Title current as of writing this post

European arms makers say they are still waiting for governments to tell them exactly how they plan to use the EU’s €150 billion loan scheme for joint defence procurement.

The EU announced the establishment of the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) programme in May last year. Since then, 19 EU countries have submitted plans to the Commission, detailing how they intend to use their allocated share of the money, including a list of equipment they plan to purchase.

But defence industry insiders say they have been left largely in the dark. The CEO of the Polish state-owned arms manufacturer PGZ, Jan Grabowski, told Euractiv he has yet to see exactly what Warsaw intends to buy.

“I don’t know what’s in the Polish investment plan,” Grabowski said, adding that PGZ was not certain of which projects and equipment could be funded under the loans.

Poland is by far the biggest recipient of SAFE funding, with an allocation of €43.7 billion, accounting for almost a third of the total envelope. The Commission approved the plans in January, together with those of 15 other capitals. But Poland isn’t the only country whose defence industry is still waiting for clarity.

Four industry sources with knowledge of national discussions, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the plans, echoed Grabowski’s comments, saying it was hard for defence manufacturers to obtain information on what countries planned to buy at this stage.

A fifth source added that companies are increasingly relying on informal contacts within defence ministries to learn about capitals’ needs as early as possible.

Although defence planning is traditionally opaque, European arms manufacturers are now pressing for greater visibility to allow them to prepare. EU capitals have so far made only limited announcements that could help defence companies gauge which contracts might emerge from the €150 billion programme.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently announced that Poland intends to use part of its allocation to fund a new anti-drone system dubbed SAN, the country’s own initiative to ward off air incursions. Bulgaria’s state-owned VMZ also inked a deal with German defence manufacturer Rheinmetall last autumn to set up a gunpowder factory in Sopot, financed using Bulgaria’s share of the loans.

It’s unclear how far such statements address industry concerns, as manufacturers prepare for years of production. Defence companies will need to ramp up production lines and deliver equipment over time, requiring clear guidance from governments, Grabowski said.

Industry will also need to rapidly convert large loan sums into military capabilities, under Commission monitoring, he added.

What’s more, arms makers face some of the most technically demanding compliance requirements under SAFE. Capitals must still provide the Commission with a detailed description of the defence products they intend to buy, in line with the regulation. It would then fall on arms makers to trace components back through the value chain and prove that the projects meet the eligibility targets.

Meanwhile, the Commission still needs to approve the national plans submitted by France, Czechia and Hungary, which are still under discussion with national officials. The EU executive said last week it was “finalising” its assessment. It had initially aimed to approve all 19 plans by the end of January.

The Council still needs to approve them before the first funds can be disbursed in April.

Seven employees of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have been denied access to the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, in Berlin for security reasons.

An AfD spokesman confirmed on Sunday that five of them worked for individual lawmakers, and two were employed by the party's parliamentary group.

He added that one of the two affected parliamentary group employees no longer works for the parliamentary group.

The story was first reported by the news magazine Der Spiegel in December.

No decision has yet been made on the proposal by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner to cancel the salaries of employees who do not receive a house ID card and do not have access to parliamentary IT systems.

In December, she said that people who had not been authorized to access the Bundestag following a security check should generally be barred from working for members of parliament and should not be paid from public funds.

She has asked the parliamentary groups to amend the Members of Parliament Act accordingly.

Bernd Baumann, parliamentary secretary of the AfD parliamentary group, criticized the proposal.

"If employees of members of the Bundestag are denied a house pass and therefore no salary is to be paid in future on the grounds that they are not reliable, the question arises as to what criteria are used to assess this reliability," he said.

The police are tasked with carrying out security checks on employees of members of parliament and parliamentary groups.

Currently, only employees who have access to particularly sensitive classified information are checked to see whether Germany's domestic intelligence agency has any sensitive information about them.

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

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Centre-left Socialist António José Seguro scored a landslide victory over far-right populist André Ventura in Portugal’s presidential runoff on Sunday, exit polls showed, dealing a blow to the country’s rising populist right and handing the largely ceremonial presidency to a moderate figure promising stability after years of political turmoil.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50537922

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50537635

Archived

For an administration otherwise so uncertain of its motivations, Sir Keir Starmer’s government has proved remarkably determined to get its dud ­Chagos Islands deal over the line. No warning, from any quarter, has deterred the effort.

Not the opposition of the Chagossian people, evicted by Britain in the 1960s, the majority of whom have made it clear they do not want the islands to fall into Mauritian hands. Not America’s ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens, who understatedly warned that surrendering the strategically important territory was not the “ideal outcome”. Not the opinion of US senators that No 10’s legal case for secession was “nonsense” fuelled by “a misguided anti-western agenda”. Nor the considered view of the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who told this paper that the deal’s potential to ­strengthen Chinese influence in the region meant it was “one of the dumbest geostrategic mistakes”.

[...]

The case against ceding control of the Chagos Islands is by now well-rehearsed and unanswerable. The islands are home to the US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia, nicknamed “the footprint of freedom” for the unique aerial ­access it affords to the Middle East, Indian and Pacific theatres. Having turned this strategic asset over to Mauritius, whose claim to the land is ­dubious, Britain plans to pay the new owners £35 billion over the next 100 years for the privilege of leasing it back.

That extraordinarily unfavourable arrangement, championed by Sir Keir’s special envoy to the archipelago, Jonathan Powell, was a completely unforced error triggered by a non-binding resolution of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which the UK could, and should, have simply ignored. Labour’s rationalisations were always blatantly spurious. It complied with the ICJ’s edict under the naive impression that Britain would then be able to parade as a paragon of virtue to the global south.

[...]

From any angle, Sir Keir’s unfathomable desire to surrender the Chagos Islands has been a chaotic and embarrassing debacle, symptomatic of the government’s misplaced goals and strategic ­confusion. However unattractive the prospect of another U-turn, Labour should resile from the project while it still can. Further humiliation is now a certainty either way.

My biased quotes:

The government says a Liquefied Natural Gas import facility in Taranaki will save New Zealanders about $265 million a year.

Energy Minister Simon Watts on Monday announced a contract was expected to be signed by the middle of the year, with construction finishing next year or early 2028.

"We need to get rid of the dry risk," Luxon told reporters on Monday.

"I'm not going to guarantee, based on the advice I've been given the benefits outweigh the costs."

A factsheet supplied by the government said the infrastructure costs would be paid for through a levy on electricity of between $2 and $4 /MWh.

The facility was expected to cut future prices by at least $10/MWh, and curb an expected 1.25 percent reduction in Gross Domestic Product from higher energy prices.

Procurement started in October in response to the independent Frontier report, which the government largely rejected.

The government largely rejected the recommendations of the review carried out by Frontier Economics, with sector players including Simon Bridges criticising a lack of bold action.

"It would make no economic sense to develop an LNG import terminal to meet just dry year risk as the large fixed costs would be spread over a relatively small amount of output," the Frontier report said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50538886

Archived

On January 29, 2026, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) participated in an event at the National Endowment for Democracy which launched former City University of Hong Kong Professor Hon-Shiang Lau’s book “Tibet Was Never Part of China Since Antiquity.” The book launch included a panel of Tibetan leaders and experts who discussed Tibet’s historical sovereignty and refuted the People’s Republic of China (PRC) narrative that Tibet has always been a part of China. Professor Lau’s groundbreaking scholarship clearly dispels PRC propaganda that Tibet has been a part of China by analyzing official Chinese documents and definitively establishing the historical fact that Tibet had for centuries until 1950 been independent and sovereign.

Former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom (and United States Senator and Governor of Kansas) Sam Brownback delivered keynote remarks highlighting Tibet’s long history as a free and sovereign nation and warning about the growing cultural genocide the PRC is committing against the Tibetan people. On a panel moderated by the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin that included Lau, Sikyong Penpa Tsering of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), and ICT Research and Monitoring Head Bhuchung K. Tsering, Brownback contextualized the importance of Lau’s scholarship within the larger Tibetan movement. The PRC’s forcible assimilation of historically independent Tibet lays bare the hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s anti-colonial rhetoric. The CCP fears religious freedom more than any weapon, Brownback observed, because it undermines the weak foundation of the state.

Lau noted his purposeful choice of publicly available, Chinese-sourced official documents created before the 1950 occupation in hopes of credibly refuting the CCP’s false narrative around Tibet’s historical sovereignty. For example, China has not historically played, or sought to play, any role in the selection process of the Dalai Lama.

[...]

Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado said political leader Juan Pablo Guanipa was taken by force in Caracas.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said her opposition colleague Juan Pablo Guanipa had been kidnapped just hours after being released from detention.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said on Sunday that Guanipa, leader of the Justice First party, was taken in the Los Chorros neighbourhood of the capital Caracas.

"Heavily armed men dressed in civilian clothes arrived in four vehicles and took him away by force," she wrote on social media early on Monday.

MBFC
Archive

When metaphysicians wish to persuade a naturalist that the intellectual and emotional life of man unfolds according to “the inherent laws of the Spirit,” the naturalist shrugs his shoulders and continues his patient study of the phenomena of life, of intelligence, and of emotions in order to prove that all can be reduced to physical and chemical phenomena. He seeks to discover their natural laws.

Results mean coalition of recently installed PM has supermajority in lower house of parliament

Japan’s conservative governing coalition has dramatically strengthened its grip on power after a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections in what will be seen as an early public endorsement of the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

Her Liberal Democratic party (LDP) had won 316 seats by early Monday, comfortably surpassing the 261 it needed for an absolute majority in the 465-member lower house and the highest number since the party was founded in 1955. With her coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, which won 36 seats, Takaichi now has a supermajority of two-thirds of seats, easing her legislative agenda as she can override the upper chamber, which she does not control.

MBFC
Archive

Russian forces carried out a series of attacks overnight on Feb. 8-9, killing one person and injuring two others amid a targeted missile and drone attack on multiple Ukrainian cities.

The southern city of Odesa was subject to large-scale drone attack, which local officials reporting damage to "residential infrastructure" in the city.

. . .

Odesa City Military Administration head Serhiy Lysak said that a fire broke out at multi-story residential building, adding that a gas pipeline was damaged in the attack. Car fires were also reported in the city.

Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported that a 35-year-old man was killed, and two others, including a 19-year-old woman, were injured in the attack. A total of 21 apartments were damaged in the strike on the residential building in the Prymorskyi district of the city.

MBFC
Archive

A Russian magazine editor claims his publisher demanded he censor a book that mentions homosexuality in animals because it violates the country’s “LGBT propaganda” law.

Viktor Kovylin, editor of the scientific journal Batrachospermum, wrote on Telegram that his publisher told him the descriptions of same-sex behavior in a book on animal sexual behavior were against the law because they did not express “disgust or criticism” for the acts.

“Apparently, neutral scientific descriptions of homosexual behavior, without disgust or criticism, now fall under the category of propaganda for non-traditional relationships!” Kovylin wrote on Telegram, according to a translation.

Archived

Here is the entire report: Tightening the net: China's infrastructure of oppression in Iran (pdf)

The Iranian regime has been accused of deploying Russian and Chinese technology to aid its brutal crackdown on recent protests, and proliferate a near total internet shutdown, including disrupting satellite internet. This networked authoritarianism has equipped Iran with the technical capacity and political will to impose unprecedented infrastructure control to suppress the flow of information, as the regime massacred thousands of protesters and arrested many more.

[...]

The report outlines how China, Iran’s largest trading partner, has been providing material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, supercharging its surveillance and censorship capabilities. Despite international sanctions, Chinese companies including ZTE, Huawei, Tiandy and Hikvision continue operations in Iran, often through front companies, providing surveillance and monitoring technologies that directly contribute to the regime’s ability to perpetuate gross human rights violations.

The research also charts the way in which China’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ doctrine appears to influence Iran’s approach to internet governance – best exemplified in the country’s efforts to replicate the Great Firewall of China through Iran’s National Information Network. Both systems intend to block free access to the global internet, centralising censorship and embedding surveillance deep into their infrastructure. Iranian officials have publicly praised China’s normative and technical capacity, and supported China’s global push for separation from ‘foreign’ internet regulation in international fora, including the United Nations.

[...]

Iran's suppression was combined with door-to-door seizure of satellite dishes, aided by arial drones, and criminal penalties of up to 10 years' imprisonment under a 2025 law in Iran criminalising the possession of hardware like Starlink terminals. Such multifaceted methods significantly complicate countermeasures to protect freedom of expression and information.

[...]

Despite international sanctions and legal penalties, Chinese firms have sought means of continuing operations in Iran, often through front companies, complicating accountability. The involvement of Chinese vendors in supplying censorship and surveillance technologies to Iran has contributed to the government's ability to perpetrate human rights abuses, often disproportionately against ethnic and religious minorities and women.

[...]

An internet safety campaign backed by US tech companies has been accused of censoring two teenagers they invited to speak out about the biggest issues facing children online.

Childnet, a UK charity part-funded by companies including Snap, Roblox and Meta, edited out warnings from Lewis Swire and Saamya Ghai that social media addiction was an “imminent threat to our future” and obsessive scrolling was making people “sick”, according to a record of edits seen by the Guardian.

Swire, then 17, from Edinburgh, and Ghai, then 14, from Buckinghamshire, had been asked to speak at an event to mark Safer Internet Day in 2024 in London in front of representatives from government, charities and tech companies.

The tech-backed charity also edited out references to children feeling unable to stop using TikTok and Snap, social media exacerbating a “devastating epidemic” of isolation, and a passage questioning why people would want to spend years of their lives “scrolling TikTok and binge-watching Netflix”, the edits show.

Childnet denied making edits to keep tech funders happy and insisted it would not stop young people making their points. Aspects of the approved speech did acknowledge that excessive screen time had led to depression and anxiety, and that social media companies should reduce the use of devices such as notifications, autoplay and streaks to prolong user engagement.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/58750124

The Stellantis-backed Automotive Cells Company (ACC) told unions it had dropped plans to build gigafactories in both Italy and Germany, the Italian metalworkers' union UILM said in a statement on Saturday.

Bad Bunny's halftime show at the Superbowl ended with him listing all the nations of America (South to North order).