The number of accidents on Dutch highways heading towards the border has increased by 250 percent since Germany introduced border controls on September 1, 2024, De Telegraaf reports based on data requested from the Rijkswaterstaat.

In an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape, the EU has no choice but to take control of its own money, head of ECB tells panel in Brussels.

NATO countries in Europe have more than doubled their arms imports between 2020 and 2024, with the US supplying over 64% of the total – up from 52% over the previous five-year period.

Saw this while reading some related stuff about Canada. Article from 2025 but it doesn't seem to have been posted.

“Electric and hybrid flights are a core part of the solution to making short-haul travel more sustainable, and less dependent on imported jet fuel.”

For most of the last three decades, Brussels' interest in Taiwan was measured almost entirely in trade statistics. That is changing. Over the past two years, the European Parliament has passed a string of resolutions naming Taiwan explicitly, EU delegations have made repeat visits to Taipei, and Taiwanese ministers have quietly become regular faces in European capitals. The language coming out of Brussels has shifted too — from "trading partner" to "strategic partner," and increasingly, "like-minded democracy."

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The EU's renewed attention to Taiwan didn't come out of nowhere. Three forces pushed it into motion.

The first is de-risking. After years of watching its trade imbalance with China widen and its industries absorb the shocks of an increasingly state-directed Chinese economy, the EU has been actively looking for partners that offer the opposite: transparent regulation, enforceable intellectual property protections, and a market economy that behaves like one. Taiwan checks every one of those boxes, and it does so as a democracy ...

The second is semiconductors. COVID-era shortages made painfully clear how exposed European manufacturing — particularly the automotive sector — was to disruptions in Taiwan's chip supply chains. The response has been concrete: the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company joint venture in Dresden, where TSMC holds the majority stake alongside Bosch, Infineon, and NXP, is now a live example of Taiwanese technology anchoring European industrial capacity ...

The third is geopolitics. Russia's war in Ukraine reframed how European governments think about authoritarian pressure on democratic neighbors, and Taiwan's own alignment with the Western response — sanctions on Russia, support for Ukraine — did not go unnoticed. Combined with growing European concern over Chinese-linked cyber activity and disinformation, the old taboo around security-adjacent cooperation with Taiwan has largely dissolved. Taiwan-Poland's cybersecurity cooperation and joint statements from European missions in Taipei on Taiwan Strait stability are recent, tangible markers of this.

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The political signal is clear. Brussels sees Taiwan differently than it did five years ago, and that shift is durable rather than cyclical. The companies [in the EU and Taiwan] that benefit most will be the ones that treat this as an operational opportunity now, rather than a geopolitical story to watch from the sidelines.

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A cancer researcher in Osaka can now lead a European consortium and draw on EU funding just like a colleague in Vienna. As of August, Japan is formally part of Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research programme. It is by far the largest of the programme’s 23 associated countries, bringing 123 million people into Europe’s scientific network.

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With a budget of €93.5 billion for the 2021–2027 period, Horizon Europe is EU's flagship research and innovation programme. It supports cutting-edge research and innovation to address global challenges, accelerate the clean and digital transitions, contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and strengthen Europe's competitiveness and growth.

Japan [is] joining the other 22 countries already associated - either through the European Economic Area membership, the enlargement process, the European Neighbourhood Policy, or as other third countries and territories that meet the programme's eligibility criteria.

Japan's association builds on a long-standing and increasingly strategic research and innovation partnership with the EU initiated in 2011 with the Science and Technology cooperation agreement. A recent example of the close collaboration between the EU and Japan is the recommendation made by an EU-Japan expert panel which was done under the enhanced dialogue on advanced materials. This recommendation explores complementarities and synergies in the areas of electronics, mobility, construction, energy and data-driven science which can be both beneficial for EU and Japan citizens.

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The Prague High Court is currently considering whether to keep holding Yang Yiming, a Chinese national who had been working as Prague correspondent for Guangming Daily, a newspaper controlled by the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party's] Central Propaganda Department, in custody.

The Czech Security Information Service (BIS) identified Yang as an operative of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), alleging he used his cover as a journalist to collect compromising information on Czech politicians, particularly those supportive of closer ties with Taiwan.

The case points to a broader pattern documented by RSF, notably in the China edition of The Propaganda Monitor: the Chinese regime views journalism — at home and abroad — as a means to further the state’s goals. In Czechia, this notably translates into Beijing’s attempts to insert its narrative into the media landscape of this European Union (EU) member state.

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“China’s media influence apparatus in Czechia operates across multiple fronts simultaneously, from state-backed content disguised as independent programming to influencers recruited to relay carefully curated narratives," says Aleksandra Bielakowska, Advocacy Manager at the Asia-Pacific Bureau of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"When propaganda uses media outlets and online personalities to appear credible, it contaminates the information space and blurs the line between independent journalism and foreign influence. This is not soft power — it is information manipulation. Democracies like Czechia must strengthen their resilience against the expansion of China’s emerging global media order and the spread of regime-backed propaganda."

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According to the study by Czech researcher Ivana Karásková published by the Central European Digital Media Observatory in 2023, the programme was broadcast six times per week on the Czech commercial stations Radio HEY and Radio Color. "Barevný svět" covered, according to the official description, “travel, history, culture, [...] and other points of interest, particularly from the Far East.” However, it focused almost exclusively on China, presenting Chinese government policy in a positive light, and episodes mentioning Tibet or Taiwan, for example, adhered to official Chinese narratives. Over a thousand episodes aired between 2019 and April 2023, without any disclosure to listeners of Radio HEY and Radio Color that the content was co-produced by a Chinese state broadcaster.

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The official website of CRI stated the programme had been prepared with Radio HEY and the consulting company Phoenix Amber, a firm managed by a translator who, in 2022, was listed on CRI’s Czech website as a Prague correspondent. The partnership exemplifies the CCP’s strategy of “borrowing a boat to go out to sea” — a term used by Czech researchers — meaning it uses local media outlets as proxies for spreading its narratives abroad.

The CCP also creates links with less credible outlets. The site iportal24.cz — listed as one of 20 Czech sites that cite Russian media and regurgitate their narratives, according to a report by Ukraine-oriented outlets Insight News and TV Espreso — has cooperated directly with the China Media Group (CMG), the parent structure of CRI. These actions include co-organising public discussions that involve the Czech-Chinese Mixed Chamber of Commerce, with speakers from CMG.

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Of course, China’s propaganda strategy in Czechia has spread into social media. A 2025 investigation by the Czech outlet Refresher found that multiple Czech influencers have been producing content with Czech-speaking Chinese social media accounts since at least 2022. For example, Pepa Zhang (26K followers on Instagram) and Lada Wang (74K followers on Instagram) reach out to Czech influencers to collaborate on “lifestyle content.” But analyst Ivana Karásková from the NGO Association for International Affairs identified both as prominent Czech-language faces of CRI, which oversees the editorial guidelines of their content.

In addition to content partnerships, the CCP’s propaganda strategy relies heavily on press trips. In late 2024, for example, Czech TikToker Jan “Honzi” Michálek, who has approximately one million followers, publicly described a trip to China, which was fully funded by a “random” Chinese agency that reached out via email. He travelled to East Turkestan — a region Beijing refers to as “Xinjiang province” where the United Nations has documented mass human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority — accompanied by a Chinese-speaking crew filming him for Chinese television.

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Czechia ranks 11th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index. China remains the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with 124 currently detained, and ranks 178th out of 180 countries and territories in the Index.

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This week, the websites of major Russian banks—Sber, VTB, Rosselkhozbank, T-Bank, Uralsib, Promsvyazbank and Bank Saint Petersburg—began serving TLS certificates issued by Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Mediazona discovered. Just last week, on July 31, all of them were still using certificates from the Chinese authority TrustAsia.

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The migration is uneven. T-Bank moved only tinkoff.ru, which references the bank’s more common older name, leaving tbank.ru still on US-based Let’s Encrypt certificate. Levoberezhny bank switched only its business banking. Alfa-Bank made the jump last week.

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(T-bank, widely known as Tinkoff, dropped its founder’s name in 2024, two years after Oleg Tinkov denounced the invasion of Ukraine. Tinkov says he was pressured into selling his stake at 3% of its value. He renounced his Russian citizenship later that year, left the country and was subsequently designated a “foreign agent”.)

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No major browser trusts the Ministry’s root—so the Ministry is asking users to install it manually, describing the step as “safe” and as having no effect on how devices function.

Once a root certificate is installed, it can vouch for any domain—not just the bank a person installed it to reach, but Gmail, iCloud, a messaging service, a news site. The browser accepts the result silently, because the user told it to. And the agency making the request already operates the network the traffic crosses: TSPU deep-packet-inspection equipment sits inline at Russian ISPs while state DNS resolvers can redirect a hostname to a server of their choosing.

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Maybe y'all should have actually pushed back against the US starting the Iran War harder?

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10548069

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The video shows the drone pursuing a street vendor on a city street in the Kherson region. The man moves away from the drone hovering above, before it chases him as he runs around a white van. Eventually, the drone swoops down on him and explodes on impact.

The man escaped with multiple shrapnel wounds, concussion and trauma, a doctor said.

Sometimes called "human safari", the deployment of remotely-operated drones against civilians has often been used by Russians to terrify residents of front line areas in Ukraine.

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Here is an alternative Invidious link to the video (1 min).

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10554139

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At the centre of the collaboration is Taiwan-based Jiin Ming Industry Co., Ltd., which develops autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle solutions, flight control systems and related technologies. The company’s portfolio includes the VIPER series drones and JMG Flight Remote Controller, supported by in-house research and development capabilities.

The trilateral framework brings together Taiwan’s strengths in semiconductor technology, electronic components, precision manufacturing and supply chain integration; Japan’s expertise in quality management, system verification and industrial implementation; and Ukraine’s operational experience in unmanned systems, communications technologies and field testing in high-intensity environments.

The collaboration will focus on advancing autonomous drone applications across areas including disaster response, infrastructure inspection, medical logistics, maritime safety and public safety operations.

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AI's biggest winners may be those who make it work, not those who build it

Enterprises need AI wired into old systems, permissions and compliance, not just access to a model

Regulated, high-stakes sectors show AI has little value without deep integration into specialist workflows

Running multiple AI models pushes demand toward firms that can connect them across ​fragmented legacy systems

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64535087

Quite insightful. If only more people would read this.