Europe Pub

A Trump-appointed judge also said Americans have no “constitutional right to truthful information” during a public health crisis.

On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.

The lawsuit, first filed in 2022, says the contamination violated Jacksonians’ constitutional right to bodily integrity. Donald Trump-appointed judge Kurt Engelhardt disagreed. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt said.

“Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51167317

Crossposted from https://lemmy.ca/post/69977166

wo bekomme ich die her? die sind ja mal ultrageil!

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11159084

Archived link

The Canadian intern charged with espionage at NATO headquarters in Belgium was found in April near the office of the alliance’s supreme commander after a fire alarm was pulled by a suspected accomplice, a Belgian source familiar with the case told The Globe and Mail.

The intern’s unexpected appearance there triggered an investigation into her activities by the counterintelligence service of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE.

It reported its concerns to Belgian military intelligence. In July, she was arrested by Belgian police and faces espionage charges on suspicion of spying for a third country.

...

Biwei Zhang (also known as Claire Zhang) is a former Canadian federal public servant who took an internship at SHAPE in Mons, Belgium, last year.

...

On April 21 this year, the intern, an IT specialist, was found near the building of U.S. General Alexus Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, as an evacuation of SHAPE’s personnel took place after the triggering of a fire alarm.

Ms. Zhang, a naturalized Canadian of Chinese origin, had already come to the attention of SHAPE’s counterintelligence service after asking colleagues questions about the consequences of security protocol breaches.

The Belgian source told The Globe on Friday that the investigation into Ms. Zhang, who is in pretrial detention in Belgium, is probing whether she was aided by accomplices both inside and outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

...

The fire alarm is believed by investigators to have been triggered by someone other than Ms. Zhang, but they have not been identified, the source said. And on the day that it was triggered, according to the source, there was some suspicious activity in the access-control system of the building where the supreme NATO commander works.

...

[The source, who spoke under the condition of anonymity] said that after she was arrested and incarcerated, a number of passwords to her social-media accounts were remotely changed. Her apartment in Mons was also broken into while she was behind bars, the source said, sparking questions about whether material that could relate to her case was being searched for.

...

A Belgian judge on Monday denied her appeal for release from prison. The Chamber of Indictments decided to extend her pretrial detention by a month.

...

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is working with Belgian authorities on the case.

In a statement, CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam said, “as the Prime Minister has shared, we are directly supporting our Belgian counterparts in support of the ongoing legal process in Brussels.”

Some of those involved in the investigation were surprised, according to the source, that Ms. Zhang was given security clearance by the Canadian government before starting her internship at NATO headquarters in Mons, near the French border. They said her background would likely have raised a number of red flags with security experts in Belgium.

...

In Canada’s Parliament last month, the Commons public safety and national security committee launched an inquiry into vetting of public officials, after MPs expressed concern about how Ms. Zhang was cleared by Ottawa to work at NATO headquarters.

...

She had previously held a number of federal jobs including at Statistics Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.

But in 2023, Ms. Zhang was found to have committed fraud within the federal civil service when she wrote the same job exam twice for a single posting at the Canada Border Services Agency, applying under slightly different names and separate e-mail addresses.

The public-service watchdog, which investigated her conduct, ruled that if she joined the federal public service within a year, she would have to complete an ethics course.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and advisory-board member of the China Strategic Risks Institute, said it is possible that Ms. Zhang, who had “been in numerous and increasingly responsible positions already, did not get the screening depth that she might otherwise have had.”

...

Since Mark Carney took office, she added in an e-mail, Canada’s security agencies “have been spread thin with budget cuts and many demands to screen new employees into sensitive positions in the PM’s and ministers’ offices as well as staff of newly created agencies.”

A small update from a few days ago. To save you a click, it turns out that if you apply PVC cement and don't push the pipes together you won't actually make a good joint. Who knew.

I'm honestly impressed it lasted so long without issues. We've lived in this house over 10 years and the PVC run predates our purchase.

As a side note, PVC repair couplers are a massive PITA. I am glad I didn't have to dig a fresh trench, get the old pipe out, and put a new one in, but it was quite the dance getting the coupler on while fighting with 2" OD pipe that's firmly lodged in clay. My nice small hole grew a bit longer to get some wiggle room.

More than 153 million US and Canadian driver’s licenses, as well as other identity documents, have reportedly become available for purchase on the dark web for a limited time. According to cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, the service was called Nexus, and although it’s no longer available at the time of writing, it claimed to have possessed 153 million driver’s licenses, 10 million ID cards, 1.9 million travel documents, 1.3 million international driver’s licenses, 579k medical cards, 429k common access cards, 91k residence cards, 77k employment authorization records, and 5 million other documents, allegedly sourced from an ID-authentication service based in Louisiana.

However, Planet13 and Hertz [the companies involved] do not do their own authentication; instead, they contract a service provider for the service. Now, it turns out that both Planet13 and Hertz used the company for identity verification and ID-authentication — IDScan.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11159169

Archived link

An Ontario university student is suspected of espionage after the FBI said he admitted to accessing airport facilities in Toronto and Chicago to take photos on behalf of a shadowy figure from China.

Weiheng Zeng, himself a Chinese citizen, was arrested in Michigan on Aug. 23 after crossing the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor, Ont. He was charged with one count of making false statements.

Zeng appeared in a federal court in Detroit on Tuesday and agreed to remain in custody as he awaits his trial.

A University of Waterloo undergraduate student born in 2004, Zeng first raised U.S. authorities' suspicions in April, after an incident captured on security video at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, according to a criminal complaint reviewed by CBC News.

...

At the time, FedEx employees spotted a man taking photos, climbing a forklift and attempting to open a locked delivery truck and a shipping container in the company's parking lot at the Chicago airport, the criminal complaint said.

...

Border agents found numerous photos of military aircraft on his phone, Zeng purportedly said they were for a flight radar website. He said taking pictures of planes was his hobby.

"Zeng's phone was also found to contain pictures of him and other individuals in tactical clothing and in tactical formations, holding rifle-styled firearms," FBI special agent Robert Holbrook wrote in the complaint. Zeng purportedly said the weapon was an airsoft gun.

He denied having any military service or training.

...

According to the criminal complaint, Zeng eventually said he was being paid by someone — identified in the U.S. court records only as "Chinese contact" — to photograph specific planes and their tail numbers.

Zeng believed his contact worked for a Chinese security service and that it was "cool," according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Zeng said they had met on a Chinese forum for aviation enthusiasts in 2024.

...

Zeng, who lives in Cambridge, Ont., also outlined to investigators a convoluted system he purportedly used to communicate with the unnamed individual, who paid him via bank transfer in Chinese yuan.

The "Chinese contact" would mail Zeng a new SIM card every four to five months, which he was directed to use in his Huawei cell phone, according to the criminal complaint.

"Zeng, at the direction of 'Chinese Contact,' would subsequently destroy the SIM cards, delete the conversations, and delete the photos he took," wrote Holbrook, the FBI agent.

...

It's unclear what undergraduate program Zeng was enrolled in, or when he first came to Canada.

...

Not only was it terrible, it was terrible.

I use instant when I can't do espresso. 😂

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51596713

Kacey Musgraves is facing backlash from some fans after she showed support for immigrant families during a birthday performance.

The Grammy-winning country singer celebrated her 38th birthday on Friday by marking the opening night of her Middle of Nowhere tour in Chicago. At one point during the performance, she paused the show and urged the audience to donate to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights as her “birthday wish.”

“It’s a wonderful organization, and they help give aid — legal aid — and money to children whose parents have been deported unfairly,” Musgraves said on stage. “It’s not a political thing. It’s just, these kids need help.”

She continued: “They have no guidance and no way to get through this thing without their home base or their parents. So anyway, 50 cents, whatever the hell, I don't know, whatever you want to do, but that would mean a lot to me. If you don't want to, that's totally fine too.”

The plea was met with applause and cheers from her crowd at the United Center. However, once videos of the moment started circulating online, conservative political commentators were quick to unleash their wrath on the “Follow Your Arrow” singer.

By tiss 221, mayo

To building engineer:

When you sign the document, please confirm that the elevator shaft is straight.

(P.S. It is hard to believe that the shaft was built tilted greatly, given modern construction standards.)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51595631

Donald Trump wants the midterm elections to be all about Donald Trump. Republicans think they have little choice but to go along.

Many of those Republicans ― or at least the political operatives working for them ― are fully aware they don’t really want the president to show up in their districts. Trump is deeply unpopular, with voter anger at his decision to launch a costly war in Iran and his failure to lower prices driving his approval rating down into the 30s in most public opinion surveys.

But downballot Republicans, who have seen their majorities in the House and Senate become deeply endangered, are not responding by breaking with Trump. They long ago decided on a midterm strategy of tying themselves to the president in hopes of turning out low-propensity conservative voters, and they are desperate for his political operation to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars he has hoarded so far.

Archived link

The Canadian intern charged with espionage at NATO headquarters in Belgium was found in April near the office of the alliance’s supreme commander after a fire alarm was pulled by a suspected accomplice, a Belgian source familiar with the case told The Globe and Mail.

The intern’s unexpected appearance there triggered an investigation into her activities by the counterintelligence service of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE.

It reported its concerns to Belgian military intelligence. In July, she was arrested by Belgian police and faces espionage charges on suspicion of spying for a third country.

...

Biwei Zhang (also known as Claire Zhang) is a former Canadian federal public servant who took an internship at SHAPE in Mons, Belgium, last year.

...

On April 21 this year, the intern, an IT specialist, was found near the building of U.S. General Alexus Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, as an evacuation of SHAPE’s personnel took place after the triggering of a fire alarm.

Ms. Zhang, a naturalized Canadian of Chinese origin, had already come to the attention of SHAPE’s counterintelligence service after asking colleagues questions about the consequences of security protocol breaches.

The Belgian source told The Globe on Friday that the investigation into Ms. Zhang, who is in pretrial detention in Belgium, is probing whether she was aided by accomplices both inside and outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

...

The fire alarm is believed by investigators to have been triggered by someone other than Ms. Zhang, but they have not been identified, the source said. And on the day that it was triggered, according to the source, there was some suspicious activity in the access-control system of the building where the supreme NATO commander works.

...

[The source, who spoke under the condition of anonymity] said that after she was arrested and incarcerated, a number of passwords to her social-media accounts were remotely changed. Her apartment in Mons was also broken into while she was behind bars, the source said, sparking questions about whether material that could relate to her case was being searched for.

...

A Belgian judge on Monday denied her appeal for release from prison. The Chamber of Indictments decided to extend her pretrial detention by a month.

...

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is working with Belgian authorities on the case.

In a statement, CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam said, “as the Prime Minister has shared, we are directly supporting our Belgian counterparts in support of the ongoing legal process in Brussels.”

Some of those involved in the investigation were surprised, according to the source, that Ms. Zhang was given security clearance by the Canadian government before starting her internship at NATO headquarters in Mons, near the French border. They said her background would likely have raised a number of red flags with security experts in Belgium.

...

In Canada’s Parliament last month, the Commons public safety and national security committee launched an inquiry into vetting of public officials, after MPs expressed concern about how Ms. Zhang was cleared by Ottawa to work at NATO headquarters.

...

She had previously held a number of federal jobs including at Statistics Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.

But in 2023, Ms. Zhang was found to have committed fraud within the federal civil service when she wrote the same job exam twice for a single posting at the Canada Border Services Agency, applying under slightly different names and separate e-mail addresses.

The public-service watchdog, which investigated her conduct, ruled that if she joined the federal public service within a year, she would have to complete an ethics course.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and advisory-board member of the China Strategic Risks Institute, said it is possible that Ms. Zhang, who had “been in numerous and increasingly responsible positions already, did not get the screening depth that she might otherwise have had.”

...

Since Mark Carney took office, she added in an e-mail, Canada’s security agencies “have been spread thin with budget cuts and many demands to screen new employees into sensitive positions in the PM’s and ministers’ offices as well as staff of newly created agencies.”

President Donald Trump is the first sitting president in a century to appear on a U.S. coin, reviving questions about whether the practice is legal.

Title. Well these days I've been feeling lonely, and I feel somewhere male friendships I have aren't that strong. I'll be honest, I don't have many female friends either, but I've been particularly felt disappointed by my male peers, especially when it comes to talking emotionally. What are your experiences?

Because of how Trump reacted and tried to overturn the 2020 election that he lost after the fact, some Americans have made the assumption that the president will approach the 2026 midterm election the same way.

2026 isn’t 2020, and Trump has learned a great deal about how to misuse his power to try to rig an election over the last five-plus years. This time, the president is trying to preemptively rig the election in his favor before a single vote is cast.

...