Super-Fun-Pak Comix by Ruben Bolling for May 20, 2024.

Angry Little Girls by Lela Lee for May 20, 2024.

An Arizona man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2017 death of his wife, who was buried alive in a hand-dug grave near their home while their children slept, authorities said.

Seven years after the murder, David Pagniano decided to plead guilty before his trial was scheduled to start and allowed a judge to determine his sentence without a plea agreement.

Pagniano, 62, also was sentenced on May 9 to a 16 ½-year prison term for kidnapping, forgery and fraud, according to the Yavapai County Attorney's Office.

…

"Sandra was kidnapped from her home while her children slept nearby, bound in packing tape, driven to a remote location and buried alive," McGrane said. "The evidence revealed she vigorously struggled while she was in the grave, and was likely conscious for up to five minutes after being buried."

Iran’s supreme leader has announced a five-day mourning period, but there have been fireworks and cheering in the country since the death was confirmed

Activists in Iran have said there is little mood to mourn the death of the country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan on Sunday. 

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, announced a five-day public mourning period after the deaths of Raisi, the foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other passengers on the helicopter. However, Iranians who spoke to the Guardian have refused to lament the death of a man who they say was responsible for hundreds of deaths in his four-decade political career.

It was during Raisi’s tenure that protests swept the country after the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested by police under Iran’s harsh hijab laws. More than 19,000 protesters were jailed, and at least 500 were killed – including 60 children – during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. The police continue to violently arrest women for refusing hijab rules.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin delivered the opening remarks at the 22nd Ramstein-format summit of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) on May 20, emphasizing that the new Russian offensive in Kharkiv Oblast has added to the urgency of the West's support for Ukraine.

. . .

Russia launched a new offensive on May 10 in northern Kharkiv Oblast. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Moscow's forces had managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers (6 miles) in the region but had been halted by the first line of defense.

While the specific results of the summit have yet to be announced, Austin said that the U.S. has "already delivered many of Ukraine's top priority requirements, and much more assistance is on the way."

MBFC
Archive

The United States and its allies in the Group of 7 nations set two goals in 2022 when they enacted a novel plan to cap the price of Russian oil: restrict Moscow’s ability to profit from its energy exports while allowing its oil to continue flowing on international markets to prevent a global price shock.

. . .

A variety of factors have allowed Russia to continue profiting from strong oil revenue, including lenient enforcement of the price cap. Russia’s development of an extensive “shadow” fleet of tankers has allowed it to largely circumvent that policy. That has allowed the Russian economy to be more resilient than expected, raising questions about the effectiveness of the coordinated sanctions campaign employed by the G7.

The Biden administration maintains that the strategy has been effective and that the price cap has imposed costs on Russia and forced it to redirect money that it would have used in Ukraine to finance an alternative oil ecosystem.

MBFC
Archive

Reactions ranged from welcoming the International Criminal Court’s decision to slamming it as “appalling” and “non comprehensible.”

While Israeli politicians of all stripes have sharply rebuked the International Criminal Court’s request for arrest warrants for its top officials, European leaders’ reactions are split.

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan filed applications Monday for arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as well as the commander of Hamas’s military wing and Israel’s defense minister, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel and the State of Palestine.

“Crimes committed in Gaza must be prosecuted at the highest level, regardless of the perpetrators,” Belgium’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Hadja Lahbib, wrote in a statement on X, emphasizing Belgium’s support for the work of the ICC. 

Slovenia’s foreign ministry issued a statement in a similar vein, stating that war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on Israeli and Palestinian territory “must be prosecuted independently and impartially regardless of the perpetrators.”

…

Other EU leaders saw the decision less favorably. 

“The ICC Chief Prosecutor’s proposal to issue an arrest warrant for the representatives of a democratically elected government together with the leaders of an Islamist terrorist organisation is appalling and completely unacceptable,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala wrote.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer expressed similar reservations.

…

In London, the United Kingdom’s government distanced itself from the ICC’s move.

Specifically from the standpoint of protecting against common and not-so-common exploits.

I understand the concept of a reverse proxy and how works on the surface level, but do any of the common recommendations (npm, caddy, traefik) actually do anything worthwhile to protect against exploit probes and/or active attacks?

Npm has a "block common exploits" option but I can't find anything about what that actually does, caddy has a module to add crowdsec support which looks like it could be promising but I haven't wrapped my head around it yet, and traefik looks like a massive pain to get going in the first place!

Meanwhile Bunkerweb actually looks like it's been built with robust protections out of the box, but seems like it's just as complicated as traefik to setup, and DNS based Let's Encrypt requires a pro subscription so that's a no-go for me anyway.

Would love to hear people's thoughts on the matter and what you're doing to adequately secure your setup.

Useless red circle, I know, but in my defense I didn’t put it there, it was already like this when I found it.

As Ukraine struggles to hold back Russian advances, the country’s officials say they are once again facing the formidable challenge of keeping electricity flowing as Moscow’s forces increasingly strike power plants.

To conserve energy, the government has ordered nationwide rolling blackouts for Monday night, broadening the smaller regional ones that have become the norm in recent weeks.

“This is another frontline in the war,” said Maxim Timchenko, the head of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private electricity company, on social media last week. He said the company’s workers were engaged in a “race against time” to restore power to consumers.

MBFC
Archive

The ringleaders of a far-right network of "Reichsbürger" around Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss begins in Frankfurt on Tuesday. The group has been accused of planning to topple the government.

The most high-profile of three trials linked to a far-right coup plot begins on Tuesday in a newly erected courtroom on the outskirts of Frankfurt. The defendants are alleged to be the 10 ringleaders of a group led by German aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, and stand accused of preparing to commit high treason and of membership in a terrorist organization.

All the suspects, part of the so-called "Reichsbürger" movement, were allegedly plotting to overthrow the German government. They were allegedly planning to storm the German parliament and detain prominent politicians, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz.

The Reichsbürger, or "citizens of the Reich," reject Germany's postwar state, claiming it was installed and controlled by the Allied powers who won World War II.

Police uncovered the suspected plot in a series of nationwide raids on December 7, 2022. Some 25 people were arrested and are now in detention awaiting the upcoming trials. More than 380 firearms were confiscated, along with almost 150,000 pieces of ammunition.

The alleged military arm of this group has been facing court in Stuttgart since April 29. A further eight suspected members of the alleged association will have to stand trial in Munich from June 18.

As the climate has warmed, there’s been an increase in the ingredients that make up hail storms: more instability in the atmosphere and stronger updrafts. The altitude in the atmosphere where water freezes has also been rising because of the warmer weather. This means that small hailstones often melt before they hit the ground. The upshot, said Gensini, is the hail that hits will be bigger and storms that produce small stones will be less frequent, thanks to climate change.

Yet even if warming’s effect on hail globally is still emerging, there are clear climate signals in specific places, namely Europe, according to Ian Giammanco, lead research meteorologist and managing director of standards and analytics at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), an industry-funded research group. “The hail across northern Italy, France and that sort of belt is increasing at an anomalously high rate,” he said.

Haircut Practice by Adam Koford for May 20, 2024.

Thermoplastics coming from the US, the EU, Taiwan and Japan are sold at prices below fair market value, says Beijing.

China has launched an "anti-dumping" investigation into chemical imports, in what appears to be a response to trade barriers introduced by the EU, the US and other countries. 

Polyoxymethylene copolymer, a plastic widely used in electronics and cars, is being sold at an unfairly low cost in China, therefore causing damage to domestic companies, said China's Ministry of Commerce.

The investigation will focus on imports from the US, the EU, Taiwan and Japan, and could take up to 18 months to complete.

Piped link to the video.