North Korea called its campaign a ‘countermeasure’ against propaganda leaflets floated into the country by South Korean activists.

North Korea says it will stop sending trash-filled balloons across the border into South Korea, claiming its campaign has been an effective countermeasure against propaganda sent by anti-regime activists in the neighbouring country.

Since Tuesday, North Korea floated hundreds of balloons carrying bags of rubbish containing everything from cigarette butts to bits of cardboard and plastic, Seoul’s military said on Sunday, threatening to retaliate if the provocations do not stop.

Hours later, North Korea said it would halt the campaign.

“We made the ROK [Republic of Korea] clans get enough experience of how much unpleasant they feel and how much effort is needed to remove the scattered wastepaper,” said Kim Kang Il, a North Korean vice defence minister, in a statement carried by state media.

However, he warned that if South Korean activists float anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets via balloons again, North Korea will resume flying its own balloons to dump trash hundreds of times the amount of the South Korean leaflets found in the North.

“There’s always a ‘no’ first: No tanks. No missiles. No fighter jets,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to multiple times that Western allies have either refused to provide certain types of weapons to Ukraine or have strictly regulated their use. Denys withheld his last name and the location of his military unit in accordance with wartime regulations.

“And each ‘no’ costs lives. Not just ours. We’re big boys, we’ve seen life a bit, but those of children, the little children burned alive or blown to pieces …” the 27-year-old said, close to yelling, as he stood between a blossoming linden tree and an ice-cream kiosk in central Kyiv. “And then there’s a ‘maybe, maybe,’ and it goes on for months, and then there’s a ‘yes,’ but it’s always too late.”

Eventually, Western nations did agree to supply tanks, missiles and fighter jets – but after agonisingly long deliberations that cost lives, he said.

The latest “yes” from the United States and nearly a dozen Western nations that follows Russia’s recent advance and the relentless bombing of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, grants their permission to use the advanced weaponry they have supplied – or will supply soon – to strike inside Russia.

Washington and its allies have been afraid of antagonising Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly suggested that the use of nuclear weapons is on the table in the event that Ukraine or the West cross yet another “red line” such as the shelling of Crimea and Putin’s pet project, a bridge that links it to mainland Russia.

But Ukraine has already crossed many military and political Rubicons, including the expulsion of Russian troops from occupied areas and drone strikes on airfields, military bases, ports and oil depots deep in Russia. These acts have left Moscow fuming, but not enough to use nuclear weapons.

The latest Western “yes”, which came on Thursday and followed months of pleas from Kyiv, is more of a “yes, but”.

The White House said that Kyiv can start using US-supplied weapons for “limited strikes” within Russia – but only in areas adjacent to the northeastern Kharkiv region that sits along the Russian border.

Nearly all the ballots have been counted in South Africa, but the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has received only 40.21 percent votes in Wednesday’s election, well short of a majority.

For the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, the once-dominant party will need to make a deal with other parties to form a coalition government.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party, received the second-highest number of votes (21.78 percent) followed by the MK party (14.59 percent) and EFF (9.51 percent).

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will announce the official results on Monday night at 6pm local time (16:00GMT).

Ahead of the May 29 elections, a record 27.7 million South Africans registered to vote. However, only 16.2 million votes were cast on election day, resulting in a voter turnout of 58.61 percent – the lowest ever in South Africa’s 30-year democratic history.

In fact, voter turnout has been on a gradual decline in recent years. In 1999, nearly 90 percent of the registered voters cast their ballots, while the 2019 election had a 66 percent turnout.

that's a lot of birds to be culling

A new poll in Hungary shows that 46 percent of Hungarians believe that the European Union should not support Ukraine at any level, which was attacked by the Russians more than two years ago.

According to the poll conducted by Závecz Research on behalf of 24.hu, 32 percent of those polled are more permissive and would support EU assistance through financial, economic and humanitarian means, while only 16 percent of the population would also send arms and other military equipment to Ukraine.

The poll reveals that Orbán’s stance of supporting humanitarian aid for Ukraine while rejecting sending weapons is generally in line with what the population is willing to support, while there are still many Hungarians who want to take the step of cutting off support entirely.

The three-part proposal would begin with a six-week ceasefire in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza. There would also be a "surge" of humanitarian aid, as well as an exchange of some hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

The deal would eventually lead to a permanent "cessation of hostilities" and a major reconstruction plan for Gaza.

Hamas said it views the proposal "positively".

Speaking at the White House on Friday, Mr Biden said that the first phase of the proposed plan would include a "full and complete ceasefire", the withdrawal of IDF forces from populated areas and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

"This is truly a decisive moment," he said. "Hamas says it wants a ceasefire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it."

The ceasefire, he added, would allow more humanitarian aid to reach the beleaguered territory, with "600 trucks carrying aid into Gaza every single day". The second phase would see all remaining living hostages returned, including male soldiers. The ceasefire would then become "the cessation of hostilities, permanently."

Among those who have urged Hamas to agree to the proposal was UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who said on X that the group "must accept this deal so we can see a stop in the fighting".

This is the part that gets me:

Lying on New York state business records is a crime, though usually charged as a misdemeanor.

Also, the statute of limitations had also expired on those charges.

But Bragg made those charges a felony, and got around the statute of limitations, by saying they were conducted with the “intent” to commit another crime, in this case, a conspiracy to help get election in 2016.

Stylish young workers sip their coffee in the leafy courtyard, quietly toiling on their latest projects, while groups of young people chat quietly so as not to disturb the studious ambience.

This scene could easily take place in a trendy co-working cafe in New York. The menu and, most definitely, the prices reflect those of western capitals. An avocado halloumi toast costs $8, a matcha bowl is $8 while an iced latte coffee is $4.

But this is not Brooklyn; this is Mar Mikhael, a popular street in Beirut, Lebanon's capital.

“It's like American prices,” a foreigner sighs while reading the menu, slowly coming to the realisation that Lebanon, a country embroiled in a steep economic crisis, where 44 per cent of the population lives in poverty is not a cheap country.

Lebanon – a lower-middle income country according to the World Bank, which reclassified the small Mediterranean nation down from upper middle-income status in July 2022 – has been seized by a dollar frenzy, as the country initiated a de facto dollarisation of its economy over a year ago.

Now, most shops, restaurants and service providers are asking customers to pay in US currency due to the depreciation of the Lebanese pound – and the bill is hefty.

This is not confined to high-end areas of the capital, such as Mar Mikhael. In the working-class neighbourhood of Ain El Remmaneh, Rosine Abou Nassif, 72, said prices were now even higher than they were before the economic crisis that shook the country in 2019.

“We cannot keep up,” she said.

At a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey on Saturday, former President Donald Trump made many questionable comments.

He called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “Fat Alvin.” He claimed migrant children “don’t speak English.” And he said that, if he’s re-elected, he will deport pro-Palestinian, antiwar protesters.

“When I’m president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals, and if you come here from a violent country and try to bring jihadism, or anti-Americanism, or antisemitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you. You’ll be out of that school,” Trump said, to the crowd’s cheers. (You can watch the full comments for yourself at the 1:30:41 mark.)

This is not the first time Trump has made similar promises: Back in the fall, he said he “will implement strong ideological screening for all immigrants,” and that those who “sympathize with jihadists” and “want to abolish Israel…[are] not coming into our country.” He added: “We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza.”

The comments come amid Republican-led efforts to brand all anti-war protesters as supporters of terrorism and a continued push to criminalize protest.

Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) re-upped an effort he first made last fall to deport protesters who have “endorsed or espoused the terrorist activities of Hamas” or other anti-Israel terrorist organizations. Rubio wrote a letter to the secretaries of the State and Homeland Security departments to initiate “expedited deportation proceedings” for participants in “antisemitism and pro-Hamas protests.” Earlier this month, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Tx.) introduced what her office calls the “Hamas Supporters Have No Home Here Act,” which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow for the deportation of people “charged with any crime related to their participation in pro-terrorism or antisemitism rallies or demonstrations.”

These efforts seem to ignore the reality on the ground: As my colleagues and I have reported, many protesters and organizers have said they condemn antisemitism and have insisted that gatherings on campuses—including some in which administrators have called the cops—have been peaceful.

Some of those on the right condemning all anti-war protesters have gone beyond calling for enforcement. Last month, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said people “who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic” should “take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.” (He later claimed he wasn’t endorsing violence.) And earlier this month, Cotton introduced a bill called the “No Bailouts for Campus Criminals Act” that would make anyone convicted of a crime in connection with a campus protest ineligible for student loan relief.

This past Sunday night, an Israeli assault struck displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents outside of Rafah, in northern Gaza. The barrage killed at least 45 people in a hellish blaze, according to medics and witnesses, with many of the dead children charred or dismembered beyond recognition. “We pulled out children who were in pieces,” Mohammed Abuassa, who rushed to the scene, told the Associated Press. “The fire in the camp was unreal,” he said. The strike provoked another round of international outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza. (Israel says it’s investigating.)

Not long after, on Tuesday, the former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was all over social media for a picture taken of her during a visit to Israel. In the picture, Haley – the one Republican who had been frequently lauded for her smarts on foreign policy – is seen squatting down in front of a row of Israeli artillery shells, likely provided by the United States, with pen in hand. “Finish them,” she wrote on one of the shells.

The evidence indicates that Nikki Haley can write, but one must wonder if she can read. For months, report after report by international human rights organizations and jurists have documented one Israeli war crime after another. South Africa has petitioned the UN’s top court, the international court of justice, three times to compel Israel to stop its current campaign in Gaza on the grounds that Israel is committing the crime of all crimes, genocide. Each time, the court has generally (and overwhelmingly) ruled in South Africa’s favor, the latest ruling being a call that Israel cease its current campaign in Rafah.

Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court is also seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, along with the Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, for crimes against humanity.

Rather than pursue the path of justice to bring about a sustained peace, a position that would befit a former US ambassador to the United Nations (which she is), Haley chooses to venerate the Israeli war machine by literally writing a sociopathic message on the weapons that have repeatedly been used to kill an estimated 15,000 Palestinian children over more than seven months.

The Gaza pier operation was suspended Tuesday after three months of logistical wheel-spinning, wasting $320M+ of taxpayer money, injuring three servicemembers, and delivering less than a thousand tons of aid in total, after the pier was destroyed by mundane weather in the area.⬇️

This operation was so poorly conceived that there's really only three options here:

1. This scheme was the result of incompetence at an institutional level. Flocks of uniformed senior leaders signed off on a scheme to use a complicated floating pier system that isn't rated for use above Sea State 2 on an unprotected shoreline known for heavy surf. No individual or group within the military had the competence, authority, and courage to pull the brakes on an operation that rushed to failure.
2. This operation was comprehensively sabotaged at a high level, presumably via compromised senior leaders within the military directing the use of a Rube Goldberg-esque operational scheme that they knew would be time-consuming to implement yet collapse immediately once "in contact."
3. The operation was intended to fail. Very senior leaders, presumably at the level of the Biden Administration, directed the Pentagon to conduct a "kabuki" aid operation - and the generals and admirals saluted and executed.

All options are bone-chilling and merit a thorough investigation. I call for one to be launched immediately.

Shortly after moving in, they noticed water damage in their kitchen and dining room. Soon, the family started falling ill with respiratory illnesses and other ailments. Dudek was afflicted with respiratory problems that their doctor said were “very likely” related to mold exposure, as well as severe skin issues and increased anxiety. After their daughter was born that spring, the newborn was frequently sick and had trouble breathing at night. She too began having severe skin problems. “The only times where she wasn’t sick was when we went on vacation,” Dudek says.

Dudek suspected that the root cause of all these health problems was mold from the water damage; official Army guidance indicates water damage should be addressed within 48 hours to minimize the risk of mold. Soon, he began what he describes as a year of fighting with Fort Bliss Family Homes, a development of the international real estate conglomerate Balfour Beatty, which oversees a vast swath of military housing across the country.

First, an employee at Fort Bliss Family Homes denied there was any mold problem at all and told him that black mold doesn’t grow in El Paso, recalls Dudek. At one point, after Dudek made multiple requests for the company to remediate the water damage in their home, the family was temporarily displaced while the company tried to address the issue. When they moved back in, the company said their water damage had been addressed. But Dudek says they were skeptical.

While the family was displaced, Dudek says the housing company capitulated on their request to test the home’s dining room wall for mold; a contractor hired by the company reported that none had been found. (Dudek claims the company refused to test other parts of the house.) This seemed at odds with the findings of a separate company Dudek later hired to perform its own testing of a kitchen cabinet that was re-installed after the company had supposedly remediated the water damage. That company found multiple types of mold that have been linked to respiratory illnesses, skin infections, and cancer, according to medical experts.

“Fighting with Fort Bliss Homes cost me my military career,” says Dudek, who left the Army in 2023 after serving 12 years and now is in the Texas National Guard while training to get certified as an EMT. He said his experience soured his opinion not only of military housing, but also of the military itself, after facing a “toxic and unsupportive” response from his unit during the year he spent battling the housing company. “I was basically forced out of my job, because all of my time was dedicated to dealing with this problem,” he says. He is preparing to sue over his housing issues.

The housing issues that Dudek says derailed his military career were not news to the Defense Department. The same month the Dudek family moved into their home at the end of 2021, Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to defrauding the US military of millions by falsifying maintenance records on military housing. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco described Balfour’s scheme as the result of a “broken corporate culture,” and the company was ordered to pay over $65 million in fines.

But Balfour continues to hold lucrative military housing contracts across the nation. It is one of 14 private companies that own and operate 99 percent of military family housing in the US, controlling 78 developments. It also isn’t the only company that has faced accusations of work order fraud: Hunt Companies, Inc., the largest of the military housing providers, agreed to a $500,000 settlement with no admission of guilt in a similar federal fraud case in 2022.

Roughly 700,000 service members and their families live in privatized military housing, where they could be subject to dangerous living conditions created by substandard landlords.

BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. law claiming to have been coined for "safeguarding" justice and rights for the Uygur people has actually done great injustice to and infringed on the basic rights of ethnic minorities in China's Xinjiang, as it is forcing upon Chinese and foreign businesses a de-facto "hiring discrimination" against those groups.

Causing major economic repercussions, the so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" is sabotaging the smooth development of the northwestern Chinese autonomous region at the cost of innocent local people, many of whom have just shaken off absolute poverty after nearly a decade of painstaking efforts.

By unjustly targeting a specific region and certain ethnic groups, the U.S. law and its following enforcement actions have virtually stigmatized Uygur and other ethnic minority workers in the job market within and even outside Xinjiang, making it increasingly hard for them to find a job or work as a normal member of society.

Since the act absurdly demands all businesses with any possible links to Xinjiang either provide credible evidence that their goods are not made with forced labor or face a thorough imports ban, many business owners are caught in a dilemma -- either bearing excessive costs and still facing high risks of being punished, or sacrificing their employees and living with a guilty conscience.

Wild tweet.

Bro was definitely satisfied with this and couldn't help himself.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld said on Tuesday that he misses the era of "dominant masculinity" that encompassed his youth.

During an appearance on The Free Press podcast "Honestly with Bari Weiss," Seinfeld said growing up he always wanted to be a "real man," but simply never "made it."

"I really thought when I was in that era, again, it was [John F. Kennedy], it was Muhammad Ali, it was Sean Connery, Howard Cosell, you can go all the way down there. That's a real man," he said.

The "Seinfeld" creator said he always wanted to be like those prominent figures. Still, Seinfeld claimed he never really grew up because, as a comedian, you don't want to because it is a "childish pursuit."

The Legal and Administrative Matters Law was passed in 1970 after Israel annexed East Jerusalem. The same law does not, however, permit the far larger number of Palestinians whose families were evicted from West Jerusalem in 1948 to reclaim the properties they lost.

In fact, the Absentee Property Law, passed in 1950 and amended in 1973, prevents Palestinians from reclaiming lost properties.

Both laws are doubly unjust, critics say, because Jews who left East Jerusalem in 1948 were later given Palestinian properties in West Jerusalem as compensation, and in being allowed to “reclaim” properties in East Jerusalem are being doubly compensated.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The International Organization for Migration on Sunday increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea to more than 670 as emergency responders and traumatized relatives gave up hope that any survivors will now be found.

Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the U.N. migration agency’s mission in the South Pacific island nation, said the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday’s landslide. The previous estimate had been 60 homes.

“They are estimating that more than 670 people (are) under the soil at the moment,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press.

Local officials had initially put the death toll on Friday at 100 or more. Only five bodies and a leg of a sixth victim had been recovered by Sunday, when an excavator donated by a local builder became the first piece of mechanical earth-moving equipment to join the recovery effort.

https://veteran.com/national-moment-remembrance/

Americans observe the National Moment of Remembrance at 3 p.m. every Memorial Day (the last Monday in May). It is intended to help Americans spend a brief, but significant time remembering the sacrifices of those who died as a result of military service.

At 3 p.m. local time on the last Monday in May, Americans are asked to stop for 60 seconds or one full minute to remember those who have died in service to their country.

While participation is voluntary, the VA fact sheet suggests a variety of ways in which you can observe the moment. These include pausing for a simple moment of silence. listening to “Taps” or attending an organized group setting. If you are driving a vehicle, the VA suggests turning on your headlights in observance of the moment.

In the ongoing seven-phase parliamentary election to determine whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get a third term, India’s 970 million voters include over 48,000 transgender people.

And of the 8,039 candidates nationwide – a four-fold rise from 1,874 in the 1952 election, India’s first – three candidates are transgender; a fourth dropped out. And a fifth is hoping to sit in the state assembly of Andhra Pradesh in south India, for which voting was on May 13.

India has long had a tolerance for transgender persons, however this has nothing to do with the Western LGBTQ+ movement – indeed, Indians are merely trying to overcome the colonial-era laws that tried to stamp out its own ancient traditions on the 'third gender'.

The transgender community comprises Hijras, eunuchs, Kothis, Aravanis, Jogappas, Shiv-Shakthis, and more. Evidence for the existence of third-gender people can be found in Hindu holy texts like the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

In Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, and further back in Vedic culture, three genders were recognized. The Vedas (1500 BCE to 500 BCE) describe individuals as one of three categories according to one’s nature (‘prakrti’). These are also spelled out in the Kama Sutra (c. 4th century AD) and elsewhere as pums-prakrtistri-prakrti (female nature), and tritiya-prakrti (third-nature).

Various texts suggest that ‘third sex’ individuals were known in pre-modern India and included male-bodied or female-bodied people as well as intersexual. Third sex is also discussed in ancient Hindu law, medicine, linguistics, and astrology.