Europe

Turns out Abbé Pierre was a creep... This is like learning Mohter Theresa was a sexual predator.

Loreto Gesualdo, the president of the Italian Federation of Medical-Scientific Societies (Fism), has proposed legislation to suspend free access to medical care for three years for those who assault healthcare workers or damage health facilities.

Fism reported more than 16,000 verbal and physical attacks against doctors and nurses in Italian hospitals in 2023 alone.

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Poland: Investigation into previous government’s use of Pegasus spyware could be blocked

The probe, which was supposed to be conducted by a parliamentary commission, was one of the promises of Poland’s new ruling coalition led by Donald Tusk when it came to power in December 2023.

In February 2024, a special parliamentary commission was established to investigate the use of Pegasus, which, according to Poland’s current justice minister, was used on almost 600 people between 2017 and 2022. Those targets included opponents of the Law and Justice (PiS) government.

Subsequently, Zbigniew Bogucki, a Polish MP and member of PiS, led a group of MPs to introduce a resolution against the probe.

In their motion, the PiS MPs claimed that the vaguely defined scope of the commission’s activities rendered the investigation unconstitutional.

On September 10, 2024, Bogucki announced that the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), Poland’s Supreme Court, ruled the investigation unconstitutional.

“Therefore from the moment the judgment is announced, this commission must cease its activities,” Bogucki said on X.

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However, Magdalena Sroka, the head of the commission and member of the Polish People's Party, quickly rejected the ruling, arguing that it lacks legal validity.

She claims this is due to the involvement of a judge appointed illegally during the previous PiS government and because the TK operates under the influence of the former ruling party's political agenda.

“We all knew what the tribunal's ruling would be before it was made. This means that the Constitutional Tribunal has once again carried out a political order. The attempt to block the commission's work is dictated by the fear of liability. Rulings involving understudy judges are not binding,” she added.

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China must reprioritize economic growth and reforms and boost investor confidence by leveling the playing field for all companies in the country, a European business group said Wednesday.

With “business confidence now at an all-time low” over lagging domestic demand and overcapacity in certain industries, the annual European Business in China Position Paper called on China to open its economy and allow a more free market to determine resource allocation. It also recommended introducing policies to boost domestic demand.

Profit margins in China are at or below the global average for two-thirds of the companies surveyed earlier in the year, according to the paper published Wednesday by the European Chamber of Commerce in China.

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Many European businesses are deciding that the returns on investments in the world’s second-largest economy are not worth the risks, due to issues including China’s economic slowdown and a politicized business environment.

“For some European headquarters and shareholders, the risks of investing in China are beginning to outright the returns, a trend that will only intensify if key business concerns are left unaddressed,” Jens Eskelund, president of China’s European Union Chamber of Commerce, said in a message at the beginning of the paper.

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy have arrived in Kyiv on a joint visit as Ukraine continues to press for the right to use US and British long-range missiles against Russia.

The two men travelled together to the Ukrainian capital after talks in London. They are due to meet President Volodymr Zelensky, who has repeatedly called on Washington to loosen the limits on US-supplied weapons.

Blinken said one of their goals was to "hear directly from the Ukrainian leadership" about their "objectives and what we can do to support those needs".

Earlier, US President Joe Biden said his administration was "working" on whether to lift the restrictions.

The policy will come under further scrutiny when UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer meets Biden at the White House on Friday.

Ukraine's Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, thanked Lammy for the UK’s military support for Ukraine throughout the war.

But he added: “We hope that long-range equipment for strikes on the territory of our enemy will be reached and we will have it and we hope for your help and support in this issue.”

[...]

KEY QUOTES

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry: "In Kyiv, there is disappointment regarding the statement made by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico towards Ukrainian soldiers, which goes against the existing level of trust and cooperation between Ukraine and Slovakia."

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico: "We all talk about fascism, Nazism, and yet we tacitly tolerate the fact that there are units running around Ukraine which have a very clear designation, which are linked to movements that we now consider dangerous and forbidden."

Russia routinely refers to Ukraine's leaders as Nazis. President Vladimir Putin cited the need to rid the country of Nazis from the very first day of the invasion in February 2022.

Since the outbreak of war, Ukraine has pressed a drive to join the European Union and NATO but Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have bucked a consensus on those efforts.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/17405067

"We don't need another war, in this case, a trade war. We need to build bridges between the EU and China," Pedro Sánchez said in Shanghai.

Apple has been told to pay €13bn (£11bn; $14bn) in unpaid taxes to Ireland by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages eight years ago but the Irish government has consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid.

The ECJ said its decision on the matter was final and that "Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover".

The Irish government said it would respect the ruling, while Apple said it was disappointed with the decision and accused the European Commission of "trying to retroactively change the rules".

A separate ECJ ruling on Tuesday also brought an end to a long-running case with Google, with the company ordered to pay a fine of €2.4bn (£2bn) fine for market dominance abuse.

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According to the Hungarian media outlet Válasz Online, Father Gergő Bese, the “star priest” of the Orbán regime, there were a series of documents proving that Mr Bese participated in gay parties and maintained intimate relationships with other men.

Things like that are, of course, part of private life, and should remain so. However, the case of Gergő Bese is different. He is one of the flag-bearers of Orbán’s political Christianity, a strong protector of Fidesz from critics from inside the church, an influencer regularly publishing pro-government writings, a public figure, and it seems a financial beneficiary of the Orbán cabinet.

Moreover, he kept slamming the LGBTQ movement, supporting and authenticating the government’s campaign by wearing a cassock.

He blessed PM Orbán’s office in Buda Castle’s Carmelite Monastery and the government-close Megafon Centre. He campaigned for the government during the 2022 general elections, writing that those voting for the opposition choose tuition fees in schools, unbearable payments in social institutes and the lockdown of village temples.

He slammed Hungarian singer Gabi Tóth because of her divorce and the drag queens performing at the 2024 Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony. Bese wrote about the LGBTQ ideology and its aim to conquer the world and how difficult it was for a kid living in a single-parent family to find an identity. That is when LGBTQ propaganda can find and “change” them, he argued.

He slammed the demonstration of church school teachers, Péter Magyar, whom he called the Judas of Fidesz, accepting the 30 pieces of silver.

In the last six years, Bese and his family received HUF 41 million (EUR 101 thousand) from a civil fund supporting almost only the Fidesz-close NGOs. Even though the two NGOs applying are officially led by Bese’s mother and sibling, his email address and phone number were given under the contact details. Apart from the subvention, they received more than HUF 60 million (EUR 152 thousand) through different programmes from the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, the Cultural Ministry and the Bethlen Gábor Fund. Moreover, he is renting the Regina Hungarorum in Medjugorje.

The Archbishop of Kalocsa-Kecskemét suspended Bese today.

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Russia's naval activity near undersea cables is reportedly drawing the scrutiny of US officials, further sparking concerns that the Kremlin may be plotting to "sabotage" underwater infrastructure via a secretive, dedicated military unit called the General Staff Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research (GUGI).

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Knocking out internet and telecommunications traffic traveling across these fiber-optic cables would have a devastating effect on government, military, and private-sector communications.

More than 95 percent of international data flows through those submarine cables, which puts them at increasing risk of both cyber and physical attacks .

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Last year, public broadcasters of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland uncovered a Russian fleet of suspected spy ships operating in Nordic waters, reportedly for purposes of sabotaging both submarine cables and wind farms.

**In addition to communications, the cables also carry electricity between European countries. **

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"Any activities that damaged seabed infrastructure including undersea cables especially during periods of heightened tensions risks misunderstandings and misperceptions that could lead to unintended escalation," [said an] US official. "The US would be especially concerned about damage to our or our allies' critical undersea infrastructure."

If a social media account is spreading Russian disinformation - does sharing content from the account give it legitimacy?

No, says Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Minister for Civil Defence. But at the authority the minister is responsible for, the answer sounds different.

— In any case, you spread something that a foreign power might intend to spread to make us worried, says Mikael Östlund, press officer at the authority.

It was a year ago that Carl-Oskar Bohlin shared a tweet from the American influencer Lauren Southern, known for her far-right advocacy. The original video warned of how AI is used in influence operations, something the minister forwarded to his around 45,000 followers. "The ability and height of the impact operations risk increasing avalanche-like with disruptive technology shifts," wrote Carl-Oskar Bohlin on X.

Now, an American indictment against two Russian government employees shows that the production company Tenet media, where Lauren Southern is employed, must have been secretly financed by the Russian news agency RT. A total of just over SEK 100 million is said to have been transferred from the Russian state employees to the American company. In turn, influencers would push specific issues—such as questioning support for Ukraine—to their millions of followers. On YouTube alone, the videos have received more than 16 million views.

In light of the American indictment, Carl-Oskar Bohlin has been criticized for not checking his sources better. But the Minister of Civil Defense lets the tweet stay on X.

"For the simple reason that it is difficult to misunderstand." writes Bohlin to DN.

"One should of course refrain from spreading harmful narratives from foreign powers. However, it is a somewhat strange indictment that my warning about deepfakes and doctored videos would in itself constitute Russian disinformation. With such a threshold, it will be difficult to talk about or warn about the phenomenon at all," continues the minister.

Carl-Oskar Bohlin is responsible for the agency for psychological defence, MPF. Countering misdirection and misinformation, including rumor spreading and propaganda, is one of the agency's main missions.

In case you wonder, mr. Bohlin is from the conservative party (Moderaterna).

Borrowed from that other site...

New EU report: “Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure… [N]o EU company with a market capitalisation over EUR 100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years, while all six US companies with a valuation above EUR 1 trillion have been created in this period.”

Romania and Latvia, both NATO members and supporters of Ukraine in its 2 1/2-year-old war with Russia, on Sunday were investigating instances of Russian drones that crashed after breaching their airspace, authorities in both countries said.

The incidents prompted officials to call for measures to act jointly to counter Russia air incursions.

NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana denounced the incidents as “irresponsible and potentially dangerous”, while saying there was no indication of a deliberate attack on Alliance member-states.

The Romanian defence ministry said the “radar supervision system identified and tracked the path of a drone which entered national airspace and then exited towards Ukraine”.

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In Latvia, which borders both Russia and its close ally Belarus, President Edgars Rinkevics posted on social media platform X that his government sought a common NATO response.

“The number of such incidents is increasing along the Eastern flank of NATO and we must address them collectively,” Rinkevics wrote.

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“There weren’t serious issues on the ground,” Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu told reporters on Sunday after consulting with the defence minister.

“(Attacks) will continue. That is it, we have a war on the border.”

Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, issued a warning on Monday that a cybercrime group belonging to Russian military intelligence (GRU) had been behind a number of online attacks against NATO and EU countries.

Together with US intelligence and other international partners, the BfV found that groups belonging to GRU Unit 29155 were "responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020."

It cautioned that the unit, also known as Cadet Blizzard or Ember Bear, was behind the WhisperGate malware attacks against Ukrainian targets in January 2022, a month before Russia invaded the country.

Unit 29155 also "attacked networks in NATO member states in Europe and North America as well as countries in Latin America and Central Asia," the BfV said.

Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

Media last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing.

Reports cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal.

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While the US and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the Strait in the past few weeks, it would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002.

China says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180km-wide waterway between it and Taiwan.

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The Taiwan Strait is a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass, and both the US and Taiwan say it is an international waterway.

The commander of the German naval task group, Rear Admiral Axel Schulz, last month said that such a passage would demonstrate Germany’s commitment to a rules-based order and the peaceful solution of territorial conflicts.

“We are showing our flag here to demonstrate that we stand by our partners and friends, our commitment to the rules-based order, the peaceful solution of territorial conflicts and free and secure shipping lanes,” Schulz said at the time.

One of UK's oldest nuclear waste storage silos is currently leaking radioactive liquid into the ground. That is a “recurrence of a historic leak” that Sellafield Ltd, the company that operates the site, says first started in the 1970s.

Sellafield has also faced questions about its working culture and adherence to safety rules. The company is currently awaiting sentencing after it pleaded guilty, in June, to charges related to cyber-security failings.

The former Italian prime minister proposes "radical change" as the bloc faces aggressive competition from China and the US. Draghi touts use of controversial eurobonds; proposed plan for decarbonisation and competitiveness could entail defensive trade measures, he says.