Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Only 29% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients fully recover one year on, study says | The Japan Times (Me: 71% of hospitalized Covid sufferers do not fully recover in a year afterwards! Covid harder than we thought/think)

Source: Only 29% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients fully recover one year on, study says | The Japan Times

Open-Source Intelligence: How Bellingcat Uses Data Gathered by Authoritarian Governments – Slashdot

CNN profiles Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative group specializing in “open-source intelligence”. And investigator Christo Grozev tells CNN that authoritarian governments make their work easier, because “they love to gather data, comprehensive data, on … what they consider to be their subjects, and therefore there’s a lot of centralized data.”

“And second, there’s a lot of petty corruption … within the law enforcement system, and this data market thrives on that.”Billions have been spent on creating sophisticated encrypted communications for the military in Russia. But most of that money has been stolen in corrupt kickbacks, and the result is they didn’t have that functioning system… It is shocking how incompetent they are. But it was to be expected, because it’s a reflection of 23 years of corrupt government.
Interestingly there’s apparently less corruption in China — though more whistleblowers. But Bellingcat’s first investigation involved the 2014 downing of a Boeing 777 over eastern Ukraine that killed 283 passengers. (The Dutch Safety Board later concluded it was downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine.) “At that time, a lot of public data was available on Russian soldiers, Russian spies, and so on and so forth — because they still hadn’t caught up with the times, so they kept a lot of digital traces, social media, posting selfies in front of weapons that shoot down airliners. That’s where we kind of perfected the art of reconstructing a crime based on digital breadcrumbs…”

“By 2016, it was no longer possible to find soldiers leaving status selfies on the internet because a new law had been passed in Russia, for example, banning the use of mobile phones by secret services and by soldiers. So we had to develop a new way to get data on government crime. We found our way into this gray market of data in Russia, which is comprised of many, many gigabytes of leaked databases, car registration databases, passport databases. Most of these are available for free, completely freely downloadable from torrent sites or from forums and the internet.”And for some of them, they’re more current. You actually can buy the data through a broker, so we decided that in cases when we have a strong enough hypothesis that a government has committed the crime, we should probably drop our ethical boundaries from using such data — as long as it is verifiable, as long as it is not coming from one source only but corroborated by at least two or three other sources of data. That’s how we develop it. And the first big use case for this approach was the … poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 (in the United Kingdom), when we used this combination of open source and data bought from the gray market in Russia to piece together who exactly the two poisoners were. And that worked tremendously…. 

Source: Open-Source Intelligence: How Bellingcat Uses Data Gathered by Authoritarian Governments – Slashdot

Uri #atozchallenge #Ukraine #fiction

penned in moon dust

If The Portal could have spoken to the couple trying to enter, it would have said “we are in trouble and we need Vlad.”

One man had patiently watched for years as people moved quietly through the Passage. There were several passageways; few knew all of them.

One passageway was the Passage Hotel’s passage that was intentional built through the structure. It had been storehouses, military barracks, and a beautiful shopping area with cafes during times when there weren’t soldiers stomping through Odessa.

Then there was the Portal. Uri only knew about the one side from observation. He had watched enough people come across to know that it was a time portal.

The last Passage was the reason he had been stationed at this location years ago. This Passage was where resistance leaders from earlier wars hid and met and stored weapons. Some knew it existed but no one…

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The Boy Who Refused to be Sold #Ukraine #nonfiction

penned in moon dust

It was years ago now and hugs are just a memory.

There were street children in a world called Odessa. Each day there was a mother who flipped a coin:

Her raspy words “drugs or my child? “

Too often the drug addiction won and another child was left as refuse on a moon- lit sidewalk.

With no reform programs for the mothers or safe housing for the children, the children learned to survive in the sewers and under piles of debris .

Young men and women would go between the shadows long after curfew looking for children to help.

They carried satchels filled with sandwiches, blankets or coats.

This team learned to fit in with the homeless that frequented the night. It was the only way to avoid the mafia thugs.

“Wear your athletic shoes and be prepared for anything.” One of the team told me. “Always look for…

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Nepal’s journey to electric public transport · Global Voices

One of the three buses that Sajha Yatayat imported from China Nothing could be more symbolic of Nepal’s goal of being net-zero in energy by 2045 than the sight on New Year’s day on Thursday, April 14, 2022, as three new Chinese electric buses drove past a hydroelectric plant and a solar panel array on the Bhote Kosi River.

The three buses are the first of 40 battery-powered buses ordered by the Sajha Yatayat cooperative public transport service from China. They will be running on renewable energy generated by power plants like the 45MW Upper Bhote Kosi hydroelectric project along the Arniko Highway in Phulping Katti, Central Nepal to the Chinese border.

These three buses arrived at the Tatopani customs, a major customs point along the Nepal-China border, a few days before and will be brought to Kathmandu on flatbed trucks since the highway is rough in places for the low-clearance buses. And after undergoing gradient, roadworthiness and range tests in the capital Kathmandu, the other 37 buses will arrive later this year.

Source: Nepal’s journey to electric public transport · Global Voices

Y una noche, uno descubre tanto

Santiago Galicia Rojon Serrallonga

SANTIAGO GALICIA ROJON SERRALLONGA

Derechos reservados conforme a la ley/ Copyright

Y una noche, al repasar las jornadas del día y observar las huellas que quedaron en el camino, uno se da cuenta de que es preciso compartir los frutos que lleva en la canasta con el objetivo de aliviar el hambre de otros, cultivar y multiplicar alimentos para bien de los demás y aligerar la carga. Y una noche, al dormir la gente en las aldeas, en los pueblos y en las ciudades, uno asoma a la ventana y descubre el paso de la vida y de la muerte que llegan puntuales, cada una, a sus citas, en los domicilios o fuera, para cumplir sus encomiendas. Y una noche, tras mucho andar, uno se percata de que merece vivir plenamente, con equilibrio y en armonía consigo, con la creación y con los demás, para los cual es necesario reír…

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