Yemen weapons dealers selling machine guns on X

[ad_1] Getty Images A file picture of an AK47 rifle and ammunition Weapons dealers in Yemen are openly using the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to sell Kalashnikovs, pistols, grenades and grenade-launchers. The traders operate in the capital Sana’a and other areas under control of the Houthis, a rebel group backed by Iran and proscribed as terrorists by the US and Australian governments. “It is inconceivable that they [the weapons dealers] are not operating on the Houthis’ behalf,” said the former British Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton-Brown, who now works for the Counter Extremism Project. “Purely private dealers who tried to profit from supplying, [for example] the government of Yemen, would be quickly shut down.” An investigation by The Times newspaper found that several of the Yemeni accounts bore the blue tick of verification. Both The Times and the BBC have approached X for comment, but have not so far received any response. Most of the platform’s content moderators were laid off after the new owner Elon Musk bought the company in 2022. The advertisements are mostly in Arabic and aimed primarily at Yemeni customers in a country where the number of guns is often said to outnumber the population by three to one. The BBC has found several examples online, offering weapons at prices in both Yemeni and Saudi riyals. The words beside the weapons are designed to lure in the buyers. “Premium craftsmanship and top-notch warranty,” says one advertisement. “The Yemeni-modified AK is your best choice.” A demonstration video, filmed at night, shows the seller blasting off a 30-round magazine on full automatic. Another offers sand-coloured Pakistani-produced Glock pistols for around $900 each. Yet these advertisements are not hidden in the depths of the Dark Web, where guns and other illegal items are usually traded, they are in plain sight on X, openly accessible to millions of people. Commenting on this, UK-based NGO Tech Against Terrorism issued what it called an urgent plea to tech platforms to actively remove Houthi-supporting content on the internet and social media platforms. The Houthis, a mountain-based tribal minority, swept to power in Yemen in 2014, ousting the UN-recognised government. Since then, a seven-year military campaign led by neighbouring Saudi Arabia failed to remove them, while the country descended into civil war. In late 2023 the Houthis, who have an extensive arsenal of drones and missiles, many supplied by Iran, have been targeting commercial and naval shipping in the Red Sea. The Houthis say this is in support of Palestinians in Gaza, but many of the vessels have had no links to Israel. A US-led maritime force offshore has failed to stop the Houthis’ attacks on shipping, which have had a disastrous effect on trade passing through Egypt’s Suez Canal. [ad_2] Source link

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Soft Skills in Software Are Important

[ad_1] The last point made in 10 hard-to-swallow truths they won’t tell you about software engineer job – in the article I’ve been discussing for the past few months – the author ends on a single point that has nothing to do with development or anything related to technology. You will profit more from good soft skills than from good technical skills. He summarizes the statement like this: Technical skills are the ones you can learn easily. … It’s just a matter of practice. On the other hand, soft skills are much harder to improve. … You must do things you are not comfortable with. This is something I think is absolutely worth talking about within our industry especially given we’re not just responsible for solving a given problem. We should be able to articulate the solution to our team or stakeholders, field questions from them, and garner and manage feedback from them to adjust or improve our work (or, in some cases, ourselves). Soft Skills in Software If you’ve read the original article, and/or are reading this, and/or are looking for ways to improve your soft skills as a developer working – or aspiring to work – in this industry, there’s a wide variety of things you can do to sharpen said skills. You don’t have to be scared to give a presentation. Remember, as stated: You must do things you are not comfortable with. Here’s a list of things I found helpful when working to sharpen my soft skills. Maybe at least one of these can help you: In college, I worked as a teacher’s assistant for three semesters during school. Early in my career, I would give presentations and lead discussions on learning new tools, technologies, or paradigms based on things I was reading. This was open to a handful of teams related to the work we were doing. I, and a handful of team members, would host meetups during which we’d given presentations and give practical examples for how to achieve certain things in building web applications, blogging, and so on. I attended as many local meetups as my schedule allowed and tried to participate in every discussion. For several years, I submitted – and gave – numerous presentations at WordCamps. During the same time, I would try to participate in any podcast on to which I was invited. I would participate or lead lunch-and-learns or general meetings over Zoom with those interested in a certain topic. And throughout my career, I’ve tried to regularly blog about the whole process. Though this isn’t directly related to interacting with others in a social setting, I still find it important because it helps you to formulate and articulate your thoughts and this directly feeds back into all of the above. I’m not making the case you should do all of these. And I’m not claiming any of these weren’t without their own difficulty. But they did pay dividends in a variety of ways and picking just one can go a long way. Finally, I find this important because I think people who tend to work in our industry are often more comfortable working remote, in isolation, or with headphones on, and would prefer for other people to handle general communication (outside of Slack, Twitter, or whatever). It doesn’t have to stay that way, though. When there are opportunities for engineers to contribute to communication with others with regard to the problem at hand, it can help the entire project. On Lack of Soft Skills In addition to talking about my own experience, there are two points in the article I’d like to address. On Arrogance and Attitude I have met a lot of folks who are good with technical skills but awful to work with. One of the things I thoroughly enjoy about the tech industry – starting as far back as being a student in college – is we are surrounded by incredibly bright people. It’s one of those things we can take for granted but if you foster friendships in the space, you can learn a lot about so many things from so many people. But not everyone in the space is as friendly or willing to share what they know. (I know the popular word for this is “gatekeeping” but I don’t think that’s relegated to this industry alone, so I digress.) Don’t be this dude, gatekeeping. Part of meeting bright people is some of them are very smart, they know it, and this can breed arrogance. And if one isn’t self-disciplined or, simply put, nice enough, they may be insufferable. The tech industry is larger than it’s ever been before. Unfortunately, this means that for however many people you meet that are smart and willing to help, there are those who are just the opposite. On Soft Skills and Elevation With good soft skills, people will like you more and you have a better chance of getting a raise or promotion. If you are technically gifted but hard to work with, your chances are slightly reduced. Starting with the final point first: I’m not the position to deal with hiring and firing, though I’ve been there before. In my limited experience, those who are difficult to work may still be solid engineers and do an excellent job at problem solving. Further, they may be extraordinarily gifted thus helping to further the product or service the business is offering. But if that’s not only their core competency but their primary disposition in working, there isn’t much they will offer beyond that. Additionally, they can negatively impact morale among colleagues. To that end, they will likely stay where they are. And that may be fine for them. My point isn’t that those with caustic personalities be kept down, but that the dynamic of a team should be optimized. You too can increase team morale and earn a pizza party. And that leads back to the first point: If a person has good soft skills in

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Jadon Sancho completes loan move to Chelsea from Manchester United with obligation to buy next summer for £23m to end his Red Devils nightmare

[ad_1] Chelsea have signed Jadon Sancho on loan from Manchester United The deal includes a £23m obligation to buy next year plus add-ons LISTEN NOW : It’s All Kicking Off! , available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday and Thursday By Kim Morrissey Published: 15:02 EDT, 31 August 2024 | Updated: 15:10 EDT, 31 August 2024 Jadon Sancho is a blue! Chelsea have finally announced that the 24-year-old has signed to the London club on loan from Manchester United, with the Blues having an obligation to buy the England forward for £23million next year. Speaking about his arrival Sancho said: ‘I’m really excited to be here. London is where I grew up and I’m happy to be back. ‘The manager spoke to me about the project and, for a young player, it’s exciting. Hopefully I can bring goals and assists to the Bridge.’ Sancho will replace Raheem Sterling, who has joined Arsenal, after the former Borussia Dortmund star was out-of-favour with head coach Erik ten Hag following a highly documented fall-out last season. Sancho was brought in to replace Raheem Sterling, who has joined Arsenal, after the former Borussia Dortmund star was out-of-favour with head coach Erik ten Hag following a highly documented fall-out last season. Jadon Sancho has completed his loan move to Chelsea from Manchester United More to follow  Share or comment on this article: Jadon Sancho completes loan move to Chelsea from Manchester United with obligation to buy next summer for £23m to end his Red Devils nightmare [ad_2] Source link

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In Vietnam digital systems are helping farmers

[ad_1] Quang Doan Hong There are about 600 pigs on Quang Doan Hong’s farm Quang Doan Hong is a busy person. The accountant, who lives with his family in Hưng Yên, Vietnam, also owns a farm with about 600 pigs. He’s had to learn quickly about pig health, from which vaccines are effective to when to use antibiotics. “When the weather changes, I give the pigs antibiotics,” Mr Hong says. In his experience, rapid changes between sunny and rainy weather make it necessary to administer antibiotics for respiratory and diarrhoeal diseases. Mr Hong has also had to learn which sources of information are reliable. He’s joined farming groups and done online research, although he’s realised that some information on Facebook, for instance, isn’t reliable. “I need to filter it,” he explains. As his operation has grown, Mr Hong has become reluctant to have veterinarians visit. He worries about the risk of disease transmission from people who come into contact with animals at many different sites. Some large farms require animal health workers to quarantine for several days before visiting. FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization encourages careful use of antibiotics One thing that would be useful to Mr Hong is a hybrid source of information: something that combines the expertise of veterinarians with the convenience of digital access. These kinds of remote veterinary technologies are under development. The team behind Farm2Vet, a veterinary app for farmers, recently won the top prize from the Trinity Challenge, a charity tackling global health threats. The competition that Farm2Vet won focused on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – the urgent global threat of our limited slate of antibiotic medicines becoming less effective as pathogens adapt. Farms where antibiotics are overused can become breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These bacteria then enter the food system and the environment, for instance due to animal waste. Some drug-resistant bacteria, like certain strains of E. coli, can spread between animals and humans. “Antibiotic misuse and overuse largely relates to a lack of understanding, a lack of support,” says Marc Mendelson, the director of the Trinity Challenge, who also heads the infectious diseases division at the University of Cape Town’s hospital. Veterinary antibiotics can be extremely cheap, Prof Mendelson says. “Some farmers probably don’t even know that they’re giving antibiotics, because it’s just in the feed.” Vietnamese regulations now require prescriptions for livestock antibiotics. But this requirement is relatively recent and difficult to monitor. In practice, antibiotics are dispensed without prescriptions, Pawin Padungtod acknowledges. Dr Padungtod, based in Hanoi, is the senior technical coordinator for the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD), a unit of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Helen Nguyen Helen Nguyen says only the bigger farms in Vietnam can afford vets Helen Nguyen grew up in Vietnam and now lives in US, where she is an environmental engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Both countries have issues with the way antibiotics are given to farm animals, she says. In the US, medically important antibiotics are used for livestock far more often than they’re used for human beings. And in Vietnam, Prof Nguyen says, only larger farmers can afford or access veterinarians. Prof Nguyen and the rest of the Farm2Vet team are seeking to address these issues in Vietnam by working with farmers, veterinarians, and agricultural suppliers to develop a smartphone app that provides reliable information on animal care. There would be an AI-powered chatbot to answer relatively simple questions, and connections to veterinarians in more complex cases. “The technology that we are trying to produce doesn’t replace vets,” according to Prof Nguyen. The aim is to allow veterinarians to expand their reach. She says that the challenge is not developing the technology, but accumulating the knowledge base. While there are Vietnamese-language veterinary publications, the amount of data required to feed the AI is likely to exceed what’s available in Vietnamese. Because so much of the published veterinary science is in English, it’s important to carefully translate and localise the information, even to the provincial level. It will be years before the app is ready. Prof Nguyen says that while the app will be free for farmers to use, eventually, for financial sustainability, the aim is to allow advertising and a paid farming certification programme. FAO Vietnam Biosecurity experts want better ways to track the outbreak of animal diseases Also in Vietnam, the International Livestock Research Institute is designing a similarly named app, FarmVetCare. The idea is that using the app, farmers will report health abnormalities in livestock to a veterinarian. This is intended to help prevent and control animal diseases and diseases which can transfer between animals and humans. A different app is being piloted to extend the reach of the digital system for logging animal disease outbreaks through Vietnam’s Department of Animal Health. While the system now allows daily online reporting at the provincial level, the aim is to localise the reporting further, to be as close to the farm as possible. “The mobile application will then be very helpful because now they can start the reporting closer to the site of where the outbreak is,” Dr Padungtod says. Farmers may be reluctant to report veterinary diseases “because they don’t want to go bankrupt”, Prof Nguyen says. The Farm2Vet app would allow farmers to report veterinary illnesses anonymously, and the team would not provide identifiable data to anyone, according to Prof Nguyen. Prof Mendelson reckons such tools that can simplify the process of reporting, especially for subsistence farmers, are helpful. They may also help to prevent infection in the first place, which would cut down on the need for precious antibiotics. “The biggest bang for buck is in preventing infection – and not only in humans, but in in livestock,” Prof Mendelson says. He comments that governments could encourage prevention by making vaccination more accessible. And farmers could reduce the chances of infection by giving farm animals more space. Prof Mendelson says, “Intensive livestock farming increases stress on animals. It increases illness and

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The New “Learn WordPress” Launches. Here’s What I Like About It

[ad_1] If you haven’t checked out Learn WordPress lately, it’s probably a good idea to do it today. This free educational hub has just had a serious glow-up, and I’m here to give you the scoop on why it’s worth your attention. 👋 What’s Learn WordPress, anyway? For those who might not know, Learn WordPress has been around since 2020, offering free lessons, tutorials, and other training material for anyone looking to level up their WordPress game. The platform was okay (I guess), but the design and content organization left a lot to be desired. A reminder of what the old design was: Fresh new look, better content organization and experience! Thanks to the hard work of the Training, Design, Marketing, and Meta teams of WordPress contributors 👏, we can all now witness the birth of the new Learn WordPress; and it’s looking quite sharp! It’s not just about good looks, though. The whole site feels more intuitive now. You know how frustrating it can be to hunt for the right resource on a cluttered website, and especially when we’re talking things like training materials, right? But what has happened here goes beyond simple redesign. The team also did a lot to improve the content offering and overall organization of the platform. Most notably, we now have: “Learning Pathways” Quite simply, those are your “getting started” points based on your current understanding of WordPress and where you want to go with it. In other words, instead of there being just a bunch of random courses, there’s now a better organization at the top level that makes it much easier to pick the material that’s best tailored to you. When you go to learn.wordpress.org, the first thing that jumps right at you is a nice section that lets you make one of two choices – there’s “Develop with WordPress” and “Start using WordPress.” This seems like a good top-level organization, since most people dealing with WordPress are either users or developers. Plus, the user pathway also creates other opportunities for how this platform can be used (more on that in a sec). The courses Entering either of these pathways shows you a couple of more options and the courses available (for now). Granted, not a huge choice as of now, but what’s there is already surprisingly useful (in my opinion, at least). To take a course, all you need is a WordPress.org account. And, of course, it’s all free. The learning platform itself is neatly organized – it’s basically a classic LMS website structure, but done really cleanly and accessibly. I was wondering what actually runs the LMS underneath, so I did some digging in the project’s GIT, to find out that it’s Sensei PRO. The lessons that are currently there have been put together nicely, with good editing, and highlighting the most important parts of the lesson. Or, to say it another way, even though the ones I checked are basic screen recordings with added commentary on top, they do deliver all the content very nicely. This makes me hopeful for the future of the project overall and the value it can bring to the community. All the lessons right now are technically hosted on YouTube, so I could just embed them here, but I choose not to do that – not to take away from the complete course experience you get with the platform. Practice yourself What’s also unique about this WordPress course is that it allows learners to practice on a private demo site, which is powered by, yes, you’ve guessed it, WordPress Playground. This one’s cool, since you can do all your learning and experimentation there, without having to deal with any “difficult WordPress setup” (although there have been people who installed WordPress on Raspberry Pi in the past – we know those people(!)). Plus, if need be, you can export your work at the end. License and potential The courses are also licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, which is a notable detail. I’m no lawyer, but that license allows you to “copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially” and “remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,” which means that the courses there can serve as a foundation of your own work, plus you can use them to educate your users/clients/team/colleagues. Check it out! In the end, I encourage you to check out “Learn WordPress,” click around, get a feel for what’s there, and see how you might integrate the material into what you’re working on. Just to give you one example of what you could do; there’s a pathway called “Intermediate Theme Developer,” which goes through the current ins and outs of working on themes, including some newer developments in the WordPress platform. Many of the videos in the course were added as recently as two months ago. The WordPress team isn’t stopping here. They’re planning more pathways, including ones for designers and contributors. So if you don’t see exactly what you’re looking for yet, keep an eye out – it might be coming soon. As someone who’s been around the WordPress block a few times, I’m genuinely impressed with this update. It shows a real commitment to education and community support, which has always been at the heart of WordPress’ success! … Don’t forget to join our crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. Learn more below: Sources: Was this article helpful? No Thanks for your feedback! Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)! [ad_2] Source link

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