In an effort to spur innovation, the European Union has begun to relax its expansive regulations governing artificial intelligence and data privacy.
The European Commission’s unveiling of what it refers to as the “Digital Omnibus” on Wednesday marked the start of a battle between tech companies worried about red tape and privacy advocates worried about digital rights being eroded.
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The bloc would allow tech companies to use anonymized personal data to train AI models and postpone the introduction of stricter risk-management and oversight regulations for “high-risk” AI until 2027 as part of the reform package.
The changes, which amend the AI Act and a number of other privacy and technology-related laws, would also lower website pop-ups that ask for cookies’ permission and lessen the requirements for small and medium-sized businesses to submit documentation.
The changes, according to EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen, require the 27 EU member state representatives’ approval to bolster European competitiveness due to simpler rules governing AI, cybersecurity, and data protection.
We have “a large internal single market, strong infrastructure, and talent.” However, “our businesses, especially our start-ups and small businesses,” Virkkunen said, are frequently stifled by bureaucratic regulations.
The move was welcomed by lobbying organizations for tech giants in the United States, who have voiced their disapproval of Europe’s regulatory framework.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which includes Google, Apple, and Meta, reported that the Omnibus misses important opportunities to raise the outdated compute threshold for identifying AI models that pose a “systemic risk” and fails to address problematic language regarding the extraterritoriality of copyright provisions, which conflict with EU and international standards.
Meanwhile, advocates for privacy rights criticized the reforms as a capitulation of Big Tech.
The founder of Vienna-based rights organization NOYB – European Center for Digital Rights, Max Schrems, described this as “the biggest attack on Europe’s digital rights in years.”
It is obvious that the commission is incorrect when it claims that it “maintains the highest standards.” It makes the suggestion to “unify” these standards.
The proposals, according to Gianclaudio Malgieri, an associate professor of law and technology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, marked a shift away from a rights-based approach to tech regulation that had made Europe unique from the US.
Franco launched a right-wing military rebellion on July 18, 1936, to put an end to its political and social reforms after Spain’s first fully fledged modern democracy and Second Republic were established in 1931 despite fierce opposition from hardline conservatives.
His uprising was sparked by a makeshift pro-Republican coalition of left-wing trade unionists, political parties, some armed forces, and pro-democracy activists, which led to a three-year, bloody Civil War.
His regime was established on April 2, 1939, with the republic finally giving in.
In the Franco-controlled regions of Spain, a brutal repression of suspected civilian rivals and their families had already begun. Any potential opposition would be silenced and intimidated by it.
Between 130,000 and 200,000 of the victims are thought to have been executed for a sum total.
Exhumations have taken place slowly and without much logistical, financial, and legal stress in the fifty years since Franco’s death. Around the nation, there are reportedly 6,000 unmarked mass graves, some of which are located in locations as far away as cemeteries, parks, forests, and rural hillsides.
However, as Spain recalls the victims of the Holocaust and examines exhumation efforts, it is grappling with the recent emergence of a far-right party, Vox, and nostalgia for the ideals of the dictatorship among young people who did not endure it.
According to a recent CIS poll, 20% of people between the ages of 18 and 24 thought the dictatorship was “good” or “very good.”
Secondary schoolteachers believe that teenagers are gaining more Franco support from social media.
They talk like they are actually opposed to the dictatorship and the need for military service, according to Jose Garcia Vico, a teacher in Andalusia’s secondary school.
Even if we had explained the differences between dictatorship and democracy, the majority of the teachers I know were very concerned because they were so enamored of TikTok content and were genuinely hostile toward the world. ”
They receive a lot of content from the hard-right parties that target adolescents on social media, and it significantly influences how they interact with one another. ”
Garcia Vico points to a sharp rise in anti-transgender and Islamophobic comments despite the fact that “not everyone in the class” is drawn to the extreme right.
The boys are viewed as superior to the rest, according to the article. However, some of the parents are also affected by the issue. Some parents told me a few years ago that it was acceptable that their child had yelled “Viva Franco!” at me before they stopped. [‘Long Live Franco! Because that was the right to free speech. ”
Sebastian Reyes Turner, a 27-year-old teacher in Madrid, has also seen the impact of hard-right social media influencers, citing his observations hundreds of kilometers north.
People only consider Franco’s rule as one of the many subjects to mindlessly memorize in order to pass a history exam that doesn’t really matter in schools.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed that a devastating Russian aerial assault on Ternopil in western Ukraine had resulted in the deaths of at least 26 people and the injuries of dozens more.
At the time of the Russian attack on Ternopil on Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, announced on Thursday that 22 people were still missing. In order to force emergency power cuts in the icy weather, Russia launched 476 drones and 48 missiles across Ukraine, striking vital infrastructure for energy and transportation.
The attack destroyed a residential building’s upper floors in Ternopil. As firefighters battled the blaze, smoke emitted from the structure as concerned residents gathered below, waiting for confirmation about missing loved ones.
Klymenko reported on Telegram that emergency personnel searched the structure’s interior throughout the night. There is still a lot to do. Finding those who might still be hidden beneath the rubble is the main goal, he wrote.
Not a single apartment was left standing in the building where two entrances were completely destroyed. The building was completely engulfed in a wave by the flames that had just erupted. People tried to jump out of windows out of fear.
Three children were among those killed, according to authorities.
Oksana Kobel’s son, who had been staying in a ninth-floor apartment during the strike, had remained hopeful. I heard the explosions as I left for work. I called him and said, “Bohdan, go to the shelter, and get dressed.” She recalled that he said, “Mum, I’m already up, everything will work out.”
Poland, a NATO member with a border with western Ukraine, temporarily closed the southeast’s airports in Rzeszow and Lublin and deployed aircraft to protect its airspace.
Following his European diplomatic mission, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Turkiye to resume peace talks with Russia.
In seven of the country’s seven regions, the attack caused nationwide restrictions on power consumption.
Russia, which denies intentionally attacking people, claimed that Ukrainian forces fired four ATACMS missiles at Voronezh in southern Russia as a response to “terrorist attacks” on Russian territory.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva helped to inaugurate a new megafactory on the site of a former Ford car manufacturing plant one month before the UN climate summit.
The new plant, in Brazil’s Camacari, Bahia, is one of many being built around the world by China’s BYD, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars.
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BYD’s presence is also being felt at the ongoing COP30 climate summit in Brazil’s Belem, where it is a cosponsor alongside GWM, another Chinese electric carmaker.
The sponsorship at the UN’s top climate meeting, where China’s official delegation of 789 people is second only to Brazil’s 3, 805 people, is just one of many ways that China’s investments in green technology are being felt.
It contrasts sharply with the United States, where no official delegation has been sent by the federal government. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has accused US President Donald Trump of “handing the future to China” and leaving states like California to pick up the slack, in a speech at the summit.
“China is here,” he declared. United States of America is the only nation that is not present, Newsom claimed. Trump has called concerns over climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”.
However, the polarizing effects China and the US are having on addressing the climate crisis are being felt at the UN Climate Change Conference COP30.
Chinese electric vehicles have been much more expensive than their manufacturers’ prices due to trade barriers in the US and neighboring Canada.
These tariffs are a legacy of former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and place North America as an outlier at a time when Chinese EVs otherwise dominate the global market.
How much of the EV market is China?
Chinese EVs have “really upended the car market” in recent years, according to Joel Jaeger, a senior research associate with the World Resources Institute.
China has gone “from basically not a major player five years ago” to becoming “the number one exporter of cars globally in terms of the units”, says Jaeger.
China produced 12.4 million electric cars in 2024, or more than 70% of the 17.3 million electric cars produced globally last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
About 1.4 million of these cars were exported by China, accounting for 40% of global exports, while the majority of the remaining Chinese-made vehicles were domestically sold.
This dominance has been built on the back of “subsidies that China’s put in place to develop its industry, which I think is a very strategic thing that China has done, both for its own economic growth as well as decarbonisation”, Jaeger said.
Chinese electric vehicles are still comparatively uncommon on American or Canadian streets.
Why are Chinese electric vehicles less affordable in the US and Canada?
According to Jaeger, “prohibitive” tariffs mean that Chinese EVs are almost impossible to buy in the US and Canada.
He continued, “Over the past year, the US and Canada both implemented essentially total prohibitive tariffs on EVs over 100% in both places.”
Notably, Trump has vowed to fight it and “drill, baby, drill” for oil while Democrats’ Biden, a Democrat, who has advocated renewable energy, introduced the steep import taxes on Chinese EVs in the US.
A month after the US introduced 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs in September 2024, Canada brought in identical tariffs of its own.
This implies that a vehicle that a Chinese EV manufacturer might be selling for $30, 000 in the US or Canada actually costs at least $60,000. Even the less expensive Chinese models can’t compete with the more expensive US electric models, which typically cost about $55,000.
These tariffs, along with other US policies, have meant that Chinese manufacturers have yet to set up shop in the US.
According to Addisu Lashitew, an associate professor of business at McMaster University in Canada, the steep tariffs conflict with targets for fully electric cars by 2035, and are also complicated because of Canada’s close trading ties to the US.
The issue is that we are currently having a very complicated trade conversation with the US, Lashitew said. “And two, our supply chain has also]been] very much integrated. Here are primarily Canadian companies’ suppliers, while many American companies are present.
However, Jaeger contends that North America is missing out on importing new Chinese technology even though it is nearly impossible to purchase one of these cars in the US.
“The US, for example, imports a lot of batteries from China. In fact, China imports lithium-ion batteries from China second only to Germany in the world. They are being used in US-made electric vehicles, he said.
US manufacturers are also making bigger cars, including fully electric pick-up trucks]File: Charles Krupa/AP Photo]
Where can I find affordable Chinese electric vehicles?
Many other nations have been more welcoming of China’s EV market, according to Jaeger, than the US and Canada.
“You see different reactions from different countries, depending on their relationship with China, but mostly depending upon their domestic auto manufacturing presence”, he said.
According to Lashitew, Chinese exporters, including BYD and some smaller ones, are “targeting many emerging and developing nations.”
“Ironically, we’re in a situation where, at least in the transportation sector, the energy transition is moving much more quickly than it has in North America.
Chinese electric cars have also continued to sell well in many European countries, says Jaeger, despite those countries also imposing some tariffs, though lower than the US and Canada, “for what they see as unfair competitive practices in China”.
Despite having factories in Brazil, Hungary, India, and Japan, BYD still maintains its strongest presence in China, where it was founded in Shenzhen in 1995. Chinese consumers made up the majority of the 4.27 million electric vehicles BYD sold in 2024. BYD also has a manufacturing presence in Lancaster, California, where it builds electric buses and batteries, but not cars.
The government’s incentives for local businesses in China have increased, in part because they saw electric cars as a part of their plan to reduce air pollution in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
The government’s strategy has had positive effects on Chinese customers, including with new technology. For example, a new battery, which BYD announced in March with the promise of charging for 400km (about 250 miles) of travel in just five minutes, is first being made available for preorder to customers in China only.
How much do electric vehicles cost?
They cost more than gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles in the past. But according to the IEA, the cost of owning an electric car over the vehicle’s entire lifetime is now less than fossil fuel-powered cars, due to the reduced costs of fuel and maintenance.
However, buying an electric vehicle is still frequently more expensive.
China’s manufacturer subsidies are helpful in that area. The IEA has found that prices for electric cars in China are similar to petrol and diesel cars, with half of all electric cars being sold for less than $30, 000 and a wide range of lower-priced models available.
In contrast, the IEA claims that “the range]of available EVs] was skewed towards higher-end models with higher prices” in the US and Europe.
Under Biden, the US attempted to boost its domestic electric vehicle industry while reducing China’s dependence on the latter.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced incentives for US manufacturers that did not use any Chinese parts. Despite being largely overturned by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which became law in July, the IRA also introduced subsidies for customers who purchased EVs.
However, despite the incentives imposed by Biden, only one in ten cars sold in the US in 2024 was electric, compared to more than half of all new cars sold in China in the same year.
Electric buses charge in Cape Town, South Africa]File: AP Photo]
not just automobiles
In many places around the world, people are increasingly turning to electric bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, buses, and even trains, despite the headlines for sustainable transportation.
Even in the US, says Jaeger, there has been a significant growth in the number of electric scooters and two-wheelers imported from China.
In the 12 months leading up to September 2025, the US imported $ 1.5 billion worth of electric two-wheelers from China, an increase of $ 275 million, or more than 20%, from the previous year, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). According to experts, this is because scooters are less expensive than cars and because US taxes on Chinese electric scooters are also lower than those on electric vehicles.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the government has said it will ban petrol-powered motorbikes in the centre of its capital, Hanoi, from July next year, as part of a plan to tackle local air pollution.
In Europe, including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, the IEA estimates that about 40% of bus sales are now electric.
In Central and South America, electric bus sales have increased as well. In Mexico, for example, “close to 18 percent of all bus sales were electric in 2024, up from just above 1 percent in 2023”, according to the IEA.
The US is still struggling in this area, too. The leading electric bus manufacturer went bankrupt, and a second company stopped making electric buses in the US market after suffering significant financial losses, according to the IEA, in 2024.
Vietnam is planning to phase out petrol motorcycles]File: Thanh Hue/Getty Images]
In a show of force ahead of the anticipated demonstrations surrounding the Group of 20 world leaders summit in Johannesburg this weekend, South African police and army units have organized a parade featuring helicopters and motorcycle riders.
The army was put on standby under the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure, a unified command that coordinates the nation’s police, military, and intelligence agencies for high-profile events, on Wednesday as authorities increased security by adding 3, 500 police officers.
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Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili, the deputy national commissioner for policing, informed reporters on Tuesday that the government was anticipating protests in Johannesburg and other significant cities.
She said, “We will permit that right to protest to be exercised.” However, within the law’s proper guidelines and restrictions.
Near the summit venue, an exhibition center next to South Africa’s largest football stadium, police said they have designated specific locations for protesters to gather near.
Leaders and top diplomats from more than 40 nations as well as from international organizations like the UN are expected to attend the two-day summit, which will take place on Saturday. However, America is boycotting.
Anti-capitalists, climate activists, women’s rights activists, anti-immigrant organizations, and other groups are expected to demonstrate their own issues with poverty and inequality.
[Esa Alexander/Reuters] A Greenpeace activist holds a banner in Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 19, 2025.
By putting up billboards in Johannesburg that read “Welcome to the most RACE-REGULATED country in the world,” a trade union representing members of South Africa’s Afrikaner white minority has already stoked controversy.
The Afrikaner trade union, Solidarity, threatened legal action after one of the boards was removed by city authorities.
The billboards reference South Africa’s affirmative action laws, which promote opportunities for Black people and have become a result of US-South Africa’s diplomatic conflict.
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, will not be present at the G20 summit as a boycott because of his widely disproven claims that the country’s Black-led government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies and violently oppressing its Africann minority.
Trump’s claims have been largely disproven as being unsupported, but the US government’s boycott threatens to derail Africa’s first G20 summit.
Washington claimed its decision to boycott the G20 summit had lost its influence, so South Africa rejected a US request on Wednesday to have no leaders’ declaration issued following the G20 summit this weekend.
Government officials confirmed rumors that Washington would not participate in the summit had been reiterated by the US embassy over the weekend.
“For the wealthy”
On Friday, the summit’s eve, the advocacy group Women for Change wants a national shutdown. In protest of South Africa’s extremely high rates of femicide and violence against women, it is asking women to boycott their jobs on the day.
The G20 cannot talk of growth and progress, according to Women for Change, until South Africa stops burying women every 2.5 hours.
The leader of a South African anti-immigration group, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, said the country’s leader will launch a protest against the lack of employment and poverty there.
In a move that has already sparked a diametrically opposed political outlook for the country, US President Donald Trump will meet with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House.
Late on Wednesday, Trump posted a false statement on his social media platform Truth Social stating that Mamdani would travel to the Oval Office on Friday. He also falsely identified Mamdani as a communist and put his middle name, Kwame, in quotation marks.
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“Further details to follow” the president enlarging.
The president slammed Mamdani as a “communist,” mispronouncing his name, threatened to cut off federal funding to New York if he won, and capped off the campaign with his historic victory on November 4 as the city’s first Muslim mayor.
In the final hours before the election, Trump even endorsed Democratic Rep. Andrew Cuomo over Republican Rep. Curtis Sliwa, boasting to his supporters that Mamdani was a “FAILURE.”
Mamdani, for his part, has frequently compared the Trump administration to authoritarianism and portrayed his own objectives as mayor in stark contrast to the president’s lifelong pursuit of wealth and power.
In his victory speech, Mamdani made a promise to the same city that gave rise to Donald Trump, noting his New York roots. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by destroying the very conditions that gave him the most power, “And there is only one way to do that.”
Trump has nevertheless indicated that he is willing to defrost relations following the election earlier this month, which also saw sweeping victories for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia. The president rebuffed his threat of funding in a speech to the American Business Forum in Florida as he criticized communism.
“We’ll help him,” the phrase means “we’ll help him.” New York should have success, we want it. He said, “We’ll give him a little help, maybe.”
In the run-up to and after Mamdani won the mayoral election, numerous Republicans and MAGA supporters launched racist and vitriolic attacks on Mamdani.
Mamdani addressed “racist, baseless attacks” from his opponents in an emotional speech days before the election day. Mamdani criticized opponents for bringing “hatred to the forefront” while speaking outside a Bronx mosque, noting that close to one million Muslims live in New York and are affected by their Islamophobia.
Mamdani claimed earlier this week that his team had contacted the White House because he had “made a commitment that showed a willingness to meet with anyone and everyone, as long as it is for the benefit” of New Yorkers.
