Futurology Today

Michael Mansfield KC is one of a group of lawyers who will on Monday hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.

The report, which has been prepared by a team of UK lawyers and researchers in The Hague, also accuses suspects of coordinated attacks on protected sites including historic monuments and religious sites, and forced transfer and displacement of civilians.

For legal reasons, neither the names of suspects, who include officer-level individuals, nor the full report are being made public.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/pcmasterrace by /u/quesslay on 2025-04-07 20:52:58+00:00.

This installation of arch is 2 years old at this point and there's nothing wrong with it and I want to do a clean reinstall to feel more fresh. But I've been constantly delaying it for a long time because I'm scared breaking something and also not having my laptop fully functional for even a day isn't a pleasant thought.

The benefits I think is being able to handpick which files I want to keep and which packages I would reinstall since the thought of how many files and packages are left over from when I momentarily needed them is really unpleasent. But this habit of reinstalling the OS as a cleanup method might be a bad one I've brought myself from the time I used windows which was justified back then but it may no longer be here since I can achieve what I want with a much more simple and less risky method

So am I being an idiot here? Or should I go for it?

Edit: I do have bleachbit but the benefit of a reinstall is that only system files, essential packages and my personal files are kept (actually copied out, formatted and copied back in for my files). These two aren't the same

Edit 2: Thank you everyone for their answers, it's clear that I don't have that much reason to wipe my system at the moment. It might be a better learning experience to look for orphan files and packages

"Struggling with sagging store-bought shelves or wasted space? Learn how to build custom bookcases that fit your space, hold tons of weight, and look pro—even if you’re a DIY newbie."

Original question by @ezyryder@lemmy.dbzer0.com

My partner's grandmother has passed and has left a collection of hundreds possibly thousands of DVDs. These range from official releases to pirated and bootleg copies. What would be the best way to digitize and archive this collection? Is there an external device out there that will let me burn and convert the DVDs? I'd want to possibly upload on archive.org if the copyright expired, store on backblaze or maybe another digital archiving site besides a regular torrent, would appreciate any recs on sites and advice in general. I haven't gone through these yet but figure the project would be a fun learning experience.

El Amra (Tunisia) (AFP) – Batons in hand, Tunisian police marched in single file down a dirt path flanked by olive trees. Ahead of them, migrants fled as their tents burned.

Some migrants stood by helplessly, watching the smoke swirl into the sky just a few hundred metres (yards) away after the authorities torched what had been their temporary homes.

"I don't know what to do," said Bakayo Abdelkadeur, a 26-year-old from Mali, clutching two worn blankets.

For nearly two years, olive groves around El Amra, a town south of Tunis, served as informal camps for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

This week, authorities launched a sweeping operation to clear out the makeshift shelters located a few kilometres (miles) from Tunisia's Mediterranean coast.

It's a growing flashpoint, fuelled by an anti-migrant campaign and rising tensions with local residents, who complain about the camps and demand that the land be cleared.

Tempers flared in 2023 after President Kais Saied said that "hordes of sub-Saharan migrants" threatened to change the country's demographics.

Many migrants arrived after crossing the deserts of Algeria and Mali, hoping to reach Italy. But tighter controls on the sea route have left them stranded.

Last year, Tunisia signed a 255-million-euro (almost $280-million) deal with the European Union, nearly half of which is earmarked for tackling irregular migration.

Benjamin Enna picked up a spoon and a sachet of powdered juice -- remnants of the so-called "Kilometre 25" camp.

The 29-year-old Nigerian said he survived a Mediterranean shipwreck and had hoped to join his brother in Italy.

Now he's torn between going home, working in Tunisia and trying to reach Europe again.

"My head's all mixed up," he said.

While some expressed a desire to go home and others insisted on pushing for Europe, nearly all migrants AFP spoke to around El Amra agreed on one thing: they want to leave Tunisia.

"We've suffered a lot," said Camara Hassan, 25, a former student of international relations from Guinea who spent two months in a Tunisian prison.

Despite the many obstacles, he remains determined to reach Europe.

"One way or another we'll make it," he said.

Others are frustrated by delays in voluntary return flights facilitated by the UN's International Organization for Migration.

"I want to go back to Ivory Coast, but the IOM (flights) are full," he said, before darting away when a National Guard vehicle approached.

A visibly exhausted 29-year-old Cameroonian, who asked not to be named, described her anguish.

"It's horrible," she said. "They treat us like we're not human."

National Guard spokesman Houcem Eddine Jebabli defended the police operation as "humane", saying that officers did not use tear gas.

Asked what would happen to the migrants now their shelters were gone, he said many would benefit from the "voluntary returns", while others have "dispersed into the wild".

As of Wednesday, the IOM said it had arranged 1,740 voluntary returns, following nearly 7,000 last year -- triple the 2023 figure.

But rights groups are sceptical.

Dozens of police vans and tractors were deployed in the operation, which Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) said aimed to scatter migrants to ease local anger.

"It won't work," he warned. "They'll regroup and build new camps because they have nowhere else to go."

On Saturday, a short drive from El Amra, groups of migrants were already walking along the roadside, heading towards other olive groves.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/Thick_Caterpillar379 on 2025-04-07 19:54:04+00:00.

Archived

The European Union and Central Asian countries have agreed to elevate their relationship to a strategic partnership.

[...]

Chaired by the Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the gathering was attended by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa, and the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

[...]

To anchor the upgraded relationship, von der Leyen announced a €12bn investment package under the EU Global Gateway strategy that rivals China’s Belt and Road Initiative (CBI) and investments committed by Russia to the ex-Soviet region, geopolitically now seen as much more “in play” given Moscow’s concentration on its war in Ukraine and the growing need of big powers to source critical minerals for the tech and energy transitions.

The funding will target priority sectors including critical raw materials (CRM), including a pledged emphasis on keeping added-value in processing local, as well as transport connectivity, digitalisation, water and energy. It will be allocated as follows:

• €3bn for sustainable transport initiatives
• €2.5bn for critical minerals development
• €6.4bn for hydropower and climate projects
• €100mn for satellite internet connectivity

[...]

Spin Boldak (Afghanistan) (AFP) – Thousands of Afghans have crossed the border from Pakistan in recent days, the United Nations and Taliban officials said, as Islamabad ramped up pressure for them to return to Afghanistan.

Pakistan last month set an early April deadline for some 800,000 Afghans carrying Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC) issued by Pakistan authorities to leave the country, another phase in Islamabad's campaign in recent years to repatriate Afghans.

Families with their belongings in tow lined up at the key border crossings of Torkham in the north and Spin Boldak in the south, recalling similar scenes in 2023 when tens of thousands of Afghans fled deportation threats in Pakistan.

"In the last 2 days, 8,025 undocumented & ACC holders returned via Torkham & Spin Boldak crossings," the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a post on social media platform X on Monday.

"IOM stands ready to scale up its response at key border points with forced returns expected to surge in the coming days," it said.

Taliban officials also said thousands of people had crossed the border, but at lower rates than the IOM reported.

Refugee ministry spokesman Abdul Mutalib Haqqani told AFP that 6,000-7,000 Afghans had returned since the start of April, saying "more than a million Afghans might return".

"We are urging Pakistan authorities not to deport them (Afghans) forcefully -- there should be a proper mechanism with an agreement between both countries, and they must be returned with dignity," he said.

The UN says nearly three million Afghans live in Pakistan, many having lived there for decades after fleeing successive conflicts in their country and after the Taliban's return to power in Kabul in 2021.

"We were forced to return. Two days ago I was stopped and asked for documentation when they were searching houses," 38-year-old Abdul Rahman told AFP after passing the Spin Boldak crossing with his family from Quetta, in Pakistan's southwest, where they lived for six years.

"They didn't even gave me an hour (to leave), I sold a carpet and my phone to make some money to come here, all my other belongings we left behind," he said.

Human rights activists have been reporting for months the harassment and extortion of Afghans in Pakistan, a country mired in political and economic chaos.

More than 1.3 million Afghans who hold Proof of Registration cards from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, have also been told to move outside the capital Islamabad and the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi.

Human Rights Watch has slammed "abusive tactics" used to pressure Afghans to return to their country, "where they risk persecution by the Taliban and face dire economic conditions".

Ties between the neighbouring countries have frayed since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Islamabad has accused Kabul's rulers of failing to root out militants sheltering on its soil, a charge that the Taliban government denies, as Pakistan has seen a sharp rise in violence in border regions with Afghanistan.