EU Digital ID Could Become The Default Way To Prove Identity To Banks

EU Digital ID Could Become The Default Way To Prove Identity To Banks

Cindy Harper

The EU’s anti-money laundering authority wants electronic ID, including the bloc’s European Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet, to become the standard way people prove their identity to banks.

Remote alternatives such as video and selfie checks will still be allowed, but only as an exception that the bank will have to justify to its supervisor.

The EUDI wallet was sold to EU citizens as a voluntary, convenient, and secure way to store their ID, driver’s license, and other documents, and to use it for accessing public and private services online and in person.

The EU’s Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AMLA) has submitted its final draft standards for customer due diligence to the European Commission (EC).

AMLA is pushing for the EUDI wallet to be the go-to choice here, saying that electronic identification means, including the wallet, “should be used wherever possible.”

The standard refers to the wallet as “European Digital Identity Wallets” and says that it is one of the electronic identification means that provides “substantial” or “high” assurance levels, and should therefore be used wherever possible.

The draft standard covers customer due diligence, including “the information companies and professionals must collect and verify,” as well as “non-face-to-face verification, electronic identification, and screening of politically exposed persons.”

What’s At Stake Globally

The Sheer Ignorance Of What’s At Stake Globally

Martin Armstrong

This is a classic example of how people who rise to the top of one field are complete idiots when it comes to everything else. Lt. General Keith Kellogg served as National Security Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence and later as Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. He is Co-Chair at the Center for American Security, America First Policy Institute, USA, which is a Neocon think tank. The ignorance of this guy is just stunning. He has made no effort to look at the facts, or more likely, he knows the facts and is deliberately no discussing how Victoria Nuland selected the interarm government which started this civil war and attacked the Donbas on Neocon orders.

He advocates that Zelensky should say FU to President Trump and destroy every refinery in Russia. To illustrate he absolute stupidity, forget the food crisis he would cause in Russia knowing that will lead to nuclear war, he completely ignores that overall, Africa and the Middle East account for over 80% of Russia’s wheat exports, making these regions the most directly tied to Russian grain. Iran is 100% dependent on Russian grain. That would be one sure fire way to make sure the Middle East explodes into a full blown war and it will then merge with the Russia vs EU war and China and North Korea will join.

It is these Neocons who simply hate the Russian people that are cascading the world into World War III for a war that they instigated using Ukraine. He would fulfill our mode pushing diesel to the extreme projecting to $8, which will impact the US economy reducing trucking and result in a US food shortage. This is what I mean. Having expertise in one field does not qualify you to argue things that will impact the rest of the entire would with ZERO comprehension of where that goes.

A full-scale war with Russia would very likely cause a severe global diesel crisis, and in many regions, a collapse in supply is a real possibility. The system is already under extreme strain, and a broader conflict would push it past its breaking point. Our computer project $10+ a gallon by 2032.

The global diesel market is not starting from a position of strength; it is already in a state of acute shortage driven by two simultaneous wars. A wider conflict with Russia would remove one of the world’s largest suppliers from a market that is already reeling. Russia is the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, accounting for roughly 9.5% of global export volumes whereas the United States exports 1,264,000 bpd 15.4%. Russia’s exports are a vital source of supply for Turkey, Brazil, and parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Russia’s diesel exports have already plummeted due to Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries. In June 2026, exports fell below 1 million tons, compared to around 2.5 million tons a year earlier—a drop of over 60%! Its monthly exportable surplus has fallen from about 3 million tons to as low as 325,000 tons. Global inventories were already drained before any wider war. In the U.S., diesel stocks hit their lowest level for September 2026 since 1982, and European stocks in the ARA hub were 16% below the five-year average.

There has been a shortage without a wider war. The combined effect of the Iran war (disrupting Gulf refining and shipping) and the Ukraine war (disabling Russian refineries) has already created a global diesel shortage expected to last into 2027 even if peace was achieved now. With that unlikely, the shortages will expand into 2028.

A direct war with Russia as advocated by the EU would be catastrophic because it would compound the existing crisis in several ways not to mention seriously wipe out the European economy. Russia’s exports would likely cease entirely, either through a formal blockade or the destruction of its remaining energy infrastructure. The market would lose a supplier already responsible for nearly a tenth of global trade.

The current war has shown that refineries are Zelensky’s primary targets after he blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline. A wider conflict would likely see attacks on refining and export infrastructure far beyond Russia, including in the Middle East and potentially on shipping routes, further crippling the world’s ability to turn crude oil into diesel.

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Federal government declares POWER GRID EMERGENCY across 13 states and D.C.

Federal government declares POWER GRID EMERGENCY across 13 states and D.C.

Leo Hohmann

I have been warning for the last three years that Americans should prepare for widespread power blackouts.

That was before more than 5,000 new data centers were built, sucking up tons of energy from an already aging and overtaxed power grid.

On Monday the federal government issued an order with a stunning admission. It doesn’t have enough electric power to supply everyone’s needs without waiving certain rules and protocols related to pollution standards.

The Department of Energy has issued an emergency power order to reduce the risk of blackouts across the territory managed by PJM Interconnection, which coordinates electricity supplies in much of the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest.

PJM, which coordinates the provision of electricity for more than 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C., said Monday that it had issued a maximum generation and load management alerts “ahead of expected tight system conditions caused by unusually warm fall weather.”

Besides the weather, it also cited quipment outages for maintenance and construction as hampering the supply of adequate electric power.

A PJM spokesperson said in a statement:

“Tight grid conditions in general currently are caused by growing electricity demand coupled with the need for owners of generators and transmission equipment to take their equipment out of service for maintenance ahead of winter, and also for construction on major transmission projects that requires nearby lines to be taken out of service for safety reasons.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the order on Monday “to mitigate blackout risks in the mid-Atlantic ahead of a period of elevated demand, a high rate of planned generator outages during the autumn maintenance season, and numerous planned transmission outages,” the Department of Energy said in a statement.

The emergency order applies to Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia… and Washington D.C. It remains in effect October 13-16.

Continued 80-plus degree daytime temps are straining the grid. Thus, the emergency conditions will allow power plants to run past their pollution limits just to keep the lights on.

And as a LAST RESORT before rolling blackouts, PJM can force data centers and other big power users off the grid and onto their backup generators.

What are the chances of that happening? I believe they would ration residential power usage before they would cut off their sacred data centers.

A PJM spokesperson told Newsweek on Tuesday that it does not expect any impacts to customers and that customers are not being asked to take action.

Wright said in a statement that, “This order will help ensure millions of American families and businesses across the mid-Atlantic have access to affordable, reliable, and secure electricity by making additional power generation, including backup power, available to use as needed.”

Sounds to me like they are trying to downplay and normalize something they are calling an emergency.

Houthis will respond ‘eye for an eye’ to Saudi attacks

Houthis will respond ‘eye for an eye’ to Saudi attacks – foreign minister

RT

Yemen’s Houthis will continue retaliatory strikes against Saudi airports and oil facilities as long as Riyadh continues its military operations in Yemen, the Houthi administration’s acting foreign minister, Abdulwahid Abu Ras, has told RT. 

He said the fighting could end if Saudi Arabia lifted its blockade and withdrew its forces from Yemeni territory.

Recent Houthi-claimed strikes on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport have killed at least 14 people and injured more than 300 over the weekend. On Tuesday, the Saudi-led coalition struck a fuel depot near Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. 

The minister described the group’s approach as “an eye for an eye,” saying Houthi forces were targeting Saudi oil facilities, infrastructure, and military positions in retaliation.

“Siege for siege, airport for airport, ports for ports, and escalation for escalation,” Abu Ras told RT India Managing Editor Ashok Bagriya in an exclusive interview. 

The renewed confrontation began in July when strikes on Sanaa airport were followed by Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, breaking years of relative calm following a United Nations-brokered truce in 2022. United Nations envoy Hans Grundberg warned last week that Yemen had returned to full-scale war. 

“Our red lines are that the blockade on Yemen, our airports, and our ports must not continue,”Abu Ras said. He also demanded access to the country’s oil and gas resources.

He said the Houthi administration remains prepared for direct negotiations with Riyadh despite Saudi Arabia allegedly failing to implement earlier humanitarian agreements. “We invite the Saudi regime to sit at the negotiation table to implement what was agreed upon,” Abu Ras said, calling for humanitarian facilities to be kept out of the fighting. 

Zelensky Feels 'Betrayed' By Trump & Elon Musk

"It's A Pity...": Zelensky Feels 'Betrayed' By Trump & Elon Musk

TYLER DURDEN

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he feels betrayed by President Trump in the wake of the US deal to buy Russian fuel from Moscow, which was announced last week.

Zelensky went on a newly aired episode of Piers Morgan's show, and he was asked point blank by the British show host if he had been "betrayed" by the Trump administration, to which Zelensky answered, "Really, Yes." Russian media was quick to seize on the increasingly open schism between Trump and Zelensky...

"It’s a pity that we are losing a strong partner," the Ukrainian leader told Morgan on Wednesday.

"This is our country, our body, our home, our children… That's why it’s painful when Trump chooses one side," Zelensky at one point also stated.

"If you’re in the middle, you have to stay in the middle. Not on the wrong side," said Zelensky. "This is not the right side of history." Here, Zelensky seemed to suggest Trump is actually more on the Kremlin side of things at this point.

The interview also came amid reports that the US is throttling intelligence-sharing with Kiev. The White House has thus far neither confirmed nor denied the allegations.

But Zelensky has himself for the past two night of Russian airstrikes made a point to publicize that Western partners have not provided the typical early warning notices of inbound missiles that were available in prior such attacks.

There's been another apparently 'betrayal' (in Zelensky's assessment) by the White House of late: reports say that SpaceX has imposed a movement-speed restriction on certain Starlink terminals used in Ukraine.

This has deeply impacted Ukraine's military, which is greatly reliant on Starlink for rapid battlefield communications and functions. Zelensky used the Piers Morgan appears to plead that it be 'switched on'.

"People will die, of course, if attacks will continue and if Starlink will not work… it’s not helpful," he continued.

The Ukrainian leader expressed home the limitation was merely a "mistake," suggesting it could "maybe a huge technical problem" at SpaceX. 

Overall, Zelensky's message was that Ukraine is 'losing' American support and that he feels betrayed not only be Trump, but by Elon Musk too.

Musk has directly chimed in on the controversy, clarifying "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government" - and so ultimately it's the US government, not SpaceX, behind whatever cut happened that impacted Ukraine.

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