Europe

Dutch regulator approves Tesla’s FSD driver-assistance system but won’t release safety-test details

Though progress is often slow, city planners and politicians are gradually waking up to the fact that when cities offer safe and affordable alternatives to cars, we start to travel differently.

The Foreign Ministries of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom have issued a joint statement regarding the Russia-Georgia War. The joint statement was published on social media by the British Embassy in Georgia.

Didn’t know the first one ended, let alone the fourth.

Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt on Sunday warned that hybrid warfare attacks had become a daily threat to the country.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/69386974

Here is the study: The Russian FIMI Playbook in Moldova (pdf)

Data processing, CCTV cameras, facial recognition systems and Chinese contracts in the Balkans. These are all factors against which to assess EU enlargement. Serbia is the most advanced and well-documented case: Huawei has launched a ‘Safe City’ project for Belgrade and potentially for the whole country, whilst the European Commission continues to raise concerns about the lack of safeguards regarding the use of biometrics.

A financial analysis by Strategy&, PwC’s German consulting arm, found that average interest expenses at ​Germany’s leading auto suppliers rose for a ​fourth consecutive year in 2025 to 102% of ⁠operating earnings - far exceeding levels in the rest ​of Europe and China.

Pasta may be one of the world’s most beloved staples, but technology is being used to improve the iconic Italian dish. In the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy’s “Food Valley”, researchers are creating the pasta of the future by focusing on its main ingredient, wheat. FRANCE 24’s Natalia Mendoza, Laura Roudaut, Tommaso Marro and Charlotte Davan Wetton report.

Nearly six years ago, Belarusians poured onto the streets after Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president who has ruled the country since 1994, claimed another implausible election victory.

The goal of the Industrial Accelerator Act: to lift manufacturing to 20% of EU GDP by 2035.

Italy wants to consolidate its presence in the Indo-Pacific, where China has been stepping up its maritime activities, and plans to deepen security cooperation with Japan, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in a recent interview.

A study by the government-funded Polish Economic Institute (PIE) found that 7.09% of Polish SMEs used AI in 2025— one of the lowest rates in the EU and equivalent to 35% of the EU average.

The German startup ecosystem is off to a strong start in 2026: Between January and June, 3,053 new startups were founded. This represents a 52 percent increase compared to the second half of 2025 and means more startups were founded than in all of 2024.

Europe’s dependence on Asian - particularly Chinese - battery cell manufacturers like CATL continued to deepen in 2025. 77 per cent of EV battery were produced in Asia, up from 70 per cent in 2024. Many of the cells produced in Europe also come from Asian companies.

Opening up national markets has worked wonders for European railways

Walking tours connect Berlin’s streets with Africa’s past – sparking conversations about race, identity and power while uncovering hidden histories that still shape lives today.

Serhiy Tsyhipa is turning 65 on 10 August, his fifth birthday in Russian captivity. The Ukrainian journalist, writer and civic activist from Nova Kakhovka (Kherson oblast) has already paid a heavy price for speaking out against Russia’s invasion and occupation of his homeland. Publicity is needed to ensure that he does not serve Russia’s reprisal 13-year sentence to the end. Olena Tsyhipa has issued a plea for people to join her in a flashmob for her husband’s birthday. She asks that they take a selfie, or make a videoed message, holding a placard reading “65 years – 5 years stolen’ under the hashtag #FreeSergiyTsyhipa. Even if Serhiy does not receive the greetings in the Russian prison colony where he is held, they will help to draw attention to his imprisonment.

ECFR [European Council on Foreign Relations] polling suggests significant public support not only for tougher German policy on China but also for investment in renewables—tackling twin problems together.

“Like cash, the digital euro will be a public good and, in the digital age, every European should be able to access it on equal terms,” said Piero Cipollone, an ECB Executive Board member who chairs the High-Level Task Force on a digital euro.

Russians are beginning to feel the economic cost of the war in their household finances, with inflation-adjusted wages and disposable incomes declining after three consecutive years of growth.

There are many reasons that German support for development funding has tailed off in the last half-decade. From the Covid-19 pandemic to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to U.S. friction with NATO, the feeling has become entrenched that Germany, the world’s third-wealthiest country, simply can’t spare the money.

The number of accidents on Dutch highways heading towards the border has increased by 250 percent since Germany introduced border controls on September 1, 2024, De Telegraaf reports based on data requested from the Rijkswaterstaat.

“Electric and hybrid flights are a core part of the solution to making short-haul travel more sustainable, and less dependent on imported jet fuel.”

NATO countries in Europe have more than doubled their arms imports between 2020 and 2024, with the US supplying over 64% of the total – up from 52% over the previous five-year period.

In an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape, the EU has no choice but to take control of its own money, head of ECB tells panel in Brussels.

A cancer researcher in Osaka can now lead a European consortium and draw on EU funding just like a colleague in Vienna. As of August, Japan is formally part of Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research programme. It is by far the largest of the programme’s 23 associated countries, bringing 123 million people into Europe’s scientific network.

For most of the last three decades, Brussels’ interest in Taiwan was measured almost entirely in trade statistics. That is changing. Over the past two years, the European Parliament has passed a string of resolutions naming Taiwan explicitly, EU delegations have made repeat visits to Taipei, and Taiwanese ministers have quietly become regular faces in European capitals. The language coming out of Brussels has shifted too — from “trading partner” to “strategic partner,” and increasingly, “like-minded democracy.”

The Prague High Court is currently considering whether to keep holding Yang Yiming, a Chinese national who had been working as Prague correspondent for Guangming Daily, a newspaper controlled by the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party’s] Central Propaganda Department, in custody.

Maybe y’all should have actually pushed back against the US starting the Iran War harder?

This week, the websites of major Russian banks—Sber, VTB, Rosselkhozbank, T-Bank, Uralsib, Promsvyazbank and Bank Saint Petersburg—began serving TLS certificates issued by Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Mediazona discovered. Just last week, on July 31, all of them were still using certificates from the Chinese authority TrustAsia.

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AI’s biggest winners may be those who make it work, not those who build it

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Quite insightful. If only more people would read this.

Former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin said yesterday that the international community could find it “much more complicated” to respond to Chinese coercion against Taiwan than to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of the “one China” policy.

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Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu issued a decree on Sunday extending France’s investment-screening system to acquisitions of 10 percent or more of a listed French company operating in a sensitive sector – regardless of whether its shares are traded in France or abroad.

The talks were temporarily suspended in June as the new Social Democrat-led government restructured the cabinet.

Opinion piece by Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham, UK; Elīna Šteinerte, Visiting fellow, Human Rights Implementation Centre, University of Bristol, UK; Hervé Ascensio, Professor of international law at the Sorbonne Law School, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.

Leipzig startup SAXON Q used sulfur co-implantation to lift qubit yield from 10% to 85%, enabling server-rack systems shipping within 90 days

MUNICH / LONDON (IT BOLTWISE) – Munich-based robotics startup Agile Robots expects to double its revenue this year to around €600 million. The company aims to become profitable within the next two to three years, citing signed customer contracts that already support its planned growth. To date, Agile Robots says it has raised approximately US$1.5 billion from investors. In addition to industrial robots, the company is developing humanoid systems and is collaborating with Google DeepMind on this effort.

In this industrial province of Tuscany, home to Europe’s largest textile hub, fraudulent practices by some Chinese companies have fueled a shadow economy built on tax evasion, undeclared labor and the exploitation of migrant workers.

Russia has built a network linking socialist and anti-globalist groups abroad under the banner of support for left-wing causes. The effort often starts with seemingly benign events such as community cleanups and discussion clubs before developing into street protests, disinformation campaigns, sabotage operations in Western countries, and even recruitment for Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Insider has identified several British and U.S. citizens who were recruited to fight for Russia with the help of “communists” and far-left activists.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/69048367

Lithuania is making progress toward normalising relations with China, Parliament Speaker Juozas Olekas said after meeting with Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys.

A document obtained by Void Group appears to reveal how Russia organized supposedly public anti-Western demonstrations through a tightly controlled process involving 2,000 participants, prescribed slogans, visual examples, and designated supervisors.

Successfully stopping Gianni Infantino’s FIFA plan to sell World Cup profits to private investors was the first half of a high-stakes game in global soccer politics.

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Hacktivist group LunarisSec has issued a direct ultimatum, threatening cyberattacks on EU systems unless Chat Control is abandoned.