Category: Western Media

Hungary wants to remove eight individuals from the European Union’s Russia sanctions list and receive fresh guarantees on Ukraine gas transit talks before agreeing to renew the restrictions, EU diplomats said.EU sanctions on Russia – imposed over Moscow’s war against Ukraine – must be renewed every six months by a unanimous vote and Budapest has often used these renewals as bargaining opportunities. On Monday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on Facebook that Budapest would “not consent to rushing ahead” with the…

Austria’s legal fight against Hungarian nuclear reactors built by Russian companies is valid, the adviser to the EU’s top court ruled. Back in 2017, Brussels approved a Budapest request to finance the construction of a new nuclear power plant, Paks II, in the heart of the country. It was to be built by a Russian company, Nizhny Novgorod Engineering. Austria sued and lost a lower court case in 2022. Today, the advocate general of the Court of Justice of the…

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.” “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honour…

Feb 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday filed a rare judicial misconduct complaint, accusing the judge hearing a challenge of President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military of “hostile and egregious misconduct.” The complaint, said U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., violated the judicial code of conduct by disrespecting a Justice Department lawyer and failing to uphold the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary. During two hearings in the case this…

Gal Haimovich, 49, of Israel, was sentenced today to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release for conspiracy to illegally ship aircraft parts and avionics from U.S. manufacturers and suppliers to Russia, including for the benefit of sanctioned Russian airline companies. In addition, Haimovich paid the full forfeiture amount of $2,024,435.44 at today’s sentencing. As part of his plea agreement, Haimovich admitted that his scheme involved deceiving U.S. companies about the true destination of the goods at…

EU countries have agreed on a new round of sanctions against Russia, diplomats said Wednesday, as the bloc looks to maintain pressure on Moscow ahead of the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The wide-ranging package, which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum, will be formally adopted by EU foreign ministers on Monday. “The EU is clamping down even harder on circumvention by targeting more vessels in Putin’s shadow fleet and imposing new import and export…

U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance met the leader of a German far-right party during a visit to Munich on Friday, nine days before a German election and after lecturing European leaders about the state of democracy. Vance met with Alice Weidel, the co-leader and candidate for chancellor of the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, his office said. Mainstream German parties say they won’t work with the party, a stance often referred to as a “firewall.” Polls put Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in second place going into…

By car and on foot, through muddy olive groves and sniper sight lines, tens of thousands of Palestinians in recent weeks have fled Israeli military operations across the northern West Bank — the largest displacement in the occupied territory since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. After announcing a widespread crackdown against West Bank militants on Jan. 21 — just two days after its ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on the restive city of Jenin, as they have dozens…

President Donald Trump this week falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war that has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, causing outrage and alarm in a country that has spent nearly three years fighting back a much larger Russian military. Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “ a dictator without elections” and claimed his support among voters was near rock-bottom. Zelenskyy said Wednesday that the disinformation is coming from Russia, and some of what Trump has said does echo Russia’s own narrative of the conflict….

The relationship between the United States and Ukraine, which has helped Kyiv fend off the Russian invasion for the past three years, appeared on the verge of collapse Wednesday as the presidents of the two countries publicly traded insults. The furor has the potential to leave Ukraine – which is already losing ground along the front line – without the support of its biggest ally, as U.S. President Donald Trump called Ukraine’s future existence into question. The relationship between Mr….

Officials in St. Petersburg announced controversial plans to equip thousands of the city’s surveillance cameras with ethnicity recognition software, the Kommersant business newspaper reported Thursday. Oleg Kapitanov, head of interethnic relations for the St. Petersburg city government, said around 8,000 of the city’s 102,000 cameras will feature the new ethnicity recognition technology. According to him, the system will help combat “the formation of ethnic enclaves” and “prevent social tension.” Kapitanov said the St. Petersburg city government purchased an ethnic recognition software…

YAPP USA Automotive Systems Inc., a corporation with its principal place of business in Michigan, has agreed to pay $14,208,496 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to obtain a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for which it was not eligible. Congress created the PPP in March 2020 to provide emergency financial assistance to Americans suffering from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the PPP, eligible businesses could receive forgivable loans…

The Coast Guard is in the midst of investigating a data breach within its personnel and payroll system that delayed bi-weekly pay for 1,135 service members. The Coast Guard said it temporarily shut down its Direct Access (DA) system as it investigates the breach. News articles won’t speculate, but supposedly enlisted users on certain online forums have said that hackers entered the DA system and changed the direct deposit data of the affected users. Coast Guard members take to social…