Over 50 leaders are descending on Dublin today for the European Political Community summit — but it’s not a popular one.

Today on the show, Zoya Sheftalovich and Kathryn Carlson discuss why insiders don’t find the forum particularly useful, and some even hope it will end once French President Emmanuel Macron — who spearheaded the initiative — leaves office.

One meeting leaders are more eager to attend, however, is Friday’s informal European Council, also taking place in Dublin. High on the agenda is the thorny question of who should represent Europe in future Ukraine peace talks, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ups the pressure with a November deadline. Plus, AI will be a crucial topic: from Europe’s place in the global AI race to cybersecurity concerns.

Finally, Finland’s embassy in Canberra is going viral … and no one quite knows why.

Questions? Comments? Message us on WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

• US to seek Putin’s ‘blessing’ for Europe to join Ukraine talks.
• Zelenskyy tells Europe to hurry up and pick a rep for peace talks with Russia.
• Finland’s embassy in Canberra is going viral — and no one knows why.
  

ABU DHABI — When Jared Kushner walked into the briefing room to announce the results of two days of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, he didn’t try to conceal how hard it had been. 

“The reality is there’s no trust right now between the sides,” Donald Trump’s son-in-law and trusted envoy told POLITICO during a post-talks briefing. “There were some pretty tough discussions.” 

The two sides, one led by a Kremlin aide and the other by Ukraine’s spy chief, discussed all the most difficult topics including the toughest — what happens to disputed territory — and fought hard for their own objectives, according to those in the room. 

The mood cooled from the first day to the second. On Tuesday, with negotiations lasting four and a half hours, officials on the ground in Abu Dhabi who were familiar with the talks described them as “constructive.” The best they could muster on Wednesday, when the session broke up after just two hours, was that the exchange had been “neutral.” 

In truth, few on the Ukrainian side ever believed this week’s resumption of face-to-face negotiations would deliver a breakthrough. The biggest announcement concerned the non-trivial matter of a planned prisoner exchange — which Kushner said would be the biggest in the war so far, but on even this they failed to announce the final agreed numbers. 

Yet despite the muted rhetoric, the meeting in the air-conditioned environs of a secure government guest house — where staff were constantly on hand to provide coffee, sandwiches and even pizza — was nevertheless a significant moment in the stop-start journey toward peace after nearly five years of war. 

Here’s what you need to know about where things stand.

What did they discuss?  

Everything. According to Kushner, there was no significant topic that was not raised over the two days. The question of territory, he said, would clearly be “the hardest” to resolve. According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv’s negotiators scored a major win on day one by convincing the Americans to accept their analysis of where the front line stands, and just how much less Ukrainian territory Russia has conquered than Moscow claims. 

It’s hard to see a quick resolution on that issue, although privately U.S. officials say both sides have shown some flexibility on how to settle territorial claims. Zelenskyy still insists, and it seems the American mediators agree, that matters relating to the fate of Ukrainian land can only be discussed at the level of leaders. That kind of meeting is still very far away. “Clearly, there’s not great trust or love between the leaders,” Kushner said. 

What did they agree? 

A big prisoner exchange — potentially the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. But even this isn’t yet final: Kushner made it clear that it would depend on approval from Vladimir Putin, and that he’d try to obtain that on Thursday on a visit to Moscow . 

“One of the positives was that we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners — we’re gonna finalize the numbers tomorrow,” Kushner said. He said he would be traveling with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s other envoy, “to Moscow tomorrow to meet with President Putin, to go over what was discussed today, and try to make more progress on some of the issues.” 

Ukraine’s negotiators said “strict directives” from Moscow had limited the scope of their Russian counterparts to reach agreements this week, making the talks harder. 

What happens next? 

The Moscow trip is key. Kushner said his other big goal in speaking to Putin would be to get him to allow Europeans to join the next round of negotiations. “I believe that hopefully tomorrow in Moscow, Steve and I will be successful and President Putin will give the blessing for that to occur. I think that if he agrees to that we will be able to make a lot more progress,” Kushner said in response to a question from POLITICO. 

Then the Americans plan to head to Dublin to meet Zelenskyy in person and try to push the agenda forward. The Ukrainians want to get the next date in their diary for more talks because they hope to have a deal before the end of the year, with Russia ramping up strikes on Ukraine’s power grids and energy facilities and another winter looming. 

The big shift 

Arguably, the biggest change in recent days has been in America’s attitude. This was never simply a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, after all; ever since Trump returned to power nearly two years ago, Kyiv and Brussels have been trying to persuade Washington to take their arguments more seriously. For Ukraine’s European allies, that lobbying has paid off. 

Kushner and Witkoff now want European officials to join the next round of negotiations — so they can move on to discussing one of Putin’s most totemic obsessions: Relations with NATO, and the future system of European security. 

“We need to have the Europeans at the table,” Kushner said, answering a question from POLITICO at the briefing. “We have relayed to President Putin directly several times and to his team that the only way to get this done is to have them by our side, and I think they are receptive to it.”

Ukrainian negotiators said Russian attitudes only started to soften — and open to dialogue — once the U.S. moved to discuss postwar settlements for both sides.

On Ukraine, too, American attitudes have changed. Only a few weeks ago Trump was angrily demanding that Zelenskyy be replaced amid a bust-up over Ukraine’s criticism of the U.S. president’s diesel deal with Putin. Russia, Trump said, had been “fine” on Ukraine. 

Now, however, Kushner is careful to praise the Ukrainian negotiating team and “the great efforts” they made in Abu Dhabi. “I think they fought very, very hard for their issues, were very constructive, and I think it was a very productive session.” The Ukrainians also expressed gratitude to the U.S. side. 

Europe’s big question 

It’s one thing to be invited to take part in real talks with Russia and Ukraine — and Europeans have yet to be given even this chance. But it’s another to participate and then influence the conversation when it finally happens. For that, Europe needs to choose its representatives wisely. 

Zelenskyy says he wants to be consulted on who should get the role of speaking for Europe — and that it should be a single person. He also wants Europe to decide by the end of this month. 

So far, however, Europe’s approach has been anything but streamlined. Attending the talks on the sidelines in Abu Dhabi were representatives of the European Commission, the European Council, NATO, the U.K., France, Germany and Italy. 

Wearing his diplomatic hat, Kushner described this arrangement as “strong” — but added that “If Europe could identify one person to speak on their behalf, that would be a bigger achievement than getting the Russians to include them in the negotiation.”

Europe’s danger moment 

If the latest negotiations have achieved nothing else, after months of worrying about being left on the sidelines, Europe now finds itself — subject to Putin’s approval, of course — in the thick of the most perilous negotiations in the continent’s recent history. 

One critical question is how far talks about changing the continental security framework, which is underpinned by NATO, will be tied to the peace negotiations regarding Ukraine. Europeans have long campaigned for Ukraine to get the strongest possible security guarantees to prevent Russia from attacking again when the war ends. And U.S. officials want to explore the idea of providing a NATO-like collective defense agreement with Ukraine that could even involve NATO itself as a guarantor. 

Officials in European capitals say the sequencing of these talks will be critical. The European side has signaled its willingness to explore the continent’s wider security system to allay Russia’s concerns — in parallel with the Ukraine peace process. But they don’t want to sign up to any wider reforms until peace has been achieved. 

‘Trying to survive’

Kushner said the aim was to discuss all the issues and then “find a pathway to settle them all at the same time.” 

“I think that having these discussions is very important,” he said. “But the implementation of postwar security will not occur until there’s an agreement on territory and on all other bilateral issues.” 

If that position holds, it could work for Europe. But in the end, anything agreed among officials in the negotiating room is always provisional. All it would take is a phone call from Putin to Trump. 

Some Europeans are wary. German officials involved in the Abu Dhabi talks see very little potential upside and view the process as a “Russian trap” to give a false impression that Moscow is willing to make peace, said one German official with knowledge of talks, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly. 

“The Europeans are only trying to survive this,” the official said.

James Angelos and Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS—The European Union should have a plan to respond to serious artificial intelligence incidents, two EU countries said ahead of a key Friday meeting of national leaders focused on AI.

In a letter seen by POLITICO, Finland and Estonia say the bloc “can still compete at the frontier” of AI by mobilizing capital and building up compute power, but this should go hand in hand with “governing it responsibly.”

The two countries, considered among Europe’s digital leaders, call for “EU-level arrangements for responding to serious AI incidents.”

AI safety and security are on Friday’s agenda of the first-ever European Council meeting devoted to the revolutionary new technology.

Concerns about whether Europe is prepared to respond to AI-powered threats have been picking up steam since a series of incidents this summer in which AI agents went rogue and hacked into other companies. Recent cyberattacks and revelations of coding vulnerabilities have also raised concerns that security systems must be better equipped for the arrival of artificial intelligence.

Hungary pushed for a network of national contact points in case AI model providers lose control of their models, in an October paper seen by POLITICO. The country also pushed for a team of “pre-vetted, security-cleared” independent evaluators who can be ahead of incidents.

The letter from Finland and Estonia called for investment in European frontier AI models “as an economic priority and as a foundation for Europe’s influence on the future of AI.”

The countries warn that Europe requires “independent capacity to evaluate the most advanced models and their safety and security risks.”

ATHENS — A controversial maritime border deal between Libya and Turkey has riled Greece, annoyed the European Union — and could intrude on Friday’s EU leaders’ summit.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will raise the issue during the informal meeting of EU leaders in Dublin, according to a senior official in Athens who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity. The summit is supposed to focus on AI and Ukraine.

The row centers on a Turkey-Libya agreement that claims a corridor in the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Cyprus — waters Athens says fall within its exclusive economic zone and where the EU has backed energy and connectivity projects.

“Greece has explicitly stated … that in the event of any escalation, it will request sanctions and support from the European Union,” Greece’s Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said last week in an interview with local TV.

Despite being NATO allies, Greece and Turkey have quarreled over maritime boundaries and overlapping claims to their continental shelves. Athens fears Ankara could invoke the Libya deal to challenge offshore exploration south of Crete and the EU-funded undersea electricity cable linking Greece and Cyprus, turning both projects into flashpoints.

Turkey signed the agreement in 2019 with Libya’s U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, and it was unanimously ratified by rival authorities in eastern Libya on Oct. 20.

The EU immediately responded.

“This agreement infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states, it does not comply with the Law of the Sea, and is null and void,” said a joint statement on Oct. 20 from the heads of the European Commission and Council.

Egypt also rejected the border pact, as did Bahrain, Cyprus (which has its own separate disputes with Turkey over Ankara’s occupation of the northern part of the island since the 1970s), Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Turkish foreign ministry accused Brussels of adopting what it called the “maximalist and illegal” positions of Greece and Cyprus that were “detached from reality.”

“We expect them to respect the joint will of our country and Libya,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a recent Cabinet meeting.

Mitsotakis raised the issue at last month’s U.N. General Assembly, and Athens is now pressing the rest of the EU for stronger action.

“There is no precedent for such a diagonal delimitation,” he said in New York, holding up a map to illustrate Greece’s position. “Geography cannot be rewritten … and sovereign rights cannot be erased by drawing arbitrary lines on a map.”

The underwater border demarcation is part of a broader Turkish policy of stressing its sovereignty over coastal areas. Ankara aims to codify what it calls its Blue Homeland doctrine by year’s end.

The big test

Greece and Cyprus warn that Turkey’s claims could be used to block strategic projects in the eastern Mediterranean.

The EU’s latest report on Turkey’s stalled EU accession progress specifically referred to Ankara’s continued obstruction of a €1.9 billion electricity interconnection between Greece and Cyprus. The project was interrupted in 2024 amid a standoff between Athens and Ankara.

Three months ago, French company Meridiam became the project’s majority shareholder.

On Tuesday, a French vessel sailed from Heraklion, Greece, to start working on the project. Gerapetritis told a parliamentary committee last week that Athens is bracing for a Turkish reaction.

Tension over the maritime border and the energy project comes as Turkey’s already difficult ties with the EU — from protecting the car industry to Ankara’s role in Black Sea security — come under greater pressure, noted Carnegie Europe Turkey analyst Marc Pierini.

“In the eastern Mediterranean, several divergences over maritime borders have widened the gap between Turkey and EU governments,” wrote Pierini.

ABU DHABI — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said European countries supporting his cause must decide fast who will represent them in peace talks.

That means ideally one person should have a mandate from the EU and other non-EU countries that have backed Ukraine, such as the U.K. and Norway, because “unity” is important, he suggested.

“I think that in November, not later, we need to accept who will represent Europe in negotiations,” he said. “It will be better because they will get [a] mandate for negotiations and they will get a mandate from all Europe, all this coalition.”

With Europe set to take on a more important role in talks with Russia and the United States, Zelenskyy’s comments join a growing chorus of demands for the EU and others to unite behind one top negotiator or a small team at the highest level.

Speaking to reporters during his trip to Denmark on Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader said he wanted a “dialogue” with the EU and other European powers over who will represent them. He said it would be “better” this way, rather than just presenting their answer to Ukraine, which is “not good, really.”

“I hope that not later than the end of November — better in Germany on 19th [at a Coalition of the Willing meeting] — fix it. We will see.”

Europe has been struggling to work out a plan for how to engage in top-level dialogue with Moscow and Washington over ending the war in Ukraine. Despite providing most of the foreign financing for Ukraine’s war effort, EU countries have been split over who should represent them, or whether they should be talking to Russian leader Vladimir Putin at all.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni last week blasted the European Union’s engagement with the peace talks as “all over the place.”

Leaders are due to grapple with these questions at a summit in Dublin later this week.

As talks with Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. resumed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, American officials made clear they wanted Europe fully at the table next time the negotiations take place. That is partly because the U.S. wants to bring a review of wider European security arrangements for Europe into the negotiations over peace in Ukraine — a longstanding Russian demand.

ABU DHABI — After a nine-month break, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met to restart face-to-face talks on how to end the four-and-a-half-year war, with tentative signs of early progress. 

The two sides discussed an exchange of prisoners, but contrary to some reports, it has not yet been finalized, according to one official familiar with the matter, who was granted anonymity because the meeting was confidential.

The talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday focused on what security guarantees Ukraine — and Russia — want to see after the war ends. On the second and final day of the meeting on Wednesday, negotiators are due to turn to the highly sensitive question of territory. Privately, U.S. officials who convened the meeting say both Russia and Ukraine have shown at least some readiness to be flexible on the issue of land. 

The meeting with Russia and the U.S. was “constructive and quite substantive,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on X after receiving a report from his negotiating team. “They had time to discuss the need and possible parameters for humanitarian steps. The release of prisoners is a priority.”

Zelenskyy said the negotiating teams spoke “in detail” about what security guarantees would be required to stop Russia from attacking Ukraine again in the future. 

In a significant move toward easing Ukraine’s fears, the U.S. is asking the Russian side if they would consent to America providing Ukraine with NATO-like commitments to collective defense, or even for NATO to sign such an agreement itself. 

“Real tools are needed to block any recurrence of the war,” Zelenskyy said. 

According to Russian state media, the talks ended after 4.5 hours and were conducted in Russian. Alongside the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators, the United Arab Emirates foreign minister and NATO’s top commander in Europe were also at the table.

Earlier in the day, European representatives held talks with the American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who convened the negotiations. The European side agreed with the Americans to review Europe’s wider security architecture as part of the peace process for Ukraine — a step toward meeting one of Russia’s central demands.

“It looks like the talks in Abu Dhabi were very productive,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris. “There’s a lot of work to be done in that regard. It’s not like something that’s on the verge of being solved in the next 24 hours or anything like that.”

As espionage targets go, Jensen Huang is perhaps one of the least surprising on Earth. The Nvidia CEO runs one of the world's most valuable companies, controls the in-demand technology fueling the AI boom, and is cozy with presidents, CEOs, and all manner of important people. He also wears a cool leather jacket.

Which makes Huang's admission that he had an affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy - reportedly while her spying was known to US intelligence and even President Donald Trump - all the more shocking. The fallout goes well beyond his marriage, his reputation, or Nvidia itself. Experts tell The Verge the incident threate …

Read the full story at The Verge.

PARIS — Tehran denied accusations by Paris that it was behind the recent series of cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigerators in France, calling the claims “baseless and biased.”

The Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it “strongly condemns” France’s “worn-out policy of making accusations against Iran.”

French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot on Monday said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for the “unprecedented” cyberattacks against several supermarket chains last month. On Tuesday, Barrot said Paris would not “rule out anything” in its response to the attacks, which affected 700 food distribution sites.

“We’ll take all measures, including those we will not disclose publicly, which we ourselves consider proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks and punish those responsible for this unacceptable aggression,” he said.

Iran’s ambassador to France has been summoned to the foreign ministry after French prosecutors said that they were opening an investigation into the hacks.

According to French investigators, Iran’s cyber unit linked to the IRGC, Shahid Kaveh, carried out the destructive attacks.

The French investigation will focus on the unit’s head, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding that about 20 fires had been started because of the cyberattack.

“The attackers took remote control of the equipment via web interfaces to trigger abnormal defrost cycles of unlimited duration, while disabling the security alerts on the sensors that were supposed to activate once a certain temperature was exceeded,” it added.

On Monday, European Council President Kaja Kallas said that the topic of alleged Iranian hacks would be discussed at next week’s European foreign affairs council. If the attribution is confirmed, she said, “[Europe’s] response should be strong.”

The European Commission is also looking into these cyberattacks, which European Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen described as a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.”

The remote access giant also urged its self-hosted customers to take down their own servers amid a "critical security incident," fearing the possibility of cyberattacks.

Hugging Face executive Irene Solaiman warns that growing cyberattacks on open AI platforms could force tighter security restrictions, threatening the accessibility that makes open-source communities valuable to developers worldwide.

LISBON — The European Union should work “only with very trusted partners” on artificial intelligence microchips, its tech chief said Tuesday, just days after revelations of a spy scandal rocked industry leader Nvidia.

“When we speak about very critical technologies, like AI semiconductors and quantum technologies, cybersecurity, satellites … it’s very important that we are working very closely only with very trusted partners,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty. She made the comments in an interview with POLITICO at the Web Summit tech fair in Lisbon, when asked about Europe’s reliance on Nvidia.

It is Virkkunen’s first public comment since Nvidia opened an internal investigation into whether its CEO was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation. Top executive Jensen Huang admitted to an affair following a reported relationship with an executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed whom the U.S. government believes is a Chinese spy.

Virkkunen did not detail whether she considered Nvidia less trustworthy since news of the spy scandal broke. When asked who she considers trusted partners, she described the U.S. as the EU’s traditionally “closest partner when it comes to security and technology,” suggesting the bloc has no intention of blaming the U.S. but would prefer to collaborate to plug the security gap.

In “limited areas of technologies,” it is important to ensure that “we don’t have that kind of technological leakages,” the EU tech chief said. “We want to really keep the business secrets in Europe.”

Europe is heavily reliant on Nvidia chips, since it has little production or design capacity for AI chips of its own — something that the EU aims to correct for through an industrial policy push into chipmaking called the European Chips Act.

“It’s true that currently Europe is very dependent on AI chips on a few American companies and that’s why it’s important also that we are building up our own capacity to also design and also manufacture more advanced [chips] and also AI chips in the coming years,” Virkkunen said.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ABU DHABI — European representatives have agreed to review the continent’s overarching security arrangements with the United States to minimize tensions between Russia and NATO allies, on the first day of the latest Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi. 

According to two near-identical statements — one from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and another from the European Council — Ukraine and its European partners agreed with the American side that it is “essential” to address “post-war security concerns” and reduce “the risk of conflict” in the region.  

“The shared objective is to develop a practical and mutually reinforcing security framework that strengthens Ukraine’s long-term security and builds the confidence necessary to reach a negotiated settlement,” the two statements said. “Alongside a central focus on a lasting peace, the discussion covered how to build upon existing European security institutions and agreements following the conclusion of the war in Ukraine.” 

Before the teams from Ukraine and Russia met, preparatory talks took place in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday morning involving European powers, Ukraine and the U.S. team. Two officials familiar with these discussions, granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters, said these first talks were substantial and the mood was positive.

The topic of Europe’s future security architecture is acutely sensitive for European governments, who fear that President Donald Trump may be preparing to radically reduce U.S. support for security in their region, after years of bashing NATO allies. 

Russia has been demanding a say over scaling back NATO’s efforts in Europe and has repeatedly insisted Ukraine should never join the alliance, something Kyiv and its closest allies have traditionally supported. 

One critical question is sequencing. Will a deal on wider European security be part of a final Ukraine peace agreement or will it come later? Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and some of his strongest supporters have said in the past that there is no place for Russia to demand a wider European-NATO settlement as a condition for ending the war. 

The Abu Dhabi talks mark the first time in nine months that negotiators from Ukraine and Russia have met with representatives from the U.S. for trilateral negotiations on peace. Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Witkoff are leading for the American side and pushing hard to expand the scope of the discussion to include Europe’s future security, and to get Europe a seat at the table. 

Since Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has publicly and privately criticized Europeans for not doing enough to take responsibility for their own defenses. Under American pressure, NATO allies agreed new targets to increase their spending on security and defense to 5% of GDP by 2035.

And Trump’s officials have already said they will be cutting back on U.S. troop deployments to Europe. 

Ahead of the trilateral talks with Russia in Abu Dhabi, the American and Ukrainian delegations met with European representatives, including top officials from the European Commission, the European Council, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy, and NATO.  

“They discussed how to ensure strong mechanisms for managing risk and avoiding dangerous escalation,” the two statements said. “The participants reaffirmed their shared commitment to a strong post-war European security architecture and arrangements, and were clear that a strong NATO will remain central to Euro-Atlantic collective defense.”

Veronika Melkozerova and Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to this report.

LONDON — The U.S. has evacuated refueling aircraft from an RAF base in Britain after registering an alleged threat from Iran.

At least 10 U.S. planes left RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk on Monday, according to the BBC, and landed at other American bases in Europe and at Prestwick Airport in Scotland.

The operation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by two U.K. officials briefed on the matter.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “We do not routinely comment on the activity of other nations. Aircraft and other assets move regularly ​according to operational ​requirements.”

It comes weeks after an Iran-linked security incident at RAF Fairford, which saw the U.S. pull its bombers out of the base and return them to America.

A major incident was declared after three suspicious vans were seen near Fairford, which led to eight arrests. Two British nationals appeared in court in October in connection with an alleged plot connected to Iran.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s spokesman said: “The U.S. is one of our top security partners. We’re in constant communication with them, sharing intelligence and accessing threats together. Aircraft and other assets move regularly according to operational requirements… The protection of our bases, both in the U.K. and across the world, is a top priority.”

Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch said on Tuesday that the latest U.S. withdrawal of assets is “very concerning, and our government’s got absolutely nothing to say about it.”

Head of the MI5 intelligence service Ken McCallum said last month that threats from foreign adversaries against the U.K. had quadrupled in the last decade, including an increase in Iran-sponsored aggression against Jewish sites and military bases.

This story was updated to include a comment from the U.K. prime minister’s spokesperson.

BRUSSELS — Royalty descended on the European Parliament on Tuesday as Prince Harry slammed Big Tech for creating a world of “chaos.”

“A handful of very powerful people … would like to see the world as a social media world: lawless, no consequence, complete chaos, division,” the Duke of Sussex said at an event on online safety for children.

Speaking in a room packed to the brim with journalists and photographers, Harry called for stricter rules on social media platforms to protect kids from content that could lead to suicide or self-harm.

He expressed reservations about the privacy policies of social media platforms, which he said bar parents from knowing how their children died. “That cannot be right,” a visibly upset Harry said.

His wife, Meghan Markle, was present but withdrew from an address on Tuesday’s panel.

The European Commission regulates online platforms through its Digital Services Act and is planning a special regime for minors under the Kids Act.

The burden of proof that platforms are safe should be on the companies rather than on parents, and “the EU Kids Act is exactly that,” said the prince, praising an EU proposal that would bar access to social media for under-13s.

The couple brought an air of celebrity to the Parliament, with heightened security and a clamoring press pack, including many journalists from the U.K. Dozens of parliament employees and lobbyists gathered outside the room, phones in hand, to catch a glimpse of the pair.

Meanwhile, the internal market committee, which is leading negotiations for the Parliament on the Kids Act, was meeting in a far less crowded room. MEPs from the committee — including Hungarian conservative Dóra Dávid and Slovak liberal Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová — attended the royal event.

A researcher’s trawl through publicly available code found private information was at risk across multiple departments.

DeepMind researchers were able to formally verify that the widely used encryption protocol works as intended. Their stretch goal? Do the same for “all the software of the world.”

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ABU DHABI — European governments’ long-running and sometimes bad-tempered debate over who should represent them in Ukraine peace talks just became urgent. 

Donald Trump’s envoys are pressing Russia to allow Europe to join the next round of negotiations aimed at resolving the Ukraine war, according to U.S. officials granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. 

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff will push the case for Europe to have a direct role in future talks as they mediate the first trilateral discussion with Russia and Ukraine since February in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, the officials said. 

European governments and EU institutions will likely not have long to decide who they want at the negotiating table on their behalf. Kushner and Witkoff want to step up the pace of the talks and for this week’s meeting to be the last without Europe’s full participation, the same officials said.

“We need Europe at the table,” one of the officials said. “So our proposal is to bring the Europeans into the discussion after this trilateral.”

The officials welcomed the fact that the leaders of Finland and Norway called Russia’s Vladimir Putin directly on Oct. 27 and said more outreach is necessary. “We need a lot more European discussions with Russia so that they could be hearing what we’re hearing and the message that they’re conveying to us they could be conveying to Russia directly.” 

The question of who speaks for Europe — and whether Ukraine’s European allies should even be speaking to Putin at all — has been deeply divisive. EU leaders will discuss the topic at an informal summit in Dublin later this week. 

Ever since Trump returned to the White House last year, EU officials and diplomats have been fretting about being left on the sidelines while the U.S. talks directly to Russia to negotiate an end to the war.

Senior European officials are due in Abu Dhabi for the meetings this week but, although Kushner and Witkoff are expected to consult them, they will not be involved in the main negotiations due to Russian objections. Those present include security advisers from the U.K., Germany, France, as well as officials from Italy, NATO, the European Commission and European Council. 

The U.S. officials said Day 1 of the talks would focus on security guarantees for Ukraine and the potential reshaping of the security architecture of Europe. Day 2 would look at territorial issues — where the borders and boundaries should be drawn — and other questions. 

European governments fear that Trump may be preparing to agree to longstanding demands from Putin to roll back NATO’s influence in the region. But the U.S. officials insisted that NATO would still be central to Europe’s collective defense, while refusing to back away from the need for a fundamental rethink of the continent’s relations with Russia. 

“Obviously something’s not working,” the same official said. Europeans have “a lot of baggage” about redrawing the security architecture because Russia had proposed various changes in the past and previous arrangements had failed, the official said. “We have to build something new that works today.”

The officials said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had been heavily involved in the discussions with the U.S. administration and in sharing ideas for reforms. 

On the most difficult question of all for Ukraine — the fate of Russian-occupied territory — both sides have shown “flexibility” in private, the officials said. The aim of this week’s talks is to keep up the momentum of recent weeks, rather than to deliver a final ceasefire, they added. 

But the two main tracks in the talks — territory and future security arrangements for Ukraine and Europe — must run together and be resolved together, the U.S. side said. 

Additional reporting by Scott Waldman.

Exclusive: Wyndham left a hardcoded credential in its customer app, allowing anyone to access customer data. The hotel giant wouldn't say if it has the ability to check for any past unauthorized access.

France's foreign minister blamed Iran for launching at least two waves of cyberattacks targeting industrial refrigerated and freezer units across France and wider Europe.