World Geopolitics

EU at UN Security Council: Ukraine has lost up to 80% of its pre-war thermal electricity production capacity – euneighbourseast.eu
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On 10 September, the Head of the EU Delegation to the United Nations, Ambassador Stavros Lambrinidis, speaking in New York at the UN Security Council on the Maintenance of International Peace and Security, repeated the EU’s call on Russia immediately to halt its illegal war of aggression, including its unrelenting air strikes against Ukraine’s civilians and civilian and critical infrastructure.

On 26 August, Russia launched an unprecedented number of 236 missiles and drones. On 3 September, at least 55 people were killed and 328 injured in Poltava alone.

“It has hit residential buildings, hospitals, schools, power plants and playgrounds. This is unacceptable under any circumstances. Ukraine has lost up to 80% of its pre-war thermal electricity production capacity. It is clear Russia is attempting to pile the pressure on the Ukrainian people ahead of a cold winter,” Lambrinidis said.

He said the EU is “very concerned” by the recent reports indicating that Iran has supplied Russia with ballistic missiles and called upon all countries, including the DPRK and Belarus, to refrain from any actions that may amount to complicity in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Groundbreaking AI Treaty to be Signed by US, Britain, and European Union: Report – Finance Magnates

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  • This treaty aims to balance the risks of AI with the promotion of responsible innovation and the protection of human rights.
  • The AI Convention differs from the EU’s AI Act in that it applies to a broader group of countries and emphasizes human rights.

United States, Britain, and European Union member states will sign the world’s first legally binding international treaty on artificial intelligence, Reuters reported. The treaty, developed over years of negotiations, aims to address the risks posed by AI while promoting responsible innovation.

The AI Convention, adopted in May, is the result of discussions among 57 nations spearheaded by the Council of Europe, a human rights organization. This agreement is focused on protecting the human rights of those affected by AI systems and ensuring that technological progress does not come at the expense of fundamental values like human rights and the rule of law.

While the treaty may share similar goals with the European Union’s recently enacted AI Act, it is distinct in scope and application. The EU’s AI Act, which came into force last month, focuses on regulating AI systems within the EU’s internal market.

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Excerpt from news.google.com

Sudan is at a “breaking point,” a United Nations agency said Monday, as a growing number of people need food, water, shelter and medical care in a country devastated by intensifying war.

Over eight million people have been displaced since fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last year, plunging the country into what the UN has called “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.”

“Without an immediate, massive, and coordinated global response, we risk witnessing tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the coming months,” Othman Belbeisi, the Middle East and Africa director for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said in a statement. “We are at breaking point, a catastrophic, cataclysmic breaking point,” he added.

At least half of the displaced are children in a war tarred by “appalling levels of rights violations, ethnic targeting, massacres of civilian populations and gender-based violence,” the statement said.

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Excerpt from Newsmax

EU Warns Musk, X on Hate Speech Ahead of Trump Interview

A top European Union official warned Elon Musk ahead of Monday night’s interview on X with former President Donald Trump about the 27-nation alliance’s rules against “amplification of harmful content.”

In a letter to Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino that he posted on X, Thierry Breton, a French businessman who is the European Commissioner for Internal Market, wrote “as the individual entity ultimately controlling a platform with over 300 million users worldwide, of which one-third in the EU, that has been designated as a Very Large Online Platform, you have the legal obligation to ensure X’s compliance with EU law and in particular the DSA [Digital Services Act] in the EU.”

DSA regulations, which took effect in February, reportedly were put in place to monitor social media platforms in Europe by removing content and misinformation. Critics claim the regulations are sweeping and tantamount to censorship.

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Excerpt from news.google.com

Bangladesh president dissolves parliament, frees former PM Zia

Bangladesh’s president dissolved parliament on Tuesday, clearing the way for an interim government and new elections, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s office also announced that the leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Begum Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister who had feuded with Hasina for decades, had been freed from house arrest.

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Excerpt from www.whio.com

NEW DELHI — (AP) — The United Nations’ cultural agency rejected recommendations Wednesday to place Stonehenge on the list of world heritage sites in danger over concerns that Britain’s plans to build a nearby highway tunnel threaten the landscape around the prehistoric monument.

Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in southern England in stages, starting 5,000 years ago, with the unique stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period about 2,500 B.C.

 

Ursula von der Leyen has been elected to a second term as the European Union’s Commission President, a post she was fires elected to in 2019. Next, von der Leyen will be inviting heads of state and government to send candidates for the selection of Commissioner posts. The selection assures the Eu’s current devolution towards centralized authoritarianism will only continue, if not accelerate.

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Excerpt from www.europarl.europa.eu

This will be Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as Commission President. She was first elected by MEPs in July 2019.

Parliament is currently composed of 719 MEPs, so the necessary majority was 360 votes. The vote was held by secret paper ballot. 401 MEPs voted in favour, 284 against, and 22 cast blank or invalid votes.

Ahead of the vote, Ursula von der Leyen presented her political priorities for the next five years during a debate with MEPs.

Next steps

The Commission President-elect will now send official letters to member state heads of state or government inviting them to put forward their candidates for European Commissioner posts. Parliament will then organise nominee hearings in the relevant committees after the summer. The full college of Commissioners then needs to be endorsed by Parliament. More information is available in Parliament’s press kit.

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Excerpt from www.telegraph.co.uk

The European Union will demand access to British fishing waters in return for a closer relationship with Britain, The Telegraph understands.

Sir Keir Starmer is pursuing a reset to European relations and last week hosted a summit for European Political Community (EPC) leaders at Blenheim Palace.

The Prime Minister hoped to use the summit as a springboard to forge closer trade, security and foreign policy ties with Brussels, as well as work on a migrant returns deal.

However, the EU is said to be preparing a list of “offensive interests” it will use in any future talks with the UK Government.

Government officials believe access to British fishing waters will be one of the key trade-offs in response to Sir Keir’s requests.

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Excerpt from watermarkonline.com

UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. (Screen capture via Kellogg Institute YouTube)

The U.N. human rights chief and UNAIDS’s executive director have reiterated their calls for countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations.

“Laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ people must be consigned to history,” said Volker Türk and Winnie Byanyima in a statement they released on July 19.

The 25th International AIDS Conference began in Munich on July 22.

The statement notes Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Botswana, the Cook Islands, Dominica, Gabon, India, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, Seychelles, Singapore, and Trinidad and Tobago over the last decade have repealed laws that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations.