Starlink tells Brazil regulator it will not comply with X suspension

  Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil's telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.

Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil's top court.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.

The move also led to the freezing of Starlink's bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a "dictator."

The decision to freeze Starlink's accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents.

The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, a five-member panel of the court is set to decide whether to uphold Moraes' ruling.

Law experts consulted by Reuters have said they believe the panel will likely confirm Moraes' ruling.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/starlink-tells-brazil-regulator-not-133059311.html

South Korea denies hospital emergency rooms collapsing as army doctors deployed

 South Korea's health ministry said on Monday it was deploying military doctors to assist in some hospital emergency rooms due to a shortage of medical staff, but disputed a warning by some physicians that the system was on the verge of collapse.

A strike by young doctors has increased strain on the medical system, but Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo said that while some hospitals had shortened the hours of emergency room (ER) operations and were working with fewer doctors reports that some major hospitals had suspended ER operations were false.

"The overall emergency medical capacity is such that there are some difficulties but it's not a situation where we have to worry about a collapse as some people are warning," Park told a briefing.

The government plans to initially send 15 military doctors to emergency rooms that had been particularly badly affected and assign 235 military doctors and community doctors who will be rotated in to troubled hospitals from Sept. 9, he said.

Earlier on Monday, the national association of medical school professors said in a statement many emergency rooms were not providing normal services and a collapse of the healthcare system had already started.

Thousands of trainee doctors, including interns and resident doctors, walked off the job in February to protest against a plan to lift medical student numbers by 2,000 a year to meet what authorities project will be a severe shortage of doctors.

Hospitals which had relied on trainee doctors across multiple medical disciplines have had to turn away patients at emergency rooms, citing a shortage of staff, while existing doctors have experienced heavier workloads, the government said.

There are particular concerns about the impact of a three-day autumn holiday starting Sept. 16, which could put more pressure on ER operations. The government said it is readying 4,000 local clinics and smaller hospitals that would open in turn during the holidays.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-korea-denies-hospital-emergency-083100983.html

New unproductive forces: the Chinese youth owning their unemployment

After quitting the education industry last August due to China's crackdown on private tutoring, He Ajun has found an unlikely second life as an unemployment influencer.

The Guangzhou-based vlogger, 32, offers career advice to her 8,400 followers, charting her journey through long-term joblessness. "Unemployed at 31, not a single thing accomplished," she posted last December.

He is now making around 5,000 yuan ($700) per month through ads on her vlogs, content editing, private consultations and selling handicrafts at street stalls.

"I think in future freelancing will be normalised," said He. "Even if you stay in the workplace, you'll still need freelancing abilities. I believe it will become a backup skill, like driving."

China is under instruction to unleash "new productive forces", with government policies targeting narrow areas of science and technology including AI and robotics.

But critics say that has meant weak demand in other sectors and risks leaving behind a generation of highly educated young people, who missed the last boom and graduated too late to retrain for emerging industries.

A record 11.79 million university graduates this year face unprecedented job scarcity amid widespread layoffs in white-collar sectors including finance, while Tesla, IBM and ByteDance have also cut jobs in recent months.

Urban youth unemployment for the roughly 100 million Chinese aged 16-24 spiked to 17.1% in July, a figure analysts say masks millions of rural unemployed.

China suspended releasing youth jobless data after it reached an all-time high of 21.3% in June 2023, later tweaking criteria to exclude current students.

Over 200 million people are currently working in the gig economy and even that once fast-growing sector has its own overcapacity issues. A dozen Chinese cities have warned of ride-hailing oversaturation this year.

Redundancies have even spread to government work, long considered an "iron rice bowl" of lifetime employment.

Last year Beijing announced a 5% headcount reduction and thousands have been laid off since, according to official announcements and news reports. Henan province trimmed 5,600 jobs earlier this year, while Shandong province has cut nearly 10,000 positions since 2022.

Meanwhile, analysts say China's 3.9 million vocational college graduates are mostly equipped for low-end manufacturing and service jobs, and reforms announced in 2022 will take years to fix underinvestment in training long regarded as inferior to universities.

China currently faces a shortage of welders, joiners, elderly caregivers and "highly-skilled digital talent", its human resources minister said in March.

Yao Lu, a sociologist at Columbia University, estimates about 25% of college graduates aged 23-35 are currently in jobs below their academic qualifications.

Many of China's nearly 48 million university students are likely to have poor starting salaries and contribute relatively little in taxes throughout their lifetimes, said one Chinese economist who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"Although they cannot be called a 'lost generation', it is a huge waste of human capital," the person said.

'DOING THREE PEOPLE'S JOBS'

Chinese President Xi Jinping in May urged officials to make job creation for new graduates a top priority. But for younger workers unemployed or recently fired, the mood is bleak, nine people interviewed by Reuters said.

Anna Wang, 23, quit her state bank job in Shenzhen this year due to high pressure and frequent unpaid overtime. For a salary of about 6,000 yuan per month, "I was doing three people's jobs," she said.

Her ex-colleagues complain about widespread pay cuts and transfers to positions with unmanageable workloads, effectively forcing them to resign. Wang now works part-time jobs as a CV editor and mystery shopper.

At a July briefing for foreign diplomats about an agenda-setting economic meeting, policymakers said they have been quietly urging companies to stop layoffs, one attendee told Reuters.

Olivia Lin, 30, left the civil service in July after widespread bonus cuts and bosses hinted at further redundancies. Four district-level bureaus were dissolved in her city of Shenzhen this year, according to public announcements.

"The general impression was that the current environment isn't good and fiscal pressure is really high," she said.

Lin now wants a tech job. She has had no interview offers after a month of searching. "This is completely different from 2021, when I was guaranteed one job interview a day," she said.

REDUCED STIGMA

Shut out of the job market and desperate for an outlet, young Chinese are sharing tips for surviving long-term unemployment. The hashtags "unemployed", "unemployment diary" and "laid off" received a combined 2.1 billion views on the Xiaohongshu platform He uses.

Users describe mundane daily routines, count down the days since being fired, share awkward chat exchanges with managers or dole out advice, sometimes accompanied by crying selfies.

The increasing visibility of jobless young people "increases broader social acceptance and reduces stigma surrounding unemployment", said Columbia's Lu, allowing otherwise isolated youth to connect and "perhaps even redefine what it means to be unemployed in today's economic climate".

Lu said unemployed graduates understood blaming the government for their plight would be both risky and ineffective. Rather, she said, they were more likely to slip into "an internalisation of discontent and blame" or "lying flat".

He, the influencer, thinks graduates should lower their ambitions.

"If we have indeed entered 'garbage time', then I think young people could accumulate skills or do something creative, such as selling things via social media or making handicrafts."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unproductive-forces-chinese-youth-owning-230830675.html

'Biden says Netanyahu not doing enough to secure hostage deal'

 President Joe Biden told reporters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal in the Israel-Hamas war.

Biden made the remark to a Reuters reporter at the White House on Monday morning. This comes as the Biden administration irons out “take it or leave it” alongside Egypt and Qatar to present to the Israeli government and Hamas, The Washington Post reports.

The US, Egypt and Qatar were already working on the deal before Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six hostages held by Hamas in Gaza over the weekend. The Israeli Defense Forces said all six were killed shortly before they were set to be rescued.

“You can’t keep negotiating this,” an anonymous senior Biden administration official told the Post. “This process has to be called at some point.”

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/biden-says-netanyahu-not-doing-141819321.html

'U.S. researchers find probable launch site of Russia's new nuclear-powered missile'

 Two U.S. researchers say they have identified the probable deployment site in Russia of the 9M370 Burevestnik, a new nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile touted by President Vladimir Putin as "invincible."

Putin has said the weapon - dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by NATO - has an almost unlimited range and can evade U.S. missile defenses. But some Western experts dispute his claims and the Burevestnik's strategic value, saying it will not add capabilities that Moscow does not already have and risks a radiation-spewing mishap.

Using images taken on July 26 by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm, the two researchers identified a construction project abutting a nuclear warhead storage facility known by two names - Vologda-20 and Chebsara - as the new missile's potential deployment site. The facility is 295 miles (475 km) north of Moscow.

Reuters is the first to report this development.

Decker Eveleth, an analyst with the CNA research and analysis organization, found the satellite imagery and identified what he assessed are nine horizontal launch pads under construction. They are located in three groups inside high berms to shield them from attack or to prevent an accidental blast in one from detonating missiles in the others, he said.

The berms are linked by roads to what Eveleth concluded are likely buildings where the missiles and their components would be serviced, and to the existing complex of five nuclear warhead storage bunkers.

The site is "for a large, fixed missile system and the only large, fixed missile system that they're (Russia) currently developing is the Skyfall," said Eveleth.

Russia's defense ministry and Washington embassy did not respond to a request to comment on his assessment, Burevestnik's strategic value, its test record and the risks it poses.

A Kremlin spokesman said these were questions for the defence ministry and declined further comment.

The U.S. State Department, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center declined to comment.

The identification of the missile's probable launch site suggests that Russia is proceeding with its deployment after a series of tests in recent years marred by problems, said Eveleth and the second researcher, Jeffery Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Lewis agreed with Eveleth's assessment after reviewing the imagery at his request. The imagery "suggests something very unique, very different. And obviously, we know that Russia is developing this nuclear-powered missile," he said.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, who also studied the Vologda imagery at Eveleth's request, said that it appears to show launch pads and other features "possibly" related to Burevestnik. But he said he could not make a definitive assessment because Moscow does not typically place missile launchers next to nuclear warhead storage.

Eveleth, Lewis, Kristensen and three other experts said Moscow's normal practice has been stockpiling nuclear payloads for land-based missiles far from launch sites - except for those on its deployed Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force.

But deploying the Burevestnik at Vologda would allow the Russian military to stockpile the nuclear-armed missiles in its bunkers, making them available to launch quickly, said Lewis and Eveleth.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia will make changes to its guidelines on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as Western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state news agency TASS reported on Sunday.

POOR TEST RECORD

A 2020 report by the United States Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center said that if Russia successfully brought the Burevestnik into service, it would give Moscow a "unique weapon with intercontinental-range capability".

But the weapon's checkered past and design limitations raised doubts among eight experts interviewed by Reuters about whether its deployment would change the nuclear stakes for the West and other Russian foes.

The Burevestnik has a poor test record of at least 13 known tests, with only two partial successes, since 2016, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an advocacy group focused on reducing nuclear, biological and emergent technology risks.

The setbacks include a 2019 blast during the botched recovery of an unshielded nuclear reactor allowed to "smolder" on the White Sea floor for a year following a prototype crash, according to State Department reports.

Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom said five staff members died during the testing of a rocket on Aug. 8. Putin presented their widows with top state awards, saying the weapon they were developing was without equal in the world, without naming the Burevestnik.

Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based expert on Russia's nuclear forces, Lewis, Eveleth, and other experts said it will not add capabilities that Moscow's nuclear forces already do not have, including the ability to overwhelm U.S. missile defenses.

Moreover, its nuclear-powered engine threatens to disgorge radiation along its flight path and its deployment risks an accident that could contaminate the surrounding region, said Cheryl Rofer, a former U.S. nuclear weapons scientist and other experts.

"The Skyfall is a uniquely stupid weapon system, a flying Chernobyl that poses more threat to Russia than it does to other countries," agreed Thomas Countryman, a former top State Department official with the Arms Control Association, referring to the 1986 nuclear plant disaster.

NATO did not respond to questions about how the alliance would respond to the weapon's deployment.

Little publicly is known about the Burevestnik's technical details.

Experts assess that it would be sent aloft by a small solid-fuel rocket to drive air into an engine containing a miniature nuclear reactor. Superheated and possibly radioactive air would be blasted out, providing forward thrust.

Putin unveiled it in March 2018, saying the missile would be "low flying," with nearly unlimited range, an unpredictable flight path and "invincible" to current and future defenses.

Many experts are skeptical of Putin's claims.

The Burevestnik, they say, could have a range of some 15,000 miles (23,000 km) - compared to more than 11,000 miles (17,700 km) for the Sarmat, Russia's newest ICBM - while its subsonic speed would make it detectable.

"It’s going to be as vulnerable as any cruise missile," said Kristensen. "The longer it flies, the more vulnerable it becomes because there is more time to track it. I don't understand Putin's motive here."

The Burevestnik's deployment is not banned by New START, the last U.S.-Russian accord limiting strategic nuclear weapon deployments, which expires in February 2026.

A provision allows Washington to request negotiations with Moscow on bringing the Burevestnik under the caps but a State Department spokesperson said no such talks had been sought.

Citing the war in Ukraine, Russia has spurned U.S. calls for unconditional talks on replacing New START, stoking fears of an all-out nuclear arms race when it expires.

Podvig said Moscow might use the missile as a bargaining chip if talks ever resume.

He called the Burevestnik a "political weapon" that Putin used to bolster his strongman image before his 2018 re-election and to telegraph to Washington that it cannot dismiss his concerns over U.S. missile defenses and other issues.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-researchers-probable-launch-130014605.html

1.6 M Migrants In UK Are Unemployed, Costing Taxpayers £8.5 B: Report

 by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Almost 1.7 million foreigners residing in the U.K. are out of work or “economically inactive,” costing taxpayers an estimated £8.5 billion per year according to a new report.

An analysis of government figures by the Centre for Immigration Control shows that the current levels are the highest ever, surpassing a previous high of 1,628,000, recorded in 2012.

The £8.5 billion estimate doesn’t even include the costs of asylum seekers, who are routinely placed into four star hotels, as well as foreign students, meaning the actual cost to a British taxpayers is probably much higher.

In addition, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that the Home Office spent a staggering £7.9 billion in just three years on asylum, border, and visa management when its budget was just £320 million.

They went £7.6 BILLION over budget.

IFS research economist Max Warner told the BBC “When there is a one-off unexpected spike in costs or demand, spending more than was budgeted is entirely understandable. But when it is happening year after year, something is going wrong with the budgeting process.”

Robert Bates, of the Centre for Migration Control research director, told The Daily Mail that “For all the talk of a fiscal ‘black hole’, the Labour Government seem to be missing the glaringly obvious fact that mass migration is causing economic pandemonium.”

“There is no reason for us to continue handing out so many long-term visas when we are currently having to bail out over a million migrants who are already in Britain but not working,” Bates further noted.

“This is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme, and we will only compound the problem if we do not change course soon,” he urged.

“Our elderly are facing a potentially deadly winter as Keir Starmer cancels the lifeline of the winter fuel allowance, but at the same time he is doing nothing to clamp down on workless migrants,” Bates emphasised.

In response to the report, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage commented “The economic arguments for mass migration are over.”

Farage previously addressed the loophole of foreign students in the UK being given visas for their entire families, urging that they shouldn’t be able to “bring mum” to university.

*  *  *

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/16-million-migrants-uk-are-unemployed-costing-taxpayers-ps85-billion-report

US Schools In Mad Dash To Spend COVID Cash As Deadline Looms

 School districts across the country are in a mad dash to spend their remaining post-COVID relief grant money, or they have to return it to the US Treasury.

The $122 billion program aimed at boosting learning recovery in the wake of the pandemic expires Sept. 30, leaving just 30 days.

According to Georgetown University's Edunomics lab, which tracks how the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds have been spent, nine districts have yet to submit more than $30 million of previously granted funds for reimbursement.

According to the Lab, most of the grant funds were spent on labor, including additional teachers, classroom aides, counselors, tutors, reading coaches, subject area specialists and administrators.

As the Epoch Times notes further, in an Aug. 30 email response to The Epoch Times, the U.S. Department of Education affirmed that it cannot extend the deadline for expenditure approvals past Sept. 30, and it will not allow them to transfer any leftover money to a “rainy day account.”

Districts can request additional time to spend down the money if the U.S. Department of Education approves the expenditure prior to Sept. 30. Liquidation extension requests are due Dec. 31.

The smallest of the nine districts on the $30 million plus unspent list, Syracuse city in New York, has used 68.4 percent of its allocation, or $74.45 million out of $108.86 million. The largest district, Clark County in Nevada (Las Vegas area), so far spent 95.4 percent of its ESSER money, or $1.15 billion out of $1.20 billion. Neither district replied to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) in Wisconsin has spent $570.22 million of its total $786.41 million allocation, or 72.5 percent, according to the Edunomics Lab.

All told, MPS spent its ESSER money on providing Chromebooks for students, upgrading athletic facilities, tutoring services, learning camps that took place when school wasn’t in session, mental health services, afterschool clubs, free sports physicals, and free drivers’ education classes, said Stephen Davis, MPS media relations manager, in an Aug. 30 email response to The Epoch Times.

As for the amount currently listed as unspent, he added, contracts and purchase orders for goods and services have been approved, so the district is authorized to make final payments on those items several months from now.

“MPS is on track to spend the entire budget,” he said.

Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida received $766.23 million. The data indicate that 85.3 percent of that amount has been spent. Tanya Arja, district chief of communications, said $24 million of the remaining money has gone to charter schools whose expenditures don’t require authorization from the district office.

Arja said the district’s current unallocated amount, $19 million, will go toward curriculum, school supplies, and information technology improvements that are expected to be approved by both the Board of Education and the U.S. Department of Education in the coming weeks.

“This will ensure all district funds will be obligated by Sept. 30 and liquidated by November. We do not plan on sending anything back,” Arja said in an Aug. 30 email response to The Epoch Times.

The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) has spent $566.15 million of its $846.78 million total allocation, or 66.9 percent, according to the data. However, unlike the other districts with unspent money, DISD’s remaining balance is attributed not to the last phase of ESSER but to the first two phases: $12.41 million of $61.98 million for phase one, and $49.32 million of $241.73 million for the second phase.

DISD officials replied to The Epoch Times’ request for comment and, noting that a new chief financial officer is still onboarding, said further information will be provided at a later date.

The other districts with remaining balances above $30 million include Minneapolis, with 62 percent of $249.40 million; Newark, New Jersey, with 83.4 percent of $277.08 million; DeKalb County, Georgia, with 76.7 percent of $486.57 million; and Stockton, California, with 79.6 percent of $241.56 million. Representatives from those districts did not respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment.

In the prior ESSER rounds, there were a small number of school districts that failed to spend their grants on time and had to return the money, according to a news release on the Edunomics Lab website. For the program’s last phase, a far greater amount of money is at stake, considering the rapidly approaching deadline.

“With one month left on this 42-month grant, many districts are cutting it close,” the news release said. “Is it worth spending ESSER down to the final penny? Depends on who you ask. Spending for the sake of spending can seem wasteful. Besides, isn’t $1,000 just a rounding error in a budget of millions?” it said.

“Then again, try telling a kindergarten teacher that you send the money back instead of replacing that dirty old circle-time rug that little Sophia threw up on last week. Or the PTA chair who spent countless hours getting the kids to sell chocolate to pay for honor roll prizes.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-schools-mad-dash-spend-covid-cash-deadline-looms