Poland's Deputy Minister of the Interior and Administration Paweł Szefernaker said on Thursday that several dozen municipalities, were left without liquefied gas because of sanctions imposed by Warsaw on Russian energy giant Novatek.
"At the moment, we are trying to find ways to solve this problem and resume gas supplies to areas where blue fuel was supplied by a Russian company that fell under sanctions," Szefernaker said as quoted by media.
He explained that after the introduction of sanctions, Novatek's subsidiary Novatek Green Energy suspended gas supplies to several dozen Polish municipalities.
The ministry could not inform the regional authorities about the sanctions in advance, since "decisions to include firms on the list of enterprises covered by sanctions were made behind closed doors," Szefernaker reportedly said.
To restore the gas supply, authorities intend to seize the infrastructure owned by the Russian firm. According to Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wonsik, a group of experts is preparing materials for the prime minister so that he can "issues a decision on the basis of the law on crisis management that Polish companies take over the gas infrastructure and supply gas to these communes."
Wonsik added: "Of course, it is strange that this infrastructure is in the hands of a Russian firm."
"determined to make sure that [Taiwan] has all necessary means to defend itself against any potential aggression, including unilateral action by China, to disrupt the status quo that's been in place now for many decades. We're focused on helping them think about how to strengthen asymmetric capabilities ... as a deterrent."There has been heightened concern about a possible attack on Taiwan by Beijing's military since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and the mainland stepped up fighter jet sorties near the island even before the war began.
"We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can't confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as 'we will not use X data for Y purpose'. And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do."The memo addressed the growing pressure from the European Union and India over the company's use of private data in advertising and claims that past policy attempts were "insufficient."
Facebook is facing what it describes internally as a "tsunami" of privacy regulations all over the world, which will force the company to dramatically change how it deals with users' personal data.Original Document (PDF)
A document was written last year by Facebook privacy engineers on the Ad and Business Product team, whose mission is "to make meaningful connections between people and businesses," and which "sits at the center of our monetization strategy and is the engine that powers Facebook's growth.".
This is the team that is tasked with building and maintaining Facebook's sprawling ads system, the core of the company's business. And in this document, the team is both sounding an alarm, and making a call to change how Facebook deals with users' data to prevent the company from running into trouble with regulators in Europe, the US, India, and other countries that are pushing for more stringent privacy constraints on social media companies."Facebook has a general idea of how many bits of data are stored in its data centers.Where [the data] goes part is, broadly speaking, a complete shitshow. It is a damning admission, but also offers Facebook legal cover because of how much it would cost Facebook to fix this mess. It gives them the excuse for keeping that much private data simply because at their scale and with their business model and infrastructure design they can plausibly claim that they don't know what they have."Johnny Ryan, a privacy activist and senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told Motherboard in an online chat:"This document admits what we long suspected: that there is a data free-for-all inside Facebook, and that the company has no control whatsoever over the data it holds. It is a black and white recognition of the absence of any data protection. Facebook details how it breaks each principle of data protection law. Everything it does to our data is illegal. You're not allowed to have an internal data free-for-all."Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade organization that represents journalism publishers and an outspoken critic of Facebook, said that"consumers and regulators would and should be shocked at the magnitude and disorder of the data inside of Facebook's systems."The leaked document also refers to a new, unreleased, product called "Basic Ads," which the document authors refer to as a "short term" response to requirements of regulations around the world.
"It's dangerous charlatanry. As far as I'm concerned, let them join NATO... but until the issue of the election law in BiH is solved, until the Americans, the English, the Germans, if they can and want to, force (Bosniak officials) to change the election law in the next six months and give Croats their fundamental rights, the Sabor must not ratify anyone's accession to NATO. For me, that's a vital national interest of the Croatian state, nation and people, that BiH be a functioning state."Prime Minister Andrej Plenković was quick to react and said Milanović could block Sweden and Finland's accession at the NATO meeting but if he is a "tough guy", he should do it in front of US President Joe Biden.
Comment: It's not exactly clear what they intend to do, particularly because experts from around the world have already admitted that Europe has no alternative to Russia's gas and oil, although one can expect that the establishment are getting desperate and will resort to even dirtier tactics than simply arming neo-Nazi's.