Europe

Hundreds of people protested in European cities on Saturday against U.S. President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, following a bruising week for financial markets after Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs.

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Some of the demands of the protesters include the immediate lowering of rental prices with a reduction of up to 50%, the revamping of 3.8 million vacant homes, and the prohibition of evictions of vulnerable families.

Archived

Britain needs to re-arm and build reserves through a form of national service to defend against Vladimir Putin’s hopes to dominate eastern Europe and undermine the west, the former head of MI6 has warned.

Sir Alex Younger said people in the UK must realise that the threat from Russia - and its closeness to the US - is real, adding: “Putin and Trump together have done their best to persuade us that the rules have changed”.

[...]

Reflecting on whether Britain has the mettle for a full-scale war, he [said]: "We have, for many years, been completely free of any form of existential threat [...] We've unforgivably… launched a set of wars of choice, which have imposed sacrifice needlessly on young people and there's great cynicism about this idea of collective effort to defend your country."

[...]

Discussing what need to be done to prepare, Sir Alex, known as “C” during his time as spy chief, added: “You'd have to ask a soldier about the actual efficacy of things like conscription. I have no idea… I know that it just needs to be a more integrated feature of everyday life."

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“In a sense, that's not the point [whether or not Trump is a Russian agent]. The point is he agrees with Vladimir Putin. He agrees that big countries get additional rights over small countries, particularly in their own backyard.”

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“It really depends on how close to Moscow you are. I think in Finland it's well understood [that there is a threat of Russia attacking othrr European countries] and there's a properly integrated resilient culture where everyone is accustomed to playing their part. I think we go to Portugal at the other end that's just not true - and in a sense that's understandable."

[...]

[Dr Rachel] Ellehuus, [an American, former US defence secretary’s envoy to Nato, and now head of the the Royal United Services Institute, Britain’s leading security thinktank], said that while the threat posed by the Kremlin had been persistent, it has been the dramatic shift in Washington that has been the greatest strategic shock [and argued that] a hybrid war with Russia - where disinformation, cyberattacks and economic pressure are equally important - is already underway.

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This threat has intensified following the sudden change in strategic ideology in Washington under Trump [according to Ellehuus].

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“The galvanizing moment for Europe? Yes. Take a look at the Trump-Putin relationship or the Trump/MAGA-Putin relationship,” she said.

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"Am I saying he's going to invade the Baltic states or Poland tomorrow? I'm not. But he is going to test the boundaries of what we call Article 5, which is the commitment that an attack against one Nato ally is an attack against all of them.

“He's already been pushing the boundaries of that through below-the-threshold activities that aren't conventional attacks.”

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According to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, there was a 300 per cent increase in unconventional attacks on Europe by Russia last year, 2023-2024.

“Roughly 27 percent of the attacks were against transportation targets (such as trains, vehicles, and airplanes), another 27 per cent were against government targets (such as military bases and officials), 21 percent were against critical infrastructure targets (such as pipelines, undersea fiber-optic cables, and the electricity grid), and 21 percent were against industry (such as defense companies),” the CSIS said in a report last month.

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Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic who survived two poisoning attempts and a prison term in Russia, [...] calls for the release of all prisoners of war and abducted Ukrainian children in any peace deal.

"I just want those who are once again ready to shake Putin’s hand to remember: every time they do, they shake a hand drenched in blood,” Kara-Murza tells SWI swissinfo on the sidelines of the 17th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, which he attended with his wife in February.

The Russian activist was freed in August 2024 as part of a major prisoner swap between Russia and the West. A fierce critic of the Putin’s war on Ukraine, he spent over two years in prison – of which one year in solitary confinement – in the Siberian city of Omsk, over 2,700 kilometres from Moscow.

[...]

Kara-Murza now lives in the United States, reunited with his family. He worries that US President Donald Trump’s efforts to directly engage Putin – a break with past US and current EU policy – will backfire.

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Over the past 25 years “the West has engaged with Putin despite him shutting down independent media, suppressing protests,” he points out, arguing that it would be foolish to expect a different result now.

“All this time, Western leaders rolled out the red carpet, shook his hand, looked into his eyes, and claimed to ‘see his soul’,” he adds, referring to US President George W. Bush’s famous 2001 remark.

Since then, Putin has invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Demonstrations in Russia have been met with brutal force. Putin’s opponents have been poisoned or killed.

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"Any agreement must contain a clause on the release of all Russian political prisoners,” he stresses, noting that the fastest-growing category among Russian political prisoners are those who have spoken out against the war in Ukraine, as he did. “Today, there are 1,497 political prisoners in Russia – more than in the Soviet Union during the 1980s,” he points out.

Likewise, he calls for the release of Ukrainian civilians captured by Russia. He notes that thousands of people are now being held in penitentiary institutions across Russia External linkor in the occupied territories. And he advocates for the repatriation of thousands of Ukrainian children, who were forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-occupied territories in what the United Nations considers a war crime.

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Archived

Russian roulette” is how 24-year-old painter Daria Bakun describes Russia’s drone attacks against Dnipro and other cities, which have intensified despite ceasefire talks and have become more destructive due to a new tactic.

“You never know what happens next when you hear some 10-20 drones fly, one by one, over your home”, she tells EFE from her city in south-eastern Ukraine that has been attacked thrice in the last eight days.

Though Dnipro’s residents are accustomed to frequent air alarms, Russia’s drone waves keep Bakun in a state of constant tension, worsened by the strain of having to get her gravely ill father to safety during the attacks.

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[33-year-old Ludmyla] Pryimenko, in her eighth month of pregnancy, still sounds upbeat and happy that her 7-year-old and 4-year-old children remained unharmed. However, she recognizes that the complete shock may hit her later.

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For Pryimenko and millions of other Ukrainians, the threat is growing as Russia refines its tactics.

Military observers say the drones – mostly Iran-designed Shaheds – now strike cities like Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Odesa in groups of 20 or 30 drones almost nightly, exploiting a method that makes them harder to stop.

Drones approach a city at an altitude of several kilometers, after which they sharply descend and begin circling next to the roofs of the houses.

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Military observer Oleksandr Kovalenko compares such attacks with “carpet bombing” due to their indiscriminate impact. Writing for the Information Resistance Group, he warns that Russia will increase its terror of Ukrainian civilians in an attempt to sow panic, while unable to break through the defense on the frontline.

Last month, Russia launched a record 4196 drones, including 1344 in the final week alone, according to Ukraine’s Air Force.

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Such attacks signal Russia has no plans to stop, locals believe.

“It’s blackmail. They terrorize civilians and try to intimidate and demoralize us to destabilize the country,” Daria Bakun from Dnipro is certain.

She doubts it will work, however.

“Such nights of terror only imbue most in Dnipro with even more hatred and distrust towards Russia rather than make them inclined to accept its ultimatums”, Bakun underlines.

https://archive.is/2025.04.04-200922/https://www.ft.com/content/b1eda0a8-6449-4fe5-b8c6-a2afebadc823

France’s largest employers' federation, Medef, swiftly backed Macron’s position.

“The world is reorganising,” said Medef president Patrick Martin, who described the situation as “very serious”. He said France and Europe must now focus on competitiveness and cutting back regulation as global trade tensions rise.

Business group France Industrie echoed the call for action.

Its president, Alexandre Saubot, urged French manufacturers to consider suspending US investments as a show of strength. “To negotiate from a position of strength, we have to be ready to use all the levers at our disposal,” he said.

cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/5842702

Germany is financing Ukraine's access to a satellite internet network operated by French company Eutelsat, Reuters reported on April 4, citing Eutelsat CEO Eva Berneke.

ProtectEU

Additionally, the Commission envisions expanding Europol's role, effectively transforming it into a European equivalent of the FBI, with enhanced operational capabilities.

Granting Europol the ability to access encrypted data can only mean one thing: Brussels is proposing some form of government-mandated backdoor for communication platforms protected by end-to-end encryption.

use your voice

If you are concerned about people being influenced by Russia, the US, and China, be it via Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, local ads, or whatever else, if you are concerned about that friend who suddenly started spouting anti-EU rhetoric from Youtube, if you're unhappy with how the EU and member states have handled it so far, this is for you.

~~EU citizens~~ anybody can respond and it would be in our interest to do so too.

It will take 10 minutes if you're quick, longer if you want to leave comments on each point. There are 4 points with up to 4 sub points, each comment can be 3500 characters long.

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Under pressure from the Israeli government, a speech by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm at an event marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany was cancelled.

In a statement on X, Israel's embassy to Germany described the decision to invite Boehm to the event as "a blatant insult" to the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. As reasons, they cited his comparison of the Holocaust to the Palestinian Nakba and his description of Yad Vashem as "an instrument of political manipulation."

When Putin wanted to go to South Africa, Brussels banged on about his ICC war crimes warrant. Crickets for the Israel PM's trip to Budapest.

Archived

The tragic collapse of a skyscraper in Bangkok [which was the only building that collapsed during the recent earthquake in Thailand], behind the same Chinese contractors associated with the works on Novi Sad railway station, has opened new questions about the security of Chinese projects around the world. While CNN and the Telegraph are investigating the responsibility of Chinese companies in detail, Serbia has reason to follow the developments related to this case with special attention.

While the safety of the Novi Sad railway station and the responsibility of the Chinese contractors from the CRIC-CCCC consortium, led by the China Railway International Company, are still being investigated in Serbia, the new tragedy has once again raised an avalanche of questions about the safety and reliability of projects implemented by Chinese construction companies around the world. In question is the collapse of a skyscraper in Bangkok, the construction of which, according to international media, was entrusted to the company China Railway Number 10 Engineering Group - a related entity of the state corporation that also operates in Serbia.

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The project worth more than two billion Thai baht (about 45 million pounds), built for three years, was led by a company whose actors are known to the public in Serbia - the Italian-Thai corporation Italian-Thai Development Plc and the company China Railway Number 10 (Thailand) Ltd. The latter is the local branch of the Chinese giant China Railway Number 10 Engineering Group, with a share of 49 percent, which is the maximum share of foreign companies in Thai companies, according to the Telegraph, referring to local source The Nation.

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The investigation by the Thai Ministry of Industry is focused on the possible reasons for this disaster, among which are issues of the quality of the steel used, a poor construction project, as well as the possible inadequacy of the specific construction method - the so-called "flat slab" slabs, i.e. flat slabs that lie directly on the pillars, without classic supporting beams. In addition, experts point out the problem of the ground on which Bangkok rests: the soft and unstable ground could significantly increase the effects of the earthquake.

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What further strengthened the suspicion of omissions in the construction process was the deletion of all posts by China Railway Number 10 Group on Chinese social networks related to this project.

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The lack of responses to media inquiries also points to possible attempts to cover up responsibility, which is of particular concern in partner countries around the world, including Serbia, where Chinese contractors have already faced safety issues in the tragic collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad railway station.

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Berlin has been paying for Ukraine's access to a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat, as Europe seeks alternatives to Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Eutelsat’s chief executive Eva Berneke told Reuters the company has provided its high-speed satellite internet service to Ukraine for about a year via a German distributor.

[...]

Berneke said it was funded by the German government, but declined to comment on the cost.

Berneke said there were fewer than a thousand terminals connecting users in Ukraine to Eutelsat’s network, which is a small fraction of the roughly 50,000 Starlink terminals Ukraine says it has, but she said she expected the figure would rise.

"Now we're looking to get between 5,000 and 10,000 there relatively fast," she said, adding it could be "within weeks".

Asked whether Germany would also fund that additional provision, Eutelsat spokesperson Joanna Darlington said the issue was under discussion.

"We don’t know yet how the EU collectively or country by country will fund efforts going forward," Darlington said.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s more hostile approach to Ukraine since his return to the White House has sparked concern in Europe about reliance on Starlink.

It is part of rocket company SpaceX, owned by tech billionaire Musk who is close to Trump. Starlink provides crucial internet connectivity to Ukraine and its military in the war against Russia.

Eutelsat’s OneWeb division is Starlink’s main rival in providing high-speed internet satellite via low-Earth orbit satellites.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27771988

Summary

Donald Trump warned the UK must accept chlorinated US chicken imports if it wants relief from new 10% tariffs on British exports.

The U.K. has long reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining high food standards, with polling showing 80% of Britons oppose a ch imports.

Critics argue chlorinated chicken stems from poorer production hygiene, with studies showing high bacteria rates in US chicken.

Farming advocates warn a US trade deal with lower standards would be "devastating for British farming."