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The City of Laredo and Laredo Animal Care Services (LACS) partnered with Austin Pets Alive! (APA!) in February 2023 as a result of the city’s desire to meet the Laredo community’s need for shelter improvement. Due to limited resources, LACS has historically faced challenges in implementing veterinary best practices, struggling to save half of the 8,000 pets that come into its shelter. Recognizing that a change was needed, LACS contracted with APA! to provide veterinary care services and updated shelter operations. Because LACS has unnecessarily delayed implementing animal welfare industry standards at its shelter, APA! is calling on the citizens of Laredo to join our efforts in advocating for the thousands of pets who are at risk of being euthanized.
APA! has been helping LACS with rescue transport since 2020 and partnered with LACS during Winter Storm Uri, which led to this bigger partnership. In May 2023, after working with LACS over many months, APA! built a set of customized recommendations and an implementation plan to establish Laredo as a leader in animal sheltering throughout South Texas. LACS has been presented with its first opportunity to accept resources, in the form of time and money, from a transformational organization to help save more animal lives. APA!’s objective is to help fill the gap in necessary training and support, at the request and with the cooperation of LACS, to help people and their pets in Laredo.
APA!’s implementation plan includes shelter best practices such as support at intake,Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) program, lost pet reunification, and placement programs. A people focused intake model, which includes an appointment-based intake of animals in non-emergency situations into the animal services facility, is a modern practice that prioritizes sick or injured pets, animals in immediate danger, or dogs that pose a threat to public safety. Organized intake frees up shelter resources to ensure emergencies and critical situations are handled promptly and effectively.
PROGRESS IN SAVING LIVES
APA!’s vet and national shelter support teams have made significant progress at LACS:
Since March, APA! doubled spay and neuters with over 1,000 animals, and in 2023 since the start of the contract, we have brought the feline live outcome rate to over 65%. APA! is responsible for over 1,100 live outcomes in 2023 through rescue transport.
Implemented treatment protocols to ensure every sick, treatable animal receives medication and vaccines, health certificates, and more to increase the number of pets saved.
Performed an elevated level of medical attention for shelter animals, including leg amputations, mass removals, surgeries, and more to save the pet’s life. Previously animals requiring this care would have been automatically euthanized.
Furthermore, APA! designed free custom staff training, over 30 standard operating procedures, and an implementation plan for LACS based on best practices that include:
Intake Counseling and Triage – To help provide treatment and care to the animals in need, providing consent-based resources for pets that may not need to come to the shelter, and reducing euthanasia rates.
Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) program – To ensure stray cats aren’t euthanized upon intake at alarming rates.
Lost Pet Reunification – To ensure that at least the national standard number of lost pets make it back to their families.
Placement Programs- Rescue/Transport, Adoption, Case Management, Foster, Volunteer – To help reduce the number of pets at the shelter by promoting adoptions, fostering, and working with rescue partners.
The implementation of these programs and procedures is fundamental to the success of the contract between Austin Pets Alive! and Laredo Animal Care Services to increase adoptions and provide community guidance to better support the people and pets of Laredo. APA! is also providing additional resources such as:
5 Full-time employees (4 directly operations focused and local to Laredo and 1 focused on marketing and communication)
National Field Services in-person training
Online course module with in-person guidance and assessment for free
Weekly transport van and driver dedicated to picking up Laredo animals and taking in-state partners.
Once a month, state transport van and driver assistance are dedicated to Laredo animals.
$90K pet food donation for the community via HSUS/Chewy secured by APA!.
Adoption incentive grant of $3,000 for gift bags for adopters.
Handouts, flyers, resources, and posters – printed for the front lobby, and for staff to hand out to the community to help people with their pets.
CHALLENGES BEING FACED:
While APA! has addressed the many issues with LACS’s current practices by providing recommendations, staff training, and standard operating procedures, LACS has unnecessarily delayed implementing animal welfare industry standards at its shelter.
APA!’s implementation plan, introduced in May 2023, includes shelter best practices such as support at intake, Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) program, lost pet reunification, and placement programs.
To be successful, Laredo Animal Care Services needs to implement these changes immediately and take the community’s and animals’ needs into consideration. Many of the recommendations made by APA! in May have yet to be implemented, leading to the continued killing and warehousing of shelter pets.
HISTORY
When APA!’s team first arrived at LACS, they encountered dire conditions, including an extremely high rate of disease in pets–predominately parvovirus; overcrowding, unsanitary kennels; inadequate water and food supplies; and unattended injured animals in urgent need of medical care.
Upon arrival, APA! quickly identified and implemented immediate solutions to solve these harsh conditions and continued to work with the LACS team to implement additional medical and treatment protocols. These actions have already contributed to saving the lives of several hundred pets that most certainly would have died without intervention due to lack of medical care and euthanasia. The year-end goal is to increase live outcomes to 90%, almost double what they were when APA! first arrived.
Two high-ranking Ukrainian officials have been named as suspects in an embezzlement scheme uncovered by Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities this week, involving the procurement of humanitarian aid.
Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agrarian policy and food and the former deputy minister of economy reportedly misappropriated UAH 62 million (about €1.5 million), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) found.
This is just the latest wave of corruption that has swept Ukraine since the war with Russia started in 2022. In January, two major corruption scandals centered on government procurement of military catering services and electrical generators shook the country.
Rather than sweeping the suspect deals under the carpet, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy launched a major crackdown, in a bid to show allies in the U.S. and EU that Ukraine is making a clean break from the past. Earlier this month, he fired all regional military recruitment bosses amid reports of corruption, replacing them with soldiers who have been on the front lines or who have been hurt in combat.
The most recent scheme involved the purchase of food which was intended as humanitarian aid for regional military administrations and for the populations of Donetsk, Kherson, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Khmelnytsky, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions and the city of Kyiv, SAPO said.
According to the agencies, in one episode the first deputy minister of agrarian policy purchased food at prices two to three times higher than market value through a controlled company, which in turn bought the products at market value from a Polish manufacturer.
This cost Ukraine’s railway company Ukrzaliznytsia about €719,000 between March and August 2022.
“He was aware of the actual market value of the products, as he regularly received relevant data from the state statistical service,” said NABU in a press release. “He also knew about the possibility of purchasing products from Ukrainian manufacturers but deliberately ignored this fact.”
In a separate scheme involving both officials, food was purchased once again at higher prices through an intermediary company which, in turn, bought food at market value from a Turkish manufacturer. The deputy minister of economy hid proof that there were better offers available and pushed officials to illegally approve applications and invoices from the controlled companies.
As a result of this scheme, Ukrzaliznytsia overpaid companies about €841,000.
“Having been received, the funds were transferred to a foreign company with signs of fictitiousness for further legalization,” NABU said. “Draft records outlining the distribution of the ill-gotten gains were discovered during a search at a scheme participant’s place.”
The investigation is ongoing.
Claudia Chiappa
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Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was buried during a low-key ceremony in his home city of St. Petersburg six days after he died in a plane crash, the dead warlord’s press service said Tuesday.
The funeral was held “in a closed format,” according to a post on the Telegram channel of Prigozhin’s company Concord. The mercenary-turned-mutineer was buried in the Porokhovskoye cemetery, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Russian President Vladimir Putin — who Prigozhin rose up against in June — would not attend the funeral.
According to some Russian outlets, around 20 to 30 people attended the ceremony, which lasted about 40 minutes. Sources told Russian state-run news outlet TASS that holding a private ceremony with only friends and family was what Prigozhin’s relatives wanted.
Pictures circulating on social media and taken by news agency Reuters show what is reportedly Prigozhin’s grave, next to his father’s.
Earlier today, the funeral for Prigozhin confidant Valery Chekalov, who also died in the plane crash that killed the Wagner chief, was held at a different cemetery in St. Petersburg. That ceremony was attended by Chekalov’s family and some Wagner mercenaries and employees from Prigozhin’s business empire.
Prigozhin led Russia’s Wagner Group of fighters, including on the front line in Ukraine, before he launched an aborted uprising against the Kremlin in June. He died in a fiery plane crash last week two months to the day after the insurrection started.
The Kremlin has rejected accusations that Putin ordered Prigozhin’s death in revenge for the mutiny.
This story has been updated.
Claudia Chiappa
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Moscow launched a barrage of drone attacks early Sunday at a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region used by Kyiv to export grain, a day ahead of talks between Russia and Turkey where reviving a U.N.-backed grain deal will be high on the agenda.
Kyiv’s air defenses shot down 22 out of the 25 Iranian-made drones destined for the Danube River port infrastructure, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram on Sunday. At least two people were reported injured.
The Danube River has become Ukraine’s main route for shipping grain after a deal brokered by Turkey and the U.N. allowing Kyiv to use the Black Sea for exports collapsed in July. Moscow has stepped up its attacks of Danube port infrastructure in recent weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Russia on Monday, where Turkey is expected to push for the restoration of the Black Sea grain deal.
“Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope of provoking a food crisis and famine in the world,” said Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, on Telegram following the Russian attack.
Ukrainian officials also said Russian shelling had injured four people in the country’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region Sunday morning, while one person had died after attacks on Saturday in the country’s northeastern Sumy region. POLITICO couldn’t independently verify the reports.
That also comes after a top Ukrainian general leading the country’s counteroffensive said on Saturday that Kyiv’s troops had breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine after weeks of mine clearance.
In a sign that Russia is also increasingly looking at all possible options to shore up its forces, Moscow has been appealing for fresh recruits through advertizing in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday. Online adverts offering up to €4,756 in initial salaries have been spotted Armenia and Kazakshtan, as well as schemes offering fast-track Russian citizenship for those who sign up.
Around 280,000 people have signed up for military service in Russia so far this year, the country’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday. Last year, Russia announced a plan of increasing its troops by 30 percent to 1.5 million.
Victor Jack
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BERLIN — Consider this a final warning for Europe’s car industry.
The IAA motor show gets up and running in Munich on Monday, but rather than purring Mercedes engines and silhouettes of sleek new Porsches wrapped under sheets of crisp satin cloth, the spotlight will be on Tesla and China’s insurgent all-electric brands.
After a few years of sparring, this is where rivals to Europe’s legacy brands start landing punches.
In a rare motor show appearance, Elon Musk’s Tesla is set to unveil an updated version of its best-selling Model 3 in Munich, while Shenzhen-based BYD — the country’s largest electric car company — will have a record six models on show in the IAA exhibition halls.
The show’s organizers say 41 percent of those exhibiting will be Asian companies, which includes big battery-makers from South Korea such as LG and Samsung. The roster of Chinese companies has more than doubled since the last bash in 2021, and that includes market leaders in battery technology with big ambitions for the Continent.
“China has its gaze set on the European market, with the potential to fundamentally change the face of Europe’s industries as we know it,” Sigrid de Vries, Europe’s chief car lobbyist at the ACEA association, wrote in a pre-show open letter. “Propped up by public money and government intent, it is no secret that China’s auto industry now mounts a challenge to the auto industry in Europe and beyond.”
It’s not that the locals aren’t trying.
In Munich, BMW promises an exclusive with its Vision Neue Klasse concept car at its hometown show. And the likes of Volkswagen and Mercedes have new EV models to talk about too. But many of the next-generation vehicles aren’t set to enter commercial production until later this decade.
In the here and now, that puts the competition firmly in the driving seat.
“While the EV transition of legacy OEMs [carmakers] is happening at a moderate pace, Tesla and BYD are gapping away,” said bank UBS in an analysis note shared ahead of the Munich show. “We consider two-thirds of the global car market as addressable by Chinese OEMs, and Europe is the most appealing region, given its size and the clear EV roadmap.”
The alarming arrival of China, a global leader in batteries, is nothing new in European automotive circles; its brands have been building beachheads in richer continental markets with high EV penetration since the Paris motor show in 2022. But the invasion is on the verge of turning into a rout.
Data from Schmidt Automotive Research, covering 18 markets across Western Europe, shows roughly one in 10 new battery electric vehicles sold in July was from a Chinese brand, with rumors that at least one company will soon invest in a local production site.
“If Paris wasn’t a wake-up call, Munich certainly is,” said Matthias Schmidt, an automotive analyst.
Tesla has already snagged the top two spots in European EV sales with its Model Y and Model 3, but no company has yet cracked the sub-$30,000 EV market. China could do that. In a cost comparison study, UBS says it will be “near-impossible” for a legacy carmaker to compete with any Chinese model even if it is built inside the EU.
That’s because of structural advantages companies like BYD have in sourcing batteries and components, UBS said.
While BYD sold just 1,900 units across Western Europe in July, Schmidt expects the company to accelerate its sales push through the second half of the year with the launch of new models in Munich, including the new Seal SUV variant. The company “is truly dedicated to introducing innovative and high-tech eco-friendly cars to the European market,” Michael Shu, BYD’s managing director for Europe, said in a statement.
The disruption by new market entrants is already playing havoc with the industry’s business model.
Carmakers have traditionally planned product launches over seven-year cycles of development and sales, giving them plenty of time to earn fat profits from each generation of combustion engine technology.
But the pace of innovation in batteries and digital technologies is upending that, and turning cars, at least during this rapid period of innovation, into fast moving consumer goods similar to mobile phones with models quickly going out of date, said Martin Benecke from S&P Global Mobility.
At the IAA in Munich, Tesla plans to unveil changes to its Model 3 that will see it deliver more range from a charge.
That puts pressure on Europe’s legacy carmakers to compete, and they may end up falling short.
“One example is the ID.3 from VW,” said Benecke. “It’s quite fresh but it will stay for three or four years, even though it’s looking quite old already. There has been a face lift, but to compete [against the Chinese] with the same vehicle will be tough.”
Joshua Posaner and Wilhelmine Preussen
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Glazed eyes. One syllable responses. The steady tinkle of beeps and buzzes coming out of a smartphone’s speakers.
It’s a familiar scene for parents around the world as they battle with their kids’ internet use. Just ask Věra Jourová: When her 10-year old grandson is in front of a screen “nothing around him exists any longer, not even the granny,” the transparency commissioner told a European Parliament event in June.
Countries are now taking the first steps to rein in excessive — and potentially harmful — use of big social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
China wants to limit screen time to 40 minutes for children aged under eight, while the U.S. state of Utah has imposed a digital curfew for minors and parental consent to use social media. France has targeted manufacturers, requiring them to install a parental control system that can be activated when their device is turned on.
The EU has its own sweeping plans. It’s taking bold steps with its Digital Services Act (DSA) that, from the end of this month, will force the biggest online platforms — TikTok, Facebook, Youtube — to open up their systems to scrutiny by the European Commission and prove that they’re doing their best to make sure their products aren’t harming kids.
The penalty for non-compliance? A hefty fine of up to six percent of companies’ global annual revenue.
The exact link between social media use and teen mental health is debated.
These digital giants make their money from catching your attention and holding on to it as long as possible, raking in advertisers’ dollars in the process. And they’re pros at it: endless scrolling combined with the periodic, but unpredictable, feedback from likes or notifications, dole out hits of stimulation that mimic the effect of slot machines on our brains’ wiring.
It’s a craving that’s hard enough for adults to manage (just ask a journalist). The worry is that for vulnerable young people, that pull comes with very real, and negative, consequences: anxiety, depression, body image issues, and poor concentration.
Large mental health surveys in the U.S. — where the data is most abundant — have found a noticeable increase over the last 15 years in adolescent unhappiness, a tendency that continued through the pandemic.
These increases cut across a number of measures: suicidal thoughts, depression, but also more mundanely, difficulties sleeping. This trend is most pronounced among teenage girls.
At the same time smartphone use has exploded, with more people getting one at a younger age. Social media use, measured as the number of times a given platform is accessed per day, is also way up.
There are some big caveats. The trend is most visible in the Anglophone world, although it’s also observable elsewhere in Europe. And there’s a whole range of confounding factors. Waning stigma around mental health might mean that young people are more comfortable describing what they’re going through in surveys. Changing political and socio-economic factors, as well as worries about climate change, almost certainly play a role.
Researchers on all sides of the debate agree that technology factors into it, but also that it doesn’t fully explain the trend. They diverge on where to put the emphasis.
Luca Braghieri, an assistant professor of economics at Bocconi university in Italy, said he originally thought concerns over Facebook were overblown, but he’s changed his mind after starting to research the topic (and has since deleted his Facebook account).
Braghieri and his colleagues combed through U.S. college mental health surveys from 2004-2006, the period when Facebook was first rolled-out in U.S. colleges, and before it was available to the general public. He found that in colleges where Facebook was introduced, students’ mental health dipped in a way not seen in universities where it hadn’t yet launched.
Braghieri said the comparison with colleges where Facebook hadn’t yet arrived allowed the researchers to rule out unidentified other variables that might have been simultaneous.
Elia Abi-Jaoude, a psychiatrist and academic at the University of Toronto, said he observed the effect first-hand when working at a child and adolescent psychiatric in-patient unit starting in 2015.
“I was basically on the front lines, witnessing the dramatic rise in struggles among adolescents,” said Abi-Jaoude, who has also published research on the topic. He noticed “all sorts of affective complaints, depression, anxiety — but for them to make it to the inpatient setting — we’re talking suicidality. And it was very striking to see.”
His biggest concern? Sleep deprivation — and the mood swings and worse school performance that accompany it. “I think a lot of our population is chronically sleep deprived,” said Abi-Jaoude, pointing the finger at smartphones and social media use.
New technologies have gotten caught up in panics before. Looking back, they now seem quaint, even funny.
“In the 1940s, there were concerns about radio addiction and children. In the 1960s it was television addiction. Now we have phone addiction. So I think the question is: Is now different? And if so, how?” asks Amy Orben, from the U.K. Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge.
She doesn’t dismiss the possible harms of social media, but she argues for a nuanced approach. That means honing in on the specific people who are most vulnerable, and the specific platforms and features that might be most risky.
Another major ask: more data.
There’s a “real disconnect” between the general belief and the actual evidence that social media use is harmful, said Orben, who went on to praise the new EU’s rules. Among its various provisions, the new EU rules will allow researchers for the first time to get their hands on data usually buried deep inside company servers.
Orben said that while much attention has gone into the negative effects of digital media use at the expense of positive examples, research she conducted into adolescent well-being during pandemic lockdowns, for example, showed that teens with access to laptops were happier than those without.
But when it comes to risk of harm to kids, Europe has taken a precautionary approach.
“Not all kids will experience harm due to these risks from smartphones and social media use,” Patti Valkenburg, head of the Center for Research on Children, Adolescents and the Media at the University of Amsterdam, told a Commission event in June. “But for minors, we need to adopt the precautionary principle. The fact that harm can be caused should be enough to justify measures to prevent or mitigate potential risk.”
Faced with mounting pressure in the past years, platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have introduced various tools to assuage concerns, including parental control. Since 2021, YouTube and Instagram send teenagers using their platform reminders to take breaks. TikTok in March announced minors have to enter a passcode after an hour on the app to continue watching videos.
But the social media companies will soon have to go further.
By the end of August, very large online platforms with over 45 million users in the European Union — including companies like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube — will have to comply with the longest list of rules.
They will have to hand in to the Digital Services Act watchdog — the European Commission — their first yearly assessment of the major impact of their design, algorithms, advertising and terms of services on a range of societal issues such as the protection of minors and mental wellbeing. They will then have to propose and implement concrete measures under the scrutiny of an audit company, the Commission and vetted researchers.
Measures could include ensuring that algorithms don’t recommend videos about dieting to teenage girls or turning off autoplay by default so that minors don’t stay hooked watching content.
Platforms will also be banned from tracking kids’ online activity to show them personalized advertisements. Manipulative designs such as never-ending timelines to glue users to platforms have been connected to addictive behavior, and will be off limits for tech companies.
Brussels is also working with tech companies, industry associations and children’s groups on rules for how to design platforms in a way that protects minors. The Code of Conduct on Age Appropriate Design planned for 2024 would then provide an explicit list of measures that the European Commission wants to see large social media companies carry out to comply with the new law.
Yet, the EU’s new content law won’t be the magic wand parents might be looking for. The content rulebook doesn’t apply to popular entertainment like online games, messaging apps nor the digital devices themselves.
It remains unclear how the European Commission will potentially investigate and go after social media companies if they consider that they have failed to limit their platforms’ negative consequences for mental well-being. External auditors and researchers could also face obstacles to wade through troves of data and lines of code to find smoking guns and challenge tech companies’ claims.
How much companies are willing to run up against their business model in the service of their users’ mental health is also an open question, said John Albert, a policy expert at the tech-focused advocacy group AlgorithmWatch. Tech giants have made a serious effort at fighting the most egregious abuses, like cyber-bullying, or eating disorders, Albert said. And the level of transparency made possible by the new rules was unprecedented.
“But when it comes to much broader questions about mental health and how these algorithmic recommender systems interact with users and affect them over time… I don’t know what we should expect them to change,” he explained. The back-and-forth vetting process is likely going to be drawn out as the Commission comes to grips with the complex platforms.
“In the short term, at least, I would expect some kind of business as usual.”
Carlo Martuscelli and Clothilde Goujard
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Russia has fined Google 3 million rubles — around €30,000 — for not deleting what it says is fake news about the war in Ukraine.
A Moscow court found Google guilty on Thursday for failing to remove from YouTube what it considers “prohibited information” — allegedly detailing how to enter certain protected facilities — and “false information” about the “special military operation in Ukraine,” despite having been ordered to do so by Russian authorities, according to Russian state-run news agency TASS.
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has ramped up its efforts to control online content that does not agree with its narrative. On Tuesday, social media site Reddit was fined for the first time for not removing “false content.” Earlier this month, a Russian court fined Apple and Wikipedia for similar reasons. Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has been fined numerous times, but has refused to comply with any of the demands to take down information, according to a spokesperson.
Google is also not new to these rulings. Last year, it was slapped with a hefty penalty of 21.1 billion rubles — over €360 million at the time — for once again failing to remove allegedly false content on the war in Ukraine.
Like many other Western technology companies, Google scaled down its activities in Russia, in part due to Western sanctions and Russian countermeasures, and in part due to pressure from the Ukrainian government to throw up a “digital blockade” to stop Russia from accessing services. Google’s local subsidiary in Russia filed for bankruptcy in 2022 because Moscow’s measures against the U.S. company made it impossible to do business there, according to the firm.
POLITICO has contacted Google for comment.
Claudia Chiappa
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KYIV — Russia’s missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv at the weekend not only killed seven people and injured 120, it also scored a second hit for the Kremlin by stoking internal anger against drone-makers, who are accused of turning the city into a target with a security blunder.
On a bright holiday morning, as Ukrainians were returning from church on Saturday after celebrating the Apple Feast of the Savior — a harvest festival of the Orthodox church — a Russian Iskander-type ballistic missile exploded over the theater in the center of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, only some 70 kilometers from the border with Russia.
The prosecutor’s office has started an investigation into a war crime that led to a mass murder.
Online commentators, however, are already pronouncing guilty verdicts on an unexpected group of former national heroes, blaming not only Russia, but also Ukrainian drone producers and military volunteers who organized and advertised an event on the same day at the theater that was ultimately targeted, with the help of local military administration.
“Is Russia to blame for the fact that it struck the theater in Chernihiv and killed civilians there? Of course. But didn’t the organizers have to turn on their brains and think that such an event is highly likely to become a target for Russian missiles? Especially if they constantly say that drones are a weapon of victory? This is about responsibility,” Sergiy Fursa, deputy director of Dragon Capital, an investment company, said in a Facebook post.
Ukrainian military volunteer Roman Sinicyn chimed in, adding that by organizing their event in the city center so close to Russia, Ukrainian military producers, soldiers, and volunteers, as well as the local military administration, demonstrated supreme recklessness. “However, we should not shift all the blame on a specific and effective volunteer organization. The event was approved by officials, not volunteers. And quite specific representatives of ministries, special services, and the military were aware of the event,” Sinicyn said.
Maria Berlinska and Lyuba Shypovych from the Dignitas Fund, a Ukrainian military volunteer organization that has pushed for systemic changes in Ukraine’s drone production and supply industry as well as the training of drone operators, are now taking most of the online hate from Ukrainians.
Dignitas Fund was among the organizers of the “Angry Birds” event, together with Chernihiv’s regional military administration and Ukraine’s defense innovation cluster Brave 1.
The event organizers publicly announced the time and date of the meeting and said what city it was happening in, but revealed the exact location only to participants some four hours before the start.
Someone then leaked that information to the Russians or Russia intercepted the communication. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Russian forces were targeting a military meeting and even published an invitation with detailed maximum-security measures for the attendees who were not supposed to wear their military uniforms.
Both Shypovych and Berlinska are declining to give any comments to the media as they are now taking part in the investigation of the event, Shypovych told POLITICO.
According to social media posts by both volunteers, the participants in the event survived the attack, as most of them were able to escape to a shelter. The security services are now investigating the information leak that triggered the Russian missile launch, Shypovych wrote.
After the wave of online hate, many members of Ukraine’s military, NGOs, and cultural sphere wrote posts in support of Berlinska, who has been a vocal critic of Ukraine’s defense ministry, and who has raised awareness of the Ukrainian authorities’ initial neglect of the crucial role that military drones should play in Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion.
“Believe me, I would want to die instead of those people,” Berlinska said in a statement.
Veronika Melkozerova
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Ford Motor Co. is betting that hybrid vehicles will be the bridge toward an all-electric-vehicle future for perhaps longer than most people expect. It’s a cautious strategy that has its admirers on Wall Street.
Ford
F,
is not thinking about “extremes” between hybrids and EVs, company Chief Executive Jim Farley said recently. The automaker decided to keep investing in heavy-duty hybrid vehicles and has been surprised by their popularity, he said.
That’s a “subtle shift of strategy” for Ford, but one that makes sense in the current reality, said Garrett Nelson, an analyst with CFRA.
On the call with analysts following Ford’s quarterly results last month, Farley noted that Ford’s hybrid offerings are extremely popular. About 10% of F-150 pickup trucks and 56% of smaller Maverick pickup trucks being sold in the U.S. are hybrids, he said.
“We are adding hybrid options across our [internal-combustion-engine] lineup,” he said. “And we expect to quadruple our hybrid sales in the next five years, and we were already No. 2 in the market last year.”
The pure-battery EV market has become saturated, and Ford is indicating that it is willing to be flexible, CFRA’s Nelson said.
“Bottom line, aside from Tesla
TSLA,
EVs, the vast majority of other EV models have sold very poorly,” Nelson said, adding that although many people are not interested in EVs, hybrids could be an easier sell.
Related: Electric vehicles vs. gas-powered cars: Which one is cheaper to buy and own?
“Consumers are becoming much more educated,” he said. “You can in a lot of cases go on pure battery power and not even use any fuel with these hybrids.”
Japanese carmakers such Toyota Motor Corp.
7203,
TM,
and Honda Motor Co.
7267,
HMC,
have taken that approach from the start, making much bigger bets on hybrids, and “in hindsight that appears to have paid off,” Nelson said.
Indeed, “hybrids are a much easier purchase in today’s environment,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst with iSeeCars.com.
“They cost less than electric vehicles, they don’t involve range anxiety, and Ford has managed to make them quite practical in how it pairs the technology with the F-150,” Brauer said.
Hybrids are more expensive to buy than internal-combustion-engine vehicles, but they are cheaper than electric vehicles because their batteries are significantly smaller — even those in plug-in hybrids, which are capable of driving several dozen miles solely on an electric charge. About a third of the cost of an EV is the cost of the battery.
Hybrids have one more critical advantage over EVs, Brauer said — they can be produced and sold for a profit.
Ford’s strategy contrasts with a more aggressive EV push by General Motors Co.
GM,
Nelson said.
GM late Wednesday unveiled its Cadillac Escalade IQ, a luxury EV that starts at around $130,000 and has 450 miles of range. GM expects to begin making the vehicle in the summer of 2024, with sales beginning in late 2024.
GM’s future lineup includes a number new EV models as well as electric versions of popular vehicles that were previously available only as gas-powered models. That includes an electric Chevy Equinox for next year and a return of the Chevy Bolt, among the cheapest EVs available in the U.S.
See also: GM is bringing back the Bolt. What do we know so far about the updated EV?
GM will cease production of the Bolt later this year but has promised to bring it back using the company’s new shared EV platform. Observers expect the new Bolt to be available around 2025.
GM’s EV strategy is generally viewed as more risky.
Tesla started a price war earlier this year, cutting prices of its EVs several times. Ford also cut prices, most notably on the F-150 Lightning, the electric version of a pickup truck that’s been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. since the 1980s.
Hybrids also do away with so-called charge anxiety, because their gas-powered engines kick in when needed.
Related: EVs zoomed ahead with a 8.2% slice of auto financing pie in second quarter
According to a Consumer Reports survey in June, about 6 in 10 respondents said that concerns about charging were holding them back from purchasing an EV, and about 5 in 10 cited range as a reason they wouldn’t buy one just yet.
Tesla has made its fast-charging ports the de facto standard in the U.S., and several automakers, including Ford and GM, have inked deals to allow their EV owners to power up at Tesla’s Supercharger network, which has charging stations located near major highways.
An often-cited 2022 study about the reliability of public, open-to-all fast-charging stations in nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area found a range of issues with the stations, from charging and payment failures to annoyances such as spaces being occupied by gas-powered vehicles or EVs that are not actively charging.
Upstart Holdings Inc. has struggled to contend with a tougher lending environment, and the company indicated Tuesday that its challenges are expected to continue.
The financial-technology company, which uses artificial intelligence to inform lending decisions, delivered a lower-than-expected forecast for the current quarter, as Chief Executive David Girouard called out high interest rates and “an environment where banks continue to be super cautious about lending.”
For the third quarter, Upstart
UPST,
expects $140 million in revenue, while analysts had been anticipating $155 million. The company also models $5 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda), while analysts were looking for $9.6 million in adjusted Ebitda.
Upstart shares tumbled more than 19% in Tuesday’s after-hours action.
See also: Marqeta scores long-awaited Cash App renewal, and its stock is surging
Chief Financial Officer Sanjay Datta, meanwhile, explained that the “ongoing supply of loans on offer in the secondary markets by sellers anxious for liquidity contributes to a challenging market dynamic, with loan books being sold at bargain prices and creating no shortage of buying opportunities for selected investors.”
“Our view is that it will take some time for the market to work its way through this surplus of cheap available yield,” he said. “Despite this, we continue to pursue a number of promising discussions with prospective funding partners, aimed at bringing more committed capital to the platform, and believe that we will be well positioned once the loan market returns to a more traditional state of pricing equilibrium.”
Though Datta said Upstart moved in a “promising direction this past quarter,” he also acknowledged there’s “much work to be done to restore our business to the scale and growth that we aspire to.”
Read: Toast’s stock heats up after earnings as company hits a milestone
The company reported a second-quarter net loss of $28.2 million, or 34 cents a share, compared with a loss of $29.9 million, or 36 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. On an adjusted basis, Upstart earned 6 cents a share, whereas analysts tracked by FactSet were modeling a 7-cent loss per share.
Revenue fell to $136 million from $228.2 million. The FactSet consensus was for $135.2 million. The company generated $144 million in fee revenue, compared with the $131 million that analysts were expecting.
Upstart’s lending partners originated 109,447 loans across its platform in the second quarter, totaling $1.2 billion. Conversion on rate requests was 9%, down from 13% in the same period a year prior.
Though Upstart beat on adjusted earnings, it “signaled that macro pressure is not set to abate in Q3, with credit performance and the funding markets still buffeted by a challenging economic environment,” Barclays analyst Ramsey El-Assal wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. “With a new Q3 guide that came in below Street estimates, we expect shares to be down in tomorrow’s tape.”
Shares of Upstart have rocketed 291% so far in 2023, through Tuesday’s close, as the S&P 500
SPX
has risen 17%.
The Food and Drug Administration late Friday approved the first-ever pill that can be taken at home for postpartum depression.
The medication, called zuranolone, and jointly developed by pharmaceutical companies Biogen Inc.
BIIB,
and Sage Therapeutics
SAGE,
is taken daily for two weeks, the FDA said in its release.
In a pair of clinical trials involving women who experienced severe depression after having a baby, the drug improved symptoms including anxiety, trouble sleeping, loss of pleasure, low energy, guilt or social withdrawal as soon as three days after the first pill.
“Postpartum depression is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition in which women experience sadness, guilt, worthlessness — even, in severe cases, thoughts of harming themselves or their child,” said Tiffany Farchione, M.D., director of the Division of Psychiatry in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
”And, because postpartum depression can disrupt the maternal-infant bond, it can also have consequences for the child’s physical and emotional development,” she said.
Women who are breastfeeding or had mild or moderate depression weren’t included in the trials.
Until now, the only available option for this condition has been an intravenous injection that the FDA approved in 2019. It requires patients to stay in a hospital for two-and-a-half days.
Postpartum depression affects one in eight new mothers in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers suggest the actual rate may be higher and that half of such cases go undiagnosed.
Research finds that postpartum depression is more intense and lasts longer than the typical worries, sadness or tiredness that many women experience after giving birth. The condition can make it harder for mothers to bond with their babies and may increase the likelihood of developmental delays in infants.
Drug overdoses and suicides are leading causes of maternal death in the U.S., contributing to nearly one in four pregnancy-related deaths, according to the CDC.
Zuranolone stimulates a brain receptor called GABA that slows down the brain and helps control anxiety and stress. The drug, through trials, is thought to calm women suffering from postpartum depression enough to allow them to rest, which also improves symptoms.
Shares of Biogen are up 23% over the past year, and Sage has lost 14%, while the S&P 500
SPX
is up 8% over the same time.
Russia fined Apple and Wikipedia on Thursday for not deleting what it says is fake news about Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
A Russian court fined Apple 400,000 rubles — around €4,000 — for failing to remove material on Apple Podcasts it considered to be false, reported Russian state-run news agency TASS.
Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor had reportedly notified the company that it needed to remove information that was “aimed at destabilizing the political situation” in the country.
The same court also later fined Wikipedia 3 million rubles — around €29,000 — for the same offense.
This is the first time Apple has been fined for this offense, Russian media reported, while Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has been fined numerous times. In April, the company was reportedly fined for the seventh time for not deleting what it said was “banned content” related to the Russian military.
Apple paused the sale of all its products in Russia and limited Apple Pay services in 2022, in response to the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
POLITICO has contacted both Apple and Wikipedia for comment.
Claudia Chiappa
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Ford Motor Co. late Thursday reported quarterly profit that was about three times higher than last year’s and a 12% increase in its revenue, moving it to raise its outlook for 2023, but the beat-and-raise was overshadowed by a delay in EV production goals.
Ford stock
F,
initially rose about 3% after the positive results, with Chief Executive Jim Farley telling investors that the company’s goal is to match an “exciting, long-term vision” of itself with “boringly predictable execution quarter after quarter, year after year.”
Share gains started to fade, however, as investors zeroed in on the shifted production goal, and ended the extended session down 1.2%. Ford said it expects to reach a production rate of 600,000 EVs in 2024; when it reported first-quarter earnings in May it said it would reach that milestone by the end of this year.
The company’s EV production growth has been “disappointing,” CFRA analyst Garrett Nelson said Thursday.
Nelson said he was “cautious” on Ford in light of the stock’s run so far this year and the possibility that “higher-for-longer” interest rates would weigh on sales after a strong first half of the year. Looming labor negotiations with the United Auto Workers are another reason for caution, he said.
Ford earned $1.9 billion, or 47 cents a share, in the second quarter, nearly three times higher than in the year-ago period and a 4% margin, the company said. Adjusted for one-time items, the automaker earned 72 cents a share.
Revenue rose 12% to $45 billion, Ford said, and its cash and liquidity are “persistently strong.” The revenue increase included a 39% rise for Ford’s EV business.
Analysts polled by FactSet expected Ford to report adjusted earnings of 54 cents a share on sales of $43.17 billion.
Supply-chain “disruptions” have persisted but are now easing, and Ford has “more work to do” to streamline its systems, reduce costs and improve quality, Farley said in the call.
EV adoption is still in the upswing, Farley said, but the number of companies entering the market is growing even at the higher end of the market. With its varied offers, though, Ford is building EV “loyalists” to its brand, Farley said.
Ford lifted its EBIT guidance range for the full year to between $11 billion and $12 billion. It also adjusted upward its expectations for 2023 adjusted free cash flow to between $6.5 billion and $7 billion. Capital expenditures would be between $8 billion and $9 billion, the automaker said.
The guidance presumes “headwinds” including “global economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures, higher industrywide customer incentives and continued EV pricing pressure,” Ford said, as well as increased warranty costs and costs associated with union contract negotiations.
On the positive side, “tailwinds” accounted for in the guidance included “improved” supply chain, higher industry volumes, upside from the its all-new Ford Super Duty truck and lower commodity costs, Ford said.
Ford earlier this month surprised Wall Street by cutting the price of its sought-after electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning.
Ford earnings close the cycle for major U.S. automakers, as Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
reported second-quarter earnings last week and General Motors Co.
GM,
earlier this week.
Shares of Ford have gained 19% so far this year, matching the advance for the S&P 500 index
SPX,
The stock holds an outperformance, however, in the past three months, up 19% to the S&P’s 11%.
See also: GM, Hyundai and other car manufacturers to build 30,000 fast EV chargers in challenge to Tesla
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BRUSSELS — It’s officially August, which means the last Eurocrats are heading out of town to their favorite summer retreats, and most of Brussels is “out of office.”
But a few commissioners have the questionable honor of being on the summer roster, staying behind as the person on duty should an emergency arise. Former Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker introduced the system in 2017 to show that the EU never sleeps, and his successor Ursula von der Leyen continued it. A rota is set up at the start of each five-year Commission term and covers all holiday periods, with each commissioner holding down the fort for 13 days. Von der Leyen and top EU diplomat Josep Borrell are exempt.
The official job description for the commissioners on duty recalls the theme of “Designated Survivor.” The assigned commissioner will be in charge if there’s an unexpected crisis and will maintain the “continuity of the Commission’s core tasks,” a Commission spokesperson said, adding that these include “coordination, decision-making processes and communication.”
But in practice, not much decision-making goes on in Brussels in August. “They’ll be sitting in the Berlaymont watching the rain from their windows,” said a Commission official who was granted anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius (who at 32 is the youngest member of von der Leyen’s team) holds the keys to the Berlaymont this week following agriculture chief Janusz Wojciechowski, who was on duty last week.
Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides will have to tear herself away from the beaches of Cyprus from August 5-11; then home affairs boss Ylva Johansson takes the reins from August 12-18; and finally Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli will wrap up the roster for August 19-27.
Commissioners also rely on a core of officials from the EU executive’s key units, including the secretariat-general, legal service, communication department and spokesperson’s service. Everyone else is expected back in town for the next College of Commissioners meeting, scheduled for September 6.
Despite Brussels’ best efforts to preserve the sanctity of summer holidays, sometimes the outside world does come knocking — as the commissioners know all too well. Wojciechowski, Dalli and Johansson were on duty during the summer of 2021, when the Belarus migration emergency and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan set EU capitals into motion.
Gregorio Sorgi and Jakob Hanke Vela
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Banc of California Inc.’s proposed agreement to acquire PacWest Bancorp. helped send regional-bank stocks considerably higher on Wednesday. But even after a two-day increase of 12% for its shares, the acquiring bank remains the favorite name among analysts covering regional players in the U.S.
The merger agreement was announced after the market close on Tuesday, but the rumor mill had already sent Banc of California’s
BANC,
stock up by 11% that day. Then on Wednesday, shares of PacWest Bancorp
PACW,
shot up 27% to $9.76, which was above the estimated takeout value of $9.60 a share when the deal was announced. The merger deal, if approved by both banks’ shareholders, will also include a $400 million investment from Warburg Pincus LLC and Centerbridge Partners L.P.
A screen of regional banks by rating and stock-price target is below.
Deal coverage:
With PacWest closing above the initial per-share deal valuation, it is fair to wonder whether or not its shareholders will vote to approve the agreement. In a note to clients on Wednesday, Wedbush analyst David Chiaverini called Banc of California’s offer “fair, but not overwhelmingly attractive,” and wrote that PacWest was “a likely seller before the mini banking crisis occurred in March.”
While Chiaverini went on to predict the deal’s approval by PacWest’s shareholders, he added that he “wouldn’t be surprised if there were some dissent among a minority of shareholders [which could] possibly open the door to the potential emergence of a third-party bid.”
More broadly, Odeon Capital analyst Dick Bove wrote to clients on Wednesday that the merger deal, along with increasing involvement of private-equity firms in lending businesses, the expected enhancement of regulatory capital requirements for banks and other factors could lead to more consolidation among smaller banks.
He went on to write that we might be entering a period for the banking industry similar to the 1990s, “when rules were being changed and acquisitions were rampant,” which “created new investment opportunities.”
The SPDR S&P Regional Banking exchange-traded fund
KRE,
rose 5% on Wednesday but was still down 17% for 2023, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
SPY,
was up 19%, both excluding dividends.
KRE holds 139 stocks, with 98 covered by at least five analysts working for brokerage firms polled by FactSet. Out of those 98 banks, 45 have majority “buy” ratings among the analysts. Among those 45, here are the 10 with the most upside potential over the next 12 months, implied by consensus price targets:
| Bank | Ticker | City | Total assets ($mil) | July 26 price change | Share buy ratings | July 26 closing price | Consensus price target | Implied 12-month upside potential |
| Banc of California Inc. |
BANC, |
Santa Ana, Calif. | $9,370 | 1% | 71% | $14.71 | $18.58 | 26% |
| Enterprise Financial Services Corp. |
EFSC, |
Clayton, Mo. | $13,871 | 2% | 80% | $41.75 | $49.25 | 18% |
| First Merchants Corp. |
FRME, |
Muncie, Ind. | $17,968 | 4% | 100% | $32.38 | $37.33 | 15% |
| Amerant Bancorp Inc. Class A |
AMTB, |
Coral Gables, Fla. | $9,520 | 3% | 60% | $20.26 | $23.30 | 15% |
| Old Second Bancorp Inc. |
OSBC, |
Aurora, Ill. | $5,884 | 3% | 100% | $16.15 | $18.50 | 15% |
| F.N.B. Corp. |
FNB, |
Pittsburgh | $44,778 | 3% | 75% | $12.91 | $14.50 | 12% |
| Columbia Banking System Inc. |
COLB, |
Tacoma, Wash. | $53,592 | 4% | 55% | $22.63 | $25.32 | 12% |
| Wintrust Financial Corp. |
WTFC, |
Rosemont, Ill. | $54,286 | 3% | 92% | $86.05 | $95.33 | 11% |
| Synovus Financial Corp. |
SNV, |
Columbus, Ga. | $60,656 | 6% | 75% | $34.06 | $37.73 | 11% |
| Home BancShares Inc. |
HOMB, |
Conway, Ark. | $22,126 | 5% | 57% | $24.09 | $26.67 | 11% |
| Source: FactSet | ||||||||
Click on the tickers for more about each bank.
Any stock screen can only be a starting point when considering whether or not to invest. If you see any stocks of interest here, you should do your own research to form your own opinion.
Don’t miss: How you can profit in the stock market from an incredible financial-services trend over the next 20 years
PacWest Bancorp’s stock jumped more than 38% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the company said it had agreed to be acquired by Banc of California Inc. in an all-stock merger backed by two private-equity firms. The merger comes as PacWest looks to put a rocky period behind it.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, PacWest
PACW,
stockholders will receive 0.6569 of a share of Banc of California common stock for each share of PacWest common stock. Based on closing prices on Tuesday, the deal values PacWest at $9.60 a share, a premium over its closing price of $7.67 a share on Tuesday.
Warburg Pincus and Centerbridge will provide $400 million in equity.
PacWest stockholders will own 47% of the outstanding shares of the combined company, while the private-equity investors will own 19% and Banc of California shareholders will have 34%.
PacWest said that it is the company being acquired and that it will change its name to Banc of California. PacWest said it will be the “accounting acquirer,” with fair-value accounting applied to Banc of California’s balance sheet at closing.
Banc of California CEO Jared Wolff will retain the same role at the combined company.
The combined company will repay about $13 billion in wholesale borrowings to be funded by the sale of assets, “which are fully marked as a result of the transaction, and excess cash,” the companies said.
The merged company is currently projecting about $36.1 billion in assets, $25.3 billion in total loans, $30.5 billion in total deposits and more than 70 branches in California.
John Eggemeyer, the independent lead director at PacWest, will be chair of the board of the combined company following the merger.
The board of directors of the combined company will consist of 12 directors: eight from the existing Banc of California board, three from the existing PacWest board and one from the pair of private-equity firms led by Warburg Pincus.
Citing sources close to the deal, the Wall Street Journal had reported earlier that a tie-up was imminent.
In regular trading Tuesday, PacWest’s stock ended 27% down; trading was halted for volatility following the report of the deal.
Banc of California’s stock rose 11% but was later halted for news pending as well. The stock rose more than 9% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
At last check, PacWest’s market capitalization was about $1.2 billion, while Banc of California’s was about $764 million. Combined, the business would be worth about $2 billion.
PacWest’s big share-price move on Tuesday marks the latest in a volatile few months for the Beverly Hills, Calif., bank, which was founded in 1999.
Investors had speculated that the bank could be the next to fail after Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed in March and First Republic Bank was taken over by JPMorgan.
Also on Tuesday, PacWest said it lost $207.4 million, or $1.75 a share, in its second quarter, as it got a hit from items related to loan sales and restructuring of its lending unit Civic. The loss contrasts with earnings of $122 million, or $1.02 a share, in the year-ago period.
Analysts polled by FactSet expected the bank to report a loss of 58 cents a share in the quarter.
PacWest disclosed in recent months that it was exploring strategic alternatives while it sold off parts of its business to raise cash to strengthen its balance sheet. It sold a loan portfolio to Ares Management Corp.
ARES,
in a move to generate $2 billion.
It also sold a portfolio of loans to Kennedy-Wilson Holdings Inc.
KW,
which then sold part of the portfolio to Canada’s Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd.
FFH,
Also read: PacWest sparks regional-bank rally after unveiling plan to sell loans worth $2.6 billion
In May, PacWest sold its real-estate lending portfolio to Roc360.
Also in May, PacWest’s stock dropped more than 20% after it said it had lost 9.5% of its deposits amid market volatility.
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PARIS — Liberté. Egalité. But mostly: sécurité.
It all started with Napoléon Bonaparte. Over two centuries, France cobbled together a surveillance apparatus capable of intercepting private communications; keeping traffic and localization data for up to a year; storing people’s fingerprints; and monitoring most of the territory with cameras.
This system, which has faced pushback from digital rights organizations and United Nations experts, will get its spotlight moment at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. In July next year, France will deploy large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supported video surveillance cameras — a first in Europe. (Not included in the plan: facial recognition.)
Last month, the French parliament approved a controversial government plan to allow investigators to track suspected criminals in real-time via access to their devices’ geolocation, camera and microphone. Paris also lobbied in Brussels to be allowed to spy on reporters in the name of national security.
Helping France down the path of mass surveillance: a historically strong and centralized state; a powerful law enforcement community; political discourse increasingly focused on law and order; and the terrorist attacks of the 2010s. In the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda for so-called strategic autonomy, French defense and security giants, as well as innovative tech startups, have also gotten a boost to help them compete globally with American, Israeli and Chinese companies.
“Whenever there’s a security issue, the first reflex is surveillance and repression. There’s no attempt in either words or deeds to address it with a more social angle,” said Alouette, an activist at French digital rights NGO La Quadrature du Net who uses a pseudonym to protect her identity.
As surveillance and security laws have piled up in recent decades, advocates have lined up on opposite sides. Supporters argue law enforcement and intelligence agencies need such powers to fight terrorism and crime. Algorithmic video surveillance would have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack, claimed Sacha Houlié, a prominent lawmaker from Macron’s Renaissance party.
Opponents point to the laws’ effect on civil liberties and fear France is morphing into a dystopian society. In June, the watchdog in charge of monitoring intelligence services said in a harsh report that French legislation is not compliant with the European Court of Human Rights’ case law, especially when it comes to intelligence-sharing between French and foreign agencies.
“We’re in a polarized debate with good guys and bad guys, where if you oppose mass surveillance, you’re on the bad guys’ side,” said Estelle Massé, Europe legislative manager and global data protection lead at digital rights NGO Access Now.
Both the 9/11 and the Paris 2015 terror attacks have accelerated mass surveillance in France, but the country’s tradition of snooping, monitoring and data collection dates way back — to Napoléon Bonaparte in the early 1800s.
“Historically, France has been at the forefront of these issues, in terms of police files and records. During the First Empire, France’s highly centralized government was determined to square the entire territory,” said Olivier Aïm, a lecturer at Sorbonne Université Celsa who authored a book on surveillance theories. Before electronic devices, paper was the main tool of control because identification documents were used to monitor travels, he explained.
The French emperor revived the Paris Police Prefecture — which exists to this day — and tasked law enforcement with new powers to keep political opponents in check.
In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon, who worked for the Paris Police Prefecture, introduced a new way of identifying suspects and criminals using biometric features — the forerunner of facial recognition. The Bertillon method would then be emulated across the world.
Between 1870 and 1940, under the Third Republic, the police kept a massive file — dubbed the National Security’s Central File — with information about 600,000 people, including anarchists and communists, certain foreigners, criminals, and people who requested identification documents.
After World War II ended, a bruised France moved away from hard-line security discourse until the 1970s. And in the early days of the 21st century, the 9/11 attacks in the United States marked a turning point, ushering in a steady stream of controversial surveillance laws — under both left- and right-wing governments. In the name of national security, lawmakers started giving intelligence services and law enforcement unprecedented powers to snoop on citizens, with limited judiciary oversight.
“Surveillance covers a history of security, a history of the police, a history of intelligence,” Aïm said. “Security issues have intensified with the fight against terrorism, the organization of major events and globalization.”
In the 1970s, before the era of omnipresent smartphones, French public opinion initially pushed back against using technology to monitor citizens.
In 1974, as ministries started using computers, Le Monde revealed a plan to merge all citizens’ files into a single computerized database, a project known as SAFARI.
The project, abandoned amid the resulting scandal, led lawmakers to adopt robust data protection legislation — creating the country’s privacy regulator CNIL. France then became one of the few European countries with rules to protect civil liberties in the computer age.
However, the mass spread of technology — and more specifically video surveillance cameras in the 1990s — allowed politicians and local officials to come up with new, alluring promises: security in exchange for surveillance tech.
In 2020, there were about 90,000 video surveillance cameras powered by the police and the gendarmerie in France. The state helps local officials finance them via a dedicated public fund. After France’s violent riots in early July — which also saw Macron float social media bans during periods of unrest — Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced he would swiftly allocate €20 million to repair broken video surveillance devices.
In parallel, the rise of tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Apple in everyday life has led to so-called surveillance capitalism. And for French policymakers, U.S. tech giants’ data collection has over the years become an argument to explain why the state, too, should be allowed to gather people’s personal information.
“We give Californian startups our fingerprints, face identification, or access to our privacy from our living room via connected speakers, and we would refuse to let the state protect us in the public space?” Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier from the conservative Les Républicains said in June to justify the use of facial recognition on the street.
Resistance to mass surveillance does exist in France at the local level — especially against the development of so-called safe cities. Digital rights NGOs can boast a few wins: In the south of France, La Quadrature du Net scored a victory in an administrative court, blocking plans to test facial recognition in high schools.
At the national level, however, security laws are too powerful a force, despite a few ongoing cases before the European Court of Human Rights. For example, France has de facto ignored multiple rulings from the EU top court that deemed mass data retention illegal.
Often at the center of France’s push for more state surveillance: the interior minister. This influential office, whose constituency includes the law enforcement and intelligence community, is described as a “stepping stone” toward the premiership — or even the presidency.
“Interior ministers are often powerful, well-known and hyper-present in the media. Each new minister pushes for new reforms, new powers, leading to the construction of a never-ending security tower,” said Access Now’s Massé.
Under Socialist François Hollande, Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve both went from interior minister to prime minister in, respectively, 2014 and 2016. Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac’s interior minister from 2005 to 2007, was then elected president. All shepherded new surveillance laws under their tenure.
In the past year, Darmanin has been instrumental in pushing for the use of police drones, even going against the CNIL.
For politicians, even at the local level, there is little to gain electorally by arguing against expanded snooping and the monitoring of public space. “Many on the left, especially in complicated cities, feel obliged to go along, fearing accusations of being soft [on crime],” said Noémie Levain, a legal and political analyst at La Quadrature du Net. “The political cost of reversing a security law is too high,” she added.
It’s also the case that there’s often little pushback from the public. In March, on the same day a handful of French MPs voted to allow AI-powered video surveillance cameras at the 2024 Paris Olympics, about 1 million people took to the streets to protest against … Macron’s pension reform.
For politicians, France’s industrial competitiveness is also at stake. The country is home to defense giants that dabble in both the military and civilian sectors, such as Thalès and Safran. Meanwhile, Idemia specializes in biometrics and identification.
“What’s accelerating legislation is also a global industrial and geopolitical context: Surveillance technologies are a Trojan horse for artificial intelligence,” said Caroline Lequesne Rot, an associate professor at the Côte d’Azur University, adding that French policymakers are worried about foreign rivals. “Europe is caught between the stranglehold of China and the U.S. The idea is to give our companies access to markets and allow them to train.”
In 2019, then-Digital Minister Cédric O told Le Monde that experimenting with facial recognition was needed to allow French companies to improve their technology.
For the video surveillance industry — which made €1.6 billion in France in 2020 — the 2024 Paris Olympics will be a golden opportunity to test their products and services and showcase what they can do in terms of AI-powered surveillance.
XXII — an AI startup with funding from the armed forces ministry and at least some political backing — has already hinted it would be ready to secure the mega sports event.
“If we don’t encourage the development of French and European solutions, we run the risk of later becoming dependent on software developed by foreign powers,” wrote lawmakers Philippe Latombe, from Macron’s allied party Modem, and Philippe Gosselin, from Les Républicains, in a parliamentary report on video surveillance released in April.
“When it comes to artificial intelligence, losing control means undermining our sovereignty,” they added.
Laura Kayali
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American Express
delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue and all-time high earnings per share, but the group remains cautious on debt struggles among cardholders as it continued to build its reserves for credit losses.
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.
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