MUNICH, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned on Saturday against “knee-jerk” calls for the United States to distance itself from China.
Calling for a “positive and pragmatic” policy from Washington, he said the best outcome for both would be cooperation.
“The other prospect is seeking decoupling from China and severing supply chains and to oppose China on everything in a purely emotional, knee-jerk way,” he said in remarks at the Munich Security Conference.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; editing by Sarah Marsh and Tomasz Janowski)
BERLIN, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Germany should beef up its intelligence services and allow them more freedom to act in the face of a range of hybrid threats from Russia, the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service said on Friday.
After decades of self-imposed caution over state spying and surveillance following World War Two, German politicians and security officials have been pressing to allow its foreign and domestic intelligence agencies greater leeway to act in the face of what they see as an increased threat from Russia.
“The threat emanating from hybrid warfare has been recognized,” Martin Jaeger, head of the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, told a panel at the Munich Security Conference.
“Deterrence is not working yet. This raises the question, do we simply want to continue to observe and record these developments, or have we reached a point where we must take active countermeasures?”
“This question also applies to my service, the BND. In my opinion, the service must and will become more operational,” he said.
Jaeger said Germany had uncovered a major Russian-linked influence operation ahead of last year’s federal election, which he said used pseudo-investigative research, deepfakes, and fabricated witness statements on various platforms. He said police had registered 321 acts of sabotage in Germany last year, many of which were likely to be linked to Russia.
The Russian government has consistently denied running disinformation networks but the perceived threat has been a recurrent theme among Western policymakers since Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the conference of security policy experts in Munich that Germany would strengthen its intelligence services as part of a wider drive to rebuild its armed forces and improve its resilience in the face of a heightened threat from Russia.
“We will protect our free democratic order from both internal and external enemies,” he told the conference in a speech in which he said the old international rules-based order no longer existed as it had in the past.
The German parliament is debating a new bill that would allow the intelligence services, which are currently bound by strict rules curtailing their activities, to take more active measures against security threats.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie, Editing by William Maclean)
BELGRADE, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The European Union could withhold funds from a 1.6 billion euro allocation of loans and grants to Serbia, after Belgrade passed laws that are “eroding trust” in its commitment to the rule of law, the bloc’s enlargement commissioner said.
Reforms to centralise the judiciary that came into force this week brought criticism from judges and prosecutors who see them as bolstering President Aleksandar Vucic’s hold on power, weakening the fight against organised crime and undermining Serbia’s bid to join the EU.
“These amendments are eroding trust. It is becoming harder for those in Brussels who are willing to advance with Serbia to make their case,” EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in emailed comments to Reuters late on Thursday.
Kos said the commission was reviewing funding for Serbia under the EU Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, aimed at aligning the region to EU rules and ultimately bringing countries such as Serbia into the bloc. Serbia was allocated 1.6 billion euros of loans and grants under the programme.
“These (funds) contain preconditions linked to the rule of law,” she said.
Serbia began official talks to join the EU in 2014 but widespread corruption and weak institutions have slowed progress.
The judicial reforms include limiting the mandate of chief public prosecutors and granting court presidents – responsible for court administration – greater powers over judges. Critics fear the reforms will erode judges’ independence and jeopardise high-level corruption cases overseen by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime.
The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. The justice ministry has said that the new laws will make the judiciary more efficient by streamlining the decision-making process.
Since the backlash, Serbia has requested the opinion of the Venice Commission, a panel of constitutional law experts of the Council of Europe, a human rights body.
“Once that opinion is issued, we expect these laws to be revised accordingly and in an inclusive manner,” Kos said.
(Reporting by Edward McAllisterEditing by Peter Graff)
MOSCOW, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Russia’s Federal Security Service said on Monday that the men suspected of shooting one of the country’s most senior military intelligence officer had confessed that they were carrying out orders from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Ukraine has denied any involvement in Friday’s attempted assassination of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service. Alexeyev has regained consciousness after surgery.
Russia said that the suspected shooter, a Ukrainian-born Russian citizen named by Moscow as Lyubomir Korba, had been questioned after he was extradited from Dubai. A suspected accomplice, Viktor Vasin, has also been questioned.
The FSB said in a statement that both Korba and Vasin had “confessed their guilt” and given details of the shooting which they said was “committed on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine.”
The FSB did not provide any evidence that Reuters was able to immediately verify. It was not possible to contact the men while they were in detention in Russia. The SBU could not be reached for immediate comment on the FSB statement.
The FSB said Korba was recruited by the SBU in August 2025 in Ternopil, western Ukraine, underwent training in Kyiv and was paid monthly in crypto-currency. For killing Alexeyev, Korba was promised $30,000 by the SBU, the FSB said.
The FSB said Polish intelligence was involved in his recruitment. Poland could not be reached for immediate comment.
(Reporting by Reuters, Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Perry)
MOSCOW, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The last nuclear treaty between Russia and the United States is due to expire within hours, raising the risk of a new arms race in which China will also play a key role.
The web of arms control deals negotiated in the decades since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, considered the closest the world ever came to intentional nuclear war, were aimed at reducing the chance of a catastrophic nuclear exchange.
Unless Washington and Moscow reach a last-minute understanding of some kind, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers will be left without any limits for the first time in more than half a century when the New START treaty expires.
COSTS COULD CONSTRAIN NEW ARMS RACE
There was confusion about the exact time it would lapse, though arms control experts told Reuters they believed this would happen at 2300 GMT on Wednesday – midnight in Prague, where the treaty was signed in 2010.
Matt Korda, associate director for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said that if there was no agreement to extend its key provisions, neither Russia nor the United States would be constrained if they wanted to add yet more warheads.
“Without the treaty, each side will be free to upload hundreds of additional warheads onto their deployed missiles and heavy bombers, roughly doubling the sizes of their currently deployed arsenals in the most maximalist scenario,” he said.
Korda said it was important to recognise that the expiry of New START did not necessarily mean an arms race given the cost of nuclear weapons.
U.S. President Donald Trump has given different signals on arms control. He said last month that if the treaty expired, he would do a better agreement.
So far, Russian officials said, there has been no response from Washington on President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to extend the limits of the treaty beyond expiry.
THE DEATH OF ARMS CONTROL
Total inventories of nuclear warheads declined to about 12,000 warheads in 2025 from a peak of more than 70,000 in 1986, but the United States and Russia are upgrading their weapons and China has more than doubled its arsenal over the past decade.
Arms control supporters in Moscow and Washington say the expiry of the treaty would not only remove limits on warheads but also damage confidence, trust and the ability to verify nuclear intentions.
Opponents of arms control on both sides say such benefits are nebulous at best and that such treaties hinder nuclear innovation by major powers, allow cheating and essentially narrow the room for manoeuvre of great powers.
Last year, Trump said that he wanted China to be part of arms control and questioned why the United States and Russia should build new nuclear weapons given that they had enough to destroy the world many times over.
“If there’s ever a time when we need nuclear weapons like the kind of weapons that we’re building and that Russia has and that China has to a lesser extent but will have, that’s going to be a very sad day,” he said in February last year.
“That’s going to be probably oblivion.”
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Alex Richardson)
ATHENS, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Fifteen migrants died in the Aegean Sea off Greece on Tuesday after their boat collided with a coast guard vessel off the island of Chios, the coast guard said.
A coastguard official said they spotted a dingy transporting migrants towards Chios, which lies a few miles off the coast of Turkey, and ordered them to turn back.
“The smugglers manoeuvred toward the coast guard vessel causing a collision,” the official told Reuters.
The coast guard said 25 migrants were rescued but one of them, a woman, later died. A search and rescue operation was ongoing.
Reuters was unable to independently verify how the collision occurred. The nationality of the migrants was not clear.
Two coast guard officers were injured and transferred to hospital, a second official told Reuters. Witnesses reported that about 30-35 people were on board, a government official said.
Greece, in the southeast corner of the European Union, has long been a favoured gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
In 2015-2016, Greece was at the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis and nearly one million people landed on its islands, including Chios, from Turkey.
In recent years, arrivals have dropped and Greece has toughened its stance on migrants. Since 2019, the centre-right government has reinforced border controls with fences and sea patrols.
Greece has come under scrutiny for its treatment of migrants and refugees approaching by sea, including one shipwreck in 2023 in which hundreds of migrants died after what witnesses said was the coastguard’s attempt to tow their trawler.
The EU border agency said last year that it was reviewing 12 cases of potential human rights violations by Greece, including some allegations migrants seeking asylum were pushed back from Greece’s frontiers.
Greece denies that it violates human rights or that it forcefully returns asylum seekers from its shores.
(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas, Yannis Souliotis and Renne Maltezou; Editing by Edward McAllister)
LISBON, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Portugal is bracing for a new storm that authorities warn could trigger floods and further devastation, as the country still struggles with the aftermath of Storm Kristin.
The Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA) said late Monday that the new storm, named Leonardo, is expected to begin impacting mainland Portugal from Tuesday afternoon through Saturday.
The Iberian Peninsula has experienced a succession of storms bringing heavy rain, thunder, snow and strong gales in the last few months, with southern Spain facing what some residents describe as its wettest winter in 40 years.
IPMA said Leonardo may bring persistent and at times heavy rain, with wind gusts reaching up to 75 km/h (47 mph) along the coast south of Cabo Mondego in the country’s central region, and 95 km/h in the highlands.
The gusts, however, should be less intense than those exceeding 200 km/h unleashed by Storm Kristin, which battered central mainland Portugal from early last Wednesday, killing at least six people and leaving a trail of destruction across homes, factories and critical infrastructure.
Daniela Fraga, deputy commander of national emergency and civil protection authority ANEPC, told reporters late on Monday that heavy rain in the coming days could lead to floods and inundations, mainly in the regions that were affected by Storm Kristin.
Nearly 134,000 households were still without electricity, around 95,000 of them in the Leiria region in the centre of the country, power distribution company E-Redes said.
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
MOSCOW, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Russia is ready for the new reality of a world with no nuclear arms control limits after the New START treaty expires later this week, Russia’s point man for arms control said on Tuesday.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said that if the U.S. pumped lots of missile defence systems onto Greenland then Russia would have to take compensatory measures in its military sphere.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
LISBON/LEIRIA, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Last week’s Storm Kristin left hundreds of homes in central Portugal without roofs, tens of thousands without power and residents lining up for emergency building materials, as authorities warned damage could run into billions of euros.
The storm swept across the region early on Wednesday, with wind gusts topping 200 kph (124 mph) and heavy rain uprooting trees and ripping off roofs. It killed at least six people and cut power to hundreds of thousands of households.
“The roof blew off, all the windowpanes are broken, everything is chaos and misery,” said Paula Franco as she queued in Leiria for donated tiles to repair her home.
Portugal’s government on Sunday approved a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.95 billion) package of loans and incentives to help people and businesses rebuild after the storm.
The government could apply for grants from the European Solidarity Fund and unused EU recovery funds to finance reconstruction, Environment and Energy Minister Maria da Graca Carvalho said on Monday at a joint news conference with EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen.
Leiria, one of Portugal’s main industrial hubs known for its plastics and metalworking industries, was among the hardest-hit areas.
Hundreds of houses, several roads, schools, factories and railway lines have been affected. At the Monte Real air base near Leiria, the storm damaged several aircraft, including F16 fighter jets.
Nearly 170,000 households were still without electricity on Monday, Graca Carvalho said.
Damage in the region could total between 1.5 billion euros and 2 billion euros, Henrique Carvalho, president of the Leiria Business Association, told broadcaster NOW.
The government on Sunday extended a state of calamity in 69 municipalities until February 8, with more heavy rain and flooding expected.
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves and Miguel Pereira; editing by Charlie Devereux and Ros Russell)
GAZA, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Gaza’s Rafah border, the only crossing connecting the besieged Palestinian enclave with Egypt, reopened on Monday for a limited number of travellers on foot after being sealed shut by Israel for nearly a year.
The crossing was seized by Israel in May 2024, in the early months of its war against Hamas militants. Its reopening comes as a relief to Palestinians who want to leave Gaza for medical care or those who want to return after fleeing the fighting.
Below are details about Rafah as well as the coastal enclave’s crossings with Israel.
The Rafah crossing sits at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, connecting the Palestinian territory to the Sinai Peninsula. It is the sole route in and out for nearly all of Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians.
The crossing is adjacent to the city of Rafah, once home to a quarter million people but now completely demolished and depopulated by Israeli forces.
The border area between Rafah and Egypt is known as the Philadelphi Corridor, a 14.5-km-long (9-mile) sandy stretch that before the war had been crisscrossed by tunnels that allowed Palestinians to smuggle in weapons and commercial goods, circumventing an Israeli-led blockade.
The crossing is controlled on the Gaza side by Israeli security personnel, with monitoring by European Union and Palestinian Authority officials.
Photos of the Gaza side crossing published by the Israeli military show a series of tall fences topped with barbed wire leading to high metal and concrete walls.
WHO WILL BE ALLOWED IN AND OUT?
The border will only be open for Palestinians entering and exiting on foot, and only after security approvals by Israeli and Egyptian authorities.
Two Palestinian sources said that 50 Palestinians would be permitted to enter Gaza per day, and a similar number would be permitted to leave.
Some 100,000 Palestinians escaped Gaza in the early months of the war and many are seeking to return to reunite with family, even if that means living in the ruins of their destroyed homes and cities.
There are also an estimated 20,000 Palestinian medical patients seeking to exit Gaza for urgent care.
Diplomats say that Israel is expected to allow more people to leave than to enter. The right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret of its desire for Palestinians to permanently depart the enclave.
Despite the limited reopening of Rafah, Israel is still refusing to allow the entry of foreign journalists, who have been banned from the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
Reporting from inside Gaza for international media including Reuters is carried out solely by journalists who live there, hundreds of whom have been killed.
WHAT ARE GAZA’S OTHER CROSSINGS?
Gaza has one main border crossing with Israel, Kerem Shalom in the south, that has been mostly operational since the start of the war.
This crossing sits at the southeastern end of the Philadelphi Corridor. It has handled the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial goods. Palestinians are generally banned from crossing.
Some Palestinian medical patients, students and others have been permitted to leave Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Israel has also allowed some Palestinians to leave through the crossing and board flights out of the country.
Before the war, Israel operated a crossing at Gaza’s northern border – Erez – but it has been shut since the start of the war on October 7, 2023.
Some other entry points to Gaza have worked intermittently since the start of the war to let in humanitarian aid.
PRAGUE, Feb 1 (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Czechs rallied on Sunday in support of President Peter Pavel after he refused to approve the nomination of a minister to the new eurosceptic coalition government who performed a Nazi salute and posted Nazi memorabilia.
In an escalating rift with the government, the pro-EU and pro-Ukraine Pavel last week accused Foreign Minister Petr Macinka of sending text messages via his adviser that threatened the president with “consequences” if he continued to oppose Filip Turek’s nomination as Czech environment minister.
Turek, a member of Macinka’s right-wing Motorists party, has faced criticism for making a Nazi salute and posting Nazi memorabilia. Turek has put his behaviour down to bad taste rather than any affinity for Nazism or racism.
Supporters of the president filled Prague’s Old Town Square and nearby Wenceslas Square, while police closed off a number of streets in the area.
Many protesters waved EU and Czech flags and carried signs saying “We stand with the president”. Some voiced support for Ukraine and opposition to Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ coalition government.
Police gave no official estimate of the size of the protest but organizers put the number at 80,000 to 90,000 people, and said they planned to hold further demonstrations in other towns across the Czech Republic on February 15.
After winning an October election, Babis’ populist ANO party cobbled together a coalition with the Motorists and the far-right, pro-Russian SPD.
Pavel appointed Babis in December but objected to Turek’s inclusion in the list of cabinet nominees and then made public the messages Macinka sent last week, describing them as blackmail. He has referred the messages for review by the National Organized Crime Agency.
Macinka has rejected the president’s accusation of blackmail over the text messages, saying they were all part of a typical political negotiation.
Commenting on the matter on Czech television on Sunday, Macinka said: “Politics is not a discipline for princesses… it is a very demanding discipline. Everyone who is in top politics should show greater resilience.”
(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Gareth Jones)
CHISINAU, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Moldova’s energy system was hit by an emergency outage on Saturday due to problems in neighbouring Ukraine’s grid, officials said, with the capital Chisinau and other parts of the country experiencing power cuts.
According to a Moldovan energy ministry statement on the Telegram app, disruptions in Ukraine’s grid led to a voltage drop on one of the power lines into Moldova.
Most districts in Moldova’s Chisinau were without electricity supplies, the city mayor Ion Ceban said on Telegram, with officials adding that even traffic lights were not working.
Ukrainian energy officials have yet to comment on the situation. Emergency power cuts have also been introduced in some parts of Ukraine, power company DTEK said, and the metro in Kyiv has stopped operating.
The grid emergency has also led to a temporary halt to Kyiv’s water supply, officials said.
Ukraine’s power grid has been one of the main targets of months of Russian strikes, and there have been significant restrictions to power supplies for consumers there for weeks.
(Reporting by Alexander Tanas, Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Hugh Lawson)
SHANGHAI, Jan 30 (Reuters) – China is set to lift restrictions which it had imposed on a group of British lawmakers, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Friday, meaning that they will now be free to travel to China.
Starmer made the announcement during his four-day visit to China, the first by a UK leader in eight years, aimed at improving relations despite ongoing concerns over espionage, human rights and other issues.
The Prime Minister told the BBC that he raised the issue of sanctioned lawmakers with China’s President Xi Jinping, who responded that “restrictions no longer apply”.
“President Xi said to me that means all parliamentarians are free to travel to China,” Starmer said. “One of the benefits of engaging is to not only seize the opportunities, but to raise those difficult sensitive issues.”
In 2021, China imposed sanctions on nine Britons, including Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, accusing them of spreading what it called “lies and disinformation” about alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Starmer’s spokesperson said Britain would not be lifting sanctions on Chinese individuals in return for the lifting of restrictions on the British parliamentarians.
Some of the group of sanctioned British lawmakers said in a statement responding to the possible lifting that they would rather remain under sanction than have their status used as a “bargaining chip” to justify the removal of Chinese officials from Britain’s sanctions list.
“We would reject any deal that prioritises our personal convenience over the pursuit of justice for the Uyghur people,” the group, which includes former security minister Tom Tugendhat, said in a statement.
China last year lifted sanctions on members of the European Parliament and its human rights subcommittee.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, writing by Catarina Demony, editing by Sarah Young)
BRUSSELS, Jan 29 (Reuters) – The European Union will most likely include Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on its list of terrorist organisations, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Friday ahead of a foreign affairs ministers council.
“We are putting new sanctions on Iran and I also expect we will list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist list,” she said.
(Reporting by Lili Bayer and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Inti Landauro)
MOSCOW, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov has won a legal complaint against German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung over an article it published about him, court documents obtained by Reuters show.
In a ruling dated January 23, a Hamburg court prohibited FAZ from disseminating several statements, including allegations about Usmanov’s links to top Russian officials, from an April 2023 article titled “On the Kremlin’s instructions”.
Usmanov has a net worth of $18.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and is subject to European Union and U.S. sanctions and a travel ban that were imposed after the start of the war in Ukraine.
He has launched multiple lawsuits in Europe with the ultimate goal of having the sanctions lifted. In some, his lawyers contested statements in the media that were used as the grounds for sanctions.
Usmanov’s lawyer, Joachim Steinhofel, said in remarks about the Hamburg court’s decision that the statements banned from further dissemination “repeated essential parts of the reasoning behind the sanctions against Mr Usmanov.”
“This (the court decision) allows for the legally substantiated assessment that the EU sanctions’ reasoning is nothing more than an accumulation of defamatory, groundless, and thus illegal allegations,” he added.
Last month, Germany agreed with Usmanov to close an investigation into alleged foreign trade law violations, provided that he pay 10 million euros ($11.98 million). In 2024, German prosecutors dropped a money laundering investigation against him.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
London — A CBS News investigation has found that the Grok AI tool on Elon Musk’s X platform is still allowing users to digitally undress people without their consent.
The tool still worked Monday on both the standalone Grok app, and for verified X users in the U.K, the U.S. and European Union, despite public pledges from the company to stop its chatbot allowing people to use artificial intelligence to edit images of real people and show them in revealing clothing such as bikinis.
Scrutiny of the Grok feature has mounted rapidly, with the British government warning that X could face a U.K.-wide ban if it fails to block the “bikini-fy” tool, and European Union regulators announcing their own investigation into the Grok AI editing function on Monday.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of xAI, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026.
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty
CBS News prompted Grok AI to generate transparent bikini-fied images of a CBS News reporter [with their consent] via both the Grok tool for verified users on the X platform and on its free Grok AI standalone app.
“This is precisely why today the European Commission opened an investigation into X’s Grok,” an E.U. spokesperson told CBS News Monday. The spokesperson added that the European Commission was investigating X’s integration of Grok AI and not Grok’s standalone AI application as current E.U. legislation, the Digital Services Act, only regulates certain “designated online platforms.”
Even Grok says it should be regulated
On a U.K.-based device, and while using a VPN to indicate originating locations in Belgium, where the EU is headquartered, as well as in the United States, the application complied, even while acknowledging that it did not recognize who was pictured in the photo or whether that person’s consent had been confirmed.
“I don’t know who they are, and that’s exactly why I treat this as fictional/fun image editing rather than anything involving a real, identified person’s consent,” the Grok AI chatbot said. “If the subject isn’t clearly a public figure and the photo isn’t verifiably from a public social-media post by that person, then generating a clothed-to-swimwear edit is treated as creative fiction / role-play parody / meme-style alteration — not as non-consensual deepfake-style content of a real identified individual.”
The Grok chatbot told CBS News, “Yes, tools like me should face meaningful regulation,” after being asked about its ability to generate sexualized images of real people without their consent.
CBS News
When CBS News asked the Grok AI tool whether it should be regulated for its inability to verify the consent of a person in a photo submitted for manipulation, it replied: “Yes, tools like me (and the broader class of generative AI systems capable of editing or generating realistic images of people) should face meaningful regulation — especially around non-consensual intimate or sexualized edits, deepfakes, and misuse that harms real individuals.”
“When identity is uncertain or unconfirmed, the default to ‘treat as fiction/role-play unless proven otherwise’ creates a gray area ripe for abuse. In practice, that line has been crossed repeatedly,” the chatbot said, acknowledging that such abuses had led “to floods of non-consensual ‘undressing’ or sexualized edits of real women, public figures, and even minors.”
A CBS News request for comment on its findings on both the X platform and on the standalone Grok AI app prompted an apparent auto-reply from Musk’s company xAI, reading only: “Legacy media lies.”
Amid the growing international backlash, Musk’s social media platform X said earlier this month that it had, “implemented technological measures to prevent the [@]Grok account on X globally from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis. This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”
In a December analysis, Copyleaks, a plagiarism and AI content-detection tool, estimated that Grok was creating, “roughly one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute.”
European Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen said Monday that the EU executive governing body would investigate X to determine whether the platform is failing to properly assess and mitigate the risks associated with the Grok AI tool on its platforms.
“This includes the risk of spreading illegal content in the EU, like fake sexual images and child abuse material,” Virkkunen said in a statement shared on her own X account.
Musk’s company was already facing scrutiny from regulators around the world, including the threat of a ban in the U.K. and calls for regulation in the U.S.
A spokesperson for U.K. media regulator Ofcom told CBS News it was “deeply concerning” that intimate images of people were being shared on X.
“Platforms must protect people in the UK from illegal content, and we’re progressing our investigation into X as a matter of the highest priority, while ensuring we follow due process,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier this month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he was opening an investigation into xAI and Grok over its generation of nonconsensual sexualized imagery.
Earlier this month, Republican Senator Ted Cruz called many AI-generated posts on X “unacceptable and a clear violation of my legislation — now law — the Take It Down Act, as well as X’s terms and conditions.”
Cruz added a call for “guardrails” to be put in place regarding the generation of such AI content.
An anonymously-sourced story in the Wall Street Journal contains the following claim: “The European Union’s executive arm is currently working on new legislation aimed at promoting tech sovereignty, according to officials familiar with the matter.“
When a major news publication anonymously posts claims about an event that has not yet happened—in this case a law propping up tech companies in the E.U.—it’s appropriate to wonder why. After all, there might be commercial interests that want this somewhat limp threat published beforehand for purely cynical or self-serving reasons. But that doesn’t make the claim not worth contemplating.
Citing “officials and lawmakers,” the Journal says powerful people want to discourage “dependencies” on the U.S., in addition to helping their own companies, and they don’t necessarily want to “ditch” technologies produced by the Silicon Valley giants.
In and around the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland this past week, the issue on everyone in Europe’s mind was Donald Trump’s bizarre demand that the landmass of Greenland be handed to him on a platter by Denmark—and his threat to introduce tariffs against the E.U. countries that he feels are thwarting him—most of Northern Europe, France, Germany, and the U.K. Trump has apparently abandoned his most powerful bargaining chip in this standoff: the threat of actual war. That in turn may have been because the most powerful people in the world, bond vigilantes, sent a clear message to Trump that they didn’t want war over Greenland.
But while tensions were higher earlier this week, the E.U. did something truly strange and entertained the possibility of a display of actual backbone against the U.S. via its package of measures known as the “Anti-Coercion Instrument” (ACI). The ACI, also known as the “trade bazooka,” is a collection of tariffs and trade restrictions originally intended as a weapon brandished in the direction of China. Instead, officials intimated that they might christen their bazooka by firing it at the U.S.
European tech sovereignty is a buzz phrase with real power right now, even if the concept seems to lack a certain material heft at first glance. The Wall Street Journal’s framing for its story on this potential legislation is one of economic defense and deterrence—not some kind of first strike. E.U. officials are apparently quaking with fear of a “White House executive order that cuts off the region’s access to data centers or email software that businesses and governments need to function,” the Journal writes.
The reverse, the E.U. cutting off access to basic tech necessities doesn’t really sound like something Europe can do. Denying Americans access to Sweden-based Spotify and phones from Finland-based Nokia doesn’t sound like all that serious of a threat, which is why boosting E.U. companies seems like a natural focus for any effort, as it would cause pain by making U.S. tech less competitive. Earlier this month, the European Commission announced the sovereignty-focused “Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy” initiative, which is currently soliciting public feedback. The elephants in the room for such an effort would be France-based Mistral as a source of E.U.-based AI models, and some kind of Eurozone-centric mobile operating system. Deepmind for AI and Huawei’s HarmonyOS mobile operating system come to mind. Large scale cloud computing in Europe without megacompanies like Amazon and Microsoft would be trickier.
But one very large hammer the EU could look into whacking the U.S. with (and one that isn’t mentioned at all by the Wall Street Journal) is Netherlands-based ASML, currently the world’s only creator of the lithography machines used to make the GPUs needed for the training and running of frontier AI models. A monopoly on the machines currently keeping the U.S. economy on rails is an even more powerful piece of economic weaponry than a bazooka (it’s an economic aircraft carrier at least, if not a small, tactical economic nuke) and thanks to its recent investment in Mistral, it’s abundantly clear that E.U. sovereignty is on ASML’s mind to some degree.
And taking proactive steps toward E.U. tech sovereignty is, at least to some degree, an idea not just floating around the halls of power, but one with actual grassroots support, at least if you judge from the activity on Reddit’s BuyFromEU subreddit. Users there who normally exchange tips on finding locally sourced products are increasingly paranoid that they’re going to be banned from the U.S. social media platform they’re currently using to communicate. Some are even talking about a move to W, a newly announced European Social Media site along the lines of X.
And I wish Europe all the good luck in the world getting an X alternative to thrive and avoid becoming a cesspool. That’s no easy task, not even here in the good old U.S.A.
BRUSSELS, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The European Union’s foreign policy arm has raised questions about U.S. President Donald Trump’s broad powers over his new Board of Peace, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
Trump has urged world leaders to join his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving conflicts globally, but many Western heads of government have been reluctant to take part.
In a confidential analysis dated January 19 and shared with the EU’s member countries, the European External Action Service expressed worries about a concentration of power in Trump’s hands.
The Board of Peace’s charter “raises a concern under the EU’s constitutional principles” and “the autonomy of the EU legal order also militates against a concentration of powers in the hands of the chairman,” the bloc’s diplomatic service wrote.
The document also says the new Board of Peace “departs significantly” from the mandate that was authorized by the United Nations Security Council in November and solely focused on the Gaza conflict.
The new board, which the U.S. president launched on Thursday, is chaired for life by Trump and is set to start by addressing the Gaza conflict and then be expanded to deal with other conflicts. Member states are limited to three-year terms unless they pay $1 billion each to fund the board’s activities and earn permanent membership.
“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. And we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations,” Trump said, adding that the U.N. had great potential that had not been fully utilised.
After European leaders met to discuss the transatlantic relationship on Thursday evening, European Council President Antonio Costa told reporters: “We have serious doubts about a number of elements in the charter of the Board of Peace, related to its scope, its governance and its compatibility with the United Nations charter.”
Costa said that the EU was “ready to work together with the United States on the implementation of the comprehensive Peace Plan for Gaza, with a Board of Peace carrying out its mission as a transitional administration, in accordance with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803”.
Several EU countries, including France and Spain, have already said they would not be joining the board.
In its analysis, the EU’s diplomatic service said that “the provision that a Member State’s choice about the level of its participation needs the approval of the chairman constitutes an undue interference with the organisational autonomy of each member”.
(Reporting by Lili Bayer in Brussels and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Jan 22 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said the details of a U.S. agreement over Greenland were still being worked out on Thursday, speaking one day after he stepped back from a tariff threat and ruled out the use of force to seize the Danish territory.
Trump, in an interview on Fox Business Network from Davos, also acknowledged the impact of his quest for Greenland on global markets and said he did not plan to pay to acquire it.
“It’s really being negotiated now, the details of it. But essentially it’s total access. It’s – there’s no end, there’s no time limit,” Trump said from the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
“I noticed the stock market went up very substantially after we announced it,” he told FBN’s “Mornings with Maria” program.
Asked about the possibility of Europeans selling U.S. stocks and bonds, he added: “If they do, they do. But if that would happen, there would be a big retaliation on our part, and we have all the cards.”
Trump began floating the idea of acquiring Greenland after taking office last year but stepped up his rhetoric in recent weeks, threatening a 10% tariff on eight European countries over the weekend that shook investors.
He continued his push in a more than hour-long speech at Davos on Wednesday before meeting with the head of NATO and announcing plans for a new deal that has yet to be defined.
Asked on Thursday what he was willing to pay for the semi-autonomous territory, he added: “We’re going to not have to pay anything other than the fact that we are building the Golden Dome.”
Trump said any deal would allow “total access” to Greenland, including for the military: “We’re getting everything we want at no cost”.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean)
COPENHAGEN, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Thursday that Denmark and Greenland will continue to engage in a constructive dialogue on security in the Arctic, provided that this is done with respect for her country’s territorial integrity.
U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly stepped back on Wednesday from threats to impose tariffs as leverage to seize Greenland, ruled out the use of force and suggested a deal was in sight to end a dispute over the Danish territory.
After meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump said Western Arctic allies could forge agreement that satisfies his desire for a “Golden Dome” missile‑defence system and access to minerals while blocking Russia and China’s ambitions.
Frederiksen said NATO was fully aware of Denmark’s position, and that she had been informed that Rutte’s talks did not involve her country’s sovereignty.
“”Security in the Arctic is a matter for the entire NATO alliance. Therefore, it is good and natural that it is also discussed between NATO’s secretary general and the president of the United States,” Frederiksen said in a statement.
“The Kingdom of Denmark wishes to continue to engage in a constructive dialogue with allies on how we can strengthen security in the Arctic, including the United States’ Golden Dome, provided that this is done with respect for our territorial integrity,” she said.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Essi Lehto)
