Europe

I can access it through reddit, but not lemmy https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1lxf3k2/eu_to_bring_new_taxes_on_corporations_with_50m/

Archived (archive.org)

Archived

Truckers in Moscow and the Moscow region have begun to check trucks en masse amid the threat of new drone attacks. According to the Telegram channel "VChK-OGPU," a heightened alert has been introduced in the Russian capital, and all defense equipment and shelters have been put on full alert.

Virtually all personnel of the Federal Security Service (FSO) have been summoned to duty. According to sources, the security forces fear a repeat of the scenario that took place in early June in Irkutsk Oblast and other Russian regions.

Then the Ukrainian SBU conducted a successful operation called "Spider's Web," in which attack drones launched directly from trucks attacked Russian military airfields, causing massive damage.

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Archived

A court in the Netherlands has sentenced a Russian national to three years in prison for violating EU sanctions by transferring sensitive semiconductor technology to Russian intelligence.

German Aksenov, 43, had worked as an engineer in the Dutch semiconductor industry from 2015-2024, including for ASML, a leading manufacturer of microchip equipment, and NXP Semiconductors, a supplier of semiconductor components.

Prosecutors said Aksenov downloaded files containing technical specifications for microchip production from ASML and NXP servers onto a USB drive and external hard disk, which he was expected to hand over to an agent of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in Moscow, Bloomberg reported.

According to the court, the information he transferred “can contribute to strengthening [Russia's] military and strategic capabilities. That has consequences for Ukraine and indirectly for international security and stability.”

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Archived

A Spanish company has supplied Russia with an Austrian radial forging machine. [...] Russia’s production of artillery barrels relies entirely on this type of equipment. Howitzer barrels wear out frequently and must be replaced, and the precision required for their manufacture can only be achieved on machines Russia is unable to produce itself.

Forward Technical Trade SL, a Barcelona-based company with a sole shareholder, David Candela Sauri, delivered a used CNC forging machine — manufactured in 1983 by the Austrian firm Gesellschaft für Fertigungstechnik und Maschinenbau (GFM) — to AZK Group LLC in Izhevsk. The machine is valued at approximately $1.3 million and weighs 110 tons, according to documentation.

The deal came to light through court records: Izhevsk-based AZK Group was disputing a customs classification, arguing that the machine was a rotary forging press, while Russian customs officials claimed it was a radial forging press. According to Russia’s company register (EGRUL), AZK Group’s revenue has experienced manifold growth since the start of the full-scale war.

Spanish company Forward Technical Trade SL has no website. The point of origin for the shipment of the CNC forging machine in question is listed as the city of Albacete. The delivery was carried out under the name of a Hong Kong–based company, Scorpion’s Holding Group Limited. In Russia, the shipment was processed by the Nizhny Novgorod customs office.

Austrian manufacturer GFM previously told The Insider that, “We have never had any business relationship or contact with Forward Technical Trade S.L.U. or Scorpion’s Holding Group Limited.”

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/3506750

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Climate-related risks are an immediate concern for financial stability and economic growth. Yet until very recently, there have been no tools to systematically assess their short-term effects. The innovative short-term scenarios devised by the NGFS – the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System which brings together central bankers and supervisors from around the world to work on climate-related issues – fill this gap. The new scenarios offer financial institutions a comprehensive framework for quantifying the impacts that transition and physical risks could have on the economy by 2030. They reveal that a series of extreme climate events could cause euro area GDP to fall by up to 5% – a downturn similar in magnitude to the economic impact of the Global Financial Crisis. This blog post provides a deep dive into the results of new NGFS short-term scenarios for the euro area.

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The NGFS short-term scenarios focus on a five-year horizon, which aligns closely with the decision-making horizons of central banks, financial institutions and supervisors. The scenarios show how natural hazards and climate policies affect the economy and inflation. They also account for the reaction of the financial system by assessing how financing conditions might change, and which economic sectors could face pressure to adjust to climate shocks.

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A major innovation of the scenarios is their approach to modelling physical risks. For the first time, the NGFS captures the impact of compounding extreme weather events and how they propagate across borders through international supply chains.

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• In the Disasters and Policy Stagnation scenario, a series of natural hazards affects all European countries, starting with heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in 2026, followed by a combination of floods and storms in 2027. The compounding effects of these hazards could lead to a decline in euro area annual GDP of up to 4.7% by 2030. As production is disrupted and borrowing gets more expensive for vulnerable industries, inflation increases.

• In the Highway to Paris scenario, carbon tax revenues are invested effectively in green technologies, and euro area GDP and employment slightly increase. The green transition has limited inflationary effects. The euro area position in this scenario stands out because it has previously adopted ambitious climate policies, particularly the European Green Deal, which targets a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

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In March 2025, as part of a major offensive in the Kursk region to retake territory held by Ukrainian forces since August 2024, Russian troops crawled through a branch of the decommissioned Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod pipeline in an attempt to slip behind Ukrainian lines.

The video is framed as “the truth about the operation, told by the fighters who took part.” It consists largely of an interview with an unidentified man in camouflage, who claims to be one of the Russian soldiers involved. A few other soldiers briefly appear on camera, and the video also contains footage from inside the pipeline. It’s unclear how Severny [Telegram] Kanal obtained this material.

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Archived version

***- Russians are hunting for the private data of thousands of people they consider Putin’s enemies. They use the data for doxing – exposing them to online attacks.

• Deploying a method that had previously proven successful in Ukraine, they published a list of Poles—activists, politicians and journalists—who support Ukraine.
• The “doxing Wikipedia” includes names from many countries, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
• In Central Europe, no one is effectively countering doxing.***

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On Facebook, Kateryna comes across a photo of Oleksiy [her husband who volunteered in the Ukrainian army, both his and his wife's name have been changed to protect their identity], uploaded by an unknown woman. The caption under the photo says in Russian that the man is wanted. Kateryna writes to the author: how does she know her husband? Why is she posting his photo online? What is he wanted for?

The stranger’s account immediately disappears.

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According to Mykola Balaban, deputy head of the Center for Strategic Communications of Ukraine (Stratcom), doxing is one of the key tools of Russian information and psychological warfare. It is meant to create an atmosphere of fear, to weaken morale. To destabilize the opponent’s base.

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This is confirmed by Maria Pavena, a specialist working for the Ukrainian government on the search for missing persons in the central and northern regions of Ukraine. On a daily basis, Pavena works with families who have lost contact with their loved ones, helping to get information and advising on how to respond in similar situations. She hears horror stories about victims of Russian doxing.

“Scammers found a contact for one woman on social media and demanded $15,000 from her,” she says. “They threatened that if she didn’t pay, her relative, who is in captivity, would spend the night naked outside. They sent a video as proof. After she told them that she had no such money, the contact stopped.”

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Doxing poses a challenge to legal systems. We asked institutions in Poland, as well as the neighboring Czech Republic and Slovakia, how they are approaching the problem.

The Polish Ministry of Justice explains that doxing is not a separate crime under Polish law. However, it can be classified as stalking, defamation or illegal solicitation of information. The most common actions in such cases are the initiation of criminal proceedings, securing data on the internet, imposing a penalty and, in some cases, a ban on contact or an order to refrain from certain activities.

There is also no separate criminal provision for doxing in Czech law. “It is an act that can be of a very diverse nature,” explains Hanna Malá from the communications department of the Czech Interior Ministry. “Therefore, each time the legal qualification depends on the specific case: it could be a crime of unauthorized access to a computer system, a violation of the confidentiality of transmitted information, or a violation of RODO regulations [the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection is responsible for enforcing the latter – ed]”.

Slovak police spokeswoman Martina Sláviková responds similarly. In response, she stresses that the term “doxing” is not in the Slovak Criminal Code, but that actions of this type—depending on their scale and consequences—can be classified as dangerous electronic harassment or violation of the rights of others, among other things.

Sláviková adds that police do not keep separate statistics on doxing. These cases are recorded under other crime categories.

Why doesn’t Telegram block sites that directly incite hatred and murder?

The platform has not answered our questions for months. Last August, police in France detained Telegram’s owner, Pavel Durov. French prosecutors accused him of not doing enough to moderate toxic material on Telegram.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38352034

Archived

Russia’s spending on military personnel reached a record 2 trillion rubles ($25.68 billion) in the first half of 2025, according to new estimates from Re: Russia, an analytical platform run by exiled Russian academics.

The surge in spending — driven by enlistment bonuses, salaries and compensation for wounded soldiers and bereaved families — reflects the Kremlin’s determination to keep waging its war in Ukraine at any cost.

Between January and June, federal and regional budgets allocated an estimated 400 billion rubles ($5.14 billion) for enlistment bonuses, 865 billion rubles ($11.11 billion) for military salaries and 765 billion rubles ($9.82 billion) in payments to families of the dead and wounded.

If the current pace of spending continues, total personnel costs are projected to exceed 4 trillion rubles ($51.36 billion) by year’s end.

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Venture capitalist Harry Stebbings faced a wave of backlash in June after urging European startup founders to increase their work hours — but he now admits there’s some room for nuance when applying his mantra.

Stebbings, founder of 20VC, a firm managing $650 million in funds, advised founders on LinkedIn last month that “7 days a week is the required velocity to win right now,” to compete with startups in Silicon Valley and China.

The post went viral, to Stebbings’ surprise, and sparked a debate on whether China’s brutal “996” work culture — which means working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week — is needed in Europe.

“What Europe really needs isn’t more hustle-porn, it’s more aggressive funding,” Sarah Wernér, co-founder of Husmus, said back then.

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/226413

From BBC News via this RSS feed

TikTok was fined 530 million euros ($620 million) in May by the Data Protection Commission over European data transfers to China, though the Chinese social media giant had insisted this data was only accessed remotely.

The DPC on Thursday said it had been informed by TikTok in April that "limited EEA user data had in fact been stored on servers in China," contrary to evidence presented by the company.

The regulator said it had expressed "deep concern" in its previous investigation that "TikTok had submitted inaccurate information".

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