Thao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that as he was being detained he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification but the agents told him they didn’t want to see it.

Instead, as his 4-year-old grandson watched and cried, Thao was led out in handcuffs wearing only sandals and underwear with just a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

Videos captured the scene, which included people blowing whistles and horns and neighbors screaming at the more than a dozen gun-toting agents to leave Thao’s family alone.

Thao said agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and made him get out of the car in the frigid weather so they could photograph him. He said he feared they would beat him. He was asked for his ID, which agents earlier prevented him from retrieving.

Agents eventually realized that he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said, and an hour or two later, they brought him back to his house. There they made him show his ID and then left without apologizing for detaining him or breaking his door, Thao said.

https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-immigration-us-citizen-detained-hmong-d009590a491c0c8243ef21ef24db7182

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/climate/trump-coal-plant-centralia-washington.html?unlocked_article_code=1.F1A.wmfj.u_eXxWkskYqP

It was early evening in Berlin, just a day before Christmas Eve, when Josephine Ballon got an unexpected email from US Customs and Border Protection. The status of her ability to travel to the United States had changed—she’d no longer be able to enter the country.

At first, she couldn’t find any information online as to why, though she had her suspicions. She was one of the directors of HateAid, a small German nonprofit founded to support the victims of online harassment and violence. As the organization has become a strong advocate of EU tech regulations, it has increasingly found itself attacked in campaigns from right-wing politicians and provocateurs who claim that it engages in censorship.

It was only later that she saw what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had posted on X:

Then Undersecretary of State Sarah B. Rogers posted on X the names of the people targeted by travel bans. The list included Ballon, as well as her HateAid co-director, Anna Lena von Hodenberg. Also named were three others doing similar or related work: former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who had helped author Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA); Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which documents hate speech on social media platforms; and Clare Melford of the Global Disinformation Index, which provides risk ratings warning advertisers about placing ads on websites promoting hate speech and disinformation.

This conclusion comes from a three-continent investigation—current and former employees across R&D, Business, and Marketing at headquarters in China and regional offices in the US, India, and Europe. It’s confirmed by four independent analyst firms whose market data verifies what OnePlus won’t say. And it’s informed by 15 years covering OnePlus and the smartphone industry’s business dynamics—watching Samsung and Apple rise while Nokia, BlackBerry, HTC, and LG followed this exact pattern into irrelevance.

The evidence is damning. Shipments in freefall. A premium stronghold that collapsed almost overnight. Headquarters shuttered without announcement. Partnerships ended. Western teams gutted to skeleton crews. Product cancellations—the Open 2 foldable and 15s compact flagship have both been scrapped; neither will launch as planned. And every major decision now flows from China—regional offices don’t strategize anymore, they take orders.

EXCLUSIVE: OnePlus Is Being Dismantled

An investigation into the business collapse of a smartphone pioneer OnePlus, as you know it, is over. The brand is being dismantled—wound down and put on

^{Alexander Maxham (Android Headlines)}

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We join its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

Hey Mark, quick question, would you be willing to be specific about the things you "avoided calling out"? Might it have any relevance to literally everything the US has done as its foreign policy? Would that apply to any recent genocides you might have avoided calling out? Or the meek statement on the abduction of Maduro?

Trump really has just revealed so much. Now the liberals are admitting what should have been obvious.

This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.

And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness.

We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together. Which brings me back to Havel. What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?

It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.

It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals.

When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window. It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the hegemon to restore an order it is dismantling, create institutions and agreements that function as described.

And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion. Building a strong domestic economy should always be every government’s priority. Diversification internationally is not just economic prudence; it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy. Countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5697213-judge-currie-halligan-ruling/

  ~                                                                                                                                11:38:29
❮ sudo limine-snapper-sync 
Stop creating a snapshot boot entry because the boot partition usage limit 85.0% is exceeded.
Saved: /boot/8e894020c9ab48be8cae43e3b9a5598f/limine_history/snapshots.json
Updated: /boot/limine.conf
  ~                                                                                                                                11:38:42
❮ sudo limine-snapper-info

Version           : 1.20.0
Manifest version  : 1.3.0
UUID              : 619cf237-3877-416c-a318-6b2aab55db2a
Last snapshot     : ID: 498, date: 2025-09-26 23:28:22
Snapshots         : 0 (max 8)
ESP usage         : 45.4% of 2.00 GiB (max 85.0%)
Unused files      : 0
Missed files      : 0
Corrupted files   : 0

  ~                                                                                                                                11:38:54
❮ df -h /boot
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme1n1p1  2.0G  928M  1.1G  46% /boot
  ~                                                                                                                                11:39:01
❮ sudo limine-snapper-list

 ID │ Date      │ Description 
────┼───────────┼─────────────
  ~                                                                                                                                11:41:51
❮ lsblk -f
NAME        FSTYPE FSVER LABEL   UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
# I also have a windows drive nvme0n1 and sda is a HDD for media.
zram0       swap   1     zram0   e3b51290-5582-4a70-90bd-e5ab248bf116                [SWAP]
nvme1n1                                                                              
├─nvme1n1p1 vfat   FAT32         6439-85CB                               1.1G    45% /boot
└─nvme1n1p2 btrfs                619cf237-3877-416c-a318-6b2aab55db2a    309G    66% /home
                                                                                     /root
                                                                                     /var/cache
                                                                                     /var/log
                                                                                     /srv
                                                                                     /var/tmp
                                                                                     /

https://www.newsweek.com/people-discovering-last-land-denmark-sold-us-epstein-island-11385832

Israel’s prison system has become a “network of torture camps” targeting Palestinians, according to new findings released by B’Tselem.

The report details widespread abuse, deaths in custody and what the rights group describes as a deliberate state policy of violence.

It said on Tuesday that at least 84 Palestinians, including one child, have died in Israeli detention facilities since October 2023.

B’Tselem stressed that the real figure is likely far higher, as many cases remain unverified or concealed.

...

B’Tselem says at least 84 Palestinians killed in Israeli torture camps

^{Elis Gjevori (Middle East Eye)}

The move showed a significant expansion of the Justice Department’s investigation into the state’s leaders, including Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis

Notice how they are not investigating Ross for murdering Good, or the maga thugs who arent even employed by ICE but attacked legal observers in Sacramento this weekend

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/politics/subpoena-minnesota-democrats-immigration.html?unlocked_article_code=1.F1A.H7Oz.jdoCOAlXHnxx

A limited history of Trump’s expansion of presidential powers includes:

• The unilateral capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Máduro and deadly U.S. military strikes on suspected drug-running boats off that nation’s coast, as well as a threat to acquire Greenland.
• The targeting of Democratic-led cities with federal immigration agents — most recently Minneapolis — and National Guard troops.
• The threat to cut congressionally approved funding from institutions, including universities, that do not align with the administration’s ideology.
• The prosecution of political opponents and attacks on the free press.

Those actions and others, coupled with a cooperative GOP Congress, have created an unprecedented shift away from the United States’ democratic tradition and founding principles that establish a system of checks and balances, States Newsroom was told in extensive interviews over recent months.

https://northdakotamonitor.com/2026/01/20/repub/one-year-of-donald-trump-alarms-sound-over-relentless-expansion-of-presidential-powers/

In 2020, a foster care supervisor in Montcalm County, Michigan, messaged her boss with concerns about drug testing. A father who was working to reunite with his children had tested positive for methamphetamine with the lab the state had a contract with, Averhealth, and the results contradicted tests ordered by other law enforcement agencies, she wrote.

“Judge indicated on the record that the issue of Averhealth’s testing results was a state-wide issue and that probate court judges all over the state were having similar problems.”

Months later, another official with Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services wrote to colleagues about similar worries. “We are struggling to do casework with Averhealth and don’t trust them,” supervisor Sara Winter wrote. “We are making BIG decisions, including having parents leave home or removal, and that’s scary to do when you don’t trust who you’re getting services from.”

A Child Welfare Agency Doubted the Accuracy of Drug Tests Used in Court. The Testing Company Dodged Questions.

Averhealth’s lab practices have been faulted by its own accreditor, and the company has been targeted in lawsuits and dropped by two child welfare agencies, a ProPublica investigation found.

^{cengiz.yar@propublica.org (ProPublica)}

Federal immigration agents forced open a door and detained a U.S. citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him out onto the streets in his underwear in subfreezing conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by The Associated Press.

ChongLy “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law woke him up from a nap Sunday afternoon and said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging at the door of his residence in St. Paul. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled.

“I was shaking," he said. “They didn't show any warrant; they just broke down the door."

US citizen says ICE held him at gunpoint, led him outside in underwear

A St. Paul U.S. citizen says ICE broke into his home without a warrant, held him at gunpoint, and detained him in the cold before realizing their mistake.

^{AP via Scripps News Group (News Channel 5 Nashville (WTVF))}

~~I was notified at my ani.social account of a report in !sanfrancisco@lemmy.world

As explained in the message, I cannot view reports in my ani.social account, and have to have a native alt on lemmy.world

I created an alt !zabadoh@lemmy.world promoted it as a moderator...

But lemmy.world/reports still results in an error page.

Please advise...~~

Oh never mind, wrong instance...

I want to leave my phone at home or not have it on me most of the time. Most calls I get are meaningless spam and I rarely need to answer my phone for real calls outside my home (though it does happen on ocassion). One thing I do want and am accustomed to is having music, however.

I was looking at Amazon and Aliexpress for devices that can play mp3/mp4s, some can do that and even have ebook readers which is great. I don't see any connectivity on them or microphones save for the one that is included on the earbuds or Bluetooth.

And that is one question I have: can Bluetooth compromised your privacy? I know Bluetooth hacking is real but how bad is it?

I guess if it has a microphone it is ok if I dont have any connectivity. What do you guys recommend?