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Tag: European Union

  • Greece shuts Acropolis, 2 firefighters killed in Italy as southern Europe swelters in a heat wave

    Greece shuts Acropolis, 2 firefighters killed in Italy as southern Europe swelters in a heat wave

    ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A heat wave across southern Europe forced authorities in Greece to close the Acropolis Wednesday for several hours and two firefighters died while putting out a fire in the Basilicata region in southern Italy, Italian authorities said.

    Italy added Palermo, Sicily, to the list of 13 cities in the country with a severe heat warning. Elderly people in the city of Verona were urged to stay indoors, while sprinklers were set up to cool passersby.

    Greece’s Culture Ministry ordered the closure of the Acropolis — the country’s biggest cultural attraction — from midday for five hours.

    Tourists hoping to visit the Parthenon temple atop the Acropolis queued early in the morning to beat the worst of the heat, while the Red Cross handed chilled bottled water and information fliers to those waiting in line.

    “We got it done and got out quick, and now we’re going to some air conditions and some more libation and enjoy the day,” said Toby Dunlap, who was visiting from Pennsylvania and had just toured the Acropolis. “But it’s hot up there, it really is. If you don’t come prepared, you’re going to sweat.”

    Meteorologists said the hot air from Africa was forecast to continue through Sunday, with heat wave temperatures expected to peak at 43 degrees C (109 F).

    In Albania, the heat led the government to reschedule working hours for civil servants, making it easier for some to work from home. Neighboring North Macedonia struggled with dozens of wildfires that had broken out in the previous 24 hours. One major blaze stretched across nearly 30 kilometers (21 miles). Firefighting aircraft from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Romania and Turkey responded to the country’s call for assistance.

    In western Turkey, firefighters — aided by more than a dozen water-dropping aircraft — managed to bring a wildfire near the town of Bergama under control several hours after it ignited. The cause of the blaze, which was fanned by strong winds, was not immediately known.

    The municipality of Turkey’s largest city Istanbul issued a heat warning on Tuesday, saying temperatures would rise between 3-6 degrees C (5.4-10.8 degrees F) above seasonal norms until July 28.

    Several Spanish cities, including Granada and Toledo, are bracing for temperatures as high as 44 degrees C (111 F) forecast for later in the week in the country’s hottest spots in the south.

    ___

    Barry reported from Milan, Italy. Srdjan Nedeljkovic in Athens, Greece, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, North Macedonia, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey and Llazar Semini in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

    ___

    This story corrects Fahrenheit conversion to 5.4-10.8 degrees F.

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  • Wood pellets production boomed to feed EU demand. It’s come at a cost for Black people in the South

    Wood pellets production boomed to feed EU demand. It’s come at a cost for Black people in the South

    GLOSTER, Miss. (AP) — This southern Mississippi town’s expansive wood pellet plant was so close to Shelia Mae Dobbins’ home that she sometimes heard company loudspeakers. She says industrial residues coated her truck and she no longer enjoys spending time in the air outdoors.

    Dobbins feels her life — and health — were better before 2016, when United Kingdom energy giant Drax opened a facility able to compress 450,000 tons of wood chips annually in the majority Black town of Gloster, Mississippi. To her, it’s no coincidence federal regulators find residents are exposed to unwanted air particles and they experience asthma more than most of the country.

    Her asthma and diabetes were once under control, but since a 2017 diagnosis of heart and lung disease, Dobbins has frequently lived at the end of a breathing tube connected to an oxygen cannister.

    “Something is going on. And it’s all around the plant,” said the 59-year-old widow who raised two children here. “Nobody asked us could they bring that plant there.”

    Shelia Mae Dobbins holds part of her oxygen tube inside her home in Gloster, Miss., Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

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    Shelia Mae Dobbins walks with her oxygen tube inside her home in Gloster, Miss., Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Wood pellet production skyrocketed across the U.S. South. It helped feed demand in the European Union for renewable energy, as those coutries sought to replace fossil fuels such as coal. But many residents near plants — often African Americans in poor, rural swaths — find the process left their air dustier and people sicker.

    Billions of dollars are available for these projects under President Joe Biden’s signature law combating climate change. The administration is weighing whether to open up tax credits for companies to burn wood pellets for energy.

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    Shelia Mae Dobbins cries as she talks about her health inside her home in Gloster, Miss., Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    As producers expand west, environmentalists want the government to stop incentivizing what they call a misguided attempt to curb carbon emissions that pollute communities of color while presently warming the atmosphere.

    Despite hefty pollution fines against industry players and one major producer’s recent bankruptcy, supporters say the multibillion-dollar market is experiencing growing pains. In wood pellets, they see an innovative long-term solution to the climate crisis that brings revenue necessary for forest owners to maintain plantations.

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    Birds fly past a pile of wood used to make pellets during a tour of a Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Biomass boom

    After the European Union classified biomass as renewable energy in 2009, the Southeast’s annual wood pellet capacity increased from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons by 2017, according to research led by a University of Missouri team.

    Federal energy statistics show about three dozen southern wood pellet manufacturing facilities account for nearly 80% of annual U.S. capacity. Most pellets are used for commercial-scale energy overseas.

    The market brought hope for revitalization to small, disadvantaged communities. But interviews with residents of towns with large Black populations, from Gaston, North Carolina, to Uniontown, Alabama, surfaced complaints of truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet plants.

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    Dan Caston, an employee of Drax leads a tour of their plant in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

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    Dan Caston, an employee of Drax, shows some of the wood pellets their plant produces in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Gloster has become the poster child for such tensions. In 2020, Mississippi’s environmental agency fined Drax $2.5 million for violating air emissions limits. Gloster is exposed to more particulate matter than much of the U.S. and adults have higher asthma rates than 80% of the country, according to an Environmental Protection Agency mapping tool. Median household income is about $22,000; the poverty rate is triple the national level.

    Spokesperson Michelli Martin said Drax in 2021 installed pollution controls, including incinerators to decrease carbon emissions. An environmental consulting firm found “no adverse effects to human health” and that “no modeled pollutant from the facility exceeded” acceptable levels, Martin said.

    The company recently committed to annual town halls and announced a $250,000 Gloster Community Fund to “improve quality of life.”

    But critics aren’t swayed by showings of corporate goodwill they say don’t account for poor air. Krystal Martin, of the Greater Greener Gloster Project, returned to her hometown after her 75-year-old mother was diagnosed with lung and heart problems.

    “You don’t really know you’re dealing with air pollution until most people have breathed and inhaled it for so long that they end up sick,” she said.

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    Krystal Martin, a Gloster native, shows pamphlets to residents Myrtis Woodard and Shelia Mae Dobbins, right, during a community meeting she organized regarding health complaints against the Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

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    Krystal Martin, a Gloster native, shows pamphlets during a community meeting she organized regarding health complaints against the Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Brown University assistant epidemiology professor Erica Walker is studying health impacts of industrial pollutants on Gloster residents. Walker said fine particulate matter can travel deep into lungs and reach the bloodstream.

    “It can also circulate to other parts of our body, leading to body-wide inflammation,” she said.

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    A man crosses the street in downtown Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Subsidies for an upstart industry

    Environmentalists are calling on Biden to stop aiding an industry they believe runs counter to his green energy goals. At the annual United Nations climate conference, The Dogwood Alliance urged attendees to phase out wood pellets.

    Enviva — the world’s largest wood pellet producer — had already received subsidies through the 2018 farm bill signed by former President Donald Trump, according to Sheila Korth, a former policy analyst with nonpartisan watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.

    But Korth said the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act made tax credits available to companies that create pellets for countries in Europe and Asia.

    Elizabeth Woodworth, interim executive director of the US Industrial Pellet Association, said the money is a small part of lRA allocations and noted emerging technologies require government subsidies. The industry argues that replanting of trees will eventually absorb carbon produced by burning pellets.

    “We need every single technology we can get our hands on to mitigate climate change,” Woodworth said. “Bioenergy is a part of that.”

    Scientific studies have found firing wood pellets puts more carbon immediately into the atmosphere than coal. Pollution from biomass-based facilities is nearly three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a 2023 paper in the journal Renewable Energy.

    In a 2018 letter, hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the “additional carbon load” from burning wood pellets means “permanent damages” including glacial melting.

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    A resident crosses the street for a community meeting regarding health complaints against Drax in Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Expansion plans and more burning?

    Drax — with plants operating in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi — is heading west.

    The corporation signed an agreement in February with Golden State Natural Resources to identify biomass from California’s forests. The public-private venture hopes to build two plants by year’s end and produce up to 1 million tons of wood pellets annually. Another Drax project in Washington would produce 500,000 tons a year.

    The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Rita Frost, who fought plants in the South, said the deal will endanger California’s low-income Latino communities much like she says the industry threatened Black southern towns.

    “It’s an environmental justice problem that should not be repeated in California,” Frost said.

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    An employee walks toward a pile of lumber to be used during a tour of a Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Biomass, including wood pellets, accounted for less than 5% of U.S. primary energy consumption in 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    But a key federal decision could draw more companies into pellet combustion — not just production.

    The White House is looking into whether biomass facilities should receive tax credits meant for zero-emission electricity generators. The Treasury Department is weighing whether biomass’ potential long-term carbon neutrality is sufficient even if its production increases emissions in the short term.

    Spokesperson Michael Martinez said they are “carefully considering public comments” and “working to issue final rules that will increase energy security and clean energy supply as effectively as possible.”

    Some environmentalists doubt the energy alternative is ultimately carbon neutral. The Southern Environmental Law Center fears the credits could be the incentive needed for the U.S. to join Europe in scaling up the burning of pellets.

    “The threat here is really the growth of biomass energy production in the U.S. itself,” said senior attorney Heather Hillaker. “Which obviously will add to the total carbon and climate harms of this industry globally.”

    ___

    Pollard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Watson reported from San Diego. Contributing were video journalist Terry Chea from San Francisco and reporter Matthew Daly from Washington, D.C.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • AI could supercharge disinformation and disrupt EU elections, experts warn

    AI could supercharge disinformation and disrupt EU elections, experts warn

    BRUSSELS (AP) — Voters in the European Union are set to elect lawmakers starting Thursday for the bloc’s parliament, in a major democratic exercise that’s also likely to be overshadowed by online disinformation.

    Experts have warned that artificial intelligence could supercharge the spread of fake news that could disrupt the election in the EU and many other countries this year. But the stakes are especially high in Europe, which has been confronting Russian propaganda efforts as Moscow’s war with Ukraine drags on.

    Here’s a closer look:

    WHAT’S HAPPENING?

    Some 360 million people in 27 nations — from Portugal to Finland, Ireland to Cyprus — will choose 720 European Parliament lawmakers in an election that runs Thursday to Sunday. In the months leading up to the vote, experts have observed a surge in the quantity and quality of fake news and anti-EU disinformation being peddled in member countries.

    A big fear is that deceiving voters will be easier than ever, enabled by new AI tools that make it easy to create misleading or false content. Some of the malicious activity is domestic, some international. Russia is most widely blamed, and sometimes China, even though hard evidence directly attributing such attacks is difficult to pin down.

    “Russian state-sponsored campaigns to flood the EU information space with deceptive content is a threat to the way we have been used to conducting our democratic debates, especially in election times,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, warned on Monday.

    He said Russia’s “information manipulation” efforts are taking advantage of increasing use of social media penetration “and cheap AI-assisted operations.” Bots are being used to push smear campaigns against European political leaders who are critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said.

    HAS ANY DISINFO HAPPENED YET?

    There have been plenty of examples of election-related disinformation.

    Two days before national elections in Spain last July, a fake website was registered that mirrored one run by authorities in the capital Madrid. It posted an article falsely warning of a possible attack on polling stations by the disbanded Basque militant separatist group ETA.

    In Poland, two days before the October parliamentary election, police descended on a polling station in response to a bogus bomb threat. Social media accounts linked to what authorities call the Russian interference “infosphere” claimed a device had exploded.

    Just days before Slovakia’s parliamentary election in November, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a candidate discussing plans to rig the election, leaving fact-checkers scrambling to debunk them as false as they spread across social media.

    Just last week, Poland’s national news agency carried a fake report saying that Prime Minister Donald Tusk was mobilizing 200,000 men starting on July 1, in an apparent hack that authorities blamed on Russia. The Polish News Agency “killed,” or removed, the report minutes later and issued a statement saying that it wasn’t the source.

    It’s “really worrying, and a bit different than other efforts to create disinformation from alternative sources,” said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit group that researches disinformation. “It raises notably the question of cybersecurity of the news production, which should be considered as critical infrastructure.”

    WHAT’S THE GOAL OF DISINFORMATION?

    Experts and authorities said Russian disinformation is aimed at disrupting democracy, by deterring voters across the EU from heading to the ballot boxes.

    “Our democracy cannot be taken for granted, and the Kremlin will continue using disinformation, malign interference, corruption and any other dirty tricks from the authoritarian playbook to divide Europe,” European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova warned the parliament in April.

    Tusk, meanwhile, called out Russia’s “destabilization strategy on the eve of the European elections.”

    On a broader level, the goal of “disinformation campaigns is often not to disrupt elections,” said Sophie Murphy Byrne, senior government affairs manager at Logically, an AI intelligence company. “It tends to be ongoing activity designed to appeal to conspiracy mindsets and erode societal trust,” she told an online briefing last week.

    Narratives are also fabricated to fuel public discontent with Europe’s political elites, attempt to divide communities over issues like family values, gender or sexuality, sow doubts about climate change and chip away at Western support for Ukraine, EU experts and analysts say.

    WHAT HAS CHANGED?

    Five years ago, when the last European Union election was held, most online disinformation was laboriously churned out by “troll farms” employing people working in shifts writing manipulative posts in sometimes clumsy English or repurposing old video footage. Fakes were easier to spot.

    Now, experts have been sounding that alarm about the rise of generative AI that they say threatens to supercharge the spread of election disinformation worldwide. Malicious actors can use the same technology that underpins easy-to-use platforms, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to create authentic-looking deepfake images, videos and audio. Anyone with a smartphone and a devious mind can potentially create false, but convincing, content aimed at fooling voters.

    “What is changing now is the scale that you can achieve as a propaganda actor,” said Salvatore Romano, head of research at AI Forensics, a nonprofit research group. Generative AI systems can now be used to automatically pump out realistic images and videos and push them out to social media users, he said.

    AI Forensics recently uncovered a network of pro-Russian pages that it said took advantage of Meta’s failure to moderate political advertising in the European Union.

    Fabricated content is now “indistinguishable” from the real thing, and takes disinformation watchers experts a lot longer to debunk, said Romano.

    WHAT ARE AUTHORITIES DOING ABOUT IT?

    The EU is using a new law, the Digital Services Act, to fight back. The sweeping law requires platforms to curb the risk of spreading disinformation and can be used to hold them accountable under the threat of hefty fines.

    The bloc is using the law to demand information from Microsoft about risks posed by its Bing Copilot AI chatbot, including concerns about “automated manipulation of services that can mislead voters.”

    The DSA has also been used to investigate Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms for not doing enough to protect users from disinformation campaigns.

    The EU has passed a wide-ranging artificial intelligence law, which includes a requirement for deepfakes to be labelled, but it won’t arrive in time for the vote and will take effect over the next two years.

    HOW ARE SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES RESPONDING?

    Most tech companies have touted the measures they’re taking to protect the European Union’s “election integrity.”

    Meta Platforms — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has said it will set up an election operations center to identify potential online threats. It also has thousands of content reviewers working in the EU’s 24 official languages and is tightening up policies on AI-generated content, including labeling and “downranking” AI-generated content that violates its standards.

    Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, has said there’s no sign that generative AI tools are being used on a systemic basis to disrupt elections.

    TikTok said it will set up fact-checking hubs in the video-sharing platform’s app. YouTube owner Google said it’s working with fact-checking groups and will use AI to “fight abuse at scale.”

    Elon Musk went the opposite way with his social media platform X, previously known as Twitter. “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,” he said in a post in September.

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    A previous version of this story misspelled the given name of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

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  • Baltic countries notify Russia and Belarus they will exit the Moscow-controlled electricity grid

    Baltic countries notify Russia and Belarus they will exit the Moscow-controlled electricity grid

    VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — The electricity grid operators of the three Baltic countries on Tuesday officially notified Russia and Belarus that they will exit a 2001 agreement that has kept Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania connected to an electricity transmission system controlled by Moscow.

    The Baltic countries have already stopped buying electricity from Russia. And in a plan announced last year as part of moves to sever ties with Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine, they will shift their grid connections next February to the main continental European energy network in a move to end reliance.

    Utility operators Elering of Estonia, AST of Latvia and Litgrid of Lithuania said that the exit notice was signed in the Latvian capital of Riga on Tuesday. The joint agreement with Moscow and Minsk will end Feb. 7, and the Baltic systems will be disconnected from the grid the next day.

    “We will disconnect and dismantle the last physical connections with Russian and Belarusian grids,” Litgrid CEO Rokas Masiulis said, calling the move an “ambitious energy independence project.”

    The three former Soviet republics do not currently buy electricity from Russia, but remain physically connected to a grid in which the electricity frequency is controlled by Moscow under the 2001 BRELL agreement. The Baltic systems plan to synchronize with the continental European system on Feb. 9, 2025. Both systems use 50 Hz alternating current.

    “Synchronization with Continental Europe Synchronous Area will allow for independent, stable and reliable frequency control of the Baltic states electricity grids and will increase energy security in the region,” Estonia’s grid operator Elering said.

    Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland agreed with the European Union’s executive commission in 2019 to coordinate on connecting the Baltic nations to the EU’s power network by the end of 2025. However, Russia’s war in Ukraine led the Baltic countries to speed up the project.

    The February 2025 date for the transition was a compromise. Lithuania wanted an energy exit as early as this year, citing Moscow’s unreliability and its aggression in Ukraine. Estonia resisted a quicker cutoff, saying it might experience blackouts if the transition happened too soon.

    “The Baltic electricity market has adapted and operates without electricity import from Russia,” said chairman Rolands Irklis from Latvia’s AST.

    “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Latvia has completely stopped electricity import and export from Russia and Belarus, and synchronization with continental Europe is the last step to achieve country’s independence in the field of electricity supply,” Irklis said.

    There was no immediate response from Russia’s Energy Ministry to a request by The Associated Press for comment.

    ___

    Jari Tanner reported from Helsinki.

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  • European Commission accuses Elon Musk’s X platform of violating EU Digital Services Act

    European Commission accuses Elon Musk’s X platform of violating EU Digital Services Act

    London — The European Union said Friday that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk’s X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements, in the first charges against a tech company since the bloc’s new social media regulations took effect.

    The European Commission outlined the preliminary findings from its investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act.

    The rulebook, also known as the DSA, is a sweeping set of regulations that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting their European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

    Regulators took aim at X’s blue checks, saying they constitute “dark patterns” that are not in line with industry best practice and can be used by malicious actors to deceive users.

    Before Musk’s acquisition, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts. After Musk bought the site in 2022, it started issuing them to anyone who paid $8 per month for one.


    Artificial intelligence, Elon Musk and the biggest tech stories of 2023

    04:26

    “Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a ‘verified” status’ it negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with,” the commission said.

    An email request for comment to X resulted in an automated response that said “Busy now, please check back later.” Its main spokesman reportedly left the company in June.

    “Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,” European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement. “Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA.”

    The commission also charged X with failing to comply with ad transparency rules. Under the DSA, platforms must publish a database of all digital advertisements that they’ve carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience.

    But X’s ad database isn’t “searchable and reliable” and has “design features and access barriers” that make it “unfit for its transparency purpose,” the commission said. The database’s design in particular hinders researchers from looking into “emerging risks” from online ads, it said.

    The company also falls short when it comes to giving researchers access to public data, the commission said. The DSA imposes the provisions so that researchers can scrutinize how platforms work and how online risks evolve.

    But researchers can’t independently access data by scraping it from the site, while the process to request access from the company through an interface “appears to dissuade researchers” from carrying out their projects or gives them no choice but to pay high fees, it said.

    X now has a chance to respond to the accusations and make changes to comply, which would be legally binding. If the commission isn’t satisfied, it can levy penalties worth up to 6% of the company’s annual global revenue and order it to fix the problem.

    The findings are only a part of the investigation. Regulators are still looking into whether X is failing to do enough to curb the spread of illegal content — such as hate speech or incitement of terrorism — and the effectiveness of measures to combat “information manipulation,” especially through its crowd-sourced Community Notes fact-checking feature.

    TikTok, e-commerce site AliExpress and Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms are also facing ongoing DSA investigations.

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  • France is voting in pivotal elections that could see a historic far-right win or a hung parliament

    France is voting in pivotal elections that could see a historic far-right win or a hung parliament

    Voting has begun in mainland France on Sunday in pivotal runoff elections that could hand a historic victory to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and its inward-looking, anti-immigrant vision — or produce a hung parliament and political deadlock.

    French President Emmanuel Macron took a huge gamble in dissolving parliament and calling for the elections after his centrists were trounced in European elections on June 9.

    The snap elections in this nuclear-armed nation will influence the war in Ukraine, global diplomacy and Europe’s economic stability, and they’re almost certain to undercut President Emmanuel Macron for the remaining three years of his presidency.

    The first round on June 30 saw the largest gains ever for the anti-immigration, nationalist National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen.

    France Election
    A woman casts her ballot in the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7, 2024, in Strasbourg, eastern France.

    Jean-Francois Badias / AP


    A bit over 49 million people are registered to vote in the elections, which will determine which party controls the 577-member National Assembly, France’s influential lower house of parliament, and who will be prime minister. If support is further eroded for Macron’s weak centrist majority, he will be forced to share power with parties opposed to most of his pro-business, pro-European Union policies.

    Voters at a Paris polling station were acutely aware of the far-reaching consequences for France and beyond.

    “The individual freedoms, tolerance and respect for others is what at stake today,” said Thomas Bertrand, a 45-year-old voter who works in advertising.

    Racism and antisemitism have marred the electoral campaign, along with Russian cybercampaigns, and more than 50 candidates reported being physically attacked — highly unusual for France. The government is deploying 30,000 police on voting day.

    The heightened tensions come while France is celebrating a very special summer: Paris is about to host exceptionally ambitious Olympic Games, the national soccer team reached the semifinal of the Euro 2024 championship, and the Tour de France is racing around the country alongside the Olympic torch.

    France Election
    A voter stands in the polling booth during the second round of the legislative elections in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, northern France, on Sunday, July 7, 2024.

    Mohammed Badra / AP


    As of noon local time, turnout was at 26.63%, according to France’s interior ministry, slightly higher than the 25.90% reported at the same time during the first round last Sunday.

    During the first round of voting last Sunday, the nearly 67% turnout was the highest since 1997, ending nearly three decades of deepening voter apathy for legislative elections and, for a growing number of French people, politics in general.

    Prime Minister Gabriel Attal cast his ballot in the Paris suburb of Vanves Sunday morning.

    Macron is expected to vote later Sunday morning in the seaside town of La Touquet. Le Pen is not voting, because her district in northern France is not holding a second round after she won the seat outright last week. Across France, 76 other candidates secured seats in the first round, including 39 from her National Rally and 32 from the leftist New Popular Front alliance. Two candidates from Macron’s centrists list also won their seats in the first round.

    The elections wrap up Sunday at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) in mainland France and on the island of Corsica. Initial polling projections are expected Sunday night, with early official results expected late Sunday and early Monday.

    France Election
    A voter casts his ballot during the second round of the legislative elections, in Lyon, central France, on Sunday, July 7, 2024.

    Laurent Cipriani / AP


    Voters residing in the Americas and in France’s overseas territories of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana and French Polynesia voted on Saturday.

    The elections could leave France with its first far-right government since the Nazi occupation in World War II if the National Rally wins an absolute majority and its 28-year-old leader Jordan Bardella becomes prime minister. The party came out on top in the previous week’s first-round voting, followed by a coalition of center-left, hard-left and Green parties, and Macron’s centrist alliance.

    Pierre Lubin, a 45-year-old business manager, was worried about whether the elections would produce an effective government.

    “This is a concern for us,” Lubin said. “Will it be a technical government or a coalition government made up of (various) political forces?”

    The outcome remains highly uncertain. Polls between the two rounds suggest that the National Rally may win the most seats in the 577-seat National Assembly but fall short of the 289 seats needed for a majority. That would still make history, if a party with historic links to xenophobia and downplaying the Holocaust, and long seen as a pariah, becomes France’s biggest political force.

    If it wins the majority, Macron would be forced to share power with a prime minister who deeply disagrees with the president’s domestic and foreign policies, in an awkward arrangement known in France as “cohabitation.”

    Another possibility is that no party has a majority, resulting in a hung parliament. That could prompt Macron to pursue coalition negotiations with the center-left or name a technocratic government with no political affiliations.

    No matter what happens, Macron’s centrist camp will be forced to share power. Many of his alliances’ candidates lost in the first round or withdrew, meaning it doesn’t have enough people running to come anywhere close to the majority he had in 2017 when he was was first elected president, or the plurality he got in the 2022 legislative vote.

    Both would be unprecedented for modern France, and make it more difficult for the European Union’s No. 2 economy to make bold decisions on arming Ukraine, reforming labor laws or reducing its huge deficit. Financial markets have been jittery since Macron surprised even his closest allies in June by announcing snap elections after the National Rally won the most seats for France in European Parliament elections.


    Why is the far-right gaining momentum in France?

    05:20

    Regardless of what happens, Macron said he won’t step down and will stay president until his term ends in 2027.

    Many French voters, especially in small towns and rural areas, are frustrated with low incomes and a Paris political leadership seen as elitist and unconcerned with workers’ day-to-day struggles. National Rally has connected with those voters, often by blaming immigration for France’s problems, and has built up broad and deep support over the past decade.

    Le Pen has softened many of the party’s positions — she no longer calls for quitting NATO and the EU — to make it more electable. But the party’s core far-right values remain. It wants a referendum on whether being born in France is enough to merit citizenship, to curb the rights of dual citizens, and to give police more freedom to use weapons.

    With the uncertain outcome looming over the high-stakes elections, Valerie Dodeman, a 55-year-old legal expert said she is pessimistic about the future of France.

    “No matter what happens, I think this election will leave people disgruntled on all sides,” Dodeman said.

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  • 2024 U.K. election is set to overhaul British politics. Here’s what to know.

    2024 U.K. election is set to overhaul British politics. Here’s what to know.

    London — British voters will head to the polls Thursday to vote in the country’s first general election since 2019. Here’s what to know. 

    Who is up for election in the U.K.?

    British voters will not be directly electing a new leader on Thursday. Under the United Kingdom’s parliamentary system, voters choose their local representatives for the lower house of Parliament, the House of Commons. 

    On Thursday, there are 650 parliamentary seats up for grabs, each of which will be occupied by one Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons. For any single party to win an outright majority in the Commons, it would need to win at least 326 seats — over half of those available. Any party that does that gets to form the next government, with its leader becoming the prime minister. [Yes, King Charles III is Britain’s formal head of state. You can read here about what limited power that actually conveys.]

    Parliament was formally dissolved on May 30 when current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the election, as is procedure, but prior to that, Sunak’s long-ruling Conservative Party held an outright majority of 345 seats, giving it significant power to set the policy agenda.

    BRITAIN-POLITICS-ELECTION-VOTE-DEBATE
    Labour Party leader Keir Starmer speaks during a live TV debate with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, seen in the background, in Nottingham, England, on June 26, 2024, in the build-up to the U.K. general election.

    PHIL NOBLE / POOL / AFP / Getty


    The U.K. has what is called a first-past-the-post system, which means voters receive a ballot paper with a list of candidates from different parties and select only one of their choice. The candidate from each constituency with the most votes wins the seat — with no specific threshold required. So if, for instance, there are six candidates in a particular race, they will all be from different parties, and even if the candidate with the most votes only wins 25% of the total, they still win the seat.

    If a voter believes their favorite candidate has a low chance of winning, they can chose to vote tactically and put their X next to another candidate’s name — effectively a second choice — if they feel that candidate has a better chance of winning. This tactic is generally seen as a way for a voter to help block a candidate deemed highly unfavorable, but who stands a reasonable chance of winning, from gaining the seat in a race.

    In practice, this system means that a political party could win a healthy share of votes on a national level but not win a proportional share of the seats. Smaller political parties in the U.K. have long argued that the first-past-the-post electoral system has thus helped to cement the power of Britain’s two biggest parties — the incumbent right-leaning Conservative Party, often called the Tories, and their main rivals, the more left-leaning Labour Party. 

    What is the U.K. election timeline?

    Voting begins in the U.K. general election on Thursday morning, and most constituency results are expected by early Friday morning, although this may take longer in some more rural parts of the country — particularly if the vote tally is close or subject to a recount. 

    There is usually an early indicator of the overall results of a U.K. general election as a joint exit poll is released by British broadcasters Sky News, ITV and CBS News’ partner network BBC News immediately after the polls close. 

    The exit poll generally provides an accurate representation of the final results and can be expected by about 10 p.m. on Thursday local time (5 p.m. Eastern).

    U.K. election predictions and polling data

    Polls and political analysts have predicted for many weeks that Labour will sweep to a landslide majority in Parliament. If the latest polling data proves accurate, Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s 18-month tenure will end and Britons will wake up Friday morning to a new party in charge of the country for the first time in 14 years.


    Britons react to Rishi Sunak’s U.K. election announcement: “Political suicide”

    03:06

    Those 14 years of Conservative rule have been marked by political and economic turmoil, with a rotating cast of five Conservative prime ministers occupying 10 Downing Street in the last eight years alone.

    The latest polling by the major independent data analysis group YouGov shows Labour in the lead by a 17-point margin, with 37% of those polled saying they intend to vote for Labour versus 20% of the public who say they will cast their votes for the Conservatives. 

    Labour candidates are projected to win as many as 425 seats in the House of Commons, which would be a massive 223 seat gain for the party. The Conservatives are projected to hold onto just 108 seats, which would be a seismic loss of 257 seats.

    Who is Keir Starmer, the likely next prime minister?

    Keir Starmer was elected by party members to lead Labour in 2020, right after the party suffered its worst general election defeat in 85 years. He immediately declared it his mission to make the party “electable” again.

    Four years later Starmer, 61, is poised to take Britain’s top job.

    Keir Starmer Visits Three Countries Of The UK On Final Day Of Election Campaigning
    Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks to media on the final day of campaigning before Britain’s national general election, July 3, 2024, in Whitland, Wales.

    Matthew Horwood/Getty


    He’s faced frequent criticism for a perceived lack of charisma, but his efforts to drag Labour back toward the center of British politics to give it broader voter appeal seems to have paid off.

    Throughout his leadership of the party, Starmer has methodically frozen out elements of Labour’s far-left, socialist-leaning wing, which ran the party under previous leader Jeremy Corbyn.

    Starmer’s deliberate shift from socialism to centrism has been criticized by pundits and voters who hew to the left, and Labour may lose some votes to smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party but, given the polling, it seems to have been a winning strategy overall.

    Is Britain bucking the trend of Europe’s shift to the right?

    A shift to a center-left Labour government in Britain would buck the trend in Europe, as far-right parties have been on the rise across the continent in recent years. 

    In the first round of voting in France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally Party moved within reach of becoming the largest political party in France. The party took a third of the votes in a first round that drew a historically high turnout.

    If voters maintain that trend in the decisive second round of voting on July 7, it will mark an unprecedented shift to the right for the French.


    France’s far-right takes lead in first round of snap election

    03:20

    Last month’s European parliamentary elections also saw a record number of far-right legislators win seats, with right wing candidates across Europe’s three main economies — Italy, France and Germany — making gains by campaigning on opposition to issues including immigration, support for Ukraine and green environmental policies. 

    While a Labour victory would be a move against those political winds on the continent, Britain has also seen a surge in support for far-right candidates in this election cycle.

    Nigel Farage may be familiar to Americans as an ally of former President Donald Trump. His firebrand anti-immigrant rhetoric became hugely influential in the movement that led to Britain’s “Brexit” from the European Union.

    After decades languishing on the far-right fringe of British politics, unable to win a seat in Parliament despite eight previous attempts, Farage looks set this year to finally claim the seat for his local constituency of Clacton, in southeast England.

    donald-trump-nigel-farage-twitter.jpg
    A photo posted by British politician Nigel Farage on Nov. 12, 2016 shows him standing with Donald Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan after a private meeting with the then-U.S. president-elect. 

    Nigel Farage/Twitter


    Farage’s far-right Reform Party is only projected to pick up a total of about five seats in Parliament, including Farage’s own, but YouGov projects overall support for Reform nationally at about 15% of the electorate, and from its current position with zero seats in the House of Commons, it seems the party is heading for a significant increase in popularity. 

    Political analysts say Reform’s anti-immigrant messaging is largely eating into the Conservative Party’s vote share.

    So while Farage won’t be taking power anytime soon, it looks like he is about to step back into the limelight of British politics and, with a sizable share of public support, he may find himself wielding an outsized influence on the politics of Britain’s Conservative Party as it tries to rebuild itself in the wake of what could be a devastating election.

    CBS News’ Frank Andrews contributed to this report.

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  • Euro Rises After French Vote, China Shares Slip: Markets Wrap

    Euro Rises After French Vote, China Shares Slip: Markets Wrap

    (Bloomberg) — The euro climbed with European stock-index futures on speculation Marine Le Pen’s far-right party will struggle to win an outright majority in French elections, easing investor concern that Europe’s second-largest economy was headed for a more radical policy shift.

    Most Read from Bloomberg

    Futures on French government bonds edged higher, while those on German bunds dropped after the first round of voting showed Le Pen’s National Rally in front of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance, albeit less comfortably than some polls projected. A very strong showing for her party would have increased the odds of expansive fiscal policy in France, whose deficit already exceeds what’s allowed under European Union rules.

    Most Asian shares rose, with Japanese and South Korean benchmarks both gaining. Chinese equities slipped after a report showed factory activity contracted for a second month in June. While data showed the Caixin manufacturing gauge edged up last month, Bloomberg Economics said the marginal improvement did little to counter the worrisome message from official surveys. Hong Kong financial markets are shut for a holiday.

    “We are starting off in Asia with that sense of relief that the far-right parties did not get the kind of majority that was feared,” Charu Chanana, a market strategist for Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore, told Bloomberg Television’s David Ingles and Stephen Engle.

    In addition to French politics, investors will be looking to the European Central Bank for clues, she said, adding that “there’s been some sense of stability for the euro zone economy after that first rate cut, but we certainly don’t look like we’re out of the woods yet.”

    France’s second round of voting will be held on July 7. The French political world is now embarking on a period of horse-trading. In constituencies where three people qualified for the runoffs, the third-placed candidate can withdraw to boost the chances of another mainstream party defeating the far right.

    Japan Confidence

    Confidence among Japan’s large manufacturers rose, data on Monday showed, leaving the door open for the central bank to consider an interest-rate increase later this month. The yield for the nation’s 10-year bond rose 2 basis points to 1.07%.

    One in three economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicts a rate hike at the BOJ’s next gathering. The yen dropped to the lowest level since 1986 last week, prompting some analysts to flag a heightened risk of a rate move as Governor Kazuo Ueda has pledged to watch the yen’s impact on inflation closely.

    A swath of data indicated the US biggest economy is cooling without lasting damage to consumers. US consumer sentiment declined by less than initially estimated on expectations inflationary pressures will moderate and the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge marked its smallest advance in six months. Ten-year treasuries were little changed on Monday.

    “Going into the second half, there’s a lot of election election uncertainty and we think the dollar will be the best risk-off hedge,” Alex Loo, foreign exchange and macro strategist at TD Securities, told Annabelle Droulers and Shery Ahn on Bloomberg Television. “We do like its appeal as a safe-haven currency.”

    In commodities, oil was little changed as traders weighed China’s economic outlook and geopolitical risks in Europe and the Middle East. Gold was also little changed.

    Key events this week:

    • Eurozone S&P Global Eurozone Manufacturing PMI, Monday

    • Indonesia CPI, Monday

    • India HSBC Manufacturing PMI, Monday

    • UK S&P Global / CIPS UK Manufacturing PMI, Monday

    • US construction spending, ISM Manufacturing, Monday

    • ECB President Christine Lagarde speaks, Monday

    • Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel speaks, Monday

    • RBA issues minutes of June policy meeting, Tuesday

    • South Korea CPI, Tuesday

    • Eurozone CPI, unemployment, Tuesday

    • Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks, Tuesday

    • ECB President Christine Lagarde speaks, Tuesday

    • Australia retail sales, Wednesday

    • China Caixin services PMI, Wednesday

    • Eurozone S&P Global Eurozone Services PMI, PPI, Wednesday

    • Poland rate decision, Wednesday

    • US FOMC minutes, ISM Services, factory orders, trade, initial jobless claims, durable goods, Wednesday

    • ECB President Christine Lagarde speaks, Wednesday

    • New York Fed President John Williams speaks, Wednesday

    • Sweden’s Riksbank issues minutes of June meeting, Wednesday

    • Australia trade, Thursday

    • Brazil trade, Thursday

    • UK general election, Thursday

    • European Union provisional tariffs on China EVs set to be introduced, Thursday

    • ECB publishes account of June’s policy meeting, Thursday

    • US Independence Day holiday, Thursday

    • Philippines CPI, Friday

    • Taiwan CPI, Friday

    • Thailand CPI, international reserves, Friday

    • Eurozone retail sales, Friday

    • France trade, industrial production, Friday

    • Germany industrial production, Friday

    • ECB President Christine Lagarde speaks, Friday

    • Canada unemployment, Friday

    • US unemployment, nonfarm payrolls, Friday

    • New York Fed President John Williams speaks, Friday

    Some of the main moves in markets:

    Stocks

    • S&P 500 futures rose 0.3% as of 12:50 p.m. Tokyo time

    • Hang Seng futures fell 0.4%

    • Nikkei 225 futures (OSE) rose 0.1%

    • Japan’s Topix rose 0.4%

    • Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.3%

    • The Shanghai Composite rose 0.3%

    • Euro Stoxx 50 futures rose 1.1%

    Currencies

    • The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed

    • The euro rose 0.4% to $1.0752

    • The Japanese yen was little changed at 161.04 per dollar

    • The offshore yuan was little changed at 7.3016 per dollar

    Cryptocurrencies

    • Bitcoin rose 2.4% to $63,373.65

    • Ether rose 2.3% to $3,495.2

    Bonds

    • The yield on 10-year Treasuries was little changed at 4.39%

    • Japan’s 10-year yield advanced two basis points to 1.070%

    • Australia’s 10-year yield advanced seven basis points to 4.38%

    Commodities

    This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

    –With assistance from Matthew Burgess.

    Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

    ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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  • Europe Scrambles for Relevance in the Age of AI

    Europe Scrambles for Relevance in the Age of AI

    That concentration of power is uncomfortable for European governments. It makes European companies downstream customers of the future, importing the latest services and technology in exchange for money and data sent westward across the Atlantic. And these concerns have taken on a new urgency—partly because some in Brussels perceive a growing gap in values and beliefs between Silicon Valley and the median EU citizen and their elected representatives; and partly because AI looms large in the collective imagination as the engine of the next technological revolution.

    European fears of lagging in AI predate ChatGPT. In 2018, the European Commission issued an AI plan calling for “AI made in Europe” that could compete with the US and China. But beyond a desire for some kind of control over the shape of technology, the operational definition of AI sovereignty has become pretty fuzzy. “For some people, it means we need to get our act together to fight back against Big Tech,” Daniel Mügge, professor of political arithmetic at the University of Amsterdam, who studies technology policy in the EU, says. “To others, it means there’s nothing wrong with Big Tech, as long as it’s European, so let’s get cracking and make it happen.”

    Those competing priorities have begun to complicate EU regulation. The bloc’s AI Act, which passed the European Parliament in March and is likely to become law this summer, has a heavy focus on regulating potential harms and privacy concerns around the technology. However, some member states, notably France, made clear during negotiations over the law that they fear regulation could shackle their emerging AI companies, which they hope will become European alternatives to OpenAI.

    Speaking before last November’s UK summit on AI safety, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said that Europe needed to “innovate before it regulates” and that the continent needed “European actors mastering AI.” The AI Act’s final text includes a commitment to making the EU “a leader in the uptake of trustworthy AI.”

    “The Italians and the Germans and the French at the last minute thought: ‘Well, we need to cut European companies some slack on foundation models,’” Mügge says. “That is wrapped up in this idea that Europe needs European AI. Since then, I feel that people have realized that this is a little bit more difficult than they would like.”

    Sarlin, who has been on a tour of European capitals recently, including meeting with policymakers in Brussels, says that Europe does have some of the elements it needs to compete. To be a player in AI, you have to have data, computing power, talent, and capital, he says.

    Data is fairly widely available, Sarlin adds, and Europe has AI talent, although it sometimes struggles to retain it.

    To marshal more computing power, the EU is investing in high-performance computing resources, building a pan-European network of high-performance computing facilities, and offering startups access to supercomputers via its “AI Factories” initiative.

    Accessing the capital needed to build big AI projects and companies is also challenging, with a wide gulf between the US and everyone else. According to Stanford University’s AI Index report, private investment in US AI companies topped $67 billion in 2023, more than 35 times the amount invested in Germany or France. Research from Accel Partners shows that in 2023, the seven largest private investment rounds by US generative AI companies totaled $14 billion. The top seven in Europe totaled less than $1 billion.

    Peter Guest

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  • The Pirate Party Survived Mutiny and Scandal. Now It’s Trying to Rewrite the Rules of the Web

    The Pirate Party Survived Mutiny and Scandal. Now It’s Trying to Rewrite the Rules of the Web

    Outside the skatepark in Prague, on a scrubby patch of grass, Bartoš leans back into his deck chair as he tries to impress on me that Pirates are not your regular stiff politicians. From the campaign launch unfolding behind us, that’s pretty obvious. Yes, there are long speeches and polite rounds of applause. But there are also gangs of shirtless skateboarders, a blue-haired rapper, rainbow banners showing our solar-powered future, and references to the online forums where party members can vote on new policies or demand new leadership.

    He disagrees that the broadening of the Pirates’ focus has diluted its identity. “We cannot be a single issue party,” he insists. Instead, he compares the Pirates’ evolution to Europe’s Greens, which started as a grassroots movement built around a single issue: the environment. Now the Greens are applying their original values to everything from housing to energy, as they sit in coalition governments in Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Austria. Although the Pirates “don’t preach” like the Greens, he says, “we’re doing the same journey they did a while ago.”

    The Czech branch demonstrates the Pirates’ potential—how an internet-first ideology can be woven into national politics—but it is also a microcosm of the party’s problems. Like other Pirates before it, the Czechs suffer from internal bickering, factionalism, and claims of sexual harassment. Former campaign manager Šárka Václavíková has spoken publicly about her decision to leave the party and her police complaint against a fellow party member for what she describes as stalking and psychological abuse. Over Zoom from her new home in Italy, she says sexual harassment of women was systemic before she left last year—a claim the party strongly denies. “Isolated incidents can, of course, happen, just as in society or any other party. However, if we had any information about such incidents, we would take immediate action,” party spokesperson Lucie Švehlíková told WIRED.

    But Václavíková says she’s also disappointed with the direction of the party as a whole. “There are two factions in the Pirate Party,” she declares. There are the centrists, the people who want to appeal to everyone and are disowning the party’s Pirate Bay roots in the process. Václavíková says she identified with the other faction, whom she calls “the real pirates.” “For us,” she says, “the ideology of transparent policy and privacy, and also human rights, are more important than just gaining more power for our own profit.”

    So far, Bartoš has prevented these issues from tearing the party apart. Part of why he has lasted so long, surviving a series of leadership challenges (including from Gregorová), is because he can clearly describe what makes the Pirates’ outlook different. Across Europe, other Pirates are still struggling to define what a better future—with more technology, not less—would actually look like. When I sign into a Zoom call with Tommy Klein, political adviser to the Pirates in Luxembourg, he is sitting in front of a poster emblazoned with the phrase “Save Our Internet.” When I ask how exactly the internet needs saving, he replies without enthusiasm that the poster is old. “It’s from the 2018 election,” he says.

    Under Bartoš, however, the Czech Pirates have found a way to articulate a utopian vision of a technology-infused future that means more than just reducing Big Tech’s influence on the European internet. Like the Pirate Bureau 20 years ago, the Czech Pirates also have a bus—really more of a camper van—that carries illustrations of their message. There is a sun, with rays resembling internet nodes. Wind turbines and solar farms grow out of rolling pink hills. Slogans like “Girl Power” and “Tolerance” hover over people doing peace signs and smiling through heart-shaped glasses. In Bartoš, the original Pirate vision for an alternative technology-enabled future still lingers. “I believe that we can save the planet and society through technology,” he declares from his deck chair. Whether that optimism is still applicable, 20 years later, is up to the voters to decide.

    Morgan Meaker

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  • Why the EU’s Vice President Isn’t Worried About Moon-Landing Conspiracies on YouTube

    Why the EU’s Vice President Isn’t Worried About Moon-Landing Conspiracies on YouTube

    When European Union vice president Věra Jourová met with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in California last week, they fell to talking about the long-running conspiracy theory that the moon landings were fake. YouTube has faced calls from some users and advocacy groups to remove videos that question the historic missions. Like other videos denying accepted science, they have been booted from recommendations and have a Wikipedia link added to direct viewers to debunking context.

    But as Mohan spoke about those measures, Jourová made something clear: Fighting lunar lunatics or flat-earthers shouldn’t be a priority. “If the people want to believe it, let them do,” she said. As the official charged with protecting Europe’s democratic values, she thinks it’s more important to make sure YouTube and other big platforms don’t spare a euro that could be invested in fact-checking or product changes to curb false or misleading content that threatens the EU’s security.

    “We are focusing on the narratives which have the potential to mislead voters, which could create big harm to society,” Jourová tells WIRED in an interview. Unless conspiracy theories could lead to deaths, violence, or pogroms, she says, don’t expect the EU to be demanding action against them. Content like the recent fake news report announcing that Poland is mobilizing its troops in the middle of an election? That better not catch on as truth online.

    In Jourová’s view, her conversation with Mohan and similar discussions she held last week with the CEOs of TikTok, X, and Meta show how the EU is helping companies understand what it takes to counter disinformation, as is now required under the bloc’s tough new Digital Services Act. Its requirements include that starting this year the internet’s biggest platforms, including YouTube, have to take steps to combat disinformation or risk fines up to 6 percent of their global sales.

    Civil liberties activists have been concerned that the DSA ultimately could enable censorship by the bloc’s more authoritarian regimes. A strong showing by far-right candidates in the EU’s parliamentary elections taking place later this week also could lead to its uneven enforcement.

    YouTube spokesperson Nicole Bell says the company is aligned with Jourová on preventing egregious real-world harm and also removing content that misleads voters on how to vote or encourages interference in the democratic processes. “Our teams will continue to work around the clock,” Bell says of monitoring problematic videos about this week’s EU elections.

    Jourová, who expects her five year term to end later this year, in part because her Czech political party, ANO, is no longer in power at home in Czechia to renominate her, contends that the DSA is not meant to enable anything more than appropriate moderation of the most egregious content. She doesn’t expect Mohan or any other tech executive to go a centimeter beyond what the law prescribes. “Overusage, overshooting on the basis of the EU legislation would be a big failure and a big danger,” she says.

    On the other hand, she acknowledges that if the companies aren’t seen to be stepping up to mitigate disinformation, then some influential politicians have threatened to seek stiffer rules that could border on outright censorship. “I hate this idea,” she says. “We don’t want this to happen.”

    But with the DSA offering guidelines more than bright lines, how are platforms to know when to act? Jourova’s “democracy tour” in Silicon Valley, as she calls it, is part of facilitating a dialog on policy. And she expects social media researchers, experts, and the press to all contribute to figuring out the fuzzy borders between free expression and destructive disinformation. She jokes that she doesn’t want to be seen as the “European Minister of the Truth,” as tempting as that title may be. Leaving it to politicians alone to define what’s acceptable online “would pave the way to hell,” she says.

    Paresh Dave

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  • Taylor Swift’s European Eras Tour leg kicked off in Paris with a new setlist. See which songs are in and out.

    Taylor Swift’s European Eras Tour leg kicked off in Paris with a new setlist. See which songs are in and out.

    Taylor Swift fever struck Paris on Thursday as the highest-grossing tour in history finally arrived in Europe, with fans treated to the first-ever performance of songs from her latest album.

    The Eras Tour began its European leg with four dates at the La Defense Arena in Paris.

    “I wish I could have toured Europe more. This is a dream crowd,” the 34-year-old megastar told the ecstatic audience.

    There were deafening shrieks as images of typewriter sheets indicated that songs off the new album “The Tortured Poets Department” were starting late in the show.

    Emerging in a lyrics-covered dress, she ran through several of the darker new tracks starting with “But Daddy I Love Him” and “Fortnight”, a particularly furious rendition of “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and an elaborate “I Can Do it with a Broken Heart,” with a golden-era Hollywood dance routine.

    Other “The Tortured Poets Department” songs performed included “So High School,” “Down Bad” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” according to ETonline.

    Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - Paris, France
    Taylor Swift performs onstage during “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at La Defense on May 0, 2024 in Paris, France.

    Kevin Mazur/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management


    “You were the first crowd to see songs from ‘The Tortured Poets Department’,” she said, before adding: “Or, as I like to call it, ‘Female Rage: the Musical.’”

    That was a dream come true for many in the audience.

    “I’ve been so excited for so long, I can’t believe it’s actually happening,” said 11-year-old Emma, who had flown in with her mother from New York.

    Adding songs from “The Tortured Poets Department” wasn’t the only change to the show and its 45-song setlist.

    Perhaps the biggest change, according to ETonline, is the “Folklore” and “Evermore” setlists were combined, cutting four songs across the two albums: “‘Tis the Damn Season,” “Tolerate It,” “The 1” and “The Last Great American Dynasty.”

    “On the Eras Tour, we have now reunited the sisters, combined them into one chapter,” Swift said, according to video posted to social media. “You can call it “Folklore, Evermore” or you can call it the Sister Albums! You can call it whatever you want as long as you promise to sing ‘Champagne Problems’ with me.”  

    “The Archer” was removed from the “Lovers” portion of the show and “Long Live” was cut from the “Speak Now” era setlist, according to ETonline.

    One of the secret songs was, fittingly, the “Midnights” bonus track “Paris.” 

    Parts of the show were also rearranged to make room for the newest era. The “Red” era was moved from the fifth to the third slot, according to ETonline, and the newest album was introduced following the “1989” set.

    Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - Paris, France
    Taylor Swift at La Defense on May 9, 2024 in Paris, France.

    Kevin Mazur/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management


    The venue said a fifth of the crowd were from the United States — many attracted by Europe’s rules against charging huge mark-ups on resale tickets that can save Americans thousands of dollars compared with shows at home.

    Georg’Ann Daly decided to celebrate her 23rd birthday with the Paris show. It meant flying from Nashville to Chicago to London and catching the Eurostar to Paris.

    “I’ve always been obsessed with Taylor Swift,” she told AFP.

    A handful of superfans camped out from Tuesday in Paris to ensure they got a prime spot.

    “I didn’t plan to, but I came to check it out and I saw the first tents and I panicked a little,” said Chris, 30.

    Noah, 20, is seeing all four Paris concerts — he used 22 email addresses to get through the lottery system and secure the tickets.

    FRANCE-MUSIC-AUDIENCE-TAYLOR-SWIFT
    Fans of Taylor Swift arrive at Paris La Defense Arena for The Eras Tour.

    MAGALI COHEN/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images


    After wrapping up her run in Paris, Swift will head for dates in Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Poland and Austria.

    The Eras Tour has worked its way across North and South America and Asia since starting in March 2023.

    By the end of the year, it had already become the first to sell more than $1 billion in tickets and is on track to more than double that by the time it concludes in Vancouver this December.

    Swift’s popularity shows no sign of dimming — the new album sold 1.4 million copies on its first day and broke every streaming record, reaching a billion streams on Spotify within five days.

    Swift’s tell-all dissections of her love stories have been the fuel powering her global domination, and fans have been poring over “The Tortured Poets Department” for cryptic clues about ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, her short-but-dramatic fling with Matty Healy (lead singer of The 1975), and her current partner, American football star Travis Kelce.

    “Taylor talks about toxic relationships, impossible love, politics, mental health, and so much more,” said Chris as she waited by her tent for the big moment. “I think we can all find a song that resonates with our experiences.” 

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  • What Putin hopes to accomplish in 5th presidential term

    What Putin hopes to accomplish in 5th presidential term

    What Putin hopes to accomplish in 5th presidential term – CBS News


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    Russian President Vladimir Putin was inaugurated Tuesday for a fifth term. If he completes this six-year term, he’ll become the longest-serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century. David Herszenhorn, international desk editor for The Washington Post, joins CBS News to examine Putin’s ambitions.

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  • How Did Europe Get Left Behind?

    How Did Europe Get Left Behind?

    The privileged ability to spend through the dollar’s global reserve status, though amounting to a national debt of unprecedented size, has allowed the U.S. to run circles around Europe in public spending and crisis-time stimulus while subverting debt crises. USGS via Unsplash

    If the United Kingdom or France joined the United States, they would become the poorest states in the country, with a GDP per capita lower than even Mississippi. Germany would be the second poorest. For most of the second half of the 20th century, Europe and the U.S. rivaled each other in GDP. In 2008, the EU and U.S. had GDPs of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion, respectively. Closing 2023, the EU has seen little growth, with a GDP of around $15 trillion, while the U.S. has marched ahead to a GDP of $27 trillion.

    The EU GDP growth clocked in at 0.1 percent for 2023’s last quarter, a small fraction of the U.S.’s 3.4 percent during the same period. The UK fell into recession in the back half of last year, but the French economy looks to an optimistic forecast of 0.9 percent growth for 2024 to put six months of stagflation in the rearview mirror. While inflation has come down to just above 3 percent, similar to the U.S., the European Central Bank’s rate hikes have taken a larger toll on the nation-states.

    One reason Europe has fallen behind? A spending handicap.

    After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which originated in the U.S. real estate debt and loaning markets in 2007 and triggered a recession in Europe in the second quarter of 2008, the U.S. and Europe increased stimulus spending and access to liquidity. This increased the debt-to-GDP percent in the U.S. from 61.8 percent in 2007 to 82.0 percent in 2009 and from around 60 percent to 73 percent for the average EU government in the same time period. Because the U.S. benefits from the dollar’s reserve currency status, it can comfortably borrow large amounts at relatively low rates due to the high demand and liquidity of the U.S. treasury market. Europeans cannot take advantage of the same privilege, and thus saw a growing debt crisis in the years following the GFC in countries like Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain, which were having trouble paying back the debt their governments had borrowed. The crisis peaked in 2010 when Greece’s sovereign debt was downgraded to junk by rating agencies. Numerous European countries required bailouts from the IMF and EU and instituted new austerity policies that limited public spending.

    Such austerity policies became handicaps in dealing with future crises: during the COVID pandemic, the U.S. distributed $5 trillion in stimulus, while the U.K. and Germany spent $500 billion, France spent $235 billion, and Italy $216 billion, as per Moody’s. Though controversial then and a contributor to the steep inflation that followed, the cash cascade likely helped the U.S. spend itself out of a recession. Household savings were at dramatic highs following the pandemic, allowing consumer spending—contributing to 70 percent of the U.S. GDP—to be strong through the Federal Reserve rate hikes. Post-pandemic, the U.S. has continued its public investment streak with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, contributing another $2 trillion to its manufacturing and construction sectors and far exceeding EU contributions.

    The privileged ability to spend through the dollar’s global reserve status, though amounting to a national debt of unprecedented size, has allowed the U.S. to run circles around Europe in public spending and crisis-time stimulus while subverting debt crises.

    A variety of other factors

    The explanation of why the U.S. economy has outpaced Europe cannot be reduced to just one reason. Broad structural differences are at play: the U.S. enjoys a large single free trade zone, where capital and labor can unquestionably cross state boundaries without additional tax, tariff or currency conversion costs. Brexit and many other hurdles have tested the EU’s free trade zone. The U.S. is also unusually entrepreneurial: more start-ups are founded in the U.S. than in the European Union, and the U.S. leads the world in VC funding. Eight of the ten largest companies globally by market cap are American; none are European. The U.S. is also the globe’s most attractive place for investment, making the New York Stock Exchange larger than every European stock exchange combined (and that is just one of the U.S.’s equity exchanges). Recent events also serve as obstacles: energy embargos on Russia have been far more taxing on Europe, with the cost of electricity far higher than in the U.S. and not yet returning to pre-sanction levels.

    Recent events also serve as obstacles: energy embargos on Russia have been far more taxing on Europe, with the cost of electricity far higher than in the U.S. and not yet returning to pre-sanction levels.

    What’s next?

    European leaders are eager to act. “We’re in danger of falling out of touch. There is no time to waste. The gap between the European Union and the U.S. in terms of economic performances is becoming bigger and bigger,” former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta admitted in a recent report.

    Last week, European leaders gathered to discuss the “European Competitiveness Deal,” aimed at helping the continent catch up to the U.S. and China. The policy would upskill workers, make Europe more attractive for capital, reduce the cost of energy and strengthen trade, as per the European Commission. Among Europe’s long-term challenges is that its leaders ultimately need to make their markets an attractive place for Europeans to invest their savings; French President Emmanuel Macron noted that “Europe has more savings than the United States of America … and every year, around 300 billion euros of these savings go to finance the American economy.”

    The U.S. greatly benefits from a stronger Europe, giving it an ally to help curtail Chinese and Russian influence. However, the U.S. has recently levied tariffs against Europe while implementing trade and subsidy policies. European leaders have criticized it as protectionist, reducing Europe’s global competitiveness and growth potential.

    How Did Europe Get Left Behind?

    Shreyas Sinha

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  • Europe may have an answer to U.S. wire transfer fraud questions

    Europe may have an answer to U.S. wire transfer fraud questions

    A move by Citigroup to dismiss what it called a “misguided” and “imaginative” wire-fraud lawsuit by the New York attorney general has gotten a mixed reception among bankers, many of whom sympathize with Citi’s pushback while others say banks can do more to protect their customers.

    The move also highlights ongoing debates in the U.S. and abroad about who should be liable when a consumer loses money to a bank spoofing scam. While Europe is moving toward holding banks liable, the U.S. has not seen any such proposals.

    Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, sued Citibank in January for inadequate responses to “obvious red flags of identity theft and account takeover” cases, allowing fraud to take place, including against one customer who had $40,000 stolen from her via wire transfer after she clicked on a fraudulent link she received in a text message. Citi denied her case, according to the lawsuit.

    According to James’ office, the customer “did not provide any information” after clicking on the fraudulent link she received. Yet, after clicking the link, an unauthorized user changed her online banking password, enrolled her account in online wire transfer services, tried and failed to make a wire transfer of $39,999, then successfully executed a $40,000 transfer, which constituted most of her savings after a recent retirement.

    This month, Citigroup filed a motion to dismiss the case, acknowledging a recent rise in online wire fraud but arguing that banks are not liable for reimbursing customers who got scammed through wire fraud schemes.

    “There is no denying that the problem is real,” the bank wrote, but the New York state AG’s lawsuit “defies longstanding, settled understandings” of banks’ liability in cases of fraud.

    In reaction to the motion to dismiss the case, bankers on LinkedIn largely responded in defense of their institutions.

    “In this case, it seems the victim clicked a link that appeared to be from Citi,” said Ana Campaneria-Villarini, director of corporate fraud for BankUnited. “Well, the victim fell for it! It’s sad but shouldn’t be the fault of the bank. Why should the banks be liable?”

    Many responders sympathized to varying degrees. One commenter, Elena Michaeli, a fraud and cybersecurity consultant, pointed out that while banks have little recourse when a victim provides their banking credentials to a fraudster, banks have much more data and tools at their disposal than consumers.

    In Europe, lawmakers have proposed changes that could entitle consumers to refunds in cases of bank spoofing, where a fraudster pretends to be the consumer’s bank and tricks them into parting with their money. Only in cases of “gross negligence” — for example, if the victim falls for the same scheme more than once, or if the spoof is not convincing — would the payment service provider escape refund liability, according to the proposed regulation.

    The proposals also create a legal basis for payment service providers to voluntarily exchange personal data of their users, subject to information sharing arrangements, for the purposes of reducing fraud. The legislation would require such information sharing to happen in compliance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.

    The proposals are under review by the European Parliament and Council, and while exact timelines are not yet known, any changes to fraud loss liability and data sharing arrangements could take 18 to 24 months to enter into force once agreed upon by member states of the European Union.

    “It is currently anticipated that the legislative proposals will enter into force in 2026,” wrote global law firm DLA Piper in a blog post about the proposals.

    In the U.S., the Department of the Treasury recently alluded to the lack of a legal basis for sharing fraud data between banks voluntarily in a recent report on artificial intelligence. “Most financial institutions” interviewed expressed the need for better collaboration in the domain of fraud prevention, according to the report.

    “Sharing of fraud data would support the development of sophisticated fraud detection tools and better identification of emerging trends or risks,” the report said, which likened such data sharing to similar arrangements banks have for sharing cybersecurity threat and anti-money-laundering data.

    As for who is liable in cases where a consumer falls victim to fraud and shares their banking credentials to someone impersonating their bank, neither U.S. lawmakers nor regulators have put forward proposals to change the current standard in which customers are generally liable for wire transfer fraud tactics they fall for.

    In a parallel case, consumers are sometimes liable when they fall for scams and mistakenly send payments through person-to-person payment networks like Zelle. The closest a regulator has come to changing the fraud liability standard for P2P payments was guidance that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was expected to issue in response to increasing fraud on Zelle in 2022. However, such guidance has not reached the agency’s rulemaking agenda; rather, the agency has proposed that it should examine payment markets run by the likes of Apple, Google and PayPal to ensure they comply with existing consumer protection laws.

    Carter Pape

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  • Flooding across Russia’s west from melting mountain snow and ice forces mass evacuations

    Flooding across Russia’s west from melting mountain snow and ice forces mass evacuations

    Moscow — Warm spring temperatures have unleashed torrents on parts of western Russia, where thawing ice and melting mountain snow are swelling some of Europe’s biggest rivers and inundating towns and cities along their paths. The southwest Russian city of Orenburg, near the Kazakh border, was bracing for its worst flooding in decades, while to the north, the entire region of Tyumen in western Siberia was put under a state of emergency as the flood risk mounted.

    Officials have evacuated thousands of residents from homes along fast-rising rivers in the Urals and western Siberia.

    Moscow declared a federal emergency Sunday amid the flooding in the Orenburg region, where the Ural river left much of the city of Orsk covered in water, forcing thousands to leave their homes. 

    TOPSHOT-RUSSIA-FLOOD-DAM
    Rescuers evacuate residents from the flooded part of the city of Orsk, in Russia’s Orenburg region, April 8, 2024.

    ANATOLIY ZHDANOV/Kommersant Photo/AFP/Getty


    The river was reaching dangerous levels Monday in the regional capital of Orenburg, a city of 550,000 people.

    The Kremlin spoke of a “critical” situation Monday, warning that the floods had “possibly not reached their peak.”

    Emergency services said Monday that more than 10,000 residential buildings had been flooded, mostly in the Urals, the Volga area and western Siberia. They warned of a “rise in air temperature, active snow melting and the overflow of rivers.”

    Governor Alexander Moor was quoted by state media as saying all of the Tyumen region would be under a state of emergency until the flooding risk passed.

    In the south, much of the city of Orsk was under water after torrential rain caused a nearby dam to burst. Orenburg region authorities said that while the Ural river “went down by nine centimeters (3.5 inches)” in Orsk, water levels in the city of Orenburg were still rising fast.

    Evacuation of residents continues after dam bursts in Orsk, Russia
    A screen grab from video provided by the Russian Ministry of Emergency shows residents and pets being evacuated from a flooded neighborhood after a dam burst in the city of Orsk, Russia, April 6, 2024.

    Russian Ministry of Emergency/Anadolu/Getty


    The mayor of Orenburg, Sergei Salmin, called on residents in flood-risk zones to leave immediately.

    “The water can come at night. Do not risk your lives,” he said on social media, warning that water levels would surpass danger marks. “Do not wait for that. Leave right now.”

    Salmin told Russian television that Orenburg had not “seen so much water” since the last high mark was registered in 1942. “Since then there have been no floods. This is unprecedented.”

    President Vladimir Putin ordered a government commission to be established on the floods. His spokesman said Putin did not plan on visiting the flood zone but that he was being briefed on “nature anomalies” in real time.  

    Putin, who has been a vocal skeptic of man-made climate change for much of his rule, has in recent years ordered his government to do more to prepare Russia for extreme weather events. The country has seen severe floods and fires in recent springs and summers.

    Salmin said authorities had evacuated 736 people in Orenburg as they expected the water to rise further.

    Over the weekend he warned of forced evacuations if people did not cooperate, saying: “There is no time for convincing.”

    Russia’s weather monitor Rosgidromet said it did not expect the flood in Orenburg to peak until Wednesday and warned that many districts of the city would be affected.

    The Ural river flows through Orenburg and into Kazakhstan, where President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the floods were one of the worst natural disasters to affect the area in decades.

    More than 13 thousand evacuated due to flood in Kazakhstan
    An aerial view provided by a Kazakhstan Ministry of Emergency Situations helicopter shows inundated areas as melting snow causes flooding, blocking transportation in 49 villages in Kazakhstan, April 1, 2024.

    Kazakh Ministry of Emergency/Handout/Anadolu/Getty


    Aerial images of the city of Orsk showed just the top floors and colourful roofs of houses visible over brown water. In the city center, water reached the first floor of buildings.

    After evacuating more than 6,000 people across the Orenburg region, authorities also began relocating some residents of the Siberian city of Kurgan near northern Kazakhstan, home to around 300,000 people, where the Tobol river was expected to rise.

    Emergency services in Kurgan said 571 people were moved away from areas expected to be flooded.

    Authorities said around 100 rescuers had arrived as reinforcements in the western Siberian region from the Urals to prepare for the floods.

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  • Cartels, mafias and gangs in Europe are using fruit companies, hotels and other legal businesses as fronts, Europol says

    Cartels, mafias and gangs in Europe are using fruit companies, hotels and other legal businesses as fronts, Europol says

    Criminal networks in the European Union are penetrating legal businesses across the 27-nation bloc and rely heavily on corruption to develop their activities. That’s the bleak picture emerging from a report published Friday by the EU crime agency.

    Europol has identified 821 particularly threatening criminal networks with more than 25,000 members in the bloc.

    According to the agency, 86% of those networks are able to infiltrate the legal economy to hide their activities and launder their criminal profits.

    Europol cited the example of a gang leader identified as an Italian businessman of Argentinian origin residing in Marbella, Spain. The individual specialized in drug trafficking and money laundering and manages several companies, including one that imports bananas from Ecuador to the EU. He also owns sports centers in Marbella, commercial centers in Granada and multiple bars and restaurants, it said.

    “An Albanian accomplice, based in Ecuador, takes care of the import of cocaine from Colombia to Ecuador and the subsequent distribution to the EU. Ecuadorian fruit companies are used as a front for these criminal activities,” the report said.

    Massive hauls of drugs have been hidden in banana shipments throughout Europe in recent months. In February, British authorities said they had found more than 12,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas, shattering the record for the biggest single seizure of hard drugs in the country. Last August, customs agents in the Netherlands seized 17,600 pounds of cocaine found hidden inside crates of bananas in Rotterdam’s port. Three months before that, a police dog sniffed out 3 tons of cocaine stashed in a case of bananas in the Italian port of Gioia Tauro.

    Italy Cocaine Bananas
    In this image taken from a video provided by the Italian Finance Police, an Italian finance police officer indicates to his dog where to search for cocaine among a load of bananas, at the port of Gioia Tauro, southern Italy, Tuesday, May 16, 2023. The finance police say they have seized a shipment of more than 2,700 kilos (about 3 tons) of cocaine hidden under some 70 tons of bananas in two containers shipped by sea from Ecuador, that could have brought traffickers a potential value of more than 800 million euros ($900 million) in street sales. (Guardia di Finanza via AP)

    / AP


    Europol also cites families from Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate, one of the world’s most powerful, extensive and wealthy drug-trafficking groups. Their profits from drug and arms trafficking as well as tax defrauding are invested throughout Europe in real estate, supermarkets, hotels and other commercial activities, it said.

    Another characteristic of these networks is the borderless nature of their structure, with 112 nationalities represented among their members, the report said.

    “However, looking at the locations of their core activities, the vast majority maintain a strong geographical focus and do not extend their core activities too broadly,” Europol said.

    As for their activities, drug trafficking and corruption are the main concern for EU officials.

    As record amounts of cocaine are being seized in Europe and drug-related violent crime is becoming increasingly visible in many EU countries such as Belgium and France, drug trafficking is standing out as the key activity, the report said. Half of the most threatening criminal networks are involved in drug trafficking, either as a standalone activity or as part of a portfolio.

    In addition, more than 70% of networks engage in corruption “to facilitate criminal activity or obstruct law enforcement or judicial proceedings. 68% of networks use violence and intimidation as an inherent feature of their modus operandi,” the report said.

    In Belgium, with Antwerp the main gateway for Latin American cocaine cartels into the continent, gang violence has been rife in the port city for years. In January, Belgian authorities said they seized a record amount of cocaine at the port of Antwerp last year, the BBC reported.

    With drug use on the rise across the whole country, federal authorities say trafficking is rapidly penetrating society.

    “Organized crime is one of the biggest threats we face today, threatening society with corruption and extreme violence,” said the European commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson.

    Europol said the data will be shared with law enforcement agencies in EU member countries, which should help better target criminals.

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  • Meta Kills a Crucial Transparency Tool At the Worst Possible Time

    Meta Kills a Crucial Transparency Tool At the Worst Possible Time

    Earlier this month, Meta announced that it would be shutting down CrowdTangle, the social media monitoring and transparency tool that has allowed journalists and researchers to track the spread of mis- and disinformation. It will cease to function on August 14, 2024—just months before the US presidential election.

    Meta’s move is just the latest example of a tech company rolling back transparency and security measures as the world enters the biggest global election year in history. The company says it is replacing CrowdTangle with a new Content Library API, which will require researchers and nonprofits to apply for access to the company’s data. But the Mozilla Foundation and 140 other civil society organizations protested last week that the new offering lacks much of CrowdTangle’s functionality, asking the company to keep the original tool operating until January 2025.

    Meta spokesperson Andy Stone countered in posts on X that the groups’ claims “are just wrong,” saying the new Content Library will contain “more comprehensive data than CrowdTangle” and be made available to nonprofits, academics, and election integrity experts. But Meta did not respond to questions about why commercial newsrooms, like WIRED, are to be excluded.

    Brandon Silverman, cofounder and former CEO of CrowdTangle, who continued to work on the tool after Facebook acquired it in 2016, says it’s time to force platforms to open up their data to outsiders. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

    Vittoria Elliott: CrowdTangle has been incredibly important for journalists and researchers trying to hold tech companies accountable for the spread of mis- and disinformation. But it belongs to Meta. Could you talk a little bit about that tension?

    Brandon Silverman: I think there’s a bit too much of a public narrative that frustration with [New York Times columnist] Kevin Roose’ tweets is why they turned their back on CrowdTangle. I think the truth is that Facebook is moving out of news entirely.

    When CrowdTangle joined Facebook, they were all in on news and bought us to help the news industry. Fast forward three years later, they are like, “We’re done with that project.” There is a lot of responsibility that comes with hosting news on a platform, especially if you exist in essentially every community on Earth. I think that they made a calculus at some point that it just wasn’t worth what it would cost to do responsibly.

    My takeaway when I left was that if you want to do this work in a way that really serves civil society in the way we need it to, you can’t do it inside the companies—and Meta was doing more than almost anyone else. It’s abundantly clear that we need our regulators and elected officials to decide what we, as a society, want and expect from these platforms and to make those [demands] legally required.

    What would that look like?

    I think we’re at the very beginning of an entire ecosystem of better tools doing this work. The European Union’s sweeping Digital Services Act has a bunch of transparency requirements around data sharing. One of those they sometimes call the CrowdTangle provision—it requires qualifying platforms to provide real-time access to public data.

    Over a dozen platforms now have new programs that allow outside researchers to get access to real-time public content. Alibaba, TikTok, YouTube—which has been a black box forever—are now spinning up these programs. It’s been very quiet, because they don’t necessarily want a ton of people using them. In some cases companies add these programs to their terms of service but don’t make any public announcement.

    Vittoria Elliott

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  • The EU Targets Apple, Meta, and Alphabet for Investigations Under New Tech Law

    The EU Targets Apple, Meta, and Alphabet for Investigations Under New Tech Law

    Apple is among three tech giants being investigated for failing to comply with the European Union’s new competition rules, in another blow to the embattled smartphone maker.

    Apple was the primary focus of an EU press conference on Monday morning. But authorities also opened formal investigations into Meta and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The trio are the first to be subject to formal probes under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s landmark competition law, which took effect on March 7.

    Under the new rules, six of the world’s largest tech companies, known in the EU as “gatekeepers,” were asked to provide evidence that they were not harming competition. “We are not convinced that the solutions by Alphabet, Apple, and Meta respect their obligations for a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses,” said Thierry Breton, EU industry chief, in a statement on Monday. “Should our investigation conclude that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA, gatekeepers could face heavy fines.” Under the Digital Markets Act, officials can levy fines of up to 10 percent of tech giants’ global revenue or 20 percent for repeat violations.

    Following weeks of criticism directed at Apple by developers, the EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said a formal investigation would focus on two elements of the smartphone maker’s business: the limits Apple places on developers trying to link from the App Store to their own websites, and how hard Apple makes it to replace default, native apps like Photos or iCloud with third-party alternatives.

    “Gatekeepers have an obligation to enable easy uninstallation of apps and easy change of default settings,” Vestager said in the press conference. “Apple’s compliance model does not seem to meet the objective of this obligation.”

    EU officials are also considering another formal investigation into whether Apple’s rules for alternative app stores—allowing users to download apps from places other than the official App Store—comply with the Digital Markets Act rules. Apple is confident its business is compliant, company spokesperson Rob Saunders told WIRED. “Teams across Apple have created a wide range of new developer capabilities, features, and tools to comply with the regulation,” he said in a statement. “At the same time, we’ve introduced protections to help reduce new risks to the privacy, quality, and security of our EU users’ experience.”

    Apple has emerged as a focal point for competition officials in both the EU and the US. The EU announcement on Monday follows a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice last week that claimed the smartphone maker had established an iPhone monopoly that was suppressing competition and harming consumers.

    The lawsuit cited four internal Apple emails that, the DOJ claimed, illustrate how executives knowingly restrict users and developers in unfair ways. In one exchange from 2010, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and an unnamed Apple executive discussed how a new ad for Amazon’s Kindle gave the impression that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. “Not fun to watch,” the executive wrote.

    Morgan Meaker

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  • Apple, Google and Meta hit with investigations in first cases under sweeping new EU law designed to stop Big Tech from cornering digital markets

    Apple, Google and Meta hit with investigations in first cases under sweeping new EU law designed to stop Big Tech from cornering digital markets

    European Union regulators opened investigations into Apple, Google and Meta on Monday, in the first cases under a sweeping new law designed to stop Big Tech companies from cornering digital markets that took effect earlier this month.

    The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, said it was investigating the companies for “non-compliance” with the Digital Markets Act.

    The Digital Markets Act is a broad rulebook that targets Big Tech “gatekeeper” companies providing “core platform services” by forcing them to comply with a set of do’s and don’ts, under threat of hefty financial penalties or even breaking up businesses. The rules have the broad but vague goal of making digital markets “fairer” and “more contestable” by breaking up closed tech ecosystems that lock consumers into a single company’s products or services.

    The commission said in a press release that it “suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA.”

    It’s looking into whether Google and Apple are fully complying with the DMA’s rules requiring tech companies to allow app developers to direct users to offers available outside their app stores. The commission said it’s concerned the two companies are imposing “various restrictions and limitations” including charging fees that prevent apps from freely promoting offers.

    Google is also facing scrutiny for not complying with DMA provisions that prevent tech giants from giving preference to their own services over rivals. The commission said it is concerned Google’s measures will result in third-party services listed on Google’s search results page not being treated “in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.”

    The commission is also investigating whether Apple is doing enough to allow iPhone users to easily change web browsers. It’s also looking into Meta’s option for users to pay a monthly fee for ad-free versions of Facebook or Instagram so they can avoid having their personal data used to target them with online ads.

    “The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers,” it said.

    Subscribe to the new Fortune CEO Weekly Europe newsletter to get corner office insights on the biggest business stories in Europe. Sign up for free.

    Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

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