Prevention of, preparedness for, & rapid responses to disease outbreaks are essential. Our open letter calls on WHO Member States to finish the job on negotiating the #PandemicAgreement & ensure adequate resources to stop outbreaks in their tracks. https://t.co/MCOvlnKFNo
I don't get why a council should wear this cost as surely the ferry infrastructure should be part of a state highway 1 project
$110m council loan backs Picton port rebuild for new ferries https://t.co/AaLtq7AAQb
From @TheRickWilson ‘s latest Substack. Same thing is happening here. They’re taking over at The Herald. They’re moving in on RNZ. It’s only time before TVNZ goes.
This is the Irish minister for foreign affairs pushing sanctions for Isreal while she remains silent about the huge scandal around the russian refinery that still sends 14 ships to St Petersburg per month.
NZ Government backs down on levy to fund new #LNG import terminal-but doesn’t know how to pay for it, -except by power companies charging us more- & we could have #solar incentives & cheap #power instead. #PartyVoteGreen https://t.co/eUZlEHVklj
Horrifying strike in Zaporizhzhia: russian drone slammed into a civilian bus stop in broad daylight.
At least two dead, several wounded.
Ordinary people, ordinary day — turned into carnage in seconds.
Ukrainian farmers continue working in frontline areas despite constant Russian drone and KAB strikes.
One of them is Oleksandr Korosteliov, the owner of an agricultural enterprise. Before 2014, he worked in Crimea, Zaporizhzhia region, and Kherson region. After Russia's occupation of Crimea, he was forced to leave behind everything - machinery, farms, and thousands of hectares of land. In 2022, history repeated in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Oleksandr’s son, the chief agronomist of the enterprise, was killed in 2022 after hitting a mine while carrying out drone reconnaissance as a volunteer.
Today, Oleksandr cultivates fields in Zaporizhzhia region.
📹: DW
The new working week begins as war continues on Europe's eastern front.
For Ukraine and its people, it's Day 1566 of terrorism on their land, on their homes and loss of loved ones.
Every single one of those days I've made a 🧵so all the important news is in one place.
Let's go
Europe Wins Again. Obviously.
Armenia went to the polls yesterday. And the results are exactly what you’d expect if you’d been paying attention for the past five years, rather than wallowing in Kremlin nostalgia like a damp sock.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared victory on Monday, with his Civil Contract Party leading with 52.5% of the vote.  Armenia, a landlocked country the size of Belgium that Russia has spent decades treating as a vassal state, has looked at its options and made a decision that required roughly the same level of intellectual effort as choosing between a Michelin-starred restaurant and a skip fire.
They chose Europe.
This election was less a routine vote than a referendum on Pashinyan’s post-2020 course reducing dependence on Russia and moving toward an explicit European orientation. And Russia, naturally, did everything in its power to stop it. According to Reuters, citing Western intelligence officials, the election faced heavy Russian covert interference, including disinformation campaigns and a plan to transport Russian Armenians into Armenia to sway the vote. One analyst collective described it as one of the largest state-backed disinformation campaigns in modern European history. And Armenia still told them to get lost.
Putin had already warned Armenia it would face economic consequences for drifting westward, and introduced restrictions on Armenian agricultural exports in the weeks before the vote.  Threats, propaganda, economic blackmail. The full Russian toolkit. Result: irrelevant.
Now, Trump, Tucker Carlson and JD Vance would like you to believe that Russia represents some superior civilisational model. A proud, white, Christian fortress holding the line against the Muslim hordes supposedly swamping Europe. It is a compelling narrative, in the same way that flat earth theory is compelling if you ignore every single fact available to you.
Here is one such fact: between 10 and 15 percent of Russia’s own population is Muslim. Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis. Millions of them. Russia is, by its own demographic reality, a multi-ethnic, multi-faith state with a larger Muslim population than most of Western Europe. But you’re not supposed to know that. It complicates the story.
Meanwhile, the Muslim share of the EU population sits at around 5 percent. But the Tucker Carlsons of the world need you frightened, so the numbers get quietly shuffled off stage.
So Armenia joins the queue. Behind Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, and every Eastern European country that isn’t currently run by a Slovak who seems to have wandered in from a Moscow focus group. The pattern is not subtle. Every country that has actually experienced Russian influence in practice is sprinting in the opposite direction. The only nation currently moving toward Russia’s orbit is the United States, which managed to elect a man whose foreign policy instincts were apparently shaped by a property developer’s admiration for strongmen with good buildings.
The world watches America and hopes it finds its way back. Most people think it will. Eventually. The damage, however, is already considerable, and democracy, like a soufflé, does not always survive rough handling.
Armenia made its choice. The right one. Obviously.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
Rumours flying that DP World is close to a deal at Lyttelton. They operate four ports in Australia. The spent a decade (2014-2023) paying nothing in corporate tax. Stacks of related party transactions that reduce taxable income. Rip-off incoming.
Two days after Henry died Hampshire Police secretly recorded Digwa in a police van speaking Punjabi to his brother. Digwa admitted stabbing Henry. Discussed claiming self defence. Made zero mention of racial abuse. Not one word.
Hampshire Police had that tape.
They knew Digwa was lying about the racist attack. They had the evidence. They had his own words and then tried to smear Henry as the aggressor anyway.
Three days after his death their statement read “it was reported two men had been assaulted by an unknown man.” Henry was the unknown man. The boy bleeding out on the street. They flipped it.
Family complained. Statement changed. Then police told the family their NEXT update would again infer Henry was the initial aggressor. His family had to fight them a second time. While grieving their murdered son.
Then during the trial Hampshire tried to issue a statement telling the public to stop talking about it online. Calling it disinformation. The CPS had to step in. Told them they were about to collapse their own murder case.
This is the force that handcuffed a dying boy. Missed the murder weapon twice. Had a secret tape proving the killer lied. And still tried to bury Henry's name.
That's not incompetence. That's a machine protecting itself. At the expense of a dead boy's reputation and three officers are still on active duty. Not suspended. Treated as witnesses. To their own actions.
Hampshire Police didn't just fail Henry on that street. They kept failing him for six months after he died.
- @Banksycat