HowRu68

Hungary’s forthcoming election [ April 12] potentially offers a first test of the US government’s new commitment to assist like-minded politicians in Europe. Yet when it comes to gauging just how much help Orban might expect from Washington, the picture is confused(...)

Seeing how fruitless Orban’s visit to Washington in November was, I doubt that any meaningful material support would arrive from the US in the period before the election,” believes Zoltan Ranschburg a freelance political analyst based in Budapest. That said, he adds, “Trump is of course famously unpredictable.”(..)

Dr Garvan Walshe [research associate at the Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels] however, thinks that, depending on the outcome of April’s vote, the true significance of American support for Orban may only be felt after polling day rather than before it. In his view, “if there’s a disputed outcome, they [the Americans] are likely to either stand by Orban, or demand a huge and random price from others in exchange for making him stand down.”

France has finally passed a budget for this year after the minority government survived a series of no-confidence votes in a long-running political saga that has unsettled debt markets and alarmed the country’s European partners.

The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, told parliament on Monday, after months of wrangling, that French people “refuse this disorder and want our institutions to function”.

The safety organisation VeiligheidNL estimates that 5,000 fatbike riders are treated in A&E [ i.e Accident & Emergency] departments each year, on the basis of a recent sample of hospitals. “And we also see that especially these young people aged from 12 to 15 have the most accidents,” said the spokesperson Tom de Beus.

Now Amsterdam’s head of transport, Melanie van der Horst, has said “unorthodox measures” are needed and has announced that she will ban these heavy electric bikes from city parks, starting in the Vondelpark. Like the city of Enschede, which is also drawing up a city centre ban, she is acting on a stream of requests “begging me to ban the fatbikes”.

Ukraine and Russia have agreed to hold a second round of US-brokered direct peace talks next weekend after a two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi, despite Ukrainian complaints that negotiations were undermined by a barrage of deadly strikes. The trilateral talks in the UAE would resume on 1 February, a US official said on Saturday, adding: “I think getting everyone together was a big step

Zelenskyy said “a lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive”.

Russia was criticised for launching drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv – Ukraine’s two largest cities – during peace talks in Abu Dhabi, reported Peter Beaumont. “Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure.

Pension industry leaders and investment chiefs from Finland, Sweden and Denmark told Reuters they viewed U.S. foreign policy uncertainty and White House debt levels as a threat to the dollar, U.S. Treasuries and stocks. The Nordic region is home to some of Europe's biggest pension funds by assets.

TLDR; they divested ca. 10 billion euro

"The value of the U.S. Treasuries held by Dutch pension fund ABP, Europe's ​largest, dropped steeply from the end of 2024 to September ‌last year, another sign that major European investors have grown more cautious around holding U.S. assets.

The market value of ABP's U.S. Treasury holdings dropped to nearly 19 billion euros ($22 billion) last September from 29 billion euros in December ‌2024, according to statements outlining its investments." (..)

Several considerations play a role in our investments in government bonds. Naturally, we look at a country's fundamental situation ‍and prospects," she [spokesperson for ABP] added.,(..)

Hi there,

Anyone ( and @EuroMod@feddit.org. ) knows whether the community rules of Europe.feddit.org have been changed recently? Am a bit confused, for example:

• I just saw under the rules that the old Archive. Today ( Archive. ph ; .is etc) websites are not to be used due to a possible changed and malicious ddos-script. There is a link to a (for me unknown) blog post as an explainer. Also, more officially there is a FBI action going on. Both are from January 2026.

• However, Archive. Today has always been vague . Afaik, I think Sunshine?, has posted about attention to tid matter because It reroutes to a Russian IP. But still, there isn't much choice nowadays.

• Is using the wayback machine Archive.org thus still ok , and all other options like deblock sites?

• The title states "Rules (2024-08-30)", which strangely enough is an USA date format, and secondly if rules are updated so should imo the date of changes be updated accordingly, I assume.

• Could be more rules have changed. Like I believed, but could be I'm wrong, that post titles should use the "official article title", or at least match the content. I'm not sure.

• If the rules were indeed recently changed, please condider informing the community about Rule changes going forward, via a post and updating the date in the Community info .

#edit syntax ;and deleted (European) as Mods use ISO date format, TIL.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The bloodiest crackdown on dissent since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution is slowly coming into focus, despite authorities cutting off the Islamic Republic from the internet and much of the wider world.

Cities and towns smell of smoke as fire-damaged mosques and government offices line streets. Banks have been torched, their ATMs smashed. Officials estimate the damage to be at least $125 million, according to an Associated Press tally of reports by the state-run IRNA news agency from over 20 cities.

The number of dead demonstrators reported by activists continues to swell. Activists warn it shows Iran engaging in the same tactics it has used for decades, but at an unprecedented scale — firing from rooftops on demonstrators, shooting birdshot into crowds and sending motorcycle-riding paramilitary Revolutionary Guard volunteers in to beat and detain those who can’t escape.

Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.

Donald Trump has told the Davos economic forum “without us, most countries would not even work”, but for the first time in decades, many western leaders have come to the opposite conclusion: they will function better without the US.

Individually and collectively, they have decided “to live in truth” – the phrase used by the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel and referenced by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, in his widely praised speech at Davos on Tuesday. They will no longer pretend the US is a reliable ally, or even that the old western alliance exists.

A French magistrate has said two Trump administration emissaries approached her seeking to lobby against an election ban on the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Magali Lafourcade, the secretary general of France’s human rights commission (CNCDH), an independent body that advises the government, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) she had reported the content of the meeting to the French foreign ministry immediately, fearing a potential “manipulation of the public debate in France”.

clip YT EP, ca. 4 mins

"The EU supports Denmark and the peoples of Greenland and we are united in our resolve (...) We are Europe and we will always stand up for our way."

Info: The measures threatened over the weekend by the United States' administration will not help improve security in the Arctic.

At the beginning of Parliament's plenary session today, President Metsola addressed the increased pressure put on Denmark and Greenland by the US administration. Transatlantic and Arctic security can absolutely be achieved without the destabilising impact of calling Greenland and Denmark's sovereignty into question, she added.

The Parliament will debate the EU's response to President Trump's claims on Greenland on 20 January at 13:00 CET.