The copyright status of digital content shared online is often unclear, hindering its reuse. To address this issue, the CommonsDB initiative, funded by the European Commission, is building a prototype registry of Public Domain and openly licensed works. To enhance legal certainty for digital content reuse, the registry will employ decentralized identifiers for consistent content and rights recognition.

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Public Money, Public Code - A campaign for releasing publicly financed software as Free Software

It needs more signatures to make the @EUCommission notice it. Opensource is becoming more important than ever in our efforts to de-USA.

[This is a piece by Dr. Kerry McElroy, cultural historian and founder of The Sága Project: An International Women's Journalism and Oral History Collective.]

In 2022, numerous phone calls were intercepted between Russian soldiers and wives and girlfriends about raping Ukrainian women. Roman Bykovsky and wife Olga Bykovska went viral on one such call, in which the wife laughingly encouraged her husband to rape Ukrainian women as long as he used a condom.

From the first year of the war into the second and third, the greatest site of sexual war crimes has moved from civilian young women to male POWs. One of the favorite "games" of the occupying Russians has involved spinning the wheel of the field telephone then making a call, electrocuting the prisoner connected to its wire. It has varied genital electrocution, known as "Zelensky’s Call", with anal electrocution, known as "Biden’s Call".

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Archived

The shape of a potential peace agreement in Ukraine remains uncertain, but a deal appears closer than ever. [...] Meanwhile, according to the Telegram channel Faridaily, the Kremlin is already preparing for one of the biggest challenges Russian society will face when the war ends: the return of hundreds of thousands of traumatized soldiers. Meduza shares the channel’s findings in English.

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The sources predicted a range of major societal issues, including:

• Rampant drug and alcohol abuse: Many returning soldiers are likely to turn to alcohol or drugs to cope with their physical and emotional trauma, experts told Faridaily. “The first year after the war will be a year of heavy drinking,” a source from Russia’s Labor Ministry said. A veterans’ rehabilitation specialist noted that many who have already returned with injuries, concussions, or lost limbs are struggling to reintegrate into civilian life — especially in rural areas — and have started drinking heavily. One government source said that many veterans return from the war with a deep sense of grievance: “I’m a hero, I fought for you, and you’re just worthless cowards who stayed behind.”
• Unemployment, crime, and debt: Having earned millions of rubles (equal to tens of thousands of dollars) on military contracts, many soldiers may be unwilling to take low-paying civilian jobs. A federal official warned that this could leave psychologically traumatized individuals — many accustomed to violence and familiar with weapons — without a stable income, likely driving a surge in crime. As their quality of life declines, former soldiers are also expected to take out loans en masse, a source at a state-affiliated think tank told Faridaily.
• Workplace difficulties: Employers will face challenges as they are legally required to hold jobs open for returning soldiers, Faridaily’s sources said. Veterans will be difficult to fire, yet many may be considered “problem employees” due to alcoholism and antisocial behavior. “The best-case scenario is that they’ll be paid just to stay away from the workplace,” a Labor Ministry source predicted.
• Domestic violence and unplanned pregnancies: The return of soldiers from the front won’t necessarily be the joyful reunion many families anticipate, Faridaily writes. Wives, in particular, will be at high risk of facing violence from men with PTSD. Experts told the channel it will take at least a year or two for many veterans to readjust to family life. The Labor Ministry also expects a rise in unplanned pregnancies, while a government-affiliated think tank predicts a postwar baby boom. However, the sources said a steady, controlled increase in birth rates or the formation of stable new families is unlikely.

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Archived link

Kallas and the foreign ministers of the 27 EU Member States discussed the potential financial gap for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at their monthly meeting in Brussels.

The Estonian politician, who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, described as “sad” the news that the US government is withdrawing its financial support for the radio station, which she called a “beacon of democracy.”

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was founded in the early years of the Cold War to promote democratic values to listeners in Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union.

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Archived

In January 2025, Memorial Human Rights Center members visited Ukraine and conducted the first monitoring mission by Russian observers since the start of the full-scale invasion. They visited the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Chernihiv regions, along with the cities of Poltava and Odesa. During the trip, Memorial’s team documented violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes committed by the Russian army. The group plans to present its findings later this spring. Meduza spoke with Memorial observer Vladimir Malykhin about what he saw in Ukraine and why the monitoring mission is crucial to improving our understanding of contemporary Russia.

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Along with NATO allies, there are currently over 1,700 Canadian troops and aircrew dug in as part of a Western commitment to defend Latvia. More are planned and others are on standby should there be a crisis.

[Recently], Canadian, Danish, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Swedish and Latvian troops conducted a major exercise at the Adazi training range, on the outskirts of the Latvian capital of Riga. The scenario they were rehearsing for was stark.

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"Latvia has been the target of Russian cyber operations since their very beginning," said Varis Teivans, deputy manager and a senior technical expert at CERT.LV, located at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Latvia.

When Teivans says the very beginning, he's referring to the 2006-07 timeframe when proxy groups affiliated with Russia's security service — the FSB — launched denial-of-service attacks against public infrastructure in neighbouring Estonia.

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He said Russian targets have expanded from government institutions, such as border controls, power grids, defence and foreign relations, to deep into the country's private sector — aiming at companies that are part of the national security supply chain.

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They work side-by-side at the university, which is housed in a dimly lit, old Soviet-style building. Behind banks of computer screens and with a giant, open-source, worldwide cyberattack threat monitor streaming in the background, Canadians working with the Latvians conduct what's known as threat-hunting operations.

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[Canadian officer aiding CERT.LV Maj. Kiernan] Broda-Milian also said their hosts "are capable of performing this work. But there are not enough cybersecurity professionals in Latvia, and then we both learn from each other."

The Canadian team has been engaged in digital forensics in cases where intrusions have been detected. They essentially examine the techniques for telltale signs of who may have conducted the attack.

Teivans said they look for little mistakes. For example, one Russian hacker left behind signs because it was clear they were using a keyboard with cyrillic letters.

Both Teivans and Broda-Milian said an important side benefit of the Canadian presence is that the cyberhunting and forensics operations give a glimpse into Russian tactics that gets fed back to Ottawa in the form of threat intelligence.

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Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.18-050128/https://www.ft.com/content/7fed8f2b-98c7-43c6-88b3-d66be449bfac

Macron has repeatedly stressed that a French president would always have ultimate power to decide whether to use the bomb — the same applies to Britain and the US within Nato.

Together, British and French nuclear capabilities would at least make Moscow think twice about attacking, said a senior western official. 

However, “what really influences Russian decision-making is the scale of US deterrence”, he said. Europe would need at least a decade of spending at around 6-7 per cent of GDP if it wanted to emulate that and acquire another 1,000 warheads, he added.

Russia is conducting an escalating and violent campaign of sabotage and subversion against European and U.S. targets in Europe led by Russian military intelligence (the GRU), according to a new CSIS database of Russian activity. The number of Russian attacks nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024. Russia’s primary targets have included transportation, government, critical infrastructure, and industry, and its main weapons and tactics have included explosives, blunt or edged instruments (such as anchors), and electronic attack. Despite the increase in Russian attacks, Western countries have not developed an effective strategy to counter these attacks.

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Today, Russian active measures support the following types of foreign policy objectives:

• Influencing public opinion through psychological operations in Europe, the United States, and other countries to support Russian interests.
• Coercing governments, companies, or individuals to stop taking specific actions, particularly curbing military and other assistance to Ukraine.
• Deterring countries, companies, or individuals from taking specific actions, such as escalating the type and amount of military aid to Ukraine.
• Deterring Russian soldiers, government officials, and citizens from defecting to the West.
• Creating fissures between governments, especially between NATO allies.
• Undermining the democratic norms and values that underpin the West.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27272765

For the second report in succession, the OECD has lowered its growth expectations for both France and Germany – down to 0.8 and 0.4 percent respectively.

Britain’s forecast is also down to just 1.4 percent, with only Spain amongst major European nations bucking the trend and set to maintain its recent strong performance with 2.6 percent growth predicted in 2025.

US growth is expected to be 2.2 percent in 2025, down from the OECD’s 2.4 percent projection in December, before falling to 1.6 percent in 2026 – a drop of 0.5 percentage points on the OECD’s previous forecast.

China, meanwhile, is expected to maintain healthy growth at 4.8 percent in 2025 and 4.4 percent the following year.

https://archive.ph/z7DAu

"Those who buy Patriots, we must offer them the new-generation Franco-Italian SAMP/T," Macron told French media on Sunday. "Those who buy the F-35, we must offer them the Rafale."