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Hi, this is Janice Torres from Yoquiero

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de Nero. If you own or operate

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or a global corporation, partnering

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By teaming with Bank of America, you'll

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N.A. Copyright 2024. Hello,

0:54

and welcome to the Intelligence from the

0:56

Economist. I'm Rosie Blore. And

0:58

I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we

1:00

provide a fresh perspective on the events

1:03

shaping your world. When

1:08

schools reopened after the pandemic, many

1:10

children were desperate to get back

1:12

to in-person learning. Others? Not

1:15

so much. Now, some schools in

1:17

America are trying clever new ways to coax

1:20

back truants. And

1:23

pity the marketing departments at

1:25

automakers. The annals of

1:27

history include some really bad ideas

1:30

for branding new models. Our

1:32

industry editor looks at the sometimes

1:34

arbitrary yet always delicate business of

1:37

naming new cars. But

1:45

first, elections

1:53

for the European Parliament can be

1:55

extremely telling, as

1:57

voters in EU countries elect a member of the

1:59

board. Parliament to represent their constituency in

2:02

Brussels, they, of course, set a

2:04

path for the Parliament itself. But

2:06

the exercise is also an intriguing

2:09

window into national politics, and

2:11

this year's has brought a shock to France.

2:14

The party of President Emmanuel Macron did

2:16

so poorly that he opted to call

2:18

an election at home. I

2:20

decided to go to the House of the

2:23

United States to the party of the

2:25

United States.

2:28

He said he was dissolving the

2:30

National Assembly, giving back to citizens

2:32

the choice for our future. This

2:34

decision is a great

2:36

deal. But

2:38

it is a choice of confidence. Confidence

2:42

is a choice, but it's not. He

2:44

called it an act of confidence, confidence

2:46

in the French people to make the

2:48

fairest choice for themselves and for future

2:51

generations. That choice

2:53

may lean, as the EU voted,

2:55

toward the hard-right National Rally Party

2:58

of Marine Le Pen, who claimed,

3:00

unsurprisingly, at this point, to

3:06

be ready to exercise power, to

3:08

defend the interests of the French.

3:11

France wasn't the only country that saw a

3:13

shift to the right. Those

3:16

shifts reflect politics at home, but also

3:18

hint at how the business of governing

3:20

Europe is likely to change. The

3:23

European parliamentary elections have been going on for

3:25

several days, but the votes were only counted

3:27

last night, and they were a bit of

3:29

a surprise. Chris

3:31

Lockwood is our Europe editor. Hard-right

3:34

parties did really well in France and Germany.

3:36

Elsewhere, though, the hard-right didn't do quite as

3:39

well as people had feared, so that overall,

3:41

we don't see a big shift to the

3:43

right. But in those two countries, the effects

3:45

have been pretty shocking. So

3:48

let's go to France first. What happened there?

3:51

Well, this was by far the

3:53

biggest surprise of the evening. It

3:55

was expected that Emmanuel Macron's party,

3:57

which is called Renaissance, school

14:00

for the same reasons. They

14:02

might be struggling because they don't have the

14:04

proper supports at home, they don't have the

14:06

basic necessities like food or shelter,

14:08

or it could be that they're just not

14:10

that invested in school and that could be

14:13

the kid themselves or the parents seeing

14:15

how the child responds when they go to school. What

14:18

sorts of things can schools do then to

14:20

try and make kids or parents feel more

14:22

invested in what they get out of being

14:24

at school? I think

14:26

the obvious answer is to improve instruction. One

14:28

way to do that is through high-impact

14:31

tutoring, which is basically a fancy

14:34

phrase for giving kids small

14:36

group instruction for about 90 minutes per week.

14:39

There was a study based on DC schools

14:42

out of Stanford University that showed

14:44

that such a program might actually

14:46

increase attendance by about three days,

14:48

but some schools need a much

14:50

bigger improvement and a

14:52

much heavier intervention for their absenteeism

14:55

problem. That might mean having to

14:57

focus specifically on students who are

14:59

struggling the most. That

15:01

sounds quite labor intensive. Is it actually

15:04

viable? It is viable

15:06

if you have good data. What's interesting

15:09

about this idea is that it can seem so

15:11

simple. It's like, oh, of course you find the

15:13

students who are struggling. But that actually

15:15

requires, like you mentioned, good data and somebody

15:17

to have the time to comb through that

15:19

data and look at student grades and attendance.

15:22

It's both a simple solution but also an

15:24

actually difficult one to implement. So

15:26

has anyone tried this and been successful? Manzano

15:29

High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico was

15:31

having a huge absenteeism problem. Over

15:34

60% of their kids missed 10% or more

15:37

of the school year. So they reached out

15:39

to a group of nonprofits and universities that

15:41

work to help schools with these kinds of

15:43

problems called grad partnerships. And

15:45

a year later, their absenteeism rate actually dropped

15:47

to 45%. They

15:50

expect to actually drop even further this

15:52

academic year. We knew

15:54

we needed to rely on data to help move

15:56

this work forward. So this is the principal of

15:58

Manzano High School. been

20:00

caught out by unfortunate translations. Chevrolet's

20:03

Nova means no-go in Spanish, while

20:05

the Mazda Laputa translates as prostitute.

20:08

Ford's Pinto is probably even worse, it

20:10

means small penis in Brazilian slang. One

20:14

way of getting around this is using a collection

20:16

of letters and numbers. It's safer but it's not

20:18

bulletproof. Toyota's MR2 had to

20:20

chop the D in France. The

20:23

full name sounded close to the word for shit. But

20:28

the latest problem with naming cars is apparently

20:30

geopolitics. China's car makers have Europe in their sights as

20:34

their next market they want to expand into, and that's caused problems.

20:36

Zhao Mi, a Chinese tech giant that's turned to car making, wants

20:40

to brand just a platform underpinning its expensive

20:42

SU7 saloon as the Modena. It

20:48

doesn't sound like a problem, but it is, because

20:50

that happens to be the name of the Italian city

20:52

with both Ferrari and Maserati, two pricier European marks that

20:54

make fancy sports cars. Hail

20:58

from. This

21:03

has incurred the displeasure of the

21:05

city's mayor and Italy's Minister for Enterprise, and it

21:07

may even fall foul of Italian law banning use

21:09

of Italian place names for foreign products. But

21:13

it's not any Chinese car makers that

21:15

have committed such errors. Alfa Romeo, which

21:17

is a quintessential Italian car brand, was

21:19

forced to hastily rebrand the Milano,

21:21

a small SUV, as the junior, days after

21:23

it was launched in April. That's

21:27

because it turned out the cars were made

21:29

in Poland. But

21:33

I wonder if before long foreign car makers might try

21:35

to win favour with Chinese customers by calling one of

21:37

their models the Hangzhou after the country's car making heartland.

21:40

Perhaps they should think twice. That's

21:58

all for this episode of the Intelli- Hi,

22:23

this is Matt and Sean from Two

22:25

Black Guys with good credit. From a

22:27

local business to a global corporation. Partnering

22:31

with Bank of America gives

22:33

your operation access to exclusive

22:35

digital tools, award-winning insights, and

22:37

business solutions so powerful you'll

22:39

make every move matter. Visit

22:41

bankofamerica.com/banking for business to learn

22:43

more. What would you like the

22:45

power to do? Bank of America,

22:47

N.A., copyright 2024.