World News

39330 readers

2280 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

112

How children of freed spies learned they were Russian on flight to Moscow (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by MicroWave to c/world

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sofia, 11, and Daniel, 8, did not speak the language and knew nothing about their new home country

The Russian government plane that landed in Moscow from Ankara on Thursday carried an assortment of spies, assassins and criminals, one half of the biggest prisoner exchange since the cold war.

But among the first to descend the stairs to the tarmac, where president Vladimir Putin was waiting to greet the returnees, were two young children, looking wide-eyed and confused.

Sofia, 11, and Daniel, 8, had been born in Argentina. They later moved with their parents, Maria Mayer and Ludwig Gisch, to Slovenia, where Mayer ran an online art gallery and Gisch started an IT company.

Mayer told friends the family had left their home country of Argentina to avoid street crime. The family spoke Spanish at home; the children went to an international school in Ljubljana, where they studied in English.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] FlyingSquid 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Could have been worse. We used to execute spies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

We still do execute spies, as long as their actions were sufficiently serious.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/794

18 U.S. Code § 794 - Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government

(a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver, or transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, or to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof, either directly or indirectly, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, note, instrument, appliance, or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury or, if there is no jury, the court, further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power (as defined in section 101(a) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) of an individual acting as an agent of the United States and consequently in the death of that individual, or directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack; war plans; communications intelligence or cryptographic information; or any other major weapons system or major element of defense strategy.

We also don't have parole for federal crimes, so when the statue says you maybe get sentenced to life, it doesn't mean "you get at most fifteen years until a parole hearing" the way it does in Germany. It means you're going to jail for the rest of your life.

They were living in Slovenia, though, and the Council of Europe requires members to not have the death penalty, so they wouldn't have been executed. The only European country that isn't in the Council of Europe and has the death penalty is Belarus. Well, and Russia withdrew, and the Kremlin did extrajudicial killings anyway when Russia was in the Council of Europe.

I also don't think that Slovenia considered this to be at the upper end of the scale. They apparently, assuming that this was them, got a year and seven months. I don't know Slovenia's criminal code, but I am confident that whatever espionage law they have permits for more-severe penalties than that.