The primary purpose of Xi Jinping's three-day visit to Hungary might be to ensure that Hungary can help China gain market share in the EU, as Beijing and Budapest prepare to sign a total of 16 bilateral agreements.

The Chinese president has arrived in Budapest late Wednesday, in the third and last stop of his European visit.

During his three-day stay, Xi Jinping and his delegation are expected to conclude a series of economic agreements with Budapest, as China sees Hungary as an important bridgehead in conquering European markets: among other things, Chinese companies are building electric car and battery factories.

The two sides are expected to sign 16 agreements, while another two are still being negotiated. The deals include Hungarian infrastructural developments and railway, road and energy projects related to Beijing's top-priority Belt and Road Initiative.

Students have been camping in the building protesting university's ties with Israel

The senate of the University of Barcelona (UB) has approved a motion in support of Palestine on Wednesday.
The motion calls for the university to break all institutional and academic ties with Israel, including centers, research institutes, companies, and other institutions in the country, until what they refer to as genocide stops.
The result was 59 votes in favor of the motion, 23 against and 37 abstentions.
The students protesting at the university celebrated the news of their motion being approved.
[...]

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel said it would pull out of an AI project it was working on in collaboration with Israeli institutions, amid the Gaza war.

A Belgian university said on Wednesday that it is planning to end its collaboration with two Israeli institutions on an artificial intelligence project.

It comes after a negative assessment by Vrije Universiteit Brussel's ethics commission, the Belga News Agency reported.

The university said it would start discussions with the EU Commission, which is funding the research project, in order to pull out.

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel said on Tuesday that it wished to achieve greater transparency over its work with Israeli organisations given the "unacceptable escalation of the conflict in the Middle East".
[...]

"I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South," one expert said.

Thirty-two people were arrested as Dutch police broke up a Gaza war protest at the University of Amsterdam, in a second day of unrest over the conflict. Police said the offences included public violence, vandalism and assault.

Video captured by Reuters appeared to show officers in riot gear striking protesters and police knocking down makeshift barricades of desks, bricks and wooden pallets that seemingly had been used to set off fire extinguishers in hopes of pushing them back. The footage appeared to also show police dragging several students away as hundreds shouted: “Shame on you!”

About 30 miles south, at Utrecht University, students occupied a building in protest while in Belgium, dozens of students have continued to occupy Ghent University in a three-day protest that has fused demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.

In Spain, demonstrations and encampments continued at several campuses across the country. At the University of Valencia, where tents were set up 11 days ago, about 50 people are calling on Spain to sever ties with Israel. At Madrid’s Complutense University about 200 students crammed into 80 tents in an encampment launched this week. Similar initiatives have sprung up in Barcelona and the Basque Country.

The death toll from what authorities call the worst climate disaster ever to strike southern Brazil has risen to 90, after ferocious rain flooded huge stretches of Rio Grande do Sul state, displacing more than 155,000 people and forcing the closure of the main airport in the country’s fifth biggest city.

Link O Sul, Br news

Europeans — especially Germans — are increasingly keen on curbing immigration and are less focused on climate change, according to a study by a Danish-based think tank.

Europe has seen a sharp rise in the share of people who say that reducing immigration should be a top government priority, according to a study published Wednesday. Germany is topping the list.

At the same time, there was less desire to prioritize fighting climate change in the same countries, according to the survey commissioned by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation think tank.

Nearly half of German respondents put focus on migration

Since 2022, an increasing number of Europeans say their government should prioritize "reducing immigration," rising from just under 20% to a quarter.

Meanwhile, concern about climate change was on the slide across the continent.

"In 2024, for the first time, reducing immigration is a greater priority for most Europeans than fighting climate change," the report said.

"Nowhere is this reversal more striking than in Germany, which now leads the world with the highest share of people who want their government to focus on reducing immigration — topping all other priorities — and now nearly twice as high as fighting climate change," the report read.

Recent assaults spark national debate over Germany’s increasingly raw political climate, with some seeing echoes of its dark history.

One politician ruthlessly beaten while hanging campaign posters. Another assaulted in a public library. Yet another, pushed and spat on by suspects who were part of a group of people allegedly calling out “Heil Hitler.”

A string of violent attacks on politicians in Germany — including a brutal assault on a member of the European Parliament in Dresden — has shaken many and sparked a national debate over the increasingly raw political climate in the country, with some drawing comparisons to the kind of political violence that accompanied the rise of the Nazis.

Recent attacks on politicians are “reminiscent of the darkest chapter in German history,” said Hendrik Wüst, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, in an interview on German public television.

Labor unions called for people to strike against President Javier Milei's austerity agenda after the lower house of Argentina's Congress approved a downsized version of Milei's economic overhaul package in April.

Major trade unions in Argentina have called for a countrywide general strike on Thursday for the second time in less than five months.

People in Argentina are protesting against austerity reforms and measures by the country’s libertarian President Javier Milei. 

For 24 hours, public transport including trains, buses and flight services will be shut down.

Last time, the general strike in January,  saw demonstrations nationwide. It was organized by the largest umbrella union — the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).

Snakey fish fight is center stage as U.K.’s new environmental measures rub the EU the wrong way.

When the U.K. left the EU, Brussels insisted on strict “level playing-field” rules as a check on Tories turning their country into a deregulated offshore tax haven.

But fast-forward to 2024 and it's tougher new U.K. environmental measures that are increasingly rubbing the EU up the wrong way — at least when it comes to protecting sea-life.

In March, irate French ministers asked the European Commission to investigate whether a ban on “bottom trawling” in protected marine areas — brought in on conservation grounds — breached the terms of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the two countries.

More than 200 people with diabetes have been injured when their insulin pumps shut down unexpectedly due to a problem with a connected mobile app, the US Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.

Gabrielius Landsbergis also backs David Cameron and Emmanuel Macron on standing up to Putin

Lithuania’s foreign minister has raised the prospect of an ad hoc coalition of western countries sending military training personnel into Ukraine backed by ground-based air defence, days after Russia took an increasingly strident tone against what it sees as the threat of deeper western involvement in the war.

Speaking to the Guardian after meeting his British counterpart, David Cameron, in London, Gabrielius Landsbergis also backed the British foreign secretary for saying that Ukraine could use British-made weapons against Russia; remarks that alongside Emmanuel Macron refusing to rule out western troops in Ukraine prompted the Kremlin to threaten UK assets and order a tactical nuclear training exercise.

Foreign secretary in Lithuania for four years, Landsbergis has long called for tougher action against Russia, but his latest remarks have shown that there is support in parts of Europe for the muscular line recently adopted by the French president.

Biodiversity loss is the biggest environmental driver of infectious disease outbreaks, making them more dangerous and widespread, a study has found.

New infectious diseases are on the rise and they often originate in wildlife. In meta-analysis published in the journal Nature, researchers found that of all the “global change drivers” that are destroying ecosystems, loss of species was the greatest in increasing the risk of outbreaks. Biodiversity loss was followed by climate change and introduction of non-native species.

“The take-home messages are that biodiversity loss, climate change and introduced species increase disease, whereas urbanisation decreases it,” said lead researcher Prof Jason Rohr from the University of Notre Dame in the US. Experts analysed nearly 1,000 studies of global environmental drivers of infectious disease, covering all continents except for Antarctica. They looked at both the severity and prevalence of disease in plant, animal and human hosts.

Police said gunmen stormed into a house near southwestern Pakistan's Gwadar city and shot workers in an apparent ethnic attack. The victims were originally from Pakistan's Punjab province.

Unidentified gunmen shot and killed at least seven workers in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, police said on Thursday.

According to police official Mohsin Ali, gunmen stormed into a house some 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of the port city of Gwadar, and shot the workers while they were asleep. 

The coastal town of Gwadar is the site of several Beijing-backed projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor investment, which is part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Twelve Malawians have been deported from Israel after leaving the farms where they were working, to get higher salaries elsewhere.

The 12 Malawians were among more than 40 foreign workers who were arrested while working at a bakery in Tel Aviv last week.

The workers, who were part of a labour agreement between Israel and Malawi, were unhappy with working conditions in the agricultural sector and found work in a bakery instead.

Israel's ambassador to Malawi Michael Lotem told the BBC: "Anybody who violates his visa terms will be deported – as easy as this, as in any country.

Last week, Benzani, a Malawian working in Israel, told the BBC that some of his compatriots working on other farms were being paid less than the minimum wage in Israel.

Hundreds of Gaza's water and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed since Israel began military action against Hamas, satellite analysis by BBC Verify has found. Damage to a major supplies depot has also severely disrupted repairs. The lack of clean water and flows of untreated sewage pose a serious threat to health, say aid agencies.

The destruction comes despite Israel's duty to protect critical infrastructure under the rules of war, unless there is evidence sites are being used for military reasons, say human rights lawyers. Of the 603 water facilities we analysed, 53% appeared to have been damaged or destroyed since 7 October.

Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.

One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction.

The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment.

Neom, Saudi Arabia's $500bn (£399bn) eco-region, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy which aims to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil.

Its flagship project, The Line, has been pitched as a car-free city, just 200m (656ft) wide and 170km (106 miles) long - though only 2.4km of the project is reportedly expected to be completed by 2030.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15187023

The message was not getting through. Not through the phone calls or the emissaries or the public statements or the joint committee meetings. And so, frustrated that he was being ignored, President Biden chose a more dramatic way of making himself clear to Israeli leaders. He stopped sending the bombs.

Mr. Biden’s decision to pause the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel was meant to convey a powerful signal that his patience has limits. While insisting that his support for the Jewish state remains “ironclad,” Mr. Biden opted for the first time since the Gaza war erupted last fall to use his power as Israel’s chief arms supplier to demonstrate his discontent.

The hold on the bombs represents a significant turning point in the 76-year-old relationship between the United States and Israel, historically one of the closest security partnerships in the world. But it may not necessarily be a breaking point. The Biden administration is still allowing other weapons to be sent to Israel, and in fact officials emphasized that no final decision has been made on the bombs that are currently in limbo. Mr. Biden hopes the pause will prompt Israel to change course.

MBFC
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Israel has abandoned its goals of freeing the captives in Gaza, instead seeking to establish a long-term presence with its Rafah ground offensive and pursue top Palestinian leaders, Israeli military officers have told Middle East Eye.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, three officers, one of whom is serving in Gaza, questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy in the ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed at least 34,800 Palestinians and failed to return captives taken by Hamas on 7 October.

One officer told MEE the government’s aims were unclear and the objective of rescuing captives and destroying Hamas had “collapsed”.

The officer told MEE that Israel’s military had become “obsessed” with Sinwar and the upper echelons of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.