UN human rights agency in ‘survival mode’: chief


By AFP
February 5, 2026


UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said his office was now in 'survival mode' - Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI

Robin MILLARD

The UN human rights chief said Thursday his agency was “in survival mode” due to funding shortfalls, as he launched a $400 million appeal to tackle global rights crises in 2026.

Volker Turk warned countries that at a time when global human rights are under significant assault, his office was facing dire funding shortages hampering its increasingly important and life-saving work.

“Our reporting provides credible information on atrocities and human rights trends at a time when truth is being eroded by disinformation and censorship,” he told diplomats at the UN rights office headquarters in Geneva.

“We are a lifeline for the abused, a megaphone for the silenced, and a steadfast ally to those who risk everything to defend the rights of others.”

In 2025, the UN Human Rights Office’s regular budget — set by the UN General Assembly of member states — was $246 million, but it ultimately received only $191.5 million of that money.

It also sought $500 million in voluntary contributions, of which $257.8 million came in.

Funding for the UN’s human rights work has long been chronically underfunded, but Turk said: “We are currently in survival mode, delivering under strain.”

“These cuts and reductions untie perpetrators’ hands everywhere, leaving them to do whatever they please. With crises mounting, we cannot afford a human rights system in crisis,” he added.

The UN human rights office lost around 300 out of 2,000 staff last year and had to end or scale back its work in 17 countries.

Its programme in Myanmar, for example, was cut by 60 percent.



– High impact, low cost –



This year, the General Assembly approved a regular budget of $224.3 million for human rights.

However with the United Nations facing a liquidity crisis, uncertainty remains over how much Turk’s office will receive.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is among a slew of international organisations hit by a global funding crisis.

The United States was the United Nations’ biggest contributor but has slashed its funding since President Donald Trump returned to power in January 2025 — while other countries have tightened their belts.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned last Friday that the world body is on the brink of financial collapse and could run out of cash by July, as he urged countries to pay their dues.

Against this backdrop, Turk is seeking $400 million in voluntary funding from countries and donors.

He said human rights accounted for a very small slice of overall UN spending but produced “high-impact” results that help to stabilise communities, build trust in institutions and underpin lasting peace.

“The cost of our work is low; the human cost of underinvestment is immeasurable,” he insisted.

In 2025, UN human rights staff working in 87 countries undertook more than 5,000 human rights monitoring missions — down from 11,000 in 2024.

“That means less evidence for both protection and prevention,” said Turk.



– ‘Countering secrecy’ –



Giving examples of his office’s work, Turk said it supported 67,000 survivors of torture and modern slavery, documented tens of thousands of human rights violations and exposed discrimination in more than 100 countries.

Its monitoring mission in Ukraine is the “only organisation” with a comprehensive record of verified civilian casualties “since the initial Russian invasion in 2014”, he said.

In Bangladesh, its fact-finding mission on the 2024 crackdown “helped establish a comprehensive record of systematic and serious human rights abuses”.

And the probe in the Democratic Republic of Congo “uncovered patterns of grave human rights violations that may amount to crimes against humanity”.

“All this work aims to bring the stories of victims to the world, countering secrecy — the oppressor’s strongest ally — and challenging injustice and impunity,” Turk said.

Brazil mine disaster victims in London to ‘demand what is owed’

By AFP
February 4, 2026


Marilda Lyrio de Oliviera, one of the Indigenous leaders of the Boa Esperanca village in Aracruz, Espirito Santo - an area affected by the 2015 Mariana dam disaster, is pictured outside Britain's High Court in London - Copyright AFP ADRIAN DENNIS

Victims of a 2015 dam collapse in Brazil, for which Australian mining giant BHP has been found liable, attended a London hearing on Wednesday ahead of a trial to determine damages.

In one of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters, an iron-ore mine run by a firm co-owned by BHP unleashed a deluge of toxic mud into villages, fields, rainforest, rivers and the ocean, killing 19 people.

In November, the High Court in London found BHP “strictly liable” for the disaster following a mammoth trial, which could lead to billions of dollars in damages shared among 620,000 plaintiffs.

“We are demanding what is owed to us,” Marilda Lyrio de Oliveira, from Aracruz in the state of Espirito Santo, told AFP on Wednesday.

“We hope for a just outcome, because the impact was enormous, the crime was enormous.

“Many people are dying of cancer, something that didn’t exist before,” added Lyrio de Oliveira, representing the region’s Indigenous people, as she stood alongside about a dozen other victims attending court.

“We have physical and mental health problems because we can no longer carry out our former activities,” she added.

The two-day hearing aims to set the timetable for the compensation trial, which could begin in October or the first half of 2027, the law firm Pogust Goodhead, representing the plaintiffs, told AFP.

Dissatisfied with the proceedings in Brazil, the victims turned to the British courts two years ago, seeking £36 billion ($49 billion) in compensation.

At the time of the disaster, one of BHP’s global headquarters was in Britain.

“The suffering was so immense that it shattered our lives and interrupted our dreams,” Ana Paula Auxiliadora Alexandre, who lost her husband in the tragedy, told AFP on Wednesday.

“For ten years, we fought for justice. The fact that a mega-corporation has been convicted here in England makes me think that the British justice system is more diligent than the Brazilian one,” she added.

The mine was managed by Samarco, co-owned by BHP and Brazilian miner Vale.

The trial at the High Court in London ran from October 2024 to March 2025.

Indigenous Brazilians protest Amazon river dredging for grain exports


By AFP
February 4, 2026


Auricelia Arapiun, pictured during the COP30 UN climate talks in 2025, was one of several Indigenous leaders protesting plans to dredge rivers in the Amazon

 - Copyright AFP Pablo PORCIUNCULA

Fran BLANDY

Hundreds of Indigenous people have been protesting in northern Brazil for two weeks outside the port terminal of US agribusiness giant Cargill, angered over the dredging and development of Amazonian rivers for grain exports.

Brazil’s Indigenous communities have raised the alarm for months about port expansion on rivers they see as vital to their way of life, a grievance they protested at COP30 climate talks last November.

“The government is opening up our territories to many projects … to boost agribusiness,” Indigenous leader Auricelia Arapiuns told AFP in a video message from the Amazon port city of Santarem, in the same state that hosted COP30 in Belem.

“We have been here for 14 days, but this struggle didn’t start now. We occupied Cargill to draw attention so that the government would come up with a proposal.”

By Wednesday, some 700 Indigenous people from 14 communities were taking part in the demonstration, according to the Amazon Watch advocacy group.

The protesters have blocked trucks from “entering and leaving the terminal,” Cargill said in a statement sent to AFP, adding it has “no authority or control” over their complaints.

The Minnesota-based multinational has agricultural logistics operations across Brazil, where it employs 11,000 people.

Protesters on Wednesday demanded the cancellation of a decree signed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in August which designates major Amazonian rivers as priorities for cargo navigation and private port expansion.

They also want the cancellation of a federal tender issued in December worth 74.8 million reais ($14.2 million) to manage and dredge the Tapajos River — a major Amazon tributary.

“This infrastructure that is coming is not a space for us, and it never will be. It is a project of death to kill our river and our sacred places,” Indigenous leader Alessandra Korap of the Munduruku people said in a statement.

The ports ministry said earlier in January that the contract of a company for maintenance dredging was necessary to “increase navigation safety… and ensure greater predictability for cargo and passenger transport operations.”



– ‘Serious environmental risks’ –



The protesters criticized the government for only sending mid-level officials to meet with them and breaking a COP30 promise not to carry out projects on Amazonian rivers “without prior consultation.”

Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said in a statement Monday it recognizes the “legitimacy of the concerns raised” and that no dredging or other projects can take place on the Tapajos river without the consent of those affected.

Fed up, the protesters were no longer in the mood to negotiate.

“We don’t want a consultation. We want this decree revoked,” Indigenous leader Gilson Tupinamba, wearing a large headdress of blue and orange feathers, told a meeting with government representatives on Wednesday.

Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of soybeans and corn, and in recent years has switched to northern river ports to export grains more cheaply.

Critics see plans to boost barge traffic on Amazonian rivers as yet another project where economic development is clashing with Lula’s much vaunted commitment to the environment.

“What did the government do after the COP? They launched the dredging tender,” Arapiuns told the government representatives.

After the meeting, the protesters blocked the road leading to the Santarem international airport — a popular hub for tourists.

Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) — which has taken legal action against the dredging efforts — on Tuesday pointed to “serious environmental risks” for the river.

In a statement, the MPF referred to the release of heavy metals such as mercury into the water, and destruction of crucial habitats for threatened species of dolphins, turtles and aquatic birds.

 

When Earth’s magnetic field took its time flipping

Ancient pole reversals dragged on far longer than previously known, according to new research by paleomagnetists from Utah and Japan

University of Utah

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Yuhji Yamamoto examines drilling cores on the JOIDES Resolution during the 2012 expedition in the North Atlantic. 

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Credit: Peter Lippert, University of Utah

Earth’s magnetic field is generated by the churn of its liquid nickel-iron outer core, but it is not a constant feature.

Every so often, the magnetic north and south poles swap places in what are called geomagnetic reversals, and the record of these flips is preserved in rocks and sediments, including those from the ocean floor. These reversals don’t happen suddenly, but over several thousand years, where the magnetic field fades and wobbles while the two poles wander and finally settle in the opposite positions of the globe.

Over the past 170 million years, the magnetic poles have reversed 540 times, with the reversal process typically taking around 10,000 years to complete each time, according to years of research. Now, a new study by a University of Utah geoscientist and colleagues from France and Japan has upended this scenario after documenting instances 40 million years ago where the process took far longer to complete, upwards of 70,000 years. These findings offer a new perspective on the geomagnetic phenomenon that envelops our planet and shields it from solar radiation and harmful particles from space.

Extended periods of reduced geomagnetic shielding likely influenced atmospheric chemistry, climate processes and the evolution of living organisms, according to co-author Peter Lippert, an associate professor in the U Department of Geology & Geophysics.

“The amazing thing about the magnetic field is that it provides the safety net against radiation from outer space, and that radiation is observed and hypothesized to do all sorts of things. If you are getting more solar radiation coming into the planet, it’ll change organisms’ ability to navigate,” said Lippert, who heads the Utah Paleomagnetic Center. “It’s basically saying we are exposing higher latitudes in particular, but also the entire planet, to greater rates and greater durations of this cosmic radiation and therefore it’s logical to expect that there would be higher rates of genetic mutation. There could be atmospheric erosion.”

The results appear in Nature Communications Earth & Environment. The lead author is Yuhji Yamamoto of Japan’s Kochi University.

“This finding unveiled an extraordinarily prolonged reversal process, challenging conventional understanding and leaving us genuinely astonished,” Yamamoto wrote in a summary posted by Springer Nature.

Yamamoto and Lippert worked together on a 2012 drilling expedition in the North Atlantic that was investigating climate change during the Eocene Epoch, 56 to 34 million years ago. The two-month trip was facilitated by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Expedition 342. The team drilled off the coast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, extracting sediment cores, layered time capsules built grain by grain over millions of years, from up to 300 meters below the sea floor.

As paleomagnetists, Yamamoto and Lipperts’ job was to “measure the direction and the intensity of the magnetization that’s preserved in those cores,” Lippert said. “We don’t know what triggers a reversal. Individual reversals don’t last the same amount of time, so that creates this unique barcode. We can use the magnetic directions preserved in the sediments and correlate them to the geologic timescale.”

These sediments carry a reliable magnetic signal locked in by tiny crystals of magnetite produced by ancient microorganisms and from dust and erosion from the continents. Like a compass, the direction they point reveals Earth’s polarity at the time the sediments were deposited.

One 8-meter-thick layer took the scientists by surprise, appearing to record prolonged geomagnetic reversals in incredible detail.

“Yuhji noticed, while looking at some of the data when he was on shift, this one part of the Eocene had really stable polarity in one direction and really stable polarity in another direction,” Lippert said. “But the interval between them—of unstable polarity when it went to the other direction—was spread out over many, many centimeters.”

They realized this was no ordinary flip and collected extra samples at extremely fine spacing, just a few centimeters apart, to capture the sediments’ story in high resolution.

resolution and to test if the strange magnetic behavior was due to changes in the magnetic field or the sediments. In subsequent analysis of these cores over several years, Lippert and his colleagues confirmed this was recording changes in the magnetic field and constructed high-precision timelines for two reversals, one lasting 18,000 years and another for 70,000 years.

While the finding was a surprise, it may not have been unexpected, according to the study. Computer models of Earth’s geodynamo—in the swirling outer core that generates the electrical currents supporting the magnetic field—had indicated reversals’ durations vary, with many short ones, but also occasional long, drawn-out transitions, some lasting up to 130,000 years.

In other words, Earth’s geomagnetism may have always had this unpredictable streak, but scientists hadn’t caught it in the rocks until now.

---

The study, titled “Extraordinarily long duration of Eocene geomagnetic polarity reversals,” was posted online Jan. 20 in Nature Communications Earth & Environment. Lead author is Yuhji Yamamoto of Kochi University, Slah Boulila of Sorbonne Universite and Futoshi Takahashi of Kyushu University. Funding came from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Kochi University.

---

Journal

Communications Earth & Environment

DOI

10.1038/s43247-026-03205-8 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Extraordinarily long duration of Eocene geomagnetic polarity reversals,

The coming end of ISS, symbol of an era of global cooperation

By AFP
February 4, 2026


The International Space Station will be guided back to Earth in 2030, marking the end of its three-decade mission - Copyright AFP/File Chanakarn Laosarakham

Frederic Bourigault

When the International Space Station comes back to Earth in 2030, it will mark the end of three decades of peaceful international cooperation — and an era when space became central to our daily lives.

Since November 2000, there have always been several humans on board the football field-sized scientific laboratory, whipping around the planet at eight kilometres per second.

With a new crew of astronauts set to blast off for the station as soon as next week, some of those who have helped the station from the ground are nostalgic about its looming demise.

“The ISS is a cathedral to human cooperation and collaboration across borders, languages and cultures,” John Horack, the former manager of NASA’s Science and Mission Systems Office, told AFP.

“For more than 25 years, we have had people in space, 24/7/365,” added Horack, who now holds the Neil Armstrong Chair in aerospace policy at Ohio State University.

“It is a testament to how we can ‘figure it out’ rather than ‘fight it out’ when we wish to interact with each other.”

The ISS was first proposed in the aftermath of the Cold War, illustrating a newfound spirit of cooperation between space race rivals Russia and the United States.

While many ties between Russia and the West have been severed over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, cooperation has continued on board the space station.

“The history of human spaceflight is first and foremost the space race,” Lionel Suchet of France’s space agency CNES told AFP.

“This is a very interesting moment in the evolution of space exploration,” said Suchet, who coordinated several early ISS projects after witnessing its predecessor, the Mir space station, de-orbiting in 2001.

– Back to Earth –

However, the ISS is getting old and its equipment is outdated.

NASA announced last year it had selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a vehicle that can push the station back into Earth’s atmosphere in 2030, where it will break up.

“This large rocket engine will slow down the ISS, and enable it to have a precise re-entry over the Pacific Ocean, far from land, people or any other potential hazards,” Horack explained.

Several spacecraft and telescopes — including Mir — have met a similar fate, splashing down at an isolated spot in the ocean called Point Nemo.

After 2030, the only space station orbiting Earth will be China’s Tiangong.

For the future, the US is focusing more on space stations built and operated by private companies.

“We are moving into an era where space stations have a much more commercial dimension,” similar to what has already happened with rockets and satellites, Horack said.

National space agencies would then need to pay these companies to stay on board.

Several companies, including Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Axiom Space, are already working on plans to build the first commercial space station.

Suchet emphasised that “the business model will still be largely institutional because countries are always interested in sending astronauts into low-Earth orbit”.

Scientific research and exploration also remain an “objective of all humanity”, he added, pointing to treaties that govern how nations are supposed to act in space.

Whether these treaties will hold once humans make it to the Moon — the US and China both have plans to build lunar bases — remains to be seen.

– ‘Quite sad’ –

For Horack, the end of the ISS could be seen as “quite sad”.

His children “had a lifetime of going out into the backyard to watch the ISS fly over”.

But the end of this era will mark the opening of another, he added.

“We must grow as humans in our space-faring capacity, in our exploration of space, and in the use of space to generate social, economic, educational and quality of life outcomes for all people everywhere.”

He finished by quoting the former head of the European Space Agency, Jean-Jacques Dordain: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

New crew set to launch for ISS after medical evacuation


By AFP
February 4, 2026


French astronaut Sophie Adenot, left, with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway will blast off to the ISS - Copyright AFP/File Chanakarn Laosarakham
Daniel Lawler and Frederic Bourigault

Four astronauts could blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) next week, after setbacks including a mysterious medical evacuation of the previous crew, last-minute rocket problems, and some scheduling conflicts with NASA’s Moon mission.

The crew was scheduled to launch on February 11, Elon Musk’s SpaceX company said this week it was grounding all flights on its Falcon 9 rocket while it investigates an unspecified issue.

This late uncertainty is just the most recent twist for the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, which includes Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

They will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned, during the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.

NASA has declined to disclose any details about the health issue that cut the mission short.

However, the scientific laboratory, which orbits 400 kilometres above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.

Because of the medical evacuation, NASA moved the date of the Crew-12 launch forward a few days.

The launch had also overlapped with NASA’s first mission to fly astronauts around the Moon in more than half a century.

The launch window for the Artemis 2 mission had been set for February 6-11 — until leaks detected this week during final tests pushed the date back to March 6.

– ‘One day, that will be me’ –



Once the astronauts finally get on board, they will be one of the last crews to live on board the football field-sized space station.

Continuously inhabited for the last quarter century, the ageing ISS is scheduled to be pushed into Earth’s orbit before crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.

The ISS, once a symbol of warming post-Cold War relations, has been a rare area of continued cooperation between the West and Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.

However, the space station has not entirely avoided the tensions back on Earth.

In November, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev — who had long been planned to be a member of Crew-12 — was suddenly taken off the mission.

Reports from independent media in Russia suggested he had been photographing and sending classified information with his phone. Russian space agency Roscosmos merely said he had been transferred to a different job.

His replacement Fedyaev, has already spent some time on the ISS as part of Crew-6 in 2023.

During their eight months on the space station, the four astronauts will conduct many experiments, including research into the effects of microgravity on their bodies.

Meir, who previously worked as a marine biologist studying animals in extreme environments, will serve as the crew’s commander.

Adenot will become the second French woman to fly to space, following in the footsteps of Claudie Haignere, who spent time on the Mir space station.

When Adenot saw Haignere’s mission blast off, she was 14 years old.

“It was a revelation,” the helicopter pilot said recently.

“At that moment, I told myself: one day, that will be me.”

Among other research, the European Space Agency astronaut will test a system that uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to allow astronauts to carry out their own medical ultrasounds.

The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 1100 GMT on February 11. If called off, launches can also be attempted on the following two days.

Russia says thwarted smuggling of giant meteorite to UK


By AFP
February 5, 2026


Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into smuggling

 - Copyright Federal Customs Service of Russia/AFP Handout

Russian investigators have prevented a giant meteorite fragment being smuggled to Britain disguised as a garden ornament, the Federal Customs Service reported Thursday.

The huge specimen weighing more than 2.5 tonnes is believed to have come from the Aletai meteorite, one of the largest known iron meteorites on Earth, it said.

Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation.

“The strategically important cargo was discovered during checks on a sea container at the port of Saint Petersburg,” the customs service said in a statement.

“When attempting to export it, it was declared as a garden sculpture. But a detailed inspection revealed that the origin and value of the cargo differed from the information declared,” it added.

Video showed customs officers prying open a crate to find the rock, its surface grey and rugged.

The fragment could be worth approximately 323 million rubles ($4.2 million), the statement said.

The statement did not say who attempted to import the fragment, only that it was destined for the United Kingdom.

Scientists have expressed ethical concerns about the sale of meteorites, which are often coveted for research purposes and hold important clues about the make-up of the early solar system.

The Aletai meteorite was discovered in western China in 1898 and is thought to be at least 4.5 billion years old.

Trump fuels EU push to cut cord with US tech

By AFP
February 5, 2026


Since Donald Trump's Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that Europe is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks - Copyright AFP Justin TALLIS
Raziye Akkoc

Until President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China. But now Brussels has US tech in its sights.

As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness.

Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the European Union is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work towards strategic independence — in defence, energy and tech alike.

The 27-country bloc relies on foreign countries for over 80 percent of digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property, according to a 2023 EU report.

Europe has already begun chipping away at its reliance on US tech.

The latest step came last week when France told state employees they would soon be required to use a domestic alternative to tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Brussels’ wake up call came last year when Washington sanctioned judges at the International Criminal Court, cutting them off from US tech such as Amazon or Google.

The move laid bare the US stranglehold over many tools that underpin European lives.

“During the last year everybody has really realised how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies,” EU tech tsar Henna Virkkunen said.

“Dependencies… can be weaponised against us,” she warned.

– Technology ‘no longer neutral’ –

Virkkunen will in March unveil a major “tech sovereignty” package covering cloud, artificial intelligence and chips — areas where the EU hopes to build greater autonomy.

“Digital technologies are no longer neutral tools,” European Digital SME Alliance’s secretary general, Sebastiano Toffaletti, told AFP.

“When core infrastructures like cloud, AI or platforms are controlled from outside Europe, so are the rules, the data and ultimately the leverage.”

Among EU member states, France and Germany have been leading the charge.

The northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein became a poster child for digital sovereignty last year by ditching Microsoft in favour of open-source software.

Digitalisation minister Dirk Schroedter said the move was economically-driven at first, before “political tensions” shifted the focus.

“Dominance of a few tech corporations in public infrastructure limits… our flexibility, threatens our security and inflates our software costs,” Schroedter told AFP.

Over six months, the state migrated more than 40,000 mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to open-source solutions Open-Xchange and Thunderbird.

There were challenging areas during the transition — for example in document‑sharing with other federal states and the national government — but Schroedter said the state showed “digital independence is possible”.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament is reviewing its reliance on Microsoft among other tools after a cross-party group of lawmakers urged it to adopt European alternatives.

– ‘Leverage against US’ –

Moves are also underway at EU level.

French firm Mistral and German giant SAP agreed to work on a European AI-driven cloud solution at a Franco-German digital sovereignty summit in November.

And France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands teamed up last year in a push to create common European digital infrastructure, steered by the European Commission.

Much of EU policymaking is now being viewed through the prism of sovereignty.

The bloc has long been working on a digital euro, which dozens of economists — including Thomas Piketty — called an “essential safeguard of European sovereignty” in an open letter last month.

That follows the 2024 launch of Wero, a European payments alternative to Mastercard, Visa and PayPal backed by several major banks.

But Zach Meyers of CERRE, a Brussels-based think tank, warns the EU must be clear about what “tech sovereignty” is meant to achieve.

If the goal is to withstand political pressure, the EU may be better off focusing on gaining “more leverage against” the United States, Meyers argued.

To that end, he said the most effective strategy is not to cut back on American tech use in Europe but “rather to double down on parts of the tech value chain where the US is dependent on Europe” — from chip-building machinery to corporate software or telecoms equipment.

DEREGULATION

Trump reinstates commercial fishing in protected Atlantic waters


By AFP
February 6, 2026


A Right Whale surfaces as biologists from the Center for Coastal Studies research the mammals in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts - Copyright AFP/File Joseph Prezioso

President Donald Trump on Friday issued a proclamation reopening commercial fishing in protected waters off the Atlantic coast, in a region renowned for its rich biodiversity.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument spans nearly 5,000 square miles — larger than Yellowstone National Park.

Long a focus of scientific interest, the monument lies about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and was established in 2016 by former Democratic president Barack Obama, who warned it was threatened by overfishing and climate change.

In a familiar political yo-yo, Republican Trump reopened the monument to commercial fishing during his first term, only for the decision to be reversed by former president Joe Biden. Biden’s administration cited the monument as part of its pledge to conserve 30 percent of US land and waters by 2030.

Explaining the latest reversal, Trump’s proclamation said the plants and animals in question were already protected under existing laws, making a ban on commercial fishing unnecessary.

The move, expected since last year, was welcomed by the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA).

“For decades, overregulation has stopped fishermen from making a living and putting wild, heart-healthy, American-caught products on store shelves. NEFSA is pleased that the Trump administration is committed to making America’s natural resources available to all Americans,” said NEFSA CEO Jerry Leeman in a statement last May.

Conservation groups, however, are likely to push back.

During an aerial survey last August, the New England Aquarium documented more than 1,000 marine animals in the area, including an endangered fin whale and calf, an endangered sperm whale, pilot whales, and a wide array of other whales, dolphins, and rays.

Countries using internet blackouts to boost censorship: Proton

By AFP
February 5, 2026


Image: — © Digital Journal

Nina LARSON

As countries step up their use of internet shutdowns to muzzle dissent, some are also taking advantage of the blackouts to increase censorship firewalls, internet privacy company Proton warned in an interview with AFP.

Switzerland-based Proton, known for its encrypted email and virtual private network (VPN) services, has for years observed how authoritarian governments apply “censorship as a playbook”, lead product manager Antonio Cesarano told AFP in a recent interview.

But increasingly they are observing governments in countries like Iran and Myanmar emerging from internet shutdowns with a supercharged ability to censor internet access.

VPNs delivered by Proton and others provide a secure, encrypted connection over the internet between a user and a server, giving users greater anonymity and often allowing them to avoid local restrictions on internet use.

But now the company worries governments are using long blackouts to beef up their ability to counter VPNs.

In several cases, Cesarano said that internet shutdowns saw countries’ censorship capabilities “going from nothing, or something laughable, to something very skilled”.

– ‘Censorship as service’ –

Proton’s VPN general manager David Peterson said in an email that this sudden jump in capabilities could indicate that “censorship as a service” technology “is being sold by other countries that have more know-how”.

“For example, over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the Chinese ‘great firewall’ technology used by Myanmar, Pakistan, and some African nations,” he said.

The trend is emerging as the willingness to impose total internet shutdowns is also growing, warned Proton, which runs a non-profit VPN Observatory that tracks demand for its free VPN services to detect government crackdowns and attacks on free speech.

Switzerland-based Proton tracks demand for its free virtual private network (VPN) services to detect government crackdowns and attacks on free speech 

– Copyright AFP/File Fabrice COFFRINI

Cesarano, who serves as spokesman for Proton’s internet censorship and online freedom work, pointed out that the extreme and once almost unthinkable measure has “happened three times in six months”.

He highlighted the latest dramatic shutdown in Iran, when the country’s more than 90 million people were forced offline for nearly three weeks, obscuring a crackdown on country-wide protests which rights groups say killed thousands of people.

There was also the weeklong shutdown implemented in Uganda in the days prior to the elections last month, and Afghanistan’s internet and telecoms blackout last year.

Iran also completely shuttered the internet for a week last June amid the conflict with Israel.

– VPN ‘honeypots’ –

Blacking out the internet completely was “very concerning, because it is very extreme”, Cesarano said, pointing out that a country’s entire economy basically grinds to a halt when the internet shuts down.

“It’s very dangerous and costly for the population,” he said.

Cesarano said Proton was in contact with NGOs in the field working with people on how to counter censorship by educating them on what VPNs are, how to use them, and which ones to pick.

“It is a cat and mouse game,” he said.

In some countries like Myanmar, where VPN use is illegal, the authorities deploy fake VPNs “as honeypots” to detect dissidents, he said.

In Myanmar and other countries, police may also stop people on the streets and search their phones for VPNs.

Proton spokesman Vincent Darricarrere said the company had therefore launched a special feature “to disguise the VPN app and to disguise it as a different app, like a weather app or the calculator”, to help people escape detection.

There is certainly appetite for using VPNs to try to sidestep censorship.

The VPN Observatory can predict that a clampdown is coming from spikes in sign-ups, said Cesarano.

“When we see something on our infrastructure, we can predict that something is happening,” he said, pointing to “huge spikes in demand” seen in countries like Iran, Uganda, Russia and Myanmar even before the crunch comes.

Right before Iran’s latest internet shutdown took effect on January 8, the VPN Observatory noted a 1,000-percent rise in use of Proton’s VPN services over the baseline, indicating an awareness of the coming clampdown.

And it saw an 890-percent hike in VPN sign-ups in Uganda in the days before last month’s elections as the government signalled a suspension of public internet was looming.

VPN usage also surged in Venezuela at the start of this year, jumping 770 percent in the days after the US ousted long-term president Nicolas Maduro, according to the observatory.

Greenpeace slams fossel fuel sponsors for Winter Olympics


By  AFP
February 5, 2026


Greenpeace said fossil fuel emissions were threatening winter sports - Copyright AFP WANG Zhao

Greenpeace activists staged a protest in Milan on Thursday against the sponsorship of the Milan-Cortina Olympics by energy giant Eni, warning that fossil fuel emissions were threatening the viability of winter sports.

Bearing banners saying “Kick polluters out of the Games”, the activists set up a model of the Olympic rings covered in black oil in front of the cathedral in central Milan.

The protest came the day before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in the northern Italian city on Friday.

“Sponsorships like Eni’s for Milan-Cortina 2026 are not innocent, they are a distraction to make us forget the damage these companies are causing to the planet,” Greenpeace Italia said in a statement.

Eni’s “emissions are helping to eliminate the snow and ice on which the Olympics themselves depend!”

The International Olympic Committee confirmed on Wednesday it has received a petition bearing 21,000 signatures calling for an end to fossil fuel companies sponsoring winter sports.

IOC president Kirsty Coventry told reporters her team had met with the petition organisers, adding: “It’s really nice athletes have a platform to speak up.”

“We are having conversations in order to be better, and for our stakeholders to be better. But that takes time,” she said.

Christophe Dubi, the IOC executive director for the Olympic Games, added: “We make a point to receive those petitions, and we have to recognise climate is a challenge for all of us.

“What we have to do as an organisation is to be at the forefront of sustainability, and our principles are very clear.”

Eni created the Olympic and Paralympic Torches for the Games, and has provided around 250 electricity generators fuelled by HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) diesel biofuel, which it says contributes to a reduction in greenhouse gases.

The firm says on its website that it has a shared vision with the Games organisers — “a commitment to increasingly sustainable, equitable and accessible energy”.

Italy foils Russian cyberattacks targeting Olympics


By AFP
February 4, 2026


The number of hacks has been increasing worldwide. — © AFP/File Noel Celis

Italy has thwarted a series of Russian cyberattacks targeting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the foreign minister said Wednesday, as security operations ramp up with just hours to go.

Political leaders, including US Vice President JD Vance, are expected to attend Friday’s opening ceremony, and security has become a fraught topic after it emerged that agents from a controversial US immigration enforcement agency would be present.

Italy’s interior minister Matteo Piantedosi stressed Wednesday that the agents from ICE would have an advisory role only.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arm will operate within US diplomatic missions only and “are not operational agents” and “have no executive function”, he told parliament.

Just hours before the first sporting events, which begin Wednesday, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Italy has “foiled a series of cyberattacks” of “Russian origin”.

The attacks were “on foreign ministry offices, starting with Washington, and also some Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina”, he said during a trip to the US city.

His office did not provide further details. AFP requested comment from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).


The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics take place from Friday to February 22 – Copyright AFP PIERO CRUCIATTI

Some 6,000 police plus nearly 2,000 military personnel are being deployed across the Games area, which stretches across half a dozen sites from Milan to the Dolomites.

Bomb disposal experts, snipers, anti-terrorism units and skiing policemen are among those deployed, according to Piantedosi.

The defence ministry is also providing 170 vehicles plus radars, drones and aircraft.

The prospect of ICE agents, currently embroiled in an often brutal crackdown on illegal immigration in the United States, operating on Italian soil has sparked widespread outrage in the country.

Piantedosi noted it was standard for countries to send security officials to the Olympics, with Italy having sent them to Paris for the 2024 Games.

He said the anger over their presence, which included the Milan mayor warning they were not welcome in the city during the February 6-22 Games, was “completely unfounded”.

– ‘Strictly advisory’ –

The HSI investigates global threats, including the illegal movement of people, goods and weapons, and is separate from the department carrying out the US immigration crackdown that has sparked widespread protests.

“ICE does not and will never be able to carry out operational police activities on our national territory,” Piantedosi emphasised.

The US State Department said that the HSI has in the past taken part in other Olympic events.

The US ambassador to Italy, Tilman J. Fertitta, previously said the HSI will be “strictly advisory and intelligence-based, with no patrolling or enforcement involvement”.

“At the Olympics, HSI criminal investigators will contribute their expertise by providing intelligence on transnational criminal threats, with a focus on cybercrimes and national security threats,” he said last week.

But the row continues. A pop-up hospitality house organised by US Figure Skating, USA Hockey and US Speedskating at a hotel in Milan has even changed its name from “Ice House” to “Winter House”.

Several protests have been planned for the opening weekend of the Games, focusing on their environmental impact as well as the politics of the event.

Pro-Palestinian activists are planning a demonstration during the arrival of the Olympic flame in Milan on Thursday, to protest Israel’s participation in the Games due to the war in Gaza.

Demonstrations are also expected to coincide with the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium on Friday, with a further march planned in the city on Saturday.

One protest organisation in Milan calls itself the Unsustainable Olympics Committee — a play on the official International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Critics of the Winter Games complain about the impact of infrastructure — from new buildings to transport — on fragile mountain environments, as well as the widespread and energy-intensive use of artificial snow.

‘No One Should Have a Copyright on Vance Being Booed’: Video From Olympics Blocked on X

The vice president attended the opening ceremony in Milan, where people also protested the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics.


US Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games at the San Siro stadium in Milan, Italy, on February 6, 2026.
(Photo by Andreas Rentz/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Feb 06, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


US Vice President JD Vance was booed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Italy on Friday, but at least one widely shared video of it was swiftly scrubbed from X, the social media platform controlled by former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk.

Acyn Torabi, or @Acyn, “is an industrialized viral-video machine,” the Washington Post explained last year, “grabbing the most eye-catching moments from press conferences and TV news panels, packaging them within seconds into quick highlights, and pushing them to his million followers across X and Bluesky dozens of times a day.”


Demonstrators Rally in Milan to Say ‘FCK ICE’ as Winter Olympics Kick Off


In this case, Torabi, who’s now senior digital editor at MeidasTouch, reshared a video of the vice president and his wife, Usha Vance, being booed that was initially posted by filmmaker Mick Gzowski.

However, the video was shortly taken down and replaced with the text, “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

Noting the development, Torabi, said: “No one should have a copyright on Vance being booed. It belongs to the world.”

As of press time, the footage is still circulating online thanks to other X accounts and across other platforms—including a video shared on Bluesky by MeidasTouch editor in chief Ron Filipkowski.



The Vances’ unfriendly welcome came after a Friday protest in the streets of Milan over the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics, with some participants waving “FCK ICE” signs.

The Trump administration has said the ICE agents—whose agency is under fire for its treatment of people across the United States as part of the president’s mass deportation agenda—are helping to provide security for the vice president and other US delegation members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

JD Vance mercilessly booed at Olympics as US athletes denounce Trump admin

David Edwards
February 6, 2026 

RAW STORY


CBC/Olympics/screen grab

Vice President JD Vance was reportedly booed at the Milan Cortina Winter Games as U.S. Olympians denounced President Donald Trump's administration.

A video shared on social media showed the audience booing Vance as the camera panned by him during the Opening Ceremony on Friday.

"Those are a lot of boos for him," one announcer noted.

At a press conference, members of the U.S. figure skating team were asked about the Trump administration's use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to crack down on migrants.

"I feel heartbroken about what's happened in the United States when, you know, I'm pretty sure you're referencing ICE and some of the protests and things like that," freestyle skater Chris Lillis told reporters. "I think that as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody's rights and making sure that we're treating our citizens as well as anybody with love and respect."

"It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. It's a little hard," skater Hunter Hess agreed. "There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren't."

"Just because I'm wearing the flag doesn't mean I represent everything that's going on in the U.S.," he added. "So yeah, I just kind of want to do it for my friends and my family and the people that support me getting here."