● 08.09.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 09/08/2023: Indian Defense Services Moving to GNU/Linux, WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• In the past, we have seen governments trying to switch to Linux for their administration needs. But, that usually comes with its own set of challenges, ranging from interoperability, all the way to training the end-users.

• And as it turns out, the Indian government is all set to take up that challenge once again by implementing an internally developed Linux distro.

• Allow me to take you through this endeavor.

Server

• Selecting where to store your cloud-native application data—backend or frontend—is a critical step in creating your overall data architecture.

Audiocasts/Shows

• On this episode of Destination Linux (334), we discuss some trying to make make open source illegal. No, we’re not making this up, there are people who are pushing for this. Then we’re going to give you some upbeat news about Zorin OS to make up for the first topic.

• FULL SHOW NOTES ►► https://tuxdigital.com/podcasts/destination-linux/dl-334/

• Discussion of the various tools we use to backup our important stuff.

Applications

• Highlights of the NetworkManager 1.44 release include a new “link” setting that holds properties related to the kernel link, such as tx-queue-length, gso-max-size, gso-max-segments, and gro-max-size, support for sending a DHCPv6 prefix delegation hint through the ipv6.dhcp-pd-hint connection property, and new bond options including arp_missed_max, lacp_active, and ns_ip6_target.

• Also new is a [keyfile].rename option in NetworkManager.conf to allow you to force rename profiles on disk when their name changes, the initial-eps-bearer-configure and initial-eps-bearer-apn properties in the GSM settings, as well as a version-id argument in the Update2() D-Bus call to protect against concurrent modifications of profiles.

• This article highlights the best astrology software that runs natively under Linux. There’s not a wide selection of software available in this genre. Nevertheless, there are some great astrology applications listed below for anyone who wants to try to improve his or her understanding of themselves or others.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 8 top quality open source astrology applications. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone interested in intuitive perception.

• The main benefit of using an LDAP server is that information for an entire organization can be consolidated into a central repository. LDAP supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), so that sensitive data can be protected. LDAP servers are used for a variety of tasks including, but not limited to, user authentication, machine authentication, user/system groups, asset tracking, organization representation, and application configuration stores.

• The chart below offers our recommendations. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.

• It took almost a year of design and implementation but finally the DMABuf modifier negotiation in GStreamer is merged. Big kudos to all the people involved but mostly to He Junyan, who did the vast majority of the code.

• What’s a DMAbuf modifier?

• DMABuf are the Linux kernel mechanism to share buffers among different drivers or subsystems. A particular case of DMABuf are the DRM PRIME buffers which are buffers shared by the Display Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem. They allowed sharing video frames between devices with zero copy.

• File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a time-honored method of transferring files to and from a remote network site.

• There are many reasons why someone might want to download YouTube videos.

• You don’t need a dedicated PDF editor to add comments and highlight text. Here’s how you can use GNOME’s Document Viewer to annotate PDFs in Linux.

• The PL/R team is proud to announce the release of version 8.4.6

• This release is mainly to fix some issues building the code with version 16 of PostgreSQL and releasing windows builds with R version 4.1.3 and 4.2.3

• PL/R is a procedural language which allows you to write PostgreSQL functions in R.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install LibreOffice on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, LibreOffice offers a wide array of productivity tools, including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

• Have you ever wished you could carry your favorite hacking toolkit with you wherever you go or travel?

• Being a Linux user, managing files and directories efficiently is crucial, especially when dealing with a large number of files.

• Hello Debian users, are you looking to install the widely used LAMP Stack on your system?

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install TeamViewer on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, TeamViewer stands as a powerful remote access and support software, enabling seamless collaboration and efficient troubleshooting across multiple devices and platforms.

• OBS Studio, a leading open-source software, has emerged as an indispensable tool for professionals engaged in video recording and live streaming.

• Kdenlive, an acronym for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor, stands as one of the most robust and versatile open-source video editing software available today. Originating from the KDE community, it offers a comprehensive suite of editing tools suitable for both beginners and professionals.

• With the current AI craze and it’s impact we want to use the opportunity to explore how to get started with playing around with some AI. /blockquote>

• Gnome screenshot is an screenshot app that allows you to take screenshots of your desktop.

• Gnome screenshot is the default screenshot application on Gnome. However, you can use Gnome screenshot on other desktop environments too.

• Magento is a free and one of the most widely used PHP-based open-source eCommerce platforms that allows you to quickly and easily set up eCommerce websites and online shops.

• Etherpad is a collaborative and real-time text editor for your team. It’s accessible from anywhere, anytime, because Etherpad is a web-based text editor.

• File counting in a directory is a common task that many users might need to perform. It could be for administrative purposes, understanding disk usage, or organizing files in a systematic manner. Linux, an open-source operating system known for its powerful command-line interface, offers multiple ways to accomplish this task. In this article, we’ll explore various techniques to count files in a directory, catering to both command-line enthusiasts and those who prefer graphical interfaces.

• Strapi is a most advanced open source content management system (CMS) designed to help developers to build powerful API.

• If you’re encountering the following error due to a forgotten password for your MySQL database, rest assured, you’ve come to the perfect destination for assistance. Follow along with the article to learn how to reset a forgotten MySQL password on Linux.

• The second blog in a series of blogs tak Click to Read More at Oracle Linux Kernel Development

Games

• Valve is selling certified refurbished Steam Decks on Steam, starting at $319. GameStop also has some in stores exclusively for its Pro members.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Don’t like the green number badges on the left (or bottom) dock app icons? Ubuntu 23.10 now has hidden option to show/hide it. The next Ubuntu 23.10 has now introduced some visible changes, such as enhanced tiling window support, remove ‘minimal installation’ and drop some pre-installed applications.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Geofeeds are new feature described in RFC 8805 which allows to self-publish Geo location information in a machine readable format for people who own their own IP address space on the Internet. From now, we are parsing this data for IPFire Location to further improve the accuracy of our database – especially for large distributed companies like cloud providers.

• Although the standard is already a couple of years old, it has not gained much adoption, yet. Maybe it doesn’t need that, because not every Autonomous System on the Internet has a complicated layout. Some are simply just one rack in one data center and maybe have a mirror in a different building in the same city. Some other networks are larger and span across many countries. They also change fast as they are growing and for geo location algorithms to “learn” about those changes will take some time.

• It seems to be kernel update season out there. The current Ubuntu LTS gets a new kernel, Zorin OS 17 gets a new point release – and Mint announces two updated editions, coming really soon now.

• It is very nearly one year since Ubuntu 22.04.1 was released, and as long term support versions get semiannual updates, release 22.04.3 is expected any day. Once the next Ubuntu interim release appears, it’s normal for the following minor–point-release of the LTS to get a new kernel. So, six months after 22.04.1 and four months after 22.10 “Kinetic Kudu”, the next point-version of Jammy, Ubuntu 22.04.2, duly delivered kernel 5.19.

• So, with 23.04 “Lunar Lobster” out for four months and proving fairly stable on The Reg FOSS Desk’s kit, we were expecting 22.04.3 any day now, including a second Hardware Enablement update, including the kernel from Lunar.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Happy 18th Birthday to openSUSE! It’s that time of the year once again where we will raise our virtual glasses and celebrate the remarkable journey of open-source innovation.

• On August 9th, 2005, an announcement was made during the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, giving birth to what we now know as the openSUSE Project.

• The now defunct company known as Novell unveiled openSUSE to the technology world with excitement. Riding on the heels of the success of Red Hat’s announcement of Fedora, it was natural for Novell to embrace the open-source movement and introduce its own community-driven Linux distribution.

• The journey of openSUSE officially began with the release of beta versions of SUSE Linux 10.0 under the banner of openSUSE.org. The first official release under the openSUSE name was 10.2.

Fedora Family / IBM

• This article introduces projects available in Flathub with installation instructions.

• Flathub is the place to get and distribute apps for all of Linux. It is powered by Flatpak, allowing Flathub apps to run on almost any Linux distribution.

• Please read “Getting started with Flatpak“. In order to enable flathub as your flatpak provider, use the instructions on the flatpak site.

• The Fedora project has been moving to Matrix for our interactive chat needs for a while, but we wanted to make any such transition smooth and not leave behind users that preferred IRC for whatever reasons. When we setup Matrix rooms we also setup a portal using the Matrix<->libera.chat IRC bridge. This allows Matrix and IRC users to see the same content and interact with each other. There have of course been issues from time to time of dropped messages, or clashes between the Matrix and IRC cultures, but overall it’s been a great help to keeping our community from fragmenting.

• Unfortunately, issues with the bridge have reached a point that libera.chat folks have asked for the bridge to be taken down until it can be fixed up. This happened at 2023-08-06 14UTC.

• What a long journey this coloring book has gone on! This blog post has been sitting in my drafts for over a year and I thought it was finally time to publish it.

• If you’re not aware of the previous coloring books, they have been a series of projects started by Máirín Duffy and Dan Walsh to increase awareness and convey a better understanding of different technology.

• For example, ‘The Container Coloring Book: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’ is a coloring book where the three little pigs teach you how to keep the big bad wolf from blowing your container-based applications down. The book covers security, management, resource control, namespaces, and much more that people should keep in mind when creating their own applications with containers.

• All of the past (and hopefully future coloring books too!) are kept here at www.red.ht/coloring

• In this blog posts, we’ll dive into adapting your Ansible code made for CentOS to openSUSE Leap, ensuring seamless compatibility. In this first part, we provided advice and a general introduction to ease your way into the process. In this second part, we’ll delve into practical examples of troubleshooting and adapting existing roles.

• Edge computing has grown from being a niche use case in a handful of industries to offering a major opportunity for enterprises across industries to spread compute power around the world (or universe, as in the case of workloads in space). Edge computing slashes latency times by processing data where the data is being collected, or when it might otherwise be impossible to process because a workload or piece of hardware is disconnected from the network.

• Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a platform for implementing enterprise-wide automation, which makes it an ideal tool for your security audits. Security has many layers, but this article focuses on mitigating SSH attacks on managed hosts. While you can’t eliminate all security risks, you can harden managed hosts to minimize some of them (especially brute force attacks), and mitigate others (by allowing SSH connections only from authorized hosts, enforcing sudo, and so on).

• Tricking generative AI to help conduct scams and cyberattacks doesn’t require much coding expertise, new research shared exclusively with Axios warns.

• The migration process is cumbersome, to say the least. The root cause for this can be associated with the ambiguity about the differences that may exist between two vantage points (i.e., origin and destination). Hence in the absence of a knowledgeable, tried, and tested roadmap, one simply cannot identify the gaps that are to be bridged while moving from origin to the destination. Same goes for software migration. A software migration process must factor in the changes it expects to undergo while migrating (i.e., downgrading, upgrading, or switching between two different and/or compatible/incompatible versions of the same or different brands). The key to success for such a venture lies in knowing the unknowns alongside their respective impact to its surroundings. Only then can an effective list of changes be identified and implemented.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The Amiga 4000 #2 motherboard has been repaired enough to almost boot correctly, but there is still a problem. There appears to be a stuck bit on the custom chips bus. Let’s continue with the diagnosis. Finding The Problem We know that the data line 6 to Paula is not working.

• Debian runs well even on systems with as little as 512 MBytes of RAM.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Chromium

• Big performance wins can be found by taking a step back and tweaking what you already have.

Mozilla

• I work on the Firefox sync team at Mozilla. Four years ago, we wrote a blog post describing our strategy to ship cross-platform Rust components for syncing and storage on all our platforms. The vision was to consolidate the separate implementations of features like history, logins, and syncing that existed on Firefox Desktop, Android, and iOS.

• We would replace those implementations with a core written in Rust and a set of hand-written foreign language wrappers for each platform: JavaScript for Desktop, Kotlin for Android, and Swift for iOS.

• Since then, we’ve learned some lessons and had to modify our strategy. It turns out that creating hand-written wrappers in multiple languages is a huge time-sink. The wrappers required a significant amount of time to write, but more importantly, they were responsible for many serious bugs.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” is here! Named after Lionel Hampton, the prolific jazz musician and bandleader, this release was made possible by over 650 contributors. Download WordPress 6.3 Lionel today.

• WordPress, the world’s leading content management system, has once again made waves in the digital realm with its latest release – WordPress 6.3 “Lionel”.

Programming/Development

• Over the past weeks we worked hard to make it possible for you to create Submit Requests from within an SCM/CI Workflow. Now you can automate this step, making it easier to work with OBS in a more SCM-centric way.

• Leonardo and I are happy to announce the release of a first follow-up release 0.1.1 of our dtts package which got to [CRAN][cran] in its initial upload last year.

• dtts builds upon our nanotime package as well as the beloved data.table to bring high-performance and high-resolution indexing at the nanosecond level to data frames. dtts aims to bring the time-series indexing versatility of xts (and zoo) to the immense power of data.table while supporting highest nanosecond resolution.

• This release fixes a bug flagged by valgrind and brings several internal enhancements.

Python

• In Python, the “truncate()” method is used to truncate or reduce the file size by taking the specified bytes numbers as an argument.

• The “np.average()” method, the “User Defined” function, and the “groupby” method are used to determine the weighted average of the Pandas DataFrame.

• In Python, the “groupby()” method is used along with the “mean()” method to determine the mean of single or multiple columns for each group data.

• Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language that has gained popularity in recent years. It was initially developed by Guido van Rossum in the late 1980s and was released to the public in 1991.

Leftovers

Hardware

• The “M1 Pocket Mini Soft Router” is a tiny Intel Alder Lake-N OEM mini PC with four 2.5Gbps Ethernet ports that is powered by a Processor N100, Processor N200, or Core i3-N305 CPU and sold by various brands such as Kingnovy or Tuofudun Topton. The pocket-sized computer comes with up to 16GB DDR5 memory, up to 1TB NVMe SSD, and features HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort USB-C video outputs, two USB 3.0 ports, as well as a microSD card slot and a 3.5mm audio jack.

• Waveshare WS-431E is an industrial-grade 4G LTE router with three Ethernet ports, WiFi 4, wall and DIN-Rail mounting options, and support for a wide power input range between 9V and 36V DC. The router is said to be based on two Qualcomm chips without further details provided, support various VPN protocols, and be suitable for networked medical equipment, Smart Agriculture, Smart Cities, robots, and security monitoring applications.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• At Idaho’s public universities, professors who teach, discuss, or write about abortion may now face up to 14 years of imprisonment under Idaho’s abortion censorship law, the No Public Funds for Abortion Act (NPFAA). The law, which prohibits the use of any public funds to “promote” or “counsel in favor of abortion,” has shut down academic inquiry about abortion — one of today’s most urgent social, moral, and political issues — across university classrooms and campuses in the state. Idaho’s abortion censorship law works in tandem with anti-abortion officials’ aggressive enforcement of the state’s abortion laws — among the harshest in the country — to silence speech advocating for abortion access.

• To avoid jail time as well as ruinous fines and other penalties, professors across academic disciplines have been forced to strip abortion-related content from their curricula, instruction, and scholarship or risk their livelihoods. A philosophy professor at the University of Idaho removed a module on human reproduction, which introduced difficult ethical questions about abortion, from a bioethics course. A political science professor at the same university no longer lectures on abortion public policy. And a social work professor at Boise State University has stopped assigning their own scholarship to their students on how international ethics principles for social workers undergird arguments made by abortion rights advocates.

• Ohio voters decisively rejected Issue 1, Tuesday’s sole ballot item that sought to make it tougher to amend the state constitution, per AP.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Commissioned by Microsoft and LinkedIn (which is owned by Microsoft), the study was prepared by consultancy firm Accenture.

• British author Hari Kunzru posted a link to prosecraft.io on X (formerly Twitter), alleging that the website appears “to have stolen a lot of books, trained an AI, and are now offering a service based on that data.” /blockquote>

Linux Foundation

• The exciting world of 3D graphics and virtual world-building is witnessing a transformative shift driven by the escalating demand for immersive digital experiences. A trailblazing collaboration was born in response to this burgeoning landscape – the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD). Founded by Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, NVIDIA, and several general members, AOUSD embodies a remarkable instance of industry leaders uniting under an ethos of open source collaboration to establish, develop, and widen the reach of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description technology (USD).

Security

• According to recent reports, there have been instances of threat actors using malware called ”SkidMap” to exploit vulnerable Redis systems.

• ICS Patch Tuesday: Siemens releases a dozen advisories covering over 30 vulnerabilities, but Schneider Electric has only published one advisory.

• Adobe rolls out a big batch of security updates to fix at least 30 Acrobat and Reader vulnerabilities affecting Windows and macOS users.

• Restructuring plan will result in an 18% reduction in employee headcount and closing of some Rapid7 office locations.

• Cybersecurity solutions provider Rapid7 Inc. announced alongside its quarterly earnings report today that it’s laying off staff amid reports that it has received a takeover bid from a private equity firm. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Rapid7 said it’s laying off about 18% of its workforce…

• An internal developer portal can help you consolidate and evolve your security strategy.

• We have published Qubes Security Bulletin 092: Buffer overrun in Linux netback driver (XSA-432). The text of this QSB and its accompanying cryptographic signatures are reproduced below. For an explanation of this announcement and instructions for authenticating this QSB, please see the end of this announcement.

• Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code) code editor and development environment contains a flaw that allows malicious extensions to retrieve authentication tokens stored in Windows, Linux, and macOS credential managers.

• Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at security firm Tenable, said fixes for 73 CVEs were included in this month’s release, plus two advisories: six rated critical, 67 rated important, and two rated moderate.

• “For August, Microsoft addressed one vulnerability that was exploited in the wild as well as issued a defence-in-depth update for a vulnerability disclosed in the July 2023 Patch Tuesday,” he said.

• “CVE-2023-38180, a denial of service vulnerability in .NET and Visual Studio, was exploited in the wild as a zero-day. Microsoft did not share specific details about its exploitation.”

• Why did Willie Sutton rob banks? “Because that’s where the money is,” he told a reporter. Fast forward to 2023, and data is the new currency, so it’s not surprising that bad guys are doing their best to steal it. While some techniques have changed, many aspects of data theft have remained the same over the years, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report.

• This month we got patches for 88 vulnerabilities. Of these, 6 are critical, and 2 are already being exploited, according to Microsoft.

• Patch Tuesday: A month after confirming active exploitation of Office code execution flaws, Microsoft has shipped patches for multiple affected products.

• Microsoft has made no mention of a critical security flaw in its Azure cloud platform in its monthly issues of patches on Tuesday, though the company claimed earlier this month that it had completely fixed the issue.

• Microsoft released a defense-in-depth update for Microsoft Office that prevents exploitation of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-36884 that threat actors have already leveraged in attacks.

• Today is Microsoft’s August 2023 Patch Tuesday, with security updates for 87 flaws, including two actively exploited and twenty-three remote code execution vulnerabilities.

• Google researcher discloses the details of an Intel CPU attack method named Downfall that may be remotely exploitable.

• A Google researcher has found a speculative execution vulnerability in several generations of Intel processors.

• CISA will step up training for the K-12 sector and technology providers, including Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare, will offer grants and free software.

• The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) examined the relationship between cyberinsurance and ransomware, and proposes greater reporting from victims to government, enforced through insurance policies.

• Horizon3.ai, a provider of autonomous security testing solutions, raised $40 million through a Series C funding round.

• In a statement, the agency, an independent body which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK, said the attackers appeared to have first gained access to its systems in August 2021.

• The attackers were able to gain access to the electoral registers and to enable permissibility checks on political donations, the agency said.

• The details in the system at the time of the attack includes names and addresses of those registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, as also names of registered overseas voters.

• {loadposition sam08}Details of those registered anonymously were not at risk, but the Commission’s email system was accessible to the attackers.

• We joined Boeing and United Airlines on a panel recently at the RSA Conference to talk about vulnerability disclosure in the aviation world.

Defence/Aggression

Axios ☛ D.C. on pace for most homicides in two decadesData: MPD; Chart: Axios VisualsWashington, D.C., is on pace to have the deadliest year in two decades after starting the month of August with 16 homicides.Driving the news: The violence led council member Trayon White, who represents one of the most crime-ravaged parts of town, to suggest “it may be time to call the National Guard to protect the children and innocent people.”The District’s 161 homicides to date is a 28% increase over the same period last year. That eclipses the number killed in all of 2018 and follows back-to-back years of more than 200 homicides.

• India is barring domestic manufacturers of military drones from using Chinese-made parts over concerns about security vulnerabilities, Reuters reported today (Aug. 8).

• The measure to clamp down on investments in certain industries deemed to pose security risks, set to be issued Wednesday, appears likely to open a new front in the U.S.-China economic conflict.

• Maritime security is a term that can mean almost anything.

• Nigerian President and current ECOWAS chair Bola Tinubu said on Tuesday that diplomacy is the ‘best way forward’ to resolve the crisis in coup-hit Niger. The statement came after the junta in Niamey said it could not host a mission from the West African bloc for security reasons. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken earlier told FRANCE 24’s sister radio station RFI that diplomacy is the ‘preferred way’ to resolve the situation.

• The ruling regime tightened security and posted plainclothes officers in cities and towns.

• The United States and its allies are vowing to keep Syria’s failure to account for its chemical weapons program in the spotlight at the U.N. Security Council every month despite opposition from Russia and China. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government “has repeatedly lied to the international community” and to investigators from the international chemical weapons watchdog, which has confirmed that it used these banned weapons on at least nine occasions. She said the Biden administration will continue to demand a full accounting from Syria. For the first time, Russia and China refused to speak at the monthly meeting on the Syria chemical weapons issue, saying they are repetitive.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree suspending double-taxation treaties with more than 30 countries that Russia has deemed “unfriendly.”

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned against Russia’s Wagner mercenaries taking advantage of instability in Niger.

• Moscow has aligned itself with Tehran in rejecting sanctions on Iran that remain in place despite the collapse of a deal intended to restrain its nuclear program.

War in Ukraine

• Prosecutors in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, asked a court on August 8 to convict and sentence anti-war activist Olga Smirnova to seven years in prison on charge of spreading fake news about the armed forces.

• The most exciting explanations for Niger’s upheaval are globe-sweeping and probably wrong.

• Portable surface-to-air missiles from Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group and weaponized drones are helping Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) level the field in its conflict against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

• The Latvian War Museum has received a testimony of the Russian war in Ukraine – a Russian army’s unmanned aircraft “Orlan-10”, which was neutralized by Ukrainian defenders. This drone is the first exhibit that describes the era of drone wars in Latvian museums, Latvian Television reported on August 8.

• At its meeting August 8, the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers adopted a draft order on the participation of civilian expert Arsenijs Mihejevs in the European Union Advisory Mission (EUAM) for Civilian Security Sector Reform in Ukraine starting from 1 September this year.

• Poland has been one of the most assertive proponents of Ukraine’s entry into NATO and of NATO’s escalating involvement in the war, from providing tanks to providing fighter jets.

• For the record: I was born in Ukraine, studied in Russia, and worked in America as a laser fusion researcher and Professor of Mathematics and Physics.

• Ukrainian Black Sea port Odesa has recently been hit by a series of Russian air attacks that have caused devastation in the city’s UNESCO-listed historic center and highlighted the need for improved air defenses, writes Michael Bociurkiw.

• Russian forces downed two combat drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor said Wednesday, the latest in a surge of drone attacks targeting the capital.

• As the Ukrainian army continues its counteroffensive, it’s using weaponry provided by Western allies – but also old Soviet equipment. FRANCE 24’s Emmanuelle Chaze reports from the Donetsk region with the 59th artillery brigade.

• US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will begin to help Ukraine with its ongoing Russian war crime investigations and assist the International Criminal Court (ICC).

• Davit Ratiani glanced up as the Russian military aircraft buzzed across the skies of Georgia, clenching his fist in such anger that his nails tore into his skin.

• Ukrainian military officials on August 9 cited more than 30 frontline clashes amid counteroffensive operations in the past 24 hours, while Russia blamed Kyiv for what it said was a twin drone attack targeting Moscow that it “thwarted” with no casualties or damage to the capital.

• Dozens of secondhand Leopard 1 tanks that once belonged to Belgium have been bought by another European country for Ukrainian forces fighting Russia’s invasion, the arms trader who did the deal said on August 8.

• Images from recent weeks, showing a region reshaped by a year and a half of war

• Self-exiled Chechen opposition activist Abubakar Yangulbayev said on Telegram on August 7 that four of his relatives were forcefully sent by Chechen authorities to serve in the Russian armed forces in the war in Ukraine.

• Ukrainians say the explosions 37 minutes apart in Pokrovsk, which killed at least nine people and injured 82 others, were a “double tap” intended to kill rescuers responding to the first strike.

• New measures announced Tuesday will affect businesses in Turkey, Dubai and Iran, as well as individuals that Britain says have supplied weaponry or components needed to sustain Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• Dark clouds of fear gathered in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, after Russia’s recent decision to end its Black Sea grain deal. Bakers, traders and hungry customers prepared for another surge of pain as Russia’s war on Ukraine continues to affect Africa.

• Two people were killed and four others injured after an explosion caused by a gas leak hit a five-story apartment block in Russia’s southwestern city of Astrakhan, local emergency officials said.

Environment

• The new climate law, combined with an urban real estate market reshaped by COVID, brings an opportunity to boost housing supply and cut emissions at the same time.

Energy/Transportation

• This Global Energy Center report examines how blending hydrogen into US gas pipelines can quickly support demand growth for this key technology for US decarbonization objectives. The report provides recommendations for how policymakers can create a favorable regulatory environment to overcome technical obstacles to scaling up hydrogen deployment.

Wildlife/Nature

• In praise of Dave the Diver, the video game that made me realize that harpooning sharks in the middle of the ocean, then turning them into sushi, is extremely fun.

Finance

• Authorities in Italy have halted an investment program for Russian and Belarusian citizens that offered residency permits in exchange for large investments.

• U.S. credit card debt hit $1 trillion for the first time toward the end of July, but its share of U.S. gross domestic product is still lower than it was in 2010, or at the onset of the pandemic.

• Paper Education (Paper) has reportedly scaled back its staffing levels for the second time this year.

• According to The Globe and Mail, the Montreal-based online tutor service recently laid off 20 per cent of its corporate workforce. Approximately 105 employees are affected by the reduction.

• CEO Philip Cutler told The Globe in an interview that buying patterns “are different than they were a year or two ago.”

• Doximity, a digital platform for medical professionals, cut its workforce by 10%, or 100 employee positions, and downgraded its revenue guidance as it faces economic pressures and slowing sales among its pharmaceutical customers.

• The company’s latest financial results in the quarter ending June 30 beat Wall Street expectations as it continued its streak of strong revenue growth. Doximity also marked a major product milestone as it continues to innovate with generative AI tools for providers. But the good news was overshadowed by a major reduction in guidance as management reduced its fiscal 2024 revenue target by $43 million at the midpoint.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Hong Kong activist Owen Chow, one of the 47 pro-democracy figures charged with conspiracy to commit subversion, has said he had considered quitting an unofficial primary election due to national security concerns but decided to press on because he could not “abandon the crowd.”

• Hong Kong national security police have taken the parents of a wanted activist for questioning, marking the latest move in authorities’ investigation of eight overseas pro-democracy figures issued with arrest warrants and HK$1 million bounties.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The Supreme Court of Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan on August 7 extended until November 10 the pretrial arrests of Yury Yefimov and Aleksei Dmitriyev, two members of a neo-communist group known as the Marxist Circle.

• The Kids Online Safety Act imposes an amorphous “duty of care” that would compromise anonymous speech and restrict access to constitutionally protected content.

Civil Rights/Policing

• A US federal judge rejected a lawsuit on Monday brought by parents and students of an Ohio school district that challenged the school district’s bathroom policy. US District Judge Michael Newman found that the Bethel Local School District’s decision to establish a gender-inclusive bathroom policy did not violate the parents’ and students’ US Constitutional rights.

Monopolies

Patents

• For over a year, a fierce battle has raged across many European countries over Novartis’ EP 2 959 894. The second medical use patent covers a 0.5mg per day dosage of active ingredient fingolimod, which forms the basis of Novartis’ drug Gilenya. The product is used to treat relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.

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