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Taliban Sign Multibillion-Dollar Afghan Mining Deals

Afghanistan’s Taliban announced Thursday they have signed more than $6.5 billion worth of mining contracts with local and foreign companies from China, Iran, Turkey and Britain.

Shahabuddin Dilawar, the Taliban minister of mines and petroleum, said the seven contracts cover the extraction and processing of gold, copper, iron, lead and zinc in four Afghan provinces — Takhar, Ghor, Herat and Logar.

The nationally televised signing ceremony occurred as the de facto Afghan authorities marked the second anniversary of the withdrawal of all U.S.-led NATO troops from the country after nearly 20 years of war with the then-insurgent Taliban.

Dilawar said the seven contracts signed Thursday “will collectively bring a $6.557 billion investment” and create thousands of jobs in Afghanistan.

The minister said that an agreement awarded to a Chinese company for gold extraction in Takhar would bring the Taliban government a 65% share of the earnings over five years.

Dilawar said other contracts involving Turkish, Iranian and British investments for mining and processing iron ore in Herat would earn the government a 13% share over 30 years. “It will eventually turn Afghanistan into an exporter of iron,” he said.

Skeptics question the viability of the contracts, citing international economic sanctions imposed on the country after the Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021.

“The Afghan financial and banking sector is almost paralyzed and dysfunctional. Hence, no financial transactions or valuations,” Tamim Asey, a former official with the Afghan ministry of mines and petroleum, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He argued that the Afghan ministry “lacks technical-legal-police capacity” to manage and oversee such mining contracts.

“The legal-policy framework for the mining sector is not only vague but almost nonexistent. The regime doesn’t even have a constitution, let alone mining legal framework,” Asey said.

Earlier this year, a Chinese firm signed an oil extraction contract with the Taliban administration. Beijing lately has also shown interest in investing in lithium mining in Afghanistan.

The landlocked South Asian country reportedly has more than $1 trillion worth of precious minerals, including deposits of highly sought-after lithium used in rechargeable batteries.

The Taliban have stabilized Afghanistan’s economy and increased trade with neighboring and other countries, according to regional officials and independent monitors.

The World Bank said in its report last month that “the year-on-year inflation has been negative” for the past two months in Afghanistan.

“The supply of goods has been sufficient, but demand is low. Over 50% of Afghan households struggle to maintain their livelihoods and consumption,” the report said. It added that the local currency, the Afghani, appreciated against major trading currencies in the first seven months of 2023.

But the Taliban’s men-only government in Kabul remains under fire from the world because of its restrictions on women’s access to work and education.

Since seizing power from a U.S.-backed Afghan government on Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban have imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the conflict-torn nation.

Edicts from reclusive Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada primarily set the policy guidelines for his government.

Akhundzada has banned girls from attending schools past the sixth grade and most women from working for the government and nongovernmental aid groups in a country where two-thirds of the population needs humanitarian assistance. The Taliban have closed thousands of women-run salons nationwide. Women are barred from visiting public parks and gyms and undertaking road trips without a male guardian.

The treatment of Afghan women has deterred foreign governments from recognizing the Taliban administration in Kabul, known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The last American soldier departed Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, ending the longest war in U.S. history.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden defended his troop exit decision in a statement marking the second anniversary of ending the Afghan war.

“We have demonstrated that we do not need a permanent troop presence on the ground in harm’s way to take action against terrorists and those who wish to do us harm,” Biden said.

The president referred to the July 30, 2022, drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in his home in downtown Kabul.
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US Commerce Secretary Wraps Up China Visit With Commitments for More Talks

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo wrapped up a four-day visit to China on Wednesday in the latest move by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to stabilize commercial and trade links between the world’s two largest economies.

In public remarks Wednesday, Raimondo said that she is hopeful about holding regular and direct talks with Chinese officials, but that she is “very clear-eyed” and does not expect every issue with Beijing will be resolved “overnight.”

Earlier in her visit, she said American companies have told her that China’s unlevel playing field and unpredictable regulatory environment with steep penalties have made the country “uninvestible.”

Raimondo said the two sides planned to hold meetings with technical experts to talk about disputes over protecting trade secrets as well as sharing information about export controls.

“We are not returning to the days when we had dialogue for dialogue’s sake, but shutting down communication and de-coupling services is neither in our economic or national security goals,” Raimondo told reporters during a phone briefing.

While the United States and China maintain more than $700 billion in annual trade, escalating tensions in recent years have made it more challenging for U.S. firms to operate in China.

“I did mention that my own emails had been hacked,” she said, “and I mentioned that as an example of an action that erodes trust at a time that we are trying to stabilize the relationship and increase channels of communication.”

U.S. officials have said Washington is not seeking a “de-coupling” with the Beijing government, but focusing on “de-risking.” Biden signed an executive order earlier this month to restrict U.S. investments in some sensitive and high-tech industries in China, including in semiconductors, microelectronics, quantum computing and certain artificial intelligence capabilities.

In Beijing, Chinese officials said the United States was engaging in “de-coupling” under the guise of “de-risking.” China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Aug. 10 that the U.S. decision “seriously disrupts the security of global industrial and supply chains.”

The two countries have traded other restrictions in recent months.

In May, China’s Cyberspace Administration banned its corporations from buying memory chips from U.S.-based Micron Technology Inc., as the U.S. works with its allies to ensure that advanced semiconductor manufacturing stays out of the reach of the Chinese industry.

In March, Chinese officials closed the Beijing offices of the U.S. due diligence company Mintz Group and detained five of its employees, accusing the firm of doing “unapproved statistical work.” With 18 offices worldwide, Mintz Group specializes in background checking, fact gathering and internal investigations.

Raimondo visited Shanghai Disneyland and a Boeing facility, as well as New York University’s campus in Shanghai on Wednesday, after meetings with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Tuesday.  She held meetings with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao on Monday.

Although Raimondo agreed to launch an information exchange on export control enforcement and a new working group on commercial issues, Congressional critics are skeptical about Washington’s ability to work constructively with Beijing.

Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, accused the Biden administration of being “at best naive” in starting a working group with China.

McCaul said it is a dangerous move because the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, “steals U.S. intellectual property and hacks the emails of senior government officials, including Secretary Raimondo. The administration must stop treating the CCP as anything other than an adversary who will stop at nothing to harm our national security and spread its malign authoritarianism around the globe.”

Raimondo’s visit follows recent trips by other senior U.S. officials, including CIA Director Bill Burns in May and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, as well as separate trips by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and U.S. Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry in July.
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Chinese Demand for Steel Not as Dire as Data Suggests, Brazil Miner Says

Brazilian mining company Vale SA sees declining steel demand in China, the world’s largest producer, but the situation is not as dire as some indicators suggest, the company’s vice president of iron ore solutions told Reuters.

Vale is “cautiously optimistic” about the largest global consumer of iron ore, as China’s economy has proved resilient, despite uncertainties surrounding possible stimulus measures to achieve growth targets, the Vale executive, Marcello Spinelli, said.

“We can see that there is demand [for steel]. It’s declining, but not to the extent that some isolated indicators show to some analysts,” Spinelli said. “When you reconcile it with the property numbers [in the construction sector], there is this divergence.”

Vale is heavily dependent on sales to China, even as it works to diversify with its base metals unit. Last year, China bought 190 million metric tons (290 million tons) of iron ore and pellets from Vale, representing around 63% of total sales in those segments, according to company data.

Spinelli acknowledged significant distrust among analysts about China’s building sector, following liquidity problems for some real estate developers. However, he said many analysts overlook that nondeveloper entities are actively constructing homes at elevated levels, partially offsetting the decline.

He also said low iron ore and steel inventories offer support for the market.

Iron ore inventories at China’s ports are at their lowest levels in almost three years, around 118 million metric tons (130 million tons), according to data from consultancy SteelHome. Prices are still holding above $110 per metric ton, but far from this year’s peak near $130 and last year’s high of $150.

“There’s a lot of volatility because nobody knows what the central government is going to decide [about stimulus]. We have to wait a bit,” Spinelli said.

“We’re cautious optimists, that’s what we are. There is a stabilization of the economy at a very high level, and with some adjustment, yes, [growth] will slow moderately over the next five, 10 years, but in a way that is already foreseen,” he said.
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FBI-Led Operation Dismantles Notorious Qakbot Malware

A global operation led by the FBI has dismantled one of the most notorious cybercrime tools used to launch ransomware attacks and steal sensitive data.

U.S. law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday that the FBI and its international partners had disrupted the Qakbot infrastructure and seized nearly $9 million in cryptocurrency in illicit profits.

Qakbot, also known as Qbot, was a sophisticated botnet and malware that infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, allowing cybercriminals to access and control them remotely.

“The Qakbot malicious code is being deleted from victim computers, preventing it from doing any more harm,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement.

Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and Don Alway, the FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, announced the operation at a press conference in Los Angeles.

Estrada called the operation “the largest U.S.-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure” used by cybercriminals to carry out ransomware, financial fraud, and other cyber-enabled crimes.

“Qakbot was the botnet of choice for some of the most infamous ransomware gangs, but we have now taken it out,” Estrada said.

Law enforcement agencies from France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Latvia took part in the operation, code-named Duck Hunt.

“These actions will prevent an untold number of cyberattacks at all levels, from the compromised personal computer to a catastrophic attack on our critical infrastructure,” Alway said.

As part of the operation, the FBI was able to gain access to the Qakbot infrastructure and identify more than 700,000 infected computers around the world, including more than 200,000 in the United States.

To disrupt the botnet, the FBI first seized the Qakbot servers and command and control system. Agents then rerouted the Qakbot traffic to servers controlled by the FBI. That in turn instructed users of infected computers to download a file created by law enforcement that would uninstall Qakbot malware.
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Meta Fights Sprawling Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ Operation

Meta on Tuesday said it purged thousands of Facebook accounts that were part of a widespread online Chinese spam operation trying to covertly boost China and criticize the West.

The campaign, which became known as “Spamouflage,” was active across more than 50 platforms and forums including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter, according to a Meta threat report.

“We assess that it’s the largest, though unsuccessful, and most prolific covert influence operation that we know of in the world today,” said Meta Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo.

“And we’ve been able to link Spamouflage to individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement.”

More than 7,700 Facebook accounts along with 15 Instagram accounts were jettisoned in what Meta described as the biggest ever single takedown action at the tech giant’s platforms.

“For the first time we’ve been able to tie these many clusters together to confirm that they all go to one operation,” Nimmo said.

The network typically posted praise for China and its Xinjiang province and criticisms of the United States, Western foreign policies, and critics of the Chinese government including journalists and researchers, the Meta report says.

The operation originated in China and its targets included Taiwan, the United States, Australia, Britain, Japan, and global Chinese-speaking audiences. 

Facebook or Instagram accounts or pages identified as part of the “large and prolific covert influence operation” were taken down for violating Meta rules against coordinated deceptive behavior on its platforms.

Meta’s team said the network seemed to garner scant engagement, with viewer comments tending to point out bogus claims.

Clusters of fake accounts were run from various parts of China, with the cadence of activity strongly suggesting groups working from an office with daily job schedules, according to Meta.

‘Doppelganger’ campaign

Some tactics used in China were similar to those of a Russian online deception network exposed in 2019, which suggested the operations might be learning from one another, according to Nimmo.

Meta’s threat report also provided analysis of the Russian influence campaign called Doppelganger, which was first disrupted by the security team a year ago.

The core of the operation was to mimic websites of mainstream news outlets in Europe and post bogus stories about Russia’s war on Ukraine, then try to spread them online, said Meta head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher.  

Companies involved in the campaign were recently sanctioned by the European Union.

Meta said Germany, France and Ukraine remained the most targeted countries overall, but that the operation had added the United States and Israel to its list of targets.

This was done by spoofing the domains of major news outlets, including The Washington Post and Fox News.

Gleicher described Doppelganger, which is intended to weaken support of Ukraine, as the largest and most aggressively persistent influence operation from Russia that Meta has seen since 2017.
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Glitch Halts Toyota Factories in Japan

Toyota said Tuesday it has been hit by a technical glitch forcing it to suspend production at all 14 factories in Japan.

The world’s biggest automaker gave no further details on the stoppage, which began Tuesday morning, but said it did not appear to be caused by a cyberattack.

The company said the glitch prevented its system from processing orders for parts, resulting in a suspension of a dozen factories or 25 production lines on Tuesday morning.

The company later decided to halt the afternoon shift of the two other operational factories, suspending all of Toyota’s domestic plants, or 28 production lines.

“We do not believe the problem was caused by a cyberattack,” the company said in a statement to AFP.

“We will continue to investigate the cause and to restore the system as soon as possible.”

The incident affected only Japanese factories, Toyota said.

It was not immediately clear exactly when normal production might resume. 

The news briefly sent Toyota’s stocks into the red in the morning session before recovering.

Last year, Toyota had to suspend all of its domestic factories after a subsidiary was hit by a cyberattack.

The company is one of the biggest in Japan, and its production activities have an outsized impact on the country’s economy.

Toyota is famous for its “just-in-time” production system of providing only small deliveries of necessary parts and other items at various steps of the assembly process.

This practice minimizes costs while improving efficiency and is studied by other manufacturers and at business schools around the world, but also comes with risks.

The auto titan retained its global top-selling auto crown for the third year in a row in 2022 and aims to earn an annual net profit of $17.6 billion this fiscal year.

Major automakers are enjoying a robust surge of global demand after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed manufacturing activities.

Severe shortages of semiconductors had limited production capacity for a host of goods ranging from cars to smartphones.

Toyota has said chip supplies were improving and that it had raised product prices, while it worked with suppliers to bring production back to normal. 

However, the company was still experiencing delays in the deliveries of new vehicles to customers, it added.
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ChatGPT Turns to Business as Popularity Wanes

OpenAI on Monday said it was launching a business version of ChatGPT as its artificial intelligence sensation grapples with declining usership nine months after its historic debut.

ChatGPT Enterprise will offer business customers a premium version of the bot, with “enterprise grade” security and privacy enhancements from previous versions, OpenAI said in a blog post.

The question of data security has become an important one for OpenAI, with major companies, including Apple, Amazon and Samsung, blocking employees from using ChatGPT out of fear that sensitive information will be divulged.

“Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data,” OpenAI said.

The ChatGPT business version resembles Bing Chat Enterprise, an offering by Microsoft, which uses the same OpenAI technology through a major partnership.

ChatGPT Enterprise will be powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s highest performing model, much like ChatGPT Plus, the company’s subscription version for individuals, but business customers will have special perks, including better speed.

“We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive,” the company said.

It added that companies including Carlyle, The Estée Lauder Companies and PwC were already early adopters of ChatGPT Enterprise.

The release came as ChatGPT is struggling to maintain the excitement that made it the world’s fastest downloaded app in the weeks after its release.

That distinction was taken over last month by Threads, the Twitter rival from Facebook-owner Meta.

According to analytics company Similarweb, ChatGPT traffic dropped by nearly 10% in June and again in July, falls that could be attributed to school summer break, it said.

Similarweb estimates that roughly one-quarter of ChatGPT’s users worldwide fall in the 18- to 24-year-old demographic.

OpenAI is also facing pushback from news publishers and other platforms — including X, formerly known as Twitter, and Reddit — that are now blocking OpenAI web crawlers from mining their data for AI model training.

A pair of studies by pollster Pew Research Center released on Monday also pointed to doubts about AI and ChatGPT in particular.

Two-thirds of the U.S.-based respondents who had heard of ChatGPT say their main concern is that the government will not go far enough in regulating its use.

The research also found that the use of ChatGPT for learning and work tasks has ticked up from 12% of those who had heard of ChatGPT in March to 16% in July.

Pew also reported that 52% of Americans say they feel more concerned than excited about the increased use of artificial intelligence.
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New Study: Don’t Ask Alexa or Siri if You Need Info on Lifesaving CPR

Ask Alexa or Siri about the weather. But if you want to save someone’s life? Call 911 for that.

Voice assistants often fall flat when asked how to perform CPR, according to a study published Monday.

Researchers asked voice assistants eight questions that a bystander might pose in a cardiac arrest emergency. In response, the voice assistants said:

  • “Hmm, I don’t know that one.”

  • “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

  • “Words fail me.”

  • “Here’s an answer … that I translated: The Indian Penal Code.”

Only nine of 32 responses suggested calling emergency services for help — an important step recommended by the American Heart Association. Some voice assistants sent users to web pages that explained CPR, but only 12% of the 32 responses included verbal instructions.

Verbal instructions are important because immediate action can save a life, said study co-author Dr. Adam Landman, chief information officer at Mass General Brigham in Boston.

Chest compressions — pushing down hard and fast on the victim’s chest — work best with two hands.

“You can’t really be glued to a phone if you’re trying to provide CPR,” Landman said.

For the study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers tested Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana in February. They asked questions such as “How do I perform CPR?” and “What do you do if someone does not have a pulse?”

Not surprisingly, better questions yielded better responses. But when the prompt was simply “CPR,” the voice assistants misfired. One played news from a public radio station. Another gave information about a movie titled “CPR.” A third gave the address of a local CPR training business.

ChatGPT from OpenAI, the free web-based chatbot, performed better on the test, providing more helpful information. A Microsoft spokesperson said the new Bing Chat, which uses OpenAI’s technology, will first direct users to call 911 and then give basic steps when asked how to perform CPR. Microsoft is phasing out support for its Cortana virtual assistant on most platforms.

Standard CPR instructions are needed across all voice assistant devices, Landman said, suggesting that the tech industry should join with medical experts to make sure common phrases activate helpful CPR instructions, including advice to call 911 or other emergency phone numbers.

A Google spokesperson said the company recognizes the importance of collaborating with the medical community and is “always working to get better.” An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on Alexa’s performance on the CPR test, and an Apple spokesperson did not provide answers to AP’s questions about how Siri performed.
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Cybercrime Set to Threaten Canada’s Security, Prosperity, Says Spy Agency

Organized cybercrime is set to pose a threat to Canada’s national security and economic prosperity over the next two years, a national intelligence agency said on Monday.

In a report released Monday, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) identified Russia and Iran as cybercrime safe havens where criminals can operate against Western targets.

Ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure such as hospitals and pipelines can be particularly profitable, the report said. Cyber criminals continue to show resilience and an ability to innovate their business model, it said.

“Organized cybercrime will very likely pose a threat to Canada’s national security and economic prosperity over the next two years,” said CSE, which is the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency.

“Ransomware is almost certainly the most disruptive form of cybercrime facing Canada because it is pervasive and can have a serious impact on an organization’s ability to function,” it said.

Official data show that in 2022, there were 70,878 reports of cyber fraud in Canada with over C$530 million ($390 million) stolen.

But Chris Lynam, director general of Canada’s National Cybercrime Coordination Centre, said very few crimes were reported and the real amount stolen last year could easily be C$5 billion or more.

“Every sector is being targeted along with all types of businesses as well … folks really have to make sure that they’re taking this seriously,” he told a briefing.

Russian intelligence services and law enforcement almost certainly maintain relationships with cyber criminals and allow them to operate with near impunity as long as they focus on targets outside the former Soviet Union, CSE said.

Moscow has consistently denied that it carries out or supports hacking operations.

Tehran likely tolerates cybercrime activities by Iran-based cyber criminals that align with the state’s strategic and ideological interests, CSE added.
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Tesla Braces for Its First Trial Involving Autopilot Fatality

Tesla Inc TSLA.O is set to defend itself for the first time at trial against allegations that failure of its Autopilot driver assistant feature led to death, in what will likely be a major test of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s assertions about the technology.

Self-driving capability is central to Tesla’s financial future, according to Musk, whose own reputation as an engineering leader is being challenged with allegations by plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits that he personally leads the group behind technology that failed. Wins by Tesla could raise confidence and sales for the software, which costs up to $15,000 per vehicle.

Tesla faces two trials in quick succession, with more to follow.

The first, scheduled for mid-September in a California state court, is a civil lawsuit containing allegations that the Autopilot system caused owner Micah Lee’s Model 3 to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour, strike a palm tree and burst into flames, all in the span of seconds.

The 2019 crash, which has not been previously reported, killed Lee and seriously injured his two passengers, including a then-8-year old boy who was disemboweled. The lawsuit, filed against Tesla by the passengers and Lee’s estate, accuses Tesla of knowing that Autopilot and other safety systems were defective when it sold the car. 

Musk ‘de facto leader’ of autopilot team

The second trial, set for early October in a Florida state court, arose out of a 2019 crash north of Miami where owner Stephen Banner’s Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had pulled into the road, shearing off the Tesla’s roof and killing Banner. Autopilot failed to brake, steer or do anything to avoid the collision, according to the lawsuit filed by Banner’s wife.

Tesla denied liability for both accidents, blamed driver error and said Autopilot is safe when monitored by humans. Tesla said in court documents that drivers must pay attention to the road and keep their hands on the steering wheel.

“There are no self-driving cars on the road today,” the company said.

The civil proceedings will likely reveal new evidence about what Musk and other company officials knew about Autopilot’s capabilities – and any possible deficiencies. Banner’s attorneys, for instance, argue in a pretrial court filing that internal emails show Musk is the Autopilot team’s “de facto leader.”

Tesla and Musk did not respond to Reuters’ emailed questions for this article, but Musk has made no secret of his involvement in self-driving software engineering, often tweeting about his test-driving of a Tesla equipped with “Full Self-Driving” software. He has for years promised that Tesla would achieve self-driving capability only to miss his own targets.

Tesla won a bellwether trial in Los Angeles in April with a strategy of saying that it tells drivers that its technology requires human monitoring, despite the “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” names. The case was about an accident where a Model S swerved into the curb and injured its driver, and jurors told Reuters after the verdict that they believed Tesla warned drivers about its system and driver distraction was to blame. 

Stakes higher for Tesla

The stakes for Tesla are much higher in the September and October trials, the first of a series related to Autopilot this year and next, because people died.

“If Tesla backs up a lot of wins in these cases, I think they’re going to get more favorable settlements in other cases,” said Matthew Wansley, a former General Counsel of nuTonomy, an automated driving startup and Associate Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law.

On the other hand, “a big loss for Tesla – especially with a big damages award” could “dramatically shape the narrative going forward,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

In court filings, the company has argued that Lee consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel and that it is not clear whether Autopilot was on at the time of crash.

Jonathan Michaels, an attorney for the plaintiffs, declined to comment on Tesla’s specific arguments, but said “we’re fully aware of Tesla’s false claims including their shameful attempts to blame the victims for their known defective autopilot system.”

In the Florida case, Banner’s attorneys also filed a motion arguing punitive damages were warranted. The attorneys have deposed several Tesla executives and received internal documents from the company that they said show Musk and engineers were aware of, and did not fix, shortcomings.

In one deposition, former executive Christopher Moore testified there are limitations to Autopilot, saying it “is not designed to detect every possible hazard or every possible obstacle or vehicle that could be on the road,” according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

In 2016, a few months after a fatal accident where a Tesla crashed into a semi-trailer truck, Musk told reporters that the automaker was updating Autopilot with improved radar sensors that likely would have prevented the fatality.

But Adam (Nicklas) Gustafsson, a Tesla Autopilot systems engineer who investigated both accidents in Florida, said that in the almost three years between that 2016 crash and Banner’s accident, no changes were made to Autopilot’s systems to account for cross-traffic, according to court documents submitted by plaintiff lawyers.

The lawyers tried to blame the lack of change on Musk. “Elon Musk has acknowledged problems with the Tesla autopilot system not working properly,” according to plaintiffs’ documents. Former Autopilot engineer Richard Baverstock, who was also deposed, stated that “almost everything” he did at Tesla was done at the request of “Elon,” according to the documents.

Tesla filed an emergency motion in court late on Wednesday seeking to keep deposition transcripts of its employees and other documents secret. Banner’s attorney, Lake “Trey” Lytal III, said he would oppose the motion.

“The great thing about our judicial system is Billion Dollar Corporations can only keep secrets for so long,” he wrote in a text message.
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Support Grows for Sustainable Development, a ‘Bioeconomy,’ in the Amazon

If all goes according to plan, in a few weeks people will be sipping a shake that Marcelo Salazar has been developing for three years, made from the Amazon jungle’s cornucopia.

His company Mazo Mana Forest Food has partnered with communities that live from the forest and gather the Brazil nuts, cocoa beans, acai, mushrooms, fruits and other ingredients that go into the drinks. They have received some backing from a business incubator based in Manaus that focuses on sustainable forest businesses, to counter an economy based on logging and ranching.

“To turn the game around, I think it takes a new generation of ventures that combine different business models,” Salazar said.

Some hope sustainable ventures like this will be part of a new “bioeconomy,” a buzzword at the Amazon Summit in Belem in early August, where policymakers voiced eagerness to protect the rainforest and provide a livelihood for tens of millions of rainforest residents.

But beyond general support for the notion, there was little consensus about what exactly a bioeconomy should look like. Salazar attended and spoke on a panel organized by Brazil’s environment ministry titled “The challenge of building an Amazon bioeconomy.”

The idea is not new. It is the latest term for sustainable livelihood, or sustainable development or the green economy. Small to mid-size examples of it exist across the Amazon.

Besides the Brazil nuts and acai harvesters, people are making chocolate from native cocoa. A sustainable fishery for one of the world’s largest freshwater fish has given river communities an alternative to logging. Production of sneakers for fashionable Parisians has restored hope for a community of rubber tappers who labored on the verge of obsolescence with the advent of synthetic rubber.

“The challenge is scale,” Para state Gov. Helder Barbalho said in an interview on the sidelines of the summit. His state is believed to be the only one in Brazil that has an actual bioeconomy plan. Para is Brazil’s top producer of acai, yet its economy is far more dependent on iron ore exports to China. So much land in Para has been converted to pasture for an estimated 27 million cattle that it emits more greenhouse gases than any Amazon country besides Brazil.

But when it comes to larger sustainable enterprises, there are few success stories. The brightest example has been cosmetics company Natura, which two decades ago launched a product line using ingredients from traditional Amazon communities and family farms.

Developing these relationships took patience and research, said Priscila Matta, sustainability senior manager at Natura.

When the company started, local people were felling ucuuba trees to make brooms. They tripled their income by leaving the trees standing and selling the seeds to Natura. That is just one among dozens of Natura’s bioingredients, helping the company contribute to the conservation of more than 2 million hectares (about 7,700 square miles) of forest.

About 8% of what Natura spent on raw inputs last year went for Amazon bioingredients. They come from 41 communities – home to 9,120 families – who in 2022 received about $9 million, some of it direct payments to keep the forest standing.

The bioeconomy pitch can also veer toward pie-in-the-sky. Speaking to reporters at the Amazon Summit, Brazil’s planning and budget minister Simone Tebet said that driving a vibrant economy while keeping the forest standing “is our dream, but dreams exist to be realized.”

“Banks are interested,” Tebet said. “Imagine big industries without smokestacks, industries for the good, taking root in Amazon states … learning from the Indigenous people from whom everything comes.”

Para state’s bioeconomy plan strikes a similarly utopian tone: “The Amazon Forest is like an enormous library of knowledge and wisdom that has yet to be discovered,” it reads.

The plan gets into specifics, naming 43 forest-compatible products that could be exported, including acai, cocoa, cassava, pepper, fish species and essential oils for cosmetics.

Para has started building a complex to serve as a bioeconomy incubator to house researchers and start-ups, scheduled for completion before the state capital of Belem hosts the 2025 global climate conference. Para’s public bank, Banpara, has launched a subsidized lending program for small farmers who want to develop agroforestry.

“We can balance the scenario of a living forest and people being cared for, being seen,” Barbalho said in the interview.

Neighboring Amazonas state is developing a bioeconomy plan with the financial support of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The federal government is also starting to move beyond mere words. This month, Brazil’s economy minister, Fernando Haddad, announced an Ecological Transformation Plan. It proposes using a climate fund to back sustainability projects and setting up rules for Brazil’s carbon market.

But some earlier efforts reveal pitfalls.

A state condom factory in the Amazon city of Xapuri that opened in 2008 during President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s previous term was supposed to provide a market for hundreds of rubber-tapper families living in the region where the late environmental leader Chico Mendes was killed. The factory closed 10 years later, after federal subsidies came to an end. Locals resorted to cattle ranching and today the region ranks high for deforestation.

Cocoa beans are another cautionary tale. The trees can be a way to let forest grow back where it has been cut down but its appeal in places like the Ivory Coast and Ghana has meant massive deforestation to make way for the more lucrative trees.

Salazar, the CEO of Mazo Mana, the forest shake company, views his enterprise as both social-minded and market-savvy. It reserves nearly 10% equity for its partner community associations and, to the extent possible, production takes place locally to add value and develop expertise.

Salazar thinks the sustainable companies that succeed and grow big will be those with a mission to solve the Amazon’s problems, and they will drive a transformation toward an economy that recognizes the value of the forest.
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Thailand’s Droughts Could Damage Economy, Increase Poverty, Experts Say

Record-breaking temperatures, reduced rainfall and changes in the natural climate are set to damage Thailand’s economy and increase poverty, experts say.

Thailand is suffering from droughts caused by the El Niño weather event, which is drying up land for the growth of key crops in the country’s farmlands.

Rainfall in Thailand has been below average this year, with a 25% reduction nationwide up until July, according to the Thai Meteorological Department. It has forced the government to advise some farmers to switch to other crops that use less water if planting has not already begun.

“It was less rain in central Thailand for the past couple of months.

As [the World Meteorological Organization] said that July was the hottest July in history. But the hottest month of the year [for Thailand] is April,” said Chaowat Siwapornchai, a meteorologist in Bangkok.

“As a long-term trend, we continue facing rising temperatures combined this year with El Niño], which is developing the situation we are facing,” he added.

The La Niña phenomenon is the natural cooling of the water in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. It occurs every few years yet affects weather changes worldwide. The El Niño pattern does the opposite, developing warm water, that brings drier weather and reduces rainfall, contributing to extreme hot weather in the Asia region. Extreme heat has also been common this year in India, China, Laos, Pakistan and Vietnam.

In a report published last month, the World Meteorological Organization said that El Niño conditions have developed in the Pacific for the first time in seven years, adding that there is a 90% probability El Niño will continue until the end of 2023. The report says there is almost a certainty the next five years will be the warmest on record, with one of the five years in that period being the warmest ever recorded.

But for Thailand, the Southeast Asian country has already experienced record-breaking temperatures earlier this year.

In April, the city of Tak recorded a highest-ever temperature of about 45.5 degrees Celsius. The same month saw Thailand’s heat index – which determines what the temperature feels like because of humidity – measure at a record 53.9 Celsius in the Chonburi province and the popular tourist island of Phuket.

The scorching temperatures also have forced Thai households to use more electricity, such as in air conditioning homes, causing power consumption to soar to record levels in April and May.

And last week, in the Korat area, water levels in the Lam Takhong Dam dropped to the point that a historic part of Thailand reappeared. The Thai-America Road, built and used during the Vietnam War and used by the U.S Air Force as a route to its base in Udon Thani, has re-emerged. The road is usually submerged under the dam waters, which have dropped to less than half of capacity, the Khaosod English newspaper reported.

Kiatanantha Lounkaew, an economic lecturer at the Thammasat University in Bangkok, says the droughts from El Niño will harm the economic livelihood of the Thai people.

“The key crops that could be affected are rice, corn, and sugar cane. The household incomes of those who cultivate these crops are low. Thus, this effect could result in persistent poverty. Impoverished households will not have sufficient resources to mitigate the effects of the drought,” he told VOA via email.

Data shows about 40% of Thai farmers live below the poverty line.

“Since these produce items are the main staple for Thai people and are used to feed farm animals, rising prices would be felt throughout the economy. As shown by past empirical evidence, there is a clear correlation between drought spells and inflation, especially food inflation. Those with low incomes will be more vulnerable to the effects, as about 50% to 70% of their monthly earnings are spent on food.”

Agriculture accounts for up to 9% of Thailand’s GDP. The country is the world’s second-largest rice exporter, and the third largest exporter of raw sugar. The industry employs about a third of Thailand’s labor force, including millions of farmers.

Following an economic decline during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second largest economy, has seen a rebound and 3.5% GDP growth was forecast for 2023.

Earlier in August, the Bank of Thailand’s policy committee warned the economy could shrink because of weather concerns and political uncertainty, Reuters reported.

Kiatanantha says the droughts could hamper Thailand’s agricultural competitiveness.

“In the long run, it will affect the competitiveness of Thailand’s agricultural sector. Agricultural households facing volatile income will find it hard to remain competitive, as doing so requires further investment to improve their yield and the quality of their produce.

“Additionally, such a prospect would ‘push’ people who are able to do so into other economic sectors. Changing the workforce composition will exert further downward pressure on the agricultural sector, ensuring regional and sectoral inequality,” Kiatanantha said.
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Trump, Biden Policies Shifted Trade from China, Study Shows

U.S. trade has shifted away from China due to policies enacted by the Biden and Trump administrations, but U.S. reliance on China-linked supply chains has not necessarily been reduced and consumers have faced higher costs, according to new research presented Saturday at a Federal Reserve economic symposium.

Despite deglobalization fears after the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, overall trade “has held steady at just under 60% of world (gross domestic product) rather than gone into freefall,” Laura Alfaro, an economist at Harvard Business School, and Davin Chor, an associate professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, concluded in their paper, which was presented at the annual gathering of central bankers and economists in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

But U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, recently enacted industrial policies, and the pandemic, do seem to have touched off a “‘great reallocation’ in supply chain activity: Direct US sourcing from China has decreased,” from 21.6% of U.S. imports as of 2016 to 16.5% last year, Alfaro and Chor wrote.

What’s less certain is what that means, with the authors saying the shift from China is raising prices for consumers without clearly providing offsetting benefits in the form of, for example, improved manufacturing efficiency in the U.S.

It is not even certain that the decline in China’s U.S. import share represents a true delinking, they said.

Vietnam and Mexico, for example, appear to have captured much of the reallocated trade, the authors said, based on an analysis of goods import and export patterns, while an increase in U.S. purchases of less processed goods from abroad was “indicative of some reshoring of production stages.”

And among companies, they said, “concerns are being voiced over the wisdom of sprawling supply chains that can expose firms and countries to the risk of disruptions,” from events like the pandemic or severe weather, or policy shocks like tariffs.

Yet in the background, the researchers noted that China had “stepped up” its trade and investment activity with Vietnam and Mexico, as well as other countries.

“The U.S. could well remain indirectly connected to China through its trade and global value chain links with these third-party countries,” they argued.

Prices for goods from some countries, moreover, were beginning to rise.

“The recent policy restrictions to shift sourcing patterns or even to encourage substitution toward domestic inputs are poised to add to wage and cost pressures in the U.S.,” the research found, a pointed conclusion as the Fed tries to lower inflation by slowing the U.S. economy. 
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Protests in Syria’s Southern Druze Enclave Appear To Be Gaining Momentum

A crowd of what appeared to be several hundred protesters in the southern Druze city of Suwaida, Syria, chanted slogans targeting the Syrian government Saturday on the seventh day of a growing movement calling for economic and political reform.

An economic crisis across Syria has hit the general population hard, making daily life extremely difficult and sparking protests that seemingly are causing ripples to several other parts of the country.

Activists in Suwaida said they are not trying to overthrow the government but to prompt leaders to try harder to improve the economic situation, citing the deteriorating exchange rate of the Syrian pound, the lifting of fuel subsidies, and price hikes on bread and other food.

One protest leader, Marwan Hamzeh, told Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV that the government has “not appeared to make any use of its security forces to crack down on the latest protests,” adding that it’s “unclear why.” Some observers, however, say the government is concerned about provoking a wave of violence like that which sparked the much larger protest movements of 2011.

Although Arab media broadcast video of protesters in several parts of the country calling for the “fall of the regime,” Joshua Landis, who heads the Middle East Studies department at the University of Oklahoma, told VOA that “most of the protesters are calling for more government activity in the economic life of the country, rather than a collapse of the government.”

“It’s an odd situation because the Syrians who are demonstrating all want more government services, not less,” Landis said. “They want more electricity, they want subsidies, they want better schooling, they want the currency to be stabilized. They are desperate. They want higher salaries.”

Landis noted that Druze leaders criticized the protesters that burned down their province’s town hall in a previous protest movement last December, telling them they were “destroying the infrastructure needed to run their province rather than harming the government.”

Activist Hamzeh said that “90% of all government offices that collect revenue for land sales, vehicle registration and other taxes have been closed during the week of protests,” and that “most people have stopped paying their taxes to the government.”

One middle-aged protester, looking tired but enthusiastic, told Druze social media it is “time for the government to clean up its act and govern fairly, rather than favoring certain sectors of the population.”

He said that protesters were calling for freedom, justice, dignity and humanity, in addition to demanding the law be applied fairly to everyone.

The Saudi-owned Asharq al Awsat newspaper reported Friday that the protest movement has “spread to the Bedouin tribes in the south of Syria” from their initial communal origin among the Druze in Suwaida, “making them more of a national movement.”

Several Kurdish leaders, including Ilham Ahmed, have expressed support, insisting that “peaceful protests are the correct path to achieve democratic change.”

The Arab League normalized ties with the Syrian government in May, but those ties remain shaky. Investment in Syrian infrastructure has been slow to materialize, partly because of ongoing U.S. economic sanctions on the Assad government.
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New Crew for Space Station Launches With Astronauts From 4 Countries

Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.

They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.

A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.

It was the first U.S. launch in which every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.

“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit. Added NASA’s Ken Bowersox, space operations mission chief: “Boy, what a beautiful launch … and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see.”

Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”

The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.

Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.

Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.

Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.

Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.

One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring with them: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.

SpaceX’s first-stage booster returned to Cape Canaveral several minutes after liftoff, an extra treat for the thousands of spectators gathered in the early-morning darkness.

Liftoff was delayed a day for additional data reviews of valves in the capsule’s life-support system. The countdown almost was halted again Saturday after a tiny fuel leak cropped up in the capsule’s thruster system. SpaceX engineers managed to verify the leak would pose no threat with barely two minutes remaining on the clock, said Benji Reed, the company’s senior director for human spaceflight.

Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.

SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
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Thailand Threatens Facebook Shutdown Over Scam Ads

Thailand said this week it is preparing to sue Facebook in a move that could see the platform shut down nationwide over scammers allegedly exploiting the social networking site to cheat local users out of tens of millions of dollars a year.

The country’s minister of digital economy and society, Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, announced the planned lawsuit after a ministry meeting on Monday.

Ministry spokesperson Wetang Phuangsup told VOA on Thursday the case would be filed in one to two weeks, possibly by the end of the month.

“We are in the stage of gathering information, gathering evidence, and we will file to the court to issue the final judgment on how to deal with Facebook since they are a part of the scamming,” he said.

Some of the most common scams, Wetang said, involve paid advertisements on the site urging people to invest in fake companies, often using the logo of Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission or sham endorsements from local celebrities to lure them in.

Of the roughly 16,000 online scamming complaints filed in Thailand last year, he said, 70% to 80% involved Facebook and cost users upwards of $100 million.

“We believe that Facebook has a responsibility,” Wetang said. “Facebook is taking money from advertising a lot, and basically even taking money from Thai society as a whole. Facebook should be more responsible to society, should screen the advertising. … We believe that by doing so it would definitely decrease the investment scam in Thailand on the Facebook.”

Wetang said the ministry had been urging the company to do more to screen and vet paid ads for the past year and was now turning to the courts to possibly shut the site down as a last resort.

“If you are supporting the crime, especially on the internet, you will be liable [for] the crime, and by the law, it’s possible the court can issue the shutdown of Facebook,” he said. “By law, we can ask the court to suspend or punish all the people who support the crime, of course with evidence.”

Neither Facebook nor its parent company, Meta, replied to VOA’s repeated requests for comment or interviews.

The Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association that counts Meta among its members, acknowledged that online scamming was a growing problem across the region. Other members include Google, Amazon, Apple and X, formerly known as Twitter.

“While it’s getting challenging from the scale perspective, it’s also getting complicated and sophisticated because of the technology that has been used when it comes to application on the platforms but also how this technology can be misused,” the coalition’s secretariat, Sarthak Luthra, told VOA.

Luthra would not speak for Meta or address Thailand’s specific complaints against Facebook but said tech companies were taking steps to thwart scammers, including teaching users how to spot them.

Last year, for example, Meta launched a #StayingSafeOnline campaign in Thailand “to raise awareness about some of the most common kinds of online scams, including helping people understand the different kinds of scamsters, their tricks, and tips to stay safe online,” according to the company’s website.

Luthra said tech companies have been facing a growing number of criminal and civil penalties for their content across the region while urging governments to give them more room to regulate themselves and to apply “safe harbor” rules that shield the companies from legal liability for content created by users.

Shutting down any platform on a nationwide scale is not the answer, he said, and he warned of the unintended consequences.

“It really, first, impacts the ease of doing business and also the perception around the digital economy development of a country, so shutting down a platform is of course not a solution to a challenge in this case,” Luthra said.

“A government really needs to think of how do we promote online safety while maintaining an open internet environment,” he said. “From the economic perspective, it does impact investment sentiment, business sentiment and the ability to operate in that particular country.”

At a recent company event in Thailand, Meta said there were some 65 million Facebook users in the country, which also has the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia.

Shutting down the platform would have a “huge” impact on the vast majority of people using the site to make money legally and honestly, said Sutawan Chanprasert, executive director of DigitalReach, a digital rights group based in Thailand.

She said a shutdown would cut off a vital channel for free speech in Thailand and an important tool for independent local media outlets.

“Some of them rely predominantly on Facebook because it’s the most popular social media platform in Thailand, so they publish their content on Facebook in order to reach out to audiences because they don’t have a means to set up … a full-fledged media channel,” she said.

Taking all that away to foil scammers would be “too extreme,” Sutawan said, suggesting the government focus instead on strengthening the country’s cybercrime and security laws and enforcing them.

Ministry spokesperson Wetang said the government was aware of the collateral damage a shutdown could cause but had to risk a lawsuit that could bring it on.

“Definitely we are really concerned about the people on Facebook,” he said. “But since this is a crime that already happened, the evidence is so clear … it is impossible that we don’t take action.”
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Meta Faces Backlash Over Canada News Block as Wildfires Rage

Meta is being accused of endangering lives by blocking news links in Canada at a crucial moment, when thousands have fled their homes and are desperate for wildfire updates that once would have been shared widely on Facebook.

The situation “is dangerous,” said Kelsey Worth, 35, one of nearly 20,000 residents of Yellowknife and thousands more in small towns ordered to evacuate the Northwest Territories as wildfires advanced.

She described to AFP how “insanely difficult” it has been for herself and other evacuees to find verifiable information about the fires blazing across the near-Arctic territory and other parts of Canada.

“Nobody’s able to know what’s true or not,” she said.

“And when you’re in an emergency situation, time is of the essence,” she said, explaining that many Canadians until now have relied on social media for news.

Meta on Aug. 1 started blocking the distribution of news links and articles on its Facebook and Instagram platforms in response to a recent law requiring digital giants to pay publishers for news content.

The company has been in a virtual showdown with Ottawa over the bill passed in June, but which only takes effect next year.

Building on similar legislation introduced in Australia, the bill aims to support a struggling Canadian news sector that has seen a flight of advertising dollars and hundreds of publications closed in the last decade.

It requires companies like Meta and Google to make fair commercial deals with Canadian outlets for the news and information — estimated in a report to parliament to be worth US$250 million per year — that is shared on their platforms or face binding arbitration.

But Meta has said the bill is flawed and insisted that news outlets share content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms to attract readers, benefiting them and not the Silicon Valley firm.

Profits over safety

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week assailed Meta, telling reporters it was “inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of (safety)… and keeping Canadians informed about things like wildfires.”

Almost 80% of all online advertising revenues in Canada go to Meta and Google, which has expressed its own reservations about the new law.

Ollie Williams, director of Cabin Radio in the far north, called Meta’s move to block news sharing “stupid and dangerous.”

He suggested in an interview with AFP that “Meta could lift the ban temporarily in the interests of preservation of life and suffer no financial penalty because the legislation has not taken effect yet.”

Nicolas Servel, over at Radio Taiga, a French-language station in Yellowknife, noted that some had found ways of circumventing Meta’s block.

They “found other ways to share” information, he said, such as taking screen shots of news articles and sharing them from personal — rather than corporate — social media accounts.

‘Life and death’

Several large newspapers in Canada such as The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have launched campaigns to try to attract readers directly to their sites.

But for many smaller news outlets, workarounds have proven challenging as social media platforms have become entrenched.

Public broadcaster CBC in a letter this week pressed Meta to reverse course.

“Time is of the essence,” wrote CBC president Catherine Tait. “I urge you to consider taking the much-needed humanitarian action and immediately lift your ban on vital Canadian news and information to communities dealing with this wildfire emergency.”

As more than 1,000 wildfires burn across Canada, she said, “The need for reliable, trusted, and up-to-date information can literally be the difference between life and death.”

Meta — which did not respond to AFP requests for comment — rejected CBC’s suggestion. Instead, it urged Canadians to use the “Safety Check” function on Facebook to let others know if they are safe or not.

Patrick White, a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, said Meta has shown itself to be a “bad corporate citizen.”

“It’s a matter of public safety,” he said, adding that he remains optimistic Ottawa will eventually reach a deal with Meta and other digital giants that addresses their concerns.
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Fed’s Powell: Higher Rates May Be Needed, Will Move ‘Carefully’

The Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates further to cool still-too-high inflation, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday, promising to move with care at upcoming meetings as he noted progress made on easing price pressures as well as risks from the surprising strength of the U.S. economy.

While not as hawkish a message as he delivered this time a year ago at the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, Powell’s remarks still delivered a punch, with investors now seeing one more rate hike by year-end more likely than not.

“We will proceed carefully as we decide whether to tighten further or, instead, to hold the policy rate constant and await further data,” Powell said in a keynote address. “It is the Fed’s job to bring inflation down to our 2% goal, and we will do so.”

The Fed has raised rates by 5.25 percentage points since March 2022, and inflation by the Fed’s preferred gauge has moved down to 3.3% from its peak of 7% last summer. Although the decline was a “welcome development,” Powell said, inflation “remains too high.”

“We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective,” he said.

But with “signs that the economy may not be cooling as expected,” including “especially robust” consumer spending and a “possibly rebounding” housing sector, Powell said that above-trend growth “could put further progress on inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy.”

His remarks showed the Fed wrestling with conflicting signals from an economy where inflation has by some readings slowed a lot without much cost to the economy — a good outcome, but one that has raised the possibility that Fed policy is not restrictive enough to complete the job.

‘Finger on the trigger’

At day’s end, futures contracts tied to the Fed policy rate were pricing in just less than a 20% chance of a rate hike in September, but a better-than-50% chance of the policy rate ending the year in a 5.5%-5.75% range, a quarter-point higher than the current range. Fed policymakers will also meet in November and December.

The yield on the two-year Treasury note ended the day at 5.08%, its highest close since June 2007.

“My main takeaway is that when it comes to another rate hike, the chair still very much has his finger on the trigger, even if it’s a bit less itchy than it was last year,” said Inflation Insights’ Omair Sharif.

It is difficult, Powell said, to know with precision how high above the “neutral” rate of interest the current benchmark rate stands, and therefore hard to assess just how much restraint the Fed is imposing on growth and inflation.

Powell repeated what has become a standard Fed diagnosis of inflation progress — with a pandemic-era jump in goods inflation easing and a decline in housing inflation “in the pipeline,” but concern that continued consumer spending on a broad array of services and a tight labor market may make a return to 2% difficult.

Recent declines in measures of underlying inflation, stripped of food and energy prices, “were welcome, but two months of good data are only the beginning of what it will take to build confidence that inflation is moving down sustainably,” Powell said.

Powell ended his speech on Friday with nearly the same line he finished with last year at Jackson Hole: “We will keep at it until the job is done.”
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Q&A: How Do Europe’s Sweeping Rules for Tech Giants Work?

Google, Facebook, TikTok and other Big Tech companies operating in Europe must comply with one of the most far-reaching efforts to clean up what people see online.

The European Union’s groundbreaking new digital rules took effect Friday for the biggest platforms. The Digital Services Act is part of a suite of tech-focused regulations crafted by the 27-nation bloc, long a global leader in cracking down on tech giants.

The DSA is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal or violates a platform’s terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia. It also looks to protect Europeans’ fundamental rights like privacy and free speech.

Some online platforms, which could face billions in fines if they don’t comply, already have made changes.

Here’s a look at what has changed:

Which platforms are affected? 

So far, 19. They include eight social media platforms: Facebook; TikTok; X, formerly known as Twitter; YouTube; Instagram; LinkedIn; Pinterest; and Snapchat.

There are five online marketplaces: Amazon, Booking.com, China’s Alibaba and AliExpress, and Germany’s Zalando.

Mobile app stores Google Play and Apple’s App Store are subject to the new rules, as are Google’s Search and Microsoft’s Bing search engines.

Google Maps and Wikipedia round out the list. 

What about other online companies?

The EU’s list is based on numbers submitted by the platforms. Those with 45 million or more users — or 10% of the EU’s population — face the DSA’s highest level of regulation. 

Brussels insiders, however, have pointed to some notable omissions, like eBay, Airbnb, Netflix and even PornHub. The list isn’t definitive, and it’s possible other platforms may be added later. 

Any business providing digital services to Europeans will eventually have to comply with the DSA. They will face fewer obligations than the biggest platforms, however, and have another six months before they must fall in line.

What’s changing?

Platforms have rolled out new ways for European users to flag illegal online content and dodgy products, which companies will be obligated to take down quickly. 

The DSA “will have a significant impact on the experiences Europeans have when they open their phones or fire up their laptops,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs, said in a blog post. 

Facebook’s and Instagram’s existing tools to report content will be easier to access. Amazon opened a new channel for reporting suspect goods. 

TikTok gave users an extra option for flagging videos, such as for hate speech and harassment, or frauds and scams, which will be reviewed by an additional team of experts, according to the app from Chinese parent company ByteDance. 

Google is offering more “visibility” into content moderation decisions and different ways for users to contact the company. It didn’t offer specifics. Under the DSA, Google and other platforms have to provide more information behind why posts are taken down. 

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat also are giving people the option to turn off automated systems that recommend videos and posts based on their profiles. Such systems have been blamed for leading social media users to increasingly extreme posts. 

The DSA also prohibits targeting vulnerable categories of people, including children, with ads. Platforms like Snapchat and TikTok will stop allowing teen users to be targeted by ads based on their online activities. 

Google will provide more information about targeted ads shown to people in the EU and give researchers more access to data on how its products work. 

Is there pushback?

Zalando, a German online fashion retailer, has filed a legal challenge over its inclusion on the DSA’s list of the largest online platforms, arguing it’s being treated unfairly. 

Nevertheless, Zalando is launching content-flagging systems for its website, even though there’s little risk of illegal material showing up among its highly curated collection of clothes, bags and shoes. 

Amazon has filed a similar case with a top EU court.

What if companies don’t follow the rules?

Officials have warned tech companies that violations could bring fines worth up to 6% of their global revenue — which could amount to billions — or even a ban from the EU. 

“The real test begins now,” said European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees digital policy. He vowed to “thoroughly enforce the DSA and fully use our new powers to investigate and sanction platforms where warranted.” 

But don’t expect penalties to come right away for individual breaches, such as failing to take down a specific video promoting hate speech. 

Instead, the DSA is more about whether tech companies have the right processes in place to reduce the harm that their algorithm-based recommendation systems can inflict on users. Essentially, they’ll have to let the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm and top digital enforcer, look under the hood to see how their algorithms work. 

EU officials “are concerned with user behavior on the one hand, like bullying and spreading illegal content, but they’re also concerned about the way that platforms work and how they contribute to the negative effects,” said Sally Broughton Micova, an associate professor at the University of East Anglia. 

That includes looking at how the platforms work with digital advertising systems, which could be used to profile users for harmful material like disinformation, or how their livestreaming systems function, which could be used to instantly spread terrorist content, said Broughton Micova, who’s also academic co-director at the Centre on Regulation in Europe, a Brussels think tank. 

Big platforms have to identify and assess potential systemic risks and whether they’re doing enough to reduce them. These assessments are due by the end of August and then they will be independently audited. 

The audits are expected to be the main tool to verify compliance — though the EU’s plan has faced criticism for lacking details that leave it unclear how the process will work. 

What about the rest of the world? 

Europe’s changes could have global impact. Wikipedia is tweaking some policies and modifying its terms of use to provide more information on “problematic users and content.” Those alterations won’t be limited to Europe and “will be implemented globally,” said the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the community-powered encyclopedia. 

Snapchat said its new reporting and appeal process for flagging illegal content or accounts that break its rules will be rolled out first in the EU and then globally in the coming months. 

It’s going to be hard for tech companies to limit DSA-related changes, said Broughton Micova, adding that digital ad networks aren’t isolated to Europe and that social media influencers can have global reach.
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US Sues SpaceX for Discriminating Against Refugees, Asylum-Seekers

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Elon Musk’s SpaceX for refusing to hire refugees and asylum-seekers at the rocket company.

In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, the Justice Department said SpaceX routinely discriminated against these job applicants between 2018 and 2022, in violation of U.S. immigration laws.

The lawsuit says that Musk and other SpaceX officials falsely claimed the company was allowed to hire only U.S. citizens and permanent residents due to export control laws that regulate the transfer of sensitive technology.

“U.S. law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are advanced weapons technology,” Musk wrote in a June 16, 2020, tweet cited in the lawsuit.

In fact, U.S. export control laws impose no such restrictions, according to the Justice Department.

Those laws limit the transfer of sensitive technology to foreign entities, but they do not prevent high-tech companies such as SpaceX from hiring job applicants who have been granted refugee or asylum status in the U.S. (Foreign nationals, however, need a special permit.)

“Under these laws, companies like SpaceX can hire asylees and refugees for the same positions they would hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents,” the Department said in a statement. “And once hired, asylees and refugees can access export-controlled information and materials without additional government approval, just like U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.”

The company did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the lawsuit and whether it had changed its hiring policy.

Recruiters discouraged refugees, say investigators

The Justice Department’s civil rights division launched an investigation into SpaceX in 2020 after learning about the company’s alleged discriminatory hiring practices.

The inquiry discovered that SpaceX “failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement.

“Our investigation also found that SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company,” Clarke said.

According to data SpaceX provided to the Justice Department, out of more than 10,000 hires between September 2018 and May 2022, SpaceX hired only one person described as an asylee on his application.

The company hired the applicant about four months after the Justice Department notified it about its investigation, according to the lawsuit.

No refugees were hired during this period.

“Put differently, SpaceX’s own hiring records show that SpaceX repeatedly rejected applicants who identified as asylees or refugees because it believed that they were ineligible to be hired due to” export regulations, the lawsuit says.

On one occasion, a recruiter turned down an asylee “who had more than nine years of relevant engineering experience and had graduated from Georgia Tech University,” the lawsuit says.

Suit seeks penalties, change

SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit asks an administrative judge to order SpaceX to “cease and desist” its alleged hiring practices and seeks civil penalties and policy changes.
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