03 World

Russia-backed network behind detonating parcels in Europe, Lithuania says– www.euronews.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Russia-backed network behind detonating parcels in Europe, Lithuania says– www.euronews.com
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Fifteen people have been charged over an alleged Russia-backed operation that planned arson attacks across Europe through courier services, Lithuanian prosecutors have said.

In a statement on Wednesday, Lithuania’s prosecutor general’s office in Vilnius said investigations had revealed that suspects with ties to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, had led the operations.

The suspects included citizens from Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine.

The network is believed to have hidden home-made explosive devices, containing the highly flammable substance thermite, inside massage pillows and tubes of cosmetics.

Some of these incendiary devices exploded last year in the UK, Germany and Poland while being transported by the courier services DHL and DPD.

Four packages were posted on 19 July 2024 by a member of the network, prosecutors say.

Ukraine expects €2.9bn fund for US weapons to fight Russia, Zelenskyy says– www.euronews.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Ukraine expects €2.9bn fund for US weapons to fight Russia, Zelenskyy says– www.euronews.com
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Ukraine expects to have around $3.5 billion (€2.9 billion) in a fund by next month to buy weapons from the United States and help sustain its war effort against Russia’s full-scale invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday.

The financial arrangement known as the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) pools contributions from NATO members, with the exception of the United States, to purchase American weapons, munitions and equipment.

“We received more than $2 billion from our partners specifically for the PURL program,” Zelenskyy said at a joint news conference in Kyiv with visiting European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

“We will receive additional money in October. I think we will have somewhere around $3.5-3.6 billion.”

Zelenskyy declined to provide details of what weapons the first shipments would include, but said that they would definitely contain missiles for Patriot air defence missile systems and munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

The Russian Camp Where Abducted Ukrainian Children Reportedly Made Drones– www.rferl.org

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

The Russian Camp Where Abducted Ukrainian Children Reportedly Made Drones– www.rferl.org
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Evidence has been found for the first time that abducted Ukrainian children were used by Russia to assemble military equipment, according to the head of a Yale University team investigating the fate of nearly 20,000 minors reported to have been kidnapped or forcibly displaced.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen any such description of children involved in making devices for military operations,” Nathaniel Raymond, head of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, told RFE/RL.

Raymond said his team had seen Russian government documents which detailed how children aged 13-17 were given a class on assembling drones and other military equipment in April last year.

The incident, mentioned in a new report by Raymond’s team, took place at a beachside camp on the Black Sea called Change.

Nvidia CEO Huang caught between US, China’s ‘larger agendas’– www.channelnewsasia.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Nvidia CEO Huang caught between US, China’s ‘larger agendas’– www.channelnewsasia.com
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“Jensen Huang’s diplomatic comment about ‘larger agendas’ is CEO-speak for ‘We’re pawns in a digital Cold War,’” said Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors.

Nvidia has responded to the political tumult by sharply increasing its lobbying spending in Washington. Senate disclosures show it spent nearly US$1.9 million in the first half of 2025, compared with US$640,000 for all of last year. It also hired three new firms with 21 lobbyists last month.

China’s Cyberspace Administration directed ByteDance and Alibaba to terminate RTX Pro 6000D testing and orders, the Financial Times reported, citing three sources. The new restrictions go beyond earlier guidance that focused on the H20 chip, designed specifically for the Chinese market.

“We’ll continue to be supportive of the Chinese government and Chinese companies as they wish,” Huang said in London.

Nvidia CEO disappointed after reports China has banned its AI chips– www.cnbc.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Nvidia CEO disappointed after reports China has banned its AI chips– www.cnbc.com
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has weighed in on the U.S. tech giant’s struggles in China after a report claimed the country has banned its artificial intelligence chips.

Huang said he was “disappointed” after the Financial Times on Wednesday reported that the Cyberspace Administration of China had ordered companies including TikTok parent company ByteDance and Alibaba not to buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D, a chip that was made for the country.

In response to a question on the FT report, Huang said Wednesday that “we can only be in service of a market if the country wants us to be.”

“We probably contributed more to the China market than most countries have. And I’m disappointed with what I see,” Huang said. “But they have larger agendas to work out between China and the United States, and I’m understanding of that.”

It comes after a tumultuous few years for Nvidia’s business in China, which Huang described as “a bit of a roller coaster.”

“We’ve guided all financial analysts not to include China” in financial forecasts, Huang told reporters Wednesday at a press briefing in London. “The reason for that is because that’s largely going to be within the discussions of the United States government and Chinese government.”

Israel opens new temporary route out of Gaza City as death toll rises – National– globalnews.ca

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Israel opens new temporary route out of Gaza City as death toll rises – National– globalnews.ca
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The Israeli military said it was opening an additional route for 48 hours that Palestinians could use to leave Gaza City as it stepped up efforts on Wednesday to empty the city of civilians and confront thousands of Hamas combatants.

Hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering in the city and many are reluctant to follow Israel’s orders to move south because of the dangers along the way, dire conditions, a lack of food in the southern area and fear of permanent displacement.

“Even if we want to leave Gaza City, is there any guarantee we would be able to come back? Will the war ever end? That’s why I prefer to die here, in Sabra, my neighborhood,” Ahmed, a schoolteacher, said by phone.

At least 50 people were killed by Israeli strikes and gunfire across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including 39 in Gaza City, local health authorities said.

As negotiations for Ukraine’s EU accession near, everybody is talking about how to get around Orbán’s veto– rmx.news

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

As negotiations for Ukraine’s EU accession near, everybody is talking about how to get around Orbán’s veto– rmx.news
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According to Marta Kos, European Union Commissioner for Enlargement, the screening phase of Ukraine’s and Moldova’s EU accession process is almost complete.

However, of course, there is still that pesky Hungarian veto the EU must find a solution to, at least regarding Ukraine’s accession.

Kos, echoing sentiments expressed by Denmark’s Minister for European Affairs Marie Bjerre, assured the press that they will “proceed with the technical aspects,” even if the EU Council does not give its political approval, reports Magyar Nemzet.

Previously, Bjerre stated: “We are still trying to find a solution to get Hungary to give up its veto. If that doesn’t work, we are ready to consider all political and practical means to succeed [in opening negotiations], because our security is at stake.”

Readers should note that Denmark is the current president of the European Union, and it has made it clear that starting accession negotiations with Ukraine is a top priority of its presidency. As noted above by Bjerre, they are directly linking it to the security of the entire EU.

Denmark is not alone. Lithuania has actually presented a way to get around Hungary’s veto by simply starting negotiations without it. Although it is unclear as to how this would work, European Council President António Costa also believes that negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU should continue, despite Hungary’s veto.

International Students in China Complain, “Quark AI Has Forgotten Us!”– chinadigitaltimes.net

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

International Students in China Complain, “Quark AI Has Forgotten Us!”– chinadigitaltimes.net
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Some international students in China have taken to social media platform RedNote (Xiaohongshu) to complain about being excluded from obtaining free educational accounts for Quark AI, an LLM tool widely used by their Chinese university classmates. Using the hashtag #WeStudyInChina, these students have also set up an online “message wall” to lobby for inclusion in the popular AI tool.

Chinese online reactions to the students’ pleas ranged from sympathy to amusement, Schadenfreude to national pride. Some commenters highlighted the perceived privileges enjoyed by exchange students in China, while others pointed to the clamor for Quark AI as a sign that Chinese AI tools have finally become cutting edge. Others noted the similarities between these recent “Quark AI refugees” and the millions of so-called “TikTok refugees” who joined RedNote earlier this year when a U.S. ban on TikTok seemed imminent. (After U.S.-China bilateral trade talks in Spain this weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the two nations had reached a framework deal to divest TikTok’s ownership from Chinese parent company Bytedance.)

In a recent WeChat article titled “As International Students in China Are Reduced to ‘Quark AI Refugees,’ Should We Gloat, or Feel Proud?” blogger Xiang Dongliang discusses various aspects of the controversy, including China’s educational subsidies for foreign students, on-campus segregation of Chinese and international students, and the rise of xenophobic attitudes in Chinese society. In the end, Xiang suggests that neither smug nationalism nor petty Schadenfreude is an appropriate reaction to the travails of exchange students in China:

I came across this particularly interesting trending topic: “Quark AI has forgotten us!”

I have no relationship with Trump, Brazil’s President Lula tells BBC– www.bbc.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

I have no relationship with Trump, Brazil’s President Lula tells BBC– www.bbc.com
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Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the BBC in an exclusive interview that he has “no relationship” with US President Donald Trump.

Lula has frequently criticised Trump, but this is the clearest signal yet that he thinks communication between him and his US counterpart is now broken.

Even though the US has a trade surplus with Brazil, Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods in July, citing the trial on coup charges of Brazil’s right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro as a trigger.

Lula described the tariffs as “eminently political” and said US consumers would be facing higher prices for Brazilian goods as a result.

The tariffs imposed by Trump have hit Brazilian exports to the US, like coffee and beef, which Lula said would become more expensive: “The American people will pay for the mistakes President Trump is incurring in his relationship with Brazil.”

The two leaders have never spoken directly to each other. When pushed on why he had not just tried to pick up the phone or form a relationship, President Lula said: “I never tried that call because he never wanted to have a conversation.”

French unions strike against austerity, pressuring Macron – Reuters– news.google.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

French unions strike against austerity, pressuring Macron – Reuters– news.google.com
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Hundreds of thousands took part in anti-austerity protests across France on Thursday, urging President Emmanuel Macron and his new Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to acknowledge their anger and scrap looming budget cuts.
Teachers, train drivers, pharmacists and hospital staff were among those who went on strike as part of the day of protests, while teenagers blocked dozens of high schools for hours.

Sweden raises defence budget by 18% for 2026– www.army-technology.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Sweden raises defence budget by 18% for 2026– www.army-technology.com
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The Swedish Government has unveiled plans to significantly increase its defence budget in the 2026 budget bill, allocating an additional Skr26.6bn ($2.87bn).

This funding surge represents an 18% hike from 2025. It is the largest boost to the nation’s defence capabilities since the Cold War era, the country’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said…

Projections based on current gross domestic product (GDP) forecasts and the proposed allocations in the Budget Bill indicate that defence spending will rise to 2.8% of GDP in 2026, aligning with NATO’s benchmark.

By 2028, this figure is expected to reach 3.1% of GDP.

Ukraine may soon add warheads, interceptor drones to digital marketplace– www.army-technology.com

pgnewser September 18, 2025 0

Ukraine may soon add warheads, interceptor drones to digital marketplace– www.army-technology.com
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Arsen Zhumadilov, director of Ukraine’s Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), revealed that the Ministry of Defence plan to introduce a new range of systems to the Ukrainian military’s digital marketplace, the DOT-Chain Defence platform, in 2026.

Last week, during DSEI 2025 in London, Zhumadilov revealed that the online marketplace may soon offer interceptor drones and warheads to Ukrainian military units for the first time.

What is the DOT-Chain Defence digital platform?

DOT-Chain Defence was launched in pilot mode only two months ago. Access to the IT system has only been granted to 12 brigades (deployed in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Kharkiv regions) out of more than a hundred.

Commanders can independently select and acquire systems using funds from the DPA.

The platform operates much like an online store but instead of civilian commodities it offers a range of weapons systems. Initially, DPA focused on supplying first-person view (FPV) uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), but this soon expanded to include other autonomous systems and radio electronic warfare (EW) devices. Currently, the marketplace offers products from 25 companies.