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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3445013

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Shannon Van Sant, an adviser to the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, tracked a network of dozens of sites that posed as news organizations. One site mimicked The New York Times, using a similar font and design in what she called an attempt at legitimacy. The site carried strongly pro-Chinese messages.

When Van Sant researched the site’s reporters she found no information. Their names didn’t belong to any known journalists working in China, and their photos bore telltale signs of being created with AI.

“Manipulation of the media is ultimately a manipulation of readers and the audience, and this is damaging to democracy and society,” Van Sant said.

[...]

In addition to its state media, Beijing has turned to foreign players — real or not — to relay messages and lend credibility to narratives favoring the Communist Party, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Xiao also is editor-in-chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual news website that aggregates information from and about China.

[...]

Beijing’s methods are wide-ranging and links to the government are often difficult to prove, Xiao said. But whether it’s journalists with American-sounding names or an Indian influencer, the consistently pro-Beijing messages give them away.

“The implicit message is the same — that the Chinese Communist Party works for its people,” Xiao said.

Analysts at the cybersecurity firm Logically identified 1,200 websites that had carried Russian or Chinese state media stories. The sites often target specific audiences and have names that sound like traditional news organizations or defunct newspapers.

Unlike Russia or Iran, which have displayed clear preferences in the U.S. presidential campaign, Beijing is more cautious and focused on spreading positive content about China.

[...]

Beijing has invested in state media such as the Xinhua news agency and China Central Television to convey its messages to global audiences in various languages and platforms. Media groups at the local level are creating “international communication centers” to build an overseas presence with websites, news channels and social media accounts.

Beijing also has struck media partnerships worldwide.

[...]

To tell its story, Beijing has not shied away from using fake personas. A 2023 State Department report detailed the case of a published writer named Yi Fan, originally described as a Chinese foreign ministry analyst. Yi morphed into a journalist, then became an independent analyst.

Yi’s details changed, but the message did not. Through published commentaries and writings, Yi trumpeted close ties between China and Africa, praised Beijing’s approach to environmental sustainability and argued that China must counter distorted Western narratives.

Then there was Wilson Edwards, a supposed Swiss virologist quoted in Chinese media as a COVID-19 expert who criticized the U.S. response. But Swiss officials found no evidence he existed.

“If you exist, we would like to meet you!” the Swiss Embassy in Beijing wrote on social media.

Israeli forces killed 28 health care workers in Lebanon in just the past day, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press briefing on Thursday. So far, Israeli forces have killed 1,600 people, including over 100 children, in the past two weeks in Lebanon.

Israel has openly adopted attacks on health care as a military practice in its genocide in Gaza — one of many tactics that seemingly violate international wartime law that Israel is now using on Lebanon.

Israel is carrying out intense shelling in Lebanon, killing nearly the same number of people in Lebanon in just 10 days as were killed in the 2006 Lebanon war,

Israel’s violence is also causing a major displacement crisis. (...) at least 1.2 million people across Lebanon, or over a fifth of the population, have been forcibly displaced amid Israel’s attacks.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Lebanese army says that a soldier was killed in an Israeli strike on a military post in southern Lebanon, adding that soldiers fired back at the source of the fire.

It is the first time the army has fired back at Israeli forces since the conflict began a year ago, a Lebanese security source tells Reuters.

Palestinian security services say attack on Tulkarm refugee camp is deadliest on West Bank in 24 years

New NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte visited Ukraine on Thursday in his first official trip since taking office and pledging the alliance’s continued support for Kyiv in its war with Russia.

Rutte met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv as air raid sirens twice went off in the Ukrainian capital.

The new head of NATO vowed when he took office on Tuesday to help shore up Western support for Ukraine, which has been fighting Russia's full-scale invasion since February 2022 and has for most of this year been on the defensive due to a relentless Russian army push in the country's eastern regions.

SEOUL, Oct 2 (Reuters) - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered on Wednesday military aircraft to be deployed immediately to evacuate its citizens from Israel and other parts of the Middle East amid escalating tension, his office said.

Earlier on Wednesday, South Korea's foreign ministry urged its citizens in Israel and Lebanon to immediately leave by any means available.

When Leonid Volkov, a longtime associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was brutally attacked with a hammer outside his home in Lithuania in March, it initially seemed yet another case of the Kremlin hunting down its enemies abroad.

The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and struck him repeatedly with a hammer, breaking his left arm and damaging his left leg. Western officials and opposition figures assumed the attack, which took place a few weeks after Navalny’s mysterious death in prison, had been orchestrated by the Kremlin.

Then, last month, Navalny’s team released an explosive investigation that cast doubt on that version of events.

In the video, Maria Pevchikh, the head of Navalny’s investigation department, accused the wealthy businessman and outspoken Kremlin critic Leonid Nevzlin of hiring the men to beat up Volkov outside his home, claiming the attack was triggered by a personal dispute.

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A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.

The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

The woman is a member of the Yazidi religious minority, which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the UN has said constituted genocide.

Silwan Sinjaree, the chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, said she was freed after more than four months of efforts including several attempts that failed because of the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20987711

Local police in the cartel-dominated city of Culiacan, Mexico have been pulled off the streets after the army seized their guns, officials announced Monday.

The move came just one day after about 1,500 residents of Culiacan, the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa, held a march Sunday though the city’s downtown to demand peace after weeks in which cartel gunfights have killed dozens of people in and around the city.

. . .

Historically, the Mexican army has seized the weapons of local police forces they distrust, either because they suspect some local cops are working for drug gangs or because they suspect they are carrying unregistered, private sidearms that would make abuses harder to trace.

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This is merely a bullet point on the main article, but seems more-significant to me than the article's main title, and has now been cited on a number of other news sites:

Iranian source tells Al Jazeera Iran sent a message to the US via Qatar saying that it does not seek regional war but adding that “the phase of unilateral self-restraint has ended”. It also warned any Israeli attack would be met with an “unconventional response” that includes targeting Israeli infrastructure.