BREAKING:
A Syrian court has sentenced Bashar al-Assad to death for premeditated murder (including of children), torture, arbitrary detentions, and crimes against humanity.
Assad fled to Russia in December 2024, where Putin granted him political asylum.
💥SCOOP: Orbán may be looking abroad for a job. Hungarian officials and diplomats say the former PM discussed a possible FIFA role during the World Cup, while sources also claim he may be eyeing a top UN post with help from Argentina &the US. More in 🇭🇺: https://t.co/79CnaUqbGr
Today is the 89th anniversary of the head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov signing NKVD Order No. 00485 which became the start of the Polish Operation of the NKVD.
It was essentially an order to kill as many Poles in the Soviet Union as possible.
111,091 Poles were shot in the back of the head within a year while tens of thousands were sent to Gulags.
Arrests relied on superficial criteria. NKVD officers consulted local phone books) and similar lists to identify and detain people with Polish-sounding surnames (for example, those ending in “-ski” or “-wicz”).
In Leningrad, the NKVD reviewed local telephone books and arrested more than 7000 citizens with Polish-sounding names.
The vast majority of these “suspects” were shot within 10 days of their arrest.
Almost all those executed were men.
Their wives were typically dealt with under a related order (No. 00486 of August 15th 1937) and forcibly deported, often to Kazakhstan, for terms of roughly 5–10 years.
Children were frequently sent to orphanages or special institutions, where they were to be raised as Russians without a Polish identity, stripped of knowledge of their origins and language.
Family property was confiscated.
In total, around 150 000 Poles are believed to have been shot, perished in Gulags or starved to death in this Russian genocidal campaign over the course of 1937 and 1938
We recently learned of the loss of human control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses from AI.
AI leaders pledged to pause development if they could no longer safely control it.
Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei, Mr. Zuckerberg: Keep your word.
PAUSE AI DEVELOPMENT.