2022
October
04
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

October 04, 2022
Loading the player...

The future of the automobile is electric.

If there was any doubt about that statement, the Ford Motor Company is forcing the issue. Ford CEO Jim Farley recently issued an ultimatum to his U.S. dealerships: You’re in or you’re out.

Ford dealers have until Oct. 31 to commit to selling the company’s line of electric vehicles (EVs) or they won’t get any Ford EVs to sell. 

And there’s more. A Ford dealer’s commitment to sell EVs includes a certification process that, among other things, requires installation of fast charging stations (at an estimated cost of $100,000-$200,000).

Ford only has three EV models now: the F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E, and e-Transit commercial van. But the company plans to spend $50 billion to expand its line and has a goal to sell 2 million EVs a year by 2026 (or about half their total sales last year). 

Ford will also require dealers to post prices and sell its EVs online. “We’ve been studying Tesla closely,” Ford’s CEO told reporters last month. Tesla boldly launched without a dealer network, selling vehicles exclusively online. So far this year, Tesla reports selling more than 908,000 electric vehicles. But Tesla’s sales approach in Norway (where 86% of all new cars sold in August were plug-ins) is evolving. In Norway, Tesla has “dealer-like facilities and we think that’s the direction they’ll go as they scale their operations in the United States,” said Mr. Farley.

In other words, Tesla is becoming more like Ford – and vice versa. The EV revolution is accelerating.


You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.

Today's stories

And why we wrote them

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor
Ukrainian emergency services workers clear rubble from Izium Comprehensive School No. 12 in Izium, Ukraine, Sept. 26, 2022. Russian occupation forces often used schools as bases, which resulted in their further destruction when a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September swept across much of Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region.

The Russian occupation of Ukraine includes a hearts-and-minds campaign in schools. Our reporter looks at one Ukraine community where distrust of Russian propaganda ran high, but found some takers.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Nordic and Baltic states are taking military service, including conscription, more seriously. Our reporter looks at how Finland and Estonia have made that service a cultural norm with a generation that cherishes gender equality and personal freedom.

SOURCE:

NATO, Government agencies

|
Lenora Chu and Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Q&A

Fabio Nascimento/Courtesy of Outlaw Ocean Project
Investigative reporter Ian Urbina, shown on an Indonesian patrol ship called the Macan as it chases Vietnamese fishing boats in a contested area of the South China Sea. Mr. Urbina says that while many people perceive the sea as "vacant, barren, beautiful," some 50 million people work on the world's oceans, many in conditions that violate basic human rights.

The scale of the problems in the world’s oceans is daunting. But a Q&A with journalist Ian Urbina leaves readers with a path to individual agency and hope.

Points of Progress

What's going right

This week’s progress roundup includes paths to dignity, and educational and gender equity in the U.S., Mali, and India, as well as innovative ways to care for the planet. 

Essay

Photo illustration by Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

In this essay, the author sifts through his personal paper mementos that remind him of a life of perseverance, joy, and dignity. 


The Monitor's View

Two trends in Africa have prompted a challenge to the military model of countering terrorist threats. Each trend bears watching for the global struggle against terrorism.

The first is negative. During the past decade, the United States, France, and others have spent billions of dollars helping African governments and militaries fight Islamist extremism in countries upward from the Sahara. Yet violence by these groups has continued to grow. In addition, six countries in the region have seen attempted or successful military coups since 2020. Last Friday, Burkina Faso had its second putsch this year. That instability has prompted France to step back and reassess its military strategy in the region.

Those developments have given momentum to a second, more encouraging trend. As national militaries and central governments falter in Africa, local leaders are stepping forward. Their efforts to rebuild their communities are redefining what countering terrorism involves. Instead of waging war, they are battling corruption, breaking down traditional norms that perpetuate social inequality, and building trust between jihadis and villagers.

“The mediation of local conflicts will contribute to rethinking the paths to peace,” wrote Senegalese historian Mamadou Diouf in a preface to a recent study on reconciliation in the Sahel by the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. That involves, for example, local approaches to reconciliation and traditional justice, as well as upending practices that fuel economic grievance – like norms that sideline women and favor first-born sons over their younger siblings.

African countries “are gradually recognising the limitations of an overly centralized and securitised approach to addressing a threat that has become more localized than ever,” a new United Nations study of local counterterrorism responses noted last month. In its place, a “whole-of-society” approach, recognizing “the importance of local and non-security actors and the need to address the drivers and not simply the manifestations of extremist violence – has begun to gain traction, albeit gradually.”

It also signals the use of empathy and mercy to help soften the hard approaches to violent jihadis. One example is in Australia’s plan to repatriate more than 60 widows and children of slain Islamic State fighters. The women, who have Australian citizenship and were enticed or coerced to join the jihadi group, have been held in detention camps in Syria for years.

The move partly reflects a change in government in Canberra. Until a few months ago, Australia regarded the women as a potential security threat. But that view is increasingly out of sync with global attitudes. The European Court of Human Rights, for example, condemned France last month for refusing to repatriate its own nationals in similar positions. In the first-ever decision of its kind, the court found that denying a request for protection “made on the basis of the fundamental values” of democratic societies by vulnerable citizens to their own government was “incompatible with respect for human dignity.”

The world still relies on meeting violence with violence in responding to terrorism. Yet after more than two decades since 9/11, the wisdom of softer approaches may be gaining ground. Africa serves as a test case.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

We are all inherently capable of discerning our true, spiritual nature as God’s children – and experiencing the protection and healing this brings.


A message of love

ESA/Handout/Reuters
European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is Europe's first female commander of the International Space Station. She is pictured at the space station, along with her look-alike Barbie doll.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow: We’re prepping a story about British poet Raymond Antrobus, whose new spoken-word album explores the experiences of deafness and perseverance.

More issues

2022
October
04
Tuesday

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.