Europe

A majority of EU Member States agreed to adopt the European Commission's proposal to downgrade the protection status of the wolf under the Bern Convention. This shift opens the door to wolf culling as a false solution to livestock depredation, which runs counter to Europe’s commitment to safeguard and restore biodiversity. The decision which cannot be scientifically justified went through after Germany changed its position from abstention to support.

With this decision, Member States have chosen to ignore the call of over 300 civil society organisations, among others EuroNatur, and more than 300,000 people urging them to follow scientific recommendations and step up efforts to foster coexistence with large carnivores through preventive measures.

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Wolves are strictly protected under both the Bern Convention and the EU Habitats Directive, serving as a keystone species vital for healthy ecosystems and biodiversity across Europe. Weakening their protection will hinder the ongoing recovery of wolf populations.

‘The EU's decision will not only destabilise the still fragile wolf populations in large parts of Europe, but also undermine the significant progress made towards a coexistence of humans and wolves,’ says Antje Henkelmann, project manager and wolf expert at EuroNatur. ‘Only efficient herd protection can prevent livestock kills. Instead, the EU is focussing on symbolic but inefficient culls. With her turnaround, the Federal Environment Minister is not only weakening wolf protection, but also giving in to populist demands that are of little use to livestock farmers,’’ says the biologist.

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On Saturday [September 21], Tibetan activists convened outside the Musée Guimet in Paris to protest the museum’s decision to replace exhibition materials that identify certain artifacts as Tibetan by replacing it with the Chinese name for the region. Activists claim the change to the language is problematic for deferring to a Chinese political narrative that’s historically aimed to erase Tibetan cultural identity from public spaces.

The mass protest, which some sources estimate attracted 800 demonstrators, followed a report in the French newspaper Le Monde alleging that Musée Guimet and the Musée du quai Branly, two prominent Parisian museums that house collections of Asian art, altered their exhibition materials cataloging Tibetan artifacts as deriving instead from then Chinese term “Xizang Autonomous Region.” According to the same report, the Musée Guimet renamed its Tibetan art galleries as deriving from the “Himalayan world.”

A handful of Tibetan cultural advocacy groups based in France penned letters to both museums, requesting formal meetings to discuss the reasons behind and implications of the terminology changes, a request that activists say was accepted by Musée du quai Branly, but not it’s peer Musée Guimet.

Green Party co-chairs Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour are stepping down. The move could make things even harder for Germany's fractious coalition government.

A French environmental group has found artillery shells dating back to World Wars I and II and even the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 in a lake in eastern France. Water samples from Gerardmer in the Vosges mountains show high levels of TNT explosive as well as metals like iron, titanium and lead. A major theatre of conflicts over the past century and a half, France is particularly afflicted by unexploded ordnance, which results in 10 deaths nationwide a year.

Industry minister Adolfo Urso warns of large-scale job losses among carmakers unless Green Deal rules are relaxed

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/22596941

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• Russia establishes drone factory in China
• Russian arms firm develops UAVs for use in Ukraine
• China-made drones have been delivered to Russia
• Chinese government says it is not aware of such a project

Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents.

IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned weapons company Almaz-Antey, has developed and flight-tested a new drone model called Garpiya-3 (G3) in China with the help of local specialists, according to one of the documents, a report that Kupol sent to the Russian defence ministry earlier this year outlining its work.

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Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based defence think-tank, said the delivery of UAVs from China to Russia, if confirmed, would be a significant development.

"If you look at what China is known to have delivered so far, it was mostly dual-use goods - it was components, sub-components, that could be used in weapon systems," he [said]. "This is what has been reported so far. But what we haven't really seen, at least in the open source, are documented transfers of whole weapon systems."

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David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Security research group and has conducted extensive work on Chinese and Russian cooperation on drone production, told Reuters that Kupol could skirt Western sanctions on Russia by setting up a production facility in China where it could access advanced chips and expertise.

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Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his military had received around 140,000 drones in 2023 and that Moscow planned to increase this number tenfold this year.

"Whoever reacts faster to demands on the battlefield wins," he told a meeting in St Petersburg about drone production.

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Estonian officials have again refuted suggestions that the rupture of the Balticconnector gas pipeline and two data cables in the Baltic Sea by the Chinese cargo ship, NewNew Polar Bear, in October 2023 was an accident.

“You would need to find a very stupid captain” for the incident to have been an accident, Jüri Saska, commander of the Estonian Navy (Merevägi), stated. Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur pointed out that the length of the furrow (180 km) that the Chinese ship’s anchor made on the seabed made it hard to believe that the incident was accidental. When the ship struck the gas pipeline, its speed dropped suddenly from 11 knots to 6 knots, which must have made a very loud noise throughout the ship’s hull, Saska noted.

Nevertheless, the ship’s crew insisted that it had no need for assistance. China has yet to respond to Estonia’s and Finland’s request for legal assistance in the investigation.

By the time the Newnew Polar Bear moved out of Estonia's area of responsibility, on October 11, a criminal case had already been initiated on both sides of the Gulf of Finland.

Finland is investigating the case as an act of sabotage, as damage to Estonian infrastructure. In the aftermath of the incident, the two countries jointly submitted to China a request for legal assistance, but 11 months and two weeks later had not received an official response.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43215494

Wrong link. https://archive.is/ZwF79

Correct link. https://archive.is/2ujHV

https://archive.is/0sHJE

• Ukraine says China is main supplier of foreign weapons parts to Russia
• About 60% of foreign components in weapons from China, it says
• Despite sanctions, advanced US chips found in Russia
• China denies supplying weapons, or parts

• Ukraine must have the possibility to defend itself fully
• Parliament deplores the declining volume of bilateral military aid to Ukraine by EU countries
• MEPs demand tougher EU sanctions against Russia and its allies
• Accountability for war crimes and Russian reparations are essential elements of any peaceful solution

In a resolution, MEPs want EU countries to lift current restrictions hindering Ukraine from using Western weapons systems against legitimate military targets in Russia.

The text, adopted on Thursday 19 September with 425 votes in favour, 131 against and 63 abstentions, states that without lifting current restrictions, Ukraine cannot fully exercise its right to self-defence and remains exposed to attacks on its population and infrastructure.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43118268

Norway, one of the world's largest exporters of oil, now has more electric cars on its roads than petrol-driven vehicles.

Of the 2.8 million private cars registered there, 754,303 are now all-electric, compared with 753,905 that run on petrol, according to new figures from the Norwegian Road Federation.

The Nordic country of 5.5 million people is aiming to become the first nation to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars - by 2025.

Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) have been boosted by tax breaks and other incentives, funded in large part from the money Norway makes out of oil and gas.

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For several months, a detachment of the Italian Air Force (Aeronáutica Militare) has been operating from the Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania as part of the reinforcement of NATO’s military presence in the Baltic region. The Italian presence includes Eurofighter jets, which relieved the unit of the Spanish Air and Space Force detachment.

In addition, the Italian presence in the region is complemented by Eurofighter jets from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), operating from Latvia and also participating in quick reaction alert (QRA) missions, intercepting Russian aircraft. Furthermore, Spanish Air Force F-18 Hornets are stationed in Romania, conducting similar missions in the Black Sea region, operating from the Kogălniceanu Air Base.

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Regarding Italian operations, NATO’s Air Command has reported increased activity from Russian military aircraft in recent weeks, leading to a rise in Italian jet missions. On one occasion, three sorties were carried out in less than 24 hours.

Although not many details have been provided, in one of these incidents, Italian Eurofighters intercepted a MiG-31 from the Russian Aerospace Forces in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. These incidents occur when Russian aircraft conduct flights without a flight plan or fail to follow it, as well as flying with transponders off, which triggers alarms in NATO Control and Surveillance Centers and activates interception protocols.

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The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine found new evidence showing common patterns of torture by Russian authorities against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in occupied Ukrainian territories and in the Russian Federation.

The wide geographic spread of locations and the prevalence of shared patterns in the way torture is committed demonstrate that torture has been used as a common and acceptable practice with a sense of impunity, the Commission said in its latest update to the Human Rights Council today.

The Commission’s further investigation into cases of torture provides evidence that Russian authorities committed torture in the Ukrainian regions where they have taken control of territories. The new evidence reinforces the Commission’s previous finding that torture committed by Russian authorities has been widespread.

https://archive.is/ZwF79

The call comes after Brussels blocked billions in funds to Poland and Hungary due to concerns over judicial reforms and democratic backsliding.

Ukrainian biologist Taras Oleksyk gets emotional remembering what one of his country’s snipers once told him. “If you come to the trenches, who am I going to fight for? Stay. I know how to kill people, but not to educate them. You do.”

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The researcher is at the head of the creation of Ukraine’s largest genetic database, which until now was a “a blank space on the map” in the field. The goal is to collect DNA samples from 20,000 Ukrainians, all harvested during the war. It will serve, for example, for the study genetic conditions of type one diabetes, a chronic disease of unknown causes that affects the pancreas, cause damage to other organs and even lead to death. The project has already amassed the DNA of 10,000 people, thanks to a collaboration with 80 doctors throughout the country, including some who work close to the war’s front lines, and who take samples every time patients come to them seeking medical attention and insulin treatment.

“It’s the country’s largest collection of samples of type one diabetes, DNA and complete genomes, and as far as we know, one of the largest in the world,” says Oleksyk. The scientist was visiting Madrid along with his colleagues Olga Oleksyk and Khrystyna Shchubelka in search of new collaborators at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Olga is Taras’s sister, an endocrinologist, legislator and health ambassador from Ukraine’s southwestern region of Transcarpathia. “In Ukraine, we have 25,000 amputees, not just soldiers, also many civilians, including children. We need support from Europe to obtain protheses and also, rehabilitation training for our doctors,” she explains. Her husband is a former history professor who is now fighting in the war. The number of wounded and of soldiers and civilians affected by post-traumatic stress disorder is overwhelming the region’s abilities, she says.

The capital of Transcarpathia is Uzhhorod. Separated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian mountains, it is the only Ukrainian city that has yet to be bombed by a single Russian missile, and has never been invaded.

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