Russia is building up forces for a confrontation with NATO, Latvian intel says
submitted by https://scribe.disroot.org/u/randomname
Russia is building up its forces and combat capabilities for a confrontation with NATO, notes the Latvian Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB) in its report for 2024.
In the public part of the report, the SAB pointed out that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European countries face a new but increasingly significant threat – sabotage and physical attacks against targets in Europe organized by Russian intelligence and security services.
In 2024, this trend had intensified significantly, and Russian organised sabotage is affecting more and more European countries. The new trend of Russian attacks confirms that Russia is already practically in direct confrontation with western countries, SAB concluded in its report.
According to the bureau, the current goal of the Russian intelligence and security services is to improve their ability to organize sabotage in Europe and is part of Russia’s preparations for a possible military confrontation with NATO in the long term.
[…]
If the war in Ukraine were to be “frozen” and the Russian armed forces no longer suffered significant military losses in active hostilities, they could, for a period of up to five years, implement military augmentation plans in the direction of the north-eastern flank of NATO, including the Baltic, SAB concluded.
In such a case, the Russian military threat to NATO would increase substantially, the bureau stressed.
[…]
The SAB is one of the three Latvian state security institutions that carries out intelligence and counter-intelligence, protection of classified information in accordance with the procedure established by law, as well as carries out and controls the exchange of classified information with international organizations.
https://bnn-news.com/sab-russia-is-building-up-forces-for-a-confrontation-with-nato-265024
Technically rulesexual
submitted by https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/will_steal_your_username
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/5764c534-8356-4951-bd35-b3bc669d8d97.webp
Knick in der Kurve: Lebenserwartung in Europa steigt kaum noch
submitted by https://feddit.org/u/D_a_X
https://www.scinexx.de/news/medizin/knick-in-der-kurve-lebenserwartung-in-europa-steigt-kaum-noch/
Trump is living in a Russian-made 'disinformation space,' says Ukraine's Zelenskyy
submitted by https://lemmy.world/u/MicroWave
Summary
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Donald Trump of living in a “Russian-made disinformation space” due to his administration’s talks with Kremlin officials.
He urged Trump’s team to be “more truthful” after Trump blamed Kyiv for the war and downplayed U.S. aid contributions.
Zelenskyy’s remarks came as U.S. envoy Keith Kellogg visited Kyiv amid shifting U.S. policy on Russia. Meanwhile, European leaders, feeling sidelined by U.S.-Russia talks, held emergency meetings.
Zelenskyy canceled a Saudi Arabia trip in protest.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kellogg-zelenskyy-437f4c8fa4531059007dd3ab00c23458
Why do people from Western societies always seem to complain?
submitted by https://lemmy.world/u/open_mind
Hi, I’m 21/male from Germany and to me it seems like people here are constantly negative and complaining compared to people from other/non-Western countries who seem way more chill.
I assume this is probably the worst here in Germany since this is also a stereotype about Germans that they constantly complain about things and in my opinion this is very true. But I would say I’ve also noticed this from other western countries, maybe not as extreme but for example in America people also seem to be pretty hateful and seem to make a drama out of everything (at least from what I can tell on the internet).
I just wonder why these people unnecessarily spread this negativity because in my opinion here in these western 1st world countries we have so much luxury compared to other places. For example other countries have wars, people live in terror and extreme injustice/corruption, people starve to death, get abused, raped and tortured and need to seek refuge in other countries. But we complain that eggs are too expensive and that we have too many migrants, which goes so far that America is deporting all illegal migrants including those who might’ve fled from the things mentioned earlier such as violence and rape.
Why do people waste all this time with complaining and being negative if they could use this time to be grateful, enjoy life and make the world a better place? To me this seems like people are destroying their own life and make it unnecessarily harder/unhappy with that behavior. I think I’m noticing this particularly in older people including my parents. It almost feels like they’re unable to be positive and only know how to complain.
nout worse than seeing norwich
submitted by https://feddit.uk/u/flamingos
Ocasio-Cortez says Vance ‘lied to the world’ about free speech
submitted by https://lemmy.world/u/MicroWave
Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused J.D. Vance of hypocrisy on free speech, citing Trump administration threats against lawmakers.
In a post on X, she said, “@JDVance, you lied to the world in Munich,” referencing his claim that the U.S. values free speech.
She pointed to “border czar” Tom Homan’s push for a criminal probe into her immigrant rights webinar.
Vance, speaking in Munich, criticized European censorship, calling it election interference. AOC warned of authoritarian tactics aimed at silencing dissent.
Trump says he will introduce 25% tariffs on autos, pharmaceuticals and chips.
submitted by https://ponder.cat/u/Cat
Daily bunny no.2870 is an iPad kid
submitted by https://lemmings.world/u/bunnybot
Two small bunnies play a very simple casual game on a large tablet. One bunny is playing, the other watching, and the game involves popping balloons on the screen. Next to them, an older bunny caretaker is reading a book (it is “Moby Dick”.)
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wf7nfy2us3h5gpa7zfettmzl/post/3liivyiz63c2u
German trains are less punctual than Britain’s ‘broken’ railways
submitted by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/cyrano
Tap for article# German trains are less punctual than Britain’s ‘broken’ railways
## Olaf Scholz mocked UK trains. FT analysis of 1.9bn data points show they are more reliable than Germany’s network
Germany’s rail problems have become so bad that Deutsche Bahn’s intercity service is less punctual than even the worst operator in Britain, a country the German chancellor mocked for its “broken tracks and bad trains”.
Olaf Scholz last week dismissed the idea of privatising Germany’s https://www.ft.com/rail
system in a debate for Germany’s snap elections, arguing that it would “end as badly as in England, where nothing works any more”.
But Financial Times analysis of railway data shows Germany’s state-owned rail group Deutsche Bahn consistently delivering one of the least reliable services in central Europe — and even when compared with the UK network, which is routinely criticised for poor performance at home and abroad.
About 72 per cent of Deutsche Bahn’s intercity trains arrived within 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time in the year to January 2025, compared with 78 per cent of British long distance trains, according to the FT analysis.
Any interaction with the German rail network is also one of the biggest factors affecting the punctuality of long-distance rail travel in central Europe.
Services from https://www.ft.com/germany
to Amsterdam, for instance, are delayed by an average of almost 13 minutes, while trains coming to the city from elsewhere are typically within two minutes of their scheduled arrival time.
The poor state of German trains has become a symbol for the country’s vast investment backlog and a top theme in the federal elections on February 23. Politicians have debated how to fix crumbling roads, neglected railways, housing shortages and depleted armed forces.
Germany and the UK use different definitions for punctuality. To allow for a direct comparison, the FT used detailed German rail network statistics collected by the websites https://bahnvorhersage.de/
and Zugfinder.
The analysis is based on more than 1.9bn train arrivals at stations that were tracked by the websites from February 2024 until the end of January 2025, amounting to over 5mn per day.
The data paints a picture of Deutsche Bahn, which runs about 95 per cent of all long-distance trains in Germany, struggling to meet even basic service targets.
While just 37 per cent of German long-distance trains arrived with a delay of less than 60 seconds, even Britain’s worst performing train operator — Avanti West Coast — met this service level in 41 per cent of all cases. The UK average is 69 per cent.
About a fifth of intercity trains in Germany were delayed by more than 15 minutes, almost twice the share at Avanti West Coast and 10 times as much as in the UK overall.
The performances of the rail networks in both the UK and Germany lag far behind some of their European peers. In Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, punctuality consistently exceeds 90 per cent.
Germany’s neighbours also suffer from Deutsche Bahn’s patchy performance, as its delayed trains have knock-on effects for timetables across central Europe.
In Basel’s central station, trains originating in Germany arrive with an average delay of more than 12 minutes — 12 times higher than those coming from elsewhere.
The Swiss network, renowned for its punctuality, has resorted to stopping some late-arriving German services at the border to prevent them disrupting local operations.
Deutsche Bahn told the FT that infrastructure was “the key to more punctual railways”, adding that 80 per cent of all delays were caused by the poor state of its network. The company described its infrastructure as “too crowded, too old, and too prone to disruptions”.
As a positive example, Deutsche Bahn pointed to the new high-speed track between Berlin and Munich, where 82.5 per cent of all trains in 2024 arrived within 10 minutes of their schedule.
For decades, Germany skimped on maintenance and infrastructure upgrades as successive governments put a higher priority on fixing roads and balancing budgets.
According to data by Pro-Rail Alliance, a German railways lobby group, the German government in 2023 spent just €115 per citizen on railway infrastructure, compared with three times that amount in Austria and four times in Switzerland.
Andreas Geissler, a transport policy expert at Pro-Rail Alliance, told the FT that investment surged to €190-€210 per citizen in 2024. Over the past 15 years on average the investment stood at just €73 per citizen.
Since 1995, when the government started to prepare for a privatisation that was later shelved, 12 per cent of the track network has been axed while passenger traffic is up by 50 per cent and cargo traffic has risen by 90 per cent.
Poorly designed funding laws made matters worse. Deutsche Bahn was long required to fund maintenance work with its annual budgets, while renewal and extension was paid for by the federal government.
“This created incentives not to properly maintain kit, but to run it down and then replace it at the governments’ expense,” said one person familiar with the matter, adding that this issue was only recently addressed.
More than half of all the interlockings — a type of signalling apparatus — need to be improved, with some that date back a century to the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
In Frankfurt, one of Germany’s main railway hubs, a critical bridge across the river Main close to the European Central Bank has been labelled beyond repair. Built in 1913 and quickly repaired after it was damaged in the final days of second world war, it has now been declared unsafe for pedestrians. It will take years to build a replacement.
Deutsche Bahn has labelled 16 per cent of all German railways infrastructure as “poor”, “deficient” or worse. The investment backlog that needs to be dealt with grew by €2bn in 2023 to €92bn, according to Deutsche Bahn estimates.
Even a 74 per cent surge in federal investment in the railways infrastructure in 2024 to €16.9bn was unlikely to turn the tide, according to an insider who added that this push was only expected to stop further decay.
Friedrich Merz, the centre-right leader likely to be Germany’s next chancellor, has said he wants to split the operation of the network from the operation of the trains — a move reminiscent to UK rail privatisation in the 1990s.
But Merz has not committed to provide the billions that Deutsche Bahn says it needs by 2027. A person with deep knowledge of the investment backlog in the German railways network told the FT reforming the structure “would not improve the punctuality of a single train”.
https://www.ft.com/content/d3b6e6b5-eddb-4230-b866-932d284cef9c
A quarter of US shoppers have dumped favorite stores over political stances
submitted by https://lemmy.ca/u/Sunshine
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/18/shoppers-political-boycotts-spending-patterns-poll
USA potentially switching to absolute executive power
submitted by https://feddit.org/u/CBYX
Bear with the slightly extreme wording of the copy-paste below from Reddit - it’s actually very similar energy to the actual Executive Order if you want to read the direct source instead.
This Executive Order does the following:
❧ All federal agencies, including independent regulatory commissions, are now subject to direct White House control.
❧ Regulations cannot be issued without presidential approval.
❧ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) can now withhold funding from independent agencies if they don’t align with White House priorities.
❧ All federal employees must follow the President’s and Attorney General’s interpretation of the law, eliminating legal independence.
❧ A White House Liaison is to be installed in every independent regulatory agency to enforce direct presidential control.
⚠️ This is the biggest executive power grab in U.S. history. ⚠️
This formally ends the concept of an “independent” regulatory agency, dismantling one of the last barriers to absolute executive power.
📍 This order effectively erases the last major restraints on executive power. 📍 The federal government no longer operates with checks and balances. 📍 Regulations and laws are now dictated solely by the President. 📍 If left unchecked, this is the moment the U.S. ceases to function as a democratic republic.
1️⃣ The President Now Controls All Regulatory Agencies
✅ The SEC, FTC, FCC, and FEC are no longer independent.
The Stock Market is now subject to White House control, enabling insider trading, favoritism, and targeting of political opponents. Antitrust laws can be selectively enforced, allowing administration-friendly monopolies to expand unchecked. Political opponents in the tech sector, media, or finance can be targeted with regulatory action while allies are protected. Elections are now influenced by direct White House oversight of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
✅ The FDA, EPA, and consumer protection agencies are fully politicized.
Drug approvals, food safety regulations, and environmental policies can be rewritten for political or corporate interests. Climate change regulations can be erased overnight. Scientific research is now subject to White House approval before public release.
🚨 Implication: There is no longer any neutral enforcement of economic, environmental, or election laws. Everything is now dictated by political loyalty.
2️⃣ The White House Can Block Agency Budgets or Direct Funds Elsewhere
✅ The OMB can now adjust funding allocations for independent agencies.
This gives the President the power to defund agencies without needing Congress. Regulatory agencies that challenge presidential policies will be quietly strangled of resources. Agencies loyal to the President will receive full funding—even illegally. 🚨 Implication: Congress no longer controls federal spending on regulatory enforcement. The executive branch can choke out opposition agencies and reward allies.
3️⃣ The President & Attorney General Have Final Say on All Legal Interpretations ✅ All federal employees must follow White House interpretations of the law.
The Attorney General’s opinions override agency lawyers, inspectors general, and independent counsel. Agencies cannot adopt their own interpretations of legal statutes—everything must align with the President’s views. The President can rewrite federal legal interpretations overnight. 🚨 Implication: Legal consistency is gone. Agencies cannot push back against corrupt, illegal, or unconstitutional directives because the President’s interpretation is the only interpretation allowed.
4️⃣ Installing White House Liaisons in All Regulatory Agencies ✅ A “White House Liaison” will be placed in every independent agency.
This ensures constant presidential oversight of daily operations. These liaisons will report agency actions back to the White House and enforce political compliance. Agency directors will no longer have the ability to act without White House approval.
🚨 Implication: There is now a direct enforcement arm inside every regulatory body. Even agencies that resist presidential control will be internally monitored and controlled.
📍 Every regulatory body—from financial markets to environmental protections—is now politicized. 📍 Congress no longer controls federal funding—agencies must obey the White House or risk defunding. 📍 The President’s legal interpretations override all agency autonomy, eliminating independent enforcement of federal laws. 📍 The federal bureaucracy, once designed to be resistant to corruption, is now completely subject to presidential loyalty.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/
USA potentially switching to absolute executive power
submitted by https://feddit.org/u/CBYX
Bear with the slightly extreme wording of the copy-paste below from Reddit - it’s actually very similar energy to the actual Executive Order if you want to read the direct source instead.
This Executive Order does the following:
❧ All federal agencies, including independent regulatory commissions, are now subject to direct White House control.
❧ Regulations cannot be issued without presidential approval.
❧ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) can now withhold funding from independent agencies if they don’t align with White House priorities.
❧ All federal employees must follow the President’s and Attorney General’s interpretation of the law, eliminating legal independence.
❧ A White House Liaison is to be installed in every independent regulatory agency to enforce direct presidential control.
⚠️ This is the biggest executive power grab in U.S. history. ⚠️
This formally ends the concept of an “independent” regulatory agency, dismantling one of the last barriers to absolute executive power.
📍 This order effectively erases the last major restraints on executive power. 📍 The federal government no longer operates with checks and balances. 📍 Regulations and laws are now dictated solely by the President. 📍 If left unchecked, this is the moment the U.S. ceases to function as a democratic republic.
1️⃣ The President Now Controls All Regulatory Agencies
✅ The SEC, FTC, FCC, and FEC are no longer independent.
The Stock Market is now subject to White House control, enabling insider trading, favoritism, and targeting of political opponents. Antitrust laws can be selectively enforced, allowing administration-friendly monopolies to expand unchecked. Political opponents in the tech sector, media, or finance can be targeted with regulatory action while allies are protected. Elections are now influenced by direct White House oversight of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
✅ The FDA, EPA, and consumer protection agencies are fully politicized.
Drug approvals, food safety regulations, and environmental policies can be rewritten for political or corporate interests. Climate change regulations can be erased overnight. Scientific research is now subject to White House approval before public release.
🚨 Implication: There is no longer any neutral enforcement of economic, environmental, or election laws. Everything is now dictated by political loyalty.
2️⃣ The White House Can Block Agency Budgets or Direct Funds Elsewhere
✅ The OMB can now adjust funding allocations for independent agencies.
This gives the President the power to defund agencies without needing Congress. Regulatory agencies that challenge presidential policies will be quietly strangled of resources. Agencies loyal to the President will receive full funding—even illegally. 🚨 Implication: Congress no longer controls federal spending on regulatory enforcement. The executive branch can choke out opposition agencies and reward allies.
3️⃣ The President & Attorney General Have Final Say on All Legal Interpretations ✅ All federal employees must follow White House interpretations of the law.
The Attorney General’s opinions override agency lawyers, inspectors general, and independent counsel. Agencies cannot adopt their own interpretations of legal statutes—everything must align with the President’s views. The President can rewrite federal legal interpretations overnight. 🚨 Implication: Legal consistency is gone. Agencies cannot push back against corrupt, illegal, or unconstitutional directives because the President’s interpretation is the only interpretation allowed.
4️⃣ Installing White House Liaisons in All Regulatory Agencies ✅ A “White House Liaison” will be placed in every independent agency.
This ensures constant presidential oversight of daily operations. These liaisons will report agency actions back to the White House and enforce political compliance. Agency directors will no longer have the ability to act without White House approval.
🚨 Implication: There is now a direct enforcement arm inside every regulatory body. Even agencies that resist presidential control will be internally monitored and controlled.
📍 Every regulatory body—from financial markets to environmental protections—is now politicized. 📍 Congress no longer controls federal funding—agencies must obey the White House or risk defunding. 📍 The President’s legal interpretations override all agency autonomy, eliminating independent enforcement of federal laws. 📍 The federal bureaucracy, once designed to be resistant to corruption, is now completely subject to presidential loyalty.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/
Federal Judge Blocks Trump From Firing Merit Systems Protection Board Chair
submitted by https://lemmy.ml/u/usernamesAreTricky
Washington judge blocks Trump’s gender-affirming care ban, says it's unconstitutional in multiple ways
submitted by https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/leaf
Magic: The Gathering YouTuber raises Half a Million for Trans Lifeline
submitted by https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/leaf