Europe

The Amsterdam office is the headquarters of the company's operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The French investigation is being carried out by the National Financial Prosecutor's office (PNF), a special unit used for investigations into high-profile white-collar crime.

It relates to suspicions of "covering up serious tax fraud and off-the-books work", according to the PNF.

The company is also under investigation for tax filings for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Paywall? https://archive.is/eRFly

Image via Katapult (Instagram, German)

Data source & longer analysis: https://europeelects.eu/2024/11/04/u-s-election-europeans-would-vote-for-harris-if-they-could/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4448305

Archived link

The largest book publisher in The Netherlands has confirmed it plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate some of its books into English, The Bookseller can exclusively reveal.

Utrecht-headquartered publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) was acquired by Simon & Schuster earlier this year. It was Simon & Schuster’s first acquisition of a non-English-language publisher, which it said at the time would help it access “broader European markets”.

A spokesperson for VBK told The Bookseller: “We are working on a limited experiment with some Dutch authors, for their books to be translated into English language using AI. There will be one editing phase, and authors have been asked to give permission for this.

[...]

Ian Giles, chair of the Translators Association at the Society of Authors (SoA), said: “This is concerning news. Earlier this year, the SoA found that one third of literary translators are already losing work to AI. Where work itself is not lost, translators struggle to increase their prices in the face of the AI challenger. This pressure on translators’ incomes jeopardises our ability to support ourselves in what is a highly precarious industry.”

[...]

The Government of Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, in collaboration with the Government of New Zealand, the European Union, and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), this Friday, 1 November officially launch the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) to empower communities to lead the way in building resilience to climate change.

This initiative amounts to over SBD 130 million (USD 15.6 million) with SBD 75 million (USD 9 million) contributed by New Zealand and SBD 55 million (USD 6.59 m) from the European Union.

The program builds upon Solomon Islands' existing Provincial Capacity Development Fund (PCDF) associated with the Provincial Governance Strengthening Programme (PGSP) which have been implementing performance-based grants for the past 14 years. This has delivered over 1,600 projects at a cost of approximately SBD325 million, creating over 11,000 jobs nationwide.

LoCAL will supplement financing to the PCDF, from the Government of Solomon Islands and others, to support climate change adaptation and resilience of local communities.

Seven French families have filed a lawsuit against social media giant TikTok, accusing the platform of exposing their adolescent children to harmful content that led to two of them taking their own lives at 15, their lawyer said on Monday.

The lawsuit alleges TikTok's algorithm exposed the seven teenagers to videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, lawyer Laure Boutron-Marmion told broadcaster franceinfo.

The families are taking joint legal action in the Créteil judicial court. Boutron-Marmion said it was the first such grouped case in Europe.

"The parents want TikTok's legal liability to be recognised in court", she said, adding: "This is a commercial company offering a product to consumers who are, in addition, minors. They must, therefore, answer for the product's shortcomings."

TikTok, like other social media platforms, has long faced scrutiny over the policing of content on its app.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46598831

The European Commission choose a consortium to deploy the IRIS² satellite constellation, as the European Union seeks its own satellite broadband system to ensure the bloc isn’t reliant on foreign entities such as Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The SpaceRISE consortium is composed of three European satellite network operators: SES SA, Eutelsat SA, and Hispasat S.A. The consortium relies on a Core Team of European subcontractors from all segments of the satcom ecosystem for the delivery of the scope of the concession contract: Thales Alenia Space, OHB, Airbus Defence and Space, Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat and Thales SIX.

The procurement is now entering its final phase towards the signature of the concession agreement scheduled by December 2024, upon which the legal and financial commitment from both parties will be taken.

Some military forces such as those of the U.S. rely on Elon Musk's Starlink, the first large satellite constellation to use low Earth orbit to deliver broadband Internet, but this has been raising concerns of dependency on a private company that could potentially deactivate a critical service.

PM Giorgia Meloni's deal with Albania to offshore migrants from Italy is inhumane & it is worrying that other nations want to follow, writes Tommaso Segantini.

Archived link

In Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, disabled people of all ages are among the most vulnerable.

The Oleshky Children’s Boarding School [in Ukraine] had a reputation for being one of the best of its kind in Ukraine. The state-funded school accepted orphans as well as children diagnosed with varying degrees of mental and physical disabilities. Many of the children fell into both categories, but the school was known for its attentive care and specialized treatments for all its students, regardless of their status.

[…]

The school staff who stayed after Feb. 24 [in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had started] watched in fear as the Russian occupying forces began swiftly implementing administrative control over social institutions, primarily targeting the spheres of education, health care and social security.

Russian military officials, sometimes in plain clothing, other times in uniforms with automatic rifles, attempted several times to get the Oleshky school to “cooperate” with the occupying forces. Sometimes, they made surprise visits, offering donations of food in exchange for information, such as the whereabouts and headcounts of the children.

[...]

“From the beginning of the occupation, there were constant rumors among employees that Ukraine was evacuating us. But all efforts failed at the planning stage,” said Vadym Reutsky, a teacher and sports coach at the school who stayed for the first months of the occupation. Everyone understood that it was only a matter of time before Russia would come to seize full control of the school, he said.

[...]

The deportations were being orchestrated from the highest levels of the Russian government. Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, was in the region of Kherson’s left bank in October and November, where the occupying forces were nervously watching the rapid Ukrainian approach. On Nov. 11, the official Telegram channels of the occupying authorities wrote that Lvova-Belova, who has since been indicted by the International Criminal Court for the forcible deportation of Ukrainian children, instructed the remaining students at the Oleshky boarding school to move to Skadovsk, another occupied small city on the shores of the Black Sea.

After Lvova-Belova made a request to the Ministry of Health in Russia, “they promptly responded, providing 14 ambulances for the evacuation of the children from Oleshky,” a statement read, adding that local official Alla Barkhatnova, the acting Minister of Social Policy and Labor for Kherson Region, took part in the decision. That same day, 56 disabled children and adults were transported by ambulances to the Nadiia Rehabilitation Centre in Skadovsk.

[...]

The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States.

This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU.

The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.

[Edit typo.]

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46537396

With most votes counted Sandu had won 55%, and in a late-night speech she promised to be president for all Moldovans.

Her rival Alexandr Stoianoglo, who was backed by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists, had called for a closer relationship with Moscow.

During the day the president's national security adviser said there had been "massive interference" from Russia in Moldova's electoral process that had "high potential to distort the outcome".

Russia had already denied meddling in the vote, which came a week after another key Eastern European election in Georgia, whose president said it had been a "Russian special operation".

Furniture giant IKEA has agreed to pay 6 million euros ($6.5 million) towards a government fund compensating victims of forced labor under Germany’s communist dictatorship, in a move campaigners hope will pressure other companies to follow.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21548293

Viktor Orban relishes being the EU’s nationalist rebel with close ties to Putin. The US election is now a key moment for the Hungarian strongman.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46369511

Pro-western politicians in Moldova and Georgia have dismissed Russian invasion fears as scare-mongering orchestrated by the Kremlin, and instead stressed that only the west could guarantee long-term stability. They also reported that pro-Russian forces engaged in widespread disinformation and vote-buying campaigns had created a distorted picture of the actual public sentiment.

Still, the voting in Georgia and Moldova suggests the threat of a Russian invasion resonates at least with certain parts of society, especially in conservative, poorer regions where economic progress has lagged and the promise of Europe feels distant and faint.

UK-based company Space Solar is partnering with Reykjavik Energy and Icelandic sustainability initiative Transition Labs to develop a space-based solar power plant that can deliver about 30 megawatts of electricity – potentially enough to power between 1,500 and 3,000 homes – from 2030. The system will collect sunlight in space through solar panels and then transmit it as radio waves at a specific frequency to a ground station, where it will be converted to electricity for the grid.

The satellite is expected to be scalable and quite big. Even if a full version of their CASSIOPeiA power array is not built, we are talking about the heaviest single object in space that is not a space station, and when all the arrays are splayed out, much larger than the International Space Station.

The company aims to have a scaled-up version of the system in space by 2036, which would supply gigawatts of electricity.