Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London. A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike - Akara gave chase, but they got away. He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 "snatch thefts" in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months. The prosecution rate for this offence is very low - the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot "arrest their way out of the problem". They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play. [...] Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again - his prized possession was now on the other side of the world - in Shenzhen, China. [..] It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen - where if devices can't be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts. [...] In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did. A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

[Archived version](http://web.archive.org/web/20240901031920/https://futurism.com/the-byte/chinese-company-humanoid-robots-humans) **During the World Robot Conference 2024 in Beijing from Aug 21 - Aug 25, the company Animatronics company EX-Robot (or EX Robots as reported by some news media) hired 2 women cosplayed as robots to spice up the exhibition.** Footage making the rounds on social media shows what appear to be astonishingly lifelike humanoid robots posing at the World Robot Conference in Beijing last week. But instead of showing off the latest and greatest in humanoid robotics, two of the "robots" turned out to be human women cosplaying as futuristic gynoids, presumably hired by animatronics company Ex-Robots. "Many people think these are all robots without realizing they’re actually two human beings cosplayed as robots among the animatronics," reporter Byron Wan tweeted. While somewhat uncanny at first glimpse, the illusion was shattered once an image of one of the hired women having lunch at the event started circulating online. Even humanoid robot cosplayers have to eat, it turns out. [...]

[Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240803055247/https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/67463/elon-musks-misinformation-machine-made-the-horrors-of-southport-much-worse) Within hours of a local 17-year-old boy being arrested for the mass-stabbings in Southport, a seaside town in northwest England, untrue narratives started circulating on social media naming him as “Ali al-Shakati”—a Muslim migrant to the UK—alleging that he was on an MI6 watchlist, and that he was an asylum seeker who was known to the Liverpool mental health services. None of this was true, but research by Dr Marc Owen Jones, an expert in digital authoritarianism, has traced how this kind of speculation rapidly notched up 27m impressions on social media. The self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, with nearly 10m followers on X, posted a false image of the supposed attacker, claiming he was “straight off a boat”—even though by then the police had told us he had been born in Cardiff 17 years ago. But that, according to Tate, was a lie promoted by what he calls “the Matrix”. One of the most prominent amplifiers of this untrue information was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now. Quite who is behind this outfit is unclear. Investigative journalists soon found that it had started life as a place for Russian car rally videos. It may be now run out of an address in Pakistan or the US. That’s the joy of Musk’s beloved “independent media”—you haven’t got a clue who half of the fabulists are. [...]

[Archived version](http://web.archive.org/web/20240714120940/https://www.thefeministclub.nl/2024/06/21/a-requiem-for-chinese-feminism/) To be a woman, to be any human in China, is to master the act of double-think, self-censorship, and denial. But to be a woman on the [Chinese] mainland is to work twice as hard at filtering out the disturbing noises produced by the ever-ruling Communist Party. [...] Some might even understand the astonishing tracking and surveillance the population was placed under from 2020-2023, unraveling after the White Paper Protests that began in memorial of lives lost in an apartment fire during a months-long lockdown in Urumqi. But China’s imprisonment of its feminists is often overlooked. [...] Censorship in China is effectively a question of wealth. No city-dwelling university-educated white-collar worker needs to live without a good VPN, and stepping outside of the firewall is seamless if you’re willing to buy it. Inside China, it is perfectly possible to be able to see but also to choose to look away. [...] the young urban women of China did not ignore the #MeToo movement, and the hashtag began trending across the social media islands of Chinese-made and Chinese-monitored apps before being rapidly but unsurprisingly blocked. As the state flexed to bring things under control, the movement collapsed before it had even reached enough height for its downfall to cause reverberations. [...] Sophia Huang Xueqin, and the Feminist Five: Li Maizi, Wang Man, Wei Tingting, Wu Rongrong, and Zheng Churan. These women form a small, silenced memorial in the face of the patriarchy upon which China is founded, and have faced interrogation and incarceration for speaking out against sexual harassment and domestic violence. [...] The silencing of feminists in China seems incomprehensible in the wake of Mao’s too often quoted phrase, occurring in the wake of modern domestic violence laws, in a country with maternity rights some of us could only dream of. To make sense of this incongruity, it is necessary to understand that grassroots feminism, the feminism practiced by Sophia Huang Xueqin and the Feminist Five, stands in direct opposition to Chinese policy on women’s rights and equality and is treated as extremism. To protest sexual harassment, to demand an end to domestic violence, to highlight the discrimination in academia and the workplace is to turn squarely towards the party and accuse it of failing in its duty to its people. In this sense, China does not have a problem with women as much as it does with being criticized, even implicitly. One does not seek to disrupt the status quo, for to do so is to disrupt the party itself [...] And so the women must wait, silent and grateful to the party that builds and sustains their world. The women must not ask for their inequalities to be addressed with any more urgency than they currently are, and instead, in a country where Xi Jinping’s name is rarely spoken and silence is the only guarantee of safety, feminism becomes almost extinguished, openly mourned by only a few, and documented by even fewer.

**After the Taliban restricted Afghan women's ability to work, learn and go out in public, some women initially defied these new rules, taking to the streets to protest.** But soon, those who gathered in the capital Kabul and other major cities to demand "food, work, freedom" felt the full force of the Taliban. Protesters tell the BBC they were beaten, abused, jailed and even threatened with death by stoning. We speak to three women who challenged the Taliban government after it began to place restrictions on women's freedom following the Taliban's takeover on 15 August 2021. **Marching through Kabul** When Taliban militants took over Kabul on 15 August 2021, Zakia's life began to crumble. She had been the breadwinner for her family before the Taliban returned to power - but quickly lost her job following the takeover. When Zakia (who is using a pseudonym) joined a protest more than a year later in December 2022, it was her first chance to express her anger at losing the right to work and to education. Protesters were marching to Kabul University, chosen for its "symbolic importance", but were stopped before they could reach their destination. Zakia was loudly shouting slogans when Taliban armed police put an end to her short-lived rebellion. "One of them pointed his gun right into my mouth and threatened to kill me right there if I didn't shut up," she recalls. Zakia saw fellow protesters bundled into a vehicle. "I resisted. They were twisting my arms," she says. "I was being pulled by the Taliban who were trying to load me into their vehicle and other fellow protesters who were trying to release me." In the end, Zakia managed to escape - but what she saw that day left her terrified for the future. "Violence was not taking place behind closed doors any more," she says, "it was taking place on the streets of capital Kabul in full public view." **Arrested and punched** Mariam (not her real name) and 23-year-old student Parwana Ibrahimkhail Nijrabi were among the many Afghan protesters who were detained after the Taliban takeover. As a widow and sole breadwinner for her children, Mariam was terrified she wouldn't be able to provide for her family when the Taliban introduced rules restricting women's ability to work. She attended a protest in December 2022. After she saw fellow protesters being arrested, she tried to flee but didn't get away in time. "I was forcefully pulled out of the taxi, they searched my bag and found my phone," she recalls. When she refused to give Taliban officials her pass code, she says one of them punched her so hard she thought her ear drum had burst. They then went through the videos and photos in her phone. "They got furious and grabbed me by pulling my hair," she says. "They caught my hands and legs and threw me into the back of their Ranger." "They were very violent and repeatedly called me a whore," Mariam continues. "They handcuffed me and put a black bag over my head, I could not breathe." A month later, Parwana too decided to protest against the Taliban, along with a group of fellow students, organising several marches. But their action was also met with swift reprisal. "They started torturing me from the moment they arrested me", says Parwana. She was made to sit between two male armed guards. "When I refused to sit there, they moved me to the front, put a blanket over my head and pointed the gun and told me not to move." Parwana started feeling "weak and like a walking dead" among so many heavily armed men. "My face was numb as they slapped me so many times. I was so scared, my entire body was trembling." **Life in jail** Mariam, Parwana and Zakia were fully aware of the potential consequences of public protest. Parwana says she never expected the Taliban to "treat her like a human being". But she says she was still stunned by her degrading treatment. Her first meal in jail left her in shock. "I felt a sharp thing scratching the roof of my mouth," she says. "When I looked at it, it was a nail - I threw up." In subsequent meals, she found hair and stones. Parwana says she was told she would be stoned to death, leaving her crying herself to sleep at night and having dreams about being stoned while wearing a helmet. The 23-year-old was accused of promoting immorality, prostitution and spreading western culture and was in jail for about a month. Mariam was kept in a security unit for several days, where she was interrogated with a black bag covering her head. "I could hear several people, one would kick me and ask who paid me to organise [the] protest," she recalls. "The other would punch me and say 'Who do you work for?'" Mariam says she told her interrogators she was a widow who needed work to feed her children - but says her answers were met with more violence. **Confession and release** Parwana and Mariam were both separately released following intervention by human rights organisations and local elders, and they are now no longer living in Afghanistan. Both say they were forced to sign confessions admitting their guilt and promising not to take part in any protests against the Taliban. Their male relatives also signed official papers pledging that the women would not take part in any more protests. We put these allegations to Zabihullah Mujahid, senior spokesman of the Taliban government, who confirmed women protesters were arrested but denied they were badly treated. "Some of the women who were arrested were involved in activities that were against the government and against public safety," he said. He disputes the women's account and denies torture was used: "There is no beating in any of the Islamic Emirate's prisons and their food is also approved by our medical teams." **Lack of basic facilities** Human Rights Watch's own interviews with some protesters following their release corroborated the accounts heard by the BBC. "The Taliban use all kinds of tortures and they even make their families pay for these protests, sometimes they imprison them with their children in terrible conditions," said Ferishtah Abbasi of HRW. Amnesty International researcher Zaman Soltani, who spoke to several protesters after they were released, said prisons lacked basic facilities. "There is no heating system in winter, prisoners are not given good or enough food and health and safety issues are not taken into consideration at all," Soltani said. **Longing for a normal life** Around the time of their takeover, the Taliban said women could continue to work and go to school, with the caveat that this could only happen in line with Afghan culture and Sharia law. They continue to insist the ban on girls' schooling beyond year six is temporary but have given no firm commitment to reopening girls' secondary schools. Back in Afghanistan, Zakia took one more chance and launched a home tuition centre to educate young girls. This also failed. "They feel threatened by a group of young women getting together in a place on regular basis," she says, her voice filled with sadness. "The Taliban managed to do what they wanted. I am a prisoner in my own house." She still meets her fellow activists but they are not planning any protests. They publish occasional statements on social media using a pseudonym. Asked about her dreams for Afghanistan, she breaks down in tears. "I cannot do anything. We don't exist any more, women are removed from public life," she says. "All we wanted was our basic rights, was it too much to ask?"

[Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240615023429/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/apple-deliberately-pays-women-less-than-men-lawsuit-says) **Apple could owe thousands in back pay to 12,000 female employees.** Apple has spent years "intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately paying women less than men for substantially similar work," a proposed class action lawsuit filed in California on Thursday alleged. A victory for women suing could mean that more than 12,000 current and former female employees in California could collectively claw back potentially millions in lost wages from an apparently ever-widening wage gap allegedly perpetuated by Apple policies. The lawsuit was filed by two employees who have each been with Apple for more than a decade, Justina Jong and Amina Salgado. They claimed that Apple violated California employment laws between 2020 and 2024 by unfairly discriminating against California-based female employees in Apple’s engineering, marketing, and AppleCare divisions and "systematically" paying women "lower compensation than men with similar education and experience." Apple allegedly has displayed an ongoing bias toward male employees, offering them higher starting salaries and promoting them for the "same behaviors" that female employees allegedly were punished for. Jong, currently a customer/technical training instructor on Apple's global developer relations/app review team, said that she only became aware of a stark pay disparity by chance. "One day, I saw a W-2 left on the office printer," Jong said. "It belonged to my male colleague, who has the same job position. I noticed that he was being paid almost $10,000 more than me, even though we performed substantially similar work. This revelation made me feel terrible." But Salgado had long been aware of the problem. Salgado, currently on a temporary assignment as a development manager in the AppleCare division, spent years complaining about her lower wages, prompting Apple internal investigations that never led to salary increases. Finally, late last year, Salgado's insistence on fair pay was resolved after Apple hired a third-party firm that concluded she was "paid less than men performing substantially similar work." Apple subsequently increased her pay rate but dodged responsibility for back pay that Salgado now seeks to recover. Eve Cervantez, a lawyer for women suing, said in a press release shared with Ars that these women were put in "a no-win situation." "Once women are hired into a lower pay range at Apple, subsequent pay raises or any bonuses are tracked accordingly, meaning they don’t correct the gender pay gap," Cervantez said. "Instead, they perpetuate and widen the gap because raises and bonuses are based on a percentage of the employee’s base salary.” Apple did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment. Lawsuit: Apple mostly only rewards male “talent” According to the complaint, several of Apple's policies favoring men have further entrenched the alleged pay gap. That includes Apple's performance evaluation system, which women suing alleged rewarded men in categories such as teamwork and leadership but "penalized" women for excelling in those areas. Apple also seemingly has "a policy or practice of selecting individuals who have 'talent' and compensating those persons more highly than other employees." But neither Jong nor Salgado—although both have held various leadership roles—were ever designated as "talent" deserving of a pay increase, the lawsuit said. They've alleged that this Apple policy is biased against women, more often rewarding male "talent" while female talent goes unacknowledged. "More men are identified as having talent," the complaint said. Separately, Jong has also alleged that Apple subjected her to a hostile work environment after a senior member of her team, Blaine Weilert, sexually harassed her. After she complained, Apple investigated and Weilert reportedly admitted to touching her "in a sexually suggestive manner without her consent," the complaint said. Apple then disciplined Weilert but ultimately would not allow Jong to escape the hostile work environment, requiring that she work with Weilert on different projects. Apple later promoted Weilert. As a result of Weilert's promotion, the complaint said that Apple placed Weilert in a desk "sitting adjacent" to Jong's in Apple’s offices. Following a request to move her desk, a manager allegedly "questioned" Jong's "willingness to perform her job and collaborate" with Weilert, advising that she be “professional, respectful, and collaborative,” rather than honoring her request for a non-hostile workplace. This experience, Jong alleged, caused her "profound emotional distress and mental anguish"—including PTSD, depression, anxiety, and insomnia—and required her to take a medical leave that only ended when Weilert left her team of his own volition. Jong has continued to suffer from PTSD since rejoining Apple, where she alleged her career has since "stalled." Because California laws, as well as the federal Equal Pay Act, require that "women and men are paid equally for performing substantially similar work," women suing have asked California's Superior Court in San Francisco to intervene. They're hoping a jury will agree that Apple must be stopped from alleged "immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, and offensive" business practices. Apple globally is a 65 percent male company, but its diversity data boasts that women have been promoted to more leadership roles within the past decade. The company has policies against harassment, discrimination, and retaliation that women claim it is violating. But in recent years, Apple has been mired in worker complaints, triggering a labor department investigation over hiring, pay, and working conditions in 2021. Then last year, after an expose by the Financial Times revealed that Apple had dismissed misconduct claims from 15 current and former female employees, Apple agreed that it "should have handled" their complaints "differently." "As a result, we will make changes to our training and processes," Apple's spokesperson told FT in 2022. The current class action has alleged that Apple continues to ignore complaints that the company culture fosters an unfair and hostile workplace for women. It's hard to estimate how much Apple might owe in back pay and other damages should women suing win, but it could easily add up if all 12,000 class members were paid thousands less than male counterparts over the complaint's approximately four-year span. Apple could also be on the hook for hundreds in civil penalties per class member per pay period between 2020 and 2024. "The longer a woman works at Apple, the larger the gap in compensation she receives compared to similarly situated men," the proposed class action alleged.

[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240511201801/https://mashable.com/article/qanon-resurgence-twitter-x-elon-musk-proof). On Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon conspiracy theorists played a significant role in inciting Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building in D.C., hoping to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump. Days later, Twitter suspended tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, effectively banning most users who promote the far-right conspiracy theory. Now, a new study from Newsguard has uncovered that since Elon Musk acquired the company, QAnon has had a resurgence on X, formerly Twitter, over the past year. QAnon grows on X Tracking commonly used QAnon phrases like "QSentMe," "TheGreatAwakening," and "WWG1WGA" (which stands for "Where We Go One, We Go All"), Newsguard found that these QAnon-related slogans and hashtags have increased a whopping 1,283 percent on X under Musk. From May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024, there were 1.12 million mentions of these QAnon supporter phrases on X. This was a huge uptick from the 81,100 mentions just one year earlier from May 1, 2022 to May 1, 2023. One of the most viral QAnon-related posts of the year, on the "Frazzledrip" conspiracy, has received more than 21.8 million views, according to the report. Most concerning, however, is that it was posted by a right-wing influencer who has specifically received support from Musk. The Jan. 2024 tweet was posted by @dom_lucre, a user with more than 1.2 million followers who commonly posts far-right conspiracy theories. In July 2023, @dom_lucre was suspended on then-Twitter. Responding to @dom_lucre's supporters, Musk shared at the time that @dom_lucre was "suspended for posting child exploitation pictures." Sharing child sexual abuse material or CSAM would result in a permanent ban on most platforms. However, Musk decided to personally intervene in favor of @dom_lucre and reinstated his account. Since then, @dom_lucre has posted about how he earns thousands of dollars directly from X. The company allows him to monetize his conspiratorial posts via the platform's official creator monetization program. Musk has also previously voiced his support for Jacob Chansely, a QAnon follower known as the "QAnon Shaman," who served prison time for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The dangers of QAnon QAnon's adherents follow a number of far-right conspiracy theories, but broadly (and falsely) believe that former President Trump has been secretly battling against a global cabal of Satanic baby-eating traffickers, who just happen to primarily be made up of Democratic Party politicians and Hollywood elites. Unfortunately, these beliefs have too often turned deadly. Numerous QAnon followers have been involved in killings fueled by their beliefs. In 2022, one Michigan man killed his wife before being fatally shot in a standoff with police. His daughter said her father spiraled out of control as he fell into the QAnon conspiracies. In 2021, another QAnon conspiracy theorists killed his two young children, claiming that his wife had "Serpent DNA" and his children were monsters. Of course, QAnon never completely disappeared from social media platforms. Its followers still espoused their beliefs albeit in a more coded manner over the past few years to circumvent social media platforms' policies. Now, though, QAnon believers are once again being more open about their radical theories. The looming November 2024 Presidential election likely plays a role in the sudden resurgence of QAnon on X, as QAnon-believing Trump supporters look to help their chosen candidate. However, Musk and X have actively welcomed these users to their social media service, eagerly providing them with a platform to spread their dangerous falsehoods.