Lack of ‘political will’ on public voting records

Parliament under pressure to release more data on how it makes decisions.

The European Parliament has come under increased pressure to release more data on how it makes decisions, notably in releasing information on how MEPs vote. 

VoteWatch.eu, which provides online monitoring and analysis of the Parliament’s voting data, has called for all voting by MEPs, whether in plenary or in committees, to be recorded and made public.

Doru Frantescu of VoteWatch.eu says that the Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers should do more to make their work more transparent – especially with details of how votes are carried out.

The Parliament publishes roll-call votes only on legislative reports. Other votes, either electronically, which record results but not MEPs’ individual choices, and voting by a show of hands, continue on non-legislative resolutions such as on the deal to supply banking data to the US, or on France’s expulsions of Roma.

These motions provoked wide attention, including on how MEPs voted, says Frantescu. “The image of the Parliament was badly shaken by this,” he says, pointing to a lack of political will as the main cause for the slow progress.

An eight-member working group of MEPs set up in September tasked with making the Parliament’s plenary work more attractive, will study possible extensions of roll-call voting to all issues. Frantescu says that the Parliament’s committee work, while already televised via the internet, should also ensure that it publishes clear data on how MEPs vote on each item. While most votes are recorded, roll-call votes are traditionally only conducted on final votes on reports.

VoteWatch.eu has also called on the Council to provide data on governments’ decisions, as well as more up-to-date minutes of meetings, and has urged the Commission to provide more detail on who sits on its working groups and when they meet.

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A massive surge in online readership during the coronavirus outbreak is coinciding with a sudden drop in ad revenue that could cripple local news outlets already struggling to survive. 

Several newspapers and alt-weeklies have announced pay cuts and layoffs, with some shutting down operations altogether. The turmoil has also brought fresh scrutiny on big tech platforms such as Google and Facebook, who critics say had already seriously weakened the news industry.

“The industry was in a dangerous place four weeks ago, before the coronavirus [outbreak],” said John Stanton, a former BuzzFeed News reporter and co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, a nonprofit highlighting Big Tech’s impact on the news industry. “The fact we’ve had so many layoffs so fast — news outlets getting shut down, the furloughs, all of these things combine together to really drive home what bad shape we are in.”

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Stanton said that was “in large part due to Facebook and Google’s predatory and monopolistic business practices.” 

Critics say Google and Facebook’s dominance in digital advertising — the companies together made up nearly 60 percent of the internet ad market in 2018 — helped lead to declining profits for traditional news outlets, as they siphoned away crucial ad revenue. Ad revenue for the newspaper business fell 60 percent between 2008 and 2018, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. 

David Chavern, president and CEO of News Media Alliance, a trade group representing about 2,000 media organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere, told The Hill that news publishing was already a “stressed business” before the pandemic.

Newsroom employment has declined by about 25 percent in the past decade and roughly 1,800 local newspapers have closed since 2004, according to a University of North Carolina report. 

Those problems were exacerbated by the outbreak, as many local restaurants, venues and other businesses scale back advertising amid mass closures. Meanwhile, some media buyers are blocking digital ads from appearing on stories related to the coronavirus, another hit to publishers trying to monetize their biggest stories.

Nearly 90 percent of publishing executives now say the coronavirus pandemic will cause their organizations to miss business forecasts, with 85 percent anticipating a loss in ad revenue, a Digiday Research snap survey found. 

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“Right now – 2020 could end up 20-25 percent down in local advertising,” Corey Elliott, vice president of Research at Borrell Associates, a local advertising analysis company, told Axios.

A quick succession of news outlets, many of which have axed paywalls for coronavirus-related content, have announced layoffs and reductions in pay as a result, even as their web traffic surges.

The New Orleans Advocate and Times-Picayune announced that despite web traffic running “three to four times above normal” and digital subscriptions doubling, it would have to furlough a tenth of its staff and require the rest to work four-day weeks. Newspapers and alt-weeklies across the country have made similar decisions. The Stranger, a Seattle-based alt-weekly, temporarily laid off all of its staffers and suspended publication.

Digital-only news outlets are also experiencing setbacks; BuzzFeed announced a reduction in salary for a majority of its staff ahead of an expected decline in profit.

Facebook and Google weren’t solely responsible for the state of American journalism before the pandemic, but their enormous influence over the digital ad marketplace became an undeniable factor as publishers struggled, Stanton said. 

Stanton, who was laid off by BuzzFeed News in January 2019, helped launch the Save Journalism Project last summer to highlight the harm he says Facebook, Google and Apple are causing the industry. The group formed right as state and federal officials began increasing their scrutiny of Big Tech.

Federal and state lawmakers have opened more than a dozen inquiries into those companies’ business practices, scrutinizing possible anti-competitive behavior, including with Google’s search and ad business and Facebook’s advertising tools.

The efforts have included bipartisan legislation introduced in the House and Senate that would grant a four-year antitrust exemption to publishers, allowing them to collectively negotiate with Google and Facebook on the terms of how their content is distributed. 

Rep. David CicillineDavid Nicola CicillineThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: House to vote on .2T stimulus after mad dash to Washington Pelosi rejects calls to shutter Capitol: ‘We are the captains of this ship’ Trump campaign presses Twitter to label Biden video as ‘manipulated’ MORE (D-R.I.), one of the co-authors of the House bill, said that the coronavirus pandemic is highlighting how urgent legislative action is. 

“Local news outlets were on life support before the COVID-19 outbreak,” Cicilline said in a statement to The Hill. “This public health crisis has highlighted the urgent need in communities across our country for accurate, trustworthy local news. At the same time, this crisis has pushed many newsrooms even closer to extinction.”

The bills, however, don’t address the underlying problems with the digital advertising model, said Sarah Miller, the executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly advocacy group, in particular the ability of tech giants to target ads to specific consumers.

“Our fear is that you can’t have a vibrant democratic society if you just allow local and independent news to fall victim to Google and Facebook’s rapacious and pernicious business model,” Miller said, calling for banning the tech giants from selling digital advertising.

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“If you don’t allow Facebook and Google to sell advertising, that will eliminate or at least mitigate substantially the shift of news revenue from local and independent institutions to [these companies],” she added.

Miller cited the loads of data Google and Facebook amass to enhance their ability to target ads, noting that they have the most sophisticated stores of data that other businesses can’t compete with. An advertising ban would send “revenue towards news sites that have more integrity,” she claimed.

Industry groups have proposed a less drastic approach.

Chavern said that the News Media Alliance is in “active discussions” with industry players and elected officials about how the government could specifically address the crisis for local news outlets, but he declined to offer details. 

He noted that small business provisions in the stimulus package approved by Congress could “prove pretty useful” for many publishers and help them retain staff. He said less is certain about larger businesses. 

Chavern asserts that much of the industry’s struggles stem from a digital ecosystem that doesn’t “reward quality journalism.” The News Media Alliance, which has lobbied for the antitrust exemption, and other industry advocates have called for Facebook and Google to share a bigger piece of the ad revenue they gain when sending users to links from news outlets. The alliance claims that Google makes billions off news content, but many contest those figures.

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Joshua Benton, director of Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, called the figure “imaginary” and Emily Bell, the director of Columbia University’s Tow Center for Journalism, branded it “bogus.” 

In a series of tweets last July, Bell said the larger problem was not Google and Facebook’s revenue but “the concentration of money and data in the advertising market.” She said that conversations about the platforms should be part of a broader effort to create a more sustainable business model, which the industry has so far failed at.  

In the face of criticism, Google and Facebook have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into programs and charitable grants to support the news industry.

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Facebook last year began offering news outlets millions of dollars to license its content in a news tab. The company earlier this month pledged $1 million to go towards local newsrooms covering the coronavirus outbreak. Google in 2018 pledged $300 million to support a news initiative providing digital tools to journalists. 

The company’s Search and News products also account for about 24 billion clicks to publishers’ sites each month and its ad services are utilized by thousands of outlets. The company has claimed that publishers would lose substantial revenue if personalized ads went away.

“We’ve worked for many years to be a collaborative and supportive technology and advertising partner to the news industry as it works to adapt to the new economics of the internet,” a Google spokeswoman told The Hill. “At this critical time we are exploring additional ways we can continue to help.”

A Facebook spokesperson told The Hill that it’s “committed more than $300 million to quality journalism” and that it’s “proud of the millions we’ve invested in partnerships with news publishers — and it’s a commitment we stand behind.” 

Tech companies are not immune to the economic downturn. Facebook and Google are expected to experience significant declines in ad revenue. But the economic fallout ahead could be especially devastating to local news.

In 2019, when Stanton was laid off from BuzzFeed, approximately 7,800 people working in media lost their jobs. He predicted many more journalists will lose work in the coming months.

Over the years, news outlets have floated a number of new business strategies, from more focus on subscriptions to adopting a nonprofit model. While some of the models led to successes, no strategy has emerged as an industry-wide cure. 

Miller said a focus should be on Big Tech’s stronghold on digital ads, arguing that it’s also behind problems with misinformation and competition. 

“You have to get at the underlying incentives that’s creating them,” she said. “And that’s really the digital advertising generated business model [of Facebook and Google].”

The controversial Dakota Access Pipeline hit another roadblock Wednesday when a federal judge struck down permits for the pipeline and ordered a full workup of the environmental impacts of the project.

North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had sued over the project with protestors from around the country coming to rally against pipeline construction that would travel across native lands and cross the Missouri River.

The U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit sided with the tribe, ordering the Army Corps of Engineers, which granted the permits for the project, to do a full environmental impact statement. In the next phase of the case, a judge will weigh whether the pipeline should be shut down while the case continues.

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“After years of commitment to defending our water and earth, we welcome this news of a significant legal win,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Mike Faith said in a statement. “It’s humbling to see how actions we took four years ago to defend our ancestral homeland continue to inspire national conversations about how our choices ultimately affect this planet.”

President TrumpDonald John TrumpThe pandemic is bad, we need the capability to measure just how bad Florida governor wants federal disaster area declaration Amash calls stimulus package ‘a raw deal’ for ‘those who need the most help’ MORE signed an executive order to expedite construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline during his first week in office.

Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, said the environmental analysis by both the companies behind the pipeline and the Corps was severely lacking.

“In projects of this scope, it is not difficult for an opponent to find fault with many conclusions made by an operator and relied on by the agency,” he wrote in the 42-page decision. “But here, there is considerably more than a few isolated comments raising insubstantial concerns.

“The many commenters in this case pointed to serious gaps in crucial parts of the Corps’ analysis — to name a few, that the pipeline’s leak-detection system was unlikely to work, that it was not designed to catch slow spills, that the operator’s serious history of incidents had not been taken into account, and that the worst-case scenario used by the Corps was potentially only a fraction of what a realistic figure would be,” he continued.

The 1,200-mile pipeline carries oil from North Dakota to Illinois. It became a rallying point for many environmental groups as the Standing Rock tribe voiced concerns that leaks from the pipeline could poison their water sources.

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The environmental impact statement required by the court is more thorough than the environmental assessment the Corps completed earlier and could take years to complete.

Energy Transfer Partners, which operates the pipeline, did not immediately respond to request for comment, nor did the Army Corps of Engineers.

But Grow America’s Infrastructure Now, which advocates for pipeline development, said the decision could stymie investment in such projects.

“This is a stunning decision that flies in the face of decades of widely accepted practice. The Dakota Access Pipeline is already the most studied, regulated, and litigated pipeline in the history of our country and has been safely operating for nearly three years,” the group said in a release.

“These companies that invest and support large scale infrastructure projects want certainty from the government; and those who built and now operate the pipeline followed every applicable local, state, and federal rule – but now a court is putting their work in potential peril.”

The decision comes as the Trump administration is rapidly moving ahead with plans to roll back the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the law Judge Boasberg relied on in his decision. The law requires thorough environmental review of projects like pipelines. 

Trump has repeatedly blamed the law for standing in the way of pipeline construction and other projects.

“From Day One, my administration has made fixing this regulatory nightmare a top priority. And we want to build new roads, bridges, tunnels, highways bigger, better, faster, and we want to build them at less cost,” he said in January, when announcing his plans to finalize a rollback of NEPA.

That decision could be completed within the coming weeks.

Updated at 3:04 p.m.

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Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu on Saturday extended invitations to the three American newspapers that were expelled from China, offering a foothold in the region to waylaid publications.

On March 18, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had their press credentials – which were set to expire at the end of 2020 – revoked and their journalists at their China bureaus expelled from the country. The Chinese government also banned the journalists who were kicked out from working in Hong Kong.

But on Saturday, Wu tweeted: “As @nytimes, @WSJ & @washingtonpost face intensifying hostility in China, I’d like to welcome you to be stationed in Taiwan – a country that is a beacon of freedom & democracy.”

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Wu added that the publications would be greeted in the China-claimed island with “open arms & lots of genuine smiles.”

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Currently, none of the three papers have a permanent base on the island. Taiwan as a whole is home to a small number of permanent foreign correspondents, Reuters reports.

China claims that the U.S. forced it to take action against the papers because of its restrictions on Chinese media.

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In February, amidst the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S., the White House instituted that journalists from Chinese state media be registered to diplomatic missions, saying that it was a response to China’s crackdown on independent reporting.

Beijing then booted three Journal reporters after the paper published an article that referred to China as the “real sick man of Asia.”

The ousting of the Post and the Times quickly followed.

The three papers reportedly made an appeal to China earlier this week, saying that its move to ban them was “uniquely damaging and reckless” as the coronavirus pandemic, which is believed to have originated in the country, rages across the world.

In a cold response, Beijing cited the trio’s reporting, calling it “biased,” according to the news wire.

Eurostat to get extended auditing powers

Finance minister agree to let the EU’s statistical office to investigate member states’ debt and deficit reports.

EU finance ministers today (8 June) agreed legislation to give Eurostat, the Union’s statistical office, audit powers over member states’ national finances.

Once the changes come into effect, Eurostat will be able to send officials to national capitals to investigate whether governments are accurately reporting data on their debt and deficits.

Eurostat officials will have the right to see data from every level of government on execution of national budgets. They will also have the right to see the accounts of “extra-budgetary bodies, corporations…non-profit institutions and other similar bodies that are part of the general government sector”.

The legislation obliges member states to “take all necessary measures” to facilitate the Eurostat officials’ work.

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Greek concealment

The European Commission proposed the legislation in February. It said that the audit powers were essential to prevent a repeat of Greece concealing the true size of its budget deficit. Greece admitted in October 2009 that its deficit was 12.5% of gross domestic product, far higher than the 6%-8% it had previously notified to Eurostat. Greece blamed the discrepancy on manipulation of statistics by the country’s previous government.

Greece’s announcement caused a sharp decrease in market confidence that many see as the beginning of the eurozone debt crisis.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, welcomed the agreement on the legislation. “These audit powers are…one solid condition for the functioning of economic and monetary union,” he said.

But ministers have watered down aspects of the Commission’s original proposal. The Commission wanted to require member states to punish their civil servants with “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” sanctions if they deliberately misreported data to Eurostat. Ministers have removed this requirement, because they felt it was an unacceptable infringement of national sovereignty.

The Commission also wanted to place a mandatory obligation on member states to provide Eurostat with “experts in national accounting”. These experts would work with Eurostat on a temporary basis, to help it prepare visits. This was also removed by finance ministers.

The Commission had protested against the changes, but backed down because it did not want to threaten the chance of the legislation being adopted.

Parliament consultation

Rehn called on the European Parliament to quickly complete its work on the draft legislation, so that the audit powers could come into effect. Parliament has the right to be consulted on the draft law, which means that it cannot be formally adopted until MEPs have given their opinion.

Rehn said that the first use of the audit powers was likely to take place in Bulgaria. He said that Eurostat, which falls under his responsibility within the Commission, has “some concerns as regards [the country’s] statistical performance”. “We are considering sending a mission shortly,” he said.

Anti-fraud network

Finance ministers also agreed to increase their co-operation against value-added tax fraud. They will do this by creating a permanent anti-fraud network, to be called Eurofisc.

Ministers also agreed changes to the guarantee provided from the EU budget for the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) lending outside the Union. Ministers agreed to increase the guarantee for EIB lending to tackle climate change by €2 billion. They also agreed to remove discrepancies between the EIB’s different regional mandates. Currently, for example, the EIB can provide foreign direct investment in Asia and Latin America, but not in other continents.

The jewel in UEFA’s international football crown will return to Germany in the heart of the continent in 2024

Having seen off the challenge of Turkey for the right to host the European Championship in 2024, Germany’s football authorities will already be setting things in motion for staging the tournament.

It will be Germany’s second time hosting the competition after it was previously staged in what was then West Germany in 1988, and it will be the first major tournament to be held in the country since the World Cup in 2006.

The 2024 edition of the tournament will see a return to the traditional format of a single country staging affairs, with Euro 2020 (now, of course, strictly Euro 2021 following its deferment due to the coronavirus pandemic) set to be a pan-European event spanning 12 countries.

More teams

Germany have four years to get everything into working order for UEFA’s flagship international competition and, while the finer details will need to be ironed out and the qualification process is some way away, we already know which venues will be used.

Goal brings you everything you need to know about Euro 2024, including when the tournament gets started, when qualifying kicks off, stadiums and more.

Contents

When is Euro 2024?

Euro 2024 will be played in June and July 2024. A total of 24 teams will compete in the tournament and the draw will take place in December 2023.

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When does Euro 2024 qualification start?

The qualifying stage of Euro 2024 is expected to commence in March 2023, with the draw for the qualification groups likely to be held in December 2022.

It should follow a similar process as that which existed for Euro 2016 and Euro 2020, with the two teams qualifying automatically from each of nine groups and the best third-placed team joining them.

Germany automatically qualify as hosts, in the same way as France did for Euro 2016.

The remaining four places will go to the four teams who emerge triumphant at the conclusion of the 2022-23 UEFA Nations League play-offs.

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What stadiums are being used at Euro 2024?

A total of 10 different venues will be used at Euro 2024 and they are spread right across Germany, covering a number of regions.

UEFA’s tournament requirements for hosting a major tournament dictate minimum stadium capacities for European Championship games (three with a minimum capacity of 50,000, three with a minimum capacity of 40,000 and four that can house at least 30,000) and Germany boasts a wealth of such venues.

The homes of Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich (Allianz Arena) and Borussia Dortmund (Westfalenstadion), which are among the biggest in the country, are unsurprisingly on the list.

Schalke’s Arena AufSchalke in Gelsenkirchen and Stuttgart’s Mercedes-Benz Arena also feature in the stadium list, with the smallest stadium being Frankfurt’s Waldstadion, which holds 48,387.

City	Stadium	Capacity
Berlin	Olympiastadion	74,461
Cologne	RheinEnergieStadion	49,827
Dortmund	Signal Iduna Arena	65,849
Dusseldorf	Merkur Spiel-Arena	51,031
Frankfurt	Waldstadion	48,387
Gelsenkirchen	Arena AufSchalke	54,740
Hamburg	Volksparkstadion	52,245
Leipzig	Red Bull Arena	49,539
Munich	Allianz Arena	70,076
Stuttgart	Mercedes-Benz Arena	54,697

It is not yet clear how exactly the venues will be allocated for group games and knock-out stage matches or when. The organisers may opt to stage games in the same group in various different parts of the country, as they did for the 2006 World Cup. 

However, we can be fairly certain that it will be the biggest stadiums that will feature in the latter stages of the tournament. For example, the Allianz Arena in Munich and the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund were used for the semi-final games in the 2006 World Cup. 

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Where will the Euro 2024 final be held?

When Germany last hosted the European Championship back in 1988 the final was held at the old Olympiastadion in Munich, but the 2024 final will be staged at Berlin’s Olympiastadion (which also hosted the 2006 World Cup final).

Check out Goal’s in-depth look at each stadium for Euro 2024 here.

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Teams at Euro 2024

The number of teams competing at the European Championship finals was increased from 16 to 24 from Euro 2016 onwards, so, unless UEFA makes another alteration, we should expect to see 24 competitors at Euro 2024.

As mentioned, Germany will be automatically given a place in the competition as hosts, but we will not know the identity of the remaining 23 teams until the qualification process is complete, which won’t be for another few years at least.

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Integrated rules for a divided market

Successive EU initiatives have still not created a single market for energy.

The EU is still some way short of creating an integrated, competitive internal market for energy. The European Commission’s forthcoming communication on a “strategy for competitive, sustainable and secure energy”, to be published on 9 November, admits that the market remains “fragmented into national markets” and “incumbent companies sometimes have a de facto monopoly position”. As a result, consumers are not benefiting sufficiently from market openings in recent years. 

Various legislative measures and antitrust actions have been aimed at intensifying competition. From 2003, vertically integrated energy companies (those that own generating and transmission businesses) had to ensure the legal separation of the two operations. This was supposed to prevent companies from exploiting their control over transmission networks to favour their supplier businesses by shutting out potential rivals. Investigations by the Commission revealed that legal unbundling had not been sufficient to prevent abuses of market power, and the Commission forced some large companies to sell off their transmission businesses.

Since the 2003 initiative was clearly inadequate, the EU agreed a further liberalisation package in 2009. Stronger measures should ensure greater separation of generating and transmission businesses, including restrictions on staff from one business going to work for another. There are also faster-acting sanctions for non-compliant companies. The new rules will come into force in March 2011.

New regulator

At the same time, a new body, the Agency for Co-ordination of Energy Regulators (ACER), will become fully operational. ACER’s role will be to ensure effective application of the new rules, and particularly to bring an EU-wide perspective to energy-market regulation. Most bottlenecks in the energy market occur at national borders where companies are reluctant to see the free trading of energy affect the national market that they dominate.

ACER’s job will bring it into conflict with national regulators that favour their national champions. It will be able to review companies’ ten-year investment plans to ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to providing the interconnectors needed for cross-border trade.

ACER has already started working on technical codes for national transmission system operators to ensure that technical standards are harmonised across the EU, so as not to present a barrier to trading.

The Commission has drawn mixed conclusions on the degree of integration in the EU energy market. The latest report on progress in creating the internal gas and electricity market, published in March, highlighted the importance of regional initiatives. These have been developing single rules for energy auctioning, and represent an important first step in agreeing common EU-wide rules. There will soon be common auctioning rules for an area taking in 15 countries stretching from France across to Poland and down to Greece.

But the wholesale and retail energy markets are heavily concentrated on a limited number of suppliers. On the wholesale gas market, the three largest suppliers have a market share of 90% or more in ten member states. The picture in the retail electricity market is not much different, with three of the largest companies having more than 80% of market share in 14 member states.

Time for action

Energy market observers believe that even the strengthened powers for regulators in the new energy market package will not be enough to ensure an integrated, competitive market. There is already talk of the need for yet another round of legislative proposals. But time is running out.

If the energy sector is to attract the vast amount of investment needed for a new energy infrastructure, then the EU needs to create the right legal framework. Without that infrastructure, the EU will not be able to handle the enormous increase of energy from renewables that is supposed to come online from 2020.

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Mer, montagne ou campagne. Itinéraire rodé, repos forcé ou départ improvisé, nos hommes et femmes politiques se retirent de la scène publique et profitent de l’été pour se ressourcer. Destination idyllique, repli stratégique, ou point de chute symbolique, ils concèdent à relâcher la pression et à s’éloigner des tensions de la Cité. Cependant, lorsqu’on s’appelle Barack Obama et que l’on tient les rênes de la première puissance mondiale, les vacances du pouvoir n’ont rien d’évident.

Malgré la crise, la famille Obama entrevoit la possibilité d’une île… Mais certains lui en contestent le droit en ces temps difficiles.

Premier Noir à la Maison-Blanche, incarnation de l’espoir et messie des Etats-Unis, Barack Obama a commandé un pays en guerre, combattu la crise, et s’est engagé à «reconstruire l’Amérique». S’il a réussi à affronter l’adversité politique et un défi d’une ampleur sans précédent, Mister «O» a nettement plus de mal à faire accepter ses vacances au bord l’Atlantique…

«Est-ce qu’il y a des jours où je me dis: bon sang, ça commence à faire beaucoup? Absolument», a déclaré en direct à la télé le chef de l’Etat, le regard cerné et la chevelure blanchie.

La destination est proche. Barack Obama, qui fêtera demain son 48e anniversaire, s’est réservé la dernière semaine d’un mois d’été que Washington prédit affairé. Sa popularité mise à mal par la réforme controversée du système de santé, le locataire du Bureau Ovale s’exile fin août au large du Massachusetts.

Le couple (p)résidentiel et leurs deux filles, Malia et Sasha vont occuper une somptueuse demeure à Martha’s Vineyard, au large de la côte entre Boston et New York. Une île aux airs irlandais où se retrouvent une importante communauté afro-américaine, des intellectuels, des politiques et des artistes.

Selon VSD Michelle et Barack Obama «connaissent déjà cette jolie station balnéaire, ancien territoire des Indiens Wanpanoag, réputée pour avoir accepté des vacanciers noirs durant la ségrégation». Entre une partie de golf, une ballade au coucher de soleil et un dîner romantique sur la plage de Menemsha, le couple de la Maison-Blanche devrait croiser de nombreuses célébrités. Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, les Clinton et Caroline Kennedy sont quelques illustres habitués des lieux. Un paradis démocrate, en somme? Pas vraiment. Ce cadre idyllique ne devrait offrir qu’un répit relatif au Premier des Américains.

Lorsque la Gazette de Vineyard a annoncé qu’Obama avait loué la coquette Ferme du Héron Bleu, une propriété achetée plus de 20 millions de dollars (15 millions d’euros) en 2005 sur un terrain de plus de 11 hectares, avec sa piscine, son tennis, son terrain de basket, sa possibilité d’accès à la plage, les internautes ont été nombreux à écrire qu’il y avait mieux à faire quand les Américains font face à la pire récession depuis les années 30 et à un chômage menaçant d’atteindre 10%.

Surtout quand ils ont lu que des villas bling-bling comme celles-là se monnayent entre 35 et 50.000 dollars (entre 25 et 35.000 euros) la semaine.

Le journal souligne que la location sera divisée en trois entre les Obama, le service de sécurité et les collaborateurs, et que le chef de l’exécutif paiera pour ses vacances. Cela ne suffit pas à apaiser les citoyens courroucés.

Itinéraire d’un papa gâteau

«Si la question, c’est: est-ce que je pense tous les jours aux épreuves que les Américains traversent ? La réponse est: absolument. Est-ce que, cela devrait m’empêcher de passer quelques moments précieux avec mes filles? Je ne crois pas que ce soit ce que le peuple attend de moi», a répondu Obama à la chaîne CBS.

Auparavant, au moment où Washington sombrera dans la torpeur estivale, Barack Obama ira chercher un peu de fraîcheur quelques jours dans les Appalaches, à la résidence présidentielle de Camp David, selon son porte-parole Robert Gibbs.

Est-ce qu’un héros, aussi fatigué soit-il, peut abandonner ses protégés?

J.B

Lundi 3 août 2009

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La présidentielle est reportée, Abdelaziz Bouteflika reste au pouvoir. En Algérie, on s’interroge. Pour des milliers de manifestants toujours mobilisés mardi 12 mars, les annonces du pouvoir sont loin d’être suffisantes. “Il essaie de sauver son cinquième mandat en rallongeant le quatrième et en reportant les élections. C’est inacceptable et en tant que citoyen, je ne suis pas d’accord”, confie un jeune manifestant. Nouvelles manifestations en vuePour la jeunesse sortie dans la rue lundi, le pouvoir a cédé face à la pression de la rue. “On vivait comme dans une prison, mais grâce à Dieu on a gagné et on va rester pacifiques jusqu’à la fin”, déclare un Algérien. Après une nuit de liesse dans le centre-ville d’Alger, la colère domine. Plus que le retrait d’Abdelaziz Bouteflika, c’est le changement du système qui est demandé. De nouvelles manifestations son prévues dans les jours à venir.Le JT

• JT de 13h du mardi 12 mars 2019 L’intégrale

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  Amiante: un millier de salariés devant les prud’hommes

• 3
  

  Santé : un médicament contre la calvitie inquiète

• 4
  

  Carburants : la facture repart à la hausse

• 5
  

  Transport : une voiture à deux euros par jour

• 6
  

  Emploi : le secteur du froid recrute

• 7
  

  Sommeil : triste record pour les Français

• 8
  

  Sommeil : les conseils pour bien dormir

• 9
  

  Agriculture : l’anglais pour doper l’activité

• 10
  

  Retraités : ils se plaisent à Arcachon

• 11
  

  Retraités : quelles sont leurs villes préférées ?

• 12
  

  Feuilleton “monts et merveilles” : en Chine, des montagnes de cinéma (2/5)