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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.

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.

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.

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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.”

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

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“After leaving the Convention, production of anti-personnel mines is planned on Polish territory. We have identified manufacturers and suppliers of this type of equipment,” the Defense Ministry said, according to Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

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After years of combat against Russia, Ukrainian troops will instruct Bundeswehr counterparts in battlefield technologies in new defence deal.

The Belarusian opposition leader claims Russia and Belarus are promoting a fringe historical theory that could be used by President Putin to justify a future invasion.

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Draft ‘Made in Europe’ rule seeks to protect bloc’s carmakers from Chinese competition. …

Not sure whether this is appropriate here. It’s not news, but a call to sign a petition.

Croatia refused to transport Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia following a request from the two countries, Croatian Economy Minister Ante Susnjar said.

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Defence Minister David McGuinty says Canada has now officially joined the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program, which offers loans to member states to invest in defence capabilities.

Canada’s François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue, will be in Brussels, Belgium, on February 16 to reinforce Canada’s commitment to shared economic prosperity and strengthened collaboration on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ukrainians around the world will mark four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. What was meant to break Ukraine in days has instead become a defining chapter of resilience, resistance, and unwavering determination.

Their chances of settling in the United States increasingly bleak, a growing number of Chinese nationals are travelling visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and crossing into the European Union.

Nexperia’s Chinese owner Wingtech has lost a court battle to regain control of the Dutch chipmaker, prolonging a crisis that has threatened to bring some European car factories to a halt.

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Ahead of and during the Munich Security Conference, scheduled to take place in Germany on 13–15 February 2026, the intelligence services of the aggressor state, the russian federation, plan to conduct a large-scale hybrid influence operation involving so-called “pacifist” movements ["Friedensbewegung"] across Europe.

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Amsterdam is the first capital in the world to legally ban advertising for meat and fossil fuel products. The ban will be enshrined in the municipal ordinance (APV) and represents a tightening of previous policy.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported in early January that 2025 was the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. Civilian casualties were 31% higher than in 2024 and 70% higher than in 2023. Russian attacks killed 2,514 verified civilians and injured 12,142—and the real numbers are almost certainly higher.

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Swedish aerospace manufacturer Saab has proposed that a hypothetical Gripen production line in Canada would be large enough to also serve export customers besides making planes for the Canadian Air Force.

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Two Chinese nationals suspected of trying to intercept satellite communications from a base in an Airbnb rental property in southwestern France have been placed under formal investigation, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

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Europe’s two biggest carmakers have urged Brussels to tweak purchase subsidies and public procurement to favour domestic production over imported vehicles, calling for clear labelling and additional incentives for electric cars built in Europe.

The American president has invited Canada to become his country’s “51st state,” an idea that has infuriated most of Canada’s 40 million citizens.

Russia’s supreme court has reduced by only one year the 14-year sentence passed against Oksana Hladkykh, a mother of four abducted from her home in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast in November 2023. This was presumably a cassation appeal, as the original sentence, passed on 7 June 2024 by the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’, had been upheld on 7 November 2024 by the first court of appeal in Moscow. All of Russia’s ‘treason trials’, including the supreme court hearing which seems to have been at the end of October 2025, are behind closed doors with this one of the reasons why information is scant and often delayed. Although the supreme court ‘judges’ removed a part of the charge (the accusation of providing “other help to a foreign country”) and reduced the sentence from 14 to 13 years, they chose to see no reason to overturn a manifestly wrongful conviction on ‘treason’ charges under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code.

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