cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/196/p/2013973/on-the-netrules

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8574315

Archived version

Ukrainian authorities have dismantled a so-called “bot farm” that police say was supplying thousands of fake social media accounts to Russian intelligence services for use in disinformation campaigns against Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and the National Police said on Monday they detained the suspected organizer of the network in the northern city of Zhytomyr and blocked nearly 20,000 fraudulent online profiles allegedly used in information operations directed by Moscow.

According to law enforcement, the suspect sold more than 3,000 fake Telegram accounts each month to Russian clients. The accounts were created using Ukrainian mobile phone numbers and then marketed on specialized online platforms used by pro-Russian actors.

...

The accounts were also used to circulate anonymous messages posing as Ukrainian citizens and falsely claiming that various facilities across the country had been mined. “Through these actions, the enemy sought to provoke panic among the population and destabilize Ukraine’s socio-political environment,” authorities said.

Law enforcement officers detained the suspect at his residence, where he had allegedly set up the bot farm. During searches, investigators seized computer equipment, mobile phones, USB hubs connected to modems, and nearly 2,000 SIM cards from multiple Ukrainian telecom operators.

If convicted, the suspect faces up to six years in prison.

...

A Toronto patient who has been living with HIV for 27 years is in remission – and potentially cured, according to his doctors – after a bone marrow transplant from a donor naturally resistant to the virus.

If he remains in remission for about two and a half years, the 36-year-old will join 10 people in the world currently considered cured of HIV.

The patient was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in November 2021 and needed a bone marrow transplant. His medical team of clinicians at the University Health Network, Unity Health Toronto and the University of Toronto say they saw an opportunity to cure his HIV at the same time, a feat first accomplished in Berlin in 2007, by finding a donor match with a genetic mutation resistant to the virus.

"We feel pretty confident that it's gone, but it's hard for us to say for absolute sure right now that he is cured," said Dr. Sharon Walmsley, director of the HIV Clinic at Toronto General Hospital.

Source

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8574526

Archived version

The Singapore Times, which was one of six inauthentic websites blocked by Singapore authorities for posing as local mainstream news outlets, is linked to a Chinese company, an investigation by CNA has found.

The other fake websites are also likely a coordinated cluster, based on findings by CNA Verification.

The six websites were blocked by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on Thursday (Apr 23) over their potential to be used in hostile information campaigns against Singapore.

CNA Verification also uncovered a Chinese-language companion to sgtimes.com. This website runs on a direct Alibaba Cloud IP address in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

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The site, cn[dot]sgtimes[dot]com, actively impersonates Lianhe Zaobao's search engine optimisation (SEO) – its meta keywords explicitly include Lianhe Zaobao’s name in Chinese characters – suggesting an attempt to hijack Singapore Chinese language news search traffic. It is understood that this website could be blocked as well.

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A registration number displayed at the bottom of the sgtimes.com homepage was traced to a company named Jiangsu Nanfang Digital Technology. Chinese authorities issue Internet Content Provider (ICP) licences to permit China-based websites to operate in the country; the ICP filing linked from sgtimes.com lists the site under a registration number associated with the company.

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Apart from sgtimes. com, the other five are singaporeheadline. com, singaporeweek. com, singapore24hour.com, nanyangweekly. com and singaporebuzz. com.

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CNA Verification also found no signs of an English-language social media network promoting these seven fake websites and their content.

...

It was Chantelle Bissaillion's worst nightmare on Monday when a school official arrived at her home just before noon looking for her daughter Amelia, whom she had brought to school that morning.

The Picton, Ont., parent and her husband then learned their nine-year-old — who has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) — had gone missing during morning recess and that police were involved in a search.

While a neighbour searching town ultimately found and brought Amelia home in the early afternoon, Bissaillion, a mother of three, remains upset and shaken.

"You trust these schools to take your kid from the age of three, sometimes four ... and they're supposed to be safe," she said. "How can I send [my kids] back to school now?"

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8573640

More than 18 months after Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna died in a Russian prison, witnesses ... have provided new details about the days leading up to her death. These first-hand accounts have contributed new pieces to a puzzle that the Kremlin still refuses to reveal in its entirety. The international community must obtain explanations for her death from the Russian regime.

Archived version

“Vika isn’t getting up!” On the morning of 19 September 2024, in Detention Centre No. 3 in the city of Kizel, in Russia’s Perm region — 1,700 kilometres east of Ukraine as the crow flies — Victoria Roshchyna did not get up from her bed. Jailed by Russia since her arrest in August 2023 in the occupied territories of Ukraine, this independent Ukrainian journalist lay motionless. The detainees with whom she shared the cell alerted the guards. They arrived, evacuated the other prisoners, and ordered the reporter to stand up – in vain. Victoria Roshchyna was then taken away, ostensibly still unconscious, but it is impossible to know whether she was still alive or not.

Did Victoria Roshchyna die in her cell or elsewhere in the prison? The new witnesses that RSF has been able to speak to, who saw or heard the journalist in the days and weeks preceding her death, do not know. However, they all attested to her extremely weak condition, supporting the findings of an initial investigation carried out in 2025 by RSF and the Ukrainian investigative media outlet Slidstvo.info into the torture she suffered behind bars. In February 2025, five months after her death, Russia returned the journalist’s mutilated body to Ukraine, but, to this day, has said nothing about the exact cause of her death.

...

The body that Russia returned to Ukraine was missing several organs, including the brain, larynx and eyeballs, and bore traces of torture, according to the French media consortium Forbidden Stories.

...

Important news about our beloved Greggs

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8574315

Archived version

Ukrainian authorities have dismantled a so-called “bot farm” that police say was supplying thousands of fake social media accounts to Russian intelligence services for use in disinformation campaigns against Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and the National Police said on Monday they detained the suspected organizer of the network in the northern city of Zhytomyr and blocked nearly 20,000 fraudulent online profiles allegedly used in information operations directed by Moscow.

According to law enforcement, the suspect sold more than 3,000 fake Telegram accounts each month to Russian clients. The accounts were created using Ukrainian mobile phone numbers and then marketed on specialized online platforms used by pro-Russian actors.

...

The accounts were also used to circulate anonymous messages posing as Ukrainian citizens and falsely claiming that various facilities across the country had been mined. “Through these actions, the enemy sought to provoke panic among the population and destabilize Ukraine’s socio-political environment,” authorities said.

Law enforcement officers detained the suspect at his residence, where he had allegedly set up the bot farm. During searches, investigators seized computer equipment, mobile phones, USB hubs connected to modems, and nearly 2,000 SIM cards from multiple Ukrainian telecom operators.

If convicted, the suspect faces up to six years in prison.

...

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“Well, you better get someone over here right away. … He really looks like he’s going to jump.”

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The Gloucestershire Fire Service reported that it was mobilized at 1:25 GMT on Sunday for a fire at RAF Fairford airbase.

Video link -> https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2048351793755656192/vid/avc1/360x640/3tsrQBfn-xkXmRW6.mp4?tag=14

Source -> https://xcancel.com/Nexo_Latino/status/2048351811505934777#m

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Within an hour of dropping my son off at junior kindergarten, I’m called to pick him up. The excitement of the first day of school quickly gives way to sadness and embarrassment. He was sitting on a chair in the office sucking his thumb while the secretary chastised him for misbehaving. I feel the need to chastise him, too; to signal we don’t condone whatever it is he did. But on the steps of the school after we leave the office, I kneel in front of him. I tell him he’s a wonderful boy. I promise him we’ll figure school out together.

It’s a promise I haven’t been able to keep.

My twin boys, now in Grade 5, have autism and complex needs. At one point, both of them were not attending school full-time because the public system does not support them.

These days, with one of my son’s schools, we’ve developed an “understanding.” I pick him up early. Sometimes earlier if I get the call. And I always get the call.

My body exists in a permanent state of readiness, waiting to be told my child is “having a hard day.” The euphemisms vary, but the message is always the same: get here. Every time I collect my boy, I see him as I did on that first day of JK: confused, overwhelmed, trying to comfort himself.

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