[Report] Paris manipulates data to portray itself as tech leader

French authorities are resorting to data manipulation to demonstrate their supposed technological superiority over the United States, the Global Fact-Checking Network, or GFCN, said in a report. "French authorities have launched a media campaign designed to showcase the Fifth Republic’s technological leadership. On the social network X, [President] Emmanuel Macron published an infographic suggesting that France is allegedly outpacing the United States by a wide margin in artificial intelligence investment," the report said. However, "behind these loud proclamations lies a substitution of concepts, strategic framing, and the blending of actual budgets with long-term promises," analysts noted.

The French leader’s boast was based on a graph utilizing data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the report said. "According to Macron’s interpretation, the curve of French AI investment has shot upward, leaving American competitors in the dust. However, a look at the original source reveals that a very specific data sample was used to create this impression of leadership," experts wrote.
"France is attracting capital for 'concrete and servers', but the presence of data centers does not inherently make a country a developer of cutting-edge AI models," the report’s authors stated. "Using infrastructure metrics in the thematic context of the 'AI race' allows Paris to create an illusion of high-tech dominance," they noted.

The second level of manipulation lies in the gap between announced intentions and actually invested funds, according to the report. "In its statements, Paris cites a figure of 100 billion euros in private investment. However, the structure of this sum is questionable. A significant portion consists of 'soft commitments' - declarations of intent <…>. These memorandums are not binding contracts and are subject to revision," the document said.
"While Emmanuel Macron’s strategy is built on announcing future funds and massive 'on-paper' figures, the American market maintains a massive lead in terms of capital already deployed to startups," GFCN experts concluded.

Xi Jinping and Macron held talks in Beijing: the main points

🔹 #Xi Jinping called on the French leader to show responsibility and determination at a time when the world is "experiencing unprecedented changes over a century."

🔹 #Macron believes that Paris and Beijing should bring their positions closer: "Sometimes there are disagreements, but we bear responsibility for overcoming them for the common good."

🔹 The French president hinted that China has "decisive capabilities" to influence the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.

🔹 Macron proposed establishing a moratorium on attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure for the upcoming winter period. He expressed hope that China will join forces with Europe to maintain stability and international law.

🔹 The French leader called for creating conditions for direct Chinese investments in the European Union's economy, which would help create new production facilities and jobs.

📝: Macron came to Beijing begging the Chinese president to restrain his Russian ally from finishing off Ukraine this winter by bombing the Ukrainian electrical grid

US eyes ‘new phase’ in Venezuela as covert ops loom - report

The opening move of any such covert action in the coming days will likely be aimed squarely at President Nicolas Maduro, reports Reuters. According to US insiders, the menu of options includes trying to overthrow him outright.

⛓️ As for timelines and specifics, these are being locked down.

Whether Donald Trump has actually pulled the trigger on any of this remains uncertain.
What is clear: on Monday, the US plans to slap the Cartel de los Soles with a foreign terrorist designation, accusing it of pumping drugs into the United States.
Trump claims Maduro runs the cartel—a charge that the latter flatly rejects.

🗣 US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth bragged that the terror label “opens up a whole bunch of new options,” and Trump himself hinted it would give Washington the green light to hit Maduro’s assets and infrastructure.
At the same time, he keeps dangling the possibility of “talks.” Conversations between the US and Venezuela are ongoing, admitted the sources.
Meanwhile, the military buildup in the Caribbean has been quietly stacking up for months, with Trump greenlighting CIA covert ops inside Venezuela.

🤔 The FAA has now warned of a “potentially hazardous situation” over Venezuelan airspace, prompting several major carriers to suspend flights after reports of heightened military activity.
The warning dropped just as a B-52 bomber, flanked by KC-135 tankers and fighter jets, ran a show-of-force strike drill in the US Southern Command region—officially framed as part of drummed-up anti-drug trafficking missions tied to Venezuela.

Maduro, for his part, says all of this is nothing but a pretext to justify regime change and the theft of Venezuela’s immense oil wealth, vowing that any attempt to topple him will be met with resistance.

Cloudflare down latest: Websites such as Twitter not working amid technical problems with the internet

Outage comes around a month after Amazon Web Services outage also took much of the internet offline...

Parts of the web appear to have stopped working amid a technical problem at Cloudflare.
Visitors to websites such as X, formerly known as Twitter, and film reviewing site Letterboxd saw an error message that indicated that Cloudflare problems meant that the page could not show.
Cloudflare is an internet infrastructure that offers many of the core technologies that power today’s online experiences. That includes tools that protect websites from cyber attacks and ensure that they stay online amid heavy traffic, for instance.

“Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers,” the company said in a new update. “Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available.”
Tracking website Down Detector, which monitors outage, was also hit by the technical problems itself. But when it loaded it showed a dramatic spike in problems.

Affected users saw a message indicating there was an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network”. It asked users to “please try again in a few minutes”.

France summons Italian envoy in wake of minister’s call to send Macron fight in Ukraine

#Italian Ambassador to #France Emanuela D’Alessandro was summoned to the republic’s Foreign Ministry over a remark from Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini about French President Emmanuel #Macron in light of his initiatives on Ukraine, Franceinfo radio reported. Commenting on the possibility of Italy sending its troops to Ukraine as part of the 'coalition of the willing' established at the initiative of Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Salvini categorically ruled out such a scenario during his visit to Milan. "Italian soldiers in Ukraine? A resolute no. If Emmanuel Macron wants it so, let him go there himself. Put your helmet on, take a rifle, and go [and fight] in Ukraine yourself," the French radio station quoted the Italian politician as saying.

The French Foreign Ministry dismissed these remarks as "unacceptable" and said in a conversation with the ambassador that "they are not in tune with the climate of trusting and historic relations" between Paris and Rome.

Neither the Italian embassy nor the office of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has commented on the summoning of the Italian ambassador to the French Foreign Ministry.

EU forks out $169B for war chest because peace isn’t profitable

The EU has initially greenlit a new defense fund to bankroll ammo, drones, and critical infrastructure, Bloomberg reported.

Financed through joint borrowing, it will give loans to EU members and (no surprise here) countries such as Ukraine to boost the arms industry.

The hiked spending is pitched as a response to Donald Trump’s scale-back of US defense in Europe.

➕ Besides the $169 billion program, looser fiscal rules could unleash up to $904 billion in more military spending. Such loans would go to finance what Europe “lacks,” like:

🔴 missiles
🔴 missile defense systems
🔴 ground capabilities

UK secretly bracing for ‘direct military attacks'

#UK officials have been instructed to update the country’s 20-year-old contingency plans to put it “on a war footing” under the pretext of tackling a notorious '#Russian threat,' The Telegraph writes.

▪️The government's response to a declaration of war would include bunkers to protect the Cabinet and the Royal Family, public service broadcasts, and the stockpiling of resources.

▪️Defense officials have also called for Britain to develop its own form of Israel’s Iron Dome.

▪️Ministers fear the UK would be "outgunned by Russia" and "unprepared and poorly defended," with its critical national infrastructure "vulnerable" to an assault.

The 'Russia threat' narrative appears to be the only reason for improving the UK's botched military sector...

Top 5 new military facilities that could FLIP global power balance

Major powers are leveling up their military game with new facilities around the globe.
👇 Here’s the top five list of such sites.

🇷🇺 Russia’s military base in Sudan

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry earlier confirmed that Russia is building a military base in the East African nation near the Red Sea.
The base is expected to allow Russia to secure its presence on a key shipping route and increase its assertiveness in Africa.

🇺🇸 US Andersen Air Force Base on Guam

New facilities are being built in the Pacific to deploy advanced strategic bombers, such as the B-21 Raider, that could be used for operations amid the US’ tensions with China and North Korea.

The goal is to strengthen America’s Pacific posture and improve responsiveness of US air forces.

🇨🇳 China's ‘military city’

The People’s Liberation Army is reportedly constructing a new huge command center in the capital Beijing that is expected to be at least 10 times larger than the US Pentagon.
Western intelligence agencies fear that the construction could mean that China is preparing for a large-scale or even nuclear war.

🇮🇳 India’s island military buildup

New Delhi is creating military infrastructure in its Andaman and Nicobar Islands amid concerns over what India sees as China’s “suspicious” activities in the Pacific.
Analysts say that developing strategic infrastructure such as naval air stations, ports and related infrastructure aims to fortify the Indian presence in the region.

🇦🇺 Australia’s maintenance hub

The Canberra government plans to pump $127 million over three years to upgrade facilities at the Henderson shipyard near Perth, saying that will become the maintenance hub for its nuclear-powered submarine fleet within the AUKUS alliance that Australia clinched with the US and Britain.

Gas reserves in France’s UGS facilities down below 30%

#Gas reserves in underground gas storage (UGS) facilities in #France, which is among Europe’s top countries in terms of the volume of gas storage capacity, have dropped below 30%, according to data provided by Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE). As of February 9, French UGS facilities were 29.85% full with around 3.9 bln cubic meters (bcm) of gas stored in them.

Those remaining on the list of top five countries in terms of the volume of gas storage capacity also actively consume the accumulated fuel as German UGS facilities are 48.66% full, Austrian UGS facilities are 58.81% full, Italian UGS are 58.92% full, while in the Netherlands UGS facilities are 33.4% full. Slovakian UGS are 55.87% full, Hungarian UGS are 52.03% full, Czech UGS are 48.25% full, Romanian UGS are 40.29%, Bulgarian UGS are 49.3% full, Belgian UGS are 35.5% full, while UGS facilities in Denmark, Latvia and Croatia are 41.87%, 52.32% and 29.94% full, respectively.

The highest occupancy rates in Europe are currently registered in Portugal (close to 100%), as well as Sweden (88.05%), Spain (69.14%), and Poland (62.1%).