Quality article.

Spain’s government is pushing ahead with a proposal to hit non-European Union residents with a 100 per cent tax when buying homes

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist party presented the plan as part of a broader housing bill submitted to Parliament

UK citizens are the biggest foreign buyers of Spanish property

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-22/sanchez-pushes-ahead-with-plan-to-tax-non-eu-home-buyers-

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35480023

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Ambassador Peter Mandelson [UK ambassador to the U.S. in Washington] warned of the consequences if China continues to get ahead in AI and other key technologies.

“They will be able to do things which cascade down not just to their own country but everyone else’s across the world,” Mandelson said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington on Tuesday.

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Before being appointed ambassador, Lord Mandelson had criticized the Conservative-led government for mismanaging ties with China and called for a thaw in relations. He is a founder of Global Counsel, a firm that’s become one of the most influential advisory groups in the UK and has been expanding its coverage of China.

The Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been pursuing closer ties with Beijing despite unease in Washington and other UK allies.

Mandelson said UK-China relations are unlikely to return to where they were a decade ago.

“We’re not going to to back to the ‘Golden Era’ of Cameron,” he said, referring to former Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 in a visit hailed as a breakthrough in ties.

Since then, London’s relationship with Beijing has deteriorated over a crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and alleged cyberattacks and spying operations in the UK.

Mandelson also cautioned the European Union to be “much more skeptical” about building closer ties with China, even as the two sides step up their engagement to push back against the Trump administration’s tariffs.

The ambassador called for a “reboot” of the trans-Atlantic alliance not only in technology but also defense, pointing to the war in Ukraine as a “brutal wake-up call.” He said European defense needs to step up and become less dependent on the US.

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“We [Europeans] have lived in a fantasy created by the US security guarantee, complacent that a friendly heavyweight across the water would be always there when the going gets tough,” he said.

Phil Urban, the chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers, said the group would not look to grow in that market because of the challenges it faces.

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On Saturday, May 24, the annual March of Embroidered Shirts (Vyshyvanka March), organized by the Support Ukraine / London Euromaidan initiative with the participation of leading Ukrainian organizations in the United Kingdom, took place through the central streets of the British capital.

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The march started in Hyde Park and passed through Marble Arch, Lancaster Gate, and Notting Hill, ending at the monument to Volodymyr the Great in Holland Park.

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The march was organized by Bring Kids Back UA, a state initiative aimed at returning Ukrainian children and youth from occupation or Russia. The Helping to Leave team is one of the project partners, providing practical assistance to Ukrainians in difficult occupation conditions.

It is worth noting that since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, 41 countries have already joined the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.

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Annual rate of food price increases hits 2.8% driven by rising cost of fresh produce but price inflation for all goods is falling

It seems that the UK will begin a similar program to one that is currently ongoing in the U.S., and I was wondering if anyone has any additional information about this program?

In the U.S., the Washington Post revealed last week, that at least one city has been using similar surveillance for the past 2 years without the public's knowledge.

In New Orleans, a private company, Project Nola, owns cameras that are installed all around the city. The owner is a former police officer, and basically started a private security company around 2015. He only charges customers a camera installation fee and monthly cloud storage fee, but has always offered surveillance footage to the cops for free because he says he just wants to help tackle crime. There has never been an official contract with the company and the city or the city police (NOPD).

However, this local surveillance company actually popped up in the city during a secret partnership between the city and Palantir, that enabled Palantir to collect data on individuals in order to create and patent predictive policing software.

There is allegedly no link between the current local surveillance company and Palantir, but the business model of the local company does not seem to match the level of growth it has experienced over the years despite what would seem to be a fairly low profit given what it charges people using its service.

At some point the owner of the local surveillance company began combining his surveillance with facial recognition software, which then provides real time tracking of individuals on a watchlist to police when a match is made via the surveillance cameras. The cameras are set to constantly scan the city for details like a specific face (which is still prone to error/false positive matches) or it can even scan for more vague details like walking gait, clothes a suspect may be wearing, or the type of car they may be driving.

The owner of the surveillance company, insists he doesn't share the data he collects with anyone other than the law enforcement agencies he is working with. Originally this was apparently only NOPD, but since Trump has taken office and expanded his mission on immigration, it's also the state police, FBI, and ICE/ICE state affiliates such as the National Guard, ATF, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and some other Louisiana state departments.

If those were truly the only people the technology and data is being shared with, it would still be quite concerning. However, given that he apparently began using facial recognition software at some point over the last few years, and the most common facial recognition software used by LEOs and private companies in the U.S., is also a company backed by Peter Thiel, I find that claim nearly impossible to believe.

Here is some info about that other Thiel backed company, Clearview AI

Before the police in New Orleans began using the facial recognition software, they had to lift a city wide ban in 2022, that had originally been put in place in 2020

The 2020 ban was first put into place two years after the city's partnership with Palantir allegedly ended in 2018, when it was revealed the city had been using facial recognition software, despite years of denial. In 2022, the mayor requested the ban be lifted and police continue to be allowed the use of facial recognition software. An ordinance regulating it's use was created once the ban was lifted.

This ordinance stated if police were going to use the software, they would need to have a thkrd party obtain the facial recognition match, verify the match, and then send the police the information about the verification. However, last week, a Washington Post article revealed that police have just been ignoring that ordinance since at least 2023.

Instead, the cameras in the city were set to scan for certain details (which could provide false matches to the suspects police were looking for) and then notify police with a real time location as soon as a match was made.

Most people in New Orleans, including myself, were oblivious about most of this information (including the previous partnership with Palantir, which began ~2012) until the Washington Post article was released. NOPD has allegedly stopped using the facial recognition real time tracking software since the Post began its investigation, but is hoping to get the city to remove the ordinance they were in violation of. State police and others using app cannot be regulated by city ordinance and continue to use real time tracking.

As concerning as all of this is, what's perhaps even more concerning are the provisions included in the 2022 ordinance, that was created with the intention of providing some small level of regulation and protection to the public once the ban was lifted.

The proposed ordinance, if passed, would largely reverse the council’s blanket bans on the use facial recognition and characteristic tracking software, which is similar to facial recognition but for identifying race, gender, outfits, vehicles, walking gait and other attributes. One provision also appears to walk back the city’s ban on predictive policing and cell-site simulators — which intercept and spy on cell phone calls — to locate people suspected of certain serious crimes.

That provision could, for the first time, give the city explicit permission to use a whole host of surveillance technology in certain circumstances, including voice recognition, x-ray vans, “through the wall radar,” social media monitoring software, “tools used to gain unauthorized access to a computer,” and more.

Kate Wilson won a legal battle against the Metropolitan Police after discovering her long-term boyfriend was an undercover officer

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A new report – co-written by Labour Campaign for Human Rights (LCHR) and the Labour Foreign Policy Group (LFPG) – has put forward a series of recommendations to increase awareness of CCP activities in Britain and disentangle the private sector from finance backed by the Chinese state.

The recent threat to British Steel – owned by conglomerate Jingye Group – triggered alarm over how Chinese companies leverage control within UK infrastructure. If the steel furnace in Scunthorpe had stopped operating, Britain would have been the only country in the G7 without the power to produce virgin steel domestically.

Luke Akehurst, Labour MP for North Durham, told PoliticsHome economic objectivies today should not be pursued in ways which “lead to insecurity tomorrow”.

"The public are rightly cautious about UK engagement with China under the CCP regime and the government should be too," he said. "The upcoming ‘China audit’ is an opportunity for a new, clear-eyed approach to dealing with the CCP’s economic, political and geopolitical reach."

One major consequence of the UK government’s resistance to rejoining the European single market is that it is forced to go around the world seeking trade deals and investment.

Recently, the government has boasted of successful arrangements with India, the US, and some new agreements with the EU. But it has also found itself courting one highly dubious suitor.

Since the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, went to Beijing in January 2025, the government has been focusing much of its attention on China. And while investment from the world’s second-largest economy is fairly unproblematic in a few sectors (some services and domestic real estate, for example), other areas are a cause for concern.

Relying on Chinese money to support key sectors such as steel, telecommunications, advanced electronics, power and transport – all vital for Britain’s economic and geopolitical security – is potentially dangerous.

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We are now in a world where the political interests of major states trump the economic interests of their business corporations. Geopolitics takes precedence over geoeconomics.

Consequently, Chinese firms – regardless of ownership status – should be barred from industries vital to the UK’s economic and political security. Anything less risks subordinating British interests to those of the Chinese Communist Party.

One of the world’s largest banks threatened to leave the UK if the government increased tax on banks at last year’s autumn budget, openDemocracy can reveal.

The head of US banking giant JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) was among several industry leaders to personally meet with Rachel Reeves last autumn, amid speculation that the chancellor planned to raise tax on banking profits to help fill a £22bn “blackhole” in public finances.

In the end, the tax hike did not materialise. The government has since announced a range of cuts to tackle the funding shortfall, including slashing departmental budgets, disability benefits and the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.

Now, documents obtained by openDemocracy show that a representative of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMC, wrote to Reeves after the meeting to say the bank would consider moving parts of its business abroad if taxes increased.