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CANNES, France, May 20 (Reuters) – Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar urged artists to speak out about the crises facing society on Wednesday, describing it as their moral duty against “monsters” like U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The creator, from their small platform, each from their own, must speak without mincing words,” said Almodovar at the Cannes Film Festival after the premiere of his tragicomedy “Bitter Christmas.”

“Silence and fear – because it is clearly an expression of fear – are a very bad sign; they are a sign of the erosion of democracy,” said the director considered a defining figure of contemporary European cinema.

“We are obliged to become a kind of shield against these monsters like Trump, Netanyahu or the Russian,” he said, referring to Israel’s prime minister and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Trump must know that there is a limit to all his delusions and madness, and that Europe will never bow down to Trump’s policies,” he added.

The latest film from the director known for dark humour and melodrama stars Leonardo Sbaraglia as Raul, a filmmaker who starts borrowing details from the people in his life to write his new screenplay.

The story draws deeply from Almodovar’s own creative journey as a director, he told journalists.

Almodovar, who is competing for the festival’s Palme d’Or top prize for the sixth time, said that he would miss coming to Cannes once the day comes when he stops making films.

“But for now, I think I’m going to make one more film; I hope that I’ll continue to find the inspiration for more,” he said, adding that there will be more humour in the next one.

(Reporting by Hanna Rantala and Miranda MurrayEditing by Nick Zieminski)

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By Francois Murphy

VIENNA, May 20 (Reuters) – An Austrian court found former intelligence officer Egisto Ott guilty of spying on Wednesday, for helping Russia hunt down opponents and selling it state laptops and phones at the behest of suspected Moscow agent Jan Marsalek.

Ott’s is the biggest spying case in Austria since a retired army colonel was convicted in 2020 of having spied for Moscow for decades.

In addition to spying to the detriment of Austria, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, Ott was found guilty of offences including misuse of office, bribery and breach of trust. 

Ott, 63, pleaded not guilty and has maintained his innocence since the trial opened in January. He was sentenced to four years and one month in prison. 

Ott, wearing a dark suit and black shirt, did not react as the ruling was delivered. He felt “calm”, his lawyer Anna Mair told reporters afterwards, adding that he planned to appeal.

ALLEGED MOSCOW AGENT ON THE RUN

The proceedings offered a glimpse of Russian intelligence-gathering in Europe, and of Marsalek’s alleged operations across the continent, after a London court convicted three Bulgarians last year of being part of a Russian spy ring run by him.

Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of Wirecard, the collapsed German payments firm, is on the run and believed to be in Russia. As such, he could not be reached for comment.

Ott was found to have made unauthorised searches in police and other databases in an attempt to locate people Moscow wanted to hunt down, such as Dmitry Senin, a former Russian intelligence agent who has now claimed asylum in Montenegro.

Ott acknowledged saving the results in his private Gmail account or in unrelated case files of the agency he worked for, the now-defunct Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism.

Ott said he had been operating under the orders of a superior who had been contacted by an allied Western intelligence agency that had hoped to recruit Senin, but did not say which agency or which country it was from.

Another target was Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev, who worked for investigative outlet Bellingcat and led its reporting on the 2018 poisoning in Britain of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, which Britain blames on Russia.

Moscow denies involvement in that case and has regularly accused Western powers of trying to inflame anti-Russian hysteria.

Prosecutors said Ott provided Grozev’s address in Vienna to Marsalek, who then arranged a break-in at the apartment. Grozev later moved away from Austria for security reasons when he learned he was a target.

Ott was found to have provided an accomplice of Marsalek’s with a SINA-S laptop, which includes hardware used by European Union governments for secure communications, in exchange for €20,000 ($23,200).

He also provided Marsalek’s network with three work phones belonging to members of the then-interior minister’s private office that were recovered after a boating accident in 2017, the court found.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Alex Richardson, Rod Nickel)

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SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed two decrees on Wednesday that add to the pressure on big tech companies by increasing their liability for illegal content shared by its users and paving the way for investigations by a government body into their responses to such cases.

The moves toughen the environment in Brazil for giants like Google, Meta and TikTok, who have long tried to dissociate themselves with crimes online committed by users.

The first decree makes key adaptations to government regulations to align them with a decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court making big tech companies liable if they refuse to remove content by judicial order. It also enables the country’s national agency of data protection to investigate those cases. The second decree establishes guidelines for the protection of women in the digital environment.

Brazil’s government said in a statement that from now on platforms must analyze any complaints, and if the content is deemed criminal, remove it immediately, while communicating the decision to the person responsible. Possible penalties for non-compliance include warnings, fines and temporary suspension.

Big tech companies have not commented on the decision by Brazil’s government.

Patricia Peck, a council member of Brazil’s Data Protection Authority and author of 46 books on law and technology, said the country’s executive and judicial branches have pushed for big techs to be proactive against crimes online despite evident stagnation of the debate in congress.

“We don’t have specific legislation to hold these platforms responsible, we are taking a side road,” Peck told The Associated Press. “Those who develop these technologies must think about it with perspective of ethics, privacy, and security as a standard.”

Since the Brazilian Supreme Court ruling last year, these companies have had to actively monitor content that involves hate speech, racism and incitation to violence and act to remove it.

Lula’s move also expands the current law’s capacity to address the growth of digital fraud, online scams and new forms of online violence.

Mattheus Puppe, an expert on Brazil’s digital law, says the decrees seek to stop platforms from profiting from illegal publications and reinforce the country’s Supreme Court’s decision. But he has doubts on whether the government’s initiatives will indeed hinder online crime.

“It is not clear how well this will work because the agency that was chosen to investigate cases can barely do its job now,” Puppe said. “But it is true that it shouldn’t be up to companies to know what is lawful and what is not.”

Brazil’s approach to big techs is increasingly similar to that of the European Union, which has sought to rein in the power of social media companies and other digital platforms.

But it has unsettled the relationship between the South American nation and the U.S. government. Critics expressed concern that the move could threaten free speech if platforms preemptively remove content that could be problematic.

Earlier this year, a law that seeks to shield minors from addictive, violent, and pornographic online content took effect. The legislation requires minors under 16 to link their social media accounts to a legal guardian to ensure supervision and prohibits platforms from using addictive features such as infinite scroll and the automatic play of videos.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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