Coming soon to US vehicles: Cameras to replace side mirrors, headlights that 'talk'

Mark Phelan, Detroit Free Press
Sat, February 18, 2023

Electronic sideview mirrors and adaptive headlights that avoid oncoming drivers’ eyes and communicate with pedestrians are among features drivers can expect soon, according to European parts supplier Forvia.

Some of the systems are already available in other parts of the world, but U.S. regulations slowed their adoption here.

Video cameras will replace side mirrors on some vehicles. The image can be seen on screens inside the car.

Forvia, which specializes in interior systems, lighting and electronics, also is developing a variety of eco-friendly materials that use hemp and other sustainable sources to reduce automakers’ carbon footprint.

I recently got a look at those and other new features at Forvia’s North American tech center in Auburn Hills.

Forvia lights can display symbols or letters.
High-def sideview video

The eMirror goes into production this year in China. It uses video cameras to replace or augment outside sideview mirrors.

Video cameras will replace side mirrors on some vehicles.

The first vehicles likely to get the feature in the U.S. will likely be pickups and SUVs that have outsize mirrors for towing big trailers, said Valerie Zelko, manager for the electronic mirrors and other driver assistance features.


The cameras can provide wide fields of view, eliminating blind spots without the distortion caused by optical wide-angle mirrors. They can also incorporate other sensors, lighting up to alert of vehicles oncoming on either side.

The cameras will allow automakers to replace the current big mirrors — major sources of aerodynamic drag that reduce fuel economy and increase wind noise — with smaller mirrors that can be used if the camera fails. U.S. safety regulations require that backup, but European and Chinese vehicles will be able to dispense with outside mirrors altogether.

Forvia LED lights can be used for illumination, decoration, or to communicate with pedestrians and other vehicles.
Interior radar protects children and pets

Millimeter-wave radar detectors will make sure drivers can’t walk off and forget a pet or infant in a hot, locked vehicle — even if they’re sleeping. The radars will even recognize the minute chest movements of a child sleeping under a blanket, and they’ll scan every inch of the interior, from front footwells to the cargo compartment.

The radars can also be linked to smartphone apps for alerts.

LED lights creating a logo and decorative lights on a vehicle's grille panel.

More:Hybrids, EVs dominate Consumer Reports top vehicle picks; US shut out of top 10 brands

More:I saved nearly $37 vs. gasoline on my EV road trip. Most EV owners do better.
Smart headlights, really smart

LED technology is about to add a host of features to exterior lights.

Automakers will be able to display their logo as a lighted, 3D hologram. The grilles of driverless delivery vehicles could display colored, moving arrows to let pedestrians know that the vehicle is aware of them, and they can safely cross the street.

Forvia LED lights can be used for illumination, decoration, or to communicate with pedestrians and other vehicles.

Other features coming soon will include active headlights that view the road ahead and selectively disable individual LEDs so as not to shine in other drivers’ eyes. The headlights will also be able to project lights on the road to follow the lane, or directions from the nav system.

Electric vehicles that no longer need open grilles for engine cooling provide a rich canvas for advanced LED lights, including special effects to welcome the driver.
Seats that are good for the planet and your back

Forvia’s developing a host of new materials with lower carbon footprints than vehicles use today. The company says 60% of the carbon emissions from producing a vehicle come from the production of materials. New materials that use hemp and other sustainable or recycled sources are key to Forvia’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2040. Other new materials in the works include lightweight polyester, 100% recyclable material to replace the foams used in seat cushions. In addition to a lower environmental impact, Forvia says the material is more comfortable because it’s full of air pockets that keep the driver cool on long drives.

Forvia is developing materials for car interiors using hemp, and fiber from pineapple leaves.

Other materials in the works include fibers from pineapple leaves, already in use by the fashion industry.

Forvia developed what it calls a “fully sustainable” seat that incorporates plastics that incorporate hemp with the recyclable polyester and a steel frame.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Forvia's high tech upgrades coming soon to US vehicles

‘Fake Ebitda’ Masks Risk in Debt-Laden Companies



Shannon D. Harrington
Sat, February 18, 2023 at 3:17 PM MST·3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- During the days of easy money, one of the most widely tracked numbers in credit markets became an unfortunate punchline.

Ebitda, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — a figure that’s akin to a company’s cash flow and, thus, its ability to pay its debts — was instead mocked as a marketing gimmick. When bankers and private equity firms asked investors to buy a piece of their loans funding buyouts and other transactions, they would layer on so-called add-backs to earnings projections that, to some, defied reason.

“Ebitda: Eventually busted, interesting theory, deeply aspirational,” one Moody’s analyst joked in 2017. Sixth Street Partners co-founder Alan Waxman had a more blunt assessment, warning an audience at a private conference that such “fake Ebitda” threatened to exacerbate the next economic slump.

Now, amid rising interest rates, persistent inflation and warnings of a potential recession on the horizon, research from S&P Global Ratings is underscoring just how far from reality the earnings projections are proving to be.

As Bloomberg’s Diana Li wrote on Friday, 97% of speculative-grade companies that announced acquisitions in 2019 fell short of forecasts in their first year of earnings, according to S&P. For 2018 deals, it was 96% and 93% for 2017 acquisitions. Even after the economy was flooded with fiscal and monetary stimulus after the pandemic, about 77% of buyouts and acquisitions from 2019 were still short of their projected earnings, S&P’s research shows.

The bigger worry is that years of rosy earnings projections is masking the amount of leverage on the balance sheets of the lowest-rated companies. By 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic sent markets tumbling the following year, add-backs were accounting for about 28% of total adjusted Ebitda figures used to market acquisition loans, Covenant Review data at the time showed. That was up from 17% in 2017.

The S&P analysts this week said the latest data reinforces their view that those Ebitda figures are “not a realistic indication of future Ebitda and that companies consistently overestimate debt repayment.”

“Together, these effects meaningfully underestimate actual future leverage and credit risk,” they wrote.

Elsewhere:

Adani Group bonds rallied this past week as executives sought to reassure debt investors that the conglomerate will address its debt maturities in the coming months. Options included issuing private placement notes and using cash from operations to repay Adani Green Energy bonds maturing next year. The bonds had dropped to distressed levels after the Adani Group was targeted by short seller Hindenburg Research.

Apollo Global Management and Goldman Sachs are planning private credit funds that will compete with Blackstone for rich European clients. While investors have long been able to participate in US private credit via business development companies, regulations and complexity has limited individuals’ access to such funds in Europe until recently.

A rally in the bonds of China’s debt-laden developers — fueled by a series of policy steps to ease strains in the nation’s property sector - is now losing steam amid a persistent housing slump. A Bloomberg index of US dollar-denominated junk bonds in China recorded a loss for the second straight week, snapping a record 13 weeks of gains.

Trouble is brewing in another corner of China’s credit market. Local government financing vehicles (LGFVs), which became the main buyers of half-finished projects of defaulted developers, have been caught up in a funding slump. The situation prompted a senior financial official from one of China’s poorest provinces to make a rare public plea for investors to buy bonds of its LGFVs.

--With assistance from Alice Huang, Bruce Douglas and Diana Li.

Survivors are still being found in Turkey's earthquake rubble. How long can that go on?

Melissa Healy
Fri, February 17, 2023 

Rescue workers and medics pull a person from a collapsed building in Antakya, Turkey, nine days after being buried in earthquake rubble. (Ugur Yildirim / Associated Press)

In the earthquake-ravaged towns and cities of Turkey, the scenes are as inspiring as they are increasingly rare: survivors being pulled from the wreckage eight, nine, even 10 days after they were buried in rubble.

But their numbers are vanishingly small compared with a death toll that has surpassed 43,000 after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6. On Friday, a 29-year-old mother of two was found alive, 258 hours after the temblor, in the remains of a building in Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter; two men were rescued from a collapsed hospital in Antakya.

How much longer is it realistic to hope that the living could still be among the recovered?

With luck and skill, there could be a few more miracles, experts say. But in a recovery effort that has already defied the odds, the window is nearly shut.

“This is unusual to have survivors this long,” said trauma surgeon Dr. Susan Briggs of Massachusetts General Hospital, who has raced to disaster zones for 37 years to treat survivors.

“After 72 hours, the chance of survival is not great,” Briggs said. “It’s unlikely you’re going to see survivors after two weeks.”

Still, “people surprise us all the time,” added Briggs, who in 1999 established and directed Mass General’s International Medical Surgical Response Team. In earthquakes in Armenia, Haiti and Iran, she recalled seeing people pulled alive from flattened buildings after improbable lengths of time. All had stories to tell of the small things that saved them.

Luck and resourcefulness on the part of victims, and skill and preparedness on the part of rescuers, will be critical factors in whether more survivors are found in Turkey and Syria, experts say. A victim’s age and health play a key role as well. And looming over all of this is Turkey’s ruthless winter cold.

Survivors often recount being entombed between walls or heavy structures that stayed intact. Having escaped crush injury, those trapped then find that good fortune and ingenuity often spell the difference between perishing and making it out alive.

A trickle of rainwater captured from an opening nearby helps prevent dehydration, which can kill in hours or days, depending on the temperature. Blankets or insulation material tugged from rooms or walls protect against hypothermia, which can cause death in hours.

A survivor is carried on a stretcher from a collapsed building in Antakya, Turkey, on Wednesday, nine days after the massive earthquake. (Ugur Yildirim / Associated Press)

Emergency physician Dr. Scott Goldberg said a trapped victim can sometimes have provisions passed to them that make it possible to survive further delay.

Tapping is better than yelling to get rescuers’ attention, he said, because it both conserves energy and cuts more distinctively through the din of emergency workers and their machinery. Rescuers can then deliver water, food or blankets as a stopgap before freeing the person, said Goldberg, a member of Massachusetts Task Force 1, an urban search-and-rescue team dispatched to disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

At this point in Turkey and Syria, “I don’t think it’s hopeless,” Goldberg said. “But the prospects are getting pretty grim.”

Survivors who make it out of the rubble alive aren’t safe yet either. If rescuers don’t act to head off the consequences of so-called crush syndrome, a victim could be poisoned by a buildup of toxic proteins released by the muscle tissue of a pinned or mashed limb deprived of blood flow. Once blood from that limb begins to recirculate to other parts of the body, it can carry the poison to the kidneys and other organs, causing deadly damage even after a rescue.

Before lifting weights off people, rescuers need to apply tourniquets to keep the poisoned blood from flowing to the rest of the body. When they can, rescue teams also try to start IV lines, often directly into bone (called intraosseous IV), to rehydrate a survivor and dilute the blood until the buildup of toxic proteins can be purged through dialysis.

Age matters, too, under most circumstances.

“A healthy 20-year-old is going to tolerate dehydration and harsh conditions longer than an unhealthy 80-year-old,” said USC trauma surgeon Dr. Kenji Inaba, who heads a team of USC specialists that deploys to disasters around the world. But a healthy young person who is spent and dehydrated after a tough workout may not have such a survival advantage over an older person who’s resting after dinner, Inaba said.

And in all people, there is what Inaba calls “the real intangible”: the will to survive. It’s impossible to measure, or to predict, how long it can extend survival in a disaster.

“But any trauma surgeon would be lying if they did not in their heart of hearts believe in the will to survive as a powerful motivating factor,” Inaba said.

Indeed, while disaster medicine is a niche field in the medical profession, it is not a specialty guided by much research, said Dr. Thomas D. Kirsch, an emergency physician who teaches at George Washington Medical School.

“We can identify the risk factors for death more easily than we can identify the factors involved in surviving,” Kirsch said.

In the hours and days immediately after a disaster, the desperate efforts of loved ones, neighbors and local disaster crews are responsible for most rescues. By the time specialized search-and-rescue teams typically arrive on the scene of international disasters, he said, survival is mostly “just luck.”

Once those crews do arrive, Kirsch said, one factor seems to outweigh all others in raising the odds of getting a person out alive: the survival of friends or relatives who know where the person is trapped and who persistently demand the help of search-and-rescue crews to find them.

Kirsch said he has been on the receiving end of such anguished pleas.

In circumstances where resources are scant, needs are limitless and death is everywhere, “that is one awful experience,” he said, because such appeals often can’t be met or end with a grim discovery.

But some do end in joy. On Friday, as most search-and-rescue teams yielded to cleanup crews across Turkey, a police crew celebrated after finding a 12-year-old boy named Osman in the rubble of a building in Antakya.

The team’s elated leader, Okan Tosun, told the private news agency DHA that his squad had started feeling discouraged by the futility of their efforts.

“Just when our hopes were over, we reached our brother Osman at the 260th hour,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

How Erdoğan’s Obsession With Power Got in the Way of Turkey’s Earthquake Response

Alec Luhn / Iskenderun, Turkey
Sat, February 18, 2023 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tours the site of destroyed buildings during his visit to the city of Kahramanmaras in southeast Turkey, two days after the severe earthquake that hit the region on Feb. 8, 2023.

When Ali Nusret Berker started seeing Twitter videos posted by people trapped under the rubble of the two Feb. 6 earthquakes in southern Turkey, they brought to mind the cousin he had lost when a massive earthquake hit his hometown near Istanbul in 1999. An avid cave explorer who just passed an exam to become an ambulance driver, the 33-year-old decided to go straight to the Yalova headquarters of AFAD, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, where he was a search-and-rescue volunteer.

“I couldn’t sit in my warm home when they were screaming for help,” he tells TIME.

But sit at home is exactly what AFAD told Berker to do. He had to come back the next day to badger officials to send him and other volunteers south on an overnight bus ride to Iskenderun. There, AFAD employees tried to keep Berker and his ad hoc team from going to the hard-hit city of Samandag, he says. But the team caught a lift with a local man and eventually pulled five people out alive with a jackhammer, generator, and bolt cutter, which also had to be provided by residents. At least 800 people have died in the city.

“If we had equipment and if we reached Samandag quicker, we could have easily saved more,” Berker says. “There were so many voices that we couldn’t count. But after hours and hours the voices were going mute.”

As Turkey begins to reckon with a death toll nearing 36,000, competing narratives are being told about the country’s deadliest earthquake ever. Although President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has admitted “shortcomings,” he claimed that “it’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this” and called those criticizing the government response “dishonorable.” State prosecutors have opened investigations against journalists and social media users who disagreed with his handling of the crisis.

A resident stands in front of his destroyed home in Samandag, south of Hatay on Feb. 16, 2023, ten days after a 7.8-magnitude struck the border region of Turkey and Syria.Yasin Akgul—AFP/Getty Images

Opposition politicians and other critics have argued that while the twin tremors were unprecedented, the sheer scale of death and destruction points to key missteps. The Turkish government has been supposedly preparing for the next major earthquake ever since it was caught off-guard in the 1999 quake that killed more than 17,000 people, sparking major public anger that helped bring Erdoğan and his conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) into office for the first time in 2003. Yet accounts like Berker’s depict a state disaster response that was slow, inflexible, and incompetent—and many say the centralization of power by Turkey’s longest-serving and increasingly autocratic leader is to blame.

Which of these two narratives Turkish voters choose to believe could determine Erdoğan’s fate when he stands for re-election in a vote currently planned for May.

“He hollowed out important institutions, he weakened them, he appointed loyalists who do not have the credentials in key positions and he wiped out civil society organizations,” says Gönül Tol, Turkey program director at the Middle East Institute, whose father-in-law in Hatay passed away after waiting more than 24 hours for a crane to lift a concrete slab off his legs. “It’s one-man rule, and he wants us to not talk about it. He wants us to die without complaining.”

The best way to prevent earthquake deaths is to construct resistant buildings. But amid a construction boom that enriched firms close to the ruling AKP, the government failed to enforce its own building codes and sold “zoning amnesties” to owners of existing substandard properties.

In part for these reasons, more than 61,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed last week, including several hospitals. More than 130 contractors are being investigated for collapses, even though inspectors and other experts say officials should probably be implicated as well.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to media after visiting the tent city in quake hit Adiyaman, Turkey on Feb. 10, 2023.

Murat Kula—Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Once buildings collapse, lives depend on how quickly rescuers and machinery can arrive. The survival rate is 75% in the first 24 hours, but drops precipitously after that.

Following the 1999 earthquake, a hodgepodge of NGOs, including the Turkish Red Crescent and the mountain search and rescue group AKUT, responded in tandem with the armed forces. In the two decades since, many of those groups have been sidelined or brought under Erdoğan’s influence, and tens of thousands of military and civilian officials were purged after a 2016 coup attempt. For the latest earthquakes, all rescue efforts and humanitarian aid had to be approved by AFAD, a microcosm of the rigid top-down decision-making the President has implemented throughout the country. (AFAD declined to comment for this story.)

AFAD was established under the Prime Minister’s office in 2009 to “coordinate post-disaster response” among different organizations, echoing FEMA in name and mission. (Erdoğan was Prime Minister at the time, Turkey’s most important job, before the country switched to a presidential system in 2018 after he reached the end of his three-term limit.) But it was also a “100% AKP operation” and part of a network of faith-based aid organizations designed to boost support for Erdoğan at home and abroad, according to Hetav Rojan, a Copenhagen-based security advisor for Danish authorities and expert on the region.

Along with the Turkish Red Crescent, which is now also controlled by an Erdoğan ally, AFAD has become an instrument of the President’s foreign policy goal to be the “most generous nation” in the world (as stated on their website), administering humanitarian aid programs in more than 50 countries.

“They’ve used it to show … Turkey is helping its Islamic brothers and sisters in its sphere of influence,” Rojan says.

AFAD’s top brass, mostly AKP cronies, have been criticized for lack of experience. In January, Erdoğan named theologian İsmail Palakoğlu, who previously managed Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, as head of AFAD’s disaster response department.

Emergency personnel conduct a rescue operation to save 16-year-old Melda from the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay, southern Turkey, on Feb. 9, 2023, where she has been trapped since a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country's south-east.

Bulent Kilic—AFP/Getty Images

AFAD’s results have been lackluster, even by its own admission. A report after the November 2022 earthquake in the northwestern province of Düzce that injured 93 people found that “adequate coordination could not be achieved” due to a litany of problems, including a shortage of staff. Local teachers and imams had to be recruited to conduct damage assessments in place of engineers.

AFAD nonetheless had total control of the response on Feb. 6, with environmental minister Murat Kurum warning that “we will not allow any coordination other than AFAD coordination.” After the NGO Ahbap, which is led by Turkish rock star Haluk Levent, collected billions of liras from donors including Madonna for its relief work in the earthquake zone, interior minister Süleyman Soylu threatened to do “what is necessary” to those “exploiting donations and trying to compete with the state.”

The strict centralization often caused delays. One nurse told Reuters she wanted to deploy immediately, but only arrived 40 hours later because she had to wait for orders from AFAD.

“If people are afraid to take initiative, nothing is going to happen, or certainly not happen on time,” says Soli Özel, a lecturer at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

Read More: How Turkey Can Rebuild Better After the Earthquake

AKUT’s popular and outspoken co-founder Nasuh Mahruki, who had to resign as its head in 2016 after he was charged with “insulting” Erdoğan, says the search and rescue group wasn’t “able to save all the people we could have saved because of [AFAD’s] coordination problems.” He’s been calling for the military, which at roughly half a million strong dwarfs AFAD’s 6,000 personnel, to again take the lead on disasters.

“If you’re talking about a disaster … you have to use the greatest and strongest muscle first, which is the army,” Mahruki says.

Although defense minister Hulusi Akar said the day after the earthquakes that 7,500 troops had been deployed, veterans have said the army response in 1999 was bigger and faster. Erdoğan has rolled back much of the military’s considerable independence over the years, particularly after the failed coup attempt in 2016.

A view of 12 Subat Stadium after tents set up by the Turkish Disaster Management Agency (AFAD) for earthquake victims, in the city center of Kahramanmaras on Feb. 15, 2023.

Mehmet Kaman—Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In the days after the earthquakes, many people had to dig themselves out of the rubble, according to residents of Iskenderun. The morning after the earthquake, on Feb. 7, an AFAD truck was parked in a neighborhood of aging apartment buildings that had collapsed in a “domino effect,” as one man described to TIME. A few soldiers stood ready to help. But the people extricating the bodies and carrying them out on bedsheets were local men in work gloves. When volunteer rescuers from AKUT and the Besikatas Search and Rescue Association arrived later that day, they relied on excavators and cranes brought by residents. AFAD didn’t reach the provincial capital of Hatay until the next day.

“I’m also very angry with the government because we’re all alone here, just civilians,” says Saime Özkan, whose parents were buried in the rubble. Even if victims didn’t die immediately, “they’re dead now because of how they’re handling it.”

Once again, Erdoğan’s political future hinges to a large degree on public anger over an earthquake response. He’s promised to rebuild within a year, and if he attempts to postpone the May elections by several months—through an electoral council ruling or constitutional amendment—he might have time to win voters back with lavish spending. But Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the social democratic Republican People’s Party that was last in power in the 1990s, has said any delay would be tantamount to a “coup against democracy.”

“The basis of this mess is the one-man system,” says Meral Akşener, another prospective presidential candidate from the right-leaning Good Party.

When Berker, the volunteer rescuer, returned to Yalova, he told local AFAD officials that these “deaths are on you, too.” At home, he cannot hug his infant son enough, he says.

“The newborn babies of many people who were under the rubble lost their lives. Now every one of them is my child, too,” he says. “I want everyone who was negligent in the loss of their lives to be questioned and held accountable.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s portrait in front of damaged building in Hatay, Turkey, on Feb. 13, 2023.Aziz Karimov—Getty Images

RESISTING MACHO MISOGYNISTIC FEMICIDE 
Mexican musician finds refuge in saxophone after acid attack









 Maria Elena Ríos cleans her saxophone at the end of a rehearsal at the National Autonomous University of Mexico music department, in Mexico City, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. Ríos, 29, has conflicting feelings about her saxophone: She once blamed the instrument for bringing her to the brink of death but it also has been her salvation. Her career as a musician and her devotion to hersaxwas what ledherformer boyfriend and politician to hire the men who splashed acid into her faceand body, disfiguring her. 

(AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)

MARÍA VERZA
Sun, February 19, 2023

MEXICO CITY (AP) — María Elena Ríos has conflicting feelings about her saxophone: She once blamed the instrument for bringing her to the brink of death — but it also has been her salvation.

Ríos, 29, thought her career as a musician and her devotion to her saxophone was what led her former boyfriend - an influential politician - to hire the men who splashed acid onto her face and body, disfiguring her. Later, she learned he simply couldn't accept that she had broken off their relationship.

Some of the attackers and the ex-boyfriend are in jail, but Ríos still had to come to terms with her instrument. Her love of the saxophone, in the end, is helping heal the psychological scars left by the terrifying attack.

“We are reconciling, little by little,” Ríos said of the musical instrument. “I hated it, because I thought it was responsible” for the 2019 attack in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca. She's performed live since then, but still wears a mask covering her lower face.

“It bothered my attacker a lot that I was a musician," Ríos recounts, "because he said we musicians were vagrants, poverty stricken, that we just took drugs and that when I went to concerts I probably participated in orgies.”

The ex-politician who allegedly ordered the attack is being held in jail while awaiting trial, as are two other men, but another remains at large.

Meanwhile, Ríos has joined a movement calling for greater punishments for acid attacks. and says the saxophone is her “sword” in that battle on behalf of victims.

Mexico City legislators have proposed a bill bearing her nickname, “Malena,” which would classify acid attacks as a distinct, serious crime equivalent to attempted homicide. Currently they are treated as simple assault or bodily injury.

Acid attacks are most common in South Asia, but also have been documented in many other parts of the world, including Latin America.

The Carmen Sánchez Foundation, started in 2021 to highlight the issue in Mexico, says government health data from 2022 suggests more than 100 women were attacked by chemicals or some kind of corrosive agent, though only 28 were reported to authorities.

Ríos remembers having to choose, at age 9, between playing soccer and joining one of the musical bands that are a popular community activity in the rural villages in Oaxaca.

“I am not her anymore. I am not the beautiful young woman who played the saxophone anymore,” said Ríos. “Today I can say I have been forced to become a defender of my own rights, and a defender of the rights of other fellow women survivors.”

She was hospitalized for five months after the attack, and still recalls the sadness in her parents’ eyes when she awoke in hospital.

She now attends musical classes in Mexico City, where she has taken refuge since the attack. The federal government has provided her with bodyguards because her attacker was wealthy and influential.

Ríos said she and her family were harassed before the attack, when she tried to break off the relationship. She says the harassment continues, and that she lives in constant fear for her life.

The man accused of ordering the attack, Juan Manuel Vera Carrizal, was a local legislator and businessman. He has declared himself innocent and his lawyers deny he had any involvement.

Even though he was jailed and expelled from his political party in 2020, Ríos says he still has influence.

In January he was almost released to house arrest after a judge tried to reclassify the crime, applying rules for a lesser offense. But because her case has gained has gained national attention, the attempt failed.

Music is now a refuge for Ríos. “When I begin to assemble my saxophone, I feel like I am putting myself together,” she says.

Last year she was invited to play on stage for the first time after the attack. It was at the annual Vive Latino music festival in Mexico City with the rock group Maldita Vecindad.

She says it made her feel “eternal."

ROFLMAO
I spent a night at The Nuthouse and glimpsed the future of the Michigan Republican Party



M.L. Elrick, Detroit Free Press
Sun, February 19, 2023 

LANSING — Reporters at last year's Michigan GOP endorsement convention received credentials with "Whitmer protection team" printed on them.

This year, the candidates for party chairperson should have "Democrat protection team" printed on their credentials.

If you think I'm just provoking pachyderms, consider the literature long-shot chairman and co-chair candidates Kent Boersema and Orlando Estrade distributed at the Lansing Center Saturday. The headline under a photo of the dynamic duo shaking hands says: "AT LEAST WE DIDN'T LOSE STATEWIDE."

That's a shot at Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo, the frontrunners in the race to run the state Republican party. DePerno lost his race for Attorney General by nearly 9 percent in 2022 and Karamo lost her race for Secretary of State by nearly 14 percent (though she still won't admit it). Neither were prodigious fundraisers. And many GOP stalwarts who deserted the party in 2022 have said they won't come back until the anti-establishment, election-denier flames fanned by DePerno and Karamo burn out.

More:Kristina Karamo elected chair of Michigan Republican Party

Perhaps choosing to laugh to keep from crying, Boersema and Estrada's cheeky flyer also refers to the Democrats' 2022 takeover of the Michigan House and Senate.

"We lost everything already..." Boersema says at the bottom of the flyer, setting Estrada up for their pitch to take over the party: "... what do you have to lose?"

The back of the flyer goes on to steal lines from two Will Ferrell comedy classics. "Everybody love everybody!" from "Semi-Pro" and "If you're not first, you're last!" from "Talladega Nights." Then Boersema and Estrada endorse ballot harvesting — a scheme Republicans accuse Democrats of practicing — and "improving engagement with people who live in 'blue' areas."

But, unless you're a Democrat, there's nothing funny about the state of the once-mighty MIGOP.

As recently as 2016, Republicans boasted a governor, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, chief justice of the state Supreme Court and a dramatic photo-finish victory in the election that made Donald Trump president.

Since then, party infighting and an influx of activists who are so suspicious they don't even trust other Republicans have left the GOP in such disarray that they picked a ponderous process for counting ballots at the Saturday convention, eschewing a machine count for a hand-count, even though the hand counts they performed after the machine counts at their last convention showed no errors (and not just because Hugo Chavez or Cesar Chavez or Cesar Romero or caesar salad really IS dead and consequently unable to secure the WiFi access required to manipulate Dominion voting machines, which it turns out even Tucker Carlson didn't believe were rigged, even though he would never admit it on Fox News).

Even though party leadership changes should bear the same warning as investment opportunities — "past performance is no guarantee of future results" — I suspect Democrats were more interested Saturday in the outcome of the Michigan State-Michigan basketball game than who won the race to run the state Republican Party.

I'm not making this up

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A reporter walks into a bar hoping to meet a sore loser from Arizona who claims without evidence that she won the governor's race and who agreed to fly to Michigan to headline a shindig hosted by two losers who say they can turn their party into a winner.

Before you answer, there's more: The star of the show cancels at the last minute after yet another court found no evidence she won, leaving guests to once again stand in line for photos with Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, who seems to turn up at every MIGOP event and who still thinks Donald Trump was cheated in 2020, even though there's no evidence Trump won.

And it all went down at a bar called The Nuthouse.

DePerno, who won failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's endorsement and promoted her visit to the Nuthouse, referenced her setback with an Arizona appeals court when asked Saturday why she did not show up to support him and his running mate, Garrett Soldano. DePerno said he understood, but was not happy about it.

Lake spokesman Ross Trumble told me in a text late Saturday that Lake had a previously scheduled event in Mohave County "and it became logistically impossible to make it to the GOP Convention." He said she "tried every angle to find a flight that would work but it unfortunately didn’t work out.“ Trumble did not respond to a follow-up inquiring why Lake scheduled an event in the desert when she was supposed to be freezing her butt off with us here in Lansing.

With Lake AWOL, fellow failed gubernatorial candidate Soldano spent most of Friday evening holding down the fort at the Nuthouse and mugging for photos with Lindell and Republican delegates.

Meanwhile, longtime Republican operative Scott Greenlee packed delegates into The Studio at 414, a spacious entertainment venue a few doors from the Nuthouse on Michigan Avenue. The highlight of the night was a video of Ted Nugent endorsing Greenlee. The sound quality was poor, but at least anyone who came to see Terrible Ted didn't leave terribly disappointed.

I couldn't find where Karamo was huddling Friday night, but there were more than a few people who enjoyed the free drink tickets and appetizers DePerno and Soldano provided who told me they might vote for Karamo on Saturday.

It could have been a bit of foreshadowing, or a sign that the way to a delegate's heart might not be through their stomach. Or it could finally give DePerno something worth investigating.
The beauty contest

Delegates arrived at the convention center around 9 a.m. Saturday to cast their votes. But first there was a three-hour debate about a proposed rules change that was so convoluted you would hate me for explaining it, even if I understood it well enough to explain.

So let's get to the good stuff!

By the time candidates got their turn to take the stage, the field had shrunk from 11 to nine. And we started with a bang.

Scott Aughney scolded delegates for missing opportunities to pick up votes in urban areas. He said he was worried about the future of the party.

"I look at the faces of you and I don't have a lot of hope," he said, calling the thousands of delegates "soulless" and only receiving applause after cutting his speech short and storming off stage.

Not long after, state Rep. Angela Rigas of Alto, who complained while nominating DePerno that Democrats had cut off her microphone on the House floor, had her mic cut off by Republicans for talking too long.

Other candidates emphasized their Christian faith, their commitment to reverse the GOP's losing streak, and their disdain for the party's traditional leadership. Drew Born disclosed that he slept with four things next to his bed: A Bible, the Constitution, his marriage certificate and a gun.

DePerno didn't speak, instead showing a video featuring Trump. Karamo told delegates the party "operated like a political mafia," guided by its "own self-serving agenda." She did not offer specifics beyond saying that the state GOP was run like a "private social club."

Then instead of looking forward, she looked back.

"There's a reason I did not concede the 2022 election," Karamo said. "Why would I concede to a fraudulent process?"

Again, she offered no specifics.

Sometimes it's what's not said that speaks volumes.

The one thing the candidates and their nominators all had in common is that none of them mentioned the massacre at Michigan State University, even though it happened less than a week ago and less than four miles down the road from where they were choosing new leadership and a new direction — if you consider denying election results and worrying about Trump a new direction.

The Donald Trumped

For a guy who promised Republicans that they would get sick of winning, Trump has got to be getting pretty sick of losing in Michigan.

After helping DePerno and Karamo win the GOP nomination for attorney general and secretary of state in 2022, he favored DePerno over Karamo for party chair in 2023. He recorded a video, sent a letter hailing DePerno as "the only candidate running who can get the job done" (oops!), proclaimed "I cannot think of anybody who I trust more and look forward to working with and WINNING than Matt" (double oops!), and held an online rally Monday for DePerno.

In a moment unimaginable just six months ago, former state Rep. Terence Mekoski of Shelby Township told delegates as he endorsed Karamo that he loves Trump, Lindell and Nugent, but added: "Do they really know Michigan, and do they really know you delegates?"

About 15 minutes later, Greenlee told delegates: "I love Donald Trump. But as chairman, I don't work for Donald Trump."

While other candidates littered the convention hall with signs, literature and free t-shirts, Karamo just soaked up votes.

She led the pack after the first vote but, because she didn't get to 50 percent, the field was winnowed down to the top three vote-getters. Karamo led DePerno and Greenlee after the second round. The third, and final, round came down to Karamo and DePerno. Karamo crushed her former ally 58-42. (In a refreshing twist, neither candidate alleged irregularities or election fraud.)

If there was any doubt true believers are now in charge of the state Republican Party, Karamo dispelled it in her brief victory speech.

"I am nothing without Jesus. I am a nobody without Jesus," she said. "We will not betray you, we will not lie to you. We are committed to every promise that we made."

There are many challenges facing Karamo, from uniting the party, growing the party and raising money to recruiting candidates.

While workers swept the convention floor, Jeff Sakwa, a former state Republican party chairman, told my colleague Paul Egan the event was "the Super Bowl of election deniers." He predicted donors would stay away.

But the biggest challenge Karamo faces may be what to do if it turns out she really was elected Secretary of State.

If that happens, perhaps Governor Lake will finally make that trip from Arizona to the Nuthouse to help swear her in…

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick. Support investigative reporting and use this link to invite a friend to become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Republicans gather at the Nuthouse before picking party chair

This U.S. Supreme Court Case Could Decide The Future Of The Internet As We Know It

Paul Blumenthal
Sun, February 19, 2023 


The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a case with major implications for the operation of the internet as we know it. In Gonzalez v. Google, set to be argued Feb. 21, the court will be asked to pass judgment on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for the first time.

Since its enactment in 1996, Section 230 has been interpreted by courts to shield online platforms from liability for almost any offense committed by users. This protection for user behavior enabled the growth of the current online ecosystem of search engines, social media sites, blogs, message boards, user-generated encyclopedias and shopping sites. And so it has variously been dubbed the internet’s “Magna Carta,” its “First Amendment” and the “Twenty-Six Words That Created The Internet.”

But Section 230 has also produced negative effects. Online platforms have been used for harassment, death threats, defamation, discrimination, revenge porn, fraudulent product sales, the illegal purchase of weapons and drugs resulting in death, and other illicit behavior. In most cases, platforms have been absolved of any responsibility thanks to Section 230’s protections. Gonzalez v. Google brings the negative effects that come with Section 230 before the court for the first time.


In 2015, Islamic State-linked militants murdered 23-year old American student Nohemi Gonzalez amid a terrorist attack in Paris that left 129 people dead. Gonzalez’s family sued Google for aiding and abetting terrorism under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The family claimed that YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation engine suggested and promoted videos posted by the Islamic State that recruited followers and encouraged violence. At issue in the case is whether or not these algorithms are themselves covered by Section 230’s liability protection.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in 2021 that Google’s YouTube recommendation algorithm is protected by Section 230, but the decision featured notable dissenting opinions.

These dissents joined an increasing range of criticism of Section 230 from women’s rights advocates, antitrust reformers and conservatives. With the issue finally before the Supreme Court, these challengersask the justices to consider whether the internet has changed so much in the past 30 years that it’s time to reconsider the law that made it what it is today.

From The Wolf Of Wall Street To Oklahoma City

Section 230 emerged from very specific circumstances that arose during the early public adoption of the internet in the 1990s. It started with two court cases that created perverse incentives that could doom the nascent technology.

In 1991, the online service CompuServe was sued for defamation over user posts made on a message board it hosted. A court in New York found CompuServe not liable as a publisher because it did not edit, moderate or review any content posted on the bulletin boards it operated.

Four years later, Stratton Oakmont, the brokerage firm whose founder Jordan Belfort was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” sued the internet service provider Prodigy over alleged defamatory posts made on one of its message boards. Unlike CompuServe, Prodigy engaged in content moderation in order to remove profanity and pornography. A New York state court found Prodigy liable for defamation posted by its users because it proactively removed objectionable content.

These two cases set off alarm bells for the burgeoning online industry. It looked like companies would be punished for good behavior and protected for giving free rein to bad behavior.

The 1990s message board provider CompuServe was involved in one of the early online defamation cases that gave rise to Section 230.

The 1990s message board provider CompuServe was involved in one of the early online defamation cases that gave rise to Section 230.

Then-Rep. Chris Cox, a California Republican, thought the same thing when reading about the cases in the paper. And so he teamed up with Rep. Ron Wyden, who is now a Democratic senator from Oregon, to do something about it. The law they wrote became Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

The law, named the Good Samaritan Act, gave internet content service providers liability protection when they acted to remove objectionable content. This meant that online sites would not be penalized in court as publishers of user content as Prodigy was for engaging in content moderation. It features two key passages.

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” the first passage states. These are the aforementioned 26 words that “created the internet.”

The other key passage states that online content providers are immune from liability for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected” or “any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to” such material. This provides the Good Samaritan protection for content moderation.

The new law was quickly tested in the courts. The first such case emerged in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing when an anonymous AOL user posted an offer to sell pro-Timothy McVeigh bumper stickers, and attached the name and address of one Ken Zeran. Zeran, who was not behind the bumper stickers, received a torrent of death threats and abuse. He asked AOL to take down the messages, and the company did, but they kept reappearing. Zeran ultimately sued AOL for negligence for failing to keep the messages off of the platform.

In 1998, the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Section 230 protected AOL from claims of negligence, or any other possible criminal liability, whether as a publisher or as a distributor, because the law “creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service.”

Ever since the Zeran decision, federal and state courts have applied this near-blanket “federal immunity” to protect digital platforms from liability for user-generated content. This new exemption from secondary liability encouraged the nascent tech industry to move away from content generation and toward the creation of user-generated platforms. The companies that emerged from this change in liability law like Amazon, Google and Facebook are today among the highest-capitalized companies in the world.

Are Recommendations The Same As Publishing?

As the tech industry emerged from its position as an upstart into the home of the most valuable companies in the world, the perverse consequences of Zeran’s broad grant of Section 230 immunity came more and more into focus.

For social media platforms in particular, this included the understanding that their owners prioritized the maximization of the time users spent on their site in order to increase ad revenue. Platforms built recommendation algorithms that prioritized keeping eyeballs engaged. They also built targeted advertising systems and algorithms for one class of user — advertisers — to connect with another.

In the race to monopolize user attention, social media companies built their platforms and the algorithms that unearthed engaging content in order to hook their users. One of the most read books by Silicon Valley executives as this attention economy emerged was called “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.” In this push for money and power, these companies wound up hosting and promoting to their users content from all kinds of sources, including terrorists, racist extremists, misogynists and many others who ultimately became linked to bombings, murders and mass shootings.

In my view, these types of targeted recommendations and affirmative promotion of connections and interactions among otherwise independent users are well outside the scope of traditional publication.Judge Marsha Berzon, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

Section 230 had long been cited in lower courts as providing liability protection in almost every case of platform-hosted user-generated content. Would it apply when that user-generated content was recommended by an algorithm or other system created by the platform itself? A few key lower court cases precede Google v. Gonzalez in addressing this question.

In a nearly identical case, Force v. Facebook, U.S. victims of terrorist attacks in Israel and their families sued the social media company alleging it aided and abetted terrorism under the Anti-Terrorism Act by hosting and promoting content from the group Hamas through its recommendation algorithms.

On appeal, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Facebook by holding that the use of neutral algorithms to suggest or recommend content was the action of a publisher, which Section 230 protects from liability.

“Arranging and distributing third-party information inherently forms ‘connections’ and ‘matches’ among speakers, content, and viewers of content, whether in interactive internet forums or in more traditional media. That is an essential result of publishing,” the court’s majority opinion stated.

Many online platforms do not use as sophisticated recommendation systems as Facebook or YouTube do, and they too won protection from liability under Section 230.

In Dyroff v. Ultimate Software Group, the mother of Wesley Greer sued Ultimate Software Group after Greer purchased fentanyl-tainted heroin from a drug dealer through the company’s website The Experience Project. That site allowed users to post questions or comments and then suggested connections that would appeal to them. It also alerted them when other users responded. In Greer’s case, he asked where he could find heroin near him. The site then emailed him when another user responded with an offer to sell him drugs.

The 9th Circuit ultimately ruled that the site’s “recommendation and notification functions … did not materially contribute … to the alleged unlawfulness of the content” and were “neutral,” making them just another function of publishing.

‘Proactively Creating Networks’

While these rulings uphold the long-standing lower court consensus on Section 230, a number of notable dissents have emerged along with them.

In the Force v. Facebook case, 2nd Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, a Bill Clinton appointee who died in 2021, issued a partial concurrence and dissent arguing that Section 230 should not be read to cover the recommendation algorithms created by social media sites.

“Through its use of friend, group, and event suggestions, Facebook is doing more than just publishing content: it is proactively creating networks of people,” Katzmann wrote. “Its algorithms forge real-world (if digital) connections through friend and group suggestions, and they attempt to create similar connections in the physical world through event suggestions.”

By “proactively creating networks of people” through friend, group and interest suggestions, Facebook, Katzmann argued, produces a “cumulative effect” that is “greater than the sum of each suggestion.” These suggestions have the potential to immerse a user “in an entire universe filled with people, ideas, and events she may never have discovered on her own."

People gather at a makeshift memorial near the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on Nov. 15, 2015, two days after a series of deadly attacks by Islamic State militants where American citizens including Nohemi Gonzalez were killed. Gonzalez's family is suing Google for aiding ISIS by distributing its videos over YouTube.

People gather at a makeshift memorial near the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on Nov. 15, 2015, two days after a series of deadly attacks by Islamic State militants where American citizens including Nohemi Gonzalez were killed. Gonzalez's family is suing Google for aiding ISIS by distributing its videos over YouTube.

“It strains the English language to say that in targeting and recommending these writings to users — and thereby forging connections, developing new social networks — Facebook is acting as ‘the publisher of ... information provided by another information content provider,’” he continued.

Judges on the 9th Circuit echoed Katzmann’s arguments in a concurrence and a partial dissent when they heard Gonzalez.

In joining “the growing chorus of voices calling for a more limited reading of the scope of Section 230 immunity,” Judge Marsha Berzon, a Clinton appointee, wrote in a concurrence that she would find that “the term ‘publisher’ under section 230” does not cover “activities that promote or recommend content or connect content users to each other.”

“In my view, these types of targeted recommendations and affirmative promotion of connections and interactions among otherwise independent users are well outside the scope of traditional publication,” she added.

In a separate concurrence and partial dissent, Judge Ronald Gould, a Clinton appointee, agreed that Section 230 protects Google from liability for posts published by ISIS members on YouTube, but not for any activity that “goes beyond merely publishing the post” like “amplifying” dangerous content such as terrorism recruitment videos.

The plaintiffs in Gonzalez point to these dissents to argue that Section 230 protection should not extended to cover these recommendation systems. This wouldn’t necessarily lead to Google being found in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, but it would enable a court challenge to proceed.

Friend-of-the-court briefs similarly argue that the Supreme Court could limit Section 230 immunity in a variety of ways. The court could find that certain acts of curation and recommendation are not acts of publishing. It could rule that Section 230 protects online companies as “publishers,” but not as “distributors” of third-party content. Or it could require companies to act as good Samaritans, as suggested by the law’s original title, and eliminate harmful conduct or protect users from it on their platforms when they are made aware of it.

At The Supreme Court

Since the Supreme Court has not heard a Section 230 case before, the justices have had little to say about it. The only exception is Justice Clarence Thomas, who in 2020 noted his dissatisfaction with lower courts’ interpretation of Section 230.

Noting that “most of today’s major Internet platforms did not exist” when Section 230 was enacted, Thomas said it “behooves” the court to take up a case challenging the law to judge whether lower courts have extended the protection from liability suits too far.

“Adopting the too-common practice of reading extra immunity into statutes where it does not belong, courts have relied on policy and purpose arguments to grant sweeping protection to Internet platforms,” Thomas wrote in dissent from a decision to turn down a case.

No other justice has stated an opinion on Section 230. There is also no way to divine their potential opinions based on which party’s president appointed them or their identification as conservative or liberal. Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, is the most conservative justice on the court, while the three dissenting lower court judges were all liberals appointed by Clinton. Thomas’ call for the court to hear a Section 230 case also came amid rising skepticism toward Section 230 from members of both political parties.

Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to limit Section 230 liability protections for online advertisements and certain health information, and for online platforms that enable discrimination, stalking, harassment, genocide or wrongful death. Meanwhile, Republicans seek to amend Section 230 by having its liability protections kick in only when companies do not censor or otherwise moderate political opinions.

Gonzalez may very well be the beginning of a new legal landscape for the internet. The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to take up arguments in two cases challenging laws passed by Republicans in Florida and Texas that would ban digital platforms from moderating content based on political ideology. In a hint that they might take the cases, the court asked the Biden administration to submit a brief in the Florida case on Jan. 23.

Changes to the internet’s “Magna Carta,” however well-meaning, may result in unwanted consequences. After a court found that Section 230 provided liability protection to the sex-worker website Backpage.com for connecting users with underage sex workers, Congress passed a law denying Section 230 protection to platforms engaged in sex-trafficking. This resulted in the shuttering of sites where sex workers consensually offered their services and Craigslist removing its entire personal ads section.

Just as Section 230 was enacted in response to the “perverse incentives” created by the Stratton Oakmont decision, and its passage created its own incentives protecting the internet’s negative externalities, so too could any change dictated by the court
Google’s $168 Billion in Ad Revenue at Risk in Supreme Court Case


DOJ, Eight States Sue Google Over Ad Dominance


Emily Birnbaum
Fri, February 17, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- The US Supreme Court is poised to hear a case that could spell danger for the internet’s most lucrative business: online advertising.

The case, Gonzalez v. Google, will be argued Tuesday and centers on whether internet companies are liable for the content their algorithms recommend to users. The tech industry says it’s protected by a legal shield contained in communications law known as Section 230.

Much of the discussion surrounding the case has focused on the costs to online companies if the court determines they are legally responsible for the hundreds of millions of comments, videos and other content posted by users every day. However, such a decision could also strike at the heart of the automated advertising upon which Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google rely for the bulk of their revenue.

In fact, the social media companies view the case as an existential threat.

“This case could adversely impact the entire advertising ecosystem,” said Marc Beckman, Chief Executive Officer of DMA United, an advertising firm that regularly uses Google and Facebook’s tools to serve targeted ads to potential customers around the world.

Google is being sued by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old US citizen who was among at least 130 people killed in coordinated attacks by the Islamic State in Paris in November 2015. The family argues that Google’s YouTube should be held responsible for automated recommendations of Islamic State videos.

Websites and ad networks automatically target ads based on information they have collected about users, including their location, browsing history, topics they follow closely and more. The ads are posted to websites by online tools without human intervention.

Google declined to comment about the case. But in its Supreme Court brief, it said it is concerned about the case’s impact on the economy, including advertisers. Meta believes that Section 230 shields the company from liability for all content from third parties, including ads, and the social media giant is worried that the court could weaken those protections, a Meta spokesperson confirmed.

A broad ruling by the Supreme Court could effectively snuff out the business of serving personalized ads on the internet and turn online ad practices back to the early 90s, experts say. It could also force the platforms to litigate a wave of lawsuits over the millions of advertisements they target at users, resulting in exponential legal costs for smaller ad networks and exchanges.

• QuickTake: Why ‘Section 230’ Is Nub of Fights Over Online Speech

“If we’re not targeting ads, we’re going back to the old ’90s model of ‘see who bites,’” said Jess Miers, legal advocacy counsel with tech-funded group Chamber of Progress. Miers previously worked for Google.

Together, Google and Facebook capture almost 50% of all digital advertising revenues worldwide. The companies, which have been referred to as the “duopoly” of online advertising, collect reams of data about their users in order to serve them relevant ads – a business that mints both companies billions of dollars per year. Globally, Google made $168 billion in ad revenue in 2022 while Meta made $112 billion, according to data analytics company Insider Intelligence. This year, Google’s US revenue alone is projected to reach $73.8 billion, while Meta’s is expected to reach $51 billion. A ruling by the high court would only apply to the US, but it would be technically difficult for the companies to handle advertising differently in its largest market than other countries around the world.

The companies are already facing legal challenges over the ads they serve, particularly those that relate to sensitive issues like healthcare, politics, employment opportunities and more. With few exceptions, Facebook and Google successfully win dismissals of most cases that would hold them responsible, thanks to Section 230.

That could change quickly if the Supreme Court decides to narrow Section 230. While the shield protects companies from lawsuits over content generated by ordinary people, Cathy Gellis, a California lawyer who has represented tech companies in online speech cases, said ads could be categorized as “user-generated content” if the Supreme Court’s ruling is wide-ranging.

The digital advertising industry is already coming under fire as governments around the world crack down, arguing that companies collect too much information about people without their consent and violate their privacy. Privacy regulations in countries including the European Union limiting the amount of data companies are allowed to collect on users have already put a huge strain on the digital ads ecosystem, said Beckman.

“We are already, as an agency, implementing new marketing initiatives to not just combat what we think will happen if 230 is limited, but also in the face of these new third party data privacy restrictions,” Beckman said. He said the era of “beautiful” and distinctive advertising may be on its way back as advertisers can no longer rely on the hyper-personalized and cheap ad networks they’ve become accustomed to. While targeted advertising allowed firms to reach their intended audiences with little effort, a pivot away from algorithmic recommendations could require advertisers to work harder to grab attention.

Miers said it’s likely that Google and Facebook will face the brunt of lawsuits the court weakens Section 230. But smaller ad agencies and ad networks will face “trickle-down” effects.

Online advertising is so key to Meta and Google’s business models, it’s likely they would try to fight it out in court, said Gellis, the California lawyer. They would try to handle the legal costs and see if they could win cases on the merits. “Everybody’s going to try to muddle through as best they can,” Gellis said.

To some critics of the tech companies, a wind down of targeting advertising on the internet could benefit some of the internet’s most vulnerable users. Children’s advocacy group Common Sense Media and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in a Supreme Court brief argued that Google’s video and ad recommendations can create a “feedback loop” that steers children and teenagers down rabbit holes that can revolve around eating disorders, self harm and extremism. In their view, Google and Facebook should better control the ads that it serves to young audiences.

The case could be a “shock to a lot of businesses,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School.

“So much of advertising is now being delivered in a dynamic way,” Goldman said. “If that dynamic assessment is an algorithmic recommendation that disqualifies the ad network for 230 protections, then the ad industry has to do something different.”

EU countries poised to agree push on fossil fuel phase-out -document

Fri, February 17, 2023 
By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS, Feb 17 (Reuters) - European Union countries are preparing to endorse a diplomatic stance on Monday calling for a global phase-out of fossil fuels, as they prepare for this year's U.N. climate change talks, a draft document showed.

The EU conclusions on climate diplomacy, which member countries' foreign ministers aim to approve at a meeting on Monday, seek to anchor the bloc's priorities ahead of COP28, the U.N. climate summit beginning Nov. 30 in Dubai.

A draft of the conclusions, seen by Reuters on Friday, acknowledged a commitment nearly 200 countries made at previous U.N. climate talks to phase down coal-fuelled energy - but said this must go further, to phase out all CO2-emitting fossil fuels, including oil and gas.

"The shift towards a climate neutral economy will require the global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels, as defined by the IPCC," the draft said, referring to the U.N. climate science panel.

To avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, IPCC scientists have said the world must substantially reduce fossil fuel energy use this decade.

"The EU will systematically promote and call for a global move towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels well ahead of 2050," the draft document said.

Last year's U.N. climate summit disappointed some countries for not yielding a deal on phasing down fossil fuel energy. A proposal by India to include this had gained support from more than 80 governments, including EU countries, but was opposed by Saudi Arabia and other oil- and gas-rich countries.

The latest EU draft included stronger wording than a previous version, reported by Reuters, which had not explicitly endorsed a "phase-out". EU diplomats said Germany and Denmark had pushed for more ambitious wording.

The draft is still being negotiated, however, and some diplomats said it could be delayed beyond next week because some countries were unhappy with other elements of the text, which covers topics including promoting renewable energy and EU efforts to stop using Russian gas. (Reporting by Kate Abnett Editing by Mark Potter )

WORLD WAR Z
Russia's year of war: Purge of critics, surge of nationalism


2 / 30
Cars in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, March 30, 2022, drive past a building decorated with a huge letter “Z,” which has become a symbol of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, along with a hashtag reading, "We don't abandon our own." The symbols serve as reminders of the conflict that has dragged on for a year.

DASHA LITVINOVA
Sun, February 19, 2023 

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Moscow's nights display few signs of a nation at war.

Cheerful crowds packed restaurants and bars in the Sretenka neighborhood on a recent Saturday night, watched by officers marked as “tourist police.” Nearby, a top-hatted guide led about 40 sightseers to a 300-year-old church.

There's only an occasional “Z” — the symbol of Russia's “special military operation,” as the Ukraine invasion is officially known — seen on a building or a shuttered store abandoned by a Western retailer. A poster of a stern-faced soldier, with the slogan “Glory to the heroes of Russia,” is a reminder the conflict has dragged on for a year.

Western stores are gone, but customers can still buy their products — or knockoffs sold under a Russian name or branding.

The painful, bruising changes to Russian life require more effort to see.

A broad government crackdown has silenced dissent, with political opponents imprisoned or fleeing abroad. Families have been torn apart by the first mobilization of reservists since World War II. State TV spews hatred against the West and reassuring messages that much of the world still is with Russia.

And Russia’s battlefield deaths are in the thousands.

QUASHING THE CRITICS

“Indeed, the war has ruined many lives — including ours,” Sophia Subbotina of St. Petersburg told The Associated Press.

Twice a week, she visits a detention center to bring food and medicine to her partner, Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician with serious health issues. Skochilenko was arrested in April for replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans.

She is charged with spreading false information about the military, one of President Vladimir Putin's new laws that effectively criminalize public expression against the war. The crackdown has been immediate, ruthless and unparalleled in post-Soviet Russia.

Media cannot call it a “war,” and protesters using that word on placards are hit with steep fines. Most who took to the streets were swiftly arrested. Rallies fizzled.

Independent news sites were blocked, as were Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. A prominent radio station was taken off the air. The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, led by 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, lost its license.

Skochilenko, who says she is not an activist but simply someone horrified by war, faces up to 10 years in prison.

Prominent Putin critics either left Russia or were arrested: Ilya Yashin got 8½ years, Vladimir Kara-Murza is jailed awaiting trial and Alexei Navalny remains in prison.

Entertainers opposing the war quickly lost work, with plays and concerts canceled.

“The fact that Putin has managed to intimidate a significant part of our society is hard to deny,” Yashin told AP from jail last year.

PUSHING THE GOVERNMENT LINE

The purge of critics was followed by a splurge of propaganda. State TV suspended some entertainment shows and expanded political and news programs to boost the narrative that Russia was ridding Ukraine of Nazis, a false claim Putin used as pretext for the invasion. Or that NATO is acting via puppets in Kyiv but that Moscow will prevail.

“A new structure of the world is emerging in front of our eyes,” proclaimed anchor Dmitry Kiselev in a December rant on his weekly show. “The planet is getting rid of Western leadership. Most of humanity is with us.”

These messages play well in Russia, says Denis Volkov, director of the country's top independent pollster Levada Center: “The idea that NATO wants to ruin Russia or at least weaken … it has been сommonplace for three-fourths (of poll respondents) for many years.”

The Kremlin is pushing its narrative to the young. Schoolchildren were told to write letters to soldiers, and some schools designated “A Hero’s Desk” for graduates fighting in Ukraine.

In September, schools added a subject loosely translated as “Conversations about Important Things.” Lesson plans for eighth to 11th graders seen by AP describe Russia’s “special mission” of building a “multipolar world order.”

At least one teacher who refused to teach the lessons was fired. Although not mandatory, some parents whose children skip them face pressure from administrators or even police.

A fifth grader was accused of having a Ukraine-themed photo on social media and asking classmates about supporting the war, and she and her mother were detained briefly after administrators complained, said her lawyer, Nikolai Bobrinsky. When she skipped the new lessons, authorities apparently decided to make "an example” of her, he added.

SURVIVING SANCTIONS

The sanctions-hit economy outperformed expectations, thanks to record oil revenues of about $325 billion after the war sent energy prices soaring. The Central Bank stabilized the plummeting ruble by raising interest rates, and the currency is stronger against the dollar than before the invasion.

McDonald's, Ikea, Apple and others left Russia. The golden arches were replaced by Vkusno — i Tochka (“Tasty — Period”), while Starbucks became Stars Coffee, with essentially the same menus.

Visa and Mastercard halted services, but banks switched to the local MIR system, so existing cards continued to work in the country; those traveling abroad use cash. After the European Union banned flights from Russia, airline ticket prices rose and destinations became harder to reach. Foreign travel is now available to a privileged minority.

Sociologists say these changes hardly bothered most Russians, whose average monthly salary in 2022 was about $900. Only about a third have an international passport.

Inflation spiked nearly 12%, but Putin announced new benefits for families with children and increased pensions and the minimum wage by 10%.

MacBooks and iPhones are still easily available, and Muscovites say restaurants have Japanese fish, Spanish cheese and French wine.

“Yes, it costs a bit more, but there’s no shortage,” said Vladimir, a resident who asked not to be fully identified for his own safety. “If you walk in the city center, you get the impression that nothing is happening. Lots of people are out and about on weekends. There are fewer people in cafes, but they are still there.”

Still, he admitted the capital seems emptier and people look sadder.

‘IN THE TRENCHES, OR WORSE’

Perhaps the biggest shock came in September, when the Kremlin mobilized 300,000 reservists. Although billed as a “partial” call-up, the announcement sent panic through the country since most men under 65 — and some women — are formally part of the reserve.

Flights abroad sold out in hours and long lines formed at Russia’s border crossings. Hundreds of thousands were estimated to have left the country in the following weeks.

Natalia, a medical worker, left Moscow with her boyfriend after a summons was delivered to his mother. Their income was cut in half and she misses home, but they've decided to try it for a year, said the woman, who asked that her last name and location not be revealed for their safety.

“Between ourselves, we’re saying that once things calm down, we will be able to come back. But it wouldn’t resolve the rest of it. That huge snowball is rolling downhill, and nothing will be back (as it was),” Natalia said.

Draftees complained of poor living conditions at bases and shortages of gear. Their wives and mothers claimed they were deployed to the front without proper training or equipment and were quickly wounded.

A woman who is contesting her husband being drafted said her family life fell apart after she suddenly had to care for her children and frail mother-in-law.

“It was hard. I thought I’d lose my mind,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his legal case is continuing. Her husband came home on leave — suffering from pneumonia — and needs psychological care because he jumps at every loud sound, she said.

Vasily, a 33-year-old Muscovite, learned authorities tried twice this month to deliver a summons to a former apartment where he is officially registered. Although not sure if the summons was to draft him or to clear up his enlistment records, especially after a September attempt to deliver call-up papers, he doesn't intend to find out.

“All my friends who went (to the enlistment office) to figure it out are in the trenches now, or worse,” added Vasily, who withheld his last name for his own safety.

Volkov, the pollster, said the dominating sentiment among Russians is that the war is “somewhere far away, it is not affecting us directly.”

While anxiety over the invasion and mobilization came and went over the year, “people started feeling again that it indeed doesn’t affect everyone. ’We’re off the hook. Well, thank god, we’re moving on with our lives.’”

Some fear a new mobilization, which the Kremlin denies.

LIVES LOST

As the war became bogged down by defeats and setbacks, families got the worst news possible: a loved one was killed.

For one mother, it was too much to bear.

She told AP she became “hysterical” and “started shaking” when told her son was missing and presumed dead while serving on the Moskva, the missile cruiser that sank in April. The woman, who at the time spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisal, said she found it hard to believe he was killed.

The military has confirmed just over 6,000 deaths, but Western estimates are in the tens of thousands. Putin promised generous compensation to families of those listed as killed in action — 12 million rubles (about $160,000).

In November, he met with a dozen mothers, which Russian media said were hand-picked among Kremlin supporters and officials, and told one of them her son's death wasn't in vain.

“With some people ... it is unclear why they die -– because of vodka or something else. When they are gone, it is hard to say whether they lived or not -– their lives passed without notice," he told her. "But your son did live – do you understand? He achieved his goal.”

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Associated Press writer David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine