As Russian missiles and drones plunge much of Ukraine into darkness this winter, the mountain community of Ust-Chorna has largely kept the lights on — thanks to green energy.

The district, made up of four villages tucked into a forest valley of western Ukraine, relies on a small network of hydroelectric power stations that have continued operating even as Russian attacks have all but destroyed the country's centralized energy grid.

And as emergency blackouts are implemented across the country, Ust-Chorna's residents say their power supply has remained nearly uninterrupted.

. . .

Russian attacks have decreased Ukraine's electricity generation capacity to 33% of its prewar levels, according to government estimates. The severity of the damage and ensuing blackouts have exposed the weaknesses of centralized power infrastructure, accelerating the country's push toward decentralized and renewable energy sources. In 2020, green energy made up 9.2% of the total energy consumed in Ukraine, while in 2023 this rose to 22%.

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Report details harrowing 18-month occupation of North Darfur capital, showing destruction aimed at ethnic communities

The siege and capture of the Sudanese city of El Fasher by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group last October bore “the hallmarks of genocide”, a UN-mandated fact-finding mission has said.

In a report detailing the harrowing 18-month occupation of the capital of North Darfur, investigators concluded that the RSF and allied militias deliberately inflicted conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Zaghawa and Fur ethnic communities.

“The scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around El Fasher were not random excesses of war,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, the mission’s chair, who called for a thorough investigation of the perpetrators.

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It’s not just about the trade war. Nearly half of America’s neighbors to the north now think the U.S. is a bigger threat to world peace than Russia.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/60675401

Archive article: https://archive.is/FmFAC#selection-647.1-647.51

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What’s the story?

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed steep tariffs on several African nations and cut off almost all aid programmes. Lesotho, a small country in the south of the continent, has been hit hardest by these measures.

In recent decades, Lesotho responded to Western calls to industrialise, and built up a textile industry focused on exports to the United States. Now thousands of jobs are at risk and the government has declared a ‘‘state of disaster”.

Lesotho tried to appease Trump with a range of U.S.-friendly measures and proposals, including a quickly granted licence for Elon Musk’s internet provider Starlink. But these moves have made little impact in Washington and officials in the African country fear the damage has already been done.

Why does it matter?

Other potential partners are stepping in to fill the gap left by the United States. The EU is looking for allies in Africa, but China is already acting “quickly and aggressively” to forge ties, according to a government minister in Lesotho. The extreme events in Lesotho illustrate Trump’s increasingly erratic approach to foreign policy that is alienating even traditional allies across the world.

How was this investigated?

Follow the Money visited Lesotho and spoke with a minister, entrepreneurs, civil servants, NGO workers, diplomats, academics and journalists.

Pay attention America - this is what you do with anti-Democratic leaders if you want to respect and preserve democracy.

Palestinian journalists detained by Israel have described systematic torture, sexual violence and starvation inside Israeli prisons, according to a report published on Thursday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The report, titled ‘We returned from hell’, draws on interviews with 59 Palestinian journalists jailed since October 2023.

All but one said they endured “torture, abuse or other forms of violence”.

Testimonies detail baton beatings, electroshocks and being forced into prolonged stress positions, including being forced to stand under sewage water. Two journalists said they were raped by their Israeli captors.

Journalist Sami al-Sai recounted how soldiers stripped him and penetrated him with a baton and other objects inside a small cell at Megiddo prison, leaving him in a “severe psychological state”.

The disagreement over the use of British sites is behind the US president’s withdrawal of support for the Chagos Islands deal, The Times understands

The perpetual conflict and instability in the region is partially being kept alive by intellectuals, he claimed, as “they can't grasp the notion that that's how wars are resolved, one side defeating the other and the other side crying uncle and giving up…. Their emotion and compassion get in the way of logical thinking.”

While Israel has debatably won the war against Hamas and Hezbollah, despite not yet having achieved all the goals it set out for the conflict, Lippman acknowledged that there was a key front the Jewish state was sorely losing in: the diplomatic war.

...

Unfortunately, nations seldom succeedively produce leaders of the high caliber of Donald Trump, and the US Constitution has put a term limit on this window of opportunity.

This is how the people think that are forcing us into war with Iran and it should legitimately terrify you on this war's eve.

The report said there was a pervasive climate of impunity for serious violations of international law by the Israeli authorities in the Palestinian territories.

“Impunity is not abstract — it kills. Accountability is indispensable. It is the prerequisite for a just and durable peace in Palestine and Israel,” Turk said in a statement.

This is how you start World War 3...

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/Epsteinfiles/p/884895/andrew-mountbatten-windsor-arrested-on-suspicion-of-misconduct-in-public-office-live

• > Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office by police investigating the former prince’s dealings with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. >
• Photographs of unmarked police cars and plainclothes officers at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate just after 8am were published on Thursday. >
• A statement from Thames Valley police said: “We have today (19/2) arrested a man in his 60s from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office and are carrying out searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk. The man remains in police custody at this time.” >
• The arrest came as Mountbatten-Windsor celebrated his 66th birthday at home. >
• Police had been assessing allegations that Mountbatten-Windsor – formerly known as Prince Andrew – shared sensitive information with the billionaire child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when he was a UK trade envoy. >
• Oliver Wright, Thames Valley Police’s assistant chief constable, said: “Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office.” >

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43392244

Feb. 18, 2026

Barak Ravid reported for Axios on Wednesday that, with a deal between the US and Iran appearing increasingly out of sight, “the Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize” and “It could begin very soon.”

Sources told the outlet that “A US military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than last month’s pinpoint operation in Venezuela.”

THIS AUGUST WILL mark five years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. If they hold onto their totalitarian rule for that long, they could go on to surpass their initial reign, which lasted from 1996 until the United States–led invasion in 2001. This time around, in the absence of armed intervention, it’s become increasingly clear that the international community’s measures to push them out are failing.

Over the past half-decade, the Taliban have brought one form of shock and pain after another to the Afghan people: girls being denied most types of higher education, the teaching of extremist ideology in schools, heavy restrictions on social media activity, the silencing of women’s voices, arrests and torture of dissidents, and strict rules targeting freedom of speech and the press. In January, the Taliban announced a new criminal code that, among other provisions, allows domestic violence and the corporal punishment of children and appears to legitimize slavery through the use of the word “slave.”

Pakistan and Iran began mass deportations of Afghans in 2023 and 2025 respectively, further compounding the humanitarian pressures. For a country beset by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, one that’s among the most vulnerable to climate change, the future looks grim.

To some human rights activists, there’s increasingly another cause for concern: that the Taliban may eventually become accepted on the world stage. Most states have, so far, condemned the Taliban’s human rights violations and do not formally recognize the group as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers. But over the past year, some governments have quietly begun engaging with Taliban authorities—what US-based human rights activist Metra Mehran describes as a “soft normalization” of Taliban rule.

Atide of anger is rising in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, as the city’s toilets continue to flush directly into the ocean more than two weeks after the catastrophic collapse of its wastewater treatment plant.

Millions of litres of raw and partially screened sewage have been pouring into pristine reefs and a marine reserve along the south coast daily since 4 February, prompting a national inquiry, as the authorities struggle to get the decimated plant operational.

Abandoned beaches, public health warning signs and seagulls eating human waste are now features of the popular coastline, with the environmental disaster zone adjacent to the airport where thousands of international visitors alight every day.

Fears for the safety of marine ecosystems – including vulnerable species such as the little blue penguin, or kororā, which nest along the shore – are mixed with concerns over the length and cost of disruption to those who depend on the coast for income, wellness, and recreation.

Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (£130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” says Gardiner. “You’re telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions …” She looks appalled. “It was just such a shock.”

Two months before that piece was published, a photograph of a seahorse clinging to a plastic cotton bud had gone viral; two years before that England followed Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and introduced a charge for carrier bags. “I was one of so many people who were trying to use less plastic – and it just felt like such a moment of revelation: these companies are, on the contrary, increasing production and wanting to push [plastic use] up and up.” Then, says Gardiner, as she started researching her book Plastic Inc: Big Oil, Big Money and the Plan to Trash our Future, “it only becomes more shocking.”

Her research took her to Reserve, Louisiana, in the Lower Mississippi River, where she met Robert Taylor, an activist in his 80s who has spent much of his life living by an enormous plastics plant. “He is surrounded by illness, by all kinds of cancers. He only found out in 2016, as a result of federal action, that the levels of toxic gases had gone through the roof in his area, an overwhelmingly Black neighbourhood. He told me about all the illness in his family – affecting his wife and his daughter, his neighbours and his cousins. It was haunting. When we talk about plastic, we tend to think about the ways we experience it in our own lives, and we’re not as aware of the production and the impact it has on the people who live beside it.”

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On February 10, as sirens warned of Russian strikes against Odesa, staff at the main railway depot in this southern Ukrainian region calmly made their way to one of the nearby fortified underground shelters. Aside from energy infrastructure, this vast site has become a top target for Moscow's missiles and drones.

Inside the converted bunker, mechanics, laundry workers – responsible for the sheets used on overnight trains – and company managers, including the depot director Leonid Loboïko, gathered. "Since autumn 2025, every night here has been a nightmare," he said. "The Russians target our repair workshops, trains, tracks, and electric facilities. If they manage to halt rail traffic, Ukraine will become one large cemetery."

There was no panic in the shelter, which also welcomed local residents. The voices were drowned out by the depot chief, a 75-year-old man who looks a decade younger, with an open and cheerful demeanor, leading a team of 1,300 people. "In January, the city's military administration asked us to coordinate with the police to raise our security level," he confided. "I also put in place new internal procedures, for work and discipline, to reduce risks. We've become a frontline, and sometimes I feel like a railway general."