cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/41925267

Israeli prison authorities gave a tour of a maximum-security facility to Jewish settlers where they held a “Torah lesson” and observed the abuse of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli media reported on 23 February.

Kobi Yaakobi, head of Israel's prison system, invited 20 members of the synagogue in Har Homa, an illegal West Bank settlement near Jerusalem, on a “safari” tour of Nitzan maximum-security prison.

Palestinian detainees, including alleged members of Hamas's elite Nukhba forces, were handcuffed and forced to lie on the ground to be observed by the visitors. The Jewish settlers ate an “indulgent lunch” in front of the prisoners, who were fasting for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Some 8,790 Americans sought citizenship in the UK, either through registration or naturalisation in 2025, according to Home Office data published Thursday.

Shortly after, Mamdani posted on X that he spoke with Trump by phone about the Columbia student detained Thursday morning after federal immigration agents allegedly used deception to gain entry into a campus residential building, according to university officials.

“In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elaina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning,” Mamdani wrote. “He has just informed me that she will be released imminently.”

In a wide-ranging interview, the European Parliament president backs “change” in Iran as Trump threatens war, but she doesn’t want U.S. “interference” in EU politics.

She’s not Donald Trump’s biggest foe in Europe — yet.

But European Parliament President Roberta Metsola wants the White House to know its attempts to influence politics in Europe are not welcome.

In an interview with POLITICO, Metsola said the European Union won’t express a preference on who should win the U.S. midterm elections in November. But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in to endorse Viktor Orbán in Budapest this month, ahead of Hungary’s general election coming up in April.

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After months of a crippling oil blockade on Cuba imposed by the United States, the fuel-starved country may now see some relief after the US government said it would begin authorising companies to resell Venezuelan oil, even as tensions between the two reach a head.

On Wednesday, the US Department of the Treasury said it would allow the resale of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use” in Cuba as the small island nation faces one of its worst fuel crises in decades.

Venezuela is the largest provider of oil to Cuba. However, since US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and imprisoned him to face drugs and weapons charges in a New York court, the Donald Trump administration has taken control of Caracas’s oil and halted exports to Havana.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7449044

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A new artificial intelligence (AI) agent could equip Europe to better defend itself against the barrage of Russian disinformation attacks.

Cipher is Canadian-developed AI software that has proven to accurately and quickly detect Russian disinformation targeting Canadian networks, on both the far right and the far left of the political spectrum.

Now that Cipher has passed the testing stage, the researchers are training the AI agent to distinguish those same narratives in the Russian language.

The researchers hope it can be rolled out in Europe for those at the forefront of efforts to combat Russian operations that sow distrust in Western democracies and institutions.

Marcus Kolga, who runs the foreign disinformation monitoring platform DisinfoWatch in Canada, tested Cipher to see how well it stood up to his 20 years of experience reporting on foreign interference.

"What would usually take, for an analysis piece, maybe half a day to a day, was really being crunched down to a few hours, and (it) was scarily accurate," says Kolga, who tested out Cipher in its early stages and still uses the AI agent to expedite his work.

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The tool uncovered persistent efforts to deliberately sway Canadian public opinion on Ukraine with the goal of eroding the support Kyiv receives from one of its staunchest allies.

Brian McQuinn, an associate professor in international studies at the University of Regina, is one of the project leads. He has been researching the role of social media in armed conflict.

McQuinn worked with Kolga on the 2023 report The Enemy of My Enemy, which detailed how Russia uses information operations to undermine Canadian support for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.

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The Cipher project began three years ago under the AI safety research program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). McQuinn worked with project co-lead Matthew Taylor, an associate professor in computing science at the University of Alberta, who directed a five-person team of engineers in creating the sophisticated software.

Beyond mapping out where Russian disinformation is spreading online, with reports processed down to the last 24 hours, Cipher also shows trending themes.

This type of analysis provides experts with more detail on how Russian operations are shifting over any period of time.

"We are able to track and show on a day-to-day basis ... where are the Russian networks investing their limited resources (and) what themes they are targeting day in, day out, and how they are changing over the weeks and over the months," says McQuinn.

"It really shows you the extent to which they are responding to events almost in real time."

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Deceptive narratives are often disseminated by Russian state-controlled outlets such as RT and Sputnik, then amplified by social media influencers. From there, they spread across Canadian social networks, occasionally making their way into mainstream news coverage.

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The next challenge for the Cipher team is fine-tuning it to more accurately predict how Russian disinformation will spin the narrative around any expected events. Experts like Kolga can then get ahead of the attacks to suppress how far they could spread.

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Brende stated on Thursday that after “careful consideration” he is stepping down

“I am convinced that the Forum can now continue its important work without distraction,” wrote the former Norwegian diplomat, who exchanged more than 100 text messages and emails and met Epstein on three occasions.

Alternative link: https://archive.is/20260226072104/https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/02/25/luxury-goods-are-europes-global-tax-on-vanity

The company compiled information from franchisees and guests on how to measure friendliness, resulting in the fast food chain training its AI system to recognize certain words and phrases, such as “welcome to Burger King,” “please,” and “thank you.” Managers can then ask the AI assistant how their location is performing on friendliness.

A new report revealed that Israeli soldiers fired over 900 bullets at a convoy of Palestinian aid workers near Rafah in March 2025, killing 15 medics. Investigators say the evidence reveals the cover-up of a war crime.