Wayland is more secure, performs much better than X, and overcomes many of the hurdles of the older protocol. The bad news is that your applications may not function perfectly if they expect to be running in X11.

• Docker is a popular containerization tool that enables developers to package their applications in a portable and lightweight manner. Docker images are pre-configured snapshots of an application, which include all the necessary dependencies and configurations.

• Vue.js, a progressive JavaScript framework, has emerged as a critical tool in the contemporary web development landscape. The brainchild of Evan You, an ex-Google engineer, Vue.js was born out of a vision to amalgamate the best features of Angular and React while mitigating their weaknesses. Why Vue.js?

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Sysdig on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Sysdig is an open-source, powerful system monitoring and troubleshooting tool that provides in-depth visibility into your system’s processes, files, network connections, and more.

• Developers nowadays are using Git to help them control and manage their ever changing source code versions as well as to keep track of potential code changes. Git enables developers and programmers to create different branches, revert to previous code versions, make sophisticated code comparisons and many other features.

• The head command is one of the several ways to display file contents or part of it. You can also do more with it. Here are some common examples to explore.

• Time series data is a sequence of data points that are measured at regular intervals over time.

• In the realm of web application development, selecting the appropriate software stack can be a critical factor for the successful deployment of your application. The LEMP stack, an acronym derived from the four open-source components it employs — Linux, ENGINX, MariaDB, and PHP, is a powerful, flexible, and scalable solution for managing web servers.

• TeamViewer is a comprehensive and robust software tool designed to provide seamless remote access, collaboration, and support capabilities. With its origins dating back to 2005, TeamViewer has continually adapted and grown, offering a myriad of functionalities to meet the changing needs of the tech industry.

• Fedora users, accustomed to the GNOME desktop environment, may find the MATE Desktop Environment a welcome shift for a number of reasons. MATE, originally an acronym for MATE Advanced Traditional Environment, offers a unique blend of tradition and modernity, all wrapped into an intuitive and user-friendly package. Why MATE Stands Out?

• In today’s world, technology is advancing at an incredible rate. Businesses are always looking for ways to streamline their processes, make their infrastructure more efficient, and reduce costs. One of the most popular technologies available today is Docker Hub, a cloud-based registry service that allows developers to store and manage their container images.

• Docker is one of the most popular and widely used containerization platforms in the world. It allows developers to deploy their applications in a portable and efficient manner, making it an excellent choice for modern software development.

• The `ls` command is a crucial tool in the repertoire of both novice and advanced Linux users. It’s a simple yet versatile command that provides a list of files and directories in the current directory by default.

• Docker is a game-changing technology that has revolutionized the way software is developed and deployed. It provides an open-source platform for creating, shipping, and running applications inside containers. These containers are lightweight, portable, and self-contained environments that can run on any infrastructure without any modifications.

• If you’re working with Linux, it’s almost certain that you’ll need to deal with compressed files at some point. One of the formats you might come across is the XZ format. The .xz format is known for its high compression ratio, which can be handy when you need to save space or make file transfers more manageable. This guide will walk you through the process of compressing (zipping) and decompressing (unzipping) .xz files using the command line in Linux.

• Introduction: A step-by-step guide showing two ways to install the Element messaging client on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 using the command terminal. Element is an open-source application that uses Matrix protocol for offering an end-to-end encrypted messaging and collaboration platform.

• This tutorial discusses what AppImage is and how you can use it to run a Linux application across all Linux distributions.

• This article spotlights alternative tools to xargs, a command that builds and executes command lines from standard input.

Games

• Azuriom is a modern, reliable, fast and secure game CMS.

• Moonstone Island from Studio Supersoft and Raw Fury looks sweet! It’s a creature-collecting life-sim set in an open world with 100+ islands to explore and now we have more details.

• Ready for one more run through the testing chambers? The free and very popular mod Portal Reloaded just recently had The Cooperative Update release.

• Titan Forge Games and Hi-Rez Studios have updated their popular MOBA game SMITE, and with it an improvement to allow it to now work on Linux with Easy Anti-Cheat.

• Kingdoms and Castles is a great city-builder but it seems Lion Shield want to do something a bit different, so they’ve revealed Nova Roma. It was announced at the PC Gaming Show.

• Ah yes, game industry consolidation is great isn’t it. What could possibly go wrong when one company acquires a ton of others and then screws up?

• No time for an intro because it’s time to go fast and when you’re going this fast you don’t have time to explain things or catch anyone up on what’s happening or edit out tpyos or even use punctuation let’s gooooooooooooooooooooo

• 3 days left before the Pepper&Carrot game jam starts!

• It’s hosted by Brett Chalupa here: → https://itch.io/jam/pepper-carrot-jam

• Good luck to the 17 participants who already joined, and because I cannot wait to see the results, I colored a sketch with Pepper and Carrot playing a ‘VS Fighter’ (Carrot is clearly winning).

• The rapid development and widespread accessibility of technology have opened up a world of online gaming, with millions of people around the globe logging in to play every day. While these games can be a source of entertainment and camaraderie, they also come with potential risks. In this article, we will delve into the multifaceted world of online gaming, exploring its addictive nature, educational potential, and games for money. We’ll provide examples of each, helping you to better understand the complex landscape of online gaming.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• Based on Fedora Linux 38, but shipping with Linux kernel 6.3 by default, Ultramarine Linux 38 (codename Tortuga) now uses System76’s CPU scheduler for prioritizing processes for improved desktop responsiveness.

• The devs note the fact that System76’s scheduler is included in all four editions, but only the GNOME one will automatically detect the application that’s currently in use. In addition, Ultramarine Linux 38 offers a tweaked shutdown sequence where the services were limited for faster/shorter shutdown times.

• MakuluLinux Max, the worlds First AI- Voice integrated Operating system has been released, it is live. you can grab your copy from the Download Section.

• Released the day after 5.4! Just one change, printing fixed, see this forum discussion:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8913

• Plus some very small changes committed:

• https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commits/38b9dfa2bb52a677166f3255e66f3ffaf703feec

• If running 5.4, just click the “update” icon, the update to 5.4.1 is only 929KB.

• If you are new to EasyOS, please read the 5.4 announcement first: [...]

Fedora Family / IBM

• The Fedora project has posted the results of its elections for members of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (Stephen Gallagher, Neal Gompa, Major Hayden, and Tom Stellard), Fedora Council (Sumantro Mukherjee), and Mindshare Committee (David Duncan).

• Various network switches and routers will be updated and rebooted. This will result in short times of no connectivity, possibly lasting 20minutes at a time during the outage window.

Debian Family

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Do you create content? Audio? Video? Images? If that’s what you spend your time doing, there’s a Linux distribution specifically designed for you. That distribution is another official “flavor” of Ubuntu, called Ubuntu Studio, and with it, you’ll find nearly everything you need to work on your creative endeavors.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Jeff Geerling shares an inside look at how Raspberry Pi 4s are manufactured at the Sony Tech Center in Wales.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• I am excited to announce that my book Open Source for Business is now available for free download in Chinese. Many thanks to Open Atom Foundation, China’s first open source foundation, for preparing the translation and making it available.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• Crunchy Data is pleased to announce the release of pgBackRest 2.46, the latest version of the reliable, easy-to-use backup and restore solution that can seamlessly scale up to the largest databases and workloads.

• Over the last year pgBackRest has introduced many exciting new features including block incremental backup, file bundling, repository verification, backup annotations, and SFTP repository storage.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: pgBackRest 2.44 is the last version to support PostgreSQL 9.0/9.1/9.2.

• pgBackRest supports a robust set of features for managing your backup and recovery infrastructure, including: parallel backup/restore, full/differential/incremental backups, block incremental backup, multiple repositories, delta restore, parallel asynchronous archiving, per-file checksums, page checksums (when enabled) validated during backup, multiple compression types, encryption, partial/failed backup resume, backup from standby, tablespace and link support, S3/Azure/GCS/SFTP support, backup expiration, local/remote operation via SSH or TLS, flexible configuration, and more.

• Release v2.0.0 adds a major feature and the compatibility with PostgreSQL 16. Upgrade require a PostgreSQL restart to reload the credcheck library.

• Add “Authentication failure ban” new feature

• PostgreSQL doesn’t have any mechanism to limit the number of authentication failure attempt before the user being banned. With the credcheck extension, after an amount of authentication failure defined by configuration directive credcheck.max_auth_failure the user can be banned and never connect anymore even if it gives the right password later. This feature requires that the credcheck extension to be added to to shared_preload_libraries configuration option.

Programming/Development

• The v2023.06.11a release of Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It? is now available! The double-column version is also available from arXiv.org.

• This release contains a new section on thermal throttling (along with a new cartoon), improvements to the memory-ordering chapter (including intuitive subsets of the Linux-kernel memory model), fixes to the deferred-processing chapter, additional clocksource-deviation material to the “What Time Is It?” section, and numerous fixes inspired by questions and comments from readers.  Discussions with Yariv Aridor were especially fruitful.  Akira Yokosawa contributed some quick quizzes and other upgrades of the technical discussions, along with a great many improvements to grammar, glossaries, epigraphs, and the build system.  Leonardo Bras also provided some much-appreciated build-system improvements, and also started up continuous integration for some of the code samples.

• Paul McKenney has announced a new version of his book Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?.

• The R Consortium has begun the disbursement of grants to help R User Groups (RUGS) around the world organize, share information, and support each other.

• I recently posted a draft of an RFC about Return Type Notation to the async working group Zulip stream. In response, Josh Triplett reached out to me to raise some concerns. Talking to him gave rise to a 3rd idea for how to resolve the send bound problem. I still prefer RTN, but I think this idea is interesting and worth elaborating. I call it higher-ranked projections.

• We designed the rOpenSci Champions Program with a mentorship aspect. Mentoring plays a significant role in the growth and development of both mentors and mentees alike.

Perl / Raku

• The TIOBE index for June 2023 puts the Raku Programming Language at #48, so inside the top 50 for the first time! With an actual mention by TIOBE’s CEO: [...]

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Start learning bash scripting with this new series. Create and run your first bash shell script in the first chapter.

Leftovers

• Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, has become a viral sensation for his absurd acts of altruism. Why do so many people think he’s evil?

• Sometimes you discover you have a true superpower. And sometimes things are not exactly what they seem.

• He was said to be wearing just shorts, climbing shoes and carrying a small backpack.

• Two married couples who bought a home together have found that expanding their household led to a deeper sense of community.

Science

• If only happiness could be this simple.

• The polygonal Mori3 robot is similar in concept to the shape-shifting robot TARS from ‘Interstellar,’ and could make repairs in space.

Education

• Recent data from Eurostat shows that just under 10% of Latvia’s adult population is engaged in formal or informal training and education.

• Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca on June 12 submitted his resignation as part of a scheduled plan to swap premiers following the 2020 parliamentary elections that left the two leading parties with near-equal strength.

Hardware

• Back in April I talked about connecting my Am386’s CD-ROM to the IDE header on an ESS AudioDrive ISA sound card, and using it in DOS. I wanted to see if I could repeat this with a Creative Sound Blaster 32 that also has an IDE controller. It worked!

• AOOSTAR mini PC is a 3-in-1 AMD Ryzen 5 5500U mini PC with two 3.5-inch SATA bays making it usable as a NAS, and two 2.5GbE networking interfaces to use the mini PC as a software 2.5GbE router that has recently shown up on Amazon for $399. The mini PC ships with a 512GB NVMe SSD preloaded with Windows 11 by default, as well as 16GB DDR4 memory.

• A new chip architecture called RISC-V is emerging as a hot-ticket item to unseat the dominant x86 processor in computer hardware, but it has a problem — it has poor software support.

• To solve that problem, some of the biggest names in tech have joined hands to establish RISC-V Software Ecosystem, also called RISE, which is a consortium to promote software development for the free-to-license RISC-V instruction set architecture.

• The goal is to create the underlying software tools and middleware that developers will need to write applications for devices or servers with RISC-V chips.

• European Commission Press release Brussels, 12 Jun 2023 Today, the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), enters into force.

• U.S. set to allow South Korean and Taiwanese companies to upgrade fab operations in China using American wafer fab tools.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Members of the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) have rallied against Japan’s plan to release wastewater from a nuclear power plant into the sea. They accused Tokyo of ignoring objections from the local agricultural sector and neighbouring countries.

• Few subjects considered in the parliament gain so much attention from lobbying organizations as changes in smoking restrictions. MPs have received a pile of objections from various associations, particularly regarding the plan to ban flavors in electronic cigarettes, the De Facto broadcast of Latvian Television reported on June 11.

• Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch says Navajo law enforcement teams that fanned out over metro Phoenix in recent weeks made contact with several hundred Native Americans from various tribes living on the streets amid a state crackdown on Medicaid fraud that recruited them to unlicensed sober living homes. Branch says Monday the teams have made contact with more than 270 Native Americans, the majority of them Navajo. Many tribal members accepted offers of temporary housing before moving to legitimate facilities, while others agreed to return to their reservations. State officials believe the homes defrauded Arizona out of hundreds of millions of its federal Medicaid dollars.

• Intriguing…

• A patient at the Liepāja hospital has received a placebo medicine intended for participants in a clinical trial without the consent of the patient or their family, Latvian Television reported on June 12.

• Polish health authorities stated Monday a woman who died in the fifth month of pregnancy had her patient rights violated. The patient died of sepsis in hospital after going into early labor.

• Health plans must pay for all types of preventive care, including a pill to prevent H.I.V., while an appeals court deliberates whether to strike down part of the Affordable Care Act.

• An autopsy report says the shooter who killed three children and three adults at a Nashville Christian school died from gunshot wounds to the head, torso and other parts of the body. The autopsy released Monday said the manner of death of 28-year-old Audrey Hale was homicide. Hale opened fire at the school before being shot to death by officers. The release of the report comes as a growing collection of groups are embroiled in a complex legal battle over the release of Hale’s writings and other documents in the police investigation. On Monday, a Nashville judge declined to pause the court proceedings so that those seeking the records could wait on an appeal of a previous decision in the case.

• Today, in the mainstream narrative, there is much talk of a ‘food transition’. Big agribusiness and ‘philanthropic’ foundations position themselves as the saviours of humanity due to their much- promoted plans to ‘feed the world’ with ‘precision’ farming’, ‘data-driven’ agriculture and ‘sustainable’ production.

Proprietary

• T-Shirt bots have been on Twitter for years, but now they’ve got blue check marks and prominent placement on your timeline.

• An algorithm funded by the World Bank to determine which families should get financial assistance in Jordan likely excludes people who should qualify, according to an investigation published this morning by Human Rights Watch.

• Build your own self-hosted and private Reddit clone for your community, team, school, company, and customers with these 10 open-source alternatives

• If I were a YouTube essayist, I’d say this is a story about power, language, and Digg… ing one’s grave. Wait, damn it.

• Beleaguered link aggregator site Reddit recently followed in Twitter’s well-received footsteps in imposing steep costs to access their API, attributed to large-language models training against their corpus of material without their permission, and for free. Hey, you and I know how that feels! It’s coached less in terms of defending individual writers from plagiarism, and more with words like “value” (don’t forget who owns your material when you post to a commercial site), but I’ll take it.

• Given how generative AIs and LLMs are now dickishly disseminating dull derivative dystopian detritus at scale across the web, knock-on effects are hardly surprising. Dickishly. It also raises what people like me have been saying for months: AIs depend on training data made by people who aren’t attributed or compensated. Tech pundits don’t care, though their lack of social responsibility is hardly new. I’ve been running an experiment about this, which I hope to post soon.

• Volunteer moderators closed off access to numerous subreddits and denounced the platform’s pricing plan for developers of popular outside apps used to navigate the site.

• Thousands of communities on the platform will become inaccessible today (June 12), and stay that way for at least two days.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (vim), Fedora (kernel), Oracle (emacs, firefox, python3, and qemu), SUSE (firefox, java-1_8_0-ibm, and libwebp), and Ubuntu (firefox, glusterfs, and sniproxy).

• On May 27, 2023, Texas’ Governor signed Senate Bill 768 amending Texas’ data breach notification law. The law in question, Section 521.053 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code, sets out the specific requirements any person conducting business in the state who owns or licenses sensitive personal information in a computerized format must follow in the event of any breach of system security.

• Some 25,000 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) patients are being contacted by a Tennessee billing contractor following a data breach caused by a software bug that may have exposed names, addresses, social security numbers and other personal information.

• Kingsport-based Intellihartx LLC, which provides UPMC with billing and collection services, is contacting UPMC patients by mail, offering complimentary credit monitoring and identity restoration services to anyone whose records have been used illegally.

• A day after a Telegram bot provided access to the personal information of individuals who had reportedly registered for vaccination through the government’s CoWIN portal, an independent analysis by CloudSEK has shown that the threat actors do not have access to the entire portal or the backend database.

• CloudSEK is a Singapore-based contextual AI company that claims it can forewarn cyber threats.

• “Based on the matching fields from the Telegram data and previously reported incidents affecting health workers of a region, we assume the information was scraped through these compromised credentials,” CloudSEK said in a report.

• Investigation revealed that the hacker had access to the server from March 18, 2023 to April 4, 2023. Information that might have been accessed included names and addresses and limited clinical information, including diagnosis and treatment information. “In a small numbers of instances, social security number could also have been involved,” MMC wrote in a statement.

• OSG Hengelo says that at the moment it is still unclear exactly what data the hackers have obtained. “It is still under investigation. As soon as there is more clarity about this, we will tell you,” the board says in a response to students and parents. Employees and students can now use WiFi again. In addition, almost all printers work again.

• According to the notice by the Commonwealth Health Physician Network, the breach occurred on February 2 and continued until April 14. It was first discovered by GVC on April 13, but as some great reporting by Borys Krawczeniuk of The Times-Tribune made clear, GVC only discovered the breach then when they were alerted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

• There is nothing on the district’s website to indicate any problems or breach. The only possible indicator currently found was on the district’s Facebook page in the form of a May 22 notice that their phone systems were down. There do not seem to be any follow-up posts to that although there were other posts about graduation and other normal activities.

• A hospital in Illinois will close on Friday due in part to a cyberattack – a rare case of a health care provider publicly linking a hack incident to its closure.

• The 2021 cyberattack on St. Margaret’s Health, a hospital in Spring Valley, Illinois, hobbled computer systems for months and prevented it from filing insurance claims, Linda Burt, a hospital vice president, told CNN on Monday.

• “It took months after we went back online to catch up with billing,” Burt said in an email. Other factors in the hospital’s closure were staffing costs brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and supply chain and inflation issues, she said.

Defence/Aggression

• The Israeli government told the Biden administration it intends to announce later this month the building and planning of thousands of new housing units in the settlements in the occupied West Bank, three Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios.

• The latest spate of farm killings has seen renewed calls for action including a commission of inquiry and an appeal to the national agricultural community to “intensify” security and readiness. Since the start of June there have been at least eight farm related murders reported in Limpopo and Western Cape.

• The mother pleaded guilty to breaking federal law by using marijuana while owning a firearm and making false statements about drug use when she bought the gun.

• More than 250 aircraft from 24 NATO countries and Japan will participate in a two-week military exercise.

• What’s really behind Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s recent announcement that his government is exploring opening a NATO-liaison office in Tokyo?

• Opposition among lawmakers effectively delayed a decision on when to implement the unpopular move.

• As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meets with US President Joe Biden at the White House, the question of the “who” and the “when” of changing NATO’s top leader is on the agenda.

• The Swedish government decided Monday to extradite a Turkish citizen resident in Sweden who had been convicted in 2013 of drug crime in Turkey.

• The increase in the exchange rate will raise the costs for industries heavily dependent on imported raw materials and intermediate goods. To balance this, reducing labor costs will be presented as a necessity.

• Air Defender 23 will involve up to 250 aircraft and about 10,000 military personnel from 25 different countries.

• “Due to delays, program officials are developing a new, more realistic schedule for Block V. They said that they expect to complete this process in early 2023,” the audit, the 21st annual review of the Department of Defence’s weapon system acquisition, said.

• “Program officials stated that the shipbuilders do not have sufficient workforce to complete VCS while also constructing the Columbia-class submarines and overhauling several Los Angeles-class submarines. They noted VCS construction is about 25% below staffing needs as of September 2022.”

• America’s broken immigration system has spawned a national fight, but Congress lacks the political will to fix it.

• Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Venezuela on June 12 for the start of a visit to “friendly countries” that also include Cuba and Nicaragua, all under sanctions from a common adversary, the United States.

• Eight Iranian teachers have been put on trial at the Islamic Revolutionary Court in the southern city of Shiraz for participating in union protests, part of a plan, the Iranian Teachers’ Union’s Coordination Council says, aimed at pressuring on educators unhappy with working conditions.

• Guatemala’s First High-Risk Appeals Chamber mandated the release of three military officers who were previously convicted of crimes against humanity Friday, directly contravening a March ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

• Police believe a group of teenagers attacked a bus driver and two more people in Vantaa’s Länsimäki area on Sunday morning.

• Police say a man has been charged in a shooting that killed three men — including a father and son — and wounded three others in a neighborhood dispute over parking during a party. Charles Robert Smith, 43, of Annapolis, was charged Monday with three counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, assault and other offenses in the shooting that happened Sunday evening. Annapolis Police Chief Edward Jackson told reporters at a media briefing that Smith surrendered to authorities Sunday night without incident. He was ordered held without bond Monday.

• Companies say vandalism is mainly carried out by underage kids, but older people also have been known to angrily or drunkenly knock over and break the devices.

• The Taiwanese soldiers are shown smiling, whereas the Chinese ones have downturned mouths and a severe expression.

• It comes days before an expected visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

• New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on Monday a visit to China later this month aimed at boosting trade ties, despite deepening concerns about Beijing’s actions in the Pacific. “Today I can announce that I’ll be leading a major trade delegation to China at the end of this month,” Hipkins said.

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would enshrine into law regulations on guns, including implementing universal background checks and raising the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21. Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment would also institute a “reasonable” waiting period for all gun purchases and ban assault rifles throughout the country. Amending the Constitution requires support from two-thirds of the members of both chambers of Congress. A proposed amendment then must be ratified by three-fourths of state Legislatures or ratifying conventions.

• The attack was attributed to a group that the United Nations says has killed hundreds of civilians in the region and forced thousands to flee.

• The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) military announced Monday that around 40 residents of an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in the country’s northeastern Ituri region were killed in an attack by local militia groups.

• After several protesters were killed by live ammunition this month in Senegal, many in the usually stable West African nation wonder what comes next.

• During a press conference on June 4, Senegalese police showed the press a series of video clips that they claimed documented the presence of armed protesters at recent demonstrations. However, the full videos, which have been widely circulating on social media, show the same armed individuals alongside the police. So who are these armed men? And whose side are they on?

• The army soldiers, in preventative custody, face a military trial and could eventually also answer to murder charges in a civilian court.

• The kingdom hosted a lavish Arab-China business conference days after a visit from the American secretary of state, inviting companies blacklisted by the United States.

• The military provided few details about the accident, saying the troops had sustained “injuries of various degrees.”

• It is clear that humanitarian response planning in Syria requires a full review process that reconsiders existing approaches and involves local partners while listening to their experiences.

• Canada and the Netherlands have taken Damascus to the International Court of Justice over allegations of torture, the tribunal said Monday, in the first case at the UN’s top court over Syria’s brutal civil war.

• A ceasefire deal in Colombia with a guerrilla group welcomes civilians to track the ceasefire, opening a way for them to also participate in a final peace agreement.

• To counter recruiting shortfalls, the United States military is enlisting immigrants by offering them a fast track to American citizenship. An important part of the effort is using recruiters with similar backgrounds to those of potential recruits.

• We’re at an important inflection point on the AUKUS timeline.

War in Ukraine

• Belarusian authorities have offered firearms to migrants attempting to cross the border irregularly, according to the Latvian border guards.

Environment

• Temperatures this week are expected to be about 10 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.

• What would summer be without ice cream? Not just in sun-kissed states does everyone love the sweet, creamy treat but also people in the Baltics are avid consumers of frozen desserts. Here are some facts and figures about thus seasonal treat that you might find interesting.

• Authorities in Pakistan on June 12 began evacuating tens of thousands of people who are at “high risk” of an approaching cyclone that is expected to bring high winds along the coastline of the Arabian Sea regions of Pakistan and India.

• Incandescent lava was seen flowing slowly from the mouth of the 2,462m Mayon volcano.

• The number of fossil fuel companies pledging to reach net zero has risen dramatically in the past year. Out of 112 named in a report released on June 12 by the nonprofit Net Zero Tracker, 75 have signed the Pledge to Net Zero—24 more than in 2022.

• A custody battle has broken out among relatives of four Indigenous children who survived a plane crash and 40 harrowing days alone in the Amazon rainforest. Their maternal grandparents are vying with the father of the two youngest to take care of the children, whose mother died in the May 1 crash. They have accused him of domestic abuse. The siblings range in age from 1 to 13. They are still in a hospital and are expected to stay there for several more days. Social workers are using that time to interview relatives to determine who should have custody. The head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare says a caseworker has been assigned at the grandparents’ request.

• A lawsuit in Montana marks the first time that young people in the U.S. have gotten a chance in court to demand the right to a stable climate – part of a larger global effort by children to demand government action.

• Sixteen young people argue that the state is robbing their future by embracing policies that contribute to climate change.

• Trial began Monday in a lawsuit brought by 16 youth plaintiffs alleging that the state of Montana has failed to protect them and future generations from the harmful effects of climate change.

• The first ever constitutional climate trial in the United States opened Monday in Montana, brought by young activists suing the north-central state for violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment.”

• The United Kingdom had long been a climate leader, but other countries have caught up. By working with its close ally the United States, the United Kingdom can reassert its climate leadership through a green special relationship that can galvanize net-zero objectives domestically and abroad.

• A new study maps the relationship between human-caused warming and California’s summer fires over the past five decades.

Energy/Transportation

• An overpass on one of America’s busiest highways collapsed early Sunday after a tanker crossing underneath burst into flames, Pennsylvania’s governor said, predicting it will take months to fully restore the “critical artery.”

• Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW), VNG, and JERA today (June 12) revealed plans to conduct a study into establishing an ammonia cracker at Rostock’s port in Germany to facilitate hydrogen imports.

• The crash left 10 dead, and fourteen are still hospitalised, including one in intensive care.

• Police in Australia allege a bus driver was driving too fast when his 57-seat vehicle rolled on its side and hit a guard rail in heavy fog, killing 10 wedding guests and injuring 25 others. Brett Andrew Button was driving 35 passengers on a 20-minute journey from a wedding reception at the Wandin Estate Winery to the town of Singleton late Sunday when the Volvo bus rolled at a roundabout. Button had been in police custody but was released on bail when he appeared in a Cessnock court Tuesday charged with 10 counts of dangerous driving in relation to each death and one count of negligent driving. Police alleged the “speed was too quick for him to negotiate that roundabout.”

• Southern China has been hit by a combination of hot temperatures and heavy rainfalls in recent weeks.

• Since 1972, Montana’s constitution has guaranteed “a clean and healthful environment.” In 2020, a group of young people sued the state for failing to uphold that right. The trial in this fight, a first in the US, begins today (June 12).

• Observers say the closures are part of a bid to cut off tax revenue to opposition forces.

Wildlife/Nature

• Some 435 wildfires were burning across Canada overnight as smoke from the blazes lingered in New York City and other parts of the U.S.

• Newborn chicks are unable to fly until around the beginning of July, which means the vulnerable birds may be on the ground when people approach.

• Hong Kong stray animal shelter House of Joy and Mercy does not just provide refuge for four-legged creatures. “I would call this place my home because I live here,” Ivy Tse, the centre’s founder, told HKFP. The shelter is located in a remote corner of Yuen Long.

• Party leader Anna-Maja Henriksson voted against the ban, citing the importance of fur farms to local economies.

• Migration on/off.

• Not exactly a stairway to heaven.

Overpopulation

• He is seeking to double child-care spending, as the birth rate drops to a record low of 1.26 in 2022 from 1.57 in 1990.

• Earth wouldn’t miss us.

• Officials released plans to build a network of canals, reservoirs and storage facilities to boost irrigation.

Finance

• Food delivery workers in the Big Apple will be the first in the country to get a minimum pay rate.

• The Lithuanian economy is expected to shrink by 1.4 percent this year, according to Borja Gracia, the IMF mission chief for Lithuania. The persistently high inflation remains a threat to the economy, he said.

• The overall unemployment rate increased by 0.1%, while the youth unemployment rate dropped by 1.2% to reach 19.1%, according to a recent TurkStat study.

• Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu announced that starting from July 1, the fee for a 10,000-ton ship will increase to 17,760 dollars, up from 16,393 dollars.

• More than half of Filipino millennials and Gen Zs worry they won’t be able to cover their expenses.

• The city wants to bring in at least 18,000 construction, transport and logistics workers, a local newspaper reported.

• This trend has gained popularity among young people, who eagerly grab these deals at certain moments.

• There isn’t a single country in the world where women earn more than men, or even as much as them, according to new data on gender equity released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

• The Minimum Wage Determination Committee’s decisions will significantly impact minimum wage and related compensations like unemployment benefits, disability allowances, and internship allowances.

• The company’s top boss, a real estate industry veteran, abruptly left in May after growing frustrated with SoftBank, its largest shareholder and lender.

• For the next two years, 30 people in the United Kingdom will receive £1,600 ($1,984) a month from the think tank Autonomy to help researchers understand the effects of universal basic income (UBI) policies. Will the program teach us anything other UBI pilots haven’t?

• Workers who miss the deadline could lose out on thousands in retirement

• Once launched, millions of workers will be able to view all of their pension pots in one place

• Santander follows HSBC and Nationwide in temporarily removing mortgage products from sale

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Dr Meryl Nass is joined by James Corbett to continue on from their previous discussion of the history of the World Health Organization, and the One Health Agenda, this time accompanied by Dr David Bell. Where did the global biosecurity agenda come from?

• The former president’s retention of classified documents looks willful and arguably endangered national security.

• The former president serves up a classic combination of shocking and stupid.

• Plus: Mark Zuckerberg reacts to the Twitter Files, CNN’s lockdown hypocrisy, and more…

• Jill Biden warned Democratic donors Monday that the 2024 election presents a choice between what she described as the “strong, steady leadership” of President Joe Biden or “chaos and corruption, hatred and division” of “MAGA Republicans.” The first lady was making her first solo outing of the 2024 campaign and commented on the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump, a subject her husband has tried to avoid speaking about. She expressed surprise that Trump, who is set to appear in a Florida court on Tuesday, had not lost support within his party after the indictment.

• Plus: A rundown of recent nonsensical proposals for constitutional amendments

• Trump’s sycophants in the GOP are stepping up their efforts to spread fear in American politics, and they deserve the public’s scorn.

• Federal law requires a judge to step away from a case in which her impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”

• The CIPA processes of Josh Schulte — who was the topic of Donald Trump’s first classified compromise — and Scooter Libby — whom Trump pardoned — will be key precedents to this CIPA process.

• Former President Donald Trump’s claim that the justice system has been “weaponized” is making it hard for rivals to capitalize on his indictment.

• With numerous felony charges on the docket for Donald Trump’s federal court appearance, the former president and his allies are trying to undermine the case. They have compared it to Hillary Clinton’s dropped email investigation and called for protests.

• The former president has already tested a variety of arguments to challenge his indictment in the classified documents case. They could be hard to sustain in court.

• The complicated feelings among some residents about former President Donald J. Trump and the case against him reflect the complicated politics of the state.

• Times columnists and contributors evaluate the former president’s chances in the G.O.P. primary contest.

• European Commission Statement Brasilia, 13 Jun 2023 President Lula,

• Thank you very much for the warm welcome, I am very glad to be here in Brasília.

• European Commission Statement Brussels, 12 Jun 2023 “The European Union has a longstanding commitment to eradicate child labour and safeguard the rights of the children.

• Canada’s foreign interference special rapporteur David Johnston resigned on Thursday amid accusations of partiality, citing a “highly partisan atmosphere” that emerged around his work. Johnston, a former governor-general of Canada, was appointed as the country’s first special rapporteur on foreign interference in 2020.

• A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News.

• One possible explanation for why the Intelligence Community was willing to charge Trump with hoarding 31 highly sensitive documents is that they’ve operated since September on the assumption that they’ve all been compromised.

• Former President Trump arrived in Miami on Monday ahead of his Tuesday court appearance for criminal charges related to his possession of classified documents.

• Why it matters: Trump’s indictment was unsealed on Friday, outlining 37 felony counts against the former president. He has been outspoken against the charges, the Department of Justice and the special counsel at the forefront of the investigation.

• Donald Trump is due in court Tuesday to face dozens of felony counts of mishandling US government secrets, in the most serious yet of a firestorm of criminal probes threatening to derail his bid to win back the White House.

• South Korea today lives under an unprecedented tempo of North Korean missile tests and nuclear threats.

• Support for Scottish independence has dipped, but backing for Scotland remaining part of the United Kingdom is fragile, too. Nicola Sturgeon’s arrest leaves the fate of the movement in flux.

• Just months ago, the First Minister of Scotland was a hero to progressives and independence seekers. Then she resigned—merely the start of her downfall.

• Over the last five years, a total of 70 persons have requested the politically repressed status. Of those, half have been rejected. Is the problem in the system or in the people? Latvian Radio sought answers June 13.

• Yair Lapid, a former colleague and now nemesis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, testified that he had been asked to help a wealthy film producer with a tax break.

• The United States plans to rejoin UNESCO from July this year, ending a lengthy dispute that saw Washington end its membership in 2018, the UN cultural agency announced on Monday.

• The decision came after over a decade of turbulent relations between American administrations and the United Nation’s cultural organization.

• The U.S. is rejoining the U.N. cultural and scientific agency UNESCO after a decade-long dispute over Palestine’s membership and will pay $600 million in back dues. The move intends to counter China’s influence in UNESCO policymaking, say officials.

• Data tracking biases against women has shown no progress over the past decade, with prejudices remaining “deeply embedded” in society despite rights campaigns such as MeToo, a UN report said Monday.

• JPMorgan Chase announced today (June 12) it agreed “in principle” to settling a lawsuit filed by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims that alleges the bank was complicit in his sex-trafficking operation.

• A newly-published report from the Rīga-based NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOMCOE) examines recent developments in the world of social media and related topics, including online artificial intelligence.

• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appears to have resolved, for now, an impasse with some of the more conservative members of his caucus who had brought the chamber to a standstill last week. McCarthy met Monday with nearly a dozen lawmakers in his office in an effort to quell a revolt and jumpstart various priorities that had stalled last week amid the GOP infighting. He called it a productive meeting where “everybody’s attitude was, ‘How do we find where we all work together?’” McCarthy promised more meetings with last week’s holdouts and a focus on reducing federal spending in the weeks ahead.

• The Taliban’s religious police have called again on wedding hall owners in Kabul to refrain from playing music and activities that contradict its Islamic rulings for weddings or similar events.

Censorship/Free Speech

• It is too early to tell if the government’s move to ban protest song Glory to Hong Kong, including online, would result in Google becoming unavailable in the city, a data scientist has said.

• Rallies mark the first tear gas attack on protesters outside the city’s legislature in 2019

• Fox News has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tucker Carlson as he ramps up a competing series on Twitter that drew a combined 169 million views for its first two episodes, Axios has learned.

• Children’s book author Robie H Harris’ and artist Michael Emberley’s million+ copy bestselling book, It’s Perfectly Normal, A Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, Gender, and Sexual Health, has been continuously challenged and/or banned since it was first published in 1994 and continues to be challenged even in recent days.

• PM Narendra Modi’s government has repeatedly denied engaging in online censorship.

• Filmmakers who had movies shown at a local festival replaced censored scenes with “black images and muted sound,” according to organisers, after government censors demanded certain scenes be cut.

• The internet is full of strong, impassioned, sometimes offensive language. In response to an activist’s post about being choked by a sheriff’s deputy, someone posted to Facebook, “Wow, brother they wanna hit our general. It’s time to strike back. Let’s burn this motherfucker’s house down.” And someone listening to music posted lyrics about “student bodies lying dead in the halls, a blood splattered treatise of hate.”

• While this speech might be offensive — or even feel threatening — to some people, to others it is an expression of a political opinion, an unfiltered reaction to a recent event, or an attempt to rally support for a cause. The freedom to share provocative ideas and spark robust debate about political issues is essential to democracy, social justice, and progress. Our right to free speech generally protects such communications.

• The freedom to share provocative ideas and spark robust debate about political issues is essential to democracy, social justice, and progress.

• However, “true threats” are not protected by the First Amendment. The government can prosecute someone who intentionally threatens another person with death or serious bodily harm, and whose language is reasonably perceived as threatening. But can a speaker be convicted of making a true threat solely because some people could reasonably perceive it as threatening, regardless of the speaker’s intent? That’s the question before the Supreme Court in Counterman v. Colorado.

• Alan Macleod uncovers how a shadowy pressure group linked to Israel is attempting to silence artists advocating for Palestinian liberation on Spotify.

• Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a first-of-its-kind bill into law on Monday which eliminates book bans, requiring public libraries in the state to ensure they offer a diverse range of materials. House Bill 2789 obligates all libraries to adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights.

• (though false allegations  about the details of the conduct may be).

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• Patty Stonesifer, the former chief executive of Martha’s Table, will be The Post’s interim chief executive.

• At a moment of political polarization and attacks on the media, A. G. Sulzberger goes public in defense of traditional journalistic values.

Civil Rights/Policing

• If the court won’t fix its ethics mess, Congress should.

• He probably thinks the Court is about him.

• The city is raising the minimum wage for “deliveristas” to $17.96 per hour, making it the first city in the U.S. to implement such a law.

• The increase, which requires app-based delivery workers to be paid $17.96 per hour before tips, is the first such minimum wage in the country for an industry that has exploded in popularity.

• Although I now speak and think in English, my first words were not in this language. I was raised by a village of relatives; as a result, I grew up speaking in a patchwork of Cantonese, Mandarin and Taishanese.

• An end to Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) work-from-home policy may be pushing its woman employees to quit.

• If you want to rebuild America, start with its code.

• The findings in the death of Oswaldo Payá contradict the Cuban government’s official version of what happened 11 years ago.

• Every year in India, many thousands are killed in marriage-payment disputes. Why does this war on women persist?

• He bludgeoned the woman to death and dumped her body in a manhole.

• Civil society, doctors, lawyers and journalists associations and internet service providers are calling on MEPs to reject the so-called “e-Evidence” package during the plenary vote on June 13 because the proposed system of cross-border access to data in criminal matters would severely undermine fundamental rights.

• Ms. Sewell, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in 2022, announced her decision on Monday. She did not provide a reason for her departure.

• Republican rebels who blocked action in the House for the past week said they would allow votes on Tuesday, but warned that they would wrest control of the floor again unless leaders met their demands.

• Progress roundup: In Greece, wheelchair users have an easier way to enjoy the ocean. And in Morocco, a holiday recognizes the Berbers, 40% of the population.

• All they found was some cool cars and clothes.

• Employers will need to cover the costs of internet service and electricity for workers who spend more than 40% of their workday at home.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• I used a phone with no Google mobile services for a year so I try and answer the question of whether or not it is possible.

• Bill C-18, the Online News Act, heads to clause-by-clause review this week at the Senate Transport and Communications Committee. The committee’s study of the bill wasn’t as extensive as Bill C-11, but it did hear from a very wide range of stakeholders and experts. Last month, I devoted the Law Bytes podcast to my appearance before the committee, including my opening statement and exchanges with various senators. This week’s Law Bytes podcast takes listeners into the committee room for clips from media big and small, independent experts, Google and Meta, and Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Nearly six years after announcing the purchase of music-collaboration and -creation platform Soundtrap, Spotify is selling the 11-year-old company back to its founders.

Monopolies

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans an injunction seeking to block Microsoft Corp.’s acquisition of the popular video game company Activision Blizzard, according to an exclusive report by CNBC.

• The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly seeking an injunction to prevent Microsoft Corp.’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. from closing.  CNBC reported the FTC’s plans today, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Patents

• European Patent Bulletin releases data about first European patents with requests for unitary effect

• The decision in Parus Holdings, Inc. v. Google LLC, — F.4th — (Fed. Cir. 2023), underscores the importance of adhering to the PTAB procedural requirements, particularly the prohibition against incorporating arguments by reference from one document into another during an IPR, as stipulated in 37 C.F.R. § 42.6(a)(3). The court’s affirmation of the PTAB’s decision not to consider arguments and evidence that violated this rule sends a clear message to future litigants: all arguments must be explicitly presented in the briefs, and the PTAB is not obligated to consider evidence or arguments that are not properly

Copyrights

• South Korean girl group (G)I-DLE tops the NetEase Cloud Music charts with 300,000 copies sold of their latest mini-album. Chinese online music platform NetEase Cloud Music has announced that the latest mini-album from South Korean girl group (G)I-DLE has dominated the platform’s 2023 charts with 300,000 copies sold.

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