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  • A Major Clue to COVID’s Origins Is Just Out of Reach

    A Major Clue to COVID’s Origins Is Just Out of Reach

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    Updated at 2:45 p.m. on March 21, 2023

    Last week, the ongoing debate about COVID-19’s origins acquired a new plot twist. A French evolutionary biologist stumbled across a trove of genetic sequences extracted from swabs collected from surfaces at a wet market in Wuhan, China, shortly after the pandemic began; she and an international team of colleagues downloaded the data in hopes of understanding who—or what—might have ferried the virus into the venue. What they found, as The Atlantic first reported on Thursday, bolsters the case for the pandemic having purely natural roots: The genetic data suggest that live mammals illegally for sale at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market—among them, raccoon dogs, a foxlike species known to be susceptible to the virus—may have been carrying the coronavirus at the end of 2019.

    But what might otherwise have been a straightforward story on new evidence has rapidly morphed into a mystery centered on the origins debate’s data gaps. Within a day or so of nabbing the sequences off a database called GISAID, the researchers told me, they reached out to the Chinese scientists who had uploaded the data to share some preliminary results. The next day, public access to the sequences was locked—according to GISAID, at the request of the Chinese researchers, who had previously analyzed the data and drawn distinctly different conclusions about what they contained.

    Read: The strongest evidence yet that an animal started the pandemic

    Yesterday evening, the international team behind the new Huanan-market analysis released a report on its findings—but did not post the underlying data. The write-up confirms that genetic material from raccoon dogs and several other mammals was found in some of the same spots at the wet market, as were bits of SARS-CoV-2’s genome around the time the outbreak began. Some of that animal genetic material, which was collected just days or weeks after the market was shut down, appears to be RNA—a particularly fast-degrading molecule. That strongly suggests that the mammals were present at the market not long before the samples were collected, making them a plausible channel for the virus to travel on its way to us. “I think we’re moving toward more and more evidence that this was an animal spillover at the market,” says Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the new research. “A year and a half ago, my confidence in the animal origin was 80 percent, something like that. Now it’s 95 percent or above.”

    For now, the report is just that: a report, not yet formally reviewed by other scientists or even submitted for publication to the journal—and that will remain the case as long as this team continues to leave space for the researchers who originally collected the market samples, many of them based at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to prepare a paper of their own. And still missing are the raw sequence files that sparked the reanalysis in the first place—before vanishing from the public eye.

    Every researcher I asked emphasized just how important the release of that evidence is to the origins investigation: Without data, there’s no base-level proof—nothing for the broader scientific community to independently scrutinize to confirm or refute the international team’s results. Absent raw data, “some people will say that this isn’t real,” says Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who wasn’t involved in the new analysis. Data that flicker on and off publicly accessible parts of the internet also raise questions about other clues on the pandemic’s origins. Still more evidence might be out there, yet undisclosed.

    Transparency is always an essential facet of research, but all the more so when the stakes are so high. SARS-CoV-2 has already killed nearly 7 million people, at least, and saddled countless people with chronic illness; it will kill and debilitate many more in the decades to come. Every investigation into how it began to spread among humans must be “conducted as openly as possible,” says Sarah Cobey, an infectious-disease modeler at the University of Chicago, who wasn’t involved in the new analysis.

    The team behind the reanalysis still has copies of the genetic sequences its members downloaded earlier this month. But they’ve decided that they won’t be the ones to share them, several of them told me. For one, they don’t have sequences from the complete set of samples that the Chinese team collected in early 2020—just the fraction that they spotted and grabbed off GISAID. Even if they did have all of the data, the researchers contend that it’s not their place to post them publicly. That’s up to the China CDC team that originally collected and generated the data.

    Part of the international team’s reasoning is rooted in academic decorum. There isn’t a set-in-stone guidebook among scientists, but adhering to unofficial rules on etiquette smooths successful collaborations across disciplines and international borders—especially during a global crisis such as this one. Releasing someone else’s data, the product of another team’s hard work, is a faux pas. It risks misattribution of credit, and opens the door to the Chinese researchers’ findings getting scooped before they publish a high-profile paper in a prestigious journal. “It isn’t right to share the original authors’ data without their consent,” says Niema Moshiri, a computational biologist at UC San Diego and one of the authors of the new report. “They produced the data, so it’s their data to share with the world.”

    If the international team released what data it has, it could potentially stoke the fracas in other ways. The World Health Organization has publicly indicated that the data should come from the researchers who collected them first: On Friday, at a press briefing, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, admonished the Chinese researchers for keeping their data under wraps for so long, and called on them to release the sequences again. “These data could have and should have been shared three years ago,” he said. And the fact that it wasn’t is “disturbing,” given just how much it might have aided investigations early on, says Gregory Koblentz, a biodefense expert at George Mason University, who wasn’t involved in the new analysis.

    Publishing the current report has already gotten the researchers into trouble with GISAID, the database where they found the genetic sequences. During the pandemic, the database has been a crucial hub for researchers sharing viral genome data; founded to provide open access to avian influenza genomes, it is also where researchers from the China CDC published the first whole-genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2, back in January 2020. A few days after the researchers downloaded the sequences, they told me, several of them were contacted by a GISAID administrator who chastised them about not being sufficiently collaborative with the China CDC team and warned them against publishing a paper using the China CDC data. They were in danger, the email said, of violating the site’s terms of use and would risk getting their database access revoked. Distributing the data to any non-GISAID users—including the broader research community—would also be a breach.

    This morning, hours after the researchers released their report online, many of them found that they could no longer log in to GISAID—they received an error message when they input their username and password. “They may indeed be accusing us of having violated their terms,” Moshiri told me, though he can’t be sure. The ban was instated with absolutely no warning. Moshiri and his colleagues maintain that they did act in good faith and haven’t violated any of the database’s terms—that, contrary to GISAID’s accusations, they reached out multiple times with offers to collaborate with the China CDC, which has “thus far declined,” per the international team’s report.

    GISAID didn’t respond when I reached out about the data’s disappearing act, its emails to the international team, and the group-wide ban. But in a statement released shortly after I contacted the database—one that echoes language in the emails sent to researchers—GISAID doubled down on accusing the international team of violating its terms of use by posting “an analysis report in direct contravention of the terms they agreed to as a condition to accessing the data, and despite having knowledge that the data generators are undergoing peer review assessment of their own publication.”

    Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, told me that she’s learned that the China CDC researchers recently provided a fuller data set to GISAID—more complete than the one the international team downloaded earlier this month. “It’s ready to go,” she told me. GISAID just needs permission, she said, from the Chinese researchers to make the sequences publicly available. “I reach out to them every day, asking them for a status update,” she added, but she hasn’t yet heard back on a definitive timeline. In its statement, GISAID also “strongly” suggested “that the complete and updated dataset will be made available as soon as possible,” but gave no timeline. I asked Van Kerkhove if there was a hypothetical deadline for the China CDC team to restore access, at which point the international team might be asked to publicize the data instead. “This hypothetical deadline you’re talking about? We’re way past that,” she said, though she didn’t comment specifically on whether the international team would be asked to step in. “Data has been uploaded. It is available. It just needs to be accessible, immediately.”

    Why, exactly, the sequences were first made public only so recently, and why they have yet to reappear publicly, remain unclear. In a recent statement, the WHO said that access to the data was withdrawn “apparently to allow further data updates by China CDC” to its original analysis on the market samples, which went under review for publication at the journal Nature last week. There’s no clarity, however, on what will happen if the paper is not published at all. When I reached out to three of the Chinese researchers—George Gao, William Liu, and Guizhen Wu—to ask about their intentions for the data, I didn’t receive a response.

    “We want the data to come out more than anybody,” says Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and one of the authors on the new analysis. Until then, the international team will be fielding accusations, already flooding in, that it falsified its analyses and overstated its conclusions.

    Researchers around the world have been raising questions about these particular genetic sequences for at least a year. In February 2022, the Chinese researchers and their close collaborators released their analysis of the same market samples probed in the new report, as well as other bits of genetic data that haven’t yet been made public. But their interpretations deviate pretty drastically from the international team’s. The Chinese team contended that any shreds of virus found at the market had most likely been brought in by infected humans. “No animal host of SARS-CoV-2 can be deduced,” the researchers asserted at the time. Although the market had perhaps been an “amplifier” of the outbreak, their analysis read, “more work involving international coordination” would be needed to determine the “real origins of SARS-CoV-2.” When reached by Jon Cohen of Science magazine last week, Gao described the sequences that fleetingly appeared on GISAID as “[n]othing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down.”

    There is, then, a clear divergence between the two reports. Gao’s assessment indicates that finding animal genetic material in the market swabs merely confirms that live mammals were being illegally traded at the venue prior to January 2020. The researchers behind the new report insist that the narrative can now go a step further—they suggest not just that the animals were there, but that the animals, several of which are already known to be vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, were there, in parts of the market where the virus was also found. That proximity, coupled with the virus’s inability to persist without a viable host, points to the possibility of an existing infection among animals, which could spark several more.

    The Chinese researchers used this same logic of location—multiple types of genetic material pulled out of the same swab—to conclude that humans were carrying around the virus at Huanan. The reanalysis confirms that there probably were infected people at the market at some point before it closed. But they were unlikely to be the virus’s only chauffeurs: Across several samples, the amount of raccoon-dog genetic material dwarfs that of humans. At one stall in particular—located in the sector of the market where the most virus-positive swabs were found—the researchers discovered at least one sample that contained SARS-CoV-2 RNA, and was also overflowing with raccoon-dog genetic material, while containing very little DNA or RNA material matching the human genome. That same stall was photographically documented housing raccoon dogs in 2014. The case is not a slam dunk: No one has yet, for instance, identified a viral sample taken from a live animal that was swabbed at the market in 2019 before the venue was closed. Still, JHU’s Gronvall told me, the situation feels clearer than ever. “All of the science is pointed” in the direction of Huanan being the pandemic’s epicenter, she said.

    To further untangle the significance of the sequences will require—you guessed it—the now-vanished genetic data. Some researchers are still withholding their judgment on the significance of the new analysis, because they haven’t gotten their hands on the genetic sequences themselves. “That’s the whole scientific process,” Van Kerkhove told me: data transparency that allows analyses to be “done and redone.”

    Van Kerkhove and others are also wondering whether more data could yet emerge, given how long this particular set went unshared. “This is an indication to me in recent days that there is more data that exists,” she said. Which means that she and her colleagues haven’t yet gotten the fullest picture of the pandemic’s early days that they could—and that they won’t be able to deliver much of a verdict until more information emerges. The new analysis does bolster the case for market animals acting as a conduit for the virus between bats (SARS-CoV-2’s likeliest original host, based on several studies on this coronavirus and others) and people; it doesn’t, however, “tell us that the other hypotheses didn’t happen. We can’t remove any of them,” Van Kerkhove told me.

    More surveillance for the virus needs to be done in wild-animal populations, she said. Having the data from the market swabs could help with that, perhaps leading back to a population of mammals that might have caught the virus from bats or another intermediary in a particular part of China. At the same time, to further investigate the idea that SARS-CoV-2 first emerged out of a laboratory mishap, officials need to conduct intensive audits and investigations of virology laboratories in Wuhan and elsewhere. Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy ruled that such an accident was the likelier catalyst of the coronavirus outbreak than a natural spillover from wild animals to humans. The ruling echoed earlier judgments from the FBI and a Senate minority report. But it contrasted with the views of four other agencies, plus the National Intelligence Council, and it was made with “low confidence” and based on “new” evidence that has yet to be declassified.

    Read: The lab leak will haunt us forever

    The longer the investigation into the virus’s origins drags on, and the more distant the autumn of 2019 grows in our rearview, “the harder it becomes,” Van Kerkhove told me. Many in the research community were surprised that new information from market samples collected in early 2020 emerged at all, three years later. Settling the squabbles over SARS-CoV-2 will be especially tough because the Huanan market was so swiftly shut down after the outbreak began, and the traded animals at the venue rapidly culled, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan and one of the researchers behind the new analysis. Raccoon dogs, one of the most prominent potential hosts to have emerged from the new analysis, are not even known to have been sampled live at the market. “That evidence is gone now,” if it ever existed, Koblentz, of George Mason University, told me. For months, Chinese officials were even adamant that no mammals were being illegally sold at the region’s wet markets at all.

    So researchers continue to work with what they have: swabs from surfaces that can, at the very least, point to a susceptible animal being in the right place, at the right time, with the virus potentially inside it. “Right now, to the best of my knowledge, this data is the only way that we can actually look,” Rasmussen told me. It may never be enough to fully settle this debate. But right now, the world doesn’t even know the extent of the evidence available—or what could, or should, still emerge.

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    Katherine J. Wu

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  • Fifth Third enhances AI strategy | Bank Automation News

    Fifth Third enhances AI strategy | Bank Automation News

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    Fifth Third Bank is enhancing its AI strategy by increasing the amount of data ingested by the language model it uses to build conditionals into the bank’s mobile application and messaging platform improving customer experience and self-service options. The $206 billion bank will update its language model in June to ingest more than 2 million […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • These 3 Colleges Are Closing. They Share Some Key Traits.

    These 3 Colleges Are Closing. They Share Some Key Traits.

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    When Finlandia University announced early this month that it would shut down at the end of the academic year, the reasons the college gave echoed those of other small, less-selective colleges that have also closed.

    The Michigan college has struggled to recruit students in one of the many areas of the country where the number of high-school graduates is declining and fewer of those graduates are choosing to go on to college. In addition, as the chair of the Board of Trustees said in a statement, Finlandia is burdened by an “unbearable debt load.”

    Deciding not to enroll students for the 2023-24 academic year was a way to allow the 126-year-old college to “end its operations with as much grace and dignity as possible,” the statement said.

    Finlandia is one of three small, private nonprofit colleges whose plans to close this year have been made public since December. The class of 2023 will also be the last at Cazenovia College, in Central New York, and Holy Names University, in Oakland.

    Cazenovia has grappled with falling enrollment for almost a decade — a trend made worse when the pandemic affected the institution’s recruitment efforts, the college said. When students postponed attending college, the tuition-dependent Cazenovia saw its finances falter.

    In announcing the shutdown on its website, Cazenovia said “being a small college without a large endowment has made the college’s challenges formidable.” Federal data shows that Cazenovia had an endowment valued at $4.2 million at the end of the 2021 fiscal year. And that was before the markets tumbled in 2022.

    Another factor in Cazenovia’s impending closure: It defaulted on a $25-million bond payment last year. The college wasn’t able to refinance the debt.

    An unsustainable debt load, in part, kept Holy Names University from finding a merger partner in an effort to stave off closure. The Board of Trustees at Holy Names said in a statement that the university’s property debt of $49 million, coupled with about $200 million in deferred maintenance costs was “a large undertaking for any college or university.”

    The pandemic also made the university’s financial challenges worse and “disproportionately impacted” Holy Names students, many of whom are from under-resourced communities or are first-generation college students.

    Here’s a look at some of the key traits the three institutions shared:

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    Audrey Williams June

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  • ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

    ChatGPT broke the EU plan to regulate AI

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    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    Artificial intelligence’s newest sensation — the gabby chatbot-on-steroids ChatGPT — is sending European rulemakers back to the drawing board on how to regulate AI.

    The chatbot dazzled the internet in past months with its rapid-fire production of human-like prose. It declared its love for a New York Times journalist. It wrote a haiku about monkeys breaking free from a laboratory. It even got to the floor of the European Parliament, where two German members gave speeches drafted by ChatGPT to highlight the need to rein in AI technology.

    But after months of internet lolz — and doomsaying from critics — the technology is now confronting European Union regulators with a puzzling question: How do we bring this thing under control?

    The technology has already upended work done by the European Commission, European Parliament and EU Council on the bloc’s draft artificial intelligence rulebook, the Artificial Intelligence Act. The regulation, proposed by the Commission in 2021, was designed to ban some AI applications like social scoring, manipulation and some instances of facial recognition. It would also designate some specific uses of AI as “high-risk,” binding developers to stricter requirements of transparency, safety and human oversight.

    The catch? ChatGPT can serve both the benign and the malignant.

    This type of AI, called a large language model, has no single intended use: People can prompt it to write songs, novels and poems, but also computer code, policy briefs, fake news reports or, as a Colombian judge has admitted, court rulings. Other models trained on images rather than text can generate everything from cartoons to false pictures of politicians, sparking disinformation fears.

    In one case, the new Bing search engine powered by ChatGPT’s technology threatened a researcher with “hack[ing]” and “ruin.” In another, an AI-powered app to transform pictures into cartoons called Lensa hypersexualized photos of Asian women.

    “These systems have no ethical understanding of the world, have no sense of truth, and they’re not reliable,” said Gary Marcus, an AI expert and vocal critic.

    These AIs “are like engines. They are very powerful engines and algorithms that can do quite a number of things and which themselves are not yet allocated to a purpose,” said Dragoș Tudorache, a Liberal Romanian lawmaker who, together with S&D Italian lawmaker Brando Benifei, is tasked with shepherding the AI Act through the European Parliament.

    Already, the tech has prompted EU institutions to rewrite their draft plans. The EU Council, which represents national capitals, approved its version of the draft AI Act in December, which would entrust the Commission with establishing cybersecurity, transparency and risk-management requirements for general-purpose AIs.

    The rise of ChatGPT is now forcing the European Parliament to follow suit. In February the lead lawmakers on the AI Act, Benifei and Tudorache, proposed that AI systems generating complex texts without human oversight should be part of the “high-risk” list — an effort to stop ChatGPT from churning out disinformation at scale.

    The idea was met with skepticism by right-leaning political groups in the European Parliament, and even parts of Tudorache’s own Liberal group. Axel Voss, a prominent center-right lawmaker who has a formal say over Parliament’s position, said that the amendment “would make numerous activities high-risk, that are not risky at all.”

    The two lead Parliament lawmakers are working to impose stricter requirements on both developers and users of ChatGPT and similar AI models | Pool photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/EPA-EFE

    In contrast, activists and observers feel that the proposal was just scratching the surface of the general-purpose AI conundrum. “It’s not great to just put text-making systems on the high-risk list: you have other general-purpose AI systems that present risks and also ought to be regulated,” said Mark Brakel, a director of policy at the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit focused on AI policy.

    The two lead Parliament lawmakers are also working to impose stricter requirements on both developers and users of ChatGPT and similar AI models, including managing the risk of the technology and being transparent about its workings. They are also trying to slap tougher restrictions on large service providers while keeping a lighter-tough regime for everyday users playing around with the technology.

    Professionals in sectors like education, employment, banking and law enforcement have to be aware “of what it entails to use this kind of system for purposes that have a significant risk for the fundamental rights of individuals,” Benifei said. 

    If Parliament has trouble wrapping its head around ChatGPT regulation, Brussels is bracing itself for the negotiations that will come after.

    The European Commission, EU Council and Parliament will hash out the details of a final AI Act in three-way negotiations, expected to start in April at the earliest. There, ChatGPT could well cause negotiators to hit a deadlock, as the three parties work out a common solution to the shiny new technology.

    On the sidelines, Big Tech firms — especially those with skin in the game, like Microsoft and Google — are closely watching.

    The EU’s AI Act should “maintain its focus on high-risk use cases,” said Microsoft’s Chief Responsible AI Officer Natasha Crampton, suggesting that general-purpose AI systems such as ChatGPT are hardly being used for risky activities, and instead are used mostly for drafting documents and helping with writing code.

    “We want to make sure that high-value, low-risk use cases continue to be available for Europeans,” Crampton said. (ChatGPT, created by U.S. research group OpenAI, has Microsoft as an investor and is now seen as a core element in its strategy to revive its search engine Bing. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.)

    A recent investigation by transparency activist group Corporate Europe Observatory also said industry actors, including Microsoft and Google, had doggedly lobbied EU policymakers to exclude general-purpose AI like ChatGPT from the obligations imposed on high-risk AI systems.

    Could the bot itself come to EU rulemakers’ rescue, perhaps?

    ChatGPT told POLITICO it thinks it might need regulating: “The EU should consider designating generative AI and large language models as ‘high risk’ technologies, given their potential to create harmful and misleading content,” the chatbot responded when questioned on whether it should fall under the AI Act’s scope.

    “The EU should consider implementing a framework for responsible development, deployment, and use of these technologies, which includes appropriate safeguards, monitoring, and oversight mechanisms,” it said.

    The EU, however, has follow-up questions.

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    Gian Volpicelli

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  • Biden rebuffs UK bid for closer cooperation on tech

    Biden rebuffs UK bid for closer cooperation on tech

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    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    LONDON — Britain was rebuffed by the Biden administration after multiple requests to develop an advanced trade and technology dialogue similar to structures the U.S. set up with the European Union.

    On visits to Washington as a Cabinet minister over the past two years, Liz Truss urged U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and senior Biden administration officials to intensify talks with the U.K. to build clean technology supply chains and boost collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors.

    After Truss became prime minister in fall 2022, the idea was floated again when Raimondo visited London last October, people familiar with the conversations told POLITICO. But fear of angering the U.S.’s European partners and the U.K.’s diminished status outside the EU post-Brexit have posed barriers to influencing Washington.

    Businesses, lawmakers and experts worry the U.K. is being left on the sidelines. 

    “We tried many times,” said a former senior Downing Street official, of the British government’s efforts to set up a U.K. equivalent to the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council (TTC), noting Truss’ overtures began as trade chief in July 2021. They requested anonymity to speak on sensitive issues.

    “We did speak to Gina Raimondo about that, saying ‘we think it would be a good opportunity,’” said the former official — not necessarily to join the EU-U.S. talks directly, “but to increase trilateral cooperation.”

    Set up in June 2021, the TTC forum co-chaired by Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. trade chief Katherine Tai gives their EU counterparts, Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis, a direct line to shape tech and trade policy.

    The U.S. is pushing forward with export controls on advanced semiconductors to China; forging new secure tech supply chains away from Beijing; and spurring innovation through subsidies for cutting-edge green technology and microprocessors.

    The TTC’s 10 working groups with the EU, Raimondo said in an interview late last year, “set the standards,” though Brussels has rebuffed Washington’s efforts to use the transatlantic body to go directly after Beijing.

    But the U.K. “is missing the boat on not being completely engaged in that dialogue,” said a U.S.-based representative of a major business group. “There has been some discussion about the U.K. perhaps joining the TTC,” they confirmed, and “it was kind of mooted, at least in private” with Raimondo by the Truss administration on her visit to London last October.

    The response from the U.S. had been ‘’let’s work with what we’ve got at the moment,’” said the former Downing Street official.

    Even if the U.S. does want to talk, “they don’t want to irritate the Europeans,” the same former official added. Right now the U.K.’s conversations with the U.S. on these issues are “ad hoc” under the new Atlantic Charter Boris Johnson and Joe Biden signed around the G7 summit in 2021, they said, and “nothing institutional.”

    Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up | Pool photo by Olivier Matthys/AFP via Getty Images

    Securing British access to the U.S.-EU tech forum or an equivalent was also discussed when CBI chief Tony Danker was in Washington last July, said people familiar with conversations during his visit. 

    The U.K.’s science and tech secretary, Michelle Donelan, confirmed the British government had discussed establishing a more regular channel for tech and trade discussions with the U.S., both last October and more recently. “My officials have just been out [to the U.S.],” she told POLITICO. “They’ve had very productive conversations.”

    A U.K. government spokesperson said: “The U.K. remains committed to working closely with the U.S. and EU to further our shared trade and technology objectives, through the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the U.S.-U.K. Future of Atlantic Trade dialogues, and the U.K.-U.S. technology partnership.

    “We will continue to advance U.K. interests in trade and technology and explore further areas of cooperation with partners where it is mutually beneficial.”

    Britain the rule-taker?

    Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up. Senior officials hoped to get a deal securing the free flow of data between the U.S. and U.K. across the line and addressed similar issues as the TTC.

    They couldn’t secure the data deal. The U.K. is expected to join a U.S.-led effort to expand data transfer rules baked into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trading agreement as soon as this year, according to a former and a current British official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The next formal meeting between the U.K. and U.S. is penciled in for January 2024.

    Ongoing dialogue “is vital to secure an overarching agreement on U.K.-U.S. data flows, without which modern day business cannot function,” said William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). “It would also provide an opportunity to set the ground rules around a host of other technological developments.”

    In contrast, the U.S. and EU are always at work, with TTC officials in constant contact with the operation — though questions have been raised about how long-term the transatlantic cooperation is likely to prove, ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election.

    “Unless you have a structured system or set up, often overseen by ministers, you don’t really get the drive to actually get things done,” said the former Downing Street official.

    Right now cooperation with the U.S. on tech issues is not as intense or structured as desired, the same former official said, and is “not really brought together” in one central forum.

    Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

    “This initiative [the TTC] between the world’s two regulatory powerhouses risks sidelining the U.K.,” warned lawmakers on the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in a report last October. Britain may become “a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker,” MPs noted, citing the government’s “ambiguous” position on technology standards. Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy, and others on critical minerals — like those used in EV batteries — or AI are also missing.

    Over the last two years, U.S. trade chief Tai has “spoken regularly to her three successive U.K. counterparts to identify and tackle shared economic and trade priorities,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Trade Representative, adding “we intend to continue strengthening this partnership in the years to come.” 

    All eyes on Europe

    For its part, the EU has to date shown little interest in closer cooperation with the U.K.

    Three European Commission officials disregarded the likelihood of Britain joining the club, though one of those officials said that London may be asked to join — alongside other like-minded countries — for specific discussions related to ongoing export bans against Russia.

    Even with last week’s breakthrough over the Northern Ireland protocol calming friction between London and Brussels, the U.K. was not a priority country for involvement in the TTC, added another of the EU officials.

    “The U.K. was extremely keen to be part of a dialogue of some sort of equivalent of TTC,” said a senior business representative in London, who requested anonymity to speak about sensitive issues.

    U.K. firms see “the Holy Grail” as Britain, the U.S. and EU working together on this, they said. “We’re very keen to see a triangular dialogue at some point.”

    The U.K.’s haggling with the EU over the details of the Northern Ireland protocol governing trade in the region has posed “a political obstacle” to realizing that vision, they suggested.

    Yet with a solution to the dispute announced in late February, the same business figure said, “there will be a more prominent push to work together with the U.K.”

    TTC+

    Some trade experts think the UK would increase its chances of accession to the TTC if it submitted a joint request with other nations.

    But prior to that happening, “I think the EU-U.S. TTC will need to first deliver bilaterally,” said Sabina Ciofu, an international tech policy expert at the trade body techUK. 

    Representatives speak to the media following the Trade and Technology Council Meeting in Maryland | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

    When there is momentum, Ciofu said, the U.K. should join forces with Japan, South Korea and other advanced economies to ask for a TTC+ that could include the G7 or other partners. At the last TTC meeting in December, U.S. and EU officials said they were open to such an expansion around specific topics that had global significance.

    But not all trade experts think this is essential. Andy Burwell, director of international trade at the CBI, said he doesn’t “think it necessarily matters” whether the U.K. has a structured conversation with the U.S. like the TTC forum.

    Off the back of a soon-to-be-published refresh of the Integrated Review — the U.K.’s national security and foreign policy strategy — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should instead seize the opportunity, Burwell said, to pinpoint where Britain is “going to own, collaborate and have access to various aspects of the supply chains.”

    The G7, Burwell said, “could be the right platform for having some of those conversations.”

    Yet the “danger with the ad hoc approach with lots of different people is incoherence,” said the former Downing Street official quoted above.

    Too many countries involved in setting the standards can, the former official said, “create difficulty in leveraging what you want — which is all of the countries agreeing together on a certain way forward … especially when you’re dealing with issues that relate to, for example, China.”

    Additional reporting by Mark Scott, Annabelle Dickson and Tom Bristow

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    Graham Lanktree

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  • Banks should prioritize these 3 tech projects amid tightening budgets | Bank Automation News

    Banks should prioritize these 3 tech projects amid tightening budgets | Bank Automation News

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    As a potential recession looms and inflation persists, individuals and organizations across the U.S. and globally are feeling pressures from the current macroeconomic environment.

    Banks are not immune to these challenges. Finastra’s recent “Financial Services State of the Nation Survey” found that four in five financial institutions have been “belt-tightening” and constraining their investments in technology, reflective of today’s challenging environment. However, even as budgets for new projects may shrink, banks still have an opportunity to invest right now in utilizing new and existing technologies — which can play a significant role in cutting costs in the long term and potentially even increasing revenue.

    Ravi Metta, CTO, Finastra

    With our complex economic environment in mind, these three technology priorities should be at the forefront of a bank’s strategy to navigate challenges associated with decreased budgets.

    Leverage existing data

    There is a truthful saying that “you can only improve what you can measure,” making data a powerful tool. Financial institutions of all sizes have customer data at their fingertips, but many do not fully realize the benefits.

    The key is knowing how to make data actionable for the benefit of both the bank and its customers. Making use of data already collected allows banks to better tailor their offerings based on customer preferences, which then helps enable them to remain competitive in a challenging market. The right data and analytics strategies can drive growth, enhance productivity, reduce risk, improve the customer experience, personalize product offerings and drive innovation.

    The question is: How do banks reach this goal? Data tends to exist in multiple silos across a financial institution, often in different systems, making it challenging to use it effectively. However, with the right software solutions, a bank can place all its customer data in one simple-to-access place. Once this is complete, the bank can then analyze customer behavior across multiple channels, seeing insights that reveal customers’ preferences and their likelihood of adopting a new product or service. Using this information and the appropriate tools, banks can then make personalized recommendations to customers, increasing product adoption and revenue while reducing acquisition costs.

    Essentially, it is critical that banks offer the right products to the right people at the right time. Given the potential impact on revenue, customer experience and cost reduction, it is crucial that banks leverage their existing data and analytics during challenging economic times.

    Move toward cloud-based solutions

    In the Finastra survey, respondents were asked the top five benefits of moving to the cloud; 50% named achieving efficiency gains, while 43% cited cost reduction. This reflects what I have seen throughout my career: Cloud-based solutions are often ultimately cost-savers for banks, allowing them to act more nimbly in response to evolving consumer demands.

    In addition to the operational efficiencies associated with moving to the cloud, it’s important to note that Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure is 93% more energy efficient than on-premises servers. These energy efficiencies, in turn, reduce operating costs for banks looking to find areas to cut back. By reducing reliance on physical infrastructure, banks can decrease office space and save on utility costs.

    Finastra’s research finds that 59% of financial institution respondents had most or all of their software hosted on cloud-based solutions, showing that the industry is already moving in this direction. If a bank is not yet there, now may be the time, especially when finding cost-savers is more important than ever.

    Embrace BaaS and embedded finance

    In the survey, the commercial opportunities and efficiency savings presented by banking as a service (BaaS) and embedded finance were strongly recognized. More than four in five agreed that these propositions offer a means for institutions to grow (84%), and a similar proportion agreed that they reduce their operating costs (83%).

    By deploying BaaS and embedded finance solutions, banks can place their products directly into an otherwise disconnected customer journey. New entrants in the market continue to deliver seamless customer journeys, which include embedding banking solutions into traditionally profitable products and services. It is critical that banks act quickly to ensure they’re the ones delivering BaaS and embedded finance solutions and leveraging open APIs before new players in the market take hold.

    Doing this creates new revenue streams while eliminating marketing and other acquisition costs associated with trying to win over new customers.

    In recent years, banks have made significant progress in leveraging BaaS and embedded finance to create new revenue streams in a changing market. It is critical for future success that this momentum is not lost — and the fact that leveraging BaaS and embedded finance can help banks save on operating costs further underlines why they should remain a top priority in the current environment.

    While the news continues to remind the industry that a global recession may be looming, or perhaps even have arrived, banks should not cease investing in technology. Challenging economic conditions often remind industry leaders to think differently about how to drive business through innovation, leading to increased revenue and newly realized efficiencies.

    Ravi Metta is chief technology officer at Finastra, where he oversees technical strategy, operations, cloud and platform transformation.

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    Ravi Metta

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  • Ukraine’s Drone Academy is in session

    Ukraine’s Drone Academy is in session

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    KYIV — As the distant howl of air raid sirens echoes around them, a dozen Ukrainian soldiers clamber out of camouflaged tents perched on a hill off a road just outside Kyiv, hidden from view by a thick clump of trees. The soldiers, pupils of a drone academy, gather around a white Starlink antenna, puffing at cigarettes and doomscrolling on their phones — taking a break between classes, much like students around the world do.

    But this isn’t your average university.

    The soldiers have come here to study air reconnaissance techniques and to learn how to use drones — most of them commercial ones — in a war zone. Their training, as well as the supply chains that facilitate the delivery of drones to Ukraine, are kept on the down low. The Ukrainians need to keep their methods secret not only from the Russian invaders, but also from the tech firms that manufacture the drones and provide the high-speed satellite internet they rely on, who have chafed at their machines being used for lethal purposes.

    Drones are essential for the Ukrainians: The flying machines piloted from afar can spot the invaders approaching, reduce the need for soldiers to get behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, and allow for more precise strikes, keeping civilian casualties down. In places like Bakhmut, a key Donetsk battleground, the two sides engage in aerial skirmishes; flocks of drones buzz ominously overhead, spying, tracking, directing artillery.

    So, to keep their flying machines in the air, the Ukrainians have adapted, adjusting their software, diversifying their supply chains, utilizing the more readily available commercial drones on the battlefield and learning to work around the limitations and bans foreign corporations have imposed or threatened to impose.

    Enter: The Dronarium Academy.

    Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army. Dronarium, which before Russia’s invasion last year used to shoot glossy commercial drone footage and gonzo political protests, now provides five-day training sessions to soldiers in the Kyiv Oblast. In the past year, around 4,500 pilots, most of them now in the Ukrainian armed forces, have taken Dronarium’s course.

    What’s on the curriculum

    On the hill outside Kyiv, behind the thicket of trees, break time’s over and school’s back in session. After the air raid siren stops, some soldiers grab their flying machines and head to a nearby field; others return to their tents to study theory.

    A key lesson: How to make civilian drones go the distance on the battlefield.

    “In the five days we spend teaching them how to fly drones, one and a half days are spent on training for the flight itself,” a Dronarium instructor who declined to give his name over security concerns but uses the call sign “Prometheus” told POLITICO. “Everything else is movement tactics, camouflage, preparatory process, studying maps.”

    Drone reconnaissance teams work in pairs, like snipers, Prometheus said. One soldier flies a drone using a keypad; their colleague looks at the map, comparing it with the video stream from the drone and calculating coordinates. The drone teams “work directly with artillery,” Prometheus continued. “We transfer the picture from the battlefield to the servers and to the General Staff. Thanks to us, they see what they are doing and it helps them hit the target.”

    Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army | John Moore/Getty Images

    Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many of these drone school students were civilians. One, who used to be a blogger and videogame streamer but is now an intelligence pilot in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, goes by the call sign “Public.” When he’s on the front line, he must fly his commercial drones in any weather — it’s the only way to spot enemy tanks moving toward his unit’s position.

    “Without them,” Public said, “it is almost impossible to notice the equipment, firing positions and personnel in advance. Without them, it becomes very difficult to coordinate during attack or defense. One drone can sometimes save dozens of lives in one flight.”

    The stakes couldn’t be higher: “If you don’t fly, these tanks will kill your comrades. So, you fly. The drone freezes, falls and you pick up the next one. Because the lives of those targeted by a tank are more expensive than any drone.”

    Army of drones

    The war has made the Bayraktar military drone a household name, immortalized in song by the Ukrainians. Kyiv’s UAV pilots also use Shark, RQ-35 Heidrun, FLIRT Cetus and other military-grade machines.

    “It is difficult to have an advantage over Russia in the number of manpower and weapons. Russia uses its soldiers as meat,” Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said earlier this month. But every Ukrainian life, he continued, “is important to us. Therefore, the only way is to create a technological advantage over the enemy.”

    Until recently, the Ukrainian army didn’t officially recognize the position of drone operator. It was only in January that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi ordered the army to create 60 companies made up of UAV pilots, indicating also that Kyiv planned to scale up its own production of drones. Currently, Ukrainian firms make only 10 percent of the drones the country needs for the war, according to military volunteer and founder of the Air Intelligence Support Center Maria Berlinska.

    In the meantime, many of Ukraine’s drone pilots prefer civilian drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI — Mavics and Matrices — which are small, relatively cheap at around €2,500 a pop, with decent zoom lenses and user-friendly operations.

    Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor. “Larger drones with wings fly farther and can do reconnaissance far behind enemy lines. But at some point, you lose the connection with it and just have to wait until it comes back. Mavics have great zoom and can hang in the air for a long time, collecting data without much risk for the drone.”

    But civilian machines, made for hobbyists not soldiers, last two, maybe three weeks in a war zone. And DJI last year said it would halt sales to both Kyiv and Moscow, making it difficult to replace the machines that are lost on the battlefield.

    In response, Kyiv has loosened export controls for commercial drones, and is buying up as many as it can, often using funds donated by NGOs such as United24 “Army of Drones” initiative. Ukraine’s digital transformation ministry said that in the three months since the initiative launched, it has purchased 1,400 military and commercial drones and facilitated training for pilots, often via volunteers. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation said it has purchased more than 4,100 drones since Russia’s full-scale invasion began last year — most were DJI’s Mavic 3s, along with the company’s Martice 30s and Matrice 300s.

    But should Ukraine be concerned about the fact many of its favorite drones are manufactured by a Chinese company, given Beijing’s “no limits” partnership with Moscow?

    Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images

    DJI, the largest drone-maker in the world, has publicly claimed it can’t obtain user data and flight information unless the user submits it to the company. But its alleged ties to the Chinese state, as well as the fact the U.S. has blacklisted its technology (over claims it was used to surveil ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang), have raised eyebrows. DJI has denied both allegations.

    Asked if DJI’s China links worried him, Prometheus seemed unperturbed.

    “We understand who we are dealing with — we use their technology in our interests,” he said. “Indeed, potentially our footage can be stored somewhere on Chinese servers. However, they store terabytes of footage from all over the world every day, so I doubt anyone could trace ours.”

    Dealing with Elon

    Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced it had moved to restrict the Ukrainian military’s use of its Starlink satellite internet service because it was using it to control drones. The U.S. space company has been providing internet to Ukraine since last February — losing access would be a big problem.

    “It is not that our army goes blind if Starlink is off,” said Prometheus, the drone instructor. “However, we do need to have high-speed internet to correct artillery fire in real-time. Without it, we will have to waste more shells in times of ongoing shell shortages.”

    But while the SpaceX announcement sparked outcry from some of Kyiv’s backers, as yet, Ukraine’s operations haven’t been affected by the move, Digital Transformation Minister Fedorov told POLITICO.

    Prometheus had a theory as to why: “I think Starlink will stay with us. It is impossible to switch it off only for drones. If Musk completely turns it off, he will also have to turn it off for hospitals that use the same internet to order equipment and even perform online consultations during surgeries at the war front. Will he switch them off too?”

    And if Starlink does go down, the Ukrainians will manage, Prometheus said with a wry smile: “We have our tools to fix things.”

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    Veronika Melkozerova

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  • Inside the deal: How Boris Johnson’s departure paved the way for a grand Brexit bargain

    Inside the deal: How Boris Johnson’s departure paved the way for a grand Brexit bargain

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    LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.

    But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.

    Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.

    They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.

    As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.

    Bye-bye Boris

    Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.

    For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.

    In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.

    Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.

    “Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”

    Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.

    Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.

    But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.

    “The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.

    Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images

    Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.

    But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.

    David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.

    During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.

    “Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.

    One British official suggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”

    Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.

    “When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same official said. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”

    EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.

    Global backdrop

    As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.

    Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.

    “The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.

    A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”

    A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.

    “Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”

    The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.

    “The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said. “Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”

    The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.

    The King and I

    Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.

    The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail. 

    One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”

    By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.

    The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.

    Cleverly does it

    The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.

    His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.

    “The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.

    This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.

    British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

    The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”

    Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. official said, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.

    Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.

    A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.

    By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.

    Sorry is the hardest word

    Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.

    “I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”

    The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”

    Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.

    “Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”

    There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.

    Sunak at the wheel

    The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.

    An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.

    The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.

    Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.

    The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”

    Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.

    An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”

    The ‘unholy trinity’

    Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.

    Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.  

    Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.

    Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

    Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”

    But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”

    When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.

    The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.

    Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,” the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”

    Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate. 

    Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.

    The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.

    Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.

    Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.

    For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.

    This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.

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    Cristina Gallardo and Esther Webber

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  • EU to Steve Bannon: You don’t scare us … anymore

    EU to Steve Bannon: You don’t scare us … anymore

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    BRUSSELS — The EU was “scared” of Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon during the European parliamentary election in 2019 — but those fears are gone ahead of the 2024 ballot, European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said.

    Referring to Bannon’s attempts to form a “club” to support far-right populists such as the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen in the run-up to the last EU-wide election, Jourová said Brussels was genuinely concerned his ideas would take off.

    “We were scared by Steve Bannon organizing the pan-European campaign comprising Mr. Wilders, Madame Le Pen, and all the rest — finding everywhere useful partners and willing collaborators,” Jourová told journalists at a gathering on Thursday night.

    “It was a combination still of the effect of the migration crisis, of terrorism, and Trump,” Jourová said. “It was also the Cambridge Analytica case” — revelations that the infamous British data analytics firm had illegally accessed people’s social media data to target them in a number of elections and was linked to Trump’s successful 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. “It was also the time of rising disinformation, targeted disinformation campaigns — these were things which were relatively new for us.”

    Bannon, “with his simplified vision of Europe, could easily trigger something, which the others who know Europe could use as a platform. This was my fear,” Jourová said. But, “it didn’t happen. And I believe that now it will be a similar thing.”

    Jourová, who is the European commissioner for values and transparency, said she believed Russia’s war on Ukraine would see Europeans make safe bets in the 2024 election, during which citizens in the EU’s 27 member countries will vote to elect the members of the European Parliament.

    “I don’t think there will be a rise of extremist parties — far right or left,” Jourová said. “Because the people now see, especially in the time of crisis, it’s not the time for experiments.”

    Asked whether the revelations of corruption and influence-buying by countries such as Qatar and Morocco in the European Parliament would drive extremist sentiment in the ballot, Jourová said it was “hard to say,” as the election was still a year away.

    But, she added, “if I take a broader picture, when people see the politicians in jail, there are two kinds of instincts: ‘They are all rotten, they are all bad, we knew it.’ But then when the people see the system works, and when cases of corruption are closed and people are punished, I think that paradoxically, such scandal can even increase the trust of people in democratic institutions.”

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    Zoya Sheftalovich

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  • Ensuring high availability for cloud-based banking applications | Bank Automation News

    Ensuring high availability for cloud-based banking applications | Bank Automation News

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    It’s tempting to think that a cloud service provider will ensure the high availability of your critical cloud-based banking applications. The problem is that they really don’t.

    Todd Doane, Solutions Architect, SIOS Technology

    Your cloud provider may have helped you configure a cluster of virtual machines (VMs) running out of multiple data centers or availability zones (AZs). It may have implemented an automated failover system to ensure that a standby VM in the configuration can take over immediately if the primary VM suddenly goes offline. It all sounds like it should deliver high availability, right?

    But look closely at the service level agreement (SLA) outlining high availability: The SLA guarantees that at least one of the VMs in your system will be accessible at least 99.9% or even 99.99% of the time. But that’s not a guarantee of application or data availability. If the remaining VM can’t access the storage infrastructure where your banking applications and data reside, your critical applications are effectively offline.

    Ensuring cloud accessibility

    How can you ensure that your critical banking applications and data remain highly accessible in the cloud or in a hybrid on-prem/cloud configuration, if configuring the underlying technology for automated failover across multiple AZs is insufficient?

    Let’s start by saying that having clustered VMs spread among multiple AZs is critical to ensuring the high availability (HA) of your key applications and data. What you need in addition, though, is a strategy for ensuring that each of those VMs has access to the critical applications and data you want to keep running. That’s where traditional approaches to HA diverge when it comes to the cloud.

    In a traditional — meaning on-premises — HA configuration, you might create a failover cluster consisting of multiple servers or VMs and a storage area network (SAN), where your applications and data reside. Any server or VM in the cluster could interact with the applications and data in the SAN, so if the VM actively running a key application suddenly went offline, the cluster would automatically fail over to another VM that could interact with the SAN and start running the application and updating the same database that the previous machine had been using.

    Configuring for the cloud

    In the cloud, though, there’s no real option to create a shared SAN. There are some shared storage options, but they’re not built to provide the performance or levels of HA your critical banking applications require. Instead, cloud-based HA configurations depend on high performance storage attached to each of the VMs in the cluster. When a given VM is running an application, it is interacting with data stored in a database that resides in the storage attached to that VM.

    The key to HA for cloud-based banking applications, then, is to ensure that each VM in your cluster always has the same applications and the same data. That way, if the primary VM in the cluster suddenly goes dark, the cluster can automatically fail over to a standby VM, any one of which can begin running the application and interacting with the data immediately because a copy of the application and data resides in its own attached storage.

    Your cloud provider can easily configure the VMs that will provide the levels of performance and availability that your critical applications demand. It can also attach high performance storage systems to those VMs, and it can configure your cluster for automatic failover across multiple AZs. Then, you need to deploy a mechanism that automates the synchronous replication of data among all the storage systems attached to the VMs in your failover cluster.

    Data replication solutions

    You have a number of choices when it comes data replication solutions.

    If your cluster is based on Windows and you’re using the Microsoft SQL Server, you can use SQL Server’s built-in Availability Groups (AGs) feature, which will automatically replicate user-named SQL databases to each of the nodes in your cluster. The downside of this approach is that it only replicates SQL databases, rather than every block of data in storage. Replicating multiple SQL Server databases to multiple standby VMs can get very expensive as you’ll have to use SQL Server Enterprise Edition to replicate more than one database or to replicate databases to multiple VMs, even if your applications run perfectly well using SQL Server Standard Edition.

    Alternatively, you could use a SANless clustering solution, which provides automated block-level replication of data from the active primary VM to each of the secondary VMs in a cluster. The advantage of using a SANless Clustering solution is that it is application and database agnostic; it simply replicates blocks of data from one storage system to another, ensuring that all the data in your primary storage system is replicated to each of the other VMs. The downside to a SANless clustering approach is that there’s yet another piece of software for your IT team to license and learn, which may feel onerous if you can use the AG functionality of SQL Server at no additional cost.

    Data replication is the key to ensuring HA for cloud-based banking systems, whether you use the functionality built into a solution like SQL Server, or the functionality provided by an independent SANless clustering solution.

    Your cloud provider can provide the high-performance infrastructure that your applications demand, but you must ensure that the data and applications available to each of the VMs in that cluster are up to date if your HA solution is going to perform as expected when you need it to do so.

    Todd Doane is a Solutions Architect at SIOS Technology. He has spent more than 20 years, primarily in the financial services world, creating high availability reference architectures and application-specific design patterns and principles.

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    Todd Doane

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  • Putin is staring at defeat in his gas war with Europe

    Putin is staring at defeat in his gas war with Europe

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    Voiced by artificial intelligence.

    There’s more bad news for Vladimir Putin. Europe is on course to get through winter with its vital gas storage facilities more than half full, according to a new European Commission assessment seen by POLITICO.

    That means despite the Russian leader’s efforts to make Europe freeze by cutting its gas supply, EU economies will survive the coldest months without serious harm — and they look set to start next winter in a strong position to do the same.

    A few months ago, there were fears of energy shortages this winter caused by disruptions to Russian pipeline supplies.

    But a combination of mild weather, increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a big drop in gas consumption mean that more than 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas is projected to remain in storage by the end of March, according to the Commission analysis.

    A senior European Commission official attributed Europe’s success in securing its gas supply to a combination of planning and luck.

    “A good part of the success is due to unusually mild weather conditions and to China being out of the market [due to COVID restrictions],” the official said. “But demand reduction, storage policy and infrastructure work helped significantly.”

    Ending the winter heating season with such healthy reserves — above 50 percent of the EU’s roughly 100bcm total storage capacity — removes any lingering fears of a gas shortage in the short term. It also eases concerns about Europe’s energy security going into next winter.

    The positive figures underlie the more optimistic outlook presented by EU leaders in recent days, with Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson saying on Tuesday that Europe had “won the first battle” of the “energy war” with Russia.

    EU storage facilities — also vital for winter gas supply in the U.K., where storage options are limited — ended last winter only around 20 percent full. Brussels mandated that they be replenished to 80 percent ahead of this winter, requiring a hugely expensive flurry of LNG purchases by European buyers, to replace volumes of gas lost from Russian pipelines.

    The wholesale price of gas rose to record levels during storage filling season — peaking at more than €335 per megawatt hour in August — with dire knock-on effects for household bills, businesses’ energy costs and Europe’s industrial competitiveness.

    Gas prices have since fallen to just above €50/Mwh amid easing concerns over supplies. The EU has a new target to fill 90 percent of gas storage again by November 2023 — an effort that will now require less buying of LNG on the international market than it might have done had reserves been more seriously depleted.

    “The expected high level of storages at above 50 percent [at] the end of this winter season will be a strong starting point for 2023/24 with less than 40 percent to be filled (against the difficult starting point of around 20 percent in storage at the end of winter season in 2022,” the Commission assessment says.

    Analysts at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services think tank said this week that refilling storages this year could still be “as tough a challenge as last year” but predicted that the EU now had “more than enough import capacity to meet the challenge.”  

    Across the EU, five new floating LNG terminals have been set up — in the Netherlands, Greece, Finland and two in Germany — providing an extra 30bcm of gas import capacity, with more due to come online this year and next.  

    However, the EU’s ability to refill storages to the new 90 percent target ahead of next winter will likely depend on continued reduction in gas consumption.

    Brussels set member states a voluntary target of cutting gas demand by 15 percent from August last year. Gas demand actually fell by more than 20 percent between August and December, according to the latest Commission data, partly thanks to efficiency measures but also the consequence of consumers responding to much higher prices by using less energy.

    The 15 percent target may need to be extended beyond its expiry date of March 31 to avoid gas demand rebounding as prices fall. EU energy ministers are set to discuss the issue at two forthcoming meetings in February and March.

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    Charlie Cooper

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  • Leaked Chinese police data is giving Uyghurs answers about missing family members

    Leaked Chinese police data is giving Uyghurs answers about missing family members

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    A smaller subset of this data — known as the Xinjiang Police Files — was published last May. Further examination of the files then revealed their full extent, uncovering approximately 830,000 individuals across 11,477 documents and thousands of photographs.

    The police files were hacked and leaked by an anonymous individual, then obtained by Adrian Zenz, a director of China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a US-based non-profit. Zenz and his team spent months developing the search tool, which they hope will empower the Uyghur diaspora with concrete information about their relatives, after years of separation and silence.

    Using the new online search tool, CNN tracked down the records for 22 individuals after trialing it among the Uyghur diaspora across three continents.

    For the first time, exiled Uyghurs were able to see official Chinese documents about the fate of their relatives, including why they were detained — and in some cases how they died. On seeing the files, some described a sense of empowerment; others felt guilt that their worst fears had been confirmed.

    The Chinese government has never denied the legitimacy of the files, but state-run news outlet The Global Times recently described Zenz as a “rumor monger,” and called his analysis of the files “disinformation.”

    ‘Tens of thousands’ detained

    The new website represents the largest data set ever made publicly available on Xinjiang. It allows people to search for hundreds of thousands of individuals in the raw files, using their Chinese ID card numbers.

    Most of the information is from two locations — Shufu county in Kashgar and Tekes county in Ili — where the researchers believe they have almost complete population data.

    The Uyghur population of Xinjiang is around 11 million, along with around four million people from other Turkic ethnic minorities. As such, the data likely represents only the tip of the iceberg.

    Zenz said “tens of thousands” of people were listed as “detained” in the documents. The youngest was aged just 15.

    “(This is) an inside scoop on the workings of a paranoid police state, and that’s absolutely frightening. The nature of this atrocity is becoming more and more clear.”
    Adrian Zenz

    CNN has sent a detailed request for comment to the Chinese government about the files, and the families highlighted in this article, but has not received a response.


    The leaked police records mostly cover the period between 2016 and 2018, which was the peak of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “Strike Hard” campaign against terrorism in Xinjiang.

    The US government and UN estimated that up to two million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were detained in a giant network of internment camps, described by the Chinese government as “vocational training centers” designed to combat extremism.

    These files provide a snapshot of that timeframe, but do not reflect the current situation.

    After the first set of data was published in May, the Chinese government did not respond to specific questions about the files, but the Chinese embassy in Washington DC did issue a statement claiming Xinjiang residents lived a “safe, happy and fulfilling life,” which it said provided a “powerful response to all sorts of lies and disinformation on Xinjiang.”

    At a press conference in late December, Xinjiang officials also claimed that “most” of the people identified in the leaked photographs were “living a normal life,” without specifying the fate of the rest. A woman who appeared in the files also claimed that she had “never been detained,” but had graduated from “a vocational college in June 2022,” just weeks after the documents were published.

    ‘It haunts you every day’

    Over the past four years, CNN has gathered testimonies from dozens of overseas Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, which included allegations of torture and rape inside the camp system. CNN also spoke to those abroad desperately seeking information about their loved ones.

    Such information is usually incredibly hard for relatives to find. A sophisticated system of collective punishment threatens those in Xinjiang with detention if their families abroad even try to make a phone call.

    “The black hole is the most terrifying thing,” Zenz said. “And that’s part of why the Chinese state creates this black hole. It’s the most terrifying thing that can be done. That you don’t even know the fate of a loved one, are they alive or dead.”

    From different corners of the globe, the search tool enabled three Uyghur families to find detailed official data on their relatives for the first time.

    Mamatjan Juma

    Lives in Virginia, USA

    Age 49

    Abduweli Ayup

    Lives in Bergen, Norway

    Age 49

    Marhaba Yakub Salay

    Lives in Adelaide, Australia

    Age 34

    Mamatjan Juma (49), pictured with his three brothers in 2003. They were all jailed, according to the police files. “I wish I could go back to this moment,” Juma said.

    For Mamatjan Juma, who lives just south of Washington DC in Virginia, the files provided “immense” information about his family, but also confirmed his worst fears — that they were found “guilty by association” with him.

    As the deputy director for the Uyghur service of US-funded news organization Radio Free Asia, Juma has been highlighting the situation in Xinjiang for 16 years. He left China for the US in 2003, after being selected for an academic fellowship with the Ford Foundation.

    “They called me a wanted terrorist, to be deported back to China,” Juma said. “My relatives (are) also demonized because of me, and then (they’re) not described as human beings.”

    The files show that 29 members of Juma’s immediate and extended family had been detained — and in some cases sentenced to long jail terms — due to their connections to him.

    Nephew Nephew Sister Niece, adopted sister Sister Sister Niece Nephew Father Brother Brother Sister-in-law Brother Sister Mother Mohammat Merdan Mewlut Merdan Nurimangul Juma Mehray Juma Nuranem Juma Nuramina Juma Ayshe Eysajan Iltebir Eysajan Juma Kadir Abdukadir Juma Ahmatjan Juma Aymihri Abdukerim Eysajan Juma Nurnisagul Juma Ayshem Abdulla Mamatjan Juma

    Uncle, father’s side Aunt-in-law Uncle, father’s side Cousin Cousin once removed Cousin once removed Cousin Aunt-in-law Cousin once removed Zulpiyem’s husband Uncle, father’s side Aunt-in-law Cousin Aunt-in-law, mother’s side Abduriyim Kadir Ayshem Jume Bawudun Kadir Obulkasim Bawudun Muhter Obulkasim Ekber Obulkasim Rozihaji Bawudun Ayhan Kasim Zulpiyem Omer Emetjan Abdukerim Abla Kadir Hawahan Ismayil Ilyar Mamut Horigul Sabir

    Juma learned that all three of his brothers were imprisoned, one of whom was even pictured in a police mugshot.

    Eysajan Juma, brother

    “He looked (like) he lost his soul. It broke my heart. It broke… my heart sank.”
    Mamatjan Juma, looking at his brother Eysajan’s mugshot

    He described his younger brother, Eysajan Juma, as “jubilant, very gregarious,” a sociable and likable person who was loved deeply, despite making “a lot of mistakes.” But Juma could no longer see those familiar traits in his brother’s eyes.

    “I saw a defeated person,” Juma said. “He lost any of his emotions.”

    In the files, Juma also discovered the details of his father’s death, which was described as the result of “various kinds of complications.”

    “It was a very heartbreaking situation,” Juma said, through tears. “He was so proud of us, (but) we weren’t able to be with him at the time… it was very painful.”

    Despite the disturbing revelations, Juma said he felt a sense of “relief” from seeing the files, which was “empowering” after years of not knowing.

    “The bitterness of desperation dissipates,” he said. “The darkness of not knowing also disappears.”

    But Juma is still coming to terms with the enormity of the impact his departure from his homeland had on his family.

    “Survivor’s guilt is very painful,” Juma said. “They are tied to you and they are persecuted; it’s not an easy feeling to digest.”

    “It haunts you every day.”

    Targeting geography teachers

    Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur scholar living in exile in Norway, doesn’t feel any relief from searching through the police files — only grief.

    In fact, he wishes he had never seen them.

    “Of course if I have this option, I choose to be ignorant, not to know. How can I dare to face this reality?”
    Abduweli Ayup, on finding family members’ records

    Ayup, who ran a Uyghur language school in Kashgar, fled Xinjiang in August 2015 after spending time in jail as a political prisoner, where he told CNN he faced torture and gang rape.

    He had already heard that his brother and sister — along with several others — had been targeted because of him, but the search database gave him the first official confirmation.

    Sister Niece Brother Abduweli Ayup Mihray Erkin Sajida Ayup Erkin Ayup

    “This time the government document told me that yes, it is related to you, and it is your fault,” Ayup said, adding that he now feels “guilty and responsible.”

    His sister, who taught geography at a high school for 15 years, was listed in the police files as one of 15,563 “blacklisted” people.

    “I have learned that my younger sister, she got arrested,” Ayup said. “The reason is, she (is) accused of (being a) ‘double-faced government official,’ and she (was) blacklisted because of me.”

    After using the new search tool, Abduweli Ayup (49) learned that his sister Sajida, a geography teacher, was jailed due to her association to him.

    Uyghurs working in government jobs in Xinjiang while continuing to practice their cultural beliefs were often accused of being “two-faced,” Ayup said, categorized as “traitors, not 100% loyal to the government.”

    ‘I will live in fear’

    When she first used the new search tool, Marhaba Yakub Salay, a Uyghur living in Adelaide, Australia, found police records for two relatives she did not expect: her young niece and nephew, who were aged just 15 and 12 when the files were made in 2017.

    The nephew was labeled as a “Category 2” person on the blacklist, described as a “highly suspicious accomplice” in “public security and terrorism cases.”

    Marhaba Yakub Salay (34) found files for her young niece and nephew using the online search tool.

    The files on Salay’s niece and nephew suggested they had traveled to at least one of 26 “suspicious” countries which included Syria and Afghanistan. Salay said that was not true — they had only ever traveled outside China to go on holiday to Malaysia.

    “This is insane… this is terrible,” Salay said as she read through her nephew’s file. “He’s turning 18 in a couple of months’ time. Are they going to arrest him?”

    Marhaba Yakub Salay found that her nephew has been categorized as a threat in the police files, despite being aged 12 at the time the record was created.

    Salay’s sister Mayila Yakufu — the mother of the children — was sentenced to 6.5 years in jail at the end of 2020, after she had spent several years in other camps.

    Yakufu is accused of financing terrorism after she wired money to Salay and their parents in 2013, so they could buy a house in Australia — which the family has proved with banking records. Mayila and Marhaba’s brother left Xinjiang in 1998, and later died in an accident in Australia in 2007 — but his ID card was still cited as a suspicious connection to the children.

    “I think the suspicion level (Category 2) is about my late brother, but they tried to connect my 12-year-(old) nephew with my brother, who passed away 15 years ago,” Salay said. “These two people, they have never met each other.”

    “My heart is bleeding. I will live in fear, in the worry about when they’re going to take my niece and nephew.”
    Marhaba Yakub Salay, on finding family members’ records

    ‘Like a virus of the mind’

    The extension of “guilt by association” to children reflects the paranoia which the Chinese state holds toward the Uyghur population, according to Zenz.

    “The state considers the entire family to be tainted,” Zenz said. “And I think that’s consistent with how Xi Jinping and other officials (in) internal speeches have described Islam like a virus of the mind that infects people.”

    As the families look through these files, their instinct is to search for logic and reasons for what happened to their loved ones. But they find only confusion.

    “Guilt by association can work quite extensively, and the logic behind it is quite fuzzy and the reach is pervasive,” Zenz said.

    This “fuzzy” logic was explained by a former Xinjiang police officer turned whistleblower, who told CNN in 2021 the idea had been to detain Uyghurs en masse first, and find reasons for the arrests later.

    The ex-detective — who went by the name Jiang — said that 900,000 Uyghurs were rounded up in one year in Xinjiang, even though “none” of them had committed any crimes. He admitted torturing inmates during interrogations, adding that some of his colleagues acted like “psychopaths” to extract confessions to various crimes.

    “Door by door, village by village, township by township, people got arrested. This is the evidence of crimes against humanity, this is the evidence of genocide, because (they) targeted an ethnicity.”
    Abduweli Ayup

    The US government has accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang — and a report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that China may have carried out crimes against humanity. China has vigorously denied those allegations.

    With this new deluge of leaked data, the researchers hope to add to the growing body of evidence on the policies inside Xinjiang — and they hope that providing widespread access to the files will drive renewed efforts by governments and human rights organizations to hold China accountable.

    “I sincerely hope that this is going to inspire some hope among the Uyghurs,” Zenz said.

    For Uyghur families around the world, desperate to be reunited, each one of the 830,000 names represents a loved one.

    “Beautiful souls are being destroyed behind those numbers,” Mamatjan Juma said. “There is suffering without any reason.”

    Correction: This story was updated to replace and correct a photo of Abduweli Ayup’s niece.

    Have you managed to track down your loved ones using the new search tool? Please contact UyghurFamilies@CNN.com if you’d like to share your stories.

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  • Tuition Revenue Has Fallen at 61% of Colleges During the Pandemic

    Tuition Revenue Has Fallen at 61% of Colleges During the Pandemic

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    Net-tuition revenue — the money that institutions earn through enrollment minus any discounts and allowances provided to students — is the lifeblood of many universities.

    It’s the largest source of revenue for private four-year colleges, and it accounts for just over $1 of every $5 of revenue for public four-year institutions, about the same, on average, as their combined earnings from state grants, contracts, and appropriations.

    But over the first part of the Covid-19 pandemic, 61 percent of campuses saw that source of revenue fall. A likely factor in the dip was colleges’ struggle to bring back students two years into the pandemic, according to a Chronicle analysis of finance data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which examined how net-tuition revenue fluctuated from 2019 to 2021.

    While the majority of colleges did see a decline in their net-tuition revenue, some types of institutions fared worse than others. More than seven out of 10 community colleges saw that source of revenue drop from 2019 to 2021, while four-year institutions fared slightly better: 60 percent of public colleges and 58 percent of private colleges experienced drops in their net-tuition revenue.

    A larger share of highly residential colleges saw a decline in their net-tuition revenue compared with nonresidential and primarily residential institutions; nearly two out of three highly residential campuses reported tuition-revenue drops, while 48 percent of nonresidential institutions and 62 percent of primarily residential campuses experienced declines.

    Institutions that were more selective in their admissions weren’t spared. The majority — 55 percent — of institutions defined as more selective by the Carnegie classifications saw a negative change in revenue from tuition, which was not much better than the 59 percent of inclusive institutions reporting net-tuition revenue declines. Sixty-two percent of selective institutions experienced drops.

    While net-tuition revenue typically accounts for a substantial share of a college’s income, investment returns became the leading source of revenue for private nonprofit institutions in 2021 (a trend that seems unlikely to repeat itself in 2022).

    Notes:

    The two charts in this story and the description of four-year colleges’ finances are based on an analysis of over 3,400 degree-granting institutions in the United States that are eligible to participate in Title IV financial-aid programs. The table and other information presented at the institution level are based on a smaller subset of 2,400 colleges with enrollments over 500 students and tuition revenue greater than $500,000. Enrollment and financial figures used throughout this analysis are from the falls of 2019 and 2021, and from the 2021 fiscal year.

    Values are compared over time using a college’s Ipeds unit identification number. Institutions can merge, consolidate, or split using the same unit ID, which may account for some large variations from year to year.

    Definitions of institutional selectivity and residential type follow the Carnegie classification’s Undergraduate Profile and Size and Setting listings.

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    Jacquelyn Elias

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  • Study: No new COVID variants from China since zero-COVID policy lifted

    Study: No new COVID variants from China since zero-COVID policy lifted

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    Fears that China’s lifting of its zero-COVID policy could result in fresh coronavirus variants seem to have not (yet) materialized.

    A study published in The Lancet on Wednesday found there had been no new COVID-19 variants in the country since it lifted its draconian policy last year, a move which triggered a surge in cases and deaths.

    The analysis by researchers in China of more than 400 new cases in Beijing between November 14 and December 20 shows that more than 90 percent were of the Omicron subvariants BA.5.2 and BF.7.

    These variants are similar to the ones circulating in the EU/EEA during the fall of 2022, before the surge in cases in China, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said, and there is no evidence they pose a greater risk compared with those circulating in the EU/EEA now. 

    China has been criticized for its lack of transparency throughout the pandemic, including during this most recent wave of infections. 

    But the EU’s disease agency, the ECDC, confirmed that its own analysis — which included sequencing cases detected through airport arrivals in several European countries and wastewater analysis of airplanes arriving in Europe from China — found that BA.5.2 and BF.7 were dominant, although they cautioned that this wastewater data is “quite limited and are still being verified.” 

    While the authors of the Lancet study conducted their analysis in Beijing, they write that the results “could be considered a snapshot of China.”

    But others caution against such a leap.

    “The SARS-CoV-2 molecular epidemiological profile in one region of a vast and densely populated country cannot be extrapolated to the entire country,” write Wolfgang Preiser and Tongai Maponga of Stellenbosch University in South Africa in a linked comment in The Lancet. The two were not involved in the study. 

    “In other regions of China, other evolutionary dynamics might unfold, possibly including animal species that could become infected by human beings and spill back a further evolved virus,” they write.

    The prevalence of each of the two variants — BF.7 and BA.5.2 — varies from province to province, World Health Organization spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told POLITICO, referring to data from the China CDC.

    Travel restrictions

    China’s lifting of its zero-COVID policies at the end of last year led to EU countries recommending a raft of travel measures for visitors from China.

    At its last meeting on Friday, the EU’s de facto emergency crisis forum, the IPCR, decided to maintain these measures for now. The issue will be reevaluated at the next IPCR meeting scheduled for February 16.

    Europe’s airport lobby, ACI Europe, says it would like passenger testing to be dropped.

    “We support getting away from testing passengers as a way to track COVID-19, especially in the context of the comprehensive assessment issued by the ECDC on the lack of expected impact of COVID-19 surge in China on the epidemiological situation in the EU/EEA. Airports and airlines call for any travel recommendations to be scientifically driven and risk-based, which is regrettably not the case now,”Agata Łyżnik, communications manager at ACI Europe, the European airports’ lobby, told POLITICO.

    With additional reporting from Mari Eccles.

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    Sarah Taissir Bencharif

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  • Fiserv focuses on new tech, acquisitions in Q4 | Bank Automation News

    Fiserv focuses on new tech, acquisitions in Q4 | Bank Automation News

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    Fiserv introduced new offerings in 2022, including access to data through its Open Data solution, expanded capabilities through enterprise omnichannel solution Carat and a cloud-native banking solution through its acquisition of Finxact. WHY IT MATTERS: Fiserv’s new product offerings, acquisitions and Q4 wins allowed the company to weather uncertain economic conditions in the U.S., Frank […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • The delayed impact of the EU’s wartime sanctions on Russia

    The delayed impact of the EU’s wartime sanctions on Russia

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    The EU was quick to hit Russia with sanctions after Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine — but it took time and an escalation of measures before Moscow started to feel any real damage.

    Since the war started in late February last year, November was the first month when the value of EU imports from Russia was lower than in the same month of 2021. Until then, the bloc had been sending more cash than before the conflict — every month, for nine months. More recent data is not yet available.

    The main reason behind this? Energy dependency on Russia and skyrocketing energy prices. But that’s not the whole story: Some EU countries were much quicker than others to reduce trade flows with Moscow — and some were still increasing them at the end of last year.

    Here is a full breakdown of how the war has changed EU trade with Russia, in figures and charts:

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    Arnau Busquets Guardia and Charlie Cooper

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  • Fintech Funding: Treasury Prime secures $40M | Bank Automation News

    Fintech Funding: Treasury Prime secures $40M | Bank Automation News

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    Total fintech funding and number of deals fell last year amid rising inflation and interest rates following a digitally transformative 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, fintech funding fell 46% year over year to $75.2 billion, according to CB Insights’ “2022 State of Fintech Report.” In the U.S., fintech funding plunged […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • After Years of Drops, Undergraduate Enrollment Shows ‘Signs of Recovery’

    After Years of Drops, Undergraduate Enrollment Shows ‘Signs of Recovery’

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    Undergraduate enrollment has stabilized according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which provide a final tally on enrollment for the fall of 2022. It marks a slowdown of a trend that had been in effect for years, and which had worsened during the pandemic.

    Undergraduate enrollment in the fall of 2022 fell only 0.6 percent, or by 94,000 students, from a year ago. Total enrollment in the fall of 2022 was essentially flat as well — down by 0.7 percent from a year earlier.

    But the odds of a bounce-back to pre-pandemic levels are still remote. Since the pandemic began, undergraduate and total enrollment have each dropped by more than a million students.

    Here are three takeaways from the data:

    A bright spot during years of somber enrollment news has faded.

    During the early years of the pandemic, graduate enrollment was on the rise. In the fall of 2020, it was up 3 percent from the year before, followed by 2.4 percent in the fall of 2021.

    But “we’re now seeing the end of that growth trend,” said Doug Shapiro, the center’s executive director, in a call with reporters. In 2022, graduate attendance fell 1.2 percent across all four-year sectors — public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit.

    More would-be freshmen opted for college.

    According to the data, freshman enrollment was up 4.3 percent, or 97,000 students. The increase is a reversal of the 10.2-percent slide in enrollment for first-time students in the fall of 2020.

    Freshman enrollment rose in all sectors, including a 6.1-percent increase from a year ago at community colleges, where the steepest enrollment declines had surfaced during the pandemic.

    “It’s very encouraging to start seeing signs of recovery here,” although freshman attendance still has a “long way to go” to return to 2019 levels, Shapiro said.

    Some of the top majors have lost their shine.

    Of the top-five majors at four-year colleges, only one of them, business management, grew in the fall of 2022. Business management was up 1.2 percent from the year before, after multiple years of decline. The other four majors — health professions, liberal arts and sciences, biological and biomedical sciences, and engineering — all declined in the fall of 2022.

    Some of the other majors that saw gains: computer science at 10.7 percent; natural resources and conservation at 3 percent; visual and performing arts at 1.7 percent; agriculture at 1.4 percent; and psychology at 1.1 percent.

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    Audrey Williams June

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  • Listen: Using data to drive customer loyalty | Bank Automation News

    Listen: Using data to drive customer loyalty | Bank Automation News

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    Financial institutions are collecting, organizing and using client data and automation to help consumers navigate today’s rising interest rates. Banks can use that data to better understand clients and help them make “good financial decisions,” James White, industry principal for banking at fintech Total Expert, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Listen: Direct deposits and the CFPB’s new open banking rule | Bank Automation News

    Listen: Direct deposits and the CFPB’s new open banking rule | Bank Automation News

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    The combination of today’s uncertain macroeconomic conditions and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new open banking rule coming this year has consumers wanting quick access to cash from their banks under the watchful eye of regulators. Consumers want the ability to move their data and accounts from bank to bank without risk, especially amid rising […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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