As a justification for his order to resume US nuclear tests, Donald Trump had claimed on Sunday that China, Russia, and Pakistan, among others, have been conducting secret nuclear tests.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/peoplesdispa…

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.

The Apache Software Foundation disputes claims that its OpenOffice project suffered an Akira ransomware attack, after the threat actors claimed to have stolen 23 GB of corporate documents.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/apache-openoffice-disputes-data-breach-claims-by-ransomware-gang/

The Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) is investigating a cyberattack on IT systems supplier Miljödata that exposed data belonging to 1.5 million people.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/data-breach-at-major-swedish-software-supplier-impacts-15-million/

Japanese publishing giant Nikkei announced earlier today that its Slack messaging platform had been compromised, exposing the personal information of over 17,000 employees and business partners.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/media-giant-nikkei-reports-data-breach-impacting-17-000-people/

3.27.0 Hotfix 9

• Fixed a bug where Delirium encounters could have a large delay before finishing and giving rewards.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix 9 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

The contours of a potential deal to reopen the government began to emerge on Tuesday as the shutdown was poised to become the longest in history, with senators discussing an agreement that would fund the government alongside long-term appropriations bills in exchange for a vote on extending health insurance tax credits that Democrats have demanded.

A bipartisan group of senators has been engaged in conversations in recent days as lawmakers search for an off-ramp in the shutdown fight. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday morning that he's hopeful the bipartisan group is close to a solution, while acknowledging the "cross-pressures that everybody's feeling" are "great."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-potential-deal-senate-talks/

::: spoiler Tap for article

Lakshmi Mittal’s energy venture bought Russian oil transported on blacklisted ships

Indian refinery received at least four crude shipments this year worth almost $280mn on sanctions-listed vessels

The Samadha engaged in ship-to-ship transfers with four US-sanctioned vessels © Planet Labs, European Space Agency

Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s energy joint venture in India has bought Russian oil transported on sanctions-listed vessels, according to an analysis of satellite imagery, shipping data and customs records by the Financial Times.

The Guru Gobind Singh Refinery in Punjab, a major oil refinery co-owned by the long-term UK resident’s Mittal Energy, received at least four crude shipments worth almost $280mn this year which had been transported most of the way from Russia on sanctions-listed ships.

The oil was transported on the US-blacklisted vessels between July and September from the Arctic port of Murmansk to as far as the Gulf of Oman. The final leg of the journey into India was undertaken on the Samadha, a tanker that is not on US sanctions lists, though it was blacklisted by the EU.

All of the ships involved in the process sought to conceal their behaviour with a combination of deceptive practices, either shutting off their transponders or using them to broadcast false positions.

It is not known who arranged for the oil to be transported on the sanctioned tankers, nor if HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) — the entity that owns the refinery — was aware of the use of the vessels.

Emily Kilcrease, a director at the Centre for a New American Security and a former US trade and security official, said: “If I were advising the buyer, I would want to make sure that you had enough visibility in the full transport chain to make sure that you’re not one hop or two hops from a sanctioned activity.”

Best known as the executive chair of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest integrated steel and mining group, Mittal has built a globe-spanning business empire. The billionaire, who has sat on the board of Goldman Sachs since 2008, told associates earlier this year that he intends to leave the UK over changes to its taxation rules.

The revelations about the shipments come as the US is seeking to raise the pressure on Indian companies not to buy Russian oil. Washington last week imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Moscow’s two leading oil producers, in an effort to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in negotiations with Ukraine.

HMEL is a joint venture between part of the Mittal group and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, an Indian state company, with each holding a 49 per cent stake. The remaining 2 per cent is in the hands of financial institutions, according to the company.

HMEL and Mittal did not respond to requests for comment.

The Guru Gobind Singh Refinery owned by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) © HMEL

Before last week’s US sanctions, western allies of Ukraine had already imposed a price cap aimed at limiting the profits Russia was able to reap from the trade. Oil tankers that did not comply or used various deceptive shipping practices have also been sanctioned by the EU, UK and US.

India has become one of the biggest importers of Russian crude after Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, profiting from discounted prices as western buyers turned away.

Russia has exported an average of 5mn barrels a day of seaborne crude this year, with 1.7mn b/d of the total being purchased by India, according to data analytics group Kpler. The next largest share headed to China.

Kilcrease said: “The major consumers of this oil really want [it]. They’ve been willing to take a certain amount of risk of coming into the US Treasury’s sights.”

The four deliveries identified by the FT all followed a similar pattern, with the Samadha repeatedly heading in and out of the port of Mundra in Gujarat, western India, to pick up the oil brought to the area on the sanctioned ships.

According to its transponder signals, the Samadha was simply travelling back and forth from Oman, where it would moor and load. After a pause, it would then broadcast that it was sailing back to India.

The vessel, however, was often not where it claimed to be. Satellite images analysed by the FT throughout this period and compared with transponder data show that, once the Samadha left port, it often sent a falsified position that disguised its true location.

While it claimed to be on these shuttle runs to Oman, the Samadha was actually meeting the other ships further offshore. Each of the four journeys included a meeting with another ship caught on satellite images. \
\
Each image shows a large, grey vessel, consistent with the Samadha, at anchor in the Gulf of Oman, lined up side-by-side with another tanker. This position suggests a ship-to-ship transfer of goods.

The vessels appear to be the Belgorod, Danshui, Dignity and Primorye — all of which had been added earlier to sanctions lists by the US. The images of the vessels match other images of these ships obtained by the FT.

TankerTrackers, a maritime intelligence company, confirmed the identity of the ships during their monitoring of the Gulf of Oman — an area that they usually surveil for ship-to-ship transfers involving Iranian oil.

In each case, the sanctions-listed ships sailing from Murmansk went “dark” as they approached the Gulf of Oman, switching off their transponders for between three and six days, the exact window during which each photographed transfer took place. They turned them back on again shortly after.

The dates of the Samadha’s journeys also match customs records filings, seen by the FT, made by refinery owner HMEL to Indian authorities for purchases from Varda LLC, a St Petersburg oil supplier. Three of the forms explicitly name the Samadha as the carrier.

The filings also report that the four shipments had a total value of $277mn.

The records also indicate that all of the shipments were for two grades of Arctic oil — Novy Port and Arco. In January, the US targeted Russia’s Arctic oil business with sanctions, announcing curbs on tankers and other infrastructure affecting Arco and other grades.

Guru Gobind Singh refinery, located in the Bathinda area of Punjab, is the 10th largest in India, able to process 11.3mn tonnes a year. At Mundra, the crude shipments were deposited into a 1,000km-long pipeline to the inland refinery.

The FT was unable to contact the Samadha’s registered owner and manager, Erika Freight Limited, a company about which almost nothing is known beyond its relationship with the vessel.

The Samadha has since been placed under sanctions by the UK. Its owner shares a registered address in the Seychelles with 13 other so-called shadow fleet vessels — ships against whom it is difficult to enforce sanctions because their ownership is opaque.

The FT was not able to reach Varda LLC in St Petersburg, which does not have any online presence and does not list any contact details in Russian corporate records.

Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
:::

At least two FBI agents involved in past investigations into Donald Trump were told Monday that they had been fired, only to learn later in the day that those terminations had been reversed or put on hold, according to six people familiar with the decisions.

Then on Tuesday morning, the two agents learned they had indeed been fired, along with two other employees, according to three of the people familiar with the decisions.

The chaotic process highlights the turmoil and uncertainty across federal law enforcement amid overhauls at the Justice Department and FBI that have targeted those who helped secure indictments against Trump or are viewed by the president as aligned with his political enemies.

James Comey wants case dropped, Trump's prosecutor disqualified

Former FBI Director James Comey on Monday filed motions seeking the dismissal of criminal charges against him, arguing Lindsey Halligan wasn't properly appointed and that the case was politically motivated.

^{Ryan J. Reilly (NBC News)}

Hi 😀

I'm planning on setting up my home server, and I'm feeling a bit lost.

I currently have a Jellyfin, SSH and Backrest server running on my PC, but want to get some dedicated hardware for it, and increase the services hosted to VPN, Immich, maybe Nextcloud, etc.

The problem is that I have no idea for what kind of hardware to aim for. I don't know whether I should aim for Rasperri, or MiniPC, or a dedicated rag, or any other thing. My country doesn't have a big second-hand market for server stuff, but I that's also a possibility.

Some context on my needs:

• I run 1440p videos on Jellifyn, so my guess is I need H.265 support. Other than that, I think any CPU will do, and don't need a very fast one. Same goes for RAM, maybe 8 GB is enough
• I feel like I do need at least 2 hard drives (1 for my files, another for backups)
• The ability of upgrade with better hardware would be appreciated, maybe another hard drive or some extra ram.
• Preferably, a rather low-energy consumption drive. Maybe 10 W idle? No idea on this front neither.
• Budget is around $200 USD, excluding hard drives. I can pay extra for drives, or get them later on as I start playing around and scale up.
  
  • What Linux distro should I use? For security, I want to run everything with Dockers, so I guess it doesn't matter? I'm mildly fluent in Linux, experience with Arch and Debian based.

  
  

Thanks in advance 😀

Hi All,
my fork of Tempo has had a rebrand, which was a requirement to get back into the app stores as the original Tempo still exists in F-Droid/IzzyOnDroid

Tempus v4.0.7

Attention

This release will not update previous installs as it is considered a new app, no longer Tempo, new icon, new app id, and new app name. Hoping it will not be a huge inconvenience but was necessary in order to publish to app stores izzyDroid

Android Auto
Support should be the same as before, however, I was not able to test any of the icons/visuals, so please let me know if there are any remnants of the tempo logo/icon as I believe I removed them all and replaced them successfully.

What's Changed

fix: Crash on share no expiration date or field returned from api
fix: Check also underlying transport 
feat: Unhide genre from album details view 
fix: persist album sorting on resume 
chore: Tempus rebrand 
chore: Update Polish translation 

note:

app-tempo* <- The github release with all the android auto/chromecast features

app-degoogled* <- The izzyOnDroid release that goes without any of the google stuff.

As usual, any dev contributions appreciated as I am not actually a java/mobile dev, so my progress is significantly slower than those who do this on the daily.

In particular, any android dev is familiar android auto to help me set up a dev environment

Biggest analysis of its kind finds millions are dying each year because of failure to tackle climate crisis

Rising global heat is now killing one person a minute around the world, a major report on the health impact of the climate crisis has revealed.

It says the world’s addiction to fossil fuels also causes toxic air pollution, wildfires and the spread of diseases such as dengue fever, and millions each year are dying owing to the failure to tackle global heating.

The report, the most comprehensive to date, says the damage to health will get worse with leaders such as Donald Trump ripping up climate policies and oil companies continuing to exploit new reserves.

Governments gave out $2.5bn a day in direct subsidies to fossil fuels companies in 2023, the researchers found, while people lost about the same amount because of high temperatures preventing them from working on farms and building sites.

Rising heat kills one person a minute worldwide, major report reveals

Biggest analysis of its kind finds millions are dying each year from combined effects of failure to tackle climate crisis

^{Damian Carrington (The Guardian)}