Decision says Uber suspended driver accounts automatically without adequately informing them

Uber says it disputes some facts and size of fine and will appeal

Fine ​is second largest of its kind

German intelligence believes a cache of guns found in the woods near Berlin last year was for carrying out assassinations on behalf of Russia, reports say.

Germany's Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said federal prosecutors were investigating a suspect in Romania over suspicions of espionage and "the preparation of a serious act of violence threatening the state".

While refusing to confirm reports of Russian links to the cache, Dobrindt said he could not rule out "the involvement of foreign powers".

For months security agencies have warned that Russian intelligence services are planning assassinations in Germany, possibly targeting defence industry executives or opposition figures in exile.

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Officials located the stash with the help of the Berlin State police, and found two handguns and ammunition.

The German security authorities suspect the weapons and ammunition found were intended for use in attacks.

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Reports in German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the public broadcasters NDR and WDR say the cache was to facilitate targeted killings on behalf of Moscow.

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The Guardian is citing Sinan Selen, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, who has been warning for months of more aggressive tactics by Russian secret services, including plans for targeted attacks on German soil.

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Dobrindt said prosecutors were investigating a suspect in Romania, who is being held in connection with planned parcel bomb attacks there. He said this would be taken into account when it came to a possible extradition.

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The investigation follows previous accusations of Russian attacks on German soil.

In 2024, German political figures reacted angrily to a CNN report that Russia had plotted to kill the head of Germany's biggest arms company Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger.

In 2021 a German court jailed Russian national Vadim Krasikov for life for a murder in a Berlin park and said it had been ordered by Moscow. Krasikov was later freed in a prisoner swap.

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Relokatz, a platform linked to exiled Russian opposition figure Maxime Katz, said it is receiving around 120 enquiries a day from people seeking advice on moving abroad – up from 10 to 20 previously.

In recent months, more people have asked about leaving Russia before September or October amid reports that the Kremlin is considering another mobilisation after September's parliamentary elections.

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Relokatz was established after the first major wave of emigration triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the partial military mobilisation ordered in 2022. The site provides practical information on visas, residence permits, document legalisation and transporting pets abroad, as well as paid administrative assistance.

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Interest has been growing steadily since February, said Relokatz editor-in-chief Alexandra Nazarova.

“Between February and April, traffic to the site and the number of queries sent to our AI bot tripled,” Nazarova told RFI.

Where Relokatz once received between 10 and 20 enquiries a day, the figure rose to around 70 in April before climbing again over the summer.

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"Before, people wrote for very specific reasons, because they were genuinely affected first-hand. Today, it’s a more widespread feeling: it’s impossible to live in Russia, you have to leave. And then, of course, there’s the fear of mobilisation," says Nazarova.

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Blume's comments, made in an ​internal company memo seen by Reuters, come as Volkswagen is undergoing what is considered to be ​its largest-ever restructuring, possibly ranging from a fresh 50,000 job cuts to the carve-out of some divisions.

Local residents in Leeds oppose Microsoft's AI campus over water and power consumption concerns amid rising energy bills.

The proportion of intellectual disability in autism has been decreasing over the past few decades.

Current study examined the proportion of intellectual disability in autism across two decades and in different age groups.

The proportion of intellectual disability in autism decreased substantially over two decades (from 55.8% in 2001 to 6.7 in 2020).

The prevalence of registered autism increased with approximately 800% during the same period.

edit because I am getting pushback at Germany being at fault here, here is some context.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-urge-germany-halt-criminalisation-and-police-violence-against

During the past months, Palestine solidarity protesters in Berlin have been reportedly subjected to police violence, leaving some injured and requiring medical care. Dozens were reportedly arrested, some for simply chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. This slogan is widely used by the global Palestine solidarity movement yet has been treated by German authorities as expressing support for Hamas, the experts noted. While some courts upheld fines or bans deeming the slogan as “condoning violence”, other courts recognised it as protected under freedom of expression. Moreover, the experts expressed concern that, during protests marking the two-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-led attack and the subsequent genocide in Gaza, arbitrary arrests, detentions, and police violence were reported, including officers punching non-violent activists in the face; while the police in Berlin reportedly imposed a last-minute ban on protests without evidence-based justification.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/western-central-and-south-eastern-europe/germany/report-germany/

In February, Berlin police ordered that speeches and slogans at a Palestinian solidarity demonstration be conveyed in German and English only. When protesters chanted in Hebrew and Arabic at a demonstration on 8 February, the protest was immediately violently dispersed by police.

In March, at a peaceful protest in Berlin, a woman was repeatedly hit in the face and on the head by a police officer. Similar violence by police officers was documented during protests on Nakba Day as well as at the Internationalist Queer Pride event in Berlin in July.

In February, the Christian Democratic Union Party led a parliamentary inquiry into the financing of civil society organizations. The inquiry consisted of 551 questions, aimed at assessing the political neutrality of state-funded organizations, particularly those campaigning against racism and for migrant rights. It thereby put such organizations under general suspicion.

On 20 March, the Administrative Court of Berlin ruled as unlawful the use of pain-compliance holds by the police to remove peaceful climate protesters from a previously dispersed gathering.

In March, the Berlin immigration authorities notified four foreign – EU and US – nationals of the termination of their residency status due to their involvement in student protests in support of Palestinians in 2024. None were convicted of any criminal charges. Leaked correspondence indicated that the Berlin Ministry of the Interior had pressured the immigration authorities to deport the four. All the cases were successfully challenged in preliminary proceedings and the deportations temporarily halted.

In May, following a Nakba commemoration protest, the Berlin Police claimed that an officer had been seriously injured at the hands of demonstrators. This allegation was used by police spokespeople, the mayor and the federal minister of interior to demand new police powers against protesters acting in solidarity with Palestinians. However, an independent investigation later discovered that the police officer had injured himself while beating protesters.

On 26 November the Administrative Court of Berlin ruled that the dissolution of a pro-Palestine conference in 2024 had been unlawful.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/singular-crime-double-duty-germany-israel-and

A state that grounds its legitimacy in universalizable norms cannot coherently say that the burdens produced by its special responsibility to Jews may simply fall on those who happened to live in the territory where the Jewish homeland was established—a land Jews had long regarded as their ancestral home. To avoid offloading the costs of its own past to others, Germany bears not only general human-rights duties to Palestinians, but also particular duties of non-complicity, protection, and repair toward them.

At this stage, I find these broader implications of the German responsibility toward Israel insufficiently reflected in German politics, and painfully so. But generational changes seem to be in the process of changing German attitudes in this direction.

Paywall? https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelocal.se%2F20260821%2Fsword-wielding-attacker-enters-school-in-swedish-town

Finland's defence ministry said on Thursday evening it suspected that a Russian aircraft had violated its airspace earlier in the day.

"Every suspected violation of air space is taken seriously," Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen said in a ministry statement. "An investigation is underway."

There have been a series of such incidents in Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia.

Finland suspects two Russian military aircraft of having entered Finnish airspace in May and in June, and summoned the Russian charge d'affairs at the time.

The risk of drones drifting into Finland as a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine is rising, the head of the country's military intelligence service said in January.

Major General Pekka Turunen, chief of Finnish Defence Intelligence (FDI), was speaking ahead of the release of a Finnish military intelligence report on Thursday that updates the security situation in the country.

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Moldovan President Maia Sandu called for increased pressure on Russia following another violation of the country’s airspace by a Russian drone. She stressed that such incidents must stop.

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The head of Moldova said that her country strongly condemned Russia’s overnight attacks on Ukraine.

"Our airspace was violated again, and a drone crashed on Moldovan territory. Much more pressure must be put on Russia to bring this to an end," Sandu said.

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According to experts’ preliminary findings, the debris belonged to a "Geran"-type unmanned aerial vehicle.

It was previously reported that a drone also crashed in Romania on the night of August 20. It was found in an unpopulated area.

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[Automated translation with minimal edits from Russian article.]

A court fined a resident of Belgorod [in Russia] 30,000 roubles for comments about Vladimir Putin and the Russian military in a Telegram chat, Pepel reports. 47-year-old Grigory B. called the president a "bald dk" and his supporters "Putin's dk suckers".

When asked about his attitude towards the participants in the war against Ukraine, the Belgorod resident said that they were "victims of Putin's regime", and then added that he also considered them "fers and dheads".

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The man's messages were discovered by officers from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Countering Extremism (Centre "E"), and they drew up reports against him for insulting a representative of the authorities and "discrediting" the Russian army. In court, the Belgorod resident pleaded guilty, but stated that he "had no intention of discrediting" and wrote the comments while intoxicated.

He also asked to be allowed to pay the fine in installments due to his difficult financial situation, explaining that his only income is a disability pension of 19,000 roubles. The court granted the request, allowing the obligations to be settled within three months.

The number of cases involving insults against Putin increased sharply after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. According to "Verstka", in 2021, courts considered 33 such reports, and in 2022, there were already at least 84. In 2023, the figure decreased to 54, but in 2024 it increased again to 91. In the first seven months of 2025, courts considered at least 35 such cases.

In all cases, it was about minor hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences). Most of the reports were drawn up under Part 3 of this article, which allows for punishment for "disrespect" towards the authorities on the Internet. It was introduced in March 2019 on the initiative of United Russia.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10850511

A total of 40 non-governmental organizations in Romania and Bulgaria have asked their environment ministers to launch transboundary consultations on plans for the Čukaru Peki and Malka Golaja mining and metallurgical complex near Bor and Zaječar in the eastern part of neighboring Serbia, the Timočka buna initiative said. It added that the groups warned that the planned expansion could affect both countries via the rivers Timok and Danube.

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The planned complex is located in the Timok river basin in eastern Serbia, close to the country’s borders with Bulgaria and Romania. The Timok flows into the Danube at the tripoint border. Its mouth is only a few kilometers from the Romanian commune of Gruia, while the Bulgarian municipalities of Bregovo, Vidin and Lom are also nearby.

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The organizations want their countries to ask Serbia to include them in transboundary consultations as potentially affected parties ... This would enable public authorities, local authorities and citizens in Romania and Bulgaria to receive the draft plan and strategic environmental assessment report in Romanian and Bulgarian languages, respectively, and participate in public consultations.

The organizations are also seeking independent assessments of transboundary and cumulative impacts. They want the assessments to include the expansion of the Južni revir open pit in Majdanpek and the diversion of the Mali Pek river. The Bulgarian organizations additionally requested that Serbia provide a written explanation if it decides not to include their country in the process.

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The project includes the expansion of the Čukaru Peki underground mine and a new combined open pit and underground copper and gold mine, Malka Golaja, covering more than 1,000 hectares.

The proposed concept also includes a flotation tailings storage facility covering around 1,900 hectares in the Kriveljska river valley and a new metallurgical complex outside the urban part of Bor. The complex would comprise a smelter with an annual capacity of up to 400,000 tonnes and a sulfuric acid plant.

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The planned use of water is of particular concern to the Romanian organizations. The documentation envisages the abstraction of more than 800 liters of water per second from Black Timok (Crni Timok or Crna reka in Serbian language), equivalent to approximately half of the river’s summer flow ... The petitioners warn of risks to water resources.

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The plan envisages the possible resettlement of part of the local population. In their letter to the Romanian minister, the organizations particularly highlighted the potential impact on the Vlach ethnic minority, which accounts for around 60% of the population of the village of Krivelj.

The letter also states that more than 280 protected plant and animal species and 16 types of habitats of international importance have been identified within the planning area. The area includes archaeological sites around the villages of Nikoličevo and Slatina. Gamzigrad-Romuliana, which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared a World Heritage Site , is located about six kilometers from the planned Malka Golaja mine.

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The requests by the Romanian and Bulgarian organizations followed a criminal complaint against Zijin over suspected illegal logging at Malka Golaja. Serbia’s national forestry inspectorate subsequently ordered the work to be halted.

Timočka buna also noted that in 2020, the City of Bor filed a criminal complaint against the management of the existing smelter on its territory, over high concentrations of sulfur dioxide. In addition, Zijin was fined RSD 2 million (EUR 17,000) in 2024 for the illegal construction of a mining facility in Bor.

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Meanwhile, a similar development regarding water resources appear to have found an end in Hungary after the election this spring and the subsequent change in government as the days when Chinese industry received a free pass from the Budapest government are over, a water shortage has seen to that.

Hungary faces an unprecedented water crisis. There are several causes, among them the years-long campaign by Viktor Orbán’s [former] government to lure heavily polluting and water-hungry Chinese battery factories to the country.

During Orbán’s 16 years in power, he guaranteed to Chinese investors vast amounts of water necessary for the production of batteries at Chinese-owned factories in the city of Debrecen and elsewhere.

Climate-driven droughts and soaring industrial water demands have made those promises impossible to keep without imposing unacceptable consequences on the population. That means difficult decisions have been dumped firmly in the lap of the country’s new leader, Péter Magyar.

Magyar is facing an immediate environmental emergency characterized by a severe nationwide drought and critically low water levels in rivers and groundwater. Following his victory in the April election, Magyar is also charting a path starkly different from the acquiescence of the Orbán government, and Chinese investors are falling in line ...

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US President Donald Trump's administration has ramped up its pressure on the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing it of being "politicized." The EU, France, Germany, Spain and Japan have defended the court.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/70025520

TLDR: New speed cameras in Slovakia contained an undocumented module that allowed them to be controlled remotely and granted full access to them via mobile network. All it took to activate it was to send a text message from one of 12 Russian numbers.

Further context:

Cameras purchased by Slovakia's Interior Ministry for road surveillance have been traced to a Cypriot shell company [Sodasus Ltd] with no business history, with the only identifiable trail leading back to Russia, raising serious security concerns about the procurement.

Article translation:

The cameras installed by the Ministry of the Interior along Slovakia’s roads were, in fact, entirely Russian-made. They even contained 12 Russian telephone numbers that could be used to hack directly into the cameras and view the footage.

This was highlighted by the opposition movement Progressive Slovakia, which claims that Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok was misleading the public when he claimed at a press conference last week that only certain parts of the speed cameras were Russian. Progressive Slovakia cites an assessment by the National Security Authority, which the movement obtained via a freedom of information request.

A backdoor for foreign espionage

On Friday, the National Security Authority issued its own assessment of the radars. Based on this assessment, Peter Bátor, a security expert with the movement, described the mechanism by which, in his view, it was possible to access data from the radars under test. According to him, all it took was to send a message to one of the pre-set telephone numbers, enter a password, and the attacker gained full access to the camera. This is because the devices contained a module that is not documented anywhere; it was retrofitted into the device and is hard-coded in such a way that it cannot be removed or altered.

“This is a very specific example of how Russia uses the technology it sells for espionage,” said Bátor, adding that twelve Russian telephone numbers were linked to this undocumented module. Any one of them was sufficient for an unauthorised operator to gain full control of the camera. Furthermore, the device also had built-in administrator access with a precisely defined password. According to the findings, it was therefore possible to control the camera not only via a standard 3G or 4G port, but there were many more connection options available.

Serbia is the only country in the European Union (EU) – Balkans zone where journalists have had to leave for reasons connected to their work. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the EU to stop turning a blind eye on media freedom in the EU candidate country.

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Journalist Marko Vidojković, a columnist ... the Serbian online outlet Nova.rs, left Serbia in 2023 due to death threats after being the target of a public smear campaign led by President Aleksandar Vučić. As recently as August 16, 2026, calls for his murder were made against him, according to the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia (IJAS). The police investigation into threats against Marko Vidojković has so far produced no result.

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Marko Vidojković is one of the six Serbian journalists working from exile, according to RSF’s information. One left in 2024, another four left Serbia this year.

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The most recent departure is that of Aleksandar Radić, a freelance journalist specialising in military affairs and among the first to state publicly – in line with other media reports – that a sonic weapon had probably been used against the participants at the anti-government protest in Belgrade on March 15, 2025. Belgrade's Higher Prosecutor's Office has since been investigating whether that account was fabricated. Radić was detained for an "informational interview", after which pro-government media published surveillance footage of him and his underage daughter, along with his private exchanges with other journalists. Threatened with political attacks and a possible arrest, Aleksandar Radić left Serbia at the end of June 2026. On July 17, the Interior Ministry filed a criminal complaint accusing him of preparing acts against the constitutional order and security of Serbia and of disclosing classified information.

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RSF knows the identities and host EU countries of the other exiled journalists, but has chosen to withhold the information for their safety ... A recent report on media freedom co-signed by RSF condemned the spiral of violence which affects the whole journalism profession in Serbia. RSF listed Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić as a "press freedom predator" in 2025.

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Although the European Commission (EC) concluded in July in its Rule of Law Report that “the safety of journalists further deteriorated” in Serbia, that same month the EC proposed opening a new cluster of chapters in Serbia's accession negotiations, deeming that the necessary overall balance had been achieved. Eight member states objected, citing the state of the rule of law and effectively blocking the opening of the new negotiation chapters.

Serbia ranks 104th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, the last spot among the 40 countries of the EU-Balkans zone.

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