‘Bordering on incredible’: Coalition under fire for planning to scrap Labor climate policies and offering none of its own
With Peter Dutton’s views on climate change in the spotlight, the focus has turned onto whether there will be any policies to reduce emissions in the next decade
Australia: Melbourne residents receive letter offering $200k for information on Hong Kong pro-democracy activist
Exclusive: The anonymous ‘wanted’ letter contained a photograph of Kevin Yam, a lawyer who has criticised the crackdown on dissent in the territory
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31221791
A small number of Melbourne residents have received anonymous letters purporting to offer a police bounty of $203,000 if they inform on Kevin Yam, an Australian citizen and pro-democracy activist wanted for alleged national security crimes in Hong Kong, linking him to two nearby locations.
A spokesperson for the [Australian] foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, [said] the letter was “deeply worrying” and that the matter would be raised directly with officials from China and Hong Kong.
The anonymous letter – mailed from Hong Kong and delivered to some Melbourne homes on Friday – contained a photograph of Yam with a headline alleging he was a “wanted person”. It then detailed a range of alleged “national security related offences” and offered HK$1m (A$203,000) from the Hong Kong police to anyone who provided information on his whereabouts or took him to Hong Kong or Australian police.
Yam is a lawyer who lived
Australia: Melbourne residents receive letter offering $200k for information on Hong Kong pro-democracy activist
Exclusive: The anonymous ‘wanted’ letter contained a photograph of Kevin Yam, a lawyer who has criticised the crackdown on dissent in the territory
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31221791
A small number of Melbourne residents have received anonymous letters purporting to offer a police bounty of $203,000 if they inform on Kevin Yam, an Australian citizen and pro-democracy activist wanted for alleged national security crimes in Hong Kong, linking him to two nearby locations.
A spokesperson for the [Australian] foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, [said] the letter was “deeply worrying” and that the matter would be raised directly with officials from China and Hong Kong.
The anonymous letter – mailed from Hong Kong and delivered to some Melbourne homes on Friday – contained a photograph of Yam with a headline alleging he was a “wanted person”. It then detailed a range of alleged “national security related offences” and offered HK$1m (A$203,000) from the Hong Kong police to anyone who provided information on his whereabouts or took him to Hong Kong or Australian police.
Yam is a lawyer who lived
The government plans to ban under-16s from social media platforms.
The government has taken a big step towards its goal of getting children and young teenagers off social media and revealed who would be covered by the ambitious ban.
The government is being pretty coy about the details, so most of the article is necessarily conjecture.
Selected excerpts from the article:
The definition of a social media service, as per the Online Safety Act
An electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
- The sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end users;
- The service allows end users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end users;
- The service allows end users to post material on the service.
Under the proposed changes, it will be the responsibility of social media companies to take reasonable steps to block people under 16.
How will your age be verified?
The government's legislation won't specify the technical method for proving a person's age.
Several options are on the table, including providing ID and biometrics such as face scanning.
The government's currently running an age assurance trial
Controlling the creation of minuscule communities and cleaning up abandoned ones.
Lemmygrad is not a large website. The statistics on the sidebar shows that it has around 10.5k users, with this number being considerably smaller in regards to its active users, with 1.11k users using the website in the last 6 months and half than that in the last month, with 591 users.
That is perfectly okay: the concept of a small, tight-knit community of active users with shared interests who can recognize each other frequently by name is an appealing one. However I personally think that on a site with a membership so small one should stop to think, before creating a community centered around certain topic, about the chances that exist for such to attract enough users and grow to the point needed to maintain a certain life. I would have imagined that it should be a matter of common sense, but it seems not everyone gets it, and as a result, Lemmygrad ends up full of extremely niche communities that have either no posts nor users except its creators or recieve content solely from the
Former spy for China's secret police reveals operations targeting dissidents in Australia and overseas
A spy for one of the most feared and powerful arms of China’s intelligence apparatus is revealing his identity and operations overseas, including in Australia, as part of a Four Corners investigation.
The inner workings of China's notorious secret police unit and how it hunts down dissidents living overseas – including in Australia – have been exposed by a former spy in a Four Corners investigation, raising tough questions about Australia's national security.
It is the first time anyone from the secret police – one of the most feared and powerful arms of China's intelligence apparatus – has ever spoken publicly.
The investigation also found the existence of an espionage operation on Australian soil only last year and the secret return of an Australian resident to China in 2019. Spy speaks out
The spy — who goes by the name Eric — worked as an undercover agent for a unit within China's federal police and security agency, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) between 2008 and early 2023.
The unit is called the Political Security Protection Bureau, or the 1st Bureau. It is one of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) key tools of repression, operating across the globe to surveil, kid
Former spy for China's secret police reveals operations targeting dissidents in Australia and overseas
A spy for one of the most feared and powerful arms of China’s intelligence apparatus is revealing his identity and operations overseas, including in Australia, as part of a Four Corners investigation.
The inner workings of China's notorious secret police unit and how it hunts down dissidents living overseas – including in Australia – have been exposed by a former spy in a Four Corners investigation, raising tough questions about Australia's national security.
It is the first time anyone from the secret police – one of the most feared and powerful arms of China's intelligence apparatus – has ever spoken publicly.
The investigation also found the existence of an espionage operation on Australian soil only last year and the secret return of an Australian resident to China in 2019. Spy speaks out
The spy — who goes by the name Eric — worked as an undercover agent for a unit within China's federal police and security agency, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) between 2008 and early 2023.
The unit is called the Political Security Protection Bureau, or the 1st Bureau. It is one of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) key tools of repression, operating across the globe to surveil, kid
Former spy for China's secret police reveals operations targeting dissidents in Australia and overseas
A spy for one of the most feared and powerful arms of China’s intelligence apparatus is revealing his identity and operations overseas, including in Australia, as part of a Four Corners investigation.
The inner workings of China's notorious secret police unit and how it hunts down dissidents living overseas – including in Australia – have been exposed by a former spy in a Four Corners investigation, raising tough questions about Australia's national security.
It is the first time anyone from the secret police – one of the most feared and powerful arms of China's intelligence apparatus – has ever spoken publicly.
The investigation also found the existence of an espionage operation on Australian soil only last year and the secret return of an Australian resident to China in 2019. Spy speaks out
The spy — who goes by the name Eric — worked as an undercover agent for a unit within China's federal police and security agency, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) between 2008 and early 2023.
The unit is called the Political Security Protection Bureau, or the 1st Bureau. It is one of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) key tools of repression, operating across the globe to surveil, kid
'The public needs to know': Ecologists and climate scientists reveal devastating culture of suppression. “It’s clear that there is a very large cohort of government-employed climate scientists, both i
The beauty and wonder of the natural world is what keeps scientists like Dana Bergstrom fighting to protect it. She's one of many who say speaking out comes at a cost but not speaking up can take an even greater personal toll.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7255438
Bergstrom likens scientists to soothsayers, carrying the burden of being able to see the future, a vision that is now hurtling much faster towards us.
“A team of just under 40 world-leading ecologists had put this story together of collapse right across the [Australian] continent and to Antarctica.”
Bergstrom was one of two lead authors and it was her work that led to the paper, but, despite being at the heart of the research, she was unable to be the leading voice in the media.
At six o’clock the night before the paper came out, the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told her not to speak anymore and to let the researchers outside the division take over.
The tight control over scientists within the public service is something former CSIRO climate scientist David Karoly has also experienced.
Since his retirement from the CSIRO last year, he’s spoken publicly about the restr
As heat records tumble and the sea level rises, Fijians on the front lines of the Pacific climate crisis want Australia and other global emitters to do more of the heavy lifting.
Already, when a king tide occurs during one of intense storms that increasingly batter these islands, the seawater rises over the sea wall and sluices under the floorboards of Tulupe’s family home.
The impact [of climate change] on our Pacific Island countries ... Is so severe and devastating that the large emitting countries and those companies that keep burning fossil fuel coal, oil and gas should step up and take more responsibility,” Paeniu said.
The group came to Kioa last year for the first time to launch the Kioa Climate Emergency Declaration 2022, an urgent global call to action presented to the international community at last year’s UN climate change conference COP27.
Maina Talia, an organiser of the Kioa meeting and a Tuvaluan climate activist, is blunt: “We had a lot of hope in the new [Australian] government, but opening new coal mines gives us a bad signal.”
Millions of dollars in fines to punish online misinformation under new draft bill
Online platforms spreading misinformation and disinformation could face millions of dollars in penalties under new proposed federal government legislation that bolsters the power of Australia's media watchdog.
