Exaggeration207

Israel has launched a large-scale military operation against Palestinian militants in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. It started with multiple drone strikes and Israel has sent in ground forces, leading to gun battles on the streets.

Palestinian officials say eight Palestinians have been killed and more than 50 others wounded. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they were striking "terrorist infrastructure in the Jenin area." Israel's foreign minister says they are not planning to widen the operation to the whole West Bank.

An unverified video posted on the "Razgruzka Wagner" (Wagner's Combat Vest) Telegram channel showed a scene in a forest where small fires were burning and trees appeared to have been broken by force.

It carried the caption: "A missile attack was launched on the camps of PMC Wagner. Many victims. According to eyewitnesses, the strike was delivered from the rear, that is, it was delivered by the military of the Russian Ministry of Defence."

Prigozhin vowed to avenge the incident: "There are 25,000 of us and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country."

But he also added: "This is not a military coup."

The snail can grow up to eight inches long, and can potentially carry the parasite rat lungworm, which may cause meningitis in humans and animals. The snail should not be handled without gloves because of the meningitis risk.

The snails can lay over 2,500 eggs in just one year, making the population difficult to contain. Florida has successfully eradicated the giant African land snail twice before, in 1975 and 2021.

"I'm deeply concerned about what this threat means for the nation," Dr. Rahul Gupta, the White House director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in May when he warned that xylazine is a major emerging health threat.

According to Gupta's office, xylazine-positive overdose deaths increased tenfold in the southern U.S. from 2020-2021, sevenfold in the western U.S. and fivefold in the Midwest. Most of those drug deaths also involved fentanyl.

Over the years, xylazine has occasionally turned up in street drugs, but over the past 12 months, it suddenly went viral. Overdose deaths and severe medical complications — including terrible flesh wounds caused by the chemical — have soared in the South and West, where xylazine had been almost unknown.

Xylazine also makes it much harder to revive people after fentanyl overdoses, and the chemical adds another layer of intense addiction and cravings.

"People who are in this are getting sucked further and further and further in," said KC, who uses street fentanyl in Dover, Delaware. She said xylazine is making addiction deadlier and harder to escape. "It just feels kind of hopeless right now."

Drug experts say they only have theories about who's adding xylazine into street drug cocktails — and why.

Skyrim gets some hate these days, since it was first released in 2011 and although Bethesda is supposedly working on Elder Scrolls VI, we've seen practically nothing of the game. However, you have to admit that Skyrim is still around for a reason: it's fun, especially if you mod it, and new mods get released all the time. Since Bethesda's next big open world game, Starfield, won't be released until September, I thought it'd be nice to share our favorite Skyrim mods to help deal with the wait.

I'll start with some longtime staples of mine:

Skyrim Script Extender - A prerequisite for a ton of mods. Basically, it adds commands to the game's scripting language, which allows modders to create scripts that support more situations and variables in the game, beyond what is normally possible.

SkyUI - An overhaul to the UI, which makes everything easier to navigate on PC. Also adds the Mod Configuration Menu (MCM), which is used by a ton of other mods. Todd Howard himself endorses this one.

Better Dialogue Controls - Maybe it's just me, but I constantly had issues in vanilla Skyrim with the game picking the wrong dialogue option because of some weird glitch in the UI. So, here's another UI tweak. Basic, but a real "quality of life" upgrade for me.

RaceMenu - Like SkyUI, overhauls the character creation menu and adds RGB sliders for skin color, hair color, war paint and makeup. When combined with body mesh replacing mods, such as Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Edition (CBBE), you can also tweak specific body parts to do things like give female Nord and Orc warriors actual muscles. We start to cross into NSFW territory real fast with this one, though.

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim - Adds a few dozen spells to the game, greatly expanding the relatively limited amount of spells found in vanilla Skyrim. This is especially true for Master-level spells.

Naturally, there are mods that upgrade the textures to 2k or 4k, as well as ENB, which is a resource-heavy overhaul to the lighting in the game. I don't currently have a favorite texture pack or ENB though, since new ones come out on a fairly regular basis and I like to experiment with new configurations.

Anyway, that's enough from me. Looking forward to seeing other peoples' favorites!

U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million — mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -— before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers.

Rights groups have accused the Malaysian government of using repressive laws to suppress free speech and critical voices, with Amnesty International reporting that between January 2020 and June 2022, there were 87 prosecutions of individuals including artists, performers and political activists.

Note that under article 3 of Interpol's constitution, "it is strictly forbidden for the organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character."

Turkey’s government accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt.

A series of separate demonstrations in Stockholm, including a protest by an anti-Islam activist who burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy, also angered Turkish officials.

NATO requires the unanimous approval of all existing members to expand, and Turkey and Hungary are the only countries that have not yet ratified Sweden’s request to join.

"The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have previously sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., but the rare charter flights by DeSantis mark an escalation in tactics. The two groups sent to Sacramento never went through Florida. Instead, they were approached in El Paso by people with Florida-linked paperwork, sent to New Mexico, then put on private flights to California’s capital, California officials and advocates said."

"As the migrants arrived in California Monday, a Texas sheriff’s office announced it has recommended criminal charges over the two flights to Martha’s Vineyard last year. Johnny Garcia, a spokesman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, said that at this time the office is not naming suspects. It’s not clear whether the local district attorney will pursue the charges, which include misdemeanor and felony counts of unlawful restraint, according to the sheriff’s office."

I understand that Beehaw is not a replacement for Reddit, and nor should it be. However, if I wind up ditching Reddit entirely, one thing I'm going to miss is the unbridled insanity of the "Thunderdome" discussions.

For those of you who aren't familiar, certain communities would handle major events with a serious thread for people who wanted serious discussion, and an accompanying Thunderdome thread for people who just wanted to make memes and blow off steam. In gaming communities, for example, there will likely be serious threads around Summer Games Fest, including Microsoft's upcoming presentation. But there are also people who will want to make fun of the pageantry of it all and to keep that out of the serious thread, there'll be a Thunderdome for that.

Politics communities create similar threads for election nights. Take it from me... if you work in Washington, DC and the outcome of an election could seriously impact your job two months down the line? Those are nights when you really need to blow off some steam. Mental health is important, and having an outlet to ridicule the oppressive, wall-to-wall election coverage really helps.

So, I'm curious if Beehaw communities (which I hope we'll start calling Yeehives) are the place for something like that, or if the users here would rather keep that kind of content off this platform. Genuinely curious, not just looking to start an argument. Thanks!