KYIV/BERLIN/PARIS, May 20 (Reuters) - For Ukraine and its allies, who spent months trying to win Donald Trump over to their cause in the war started by Russia, it is back to square one.

In a two-hour conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin late on Monday, the U.S. president dropped his earlier insistence on an unconditional 30-day ceasefire that he hoped would kickstart what promise to be long and tortuous peace talks.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Berlin announced Tuesday that the BDS movement has been classified as "unconstitutional."

The head of the office, Michael Fischer, explained that the movement’s status in Berlin’s antisemitic and anti-Israel landscape has significantly strengthened over the past year.

Fischer clarified that BDS’s ideology is based on “explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist.” According to him, BDS activity goes beyond boycotting cultural events or Israeli economic products. “The goal is to make the existence of Israel impossible in the international context. It is aimed at its destruction,” Fischer stated.

European leaders have agreed to increase pressure on Russia through further sanctions after Donald Trump briefed them on his call with Vladimir Putin, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said late on Monday. “Europe will increase the pressure on Moscow through sanctions. This is what we agreed upon with [Trump] after his conversation with Putin,” Merz posted on X, saying “Europe and America are very united on this”. After speaking with Putin, Trump held calls with the leaders of the European Union, France, Italy, Germany and Finland.

After 2,5 years of intensive research and programming efforts, the entire Openwebsearch.eu project team is excited to grant access to its pilot of the first-ever federated pan-European Open Web Index (OWI).

From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte (and growing) of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.

Given that the European Commission has launched the InvestAI initiative to mobilize €200 billion of investment in artificial intelligence, the Open Web Index comes with perfect timing.

The OpenWebSearch.eu consortium actively calls early adopters to pioneer innovative projects surrounding vertical web search, argumentative search, LLM applications including RAG and more.

“The OWI symbolizes a first step towards true European digital sovereignty and is a fundamental step in paving the way for a comprehensive open European AI landscape.“ says Community Manager Ursula Gmelch and further:

“Our goal behind this initial pilot phase is to onboard a range of projects from diverse domains to get early feedback in. We look forward to users confirming the quality and value in current functionalities and/or helping us pivot in such ways that real market demands can be met and further expanded upon.“

An official kick-off event will be hosted on 6 June from 10 am to 12 am CEST via Zoom.

Registration to the event is open under the following link:

https://cscfi.zoom.us/meeting/register/eATIpDQ5TZidh4Jzkim6FQ#/registration

[,,,]

French plans to build a maximum-security prison wing for drug traffickers and Islamic militants near a former penal colony in French Guiana have sparked an outcry among residents and local officials.

The wing would form part of a $450m (£337m) prison announced in 2017 that is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500 inmates. The prison would be built in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, a town bordering Suriname that once received prisoners shipped by Napoleon III in the 1800s, some of whom were sent to the notorious Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana.

When Copenhagen signed a new defence agreement giving the US “unhindered access” to Danish airbases in December 2023, the idea of granting sweeping powers to US forces on Danish soil was quite a different proposition to what it is today.

The US, then under the Biden administration, was an unwavering Nato ally that Denmark had followed into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Nordic neighbours Sweden, Finland and Norway had similar agreements with the US.

But then Donald Trump returned to power, making an unprecedented push to acquire or seize Greenland, a strategically vital part of the Danish kingdom. He has refused to rule out using military force to take over the island, and US intelligence agencies have reportedly been ordered to increase espionage in the territory.

Now, little more than a year on, as Denmark prepares to adopt the agreement next month after a vote in parliament on 11 June, when it is expected to be approved, fears are growing about its potential implications.

The deal means US soldiers will be in Denmark under US jurisdiction, meaning that if they were to commit a crime anywhere in Denmark they would in the first instance be punished under the US, not Danish, legal system.

https://archive.ph/7pwlY

More than 100,000 people gathered Sunday in The Hague to protest the Dutch government’s stance on Israel and the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, in what organizers called the Netherlands’ largest demonstration in the past 20 years, according to NOS.

Participants wore red clothing to symbolically draw a “red line,” a message aimed at the Dutch government, demanding it take action against what they described as Israel’s continued violations of international humanitarian law. “Prime Minister Schoof refuses to draw a red line. That’s why we’re doing it,” organizers stated.

Professor Nick Maynard, who relayed his experiences in evidence to the High Court as part of the legal challenge brought over UK arms exports to Israel, said he had brought laminated photos of injured children to try to get his point across, but to no avail.

“I had a very limited time to speak, but there was no question that the foreign secretary was given the information detailing the indiscriminate mutilation and killing of children in Gaza,” he wrote in a witness statement of the February 2024 meeting.

“I left the meeting with no confidence that the information would be acted upon, and in my view the information we gave them was ignored.”

The Intercept was able to uncover the suppression of audible discontent with Israel at last year’s Eurovision by examining various feeds sent out by the competition organizers for broadcast across the globe.

When the local host country’s national broadcaster — in last year’s case Sweden and SVT, respectively — produce Eurovision, they collect multiple audio feeds: such as one for the performers, one for the audience, and one for announcer voices. The broadcaster then does a live mix of the three audio feeds into a single stereo mix.

The stereo mix is beamed up to a satellite using a multichannel format which Eurovision has been experimenting with since 2004. The video feed is also sent on a separate channel. The system allows a streamlined approach for local broadcasters around the globe to access the feeds and put the program on their stations.

The audio feeds were compared using the time encoding that allows broadcasters to sync up the sound and picture. On the audience feed, cheers swell up from time to time, along with whistles and other noises of audience approval. These swells and other noises correspond between the audience feed and the stereo mix.

Notes of crowd disapproval, however, are present on the audience feed but completely absent from the stereo mix. At one point in the feed at the start of Israel’s performance, scattered boos well up on the audience feed, while the corresponding timestamp in the stereo mix has no audience sound. Likewise, at the start of the performance, an audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.

British holidaymakers could face shorter airport queues this summer with negotiators on the verge of striking an agreement for UK passport holders to use e-gates across Europe.

Downing Street said on Saturday that it was poised to strike a deal with the EU that would improve things for British families facing “queues on holiday”.

The Guardian understands officials on both sides are in talks about allowing British travellers to use e-gates reserved for people from the EU or European Economic Area when arriving at airports in Europe, ending the current two-queue system.

European “green” funds holding more than $33bn of investments in major oil and gas companies have been revealed by an investigation, despite fossil fuels being the root cause of the climate crisis. Some of these investment funds used branding such as Sustainable Global Stars and Europe Climate Pathway.

Over $18bn was invested in the five biggest polluters: TotalEnergies, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP. These topped a 2023 Carbon Majors ranking for oil and gas production among shareholder-owned firms. Other investments by funds following EU sustainable finance disclosure regulations (SFDR) included those in US fracking company Devon Energy and Canadian tar sands company Suncor, the investigation by Voxeurop and the Guardian found.

BRUSSELS ― The European Commission was wrong to refuse the release of Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, an EU court has found.

Reporters had asked to see the secret messages between the Commission president and the drug company boss, which they exchanged ahead of a multibillion euro vaccine deal agreed between Pfizer and the EU.

The judgment is likely to have huge repercussions for transparency and accountability in the EU and delivers a massive blow to von der Leyen’s reputation.

A website visualizing the repression of Palestine sentiment in Germany proportionally and by location

It also shows the date and type of each event.

You can filter by specific events and see the results.

The right bar shows the events and you can click them for more information

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