🇰🇵⚡️ — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered measures to strengthen the country's nuclear forces "quantitatively and qualitatively," while calling for a broader modernization of the military.

The decisions were made during an enlarged meeting of the Workers' Party Central Military Commission on July 9, where Kim said North Korea's security and "true peace" can only be guaranteed by building a powerful military capable of countering all threats.

The meeting approved plans to modernize combat systems, expand nuclear forces, upgrade military bases, enhance the capabilities of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, and accelerate the construction of modern naval bases and improvements to shipyard infrastructure as part of a broader effort to strengthen the navy.

🇺🇸🇮🇱🇮🇷⚡️ — U.S. intelligence had detected a steady stream of reporting in recent weeks about possible Iranian plots to assassinate President Trump, but the warning from Israel was new and referred to a more specific plot, according to CNN.

➡️ The details of the reported plot remain unclear, and American intelligence agencies have not independently verified the Israeli information.

➡️ Some U.S. officials suggested the Israeli warning may have been intended to influence Trump's deliberations as he considers whether to intensify U.S. military action against Iran.

🇨🇩🦠 — The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo has increased to 1792, including 625 deaths.

🇨🇦🇳🇴⚡️ — Canada has awarded Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace an C$800 million ($564 million) contract to supply Joint Strike Missiles (JSMs) for its future fleet of F-35 fighter jets.

➡️ The agreement makes Canada the sixth customer for the air-to-ground cruise missile, joining Norway, Japan, Australia, the U.S., and Germany, which have already ordered or fielded the weapon.

🇹🇼🇺🇸🇨🇳⚡️ — Taiwan obtained critical intelligence on China’s submarine-launched ballistic missile test this week through its long-range early-warning radar network and intelligence sharing with the U.S., according to Taiwan’s Liberty Times.

➡️ The island's U.S.-built AN/FPS-115 Pave Paws radar detected the missile shortly after it was launched from a nuclear-powered submarine in the South China Sea and tracked its initial flight before sharing the data with the U.S., prompting satellites and other early-warning systems to continue monitoring the launch.

➡️ Taiwan's National Security Council said the missile was a JL-2, although Beijing has not confirmed the missile type.

🗳 🇪🇺 📵 Hyperdemocratic European Parliament reimposes mass electronic surveillance regulation after a majority votes it down three times

An extension of the European Union’s mass surveillance regulation known as Chat Control 1.0 failed to make it out of the European Parliament twice in March. Unable to summon a clear parliamentary majority, advocates (mostly in the centre-right European People’s Party [EPP]) turned to the European Council, which adopted the failed Chat Control 1.0 renewal on 2 July.

The Council’s position hardens automatically into law unless the European Parliament can summon an absolute majority to stop it. To forestall any such majority from forming, the EPP on Tuesday moved with member state backing for urgent procedure, angling to force their scheme through in the last days before the summer holiday, after many MEP’s had already left. The parliament narrowly approved the urgent procedure, and in consequence there were not enough votes to stop Chat Control 1.0 when it came for a vote today. Hours ago, a majority of 314 MEPs voted to stop Chat Control against the wishes of the Council, while a minority of 276 voted to let it happen. Because 314 is less than the absolute majority of 361, Chat Control 1.0 passed even though most MEPs present didn’t want it to.

It was a sleazy vote, not least because it’s far from clear this procedural manoeuvre was even appropriate in this case. Also, electronic surveillance is bad, but if we are honest with ourselves this battle was already lost.

Chat Control 1.0 was first instated in 2021 as a temporary exemption to the ePrivacy Directive of the EU, allowing messaging services and online platforms to scan chats and other electronic communications for child sexual abuse material. The exemption expired in April, but various platforms have continued their surveillance with no legal basis in the intervening months. Now their formal permission to scan our private communications has been restored and extended through April 2028. We are, in other words, merely returning to the prior regime.

Chat Control 1.0 is a temporary stopgap while the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council try to negotiate their Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, or Chat Control 2.0. As envisioned by the Commission, this permanent law would not merely allow platforms to scan private communications for child sex abuse material, but require them to do so; require additional AI-assisted automated scanning not only for known child pornography but also for such vaguely defined activities as “grooming”; and extend scanning to end-to-end encrypted services like Signal via mandatory monitoring on the client side. This insane proposal has been watered down over the years, in large part because of parliamentary opposition, but it’s coming in some form. We’re getting Chat Control 2.0 before Chat Control 1.0 expires, and Chat Control 2.0 will be at least somewhat worse.

What’s amazing to me about all of this is this man:

His name is Manfred Weber, and he’s a Bavarian politician (CSU) who also happens to be president of the pro-surveillance EPP and leader of the EPP faction in the European Parliament. Weber loves electronic surveillance and he has been the driving force behind Chat Control from the beginning. Naturally, Chat Control is something that Weber would have a lot of trouble imposing in Germany, where surveillance is widely deplored and where our Basic Law guarantees as “inviolable” the so-called Briefgeheimnis – “the privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications.”

From his perch in the European Parliament, however, he has been able to hollow out this core constitutional principle of the Federal Republic from a procedurally rigged vote in Strasbourg, without any domestic debate or anybody in the Bundestag having a single thing to say about it.

This is a very advanced novel form of democracy that we have achieved here in the European Union.

🔗 https://www.eugyppius.com/p/hyperdemocratic-european-parliament

🚀 🇨🇳 🚢 China has become the second country in the world with an orbital-class launcher system with first-stage booster recovery through controlled reentry and propelled landing.

After delivering its payload to low Earth orbit, The Long March 10B had its booster landing on a recovery ship in the South China Sea with a net-and-hook system.

📎 Visegrad24

🚀 🇨🇳 🚢 Long March 10B became the fifth orbital rocket class to propulsivly land and be recovered! China Rocket Co. becomes the third company, along with SpaceX and Blue Origin, to recover their booster.

📎 Chandler G

🇹🇷🇷🇺🇺🇸⚡️ — Türkiye is seeking Russia's consent to transfer its S-400 air defense systems to a third country in an effort to clear the way for purchasing U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets, according to Bloomberg.

➡️ The proposal comes months after President Erdoğan suggested returning the S-400 systems to Russia, an idea that gained little support.

➡️ Ankara also proposed keeping the S-400 while allowing U.S. oversight of its operation to address concerns that the system could compromise the F-35's stealth capabilities, but that proposal was also rejected by U.S. officials.

➡️ The S-400 systems remain in Türkiye's inventory but are currently not in operational use.

🇬🇧⚡️ — Britain has designated Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle as critical third-party suppliers to the country's financial sector, bringing the cloud providers under direct regulatory oversight.

➡️ The move is intended to strengthen the resilience of the financial system by reducing the risk of widespread disruption caused by cyberattacks, technology failures, or major service outages.

🇷🇺🇺🇦⚡️ — Russian President Vladimir Putin is rejecting calls to negotiate peace with Ukraine, with recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and ports strengthening his resolve to continue the war, according to three sources close to the Kremlin cited by Reuters.

➡️ Putin is instead likely to escalate the conflict in the coming months, with one source describing a "high probability" of further escalation.

➡️ One source familiar with Putin's thinking said the Russian leader has "dug in his heels" on capturing the remainder of Ukraine's Donbas region and recently rebuked advisers who proposed a ceasefire along the current front lines. Another source said Putin believes Russian forces will soon secure the rest of Donbas.