Archived version

Emails sent to a Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands over his petition for asylum for his family members detained last year in Thailand were apparently fake, Dutch authorities said Friday.

The announcement was the first public statement from officials in the Netherlands in the unusual case of Gao Zhi, whose family members were stranded for months at a Thai immigration center while en route to the Netherlands and allegedly accused of sending bomb threats.

Based on emails he said he received, Gao at the time alleged that the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service had revoked his family’s visas, which would have allowed them to travel to the Netherlands.

He showed purported screenshots of the emails to the media, including one that ultimately said visas for his family members were revoked as they were being investigated for bomb threats made in Thailand. It remains unclear who sent the emails.

Gao declined to forward the emails to The Associated Press at the time, saying he feared this could jeopardize his family’s asylum case. The AP could not verify the authenticity of his claims.

On Friday, Britt Enthoven, a spokesperson for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the “message indeed doesn’t seem to be from” the service.

“I cannot give you any further information about the message,” Enthoven said.

Gao, though critical of the Chinese government online, had never been an activist back home. But his story at the time raised concerns that Chinese authorities may have made the bomb threats in the name of Gao’s family to try and control his political activities abroad.

Gao’s wife and two children were traveling to the Netherlands to join him in June and July last year, and transiting through Thailand. His wife, Liu Fengling, and daughter Gao Han were detained by Thai police for overstaying their visitors visa. His son was not detained.

A spokesperson for the Royal Thai police at the time did not respond to AP queries about the case.

Gao turned to public advocacy to try and get his family out, and was helped by Wang Jingyu, another Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands who had gained prominence after being detained in Dubai for questioning the Chinese death toll figures in the 2020 border clashes with Indian soldiers in the Karakoram mountains.

Gao’s family was released last October, but only managed to travel to the Netherlands with a proper visa earlier this month, he said.

Separately, Gao has since claimed that Wang defrauded him of thousands of dollars while allegedly trying to help him during this process — claims that Wang dismissed as “nonsense” in a message to the AP.

Bob Fu, a U.S.-based activist who runs ChinaAid, a Christian rights organization, and who helped Wang when he was detained in Dubai, said that the group was forced to pay thousands of dollars of phone bills Wang allegedly made while in the Netherlands.

Archived version

Emails sent to a Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands over his petition for asylum for his family members detained last year in Thailand were apparently fake, Dutch authorities said Friday.

The announcement was the first public statement from officials in the Netherlands in the unusual case of Gao Zhi, whose family members were stranded for months at a Thai immigration center while en route to the Netherlands and allegedly accused of sending bomb threats.

Based on emails he said he received, Gao at the time alleged that the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service had revoked his family’s visas, which would have allowed them to travel to the Netherlands.

He showed purported screenshots of the emails to the media, including one that ultimately said visas for his family members were revoked as they were being investigated for bomb threats made in Thailand. It remains unclear who sent the emails.

Gao declined to forward the emails to The Associated Press at the time, saying he feared this could jeopardize his family’s asylum case. The AP could not verify the authenticity of his claims.

On Friday, Britt Enthoven, a spokesperson for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the “message indeed doesn’t seem to be from” the service.

“I cannot give you any further information about the message,” Enthoven said.

Gao, though critical of the Chinese government online, had never been an activist back home. But his story at the time raised concerns that Chinese authorities may have made the bomb threats in the name of Gao’s family to try and control his political activities abroad.

Gao’s wife and two children were traveling to the Netherlands to join him in June and July last year, and transiting through Thailand. His wife, Liu Fengling, and daughter Gao Han were detained by Thai police for overstaying their visitors visa. His son was not detained.

A spokesperson for the Royal Thai police at the time did not respond to AP queries about the case.

Gao turned to public advocacy to try and get his family out, and was helped by Wang Jingyu, another Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands who had gained prominence after being detained in Dubai for questioning the Chinese death toll figures in the 2020 border clashes with Indian soldiers in the Karakoram mountains.

Gao’s family was released last October, but only managed to travel to the Netherlands with a proper visa earlier this month, he said.

Separately, Gao has since claimed that Wang defrauded him of thousands of dollars while allegedly trying to help him during this process — claims that Wang dismissed as “nonsense” in a message to the AP.

Bob Fu, a U.S.-based activist who runs ChinaAid, a Christian rights organization, and who helped Wang when he was detained in Dubai, said that the group was forced to pay thousands of dollars of phone bills Wang allegedly made while in the Netherlands.

Archived link

Original article behind paywall

China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics abroad, but targeting a 16-year daughter of a Chinese dissident in the United States by falsely portraying her as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute, is an new escalation, one security expert says.

• U.S. Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

• "They’re exporting their repression efforts and human rights abuses — targeting, threatening and harassing those who dare question their legitimacy or authority even outside China, including right here in the U.S.,” Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the American Bar Association in Washington in April.

• Mr. Wray said China was exerting “intense, almost Mafia-style pressure” to try to silence dissidents now living legally in the United States, including activities online and off, like posting fliers near their homes.

• Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the U.S., has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction of late has been severe, with crude and ominously personal attacks online.

• A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

• The content, posted by users with fake identities, has appeared in replies to Mr. Deng’s posts on X, the social platform, as well as the accounts of public schools in their community, where the daughter, who is 16, has been falsely portrayed as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute.

• Vulgar comments targeting the girl have also shown up on community pages on Facebook and even sites like TripAdvisor; Patch, a community news platform; and Niche, a website that helps parents choose schools, according to the researchers. As soon as these posts are deleted, Chinese trolls switch to new accounts to leave attacking text and language again.

• The harassment fits a pattern of online intimidation that has raised alarms in many countries where China’s attacks have become increasingly brazen. The campaign has included thousands of posts the researchers have linked to a network of social media accounts known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, an arm of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

• China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics, but targeting a teenager in the United States is an escalation, said Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, whose researchers documented the campaign against Mr. Deng.

• Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

Archived link

Original article behind paywall

China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics abroad, but targeting a 16-year daughter of a Chinese dissident in the United States by falsely portraying her as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute, is an new escalation, one security expert says.

• U.S. Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

• "They’re exporting their repression efforts and human rights abuses — targeting, threatening and harassing those who dare question their legitimacy or authority even outside China, including right here in the U.S.,” Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the American Bar Association in Washington in April.

• Mr. Wray said China was exerting “intense, almost Mafia-style pressure” to try to silence dissidents now living legally in the United States, including activities online and off, like posting fliers near their homes.

• Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the U.S., has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction of late has been severe, with crude and ominously personal attacks online.

• A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

• The content, posted by users with fake identities, has appeared in replies to Mr. Deng’s posts on X, the social platform, as well as the accounts of public schools in their community, where the daughter, who is 16, has been falsely portrayed as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute.

• Vulgar comments targeting the girl have also shown up on community pages on Facebook and even sites like TripAdvisor; Patch, a community news platform; and Niche, a website that helps parents choose schools, according to the researchers. As soon as these posts are deleted, Chinese trolls switch to new accounts to leave attacking text and language again.

• The harassment fits a pattern of online intimidation that has raised alarms in many countries where China’s attacks have become increasingly brazen. The campaign has included thousands of posts the researchers have linked to a network of social media accounts known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, an arm of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

• China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics, but targeting a teenager in the United States is an escalation, said Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, whose researchers documented the campaign against Mr. Deng.

• Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

Archived link

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP are telling private investigators that authorities in Canada and allied countries have observed multiple examples of their profession being hired to gather personal and “pattern of life” information about opponents of foreign regimes, to locate “purported” fugitives and dissidents, to conduct surveillance on or to harass targets. [...]

“Diaspora communities with roots in authoritarian countries are particularly vulnerable,” they say. [...]

Customers approaching private investigators may lie about the reasons for hiring them, alleging the target has committed financial fraud or marital infidelity, CSIS and the RCMP warn in their alert.

“The ultimate aim of the hostile state actor may be to harass, threaten or unlawfully repatriate persons living legally in Canada,” the alert said.

Jolene Johnson, who runs Vancouver-based West Point Investigations Corp., said a CSIS officer approached her on June 17 to discuss concerns that China has been hiring private investigators to track down alleged fugitives who are often critics of Beijing. [...]

Michelle Tessier, former deputy director of operations at CSIS, said China, Iran, Russia and India are increasingly adept at using sophisticated means to hide their involvement while tracking down opponents of their regimes.

Often, Ms. Tessier said private investigators are not even aware that they are being used by a hostile state because they may be hired through law firms or third parties. [...]

The RCMP have been conducting an investigation into facilities in Canada that were used as illegal police stations by China to intimidate or harass people of Chinese origin.

The stations are believed to be among at least 100 operating around the globe in 53 countries, including Canada, Britain and the U.S., according to Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders, which monitors human-rights abuses in China.

In a report last year, the non-profit said the illegal police stations are part of efforts by China’s regime to “harass, threaten, intimidate and force targets to return to China for persecution.”

Here is the original link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgjyHwQOUoo

"Last night in Donald Trump's first debate appearance since January 6th, the debate moderators did not ask him what the January 6th committee very much wanted to ask him, what were you doing for those 187 minutes?"

"Instead ... the very first question to Donald Trump was:"

> CNN: You want to impose a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the U.S. How will you ensure that that doesn't drive prices even higher?'

> TRUMP: It's not going to drive them higher.

Archived version

This is the result of an investigation by DoubleThink Lab, a research organization in Taiwan.

Beijing assaults Taiwan with a nonstop barrage of conspiracy theories and lies to undermine people’s faith in democracy — and China’s efforts are getting more sophisticated. Taiwan must do even more to fight back, DoubleThink Lab concludes.

Undermining the ruling Democratic Progressive Party DPP’s electoral chances is only one of the objectives of the CCP’s information-manipulation efforts. There are at least three others:

1. “Selling” the CCP’s governance model to make the prospect of unification more attractive.
2. Inducing anxiety about Taiwan’s strategic situation and making resistance seem futile by flexing the asymmetry in military power with China and eroding faith that Taiwan’s allies will come to its aid.
3. Unraveling the fabric of Taiwan’s democracy by undermining people’s attachment to the status quo, driving polarization, and chipping away at trust in institutions and government.

[...] the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been making significant progress on two of its main objectives. But the news isn’t all bad.

The CCP has utterly failed to sell Taiwanese voters on its governance model. [...] the majority of people in Taiwan identify as Taiwanese, as opposed to Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese, and that they overwhelmingly prefer Taiwan’s independent status quo. Furthermore, less than 10 percent view China as trustworthy. Even the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party), Taiwan’s former authoritarian ruling party, took steps to distance itself from Beijing before the election.

Why did the CCP fail in attracting Taiwanese voters to its governance model? No doubt certain hard realities of recent years were simply too difficult to overcome: The CCP government locked covid patients in their apartments and left them to die in building fires; it committed horrific human-rights violations against China’s Uyghur minority and crushed civil society in Hong Kong; and it persistently lobs military threats and engages in diplomatic bullying against Taiwan and others, all while the Chinese economy continues to slide. This makes for a tough sell.

But that is no cause for complacency. CCP-controlled social-media platforms may offer a new avenue for appealing to Taiwanese citizens. Research has correlated TikTok use with increased pro-China views among apolitical audiences and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) supporters, who had previously been independent or swing voters. [...] Additionally, Doublethink’s research on WeChat influencers found that instructions provided to apolitical-content creators in Taiwan trying to sell products to China advise that 10 percent of their feeds should consist of pro-unification content for algorithmic optimization. We believe that the CCP is using its control of lucrative social-media algorithms to encourage influencers to slip what is essentially propaganda into otherwise apolitical content. [...] The CCP’s information-manipulation narratives strike at Taiwan’s democracy in numerous ways: Narratives about government corruption undermine faith in democracy as a system that delivers for society; narratives about election fraud cast doubt on electoral processes and democracy’s legitimacy; and emotionally manipulative content helps to polarize society. Polarization, in turn, can undermine the legislative process — encouraging lawmakers to grandstand for partisan audiences, close space for discussion and concessions, and ride roughshod over democratic processes. [...] In the aggregate, Taiwan’s voters report satisfaction with democracy and trust in electoral processes. [...] The polarization that Taiwan is now seeing has been driven in part by long-running CCP information-manipulation campaigns pushing disinformation and conspiracy theories about government corruption and antidemocratic behavior. [...] [Taiwan's] resilience has rightly been credited to a tireless and dynamic whole-of-society response. Doublethink Lab commissioned an international-elections expert to develop a model capturing the key components of this approach. The result is expressed with the acronym “POWER”: Taiwan’s response is purpose driven, with a diverse range of citizens rallying around an existential threat; organic, driven from the bottom-up and decentralized [...]

Archived version

This is the result of an investigation by DoubleThink Lab, a research organization in Taiwan.

Beijing assaults Taiwan with a nonstop barrage of conspiracy theories and lies to undermine people’s faith in democracy — and China’s efforts are getting more sophisticated. Taiwan must do even more to fight back, DoubleThink Lab concludes.

Undermining the ruling Democratic Progressive Party DPP’s electoral chances is only one of the objectives of the CCP’s information-manipulation efforts. There are at least three others:

1. “Selling” the CCP’s governance model to make the prospect of unification more attractive.
2. Inducing anxiety about Taiwan’s strategic situation and making resistance seem futile by flexing the asymmetry in military power with China and eroding faith that Taiwan’s allies will come to its aid.
3. Unraveling the fabric of Taiwan’s democracy by undermining people’s attachment to the status quo, driving polarization, and chipping away at trust in institutions and government.

[...] the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been making significant progress on two of its main objectives. But the news isn’t all bad.

The CCP has utterly failed to sell Taiwanese voters on its governance model. [...] the majority of people in Taiwan identify as Taiwanese, as opposed to Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese, and that they overwhelmingly prefer Taiwan’s independent status quo. Furthermore, less than 10 percent view China as trustworthy. Even the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party), Taiwan’s former authoritarian ruling party, took steps to distance itself from Beijing before the election.

Why did the CCP fail in attracting Taiwanese voters to its governance model? No doubt certain hard realities of recent years were simply too difficult to overcome: The CCP government locked covid patients in their apartments and left them to die in building fires; it committed horrific human-rights violations against China’s Uyghur minority and crushed civil society in Hong Kong; and it persistently lobs military threats and engages in diplomatic bullying against Taiwan and others, all while the Chinese economy continues to slide. This makes for a tough sell.

But that is no cause for complacency. CCP-controlled social-media platforms may offer a new avenue for appealing to Taiwanese citizens. Research has correlated TikTok use with increased pro-China views among apolitical audiences and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) supporters, who had previously been independent or swing voters. [...] Additionally, Doublethink’s research on WeChat influencers found that instructions provided to apolitical-content creators in Taiwan trying to sell products to China advise that 10 percent of their feeds should consist of pro-unification content for algorithmic optimization. We believe that the CCP is using its control of lucrative social-media algorithms to encourage influencers to slip what is essentially propaganda into otherwise apolitical content. [...] The CCP’s information-manipulation narratives strike at Taiwan’s democracy in numerous ways: Narratives about government corruption undermine faith in democracy as a system that delivers for society; narratives about election fraud cast doubt on electoral processes and democracy’s legitimacy; and emotionally manipulative content helps to polarize society. Polarization, in turn, can undermine the legislative process — encouraging lawmakers to grandstand for partisan audiences, close space for discussion and concessions, and ride roughshod over democratic processes. [...] In the aggregate, Taiwan’s voters report satisfaction with democracy and trust in electoral processes. [...] The polarization that Taiwan is now seeing has been driven in part by long-running CCP information-manipulation campaigns pushing disinformation and conspiracy theories about government corruption and antidemocratic behavior. [...] [Taiwan's] resilience has rightly been credited to a tireless and dynamic whole-of-society response. Doublethink Lab commissioned an international-elections expert to develop a model capturing the key components of this approach. The result is expressed with the acronym “POWER”: Taiwan’s response is purpose driven, with a diverse range of citizens rallying around an existential threat; organic, driven from the bottom-up and decentralized [...]

Archived version

The reaction of Chinese social media users to a spate of recent violent attacks has exposed widespread discontent about the nation’s downturn, as economic pressures mount.

Shanghai police reported a stabbing Wednesday morning in one of the city’s metro stations, which — like other subway lines in major Chinese cities — has security checks at its entrances. The suspect was detained after injuring three people and the case is under investigation, police said in a statement.

In a country where violence is relatively rare, the incident became a top trending item on social media platform Weibo, garnering some 164 million reads with users speculating on the attacker’s motive. Some suggested the culprit was a stocks investor, a group battered during China’s $7 trillion market meltdown earlier this year.

“The pressure of this economic environment is cascading down to everyone, who may be pushed to the brink by a slight change in circumstances,” one user wrote. “Don’t provoke or bully others; you don’t know where their limits of outbursts are. Don’t let yourself become a victim of the economic climate.”

Another user posted: “When the economy is bad, social problems grow, people are becoming more aggressive.” [...] Protests over the economy, especially the housing crash, have become more frequent and made up 80% of publicly recorded dissent last year, according to Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor. Almost a third of office workers saw their salaries fall in that period, according to recruitment platform Zhaopin. [...] The Jiangxi attack was viewed more than 390,000 times on Weibo, with one user asking for tougher penalties as “the economy slows down, life becomes more torturing, and crazy people become more frequent.”

Archived version

The reaction of Chinese social media users to a spate of recent violent attacks has exposed widespread discontent about the nation’s downturn, as economic pressures mount.

Shanghai police reported a stabbing Wednesday morning in one of the city’s metro stations, which — like other subway lines in major Chinese cities — has security checks at its entrances. The suspect was detained after injuring three people and the case is under investigation, police said in a statement.

In a country where violence is relatively rare, the incident became a top trending item on social media platform Weibo, garnering some 164 million reads with users speculating on the attacker’s motive. Some suggested the culprit was a stocks investor, a group battered during China’s $7 trillion market meltdown earlier this year.

“The pressure of this economic environment is cascading down to everyone, who may be pushed to the brink by a slight change in circumstances,” one user wrote. “Don’t provoke or bully others; you don’t know where their limits of outbursts are. Don’t let yourself become a victim of the economic climate.”

Another user posted: “When the economy is bad, social problems grow, people are becoming more aggressive.” [...] Protests over the economy, especially the housing crash, have become more frequent and made up 80% of publicly recorded dissent last year, according to Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor. Almost a third of office workers saw their salaries fall in that period, according to recruitment platform Zhaopin. [...] The Jiangxi attack was viewed more than 390,000 times on Weibo, with one user asking for tougher penalties as “the economy slows down, life becomes more torturing, and crazy people become more frequent.”

Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu's allegedly nefarious design, which "purposely" allows Temu to "gain unrestricted access to a user's phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user's camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications."

"Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place."

• Bing’s translation and search engine services in China censor more extensively than Chinese competitors’ services do, according to new research.
• Microsoft has maintained its heavy censorship of China-based services despite growing scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers.
• Chinese tech firms are motivated to censor less severely, experts say.

Bing’s censorship rules in China are so stringent that even mentioning President Xi Jinping leads to a complete block of translation results, according to new research by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab that has been shared exclusively with Rest of World.

The institute found that Microsoft censors its Bing translation results more than top Chinese services, including Baidu Translate and Tencent Machine Translation. Bing became the only major foreign translation and search engine service available in China after Google withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010.

“If you try to translate five paragraphs of text, and two sentences contain a mention of Xi, Bing’s competitors in China would delete those two sentences and translate the rest. In our testing, Bing always censors the entire output. You get a blank. It is more extreme,” Jeffrey Knockel, senior research associate at Citizen Lab, told Rest of World.

• Bing’s translation and search engine services in China censor more extensively than Chinese competitors’ services do, according to new research.
• Microsoft has maintained its heavy censorship of China-based services despite growing scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers.
• Chinese tech firms are motivated to censor less severely, experts say.

Bing’s censorship rules in China are so stringent that even mentioning President Xi Jinping leads to a complete block of translation results, according to new research by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab that has been shared exclusively with Rest of World.

The institute found that Microsoft censors its Bing translation results more than top Chinese services, including Baidu Translate and Tencent Machine Translation. Bing became the only major foreign translation and search engine service available in China after Google withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010.

“If you try to translate five paragraphs of text, and two sentences contain a mention of Xi, Bing’s competitors in China would delete those two sentences and translate the rest. In our testing, Bing always censors the entire output. You get a blank. It is more extreme,” Jeffrey Knockel, senior research associate at Citizen Lab, told Rest of World.

Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu's allegedly nefarious design, which "purposely" allows Temu to "gain unrestricted access to a user's phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user's camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications."

"Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place."

The United States is out of step with the rest of the world in disenfranchising large numbers of citizens based on criminal convictions, the Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report released today. In this US election year, and going forward, US states should reform their laws to ensure nobody is denied the right to vote due to a criminal conviction.

The 55-page report, “Out of Step: US Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective,” examines the laws of 136 countries around the world with populations of 1.5 million and above and finds that the majority—73 of the 136—never, or rarely, deny a person’s right to vote because of a criminal conviction. In the other 63 countries, the United States sits at the restrictive end of the spectrum, disenfranchising a broader swath of people overall.

“Wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government, which is why the right to vote is protected in international human rights law and why the US should reform its outlier status on voting rights,” said Alison Leal Parker, deputy US director at Human Rights Watch. “The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination.”

Felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States date back to the end of the Civil War. After formerly enslaved Black men gained the right to vote through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, state lawmakers began expanding the list of crimes defined as felonies to target Black people. At the same time, states began revoking voting rights for any felony conviction. Although the federal government officially barred some of these policies, known as “Jim Crow laws,” in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, felony disenfranchisement laws remain in 48 US states.

Here is the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 (archived)

Spanish paleoanthropologists from the University of Alcala discovered that Neanderthals exhibited social behaviors such as compassion for seriously ill children. The research was published in the scientific journal magazine Science Advances (SciAdv).

The conclusions of scientists are based on the analysis of fossilized remains of a small group of representatives of this species, related to humans, who lived between 273 thousand and 146 thousand years ago in the Cova Negra cave in the province of Valencia, on the territory of modern Spain. Years ago.

Researchers discovered the skeleton of a young Neanderthal man who was about six years old when he died. Although researchers were not sure what the child’s gender was, she was named Tina.

As the analysis showed, Tina suffered from a severe inner ear pathology from birth, which caused complete deafness, attacks of severe dizziness and the inability to maintain balance. It was clear that he could not survive in the prehistoric world without the constant care of his adult relatives.

Scientists noted that Tina’s survival to the age of six indicates that her team provided the necessary care for the child and her mother throughout this period.

According to anthropologists, this discovery proves that Neanderthals felt compassion and did not act solely for pragmatic reasons.

“For decades, Neanderthals have been known to care for and protect their vulnerable companions. However, all known cases of grooming involved adults, leading some scientists to believe that such behavior is not true altruism but merely an exchange of mutual aid between equals,” said lead study author Mercedes Conde-Valverde.

Scientists also noted that Tina’s discovery represents the earliest known case of Down syndrome, as their pathology only occurs in people with the condition.

Previous researchers discovered The link between Neanderthal genes and autism.

> Many male insects only get to mate once, even when they aren’t eaten by their partners. For example, male bees ejaculate with such explosive force that it is loud enough for humans to hear. This ensures the sperm is passed to the female, but it results in paralysis of the male, which kills him.

• Hong Kong officials have singled out at least two schools for singing the Chinese national anthem "too softly". Teachers at a third school have been asked to help students "cultivate habit and confidence" in singing it.
• Hong Kong has redoubled the emphasis on "patriotic" education since 2020 when China cracked down on the city's pro-democracy movement. Many former opposition lawmakers and democracy campaigners have been jailed since 2020 under a controversial national security law that criminalised all forms of dissent.
• In January, China implemented a law which requires schools, including those in Hong Kong, to include "patriotic education" in their curriculum and companies to do the same in their operations. The definition is vague but the curriculum is meant to promote the leadership and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
• The city has also set up a government committee to help "the new generation to really appreciate our Chinese culture, our Chinese history," Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee said.
• In November last year, the 'education bureau' introduced a new subject which would require students as young as eight to start learning about the Beijing-enacted security law. It also covers "Chinese culture" and history that aligns with the Chinese Communist Party's vision.
• Last month, the bureau also called on parents to work with schools to "help [their children] learn the importance of safeguarding national security and enhance their national identity and national pride".

• Hong Kong officials have singled out at least two schools for singing the Chinese national anthem "too softly". Teachers at a third school have been asked to help students "cultivate habit and confidence" in singing it.
• Hong Kong has redoubled the emphasis on "patriotic" education since 2020 when China cracked down on the city's pro-democracy movement. Many former opposition lawmakers and democracy campaigners have been jailed since 2020 under a controversial national security law that criminalised all forms of dissent.
• In January, China implemented a law which requires schools, including those in Hong Kong, to include "patriotic education" in their curriculum and companies to do the same in their operations. The definition is vague but the curriculum is meant to promote the leadership and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
• The city has also set up a government committee to help "the new generation to really appreciate our Chinese culture, our Chinese history," Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee said.
• In November last year, the 'education bureau' introduced a new subject which would require students as young as eight to start learning about the Beijing-enacted security law. It also covers "Chinese culture" and history that aligns with the Chinese Communist Party's vision.
• Last month, the bureau also called on parents to work with schools to "help [their children] learn the importance of safeguarding national security and enhance their national identity and national pride".

After the Federal Reserve disclosed JPMorgan Chase's stress test results 2024, the bank said in a statement that the Fed's projections for a particular asset - the 'Other Comprehensive Income (“OCI”) - was overestimated.

"Based on the Firm’s own assessment, the benefit in OCI appears to be too large", the bank says. The meaning of this is that its losses under the exam should actually be higher than the regulator's findings.

According to the Fed's projection (new table opens as pdf), JPMorgan was assigned $13 billion in OCI, more than any of the 31 lenders in this year’s test. It also estimated that the bank would face roughly $107 billion in loan, investment and trading losses in that scenario.

Without specifying a number, the bank said that should its analysis be correct, "the resulting stress losses would be modestly higher than those disclosed by the Federal Reserve".

Some media reports say the new findings may delay JPMorgan' stock repurchase plans, although the banks did not publicly comment on that.

The move is not as unusual as it may seem. In 2023, Citigroup and Bank of America made similar moves and claimed their projected income would differ from the Fed's results. There have also been critics claiming that some aspects of the annual stress test exams were too opaque.