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Australia's national intelligence chief has sounded an alarm about an "emerging axis" of countries supporting Russia in its brutal invasion of Ukraine, cautioning that the strategic development was "profoundly troubling" for the Western countries supporting Kyiv.

[...]

Andrew Shearer, Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence, said the nexus, which included China, Iran, and North Korea, warranted thorough evaluation.

Naming North Korea and China as the main pillars of the Axis, Shearer stated that Moscow's ongoing aggression has been made possible largely by Beijing's consistent diplomatic and economic support.

"The massive provision by China of dual-use assistance to Putin, and economic support and diplomatic support is keeping Putin's army in the field in Ukraine, killing innocent Ukrainians just as surely as if they were providing artillery ammunition and missiles," Shearer said.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4509062

Finnish President Alexander Stubb has congratulated his future US counterpart Donald Trump on his re-election.

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Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) commented on the election [in a press conference ...] "I have been saying for a long time that Europe must take a bigger role. We cannot count so much on US support. Of course, the United States has other interests," the PM said.

[...]

In Orpo’s view, peace must be achieved in Ukraine, but not under any conditions.

"Peace must be attained on Ukraine's terms," he said. "We have our own experience from history that if the big ones agree over [others'] heads, it is not in the interest of a small or independent nation, and hopefully this will be kept clearly in mind when a peace agreement is possibly made."

[...]

Former president Sauli Niinistö, who met with Trump multiple times, struck a cautious note in regard to the possible ramifications for Nato and Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Niinistö commented to Yle about Trump’s assertion that he will end the war in Ukraine quickly.

"I haven't seen a detailed plan on the matter, if there is one. Rather, that will have to be considered after we see what he is really going to do," Niinistö said.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4507826

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Several videos shared online by Foxconn workers in Zhengzhou, Henan province, depict workers fainting due to long hours of overtime work in October. Given the demanding schedules, workers asked,

On 8 October, a video on Douyin described a female worker being taken to the hospital after days of night work. Three days later, another video (which has since been removed) reported that two workers fainted in the F area of the Foxconn facility. Additionally, a video uploaded on 12 October (also removed) reported another incident of a worker fainting in a workshop. China Labour Bulletin was unable to verify whether these reported cases overlapped.

Foxconn factories in Henan have significantly extended working hours following the release of the new iPhone models, leading many workers to believe this contributed to recent fainting incidents.

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Similar arrangements for longer working hours were also reported at Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, although no fainting incidents have been reported.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4474456

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As China continues to grapple with a shrinking population, new data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs reveals a significant decline in marriage registrations for the first nine months of 2024. Only 4.747 million couples registered their marriages nationwide during this period, marking a year-on-year decrease of 943,000 couples. These figures, highlighted in a Reuters analysis of official data, underscore the ongoing challenge the country faces in encouraging young people to marry and start families.

This trend is a setback for Chinese lawmakers who have been working to counteract the country’s population decline through policy interventions and cultural campaigns.

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The drop in marriage registrations in 2024 follows an earlier increase observed in 2023, when 5.690 million couples registered to marry during the first nine months of the year. This year’s decrease signals a return to the downward trend China has experienced over the past decade. As marriage rates decline, so too do birth rates—a significant concern for a country with a rapidly aging population. Government data showed China’s birth rate dropped for a second consecutive year in 2023, prompting officials to launch initiatives to boost marriage and birth rates in major cities.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasized the importance of reversing this trend. Recently, he called on Chinese women to play a “critical role” in family building, urging them to establish a “new trend of family” that aligns with the country’s demographic goals. His remarks reflect a broader government effort to revive traditional family structures while fostering a “new-era” culture that celebrates marriage and childbearing.

China’s economic climate is a primary driver behind the decline in marriage registrations. Many young adults are struggling to secure stable employment and affordable housing, which has caused them to delay or forego marriage altogether. Urban centers, particularly megacities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, have seen a significant rise in the cost of living, further deterring young couples from committing to long-term partnerships and family planning. The price of housing, healthcare, and education has soared, forcing many young adults to prioritize financial security over starting families.

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Five years ago, later came knocking.

A referendum backed by the United Nations — and funded by the US and other Western powers — asked Bougainvilleans: Would you like independence?

About 98% voted yes.

Toroama has been busy ever since. Elected president in 2020, he is determined to found a nation-state that will forever ensure that this island’s inhabitants rule themselves — as did their ancestors for eons.

Achieving this requires detaching from Papua New Guinea. At some point, its lawmakers will decide whether to honor the referendum and let Bougainville go. Fewer than half would likely vote to turn the island loose, according to Luther Wenge, a prominent Papua New Guinean parliamentarian and provincial governor.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4447469

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Chinese state-affiliated accounts bypass transparency efforts on social media by using cloaked accounts or brands, masking their connections to China’s government bodies. These accounts, which interact on social media platforms as though they were independent entities, are sometimes capable of reaching millions, and even pay to amplify their messages.

Examples of such accounts are legion. “Hi, this is GBA” looks like just a social media influencer on X with more than 85,000 followers, as does “Daily Bae,” which has 1.1 million followers on Facebook. Both are external propaganda brands run by Guangdong province, and clearly identified as such in official media reports.

As [China's president] Xi Jinping speaks of “building a more effective international communication system,” part of the message he conveyed this week during a collective study session of the Politburo, accounts like these, run not just by state media but by provincial and city-level international communication centers (ICCs), are a critical part of the strategy.

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The account “China Says” looks unassuming enough. It has a blue check and nearly 190,000 followers on X. On Facebook, it has 3.9 million followers, and its posts sometimes get millions of views. The bio section for “China Says” on X claims that the account offers “exclusive insights” into China’s foreign policy. At times, these insights appear as paid ads in X feeds like yours and mine. Much of the content on “China Says” focuses on the innocent promotion of local cuisine. But at times the account takes a sharp turn into the political. It regularly hosts explainers, for example, on China’s view of the international political system.

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In fact, “China Says” is operated by the Chinese Internet News Center (中国互联网新闻中心), an institution directly under China’s State Council Information Office (SCIO). The SCIO is essentially the same office as the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department — which means that this “news and media website,” as it is labeled on Facebook, is speaking from the very center of the Chinese party-state. And yet, quite unlike the account for China Daily, also under the SCIO, the account bears no “China state-controlled media” label.

[...]

“China Says” is one cloaked party-state account on X that has made good use of the platform’s marketing system. X Ads offer any account paid promotion for their content over a fixed period of time, allowing posts to maximize exposure — acquiring followers and engagement more quickly. The tool also allows campaigns to target audiences, according to which country they are in and if they have followed certain Twitter accounts.

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The list of those to target also includes anyone following a long list of Chinese X accounts, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, the People’s Daily, CGTN, China Daily, The Paper — and even Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, which in 2015 was bought by Alibaba Group.

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China Says is also a concrete case study on what Xi Jinping meant when he spoke about the "pattern reconstruction of international communication," and about "innovative online external propaganda."

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Be ready for stunning views of stony Tibetan peaks, followed by soft and playful pandas, and then a serving of anti-Western propaganda. It could come at you from anywhere.

Buckle up folks, here we go!

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4423236

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In Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, disabled people of all ages are among the most vulnerable.

The Oleshky Children’s Boarding School [in Ukraine] had a reputation for being one of the best of its kind in Ukraine. The state-funded school accepted orphans as well as children diagnosed with varying degrees of mental and physical disabilities. Many of the children fell into both categories, but the school was known for its attentive care and specialized treatments for all its students, regardless of their status.

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The school staff who stayed after Feb. 24 [in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had started] watched in fear as the Russian occupying forces began swiftly implementing administrative control over social institutions, primarily targeting the spheres of education, health care and social security.

Russian military officials, sometimes in plain clothing, other times in uniforms with automatic rifles, attempted several times to get the Oleshky school to “cooperate” with the occupying forces. Sometimes, they made surprise visits, offering donations of food in exchange for information, such as the whereabouts and headcounts of the children.

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“From the beginning of the occupation, there were constant rumors among employees that Ukraine was evacuating us. But all efforts failed at the planning stage,” said Vadym Reutsky, a teacher and sports coach at the school who stayed for the first months of the occupation. Everyone understood that it was only a matter of time before Russia would come to seize full control of the school, he said.

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The deportations were being orchestrated from the highest levels of the Russian government. Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, was in the region of Kherson’s left bank in October and November, where the occupying forces were nervously watching the rapid Ukrainian approach. On Nov. 11, the official Telegram channels of the occupying authorities wrote that Lvova-Belova, who has since been indicted by the International Criminal Court for the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children, instructed the remaining students at the Oleshky boarding school to move to Skadovsk, another occupied small city on the shores of the Black Sea.

After Lvova-Belova made a request to the Ministry of Health in Russia, “they promptly responded, providing 14 ambulances for the evacuation of the children from Oleshky,” a statement read, adding that local official Alla Barkhatnova, the acting Minister of Social Policy and Labor for Kherson Region, took part in the decision. That same day, 56 disabled children and adults were transported by ambulances to the Nadiia Rehabilitation Centre in Skadovsk.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4412873

Archived link

One of China’s biggest challenges today is its unprecedented low birth rate that threatens its economic development, especially given the country’s unsustainable pension system that is expected to be financially unviable by 2035. Besides this, the system shows wide discrepancies between northern and southern Chinese regions, which stems from their different economic development models. And while Chinese authorities continue to adopt and implement multiple policies aimed at boosting marriage and birth rates, Chinese citizens are increasingly disengaging from the party-state.

**A Propaganda Machine Stuck in the Past **

By all standards, China is a surveillance state that uses social credit, face recognition AI and other means to control its own population. From 1980 to 2015, Beijing successfully imposed its infamous One-Child Policy that led to effective population control. [...] Indeed, the combination of strict birth control and economic opening-up did lead to a dramatic improvement in living standards.

At the same time, Beijing showed that it would stop at nothing to enforce its coercive measures that included hefty fines in rural areas, forced abortions at late stages, and even forced sterilization. The One-Child Policy also resulted in an alarming gender gap, with over 30 million women gone missing, which has led to large-scale trafficking from other Asian countries.

Today, the challenge is the opposite of the situation in the early 1980s: China needs more children. China’s birth rate hit its lowest in 2023, with 6.2 children per 1,000 inhabitants, nearing the figures in Japan and South Korea.

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Faced with a record low birth rate, Beijing finds itself caught in its own narrative. As suggested by [the state-controlled media outlet] Global Times article: “China regards the people’s right to subsistence and development as its top priority.” However, the Chinese people are long past the level of ‘subsistence’ this refers to, and the people are now seeking security amid a crumbling system. And while it is too early to talk about a ‘parallel’ society that exists outside the system in China, the society’s refusal to comply with state policies that are essential to the party’s survival is already an indication of a larger crack in the system.

Source: Agence France-Presse.

A delegation led by Spain's king and prime minister was heckled as it visited the Valencia region hit by deadly floods, with some screaming "assassins" and others throwing mud, according to AFP journalists at the scene.

Other sources:

• CBC.

Note: The main source here is Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.