0x815

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75-hour weeks, obscure audits, and blatant “whataboutism”: Factory employees refute fast-fashion company Shein’s promises to make improvements ( www.publiceye.ch )

Two years after our pioneering investigation into Shein’s southern Chinese manufacturing plants, a follow-up investigation highlights what the online fashion giant’s sustainability rhetoric is worth. Illegal working hours and piecework wages remain a typical feature of the everyday lives of the workers interviewed. Hence the...

Citizen Lab says seven Russian and Belarusian-speaking independent journalists and opposition activists based in Europe were targeted with Israeli spyware Pegasus ( citizenlab.ca )

In September 2023, Citizen Lab published a joint investigation with Access Now into the hacking of exiled Russian journalist Galina Timchenko with Pegasus mercenary spyware. Timchenko is the CEO and publisher of Meduza, a widely-respected Russian independent media group operating in exile. After this publication, in...

Biden details a 3-phase hostage deal aimed at winding down the Israel-Hamas war ( apnews.com )

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday detailed a three-phase deal proposed by Israel to Hamas militants that he says would lead to the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza and could end the grinding, nearly 8-month-old Mideast war....

0x815 ,

No Gaza ceasefire until Israel war aims achieved, Netanyahu says

His [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's] statement comes after US President Joe Biden announced Israel had proposed a three-stage plan to Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent ceasefire.

Espionage: In seemingly the first case of its kind, the US has charged a Chinese national with using a drone to photograph a shipyard where the US Navy was assembling nuclear submarines ( www.wired.com )

The United States Department of Justice is quietly prosecuting a novel Espionage Act case involving a drone, a Chinese national, and classified nuclear submarines....

US Treasury says US and EU must deliver a "message to China" that its firms can choose between doing business with US and EU economies or equipping Russia with dual-use goods ( www.reuters.com )

Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Friday that Washington and the European Union must deliver a message to China that its firms face a choice between doing business with U.S. and EU economies or equipping Russia with dual-use goods....

Hong Kong government should immediately quash a court’s groundless national security law convictions of prominent pro-democracy activists, Human Rights Watch says ( www.hrw.org )

On May 30, 2024, three judges handpicked by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong chief executive convicted 14 activists and former elected lawmakers under the draconian National Security Law. Two were acquitted. Earlier, 31 other defendants had pleaded guilty in hopes of more lenient sentencing. The court will announce sentences,...

Critics of Putin and his allies targeted inside the EU with Israeli-made Pegasus spyware ( www.theguardian.com )

At least seven journalists and activists who have been vocal critics of the Kremlin and its allies have been targeted inside the EU by a state using Pegasus, the hacking spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group, according to a new report by security researchers....

Critics of Putin and his allies targeted inside the EU with Israeli-made Pegasus spyware ( www.theguardian.com )

At least seven journalists and activists who have been vocal critics of the Kremlin and its allies have been targeted inside the EU by a state using Pegasus, the hacking spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group, according to a new report by security researchers....

Blinken assails Russian misinformation after hinting US may allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia ( apnews.com )

- According to Blinken, the 'adversarial relationship' the West has with Russia is 'on the information front', adding that there is a need to effectively deal with misinformation and disinformation "which is a poison being injected into our democracies"....

German carmaker Volkswagen says forced labour in one of its sub-supplier's plants in China was not identified as 'no full supply chain transparency exists' ( www.hrw.org )

- Volkswagen (VW) in 2023 commissioned a deeply flawed audit at a plant in China's Xinjiang province operated by a subsidiary of Volkswagen’s joint venture with SAIC, a Chinese state-owned carmaker....

0x815 OP ,

They have been already managing that for a long time. Independent audits are common - except in a few countries.

0x815 OP ,

there's no way tovtrack where resources, material, items come from, who made them

Independent audits are done -they are very common in many industry for a variety of reasons- and they work if done properly.

We could even track the provenance of each material through a trustless system like a blockchain to guarantuee a high level of credibility and transparency, just to name a relatively new technology. This is done already.

0x815 OP ,

You wouldn't trust the Chinese supplier (or any supplier). You'd go to the bauxite shipment company and let them register with the network, you'd send independent auditors to their premises, very much as we do it with ibdependent audits nowadays.

We do need to physically access the premises across the supply chain to verify that 'on-chain personas' reflect their 'real' identities. But no single authority can control the data, we can be quite sure that all transfers of ownership across the supply chain have been authorized by their controllers. Compared to centralized systems, the blockchain provides us a much higher level of transparency and certainty over the fidelity of the information.

Polish Businessman Makes Millions From Firm That Deals With Putin’s Russia ( www.occrp.org )

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the name of blue-blooded Polish businessman Andre Mankowski has disappeared from the website of the Moscow-based IT company AMT Group, where he was formerly listed as president. Yet reporters found the EU citizen has continued to make money from the firm, which does business with...

0x815 ,

It's not onky Africa.

Moscow’s Search for Foreign Recruits Reveals Its Growing Desperation (Nov 2023)

[...] they had identified nearly 200 Cubans who had joined the Russian military in recent weeks, with enlistees ranging in age between 19 and 69. In interviews [...]. Many in particular cited monetary incentives and the prospect of Russian citizenship — an attractive draw for young men in a country beset by food insecurity and joblessness [...]

Evidence of Moscow’s desperation goes far beyond a few hundred Cuban enlistees [...] Putin publicly lent his approval to foreign recruitment and soon approached the Syrian government for manpower. Almost immediately, Damascus responded by appealing directly to veterans in its army to join the conflict in Ukraine. The Kremlin has made similar moves in the past year to amass volunteers and veterans from Central Asia, Libya, and Serbia. In recent weeks, hundreds of volunteers from Colombia and Nepal — including seasoned military veterans — have been similarly enticed to don Russian uniforms in the face of limited economic prospects in their home countries.

EU sanctions 19 Russians -including judges, prosecutors and members of the judiciary- for human rights violations after the death of opposition politician Alexei Navalny ( www.reuters.com )

European Union foreign ministers decided on Monday to impose sanctions on Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service and on 19 Russians for human rights violations after the death of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in a prison in February....

Poland to limit movement of Russian diplomats on its territory due to Moscow's involvement in hybrid war against the EU ( www.reuters.com )

Poland will introduce restrictions on the movement of Russian diplomats on its territory due to Moscow's involvement in what it deems a hybrid war against the European Union, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Monday....

0x815 OP ,

They have been discussing this for a while. Leading German politicians said they'd agree. Here's a link to the German article (the English summary is mine):

Archived unpaywalled link (in German)

Leading members of the German Bundestag from the CDU, FDP and Greens are considering the possibility of protecting parts of the airspace over Ukraine from NATO territory with Western air defense.

The example of Israel, where air defense units from the US, Great Britain, France and other countries repelled an Iranian air attack in April, shows that participating states do not necessarily have to become "the war party", they argue.

The idea have been put forward by military experts like Nico Lange from the Munich Security Conference. In Lange's view, this could create a "safe zone of up to 70 kilometres wide" on Ukraine's borders to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Roderich Kiesewetter German from the conservative party CDU told the German paper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" that such a deployment at the eastern border of NATO could shoot down 'unmanned Russian missiles' over Ukraine", relieving the Ukrainian air defense and enable it to "protect the front", he says.

Marcus Faber of the ruling party FDP, who is supposed to be the future head of the defense committee, also noted that "the airspace over the Ukrainian border regions" could in principle be protected "by air defense systems on NATO territory".

"I think that this is possible," said Faber.

Agnieszka Brugger from the ruling Green party also supported the idea of "deploying air defense systems at the borders of the neighbouring states so that the western parts of Ukraine can also be protected". Anton Hofreiter from the Green party and chairman of the European Committee shares Brugger's view, according to the paper.

Russia’s misinformation machine targets Slovakian assassination attempt, debunked narratives suggest Ukrainian military aid was a factor in attack ( www.bloomberg.com )

It didn't take Russia's misinformation machine long to settle on who was to blame for the first assassination attempt on a European national leader in more than two decades....

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