US warns of Chinese disinformation. China says that’s disinformation By Mengchen Zhang, Teele Rebane and Heather Chen, CNN Published 3:20 AM EDT, Sun October 1, 2023

A US State Department report that accuses the Chinese government of expanding disinformation efforts is “in itself disinformation,” Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Saturday.

The ministry shot back after the State Department issued a striking report this week in which it accused the Chinese government of expanding efforts to control information and to disseminate propaganda and disinformation that promotes “digital authoritarianism” in China and around the world.

The US report, issued by the Global Engagement Center on Thursday, alleged that China spends billions of dollars a year on foreign information manipulation and warned that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “significantly expanded” efforts to “shape the global information environment.”

It also underlined US concerns about China as a main military competitor and key rival in the battle over ideas and global disinformation.

Two days later, China hit back.

“The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of ‘global engagement’ – it is a source of disinformation and the command center of ‘perception warfare’,” the ministry said on Saturday.

Referring to wars in Iraq and Syria as well as US reports alleging human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang as examples, the ministry claimed that the US is “an ‘empire of lies’ through and through.”

“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’s ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ‘emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the ministry said.

Pope Says There Could Be Ways to Bless Same-Sex Unions

(VATICAN CITY) — Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.

The Vatican on Monday published a letter Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn't confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage.

New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the letter “significantly advances" efforts to make LGBTQ+ Catholics welcomed in the church and “one big straw towards breaking the camel’s back” in their marginalization.

The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But even Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.

Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanatory note in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said flat-out that the church couldn’t bless gay unions because “God cannot bless sin.”

In his new letter, Francis reiterated that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman. But responding to the cardinals’ question about homosexual unions and blessings, he said “pastoral charity” requires patience and understanding and that regardless, priests cannot become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude.”

“For this reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of benediction, requested by one or more persons, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage,” he wrote. “Because when a benediction is requested, it is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a father who can help us to live better.”

He noted that there are situations that are objectively “not morally acceptable.” But he said the same “pastoral charity” requires that people be treated as sinners who might not be fully at fault for their situations.

Francis added that there is no need for dioceses or bishops conferences to turn such pastoral charity into fixed norms or protocols, saying the issue could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis “because the life of the church runs on channels beyond norms.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, welcomed the pope's openness.

""The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the church does indeed recognize that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God," he said in a statement. “Those recognitions, while not completely what LGBTQ+ Catholics would want, are an enormous advance towards fuller and more comprehensive equality.”

The five cardinals, all of them conservative prelates from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, had challenged Francis to affirm church teaching on gays, women’s ordination, the authority of the pope and other issues in their letter.

They published the material two days before the start of a major three-week synod, or meeting, at the Vatican at which LGBTQ+ Catholics and their place in the church are on the agenda.

The signatories were some of Francis’ most vocal critics, all of them retired and of the more doctrinaire generation of cardinals appointed by St. John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.

They were Cardinals Walter Brandmueller of Germany, a former Vatican historian; Raymond Burke of the United States, whom Francis axed as head of the Vatican supreme court; Juan Sandoval of Mexico, the retired archbishop of Guadalajara; Robert Sarah of Guinea, the retired head of the Vatican’s liturgy office; and Joseph Zen, the retired archbishop of Hong Kong.

Brandmueller and Burke were among four signatories of a previous round of “dubia” to Francis in 2016 following his controversial opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried couples receive Communion. Then, the cardinals were concerned that Francis’ position violated church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Francis never responded to their questions, and two of their co-signatories subsequently died.

Francis did respond this time around. The cardinals didn’t publish his reply, but they apparently found it so unsatisfactory that they reformulated their five questions, submitted them to him again and asked him to simply respond with a yes or no. When he didn’t, the cardinals decided to make the texts public and issue a “notification” warning to the faithful.

The Vatican’s doctrine office published his reply to them a few hours later, though it did so without his introduction in which he urged the cardinals to not be afraid of the synod.

India has told Canada that it must repatriate 41 diplomats by Oct. 10, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Ties between India and Canada have become seriously strained over Canadian suspicion that Indian government agents had a role in the June murder in Canada of a Sikh separatist leader and Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who India had labeled a "terrorist."

India has dismissed the allegation as absurd.

The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the Indian demand, said India had threatened to revoke the diplomatic immunity of those diplomats told to leave who remained after Oct. 10.

Canada has 62 diplomats in India and India had said that the total should be reduced by 41, the newspaper said.

The Indian and Canadian foreign ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said earlier there was a "climate of violence" and an "atmosphere of intimidation" against Indian diplomats in Canada, where the presence of Sikh separatist groups has frustrated New Delhi.

(Reporting by Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Robert Birsel)

Ahead of the vote, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said that Moscow would view any move to join the international court as "extremely hostile" towards Russia.

The Armenian Parliament has voted to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, acknowledging the jurisdiction of the court.

"Sixty deputies voted in favour of ratification, 20 against. The decision has been made," Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan announced on Wednesday, Russian state-owned media TASS reported.

Ahead of the vote, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said that Moscow would view any move to join the international court as "extremely hostile" towards Russia.

Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that joining the court was in the interests of his country's security and not directed at Russia.

Our journalists are working on this story and will update it as soon as more information becomes available.

The three newly-minted Nobel Laureates have "demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy," the Academy said.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier for their work on "experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter."

Their experiments "have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said as it announced the prize on Wednesday.

The three newly-minted Nobel Laureates have "demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy," the Academy said.

Both Agostini and L'Huillier are from France. He is a professor at the Ohio State University in the United States, and she is a professor at Lund University in Sweden. Krausz was born in Hungary and is Director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching and a professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany.

The physics prize comes a day after Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

Nobel announcements will continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and the literature prize on Thursday.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on 9 October.

The prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor, approximately €950,000, drawn from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

The prize money was raised by 1 million kronor this year because of the plunging value of the Swedish currency.

The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The prestigious peace prize is handed out in Oslo, according to his wishes, while the other award ceremony is held in Stockholm.

There have been reports of gunshots at a luxury mall in Bangkok's city centre, Thai police say.

Police told the BBC they were heading to the Siam Paragon mall and could not yet confirm if there were any injuries.

Locals on social media had reported an active shooter situation - a detail authorities have yet to comment on.

Footage on social media earlier showed shoppers running out of the mall, which has since reportedly shut all of its entrances.

People have also posted videos online which appeared to be taken from inside the shopping centre. In one video, four loud noises which sound like gunshots can be clearly heard in the busy mall.

Witnesses have also reported online that they had taken to hiding inside shops and bathrooms.

The nearby Siam metro station has also been closed, local media report.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

onion video there a few tears

In Yalta, because of criticism of the Russian Federation, a couple from the Dnepropetrovsk region was brutally killed (video) Lyudmila Zhernovskaya 21:40, 01.10.23

The killer did not like that they called the peninsula Ukrainian.

In occupied Crimea, a man killed a married couple. He beat people with a bat because they “speaked badly of Russia.”

According to the Russian Telegram channel Baza , the murder occurred on September 29. A man came to the home of 66-year-old Vladimir and 58-year-old Victoria from the Dnepropetrovsk region, beat them with a bat and left. It is reported that before this he searched the house.

Later it became known that Russian police detained a 60-year-old man named Shavkat. He confessed to the murder, saying that the couple called Crimea Ukrainian, and also spoke badly about Russia and its leadership, so he decided to kill them.

The website of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation indicates that the couple was killed by a handyman who was looking after their guest house. A man was detained in Sudak, and they are preparing to charge him with double murder.

“During an interpersonal conflict, the employee struck a woman and a man multiple times in the head with a bat, and then moved their bodies to the basement,” the report says.

UN Global Stocktake shows countries failing Paris Agreement climate goals 2023, London – Just five of the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell and TotalEnergies, are set to spend $15 million every single hour between now and 2030 producing more oil and gas, according to new analysis of Rystad Energy data by Global Witness.

Published in early September, the UN’s Global Stocktake showed that governments are failing to deliver on their promise of keeping global heating below 1.5C under the Paris Agreement. This analysis shows how the oil and gas industry is continuing to pour vast resources into the long-term production of planet-wrecking fossil fuels, in the face of a climate crisis already destroying lives.

It shows that the five companies are forecast to spend a staggering $3.1 trillion by 2050, on both existing and new oil and gas extraction. This is one third more than the companies spent over the past 25 years ($2 trillion). When including not only known reserves but also probable oil and gas reserves that are yet to be discovered, the total forecast of spending increases to $3.8 trillion. Almost half this spending ($1.8 trillion) is on the extraction of new oil and gas, as opposed to projects where drilling is already taking place.

Both the United Nations and the International Energy Agency say that no new oil and gas projects are compatible with the 1.5C warming goal.

US-based Exxon is the biggest spender at $851 billion, followed by Shell with $696 billion, the French firm TotalEnergies is on course to spend $637 billion, Chevron $590 billion and UK’s BP $362 billion.

Sarah Biermann Becker, Senior Investigator at Global Witness, said:

“Wildfires, floods, heatwaves are the new global reality, but for the oil and gas industry it’s business as usual. This is a crisis with millions of victims already and many more to come. The immediate priority must be to stop its number one cause – the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas.”

“Peel back the lofty claims and greenwash, and these numbers make it absolutely crystal clear. Energy giants like Exxon and Shell will keep putting the future of the planet in jeopardy and injecting trillions of dollars into new oil and gas unless they are forced not to. As ever, it is profit over people, financial gains over our futures, and oil and gas extraction over everything.”

“It adds insult to injury that this eyewatering spending comes off the back of record profits for these companies, during an energy crisis that has seen energy bills go through the roof for millions. They got richer, we got poorer, and they’re spending that money on perpetuating this crooked system that is also destroying the planet. How and why governments are failing to get a grip on such an obvious and perverse situation is truly astonishing.”

The UN’s 2021 global emissions gap report showed that governments’ energy plans would lead to about 57% more oil, and 71% more gas in 2030 than is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5C. This means that at least half of oil and gas spending by 2030 is not consistent with 1.5C.

Global Witness’ analysis in August revealed that these five companies are forecast to produce oil and gas, which when burnt, will emit nearly 47 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2050. This is equivalent to almost 1/8th of the remaining global carbon budget for staying below 1.5C. Fossil fuels are the largest contributor to global climate change and responsible for almost 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Notes to editor

These companies were selected because they are the five largest integrated private sector oil and gas companies based on revenue as of 2023, according to Thompson Reuters data via Statista. Methodology

The data on forecast oil and gas capex, exploratory capex and opex was sourced from energy business intelligence agency Rystad Energy’s UCube database. UCube is an integrated field-by-field database of the global upstream oil and gas market, covering the time span from 1900 to 2100. Rystad’s data is widely referenced by major oil and gas companies, the media and international bodies such as the IEA.

Forecast expenditure on oil and gas production is based on data sources including company reporting (e.g., earnings and profits reporting) and policies, government sources and policies, energy service reporting, energy agencies and academic research and news articles. Where reported data is unavailable, data is modelled based on the above sources and supported by a comprehensive database of global oil and gas fields.

We used UCube to show forecast nominal capex, exploration capex and opex for the period 2024-2030 as well as 2024-2050 (and added one quarter of spending data from 2023). The forecast assumes a rate of 2.5% inflation per year. For total spend the data includes assets that are already producing (all assets that are currently producing), under development (assets for which development has been approved by companies and government but production has not yet started) or discovery (assets where discoveries have been made, but are not yet in a phase of further development). For new investments we included Rystad’s discovery and undiscovered life cycle category. The latter covers assets with estimated quantities of oil and gas that are probably present but have not yet been proven by drilling. The data covers only crude oil and gas production, not other hydrocarbons such as natural gas liquids (NGL) and condensate, making these conservative production estimates.

France to quit making cigarettes as last factory prepares to close The last remaining factory making cigarettes in France is set to close by the end of 2023, the site's owner told its employees this week.

Issued on: 01/10/2023 - 09:08

The Manufacture Corse des Tabacs (Macotab), on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, is the last to manufacture cigarettes in France since the closure of another in the centre of the country in 2016.

Around 30 employees work at the Corsican site, down from 143 in the early 1980s.

The factory makes cigarettes on behalf of industry giant Philip Morris, which recently signalled it was ending the contract.

Contraband packets have also cut into legal sales, according to the factory's owner Seita, the former French state-owned tobacco monopoly that is now part of the British company Imperial Tobacco.

Seita had already closed France's last tobacco processing factory in 2019, in the traditional growing region of the Dordogne in the south-west.

Some former factories in Marseille and Lyon have found new as cultural and exhibition spaces, or even a university.

Kicking the habit Efforts by authorities to curb smoking and its health hazards, not least by prohibiting puffing in restaurants and cafes and banning ads for cigarettes, have prompted sharp reductions in cigarette sales in recent years.

Smoking remains the main cause of avoidable deaths in France, according to Santé Publique France health agency, which estimates 75,000 tobacco deaths each year.

The bulk of European production these days is in Germany and Poland.