“The CIA has released a new Mandarin-language recruitment video aimed at Chinese military officers, portraying a fictional, mid-level People’s Liberation Army officer grappling with corrupt leadership and ultimately choosing to contact the American intelligence agency. The video is the latest installment in a public-facing recruitment campaign targeting China, which CIA Director John Ratcliffe has described as the agency’s top intelligence priority amid what he has called a ‘generational competition’ with Beijing. In the short film, the central character watches as qualified officers are removed and replaced by political loyalists lacking military credentials. Troubled by what he sees as corruption, and concerned about the impact on his young family, the officer decides to reach out to the CIA.” (02/12/26)
“The Paris prosecutors office on Thursday said that nine people were being detained as part of an investigation into a suspected decade-long, 10 million euro ($11.8 million) ticket fraud scheme at the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum. The arrests took place on Tuesday as part of a judicial investigation opened after the Louvre filed a complaint in December 2024, the prosecutors’ office said. The loss for the museum over the past decade is estimated to exceed 10 million euros ($11.8 million), it said. Those detained include two Louvre employees, several tour guides and one person suspected of being the mastermind, according to the prosecutors’ office. The museum alerted investigators about the frequent presence of two Chinese tour guides suspected of bringing groups of Chinese tourists into the museum by fraudulently reusing the same tickets multiple times for different visitors. Other guides were later suspected of similar practices.” (02/12/25)
“The Trump administration announced an end to greenhouse gas emission standards for all vehicles made in model year 2012 or later Thursday. The administration revoked the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and all other emission standards related to greenhouse gases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a press release that the move will save taxpayers $1.3 trillion. … The Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding set the legal basis for regulating pollution tied to climate change as part of the Clean Air Act, the primary federal air quality law enacted in 1963.” (02/12/26)
“Belgian police searched offices of the European Commission on Thursday as part of an investigation into the 2024 sale of several Commission buildings to the Belgian state. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), an independent body responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes affecting the EU’s financial interests, is leading the probe. EPPO confirmed to POLITICO it is conducting ‘evidence-collecting activities’ related to ‘an ongoing investigation.’ The office declined to provide further details, citing the need to protect the integrity of proceedings.” (02/12/26)
“South Africa’s president said Thursday that the country would send its troops into communities to help police fight the scourge of illegal mining and gang violence in its two provinces with the two biggest cities. According to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, ‘organized crime is now the most immediate threat to our democracy,’ endangering both economic stability and public safety, particularly in Gauteng and the Western Cape. … Authorities in South Africa have long struggled to prevent gangs of miners from entering some of the 6,000 closed or abandoned mines in the gold-rich nation to search for remaining reserves.” (02/12/26)
“Two Mexican Navy ships laden with humanitarian aid docked in Cuba on Thursday as a U.S. blockade deepens the island’s energy crisis. The ships arrived two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country selling or providing oil to Cuba, prompting the island to ration energy in recent days. The Mexican government said that one ship carried some 536 tons of food including milk, rice, beans, sardines, meat products, cookies, canned tuna, and vegetable oil, as well as personal hygiene items. The second ship carried just over 277 tons of powdered milk. Yohandri Espinosa, a 34-year-old engineer, observed the ships arrive with his daughter and took pictures. ‘This is incredibly important aid for the Cuban people at this moment,’ he said. ‘We are living through difficult times of great need and uncertainty, and we don’t know how long we will be like this.'” (02/12/25)
“A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to start allowing Venezuelans sent to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador to return to the United States for their immigration proceedings if they choose to. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in an order that it was requiring the administration to allow entry to any of the more than 130 Venezuelan men who were held for four months in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. ‘It is worth emphasizing that this situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them,’ he wrote.” (02/12/26)
“The European Union (EU) is considering a sweeping ban on all cryptocurrency transactions with Russia as part of new sanctions designed to choke off alternative financial channels that have helped Moscow withstand existing restrictions. Officials argue that a blanket prohibition would be more effective than targeting individual Russian entities spun out of already-sanctioned platforms. According to the Financial Times, which cited an internal European Commission document, Brussels believes such entities are being used to facilitate trade in goods that support Russia’s war in Ukraine. The commission contends that simply blacklisting individual crypto service providers is insufficient.” (02/12/26)
“Google says its flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, Gemini, has been inundated by ‘commercially motivated’ actors who are trying to clone it by repeatedly prompting it, sometimes with thousands of different queries — including one campaign that prompted Gemini more than 100,000 times. In a report published Thursday, Google said it has increasingly come under ‘distillation attacks,’ or repeated questions designed to get a chatbot to reveal its inner workings. Google described the activity as ‘model extraction,’ in which would-be copycats probe the system for the patterns and logic that make it work. The attackers appear to want to use the information to build or bolster their own AI, it said. The company believes the culprits are mostly private companies or researchers looking to gain a competitive advantage.” (02/12/26)
“The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate. In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives. Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued. The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.” (02/12/25)
