Europe

A 55-year-old man suspected of orchestrating a double murder plot in Lithuania has been arrested in Thessaloniki, Greece, the Lithuanian news outlet Delfi reported.

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Three Russian submarines conducted a “covert” operation over cables and pipelines in waters north of the UK, Defence Secretary John Healey said.

Chinese state narratives are increasingly appearing in parts of the Slovak media landscape. Several Slovak disinformation outlets have featured texts by Chinese diplomats, commentary from the Chinese embassy and echoed Beijing’s narratives, highlighting how easily the country’s disinformation sites can become platforms for foreign propaganda.

Train hopping is still a thing in the US, I suspect because freight trains are slow.

rfi.my/Cawo.bs

New polling suggests a majority of Canadians think Canada ought to explore joining the European Union at a fraught time for geopolitical relations.

France said China has executed a French citizen convicted of drug trafficking after keeping him on death row for more than 15 years.

Eggs can be safely dyed and eaten over the Easter holiday by following a few simple food safety rules when cooking, cooling, and handling them.

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Japan and France agreed to strengthen support for rare earths supply chains on Wednesday, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported, in the latest moves by both countries to lessen dependence on the world’s dominant supplier, China.

Moldova’s parliament voted Thursday to denounce key agreements with the Commonwealth of Independent States, clearing the way for the country to withdraw from the organization. Sixty of the 101 lawmakers voted in favor, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

“We’re celebrating, and they’re terribly jealous” – [Hungarian Foreign Minister] Péter Szijjártó posted this caption with a video on his social media page on September 5, 2022. The video was recorded on that day in Debrecen, where the foreign minister announced a massive investment. Szijjártó directed this sharp remark at those who had previously criticized the government’s economic strategy, known as the “Eastern Opening.”

Yes, it is batshit crazy that this happened, and that municipalities actually stripped people of Belgian nationality that they already acquired.

Governments in five EU member states are “consistently and intentionally” eroding the rule of law, Europe’s leading civil liberties group has warned, while democratic standards are deteriorating in six more, including historically strong democracies.

Archived

[Op-ed by Human Right Lawyer Benedict Rogers.]

The 1st paragraph, if the JavaScript does not block you:

Archived

It’s sickening enough that they use Twitter without so much as a free-world mirror. Even more in our faces when the DG MOVE (the commission’s transport branch) repeatedly references Twitter in their biennial report (linked). Note as well that the report itself is exclusively reachable only to clearnet users. Everyone else must rely on archive.org for a copy.

Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government in Hungary stands accused of mass voter intimidation in a film released on Thursday ahead of 12 April parliamentary elections, in which the ruling party is trailing in the opinion polls.

Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures.

The best images sent to us from Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Oxfordshire.

romania.europalibera.org/a/par…

A new regional network … is working to enhance understanding of the common security challenges facing the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic.

Finns now place roughly as much trust in the United States as in China or Russia, according to a poll published on Tuesday.

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TL;DR:

Russia, China, and Iran are the primary external threats to Sweden, the Swedish Security Service (SAPO) stated in its annual report assessing the country’s security landscape.

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Accounts have appeared on social media promoting the idea of separating Narva and the Ida-Viru County region from Estonia.

[This is about disinformation in Europe, which is why I post this here.]

https://archive.ph/ViBQk

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Here is the original FT report (paywalled).

The European Union agreed to renew sanctions against Russia over the weekend as the bloc and other US allies questioned Washington’s decision to temporarily ease some oil restrictions against Moscow to curb a price surge caused by supply disruptions from the Iran war.

We share some common security concerns,’ Canadian prime minister says.

timesnewroman.ro/life-death/ro…

A High Court judge has ruled in favour of Guardian columnist Owen Jones in a libel case brought against him by a BBC editor.

Germany is preparing to bring Ukrainian combat veterans into its military training system as Berlin accelerates efforts to prepare NATO forces for a potential confrontation with Russia later this decade, according to a report by Reuters on March 11.

Archived

Last week, Italian authorities issued expulsion orders for eight Chinese nationals from Schengen territory on national security grounds. According to news reports, three have been deported immediately, while four others had already left the Italian territory. One individual reportedly remains in custody on grounds of a pending asylum application.

moldova.europalibera.org/a/ghe…

The linked page has 2 “PDF” docs. But they are not really PDFs. If you wget them, they are HTML with javascript embedded.

Do not gift a Bongo voucher to people you like, it will ruin their day(s).

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Ilya Eliseev, a former university classmate of former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, is more than just a “wallet” holding the inexplicably wealthy civil servant’s luxury assets — he is also the owner of a firm that fulfills contracts for a sanctioned Russian company working in the field of missile production.

The Royal Mint Court Residents’ Association (RMCRA) has filed a High Court challenge to the UK Government’s decision to grant planning permission for the redevelopment of the Royal Mint Court site into a new Chinese “super-embassy”.

British police arrested three men, including the husband of a sitting MP, on suspicion of spying for China. The news comes weeks after Keir Starmer traveled to Beijing in a bid to repair ties with the country.

timesnewroman.ro/life-death/nu…

European paradise:

Video. President Donald Trump said he wants to “cut off all trade with Spain” over NATO spending, adding “we don’t want anything to do with Spain.” His comments came during a meeting between him and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Canada is considering splitting a multibillion-dollar contract for 12 new submarines by buying an equal number from Europe and South Korea as Ottawa rearms to confront the challenges of a more dangerous world, two senior government sources say.

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When Iranian-supplied drones strike Ukrainian cities, when advanced Russian engines enhance Iran’s missile reach, when energy routes are threatened, European security is directly implicated.

The EU has imposed tighter border controls on imports of a baby milk ingredient from China after it was singled out as the source of a major contamination scare, according to a text published this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7TO7TMfpn0

A person suspected of spying against Lithuania for China was detained in Poland last week, the State Security Department.

The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service’s 2026 International Security Report contained a startling finding. It tested the Chinese open-source AI model DeepSeek for biased or incomplete answers.

Swedish military said on Friday that a Russian drone had flown unauthorized off the coast of southern Sweden while a French aircraft carrier was docked in the port of Malmo.

This is a correction to my recent post. The UK has already decided to do a money grab on Europeans, not just Americans. They are already becoming hardasses about this month.

[Opinion piece by Sebastien Lai. He is the son of Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.]

In the new report, Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future (pdf, 100 pages), the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it. The report shows how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide. Together with more than 70 consumer groups and other actors in Europe and the US, we are sending letter to policymakers in the EU/EEA, UK and the US.

So, I take it the UK does not want our tourism.

The US started this shit known as ESTA. People going from visa-free countries to the US must submit a form and pay $21. Offline people are probably excluded, if not exceptionally inconvenienced. Unbanked people probably simply cannot enter the US (how would they pay the ESTA fee?). The ESTA includes a background check by snooping on the social media accounts of travelers, in advance, to look for disloyalty to the US by the traveler /or their friends/. Whereas in the past, ICE did that snooping spontaneously at the time of entry. Now it’s done in advance.. likely to give them more time to snoop on the social media.

Investigations have traced the contamination of baby milk sold in the EU to arachidonic acid oil imported from China.