Lurker > Humble_Novice

Bump.

So the Trump campaign wants to help China spy on Americans?

Trump is a Far-Left communist confirmed!

The only good thing to come out of Louisiana is Popeyes and hot sauce.

Project 2025 basically wants to turn America into a Christian Saudi Arabia

Jesus fucking christ

I would party with Rupert any day of the week while having to work in the morning. He seems a standup guy.

Dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi has been given a death sentence for his involvement in the widespread protests that swept Iran in 2022, according to his lawyer.

An order for the execution of Toomaj Salehi has been issued, Salehis lawyer Amir Raesian tweeted Wednesday.

The rapper has been detained, held in solitary confinement and was allegedly tortured following his arrest.

In an unprecedented move, a court in Isfahan reversed the higher Supreme Courts decision on Salehis case on Tuesday, upholding the original verdict of corruption on earth and issued the maximum punishment of death, according to Iranian pro-reform outlets Shargh and Entekhab.

State media said Salehis sentence is subject for reduction by a pardoning committee if he appeals again.

Salehi, 32, who has been critical of the Iranian regime and outspoken against the government in rap lyrics and on social media, was briefly released from prison last year before police violently rearrested him and sent him to prison in Isfahan, witnesses said at the time.

He was rearrested after appearing in a video where he revealed that he was tortured and placed in solitary confinement for 252 days following his arrest in October 2022, UN experts said in a statement published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Another artist, Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin, who was also arrested at the height of 2022s protests in Iran, was transferred to a psychiatric hospital two times in less than a year, according to pro-reform news outlet IranWire.

A court in Tehran sentenced Yasin to five years in prison, according to group focused on Kurdish human rights, Hengaw.

Demonstrations swept the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which occurred under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. A brutal crackdown on the protests by Iranian authorities targeted the weeks-long protests.

We strongly condemn Toomaj Salehis death sentence and the five-year sentence for Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin. We call for their immediate release, the United States Office of the Special Envoy for Iran tweeted. These are the latest examples of the regimes brutal abuse of its own citizens, disregard for human rights, and fear of the democratic change the Iranian people seek.

UN experts also demanded Salehis release and urged Iranian authorities to reverse the death sentence.

We are alarmed by the imposition of the death sentence and the alleged ill-treatment of Mr. Salehi which appears to be related solely to the exercise of his right to freedom of artistic expression and creativity, the experts said.

Salehis political sponsor in Europe, German Member of Parliament Ye-One Rhie, called the death sentence against Salehi absurd and inhumane.

It is still completely unclear how this verdict came about, she tweeted Wednesday. It is unbelievable how irresponsibly and arbitrarily the Iranian regime treats defendants. It is impossible to recognize the rule of law in the chaos of the courts in charge.

CNNs Mostafa Salem contributed reporting.

Bump.

The families of people being held hostage by Hamas terrorists praised what they called their terrific meeting on Wednesday with President Joe Biden.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, speaking on behalf of the family members of the eight Americans believed to be held hostage in Gaza, said, "We could have no better friend in Washington or in the White House than President Biden himself and his administration," as he recounted their meeting at the White House.

The families said they left the meeting feeling the Biden administration was "completely committed" to securing the release of their loved ones.

"We've seen that the U.S. administration from the previous round of negotiations and hostage release, the U.S. administration is completely committed to getting the hostages out, the eight Americans who remain there and the other nearly 130," Dekel-Chen said. "We have no doubt about that."

Dekel-Chen added that the meeting with Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "only reinforced that and that they are willing and ready to do all that they possibly can, by any number of means, to get the hostages home."

While the families declined to get into the specifics of the conversation when asked about updates on their loved ones, they said that the administration has been in frequent and transparent communication with members of the families since Hamas terrorists took the hostages during the Oct. 7 attack.

Liz Naftali, the great aunt of Abigail, the Israeli American toddler released last month after her parents were reportedly killed in front of her by Hamas terrorists, said the families were appreciative of the work Biden and his administration have done.

"What I can tell you is that Abigail is a miracle. She is a light in this very dark time and metaphorically. ... We are here because the president and his team have been bringing out light in this dark time," Naftali said.

"We are thankful to the president and to his team because we know that they are working 24 hours a day and they are going to work through the holidays, and they are going to do everything they can to make sure that all of our loved ones, real people, come home to us and to the families across the world and in Israel," Naftali said.

Biden has publicly expressed his commitment to repatriating the hostages, saying Monday at a White House Hanukkah celebration, "I'm not going to stop until we get every one of them home."

Naftali also said the administration has demonstrated empathy towards the hostages.

"That is what the president and Secretary Blinken understand -- is that they're just not numbers and they're just not faces. They are sons. They are sons. They are grandparents. They are mothers. And that is what the president and his team understand," Naftali said.

Biden was "moved" by the U.S. hostages' families' stories during his meeting with them at the White House on Wednesday, White House spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday afternoon.

"I would only add that the president was very grateful for the time that they afforded him, and he was moved by their stories, by the love they feel, by the hope that they still harbor, and he harbors that hope too, but as [White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre] rightly noted, he's acting on that," Kirby said. "The other thing that he made sure to do was to promise them that we're going to keep them informed every single step of the way. And we'll do that."

Asked by ABC News' MaryAlice Parks whether Biden's comment at a Tuesday fundraiser that Israel is "starting to lose that support [of other nations] by indiscriminate bombing that takes place" meant that the U.S. should put additional requirements on aid to Israel, Kirby responded, "Every bit of security assistance we give any other country always comes with the expectation that the law of armed conflict is going to be respected and obeyed."

"As I said earlier, we're not going to assess every single airstrike here from this particular podium, that wouldn't be appropriate. The Israelis should speak to their operations, but we have every expectation, as I said to my previous answer there that they will act in accordance with the law of armed conflict. And do everything that they can to match their intent, which is to minimize civilian casualties," he continued.

"But if they aren't, then isn't there an obligation for the U.S. to change the way that it's delivering military aid?" Parks pressed.

When Kirby replied, "Thats a hypothetical that I'm not prepared to engage in right now," Parks said, "Its not hypothetical if he said 'indiscriminate bombing.'"

"Thats a hypothetical I'm not going to engage in," Kirby reiterated. "We have expressed our concerns. The president has, publicly and privately, with the Israelis about the need to reduce civilian casualties, and were going to continue to do that."

Asked by Parks about whether the Biden administration is concerned that hostages could be held in tunnels in Gaza that Israel is reportedly flooding, Kirby responded that it's "not beyond possibility that Hamas could be holding at least some of them in tunnels as they move them around," noting that "some of the hostages have come out and said that they were held in tunnels."

"But if you're asking about the flooding specifically, I'm not going to speak for Israeli military operations. They should speak to that. I would just say that we all need to be remember -- we all need to remember the particular, extra difficulty that they have going after a group like Hamas, which isnt just -- which is a terrorist group, but it also has sort of a military structure to it, and they deliberately tunnel under civilian infrastructure to allow for the movement of their fighters and to -- for storing equipment," he added.

Dozens of the more than 240 hostages have been released as part of a cease-fire and prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas in the wake of Hamas' surprise Oct. 7 terror attack. Of those, 135 still remain as hostages, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

While the White House and families of hostages have advocated for pauses in the fighting to allow for aid and hostages to move within particular regions of the conflict, Israel has been more reluctant to do so, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that breaks in the fighting allow Hamas time to regroup. The U.S. has agreed that a broad cease-fire would benefit Hamas and instead called for localized and limited pauses.

He's going to get fired, meanwhile Sonic's jpn va can get his twitter hacked to horny post then go on to say some homophobic nonsense we live in stupid times

LONDON (AP) Britains governing Conservative Party suffered heavy losses in local election results Friday, further cementing expectations that the Labour Party will return to power after 14 years in a U.K. general election that will take place in the coming months.

Labour won control of councils in England that the party hasnt held for decades, and was successful in a special election for a seat in Parliament.

If those results are repeated in the general election, it would lead to one of the Conservatives biggest-ever defeats.

I'm glad the Harry Potter kids, from what we've seen, grew up to be good people.

More like Daniel Basedcliffe

I'll see myself out.

Daniel Radcliffe is speaking out about his career ties to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

Tony-nominated actor Radcliffe has previously assured franchise fans that Rowlings transphobic remarks are in no way indicative of the Potter actors own sociopolitical views. Now, Radcliffe is untangling the nuances of Rowlings legacy.

It makes me really sad, ultimately, because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic, Radcliffe told the Atlantic, while also confirming he has had no direct contact with Rowling since her tweets in June 2020.

Russian oil product exports slumped to a post-pandemic low in April, according to tanker tracking data, as Moscow battles to repair its Western refineries which remain under siege from Ukrainian drones.

Seaborne Russian export loadings of diesel, fuel oil, naphtha and other refined products picked up slightly in the second half of April to average 1.94 million b/d, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea. The April average marks a 360,000-b/d slump on March and almost 700,000 b/d below January levels when Ukraine began a barrage of long-range drone strikes on Russian refining capacity. Flooding also took the 116,000-b/d Orsk refinery offline for two weeks during the month.

The last time Russian product exports fell below 2 million b/d was during the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns in mid-2020.

After a three-week hiatus, Ukraine launched one of its largest drone strikes to date on April 27, when 66 drones were downed over Russia's Krasnodar region, according to Russia's defense ministry, leaving both its Ilsky and Slavyansk refineries damaged. On April 30, a fire broke out at Russia's 342,000 b/d Ryazan refinery after a new drone strike on the facility.

Some 600,000 b/d of refining capacity currently remains offline as Russia rushes to repair damaged units, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights estimates, down from more than 1 million b/d last month.

Russia's biggest fuel exports -- diesel and gasoil -- averaged 737,000 b/d in April, down 137,000 b/d from the previous month and 240,000 b/d since January, the data showed. Russia's April oil product export slump was led by fuel oil, however, which shrank 147,000 b/d on the month and 220,000 b/d since January. Exports of naphtha, gasoline and VGO were down by 72,000 b/d, 58,000 b/d and 61,000 b/d on March respectively.

Russian oil product exports have fallen to their lowest level in four years, following successful Ukrainian drone strikes on the country's oil refineries. Enkorr reports, citing data from S&P Global Commodities at Sea, exports of Russian oil products in April 2024 dropped significantly, registering a four-year low.

Tanker activity analysis indicates a significant downturn in Russian oil shipments. The damage sustained by several refineries due to the Ukrainian drone raids has resulted in decreased production and a subsequent export slump.

In the latter half of April, Russia's daily fuel, heavy oil, and other product exports totaled 1.94 million barrels - the lowest since 2020, amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Diesel and heating oil exports in April averaged 737,000 barrels per day, a decrease of 137,000 barrels from March and 240,000 barrels less than January's figures.

"The average figures for April show a decline of 360,000 barrels a day compared to March, and almost 700,000 from January, when Ukraine began a barrage of drone strikes," the article notes.

Experts estimate that due to Ukraine's strikes, Russia has lost approximately 600,000 barrels per day of refining capacity. Restoring the damaged facilities is proving costly and complex due to sanctions. Despite these challenges, Moscow has so far managed to maintain control over the situation by ramping up production at refineries that were not affected by the strikes.

Fandom is terrible, no wiki wants them and several are currently in the process of leaving specifically because of what theyve done