Europe

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29751773

I'm not European, so I can't sign (I think), sharing this is the most I can do; but if you and/or someone you know is from Europe and hasn't signed yet Please do!

EDIT: THE THRESHOLD HAS BEEN REACHED!!! LETS FUCKING GOOOOO!!!

cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5823642

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/ukrainianconflict by /u/rezwenn on 2025-05-14 12:21:07+00:00.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64099441

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/6024990

Despite progress in several EU member states, conversion practices remain legal in some countries, and even promoted, like in Poland or Hungary, putting thousands of people at risk of psychological trauma, social rejection, and physical abuse.

Extremely low river levels in the UK recently have experts concerned about an impending drought.

The UK is also experiencing its driest spring since 1961, as BBC News reported.

According to data from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the UK received just 43% of the average rainfall in March, and some rivers — including Mourne, Eden, English Tyne, Conwy and Welsh Dee — have hit their lowest levels ever recorded for the month of March this year.

River levels are expected to continue to remain low through May. Dry conditions and warm weather are also predicted for the next few months, according to UKCEH, prompting more concerns over a summer drought and how that will affect water supply.

“The dry start to May increases the likelihood that low to exceptionally low flows in some areas persist into the summer,” UKCEH reported.

In the UK, low river levels coupled with a lack of reservoir infrastructure puts water supply at risk. As The Guardian reported, there have been no new water reservoirs built in England for at least 30 years, so farmers and companies turn to rivers to draw water when reservoirs run low. When both run low, the demand will outpace supply.

In response, officials are considering water use restrictions, as The Guardian reported.

“This crisis was avoidable. But thanks to corporate greed and regulatory complacency, our reservoirs are running dry and our rivers are polluted with sewage,” James Wallace, CEO of the charity River Action UK, told The Guardian. “Rather than punish the culprits, customers have been told by government they will be fined £1,000 if they break a hosepipe ban. Yet again, the public will bear the costs of a failing water industry.”

A drought map by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre reveals that much of the UK and Ireland is already under a drought watch or warning. While officials have not formally announced a drought or water rationing, some farmers are already feeling the impacts.

“We are having a drought now from an agricultural point of view,” Nick Deane, a farmer based in Norfolk, told BBC News. “We have to ration our water and decide which areas we are going to put that water on in order to keep the crops growing.”

According to the European Commission, the drought risk applies to much of Europe following months of lower-than-average rainfall and higher-than-average temperatures, with northern and western Europe likely to experience continued dry conditions in June. The commission noted that the lower-than-usual river levels across Europe are already having a negative impact on agriculture, energy generation and transport.

Vegetation in some areas is already showing signs of stress, too, meaning the lack of rainfall is harming ecosystems. In the UK, wildfire events in the first four months of 2025 have already surpassed the amount of land burned more than any other year in over 10 years due to extended dry conditions.

archived (Wayback Machine)

Estonia said on Thursday that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a "shadow fleet" defying Western sanctions on Moscow.

Russia, which regards sanctions as a malign attempt to crush its economy, says all its ships have free passage in the Baltic and any attempt to stop them is dangerous.

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/19262779

PDF : https://transfert.free.fr/pPgrKDc

The stop killing games campaign’s slated goal is to prevent game publishers from intentionally destroying their games after official support ends.

Sign it: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

Read it: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007

More questions?: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq Giant FAQ on The European Initiative to Stop Destroying Games!

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works #StopKillingGames

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2697975

French authorities said Wednesday they had tracked nearly 80 disinformation campaigns led by Russian operators between August 2023 and early March 2025, mainly targeting Ukraine and its allies, including France.

The estimate by the French agency countering foreign online attacks, Viginum, said the campaign was "particularly... effective in distributing anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narratives to Western audiences".

The so-called "Storm-1516" campaign uses artificial intelligence to create realistic profiles, pays amateur operators, and poses a "significant threat to the digital public debate, both in France and across all European countries," the agency said.

"The European public debate is being pounded by disinformation campaigns conducted by Russian entities and relayed especially by the American far-right," said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in a statement to AFP, adding that Russian entities had targeted the French legislative elections of 2024.

...

The Viginum report highlighted the role of American far-right influencers or pro-Russian influencers like Adrien Bocquet, a "former French soldier exiled in Russia", who amplify the dissemination of false information.

Some of the false information -- such as the alleged purchase by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of a former Nazi building in Germany or a luxury hotel in Courchevel -- have been verified by AFP's digital investigative team in articles available on AFP Factuel's website (factuel.afp.com).

...

The disinformation-fighting organisation NewsGuard previously attributed to Storm-1516 a video supposedly showing a Chadian migrant confessing to raping a 12-year-old girl in France. Another, AI-generated video accused Brigitte Macron, the wife of President Emmanuel Macron, of sexual assault.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.bg/post/103527

Around Germany and Greece there were other countries. They went by names like frugal four and PIIGS. They forced "austerity" and stricter working hours onto indebted countries to save their own banks.

The colours on this map show well that northern "productivity" is not about working hours, but about other topics that did not get addressed. Among these topics are also tax heavens (think the Netherlands) and money laundering (think Austria's special relationship with Russia).

So it was nothing more than poor political leadership without vision.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26140567

This is an initiative to ban conversion therapy in the EU, if you are an EU citizen please consider signing it.

This is a more serious post than normal, but I feel this is important to share.

EDIT: Also how long should this remain pinned? The collection period is for another 2+ weeks, should it stay up until then? Here's a form

EDIT 2: All (just 1) responses from the form say keep it up for the collection period so that's going to happen for now.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/63190260

Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered an embarrassing setback when he fell short of a majority in an initial vote in the lower house of parliament, potentially delaying his swearing-in as head of government due to take place later on Tuesday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33723368

Archived

European Union privacy watchdogs fined TikTok 530 million euros ($600 million) on Friday after a four-year investigation found that the video sharing app’s data transfers to China breached strict data privacy rules in the EU.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission also sanctioned TikTok for not being transparent with users about where their personal data was being sent and it ordered the company to comply with the rules within six months.

[...]

TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is based in China, has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal information of its users amid concerns from Western officials that it poses a security risk over user data sent to China. In 2023, the Irish watchdog also fined the company hundreds of millions of euros in a separate child privacy investigation.

[...]

The Irish watchdog said its investigation found that TikTok failed to address “potential access by Chinese authorities” to European users’ personal data under Chinese laws on anti-terrorism, counter-espionage, cybersecurity and national intelligence that were identified as “materially diverging” from EU standards.

[...]

TikTok faces further scrutiny from the Irish regulator, which said that the company had provided inaccurate information to throughout the inquiry by saying that it didn’t store European user data on Chinese servers. It wasn’t until April that it informed the regulator that it discovered in February that some data had in fact been stored on Chinese servers.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62880263

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency formally classified the Alternative for Germany as a right-wing extremist movement, meaning authorities will have enhanced powers to monitor the party as a potential threat to democracy.

The judgment by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution “is based on an extremely careful expert review spanning approximately three years” that examined remarks made by high-ranking AfD officials, according to a statement published Friday by Sinan Selen and Silke Willems, the office’s co-vice presidents.

https://archive.ph/gbEqD

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62632335