World News

An Australian domestic flight was delayed for two hours after a stowaway snake was found in the plane’s cargo hold, officials said on Wednesday.

The snake was found on Tuesday as passengers were boarding Virgin Australia Flight VA337 at Melbourne Airport bound for Brisbane, according to snake catcher Mark Pelley.

The snake turned out to be a harmless 60-centimeter (2-foot) green tree snake. But Pelly said he thought it could be venomous when he approached it in the darkened hold.

The US is halting some shipments of weapons to Ukraine amid concerns that its own stockpiles have declined too much, officials said Tuesday, a setback for the country as it tries to fend off escalating attacks from Russia.

Certain munitions were previously promised to Ukraine under the Biden administration to aid its defences during the more than three-year-old war. The pause reflects a new set of priorities under President Donald Trump and came after defence department officials scrutinised US stockpiles and raised concerns.

“This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “The strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran.”

A cyber hacker broke into a database containing the personal information of millions of customers, Qantas said, in Australia's biggest breach in years and a setback for an airline rebuilding trust after a reputational crisis.

The hacker targeted a call centre and gained access to a third-party customer service platform containing six million names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers, Qantas said in a statement on Wednesday.

The airline did not specify the location of the call centre or customers whose information was compromised. It said it learnt of the breach after detecting unusual activity on the platform and acted immediately to contain it.

Well-known AI chatbots can be configured to routinely answer health queries with false information that appears authoritative, complete with fake citations from real medical journals, Australian researchers have found.

Without better internal safeguards, widely used AI tools can be easily deployed to churn out dangerous health misinformation at high volumes, they warned in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“If a technology is vulnerable to misuse, malicious actors will inevitably attempt to exploit it - whether for financial gain or to cause harm,” said senior study author Ashley Hopkins of Flinders University College of Medicine and Public Health in Adelaide.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/42971932

https://archive.is/6rJI3

China has become trendy for Russians who once worshiped everything Western. Young people are learning Mandarin, and Chinese culture and goods have become ubiquitous in Moscow.

Chinese cars have become a common sight on Moscow streets. Members of the Russian elite are hiring Chinese nannies to encourage their children to learn Mandarin early. The capital’s museums and performance centers are clamoring to put on Chinese exhibitions and shows.

In Moscow, the few public schools that offer Chinese are oversubscribed, and Mandarin is a staple not only at linguistic universities, but also at technical schools. Employment vacancies requiring Chinese have soared in recent years, according to a popular job website.

as usual... come to !altmedia@altmedia.house for more articles

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32561522

The violence last week in Kafr Malik, in the West Bank, comes amid a surge in assaults by Israeli settlers. It also set off a chain of violence in the area.

By Fatima AbdulKarim
July 1, 2025 Updated 1:56 p.m. ET

"The attackers threw another firebomb into the bedroom where Mr. Afeef’s newborn nephew was being lulled to sleep, scorching furniture and leaving blackened marks on the floor and walls, the family said. The damage was visible when Times reporters visited on Friday. [...] Soon after, Israeli forces arrived and opened fired at Palestinians instead of stopping the rioters, according to multiple witnesses.

The soldiers killed three people, according to the Palestinian health ministry. [...]Nine others were injured, some gravely..."

https://archive.ph/j6Mce

“We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine,” the duo said on Instagram. “A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza. We, like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story. And whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction.”

These allegations caused outrage in this community. Let this be a lesson in critical thinking.

Women, children and elderly people among at least 24 killed by attack that turned beach spot into scene of carnage

Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal.

A third of those at risk of premature deaths were children, researchers projected.

Low- and middle-income countries were facing a shock "comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict," said Davide Rasella, who co-authored the report.

A Russia-appointed official in Ukraine’s occupied Luhansk region said Monday that Moscow’s forces have overrun all of it — one of four regions Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in September 2022 despite not fully controlling a single one.

If confirmed, that would make Luhansk the first Ukrainian region fully occupied by Russia after more than three years of war and as recent U.S.-led international peace efforts have failed to make progress on halting the fighting.

Vladimir Putin has effectively rejected a ceasefire and hasn’t budged from his demands, which include Moscow’s control over the four illegally annexed regions.

Cheshire Police arrests three former senior staff on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer marks a year in office this week, fighting a rebellion from his own party in a vote Tuesday on welfare reform and reckoning with a sluggish economy and rock-bottom approval ratings.

On Tuesday, Starmer faces a vote in Parliament on welfare spending after watering down planned cuts to disability benefits that caused consternation from Labour lawmakers. Many balked at plans to raise the threshold for the payments by requiring a more severe physical or mental disability, a move the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimated would cut the income of 3.2 million people by 2030.

After more than 120 Labour lawmakers said they would vote against the bill — more than enough to defeat it — the government offered concessions, including a guarantee that no one currently getting benefits will be affected by the change. It pledged to consult with disability groups about the changes, and do more to help sick and disabled people find jobs.

Citizens of Hong Kong used to rally for democracy every July 1. The National Security Law has kept the streets quiet for the last five years, but the movement's fading slogans still echo in people's minds.

"For over 10 years, July 1 meant protest — walking the streets for universal suffrage and other demands, running into familiar faces, ending the day with a drink or dinner. It felt like we were trying to build a better society," says Vinze, 40, a Hongkonger who asked not to use his real name.

July 1 is the date when UK rule in Hong Kong ended and the city rejoined China in 1997, with Beijing pledging to give it broad autonomy under the "one country, two systems" policy.

For many years, liberal citizens of Hong Kong marked July 1 by marching against what they saw as government overreach. But Beijing was undeterred — in the summer of 2020, the authorities imposed the National Security Law, abruptly shrinking the space for public expression. Then, in 2024, Hong Kong cemented the shift with Article 23 which expands police power, allows for closed trials, and focuses on treason, sedition and state secrets.