Europe

Visual in-depth.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/49214434

https://archive.is/L24Eh

The world’s largest EV battery manufacturer has been rapidly expanding its share in the European market, which rose to 45 per cent from 37 per cent last year, according to JPMorgan.

Its global share was at 37 per cent in first seven months of the year, compared with 18 per cent for BYD, according to South Korea’s SNE Research.

The group also plans to bring its battery-swapping and recycling technology to Europe.

The Chinese group has invested more than €11bn in Europe, expanding its local manufacturing footprint in Germany and Hungary. It is also building a new plant with Stellantis in Spain, which is expected to start operations by the end of next year.

Shen said CATL was open to discussing joint ventures not only with other carmakers but also with battery makers such as France’s Automotive Cells Company, a joint venture between Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies.

In the US, where protectionism, anti-China sentiment and security concerns has led to an effective ban on new Chinese cleantech manufacturing, the group has instead licensed its battery manufacturing technology to Ford and Elon Musk’s Tesla.

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Europe is drowning in cheap parcels. In 2024 alone, more than 12 billion low-value packages poured into the EU, 91 percent shipped directly from China.

The delivery itself often costs more than the products inside the parcel. Shoppers may celebrate €5 T-shirts and €10 blenders, but behind every parcel lies a silent cost: bankrupt retailers, violated consumer rights, exploitative labour conditions, and rising threats to public safety.

It is time for the European Union to act immediately and close the door to companies that profit from breaking the rules.

The evidence of Shein’s and Temu’s misconduct is overwhelming. At the top of the list stands the most fundamental concern: consumer safety.

Authorities have found beauty products and children’s toys containing high levels of toxins and carcinogenic substances.

Even more alarming are the failures in products meant to save lives. Smoke detectors that stay silent, helmets that shatter, and electronics that spark fires.

[...]

A secret Russian-funded network is attempting to disrupt upcoming democratic elections in an eastern European state, the BBC has found.

Using an undercover reporter, we discovered the network promised to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news undermining Moldova's pro-EU ruling party ahead of the country's 28 September parliamentary ballot.

Participants were paid to find supporters of Moldova's pro-Russia opposition to secretly record - and also to carry out a so-called poll. This was done in the name of a non-existent organisation, making it illegal. The results of this selective sampling, an organiser from the network suggested, could lay the groundwork to question the outcome of the election.

The results of the so-called poll, suggesting the ruling party will lose, have already been published online.

In fact, official polls suggest the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) founded by President Maia Sandu is currently ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP).

We have found links between the secret network and Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor - sanctioned by the US for "the Kremlin's malign influence operations" and now a fugitive in Moscow. The UK has also sanctioned him for corruption.

We have also found links between the network and a non-profit organisation (NGO) called Evrazia.

Evrazia has connections to Mr Shor and was sanctioned by the UK, US and EU for allegedly bribing Moldovan citizens to vote against EU membership last year. The referendum on joining passed, but by a very small margin.

"In 2024 the focus of [Ilan Shor's] campaign was money. This year the focus is disinformation," Moldova's chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, told the BBC World Service.

We asked Ilan Shor and Evrazia to respond to our investigation findings - they did not provide a response.

[...]

Undercover reporter Ana, and 34 other recruits, were asked to attend secret online seminars which would "prepare operatives". With titles like "How to go from your kitchen to national leader", they seemed to serve as a vetting process. Ana and the others had to pass regular tests on what they had learned.

Reporter Ana was then contacted by a network co-ordinator called Alina Juc. Ms Juc's social media profile says she is from Transnistria, a separatist region of eastern Moldova loyal to Moscow, and her Instagram shows she has made multiple trips to Russia over the past few years.

Ms Juc told Ana she would be paid 3,000 Moldovan lei ($170, £125) a month to produce TikTok and Facebook posts in the run-up to the election, and that she would be sent the money from Promsvyazbank (PSB) - a sanctioned Russian state-owned bank which acts as the official bank for the Russian defence ministry, and is a shareholder in one of Ilan Shor's companies.

[...]

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Experts at the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) detected 30 TikTok videos containing false information about Ukraine and the Russo–Ukrainian war that the platform promoted to users over the course of two days.

The study* was conducted on 9–10 September 2025 and focused on the most popular hashtags related to Ukraine and news about it.

The disinformation videos included:

• narratives about “Russia’s imminent victory” and “conspiracies of the West”;
• stories aiming to discredit the Ukrainian authorities and the Defense Forces.

Of the total number (30) of the videos, 17 were classified as fake news and 13 as manipulation, making the disinformation ratio within this sample 57% fake news versus 43% manipulative videos. This points to a systematic combination of blatant lies with half-truths disguised as analytics or forecasts, the IMI report says.

Some of this content was shared by bloggers and former officials known for their pro-Russian stance. The videos were often framed as analysis, using clickbait headlines and emotional manipulation.

Disinformative videos aim to influence the Ukrainian audience’s morale and mental wellbeing, causing distrust and sowing doubts about Ukraine’s capacity to resist, according to the report.

The disinformation methods include staged news stories, altered or AI generated videos, as well as formats mimicking news stories. The authors of such content exploit the themes of war, conscription, economic crisis, and internal instability. According to IMI experts, the mass promotion of such content poses a direct threat to the country’s information security.

[...]

[Edit typo.]

Cross posted from https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42669893

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Chinese spies have been given a licence to operate in parliament after the ­decision to drop charges against two men accused of espionage, the Speaker of the Commons has warned.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is weighing up ­whether to carry out a private prosecution against the two men accused of targeting the China Research Group of MPs.

Hoyle has written to Shabana ­Mahmood, the home secretary, amid concerns that foreign states will be able to act with impunity.

The decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to retract the charges has been criticised by the Home Office, which said it was "disappointing that they will not face trial given the seriousness of the allegations".

The prime minister's official spokesman said "any attempt by a foreign power to infiltrate our Parliament or democracy is unacceptable".

Sir Lindsay told the Commons that he was "very unhappy" about the decision, and said: "The fact that it has taken two years, until today, for somebody to withdraw this case is not good enough."

He told the Times: "I believe this leaves the door open to foreign actors trying to spy on the House. This door must be closed hard."

[...]

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative Party leader, said it was “more likely than not” that Chinese spies were active within parliament.

He told Times Radio: “We’ve seen them hacking into accounts, we’ve seen them already with these two accusations, but there have been more which have had no further pressure on them, and I think the problem about this is, if you operate an open parliament, which is, believe it or not, what democracy is all about, you always run a greater risk that they will use this as a backdoor into intelligence gathering.

“We’re living in la-la land at the moment in the government, thinking that somehow China will be all right. They are absolutely locked together. China supports Russia with weapons, for God’s sake. It’s got North Korea involved with them. Iran has been giving them these drones.

“They work together. They are an axis of authoritarian states, and everything they do is co-ordinated. now, and we are in a mess over in the West.”

[...]

Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, had said that hostile states had tried to influence ministers, MPs and political candidates. McCallum has repeatedly spoken since about Chinese interference, warning that anyone working in the political, military or technology arenas, in cutting-edge scientific research or certain export markets is a potential target.

MI5 has also publicised more than 10,000 “disguised approaches” from Chinese intelligence to Britons on LinkedIn.

Cash and Berry were formally found not guilty after prosecutors said the evidential threshold was no longer reached. Both said they were innocent and should never have been charged.

But the affair has served as another reminder to MPs of the likelihood they are being targeted.

Portugal says it will recognise a Palestinian state on Sunday, making it the latest Western nation preparing to shift policy as the war in the Gaza Strip shows no sign of stopping.

Belying its name, Oktoberfest always begins in September, running this year from September 20 bis October 5. As the country's major tourist event, the annual festival, now in its 190th edition, is expected to attract at least 6 million visitors, with a record of 7.2 million set in 2023. Eliza Herbert tells us more.

Protesters clashed with police in The Hague at the rally demanding tougher migration policies. Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders has condemned the unrest, calling the rioters "idiots."

Britain will not rejoin the EU in the foreseeable future, according to the minister who has piloted Keir Starmer’s recent reset of European relations.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia on Saturday staged a large-scale military parade in the capital Belgrade, showcasing tanks, missile systems and fighter jets in what officials described as the country’s biggest display of army strength in its history.

Major European airports including Brussels, Berlin and London’s Heathrow were Saturday hit by “cyber-related disruption” affecting check-in and baggage drop systems and causing delays, airport service provider Collins Aerospace told AFP.

cross-posted from: https://futurology.today/post/6482997

James Reed, chief executive of Reed, told Times Radio that his site advertised around 180,000 graduate jobs three or four years ago, and this is now down to 55,000.

He encouraged aspiring families to encourage their children to look into manual labour jobs as AI increasingly automates aspects of white-collar roles.

"The direction of travel is what worries me. Some people might say, well, that’s your business. But every other business is saying the same thing, that far fewer graduate opportunities are available to young people,” he said.

But guess what's a few years away? Cheap humanoid robots powered by AI. So even the manual labor jobs will start shrinking. Approx 750,000 people in Britain have jobs that are primarily driving vehicles; self-driving vehicles mean their days are numbered, too.

What we aren't seeing yet is these facts seriously impacting politics. When will that happen?

Graduates face ‘white-collar’ recession in jobs market

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4649448

The first-ever European affordable housing plan will strive to address the housing crisis facing millions of people across the EU.

It will support EU countries, regions & cities in increasing the supply of affordable and sustainable housing, and improve access to housing for people in need, for example by addressing structural challenges and unlocking public & private investment.

The plan will respect subsidiarity and aim to deliver EU added value, building on appropriate tools & best practices.

Archived version

• Chinese defense-linked universities have dramatically increased research partnerships with Russian institutions in recent years, providing Moscow with access to innovations and know-how that help offset Western sanctions and export controls., a major new expansion of the China Defence Universities Tracker by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has found
• The ASPI tracker, which includes now more than 180 Chinese civilian and military, points out China's Beihang University and the Moscow Aviation Institute as one key partnership, focusing on aircraft engine development, and Xi’an Technological University with the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University on advanced weapons systems

...

As international scrutiny of Chinese-foreign joint venture universities has grown, ASPI has added three prominent joint ventures to the tracker, allowing users to easily compare the relative risks of joint venture universities and Chinese universities. Expanded research on international collaborations also reveals that Chinese universities are still partnering with British and European institutions with the explicit goal, for example, of advancing China’s national aerospace industry.

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The tracker also now includes the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the world’s largest scientific research institution, and 10 affiliated institutes. Users can now quickly see why CAS occupies such a preeminent place in global science research; the tracker features CAS’s global and national rankings in 64 critical technologies tracked by ASPI, including the 31 critical technologies where CAS leads the world in high-impact research. These fields include quantum sensors, high performance computing and advanced robotics.

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These new research findings have been applied to more than 60 universities and institutes in the tracker database, complementing the existing database of nearly 100 civilian universities, 50 People’s Liberation Army institutions, China’s nuclear weapons program, three Ministry of State Security institutions, four Ministry of Public Security universities and 12 state-owned defence industry conglomerates. From early 2026, updates will see new institutions added to the tracker and research additions extended to more existing institutions.

...

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A cyberattack targeting check-in and boarding systems has disrupted air traffic and caused delays at several of Europe’s major airports, officials said Saturday.

Brussels, London Heathrow, Berlin Brandenburg, ...