“Today, the Commission has opened non-compliance investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) into Alphabet’s rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple’s rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta’s ‘pay or consent model,’” the European Commission said in a statement.

The first two probes focus on Alphabet and Apple and relate to so-called anti-steering rules. Under the DMA, tech firms are not allowed to block businesses from telling their users about cheaper options for their products or about subscriptions outside of an app store.

“The way that Apple and Alphabet’s implemented the DMA rules on anti-steering seems to be at odds with the letter of the law. Apple and Alphabet will still charge various recurring fees, and still limit steering,” the E.U.’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, said Monday at a news conference.

Apple has already fallen foul of the E.U.’s rules. This month, the company was fined 1.8 billion euros ($1.95 billion) after the European Commission said it found that Apple had applied restrictions on app developers that prevented them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app.

In a third inquiry, the commission said it is investigating whether Apple has complied with its DMA obligations to ensure that users can easily uninstall apps on iOS and change default settings. The probe also focuses on whether Apple is actively prompting users with choices to allow them to change default services on iOS, such as for the web browser or search engine.

The commission said that it is “concerned that Apple’s measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem.”

Apple said it believes it is in compliance with the DMA.

“We’re confident our plan complies with the DMA, and we’ll continue to constructively engage with the European Commission as they conduct their investigations. Teams across Apple have created a wide range of new developer capabilities, features, and tools to comply with the regulation,” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.

The fourth probe targets Alphabet, as the European Commission looks into whether the firm’s display of Google search results “may lead to self-preferencing in relation to Google’s,” other services such as Google Shopping, over similar rival offerings.

“To comply with the Digital Markets Act, we have made significant changes to the way our services operate in Europe,” Oliver Bethell, director of competition at Alphabet, said in a statement.

“We have engaged with the European Commission, stakeholders and third parties in dozens of events over the past year to receive and respond to feedback, and to balance conflicting needs within the ecosystem. We will continue to defend our approach in the coming months.”

Alphabet pointed to a blog post from earlier this month, wherein the company outlined some of those changes — including giving Android phone users the option to easily change their default search engine and browser, as well as making it easier for people to see comparison sites in areas like shopping or flights in Google searches.

Meta investigation

The fifth and final investigation focuses on Meta and its so-called pay and consent model. Last year, Meta introduced an ad-free subscription model for Facebook and Instagram in Europe. The commission is looking into whether offering the subscription model without ads or making users consent to terms and conditions for the free service is in violation of the DMA.

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

Thierry Breton, the E.U.’s internal market commissioner, said during the news conference that there should be “free alternative options” offered by Meta for its services that are “less personalized.”

“Gatekeepers” is a label for large tech firms that are required to comply with the DMA in the E.U.

“We will continue to use all available tools, should any gatekeeper try to circumvent or undermine the obligations of the DMA,” Vestager said.

Meta said subscriptions are a common business model across various industries.

“Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries, and we designed Subscription for No Ads to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA. We will continue to engage constructively with the Commission,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.

Tech giants at risk of fines

The commission said it intends to conclude its probes within 12 months, but Vestager and Breton during the Monday briefing stressed that the DMA does not dictate a hard deadline for the timeline of the inquiry. The regulators will inform the companies of their preliminary findings and explain measures they are taking or the gatekeepers should take in order to address the commission’s concerns.

If any company is found to have infringed the DMA, the commission can impose fines of up to 10% of the tech firms’ total worldwide turnover. These penalties can increase to 20% in case of repeated infringement.

The commission said it is also looking for facts and information to clarify whether Amazon may be preferencing its own brand products on its e-commerce platform over rivals. The commission is further studying Apple’s new fee structure and other terms and conditions for alternative app stores.

This month, the tech giant announced that users in the E.U. would be able to download apps from websites rather than through its proprietary App Store — a change that Apple has resisted for years.

The E.U.’s research into Apple and Amazon does not comprise official investigations.

Source: NBC News

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Thailand’s new prime minister has vowed to restrict the use of marijuana for medical purposes after thousands of weed shops opened across the country since the nation became the first in Asia to decriminalise cannabis a year ago.

The government will seek to “rectify” its cannabis policy and rampant sprouting of dispensaries that freely sell the drug within a six-month time frame, Srettha Thavisin said in an interview on Wednesday in New York.

“The law will need to be rewritten,” Srettha said. “It needs to be rectified. We can have that regulated for medical use only,” he said, adding that there cannot be a middle ground for recreational use.

While Srettha said there was a broad agreement among the 11-party coalition he heads about the need to restrict cannabis use, how exactly his administration will proceed remains unclear.

Srettha’s Pheu Thai Party promoted a hardline anti-drug campaign ahead of the May election and vowed to undo the landmark policy to decriminalise cannabis. It is now in a coalition with Bhumjaithai Party led by Anutin Charnvirakul, who has vowed to press ahead with a plan to reintroduce a cannabis bill in parliament that seeks tighter monitoring of the industry but opposes classifying the plant as a drug again.

An ongoing regulatory vacuum, following the move to declassify marijuana as a narcotic, has led to a mushrooming of nearly 6,000 dispensaries all over the country. They sell everything from cannabis buds to oil extracts containing less than 0.2 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol – the psychoactive compound that gives users a “high” sensation.

Thai farmers are also allowed to freely grow cannabis after registering with the nation’s Food and Drug Administration. Local dispensary owners have also complained about unbridled imports and depressing prices.

Srettha’s government has vowed to “eradicate” drugs from Thai society, with the prime minister saying he will “decisively reduce” the menace within a year while presiding over an event to destroy drugs that were confiscated by authorities earlier this week.

Thailand is considered the main conduit for drug trafficking along Southeast Asia’s vast Mekong river valley, with enforcement agencies perceived to often turn a blind eye. Southeast Asia’s organised crime economy, including the illicit trade in drugs and wildlife, was worth an estimated US$130 billion in 2019, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes.

“The problem of drug has been widespread lately, especially in the northeastern and northern parts of Thailand,” Srettha said. “And we don’t need another issue added on top of that.”

Source : SCMP

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Pope Francis on Saturday updated rules on dealing with sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, expanding their scope to include lay Catholic leaders and spelling out that both minors and adults can be victims.

The pope issued a landmark decree in 2019 making it obligatory for all priests and members of religious orders to report any suspicions of abuse, and holding bishops directly accountable for any abuse they commit themselves or cover-up.

The provisions were initially introduced on a temporary basis, but on Saturday the Vatican said they would become definitive from April 30 and include additional elements aimed at strengthening the fight against abuse within the Church.

Abuse scandals have shredded the Vatican’s reputation in many countries and have been a major challenge for Pope Francis, who has passed a series of measures over the past 10 years aimed at holding the Church hierarchy accountable.

Critics say the results have been mixed and have accused Francis of being reluctant to defrock abusive prelates.

The new norms now encompass leaders of Vatican-sanctioned organisations that are run by lay people, not just priests, following numerous allegations in recent years against lay leaders, who have been accused of abusing their positions to sexually exploit those in their charge.

Whereas the original rules covered sexual acts targeting “minors and vulnerable persons”, the new version provides a wider definition of victims, referring to crimes committed “with a minor or with a person who habitually has an imperfect use of reason or with a vulnerable adult”.

The Vatican said Church members had an obligation to report cases of violence against religious women by clerics, as well as cases of harassment of adult seminarians or novices.

BishopAccountability.org, a not-for-profit organisation looking to document the abuses within the Roman Catholic Church, said the revision was “a big disappointment” and fell short of the “extensive revamping” the policy against the abuses would have required.

The policy “remains self-policing packaged as accountability”, said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, adding bishops remained in charge of investigating allegations against fellow bishops.

The updated provisions have been unveiled a month after the Roman Catholic religious order of Jesuits said that accusations of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse against one of its most prominent members were highly credible.

About 25 people, mostly former nuns, have accused Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, 69, a well-known religious artist of various forms of abuse, either when he was a spiritual director of a community of nuns in his native Slovenia about 30 years ago, or after he moved to Rome to pursue his career as an artist.

Rupnik has not spoken publicly of the accusations, which have rattled the worldwide order, of which the pope is a member.

Source : Reuters

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When EU lawmakers voted to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in the bloc by 2035, it was a landmark victory for climate. In February, the European Parliament approved the law. All that was needed was a rubber stamp from the bloc’s political leaders.

Then Germany changed its mind.

In a reversal that stunned many EU insiders, the German government decided to push for a loophole that would allow the sale of combustion engine cars beyond the 2035 deadline — as long as they run on synthetic fuels.

It’s an exception that could put the European Union’s green credentials at risk. The bloc is legally obliged to become carbon-neutral by 2050. With cars and vans responsible for around 15% of its total greenhouse gas emissions, a phase-out of polluting vehicles is a key part of EU climate policy.

Here’s what’s at stake.

What is happening?

The ban on internal combustion engine cars is one of the centerpieces of the European Union’s ambitious plan to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050 — which means removing from the air at least as much planet-heating pollution as the bloc emits.

The law envisions a total ban on the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars by 2035. The European Union argues that the deadline is necessary because the average car’s lifespan is around 15 years — so to get a fleet that produces no carbon pollution by 2050, sales of combustion engine cars must end by 2035.

Germany is now pushing against the idea that all internal combustion engines must be banned. Instead, it says engines powered by “green” fuels should be allowed.

Other European countries, including Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, have joined Germany in demanding the exception.

The law was meant to be formally approved by the European Council — the European Union’s top political body — earlier this month, but the vote was postponed because of the growing opposition.

What are e-fuels?

Synthetic fuels, or e-fuels, are made using hydrogen and carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere.

Their proponents often portray them as “clean”, but the reality is not straightforward. Burning these man-made fuels releases similar amounts of planet-heating emissions and air pollutants as using conventional fossil fuels.

The “green” credentials refer to the manufacturing process: e-fuels are made from carbon that was removed from the atmosphere, which offsets the emissions they produce.

For climate campaigners and the lawmakers who negotiated the new rules, this is not good enough.

“The text is very clear,” Dutch EU lawmaker Jan Huitema told CNN. “We only allow cars on the market as long as there are zero emissions from driving them. E-fuels emit carbon dioxide from the tailpipe. They will not be allowed.”

There are other problems too. For one, e-fuels are not yet produced at scale. The manufacturing process is expensive and requires a lot of renewable energy.

Supply of e-fuels is likely to be limited for some time, and critics say they should be reserved for industries that do not have a viable alternative to fossil fuels, such as aviation and shipping.

What has been the reaction to the new demands?

Many EU policy makers were flabbergasted by the demands from Germany and others. The legislation had been in the works for more than two years and had required many rounds of negotiations.

“I was the lead negotiator with the [European] Council on the final text, it was adopted there by the ambassadors of the different member states,” Huitema said. “You have an agreement and now, all of a sudden, a couple of member states want to refrain from the agreement. That is not how you negotiate and how you make deals with each other.”

Climate groups say the changes would water down action on climate change.

Transport & Environment, a clean transport campaign group, said the loophole for e-fuels would slow down the transition to electric vehicles.

“[Germany’s] plan would derail the decarbonization of the new fleet while allowing more conventional oil to be used in the existing fleet post-2035 — a win-win for Big Oil.”

Even some carmakers have come out against the potential changes to the law.

A group of dozens of companies including Volvo and Ford have penned an open letter to the European Union, pushing against the exception.

“First-mover companies have already significantly invested in zero-emission vehicles and should be rewarded for taking the inherent risks to decarbonize their fleet. It would be a very negative signal to reverse the political agreement reached last year,” they said.

What is behind Germany’s last-minute objections?

Germany is governed by a coalition, and it is one of the parties, the liberal FDP, that is calling for the changes.

“The internal combustion engine is not the problem. The fossil fuels that run it are,” German transport minister Volker Wissing, of the FDP, said on Twitter earlier this month. “The goal is climate neutrality, which is also an opportunity for new technologies. We need to be open to different solutions,” he added.

Germany is home to some of the world’s largest automakers, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen, and the government has to walk a tightrope between ambitious climate policies and the interests of a powerful industry that keeps the economy humming.

Manufacturers of car components and engines, fossil fuel producers and fuel transportation companies have been lobbying for the exception because it would allow them to continue using their existing infrastructure and products.

The Federation of German Industries, a lobby group, said e-fuels could make “a major contribution to achieving the adopted climate targets.”

“Since they can be used immediately without having to build a new infrastructure, they can also be implemented in economically less developed countries,” according to a statement on the group’s website.

The dispute over the legislation is causing friction within Germany’s government.

Environment Minister Steffi Lemke of the Greens, another coalition party, has criticized the challenge to the law.

“Germany should remain a reliable partner to its EU partners. The new CO2 fleet regulation for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, which Germany has supported in recent months, is a major step forward for European climate protection,” she said in a statement earlier in March.

It all sounds very technical. Why is it important?

If passed, the law would be one of the world’s strongest measures to phase out gasoline vehicles.

Scientists say reducing planet-heating pollution is non-negotiable if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and avoid a key tipping point beyond which extreme flooding, droughts and wildfires will likely become much more frequent.

Despite such warnings and the pledges made in the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, global emissions have continued to rise, barring a dip in 2020.

Talks are continuing to persuade Germany to support the law. In its current draft form, the law would allow cars running on e-fuels to be sold after 2035, but only if they were fitted with technology preventing them from running on gasoline or diesel.

Whether Germany will accept the proposal remains unclear.

Some are concerned that the dispute casts doubt on the European Union’s ability to implement its ambitious climate agenda.

“This debate is really destabilizing,” said Elisa Giannelli, a senior policy advisor at E3G, a climate think-tank, noting that the European Union had been “on track for climate neutrality.”

“Backtracking on a piece of legislation is potentially really undermining the credibility of what we’ve achieved over the past years,” she said.

“It’s not just about cars. It’s about the political signals that that [dispute] sends.”

Source : CNN

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In many ways, Washington DC is still grappling with the hangover from the Capitol attack of January 6, 2021. Like any good hangover, it’s long-lasting and tends to come back to hit you when you least expect it. Like for instance on January 8 of this year, two days after the low-profile commemoration of the second anniversary of the assault on Washington DC by die-hard Trump supporters, when images came in from Brasilia showing thousands of supporters of another former president, Jair Bolsonaro – as resistant to defeat like Donald Trump – storming Brazil’s democratic institutions.

In the DC courts, however, nobody needs their memory jogged. All proceedings in the “the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into,” in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s words, end up in the District of Columbia District Court. According to court records, 940 people have been prosecuted for their actions that day, when a mob stormed Congress after attending a Trump rally near the White House. Encouraged by Trump, who was still president, the insurgents attempted to halt what until then had been a little-known element of the democratic process: the certification of Joe Biden’s legitimate victory at the polls.

Two high-profile trials recently coincided at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse. On the fourth floor, five members of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group whose members feel united – besides the fact of being male – by their admiration for Trump, were being tried. This group drew growing attention in 2020 during the protests that followed the murder by a police officer of the African-American George Floyd.

Two floors up, the jury listened to the first witness, a congressional employee, in the case against Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who became a January 6 icon by photographing himself with his feet up on the desk of the then-speaker of the House of Representatives, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, to whom he left a note that said: “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch” (although his defense claims that he used the slang variant biatch). He has been charged with several counts, including committing and attempting to commit an act to obstruct, impede and interfere with an officer, propertytheft and breaking into a restricted building with a dangerous weapon. Specifically, a 950,000 volt stun gun (available on Amazon for about $100).

The Proud Boys are facing a much more serious crime: seditious conspiracy, a charge not used lightly in the United States, but for which Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was found guilty in November. He could face up to 60 years in prison, but his case is exceptional: the average prison sentence at trials so far has been 60 days.

Rhodes met on January 5 in a parking lot with his counterpart at the head of the Proud Boys, the Cuban-American Enrique Tarrio. Both are surely the most prominent figures in the assault on the Capitol, even though Tarrio was not physically there. He followed the attack on television from a Baltimore hotel because the police had barred him from setting foot in Washington that day, following an arrest in the city in December for burning a church’s anti-racist Black Lives Matter banner.

Tarrio listened with apparent detachment on Wednesday morning, exchanging quips and half-smiles with another one of the defendants, Ethan Nordean, as the judge admitted as evidence video footage of Trump instructing the Proud Boys during an election debate. “Back off and stand by,” he told them. Once the adrenaline rush of the attack on the Capitol subsided, Nordean wrote on his social media: “F— you trump you left us on [t]he battle field bloody and alone.”

Other individuals on trial included Zachary Rehl, Joe Biggs – who tweeted “this is war” after learning of the legitimate concession of election victory to Joe Biden – and Nic Pezzola, who is remembered for images repeated a million times, showing him breaking one of the windows of the Capitol with a shield taken from a policeman. Pezzola was the first person in the crowd to breach Congress.

The prosecution, as in previous cases, is trying to prove that this was not a spontaneous riot, as the defense claims, but an operation planned and led most particularly by Tarrio and his team, and which directly targeted the heart of American democracy. The case also seeks to prove the crypto-fascist gang’s ties to Trump. Those links, which the defendants deny, take up an entire chapter of the 814-page report released just before Christmas by the bipartisan congressional committee that investigated January 6 and its political implications for 18 months. In it, its members conclude that the Proud Boys led the attack, penetrated the Capitol and took hundreds of people inside with them.

It is this anonymous mass of followers that now makes up most of the arrests still taking place throughout the country (and which will continue, warn the authorities). There are so far nearly 1,000 defendants facing charges that range from misdemeanors to felonies, such as entering a restricted federal building or grounds, property destruction or causing serious bodily injury to an officer (the day ended with 140 police officers injured, and four committed suicide in the days that followed). Then there is also the crime of seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era charge used against Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers group. As for the defendants themselves, they run the gamut of ages and professions: there is an ex-policeman (Thomas Webster, sentenced to 10 years in prison), an air conditioner technician (Kyle Young, seven years), a nurse, a company CEO, four models (including John Strand, who is facing up to 24 years), a Boy Scout leader, actors (Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman and an Olympic medalist.

There is even a complete family, the Munns: the parents and the three children participated in the events. The former received sentences of 14 days; the latter were released on probation. All five belong to something that could be called the January 6 middle class. A good number of them probably didn’t count on committing any crime when they went to the Trump rally. And many have blamed the lies of the former president about election fraud for the mess in which they now find themselves. Others, like Barnett, claim to be victims of “political persecution.”

The squatter in Pelosi’s office, like other defendants, has set up a web page to defend his innocence, and he is accepting donations to cover his legal expenses. He is also raising funds ($22,794 so far) through a conservative affiliation crowdfunding platform called GiveSendGo, which, according to calculations by The Washington Post, It has raised more than $3.7 million dollars for the Jan Sixers, as those arrested and prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol like to call themselves.

There is also a Telegram account that provides links to each of these financing channels, and its administrators always start and end the day in the same way. At night, they lead a collective prayer in memory of the prisoners through a live chat. In the morning, they start the day by sharing a list of the trials that are scheduled in Washington in the following hours. Last Friday, the list added 24 ongoing processes. Two days earlier, a federal court worker defined January 6, 2021 as “the longest day of American democracy”, in a conversation with EL PAÍS. A day that, more than two years later, is still consuming most of the time of officials at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington.

Source : El Pais

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