CNN reports on this year's "State of the Climate" report from the World Meteorological Organization (the UN agency promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science a d climatology).

The report "analyzes a series of global climate indicators — including levels of planet-heating pollution, sea level rise and ocean heat — to understand how the planet is responding to climate change and the impact it is having on people and nature."

CNN's conclusion? "The world just failed its annual health checkup."= - Oceans reached record high temperatures, with nearly 60% experiencing at least one marine heatwave.

- Global sea levels climbed to the highest on record due to melting glaciers and warming oceans, which expand as they heat up.

- Antarctica's sea ice dropped to 1.92 million square kilometers in February 2022, at the time the lowest level on record (the record was broken again this year).

- The European Alps saw a record year for glacier melt, with Switzerland particularly badly affected, losing 6% of its glacier volume between 2021 and 2022.

- Levels of planet warming pollution, including methane and carbon dioxide, reached record highs in 2021, the latest year for which there is global data...


Last year, climate change-fueled extreme weather "affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. In 2022, China had its most extensive and long-lasting drought on record. Droughts also affected East Africa, with more than 20 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing acute food insecurity as of January this year. Many western and southern US states experienced significant drought and Europe's punishing heatwave is estimated to have led to 15,000 excess deaths. In Pakistan, record-breaking rainfall left huge swaths of the country underwater, killing more than 1,700 people, with almost 8 million displaced, and causing $30 billion in damages...

Last year is unlikely to be an outlier, as temperatures continue their upwards trajectory. The past eight years were the hottest on record, despite three consecutive years of the La Niña climate phenomenon, which has a global cooling effect. The global average temperature last year climbed to about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, as the world continues its march towards breaching 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time. With the predicted arrival later in the year of El Niño, which brings warmer global temperatures, scientists are deeply concerned that 2023 and 2024 will continue to smash climate records. The hottest year on record, 2016, was the result of a strong El Niño and climate change, said Baddour. "It is only a matter of time before that record is broken...."

"The droughts and level of heatwaves that we saw throughout 2022 were quite remarkable," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told CNN. "This is really a wake up call that climate change isn't a future problem, it is a current problem. And we need to adapt as quickly as possible," she added.
Omar Baddour, head of the Climate Monitoring and Policy Division at the WMO, also told CNN that "Communities and countries which have contributed least to climate change suffer disproportionately."

And for more bad news, CNN notes a report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service found Europe experienced its hottest summer ever recorded, unprecedented marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean sea, and widespread wildfires.

The Washington Post reports on "a relatively young app called Beeper that pulls all your chats into one place." This is significant, the Post argues, because "we're better off if we have the freedom to pick up our digital lives and move on. Tech companies should feel terrified that you'll walk if they disappoint you..." If different people send you messages in Apple's Messages (a.k.a., iMessage), WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Slack, you don't have to check multiple apps to read and reply. Maybe the best promise of Beeper is that you can ditch your iPhone or Samsung phone for another company's device and keep your text messages...

Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's co-founder, told me that if you're pulling Apple Messages into Beeper, you need a Mac computer to upload a digital file. All chat apps have different limits on how much history you can access in the app.

There's also a wait list of about 170,000 people for Beeper. (Add yourself to the list here.) The app is free, but Beeper says it will start charging for a version with extra features.
To put this all in context, the Post's reporter remembers the hassle of using a cable to transfer a long history of iPhone messages to a new Google Pixel phone, complaining that Apple makes it more difficult than other companies to switch to a different kind of system. "Many of you are happy to live in Apple's world. Great! But if you want the option to leave at some point, try to limit your use of Apple apps when possible..."

They look ahead to next year, when the EU "will require large tech companies to make their products compatible with those of competitors" — though it's not clear how much change that will bring. In the meantime, the existence of a small company like Beeper "gives me hope that we don't have to rely on the kindness of technology giants to make it easier to move to a different phone or computer system... You deserve the option of a no-hassle tech divorce at a moment's notice."

As the European Union gears up to enforce a major reboot of its digital rulebook in a matter of months, a new dedicated research unit is being spun up to support oversight of large platforms under the bloc's flagship Digital Services Act (DSA). From a report: The European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency (ECAT), which was officially inaugurated in Seville, Spain, today, is expected to play a major role in interrogating the algorithms of mainstream digital services -- such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

ECAT is embedded within the EU's existing Joint Research Centre (JRC), a long-established science facility that conducts research in support of a broad range of EU policymaking, from climate change and crisis management to taxation and health sciences. But while the ECAT is embedded within the JRC -- and temporarily housed in the same austere-looking building (Seville's World Trade Centre), ahead of getting more open-plan bespoke digs in the coming years -- it has a dedicated focus on the DSA, supporting lawmakers to gather evidence to build cases so they can act on any platforms that don't take their obligations seriously. Commission officials describe the function of ECAT being to identify "smoking guns" to drive enforcement of the DSA -- say, for example, an AI-based recommender system that can be shown is serving discriminatory content despite the platform in question claiming to have taken steps to "de-bias" output -- with the unit's researchers being tasked with coming up with hard evidence to help the Commission build cases for breaches of the new digital rulebook.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The European Union on Tuesday agreed a 43 billion euro ($47 billion) plan for its semiconductor industry in an attempt to catch up with the United States and Asia and start a green industrial revolution. The EU Chips Act, proposed by the European Commission last year and confirmed by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, aims to double the bloc's share of global chip output to 20% by 2030 and follows the U.S. CHIPS for America Act.

"We need chips to power digital and green transitions or healthcare systems," Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said in a tweet. Since the announcement of its chips subsidies plan last year, the EU has already attracted more than 100 billion euros in public and private investments, an EU official said. "The critical piece of the equation which the EU will need to get right, as for the U.S., is how much of the supply chains supporting the industry can be moved to the EU and at what cost," said [Paul Triolo, a China and tech expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies]. While the Commission had originally proposed funding only cutting-edge chip plants, EU governments and lawmakers have widened the scope to cover the whole value chain, including older chips and research and design facilities.

In addition to the company's long-rumored mixed reality headset, Apple is expected to launch new MacBooks, as well as a "major" update to the Apple Watch's watchOS software at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. All told, WWDC 2023 could end up being one of Apple's "biggest product launch events ever," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The Verge reports: Let's start with the Macs. Gurman doesn't explicitly say which macOS-powered computers Apple could announce in June, but lists around half a dozen devices it currently plans to release this year or early 2024. There's an all new 15-inch MacBook Air, an updated 13-inch MacBook Air, and new 13-inch and "high-end" MacBook Pros. Meanwhile on the Mac side Apple still needs to replace its last Intel-powered device, the Mac Pro, with an Apple Silicon model, and it also reportedly has plans to refresh its all-in-one 24-inch iMac.

Bloomberg's report notes that "at least some of the new laptops" will make an appearance. The bad news is that none are likely to run Apple's next-generation M3 chips, and will instead ship with M2-era processors. Apple apparently also has a couple of new Mac Studio computers in development, but Bloomberg is less clear on when they could launch.

Over on the software side, which is WWDC's traditional focus, watchOS will reportedly receive a "major" update that includes a revamped interface. Otherwise, we could be in for a relatively quiet show on the operating system front as iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS are not expected to receive major updates this year. Gurman does say that work to allow sideloading on iOS to comply with upcoming EU legislation is ongoing.

Germany consists of 16 states, the largest of which is Bavaria (covering about of fifth of Germany by area). Hours after Germany closed its last three nuclear power plants, Bavaria's premier offered to keep one of the three reactors running as a state-controlled power plant (rather than as a federally-controlled plant), according to a report in DW.

It reports that the premier told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Bavaria was "demanding that the federal government give states the responsibility for the continued operation of nuclear power. Until the [energy] crisis ends and while the transition to renewables has not succeeded, we must use every form of energy until the end of the decade. Bavaria is ready to face up to this responsibility." He also told the newspaper that Germany is "a pioneer in nuclear fusion research and are examining the construction of our own research reactor, in cooperation with other countries. It can't be that a country of engineers like Germany gives up any claim to shaping the future and international competitiveness."

Now Reuters reports that Germany's federal government just issued their answer. No. Germany's Environment Ministry on Sunday rejected a demand from the state of Bavaria to allow it to continue operating nuclear power plants, saying jurisdiction for such facilities lies with the federal government... Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said the authorisation for [the Bavaria-based nuclear plant] had expired and restarting its reactor would require a new license. "It is important to accept the state of the art in science and technology and to respect the decision of the German Bundestag," Lemke said in a statement sent to Reuters.

Finland finally began regular output Sunday from its first new nuclear power plant in more than four decades. Reuters reports that the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor is also Europe's first new nuclear plant in 16 years. Construction started in 2005, with the plant due to open four years later — but it was then "plagued by technical issues" which continued to the very end. OL3 first supplied test production to Finland's national power grid in March last year and was expected at the time to begin regular output four months later, but instead suffered a string of breakdowns and outages that took months to fix.
The reactor will be Europe's largest, the article points out: OL3's operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit is expected to meet around 14% of Finland's electricity demand, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway. The new reactor is expected to produce for at least 60 years, TVO said in a statement on Sunday after completing the transition from testing to regular output. "The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilises the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition," TVO Chief Executive Jarmo Tanhua said in the statement.
"News of OL3's start-up comes as Germany on Saturday switches off its last three remaining reactors, while Sweden, France, Britain and others plan new developments."

"The abundant sun of northern Africa may soon power Europe's homes and businesses," reports the Washington Post, "as European leaders consider connecting massive North African solar projects to undersea power cables to free their continent from Russian energy." The projects would take advantage of the climate quirk that one side of the Mediterranean is far drearier and cloudier than the other, although Europe and North Africa are geographically close. Abundant desert land also makes North African megaprojects far easier than in Europe, where open spaces tend to be agricultural or mountainous. The sudden need for alternative energy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine means that North African solar projects intended to send electricity to Europe are under active discussion, officials and experts say, as European leaders see a straightforward way to secure large amounts of green power. Past proposals have suggested that North African energy projects could meet as much as 15 percent of Europe's electricity demand.

The interest is especially high in Morocco, where undersea electrical cables already cross the 10-mile span to Spain at the Strait of Gibraltar. Moroccan leaders — who never had any fossil fuels to export — see a chance to promote their country as a renewable energy giant. Europe, meanwhile, wants to hit its ambitious climate goals and address its need for non-Russian energy at the same time. The result is a confluence of interests that could lead to a sudden leap forward for Europe's renewable energy uptake.

More broadly, it is a test for the concept of shipping green energy from sunny parts of the world to regions where the sun doesn't shine as brightly.... Europe alone doesn't have "the potential for the scale to create the dimensions of the renewable energy that we need," said European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, speaking alongside Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita.
The article cites estimates from the International Renewable Energy Agency that North Africa's "installable capacity" is 2,792 gigawatts of solar power and 223 gigawatts of wind power. Laura El-Katiri, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in North African renewable energy, writes that could generate more than two and a half times Europe's 2021 electricity output.

"Germany's final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday," reports CNN, "marking the end of the country's nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades...." [D]espite last-minute calls to keep the plants online amid an energy crisis, the German government has been steadfast. "The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable," Steffi Lemke, Germany's Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, told CNN."We are embarking on a new era of energy production," she said.

The closure of the three plants — Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim — represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older. In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition...

For critics of Germany's policy, however, it's irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify. "We need to keep existing, safe nuclear reactors operating while simultaneously ramping up renewables as fast as possible," Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CNN. The big risk, she said, is that fossil fuels fill the energy gap left by nuclear. Reductions in Germany's nuclear energy since Fukushima have been primarily offset by increases in coal, according to research published last year.

Germany plans to replace the roughly 6% of electricity generated by the three nuclear plants with renewables, but also gas and coal.... Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
CNN also notes how other countries approach nuclear power:

• Denmark passed a resolution in the 1980s not to construct nuclear power plants
• Finland began test production from a new nuclear plant last year
• Switzerland voted in 2017 to phase out nuclear power
• France, which gets about 70% of its power from nuclear, is planning six new reactors.
• Italy closed its last reactors in 1990

The Python Software Foundation is "concerned that proposed EU cybersecurity laws will leave open source organizations and individuals unfairly liable for distributing incorrect code," according to the Register. The PSF reviewed the EU's proposed "Cyber Resilience Act" and "Product Liability Act" and reports "issues that put the mission of our organization and the health of the open-source software community at risk."

From the Register's report: "If the proposed law is enforced as currently written, the authors of open-source components might bear legal and financial responsibility for the way their components are applied in someone else's commercial product," the PSF said in a statement shared on Tuesday by executive director Deb Nicholson. "The existing language makes no differentiation between independent authors who have never been paid for the supply of software and corporate tech behemoths selling products in exchange for payments from end-users...."

The PSF argues the EU lawmakers should provide clear exemptions for public software repositories that serve the public good and for organizations and developers hosting packages on public repositories. "We need it to be crystal clear who is on the hook for both the assurances and the accountability that software consumers deserve," the PSF concludes. The PSF is asking anyone who shares its concerns to convey that sentiment to an appropriate EU Member of Parliament by April 26, while amendments focused on protecting open source software are being considered.

Bradley Kuhn, policy fellow at the Software Freedom Conservancy, told The Register that the free and open source (FOSS) community should think carefully about the scope of the exemptions being sought. "I'm worried that many in FOSS are falling into a trap that for-profit companies have been trying to lay for us on this issue," he said. "While it seems on the surface that a blanket exception for FOSS would be a good thing for FOSS, in fact, this an attempt for companies to get the FOSS community to help them skirt their ordinary product liability. For profit companies that deploy FOSS should have the same obligations for security and certainty for their users as proprietary software companies do."
The article points out that numerous tech organizations are urging clarifications in the proposed regulations, including NLnet Labs and the Eclipse Foundation.

The European parliament is preparing tough new measures over the use of artificial intelligence, including forcing chatbot makers to reveal if they use copyrighted material, as the EU edges towards enacting the world's most restrictive regime on the development of AI. Financial Times: MEPs in Brussels are close to agreeing a set of proposals to form part of Europe's Artificial Intelligence Act, a sweeping set of regulations on the use of AI, according to people familiar with the process. Among the measures likely to be proposed by parliamentarians is for developers of products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT to declare if copyrighted material is being used to train their AI models, a measure designed to allow content creators to demand payment. MEPs also want responsibility for misuse of AI programmes to lie with developers such as OpenAI, rather than smaller businesses using it.

One contentious proposal from MEPs is a ban on the use of facial recognition in public spaces under any circumstances. EU member states, under pressure from their local police forces, are expected to push back against a total ban on biometrics, said people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. Agreement between MEPs, who have been fighting over measures to police artificial intelligence for close to two years, is critical to kick-starting broader negotiations over the AI Act. The proposed law would represent some of the toughest rules on the development of AI and comes in the wake of rising concerns about potential abuses of the technology.

A report released on Wednesday found that wind and solar energy made up a record high 12% of global electricity generation in 2022. Meanwhile EU countries are lagging behind with wind power expansion. From a report: All renewable energy sources, including nuclear power, made up 39% of global electricity last year according to the report by independent energy think tank Ember. The authors predict a phasedown of gas power along with a reduction of coal-fired power, forecasting that fossil fuel generation will decline by 0.3% this year. Electricity is as clean as ever, with the share of solar power rising by 24% and wind by 17% from 2021. Solar and wind energy now makes up over 10% of electricity in more than 60 countries. Ember's annual global electricity review takes data from 78 countries which account for 93% of global electricity demand. The European Union gets 22% of its electricity from wind and solar power. However, EU countries seem to lag behind global wind energy expansion, logging 9% growth from wind power -- below the global average. "The EU started the race to renewables early but, as the world accelerates, it cannot afford complacency," said Sarah Brown, Ember's Europe program lead. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February last year caused concern among EU member states about declining fossil fuel imports. The European Commission put forward a plan to increase renewable energy to 45%, an increase of 5% compared to the previous year.

The European Commission on Wednesday said U.S. chipmaker Broadcom's proposed $61 billion takeover of cloud computing company VMware could restrict competition in the market for certain hardware components. From a report: The Commission said it had informed Broadcom of its objection that the deal could restrict competition in the global markets for the supply of so-called fibre channel host bus adapters (FC HBAs) and storage adapters, by limiting access for competitors' hardware to VMware's software.

The company behind ChatGPT will propose measures to resolve data privacy concerns that sparked a temporary Italian ban on the artificial intelligence chatbot, regulators said Thursday. The Associated Press reports: In a video call late Wednesday between the watchdog's commissioners and OpenAI executives including CEO Sam Altman, the company promised to set out measures to address the concerns. Those remedies have not been detailed. The Italian watchdog said it didn't want to hamper AI's development but stressed to OpenAI the importance of complying with the 27-nation EU's stringent privacy rules. The regulators imposed the ban after some users' messages and payment information were exposed to others. They also questioned whether there's a legal basis for OpenAI to collect massive amounts of data used to train ChatGPT's algorithms and raised concerns the system could sometimes generate false information about individuals.

Other regulators in Europe and elsewhere have started paying more attention after Italy's action. Ireland's Data Protection Commission said it's "following up with the Italian regulator to understand the basis for their action and we will coordinate with all EU Data Protection Authorities in relation to this matter." France's data privacy regulator, CNIL, said it's investigating after receiving two complaints about ChatGPT. Canada's privacy commissioner also has opened an investigation into OpenAI after receiving a complaint about the suspected "collection, use and disclosure of personal information without consent." In a blog post this week, the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office warned that "organizations developing or using generative AI should be considering their data protection obligations from the outset" and design systems with data protection as a default. "This isn't optional -- if you're processing personal data, it's the law," the office said.

In an apparent response to the concerns, OpenAI published a blog post Wednesday outlining its approach to AI safety. The company said it works to remove personal information from training data where feasible, fine-tune its models to reject requests for personal information of private individuals, and acts on requests to delete personal information from its systems.

The UK's communications watchdog has called for a probe into Microsoft and Amazon's dominance of the country's cloud computing market in the latest challenge to the tech giants from global regulators. From a report: Ofcom said on Wednesday it was "particularly concerned" by the practices of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, which together control between 60 and 70 per cent of the UK cloud market. It has proposed referring the sector to the Competition and Markets Authority for further investigation. Cloud computing is dominated by Amazon and Microsoft, and has become a crucial driver of revenue at the tech giants. But growth in demand for these services has slowed this year and customers have sought to cut costs, with some complaining of rising prices and the difficulty of moving between cloud providers. Ofcom's move comes amid growing global scrutiny over the cloud market. Last year, Microsoft changed its cloud licensing policies in Europe in an effort to head off potential antitrust action from regulators in Brussels. The tech companies are already the targets of competition watchdogs in the US, UK and EU on multiple fronts, with investigations into Microsoft's $75bn acquisition of video games maker Activision and Amazon's deal to buy Roomba-maker iRobot. Ofcom said it was concerned that, if unchecked, the concentration of cloud computing supply in the hands of a small number of large US companies could lead to British customers paying more and smaller groups being squeezed out of the market.

Wired pays a visit to a half-finished Microsoft data center that rises out of the flat North Holland farmland — where the security guard tells a local councillor he's not allowed to visit the site, and "Within minutes, the argument has escalated, and the guard has his hand around Ruiter's throat." The security guard lets go of Ruiter within a few seconds, and the councillor escapes with a red mark across his neck. Back in his car, Ruiter insists he's fine. But his hands shake when he tries to change gears. He says the altercation — which he will later report to the police — shows the fog of secrecy that surrounds the Netherlands' expanding data center business.

"We regret an interaction that took place outside our data center campus, apparently involving one of Microsoft's subcontractors," says Craig Cincotta, general manager at Microsoft, adding that the company would cooperate with the authorities.

The heated exchange between Ruiter and Microsoft's security guard shows how contentious Big Tech's data centers have become in rural parts of the Netherlands. As the Dutch government sets strict environmental targets to cut emissions, industries are being forced to compete for space on Dutch farmland — pitting big tech against the increasingly political population of Dutch farmers.

There are around 200 data centers in the Netherlands, most of them renting out server space to several different companies. But since 2015, the country has also witnessed the arrival of enormous "hyperscalers," buildings that generally span at least 10,000 square feet and are set up to service a single (usually American) tech giant. Lured here by the convergence of European internet cables, temperate climates, and an abundance of green energy, Microsoft and Google have built hyperscalers; Meta has tried and failed.

Against the backdrop of an intensifying Dutch nitrogen crisis, building these hyperscalers is becoming more controversial. Nitrogen, produced by cars, agriculture, and heavy machinery used in construction, can be a dangerous pollutant, damaging ecosystems and endangering people's health. The Netherlands produces four times more nitrogen than the average across the EU. The Dutch government has pledged to halve emissions by 2030, partly by persuading farmers to reduce their livestock herds or leave the industry altogether. Farmers have responded with protests, blockading roads with tractors and manure and dumping slurry outside the nature minister's home.
Farmers object that Microsoft is building its data center before it's even received government permits certifying that it won't worsen the nitrogen problem, according to the article. In response the Farmer Citizen Movement has sprung up, and last month it became the joint-largest party in the Dutch Senate. One party leader tells Wired, "It is a waste of fertile soil to put the data centers boxes here."

And Wired adds that opposition to datacenter development is also growing elsewhere in Europe.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Like in other parts of the world, Canada is working out what the right to repair means for its people. The federal government said in its 2023 budget released Tuesday that it will bring the right to repair to Canada. At the same time, it's considering a universal charging port mandate like the European Union (EU) is implementing with USB-C. The Canadian federal government's 2023 budget introduces the right to repair under the chapter "Making Life More Affordable and Supporting the Middle Class." It says that the "government will work to implement a right to repair, with the aim of introducing a targeted framework for home appliances and electronics in 2024." The government plans to hold consultations on the matter and claimed it will "work closely with provinces and territories" to implement the right to repair in Canada:

"When it comes to broken appliances or devices, high repair fees and a lack of access to specific parts often mean Canadians are pushed to buy new products rather than repairing the ones they have. This is expensive for people and creates harmful waste. Devices and appliances should be easy to repair, spare parts should be readily accessible, and companies should not be able to prevent repairs with complex programming or hard-to-obtain bespoke parts. By cutting down on the number of devices and appliances that are thrown out, we will be able to make life more affordable for Canadians and protect our environment."

The budget also insinuates that right-to-repair legislation can make third-party repairs cheaper than getting a phone, for example, repaired by the manufacturer, where it could cost "far more than it should." Canada's 2023 budget also revealed the government's interest in introducing a standard charging port for electronics. The budget says the government "will work with international partners and other stakeholders to explore implementing a standard charging port in Canada." It says a universal charging port could help residents save money and e-waste. "Every time Canadians purchase new devices, they need to buy new chargers to go along with them, which drives up costs and increases electronic waste," the budget says.

Meta announced that starting next Wednesday, some Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union will for the first time be able to opt out of sharing first-party data used to serve highly personalized ads, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a big change from Meta's current business model, where every video and piece of content clicked on its platforms provides a data point for its online advertisers. Ars Technica reports: People "familiar with the matter" told the Journal that Facebook and Instagram users will soon be able to access a form that can be submitted to Meta to object to sweeping data collection. If those requests are approved, those users will only allow Meta to target ads based on broader categories of data collection, like age range or general location. This is different from efforts by other major tech companies like Apple and Google, which prompt users to opt in or out of highly personalized ads with the click of a button. Instead, Meta will review objection forms to evaluate reasons provided by individual users to end such data collection before it will approve any opt-outs. It's unclear what cause Meta may have to deny requests.

A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta is not sharing the objection form publicly at this time but that it will be available to EU users in its Help Center starting on April 5. That's the deadline Meta was given to comply with an Irish regulator's rulings that it was illegal in the EU for Meta to force Facebook and Instagram users to give consent to data collection when they signed contracts to use the platforms. Meta still plans to appeal those Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) rulings, believing that its prior contract's legal basis complies with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the meantime, though, the company must change the legal basis for data collection. Meta announced in a blog post today that it will now argue that it does not need to directly obtain user consent because it has a "legitimate interest" to collect data to operate its social platforms. "We believe that our previous approach was compliant under GDPR, and our appeal on both the substance of the rulings and the fines continues," Meta's blog said. "However, this change ensures that we comply with the DPC's decision."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: European Union countries gave final approval on Tuesday to a landmark law to end sales of new CO2-emitting cars in 2035, after Germany won an exemption for cars running on e-fuels. The approval from EU countries' energy ministers means Europe's main climate policy for cars can now enter into force -- after weeks of delay caused by last-minute opposition from Germany. The EU law will require all new cars sold to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035, and 55% lower CO2 emissions from 2030, versus 2021 levels. The targets are designed to drive the rapid decarbonization of new car fleets in Europe.

"The direction of travel is clear: in 2035, new cars and vans must have zero emissions," EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said. E-fuels are considered carbon neutral because they are made using captured CO2 emissions -- which proponents say balances out the CO2 released when the fuel is combusted in an engine. The Commission will, in autumn 2023, propose how sales of e-fuel-only cars can continue after 2035. Such cars will have to use technology to prevent them from starting when filled with petrol or diesel.

Belgium's intelligence service is scrutinizing the operations of technology giant Huawei as fears of Chinese espionage grow around the EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels, according to confidential documents seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the matter. From the report: In recent months, Belgium's State Security Service (VSSE) has requested interviews with former employees of the company's lobbying operation in the heart of Brussels' European district. The intelligence gathering is part of security officials' activities to scrutinize how China may be using non-state actors -- including senior lobbyists in Huawei's Brussels office -- to advance the interests of the Chinese state and its Communist party in Europe, said the people, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The scrutiny of Huawei's EU activities comes as Western security agencies are sounding the alarm over companies with links to China. British, Dutch, Belgian, Czech and Nordic officials -- as well as EU functionaries -- have all been told to stay off TikTok on work phones over concerns similar to those surrounding Huawei, namely that Chinese security legislation forces Chinese tech firms to hand over data. The scrutiny also comes amid growing evidence of foreign states' influence on EU decision-making -- a phenomenon starkly exposed by the recent Qatargate scandal, where the Gulf state sought to influence Brussels through bribes and gifts via intermediary organizations. The Belgian security services are tasked with overseeing operations led by foreign actors around the EU institutions.