SDF Chatter

PROTIP: Sort by Old.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46973111

Archived

One of Russia’s largest “systemically important” banks has disclosed severe financial strains as overdue loans mount across the corporate sector.

Credit Bank of Moscow (MKB), closely linked to state oil major Rosneft, reported an eightfold surge in overdue debt since the start of the year, the Kommersant business daily reported, citing the bank’s financial records.

Clients failed to repay 585 billion rubles ($7.66 billion) in loans on time between January and September, pushing total non-performing loans to 668 billion rubles ($8.75 billion), or about 28% of the bank’s loan book.

A source told Kommersant that the problems were uncovered during a Central Bank inspection that began in summer 2024.

[...]

MKB was the only major bank to post a net interest loss in the third quarter, with the loss amounting to 157.6 billion rubles ($2.06 billion).

Founded by billionaire Roman Avdeev, MKB was drawn into Rosneft’s orbit in 2017 after nearly collapsing alongside other lenders in the so-called “Moscow ring” — Otkritie FC Bank, Binbank and Promsvyazbank.

[...]

Rosneft effectively rescued MKB by injecting capital, placing long-term deposits maturing in 2066 and shifting into the bank hundreds of billions of rubles in reverse-repo deals used to finance its operations.

It remains unclear which borrowers defaulted in 2025, as the bank’s disclosures do not specify.

The Central Bank noted in November that several mining and metals companies required debt restructuring amid falling demand and prices, while the oil and gas sector has been hit by sanctions and a sharp decline in crude prices.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46972708

[...]

A man who spent a decade and a half working as a Chinese spy has shared details of some of his missions with Radio-Canada, including what he knows about a Chinese dissident who died in B.C., Canada, in 2022.

"From 2008 to 2023, my real job was to work for China's secret police. It's a means for political repression," said "Eric," who was interviewed in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. "Its main targets are dissidents who criticize the Chinese Communist Party."

Eric shared a variety of documents — including financial records, secret money transfers and the names of spies — with journalists from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, of which CBC/Radio-Canada is a partner.

The records give an unprecedented glimpse at the inner workings of China's overseas spy operations.

[...]

For 15 years, Eric worked for the 1st Bureau at China's Ministry of Public Security, a unit that specializes in surveillance of dissidents abroad. He previously told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he spied on a Japanese-based cartoonist and a YouTuber exiled in Australia. Often, he said, his cover was working for real companies in the countries where he was deployed — companies that collaborated with China's secret police.

[...]

In 2020, Eric said he was tasked with snooping on a dissident named Hua Yong, an artist and hardcore opponent of China's Communist Party who eventually ended up on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast.

[...]

After several failed attempts to flee China, Eric finally succeeded in 2023. The former spy wanted to go to Canada to claim asylum but ended up in Australia because he was able to get a tourist visa there.

The world has a right to know what China's secret police are up to, Eric said, adding that revealing it publicly actually buys him a measure of protection.

Meanwhile, the police investigation into Hua's death isn't officially closed because three years later, the B.C. Coroners Service still hasn't completed its report, which normally takes about 16 months.

Eric said he's had no contact with Canadian police but that he did confidentially send some documents to the Hogue commission, Canada's public inquiry into foreign interference.

"There are some strange aspects to this case that demand further investigation," he said.

The federal agency will skip the postponed October report on the Producer Price Index and instead roll those figures into November's report, which will be published Jan. 14, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Your mother would like a word about some unfinished business — your Blessed Mother, that is, who in 1925 asked the faithful to fulfill the First Saturdays devotion.

It’s a request that — on its Dec. 10 centennial — is often referred to as “forgotten” among the supernatural events surrounding Fatima. But following the better known 1917 apparitions, Sister Lúcia de Jesus Rosa dos Santos — one of three Fatima visionaries, who later became a Carmelite nun — revealed Mary returned to her twice while she was boarding at a convent in Pontevedra, Spain, and specifically requested the practice.

Catholics worldwide were asked to dedicate the first Saturday of the month — for five consecutive months, thus “Five First Saturdays” — to confession, reception of holy Communion, and the rosary and meditation on its mysteries.

“I think 100 year anniversaries are significant because it helps remind a new generation of these devotions that don’t die off,” Barbara Ernster, communications manager and editor for the World Apostolate of Fatima USA, told OSV News.

While no canonical inquiry was made, the First Saturdays devotion was approved by the bishop of Leiria, Portugal, on Sept. 13, 1939.

“Our Lady asked us to do this, and the Fatima message is timeless,” said Ernster, “because it is the Gospel message. It’s never going to be outdated.”

Speaking from Fatima — where she was participating in a centenary program and conference as part of the World Apostolate — Ernster reinforced the message of peace.

“One of the things that Lúcia had said so often, is that it could help stave off wars and help contribute to the peace of the world. And we see ourselves in situations now where we hear of a third world war — anything could spark it. Even in our own country, there’s so much division … And so,” Ernster concluded, “we do this so that we can help bring about peace — peace to our families, to our nations, to our church.”

St. Carlo Acutis shared that, in a dream after Sister Lúcia’s death, she told him, “The practice of the five First Saturdays of the month could change the destiny of the world.”

Cardinal Raymond L. Burke — former prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal and archbishop of St. Louis from 2004-2008, has urged greater participation in the First Saturdays devotion, backing a French-led initiative known as the “Alliance of the First Saturdays of Fatima,” which also launched the “First Saturdays of Fatima Jubilee 2025” on Jan. 4.

“The approaching centennial of the apparition of the infant Jesus and his Most Holy Mother to Sister Lucia at Pontevedra on Dec. 10, 1925, invites the faithful to renew, with deeper faith and greater fervor, their practice of the First Saturdays Devotion of Reparation,” Cardinal Burke said in a message sent to OSV News.

“This devotion, insistently requested by Our Lady herself as an act of loving reparation to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, remains of enduring importance for the salvation of souls and for peace in the world,” added the prelate, who, as bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, (1995-2004), founded the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe there.

On Dec. 10, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe will celebrate Mass to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Pontevedra.

“I encourage all to persevere in this devotion,” invited Cardinal Burke, “with Our Lady’s confidence in God’s fidelity to his promises of victory over sin and the victory of eternal life.”

Father Edward Looney, secretary of the Mariological Society of America, also said the faithful should heed Mary’s petition.

“When it comes to Fatima, we all strive to pray the rosary every day as she requested. The diehards observe the First Saturday devotion,” he shared. “If all practicing Catholics kept to this request, as a priest, I would be very busy with confessions.”

Noting that First Saturdays are also meant to be in reparation for offenses against Our Lady, Father Looney added, “We’ve seen statues that have been vandalized and people speaking ill of Mary. The First Saturdays call us to renew our love for Mary and to spread it so that her immaculate heart will triumph!”

For those who can’t make a trip to Fatima or Pontevedra, the World Apostolate of Fatima USA is offering a virtual First Saturday Pilgrimage to 12 sacred sites related to Fatima and the three visionaries. Short videos filmed on location will include a reflection on the events and the devotion.

“The biggest thing is that this was the part that we were supposed to do, that was given to us,” Ernster emphasized. “The church was given its part at Fatima, but the laypeople were given their part — and so we do this to help respond to the message that Our Lady brought to us.”

A.P. Bio S2E10 "Handcuffed"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46924955

Archived

After little to no progress ending a downturn that dates back to at least 2021, the industry’s woes have only intensified. A slump in home prices has deepened, and Vanke — once the nation’s biggest developer — plunged in credit and stock markets after proposing delays paying bondholders.

The significance of China’s real estate market to the average person cannot be overstated. Besides contributing around one-fifth of gross domestic product at its peak, homebuying has long been seen as a safe investment for households.

No more. And the loss of wealth from falling property prices goes a long way toward explaining why consumption has failed to become the key driver of economic growth that officials have envisaged.

One big reason that the property market’s woes seem to be worsening is [property developer] Vanke. Even though the government stepped in this year to help the developer plug funding gaps, authorities have gone quiet as pressure over liquidity and bond redemption mounts. Then there’s the abrupt changes in Vanke’s senior management.

[...]

The stakes are high for the government. Bailing out Vanke could send the wrong message given the number of firms in a similar predicament. It’d also be hard to justify after Evergrande, another formerly mighty developer, collapsed under the weight of debt and unfinished projects.

[...]

Another reason for growing real estate angst is the Chinese government ordering a halt to vital data. Beijing has done something similar in the past, to the detriment of investors trying to understand the economy. In summer 2023 authorities stopped providing youth unemployment figures after they hit a record high. When they resumed releases in early 2024 with what they said was new methodology, the numbers were much rosier.

[...]

The missing housing data “could increase uncertainty about the struggling sector’s condition,” Kristy Hung, a senior real estate analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note. “The November data would likely show steeper declines.”

Speaking of China’s playbook when the news is real bad, we’re also seeing some censorship. Authorities in Shanghai are wiping away social media posts that express pessimism about the property market. Social media platforms Xiaohongshu and Bilibili removed more than 40,000 posts as part of what the Shanghai government called a “special campaign” to regulate online real estate content. Read more about the censoring here.

[...]

The problem is that while China isn’t running out of ideas, it seems short of money. Cash-strapped local governments can no longer depend on land sales to fund themselves.

Authorities are going after tax dodgers and people with overseas investment income, along with imposing new value-added taxes on contraceptives.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46930338

Archived

• Tencent, China’s largest publicly traded company, operates WeChat, a chat and social media platform with 1.3 billion users in China. As all Chinese services and companies in the country's domestic markets, Tencent's WeChat is subject to Beijing's censorship.
• To Combat this censorship, the NGO "GreatFire" has been running a project called FeeWeChat. GreatFire constantly monitors WeChat for posts that contain certain “sensitive” keywords and archives them. If the archived posts later are removed on the WeChat site by Chinese censors, they mark them accordingly as 'censored.'
• FreeWeChat has documented over 45 million posts since 2015, with more than 700,000 later censored, providing insights how China's censorship machine works.
• GreatFire has been using U.S.-based cloud hosting company Vultr for its work. Now Tencent, through its intermediary Group IB, accused FreeWeChat of trademark infringement and of promoting banned content, despite the project’s role in exposing censorship practices.
• After months of silence and failed negotiations, Vultr formally terminated FreeWeChat’s hosting in November 2025, ignoring arguments from the GreatFire NGO and letters of support from human rights groups.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43231602

Web archive link

The regime of North Korea has continued to exploit the war in Ukraine to spread its propaganda. This week we learnt that Ukrainian children, abducted by Russia, are being sent to an infamous North Korean summer camp. The children have reportedly been taught to ‘destroy Japanese imperialists’ and heard from North Korean soldiers who destroyed the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured and sank by North Korea in 1968.

This Ukrainian children have been at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp, located near the port city of Wonsan on the country’s east coast. Well known as a popular tourist hotspot for North Korean elites, Wonsan has recently gained infamy for the newly-opened Wonsan-Kalma tourist resort, which has been not-so-affectionately nicknamed ‘North Korea’s Benidorm’. Wonsan, too, has a significant place in North Korean history. It was where Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un spent much of his childhood.

The children’s camp is hardly a new creation. Established in 1960 amid the backdrop of the Cold War, the camp became one additional facet of North Korean cultural diplomacy, as Pyongyang sought to develop ties with communist and communist-friendly countries. Whether from North Korea’s Cold War patrons of Russia and China or communist-sympathising states further afield, such as Laos, Tanzania and even Syria, children would be sent to the camp to engage in a range of activities, including cooking, swimming, rock climbing, or marathon running. For the North Korean regime, the goal was simple: spread the virtues of socialism, North Korea-style, and become friends with like-minded states.

...

Although little is known about the Ukrainian abductees sent to North Korea, cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow in areas beyond security looks to continue to grow, especially as peace in Ukraine looks evermore elusive. North Korea and Russia signed a mutual defence pact in June 2024, but these renewed ties were not limited to the domain of security. It was no coincidence that only a week after the ink was dry, Grigory Gurov, Head of the Russian Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, announced that around 250 Russian children, mainly from the Russian Far East, would visit Songdowon, making them one of the first groups to visit the camp following North Korea’s draconian three-year border closure, owing to coronavirus, in January 2021.

...

Russia and North Korea are yet to respond to the reports that Ukrainian abductees are being sent to Songdowon. Pyongyang will probably just say the children were participating in a cultural exchange – helping out an ally. We need only go back to February this year when Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora, announced that how ‘hundreds of wounded [Russian] soldiers’ fighting against Ukraine were being treated in North Korean hospitals, epitomising the ‘brotherly attitude’ between the two Cold War allies.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46924955

Archived

After little to no progress ending a downturn that dates back to at least 2021, the industry’s woes have only intensified. A slump in home prices has deepened, and Vanke — once the nation’s biggest developer — plunged in credit and stock markets after proposing delays paying bondholders.

The significance of China’s real estate market to the average person cannot be overstated. Besides contributing around one-fifth of gross domestic product at its peak, homebuying has long been seen as a safe investment for households.

No more. And the loss of wealth from falling property prices goes a long way toward explaining why consumption has failed to become the key driver of economic growth that officials have envisaged.

One big reason that the property market’s woes seem to be worsening is [property developer] Vanke. Even though the government stepped in this year to help the developer plug funding gaps, authorities have gone quiet as pressure over liquidity and bond redemption mounts. Then there’s the abrupt changes in Vanke’s senior management.

[...]

The stakes are high for the government. Bailing out Vanke could send the wrong message given the number of firms in a similar predicament. It’d also be hard to justify after Evergrande, another formerly mighty developer, collapsed under the weight of debt and unfinished projects.

[...]

Another reason for growing real estate angst is the Chinese government ordering a halt to vital data. Beijing has done something similar in the past, to the detriment of investors trying to understand the economy. In summer 2023 authorities stopped providing youth unemployment figures after they hit a record high. When they resumed releases in early 2024 with what they said was new methodology, the numbers were much rosier.

[...]

The missing housing data “could increase uncertainty about the struggling sector’s condition,” Kristy Hung, a senior real estate analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note. “The November data would likely show steeper declines.”

Speaking of China’s playbook when the news is real bad, we’re also seeing some censorship. Authorities in Shanghai are wiping away social media posts that express pessimism about the property market. Social media platforms Xiaohongshu and Bilibili removed more than 40,000 posts as part of what the Shanghai government called a “special campaign” to regulate online real estate content. Read more about the censoring here.

[...]

The problem is that while China isn’t running out of ideas, it seems short of money. Cash-strapped local governments can no longer depend on land sales to fund themselves.

Authorities are going after tax dodgers and people with overseas investment income, along with imposing new value-added taxes on contraceptives.

[...]

I used to enroll in a school where every week, you'll see students being whipped either by teachers, discipline masters or the administration. I tried myself to avoid being in trouble and not get beaten but that failed as I got beaten every year in the school for any small mistake I made. I remember the time I got 10 hard strokes on my palms because I assisted in cheating in an exam. Imagine those red throbbing hands and you're still trying to complete an exam. That's why I decided not to help people in exams. If you enrolled in that school and you didn't get beaten, congrats, you're an anomaly. This is cuz every student during the whole duration of the school year get beaten at least once. And I'm saying this cuz my class was collectively punished by cane. Sometimes when there's noise in my class, a teacher or discipline master just decides to beat the whole class including the students that didn't make noise and I was beaten too.

I was beaten for either coming late, forgetting to do assignments and failing some subjects. Most of the time I come early, but when I come late, it's usually because of a short program that forces me to come to school before 6:30 AM and if I come after, 2 strokes of cane, even at 6:31 AM. I hated those times. I was beaten for failing tests, kneeling down and opening my palms to receive either 5 or 6 strokes of cane. One assignment that I didn't finish, I was flogged by holding my desk and the teacher whipped me in the butt 5 strokes.

Sometimes, I do manage to avoid canes but my friends and classmates didn't. They got beaten a lot for noisemaking, sometimes having to go out of class and receive strokes of cane on the school yard. Even in class, you get beaten for talking while the teacher's talking. Girls were also beaten too. Mostly on their palms but there were a few teachers that beat them on the butt sometimes. I would always feel sad when they start crying on the middle of receiving their strokes and the teacher would still beat them until they have finished with their strokes. Can you imagine being in that class, seeing grown ass men with canes hit the girls on their asses and then see them uncontrollably cry but you can only do nothing about it because you know that you could get a similar or worse treatment. Yeah, I saw all that and became a little emotional. They got beaten either for noisemaking, failing subjects or forgetting to do assignments. One time after the mock exam results were published, I managed to barely pass and because of that I avoided being flogged but majority of the class failed and some discipline master whipped them really hard on their palms to the point I saw visible bruises on their palms and hands the next day. I couldn't do anything about it.

When you trigger the teachers angrily, you could get beaten like an animal. That's what happened to a friend of mine who left the school before I did. He said something that got the teacher angry, teacher then uses chalk to draw a circle on the floor, takes a cane, tells my friend to lie on it and because he couldn't do it well, he whipped my friend mostly on the back and sometimes all around his body. He was crying, begging to the teacher to stop and he repeatedly said he's sorry. The teacher didn't care, kept hitting him even though he was crying, and my friend was 13 at the time, being beaten by someone twice his age. After all that, he went to his seat to continue crying cuz that was just brutal. I sympathized with him back then and this situation still lives rent free in my mind. He was beaten like an animal all because he said something that triggered the teacher or was talking while the teacher was talking.

Mind you, this school is in a country where corporal punishment is banned with the law explicitly banning it in schools. But of course, the law wasn't enforced and my school got away with it. Because of that, I had to see students being whipped at least every week, receive 10 strokes of cane on my palms, 5 strokes on my ass, seeing girls receiving the same treatment and crying. Most of us guys didn't cry when that happens cuz we were pretty used to it. They beat us since primary school. Lying on the desk and being whipped 5 strokes and trying to hold that same desk so that you don't fall is really brutal. Pain everywhere. Pain sitting down.

I really didn't like this school at all as the only benefits I got from this school was making friends and academics being good. Basically, if you avoided being beaten in that school, you're an anomaly and a good one at that. And you can't even protest cuz when you try to do that, you get heavily beaten. Something that happened to a friend of mine when he argued about a dumb school rule and a teacher went to our class, called him out and beat him like 10 strokes just for doing that and warned us not to do the same. Children being whipped every week, sometimes outside the school yard, teenagers being whipped like animals, almost every week, I must hear a whooping either in my class or in other classes. I'm not sure you guys could make it if you went into my school. All these memories compelled me to write this post to show awareness of how bad we have it in africa.

about the Battle of Blair Mountain and other Coal Wars.

http://www.blairpathways.com/2012/10/22/our-press-release/

needed to be admin.

DISCLAIMER: Fun Bun Facts makes no guarantees about the accuracy of their claims

Edit: I'm now enlightened and use mpv, I really like the ModernZ OSC (on-screen controls), and uses config files.

IINA is only on macOS. I looked up linux alternatives but none of them seem to have similar looking UIs, at least out of the box. I want the player UI to float on top of the video + with a blurred background, it as shown in the image; or at least the ability to theme it like so.

Changes in version 166:

• add initial stubs for Android 16 QPR2

A full list of changes from the previous release (version 165) is available through the Git commit log between the releases (only changes to the gmscompat_config text file and config-holder/ directory are part of GmsCompatConfig).

GmsCompatConfig is the text-based configuration for the GrapheneOS sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. It provides a large portion of the compatibility shims.

This update is available to GrapheneOS users via our app repository and will also be bundled into the next OS release.