Brasil

Is it your children? Laughing with your mates? Your partner being brilliant? Share the joy below!

Source (Bluesky)

Feel free to have a look at

• !movies@lemm.ee
• !showsandmovies@lemm.ee
• !animation@lemm.ee
• !horrormovies@lemm.ee

China has gone over 70 days without importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, according to Kpler data cited by the Financial Times. This move is a response to Beijing’s imposition of 49% tariffs, making U.S. LNG commercially unviable. The last shipment arrived on February 6, while a second vessel was diverted to Bangladesh to avoid the tariffs.

Although the U.S. supplies only 5-6% of China’s LNG (5-6 million tons in 2025), the halt affects 13 contracts valid through 2049 and threatens 28 million tons per year in U.S. projects. Experts like Anne-Sophie Corbeau (Columbia University) predict that China will avoid new contracts with the U.S., prioritizing energy autonomy.

Beijing has quadrupled its imports of Russian LNG since 2022, making Moscow its third-largest supplier after Australia and Qatar. Ambassador Zhang Hanhui confirmed that Chinese companies are seeking to expand agreements with Russia, taking advantage of lower prices following European sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

China redirects 70% of imported U.S. LNG to Europe, profiting in higher-priced markets. This maneuver demonstrates China’s ability to reshape global energy flows, while the U.S. faces risks in key projects and a reciprocal tariff escalation (up to 245% in some sectors).

Back in the olden days, there existed physical game stores, which in addition to physical games would also have kiosks where you could try out the current game consoles and handhelds. Generally these kiosks held the console, a display and any controllers if needed. After a while these kiosks would get scrapped, with only a very few ending up being rescued and restored. One of the lucky ones is a Game Boy kiosk, which [The Retro Future] managed to snag after it was found in a construction site. Sadly the thing was in a very rough condition, with the particle board especially being mostly destroyed.

Display model Game Boy, safely secured into the demo kiosk. (Credit: The Retro Future, YouTube)

These Game Boy kiosks also featured a special Game Boy, which – despite being super rare – also was hunted down. This led to the restoration, which included recovering as much of the original particle board as possible, with a professional furniture restore ([Don]) lending his expertise. This provides a master class in how to patch up damaged particle board, as maligned as this wood-dust-and-glue material is.

The boards were then reassembled more securely than the wood screws used by the person who had found the destroyed kiosk, in a way that allows for easy disassembly if needed. Fortunately most of the plastic pieces were still intact, and the Game Boy grey paint was easily matched. Next was reproducing a missing piece of art work, with fortunately existing versions available as reference. For a few missing metal bits that held the special Game Boy in place another kiosk was used to provide measurements.

After all this, the kiosk was powered back on, and it was like 1990 was back once again, just in time for playing Tetris on a dim, green-and-black screen while hunched half into the kiosk at the game store.

From Blog – Hackaday via this RSS feed

Washington (AFP) – The United States will roughly halve the number of troops it has deployed in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, the Pentagon said Friday.

Washington has had troops in Syria for years as part of international efforts against the Islamic State (IS) group, which rose out of the chaos of the country's civil war to seize swaths of territory there and in neighboring Iraq over a decade ago.

The brutal jihadists have since suffered major defeats in both countries, but still remain a threat.

"Today the secretary of defense directed the consolidation of US forces in Syria... to select locations," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, without specifying the sites where this would take place.

"This deliberate and conditions-based process will bring the US footprint in Syria down to less than 1,000 US forces in the coming months," he said.

"As this consolidation takes place... US Central Command will remain poised to continue strikes against the remnants of (IS) in Syria," Parnell added, referring to the military command responsible for the region.

President Donald Trump has long been skeptical of Washington's presence in Syria, ordering the withdrawal of troops during his first term but ultimately leaving American forces in the country.

As Islamist-led rebels pressed forward with a lightning offensive last December that ultimately overthrew Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Trump said Washington should "NOT GET INVOLVED!"

"Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT," Trump, then the president-elect, wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The 2014 onslaught by IS prompted a US-led air campaign in support of local ground forces -- the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Iraqi government units.

Washington also deployed thousands of American personnel to advise and assist local forces, with US troops in some cases directly fighting the jihadists.

After years of bloody warfare, Iraq's prime minister announced a final victory over IS in December 2017, while the SDF proclaimed the defeat of the group's "caliphate" in March 2019 after seizing its final bastion in Syria.

But the jihadists still have some fighters in the countryside of both countries, and US forces have long carried out periodic strikes and raids to help prevent the group's resurgence.

Washington stepped up military action against IS in Syria in the wake of Assad's overthrow, though it has more recently shifted its focus to strikes targeting Yemen's Huthi rebels, who have been attacking international shipping since late 2023.

US forces in Iraq and Syria were repeatedly targeted by pro-Iran militants following the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, but responded with heavy strikes on Tehran-linked targets, and the attacks largely subsided.

Washington for years said it had some 900 military personnel in Syria as part of international efforts against IS, but the Pentagon announced in December 2024 that the number of US troops in the country had doubled to around 2,000 earlier in the year.

While the United States is reducing its forces in Syria, Iraq has also sought an end to the US-led coalition's presence there, where Washington has said it has some 2,500 troops.

The United States and Iraq have announced that the coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq by the end of 2025, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region.

As in our comrade Karl Liebknecht, co-founder of the KPD? All these years I’ve been saying “LEEB-necked”, two syllables. But the I heard Matt Christman say “Leeb-KUH-neck-et” (four syllables). And I realized I don’t really know why I was saying it like I was. Anyone know how to actually say it?

Your tip i_ highly _reciated

@pics@lemmy.world

Source

Archived: https://archive.is/AM8Up