Argentina and China sign agreement to build fourth nuclear power plant

New nuclear power plant, Atucha III, requires an investment of more than US$8 billion and will create 7,000 new jobs, according to the government. Announcement made on eve of president’s visit to China.

Argentina and China this week announced an agreement to construct the Latin American country’s fourth nuclear power plant, just days before President Alberto Fernández is due to visit Beijing.

State-owned energy company Nucleoeléctrica Argentina and the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) signed a contract Tuesday for the development of ‘Atucha III,’ which will feature a 1,200 megawatt electric reactor (MWE) and have an initial operating life of 60 years.

The project, part of the government’s ‘Nucleoeléctrica Plan,’ will require an investment of more than US$8 billion and create 7,000 jobs, according to a statement.

The plant will be located at the Atucha Nuclear Complex in Lima, in northern Buenos Aires Province. Construction works are expected to begin at the end of this year.

The EPC (engineering purchasing and construction, for its acronym in English) contract provides for the provision of engineering, construction, acquisition, start-up and delivery of a plant of HPR-1000 type, which will use enriched uranium as fuel and light water as coolant and moderator.

The news was announced at a virtual press conference attended by Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof, China’s Ambassador to Argentina Zou Xiaoli, his Argentine peer in China, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, and Energy Undersecretary Federico Basualdo, among others.

“We all know that without energy we have no development or possible future, so it is a great pleasure for me to accompany this signing,” said Kicillof.

Nucleoeléctrica President José Luis Antúnez, stressed the importance of advancing in concrete actions, “so that we can supply Argentina’s electricity demand with basic, clean, safe, and sustainable energy, and combat the effects of climate change that affects the planet.”

The state firm operates and constructs Argentina’s three existing nuclear power plants, which include the Juan Domingo Perón – Atucha I, Néstor Kirchner – Atucha II sites, both located in Lima; and Embalse, in Córdoba Province, providing up to 7.5 percent of Argentina's electricity, according to private estimates.

President’s visit

Fernández arrived in Beijing late Thursday night ahead of a four-day visit that includes a headline-grabbing meeting with Chinese Premier Xi Jingping.

Trips to the Museum of the Chinese Communist Party, the Forbidden City, Mao Zedong's mausoleum and the Great Wall are also on the presidential agenda.

The Peronist leader, who will attend the inauguration of the 2022 Winter Olympics on Friday and meet Argentina’s athletes on Sunday, is seeking to deepen ties with China during his visit. Talks are expected to focus on boosting trade between the two nations.

"It is a great opportunity to make our ties and common commercial projects more solid," Fernández told China Central Television (CGTN) earlier this week.

One of the president's aims is to advance ongoing talks for a new currency swap. Buenos Aires has asked the Chinese authorities for an extension of an existing agreement by a further US$1.3 billion in order to boost Central Bank reserves.

Fernández and Xi will also discuss ongoing and potential infrastructure and construction projects, with Atucha III the latest in a series of works undertaken with Chinese capital.

Reports in multiple outlets this week suggested the two nations are close to agreeing a five-year investment plan worth an initial US$35 billion which would pave the way for several major energy and infrastructure projects to get underway, including two hydroelectric dams in Santa Cruz Province, Néstor Kirchner and Jorge Cepernic (former Cóndor Cliff and La Barrancosa).


– TIMES/NA/PERFIL

IMF debt deal: The roots of Argentina's economic crisis

Argentina, which has been battling a deep economic crisis

since 2018, has unveiled a new debt repayment deal with

 the International Monetary Fund 

Argentina, which has been battling a deep economic crisis since 2018, has unveiled a new debt repayment deal with the International Monetary Fund.

Here is a recap of recent turmoil.

Currency collapse
In April and May 2018, Argentina's peso loses nearly 20 percent of its value in 45 days. The Central Bank intervenes several times, hiking its benchmark interest rate to 40 percent and selling foreign currency reserves.

Massive IMF loan
In June, the IMF approves a US$50-billion bailout. President Mauricio Macri's government agrees to take austerity measures.

Strike, protests
Later that month, the country grinds to a halt in a general strike to protest the loan. In July and August, there are demonstrations over soaring inflation in Buenos Aires and other cities. In September, the government announces new austerity measures. Another major strike takes place in response.

Even bigger loan
The IMF agrees to boost its crisis loan package to US$57.1 billion, with US$44 billion eventually paid out. Argentina ends 2018 in recession. On April 4, 2019, tens of thousands of people protest against austerity. To limit inflation, the government freezes the price of basic goods and public services.  The fifth general strike of Macri's presidency brings the country to a standstill on May 29. 

Macri poll setback
In August, Macri loses a key primary election to Peronist leader Alberto Fernández. Macri announces minimum wage hikes, tax cuts and a freeze on fuel prices. Fitch and S&P downgrade Argentina's credit rating. In late August, Argentina asks the IMF to reschedule its debt.

Food emergency
On September 1, the government imposes exchange controls. On September 19, Congress adopts a food emergency law to allocate greater resources to social programmes. 

Fernández president
Fernández wins the October presidential election. Argentina's Central Bank says it has sharply tightened currency exchange controls to temper capital flight. Fernández says that he will renounce the remaining US$13-billion tranche of Argentina's IMF loan as soon as he takes office in December. At his swearing in ceremony, Fernandez insists Argentina "wants to pay" its external debt but that it doesn't have "the means to do so."

'Selective default'
On December 20, the government postpones paying some US$9 billion, leading ratings agencies to downgrade its debt.

Emergency measures
On December 24, the government adopts a package of emergency measures. Inflation reaches 53.8 percent in 2019, while the economy shrinks by 2.1 percent.

Debt restructuring
In February 2020, the IMF says Argentina's debt is "not sustainable." In March, the government proposes to restructure US$68.8 billion of the US$311-billion public debt, which accounts for 90 percent of GDP. On April 6, Argentina defers payments of up to US$9.8 billion on its local public debt until 2021 in response to the coronavirus crisis. In mid-April, Fernández says his country has found itself in "a sort of virtual default."

New default
On May 22, Argentina defaults for the ninth time after failing to pay US$500 million of interest on its bond debt. Fitch and S&P reduce its credit rating.

Accord
In August, Argentina announces it has reached an agreement with three major creditors over the restructuring of a US$66-billion debt.

Discussions with IMF
Argentina then launches discussions with the IMF for a new financial programme. In 2020, Argentina's GDP contracts by nearly 10 percent.

Avoids default
In June 2021, Argentina reaches an agreement with the Paris Club of creditor countries to avoid defaulting on its loan repayments. On January 28, 2022 Argentina's president announces what he says is a "reasonable" accord with the IMF.

A conversation with Professor Stiglitz

The strong show of political support for Guzmán’s negotiating techniques from one of the world’s most renowned economists is the mirror image of what he’s suffered internally, particularly within the ranks of Frente de Todos.

A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR STIGLITZ | ART BY JOAQUIN TEMES

Argentina has once again become a relevant subject matter for some of the most important English-language media outlets and scholars on the back of the recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund over its unsustainable debt. In recent weeks, both the Financial Times and The Economist penned critical editorials, as did The Wall Street Journal. The staunchest supporter of the Argentine cause happens to be none other than Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor who's been critical of the International Monetary Fund and austerity policies for some time now. Stiglitz, it seems, is the only one that’s happy with his protégé, Economy Minister Martín Guzmán, and the results of the negotiation with the IMF, which, in his words, doesn’t impose “detrimental austerity and other counterproductive conditionalities.”

Stiglitz appears to be alone in his defence of Guzmán’s negotiation strategy, even when counting the minister himself, who recently noted that “nobody can be happy to have the IMF in our country” after explaining that “we arrived at the best agreement we could get.” Such enthusiasm. Alberto Fernández, Argentina’s president, initially appeared content, justifying the deal by saying the agreement didn’t include structural reforms, reductions in public works projects or a zero-deficit policy. “We had a noose around our neck, the sword of Damocles,” he said in a pre-recorded statement at the Olivos presidential residence. “Now we have a path to go on.” A few days later he offered a different perspective: “There’s nothing to celebrate here, but if we hadn’t closed by Friday, today I wouldn’t be here speaking with you but analysing whether to decree a bank holiday on Monday [to avoid a run on the peso],” he said to Página/12, less than 48 hours after announcing the deal.

In his two pieces defending Argentina’s stance, Professor Stiglitz highlights an impressive economic rebound in 2021 with GDP expanding 10 percent and a fall in the primary budget deficit of 3.5 percentage points. Growth, rather than austerity, is a much better antidote for balance of payment crises and rampant fiscal deficits, as the failed 2018 programme signed on by former president Mauricio Macri would show. “In the upside-down world we live in,” Stiglitz writes alongside economist Mark Weisbrot in Foreign Policy, “there’s a school of thought that argues that contractionary policies can be expansionary.” The idea would be that slashing deficits builds confidence, which in turn attracts capital inflows and then investments that would overcompensate reduced government spending. This is the hypocrisy of rich nations that relied on aggressive fiscal spending in the face of Covid-19 and would now force Argentina and other developing nations to go the other way. Regarding persistent high inflation, the Nobel laureate pins the blame on Macri but also claims the costs of bringing it down quickly outweigh the benefits in that it would stifle the recovery and job growth. He does pat his own back a few times, calling Argentina’s negotiators “well-trained economists” with a “high-level of expertise at the negotiating table.”

The strong show of political support for Guzmán’s negotiating techniques from one of the world’s most renowned economists is the mirror image of what he’s suffered internally, particularly within the ranks of Frente de Todos. The bombshell resignation of Máximo Kirchner from the leadership of the ruling coalition’s bloc in the lower house Chamber of Deputies and his scathing letter delivered a debilitating blow to Guzmán – and President Alberto of course. Claiming he cannot defend the indefensible, he decided to step aside, which forces one to ask, what does Momma Cristina think? Mrs. Fernández de Kirchner, the vice-president, hasn’t said a word, but those close to her and Máximo say they feel betrayed by Alberto and Guzmán. Máximo K apparently said it to the president’s face when he phoned to inform him of his resignation, allegedly telling him he never agreed with Cristina’s decision to pick him for the Presidency. His delusions of grandeur — Alberto is reported to have stayed calm during the meeting, only to call him infantile with his closest aides in the aftermath — are in some way tied to an image of himself as part of the Kirchner clan who finally got the IMF out of the country. A sort of Mel Gibson-like patriot fighting the Evil Empire for national sovereignty.

The “exposed fracture” within Frente de Todos didn’t count on the vice-president’s approval, who is said to have been equally dismayed by the level of fiscal tightening exposed by Guzmán’s numbers, particularly ahead of the upcoming electoral season. President Fernández isn’t all that happy with his economy minister either, according to a few reports, as he’s been misleading throughout the whole IMF ordeal. Ultimately, Guzmán didn’t manage to bring home an extraordinary extension of maturities or a reduction on IMF surcharges, or other exotic suggestions such as green bonds to pay for debt. And he’s pissed everyone off, including Sergio Massa (who is trying to paint himself as the saviour of the deal after IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva received a last second call indicating the US Treasury Department and State Department backed the deal), and even the IMF’s negotiating team. According to information published by La Nación, at one point Kristalina asked Gustavo Béliz, strategic affairs secretary, to take over negotiations.

If I were to share a conversation with Professor Stiglitz, I’d ask him whether pissing everyone off isn’t a sign of a job well done. Ultimately, if Guzmán’s extravagant strategy implied keeping information from other members of the governing coalition (possibly including the Fernández-Fernández tandem) and pushing the IMF negotiators to a limit where they agreed on a “soft” deal with Argentina in order to avoid default, then he very well may have achieved the best possible deal under current circumstances. I’d also ask about the importance of how to communicate things, given this “anti-austerity” IMF programme includes a path of fiscal consolidation that would eliminate the deficit by 2025 and aggressively cut monetary financing. Is there indeed no austerity here, or just no “structural reforms,” given they probably wouldn’t be politically achievable? And, to cap it off, whether he truly believes the 2018 IMF deal, persistently high inflation, economic contraction, and some of the worse poverty figures in a very long time in Argentina are all just Macri’s fault – or whether he’s also playing Guzmán’s game?

Sole American Hacker Took down N.Korea's Internet

February 04, 2022 12:50

A lone disgruntled American hacker identified only as "P4x" was behind the breakdown of all online traffic in North Korea for six hours on Jan. 26, U.S. magazine Wired said Wednesday.

The websites that were brought down by his distributed denial-of-service attack included "Naenara," the official portal for the North Korean government, and the websites of the Foreign Ministry, the official Rodong Sinmun, the Korean Central News Agency, and Air Koryo.

According to Wired, P4x is an independent hacker who does not belong to any agency. 'It was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks -- and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country," the magazine wrote.

P4x claims he was hacked by North Korean spies in late January 2021 and never offered any real help from the U.S. government to assess the damage, nor did he ever hear of any open investigation. "It began to feel… like 'there's really nobody on our side,'" he told the magazine.

"His cyberattacks on North Korean networks are, he says, in part an attempt to draw attention to what he sees as a lack of government response to North Korean targeting of U.S. individuals," Wired added. "If no one's going to help me, I'm going to help myself," P4x said.

P4x told the magazine he found "numerous known but unpatched vulnerabilities in North Korean systems that have allowed him to singlehandedly launch 'denial-of-service' attacks on the servers and routers the country's few internet-connected networks depend on."

He hopes to "recruit more hacktivists to his causes with a dark website he launched Monday called the FUNK Project," for "FuckyoU North Korea."

© This is copyrighted material owned by Digital Chosun Inc. No part of it may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

New Poll: Voters Overwhelmingly Oppose Las Vegas DA Seeking the Death Penalty Against Vulnerable and Impaired Persons

Posted on Feb 03, 2022


Likely voters in Clark County, Nevada overwhelmingly oppose the use of capital punishment against broad categories of vulnerable and impaired persons whom county prosecutors have been trying to execute, a new poll released by Vegas Watch on January 27, 2022 shows.

The poll, conducted by the Justice Research Group from December 1 to 13, 2021, found a significant disconnect between voters views on capital punishment and the practices of Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson (pictured). According to Vegas Watch, Clark County prosecutors have “repeatedly sought] death against people who are mentally ill and have intellectual disabilities—including former service members struggling with PTSD.” On the other hand, substantial bipartisan majorities of the county’s voters told the pollsters that they oppose using the death penalty against these individuals.

The poll questions asked 314 likely voters, “Do you support or oppose Clark County district attorney Steve Wolfson seeking a death sentence against” six different types of defendants: people with a diagnosed mental illness, serious intellectual impairment, traumatic brain injury, veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, those who experienced severe physical or sexual abuse as a child, and defendants who were between the ages of 18 and 21 at the time of the offense. By margins of better than 2 to 1, voters opposed seeking the death penalty against those with mental illness, intellectual impairment, or brain damage, and veterans with PTSD. With significant partisan differences, voters narrowly opposed seeking the death penalty against adolescent offenders and victims of abuse.

Voter opposition was greatest when it came to seeking the death penalty against veterans with PTSD. 62% of voters said Wolfson should not seek a death sentence “against a person who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving their country in the U.S. Armed Forces,” while 23% supported such prosecutions. 69% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans opposed capitally prosecuting veterans with PTSD, while 12% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans and Independents supported it.

Wolfson is currently seeking to execute Zane Floyd, a decorated Marine with brain damage who was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome after his deployment in Guantánamo Bay. Wolfson sought and obtained a warrant for Floyd’s execution in May 2021, while the Nevada State Senate was considering a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty. The Senate majority leader and the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee are both employees of the Clark County DA’s office, and although the bill had passed the state House of Representatives, it never received a hearing or a vote in committee in the Senate.


Clark County voters by a 37-percentage-point margin opposed “seeking a death sentence against a person with serious intellectual impairment.” 60% of respondents, including 67% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans opposed such prosecutions, while 27% of Republicans, 21% of Democrats, and 20% of Independents supported them. 59% opposed “seeking a death sentence against a person with a diagnosed mental illness” and “against a person with a traumatic brain injury.” 67% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 48% of Republicans opposed capital prosecutions of those with mental illness. 68% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and 43% of Republicans opposed capital prosecutions of those with brain injuries. 29% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats and Independents supported the use of the death penalty against the mentally ill. 35% of Republicans, 22% of Democrats, and 19% of Independents endorsed capital prosecution of brain injured defendants.

Clark County respondents expressed significant partisan differences over the use of the death penalty against adolescent offenders and victims of physical or sexual abuse. A 45% plurality of respondents opposed “seeking a death sentence against a person who has endured severe physical or sexual abuse as a child,” while 36% supported it. Democrats opposed such prosecutions, 52% to 31% and Independents were split evenly 39% to 39%. Republicans narrowly approved of seeking the death penalty in cases of severe abuse, 40% to 38%.

When it came to adolescent offenders, a narrow plurality, 46% to 43% opposed “seeking the death penalty against a person who is over the age of 18 but under the age of 21.” Democrats strongly opposed the practice, 60% to 28%, while Republicans even more strongly supported it, 62% to 25%. Independents narrowly opposed such prosecutions, 48% to 45%.

Clark County’s Capital Prosecution Practices

Wolfson was the lead witness against a bill to abolish the death penalty that was introduced in the Nevada legislature during the 2021 legislative session. During his testimony, Wolfson said, “the death penalty should be reserved for the very rare and extreme circumstances” and claimed he sought it in only “the worst of the worst” cases. Assistant Public Defender Scott Coffee disputed that notion, telling Vegas Watch that Wolfson had filed 128 notices of intent to seek the death penalty since becoming District Attorney in 2012. “These cases are filed like candy,” he said.

Clark County has imposed more death sentences in the last decade than all but three counties four in the nation, trailing only Riverside, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and Maricopa, AZ. They are the only counties in the country to have averaged more than one death sentence per year since 2012. All the other counties in Nevada combined have imposed just one new death sentence in the past decade.

A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of death-row data collected by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund found that, as of October 1, 2020, the 52 people on death row or facing capital retrials or resentencings in Clark County were more than in all but six other U.S. counties. By itself, Clark County accounted for three-quarters of Nevada’s death-row population.

A 2016 study by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project found that of the 16 most prolific death-sentencing counties in the U.S. in the years 2010 through 2015, Clark County had the highest rate of convictions or death sentences overturned as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. The Project reported that the Nevada Supreme Court had found misconduct in 47% of the Clark County death penalty cases it reviewed on direct appeal during the previous decade.

RIGHT WINGER PRO IMMIGRANT

The Immigrant Superpower: How Brains, Brawn, and Bravery Make America Stronger

by Timothy Kane

via Oxford University Press

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Publication date: January 27, 2022

America was built by immigrants, yet there has long been strong political opposition to immigration. In recent years, the hostility toward immigration has reached a tipping point. While partisan fighting and confusion over basic policy dominate a broken conversation, we often overlook a fundamental
American truth: immigration makes America great.

In The Immigrant Superpower, Tim Kane argues that immigration has been a source of American strength and American exceptionalism since the nation's founding. This book explores how immigration is essential to the military strength, economic power, and innovation of the United States. By combining
stories of immigrants who have contributed to the American experience, including in the military and business, with analysis of immigration's effects on wages and unemployment, Kane presents a clear defense of greater immigration as a matter of national security. The only way to win the great power
competition of the twenty-first century is to embrace America's identity as a nation of immigrants. As politicians in Washington continue to negotiate with no intention to reach an agreement, Kane exposes the immigration consensus hiding in plain sight. Using original, in-depth surveys of American
attitudes toward immigration reform he maps out a step-by-step process to achieve reform.

Straight-talking and full of common sense, The Immigrant Superpower stands in sharp contrast to the wholly dysfunctional debate about immigration in the United States.

Grounded flights and power outages as winter storm spreads from North Texas to upstate New York


By Karen Graham
Published February 4, 2022

About 350,000 homes and businesses lost power across the U.S. on Thursday as freezing rain and snow weighed down tree limbs and encrusted power lines, part of a winter storm that caused a deadly tornado in Alabama, dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Midwest and brought rare measurable snowfall and hundreds of power outages to parts of Texas.

More than 5,000 flights had been canceled — the worst day for cancellations since April 2020, at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, while hundreds more were delayed by early afternoon, according to FlightAware, a tracking website.

Dallas was hit particularly hard, with 65 percent of outgoing flights at its largest airport grounded until a runway could be reopened around lunchtime, reports the New York Times. Cancellations and delays on Thursday affected more than 10 percent of all air traffic in the U.S.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a Disaster Declaration for 17 counties Thursday evening, saying, “This ice storm poses an imminent threat of severe property damage, injury, or loss of life,” as temperatures plunged into the low 20s across a large portion of the state and various forms of frozen precipitation accumulated.

One thing is for sure – This winter storm is a hard test for Texas’ power grid after the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) declared most of its electric generation units and transmission facilities fully winterized.

The coating of ice dug as deep as San Antonio, Texas, where accumulating ice could be seen bending fences at a Top Golf facility in the area.Jordan Hall

The highest totals of power outages blamed on icy or downed power lines were concentrated in Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, and Ohio, but the path of the storm stretched further from the central U.S. into the South and Northeast on Thursday.

The Northeast is not out of the woods yet, with heavy snow expected from the southern Rockies to northern New England, with heavy ice buildup likely from Pennsylvania to New England through Friday, according to the Associated Press.

The icy conditions had already proven to be deadly on Wednesday after the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) in New Mexico reported a fatality in a rollover crash on a mountainous road just outside of Albuquerque.

Throughout the day, the BCSO reported at least 24 vehicle crashes, 13 of which there were reported injuries, plus four rolled vehicles.

Officials in rural southeast Kansas reported several accidents on roads and highways slicked with snow and black ice. In Arkansas, the Weather Service said conditions could cause power outages and make travel “very hazardous or impossible.”

Farther east, parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky were under an ice storm warning. Memphis, Tennessee saw continuous freezing rain on Thursday, leading to traffic accidents, downed trees, and power outages.

“The unusual part is the amount,” Tom Salem, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said of the freezing rain. “Usually the storms move, but this storm is sort of sitting over us.”

In western Alabama, Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told WBRC-TV a tornado that hit a rural area Thursday afternoon killed one person, a female he found under the rubble, and critically injured three others. A home was heavily damaged, he said.

The disruptive storm began Tuesday and moved across the central U.S. on Wednesday’s Groundhog Day, the same day the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. The storm came on the heels of a nor’easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/grounded-flights-and-power-outages-as-winter-storm-spreads-from-north-texas-to-upstate-new-york/article#ixzz7K0EiNfHf


Grounded Flights and Power Outages as Snow and Ice Sweep Across the U.S.

February 3, 2022
in U.S NEWS


A storm stretching from Texas to New York is disrupting travel, with over 4,700 flights canceled, and power in much of the country.

The storm dropped heavy snow in parts of the Midwest as forecasters warned that it could bring dangerous accumulations of ice to the South.

Christopher Smith for The New York Times

Thousands of Americans were left stranded in airports and shivering in their homes on Thursday by a massive winter storm stretching from North Texas to upstate New York, which brought freezing rain and more than a foot of snow to a wide stretch of the country.

More than 4,700 flights had been canceled and hundreds more delayed by early afternoon, according to FlightAware, a tracking website. Dallas was particularly hard hit, with 65 percent of outgoing flights at its largest airport grounded until a runway could be reopened around lunchtime.

On an average day, the Federal Aviation Administration handles 45,000 flights, meaning the cancellations and delays on Thursday affected more than 10 percent of air traffic in the United States.

Widespread, heavy snow and freezing rain were forecast from the Southwestern United States to New England on Thursday and into Friday, the National Weather Service said, while portions of the South could see flash flooding. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called it “one of the most significant icing events that we’ve had in the state of Texas in at least several decades.”

As of 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, more than 120,000 customers in Tennessee, 60,000 customers in Texas and nearly 25,000 in Arkansas had lost power, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that aggregates data from utilities.

In North Texas, two to four inches of snow and sleet were expected on Thursday, with light accumulations of ice. Local officials urged motorists to stay off the roads in Dallas, and the Dallas and Fort Worth school districts, among the largest in the state, were closed for the rest of the week.

The storm arrived in Texas almost exactly a year after a weeklong freeze led to the deaths of more than 200 people and caused widespread power outages. Governor Abbott assured the state’s 29 million residents on Thursday that the power grid was expected to hold.

“The power grid is performing very well,” he said. “There is plenty of power available at this time, as well as plenty of power expected for the remainder of today and early tomorrow.”

Unlike last year, temperatures in Texas will stay below freezing only for a couple of days. “This won’t last as long,” said Jason Dunn, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Fort Worth.

In Kansas, residents woke up Thursday to single-digit temperatures, with wind chills as cold as 17 degrees below zero. Officials in rural southeast Kansas reported several accidents on roads and highways slicked with snow and black ice.

At least five inches of snow fell in Fayetteville, Ark., but temperatures in the teens kept it dry and fluffy, making for easy work for dozens of snow plows clearing major roadways. No serious car crashes had been reported as of 8 a.m.

Arkansas is expecting significantly more snow, along with sleet and ice, as the day goes on, and the Weather Service there said conditions could cause power outages and make travel “very hazardous or impossible.”

Farther east, parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky were under an ice storm warning. In Memphis, ice began accumulating Thursday, leading to traffic accidents, downed trees and power outages. And in Illinois, a portion of Interstate 57 was blocked for several hours early Thursday after multiple tractor-trailers jackknifed.

The winter storm was expected to continue pushing east on Thursday. Parts of Maine could record up to 18 inches of snow, and up to 18 inches were also possible in parts of upstate New York.

“This newest storm is poised to hit us with everything in the weather arsenal — heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said on Wednesday.

— Carey Gillam, Mike Ives, Jesus Jim?nez, Sophie Kasakove, Bret Schulte, Mitch Smith, Derrick Bryson Taylor and Maggie Astor

Snow and ice forced 65 percent of departing flights to be canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Thursday.Credit…LM Otero/Associated Press

The winter storm sweeping across much of the United States led to thousands of flight cancellations and delays on Thursday, with many more likely throughout the day.

As of early afternoon Eastern time, 4,762 flights scheduled to arrive at or depart from U.S. airports on Thursday had been canceled, and an additional 934 were delayed, according to FlightAware, a tracking website.

One of the hardest-hit cities was Dallas, which had about 800 canceled departures and about 750 canceled arrivals. At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, 65 percent of departing flights and 60 percent of arriving flights were canceled, and at Dallas Love Field Airport, 84 percent of departures and 78 percent of arrivals were canceled.

By a little after noon, Dallas-Fort Worth had reopened one runway but warned, “Due to ongoing weather conditions, we anticipate intermediate stoppages throughout the day to treat for snow and ice.”

A majority of flights were canceled at each of the three largest airports serving Ohio — Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, John Glenn Columbus International Airport and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport — as well as at airports in St. Louis and in Austin, Texas.

On an average day, the Federal Aviation Administration handles 45,000 flights, meaning the cancellations and delays on Thursday are affecting more than 10 percent of air traffic in the United States. That is a remarkably high number: While there is much seasonal variation, daily cancellation totals tend to be less than 2 percent on average.

From January 2021 through November 2021 — the last period for which official data is available — 1.65 percent of U.S. flights were canceled, according to the Transportation Department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. (The total for the full year is likely to be somewhat higher because the Omicron variant caused a surge in cancellations around the holidays.)

Already, airlines have canceled nearly twice as many U.S. flights on Thursday as the 2,372 they did on Wednesday.

Trucks moved slowly down Interstate 35 in Dallas on Thursday.Credit…Jeffrey McWhorter for The New York Times

SAN ANTONIO — Nearly a year after a catastrophic winter storm led to sweeping power outages and left more than 200 people dead, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas reassured the state’s 29 million residents on Thursday that the power grid was expected to hold despite freezing temperatures across a large swath of the state.

“We are dealing with one of the most significant icing events that we’ve had in the state of Texas in at least several decades,” Mr. Abbott said. Still, he added, “the power grid is performing very well. There is plenty of power available at this time, as well as plenty of power expected for the remainder of today and early tomorrow.”

But the storm was not without impact: Nearly 70,000 Texas homes and businesses had no electricity Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks power outages. There were no reports of widespread accidents or blocked roads.

Texas is no stranger to summer weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes. But officials were unprepared last February when an eight-day winter storm plunged the state into darkness and bitter cold.

Mr. Abbott said Thursday’s outages were caused by heavy winds affecting power lines or by icy conditions bringing down trees or tree limbs.

“Local power providers are bringing in extra resources to get those power lines back up,” he said during a news conference from Austin on Thursday morning, adding that more than 10,000 workers were trying to restore power.

During last year’s storm, which caused an estimated $130 billion in damages, disaster declarations were made for all of the state’s 254 counties after the power grid failed and more than 4.5 million customers lost electricity and heat. More than 240 people died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, car crashes, drownings and house fires.

This week, the freezing temperatures are mainly forecast to affect the Dallas metropolitan area and other cities in the northern part of the state, including Lubbock, and are expected to last only until Saturday. Meteorologists said the storm would bring sleet, freezing rain, ice and aggressive wind chills.

Flanked by state officials, Mr. Abbott said the state had prepared since last winter to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic power loss. He also signed an emergency declaration to offer aid to at least 17 counties affected by this week’s icy weather, and said the number could climb.

Last year’s storm has become a political liability for Mr. Abbott, who is seeking another term. His Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, and other critics say many of the problems that pushed the Texas electrical grid to the brink of total collapse have not been addressed.

For example, the companies that operate the natural gas systems that froze in February, cutting off supply to power plants, are still not required to better prepare their equipment during cold snaps.Also, measures have not been taken to reduce demand for heat, particularly in poorly insulated dwellings. Incentives in the Texas market — which has prioritized cheap electricity over reliability — are still largely in place, critics said.

But Mr. Abbott stressed that changes had been made, including the winterization of power generators. He said 99 percent had passed inspection. The state has also stored a surplus supply of power and natural gas to be used as needed.

Lucinda Holt contributed reporting from Lubbock, Texas.
Construction equipment pushes salt into a salt dome at a Department of Public Works emergency operations center in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday.Credit…Jon Cherry for The New York Times

A “damaging ice storm” is likely to affect a region from eastern Arkansas to western Kentucky on Thursday, the National Weather Service said, with parts of Texas and Ohio also expected to see heavy ice accumulation.

Although snow can be disruptive, especially for places that do not normally contend with it, ice is considered a more serious threat. As roads become slick, crashes can injure or kill people while snarling important traffic routes. Outages often occur when trees and power lines snap under the weight of accumulating ice.

The Weather Service in Louisville, Ky., warned of “treacherous driving conditions” and said that travel would be “difficult to impossible” by late Thursday. Louisville and Frankfort could see between a quarter-inch and half-inch of ice, with even more possible in Lexington, it said.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas positioned eight National Guard units across the state in advance of the storm, which is coming days after residents in shorts and T-shirts filled grocery stores in search of winter supplies.

The Weather Service in Little Rock expects the state’s northwest, which includes Fayetteville, to receive the most snow — about six inches — but says the problematic ice buildup is projected for the central I-40 corridor.

“When it comes to ice, it’s just a completely different animal,” Dave Parker, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Transportation, told reporters.

In Middletown, Ohio, an industrial steel city between Dayton and Cincinnati, residents were warily eyeing a forecast on Wednesday that called for cold rain to change to ice and snow after dark.

Diver’s Garden and Pet Supplies, a mainstay for 130 years, has closed because of snow only twice — during the Great Blizzard of 1978 and another storm in 2008. Its customers, however, seemed to be preparing for the worst.

Aaron Diver said the business had gone through three semi-truck loads of salt and lots of bird food, a popular alternative. The ice melt and firewood were sold out.

Tom Huiet was one of the last-minute shoppers who came into Diver’s seeking salt to put on his driveway and sidewalks. He works for the city’s building inspection division but will be called on to plow roads when the storm hits.

“I am going to go home and get a nap now,” he said.


— Kevin Williams and Bret Schulte
Men in Tulsa, Okla., trying to spread salt on a gas station parking lot on Wednesday.Credit…September Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times

As several states prepare for snow and freezing rain, others were already digging out with the knowledge that another band of precipitation might make their job more difficult.

In Wichita, Kan., where the snowfall was expected to reach six inches by Thursday morning, public schools canceled classes for a second day. About a foot of snow coated the Mississippi River cities of Hannibal, Mo., and Quincy, Ill. The Chicago area appeared to take between six and 12 inches of snow in stride, and Lansing, Mich., received more than a foot.

Power outages were largely avoided along the storm’s path.

“Our goal is to have everything cleaned up this evening before the other blast comes and then wait and see,” John Whanger, who owns a landscaping and snow removal business in the St. Louis area, said on Wednesday afternoon. “I think the second wave is going to be tough.”

The St. Louis airport had received only two inches of snow by Wednesday evening, but Mr. Whanger paid for his employees to stay at a hotel overnight because an additional five to seven inches was expected, according to the National Weather Service in St. Louis.

Farther west, the airport in Tulsa, Okla., recorded three inches of snow. A dusting in Albuquerque was expected to reach several inches on Thursday as much of New Mexico experienced freezing temperatures.

While the storm was expected to produce unusually large amounts of snowfall for the area, forecasters emphasized that the precipitation remained far from what would be needed to significantly alleviate drought conditions.

“It’s still so dry that we probably need more events like this one to really put any kind of dent into it,” said Scott Overbeck, the warning coordination meteorologist for the Weather Service in Albuquerque.
A pedestrian in downtown Cleveland on Thursday.Credit…Joshua Gunter, via Associated Press

CLEVELAND — Grocery shoppers did what grocery shoppers often do as a major snowstorm bore down on the Great Lakes: They bought a little extra, just in case.

“I’m here to get the stuff I need to make spaghetti sauce,” said Edwina Neal while waiting in a line about a dozen people deep at a supermarket in the Shaker Heights neighborhood on Wednesday evening.

“If I have to stay home for a few days, I’ll have what I need to eat,” Ms. Neal said. “But we’re used to this kind of snowfall in Cleveland.”

Although maybe not. About 3 to 6 inches fell in the area overnight, keeping many commuters off the roads and forcing schools and colleges to close or move to remote learning, and forecasters predicted that 12 to 16 total inches would fall before the day is done.

If so, that would be close to or above the city’s one-day record of 13.6 inches that fell on Feb. 23, 1999.

Still, in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb just west of Cleveland, the region seemed to be handling the snowfall just fine, with the streets clear and the stores open on Thursday morning. A mid-January snowfall of 15 inches over two days led to the suspension of mass transit, but buses and trains were operating early Thursday.

“I’m hoping they can run for this snowstorm, because a lot of us need those services to get to work,” said Ariel Hawthorne, an office cleaning worker waiting for a light rail train on Wednesday night. “We need to eat and we need to get to work, and not all of us have a car to do those things.”


— Daniel McGraw
A snowstorm trapped drivers in Washington, D.C., last month.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York Times

In the aftermath of a major snowstorm that hit Virginia last month, safety experts have offered advice on how people can stay safe if they are stuck in their vehicles. Their top tip? Be prepared.

But first, a caveat: Check the weather forecast before hitting the road, they said. If a snowstorm is expected, it is best to stay put.

For those who venture out, here are some important safety tips.
Pack a ‘go bag’ for your car

Some important essentials to bring are food, water and a charged cellphone, said Dr. Ken Zafren, an emergency medicine professor at Stanford University.

Also helpful: parkas, blankets, sleeping bags, boots, mittens, hats, flares, medications, wipes, a shovel, a first-aid kit, a cellphone charger, an ice scraper, jumper cables and a full tank of gas.
Stay warm.

First, do not leave your car, experts said, warning about the risks of hypothermia or becoming lost.

Instead, generate heat by turning on the car for up to 10 minutes every hour, said Dr. Steve Mitchell, a medical director at the Harborview Medical Center emergency department in Seattle.

There is only one situation in which you should step outside: if you need to check that your tail pipe is clear, to eliminate the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust, experts said.
Take care of yourself.

If you have them, eat foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates, like nuts or candy bars, said Dr. Grant Lipman, the founder of the Global Outdoor Emergency Support.

If you run out of water, drink melted snow, Dr. Mitchell said. But don’t drink alcohol.

Have wipes and a bottle handy if you need to go to the bathroom, Dr. Lipman said.

While your phone may provide a needed distraction, it is important to preserve your battery so that you can make emergency calls, he said. Close your browser and any other battery-draining apps.
A snowplow in Westwood, Kan., on Wednesday.Credit…Christopher Smith for The New York Times

A broad upheaval in the U.S. labor force since the pandemic began in 2020 has trickled down to the transportation sector, creating shortages of snowplow operators as well as city and school bus drivers.

“I don’t know where everybody’s gone, with Covid and everything,” said Chris Ferreira, the owner of a towing company in Chelmsford, Mass., who was trying to fill four positions for plow drivers this month. “As far as hiring help, I can’t get any, and the price of fuel has jumped up. It has gone up so tremendously it affects all the overhead.”

He added, “Right now, to get tow drivers, we have to pay more money, but we can’t charge more money.”

Snowplow drivers in the United States are usually either permanent employees in state transportation departments, state seasonal hires or tow truck drivers who also clear snow for private companies that, like Mr. Ferreira’s, have government contracts.

Snowplow hiring is “a major challenge nationwide,” because freight haulers and package-delivery companies are also vying for commercial drivers, said Kris Rietmann Abrudan, the communications director for the Washington State Department of Transportation.

“We are all competing for essentially the same group of applicants,” she said.

Cities and states are trying to adapt to the hiring challenge by raising pay, offering bonuses and training, shuffling employee shifts and putting some routes on the back burner to ease the workload.

Liquid Marbles: An Emerging Technology Could Solve Carbon Capture and Storage Problems

So what’s stopping us?

February 3, 2022 by Sustainability Times 


By The Conversation

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been touted, again and again, as one of the critical technologies that could help Australia reach its climate targets, and features heavily in the federal government’s plan for net-zero emissions by 2050.

CCS is generally when emissions are captured at the source, such as from a coal-fired power station, trucked to a remote location and stored underground.

But critics say investing in CCS means betting on technology that’s not yet proven to work at scale. Indeed, technology-wise, the design of effective carbon-capturing materials, both solid and liquid, has historically been a challenging task.

So could it ever be a viable solution to the fossil fuel industry’s carbon dioxide emissions?

Emerging research shows “liquid marbles” – tiny droplets coated with nanoparticles – could possibly address current challenges in materials used to capture carbon. And our modelling research, published yesterday, brings us a big step closer to making this futuristic technology a reality.

Issues with carbon capture

Under its Technology Investment Roadmap, the Australian government considers CCS a priority low-emissions technology, and is investing A$300 million over ten years to develop it.

But the efficacy and efficiency of CCS has long been controversial due to its high-operational costs and scaling-up issues for a wider application.

An ongoing problem, more specifically, is the effectiveness of materials used to capture the CO₂, such as absorbents. One example is called “amine scrubbing”, a method used since 1930 to separate, for instance, CO₂ from natural gas and hydrogen.

The problems with amine scrubbing include its high costs, corrosion-related issues and high losses in materials and energy. Liquid marbles can overcome some of these challenges.

This technology can be almost invisible to the naked eye, with some marbles under 1 millimetre in diameter. The liquid it holds – most commonly water or alcohol – is on the scale of microlitres (a microlitre is one thousandth of a millilitre).

The marbles have an outer layer of nanoparticles that form a flexible and porous shell, preventing the liquid within from leaking out. Thanks to this armour, they can behave like flexible, stretchable and soft solids, with a liquid core.

What do marbles have to do with CCS?

Liquid marbles have many unique abilities: they can float, they roll smoothly, and they can be stacked on top of each other.

Other desirable properties include resistance to contamination, low-friction and flexible manipulation, making them appealing for applications such as gas capture, drug delivery and even as miniature bio-reactors.

In the context of CO₂ capture, their ability to selectively interact with gases, liquids and solids is most crucial. A key advantage of using liquid marbles is their size and shape, because thousands of spherical particles only millimetres in size can directly be installed in large reactors.

Gas from the reactor hits the marbles, where it clings to the nanoparticle outer shell (in a process called “adsorption”). The gas then reacts with the liquid within, separating the CO₂ and capturing it inside the marble. Later, we can take out this CO₂ and store it underground, and then recycle the liquid for future processing.

This process can be a more time and cost-efficient way of capturing CO₂ due to, for example, the liquid (and potentially solid) recycling, as well as the marbles’ high mechanical strength, reactivity, sorption rates and long-term stability.
So what’s stopping us?

Despite recent progress, many properties of liquid marbles remain elusive. What’s more, the only way to test liquid marbles is currently through physical experiments conducted in a laboratory.

Physical experiments have their limitations, such as the difficulty to measure the surface tension and surface area, which are important indicators of the marble’s reactivity and stability.

In this context, our new computational modelling can improve our understanding of these properties, and can help overcome the use of costly and time-intensive experiment-only procedures.

Another challenge is developing practical, rigorous and large-scale approaches to manipulate liquid marble arrays within the reactor. Further computational modelling we’re currently working on will aim to analyse the three-dimensional changes in the shapes and dynamics of liquid marbles, with better convenience and accuracy.

This will open up new horizons for a myriad of engineering applications, including CO₂ capture.

Beyond carbon capture

Research on liquid marbles started off as just an inquisitive topic around 20 years ago and, since then, ongoing research has made it a sought-after platform with applications beyond carbon capture.

This cutting-edge technology could not only change how we solve climate problems, but environmental and medical problems, too.

Magnetic liquid marbles, for example, have demonstrated their potential in biomedical procedures, such as drug delivery, due to their ability to be opened and closed using magnets outside the body. Other applications of liquid marbles include gas sensing, acidity sensing and pollution detection.

With more modelling and experiments, the next logical step would be to scale up this technology for mainstream use.

Australia’s second-richest person is suing Facebook over the use of his image in scams


BY JAMES FARRELL
FEBRUARY 03 2022

An Australian billionaire launched a legal case against Facebook Inc. today, alleging that the company didn’t do enough to prevent the spread of scam ads with his face in them appearing on the platform.

The billionaire in question, mining magnate Andrew Forrest (pictured), says Facebook breached Australia’s anti-money laundering laws regarding the spread of cryptocurrency scams. Forrest, who is the chairman of the Fortescue Metals Group, accused Facebook of being “criminally reckless” in not taking down clickbait cryptocurrency ads, or at least not taking them down fast enough.

His face appeared in some of those ads, as did those of other well-known celebrities, which as usual promised that initial small investments in a certain digital currency could lead to great wealth. The lawsuit, which was filed at the Magistrates Court of Western Australia, says Facebook “failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its systems being used to commit crime.”

How it works is that people see a targeted ad on their timeline and if they click the ad, they’re taken to a website that contains a bogus story about an investment. Since most people who use Facebook have likely seen one, you could say they are not rare. The website will then ask for a small investment of perhaps $250, but then the person will be asked to put more money in.

The Guardian reported that an elderly woman in Australia fell for this, initially investing a small amount. This original ad did indeed contain the face of Forrest. The woman eventually lost everything she had, about $80,000, and was unable to get the cash back. Another person lost a whopping $670,000, with the ad again showing Forrest’s face and a fake endorsement. Forrest said Facebook “knowingly profits” from such ads.

“I’m concerned about innocent Australians being scammed through clickbait advertising on social media,” he said in a statement today. “I’m acting here for Australians, but this is happening all over the world.”

“We take a multifaceted approach to stop these ads, we work not just to detect and reject the ads themselves but also block advertisers from our services and, in some cases, take court action to enforce our policies,” Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. said in a statement.

Photo: Mines and Money/Flickr

Is Momentum Shifting Toward a Ban on Behavioral Advertising?

Published on February 3, 2022

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

Data-driven personalized ads are the lifeblood of the internet. To a growing number of lawmakers, they’re also nefarious

Earlier this month, the European Union Parliament passed sweeping new rules aimed at limiting how companies and websites can track people online to target them with advertisements.

Targeted advertising based on people’s online behavior has long been the business model that underwrites the internet. It allows advertisers to use the mass of personal data collected by Meta, Google, and other tech companies as people browse the web to serve ads to users by sorting them into tens of thousands of hyperspecific categories.

But behavioral advertising is also controversial. Critics argue that the practice enables discrimination, potentially only offering certain groups of people economic opportunities. They also say serving people ads based on what big tech companies assume they’re interested in potentially leaves people vulnerable to scams, fraud, and disinformation. Notoriously, the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used personal data gleaned from Facebook profiles to target certain Americans with pro-Trump messages and certain Britons with pro-Brexit ads.

The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote, according to Jan Penfrat, a senior policy adviser at European digital rights group EDRi, were “wake-up calls” to the Europe Union to crack down. Lawmakers in the U.S. are also looking into ways to regulate behavioral advertising.
What Will the European Parliament’s New Regulations Do?

There’s been a long back and forth about how much to crack down on targeted advertising in the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s big legislative package aimed at regulating Big Tech.

Everything from a total ban on behavioral advertising to more modest changes around ad transparency has at some point been on the table.

On Jan. 19, the Parliament approved its final position on the bill. Included is a ban on targeted advertising to minors, a ban on tracking sensitive categories like religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation, and a requirement for websites to provide “other fair and reasonable options” for access if users opt out of their data being tracked for targeted advertising.

The bill also includes a ban on so-called dark patterns —“design choices that steer people into decisions they may not have made under normal conditions—such as the endless clicks it takes to opt out of being tracked by cookies on many websites.”
watch video

That measure is critical, according to Alexandre de Streel, the academic director of the think tank Centre on Regulation in Europe, because of how tech companies responded to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s 2016 tech regulation.

In a study on online advertising for the Parliament’s crucial Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, de Streel and nearly a dozen other experts documented how “dark patterns” had become a major tool used by websites and platforms to persuade users to provide consent for sharing their data. Their recommendations for the DSA—which included more robust enforcement of the GDPR, stricter rules about obtaining consent, and the dark patterns ban—were included in the final bill.

“We are going in the right direction if we better enforce the GDPR and add these amendments on ‘dark patterns,’ ” De Streel told The Markup.

German member of European Parliament Patrick Breyer joined with more than 20 other MEPs and more than 50 public and private organizations last year to form the Tracking Free Ads Coalition. Though its push for a total ban on targeted advertising failed, the coalition was behind many of the more stringent restrictions. Breyer told The Markup the new rules were “a major achievement.”

“The Parliament stopped short of prohibiting surveillance advertising, but giving people a true choice [of whether to be targeted] is a major step forward, and I think the vast majority of people will use this option,” he said.

The EU will address digital political advertising in a separate bill that could potentially be more stringent around targeting and using personal data.

Despite passing the European Parliament, the DSA is far from settled. Due to the EU’s unique law-making process, the legislation must now be negotiated with the European Commission and the bloc’s 27 countries. The member states, as represented by the European Council, have adopted an official position considerably less aggressive—opting for only improved transparency on targeted advertising—and, according to Breyer, are “traditionally very open to [industry] lobbying.”

Whether the DSA’s wins against targeted advertising survive this process “will depend to a large degree on public pressure,” said Breyer.
How Has Big Tech Responded?

So far, Big Tech companies have publicly tread lightly in response to the European push to limit targeted advertising.

In response to The Markup’s request for comment, Google spokesperson Karl Ryan said that Google supports the DSA and that it shares “the goal of MEPs to continue to make the internet safer for everyone….”

“We will now take some time to analyze the final Parliament text to understand how it could impact us and our different users,” he said.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

But privately, over the last two years, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have ramped up lobbying efforts in Brussels, spending more than $20 million in 2020.

The advertising industry, meanwhile, has been public in its opposition. In a statement on the recent vote, Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe director of public policy Greg Mroczkowski urged policymakers to reconsider.

“The use of personal data in advertising is already tightly regulated by existing legislation,” Mroczkowski said, apparently referencing the GDPR, which regulates data privacy in the EU generally. He further noted that the new rules “risk undermining” existing law and “the entire ad-supported digital economy.”

On Wednesday, the Belgian Data Protection Authority found IAB Europe–which developed and administered the system for companies to obtain consent for behavioral advertising while complying with GDPR—in violation of that law. In particular, the authority found that the pop-ups that ask for people’s consent to process their data as they visit websites failed to meet GDPR’s standards for transparency and consent. The pop-up posed “great risks to the fundamental rights” of Europeans, the ruling said. The authority ordered IAB to delete data collected under its Transparency and Consent Framework and has six months to comply.

“This decision is momentous,” Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told The Markup. “It means that digital rights are real. And there is a significance for the United States, too, because the IAB has introduced the same consent spam for the CCPA and CPRA [California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act].”

In a statement to Tech Crunch, IAB Europe said it “reject[s] the finding that we are a data controller” in the context of its consent framework and is “considering all options with respect to a legal challenge.” Further, it said it is working on an “action plan to be executed within the prescribed six months” to bring it within GDPR compliance.

Google and Meta may be preparing for whichever way the wind is blowing.

Google is developing a supposedly less-invasive targeted advertising system, which stores general topics of interest in a user’s browser while excluding sensitive categories like race. Meta is testing a protocol to target users without using tracking cookies.

A handful of European companies like internet security company Avast, search engine DuckDuckGo (which is a contributor to The Markup), and publisher Axel Springer see tighter rules around data privacy as a means to push the industry toward contextual ads or tech that matches ads based on a website’s content, and to therefore break the Google-Meta duopoly over online advertising.

What’s Happening in the U.S.?

On Jan. 18, Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced legislation to Congress to prohibit advertisers from using personal data to target advertisements—particularly using data about a person’s race, gender, and religion. Exceptions would be made for “broad” location information and contextual advertising.

“The hoarding of people’s personal data not only abuses privacy, but also drives the spread of misinformation, domestic extremism, racial division, and violence,” Booker said in a statement announcing the bill in January.

While there is bipartisan desire to rein in Big Tech, there is no consensus on how to do it. The bill most likely to pass the divided Congress is designed to stop Amazon, Apple, Google, and other tech giants from privileging their own products. Congressional action on targeted advertising does not appear likely.

Still, it is possible the Federal Trade Commission will take action.

Last summer, President Biden issued an executive order directing the FTC to use its rulemaking authority to curtail “unfair data collection and surveillance practices.” In December, the FTC sought public comment for a petition by nonprofit Accountable Tech to develop new data privacy rules.

Meanwhile, many U.S. digital rights activists, such as nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, are hopeful that new rules in Europe will force changes globally, as occurred after the GDPR. “The EU Parliament’s position, if it becomes law, could change the rules of the game for all platforms,” wrote EFF’s international policy director Christopher Schmon.

It’s still early days, but many see the tide turning against targeted advertising. These types of conversations, according to Penfrat at EDRi, were unthinkable a few years ago.

“The fact that a ban on surveillance-based advertising has been brought into the mainstream is a huge success,” he said.

This article was originally published on The Markup By: Harrison Jacobs and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.