🇺🇸🇪🇺🇨🇦🇱🇹 EU, Canada and Lithuania pull out of disinformation conference after US pressure

The Trump administration pressured diplomatic officials from the EU, Canada and Lithuania to pull out of an international conference on disinformation after organizers announced panels warning of the threat posed by American government officials and the country’s influence broadly, according to excerpts of a State Department cable seen by POLITICO.

The conference, titled # Disinfo2026, included sessions that described the U.S. as a “foreign information manipulation and interference” actor, or “FIMI,” which bothered the Trump administration, according to the cable. The conference is being held Wednesday and Thursday in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

The State Department asked American embassies in several European countries and the EU to express Washington’s concerns and “assess” whether the governments involved in the conference agree with the U.S. being characterized as a FIMI actor, according to the cable.

FIMI is an EU term used to describe activities that try to distort public information, such as spreading disinformation online, usually by foreign actors such as Russia. The conference conflates the U.S. with “foreign adversaries like Russia and China,” which is a “false equivalence” that “obscures the scale and nature of Russian and Chinese interference in our democracies,” the cable states.

The demarche request appears to be an unusual administration effort to use allied government pressure to silence criticism from European citizens and Americans abroad (three U.S. citizens appeared on one of the panels that prompted the cable). It also marks an acceleration of the Trump administration’s years-long pressure campaign on the continent, which includes U.S. criticism of perceived EU censorship.

The recipients of the cable included U.S. embassies in France, Norway, Romania and Poland. The embassies each were told to tell their hosts — verbally, not in writing — that the U.S. was unhappy with the panels on American disinformation, according to the cable and a U.S. official, who, like others, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.

One of those panels, titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back” featured two American researchers and a former CIA official and looked at how the U.S. had become a disinformation threat to Europe. Another, titled “Under attack: How the counter-disinformation community is dealing with US government pressure,” asked legal experts to weigh in on the threat of U.S. government travel bans against European figures.

The State Department asked some of those countries — but not all — to reconsider participating in the event, said the U.S. official familiar with the cable, which came from the secretary of State’s office.

🔗 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/07/disinformation-conference-europe-us-pressure-01111134

🇺🇸🛢 The US is preparing to release the last of the 172 million barrels it pledged from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to offset oil lost to the war on Iran. The Energy Department says the final batch, up to 40 million barrels from storage sites on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, will ship in November and December.

The reserve held about 283 million barrels as of Oct. 5, the lowest level since 1982, according to the Energy Information Administration. The barrels are loaned to oil companies, which must later return them with extra barrels as a premium.

Meanwhile, G7 countries agreed Friday to release up to 100 million barrels of diesel and crude. But at a meeting on Wednesday, EU countries broadly agreed that the release will "just enact previous commitments rather than requiring additional volumes," Bloomberg reported, citing a memo and EU officials.

According to Reuters, about 75 million barrels from the record release the International Energy Agency announced in March have yet to be released, and EU diplomats expect them to count toward the new 100 million.

🔗 DropSite

🇺🇸🇲🇲 The Trump administration has opened direct talks with Myanmar’s military government, reversing years of U.S. efforts to isolate its leaders following the 2021 coup.

Senior U.S. official Michael Vance met Myanmar’s leader Min Aung Hlaing on September 15–16, marking the highest-level contact since the coup.

The talks initially focused on securing the release of detained American businessman Adam Castillo but have expanded to combating cyber scam centers and discussing access to Myanmar’s vast rare-earth mineral deposits, as Washington seeks to reduce dependence on China.

Min Aung Hlaing remains under U.S. sanctions for human rights abuses, while critics warn that engagement could legitimize Myanmar’s military government.

The administration has also cut most U.S. programs supporting Myanmar’s democratic opposition, signaling a shift toward engagement driven by strategic and economic interests.

🔗 Clash Report

✡️ How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel

David Milstein a top official in the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, has been entrusted with much of the mission’s portfolio by Ambassador Mike Huckabee

In late March, at the height of the Iran war, Israel quietly approved more settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank than it ever had at one time.

Staff members at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as potentially flouting one of President Trump’s explicit red lines for Israel — no annexation of the West Bank — and drafted an urgent report intended for policy makers in Washington.

That memo never reached Washington. It was quashed by David Milstein, a top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the process.

This was no isolated incident.

Since taking up his post in April 2025, Mr. Milstein, 36, has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein in both Jerusalem and Washington:

As settler violence in the West Bank surged in the spring, for instance, he stymied embassy reporting suggesting that the Israeli government was failing to take action, according to the three officials. Instead the embassy sent a cable to Washington, viewed by The New York Times, praising Israel for “cracking down” on the attacks.

When members of Congress pushed for accountability over the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces, he suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written, effectively stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts to gain information, according to multiple officials briefed on the matter.

Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, Mr. Milstein began insisting on approving communications from the embassy section that handles Palestinian affairs, multiple officials with direct knowledge of the process said. The flow of cables plummeted from several a week to a few a month, as some staffers refrained from writing reports for fear that Mr. Milstein would block or rewrite them, these officials said.

Milstein is Jewish. He is the stepson of Jewish political commentator and one of the biggest advocates for the Iran War, Mark Levin. David Milstein is engaged with Miriam Feiglin, daughter of Israeli ex-Likud politician, Moshe Feiglin, who has repeatedly called for the murder of Gaza's Palestinian population or expel it by force.

🔗 https://archive.ph/ISBLi

🇪🇹⚔️🇪🇷 Ethiopian drone strikes hit Eritrean forces in northern Tigray city

Asmara's troops crossed the border this week and were positioned around the Ethiopian city of Adigrat in northern Tigray, multiple sources have told AFP.

Conflict monitor ACLED said "Eritrean troops and ammunition" in the Adigrat area were hit by "multiple drone strikes" overnight between Wednesday and Thursday.

"There were many, many drone strikes yesterday. Some Eritrean lorries have been destroyed. They are no longer in the streets," one witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Another witness in Adigrat, who also asked for anonymity, said they had heard a "massive explosion during the night".

"I also saw Eritrean military vehicles that had been hit by a drone," they added.

🔗 https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20261008-ethiopian-drone-strikes-hit-eritrean-forces-in-northern-tigray-city

🇮🇱 🏹 🌍 Israel attacked 100,000 targets in six countries over three years

📈 Military reports 65,000 targets attacked in Gaza, 28,000 in Lebanon and Syria, 4,500 in Iran, and 80 in Yemen

📌 Israel also carried out an attack targeting senior Hamas leadership in Qatar’s Doha in 2025

📎 Anadolu Agency

📢 🇺🇸 🤖 Trump: Anyone who uses the term "artificial intelligence" instead of "superintelligence" will be considered an enemy of the White House

📎 NEXTA

🗳 🇩🇪 📊 Germany | Federal Election Nowcast update — October 7, 2026

➡️ AfD: 28% | 203 (-3)
⬛ Union: 19% | 138 (-5)
🟩 GRN: 15% | 109 (+1)
🟥 SPD: 14% | 100 (+8)
🟪 Linke: 11% | 79 (-1)
—
🟨 FDP: 4.0% | 0 (=)
🟪 BSW: 2.9% | 0 (=)

+/- vs. September 22

📝 EUprop: Everyone focusing on AfD, but ignoring the fact that Germany is even closer to a left-wing coalition government.

📎 Nowcast EU