«Ми уточнили дуже багато визначень. Доповнили перелік посадових осіб, які не були враховані в першій редакції. Уточнили наслідки внесення особи до реєстру олігархів»
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«Ми не хочемо, щоб журналістика вимерла в Афганістані, як це було між 1996 та 2001 роками»
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«В рамках проведення стратегічного командно-штабного навчання «Об’єднані зусилля-2021»
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Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s “Smart Voting” app has disappeared from the Telegram messenger following similar moves by Apple and Google on Friday at the start of a three-day parliamentary vote in Russia.
The app, which advised Navalny supporters on which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians, was removed after Telegram announced it would “limit the functioning of apps associated with election campaigns.”
Telegram’s Russia-born founder Pavel Durov said he was following Apple and Google, which “dictate the rules of the game to developers like us.”
In a post on his Telegram channel, he said the tech giants had “already this year” urged the encrypted messenger widely popular in Russia to remove information that violates the laws of individual countries or face exclusion from their app stores.
He said that removing election-related apps was related to Russia’s ban on campaigning during voting.
“We consider this practice legitimate and urge Telegram users to respect it,” Durov wrote late Friday.
But he added that “the blocking of applications by Apple and Google creates a dangerous precedent that will affect freedom of speech in Russia and around the world.”
The election for seats in the lower house State Duma, which runs until Sunday, comes after a sweeping crackdown this year on President Vladimir Putin’s opponents.
Navalny, who was detained in January and has seen his allies arrested or flee the country and his organizations banned, has nonetheless aimed to dent the Kremlin’s grip on parliament from behind bars.
His allies on Friday accused Apple and Google of “censorship”, while sources told AFP that the companies had faced public threats from the Russian government and private threats of serious criminal charges and incarceration of local staff.
After Telegram removed the “Smart Voting” app, a Twitter account associated with Navalny posted links to Google Docs with recommended candidates, saying they were their last “remaining” tools.
On Saturday, Navalny’s team said that Google had demanded they delete the documents following a request from Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor and would do so itself if they did not comply.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.
your ad hereBritain’s food industry called on the government to subsidize carbon dioxide (CO2) production during a spike in gas prices or risk the collapse of the country’s meat industries.
A surge in gas prices has forced two British fertilizer plants to shut down, stripping food producers of the CO2 by-product that is used to stun animals before slaughter and vacuum pack food to prolong its shelf life.
The shortage of CO2, which is also used to put the fizz into beer, cider and soft drinks, comes at a terrible time for the food industry, which is already facing an acute shortage of truck drivers and the impact of Brexit and COVID-19.
Nick Allen of the British Meat Processors Association said on Saturday that the pig sector was two weeks away from hitting the buffers, while the British Poultry Council said its members were on a “knife-edge” as suppliers could only guarantee deliveries up to 24-hours in advance.
Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng was due to meet the heads of the UK’s largest energy suppliers and operators on Saturday to discuss the situation. He said he did not expect supply emergencies this year due to a diverse range of sources.
However, the food industry said more support was needed.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” Allen told Reuters, adding that given the exceptional circumstances, the government needed to either subsidize the power supply to maintain fertilizer production, or source CO2 from elsewhere.
British Poultry Council head Richard Griffiths said he was working with the government to assess stock levels and implement contingency plans, but warned that food supply disruption could become a national security issue.
Were slaughterhouses to run out of CO2, pigs and chickens would be left on farms, creating additional animal welfare, food supply and food waste issues, he said, adding: “We hope this can be avoided through swift government action.”
A spokesperson said the government was in close contact with the food and farming industries to help them manage.
your ad hereУ листі від Google, знімок екрана якого команда Навального виклала в своєму телеграм-каналі, йдеться про те, що посилання на ці документи були внесені до реєстру заборонених матеріалів «Роскомнагляду»
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Як повідомив владика Климент, стан здоров’я Єсипенка задовільний
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Загалом від початку пандемії, за офіційними даними, в Росії захворіли 7 254 754 людей, а померли 197 425 пацієнтів
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Стратегію «Розумного голосування» запропонував російський опозиціонер Олексій Навальний. Її мета – організовано голосувати проти правлячої в Росії партії
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За даними штабу ООС, стан поранених військових задовільний
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This week’s nuclear submarine deal between the United States and Australia threatens to become divisive in Australia, where some critics already are saying it risks Australian security rather than enhances it in the face of China’s militarization of the South China Sea.
Under the deal, the U.S. will help Australia build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines during the next 20 years to replace its current fleet of six diesel-powered subs.
This is the first time since 1958 that the United States has shared its nuclear submarine technology, having only ever previously shared it with the United Kingdom. The deal is the highlight of a surprise trilateral security partnership, called AUKUS, announced among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States by the three countries’ leaders Thursday.
Dubbed a “forever partnership” by Australia’s conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the pact comes amid high tensions between Australia and China, and on the heels of Washington’s exit from what has been dubbed its “forever war” in Afghanistan.
The irony has been impossible to ignore for critics of Canberra’s increasingly hawkish posture toward China.
One of those critics is former Labor Party prime minister Paul Keating, a strident critic of confrontation with China who has long advocated Australian engagement with Asia ahead of its traditional Anglo-Saxon Western allies and who scorns Canberra’s reliance on the United States for support.
“Australia has had great difficulty in running a bunch of locally built conventional submarines. Imagine the difficulty in moving to sophisticated nuclear submarines, their maintenance and operational complexity. And all this at a time when U.S. reliability and resolution around its strategic commitments and military engagements are under question,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald after the deal was announced.
Some security analysts advocate less, not more, reliance on U.S. military support, and caution against interpreting the U.S. pivot away from its Afghan campaign as part of a long-awaited pivot toward the Indo-Pacific, first promised by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011.
“What Australia, and other U.S. friends and allies in Asia, need to consider is whether it is possible that the U.S. will make a similar judgment about their presence in this region over the long term as well,” Sam Roggeveen, who heads the international security program at the Lowy Institute, told VOA in an interview.
“This deal signals that Australia is gambling that, over the decades-long lifespan of these submarines, the United States will remain committed to its defense and to maintaining a regional presence in the face of the largest economic and strategic challenge in American history,” Roggeveen wrote separately in the think tank’s Interpreter magazine Friday.
Calling the deal “momentous,” he warned that its scale “will create expectations from Washington.”
“Australia cannot have this capability while assuming that it does not come with heightened expectations that Australia will take America’s side in any dispute with China,” he wrote.
China has imposed several trade sanctions on Australia in recent years, furious at Canberra’s moves to curb foreign direct investment, its rejection of telecommunications giant Huawei, its charges of domestic political interference by Chinese agents, and its support for an inquiry into COVID-19’s origins in Wuhan.
Strategy experts caution that increased defense dependency on the United States could cost Australia more than the price of eight long-distance stealth submarines.
“It cuts both ways,” East Asia expert Richard McGregor, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.
“As a U.S. ally, if the U.S. is confronting China, we’re on one side of that. The South China Sea is where that’s going to be played out. We’ll be caught out, and we’ll always be on the wrong side, according to China,” McGregor, also a senior associate the Lowy Institute, told VOA.
“If under [U.S. President Joe] Biden, as is pretty clear, America now values alliances, that means they also expect us to do more. So if the U.S. is focused on China, they might want more troops here. They might want to put missiles on our soil. More might be demanded of us. That comes at the cost of relations with China.”
“We’ve crossed the Rubicon now. The U.S.-China deep confrontation is a permanent condition of regional global politics. That’s not going to be unwound for many years,” he added.
On the other side of the ledger, the nuclear sub deal may temper anxieties in Australia over weaknesses in the ANZUS treaty, a 1951 security pact among the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The wording of Article IV — “Each Party … declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes” — is considered weak in terms of a security commitment as it does not guarantee military support in response to an attack.
Former leader Tony Abbott, prime minister from 2013 to 2015, extolled the decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines as sending a necessary signal “that we are a serious country and a force to be reckoned with.”
“Given that China is well into what’s probably the biggest military build-up in history, time is not on our side,” he wrote in The Australian newspaper.
The deal, he wrote, “will give Australia vastly more strength to resist aggression and vastly more sovereign capacity to stare down even a superpower if needs be.”
Michael Shoebridge, director of defense, strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has said he believes the deal makes Australia safer.
The nuclear-powered submarines will give Australia “a powerful deterrent and strike weapon, adding offensive military power that any potential adversary must factor in to any decision to engage in conflict,” he told VOA.
“The primary advantage [of the deal] is as an increase in ally and partner capability to deter [President] Xi[ Jinping]’s China from using force against others in the region, and continuing on the path he is taking China of the growing use of intimidation and coercion to dictate the choices that other nations make,” Shoebridge said.
“Being able to raise the costs to [Xi] of conflict is a way of preserving peace in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has always sought to be an active contributor to regional security, working closely with partners and allies who share interests, and the AUKUS alliance empowers us to do so more effectively. It will accelerate other partnerships and groupings like the Quad and the Aus-Japan-U.S. trilateral and reassure other regional nations that do not want to have their choices dictated by Beijing.”
The nuclear submarines won’t be ready until the end of next decade, with some projections putting their delivery as late as 2040. China already has six of its own nuclear-powered subs, according to a U.S. Defense Department report last year.
In the meantime, under the trilateral pact Australia will also acquire a suite of long-range missiles including U.S. Tomahawk missiles, and unmanned underwater vehicles.
“It is impossible to read this as anything other than a response to China’s rise, and a significant escalation of American commitment to that challenge,” Roggeveen said.
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Kids across the U.S. are posting TikTok videos of themselves vandalizing school bathrooms and stealing soap dispensers and even turf from football fields, bedeviling school administrators seeking to contain the viral internet trend.
The “devious licks” challenge that swept social media this week is plaguing principals and school district administrators who already must navigate a bitter debate over requiring masks to keep COVID-19 in check. Some schools have had to more closely monitor or even shut down bathrooms, where much of the damage is occurring.
No section of the nation appears to have been untouched. In northeastern Kansas, Lawrence High School had to close several bathrooms after students pried soap dispensers off the walls. Then, students tried to steal the “closed” signs, so staff is guarding the bathrooms, even the closed ones, said 17-year-old student Cuyler Dunn, relaying Friday what he called “total destruction.”
“Some of them were to the point where they were borderline unusable,” said Dunn, who is also the co-editor-in-chief of Lawrence High’s student newspaper. “Locks on stalls had been taken off.”
Ice Bucket Challenge
While social media did spawn the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise money for research into the condition known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it also led to a rash of poisonings several years ago when teenagers swallowed pods of laundry detergent for the “Tide Pods challenge.” The latest trend follows close upon a viral challenge to walk on stacks of milk crates.
Some school officials are reluctant to say much about “devious licks,” which is slang for theft. In Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools spokesperson Kathleen Miller emailed that officials were aware of several incidents of property damage and that “disciplinary action has and will be taken.”
Outside of that statement, Miller noted that the school district was saying little to avoid “encouraging copy-cat behavior.”
A spokesperson said TikTok was removing “devious licks” content and redirecting hashtags and search results to its guidelines to discourage the behavior and that it doesn’t allow content that “promotes or enables criminal activities.”
While some school officials say they don’t know what caused the “devious licks” challenge to go viral, others chalk it up to a desire for peers’ attention or adolescents’ lack of impulse control. Some incidents have involved smashing things, like bathroom mirrors and sinks.
Tradition of senior pranks
Dunn said that his Kansas high school has a tradition of senior pranks that led someone to set chickens loose inside last year. But he said some students are starting to worry about the repercussions of “devious licks,” not only for kids who get caught but also for big events as the school tries to prevent thefts. His newspaper wrote about “devious licks” this week.
He said a detour sign taken from another school after a football game is in Lawrence High’s parking lot and that students even stole a small section of artificial turf off the school’s football field.
“The general vibe around the student body is that this is just another one of those funny things that high schoolers do,” he said. “But it has started to reach a point where it is starting to get in the way of things.”
Damage displayed on social media
Northeast of Sacramento, California, the Rocklin school district has seen students destroy soap dispensers, damage faucets, plug toilets with whole rolls of toilet paper and tear mirrors and railings off walls, then share videos and photos on social media.
Spokesperson Sundeep Dosanjh said that the damage can close bathrooms for extended periods, an issue potentially made worse by “national supply chain disruptions” that have arisen amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Police in the central Florida city of Bartow, located about 50 miles east of Tampa, said they arrested a 15-year-old student who vandalized a new building’s bathroom by tearing off soap dispensers and leaving one in a sink.
“He said he did it because of this TikTok challenge and he wanted to be cool,” police Chief Bryan Dorman said.
In the Cherry Creek school district serving an affluent Denver neighborhood and nearby trendy suburbs, the district sent parents of middle and high school students a letter warning that kids who are caught face being suspended, could be forced to make restitution and might have their cases forwarded to police.
Warnings sent to parents
Districts in Miami and Scottsdale, Arizona, sent similar warnings to parents.
Cherry Creek spokesperson Abbe Smith said its schools had seen “a handful” of incidents of damage to or theft of soap dispensers, toilet paper dispensers and fire extinguishers.
In southern Alabama, Robertsdale High School’s principal said a student there is facing criminal charges after he was caught on surveillance cameras swiping a fire extinguisher. He also was suspended from school.
Punishments aren’t effective
In Wichita, Kansas, the district has found that punishments like suspensions aren’t effective in stopping such behavior, and community service is the more likely response, said Terri Moses, its director of safety services. The district’s middle schools have lost soap dispensers, paper towels and toilet paper.
And, she said, the district warns students that what they post now could hurt their chances of getting jobs in their early 20s.
“What they’re putting out on social media is giong to be with them for a long time,” Moses said. “We’re trying very hard to relay that.”
your ad hereFrance has recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia after Australia ended a deal to buy French submarines in favor of one to pursue nuclear-powered vessels using U.S. technology.
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a written statement Friday that the move “is justified by the exceptional seriousness” of the matter.
He said the decision by President Emmanuel Macron followed “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners.”
This is the first time France has recalled its ambassador to the United States, according to the French Foreign Ministry. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1778.
A White House official said that the U.S. regretted the French decision and would be engaged in the coming days to resolve its differences with France.
At the State Department, spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement, “France is a vital partner and our oldest ally, and we place the highest value on our relationship.”
U.S. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday the deal between the United States, Australia and Britain to provide U.S. nuclear submarine technology to Australia.
Macron has not commented on the issue.
France had been planning to sell conventional submarines to Australia in a multibillion-dollar deal.
The country has also been pushing for several years to create a European strategy to boost economic and defense ties in the Indo-Pacific region.
In an interview Thursday with France Info radio, Le Drian described the deal between the United States and Australia as a “stab in the back.”
“We built a relationship of trust with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,” he said, adding that Biden had acted like his predecessor, Donald Trump.
“This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do,” he said.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
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Внаслідок удару загинули 10 членів однієї родини, більшість із них діти
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Крім того, під санкції потрапили «сім співробітників ФСБ Росії, які мали безпосередній стосунок до отруєння Олексія Навального», заявив Данілов
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Jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting app disappeared from Apple and Google stores Friday as Russians began voting in a three-day parliamentary election marked by a historic crackdown on the opposition.
“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” top Navalny ally Ivan Zhdanov said on Twitter.
The app promoted an initiative that outlines for Navalny supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians.
Russia had accused Google and Apple of election interference, demanding this week that they remove the app from their stores.
Exiled Navalny ally Leonid Volkov said the companies had “caved in to the Kremlin’s blackmail.”
“We have the whole of the Russian state against us and even big tech companies,” Navalny’s team said on Telegram.
In a message from prison, Navalny had urged supporters to download the app, which aims to help Russians to vote out candidates from President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party in the upcoming polls.
On the eve of the vote his team urged Russian voters to back Communist Party candidates.
Navalny – who was detained in January – has this year seen his organizations declared “extremist” and banned, while all his top aides have fled.
Russia’s media regulator has since barred dozens of websites linked to Navalny including his main website navalny.com.
your ad hereRussia’s President Vladimir Putin provoked chuckles earlier this month from school kids in the Russian city of Vladivostok when a 10-year-old asked him to subscribe to his YouTube channel. “Sign up please. I’d be very glad,” the kid said.
Russia’s 68-year-old leader seemed baffled.
“What do I have to sign?” Putin asked. “Sign what? I didn’t understand — what should I sign?” the president queried. The exchange was seen by many Russian commentators as an iconic moment in a widening division between Putin and his country’s youngsters.
The Vladivostok school kids are not of voting age, but as Russians started to go to the polls Friday to vote in parliamentary elections, the turnout and voting patterns of the country’s internet-savvy 18-to-24-year-olds will be scrutinized by the Kremlin as well as Putin’s foes.
Over the past year opinion polling has suggested that young Russians are increasingly unhappy with their president. Around half of young Russians expressed dissatisfaction with Putin in a poll by the independent Russian polling organization Levada Center earlier this year. Only 20% said they supported him, a sharp drop from 36% previously. Nearly half said the country was moving in the wrong direction under his leadership, with just 44% saying the direction of travel was okay.
“Young people are becoming more politically active,” analyst Natia Seskuria said in a recent commentary for London-based think tank Chatham House. “After 21 years of Putin’s rule, regime fatigue is settling in — particularly in the younger generations who have known no other leader.”
“Growing dissatisfaction made many join demonstrations that led to more than 10,000 arrests and dozens of criminal cases against the protesters,” Seskuria said, referring to protests mounted in the wake of the imprisonment of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny earlier this year on charges he says are trumped up. “Young Russians have used social media to mobilize support for rallies and to criticize Putin. Navalny, too, has used the power of social media to connect with younger voters.”
How many of Russia’s young people vote for Putin’s ruling United Russia Party will give some idea of the challenge the Kremlin may face in the coming months. It also will indicate whether Russia’s leader will face a mounting backlash from a young generation that is frustrated with economic stagnation, the lack of job prospects and a propaganda-heavy media machine that does not connect with it in the way Navalny has managed to with You-Tube videos and social media posts.
Polling data suggests that just 26% of Russians are ready to vote for Putin’s United Russia Party, which is seeking to maintain its Duma majority of 334 seats. That is its lowest opinion poll rating since 2008.
But few doubt United Russia will retain its Duma majority. Kremlin critics say this election — voting takes place over three days — is the least free since Putin came to power 21 years ago. Genuinely independent candidates are barred from running, cash-handouts have been offered to voters, and there is evidence of voter intimidation, all taking place amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.
Critics also expect plenty of ballot-rigging in the election for the 450-seat State Duma. Long lines formed at some polling stations Friday, according to local reports. Navalny supporters suggested state workers were being mobilized to vote by the Kremlin and local authorities.
“Every time [under Putin], elections have looked a little less like elections. Now this process is complete,” exiled Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky told Echo of Moscow radio station this week. “The next time our people will vote for real will be after they earn that right on the barricades,” he added.
But little is being left to chance by the Kremlin, say Navalny supporters.
And they accused U.S. tech giants Google and Apple Friday of bowing to Kremlin pressure by deleting a youth-oriented Smart Voting app that offers a step-by-step guide on how to vote tactically against pro-Putin candidates.
“This is an act of political censorship, and it can’t be justified,” said Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press spokesperson.
“They caved into the Kremlin’s blackmail,” added Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s former campaign manager.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegation of political censorship, telling reporters in Moscow the app was removed in observation of the “letter and spirit” of Russian law.
From prison, via a message on Instagram, Navalny urged voters to undermine the Kremlin by voting for the best placed candidate not affiliated with United Russia, which means in many places voting for candidates offered by the Communist Party. In the message Navalny said: “Are you not interested in trying?”
The removal of Navalny’s tactical voting app by Apple and Google from their app stores also drew criticism from international rights organizations.
“Russian government officials are putting tech companies in a tightening vise, threatening criminal actions against individual employees inside the country to pressure their employers into yielding to calls for censorship,” said Matt Bailey, director of the digital freedom program of PEN America.
“The decision on the part of Apple and Google to remove an app from the iOS and Android App Stores being used to organize protest against the government is the result of blackmail, pure and simple,” he added in a statement.
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