Author: staff

Meta is not allowed to use personal data obtained at a public event for users’ targeted advertising, the EU Court of Justice said in a case involving Max Schrems and Facebook. Meta is not allowed to use personal data on sexual orientation obtained from public sources outside its platform to personalise advertising aimed at its users, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled today (4 October) in a case brought against the tech giant by Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems. Schrems is gay and filed a complaint at an Austrian court in 2020 after he received ads on Meta’s Facebook directed…

Calls for a change in the law have gained fresh momentum in recent months thanks to campaigning by the prominent British broadcaster Esther Rantzen, who disclosed that she has lung cancer and had joined Dignitas, the assisted dying clinic in Switzerland. Views at the top of government are split on the subject, with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband describing the current law as “cruel” and vowing to back the legislation.  Health Secretary Wes Streeting voted in favor of assisted dying back in 2015 but has declared himself conflicted, warning that end-of-life care is not good enough in the U.K. to truly…

Plant-based foods can continue to be sold and promoted using terms traditionally associated with meat, as long as their composition is clearly labelled and does not mislead consumers, the EU Court of Justice ruled. EU member states cannot stop food manufacturers giving vegetarian foods labels traditionally associated with meat in order to appeal to consumers, provided they do explain clearly what is actually inside the products, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled today (4 October).  Common meat-related terms such as steak, sausage, escalope and burger are fair game for marketing vegetarian fare, so long as a country has not established a…

Experts call on global leaders and tech giants in an open letter to prioritise multilingualism in AI development. Francophone scholars are sounding the alarm about the dominance of English in artificial intelligence (AI) development, warning about the potential risks to “global cultural diversity” and “national sovereignty”. In an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute on Friday, the experts said there is a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity in AI models and safety assessments.They argue these shortcomings “pose a threat to the national sovereignty of the states in which they are distributed and to the safety of users”.The…

Judges said the rules “impede the free movement of professional footballers” and “are similar to a no-poach agreement.” While some restrictions could be justified, these “do not appear to be indispensable or necessary,” they said. “Those rules impose considerable legal risks, unforeseeable and potentially very high financial risks as well as major sporting risks on those players and clubs wishing to employ them which, taken together, are such as to impede international transfers of those players,” the court said in a statement. They also “have as their object the restriction, and even prevention, of cross-border competition which could be pursued…

Mondino’s remarks come after the British government agreed to pass sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius on Thursday, in return for securing the future of a strategically important military base. Mauritius will take over sovereignty of the archipelago, situated roughly halfway between East Africa and Indonesia, while a joint U.S.-U.K. military base will continue to operate on Diego Garcia, the largest island, for at least the next 99 years. “The long dispute between Britain and Mauritius came to a conclusion today, with Mauritians successfully regaining their territory of Chagos,” Mondino wrote. “We welcome this step in the right direction…

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it exploited the sectarian fissures of a country shattered by civil war. This time, despite long-running divisions, many Lebanese are desperate to preserve a spirit of national solidarity in the face of the Israeli attack across the southern border, and want to forge a new political order rising above sectarianism now that Hezbollah has been weakened — partly by electing a president after a two-year power vacuum. None of this will be easy. The challenge of holding together a country devastated by economic crisis — with 85 percent of people estimated to be living…

Russia refuses to confirm thousands of prisoners’ captivity or whereabouts. | Sergei Supinsky/Getty Images The Geneva Conventions, the rules encoding the treatment of POWs, states that countries at war should  allow independent monitors unlimited access to captives and permit them to send or receive letters. Russia has a spotty record when it comes to both, the U.N. has said. Tsymbaliuk said Russia refuses to confirm thousands of prisoners’ captivity or whereabouts, leaving their desperate relatives guessing daily whether their loved ones were still “on earth or in Heaven.” The U.N. also listed cases of torture of Russian POWs captured by…

The clash dramatizes the dilemma facing the bloc’s 27 governments at a highly sensitive moment for global trade. The U.S. presidential election is on a knife edge and could see Donald Trump reelected in one month’s time. He has past form playing hardball with the EU on trade and has proposed sweeping new tariffs if he wins back the White House for the Republicans.  But even Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency has taken American policy in a protectionist direction, prioritizing domestic firms for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of industrial investment and tempting European companies to relocate to the U.S.  With…

Meta executive and former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg recently said Britain had “wasted a huge amount of time.” | Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images But California’s experience had other lessons for Britain, too. In vetoing the bill, Newsom took aim at its narrow focus on frontier systems, arguing that it ignored the context in which they’re deployed — a criticism that has been lobbed at the U.K.’s approach, too. Britain’s ruling Labour Party has repeatedly said its bill will place binding safety requirements on only those creating the most powerful models, rather than regulating the way the tech…