https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/26/musk-bannon-thiel-epstein-documents-00582627

The Mail Online claimed that Lipa had parted ways with David Levy for signing a letter urging festival organiser Emily Eavis to drop the rap group over their pro-Palestinian views.

Both Lipa and her talent agency WME have called the story "categorically false", saying that Levy stopped working with the star in 2019.

In a statement, Lipa criticised Levy's attempt to silence Kneecap, but said the Mail's "deliberately inflammatory" story had been "crafted... to fuel online division".

Dua Lipa denies firing agent over pro-Israel views

Reports claimed the singer dropped her agent after he urged Glastonbury to ban Irish band Kneecap.

^{Mark Savage (BBC News)}

Roughly six pages from more than 8,500 documents provided by Epstein’s estate to Democratic members on the House Oversight Committee include meeting schedules appearing to show appointments with Bannon and venture capitalist Peter Thiel during Donald Trump’s first term in office.

The documents also mention Musk joining a potential trip to Epstein’s island in 2014.

Prince Andrew also is listed in the documents as a passenger on Epstein’s aircraft, with financial disclosures provided to the committee suggesting evidence of payments from Epstein to an individual listed as “Andrew.”

House Democrats release latest Jeffrey Epstein documents with Musk, Thiel, Bannon and Prince Andrew mentions

Small tranche of documents includes meeting itineraries, flight manifest and redacted financial transactions

^{Alex Woodward (The Independent)}

But Rosenzweig — considered to be among the rising prosecutors in the office — wasn’t fired because he had been associated with the criminal investigations of Trump by the Justice Department’s special counsel during the prior Biden administration. That was why two other respected federal prosecutors in the Miami office were abruptly terminated this year.

Rather, Rosenzweig was fired, according to multiple sources, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were recently brought to the attention of the Justice Department.

An Arizona Republican state representative who has expressed support for January 6 insurrectionists on Wednesday called for a Democratic congresswoman to be executed, as a response to a video clip.

The comment on X by state representative John Gillette of Kingman, Arizona, first reported by the Arizona Mirror, was a reaction to a short clip drawn from a YouTube video in March by US representative Pramila Jayapal, a longtime Democratic congresswoman representing Washington state, entitled “The Resistance Lab.” In the video, Jayapal discusses preparations for street protests against the Trump administration.

“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried, convicted and hanged … it will continue,” he posted.

Nothing in either the clip or the longer video actually suggests Jayapal is advocating for the overthrow of the US government. The video carries explicit calls for non-violent protest and discussed with alarm a rise in political violence in the US.

Republican Arizona lawmaker makes post calling for execution of Democratic congresswoman

John Gillette on X called for ‘people like’ Pramila Jayapal to be ‘hanged’ in response to her video on anti-Trump protests

^{George Chidi (The Guardian)}

nitter.net/BarakRavid/status/1…

The protests against Netanyahu came as Israel is causing a famine in Gaza with its near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, which has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. Israel has launched a full invasion of Gaza, and its right-wing government has explicitly said that it plans on expelling all Palestinians who are still living in the exclave. The Israel Defense Forces’ assault has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel has become increasingly isolated on the international stage in recent weeks, as the governments of France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have all formally recognized Palestine as an independent state.

Mass Walkout Leaves UN General Assembly Chamber Mostly 'Empty' for Netanyahu Speech

"I don't recall seeing such a large walkout for quite some time at UNGA," said one observer. "Israel has chosen to be a pariah and is increasingly treated as such by the international community."

^{brad-reed (Common Dreams)}

Netanyahu's UN speech was nothing more than “misleading rhetori aimed at justifying war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people

Archived version: archive.is/newest/thecanary.co…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Netanyahu's UN speech contained at least eight blatant lies

^{Alaa Shamali (The Canary)}

Meta is introducing a subscription service in the U.K., allowing Facebook and Instagram users to pay a monthly fee for an ad-free experience.

https://www.neowin.net/news/facebook-and-instagram-ad-free-subscription-arrives-in-the-uk/

Upgraded nasty slips into Xcode builds, steals crypto, and disables macOS defenses

Microsoft spots fresh XCSSET malware strain hiding in Apple dev projects

: Upgraded nasty slips into Xcode builds, steals crypto, and disables macOS defenses

^{Carly Page (The Register)}

DJI loses its lawsuit against the US government.

Case file: s3.documentcloud.org/documents…

Pentagon can call DJI a Chinese Military Company, court rules

A district court “cannot conclude” that DJI is “indirectly owned by the Chinese Communist Party,” but found the DoD can call it a Chinese military company.

^{Sean Hollister (The Verge)}

But records obtained by ProPublica show how one locality found a way to get FEMA aid more quickly: It asked one of Noem’s political donors for help.

The records show that Noem quickly expedited more than $11 million of federal money to rebuild a historic pier in Naples, Florida, after she was contacted by a major financial supporter last month. The pier is a tourist attraction in the wealthy Gulf Coast enclave and was badly damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022.

Frustrated city officials had been laboring for months, without success, to get disaster assistance. But just two weeks after the donor stepped in, they were celebrating their sudden change of fortune. “We are now at warp speed with FEMA,” one city official wrote in an email. A FEMA representative wrote: “Per leadership instruction, pushing project immediately.”

Kristi Noem Fast-Tracked FEMA Funds for Naples After Donor Intervened

The DHS chief has been widely criticized for slowing down FEMA’s response after natural disasters. Texts and emails obtained by ProPublica point to an effective way to get help faster: have one of Noem’s big donors make the ask.

^ProPublica

Critics are warning the change would make life more difficult for LGBT people.

Archived version: archive.is/20250926154817/bbc.…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Slovakia passes law to recognise only two sexes and restrict adoption

^{Rob Cameron (BBC News)}

The rule requiring private fleets to buy increasing percentages of zero-emission trucks never officially took effect.

Sorry about the sourcing. No other coverage yet

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/25/california-trump-electric-truck-rule-00581778

Three years after a federally funded move, Indigenous residents of Louisiana’s Isle de Jean Charles report broken homes — and promises

As millions face climate relocation, the nation’s first attempt sparks warnings and regret

^{Terry L. Jones/Floodlight (Floodlight)}

cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/38752499

Archived

A recent global survey by UNEP FI and Global Credit Data found that only 18 per cent of banks integrate climate risk into their internal ratings-based models [IRBs], which drive regulatory capital requirements. The study cites data gaps and methodological hurdles but does not explain the deeper problem: credit risk and climate risk models are built on fundamentally different logics.

[...]

Unless supervisors adapt, the IRB models of today will remain blind to one of the most significant credit risk drivers of this century.

Credit risk models are precision tools honed on the past. Under the IRB approach, they calculate probabilities of default, losses given default, and exposure at default using deep pools of historical data.

Defaults, losses and macroeconomic patterns from years gone by are fed into these systems, with the underlying belief that yesterday’s relationships will largely hold tomorrow. This backward-looking design is reinforced by strict regulatory requirements: every risk driver must be de facto statistically significant, rigorously validated, and continuously monitored.

The result is a disciplined, data-heavy framework built to forecast the next 12 months of creditworthiness — and nothing beyond.

Climate risk models speak a different language. They are not grounded in borrower default histories but in climate science and policy pathways. Instead of asking “what happened last year, and will it repeat?”, they ask “what could happen in the decades ahead and how prepared are we if it does?” — on the premise that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

"“A factory in a flood zone may operate for years without incident, then suffer catastrophic losses from a single storm wiping it out overnight.”"

[...]

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/42981736

Archived

[...]

[China's Xi Jinping's] promise to cut emissions by 7-10% from their peak was indeed a landmark pledge, in the sense that the country responsible for a third of global CO2 pollution has never before committed to cutting it by so much as a puff. But when you parse the Paramount Leader’s video message to world leaders, any vestige of optimism begins to melt away.

Let’s leave aside the question of which “peak” Mr Xi had in mind – some estimates suggest Chinese greenhouse gas pollution may have plateaued last year, but his carefully worded statement leaves room for another peak yet.

[...]

Firstly, some logic. A commitment to a 7-10% cut “while striving to do better” is a commitment to a 7% cut. That is all.

And let’s not forget it’s a “net” cut, meaning the parallel pledge to “scale up the total forest stock volume to 24 billion cubic metres” will subtract the presumed amount of CO2 locked away in wood.

[...]

What else does Beijing promise? “Expand the installed capacity of wind and solar power to over 6 times the 2020 levels, striving to bring the total to 3,600 gigawatts.”

There’s that weasel word “striving” again. Signatories to the Paris Agreement said they would strive to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels (specifically, the climate during the latter half of the nineteenth century). That is now considered politically impossible.

But we risk getting tied up in data. The nationally determined contribution (NDC) may not have been the most significant part of Xi’s intervention, if you read between the lines: “In the course of global green transition, fairness and equity should be upheld and the right to development of developing countries fully respected.”

[...]

It might surprise many to learn that China – while asserting itself as a major geopolitical force and very close to tying with the EU as the world’s second-largest economy – claims to be a “developing country” in the context of global climate talks, allying itself with the likes of Kiribati, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

In other words, it is the wealthy West that should pay for having had their industrial revolutions earlier. Beijing’s intransigence on this point was a major bone of contention at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan last year.

Then comes the kicker: “It is important that countries strengthen international coordination in green technologies and industries to address the shortfall in green production capacity and ensure free flow of quality green products globally so that the benefits of green development can reach all corners of the world.”

China has invested a tremendous amount of political and actual capital in turning itself into the global workshop for green tech production. Trump is not only tossing tariffs around: He’s declared climate action a “con job” and is doing his best to shut down wind and solar development, both at home and abroad.

Meanwhile Brussels is actively pursuing a “buy European” policy. Beijing probably has reason to be concerned about its export market.

[...]

The Brief – China’s empty promises on the road to Belém | Euractiv

When you parse the Paramount Leader’s video message to world leaders, any vestige of optimism begins to melt away

^Euractiv

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/42946561

Archived

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra plans to push Beijing to go beyond its pledge – unveiled by President Xi Jinping on Wednesday – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7-10% from peak levels by 2035, a target far below what NGOs and analysts hoped for.

[...]

“This level of ambition [by China] is clearly disappointing, and given China’s immense footprint, it makes reaching the world’s climate goals significantly more challenging,” the climate commissioner said on Thursday morning.

“We will continue to push China (and others) to go beyond the current level of ambition, and respect our joint commitments under the Paris Agreement,” he said.

Analysts shared Hoekstra’s disappointment.

[...]

“With the EU and others still struggling to row forward, China could be hoisting its sails and leading the way,” said Kate Logan, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Instead, the “underwhelming” 7-10% target represented a missed opportunity to deliver real leadership, she said.

[...]

This assessment echoed comments by Belinda Schäpe, a China policy analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, who spoke immediately after Xi’s announcement.

The 7-10% emission cut was “far below what would be required to align with the Paris Agreement targets,” Schäpe said, arguing that the required CO2 reduction would have been around 30%, compared to 2024 levels.

[...]

EU climate chief vows to push China on 'disappointing' climate target

Hoekstra: China’s climate stance risks derailing Paris Agreement targets

^{Jacob Wulff Wold (Euractiv)}