cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47682130

Restaurants and cafes are closing down in Russia at the fastest pace since the start of the war in Ukraine four years ago as consumption stalls even in affluent Moscow.

The closures, visible on streets from the capital to Vladivostok 6,500 km (4,000 miles) east on the Pacific Ocean, point to a significant slowdown in Russia's $2.8 trillion economy, which has so far proved surprisingly resilient in the face of stringent Western sanctions.

...

High interest rates, higher taxes, rising prices and a $20-per-barrel discount for Russian oil are taking their toll - even in Moscow, a vast urban area of 22 million people that has been largely insulated from the worst impact of Europe's deadliest war since World War Two.

"To let" signs are prominent in retail spaces across the capital. Sales of new light commercial vehicles and trucks, a good indicator for the health of the retail and construction industry, fell by 38% to 147,000 units in 2025 and have continued to fall in the first weeks of 2026, Autostat said.

Data from Sberbank, which as Russia's biggest bank sees the ripples of expenditure across the economy, showed that the fall in the number of catering outlets in January was the biggest since 2021 and that restaurant spending hit the lowest in three years in November-early December 2025. The change is especially striking as major Russian cities saw a restaurant boom before the pandemic, and some politicians bridled at what they saw as Moscow's "decadent frivolity" while soldiers were being killed or injured at the front.

Overall, real consumer spending growth fell to zero in February for the first time in two years, Sberbank data showed. Russia forecasts economic growth of 1.3% this year after 1% in 2025, 4.9% in 2024 and 4.1% in 2023. The International Monetary Fund forecasts 0.8% growth for 2026.

...

Russian sources say that while there are certainly problems in the economy, it is still performing remarkably well and they dismiss suggestions of its demise as premature. Besides, Putin is unlikely to change course on Ukraine due to restaurants shutting their doors, they said.

Nevertheless, Putin earlier this month told top economic officials to restore the growth rate and urged them not to simply monitor prices. Just 10 days later, the central bank cut rates by 50 basis points to 15.5%.

...

Borrowing costs - advertised by major banks at about 18-19% for unsecured loans to business - have hit small businesses and consumers hard, especially after some lenders imposed stricter limits on consumer credit.

...

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47681631

A relative of Vladimir Putin owns a stake in the Russian tech giant VK, which in turn owns the new state-backed “everything app” MAX, independent investigative journalist Andrey Zakharov claimed on Wednesday.

Zakharov said that although VK had a complex ownership structure, its accounts for the first half of 2025 showed that its shareholders included the insurance company Sogaz. Prior to the war in Ukraine, Mikhail Shelomov, the son of one of Putin’s first cousins, was known to own a 12.47% stake in Sogaz through a St. Petersburg-based insurance company called Accept.

Although Sogaz made its list of shareholders private after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zakharov was able to access Accept’s accounts and learnt that Shelomov has retained his stake in the company, with its 2024 accounts showing that his shares were worth approximately the same then as they did in 2019.

Zakharov thus concluded that Shelomov still owned a stake in VK, and therefore in MAX. When Zakharov managed to reach Shelomov by phone to ask him what his connection to the messenger was, Shelomov reportedly said “none” before hanging up.

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In addition to his stake in Sogaz, Shelomov also owns shares in Rossiya Bank, a controlling stake in which belongs to Putin’s friend Yury Kovalchuk, who also part owns VK.

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As investigative outlet Proekt revealed in 2019, Shelomov became a dollar billionaire in the late 2010s, but continued to spend his weekends at his dacha with an outdoor toilet, suggesting that he was simply a proxy holder of Putin’s wealth.

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A South Korean court on Thursday sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country’s democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence.

Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible sentences: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing that Yoon committed “a grave destruction of constitutional order” by mobilising troops to surround parliament and attempting to arrest political opponents during the six-hour crisis.

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Fixed the title. Article contents intact:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has unveiled dozens of nuclear-capable rocket launchers ahead of a key congress of the governing Workers’ Party, according to state media.

Kim hailed the 600mm-calibre rocket launchers as “wonderful” and “attractive” during the ceremony on Wednesday, adding that new military and construction goals will be set during the upcoming congress.

Fifty such ⁠launchers were presented by North Korean munitions workers, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday.

“When this weapon is used, actually, no force would be able to expect God’s protection,” Kim said, according to the KCNA

“It is really a wonderful and attractive weapon,” Kim said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

He described the launchers as the “world’s most advantageous weapon for concentrated super-powerful attack”, according Yonhap.

Photos released by state media showed dozens of launch vehicles parked in neat rows on the plaza of Pyongyang’s House of Culture, which will host the congress.

The weapon was “appropriate for a special attack, that is, for accomplishing a strategic mission”, Kim said, using a common euphemism for nuclear weapons.

He said the weapons incorporate “AI technology and compound guidance systems” and would deter unnamed enemies.

^Kim\ Jong\ Un\ inspects\ a\ multiple\ rocket\ launcher\ during\ a\ presentation\ ceremony\ of\ the\ launchers\ to\ the\ Ninth\ Congress\ of\ the\ Workers’\ Party\ of\ Korea\ in\ Pyongyang,\ North\ Korea,\ on\ February\ 18,\ 2026^

Kim has been touting the progress of various projects in advance of this month’s 9th Congress of the Workers’ Party, which is widely viewed as North Korea’s most important political event.

Kim said on Wednesday that the 9th Congress “will declare the next phase of the self-reliant defence initiative” and accelerate the “project of constantly renewing our military capabilities” in order to “subdue any threats ⁠and challenges from outside forces”.

The political gathering is expected to lay out North Korea’s foreign policy, war planning and nuclear ambitions for the next five years.

State media have in recent days carried reports of delegates arriving for the gathering, fuelling speculation it could start any day.

‘Four to five rounds could devastate an entire airbase’

The South Korean military is closely watching North Korea’s activities to develop weapons, a spokesperson for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Thursday.

Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told the AFP news agency that the launch system could fire rockets with an estimated range of 400 kilometres (250 miles), covering all of South Korea.

“Its primary purpose is to neutralise the combined air power of South Korea and the United States,” he said.

“If equipped with tactical nuclear warheads, a single battery firing four to five rounds could devastate an entire airbase.”

South Korea’s capital Seoul is less than 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the North Korean border at its nearest point.

North Korea has suspended nearly all talks and cooperation with South Korea since 2019, when Kim’s nuclear diplomacy with United States President Donald Trump derailed over US-led sanctions.

Relations worsened in recent years as Kim discarded North Korea’s longstanding goal of peaceful reunification and declared a hostile “two-state” system on the Korean Peninsula.

In a separate KCNA report on Thursday, the North Korean leader’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, acknowledged a South Korean minister’s apology regarding alleged civilian drone incursions, but said Pyongyang is bolstering border security against the “enemy”.

North Korea had said the incidents occurred in September of last year and again in January.

The South Korean government has denied operating any drones during the times specified by North Korea, but law enforcement authorities are investigating three civilians suspected of flying drones into the North from border areas.

Kim Yo Jong said ⁠it would be to South Korea’s benefit to prevent the recurrence of such severe infringement of North Korea’s sovereignty.

“The border with the enemy should be solid,” Kim Yo Jong said, according to KCNA.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34296302

Artist: Hizake Mozu | twitter | danbooru

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/59382082

Just wanted to share an alias I have in use and found it useful again. It's a simple wrapper around xargs, which I always forget how to use properly, so I set up an alias for. All it does is operate on each line on stdout.

The arguments are interpreted as the command to execute. The only thing to remember is using the {} as a placeholder for the input line. Look in the examples to understand how its used.

# Pipe each line and execute a command. The "{}" will be replaced by the line.
#
# Example:
#   cat url.txt | foreach echo download {} to directory
#   ls -1 | foreach echo {}
#   find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -name 'M*' | foreach grep "USB" {}
alias foreach='xargs -d "\n" -I{}'

Useful for quickly operating on each line of a file (in example to download from list of urls) or do something with any stdout output line by line. Without remembering or typing a for loop in terminal.

Fixed the title. Article contents intact:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has unveiled dozens of nuclear-capable rocket launchers ahead of a key congress of the governing Workers’ Party, according to state media.

Kim hailed the 600mm-calibre rocket launchers as “wonderful” and “attractive” during the ceremony on Wednesday, adding that new military and construction goals will be set during the upcoming congress.

Fifty such ⁠launchers were presented by North Korean munitions workers, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday.

“When this weapon is used, actually, no force would be able to expect God’s protection,” Kim said, according to the KCNA

“It is really a wonderful and attractive weapon,” Kim said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

He described the launchers as the “world’s most advantageous weapon for concentrated super-powerful attack”, according Yonhap.

Photos released by state media showed dozens of launch vehicles parked in neat rows on the plaza of Pyongyang’s House of Culture, which will host the congress.

The weapon was “appropriate for a special attack, that is, for accomplishing a strategic mission”, Kim said, using a common euphemism for nuclear weapons.

He said the weapons incorporate “AI technology and compound guidance systems” and would deter unnamed enemies.

^Kim\ Jong\ Un\ inspects\ a\ multiple\ rocket\ launcher\ during\ a\ presentation\ ceremony\ of\ the\ launchers\ to\ the\ Ninth\ Congress\ of\ the\ Workers’\ Party\ of\ Korea\ in\ Pyongyang,\ North\ Korea,\ on\ February\ 18,\ 2026^

Kim has been touting the progress of various projects in advance of this month’s 9th Congress of the Workers’ Party, which is widely viewed as North Korea’s most important political event.

Kim said on Wednesday that the 9th Congress “will declare the next phase of the self-reliant defence initiative” and accelerate the “project of constantly renewing our military capabilities” in order to “subdue any threats ⁠and challenges from outside forces”.

The political gathering is expected to lay out North Korea’s foreign policy, war planning and nuclear ambitions for the next five years.

State media have in recent days carried reports of delegates arriving for the gathering, fuelling speculation it could start any day.

‘Four to five rounds could devastate an entire airbase’

The South Korean military is closely watching North Korea’s activities to develop weapons, a spokesperson for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Thursday.

Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told the AFP news agency that the launch system could fire rockets with an estimated range of 400 kilometres (250 miles), covering all of South Korea.

“Its primary purpose is to neutralise the combined air power of South Korea and the United States,” he said.

“If equipped with tactical nuclear warheads, a single battery firing four to five rounds could devastate an entire airbase.”

South Korea’s capital Seoul is less than 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the North Korean border at its nearest point.

North Korea has suspended nearly all talks and cooperation with South Korea since 2019, when Kim’s nuclear diplomacy with United States President Donald Trump derailed over US-led sanctions.

Relations worsened in recent years as Kim discarded North Korea’s longstanding goal of peaceful reunification and declared a hostile “two-state” system on the Korean Peninsula.

In a separate KCNA report on Thursday, the North Korean leader’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, acknowledged a South Korean minister’s apology regarding alleged civilian drone incursions, but said Pyongyang is bolstering border security against the “enemy”.

North Korea had said the incidents occurred in September of last year and again in January.

The South Korean government has denied operating any drones during the times specified by North Korea, but law enforcement authorities are investigating three civilians suspected of flying drones into the North from border areas.

Kim Yo Jong said ⁠it would be to South Korea’s benefit to prevent the recurrence of such severe infringement of North Korea’s sovereignty.

“The border with the enemy should be solid,” Kim Yo Jong said, according to KCNA.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/collapse/p/1794000/senate-committee-features-climate-disinformation-the-atlas-network-and-dr-karl-s-clash

In Monday's hearing, the lobby group Coal Australia defended sending almost $4 million to "Australians for Prosperity" last financial year, which is a third-party group that attacked Labor, Greens and teal independent candidates during the 2025 federal election campaign.

Stuart Bocking, a former 2GB talkback radio host turned Coal Australia chief executive, denied it was a form of "astroturfing", telling senators that it was often easier to pay third-party groups to run political campaigns on one's behalf these days, because it left lobby groups to focus on other things.

"We're not engaged in astroturfing," he said.

Uh huh

The Atlas Network, first formed in 1981, partners with more than 500 free-market think tanks around the world, with 10 of them in Australia and New Zealand.

The ABC recently published a large piece which explains the history of the Atlas Network and what it is.

Dr Walker said Australians had little idea of the extent of the coordinated effort to prevent attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to renewable forms of energy.

He explained how fossil fuel companies have funded certain think tanks globally for decades to push climate denial, anti-Indigenous rights and anti-renewable messages, a technique that has helped to obscure where ideas and money are coming from.

....

And finally, science communicator Karl Kruszelnicki (Dr Karl) appeared at the Senate committee on Monday.

In an attempt to establish common factual ground with One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts, Dr Karl asked Roberts if he accepted that global temperatures were rising.

Their interaction illustrated how public discussions about the science of climate change get bogged down so easily:

Dr Karl: Do you agree that the climate records show that the last 10 years have been the hottest on record worldwide?

Senator Roberts: The last 10 years in Australia have been cooler than the 1880s and 1890s in Australia.

Dr Karl: Hang on … Worldwide. Do you agree that the last 10 years have been the hottest years on record worldwide?

Senator Roberts: No I don't

The fuck :)

Dr Karl: I feel like I'm talking to a school child who says seven times two is not 14, but instead seven times two is a bicycle divided by the square root of a banana.

Roberts: That's one way of making out that I'm a fool.

You do that all by yourself

Dr Karl: But all the scientists disagree with you. 99.999 per cent of the scientists disagree with you.

Roberts: So now you're into consensus, which is a political tool.

Dr Karl: Hang on, consensus is a political tool? … So if all the scientists agree that seven times two is 14, that's a political tool?

Roberts: That's obviously a stupid comment, in my opinion.