SlashDot: Another Undersea Cable Damaged in Baltic Sea. Criminal Sabotage Investigation Launched
“An underwater data cable between Sweden and Latvia was damaged early on Sunday,” reports the Financial Times, “in at least the fourth episode of potential sabotage in the Baltic Sea that has caused concern in Nato about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure…”
Criminal investigations have started in Latvia and Sweden, and a ship has been seized as part of the probes, according to Swedish prosecutors, who did not identify the vessel. Previous incidents have been linked to Russian and Chinese ships…
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Repair of data cables has tended to take much less time than that for gas or electricity connections, and the Latvian state radio and television centre said it had found alternative routes for its communications.
Wikipedia: $Trump
$Trump (stylized in all uppercase) is a meme coin associated with U.S. President Donald Trump, hosted on the Solana blockchain platform. One billion coins were originally created; 800 million remain owned by two Trump-owned companies, after 200 million were publicly released in an initial coin offering (ICO) on January 17, 2025. Less than a day later, the aggregate market value of all coins was more than $27 billion, valuing Trump’s holdings at more than $20 billion.
Don’t miss the exciting section on the ethics of this.
NYT: How Google Maps Plans to Handle the ‘Gulf of America’
The Trump administration declared on Friday that the Gulf of Mexico had been renamed the Gulf of America, but popular mapping services from Google and Apple have continued showing the old name.
On Monday, Google said it would update its maps to display Gulf of America as soon as the U.S. government updated its official maps.
“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” the company said in a post on X.
GoogleMaps had better not show that propaganda here!
NYT: Trump Administration Halts H.I.V. Drug Distribution in Poor Countries
The Trump administration has instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing H.I.V. medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics.
The directive is part of a broader freeze on foreign aid initiated last week. It includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the global health program started by George W. Bush that is credited with saving more than 25 million lives worldwide.
The administration had already moved to stop PEPFAR funding from moving to clinics, hospitals and other organizations in low-income countries.
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One study estimated that if PEPFAR were to end, as many as 600,000 lives would be lost over the next decade in South Africa alone. And that nation relies on PEPFAR for only 20 percent of its H.I.V. budget. Some poorer countries are almost entirely dependent on the program.
Last Updated: 27.Jan.2025 22:56 EST
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