Germany is aiming to establish a joint German-Israeli cyber research centre and deepen collaboration between the two countries' intelligence and security agencies, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has said.

According to Bild, Dobrindt outlined a five-point plan aimed at establishing what he called a "Cyber Dome", as part of Germany's cyber defence strategy.

Earlier on Sunday, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder called for the acquisition of 2,000 interceptor missiles to equip Germany with an "Iron Dome" system similar to Israel's short-range missile defence technology.

In 2017, we did exactly what Palestine Action did last week: we broke into an airbase. Our actions were extremely similar to theirs, and so were our aims.

Most of the Royal Saudi Air Force is manufactured right here in the UK by Britain’s merchants of death, BAE Systems. Carrying flags bearing the words of Yemenis whose lives have been destroyed by UK-made weapons, we cut through fences at BAE Warton. We were caught by security just meters from Saudi-bound fighter jets.

In our case, these jets were being sent to Saudi Arabia to be used to create what the UN called “the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe” in Yemen. In Palestine Action’s case, British planes are being sent to Cyprus and then mysteriously disappearing over the Mediterranean sea – linked, many suspect, to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

There are a few key differences between our actions and theirs. Unlike Palestine Action, we were not attacked by the Israel lobby. We were not the victims of an obsessive Islamophobic police crackdown. We are both white. Woody is a Methodist reverend: shortly after security caught us, Woody loosened the scarf from his Cambridge theological college to reveal his dog collar. The security guards that had caught us literally went, “Oh shit!”

As a result of our social position and less politicised target, we have been treated completely differently to the members of Palestine Action. We were arrested carrying a list of the serial codes of fighter jets worth over £1bn and a prepared statement explaining our intent to disarm them. Our lawyers were worried it might be the highest-value case of intent to cause criminal damage in British legal history. Their fears were short-lived: the police couldn’t wait to rush Woody out of the station, and charged us with only low-level criminal damage. A court found us not guilty.

The pressure is mounting on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. On Wednesday, a group of right-wing MEPs announced that they had secured enough support to table a no-confidence against von der Leyen over concerns about her leadership style, lack of transparency and growing accusations of bypassing democratic norms within the EU’s institutional framework.

The initiative, launched by Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, stems from the ongoing “Pfizergate” scandal, which escalated in May when the EU General Court issued a landmark ruling against the Commission for failing to disclose text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during negotiations in 2021 for the purchase of up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mind-boggling cost of €35 billion.

The motion was supported by 74 MEPs from various cross-party groups — 32 from the conservative ECR group, 23 from the sovereigntist ESN group (formed on the initiative of the AfD), 4 from the Patriots for Europe Groups, 14 independents and even 1 from the EPP, von der Leyen’s own group. The vote is expected to take place in July 2025, though an exact date has not been set.

While the motion has little chance of succeeding due to the high bar of a two-thirds majority —the EPP has the relative majority in the Parliament — this nonetheless represents a serious political hurdle for von der Leyen: for the first time the European Parliament will be forced to have a public and official discussion about a scandal that for years has been confined to newspaper reports and courtrooms. “The initiative is fundamentally about upholding transparency and ensuring a fair and genuine democratic process”, Piperea said. He acknowledged that the chances for it to succeed were slim, but said it offered a “crucial opportunity for constructive and substantiated criticism towards von der Leyen.

This is about more than just Pfizergate. Since her re-election in 2024, von der Leyen has been fiercely criticised from various quarters for her authoritarian approach and systematic sidelining of the Parliament. Last month, for example, the Commission proposed using an emergency clause in the EU treaty to shut Parliament out of approving a €150 billion loan scheme to boost joint procurement of weapons by EU countries, known as SAFE.

In response to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who threatened legal action against the European Commission, von der Leyen defended the move, arguing that the emergency clause is “fully justified” as SAFE is “an exceptional and temporary response to an urgent and existential challenge”.

In this sense, Pfizergate symbolises a broader process of supranationalisation, centralisation and “Commissionisation” of the bloc’s politics, where the Commission has progressively increased its influence over areas of competence that have previously been considered the preserve of national governments — from financial budgets and health policy to foreign affairs and defence. Piperea’s motion also mentions this alleged “procedural abuse”. He “calls on the European Commission to resign due to repeated failures to ensure transparency, persistent disregard for democratic oversight and the rule of law within the Union”.

Thus, while the motion is largely driven by right-wing and conservative factions, it exposes growing dissatisfaction across ideological and party lines. Socialists, liberals and even some Greens — who backed von der Leyen’s re-election — have become increasingly vocal in their criticism over von der Leyen’s leadership style, particularly regarding transparency issues and her withdrawal of a greenwashing law without parliamentary consultation. However, these groups explicitly stated they would not support a “far-right”-led motion.

Ultimately, the no-confidence motion will not topple von der Leyen, but its symbolic force is undeniable. Long-standing concerns over the concentration of power within the Commission can no longer be dismissed as fringe or conspiratorial. By compelling a public debate in the European Parliament, the initiative may begin to tear open the institutional façade of unity and consensus, revealing a growing unease even among mainstream parties with the EU’s escalating techno-authoritarian regime. Whether or not the motion passes, it signals that the age of unquestioned executive authority in Brussels may be nearing its limits — and that a reckoning over the future of EU governance may be fast approaching.

Slovenia has announced that it will take joint action with like-minded countries if the European Union does not take concrete steps within the next two weeks to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, which has been under a deadly Israeli assault for the past 21 months.

Speaking to journalists on the side-lines of an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob criticised some EU member states for prioritising their own interests over the protection of Palestinian human rights.

Golob stressed the importance of the EU taking meaningful action against Israel. He stated: “Unless the EU takes concrete action today or within two weeks, each member state, including Slovenia and some countries that share our views, will be forced to take the next steps on their own.”

AWS, Microsoft, Google - todas elas lançaram recentemente "nuvens soberanas". Mas a verdade é que todas as empresas norte-americanas estão sujeitas à legislação norte-americana em matéria de partilha de dados. Vamos analisar se é seguro utilizar as nuvens dos EUA ou se se trata apenas de uma "lavagem soberana".

https://archive.ph/DRLXG

The HC Opal, operated by Danish company Ocean 7 Projects and managed by Germany’s Marlow Navigation Co. Ltd., offloaded at least 10 tonnes of Hexachloroethane at Haifa port on 4 June. Hexachloroethane is a military chemical, which the Israel Military Industries (IMI) uses to produce its M150 155 mm artillery gun projectile.

Hexachloroethane was consigned to IMI Systems, a fully owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer. The offloaded substance is a key component in the M150 155mm artillery shell, crucial weapon in the genocide in Gaza and very commonly used by the Israeli military in other ground invasions, such as in Lebanon.

On 29 May, Antigua and Barbuda had issued an official maritime directive explicitly prohibiting vessels flying its flag from transporting arms or military equipment to conflict zones. The HC Opal subsequently went dark. Its Automatic Identification System (AIS) was disabled on the very same day.

Evidence of the cargo’s unloading in Israel, indicates that the vessel re-emerged on radar only on 5 June, by which time the military cargo had already been discharged. Further evidence of cargo unloading is shown by the vessel’s decreased draught—1.6 meters less than when it was last visible—indicating a significant reduction in onboard weight consistent with unloading large quantities of cargo.

“Going dark’ is in violation of the obligations under international maritime conventions, including obligations under the jurisdiction of Antigua and Barbuda” said No Harbour for Genocide initiative, a campaign that brings together various civil society groups, human rights organisations, and legal experts. “While these actions might mask public scrutiny on the vessel’s movement, they strengthen the case for holding the captain, operators, insurer and owners of the HC Opal accountable in the transport of military illegal material.”

France's military took part in efforts to stop Iranian drones targeting Israel prior to this week's ceasefire, the country's defence minister Sebastien Lecornu said late on Wednesday.

"I can confirm that the French army intercepted less than 10 drones in the last few days during the different military operations conducted by the Islamic Republic of Iran against Israel, either by ground-to-air systems or via our Rafale fighter jets," Lecornu said during a parliamentary debate on the situation in the Middle East.

Lecornu said Iran had launched some 400 ballistic missiles and 1,000 drones towards Israel during the 12-day conflict.

Responding to questions at a press conference, Vucic said that Serbia was the only country in Europe which had been exporting arms to Israel after the Hamas attack on October 7. But he said that after Israel’s attack last week on Iran – codenamed Operation Rising Lion – the country has stopped.

“One thing is what we were exporting after October 7, and another is the situation today. We have now halted everything and are sending it to our own army,” Vucic said.

He added that Serbia exported ammunition, not weapons, and that around 24,000 people made their living from these exports.

A BIRN investigation earlier this year showed how Serbia exported 42.3 million euros of arms and ammunition to Israel in 2024 – a 30-fold increase since 2023.

Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have announced they will leave the Ottawa Convention of 1997, which prohibits anti-personnel landmines. Later in June, all five states are expected to give the United Nations formal notice of their withdrawal, allowing them to manufacture, stockpile and deploy such munitions from the end of the year. Together, they guard 2,150 miles of Nato’s frontier with Russia and its client state of Belarus.

Military planners are already working out which expanses of European forest and lake land would be planted with these deadly devices, laden with high explosives and shrapnel, if Vladimir Putin were to mass his forces against the alliance.

A power outage has halted train traffic to and from Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, and Utrecht until at least 11:00 p.m. Initially, no trains were running to the airport at all, but train traffic from Leiden has now resumed. The timing of this outage is especially unfortunate given the NATO summit in The Hague.

The outage is caused by a fire breaking out in the power cables at around 3:45 a.m., a ProRail spokesperson told NU.nl. Repairs will take “a large part of the day,” at least the entire morning. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, so ProRail could not yet say whether it was sabotage.

The spokesperson called the failure “very unfortunate,” given the NATO summit. Many important highways in the Randstad will be closed on Tuesday for security reasons while world leaders travel from Schiphol Airport to The Hague, so reaching the airport by road will be even more difficult than usual.