"She went to step up to compete for the grade four shot-put final, and right before she went to throw, a grandfather of a student said, 'Hey, this is supposed to be a girls' event, and why are you letting boys compete.' My daughter is cisgender, born female, uses she/her pronouns. She has a pixie haircut," said mom Heidi Star.

Star says the man then carried on to demand certification to prove that her daughter was born female.

"He stopped the entire event. He also pointed at another girl who also had short hair. He then piped in and said, 'Well, if she is not a boy, then she is obviously trans.'"

Star said the man's wife then started calling her "a genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile."

This is what happens when you allow Americanism to invade your country.

She also calls his parents by their first names.

The apprehension of two men in New York on April 16, 2023, marked the first known US arrests in connection with Chinese overseas police stations …More Chinese police stations are believed to be operating across the US—though, like in other countries, not all their locations are known.

While foreign intelligence agencies conduct extensive espionage operations in other countries … the scale of China’s international programme and the scope of its responsibilities is notable. Run primarily by ethnic Chinese residents, the main concern of these stations appears to be managing the more than 10.5 million Chinese citizens living overseas, and to a lesser extent the 35 to 60 million people in the Chinese diaspora.

China’s first known use of these stations occurred in 2004 with the establishment of the Community and Police Cooperation Center in Johannesburg, following several attacks on Chinese citizens and businesses ... As in other countries, they help Chinese citizens obtain documents, assist in criminal matters, integrate into the country, as well as offer “security, fire, and ambulance teams.” The Chinese government maintains that they are not police stations but instead function as “service centers.”

Two reports, released in September and December 2022 … indicated that there are now more than 100 overseas Chinese stations active in more than 50 countries. Managed by China’s Ministry of Public Security, the stations are operated by police agencies from three Chinese provinces.

The stations have also brought increased Western attention due to their role in convincing Chinese citizens to return to China to face legal charges… Western officials had already criticised China for abusing Interpol’s Red Notice system to arrest and extradite citizens abroad for political purposes, while Operation Fox Hunt has allowed Chinese officials to bypass Interpol and deal directly with its own citizens… with China’s Ministry of Public Security itself stating that 210,000 citizens returned in 2021…Several dual Chinese/US citizens were prevented from leaving China in 2017 and 2018 in an apparent effort to convince their family members living in the US to return to China…The US does not have an extradition treaty with China, while the few European countries that do have taken steps to reduce China’s ability to enforce it in recent months…

FBI director Christopher Wray stated in September 2022 that he was “looking into the legal parameters” of the stations… More than a dozen other countries have also launched probes against the stations in recent months, and other countries have significantly scaled back their cooperation with them.

The growth in the number of Chinese tourists traveling abroad previously incentivized many governments to facilitate cooperation with Chinese police forces, for example, and Chinese police officers were formerly permitted to assist Chinese tourists visiting Italian cities. But this decision was reversed in December 2022, while Croatia is under similar pressure to restrict Chinese tourist assistance police patrols in its cities.

Operation Fox Hunt reveals that not even the U.S. has been able to protect dual citizens or those seeking asylum on its own soil. Though Chinese officials will likely have to act even more discreetly for some of their overseas operations, US officials have yet to locate where all these stations are. And even if they are found, the Chinese government has traditionally cultivated close ties with overseas Chinese communities and has additional avenues to project influence.

In 2019, Chinese police officers began patrolling several Serbian cities alongside Serbian police forces to assist Chinese tourists. Additionally, Chinese police officers have worked out of an office in Cambodia’s national police headquarters since 2019 to manage Chinese citizens suspected of being involved in crime. Chinese police and security forces have also drastically increased their cooperation with their Latin American counterparts over the last decade to “speed up the signing process of treaties concerning judicial assistance in criminal matters, and expand cooperation in such areas as fighting crimes, fugitive repatriation and asset recovery,” according to the Chinese government.

In February 2023, China also unveiled its Global Security Initiative to enhance training and cooperation with developing countries’ security forces. And because Chinese stations do act as legitimate centers aimed to help Chinese citizens abroad, countries with good relations with China and existing and growing Chinese immigrant and worker communities will likely allow further expansion for Chinese overseas stations.

The latest Shinkai work is just as good as all others.

It’s another coming-of-age adventure with a splash of romance and drama, his signature fantastic visuals, and paired with the otherworldly music of his regular companion, RADWIMPS.

His sincerity and love for modern life, composed of the juxtaposition of past and present, city and nature, youth and tradition, of ordinary folk in extraordinary situations, makes you forget all worries and nuisances of life for a couple hours. And once it was over, I at least felt a lot lighter and happier.

It’s a messy film, with some cliches. And it doesn’t replace Your Name as my personal favourite. But, in my opinion, nothing can top your first Shinkai film anyways. And if you haven’t had the pleasure of watching one on the big screen, then Suzume will be a great start to your Shinkai journey.

In short, go watch it and feel something that modern Hollywood seems too “cool” and cynical to give you. I’ll be listening to the soundtrack while crying.

I’ve heard a lot of high praise but it’s such a weird fucking show. It’s like as if Alex Jones made a TV show with all the cliche conspiracy theories.

I don’t know if I want to continue.

On Monday (10 April), lawmaker Nguyễn Anh Trí put forward a proposal to the Standing Committee of the National Assembly to create the new law.

Trí said the law would show that Vietnam values protecting vulnerable communities and “leaving no one behind in its policies”, Việt Nam News reported.

The proposed law would allow people the right to change gender identity, request a different gender identity to the one assigned at birth and the right to choose a medical intervention method for gender-reaffirming surgery.

In a feedback document the day before presenting the proposal, Trí said the government had outlined its support for the proposed legislation.

The chairman of the national assembly’s legal committee, Hoàng Thanh Tùng, said that the country’s legislative body appreciated the efforts of deputies in preparing the proposal.

Tùng added that the national assembly recognises the necessity of promulgating the law, but said that his committee required more clarity on the real-life basis for the creation and enactment of the legislation.

Some scope of the law overlaps with the 2015 Gender Affirmation Law that the government is continuing to study, with Tùng asking lawmakers to continue to look at the issue.

In 2015, Vietnam’s legislature passed the Law on Marriage and Family which removed a ban on same-sex marriage.

That same year, the country passed a proposed law enshrining rights for trans people, by allowing those who have had reaffirming surgery to register under their new gender.

However, in order for the Gender Affirmation Law to be enforced, the bill needed to be discussed by the national assembly, meaning it hasn’t come into effect, so the trans community has no protection from discrimination.

But LGBTQ+ rights are slowly being advanced and, in August, the country’s health ministry declared in an official document, that being LGBTQ+ is “entirely not an illness” and “cannot be ‘cured’, nor need[s] to be ‘cured’ and cannot be converted in any way”.

The war in Yemen looks like it’s coming to an end. U.S. media reported yesterday that a cease fire extending through 2023 had been agreed to, but those reports also included Houthi denials. But today Al Mayadeen, a generally pro-Houthi Lebanese news outlet, is reporting optimism from the Houthi side that the deal is real and the war is winding down.

What’s startling here is the apparent role of China in brokering a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi that made this possible. The Saudis seem like they are fully capitulating to the (quite reasonable) Houthi demands, which include opening the major port to allow critical supplies into the country, allowing flights, and allowing the government to have access to its currency to pay its workers and stabilize the economy. Reasonable stuff.

With the Saudis no longer backing militants in the war, those rump factions won’t have much capacity left to fight, though there will still probably be some clashes before it’s all said and done. The way the war is ending also underscores just how illegitimate the “government” of Yemen has been the last several years. In reality, it’s a group of exiles living in hotels in Riyadh, fully propped up by and under the thumb of Saudi Arabia. For a while, Saudi Arabia was referring to it in official documents as “The Legitimate Government of Yemen,” though it did no actual governing, and had no legitimacy outside its hotel.

It’s now led by the “Presidential Leadership Council,” and look at how the news was delivered to the “legitimate government of Yemen,” according to Al Mayadeen: “The sources stated that Riyadh informed the Presidential Leadership Council of its decision to end the war and conclude the Yemeni file permanently.”

The war is over. So is your government. The file is closed. Check out is at 11 am. You’ve been informed.

Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, which has been working for an end to the war in Yemen for years, told me that the Saudi move suggests the country is looking out for its own interests rather than continuing the war for the benefit of U.S. interests in the region. "The Saudi concessions — including a potential lifting of the blockade and exit from the war — demonstrate that their priority is to protect Saudi territory from attack and focus on economic development at home,” he said. “This diverges from the approach preferred by many Washington foreign policy elites who continued to hope that the Saudi war and blockade could force the Houthis to make concessions and cede more power to the US-backed Yemeni 'government.' While the Houthis are a deeply flawed movement, it is both immoral and ineffective to try to counter them by pushing tens of millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation. The Saudis are smart to cut their losses, end their complicity in this human rights nightmare, and refocus their attention to their own economic development."

Link

Joanna Jozwik [who came fifth] also appeared to controversially claim that she was proud to have finished as the ‘first European’ and the ‘second white’ in the race.”

It's just a constant litany of clearly fatal flaws interspersed with "great game though!"

"It may not be the most impressive technical achievement and it is certainly cursed with a lack of enemy variety ..."

"... Legacy's plot has more holes than a fishnet stocking and sorta just expects you to accept that its magical world makes no sense."

"If you're like me, you'll roll your eyes during moments when you're introduced to 100 years' worth of dead characters lecturing you from paintings ..."

"... a not-too-convoluted good-guys-versus-bad-guys conflict that ends up being an enjoyable tale, even if it's not particularly profound or original."

"... Legacy's dicey performance ... suffered from just about every issue that makes IGN's performance review team cry ... framerate inconsistency, weird issues [with] the lighting ... aggressive pop-in, and more ... every door in Hogwarts has a brief loading screen ..."

"... a fairly glitchy adventure in general ... You'll probably fall through the map a time or two, or see a character or object get caught in the environment, or maybe even have the person you're talking to just up and walk away ... leaving you to speak with the empty spot ..."

"... the creatures you fight soon run out of tricks up their sleeves ... the enemies Legacy throws at you wear thin pretty quick. ... there's practically no variety ..."

"... Quidditch is nowhere to be found. The lore reason ... feels like an attempt to paper over the absence of a major aspect ... that the developers must've just not had time to include."

"... you'll be painfully disappointed in Legacy's abysmal inventory space ... it never stops being a major pain in the cockatrice ..."

"It's certainly weighed down by technical issues, a lackluster main story, and some poor enemy variety"

Verdict: 9/10 (Amazing; "We expect to look back at it as one of the highlights of its time and genre" — not quite the impression I got from the review!)

For perspective, games given a 10 by IGN include God of War, The Last of Us, Breath of the Wild, and GTA V. Other 9s include Batman: Arkham Knight. 8s include The Outer Worlds.