THE US Congress will act to regulate Facebook

"A catalyst", this is how an elected official described whistleblower Frances Haugen, whose presentation on Tuesday damaged Facebook's image to the point of pushing Congress to promise to better regulate the Californian giant. "spiral", the 37-year-old computer engineer described for more than two hours, with calm and precision, the situation of a company that has renounced, according to her, some moral principles in the name of profit. "You've been a catalyst for change like I've never seen before and I've been working on these topics for 10 or 15 years," Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said during his hearing on the Senate Commerce Committee. Promoted toxic content and used children and adolescents is over. Congress will act," said Democratic Senator Ed Markey at the hearing of Frances Haugen, former chief product officer at Facebook.

The EU tries to reassure frustrated Balkans, without opening the door to them

European Union (EU) leaders will try on Wednesday to respond to the frustration of the Western Balkans stuck for years in the antechamber of the Union, with the temptation to turn to Russia and China. The 27 Member States will mainly recall, at an informal summit held in Slovenia, that they remain the largest donor in this strategic region, tired of waiting. With economic support amounting to billions of euros, "this is the time to assert ourselves, to make it clear that we remain the main investor and the closest trading partner," said an EU official. For this landlocked region in the EU, membership remains the "ultimate carrot", according to the Austrian think tank OIIP. But on the tortuous path to European integration, the leaders of Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo cannot hope for breakthroughs in the near future.

IN BRIEF

Bamako summoned the ambassador of France on Tuesday after President Emmanuel Macron's remarks deemed "regrettable" against the ruling military junta and his call for "the state to return" to Mali.

The Coast Guard is investigating whether the oil spill threatening California's beaches may have been caused by the anchor of a ship that pierced an oil pipeline, local media reported Tuesday.

THE PS presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo advocates, in an interview with Libération, a reduction in fuel tax, saying she wants to insist on a "social" ecology. Eleven million people need their cars every day to go to work. We must support them to turn the page on combustion vehicles from 2030," she says.

An American sued a psychic who claimed to be able to lift a love curse against him but produced no conclusive results.