Donald Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.

It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that he’s on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.

The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.

A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck near the Egyptian city of Suez early Monday, shaking buildings across Cairo and prompting authorities to activate emergency response plans. No casualties or significant damage were immediately reported.

The Italian navy has boarded a Russian tanker in international waters off Pantelleria, an island located between Sicily and Tunisia. The operation was carried out as part of an arms and oil trafficking monitoring mission with the support of a Greek vessel and a Polish maritime patrol aircraft.

Who would’ve thought??? EVERYONE!!!

Social media was a mistake.

Guinea says it’s opting out of the ECOWAS single currency. The 12 member West African economic bloc is set to launch the monetary union and eco currency in July 2027. Guinea is the first member state to say it's retaining its national currency.

The Restore Britain leader outlined five points that he said the pair would have to agree on to be able to find a "common way forward" and defeat the left wing.

Authorities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region accused the federal government of launching a military offensive on Saturday, reigniting fears of a return to war.

President Donald Trump has predicted that Greenland will be under U.S. control by the time he leaves office in January 2029.

Trump has fiercely pushed to acquire the semi-autonomous Danish territory in the Arctic since before he returned to the Oval Office. The globally unpopular move has helped strain America’s relationship with its European allies, who see it as a threat to Greenlanders’ sovereignty.

Real America’s Voice host Steve Gruber told Trump during an audio interview Friday, “I made a prediction on this program that before you left office, that Greenland would be under our operational control.”

Like fuck it will

Was browsing the news today and saw this. In my opinion, this should be mandatory not just in the EU, but that’s politics for you 🙄. Then again, in practice, what difference will this really make?

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Pierre-Henri Chuet, who flew Super Étendard and Rafale M fighters from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, was formally placed under investigation after he was presented to an investigating magistrate last week, following his questioning by France’s domestic intelligence service, the DGSI.

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He is under investigation for four charges of espionage: disclosure of national defense secrets by a person entrusted with them, intelligence with a foreign power, collection of information relating to the fundamental interests of the nation, and delivery of information to a foreign power.

Chuet joins a long list of Western pilots who have been warned or investigated for training China’s PLA Air Force (PLAAF) aviators on tactics, procedures, and related skills. Training sometimes took place in China or in third countries.

Notably, former U.S. Air Force major Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., who also flew the F-35, was arrested in February this year in the US shortly after he returned from China. He was charged with providing and conspiring to provide unauthorized defense services to PLAAF pilots in 2023.

Similarly, Daniel Edmund Duggan, a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot, was charged in a 2017 U.S. indictment with conspiracy for allegedly providing training to Chinese military pilots, including aircraft carrier takeoff/landing tactics, techniques, and procedures. In April, he lost his appeal to resist extradition to the US.

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China has allegedly been facing a shortage of skilled naval aviators. A Chinese military magazine, Ordnance Industry Science Technology, reported in 2022 that the People’s Liberation Army Navy lacks sufficient qualified shipborne fighter-jet pilots.

Pierre-Henri reportedly traveled to China in September 2018 and August 2019 while still serving, without notifying his chain of command, as required by French military regulations.

Both trips were financed by a South African aviation company, already under the scanner for hiring Western fighter pilots to train Chinese pilots, Aerotime reported.

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Archived

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Transnational repression on Canadian campuses is an emerging epistemic threat that distorts Canada’s information environment and undermines Canadian sovereignty and NATO security efforts. Transnational repression occurs when foreign governments silence, intimidate, or control individuals in Canada, threatening the freedom of expression of students and faculty.

On Canadian campuses, transnational repression functions as a disinformation and epistemic threat because it interferes with the very processes through which knowledge is produced, shaping which perspectives are expressed, recorded, and treated as representative. Instead of injecting fake news into campuses, foreign states can suppress dissenting views that conflict with their interests, narrowing the range of permissible viewpoints and manufacturing a false sense of reality and consensus.

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Canada, in particular, is especially vulnerable because of its decentralized governance, highly internationalized campuses, and liberal pluralist system — a system designed to protect diverse cultural, ethnic, and political identities — which creates pockets for foreign actors to exploit and distort its information ecosystem. While transnational repression has existed as a hybrid threat for centuries, what makes it so volatile today is the scale, speed, and technology at which it is carried out.

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In September 2020, amidst the shift to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UBC administration formally requested that instructors place warning labels on course syllabi. The recommended text warned students to avoid course materials covering topics that could be considered illegal or censored by non-Canadian governments. While UBC framed the warnings as a measure to protect their students, critics argued that it fundamentally shifted the burden of safety. Instead of the institution actively securing digital privacy or pushing back against foreign authoritarian reach, they shifted the responsibility of safety onto vulnerable students, telling them to simply “exercise caution” or self-censor by avoiding courses entirely.

Despite good intentions, the practice was harmful as students were constrained from creating and contributing to new knowledge — the very purpose post-secondary institutions ought to serve. Chinese students vulnerableArchived link to the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) regime face targeted threats, family pressure, and digital surveillance amplified by platforms like WeChat, as they are often the only way for students to reach family behind the Great Firewall, allowing the state to reinforce those pressures by tracking communications live and distributing propaganda into students’ primary and personal information sources. By using such tactics of disinformation to force self‑censorship, the PRC effectively deleted critical perspectives from Canadian institutions. This resulting chilling effect creates a false impression of consensus or indifference to current human rights issues affecting individuals in Canada.

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cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/68981310

The EU Commission has broken the law pursuing a police cooperation agreement with Israel that may itself breach international law.

Archived link

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Last Saturday, Brussels said a “Canadian national of Chinese origin” working at the European headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] had been arrested on espionage charges. The Globe and Mail has since identified the woman as Biwei Zhang, a former Canadian civil servant.

Prosecutors said only that Ms. Zhang was suspected of “spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization.” On Thursday, national security sources told The Globe that the country in question was China.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a faxed request for comment Friday. The country’s embassies in Canada and Belgium also did not respond.

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Security consultant Marc Thys, a retired Lieutenant-General in the Belgian military, said the arrest of Ms. Zhang is a blow for Canada and raises serious questions for all allies about China.

Mr. Thys said China had become more of a concern for NATO. “China isn’t simply treated as a competitor. It’s an economic competitor always, but it’s moved more towards a threat.”

China would have an interest in NATO’s technologies, plans and cybersecurity, he added.

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In January, Mr. Carney enjoyed a successful visit to Beijing, during which both sides announced they were removing some tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and Canadian canola.

On Friday however, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it was extending an anti-dumping investigation into Canadian pea starch to February, 2027, because of the “complexity of this case.” On July 1, Beijing imposed a 73.5-per-cent preliminary tariff on pea starch imports from Canada after a more than 10 month probe.

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Beijing has long been accused of using trade policy for political purposes. In 2022, NATO issued a strategy document warning that China poses “systemic challenges” to Atlantic security, and “employs a broad range of political, economic and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power.”

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The allegations against Ms. Zhang are not the first time China has been accused of spying on NATO members.

In February, in unrelated investigations, Greek and French authorities arrested multiple people accused of spying for China, including a colonel in the Greek air force, who was alleged to have shared classified and top secret information on NATO projects.

The next month, Agence France-Presse reported that China had been using fake LinkedIn profiles to solicit information from people working for NATO and European Union institutions.

For years, “various civil servants, academics and other influential figures around the world have been approached by what turned out to be an agent of the Chinese intelligence services,” Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden told the news agency. “A great deal of important information and intelligence may have reached China.”

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