LONDON — Two of the world’s biggest trading blocs are cautiously eyeing closer ties to short-circuit Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The European Union and a 12-nation Indo-Pacific bloc are opening talks to explore proposals to form one of the largest global economic alliances, multiple people with knowledge of the talks told POLITICO.

Canada is spearheading the discussions after Prime Minister Mark Carney called on middle powers to buck trade war coercion last month, days after Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Denmark’s European allies if it didn’t cede Greenland.

Ottawa is “championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership [CPTPP] and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people,” Carney told world leaders and the global business elite in Davos.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has backed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's leadership during a visit to Budapest. Nationalist leader Orban faces a strong opposition challenge ahead of elections in April.

Rubio endorsed Orban's efforts to secure a fifth consecutive term despite lagging in the polls, praising his rapport with the US leader.

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar launched his party's election campaign in Budapest on Sunday, promising to restore Hungary's Western orientation amid concerns about democratic backsliding.

A former insider in Orban's nationalist Fidesz party, Magyar broke with former colleagues to quickly form the center-right Tisza party. Independent polls show he holds a significant lead ahead of the vote on April 12.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43249696

from +972’s Sunday Recap
+972Magazine [published in Israel]
Feb. 15, 2026

Also:

• ‘I would never do it again’: Inside the struggle to enter and leave Gaza
• Released into exile, Palestinian prisoners navigate freedom on Israel’s terms
• A Palestinian influencer spent 27 months in Israeli prison — for social media posts
• To confront Israeli fascism, we need a new Jewish-Arab party
• The false symmetry of Jewish-Arab partnership
• PODCAST: Documenting the settler takeover of the West Bank

Rock structure which served as backdrop to countless proposals disappears into the Adriatic after storm

The famous arch of the sea stacks at Sant’Andrea in Melendugno, Puglia, Italy, popularly known as Lovers’ Arch, collapsed on Valentine’s Day after strong storm surges and heavy rain swept across southern Italy.

The rocky arch, one of the best-known natural landmarks on the Adriatic coast, got its name as it served as a backdrop for wedding proposals, selfies and postcards, and was one of the most recognisable symbols of the Salento, one of Italy’s most heavily visited tourist areas.

“It is a devastating blow to the heart,” said Melendugno’s mayor, Maurizio Cisternino. “One of the most famous tourist features of our coastline and of the whole of Italy has disappeared.”

A top European Union official on Sunday rejected the notion that Europe faces "civilizational erasure," pushing back at criticism of the continent by the Trump administration.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas addressed the Munich Security Conference a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a somewhat reassuring message to European allies. He struck a less aggressive tone than JD Vance did in lecturing them at the same gathering last year but maintained a firm tone on Washington's intent to reshape the trans-Atlantic alliance and push its policy priorities.

Kallas alluded to criticism in the U.S. national security strategy released in December, which asserted that economic stagnation in Europe "is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure." It suggested that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birth rates, "censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition" and a "loss of national identities and self-confidence."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.pt/post/14167668

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/technology/p/1086069/google-criticizes-europe-s-plan-to-adopt-free-software

Google has criticized the European Union’s intentions to achieve digital sovereignty through open-source software. The company warned that Brussels’ policies aimed at reducing dependence on American tech companies could harm competitiveness. According to Google, the idea of replacing current tools with open-source programs would not contribute to economic growth.

Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, warned of a competitive paradox that Europe is facing. According to the Financial Times, he said that creating regulatory barriers would be harmful in a context of rapid technological advancement. His remarks came just days after the European Commission concluded a public consultation assessing the transition to open-source software.

Google’s chief legal officer clarified that he is not opposed to digital sovereignty, but recommended making use of the “best technologies in the world.” Walker suggested that American companies could collaborate with European firms to implement measures ensuring data protection. Local management or servers located in Europe to store information are among the options.

The EU is preparing a technological sovereignty package aimed at eliminating dependence on third-party software, such as Google’s. After reviewing proposals, it concluded that reliance on external suppliers for critical infrastructure entails economic risks and creates vulnerabilities. The strategy focuses not only on regulation but also on adopting open-source software to achieve digital sovereignty.

According to Google, this change would represent a problem for users. Walker argues that the market moves faster than legislation and warns that regulatory friction will only leave European consumers and businesses behind in what he calls “the most competitive technological transition we have ever seen.” As it did with the DMA and other laws, Google is playing on fear. Kent Walker suggested that this initiative would stifle innovation and deny people access to the “best digital tools.”

The promotion of open-source software aims to break dependence on foreign suppliers, especially during a period of instability caused by the Trump administration. The European Union has highlighted the risks of continuing under this system and proposes that public institutions should have full control over their own technology.

According to a study on the impact of open-source software, the European Commission found that it contributes between €65 billion and €95 billion annually to the European Union’s GDP. The executive body estimates that a 10% increase in contributions to open-source software would generate an additional €100 billion in growth for the bloc’s economy.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47527848

On Jan. 29, the “Vremya Pokazhet” talk show on Russia’s Kremlin-controlled Channel One (Perviy Kanal) presented “proof” of what the program’s host said was criticism directed against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by the French press. The covers of two French newspapers — Libération and Le Parisien, both showing the date Jan. 27 — were presented on screen to corroborate his allegations. However, it later emerged that the front pages displayed on Russian television were fabrications created and spread by the “Matryoshka” bot network, according to analysis conducted by the Bot Blocker project.

On the show, host Ruslan Ostashko said that “two major French outlets are criticizing Zelensky for his inability to negotiate.” The big screen behind him then showed covers with the headlines “Why Is the Whole World Waiting for One Man?” and “Why Is Ukraine Continuing the War?

...

In fact, the French newspapers in question never published these covers. A report by the independent Russian fact-checking project “Provereno” (lit. “Checked”) noted that the front page of Libération’s Jan. 27 issue featured French journalist and lawmaker Francois Ruffin. That same day, Le Parisien put on its cover a story about an investigation into the New Year's Day fire in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana, which took the lives of 41 people. The fake versions, however, kept elements of the real issues’ design, including their subheadings, layout, and publication details.

...

The information campaign known as Matryoshka has been operating since at least September 2023, and the Bot Blocker project was the first to document and draw attention to its activity. The scheme centers on distributing fake posts featuring anti-Ukrainian content through a network of coordinated accounts.

...

Web archive link

Exclusive: Figures said to reflect increased Russian military targeting of cities and infrastructure

Civilian casualties in Ukraine caused by bombing soared by 26% during 2025, reflecting increased Russian targeting of cities and infrastructure in the country, according a global conflict monitoring group.

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said 2,248 civilians were reported killed and 12,493 injured by explosive violence in Ukraine according to English-language reports – with the number of casualties an incident rising significantly.

An average of 4.8 civilians were reported killed or injured in each strike, 33% more than in 2024, with the worst attack taking place in Dnipro on 24 June. Russian missiles hit a passenger train, apartments and schools, killing 21 and injuring 314, including 38 children.

Iain Overton, executive director of AOAV, said the figures showed “Ukraine fits a wider collapse of restraint that is now visible across multiple wars”, and respect for the distinction of proportionality in war “has broken”.

MBFC
Archive

This year’s Munich Security Conference was milder than last year’s, but Donald Trump has fundamentally changed transatlantic ties.

European and American leaders spent three days pledging cooperation and offering to slap a new coat of paint on the façade of the transatlantic relationship. But the cracks are still showing.

The United States was less combative than a year ago in its showing at the Munich Security Conference, when Vice President JD Vance launched a scorching attack on Europe.

But the gathering showed that while the alliance continues to function, the old order that bound the two sides of the Atlantic for decades has broken down. There is no consensus on how the relationship can move forward given the regular seismic shocks the Trump administration revels in delivering to the system.

MBFC
Archive

• Western officials said China increased its support for Russia's war in Ukraine in 2025 and is likely to deepen cooperation with Moscow further this year.
• The officials described Beijing as the key facilitator of the war, saying Russia's war in Ukraine wouldn't be able to continue without ongoing Chinese support.

Archived

[...]

Russia’s war in Ukraine wouldn’t be able to continue without ongoing Chinese support, particularly the export of dual-use components and critical minerals used in Russian drone production, the officials said. They described Beijing as the key facilitator of the war.

“China could call Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow,” US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said during a panel late Friday at the Munich Security Conference. “This war is being completely enabled by China.”

[...]

Chinese officials may have initially been concerned by the economic impact of Russia’s war but they have since come to the view that it benefits Beijing because it means Europe is focused on Ukraine rather than Asia, and relations between Europe and the US have become strained, the people said.

“These frank reflections on China’s integral role in providing the materials that support Russia’s war machine beg the question of how sustainable it is to keep up the pretense that China can be a trusted or serious trading partner for the UK,” said Sam Goodman, a senior policy director at the China Strategic Risks Institute.

[...]

European leaders have argued that only by engaging with Xi can they hope to influence his position on security issues. Still, they have also used their visits to Beijing to pursue closer trade ties.

China has helped blunt the effects of Western sanctions since the earliest days of the war, buying Russian oil and selling dual-use goods to its neighbor. A Bloomberg News investigation last year reported how Moscow had capitalized on its friendly ties with Beijing to skirt Western sanctions and acquire the know-how and capability to build drones to attack Ukraine.

[...]

Trade between the two sides [China and Russia] has increased to $253 billion in 2024 from $152 billion in 2021. Over that period, Russia rose to China’s fifth-largest trading partner from its 10th.

[...]

The Chinese Embassy in Israel announced on Friday that it has used Israel’s news outlet Channel 12 to refute reports claiming “China has banned all new investment in Israel.” The embassy said those reports arose in coverage are inaccurate.

China encourages Israeli personnel to engage with us in various forms of economic and trade cooperation, and hopes that all sectors will actively safeguard bilateral relations and play an active role in advancing China-Israel friendship and practical cooperation.

China remains Israel's top source of imports in 2024. China kept its position as Israel's largest source of commodity imports for the fifth consecutive year in 2024, according to data issued by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Israeli imports from China reached a record high of $13.53 billion in 2024, a 19.8 percent increase from the $11.29 billion in 2023, per Xinhua.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43236372

Feb. 14, 2026

Despite the inspiration by the Sumud project, the Mexican and Chinese deliveries of aid suggest that there is currently no indication that the U.S. would use its military to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching the island; Israel’s navy, conversely, intercepted the GSF before it reached the Gazan coast.

Major groups participating in the flotilla include Progressive International, an international left-wing activist organization, and Code Pink, a female-led grassroots peace and social justice group.

The flotilla’s mission has been endorsed by a variety of leading international figures, such as Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, member of Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives María Fernanda Carrascal and U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

Prominent left-wing American streamer Hasan Piker has confirmed his participation in the project. It has also been speculated that prominent Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg will take part.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50924425

The country’s online regulator aims to curb social media fuelling ‘marriage phobia’ and ‘fertility anxiety’ over the lunar new year.

Archived

[...]

No online jokes about useless husbands, bossy mothers-in-law, marriage being a trap or the joys of singledom will be allowed, all in the name of encouraging people to tie the knot.

[...]

A running joke of the season, when millions of Chinese people head from the cities to their childhood homes and villages, is that it is when the first duty of filial piety comes into effect: the requirement to tell parents and grandparents why you do not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend; if you have one, why you are not yet married; or, if you are married, why you do not have a child.

Enforcement of that duty is being taken over by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the chief censorship body for the internet and social media, which has issued its instructions for the holiday season, which starts on Tuesday.

“Regulators will crack down on content that promotes ‘anti-marriage’ or ‘anti-childbirth’ narratives, fuels gender antagonism or exaggerates so-called ‘marriage phobia’ and ‘fertility anxiety’,” according to a stern article in the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

[...]

This is not just about online joshing. It covers influencers and particularly artificial intelligence-generated content, and seems acutely focused on what happens in families everywhere when they are forced to spend time together.

[...]

Last year the number of babies born [in China] was the lowest since records began in 1949 and the rate of decline is accelerating. Cities and provinces have attempted a variety of “interventions”, ranging from childcare subsidies to the more direct practice of phoning young women and asking them why they are not pregnant — an extreme form of grandmother behaviour, as some have noted.

[...]

Canada plans to unveil a new strategy that will shift its current reliance on American companies to Canadian military suppliers.

The Canadian government, faced with increasing hostility from the Trump administration, plans to divert billions of dollars in military spending it long gave to U.S. defense companies and direct it instead to domestic manufacturers.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s wholesale expansion of Canadian military spending was prompted by pressure from President Trump, but with relations between the longstanding allies deteriorating, American companies will no longer reap the benefit.

The new defense industry strategy, which is to be announced this week, is the latest step by Mr. Carney to distance his country from the United States following Mr. Trump’s decision to impose tariffs against several key Canadian industries. The president has also made repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st American state.

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Archive link

"The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came." This is how Francis Scott Fitzgerald, in 1925, described the pathetic funeral of Gatsby the Magnificent (The Great Gatsby), a mysterious man known for his extravagant parties and illegal fortune in the America of the Roaring Twenties. A century later, there was something of Gatsby in Jeffrey Epstein, the sexual predator who died alone in prison in the summer of 2019, after hosting some of the world's financial, political and cultural elite in a debauchery of sex and money. The recent release of thousands of new documents from the Epstein case revealed a worldwide grip, with unimaginable ramifications: threatening the British government and royalty, shaking Norway, implicating the International Olympic Committee and bringing down former French culture minister Jack Lang, with further ramifications in Russia and the Gulf states.

The comparison with Gatsby is not meant to excuse the financier's sexual crimes and child abuse, but rather to try to understand how one man – born in 1953 to a modest Jewish family in Brooklyn, the son of a municipal gardener and a childcare worker – managed to weave such a web of influence, from New York's wealthy elite to the scientific community of New England, passing through the global jet set, all with a sense of impunity. Without these connections, the predator probably could not have operated for so long.

Epstein was a predator, first convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, but also a gangster who built his fortune on the back of Leslie Wexner, 88 years old, the driving force behind the global success of the Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret brands. He was also a seducer, offering his guests access to his business networks, political discussions and lavish parties, and also girls – "very young," according to numerous witnesses – to those who wanted them.

His crimes centered on four locations: a lavish mansion in New York's Upper East Side, just steps from Central Park; a residence in Palm Beach, Florida, a billionaire's haven next to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf club; a ranch on the plateaus of New Mexico, in Santa Fe; and his private island in the Bahamas, a party destination where guests arrived by helicopter and, in Epstein's secluded apartments, sex orgies took place. There was also his Boeing 727, nicknamed the "Lolita Express," which was made available to the powerful – including Bill Clinton – and served as the scene of sexual encounters, as well as his apartment on Paris's Avenue Foch.

The Israeli government has approved a proposal to register large areas of the West Bank as “state property” for the first time since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory began in 1967.

The Israeli public broadcaster Kan said on Sunday that the proposal was submitted by far-right Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and Minister of Defence Israel Katz.

“We are continuing the settlement revolution to control all our lands,” Smotrich said.

Registration of land establishes permanent ownership, but most Palestinian land is not formally registered, as it is a long, complicated process, which Israel had stopped in 1967. International law states that an occupying power cannot confiscate or settle land in occupied territories.

Key developments on Feb. 14-15:

• Ukraine destroys half of Russia's 'key' Pantsir air defense systems, security service says
• Ukraine hits Russia's BK-16 landing craft in Crimea and other targets in Russian-occupied territories, military says
• Zelensky, Rubio discuss air defense for Ukraine, possibility of leader-level peace talks
• Territorial concessions by Ukraine won't bring peace, Zelensky says in Munich
• Ukraine сonfirms strike on oil terminal in Russia's Krasnodar Krai, hits air

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Canadian passport holders can travel to China visa-free starting Tuesday until the end of 2026, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Affairs Ministry announced Sunday — marking another step in Canada's thawing relationship with the Chinese government.

In a statement posted to the Chinese ministry's website, the spokesperson said Canadian passport holders will be "exempted from visa to enter China and stay for up to 30 days for business, tourism, family/friends visit, exchange and transit purposes."

"The policy will be effective until December 31, 2026," the spokesperson said. The policy also applies to U.K. passport holders.