![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GTRRCGW5NRDJZO5PZNSTWWZ4BQ.jpg\")
In an aerial view, the Honda of San Marcos dealership is seen in San Marcos, Texas, on March 12.Brandon Bell\/Getty<\/p>\nWORLD<\/p>\n
France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week<\/p>\n
France next week will ban unsolicited telemarketing calls under a new law aimed at protecting consumers from intrusive sales pitches and shielding vulnerable people from fraudulent commercial practices. The law backed by President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s government enters into force on Tuesday. Previously in France, people who wanted to avoid marketing calls had to register their number with a government-run service, but consumer groups said some call centers ignored the list. Now, \u201cbusinesses are prohibited from contacting consumers without their prior consent,\u201d said Alice Vilcot, chief of staff at the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs, and Prevention of Fraud. \u201cThat consent can be withdrawn at any time.\u201d The government says the law is a response to years of consumer complaints. Authorities estimate that about three-quarters of people in France receive at least one unsolicited sales call every week, and many receive more. In 2024, 11 consumer organizations issued a joint call for a ban, denouncing \u201crelentless harassment of consumers through countless unwanted telemarketing calls to both landlines and mobile phones \u2014 an intrusion that has become a regular part of their daily lives.\u201d Parliament approved the law last year. Individuals who make illegal calls can be fined up to $87,000 per call. Companies can face fines of up to $435,000 per call. There are exceptions. Consumers may consent to receive marketing calls, for example by checking a consent box on a form. Companies can contact customers with new commercial offers if they already have a contractual relationship. People can report unsolicited calls through a government website. Neighboring Germany has had a similar ban since 2009. Many other countries rely on opt-out systems. In the United States, people can sign up for the national Do Not Call registry, which cuts down on unwanted sales calls, Canada has its own Do Not Call list, while the UK has the Telephone Preference Service. \u2014 ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p>\n
Get Power Play<\/p>\n
A twice-weekly dive into the power players and moves driving business in Massachusetts, authored by long-time business columnists Shirley Leung and Jon Chesto.<\/p>\n
AUTOMAKER<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Honda reports robust results after its first ever annual loss<\/p>\n
In an aerial view, the Honda of San Marcos dealership is seen in San Marcos, Texas, on March 12.Brandon Bell\/Getty<\/p>\n
Honda\u2019s profit for the fiscal first quarter more than doubled from a year ago, as the Japanese automaker continues to tackle a turnaround from the first full year loss in its history. Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co. said Wednesday its April-June profit totaled 456.9 billion yen ($2.9 billion), up from 196.6 billion yen for the same period a year ago. Quarterly sales rose 13.5 percent to 6.06 trillion yen ($38 billion), as vehicles sold well in the US and India, according to the maker of the Accord sedan, Fit subcompact, and Super Cub motorcycle. Honda previously recorded a 423.9 billion yen ($2.7 billion) loss for the fiscal year ended in March, acknowledging heavy costs for its electric-vehicle plans, which didn\u2019t measure up to the original ambitions, partly because of President Trump\u2019s policies. Analysts say many consumers weren\u2019t ready to go electric. Honda has abandoned many of its plans for EV models. Trump\u2019s tariffs on imported autos and auto parts, lowered to 15 percent from the initial 25 percent, also worked to dent Honda\u2019s profitability. For the latest quarter, Honda\u2019s motorcycle operations were highly lucrative with sales going strong in Brazil and India. Car sales grew in Japan and the US, while struggling in China. \u2014 ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p>\n
THEME PARKS<\/p>\n
Disney\u2019s strong parks results contrast with Comcast\u2019s gloomy outlook<\/p>\n
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4PSINKDKPN4CXT4HMQDOMES6TQ.jpg\")
People visit the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., on April 18, 2022.Ted Shaffrey\/Associated Press<\/p>\n
America\u2019s theme park giants can\u2019t seem to agree on the health of the tourism economy. Comcast, which owns the Universal parks, warned two weeks ago that higher fuel and airline prices and waning consumer confidence had prompted a pullback on spending in Orlando, Florida, the world\u2019s theme park capital. \u201cIt\u2019s an overall demand drop that\u2019s hitting Orlando broadly,\u201d Michael Cavanagh, Comcast\u2019s co-CEO, told analysts on an earnings call while discussing a 5 percent quarterly decline in overall Universal parks profit. Disney offered a strikingly different assessment Wednesday. Walt Disney World in Orlando had a \u201cstandout quarter, with healthy core attendance increases from domestic tourists and annual pass holders,\u201d Disney said as part of its earnings report. Attendance at Disney\u2019s parks in Florida and California climbed 3 percent; Wall Street had expected growth of half a percent. \u201cObviously, we\u2019re gaining share,\u201d Hugh Johnston, Disney\u2019s chief financial officer, said in an interview, suggesting that Disney had been taking visitors from Universal. He added that bookings at Disney World for the remainder of the year were \u201crobust.\u201d In the quarter that ended June 27, Disney\u2019s domestic parks and cruise business generated $7.12 billion in revenue, an 11 percent increase compared with a year earlier. Profit soared 27 percent, to $2.1 billion. The results partially reflected the arrival of a new cruise liner, the Destiny. Souvenir and food sales at Disney parks increased 7 percent. Theme parks have long been seen as a bellwether for consumer confidence. But the conflicting Comcast and Disney results underscore how difficult it has become to read the state of the experiences economy. Americans continue to spend heavily on travel, but they are increasingly choosier about where to splurge, producing winners and losers even within the same market. \u2014 NEW YORK TIMES<\/p>\n
JOBS<\/p>\n
Etsy lays off 12 percent of workforce as part of restructuring plan <\/p>\n
Crafting marketplace Etsy Inc. is laying off approximately 220 employees, or 12 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring plan it hopes will \u201cimprove coordination and speed of decision-making,\u201d the company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The layoffs will mostly impact workers in the product and engineering department, chief executive Kruti Patel Goyal said in an email to employees. \u201cCost savings are a consequence of these changes, but they are not the objective. We didn\u2019t start this work with a cost reduction target or a goal of making Etsy smaller,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ll continue to see us invest in the business and the team and hire in areas that are important to our long-term strategy.\u201d Patel Goyal said that the cuts also \u201cweren\u2019t driven by AI.\u201d \u201cAt the same time, AI is changing how all of us work, and it will continue to change how we build products and solve problems,\u201d Patel Goyal said. \u201cAs the tools available to us evolve, the skills we need, the ways we work together, and the capabilities we build across Etsy must evolve as well.\u201d Laid-off workers will receive at least 16 weeks of severance pay, with additional pay based on tenure, continued health care support for up to 12 months, and other benefits. \u2014 REUTERS<\/p>\n
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE<\/p>\n
Google shakes up AI leadership<\/p>\n
![\"Demis](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/5JI6HQBZWNNZ32AHIJOYSUDQCI.jpg\")
Demis Hassabis speaks at a Google I\/O event in Mountain View, Calif., on May 19.Jeff Chiu\/AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu<\/p>\n
Google shook up its artificial intelligence leadership Wednesday, moving Demis Hassabis, the Nobel Prize-winning head of its Google DeepMind lab, out of his operational role to become chair of the lab and chief scientist of Google\u2019s parent company, Alphabet. The new job for Hassabis was announced minutes after Jeff Dean, another key AI researcher, said he was leaving the company to create a startup with three other senior Google researchers. The changes atop Google\u2019s AI leadership represent a dramatic management change as concerns grow over the tech industry\u2019s spending on AI. They also raise questions about Google\u2019s confidence in its work on the technology. Even though Google, under Dean\u2019s research leadership, created some of the key technologies underpinning today\u2019s AI, it was caught flat-footed when OpenAI unveiled the ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, launching the AI boom. Since then, Google has reorganized the company and even remade the Google search homepage around AI. It merged its two AI labs, Silicon Valley-based Google Brain and DeepMind, in London, into one group under Hassabis\u2019s leadership in 2023. And in recent years, Sergey Brin, Google\u2019s cofounder, took an increasingly hands-on role in the company\u2019s AI work. But by some measurements, it has continued to trail OpenAI and its rival Anthropic. Google was expected to release a new flagship AI model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, in June, but that launch was delayed. For some Silicon Valley veterans, the departure of Dean was a significant turning point for the company and a sign that Google may continue to leak talent. \u2014 NEW YORK TIMES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WORLD France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week France next week will ban unsolicited telemarketing calls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38488,38491,38489,8615,539,38492,5,38490,24102,8614,8620,2304,236],"class_list":["post-61952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-aerial-view","tag-business-finance-and-industry","tag-car-dealership","tag-color-image","tag-economy","tag-finance-and-economy","tag-france","tag-gulf-coast-states","tag-honda","tag-horizontal","tag-photography","tag-texas","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}