This post is part of a symposium on Jason Jackson’s Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** Jason Jackson’s erudite Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry tackles the question of how to understand India’s evolving foreign investment policy. Decisions about whether to promote domestic or foreign capital, he argues, have been guided by…
Author: tio
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Ukraine Says Russia Recruited 24,000 Foreign Fighters, About Half From Asia
Russia has recruited more than 24,000 foreign fighters from 44 countries since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to data provided to reporters by Ukrainian authorities.
Ukraine has captured recruits from Colombia to Cameroon, and Italy to China, according to the previously unreported data.
The figures were compiled by Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, and they cover the period from the invasion until late 2025. The data, which the agency says comes partially from sources within the Russian military, was shared with OCCRP’s media partner, Himal Southasian.
The largest number of recruits came from Central Asia, according to the data. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan together sent 11,157 recruits. At least 1,399 of them have been killed, the agency said.
“Russian efforts are focused on recruiting in the poorest countries of the world among the most vulnerable segments of the population,” said a spokesperson for the Coordination Headquarters.
“These (recruitment) networks operate on three principles: bribery, deception, and coercion,” he told Himal Southasian.
Russia’s foreign and defense ministries did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
South Africa and India have made efforts to prevent recruitment, and to repatriate citizens fighting for Russia, while Kenya has charged one man with human trafficking. The Russian embassy in Nairobi denied any government involvement in recruitment, but noted that foreigners are allowed to voluntarily enlist in the military.
Sri Lankan authorities launched an investigation in 2024 into a network allegedly sending fighters to Russia, and reportedly arrested two retired military officers. The outcome of that investigation is unclear, and police did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
OCCRP reported in 2024 on Yemenis who said they left their own war-torn country, because they were promised non-combat jobs — and Russian citizenship — but were forced to fight.
British Defence Secretary John Healey has said Russia’s increasing reliance on foreign recruitment is due to high levels of casualties suffered on the battlefield, Bloomberg reported.
Between February 2022 and December 2025, Russian casualties — including killed, wounded, and missing — totalled about 1.2 million, according to a report by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
The Washington-D.C.-based think tank warned, however, that “assessing casualties and fatalities in wartime is difficult and imprecise, and various sides have incentives to inflate or shrink the numbers for political purposes.”
Ukraine has suffered about half the number of casualties as Russia, according to the CSIS report.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters spokesperson said Russia has stopped recruiting from Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, and Pakistan, which together had sent at least 1,794 fighters.
Of the 751 Sri Lankans recruited into the Russian military, at least 275 were killed in action, he added.
One of the missing Sri Lankans is Ulpakada Pathira Arachchilage Mahesh Suranjith Karunanayake, 45. He had served one year in the Russian military and was due to return home, according to his wife Nayomi Maheshika Dissanayake, 41.
She told Himal that she had last heard from her husband more than seven months ago, and he was last seen boarding a Moscow-bound bus from Bryanka, an occupied city in eastern Ukraine.
Before disappearing, he found that 3.7 million Russian rubles (about $48,000) had been withdrawn from his account by his commander, and he filed a complaint, Dissanayake said.
The Ukraine Coordination Headquarters spokesperson claimed that Russian officers sometimes steal the signing bonuses received by recruits, which range from 1 to 4 million rubles (about $13,000 to $52,000).
He added that fighters are recruited online via chatbots and advertisements on social media, as well as in person through locals who are paid to find potential candidates.
In the case of Karunanayake, a Sri Lankan recruitment agent told him “he would not be sent to the frontline,” according to his wife, Dissanayake.
“Then he gave money to a local agent. That agent is in hiding now,” she said.
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MAHA Government Doctors Feel Entitled to Falsely Smear Private Citizens in the Press While Demanding That They Not Be Falsely Smeared in the Press
Our so-called public servants have one set of standards for themselves and another for private citizens who dare to the challenge their government.
The post MAHA Government Doctors Feel Entitled to Falsely Smear Private Citizens in the Press While Demanding That They Not Be Falsely Smeared in the Press first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.
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Dentists return £900m for not seeing NHS patients
Sum represents £1 out of every £7 they have been given by NHS as dentists opt to chase private work. -
U.S. Lists Notorious Piracy Threats, With Focus on Sports Streaming
Every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a list of ‘notorious markets’ that facilitate online piracy and related intellectual property crimes.
Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.
For more than a decade we have covered the online section of the report. Traditionally, that includes prominent torrent sites, download portals, cyberlockers, and streaming services that offer copyrighted content without obtaining permission from rightsholders.
In recent years, the scope of the report has broadened significantly. For example, we have seen hosting companies, advertisers, and social media platforms being added. These don’t have piracy as their core business, but they allegedly facilitate infringing activity.
Issue Focus: Sports Streaming Piracy
Yesterday, the USTR published its 2025 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. Every year, the Office selects an ‘Issue Focus’; for 2025, the target is live sports broadcast piracy. This choice is in part triggered by the upcoming FIFA World Cup that’s hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
“With the United States co-hosting the FIFA World Cup, we are particularly attuned to sales of counterfeit merchandise and illicit streaming of sports broadcasts,” Ambassador Jamieson Greer said, commenting on the release.
The USTR report notes that the stakes are high. Pirate sites and services directly threaten the global sports broadcast rights market, which was reportedly valued at approximately $62.6 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, pirate site operators continue to get more sophisticated and evasive.
“When authorities shut down a pirate streaming website, operators can simply register new domain names, rebrand under different names, or migrate to alternative hosting providers,” the Notorious Markets report reads.
“This whack-a-mole dynamic frustrates enforcement efforts and requires sustained, resource-intensive campaigns that often exceed the capabilities of right holders and enforcement agencies.”
New Legal Frameworks
What further complicates the challenge is the fact that live broadcasts typically only have a small takedown window. This means that content removals and enforcement have to be swift and global. In some countries, this may require legislative updates.
“Current legal frameworks, while providing important protections, have not kept pace with the technological realities of modern piracy operations,” the USTR writes in its report.
These legislative measures may include expedited site-blocking powers, as we have seen in Italy and Spain recently, although these could introduce overblocking risks. The USTR does not mention these examples but notes that “traditional notice-and-takedown” frameworks are often “inadequate for live sports broadcasts.”
Interestingly, United States law does not support no-fault site-blocking measures yet. Nor are there broadly used legal tools to take livestreams down instantly. That said, USTR notes that preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders could help.
“For example, the United States has expedited provisions for copyright protection, primarily through temporary restraining orders (TROs) and preliminary injunctions, which a court can grant to immediately stop infringing activity,” USTR writes.
Live streaming challenges 
The Notorious Pirate Sites
USTR’s strong focus on sports streaming piracy is not immediately reflected in the list of notorious markets. While there are plenty of dedicated sports piracy networks, none is mentioned in the latest notorious markets report. Instead, it mostly highlights familiar targets.
Much of the list will look familiar to anyone who followed last year’s edition. ThePirateBay, 1337X, RuTracker, and YTS.mx return in the torrent category. Filehosting platforms Krakenfiles, Rapidgator, and 1fichier are also back, while Sci-Hub and LibGen remain listed in the publishing category.
The removals also make sense. These include the prominent torrent site TorrentGalaxy, which went offline last year, as well as NSW2U, the Nintendo Switch piracy site that had its domain names seized by the FBI and Dutch authorities last year.
Meanwhile, there are some notable newcomers too. MegaCloud, for example, which is the rebranded successor to 2embed, offers a piracy video library backend system that reportedly serves over 260 streaming sites and 600 million monthly visitors. MyFlixerz, which runs on that same ‘piracy as a service’ (PaaS) infrastructure, is also listed as a newcomer.
From USTR’s report 
Another newcomer is MIGFlash, which offers piracy-enabling Nintendo Switch devices, and Fire Video Player, which offers video player software that’s linked to a video library, so people can easily start their own pirate sites.
Pirate Sports Streaming?
As mentioned earlier, dedicated sports streaming sites are not mentioned. The notorious markets list does include IPTV services that support streaming, including MagisTV, but does not list dedicated sites, which is odd considering this year’s sports focus.
In the positive developments section, the USTR report does reference the takedown of Streameast, one of the largest online sports streaming networks with 1.6 billion annual visits, of which 80 domain names were seized last year. However, the original Streameast operation or other surviving sports streaming brands remain unmentioned.
The USTR’s mention of the FIFA World Cup is notable, however. In the past, the U.S. Government has launched several domain seizure campaigns close to the start of major sporting events, such as the Super Bowl, so it’s possible that we will see similar action this summer.
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A copy of the USTR’s 2025 Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf). The full overview also includes offline markets.
A list of highlighted sites and online services, including those listed for counterfeiting, is included below. The sites mentioned are categorized by TorrentFreak for clarity purposes and listed below.
Torrent Sites
– 1337X
– RuTracker
– The Pirate Bay
–TorrentGalaxy
– YTS.mxFile-Hosting/Cyberlockers
– 1fichier
– Krakenfiles
– Rapidgator
-SavefromE-Commerce
– Baidu Wangpan
–Bukalapak
– DHgate
– Douyin Mall (new)
– Indiamart
– Pinduoduo
–Shopee
– TaobaoPaaS
–
2embed
– Fire Video Player (new)
– MegaCloud (new)
– Streamtape
– WHMCS SmartersAdvertising
– Avito
Streaming/IPTV
– Cuevana
– GenIPTV
– HiAnime
– MagisTV
– MyFlixerz (new)
– VegaMoviesHosting/Infrastructure
–
Amaratu
– DDoS-Guard
– FlokiNET
– Private Layer (new)
– Squitter
– Virtual SystemsSocial Media
– VK
Gaming
– FitGirl-Repacks
– MIG Flash (new)
–NSW2U
– UnknownCheatsMusic
– Y2Mate
Publishing
– Libgen
– Sci-HubFrom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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Allergy training to become compulsory in schools in England
The plans, due to come into force in September, follow support for Benedict’s Law, a campaign to improve allergy safety in schools. -
Drug breakthrough for children with severe form of epilepsy
Families say the groundbreaking medicine is transforming the lives of children with Dravet syndrome. -
‘My son can now enjoy life’: Children with severe form of epilepsy helped by new drug
Families say the groundbreaking medicine is transforming the lives of children with Dravet syndrome. -
When AI Goes to War
The fight for supremacy between competing artificial intelligence behemoths has become part of the rapidly escalating U.S. war against Iran. Anthropic, creator of the chatbot Claude, has seen a spike in public interest after its CEO announced that the company would not sign a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense; according to CEO Dario Amodei, the dispute was focused on two specific restrictions on the technology prohibiting its use for autonomous warfare and for mass surveillance.
On Friday evening, Sam Altman’s OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, announced it had signed the contract Anthropic walked away from. Uninstalls of the chatbot spiked nearly 300% day-over-day — and Anthropic topped ChatGPT in the App Store for the first time — on Saturday.
While Amodei said in a statement that “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Altman said when announcing the deal that he was able to get the Pentagon to agree to terms that would keep guardrails on the use of its tech “for all lawful purposes.” However, an analysis of OpenAI’s contract showed the government could conduct broad surveillance on U.S. citizens, and Altman was forced to backtrack. On X, Altman tried to explain the deal, saying, “We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s threats to remove Anthropic’s products from its systems and designate the company as a “supply chain risk” did not scare Amodei into submission. It also did not stop the U.S. from using Anthropic tools in its attacks on Iran mere hours after President Donald Trump announced that he would ban all federal agencies from using Anthropic technology. As The Wall Street Journal reported, it will take months for agencies already using it to phase out Anthropic and replace it with OpenAI and xAI products:
Commands around the world, including U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, use Anthropic’s Claude AI tool, people familiar with the matter confirmed. Centcom declined to comment about specific systems being used in its ongoing operation against Iran.
The command used the tool for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios even as tension between the company and Pentagon ratcheted up, the people said, highlighting how embedded the AI tools are in military operations.
What happens next for Anthropic? According to Lawfare, neither Hegseth’s nor Trump’s announcement is likely to survive a court challenge, which the company has said it will pursue:
Step back and consider what these positions amount to together. The government is arguing that Claude is so vital to military operations that it cannot tolerate any contractual restrictions on it — while simultaneously claiming that Claude poses such a grave supply chain risk that the entire federal government must stop using it, every defense contractor must sever commercial ties with its maker, and the company should be cut off from the cloud infrastructure it needs to survive. It’s like the joke from “Annie Hall”: The food is terrible and the portions are too small.
That might be funny as a bit of Borscht Belt humor. It is less amusing as a description of the United States government’s strategy toward one of the companies leading America’s effort to develop what may be the most important technology of the century. What Hegseth is actually describing is not a supply chain risk determination but something closer to the beginning of a partial nationalization of the AI industry: Seize the technology and, if you can’t, destroy the company to ensure that no future AI developer dares negotiate terms the Pentagon dislikes.
Arbitrary and capricious review requires, at minimum, logical coherence. The government cannot credibly maintain that a vendor is indispensable, that its continued integration poses no immediate danger, that its technology is reliable enough for active combat operations in Iran, and that it is nonetheless so dangerous it must be severed from the entire federal procurement ecosystem — all in the same week. Even a court inclined to defer on national security matters will notice that these propositions cannot all be true at once.
You can read more about what’s happening here, here, and here.
The post When AI Goes to War appeared first on Truthdig.