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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullinawarned comments, made to a group of State Duma lawmakers, come a week after the Central Bank hiked its key rate to a record-high 21%, taking it even further than the emergency rate of 20% initially introduced after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“With high inflation, economic growth cannot be sustainable,” the Central Bank head told Russian lawmakers. “It’s a dangerous illusion to think that increased inflation can be reliably kept within a certain zone.”

“That’s why we’re not planning to take any shortcuts as we move toward our 4% target,” she added, defending the regulator’s tight monetary policy as an “inevitable reaction to what’s happening in the economy.”

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Seasonally adjusted price growth in September rose to 9.8% year-on-year from 7.5% in August. Core inflation, meanwhile, increased to 9.1% from 7.7% over the same period.

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Russia has faced volatile prices since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering a barrage of Western sanctions and strict countermeasures in a bid to stabilize the economy. So, too, has defense spending soared as Moscow ramps up arms production for the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s draft budget for 2025, passed by lawmakers in its first reading last week, allocates around one-third of total state spending — or 6.3% of GDP — to the military, a figure unprecedented since the days of the Cold War.

Given that so much of the current spending is driven by the state, which is less responsive to higher borrowing costs, analysts fear that raising interest rates may not be an effective measure against inflation.

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Analysts have cautioned that Russia may be entering a period of “inflation without growth,” while also warning the economy is inching closer toward stagflation — when the economy grows slowly and prices shoot up.

In 2022, when China was still paralyzed by zero-COVID lockdowns, we published a note entitled “The Chosen Few,” which highlighted the growing concentration of European foreign direct investment (FDI) in China among a small number of firms, countries, and sectors. Two years on, we take a new look at EU investment in China, assessing what has changed since Beijing abandoned its strict pandemic-era curbs and opened to the world again.

• Completed EU greenfield investment in China rebounded over the past year to reach a record high of €3.6 billion in the second quarter of 2024. This surge came despite growing geopolitical and economic headwinds that led US and Japanese firms to pare back their investments in China. European M&A in China, by contrast, has slowed sharply over the past two years.
• To a greater extent than ever before, EU investments in China are being driven by Germany and its carmakers. German FDI made up 57% of total EU investments in China in the first half of 2024, 62% in 2023, and a record 71% in 2022. This was driven by auto-related FDI, which has accounted for roughly half of all EU investment in China since 2022.
• These investments are deepening the dependency of some of Germany’s largest companies on the Chinese market at a time when economic de-risking from China is a stated policy goal in Berlin and Brussels. As we saw in October, when the German government voted against EU duties on electric vehicle imports from China, these deepening ties can have a major influence on Germany’s policy toward China. This is likely to become a growing source of tension within the EU and between Europe and the United States.
• Several multi-billion-euro investments were announced in the first half of 2024, meaning that completed EU FDI levels are likely to remain high through the end of the year and into 2025. But these levels will probably come down in the years ahead. Much of the EU’s recent investment in China has been driven by a push to localize production, in part to insulate China operations from geopolitical tensions and trade barriers. Once this defensive capacity is built up, and in the absence of a more positive economic outlook, EU investment in China is likely to slow.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21494404

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in the EU have shown one of the steepest drops in decades. Brussels said the data showed that tackling climate change does not need to put the brakes on economic growth. 

The European Environment Agency (EEA) on Thursday reported an 8% fall in EU-wide emissions linked to global warming in 2023, citing a significant decline in fossil fuels and a rise in the use of renewables.

The 27-country bloc is the world's fourth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after India, China and the United States.

Lithuania’s incoming Social Democratic government will target defence spending of at least 3.5% of its gross domestic product, the party’s leader said on Monday.

The Baltic country of 2.9 million people which neighbours Russia will spend about 3% of GDP on its armed forces this year, according to NATO estimates, making it the military alliance’s sixth-biggest spender as a share of its economy.

Three-quarters of Lithuanians think Russia could attack their country in the near future, a Baltijos Tyrimai/ELTA opinion poll found in May, following its attack on Ukraine in 2022.

“Our election manifesto says that it should be not less than 3.5%, and this is unavoidable … security and defence will receive as much money as needed,” Social Democrat leader Vilija Blinkeviciute told reporters after her party’s landslide election victory on Sunday.

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46295901