France, Germany, Poland facing ‘permanent’ Russian disinformation attacks: EU

France, Germany, Poland facing ‘permanent’ Russian disinformation attacks: EU
People wait in line to visit the European Parliament during Europe Day celebrations in Brussels on May 4, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 05 June 2024
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France, Germany, Poland facing ‘permanent’ Russian disinformation attacks: EU

France, Germany, Poland facing ‘permanent’ Russian disinformation attacks: EU
  • The European Union has repeatedly warned heading toward the June 6-9 vote that Russia would ramp up disinformation campaigns in the 27-country bloc

BRUSSELS, Belgium: France, Germany and Poland have become “permanent” targets for Russian disinformation attacks in the run-up to European Parliament elections this week, a senior EU official said Tuesday.
The European Union has repeatedly warned heading toward the June 6-9 vote that Russia would ramp up disinformation campaigns in the 27-country bloc.
“There are three big countries under permanent attack (from Russia). And it’s France, it’s Germany, and it’s Poland,” said EU commissioner Vera Jourova, pointing to work by the European Digital Media Observatory, of which AFP is part.
There are “more massive disinformation attacks on specific topics,” said Jourova, the commissioner for values and transparency. For example, in France they are focused on this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.
In Germany, she said, they exploit concerns over migration and security, while in Poland, a narrative has appeared online that Ukrainian refugees are a “burden.”
She pointed to a false story on the Polish state news agency last week stating that Poles would be mobilized to fight in Ukraine, which authorities said was likely a Russian cyberattack.
“Russian propaganda is done with... very good knowledge of which country has some sensitivities, which country can absorb better the narratives,” Jourova said.
The propaganda was also spread through the Telegram messaging app in countries such as Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Baltic states, she said.
Telegram does not have to comply with the strictest rules for “very large” platforms with at least 45 million monthly active users under the EU’s landmark content moderation law, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).
“Telegram is not under our competence yet, but we are now counting the users of Telegram because they announced to us that (they) have 42 million users,” she said.
Jourova was speaking to journalists in Brussels after a visit to the United States to meet with executives of the world’s biggest tech companies, including X and YouTube.
She said she urged “maximum vigilance in these last days,” warning the risk remained.
She said she also reminded the companies of their stringent obligations under the DSA.
Jourova’s comments come a day after similar findings by Microsoft in a new report.
The US tech giant’s Threat Analysis Center said Russia was waging an intense disinformation campaign aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the International Olympic Committee and stoking fears of violence at the Games.
Microsoft President Brad Smith, who was in Brussels to meet EU officials including Jourova, echoed her concerns about Russian influence operations.
“The number one abusive AI case that people are worried about is the risk of deepfakes influencing elections, especially deepfakes that come from foreign governments,” Smith said,
“And we’ve definitely seen the Russian government investing in that capability.”


Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions

Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions
Updated 21 sec ago
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Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions

Australia urges citizens to leave Israel citing rising tensions
  • Some airlines have reduced and suspended flights to Israel after the escalation in conflict caused airspace closures, the advisory said

SYDNEY: Australia has warned its citizens not to travel to Israel and urged Australians there to leave the country while commercial flights remained available, citing the conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
“The Australian government has serious concerns the security situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories could deteriorate rapidly,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a post on X late Monday.
There continues to be a high threat of military and terrorist attacks against Israel and Israeli interests across the region, the Australian government’s travel advisory said.
Some airlines have reduced and suspended flights to Israel after the escalation in conflict caused airspace closures, the advisory said.
Israel on Monday expanded its targets in its war with Hezbollah, killing at least 21 people in an airstrike in north Lebanon, health officials said, while millions of Israelis took shelter from projectiles fired back across the border.
Four Israeli soldiers were killed on Sunday in central Israel after a Hezbollah drone strike.
 

 


UN Security Council voices ‘strong concerns’ after Lebanon peacekeepers hurt

UN Security Council voices ‘strong concerns’ after Lebanon peacekeepers hurt
Updated 12 min 36 sec ago
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UN Security Council voices ‘strong concerns’ after Lebanon peacekeepers hurt

UN Security Council voices ‘strong concerns’ after Lebanon peacekeepers hurt
  • “UNIFIL peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement

UNITED NATIONS, United States: The United Nations Security Council voiced “strong concerns” Monday after incidents in which UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have been injured, as Israel presses its campaign against Hezbollah militants in its northern neighbor.
“Against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities along the Blue Line, the members of the Security Council expressed their strong concerns after several UNIFIL positions came under fire in the past days. Several peacekeepers have been wounded,” said the council’s rotating presidency, currently Switzerland’s UN ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl.

 


Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes

Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes
Updated 38 min 34 sec ago
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Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes

Russia says it captured a southern Ukraine village in a push before winter comes
  • Ukraine has deployed sophisticated long-range drones to strike targets inside Russia, including airfields, oil refineries and ammunition depots

KYIV, Ukraine: Russia said Monday it captured the village of Levadne in southern Ukraine as it probes for weaknesses along the war ‘s roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, including in eastern areas that are the main focus of Moscow’s military effort before winter arrives.
Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, reported no nighttime Shahed drone attacks on the country for the first time in about six weeks, after saying five days ago they struck a Shahed storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region where around 400 drones reportedly were being kept.
Levadne, in the Zaporizhzhia region, was seized by the Russians early on during the full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, but was recaptured by Ukrainian forces during a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.
Ukrainian officials made no comment about Levadne’s reported capture, though they had previously noted that the Russian army was assembling troops there and was conducting local assaults at the end of last week.
Ukraine’s troops are straining to hold back Russia’s military might, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, and don’t have the manpower or weaponry to launch their own offensive. Though Russia’s gains have been incremental, its steady forward movement is slowly adding up as the Ukrainians are pushed backward.
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was briefed on Russia’s autumn and winter plans for attacking Ukraine and said North Korea was supporting Moscow.
Ukraine says it needs more Western help to have a chance of holding back Russia’s invasion.
Zelensky said Monday that Ukraine’s victory plan will be publicly presented to Kyiv’s European partners and he dubbed it a strategy to compel Russia to come to a “just end to this war.”
Details of the plan have not been disclosed, but Zelensky has said the plan is about strengthening Ukraine “both geopolitically and on the battlefield” before any kind of dialogue with Russia.
Russia illegally annexed four regions of Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, in September 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all four regions as the main condition for a prospective peace deal — a demand Ukraine and the West have rejected.
Last week, the Ukrainian General Staff reported a direct hit on the Shahed drone warehouse inside Russia.
“The destruction of the Shahed drone storage base will significantly reduce the ability of Russian occupiers to terrorize peaceful residents of Ukrainian cities and villages,” it said at the time.
Ukrainian officials are keen to show the West that they aren’t giving up the fight against their much bigger neighbor. An incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region has put Ukrainian troops on Russian soil for more than two months.
The Russians are managing to retake some territory in Kursk but the Ukrainians are capturing even more, according to Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst from Information Resistance, a Kyiv-based think tank.
He told The Associated Press that the onset of winter fog and rain will affect the use of drones — an important element in Ukraine’s military strategy.
Ukraine has deployed sophisticated long-range drones to strike targets inside Russia, including airfields, oil refineries and ammunition depots.
The Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence said Monday that it destroyed a Russian military transport aircraft, a Tu-134, at a military airfield in Russia’s Orenburg region.
Russia, meanwhile, struck port infrastructure in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa with a ballistic missile Monday, killing one person and wounding eight others, as well as damaging two merchant ships, officials said.
The attack damaged grain storage facilities, cargo cranes, administrative buildings, port equipment and vehicles, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration Oleksii Kuleba said on his Telegram channel.
Recent attacks on Odesa port facilities appear intended to disrupt the country’s exports of grains and other food staples.


Dutch woman accused of enslaving Yazidi women while part of Daesh goes on trial

A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
Updated 15 October 2024
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Dutch woman accused of enslaving Yazidi women while part of Daesh goes on trial

A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP)
  • It viewed the Yazidis as devil worshippers and killed more than 3,000 of them, as well as enslaving 7,000 Yazidi women and girls and displaced most of the 550,000-strong community from its ancestral home in northern Iraq

THE HAGUE: A Dutch woman who joined Daesh in 2015 went on trial in the Netherlands on Monday for crimes against humanity for allegedly enslaving two Yazidi women in Syria.
Hasna Aarab, 33, faces charges of taking part in slavery as a crime against humanity for keeping two Yazidi women as domestic slaves, between 2015 and 2016, while she lived in Raqqa with her small son and her Daesh fighter husband.
The Netherlands is only the second country to put an alleged Daesh member on trial for crimes against humanity against Yazidis, an ancient religious minority who combine Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.
Daesh controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017, before being defeated in its last bastions in Syria in 2019.
It viewed the Yazidis as devil worshippers and killed more than 3,000 of them, as well as enslaving 7,000 Yazidi women and girls and displaced most of the 550,000-strong community from its ancestral home in northern Iraq.
In previous cases Germany convicted two members for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Yazidis.
Aarab is also charged with membership of a terrorist organization from 2015 to 2022 and endangering her then 4-year old son by taking him to a war zone.
She told the court Monday that she felt alienated and depressed in the Netherlands and left Syria for a new life in 2015 but not to join Daesh.
“I heard some stuff (but) I did not think I would have to deal with IS atrocities,” she told judges.
In earlier procedural hearings Aarab’s lawyers said she was young and naive and was left in the house with the Yazidi by her then-husband, but did not command the women. The defense will present its full case later this week.
Under Dutch universal jurisdiction laws, national courts can try suspects for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on foreign soil as long as the accused have a link to the Netherlands.  

 

 


UK orders sanctions against top Iranian military figures

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (REUTERS)
Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (REUTERS)
Updated 14 October 2024
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UK orders sanctions against top Iranian military figures

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy. (REUTERS)
  • Lammy, in Luxembourg at a meeting with EU foreign ministers, said in a statement that the sanctions were a way to hold Iran to account and expose those behind the attacks

LONDON: Britain on Monday ordered sanctions against top Iranian military figures after Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack on Israel.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Iran had ignored repeated warnings that its “dangerous actions” — and those of its proxies — were fueling conflict in the Middle East.
Among the individuals subject to a travel ban and assets freeze are the commander-in-chief of the Iranian army, Abdolrahim Mousavi, and the air force, Hamid Vahedi.
Iran said it launched the missile attack in response to Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran bombing widely blamed on Israel.
It was Iran’s second direct attack on Israel after a missile and drone attack in April in response to an airstrike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus that it blamed on Israel.
Lammy, in Luxembourg at a meeting with EU foreign ministers, said in a statement that the sanctions were a way to hold Iran to account and expose those behind the attacks.
“Alongside allies and partners, we will continue to take necessary measures to challenge Iran’s unacceptable threats and press for de-escalation across the region,” he added.
The British list also features the Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi.
Two companies, including Iran’s space agency, whose technology can be used in cruise and ballistic missiles, were hit with an assets freeze.
Last week, the US government imposed restrictions on dozens of companies in Iran’s oil and petrochemicals sectors to cut off funding for what it said was the country’s “destabilizing activity.”
Also on Monday, the EU imposed sanctions on prominent Iranian officials and entities, including airlines, accused of taking part in the transfer of missiles and drones for Russia to use against Ukraine.
The bloc said that EU foreign ministers approved the sanctions on seven entities, including Iran Air, and seven individuals, including Deputy Defense Minister Seyed Hamzeh Ghalandari and the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force senior officials.
Leading European powers Britain, France, and Germany adopted similar sanctions last month over Iranian missile transfers to Russia, as did the US.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the adoption of the sanctions by the entire bloc, adding: “More is needed.”
“The Iranian regime’s support to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is unacceptable and must stop,” she posted on X.
Two other Iranian airlines, Saha Airlines and Mahan Air, were hit under the EU measures, along with two procurement firms blamed for the “transfer and supply, through transnational procurement networks, of Iran-made UAVs and related components and technologies to Russia.”
The sanctions also target two companies producing propellants to launch rockets and missiles.
Those targeted are subject to an asset freeze and banned from traveling to the EU.
Iran rejects Western accusations it has transferred missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dozens of Russian military personnel have received training in Iran on using the Fath-360 missile, which has a range of 120 km.