Private individuals can face criminal prosecution and even prison for sharing the broadcaster’s content online, according to a new ruling | The EU’s top court has ruled that private individuals can face criminal prosecution for posting RT videos on public websites, widening the bloc’s crackdown on Russian media. ● The Court of Justice of the European Union issued the ruling on Thursday in a case from Germany, where three people are being prosecuted for publishing RT DE videos on a freely accessible website. ● The site did not charge readers and was financed only through voluntary donations. The CJEU, however, said that made no difference and ruled that all persons who are “directly or indirectly” responsible for making banned content available to the public can be treated as “operators” under EU sanctions rules. [...]Under the German law cited in the ruling, violations of EU sanctions-based media bans can carry up to five years in prison.

■ How the EU uses polls to manufacture consent (07/02/26)

Trump weighs resuming ‘all-out war’ on Iran, chooses diplomacy ‘for now’: Report https://t.co/k4sluMfIMh

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Maryanne Demasi, PhD | By the time Covid emerged in 2020, many of the global health power players moved seamlessly into roles they had spent years preparing for. | A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies. The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts. ■ In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency’s substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually. The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared. ■ For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty. But these emails tell a different story.

■ Strike on Kyiv. A detailed analysis of the targets hit (Lord Of War)

The Eurobarometer survey seems custom-designed to deliver the answers Brussels wants | The European Union’s in-house pollsters have concluded that their citizens overwhelmingly support the decisions made in Brussels, and want more of what the EU is giving them. It doesn’t take much digging to discover that someone is cooking the books. ● The topline results from the latest Eurobarometer survey paint a rosy picture of life in the EU. 75% of respondents see the EU “as a place of stability in a troubled world,” they value its “contribution to protecting peace and strengthening security,” and “vast majorities of Europeans” want deeper integration and more power for Brussels to “face global challenges,” with defense and security their top priority.