Israeli prison authorities gave a tour of a maximum-security facility to Jewish settlers where they held a “Torah lesson” and observed the abuse of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli media reported on 23 February.

Kobi Yaakobi, head of Israel's prison system, invited 20 members of the synagogue in Har Homa, an illegal West Bank settlement near Jerusalem, on a “safari” tour of Nitzan maximum-security prison.

Palestinian detainees, including alleged members of Hamas's elite Nukhba forces, were handcuffed and forced to lie on the ground to be observed by the visitors. The Jewish settlers ate an “indulgent lunch” in front of the prisoners, who were fasting for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7449044

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A new artificial intelligence (AI) agent could equip Europe to better defend itself against the barrage of Russian disinformation attacks.

Cipher is Canadian-developed AI software that has proven to accurately and quickly detect Russian disinformation targeting Canadian networks, on both the far right and the far left of the political spectrum.

Now that Cipher has passed the testing stage, the researchers are training the AI agent to distinguish those same narratives in the Russian language.

The researchers hope it can be rolled out in Europe for those at the forefront of efforts to combat Russian operations that sow distrust in Western democracies and institutions.

Marcus Kolga, who runs the foreign disinformation monitoring platform DisinfoWatch in Canada, tested Cipher to see how well it stood up to his 20 years of experience reporting on foreign interference.

"What would usually take, for an analysis piece, maybe half a day to a day, was really being crunched down to a few hours, and (it) was scarily accurate," says Kolga, who tested out Cipher in its early stages and still uses the AI agent to expedite his work.

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The tool uncovered persistent efforts to deliberately sway Canadian public opinion on Ukraine with the goal of eroding the support Kyiv receives from one of its staunchest allies.

Brian McQuinn, an associate professor in international studies at the University of Regina, is one of the project leads. He has been researching the role of social media in armed conflict.

McQuinn worked with Kolga on the 2023 report The Enemy of My Enemy, which detailed how Russia uses information operations to undermine Canadian support for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.

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The Cipher project began three years ago under the AI safety research program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). McQuinn worked with project co-lead Matthew Taylor, an associate professor in computing science at the University of Alberta, who directed a five-person team of engineers in creating the sophisticated software.

Beyond mapping out where Russian disinformation is spreading online, with reports processed down to the last 24 hours, Cipher also shows trending themes.

This type of analysis provides experts with more detail on how Russian operations are shifting over any period of time.

"We are able to track and show on a day-to-day basis ... where are the Russian networks investing their limited resources (and) what themes they are targeting day in, day out, and how they are changing over the weeks and over the months," says McQuinn.

"It really shows you the extent to which they are responding to events almost in real time."

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Deceptive narratives are often disseminated by Russian state-controlled outlets such as RT and Sputnik, then amplified by social media influencers. From there, they spread across Canadian social networks, occasionally making their way into mainstream news coverage.

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The next challenge for the Cipher team is fine-tuning it to more accurately predict how Russian disinformation will spin the narrative around any expected events. Experts like Kolga can then get ahead of the attacks to suppress how far they could spread.

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In a wide-ranging interview, the European Parliament president backs “change” in Iran as Trump threatens war, but she doesn’t want U.S. “interference” in EU politics.

She’s not Donald Trump’s biggest foe in Europe — yet.

But European Parliament President Roberta Metsola wants the White House to know its attempts to influence politics in Europe are not welcome.

In an interview with POLITICO, Metsola said the European Union won’t express a preference on who should win the U.S. midterm elections in November. But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in to endorse Viktor Orbán in Budapest this month, ahead of Hungary’s general election coming up in April.

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Some 8,790 Americans sought citizenship in the UK, either through registration or naturalisation in 2025, according to Home Office data published Thursday.

Brende stated on Thursday that after “careful consideration” he is stepping down

“I am convinced that the Forum can now continue its important work without distraction,” wrote the former Norwegian diplomat, who exchanged more than 100 text messages and emails and met Epstein on three occasions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43746192

Shipments of Venezuelan and American oil could begin flowing to the Communist island to relieve the humanitarian crisis

[only small amounts, to private sector only] Updated Feb. 25, 2026 3:50 pm ET

MIAMI—The Trump administration is easing its policy on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, providing a potential lifeline to the island’s eight million people as a fuel shortage accelerates a humanitarian crisis.

The policy announced Wednesday applies to transactions involving Cuba’s small private sector “that support the Cuban people,” but sales to the ruling Communist government in Havana would remain illicit under the comprehensive sanctions that Washington has imposed for decades, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. The Treasury would allow the sales on a case-by-case basis.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/48071812

A Russian political prisoner whose husband died in a penal colony last week was denied permission to attend his funeral, independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Thursday.

Anastasia Dyudyaeva’s request to be granted a furlough to attend the funeral of her husband, Alexander Dotsenko, was turned down, according to a group set up to support the political prisoner couple.

Dotsenko died on 19 February after suffering a heart attack in the penal colony where he was serving his sentence, and his funeral took place on Thursday morning at a church in the Leningrad region village of Taitsy, where the couple lived together before being imprisoned. It was attended by around 30 mourners.

Both Dotsenko and Dyudyaeva were found guilty of “inciting terrorism” by a St. Petersburg court in 2024. According to investigators, the couple had distributed Ukrainian-language leaflets reading “Putin to the gallows” at a supermarket in St. Petersburg.

The couple denied the allegations, but were sentenced to three and three-and-a-half years in a penal colony, respectively. Independent news outlet Mediazona observed at the time that a handwriting expert, called as a witness by the prosecution, had cast doubt on the couple’s involvement.

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Karina Remez knew her husband — 33-year-old Dmytro Remez — had been captured in 2022 while defending Mariupol. For years, there was no confirmed information about where he was being held. Then, in early February 2025, a man contacted her claiming he had shared a cell with Dmytro and had personal information to pass on.

The initial questions soon escalated into direct blackmail. They demanded that she blow up a communications tower and provide Ukrainian military locations.

To pressure her, they forced Dmytro to speak to her on the phone. During later calls, they spoke to her themselves with sounds of torture in the background.

. . .

Petro Yatsenko, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, says this is a deliberate Russian strategy aimed at destabilizing Ukraine that has only escalated and become increasingly cruel during four years of full-scale war.

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Police warn Moninder Singh, head of the Sikh Federation of Canada, his family are also at risk

Police in Canada warned a prominent Sikh activist of “credible threat” to his family’s life, days before the prime minister, Mark Carney, visits India in search of new trade deals.

Moninder Singh, who heads the Sikh Federation of Canada, said officers visited his home on Sunday, to warn him that a confidential police informant had passed information suggesting he and his family were at risk.

In 2023, the former prime minister Justin Trudeau accused India of orchestrating the high-profile assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Sikh activist and Canadian citizen. Canada’s federal police and spy agency later repeated the accusations.

Singh, a close friend of Nijjar, said he believed the Indian government was behind the most recent threat.

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A new report revealed that Israeli soldiers fired over 900 bullets at a convoy of Palestinian aid workers near Rafah in March 2025, killing 15 medics. Investigators say the evidence reveals the cover-up of a war crime.

Recent comments by United States and Israeli officials supporting the concept of a “Greater Israel” have raised alarm bells across the region and shed light on a vision once only rarely publicly spoken about.

An interview aired last week by the American right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson with US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee started the current furore. Carlson, an influential figure who has been vocally critical of Israel over the past year, repeatedly asked Huckabee whether he supported Israel controlling all the land between the Nile River in Egypt and the Euphrates River in Iraq.

Huckabee, a Christian Zionist, would not disavow the belief that the Bible promised that land to Israel – even though it now encompasses all or part of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said, leading to anger from those countries and others in the region, many of which are close US allies.

A Palestinian mother from Gaza says she recognised her missing son, Mohammed Sharab, when he was shown shackled, blindfolded and listed as ‘for sale’ in a post shared by Israeli soldiers.