УКРОПИ

Vance tells Europeans that heavy regulation could kill AI 

Paris — U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Europeans on Tuesday their “massive” regulations on artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as “authoritarian censorship.”

The mood on AI has shifted as the technology takes root, from one of concerns around safety to geopolitical competition, as countries jockey to nurture the next big AI giant.

Vance, setting out the Trump administration’s America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI and strongly opposed the European Union’s far tougher regulatory approach.

“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” Vance told an AI summit of CEOs and heads of state in Paris.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he added.

Vance criticized the “massive regulations” created by the EU’s Digital Services Act, as well as Europe’s online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, which he said meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms.

“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said.

European lawmakers last year approved the bloc’s AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology.

Vance is leading the American delegation at the Paris summit.

Vance also appeared to take aim at China at a delicate moment for the U.S. technology sector.

Last month, Chinese startup DeepSeek freely distributed a powerful AI reasoning model that some said challenged U.S. technology leadership. It sent shares of American chip designer Nvidia down 17%.

“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” Vance said.

But he said that “partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true? Just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley: if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”

Vance did not mention DeepSeek by name. There has been no evidence of information being able to surreptitiously flow through the startup’s technology to China’s government, and the underlying code is freely available to use and view. However, some government organizations have reportedly banned DeepSeek’s use.

Speaking after Vance, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he was fully in favor of trimming red tape, but he stressed that regulation was still needed to ensure trust in AI, or people would end up rejecting it. “We need a trustworthy AI,” he said.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also said the EU would cut red tape and invest more in AI.

In a bilateral meeting, Vance and von der Leyen were also likely to discuss Trump’s substantial increase of tariffs on steel.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was expected to address the summit on Tuesday. A consortium led by Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI.

Altman promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

The technology world has closely watched whether the Trump administration will ease recent antitrust enforcement that had seen the U.S. sue or investigate the industry’s biggest players.

Vance said the U.S. would champion American AI — which big players develop — he also said: “Our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech, and all other developers on a level playing field.”
…

EU’s AI push to get $50 billion boost, EU’s von der Leyen says

PARIS — Europe will invest an additional $51.5 billion to bolster the bloc’s artificial intelligence ambition, European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

It will come on top of the European AI Champions Initiative, that has already pledged 150 billion euros from providers, investors and industry, von der Leyen told the Paris AI Summit.

“Thereby we aim to mobilize a total of 200 billion euros for AI investments in Europe,” she said.

Von der Leyen said investments will focus on industrial and mission-critical technologies.

Companies which have signed up to the European AI Champions initiative, spearheaded by investment company General Catalyst, include Airbus, ASML, Siemens, Infineon, Philips, Mistral and Volkswagen.
…

US senior advisers to talk with Zelenskyy on Munich sidelines

Senior advisers in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump are preparing to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, according to an Associated Press interview with retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.

Kellogg, a special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said planning continues for talks with Zelenskyy at the annual conference. 

Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kellogg are among those who could participate in the sideline conversations with Ukraine’s president, AP reported. 

Trump has been critical about how much the war is costing the U.S. and has said European countries should repay the U.S. for helping Ukraine. 

During his campaign, Trump said if he were elected president, he would bring a swift end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but he did not specify how he would accomplish that. 

Recently, he has said that he wants to make a deal with Ukraine to continue U.S. support in exchange for access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.  

On Monday, AP reported the president said there are people currently working on a money-for-minerals-deal with Ukraine.  

“We have people over there today who are making a deal that, as we give money, we get minerals and we get oil and we get all sorts of things,” Trump said. 

Kellogg told AP that “the economics of that would allow for further support to the Ukrainians.”

Meanwhile, Russian drone attacks caused a fire in Kyiv, injured a woman in Sumy and damaged several homes, according to Ukrainian officials. 

The Russian military reported downing 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven in the Krasnodar region.

Nobody was hurt as a result of the fire in Kyiv, which was sparked in a non-residential building, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Five houses were damaged and a woman was reportedly injured in the northeastern city of Sumy, regional governor Ihor Kalchenko said on Telegram.

Material from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.
…

On sidelines of AI Summit in Paris, unions denounce its harmful effects

PARIS — In front of political and tech leaders gathered at a summit in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a strategy on Monday to make up for the delay in France and Europe in investing in artificial intelligence (AI) but was faced with a “counter-summit” that pointed out the risks of the technology. 

The use of chatbots at work and school is destroying jobs, professions and threatening the acquisition of knowledge, said union representatives gathered at the Theatre de la Concorde located in the Champs-Elysees gardens, less than a kilometer from the venue of the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence. 

Habib El Kettani, from Solidaires Informatique, a union representing IT workers, described an “automation already underway for about ten years,” which has been reinforced with the arrival of the flagship tool ChatGPT at the end of 2022. 

“I have been fighting for ten years to ensure that my job does not become an endangered species,” said Sandrine Larizza, from the CGT union at France Travail, a public service dedicated to the unemployed. 

She deplored “a disappearance of social rights that goes hand in hand with the automation of public services,” where the development of AI has served, according to her “to make people work faster to respond less and less to the needs of users, by reducing staff numbers.” 

Loss of meaning 

“With generative AI, it is no longer the agent who responds by email to the unemployed person but the generative AI that gives the answers with a multitude of discounted job offers in subcontracting,” said Larizza. 

This is accompanied by “a destruction of our human capacities to play a social role, a division into micro-tasks on the assembly line and an industrialization of our professions with a loss of meaning,” she said, a few days after the announcement of a partnership between France Travail and the French startup Mistral. 

“Around 40 projects” are also being tested “with postal workers,” said Marie Vairon, general secretary of the Sud PTT union of the La Poste and La Banque Postale group. 

AI is used “to manage schedules and simplify tasks with a tool tested since 2020 and generalized since 2023,” she said, noting that the results are “not conclusive.” 

After the implementation at the postal bank, La Banque Postale, of “Lucy,” a conversational robot handling some “300,000 calls every month,” Vairon is concerned about a “generative AI serving as a coach for bank advisers.” 

‘Students are using it’ 

On the education side, “whether we like it or not, students are using it,” said Stephanie de Vanssay, national educational and digital adviser of the National Union of Autonomous Unions (UNSA) for primary and secondary school. 

“We have indifferent teachers, worried teachers who are afraid of losing control and quality of learning, skeptics, and those who are angry about all the other priorities,” she said. 

Developing the critical thinking of some 12 million students is becoming, in any case, “an even more serious concern and it is urgent to explain how to use these tools and why,” de Vanssay said. 

The Minister of National Education Elisabeth Borne announced on Thursday the launch of a call for tenders for an AI for teachers, as well as a charter of use and training for teachers. 

“No critical thinking without interactions and without helping each other to think and progress in one’s thinking, which requires intermediation,” said Beatrice Laurent, national secretary of UNSA education. “A baby with a tablet and nursery rhymes will not learn to speak.”
…

Space telescope spots rare ‘Einstein ring’ of light

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Europe’s Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday. The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards.  

A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Astronomers have known about this galaxy for more than a century and so were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.  

An Einstein ring is light from a much more distant galaxy that bends in such a way as to perfectly encircle a closer object, in this case a well-known galaxy in the constellation Draco.  

The faraway galaxy creating the ring is more than 4 billion light-years away. Gravity distorted the light from this more distant galaxy, thus the name honoring Albert Einstein. The process is known as gravitational lensing.

“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful,” lead author Conor O’Riordan of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said in a statement.

Euclid rocketed from Florida in 2023. NASA is taking part in its mission to detect dark energy and dark matter in the universe.
…

Romanian President Iohannis announces resignation after pressure by populists

Bucharest, Romania — Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced his resignation on Monday following mounting pressure from populist opposition groups, two months after a top court annulled a presidential election in the European Union country.

“To spare Romania from this crisis, I am resigning as president of Romania,” he said in an emotional address, adding that he will leave office on Feb. 12.

Iohannis, 65, held the presidential role since 2014 and served the maximum of two five-year terms. But his presidency was extended in December after the Constitutional Court canceled the presidential race two days before a Dec. 8 runoff.

That came after the far-right populist Calin Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round, after which allegations emerged of Russian interference and electoral violations.

Several opposition parties, including the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), the nationalist SOS party and the Party of Young People — but also some members of the reformist Save Romania Union party — sought Iohannis’ ouster through a motion filed to Parliament. Some lawmakers from the governing coalition were also expected to vote in favor.

“This is a useless endeavor because, in any case, I will leave office in a few months after the election of the new president,” Iohannis said. “It is an unfounded move because I have never — I repeat, never — violated the constitution. And it is a harmful endeavor because … everyone loses, and no one gains.”

He added that the consequences of his ouster would be “long-lasting and highly negative” for Romania, an EU member since 2007, and a NATO member since 2004. “None of our partners will understand why Romania is dismissing its president when the process for electing a new president has already begun,” he said.

New dates have been set to rerun the presidential vote with the first round scheduled for May 4. If no candidate obtains more than 50% of the ballot, a runoff would be held two weeks later, on May 18. It is not yet clear whether Georgescu will be able to participate in the new election.

After his resignation announcement, clashes broke out between Georgescu supporters and police in front of the government building in the capital, Bucharest.
…

Russia drone attacks spark fire, damage homes

Russian drone attacks caused a fire in Kyiv, injured a woman in Sumy and damaged several homes, according to Ukrainian officials.

Meanwhile, the Russian military reported downing 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven in the Krasnodar region.

Nobody was hurt as a result of the fire in Kyiv, which was sparked in a non-residential building, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Five houses were damaged and a woman was reportedly injured in the northeastern city of Sumy, regional governor Ihor Kalchenko said on Telegram.

While fighting continued, a group of U.S. officials from President Donald Trump’s administration were set to travel to Europe this week for discussions that would include the war in Ukraine.

Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to attend an artificial intelligence summit in France before attending the Munich Security Conference with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Munich event, billed as “the world’s leading forum for debating international security policy,” is expected to focus on prospects for peace in Ukraine as well as discussions of other global conflicts.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will visit the headquarters of two military commands, then meet with NATO defense ministers. He’ll also attend a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, where he “will reiterate President Trump’s commitment for a diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible,” according to the Pentagon.

Material from Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.

 
…

Tensions heat up in the Arctic

Climate change is rapidly altering the Arctic region, creating environmental danger, economic opportunity and geopolitical tension as the world’s major powers scramble to control newly accessible shipping lanes and resource deposits.
…

German chancellor candidates clash on Trump, the far-right and NATO

Berlin — Europe is prepared to respond “within an hour” if the United States levies tariffs against the European Union, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a pre-election debate with his conservative challenger Friedrich Merz.

In the first duel ahead of the Feb. 23 election, Merz portrayed Scholz as a ditherer who had led Germany into economic crisis, while the Social Democrat presented himself as an experienced leader in command of the details.

Asked if the EU was ready with a targeted response if the U.S. imposed tariffs, Scholz, well behind Merz in the polls, said, “Yes … We as the European Union can act within an hour.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to enact tariffs against the United States’ largest trading partners, accusing them of free-riding on American prosperity. Trade policy is an EU competence, run by the European Commission in Brussels.

Trump and the far-right Alternative for Germany, endorsed by his confidante Elon Musk, overshadowed the debate.

Merz, far ahead in the polls and the favorite to become Germany’s next chancellor, expressed reluctance to raise taxes or borrow to reach the NATO alliance’s defense spending target of 2% of gross domestic product, far short of the 5% Trump is demanding.

When Scholz said that would not be enough, Merz signaled his openness to discuss scrapping Germany’s totemic spending cap — despite a manifesto pledge to keep the constitutional debt braked.

The two clashed over the AfD, with Scholz warning that Merz could not be trusted not to govern with the party. Merz ruled that out, blaming what he called Scholz’s “left-wing” policies for fueling the far-right party’s rise to second in the polls.
…

Ukraine looks to bargain rare earth minerals for continued US support

The presidents of Ukraine and the United States are looking to make a deal. This comes as world leaders meet later this week in Munich to discuss, among other issues, the future of Ukraine’s security. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
…

Baltic states switch to European power grid, ending Russia ties 

VILNIUS — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said on Sunday they had successfully synchronized their electricity systems to the European continental power grid, one day after severing decades-old energy ties to Russia and Belarus.

Planned for many years, the complex switch away from the grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord is designed to integrate the three Baltic nations more closely with the European Union and to boost the region’s energy security.

“We did it!,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in a post on social media X.

After disconnecting on Saturday from the IPS/UPS network, established by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and now run by Russia, the Baltic nations cut cross-border high-voltage transmission lines in eastern Latvia, some 100 meters from the Russian border, handing out pieces of chopped wire to enthusiastic bystanders as keepsakes.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian, earlier this week called the switch “a victory for freedom and European unity.”

The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after power cable, telecom links and gas pipeline outages between the Baltics and Sweden or Finland. All were believed to have been caused by ships dragging anchors along the seabed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has denied any involvement.

Poland and the Baltics deployed navy assets, elite police units and helicopters after an undersea power link from Finland to Estonia was damaged in December, while Lithuania’s military began drills to protect the overland connection to Poland.

Analysts say more damage to links could push power prices in the Baltics to levels not seen since the invasion of Ukraine, when energy prices soared.

The IPS/UPS grid was the final remaining link to Russia for the three countries, which re-emerged as independent nations in the early 1990s at the fall of the Soviet Union, and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.

The three staunch supporters of Kyiv stopped purchases of power from Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but have relied on the Russian grid to control frequencies and stabilize networks to avoid outages.
…