Europe

Taiwan is expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service by the end of the month, a step the government says is crucial in case a Chinese attack cripples the island’s communications.

The forthcoming service is via a contract between Taiwan’s main telecoms company, Chunghwa, and a UK-European company, Eutelsat OneWeb, signed last year, and marks a new milestone in Taiwan’s efforts to address technological vulnerabilities, particularly its internet access, after attempts to get access to Elon Musk’s Starlink service collapsed.

Chunghwa co-president Alex Chien said 24-hour coverage was expected by the end of the month, with commercial access as soon as sufficient bandwidth was reached.

Taiwan is under the threat of attack or invasion by China, which claims historical sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to annex it, by military force if necessary. In the meantime it is under a near constant barrage of cyber-attacks, and has had some of its 15 undersea cables connecting it and its outer islands to the world cut multiple times, usually by accidental anchor snags from passing ships.

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Chinese social media giant TikTok is “more dangerous” to Ukraine in terms of spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation than the Russia-founded messaging app Telegram, according to Alina Aleksieeva, the deputy head of Ukraine’s State Center for Countering Disinformation (CPD).

[...]

“We often perceive Telegram as the primary culprit, given its abundance of anonymous Russian channels and the impersonation of Ukrainian ones,” said Svitlana Slipchenko, deputy executive director of the data analytics platform Vox Ukraine.

“But the problem extends beyond Telegram — fake news is widespread on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads,” she added. “The danger is focusing too narrowly on one platform while Russian propaganda continues to thrive across the entire digital landscape.”

Earlier this year, the CPD published a list of over 80 TikTok accounts used for Russian disinformation. The list includes official accounts of Russian state media, such as TASS, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.

[...]

Ukraine has previously considered banning TikTok. The app’s future in the U.S. is uncertain due to concerns that ByteDance may have ties to the Chinese government. U.S. authorities have also accused the app of spreading harmful content and misinformation and posing privacy risks.

[...]

Ukraine has been paying close attention to foreign social media apps due to the risks they pose to its users amid the ongoing war. Earlier in September, Ukraine banned Telegram on official devices used by state and security officials, military personnel, and employees of critical infrastructure facilities.

[...]

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Preventing so-called technology leakage was top of the European Commission’s agenda when it in late 2023 named quantum technology as one of four critical fields it wanted to protect. Brussels has yet to publish a promised risk assessment, though, says Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, Head of Program at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS).

Europe should also increase control over the export of critical components for quantum computers to China. All European countries should follow Spain, France and the UK in declaring these items dual-use, forcing exporters to apply for permits for components that can have military as well as civilian uses. As much equipment is too widely used for control through a dual-use lists, Europe should also add policy tools so that, like the US, it can restrict exports to companies and research institutions known to work against its interests.

Taking a clear stance on the risks of quantum technologies will also enable Europe to better compete in the field. More than in digital technologies like artificial intelligence, Europe is well positioned to profit from the technology’s power – optimizing flight routes or supply chains, simulating chemical and biological processes at the atomic level. Long-term investment in basic quantum research not only led to a Nobel Prize in 2022, but has spawned quantum valleys in München and Lower Saxony, a quantum delta in the Netherlands, and the “QuantAlps” around Grenoble, to name but a few clusters.

The persistent negative outlook among the Russian populace is most evident in their perception of the future. Even in the relatively prosperous year of 2019, 62% of Russians, according to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), felt that the country's situation was not conducive to life planning. But In the atmosphere of uncertainty and stress that has developed in Russia in the third year of the war, Russians avoid making plans for several years ahead or thinking about the future.

"This behaviour deepens the state of anxiety, especially if there are expectations of a negative outcome," writes Elena Koneva, sociologist and founder of ExtremeScan, a research organization.

According to ExtremeScan survey data from the autumn of 2023, the so-called "special military operation" came in third place among significant factors affecting respondents' personal lives, after health (their own and that of loved ones) and family income.

"Available research in Russia shows a significant increase in anxiety and depressed moods," Koneva says.

No future without an end to the war

Russian people want to believe in the future but they cannot, with respondents 35 years old or younger the most pessimistic, her research reveals. Those in the older age group tend to demonstrate optimism, though they admit that it is not based on facts but an unfounded belief in Russia's strength and luck.

"The experience of recent years shows that even if the bullet has been dodged for now, people should nonetheless prepare for a worsening of the situation in every sense," says Koneva.

"There are no factors militating for an improvement."

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The Kremlin’s policy of sending hundreds of thousands of Russian men, including many prisoners, to war in Ukraine with little to no training or equipment has had predictable effects back on the home front: numerous soldiers have committed violent crimes upon returning home, and the country reportedly has a critical shortage of psychologists trained to treat PTSD.

The Russian authorities have been reluctant to criticize these veterans, with Putin calling for them to become the country’s “new elite.” But according to inside sources, the Putin’s team is well aware of the risks the returnees pose and fears Russian society isn’t prepared to accept them.

The two strategic bombers crossed the border into Finland from Norway’s northern region. Over Lapland, they were met by three U.S. Air Force tankers and Finnish fighter jets.

“Today, Finland has implemented cooperation with the strategic bombers of the United States in the territory of Finland,” the country’s defense minister Antti Häkkänen said.

“It is a normal cooperation carried out in the territory of a NATO member country and it demonstrate the basic pillar of common defense and deterrence,” Häkkänen said.

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To outsiders, it may seem like an ordinary meeting place for Russian expats.

But German authorities are under growing pressure to close down the Russian House, amid concerns it is merely a front for Kremlin spies and propaganda purposes.

A senior figure in Germany’s opposition CDU party has warned that the centre is a front for “totalitarian” propaganda, and suspects it could be evading EU sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.

It could additionally serve as a “hub” for Russian agents according to Roderich Kiesewetter, the CDU’s crisis prevention spokesman and a former general staff officer of the Bundeswehr.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18186476

Hungary first!

Translation:

• Title: The salary of Viktor Orbán is the highest in the European Union, if we compare it to the gross average salary of the country's population
• Left column: Yearly gross salary of the head of government in Euro
• Right column: As a proportion of average annual gross salary
• Middle column is the list of head if governments, their respective country is in parenthesis.
• Footer: Source: Wikipedia, Eurostat, research by Átlátszó

How to read country names in Hungarian: Remove the accents, replace SZ with S, remove ország from the end (it means country) and usually you get something similar to English or the native name of the country.

"Irregular" ones:

• Görögország - Greece
• Lengyelország - Poland
• Olaszország - Italy
• Németország - Germany

Infographic is from the Hungarian NGO newspaper/think tank, Atlatszo.hu (Átlátszó means transparent in Hungarian)

Article: https://atlatszo.hu/adat/2024/07/19/az-eu-s-kormanyfok-kozul-orban-fizetese-a-legmagasabb-az-atlagberhez-kepest/

You can try to read the full article in English with google translate (afaik deepl doesn't have a feature like this): https://atlatszo-hu.translate.goog/adat/2024/07/19/az-eu-s-kormanyfok-kozul-orban-fizetese-a-legmagasabb-az-atlagberhez-kepest/?_x_tr_sl=hu&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=hu&_x_tr_pto=wapp

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/921896

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18157341

Britain's new Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday hailed an opportunity to strengthern relations between the UK and France on key issues such as defence, security and cross-Channel migration. Meeting at a summit for the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace near Oxford in the UK, the two leaders also reaffirmed their support for Ukraine.

Meta will withhold its next multimodal AI model — and future ones — from customers in the European Union because of what it says is a lack of clarity from regulators there, Axios has learned.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/19017360

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18118101

https://archive.is/T2iWQ

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Those who incite to genocide typically attempt to dehumanize their victims, but it is disturbing that Andrei Perla’s ‘justification’ for Russia’s killing and maiming of sick children has elicited so little reaction.

Russia’s missile attack on Okhmatdyr, Ukraine’s main children’s hospital, aroused enough international outrage for Moscow to go into denial mode. Not so, however, Russian propagandists, one of whom positively told Russians to quit making excuses. The strike was no accident, according to Andrei Perla, a columnist for Tsargrad, and can be repeated as Ukrainian children, any Ukrainians “cannot be considered people”.[...]

In the propagandist's own words:

“The pitiless law of war is very simple – such enemies cannot be considered people. We must acknowledge the simple and terrible [truth] that there are no people on the other side. Not one person. Our missiles do not kill people, not one person. There are no people there.”

“Simple and terrible, but we shouldn’t try to justify ourselves for hitting a children’s hospital. We need to say: do you want it to stop? Then surrender. Capitulate. And then, perhaps, we will spare you.

“If we don’t forbid ourselves from viewing them as people, from pitying them, protecting them – we will weaken ourselves. We will restrict our ability to save our own children. We will obstruct the path to Victory.”

“If the aim of the SMO* is to ensure Russia’s security, denazify and demilitarize Ukraine, then the path to this aim is for surviving Nazis [sic] and all their families to have to flee in panic to the West. Before the Polish border. From shelling. From the ruins of their cities and homes, losing on the way their blue and yellow flags and slippers.”