boredtortoise

China sat out the Swiss meeting -- "The international community should create conditions for the resumption of direct dialogue and negotiations between the two sides and provide assistance," Xi told Orban, according to Chinese state media.

Finland's results in the European election bucked a continent-wide trend of rising support for parties on the outer fringe of right-wing politics, with the Left Alliance and the National Coalition winning big at the expense of the nationalist Finns Party.

Leftist leader Li Andersson received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in a European election.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240518061606/https://kaks.fi/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tutkimusosio-18052024.pdf

Finland dataset

Edit: final update for the viz, comments started with this

Gemini summary:

Germany has become the ninth country in the world to legalize cannabis. The new law allows individuals to grow up to three cannabis plants for personal consumption and to possess up to 25 grams of the drug. Cannabis clubs will also be allowed to grow and sell cannabis to their members. The law is expected to come into effect in April 2024.

ChatGPT summary:

Russia reportedly planned disruptive campaigns to hinder Finland and Sweden's NATO membership, as revealed in a leaked intelligence report obtained by Yle MOT. The document outlined a strategy involving organizing demonstrations under the guise of disruption to heighten tensions, particularly exploiting incidents like the Quran burning in Sweden. The objective was to sow discord and create a rift between Turkey and Europe, slowing down the NATO accession processes of both Nordic countries.

The Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Supo, confirmed awareness of these plans in Finland but refrained from providing further details due to operational considerations. While there's no evidence that Russia successfully implemented its disruptive strategies in Finland, Sweden continues to await approval for NATO membership, with the Russian intelligence service allegedly focusing more on campaigns against Sweden to exploit existing tensions.

The leaked documents, prepared by a Russian intelligence officer, were obtained by The Dossier Center, an organization dedicated to tracking criminal activities associated with the Kremlin. The identity of the report's author is known to the MOT investigation team but remains undisclosed for security reasons.

Currently running with uBlock Origin with a lot of filter lists and Consent-o-matic, and the hidden setting to auto decline cookie dialogs but still getting popups, sticky videos and such.

Used to go with I still don't care about cookies but heard it can default to accepting more cookies than needed

Brazil’s Lula backtracks on Putin arrest safety at Rio G20

Putin missed the G20 summit in India, avoiding any risk of criminal detention under an ICC warrant for alleged war crimes.

Published On 11 Sep 202311 Sep 2023

Brazil’s leader has withdrawn his personal assurance that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be arrested if he attends next year’s Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, saying it would be up to the judiciary to decide.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also questioned Brazil’s membership in the United Nations war crimes court, saying on Monday “emerging countries often sign things that are detrimental to them”.

“I want to know why we are members but not the United States, not Russia, not India, not China,” Lula said. “I’m not saying I’m going to leave the court. I just want to know why Brazil is a signatory.”

Putin missed this year’s G20 gathering in the Indian capital, New Delhi, avoiding possible political opprobrium and any risk of criminal detention under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.

In March, the ICC announced an arrest warrant for Putin over the war crime accusation of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children. The Kremlin denies the accusations insisting the warrant against Putin is “void”.

Russia issued an arrest warrant for Karim Khan, the prosecutor at The Hague-based war crimes court, in May and he was added to the “wanted list” of its Ministry of Internal Affairs.

‘The judiciary decides’

Brazil is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which led to the founding of the ICC. Lula raised eyebrows at the weekend when he told Indian news network Firstpost: “If I’m the president of Brazil and if he [Putin] comes to Brazil, there’s no way that he will be arrested.”

He changed tack on Monday at a press conference in Brazil telling reporters: “I don’t know if Brazil’s justice will detain him. It’s the judiciary that decides, it’s not the government.”

Putin has skipped recent international gatherings and sent his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to New Delhi instead for the September 9-10 G20 meeting, even though India is not an ICC signatory.

On Saturday, the G20 nations adopted a declaration that avoided condemning Moscow for the war in Ukraine but called on all states to refrain from using force to grab territory.

The next summit is slated for November 2024 in Rio de Janeiro and Lula said he hoped “by then the war is over”.

The comments on the Scripta blog — written under the username "riikka" — include multiple uses of the Finnish equivalent of the n-word as well as other racial slurs, anti-immigrant rhetoric and apparent threats of violence. The texts use racist expressions such as "mocha dicks" and "Turkish monkeys".

On 25 August 2008, "riikka" wrote: "Greetings from Barcelona. There is no "alarming immigration problem" to be seen here. N-word sell pirated Vuittons on Las Ramblas, scarves are hidden and each stays with their own."

On 25 September 2008, "riikka" wrote about a confrontation on a train with young people from an immigrant background, saying "If they gave me a gun, there'd be bodies on a commuter train, you see."