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BRUSSEL (ANP) - NAVO-topman Mark Rutte roept op kalm te blijven na een reeks waarschuwingen over Russische plannen om Europa met sabotage en ondermijning schade toe te brengen of zelfs militair aan te vallen. Rusland staat er niet goed voor en weet dat het land het aflegt tegen de NAVO, verzekert Rutte.
"Ik zou in algemene zin manen tot wat kalmte, want we investeren in onze verdediging", zei Rutte dinsdag bij een persconferentie met de premier van Litouwen. Hij wees verder op de economische problemen en de zware verliezen van Rusland aan het front.
Meerdere Europese inlichtingendiensten en Europese leiders waarschuwden de afgelopen weken voor een toename van Russische 'hybride' aanvallen zoals sabotageacties, cyberaanvallen en de verspreiding van desinformatie. Die zouden de komende maanden ook ernstiger worden en mogelijk slachtoffers kunnen maken.
Er is geen bewijs dat Rusland een militaire aanval voorbereidt, zei de Litouwse premier Mindaugas Sinkevičius, die bijval kreeg van Rutte.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het Nederlandse bedrijf Otjiaha dat in de jaren 80 grondstoffen zou hebben geleverd waarmee het Iraakse leger mosterdgas maakte, is hiervoor niet aansprakelijk. Dat heeft het gerechtshof in Den Haag dinsdag bepaald. Het land, destijds onder leiding van Saddam Hoessein, gebruikte dit verboden chemische wapen tegen Iraniërs.
Vijf mensen die deel uitmaakten van het Iraanse leger klaagden Otjiaha en de overleden directeur-grootaandeelhouder Hans Melchers in 2023 aan voor aansprakelijkheid voor het zware letsel dat zij opliepen tijdens mosterdgasaanvallen. De Iraniërs verweten het bedrijf, dat destijds Melchemie heette, dat zij thionylchloride aan het regime van Hoessein hebben geleverd. Die stof is nodig voor het maken van mosterdgas.
De rechtbank wees de aanklacht van het vijftal af. Zij vond niet bewezen dat het bedrijf destijds bewust was dat Irak mosterdgas met de geleverde stof zou maken. In het hoger beroep komt het hof tot dezelfde conclusie.
LUXEMBURG (ANP) - EPPO, de openbaar aanklager van de Europese Unie, doet onderzoek naar een criminele organisatie die mogelijk meer dan een miljoen gebruikte mobiele telefoons verkocht als nieuw. Negentien Europese landen, inclusief Nederland, waren bij het onderzoek betrokken.
De organisatie zou de telefoons hebben samengesteld in Hongkong en de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten. Hierna zijn ze naar Nederland verscheept en naar een magazijn in Duitsland vervoerd. Vanuit Duitsland werden de toestellen online verkocht aan klanten in verschillende landen in de EU.
Functionarissen hebben in negentien Europese landen, inclusief Nederland, meer dan 160 huiszoekingen en inbeslagnames uitgevoerd.
De Nederlandse Fiscale Inlichtingen- en Opsporingsdienst (FIOD) heeft op verzoek van Duitsland in Nederland onderzoekshandelingen verricht, zegt een woordvoerder. Wat die precies inhielden, wilde de zegsvrouw niet kwijt, omdat de FIOD niet de leider was van het onderzoek.
In Brussel wordt sterk rekening gehouden met het scenario dat de VS het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag binnenkort volledig lamleggen. Europarlementariërs pleiten voor „onmiddellijke actie” om de „Europese waarden en moed” koste wat kost te bewaken. „Het gaat nu over het hof, maar straks over Rheinmetall of Mistral.”
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De voorzitter van de partij van Marine Le Pen zou zich kort na zijn aansluiting bij de partij meermaals antisemitisch hebben uitgelaten. De Rassemblement National gaat voorop in de peilingen voor de presidentsverkiezingen van volgend jaar.
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Het is een grote ergernis voor automobilisten: de hoge benzineprijzen. Toch zijn de verschillen per tankstation groot, zelfs binnen de regio. De goedkoopste tankstations zijn op een rijtje gezet.
Debutants will face Australia and All Blacks and full-back Paul Altier admits he and his teammates are more used to ‘watching it as fans’
This time next year the Rugby World Cup will be looming large. Australia’s big party kicks off on 1 October 2027 when the host nation will be intent on replicating the feelgood factor generated by their eventful 42-38 win against the world champion Springboks on Sunday. If the Wallabies can maintain their improvement under Les Kiss, the levels of local interest will rise exponentially.
A resurgent Australia could also have significant implications for England, their potential quarter-final opponents, as well as New Zealand. Should the Wallabies somehow find a way past the All Blacks in Sydney on the second weekend of the pool stages it would catapult the Kiwis into England’s side of the draw and rip up a lot of advance calculations.
Continue reading...These men in Maine, Georgia and Florida shared no ties – until they became casualties in the latest phase of Trump’s anti-immigration campaign
It was 7am on 13 July this year. A warm, sunny morning, as residents of Biddeford, Maine, left their homes, got into their cars and began their commute. Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero came out of the apartment he lived in with his partner and daughter and drove off in his white car. Minutes later, neighbors heard three pops. Durán Guerrero was dead.
More than 1,200 miles (1,900km) away in Ocilla, Georgia, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva was shuffled on to a bus. Private sector guards and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were beginning the process of transferring him and several other immigrants from one detention center to another nearly two hours away. Ten minutes into the ride, he became unconscious. Doctors at a nearby hospital pronounced him dead.
Continue reading...This Luxembourg-made movie about a couple who venture east to save their son features some impressive film-making
Stippled with first-world guilt about income inequality even between fellow EU member states, this Luxembourg-made horror sprinkles a bit of liberal fairy dust over what is otherwise a pretty straight-up, if twisty, horror setup: a grunting, inarticulate and physically disfigured big baddie stalks the normie protagonists who shouldn’t have come round these impoverished parts. Think Grand Duchy Chainsaw Massacre, though admittedly without any chainsaws. There are sullen locals, a dilapidated farmhouse full of ominous clutter, ill intentions and horrible maiming.
The unlucky visitors here are former couple Greg (Malik Zidi) and Anne (Brigitte Urhausen), who are co-parenting little Leo (Leo Todesco), a pre-adolescent who is lying in a hospital bed while waiting for a crucial organ transplant. A little time has to elapse before we learn that control-freak Anne blames likable doctor Greg for Leo’s condition because he took his eyes off the kid for just long enough for him to get hit by a car. But Greg is trying to make it up to her by accompanying his ex on a trip to an unnamed eastern European country (where folks speak Bulgarian) to acquire the organ Leo needs on the black market, their glide path lubricated with lots of cash and pre-arranged bribes to border guards and the like.
Continue reading...‘Taking back control’ turns out to be staggeringly expensive. That’s something to mull over as budget day approaches
Every 100,000 immigrants lost to the UK costs the treasury £7bn, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. That figure is unsurprising if you’ve been concentrating at all – the calculation was made in 2024 – but at the same time completely staggering. Nobody ever says, “The chancellor’s going to be in trouble because of all those lost immigrants”; few people remark on, let alone decry, the very large numbers of migrants who have been lost due to policy decisions.
And then, as budget day approaches, brute facts and mathematical realities assert themselves: migration numbers have been falling faster than anticipated. And if you take all the measures you can to discourage international students, skilled workers, all imaginable young, mobile people who work and don’t get ill, while at the same time preventing with all your might any legitimate employment opportunities for asylum seekers, you will suffer a hit to the national coffers.
Continue reading...Republicans could lean on congressional procedure to defy the will of voters. But if they try that, the Senate has a clear way to fight back
Having lost his mail-in ballot case, Donald Trump will likely resort to ever more extreme ways to try to hold a Republican Congress in November’s elections.
His last-ditch effort to count Joe Biden out in 2020 was for Republicans to “investigate” states Biden narrowly won; proclaim fabricated allegations of “stolen elections” to be true; and then reassign those states’ electoral votes to Trump. I have previously described how that same playbook could be used to try to steal the midterms if a Democratic margin of victory in the House is relatively narrow.
Continue reading...Players across the league are leaving their teams up north to return home. It’s prompted questions around money, tax rates, geopolitics and respect
Back in September 1925, Frederick Wilson, sports editor at the Globe, explained the fear among hockey fans that Canadian teams might not be able to compete for players against the new US teams like New York or Boston that were entering the pro league. “Will it be a matter of money?” Wilson headlined his piece. And for about a century, money was the recurrent nexus of the Canadian hockey panic, proven by franchise departures and depleted buying power.
At the time, Wilson reassured everyone that, no matter the big US cash, everyone on the ice would be Canadian anyway. “It will be some years before the [US] will be in a position to furnish players,” he wrote. He was right about that. It took a long time for the US to catch up to Canada in on-ice talent. But now that it has, should we expect Americans to want to play anywhere else than the US? For 100 years Canada has worried that the US would just buy all the best hockey players. But now it makes its own and, as the new NHL season gets underway on Tuesday night, they want to go home.
Continue reading...US secretary of state and Donald Trump express concerns about decision to bail suspects; some residents reported as hesitant to return home
Rubio says foreign actor was ‘clearly’ behind suspected RAF Fairford plot
Tell us: have you been affected by the incident at RAF Fairford?
An MP and councillors representing the residents of the village near RAF Fairford who were evacuated due to the suspected plot have expressed scepticism and concern over the security response to threats made by Iran.
Roz Savage, the MP for South Cotswolds, said she had many questions about the circumstances of how the alleged plot was averted. The Liberal Democrat MP, whose constituency covers the military base, said she would be writing to the prime minister and the defence secretary with her concerns.
Continue reading...Freedom of information request finds six-month trial cost £320,000, used almost 100 police hours and led to just one – incorrect – alert
A six-month trial of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in London’s railway stations that cost more than £320,000 and almost 100 hours of police officers’ time ended in one false match against a watchlist of suspects and no arrests.
More than half a million faces were scanned between February and July this year in some of the capital’s busiest transport hubs during the British Transport Police (BTP) trial of the surveillance technology, which aimed to help catch offenders and people breaching court orders.
Continue reading...When NAZA premiered at Venice earlier this month, it sent shockwaves across the globe. Composed of interviews with 24 anonymous Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, NAZA is a haunting exposé of the tools that the Israeli military uses to carry out the remote killing of Palestinians in Gaza – including AI, mass surveillance, and devastating airstrikes that kill civilians and raze homes. Now, the Israeli government is treating NAZA like a national security crisis. Benjamin Netanyahu is even pushing for legislation that could strip the film's two directors of their Israeli citizenship. Host Carter Sherman speaks with the directors of NAZA, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, in one of their first interviews with an American journalist. The film, which was produced by the Guardian, will open in New York this week and soon expand to theaters worldwide. It will also stream, for free, on the Guardian website in November
Read the reporting in NAZA originally published in the Guardian:
Continue reading...
Microsoft is pushing its data analytics and engineering environment to a new set of commercial users that are an “order of magnitude” greater than its current base. Power BI has become a popular biz intelligence system - with more than 425,000 customers worldwide - particularly among customers of the Microsoft Dynamics application portfolio. Now, Microsoft execs are trying to exploit this penetration by offering Power BI customers high-end database services and app building tools available on its Fabric data analytics and engineering platform. Customers who license Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Per User will get Fabric Apps and Fabric Database capabilities (up to 1GB per app), along with security, at no additional cost. Microsoft argues that the Apps customers are building in Fabric can be ported to Power BI without much additional work or cost. Arun Ulag, exec veep at Microsoft, told The Register: “We have 40,000 Fabric customers today. Power BI is an order of magnitude larger, with 425,000 customers: organizations, not individuals. The usage of Power BI exceeds 35 million business users every month,” he said. Microsoft is now offering this user base the ability to build data analytics-style apps using Rayfin, an open source SDK. The company says Rafin will let users create their own data applications that accept inputs, write back data, preserve shared state, and support operational workflows across to Fabric. Each application gets a 1GB Fabric SQL database, authentication, and security. As an application grows, users can expand its functionality and hand it off to developers and IT teams without rebuilding it. By bringing Fabric application development to Power BI, Microsoft is showing that the “distinctions between a dashboard and an app are disappearing,” Ulag said. Rayfin is designed to work with GitHub Copilot; Claude Code or Codex; or any coding agent, letting users instruct a coding agent to build an application and deploy where they specify, in a Fabric environment.The feature is scheduled to be available in preview in the coming weeks. Fabric was anounced by Microsoft in 2023 as an integrated analytics, data warehouse and data lake environment. It has since added data mirroring to allow users to run analytics on data in other environments without pushing SQL queries directly to them. Last year, the vendor added transactional databases to the environment, including its document database Cosmos DB and Fabric SQL relational system. Microsoft says it is now extending its integration with other platforms, including Salesforce application and data systems. It is previewing bidirectional integration with Salesforce Data Cloud 360, making data from the CRM vendor available across the Microsoft system for analytics and AI, including as business context for Fabric data agents, without duplicating that data. Salesforce also has its own data environment and agent-building platform.®
