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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19124166

Social media giant Meta blocked or hid Facebook search results for "Cyclone Alfred" ahead of the tropical storm bearing down on Australia's east coast.

The platform is a key communication channel for emergency coverage in Australia and is used to help broadcast evacuation orders and other updates to residents during a crisis.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred is expected to make landfall between the Gold Coast and southern parts of Wide Bay region as early as Thursday evening as a category two cyclone.

It is forecast to bring destructive winds and the risk of life-threatening flooding.

But general searches about cyclones or "TC Alfred" did produce information and articles in the search results, indicating some kind of throttling about the term Cyclone Alfred specifically.

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The Queensland government has urged the community to visit its disaster monitoring website for the most up-to-date information.

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Executive summary

The vast majority of Europeans continues to support action to combat climate change, but many are losing faith in governments to deliver a transition that is effective and fair. Based on a large-scale questionnaire answered by nearly 8000 people in five EU countries in 2024, with a comparison to responses from 2020, we find that Europeans continue to worry about climate change and want effective action to combat it, even though the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine significantly increased their concerns about economic and physical insecurity. Scepticism about the causes of climate change has risen a bit, and concern about adapting to its impact has grown. People across all income groups, particularly in France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, feel negative about the outlook for their economic future and their governments’ ability to improve it.

People who feel politically disaffected think that decisionmakers are not taking their views and interests into account when making economic and climate policies. Some people are now shifting their attention away from action against the climate crisis towards adaptation, but this does not mean they are less concerned about climate change. Instead, for some people, it is an expression of their disillusionment with state institutions – and this feeling is present among supporters of parties across the political spectrum.

Worry about climate change is equally spread across all socio-economic groups. Closer examination of attitudes in Germany, using evidence from focus groups, which we also discuss in this Policy Brief, reinforces the finding of increasing scepticism about the German government’s ability to manage the climate crisis.

If political leaders want the public to continue to support climate policies, they must engage proactively now to avoid even greater loss of confidence in government. If governments go soft on efforts to combat the climate crisis now or delay action, they will not meet voters’ demand for an effective and just transition. Moreover, hesitation and delay would boost populist and far-right actors’ efforts to sow doubt about the causes of climate change and whether policies will be effective.

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TLDR:

• China’s military has once again escalated tensions near Australia. A Chinese J-16 fighter dangerously engaged an Australian P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft, releasing flares just 30 meters away—the fifth such incident since 2022.

• Meanwhile, a Chinese naval flotilla, including a Type 055 Renhai cruiser, sailed near Australia’s northeastern maritime approaches, marking Beijing’s growing naval presence beyond the First Island Chain.

• While Canberra insists on respecting international law, China’s continued provocations raise serious concerns about regional stability. With China targeting smaller nations like Australia, how should Defence and the Albanese government respond to these growing threats?

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni accused Russia of "offending the entire Italian nation" on Friday as she stood by comments by the Italian president that compared modern-day Russia to Nazi Germany.

In a speech last week, President Sergio Mattarella criticised the "wars of aggression" that led to World War Two. "This was the project of the Third Reich in Europe. The current Russian aggression against Ukraine is of this nature," he said.

Reacting to those statements with some delay, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Friday lambasted Mattarella's remarks as "blasphemous inventions".

Meloni said in a strongly-worded statement: "The insults of the spokeswoman (...) offend the entire Italian nation, which the head of state represents."

"I express my full solidarity, as well as that of the entire government, to President Mattarella, who has always firmly condemned the aggression perpetrated against Ukraine," she added.

Italy has traditionally been one of the countries in Europe with the closest political and economic ties to Russia, but under Meloni it has firmly stood by Ukraine, including with military aid.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/18434833

The new UK Government’s plan to decarbonise the electricity system brings with it the lofty aim of tripling total solar capacity by the end of the decade. Although much of this will be driven by large-scale installations, ministers are also hoping for a “rooftop revolution” that could see millions more homes topped with solar panels by 2030.

As well as providing carbon-free electricity, domestic solar can deliver significant reductions in energy spending – an average of £440 per year – to the households that get them. This means policy makers should think about rooftop solar like other ways of permanently reducing household energy spending, such as improving insulation. So in this briefing note we take a closer look at the case for installing more solar panels, discuss progress so far, and consider what, if any, policy might be needed to maximise the benefits.

The study's main points:

• While rooftop solar can make a small contribution to Clean Power, it can cut household bills by an estimated £440 a year on average, equivalent to almost a quarter of energy spending for the poorest fifth of households.
• Measured by savings per pound spent, solar panels compare well with other bill-cutting measures, yielding 7p-a-year per pound spent, a third more than cavity-wall insulation. Importantly, solar panels have had relatively low uptake compared to many other measures, having been installed on only 8 per cent of roofs.
• Poorer households have the most to gain from lower bills but are least able to access solar panels without policy support, due to prohibitive up-front costs. Changes to policy support in the past decade has shifted the distribution of solar panels towards richer areas – in 2015 there were more solar panels installed in the poorest third of LSOAs than the richest (35 to 31 per cent), but by 2023 more than twice as many went to the richest places (45 to 21 per cent).
• With a well-target package of support, solar panels could help to significantly reduce fuel poverty. We estimate that up to one-in-three fuel-poor households could be taken out of fuel poverty by typical solar savings, subject to the suitability of their homes.
• Though most consumers seem to be paid relatively well for the electricity they generate, the Smart Export Guarantee isn’t doing enough to prevent some solar panel owners being paid very little for their generation, with 20 per cent of Smart Export Guarantee tariffs being “unbundled” tariffs that pay just 4p/kwh on average.
• The government should consider more means-tested support with up-front costs, including both grants and subsidised loans targeted at low-to-middle income households.

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The European Union’s top diplomat slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration for sidelining Ukraine and engaging with Russia’s Vladimir Putin without consulting Kyiv or Europe.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told allies in Brussels on Wednesday that Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and reclaim its 1991 borders as part of a peace settlement were “unrealistic.” He also said the U.S. would “no longer tolerate” European NATO members relying on Washington for security.

The remarks, followed by a surprise phone call between Trump and Putin in which the two agreed to enter peace talks, have stunned European officials and raised concerns that Kyiv may be sidelined in discussions about its own future.

“They [the U.S.] say that it’s not going to be NATO membership, but some other security guarantees. Then the questions need to be answered by everybody — what are these security guarantees, really?” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, ahead of a NATO defense ministers’ meeting.

“Being in NATO, where we have these structures, is actually the best security guarantee,” she added.

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“We shouldn’t take anything off the table before negotiations start. It plays into Russia’s hands. And it is exactly what they want,” she said. “Why are we giving them everything they want even before negotiations begin? Appeasement has never worked.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius echoed her concerns, warning against making public concessions ahead of talks.

“In my view, it would have been better to discuss Ukraine’s possible NATO membership or the country’s possible loss of territory only at the negotiating table, not to rule it out beforehand,” Pistorius said in Brussels.

Kallas stressed that any peace deal imposed without the consent of Ukraine and European allies was doomed to fail.

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[This is an opinionated article by Gabrielius Landsbergis, former minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania.]

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Hungary blocks more than half of the EU’s foreign policy decisions. It continues to obstruct the European Peace Facility, a fund designed to support Ukraine’s defense. Whatever is proposed, EU diplomats have learned to brace themselves for a Hungarian veto.

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The principle of unity that underpinned the European project has been twisted and weaponized. In today’s world, this means paralysis in the face of rapidly unfolding geopolitical and technological developments.

History offers a chilling parallel. In the eighteenth century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, once a major European power, was crippled by the liberum veto—a system that allowed any single noble to block all parliamentary decisions. This eventually led to legislative paralysis.

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Recently the geopolitical stakes rose even higher. It is not inconceivable that Hungary would, for example, block retaliatory tariffs against the United States, or disagree with increasing common borrowing for defense if the United States begins to withdraw. Also, the need to regularly renew sanctions against Russia gives Hungary, or any other wannabe disruptor, a very effective way to twist the European Commission’s arm.

Thankfully, the EU is not powerless to stop all this. The Treaty on European Union’s includes Article 7 is, a mechanism designed for this very situation—a member state systematically ignoring European values. The process is complex, but it exists.

Under Article 7(1), proceedings can be initiated if there is a "clear risk" of a serious breach of European values. This must be confirmed by a majority vote in the European Parliament. If the risk is confirmed, Article 7(2) allows for the European Council to find the accused member in breach. If that happens, Article 7(3) enables the imposition of sanctions, including the suspension of voting rights.

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Download the analysis here (pdf)

The implementation of the regulation for a European electronic identity (EUid) based on digital wallets faces new criticism by digital rights groups. One of them, Austria-based Epic, recently published an open letter, and urged the European Commission to close certain loopholes that would lead to severe privacy and transparency problems.

Soon after the letter, the updated implementing acts seemed like a step in the right direction – "until we discovered completely new weak spots that not only endanger user privacy but also contradict the European Parliament’s agreement," Epicenter says in an analysis.

The Commission's new draft contains "privacy and transparency shortcomings [that] undermine trust in the eIDAS ecosystem and the democratic process as a whole. They must be fixed immediately," Epicenter adds.

A core pillar of trust in the eIDAS ecosystem is the public relying party registry. This registry is essential to enable oversight by public watchdogs and to ensure transparency. However, the current system makes it nearly impossible to obtain a meaningful overview of how relying parties are using digital identities – undermining the sole purpose of a transparency register.

The current draft of implementing acts fails to clearly distinguish between cases where a relying party is legally required to identify wallet users and other scenarios where such identification is optional. Practically speaking, the Wallet doesn’t know if it interacts with a bank that has a legal obligation to know who their customers are or Facebook that have no right to identify or track us.

Since the right to use pseudonyms depends on this distinction, it is critical that relying parties explicitly state whether a legal identification obligation applies to them and based on which law in particular. This lack of clarity cancels out the right to pseudonymity and makes the enforcement nearly impossible.

Even more concerning are the controversial changes made behind closed doors, after the public consultation process had already concluded, and at the explicit request of powerful industry players. These changes reintroduce a unique, persistent identifier and extend its scope towards the private sector – assigning users a lifelong, unchangeable digital identity number.

This proposal clearly contradicts the eIDAS regulation. The European Parliament had already drawn a clear red line against such an identifier – and now, it is being reintroduced in an undemocratic manner through an implementing act.

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The European Union and Moldova on Tuesday agreed on an energy security plan aimed at weaning the country off its dependence on Russian supplies and integrating it into the 27-nation bloc’s network.

The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, said that Moldova would receive 250 million euros ($258 million) this year — 40% of it by mid-April — after Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom cut supplies on Jan. 1.

Daily electrical outages were imposed after hundreds of thousands of people in Moldova’s separatist pro-Russian Transnistria region were left without heating and hot water last month over an alleged $709 million bill for past supplies to Moldova.

The decision by Gazprom, which came into effect a day after a gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired, halted gas supplies to Transnistria’s gas-operated Kuciurgan power plant, the country’s largest, which provided a significant portion of Moldova’s electricity.

The commission said that its financial package will provide support to consumers in Moldova – a candidate country for EU membership – to help pay their rising electricity bills. Some 60 million euros ($62 million) is earmarked for 350,000 people left in the cold in Transnistria.

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A European alliance has emerged with an alternative to tech’s global order.

They call their project OpenEuroLLM. Like DeepSeek, they aim to develop next-generation open-source language models — but their agenda is very different. Their mission: forging European AI that will foster digital leaders and impactful public services across the continent.

To support these objectives, OpenEuroLLM is building a family of high-performing, multilingual large language foundation models. The models will be available for commercial, industrial, and public services.

Over 20 leading European research institutions, companies, and high-performance computing (HPC) centres have enlisted in the the project. Leading their alliance is Jan Hajič, a renowned computational linguist at Charles University, Czechia, and Peter Sarlin, the co-founder of Silo AI, Europe’s largest private AI lab, which was acquired last year by US chipmaker AMD for $665mn.

They’re joined by an array of European tech luminaries. Among them are Aleph Alpha, the leading light of Germany’s AI sector, Finland’s CSC, which hosts one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers., and France’s Lights On, which recently became Europe’s first publicly-traded GenAI company.

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In a landmark move reinventing the working week in the United Kingdom, at least 200 British companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees without any loss of pay.

Together, these 200 companies employ over 5,000 people, and among these charities, marketing and technology firms are the best-represented, a report by The Guardian said quoting the 4 Day Week Foundation.

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The change was first adopted by around 30 marketing, advertising and press relations firms. The suit was followed by 29 charity, NGO, and social care industry-based organisations, and 24 technology, IT and software firms. Later, another 22 companies in the business, consulting and management sectors also joined the bandwagon and permanently offered four-day weeks to staff, according to The Guardian report.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17862259

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As the world races to decarbonise its energy systems, Europe faces mounting challenges in competing with global powerhouses like China and the US in PV manufacturing. To address these challenges, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Photovoltaics (ETIP PV) has emerged as a key player in fostering collaboration, innovation and strategic policymaking among European countries.

“PV is a global technology,” Rutger Schlattmann, chair of ETIP PV and head of the Solar Energy division at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, tells PV Tech Premium. “The technology is developed worldwide, and some of the effort should be done across countries because these challenges are bigger than what individual countries – especially the smaller ones – can afford.”

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Meanwhile, the EU sets a new record for renewable energy use in 2024.

In the European Union (EU), 47% of electricity now comes from renewable sources like wind and solar, a new record according to a report from the think tank Ember. This is a far higher percentage than in other countries, including the United States and China, where about two-thirds of energy comes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas.

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The share of electricity produced by renewables jumped to 47% last year compared to 34% in 2019, in large part due to strong growth in solar and wind energy. In 2024, 11% of the EU’s electricity came from solar power, 17% from wind, and 24% from nuclear. The share produced by traditional fossil fuels dropped from 39% in 2019 to 29% in 2024.