The District Court of The Hague ordered the Dutch government to come up with a plan to protect Bonaire from rising seas.

"Captive coal" is increasingly powering the nickel and aluminum industries, even after the country banned new coal plants.

“Hats off to the Trump administration for being willing to break eggs,” says former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

At the center of auditor Doug Hoffer’s report are the shortcomings of two initiatives: the State Agency Energy Plan and the State Energy Management Program.

Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to allow 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into its market at a tariff rate of about 6 percent.

The investment firm's fund has already deployed around €300 million across 13 companies. It focuses solely on environmental sustainability, rather than social- and governance-based deals.

Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. We're diving into the latest attempt to control how kids access the internet and more with our latest EFFector newsletter.

Since 1990, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberties, and the law. This latest issue tracks what to do when you hit an age gate online, explains why rent-only copyright culture makes us all worse off, and covers the dangers of law enforcement purchasing straight-up military drones.

Prefer to listen in? In our audio companion, EFF Senior Policy Analyst Joe Mullin explains what lawmakers should do if they really want to help families. Find the conversation on YouTube or the Internet Archive.

LISTEN TO EFFECTOR

EFFECTOR 38.2 - ✍️ THE BILL TO HAND PARENTING TO BIG TECH

Want to stay in the fight for privacy and free speech online? Sign up for EFF's EFFector newsletter for updates, ways to take action, and new merch drops. You can also fuel the fight to protect people from these data breaches and unlawful surveillance when you support EFF today!

Keeril Makan has been appointed vice provost for the arts at MIT, effective Feb. 1. In this role, Makan, who is the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor at MIT, will provide leadership and strategic direction for the arts across the Institute.

Provost Anantha Chandrakasan announced Makan’s appointment in an email to the MIT community today.

“Keeril’s record of accomplishment both as an artist and an administrative leader makes him exceedingly qualified to take on this important role,” Chandrakasan wrote, noting that Makan “has repeatedly taken on new leadership assignments with skill and enthusiasm.”

Makan’s appointment follows the publication last September of the final report of the Future of the Arts at MIT Committee. At MIT, the report noted, “the arts thrive as a constellation of recognized disciplines while penetrating and illuminating countless aspects of the Institute’s scientific and technological enterprise.” Makan will build on this foundation as MIT continues to strengthen the role of the arts in research, education, and community life.

As vice provost for the arts, Makan will provide Institute-wide leadership and strategic direction for the arts, working in close partnership with academic leaders, arts units, and administrative colleagues across MIT, including the Office of the Arts; the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology; the MIT Museum; the List Visual Arts Center; and the Council for the Arts at MIT. His role will focus on strengthening connections between artistic practice, research, education, and community life, and on supporting public engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration.

“At MIT, the arts are a vital way of thinking, making, and convening,” Makan says. “As vice provost, my priority is to support and strengthen the extraordinary artistic work already happening across the Institute, while listening carefully to faculty, students, and staff as we shape what comes next. I’m excited to build on MIT’s distinctive, only-at-MIT approach to the arts and to help ensure that artistic practice remains central to MIT’s intellectual and community life.”

Makan says he will begin his new role with a period of listening and learning across MIT’s arts ecosystem, informed by the Future of the Arts at MIT report. His initial focus will be on understanding how artistic practice intersects with research, education, and community life, and on identifying opportunities to strengthen connections, visibility, and coordination across MIT’s many arts activities.

Over time, Makan says he will work with the arts community to advance MIT’s long-standing commitment to artistic excellence and experimentation, while supporting student participation and public engagement in the arts. He said his approach will “emphasize collaboration, clarity, and sustainability, reflecting MIT’s distinctive integration of the arts with science and technology.”

Makan came to MIT in 2006 as an assistant professor of music. From 2018 to 2024, he served as head of the Music and Theater Arts (MTA) Section in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). In 2023, he was appointed associate dean for strategic initiatives in SHASS, where he helped guide the school’s response to recent fiscal pressures and led Institute-wide strategic initiatives.

With colleagues from MTA and the School of Engineering, Makan helped launch a new, multidisciplinary graduate program in music technology and computation. He was intimately involved in the project to develop the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building (Building 18), a state-of-the-art facility that opened in 2025. 

Makan was a member of the Future of the Arts at MIT Committee and chaired a working group on the creation of a center for the humanities, which ultimately became the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC), one of the Institute’s strategic initiatives. Since last year, he has served as MITHIC’s faculty lead. Under his leadership, MITHIC has awarded $4.7 million in funding to 56 projects across 28 units at MIT, supporting interdisciplinary, human-centered research and teaching.

Trained initially as a violinist, Makan earned undergraduate degrees in music composition and religion from Oberlin and a PhD in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley.

A critically-acclaimed composer, Makan is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Luciano Berio Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. His music has been recorded by the Kronos Quartet, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, and performed at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Tanglewood. His opera, “Persona,” premiered at National Sawdust and was performed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and by the Los Angeles Opera. The Los Angeles Times described the music from “Persona” as “brilliant.”

Makan succeeds Philip Khoury, the Ford International Professor of History, who served as vice provost for the arts from 2006 before stepping down in 2025. Khoury will return to the MIT faculty following a sabbatical.

The FEMA Review Council recommends replacing the decades-old system for distributing money to states with a plan triggered by weather conditions, not monetary damage.

The offshore wind project, which cranked out electricity during this week's storm, is on the cusp of completion after a federal judge overturned Trump's stop-work order.

House Judiciary Republicans are asking two lawyers to detail their interactions with a group that teaches judges about climate science.

A growing number of states are eyeing restrictions on weather and climate modification as startups move into the field.

The National Weather Service can fill some — but not all — of the staff positions it lost during last year’s purge of federal workers.

The Justice Climate Fund received two non-federal grants to help Native American communities finance clean energy projects.

NYSERDA didn't make any changes to its draft proposal for revenues from a regional carbon market.

After hosting the last climate summit, the South American country raised doubts about the 30-year-old paradigm based on consensus.

Critics warn such a move would undermine CBAM and the competitiveness of domestic producers.

The recent weakening of the ban on gasoline and diesel cars is fueling calls for a similar reversal in the aviation sector.

The heat wave follows another earlier this month amid one of Australia's hottest-ever summers.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) Human Rights Alliance has, since its founding by EFF and Access Now in 2021, works to ensure that the European Union follows a human rights-based approach to platform governance by integrating a wide range of voices and perspectives to contextualise DSA enforcement and examining the DSA’s effect on tech regulations around the world.

As the DSA moves from legislation to enforcement, it has become increasingly clear that its impact depends not only on the text of the Act but also how it’s interpreted and enforced in practice. This is why the Alliance has created a set of recommendations to include civil society organizations and rights-defending stakeholders in the enforcement process. 

 The Principles for a Human Rights-Centred Application of the DSA: A Global Perspective, a report published this week by the Alliance, outlines steps the European Commission, as the main DSA enforcer, as well as national policymakers and regulators, should take to bring diverse groups to the table as a means of ensuring that the implementation of the DSA is grounded in human rights standards.

 The Principles also offer guidance for regulators outside the EU who look to the DSA as a reference framework and international bodies and global actors concerned with digital governance and the wider implications of the DSA. The Principles promote meaningful stakeholder engagement and emphasize the role of civil society organisations in providing expertise and acting as human rights watchdogs.

“Regulators and enforcers need input from civil society, researchers, and affected communities to understand the global dynamics of platform governance,” said EFF International Policy Director Christoph Schmon. “Non-EU-based civil society groups should be enabled to engage on equal footing with EU stakeholders on rights-focused elements of the DSA. This kind of robust engagement will help ensure that DSA enforcement serves the public interest and strengthens fundamental rights for everyone, especially marginalized and vulnerable groups.”

“As activists are increasingly intimidated, journalists silenced, and science and academic freedom attacked by those who claim to defend free speech, it is of utmost importance that the Digital Services Act's enforcement is centered around the protection of fundamental rights, including the right to the freedom of expression,” said Marcel Kolaja, Policy & Advocacy Director—Europe at Access Now. “To do so effectively, the global perspective needs to be taken into account. The DSA Human Rights Principles provide this perspective and offer valuable guidance for the European Commission, policymakers, and regulators for implementation and enforcement of policies aiming at the protection of fundamental rights.”

“The Principles come at the crucial moment for the EU candidate countries, such as Serbia, that have been aligning their legislation with the EU acquis but still struggle with some of the basic rule of law and human rights standards,” said Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, Executive Director for Partners Serbia. “The DSA HR Alliance offers the opportunity for non-EU civil society to learn about the existing challenges of DSA implementation and design strategies for impacting national policy development in order to minimize any negative impact on human rights.”

 The Principles call for:

◼ Empowering EU and non-EU Civil Society and Users to Pursue DSA Enforcement Actions

◼ Considering Extraterritorial and Cross-Border Effects of DSA Enforcement

◼ Promoting Cross-Regional Collaboration Among CSOs on Global Regulatory Issues

◼ Establishing Institutionalised Dialogue Between EU and Non-EU Stakeholders

◼ Upholding the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights in DSA Enforcement, Free from Political Influence

◼ Considering Global Experiences with Trusted Flaggers and Avoid Enforcement Abuse

◼ Recognising the International Relevance of DSA Data Access and Transparency Provisions for Human Rights Monitoring

The Principles have been signed by 30 civil society organizations,researchers, and independent experts.

The DSA Human Right Alliance represents diverse communities across the globe to ensure that the DSA embraces a human rights-centered approach to platform governance and that EU lawmakers consider the global impacts of European legislation.