Europe

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38115360

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Plans for a new Chinese ‘super embassy’ in London would include on-site accommodation for more than 200 intelligence officers, it has been revealed.

News of the proposed ‘spy campus’ has added fresh controversy to China’s redevelopment bid for the historic Royal Mint buildings near the Tower of London.

Downing Street is considering the plans — previously shelved by the last government — following personal lobbying by Chinese President Xi Jinping, The Mail on Sunday reports.

A source said: “There will effectively be a student-style campus for spies in the heart of the City. And those spy dungeons are so deep that the sensitive cables are virtually at head height.”

A “cultural exchange” area within the embassy plans is reportedly exempt from UK inspection and verification. A security source told the Mail on Sunday the term is a “euphemism for intelligence and security services”.

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Planning documents for the proposed embassy site reveal “two suites of anonymous unlabelled basement rooms and a tunnel,” with their intended purpose redacted “for security reasons”.

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A 12-day public inquiry into the plans took place in February. A report by the Planning Inspectorate — an executive agency of the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government — is now believed to recommend approval.

Tower Hamlets Council originally rejected the application in 2022. However, the case was later called in by then-deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner, who used her ministerial powers to take the final decision away from the local authority.

Archived (archive.org)

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is one of Russia’s allies in Europe. He claims that the EU is helping Ukraine at the expense of European interests and that Hungary will not quit Russian oil and gas. Experts and the press suspect that the Russian authorities have given Orban’s inner circle the opportunity to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from energy commodities trading.
• At the center of attention is the mysterious trader of Russian oil, Normeston Trading, which in 2009 got half of a gas trader created by Hungary’s largest oil and gas company, MOL, and then transferred its stake to Orban’s friends and their partners.
• Normeston Trading itself, on the Hungarian side, is co-owned by people affiliated with Orban’s friends. For years, the press and experts have tried to understand how Normeston could be connected to Russia’s top political circles.
• IStories found out that the former Russian owner of Normeston — race car driver Lev Tolkachev — was also a business partner of Gennady Timchenko’s top-managers. Vladimir Putin's close friend Timtchenko was the biggest Russian oil trader before 2014 sanctions. One of his former managers, Aleksandr Zhuravlev, still sits on the boards of some companies in the Normeston group together with the race car driver.
• In 2017 and 2018, Cyprus-based Normeston Trading was “under common control” with the Russian company of the race car driver, which was half-owned by another Timchenko top manager — Sergey Gzhelyak. In Cyprus, “common control” means that the companies are owned or their finances are controlled by the same parties.
• After the race car driver, the Russian businessman Valery Subbotin became a co-owner of Normeston. Subbotin is a former vice president of Lukoil, who fled from Russia in 2016 and settled in Europe, but established business ties with Putin’s friends and the entourage of former pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

I think I have experienced the best train seating in Europe outside of 1st class. The new seating in the ICE3neo over the German/Dutch border is the peak of what I have experienced so far on (European) trains. The fabric has a nice texture, it has 2! outlets per pair of seats and 3 armrests (Dutch trains should def. copy that!), the table is very stable and big enough to fit the large macbook exactly. There is an integrated holder for tablets and smartphones (whilst this is a bit low for looking at your smartphone for hours it is still pretty good and an understandable compromise for accommodating both). Of course the seats are adjustable without bothering the person behind you and there is a net as well as a coathanger at each seat. There is a small trash at every pair of seats.

The consistency is a good firmness that you only starts becoming a bit uncomfy after some hours of straight sitting.

Which trains in Europe do you think has the best seating?

Paywall? https://archive.is/5IISJ

BRUSSELS — Romania’s fledgling government is made up of the country’s most pro-European politicians, but that hasn’t stopped them citing Brussels as a key reason why they need to impose a drastic set of tax hikes and spending cuts to avert financial collapse.

For the past five years, Romania has been spending way beyond its means — in the words of new President Nicușor Dan, eating a large pizza while only paying for a medium-sized one — and has a projected budget deficit of around 9 percent of economic output this year, the highest in the European Union.

That record of poor fiscal management has provoked repeated reprimands from the European Commission, which Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan now says can no longer be ignored. This week, ministers from EU countries will vote to decide on a strict plan setting out exactly what Romania must now do to restore order to its public finances.

https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-reckoning-brussels-soaring-budget-deficit/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38131512

Archived

Russia’s state statistics agency Rosstat has stopped publishing monthly data on births and deaths, a move that comes amid a deepening demographic crisis and ongoing troop losses in the war against Ukraine.

For the first time, Rosstat last week released its monthly socio-economic report without including figures on births, deaths, migration or the country’s total population.

The agency had already stopped releasing regional breakdowns of births and deaths earlier this year.

“Since March 2025, there’s been virtually no publicly available demographic data in Russia,” demographer Alexei Raksha wrote at the time. “We consider the full suppression of regional demographic statistics a clear sign of failed demographic policy at the regional level.”

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Raksha [cited] internal data from an unnamed region allegedly showing life expectancy for men dropping from 66 years in 2024 to 61 in mid-2025, while life expectancy for women held steady at 75.

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Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has gradually restricted access to demographic data that experts have used to infer wartime casualties, including deaths by age, region and cause.

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Poland introduced temporary controls on its borders with Germany and Lithuania on Monday in an effort to stem what the government says is an increasing number of undocumented migrants crossing from the north and west. The re-imposition of border checks is just the latest example of how mounting public concerns across the European Union over migration are straining the fabric of the bloc's passport-free Schengen zone.