europe
Tens of thousands protest Belgium’s tighter COVID-19 rules
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated through central Brussels on Sunday to protest reinforced COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the Belgian government to counter the latest spike in coronavirus cases.
Many among the police estimate of 35,000 at the rally had already left for home when the demonstration descended into violence as several hundred people started pelting police, smashing cars and setting garbage bins ablaze. Police, responded with tear gas and water cannons and sought to restore order as dusk settled on the Belgian capital.
Three police officials and one demonstrator were injured in the clashes. In addition, 42 protesters were detained and two were arrested and charged in the violent spree that followed the march, said police spokesperson Ilse Vande Keere.
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The marchers came to protest the government’s strong advice to get vaccinated and any possible moves to impose mandatory shots.
Shouting “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” and singing the anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao,” protesters lined up behind a huge banner saying “Together for Freedom” and marched to the European Union headquarters. Amid the crowd, the signs varied from far-right insignia to the rainbow flags of the LGBT community.
The World Health Organization said last week that Europe was the hot spot of the pandemic right now, the only region in which COVID-19 deaths were rising. The autumn surge of infections is overwhelming hospitals in many Central and Eastern European nations, including Ukraine, Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Over the past several days, there have been many anti-vaccination marches in European nations as one government after another tightened measures. Dutch police arrested more than 30 people during unrest in The Hague and other towns in the Netherlands on Saturday, following much worse violence the previous night.
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Austria is going into a 10-day national lockdown on Monday for everyone after first imposing a lockdown on the unvaccinated. Christmas markets in Vienna were packed Sunday with locals and tourists taking in the holiday sights before shops and food stalls are forced to close.
Austria begins national lockdown to fight surging infections
Austria went into a nationwide lockdown early Monday to combat soaring coronavirus infections, a step being closely watched by other European governments struggling with national outbreaks that are straining health care systems.
The measures are expected to last for a maximum of 20 days but will be reevaluated after 10. They require people to stay home apart from basic reasons like getting groceries, going to the doctor and exercising. Restaurants and most shops must close and larger events will be canceled. Schools and day care centers can remain open, but parents are encouraged to keep their children home.
Austria hopes to lift the measures on Dec. 13 but may keep a further lockdown on the unvaccinated.
The new lockdown measures kicked in a day after many Austrians hurriedly enjoyed a last day out at coffeehouses and Christmas markets across the country.
Read: Brazil's Amazon deforestation surges to worst in 15 years
Christmas markets across central Vienna were packed Sunday with people eager to buy gifts and enjoy one last round of warm drinks and food. At the Freyung Christmas market in Vienna, Alexandra Ljesevic and her sister Anna sipped mulled wine and punch amid wooden stands and under sparkling holiday lights.
“It’s the last chance to feel the Christmas time and vibes,” Alexandra Ljesevic said.
The sisters said they feel luckier than most, since their jobs won’t be affected by the lockdown. But they’re not optimistic that things will reopen as quickly as authorities hope.
“It would be weird if in 20 days they said, ‘Okay, for vaccinated people, you’re free to go,’ if the hospitals are still overwhelmed,” said Anna Ljesevic. “That’s the only reason why we even need the lockdown.”
Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg also announced Friday that Austria will also introduce a vaccine mandate as of Feb. 1. The details of how the mandate will work aren't yet clear.
In an interview Sunday in the Kurier newspaper, Schallenberg said it’s “sad” that the Austrian government had to resort to a mandate in order to ensure that enough people get vaccinated. Just under 66% of Austria’s 8.9 million people are fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in Western Europe.
Read:Italian Coast Guard rescues 550 migrants from stormy seas
On Saturday, Austria reported 15,297 new infections, after a week in which daily cases topped 10,000. Hospitals, especially those in the hardest hit regions of Salzburg and Upper Austria, are overwhelmed as the number of coronavirus patients rises in intensive care units.
Schallenberg said he and other officials had hoped this summer that a new lockdown would not be necessary and it was a tough decision to impose one that affected vaccinated people.
“That people’s freedoms need to be restricted again is, believe me, also difficult for me to bear,” he said.
The new measures, especially the vaccine mandate, have been met with fierce opposition among some Austrians and vaccine skeptics. A Saturday protest in the capital of Vienna drew 40,000 people, according to police, including members of far-right parties and groups.
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said Sunday that the country's anti-coronavirus protest scene is radicalizing.
Brazil's Amazon deforestation surges to worst in 15 years
The area deforested in Brazil's Amazon reached a 15-year high after a 22% jump from the prior year, according to official data published Thursday.
The National Institute for Space Research’s Prodes monitoring system showed the Brazilian Amazon lost 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest in the 12-month reference period from Aug. 2020 to July 2021. That's the most since 2006.
The 15-year high flies in the face of Bolsonaro government’s recent attempts to shore up its environmental credibility, having made overtures to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and moved forward its commitment to end illegal deforestation at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow this month. The space agency's report, released Thursday, is dated Oct. 27 — before talks in Glasgow began.
Also read: At COP26, over 100 countries pledge to end deforestation
Before Jair Bolsonaro’s term began in Jan. 2019, the Brazilian Amazon hadn’t recorded a single year with more than 10,000 square kilometers of deforestation in over a decade. Between 2009 and 2018, the average was 6,500 square kilometers. Since then, the annual average leapt to 11,405 square kilometers, and the three-year total is an area bigger than the state of Maryland.
“It is a shame. It is a crime,” Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups, told The Associated Press. "We are seeing the Amazon rainforest being destroyed by a government which made environmental destruction its public policy."
Bolsonaro took office with promises to develop the Amazon, and dismissing global outcry about its destruction. His administration has defanged environmental authorities and backed legislative measures to loosen land protections, emboldening land grabbers. This week at a conference in the United Arab Emirates to attract investment, he told the crowd that attacks on Brazil for deforestation are unfair and that most of the Amazon remains pristine.
Brazil's environment ministry didn't immediately respond to an AP email requesting comment on the Prodes data showing higher deforestation.
Also read: Amazon deforestation accelerates by 34.5 pct by July
The state of Para accounted for 40% of deforestation from Aug. 2020 to July 2021, according to the data, the most of any of nine states in the Amazon region. But its year-on-year increase was slight compared to Mato Grosso and Amazonas states, which together accounted for 34% of the the region's destruction. The two states suffered 27% and 55% more deforestation, respectively.
And early data for the 2021-2022 reference period signals further deterioration. The space agency’s monthly monitoring system, Deter, detected higher deforestation year-on-year during both September and October. Deter is less reliable than Prodes, but widely seen as a leading indicator.
“This is the real Brazil that the Bolsonaro government tries to hide with fantastical speeches and actions of greenwashing abroad,” Mauricio Voivodic, international environmental group WWF's executive director for Brazil, said in a statement after release of the Prodes data. “The reality shows that the Bolsonaro government accelerated the path of Amazon destruction.”
Anti-corruption party holds lead in Bulgaria's elections
A newly founded anti-corruption party held a narrow lead in the preliminary vote count from Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections Sunday.
A parallel count conducted by Gallup International gave the centrist We Continue the Change party 26.3% of the votes, leading the center-right opposition GERB party of former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov by just over three percentage points.
READ: Bangladesh receives 2.70 lakh AstraZeneca doses from Bulgaria
Founded only few weeks ago by two Harvard graduates, Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev, the party quickly won support due to their resolute anti-graft actions and pledges to bring transparency, zero tolerance for corruption and reforms to key sectors in the European Union's poorest member.
“We will be the number one political force,” Petkov told reporters after initial results were released. “We will have a majority of 121 MPs in the 240-seat parliament and Bulgaria will have a regular coalition Cabinet.”
It could be days before the final official results are announced. If they confirm the initial counts, Petkov would be handed a mandate to form a new government.
Petkov said his party was open to coalition talks with all the parties that were part of last year’s protests against Boyko Borissov’s government. Investigations by the current caretaker government showed alleged corruption cases.
“Now is the time to show that Bulgaria has embarked on the road of change and there is no turning back,” said Petkov.
After Bulgaria held inconclusive general elections in April and July, many hoped this third attempt to elect 240 lawmakers would result in a government that can lead the country out of its health and economic crises.
READ: Bulgaria arrests 6 soccer fans following racist acts
Five other parties appeared headed to winning spots in the 240-seat chamber, according to the exit poll. They include the ethnic Turkish MRF party with 11.4%, the Socialist Party with 10.4% support, the anti-elite There is Such a People party with 9.3%, the liberal anti-corruption group Democratic Bulgaria with 6.4%, and the nationalist Revival party with 5%.
The vote Sunday for a new parliament and a new president came amid a surge of coronavirus infections. The Balkan country is the least vaccinated in the EU, with less than one-third of its adults fully vaccinated. Bulgaria reported 334 COVID-related deaths last week in a single day, a pandemic record.
The Gallup International exit poll also suggested that President Rumen Radev has a commanding lead in his quest for a second five-year term but will still have to face runner-up Anastas Gerdzhikov in a Nov. 21 runoff as voter turnout remained below the needed 50%.
Radev, a vocal critic of Borissov, said Sunday that he voted for freedom, legality, and justice.
“These are the values I stand for,” he said after casting his ballot. “The stakes are huge and will determine whether the process of consolidating statehood will continue or those acting from behind the scenes will regain institutional power.”
Some 6.7 million people were eligible to vote. The Central Election Commission said preliminary voter turnout was nearly 40%, lower than in previous elections.
Italian Coast Guard rescues 550 migrants from stormy seas
The Italian Coast Guard on Sunday safely brought to shore more than 550 migrants, many of them young men or boys from Egypt, from storm-tossed waters off the southern “toe” of Italy’s mainland, as human traffickers increasingly use a new route.
One rescue began Saturday night and ended early Sunday when the 303 migrants, soaked and shivering, stepped on to the port of Roccella Jonica in the the Calabria region.
Later Sunday, after an Italian customs police boat spotted another fishing vessel in difficulty off Calabria, coast guard crews ferried 250 migrants to the same port, Associated Press journalists in Roccella Jonica reported.
While most migrants seeking to reach Italy in the central Mediterranean depart from Libya or Tunisia, authorities say an increasing number of traffickers’ boats are plying a route that begins in Turkey and ends at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula.
Those rescued from traffickers’ unseaworthy rubber dinghies and wooden boats that depart from North Africa are usually taken to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island, or to ports in Sicily. Those sailing from Turkey are generally taken to Calabria or Puglia in the “heel” of the Italian mainland.
The charity Resqship tweeted Sunday that after it alerted authorities about an overcrowded wooden boat with 100 migrants south of Lampedusa, the Italian coast vessel evacuated them to safety.
In Roccella Jonica, Red Cross volunteers early Sunday handed the migrants plastic clogs, blankets, food and protective face masks as part of COVID-19 precautions. Authorities recently set up a tent structure to serve as temporary housing but it’s only for up to 120 people, so some of the migrants were driven to other shelters.
As of Nov. 12, 57,833 migrants had arrived in Italy by sea this year.
In 2020, more than 31,000 arrived. In 2019, when anti-migrant leader Matteo Salvini used his post as interior minister to try to thwart charity boats from disembarking people they rescued at sea, just under 10,000 arrived.
Poland’s far right demands strong borders in Belarus crisis
Thousands marched in Warsaw on Thursday to mark Poland’s Independence Day, led by far-right groups calling for strong borders, while its troops blocked hundreds of new attempts by migrants to enter the country illegally from neighboring Belarus in a tense standoff.
Security forces patrolled the capital for the parade, which was peaceful, unlike those in recent years that have seen violence by some extremists.
“Today there are not only internal disputes. Today there are also external disputes. Today there is an attack on the Polish border,” march leader Robert Bakiewicz said in a speech, adding that all Poles should support those who are protecting the eastern frontier.
The march was overshadowed by events unfolding along Poland’s border with Belarus, where thousands of riot police, troops and border guards are turning back migrants, many from the Middle East, who are trying to enter the European Union. Makeshift camps have sprung up in forests on the Belarusian side near a crossing at the Polish town of Kuznica, and with temperatures falling and access to the frontier restricted, there are fears of a humanitarian crisis.
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EU officials have accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns in a “hybrid attack” to retaliate for sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime for a harsh internal crackdown on dissent.
With the EU weighing more sanctions on Belarus, Lukashenko threatened to cut off Russian natural gas supplies to Europe that pass through a pipeline in his country. “I would recommend the Poles, Lithuanians and other brainless people to think before they talk,” he said.
The U.N. Security Council discussed the crisis privately but took no action, though six of its Western members condemned the use “of human beings whose lives and well-being have been put in danger for political purposes by Belarus” and called on the international community “to hold Belarus accountable” and “to stop these inhumane actions.”
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, called the EU members’ decision to raise the Belarus-Poland issue in the U.N.’s most powerful body “a total shame.” He said Belarus is not to blame that people who came legally to Belarus want to enter EU countries.
Courts and Warsaw’s liberal Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski had banned the Independence Day march, which celebrates Poland’s statehood, but right-wing authorities in the national government overrode the order and gave the gathering the status of a state ceremony.
The government’s support for the far-right leaders of the march underlined how Poland’s right-wing ruling party wants their backing. It also is engaged in a political fight with the EU over changes to Poland’s judiciary, seen in Brussels as an erosion of democratic norms, along with rhetoric viewed as discriminatory to LGBT groups.
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In 2017, the parade drew tens of thousands and featured white nationalist and antisemitic slogans. The next year, the president, prime minister and other leaders marched the same route as the nationalists.
In seeking to ban the march, Trzaskowski argued that Warsaw, which was razed by Nazi Germany in World War II, is no place for “fascist slogans.”
Groups marched with Poland’s white-and-red flags Thursday, but some also waved the green flags of the National Radical Camp displaying a stylized hand with a sword, a far-right symbol dating to the 1930s.
The standoff near the frontier crossing at Kuznica, 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Warsaw, was on the minds of many at the march, and one banner in Warsaw read: “We Thank the Defenders of Poland’s Borders.”
Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik tweeted that some security forces “will go directly from Warsaw to defend our border with Belarus. When marching, remember this!”
About 15,000 Polish troops have joined riot police and guards at the border. The Belarusian Defense Ministry accused Poland of an “unprecedented” military buildup there, saying that migration control didn’t warrant such a force.
The Polish Defense Ministry said the migrants made a number of attempts to cross the border since Wednesday, as they have all week.
Near the village of Bialowieza, where a few hundred migrants threw debris across the razor-wire fence at Polish troops and then tried to destroy it, shots were fired in the air to deter them, the ministry said. Near the village of Szudzialowo, migrants attacked a soldier in the chest with a tree branch, but he fired two warning shots in the air and was unhurt, the ministry said, adding that the attackers fled deeper into Belarus.
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Since the start of the year, there have been 33,000 attempts to cross the border illegally, with 17,000 in October alone, the border guard service said.
At least eight migrants have died, officials said, and conditions have been getting worse with freezing nighttime temperatures. Video from Russian state media Thursday showed hundreds of migrants pushing and scrambling to get aid that was delivered to them, along with a woman being treated for what the report said was hypothermia.
Mulusew Mamo, a UNHCR representative in Belarus who visited the migrants, called the situation there “catastrophic.”
“And in a day, it will be more catastrophic, I think,” Mamo said, adding that aid is being distributed via the Red Cross and will continue for several days.
The crisis has been brewing since summer, with migrants trying to cross from Belarus to Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Many want to head for Germany, but Finland also is a destination.
Warsaw has taken a hard line, depicting the migrants as dangerous criminals and changing its law to allow the arbitrary rejection of asylum applications, something condemned by the U.N. refugee agency.
But Poland has largely gotten support on the border issue from Europe, facing only mild criticism for pushing the migrants back.
The problem “is not Poland,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. “The problem is Lukashenko and Belarus and its regime, and so Poland has earned our European solidarity in this situation.”
But Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said it was “shocking” to see Europe’s inability to properly handle such a relatively low number of migrants at the Poland-Belarus border.
“A few thousand people at Europe’s Polish border, many of whom have fled some of the worst crises in the world, is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of people displaced to countries that are much poorer elsewhere,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko’s main ally, for the second time in as many days. The Kremlin said they discussed the Poland-Belarus border and the importance of a “quick settlement” along international humanitarian norms.
Merkel’s office said she stressed the crisis was “brought about by the Belarusian regime, which is using defenseless people in a hybrid attack against the European Union.”
Moscow and Minsk have close political and military ties, and Russia sent two nuclear-capable strategic bombers on a training mission over Belarus for a second straight day in a strong show of support.
Lukashenko has emphasized the need to boost military cooperation in the face of what he has described as aggressive actions by NATO, which includes Poland.
The EU is looking at the role some airlines have played in carrying migrants and asylum-seekers to the bloc’s doorstep, and there are reports that it is mulling sanctions against them.
Russia’s national carrier Aeroflot strongly denied any involvement, saying it isn’t conducting any regular or charter flights to Iraq or Syria and didn’t have any between Istanbul and Minsk.
A Turkish official with direct knowledge of the issue said Turkish Airlines would halt selling tickets to Iraqi and Syrian nationals for flights to Minsk as part of measures being considered by Turkey to help resolve the crisis. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue and because he was not authorized to announce company policy.
Iraq’s Deputy Migration Minister Karim al-Nuri told the Russian state news agency Sputnik that his country will help its citizens who want to return from Belarus, working through its embassy in Russia because it doesn’t have one in Belarus.
Climate talks draft agreement expresses 'alarm and concern'
Negotiators at the United Nations climate talks are considering a draft decision that highlights “alarm and concern” about global warming the planet already is experiencing and continues to call on the world to cut about half of its emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2030.
The early version of the cover decision released Wednesday at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, doesn’t provide specific agreements on the three major goals that the U.N. set going into the negotiations.
The draft mentions the need to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels and achieve “net-zero” by mid-century. Doing so requires countries to pump only as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as can be absorbed again through natural or artificial means.
Read: US envoy calls for joint action to tackle climate crisis right now
It urges countries to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels,” but makes no explicit reference to ending the use of oil and gas.
The draft also acknowledges “with regret” that rich nations have failed to live up to their pledge of providing $100 billion a year in financial help by 2020 to help poor nations dead with global warming.
The draft reaffirms the goals set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with a more stringent target of trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) preferred.
Highlighting the challenge of meeting those goals, the document “expresses alarm and concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 C (2 F) of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region.”
Separate draft proposals were also released on other issues being debated at the talks, including rules for international carbon markets and the frequency by which countries have to report on their efforts.
The draft calls on nations that don’t have national goals that would fit with the 1.5 or 2 degree temperature rise limits to come back with stronger targets next year. Depending on the language is interpreted, the provision could apply to most countries. Analysts at the World Resources Institute counted this element of the draft as a win for vulnerable countries.“This is crucial language,’’ WRI International Climate Initiative Director David Waskow said Wednesday. “Countries really are expected and are on the hook to do something in that timeframe to adjust.’’
Read: Obama appeals to young activists to stay in climate fight
In a nod to one of the big issues for poorer countries, the draft vaguely “urges” developed nations to compensate developing countries for “loss and damage,” a phrase that some rich nations don’t like.
Whatever comes out of the meeting in Glasgow has to be unanimously approved by nearly 200 nations attending the negotiations.
A lot of negotiating and decision-making is to come in the next three or possibly four days. The deadline for the talks is Friday, but climate talks often go past planned end dates. The cover decisions provide more than anything the parameters for the issues that need to be resolved in the last few days of the annual U.N. conference, Waskow said.
Europe bolsters pioneering tech rules with help from Haugen
European lawmakers have pioneered efforts to rein in big technology companies and are working to strengthen those rules, putting them ahead of the United States and other parts of world that have been slower to regulate Facebook and other social media giants facing increasing blowback over misinformation and other harmful content that can proliferate on their platforms.
While Europe shares Western democratic values with the U.S., none of the big tech companies — Facebook, Twitter, Google — that dominate online life are based on the continent, which some say allowed European officials to make a more clear-eyed assessment of the risks posed by tech companies largely headquartered in Silicon Valley or elsewhere in the U.S.
But that’s only part of the explanation, said Jan Penfrat, senior policy adviser at digital rights group EDRi.
Read:Could Facebook sue whistleblower Frances Haugen?
The question, Penfrat said, should also be: “Why is the U.S. so much lagging behind? And that may be because of the immense pressure from the homegrown companies” arguing to officials in Washington that stricter rules would hobble them as they compete with, for example, Chinese rivals.
Drawing up a new package of digital rules for the 27-nation European Union is getting a boost from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who answered questions Monday in Brussels from a European Parliament committee. It's the latest sign of interest in her revelations that Facebook prioritized profits over safety after the former data scientist testified last month to the U.S. Senate and released internal documents.
If the EU rules are done right, “you can create a game-changer for the world, you can force platforms to price in societal risk to their business operations so the decisions about what products to build and how to build them is not purely based on profit maximization," Haugen told lawmakers. “And you can show the world how transparency, oversight and enforcement should work.”
Since Haugen left Facebook, the company has renamed itself Meta as it focuses its business on a virtual reality world called the metaverse.
“I’m shocked they picked this name,” she said. In the book that inspired the term, “the metaverse is a dystopian thing, that people’s lives are so unpleasant that they need to hide in the system for half of their day.”
Haugen has been on a European tour, meeting lawmakers and regulators in the EU and United Kingdom who are seeking her input as they work on stricter rules for online companies amid concerns that social media can do everything from magnify depression in teens to incite political violence. A wider global movement to crack down on digital giants is taking cues from Europe and gaining momentum in the U.S. and Australia.
Europe has been a trailblazer in applying more scrutiny for big tech companies, most famously by slapping Google with multibillion-dollar fines in three antitrust cases. Now, the European Union is working on a sweeping update of its digital rulebook, including requiring companies to be more transparent with users on how algorithms make recommendations for what shows up on their feeds and forcing them to swiftly take down illegal content such as hate speech.
The rules are aimed at preventing bad behavior, rather than punishing past actions, as the EU has largely done so far.
France and Germany also are bringing in legislation requiring social media platforms to take down illegal content quicker, though these rules would be superseded by the EU ones, which are expected to take effect no earlier than 2023.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has only recently started cracking down on big tech companies, with regulators fining Facebook and YouTube over allegations of privacy violations and the government suing over their huge share of the market in the last couple of years. American lawmakers have proposed measures to protect kids online and get at the algorithms used to determine what shows up on feeds, but they all face a long road to passing.
While Haugen’s testimony and the documents she has provided have shed light on how Facebook’s systems work and spurred efforts in the U.S., European lawmakers may not be that surprised by what she has to say.
Read:Ex-Facebook manager criticizes company, urges more oversight
“The fact that Facebook is disseminating polarizing content more than other kinds of content is something that people like me have been saying for years,” said Alexandra Geese, a European Union lawmaker with the Green party. “But we didn’t have any evidence to prove it.”
European lawmakers have been interested in digging in to algorithms, as they work on requiring platforms to be more transparent with users on how artificial intelligence makes recommendations on what content people see.
“It’s rather about looking under the hood and regulating the kind of mechanisms that a company, a platform established to disseminate content or to direct people down rabbit holes into extremist groups,” Geese said. What Haugen is doing is “shifting the focus, and I think this is something that many other people before didn’t see.”
In the U.K., which left the European Union last year, the government also is working on raft of digital regulations, including an online safety bill that calls for a regulator to ensure tech companies comply with rules requiring them to remove dangerous or harmful content or face big financial penalties.
For the European Union, there’s still a lot of wrangling over the final details of the rules, two packages known as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which the EU Commission hopes to get approved next year.
Free speech campaigners and digital rights activists worry that EU rules requiring platforms to swiftly remove harmful content will lead to overzealous deletion of material that isn't illegal. In a bid to balance free speech requirements, users will be given the chance to complain about what content is removed.
In London, there's been a similar debate over how to define harmful but illegal content.
Both the EU and U.K. rules call for hefty fines worth up to 10% of a company's annual global turnover, which for the biggest tech companies could amount to billions of dollars in revenue.
Migrants aided by Belarus try to storm border into Poland
Hundreds if not thousands of migrants sought to storm the border from Belarus into Poland on Monday, cutting razor wire fences and using branches to try and climb over them. The siege escalated a crisis along the European Union's eastern border that has been simmering for months.
Poland's interior ministry said it had rebuffed the illegal invasion and claimed the situation was under control. The Defense Ministry posted a video showing an armed Polish officer using a chemical spray through a fence at men who were trying to cut the razor wire. Some migrants threw objects at police. Video footage from Belarusian media showed people using long wooden poles or branches to try to get past a border fence as police helicopters circled overhead.
Defense Ministry video taken later Monday showed the migrants settling in for the night by the border, having put up scores of tents and cooking meals.
“A coordinated attempt to massively enter the territory of the Republic of Poland by migrants used by Belarus for the hybrid attacks against Poland has just begun,” a spokesman for Poland's security forces, Stanislaw Zaryn, said in a statement.
Noting that it's also NATO's eastern border, Zaryn stressed that the “large groups of migrants ... are fully controlled by the Belarusian security services and army.” He accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of acting to destabilize Poland and other EU countries to pressure the bloc into dropping its sanctions on Minsk. Those sanctions were put into place after Belarus cracked down brutally on democracy protests.
Read: Over 2,000 migrants march out of southern city in Mexico
Piotr Mueller, Poland's government spokesperson, said 3,000 to 4,000 migrants were next to the Polish border on the Belarusian side.
Polish border officials said the border crossing in Kuznica, in the northeast, will be closed early Tuesday.
There was no way to independently verify what was happening. Journalists have limited ability to operate in Belarus and a state of emergency in Poland is keeping reporters and human rights workers out of the border area.
The massing of people at the border appeared to rev up the crisis that has being going on for months in which the autocratic regime of Belarus has encouraged migrants from the Mideast and elsewhere to illegally enter the European Union, at first through Lithuania and Latvia and now primarily through Poland.
Anton Bychkovsky, spokesman for Belarus’ State Border Guard Committee, told The Associated Press that the migrants at the border are seeking to “exercise their right to apply for refugee status in the EU.” Bychkovsky insisted they “are not a security threat.”
But the massive group was viewed as a threat by Poland and other European countries, including Germany — the main destination for many. Steffen Seibert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, told reporters Monday that “the Belarusian regime is acting as a human trafficker.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on the bloc's 27 nations to approve extended sanctions on the Belarusian authorities “responsible for this hybrid attack.”
She said two top EU officials — EU Commission vice president Margaritis Schinas and EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell — will travel to the main countries of origin for the migrants to “ensure that they act to prevent their own nationals from falling into the trap set by the Belarusian authorities.”
The EU said it hoped that Poland would finally accept help from Frontex, the bloc’s border agency, a step that Poland’s ruling nationalists have so far refused to do. Frontex would not comment Monday on the border situation.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price expressed concern “with disturbing images and reports emanating from the Belarus-Poland border” and stressed that the U.S. “strongly condemns the Lukashenko regime’s political exploitation and coercion of vulnerable people and the regime’s callous and inhumane facilitation of irregular migration flows across its borders.”
He said the U.S. was calling on “the regime to immediately halt its campaign of orchestrating and coercing irregular migrant flows across its borders into Europe" and warned that if the regime “refuses to respect its international obligations and commitments ... we will continue to pressure Lukashenko and will not lessen our calls for accountability."
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Twitter that more than 12,000 soldiers have been deployed to the border and a volunteer Territorial Defense force was put on alert. He also posted video footage of what appeared to be a large group of migrants in Belarus, near Kuznica.
Polish ministers held an emergency meeting on the border crisis, with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki writing on Facebook that Poland's border is “sacred” and “not just a line on the map."
Read: Ransomed and beaten: Migrants face abuse in Libyan detention
Poland's deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jablonski held talks with Iraqi charge d'affaires Hussein al-Safi on ways of ending the migration crisis and thanked Iraq for having Belarus close its consulates in Baghdad and Irbil that were giving tourist visas to migrants.
Meanwhile, in Poland's EU neighbor Lithuania, officials were preparing for the possibility of a similar incursion, with the Interior Ministry proposing to declare an emergency situation.
“We are getting ready for all possible scenarios,” said Rustamas Liubajevas, the head of Lithuania's border guards.
Since the summer, Poland and Lithuania have seen thousands of migrants from the Mideast and Africa trying to cross into the EU. Poland has sought to block the attempts or send those they catch back into Belarus.
Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich told the AP that the Moscow-backed Lukashenko regime seemed to be trying to use the migrants “to scare” the EU.
“The largest attack of migrants on EU borders is taking place three days after Belarus and Russia signed a new agreement on military cooperation. The Kremlin is at least aware of the details of what’s happening,” Karbalevich said.
German court sentences mother to life for killing her 5 kids
A 28-year-old mother in Germany was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the murder of five of her six children at their home in the western city of Solingen, German news agency dpa reported.
The regional court in Wuppertal established the particular gravity of the crime in its verdict. In most cases, such a finding rules out release from prison after 15 years, the amount of time often served by people given live sentences in Germany.
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The children - Melina, Leonie, Sophie, Timo and Luca - were killed in September 2020. Prosecutors said their mother first sedated the youngsters and then either drowned or suffocated them, dpa reported. The children ranged in age from 1 to 8.
Prosecutors think a photo the woman's ex-partner sent showing him with a new companion prompted the killings. The mother had written back to the ex-partner that he would never see his children again, dpa reported.
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The woman sent a sixth child, her eldest, to stay with his grandmother before the killings. She then tried to kill herself by jumping in front of a train at the Duesseldorf railway station and suffered serious, but not life-threatening injuries.