www.theguardian.com
Moldova’s pro-western president, Maia Sandu, blamed an “unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy” by “foreign forces” on Sunday night, as a pivotal referendum on EU membership remained too close to call with most votes counted. Moldovans went to the polls earlier in the day to cast their vote in a presidential election and an EU referendum that marked a key moment in the tug-of-war between Russia and the west over the future of the small, landlocked south-east European country with a population of about 2.5 million people. With almost 84% of the vote counted, the no vote was ahead on 53%, according to data shared by Moldova’s electoral commission. But the results could yet change as votes are still being counted among the large Moldovan diaspora, which is favourable to joining the EU. The separate presidential election results showed that incumbent president Sandu topped the first round of the vote with about 38%, but she will now face her closest competitor, Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor backed by the pro-Russian Socialists, in the second round. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/) [Archive](https://archive.is/M1bTL)
*A video of Shaaban al-Dalou burning to death after an Israeli strike at a hospital has stoked criticism from Israel’s allies and highlighted the plight of people trapped in Gaza.* He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape. Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip. Instead, the world watched him burn to death. Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/3O4xO)
A year ago, Saudi Arabia was preparing to recognize Israel in a normalization deal that would have fundamentally reshaped the Middle East and further isolated Iran and its allies while barely lifting a finger to advance Palestinian statehood. Now, that deal is further away than ever, even after the killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, which has been widely seized upon as a potential opening for a peace deal. Instead, Saudi Arabia is warming relations with its traditional archenemy, Iran, while insisting that any diplomatic pact now hinges on Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state, a remarkable turnaround for the kingdom. A diplomatic détente is underway in the Mideast, but not the one envisioned by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to say that his administration can clinch a deal with Riyadh. This month, the foreign ministers of the Persian Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. It is a shaky, early-stage rapprochement that will only chip away at centuries of sectarian antagonisms, but it represents a sharp shift in a region where the rivalry between Riyadh and Tehran has drenched the region in bloodshed for decades. Tehran’s outreach continued after that, with the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, visiting Saudi Arabia before heading to other countries in the region, including Iraq and Oman, in an effort to ease tensions. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/DYldd)
www.theguardian.com
Israel’s foreign minister has announced he is taking “legal and diplomatic measures” against the decision by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to ban Israeli companies from showing their wares at an arms fair in Paris next month. Israel Katz described the “boycott” as an anti-democratic measure that was “not acceptable, especially between friendly nations”. Katz did not elaborate on the measures he had in mind and the French government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Organisers of the Euronaval Salon, a naval defence fair due to take place between 4 and 7 November, told Reuters that after a decision by the French government no Israeli stands or exhibits would be allowed, although delegates could attend. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/) [Archive](https://archive.is/sQYyh)
www.nytimes.com
The Leafs started the game with pace and control. Most of the opening 10 minutes were spent in the Rangers’ end, and the Leafs were rolling shifts and quickly reloading if the puck was cleared. Despite the start, Alexis Lafrenière put the Rangers on the board first after a bad bounce off the official, an error in structure and a well-placed shot. New York turned it up in the second as the game opened up. The two teams exchanged rush chances, and the Rangers doubled the lead on a delayed call thanks to Chris Kreider. Auston Matthews put the Leafs on the board in the third period and the team finally started to create havoc and chaos in front of Shesterkin. The Leafs threw 18 shots at Shesterkin in the third and couldn’t put a second past him to tie the game. Kreider and Artemi Panarin scored with Stolarz out of the net and the team’s three-game winning streak ended. The Leafs get a B on this one. [Archive](https://archive.is/40Nuy)
breakfastmtn
1d ago
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100%
Seems a bit of a stretch that that was her intention.
*American officials are trying to determine the source of the leak, which describes military drills and weapons placement, and how damaging it might be.* The leak of a pair of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents describing recent satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike on Iran offers a window into the intense American concerns about Israel’s plans. It also has U.S. officials working to understand the size of the improper disclosure. The two documents were prepared in recent days by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for analyzing images and information collected by American spy satellites. They began circulating on Friday on the Telegram app and were being discussed by largely pro-Iran accounts. The documents, which offer interpretations of satellite imagery, provide insight into a potential strike by Israel on Iran in the coming days. Such a strike has been anticipated in retaliation for an Iranian assault earlier this month, which was itself a response to an Israeli attack. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/bXOaV)
breakfastmtn
2d ago
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100%
I don't think there's really much moderating to do, but we probably need one. Otherwise any reports would go to the admins and we'd be effectively modded by them. I don't think they'd be super happy about that. It'd also prevent someone else who turns out to be a weird Russian propaganda guy and a dick to everyone from swooping in and bumming everyone out.
I guess I wouldn't mind doing that, unless anyone has an objection. We could also have a few mods who basically just have fancy titles and talk about hockey.
breakfastmtn
2d ago
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100%
It's complicated:
Threats against journalists and their sources have increased exponentially since the latest round of factional fighting broke out after two Sinaloa drug capos — one from each faction — flew to the United States and were arrested there.
. . .
Journalists have reported being stopped by gunmen on roadways outside Culiacan and told they couldn’t cover the continuing gunbattles happening on the outskirts of the city on an almost daily basis.
The fear is well founded; in 2022, one of El Debate’s columnists, Luis Enrique Ramírez, was abducted and killed in Culiacan. His beaten body was found wrapped in plastic on a dirt road outside the city.
Assailants fired a dozen gunshots at a building housing the newspaper El Debate in the embattled northern Mexico state of Sinaloa, the media outlet said Friday. The newspaper is based in the state capital, Culiacan, where rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have been staging bloody battles. The newspaper said it found at least four bullet impacts on the building’s walls, and more gunfire hit newspaper vehicles parked in front of the offices late Thursday. The paper said that no one was injured. The Mexican Media Alliance, a press freedom group, called it “a direct attack against press freedom and right of the public to be informed.” [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/associated-press/) [Archive](https://archive.is/WMf9l)
breakfastmtn
2d ago
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46%
Israel, the US, and probably others were looking for him but no one could find him. It was a chance encounter with trainee soldiers.
www.nytimes.com
Aleš Hemský was the player that Bobby McMann adored most as a kid growing up in Alberta. McMann loved the speed and the skill of the longtime Edmonton Oilers’ winger. He also couldn’t get enough of Patrick Kane. . . . But then, as he got a little older and a little more realistic about his prospects as a hockey player, McMann realized the player he should actually try to model his game after wasn’t Hemský or Kane. It was Zach Hyman, then a young-ish, late-blooming winger for the Toronto Maple Leafs. McMann, 28, is bringing similar late-bloomer vibes to the Leafs right now. He’s scored three times in his first three games this fall after breaking out late last season. [Archive](https://archive.is/YHccT)
breakfastmtn
2d ago
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100%
That guy was the reason I stopped posting here. Might've been the reason a few other regulars took off, too.
I'm totally on board for posting here again. I feel pretty "if you build it" about whether to post here or somewhere else. It just takes a pretty small group of consistent posters to get a community going. We need a new mod though (you?).
breakfastmtn
2d ago
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100%
It looks like the mod was banned 4 months ago.
www.theguardian.com
Hamas has acknowledged the death of its leader Yahya Sinwar but vowed to keep fighting, in the face of international calls for an immediate ceasefire. “We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy said from exile in Qatar, adding that the slain leader’s conditions for a ceasefire would not be compromised. Those conditions included a cessation of Israeli military operations in Gaza, the complete withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) from the occupied coastal strip, and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Hayya insisted that Hamas would emerge stronger than ever despite the death of its leader, but most experts predict that Sinwar’s killing was a significant blow to the movement, at least in the short term. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/) [Archive](https://archive.is/bDl3h)
Last December, Vice President Kamala Harris flew to a climate conference in Dubai and quickly huddled with the leaders of three Arab nations to discuss Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The conflict, by then, was still weeks old, ignited by a terrorist attack in which militants killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took hundreds hostage. Ms. Harris saw a diplomatic opening for herself: to be the face of the future, and not of the current war. She told the assembled leaders, “The phase of fighting will end and we will begin implementing our plans for the day after.” Planning for the phase after the war might have seemed rhetorically out of step with President Biden, who was managing growing domestic opposition to the conflict with his embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. But the visit publicly established Ms. Harris as a more compassionate voice for the administration, and she has publicly and privately been more empathetic than Mr. Biden about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. Still, according to U.S. officials and campaign advisers, the empathy she has expressed as vice president should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel as a presidential candidate. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/DRs7J)
www.cbsnews.com
Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel. Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who's a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead. Then, they'll go after everyone on that person's contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats. "You can't go five minutes out of the city, ... not even in daylight," said Ismael Bojórquez, a veteran journalist in Culiacan. "Why? Because the narcos have set up roadblocks and they stop you and search through your cellphone." [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbs-news/) [Archive](https://archive.is/bjvNS)
breakfastmtn
3d ago
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88%
"This is an alternative frontend to Reuters. It is intented to be lightweight, fast and was heavily inspired by Nitter."
I agree that we should just link to Reuters and include neuters in the post body, like most do with archive.today links.
Edit: I checked and it's unchanged from the original. They don't actually link to the original, which is super annoying, but you can get to it by replacing 'neuters.de' with 'reuters.com.'
The death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed on Wednesday by Israeli forces in Gaza, deals a significant blow to the militant organization. Israel has made eliminating Hamas’s leadership an aim of the war in Gaza, and it considered Mr. Sinwar one of its biggest targets. Long considered by Israel and the United States as the planner of Hamas’s military strategy in Gaza, Mr. Sinwar also took on the role of the organization’s political chief two months ago, after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh. . . . Hamas’s leadership structure is opaque, but here is what is known about some of Hamas’s most prominent figures who are still believed to be alive or whose fate is unclear. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/Tp8iE)
breakfastmtn
3d ago
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75%
Reuters MBFC.
kyivindependent.com
President Volodymyr Zelensky presented Ukraine's much-debated victory plan at parliament on Oct. 16, though some parts remained classified. The proposal is comprised of five points: an invitation to join NATO, a defense aspect, deterrence of Russian aggression, economic growth and cooperation, and post-war security architecture. The plan involves three secret addenda that have been shared with international partners. David Arakhamia, the ruling party's parliamentary leader, said the classified parts would be presented to faction leaders. "If the plan is supported, we can end the war no later than next year," Zelensky said in the parliament in the presence of Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, and Western diplomats. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/kyiv-independent-bias/) [Archive](https://archive.is/uOTry)
www.theguardian.com
The mayor of one of the largest cities in southern Lebanon has been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit the city’s municipal headquarters during a meeting to coordinate aid deliveries to residents and those displaced by war. The strike, one of a series on Nabatieh on Wednesday morning, killed 16 people and wounded 52, the Lebanese health ministry said. Howaida Turk, the governor of Nabatieh province, said members of the provincial capital’s crisis committee were meeting at the time. It was the most significant Israeli hit yet on a Lebanese state institution since fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah broke out a year ago, and followed a week of intensifying aerial bombardment across Lebanon. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/) [Archive](https://archive.is/e8oK3)
www.theguardian.com
More than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly accelerating water crisis grips the planet, unless urgent action is taken to conserve water resources and end the destruction of the ecosystems on which our fresh water depends, experts have warned in a landmark review. Half the world’s population already faces water scarcity, and that number is set to rise as the climate crisis worsens, according to a report from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water published on Thursday. Demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by the end of the decade, because the world’s water systems are being put under “unprecedented stress”, the report found. The commission found that governments and experts have vastly underestimated the amount of water needed for people to have decent lives. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/) [Archive](https://archive.is/uUvES)
www.theguardian.com
The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza. A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”. The four-page missive, dated 13 October, was sent to Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, and Ron Dermer, the strategic affairs minister, and came to light after being posted on social media by Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist who works for Axios, after apparently being leaked. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/) [Archive](https://archive.is/6f1VN) Edit: changed from NYT to Guardian. Same story, no paywall.
*Israeli soldiers and Palestinian former detainees say troops have regularly forced captured Gazans to carry out life-threatening tasks, including inside Hamas tunnels.* An investigation by The New York Times found that Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents, throughout the war in Gaza, have regularly forced captured Palestinians . . . to conduct life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk on the battlefield. While the extent and scale of such operations are unknown, the practice, illegal under both Israeli and international law, has been used by at least 11 squads in five cities in Gaza, often with the involvement of officers from Israeli intelligence agencies. Palestinian detainees have been coerced to explore places in Gaza where the Israeli military believes that Hamas militants have prepared an ambush or a booby trap. The practice has gradually become more widespread since the start of the war last October. Detainees have been forced to scout and film inside tunnel networks where soldiers believed fighters were still hiding. They have entered buildings rigged with mines to find hidden explosives. They have been told to pick up or move objects like generators and water tanks that Israeli soldiers feared concealed tunnel entrances or booby traps. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/Lc0uP)
breakfastmtn
7d ago
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100%
According to this, the first was Boot-Root from Torvalds himself in 1991. The oldest that are still around are Slackware (July 1993) and Debian (Aug 1993).
breakfastmtn
1w ago
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91%
Yikes
breakfastmtn
1w ago
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20%
No, if there were serious, pervasive bias impacting scores, it would lower the correlation and MBFC would be an outlier in the group because they would be in agreement less. If something's happening at such a low level that it doesn't impact correlation, it's just an outlier. Multiple researchers conclude that the differences between monitors is too low to impact downstream analysis which is hard to square with your claim. And, each entry represents about 0.01% of their content, so what percentage of that data is being used to draw sweeping conclusions about the whole?
There is just high agreement about what constitutes high and low quality news sites. The notion that MBFC is somehow inferior to other bias monitors or extremely biased is not supported by evidence. If one of those organizations is better than the others, it isn't much better. As this study concludes, because the level of agreement between them is so high, it doesn't really matter which one you use. They're all fine. Even they think so. Not only do MBFC ratings correlate nearly perfectly with Newsguard, Newsguard's rating of MBFC is a perfect score. They're well-respected by each other.
And, really, how could these researchers who've dedicated their lives to understanding this stuff have gotten it so wrong? Academia definitely isn't a hotbed of conservatism. Using awful tools could destroy their careers but MBFC is regularly used in research. Why? How are these studies getting through peer-review? How are they getting published? There are just too many failure points required.
breakfastmtn
1w ago
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44%
From the JPost article:
Two articles published in the last few days were part of the IDF investigation, one from Jewish Chronicle and one from the German tabloid newspaper Bild. Both have claimed to reveal internal and top secret documents of Hamas, supposedly straight from Yahya Sinwar's computer.
Not the NYT. Not sure how the Times gets painted with that brush for not publishing based on those documents. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.
Your claim about the sexual violence article is also not true. The NYT spent a month re-reporting that story which didn't result in a single correction. Their reporting is also supported by a UN investigation that concluded that there "are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023." I don't think you can accuse the UN of collaborating with the IDF.
From this article:
The Times assessed the documents’ authenticity by sharing some of their contents with members of and experts close to Hamas. Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and a former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul, said that he was familiar with some of the details described in the documents and that keeping organized notes was consistent with the group’s general practices. A Palestinian analyst with knowledge of Hamas’s inner workings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics, also confirmed certain details as well as general structural operations of Hamas that aligned with the documents.
The Israeli military, in a separate internal report obtained by The Times, concluded the documents were real and represented another failure by intelligence officials to prevent the Oct. 7 attack. The Times also researched details mentioned in the meeting records to check that they corresponded with actual events.
*The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.* Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid. The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.” The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/MNVb3)
breakfastmtn
1w ago
•
20%
You're wrong. Tons of peer-reviewed research says you're wrong. There just isn't any that says you're right.
Do you have an explanation for why this bias you claim is so pervasive cannot be found when anyone looks for it? Is it... paranormal bias? Is it just really shy bias that hides when it gets scared?
How can that be true and MBFC be in broad consensus across thousands of news sites with different tools from academics, journalists, and other bias monitoring organizations? Both things cannot be true. In fact, whenever someone compares MBFC to any other resource they find almost perfect correlation, not bias. I'd love for you to explain to me where that bias disappears to when under a microscope.
Is there a conspiracy between bias monitoring organizations, journalists, and academics you have evidence of? Are the prestigious journals that published them in on it too? I can't wait to sketch out this vast global conspiracy to pull the wool over our eyes and convince us that Democracy Now is just... highly factual. Those bastards!
www.latimes.com
Rejecting a renewed “war” against drug traffickers, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday unveiled her strategy to battle organized crime in a nation where each day brings word of new assassinations, gang wars, massacres and other bloodshed. . . . Instead, she outlined a four-point strategy that emphasized intelligence-gathering, troop deployment, improved federal-state coordination and providing opportunities to dissuade impoverished young people from joining organized crime — which is among Mexico’s major employers. A centerpiece of the plan is doubling down on the often-criticized “hugs not bullets” strategy of Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/la-times-los-angeles-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/KFGMH)
breakfastmtn
1w ago
•
28%
Aside from the extremely vocal minority who seek it out to downvote it and complain about it constantly, it does seem like people don't care about it when they don't need it and appreciate it when they do. Very unscientific observation but obscure sources usually seem to have more upvotes. It doesn't need to be useful to everyone all the time to have value.
Having quick access to MBFC and Wiki links is great and useful for mods, I assume. I also like that it carves out a thread to discuss sources. Replying to the bot makes it seem much less like you're attacking the OP, which I always hated pre-bot.
breakfastmtn
1w ago
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89%
Solid rule. 9/10. One point deduction for making me look at Tom Cotton.
breakfastmtn
1w ago
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100%
It's a good question. Ukraine doesn't disclose that. They're high though. There are a few estimates that vary widely and sometimes include civilian casualties. This NYT piece published today cites an unnamed American official estimating that Ukrainian casualties are "a bit more than half of Russia’s casualties, or more than 57,500 killed and 250,000 wounded." (Archive) This WSJ article from about a month ago cites an unnamed Ukrainian official putting the estimate at 80k killed, 400k wounded. (Archive)
*The report, which does not have the force of law, found that the Israeli military has engaged in deliberate assaults on hospitals and other health care providers.* United Nations investigators on Thursday accused Israel of engaging in “relentless and deliberate attacks” on health care facilities, medical workers and wounded civilians in the Gaza Strip and said the actions amounted to war crimes and extermination, a crime against humanity. A U.N. report said the Israelis had imposed“collective punishment” on Palestinians in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks Hamas militants led on Israel a year ago from Gaza. The Israeli siege that followed, it said, has prevented hospitals from receiving food, fuel, water and medical supplies, and has also limited the number of patients allowed to leave Gaza for treatment. “Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of health care facilities in Gaza,” Navi Pillay, head of the commission that conducted the report said in a statement. [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) [Archive](https://archive.is/FFKUE)
breakfastmtn
1w ago
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100%
Really interesting read. Thanks!
breakfastmtn
2w ago
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100%
The flag seems to have taken the entire feed down.
breakfastmtn
2w ago
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33%
No.