Lemdro.id

Virginia’s then-Governor Glenn Youngkin rushed to assist President Trump’s deportation agenda last year, ordering the state agencies under his control to join ICE’s 287(g) program, which gave them the power to make civil immigration arrests. He also pushed local sheriffs and police chiefs to join the program and help round up immigrants.

But his successor, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, put an end to the state’s partnerships with this ICE program on Wednesday, fulfilling a campaign promise to roll back collaboration.

Within hours of taking office on Jan. 17, Spanberger signed an executive order that rescinded Youngkin’s order mandating that state agencies contract with ICE, but that alone left the agreements intact. She went a step further this week by actually pulling the plug and ordering four state agencies, including the state police and the Department of Corrections, to end their 287(g) agreements, terminating their role as force multipliers for federal immigration authorities.

I'm not sure why her ear is purple...

Just had to catch this PoL.

Archived

The Kremlin-linked bot network known as “Matryoshka” has launched a disinformation campaign following the release by the U.S. Justice Department of new documents in the case of Jeffrey Epstein.The campaign was identified by researchers from the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny), who shared their findings with The Insider.

Social media posts presented in the guise of content from major Western media outlets included the false claims that:

• Ukrainian children allegedly became a key resource in Epstein’s operations following the country’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity. A fake video said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of the situation and that he communicated with visitors to Epstein’s island.
• In a video posing as a report from France 24, actress Catherine O’Hara, who died on Jan. 30, was said to have accused French President Emmanuel Macron of protecting a “lobby of perverts.” In reality, the late actress made no such statements.
• RFI allegedly reported that information about ties between French officials and Epstein had been removed from the released documents under an agreement between Macron and Donald Trump.
• A video bearing the Al Jazeera logo claimed that in 2025, 1,005 Ukrainian refugee children went missing in France and that Bill Gates was involved in human trafficking.
• A video falsely attributed to Reuters claimed New Caledonia had become a “new Epstein island” under French protection. It cited fabricated figures of visits by Bill Gates (112) and Prince Andrew (91).
• A fake Socialblade report claimed that the release of the files “triggered a new wave of interest among conservative Europeans in relocating with their families to the CIS countries,” with the number of search queries about obtaining a residence permit supposedly rising by 8000%.
• Gallup allegedly claimed that a video by Vladimir Putin, in which he called European elites “Satanists,” had “garnered more than 4 billion views in the European segment of TikTok.”
• Libération supposedly published a report claiming Epstein financed 55% of Emmaniel Macron’s 2017 election campaign.

The Insider checked the social media accounts of the named outlets and verified that none of the videos or reports had been published by them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50304073

Archived

The Kremlin-linked bot network known as “Matryoshka” has launched a disinformation campaign following the release by the U.S. Justice Department of new documents in the case of Jeffrey Epstein.The campaign was identified by researchers from the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny), who shared their findings with The Insider.

Social media posts presented in the guise of content from major Western media outlets included the false claims that:

• Ukrainian children allegedly became a key resource in Epstein’s operations following the country’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity. A fake video said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of the situation and that he communicated with visitors to Epstein’s island.
• In a video posing as a report from France 24, actress Catherine O’Hara, who died on Jan. 30, was said to have accused French President Emmanuel Macron of protecting a “lobby of perverts.” In reality, the late actress made no such statements.
• RFI allegedly reported that information about ties between French officials and Epstein had been removed from the released documents under an agreement between Macron and Donald Trump.
• A video bearing the Al Jazeera logo claimed that in 2025, 1,005 Ukrainian refugee children went missing in France and that Bill Gates was involved in human trafficking.
• A video falsely attributed to Reuters claimed New Caledonia had become a “new Epstein island” under French protection. It cited fabricated figures of visits by Bill Gates (112) and Prince Andrew (91).
• A fake Socialblade report claimed that the release of the files “triggered a new wave of interest among conservative Europeans in relocating with their families to the CIS countries,” with the number of search queries about obtaining a residence permit supposedly rising by 8000%.
• Gallup allegedly claimed that a video by Vladimir Putin, in which he called European elites “Satanists,” had “garnered more than 4 billion views in the European segment of TikTok.”
• Libération supposedly published a report claiming Epstein financed 55% of Emmaniel Macron’s 2017 election campaign.

The Insider checked the social media accounts of the named outlets and verified that none of the videos or reports had been published by them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50302535

Archived

A new United Nations report has issued one of the clearest warnings to date that Chinese state policies in Tibet are actively eroding the foundations of Tibetan civilisation, threatening the survival of Tibetans as a distinct people.

The findings appear in a report to the UN Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Nicolas Levrat. While global in scope, the report explicitly identifies Tibet as a case where state-led policies are not merely discriminatory but constitute what the UN expert describes as “eradication in more subtle ways.”

...

At the centre of this warning is China’s vast boarding school system imposed on Tibetan children. The report states unequivocally that “the boarding school education system implemented by China in Tibet is aimed at erasing the Tibetan language and identity.” Tibetan children are separated from their families and communities and educated in environments where Mandarin Chinese, state ideology, and cultural assimilation dominate daily life. According to the report, this policy prevents “the intergenerational transmission of cultural, linguistic or religious elements of minorities’ identities,” a process that leads to “the extinction of the minority as a distinct group in the State population.”

...

The Special Rapporteur makes clear that eradication does not require mass killing to meet the threshold of grave human rights violations.

...

These policies are not isolated, but part of a broader political project. The report notes that China has “since 2012 undertaken a nation-building process” that has resulted in “the marginalisation of minority communities,” leading to “forms of severe discrimination against non-Han minorities, such as Tibetans.” Despite constitutional guarantees of regional autonomy, the report finds that in practice Tibetan identity is being subordinated to a single state-defined national identity.

...

I closed my LinkedIn account and moved to the German Xing. It was the only EU solution I could found that resembled the US one.

That's one thing I cross of my US dependency list.

If you remember a few days ago, I reused e-waste to install a network camera in a tree facing our lake, so my wife who can't go out easily can watch the birds and the nature.

And early this morning, she saw this.

This camera is fabulous: it's so sensitive in the dark, it captured the northern lights in vibrant colors! That really made her day and mine.

Project leaders hope the sculpture will inspire girls and young women to study maths and science.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59862445

I’m ngl i’ve been doomscrolling hard over the wild stuff happening over this past week. I use reddit still to keep up to tabs on my local communities. My feed was full of anti Ice protest and the atrocious shit in the epstein files.

But today suddenly I’ve been getting A LOT of ads, random posts in subreddits I’m not even subscribed to or posts not politically related at all. Its feels like its a distraction from the stuff going on.

Anybody else run into anything similar?