LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Saturday, February 12, 2022

Indian Muslim students say hijab ban forces choice of religion or education

By Sunil Kataria

UDIPI, India (Reuters) - Ayesha Imthiaz, a devout Indian Muslim who considers wearing a hijab an expression of devotion to the Prophet Mohammad, says a move by her college to expel hijab-wearing girls is an insult that will force her to chose between religion and education.

"The humiliation of being asked to leave my classroom for wearing a head scarf by college officials has shaken my core belief," said the 21-year-old student from southern Karnataka's Udupi district, where protests over the head covering ban began.

"My religion has been questioned and insulted by a place which I had considered as a temple of education," she told Reuters.

"It is more like telling us you chose between your religion or education, that's a wrong thing," she said after studying for five years at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial college in Udupi.

Several Muslim girls who protested the ban had received threatening calls and were forced to stay indoors, she added.

College officials say students are allowed to wear the hijab on campus and only asked them to take it off inside the classroom.

Udupi is one of three districts in Karnataka's religiously sensitive coastal region, which is a stronghold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The stand-off has increased fear and anger among minority Muslims, who say the country's constitution grants them the freedom to wear what they want. Protests over the ban have escalated, with hundreds demonstrating this month in Kolkata and Chennai.

Last week, a judge at the state's high court referred petitions challenging the ban to a larger panel.

The issue is being closely watched internationally as a test of religious freedom guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.

The U.S. Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF) on Friday said the hijab bans "violate religious freedom and stigmatize and marginalize women and girls."

In response, India's foreign ministry on Saturday said outside comments over internal issues were not welcome and the matter was under judicial review.

Imthiaz and six other Muslim girls protesting the ban say they are determined to fight for their religious freedom in the face of some hardline Hindu students and even some of their friends.

"It is really hurtful to see our own friends going against us and telling 'I have a problem with you wearing the hijab'...its affected our bonds and mental health," Imthiaz said.

(Writing by Rupam Jain; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

India says 'motivated comments on internal issues not welcome' after criticism on Hijab ban

As the controversy and protests over banning hijab in schools continued in India, drawing condemnation from Pakistani and US officials, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Saturday said "motivated comments on our internal issues are not welcome".

In a short statement issued on Twitter, the spokesperson for the ministry, Arindam Bagchi, said, "A matter regarding dress codes in some educational institutions in the state of Karnataka is under judicial examination by the Honourable High Court of Karnataka. Our constitutional framework and mechanisms, as well as our democratic ethos and polity, are the context in which issues are considered and resolved."

In an apparent reference to the US, the spokesperson added, "those who know India well would have a proper appreciation of these realities. Motivated comments on our internal issues are not welcome."

The issue grabbed headlines last month when a government-run school in Karnataka's Udupi district barred students wearing hijab from entering classrooms, triggering protests outside the school gate. More schools in the state followed with similar bans, forcing the state's top court to intervene.

However, the issue shot into the spotlight and garnered reactions from celebrities and politicians in India and Pakistan after a video of a hijab-clad student being heckled and jeered at by a mob of Hindutva supporters in Karnataka surfaced on social media.

Read: Hindutva 'unveiled' as RSS mob heckles hijab-clad Muslim girl in India's Karnataka state

Pakistan had also summoned the Indian envoy and conveyed the government's "grave concern and condemnation on the deeply reprehensible act" of banning Muslim students from wearing hijab in Karnataka.

In addition, 'Solidarity Day with Indian Daughters' was observed on Friday across the world, on a call by the Pakistan Ulema Council and International Islamic Conference, according to a report by Radio Pakistan.

A day earlier, the United States Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, Rashad Hussain, criticised the hijab ban, saying the Indian state "should not determine permissibility of religious clothing".

"Religious freedom includes the ability to choose one's religious attire ... Hijab bans in schools violate religious freedom and stigmatise and marginalise women and girls," he added.

Earlier this week, the Karnataka High Court told students not to wear any religious clothing until it delivers a verdict on petitions seeking to overturn a ban on hijab in schools.

The court is considering petitions filed by students challenging the ban that some schools have implemented in recent weeks.

"We will pass an order. But till the matter is resolved, no student should insist on wearing religious dress," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi as saying.

The advocates appearing for the petitioners objected to the interim order, saying it amounts to "suspension of our rights", according to The Wire. But the court said it was a matter of a few days and adjourned for the day.

Keep religion out of schools, says actor Hema Malini on Karnataka hijab ban

IMAGES STAFF

The actor and BJP politician's statement on "respecting uniform codes" isn't sitting well with a lot of people.

A government-run high school in the Indian state of Karnataka issued a hijab ban on campus last month which then caught on to other schools in the district, causing an uproar. This led to intense protests by hijab proponents and opponents and the situation became so serious, that authorities issued an order for schools to shut down. The row hit its peak point when a hijabi woman Muskan stood up to the right-wing extremists and now the ongoing debate has a new addition — BJP MP Hema Malini has spoken on the matter, favouring the anti-hijab perspective.

The actor and politician said, "Schools are for education and religious matters should not be taken there. Every school has a uniform that should be respected. You can wear whatever you want outside the school."

It seems like Malini is trying to employ a secular viewpoint but netizens were quick to point out that students wear bindi [coloured dot worn on the forehead], turbans and crucifix necklaces and no one bats an eye. This primarily leads to the inference that this is discriminatory behaviour, targeting a specific group.

The main point here is that the hijab is not a fashion statement — it's a part of some Muslims' every day lives and to tell them to take it off in school translates into religious intolerance.

Several netizens were quick to oppose the BJP MP's comments.

Recently, a young woman named Muskan showed great courage against some right-wing extremists who were protesting against hijab at her college. The swarm of men wearing saffron scarves saw this burqa-clad woman and starting shouting "Jai Shri Ram" at her and making obscene signs to which she responded with equal sheerness, screaming "Allahu Akbar". The video of the exchange went viral on social media and Muskan's reaction won hearts all over Pakistan, it was even applauded by celebrities.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Amazon’s Snub of Frontline Workers Could Hurt AMZN Stock

Will Ashworth - Yesterday - InvestorPlace

On the surface, the news that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is upping its maximum base pay for corporate and tech workers to $350,000 from $160,000 is a win for current and future employees. However, I’m not sure anyone holding AMZN stock should be sold on the move.

Logistics activity on the Amazon (AMZN) site of Vélizy-Villacoublay in France. Packages are sorted by workers on conveyors.

Here’s why I feel this way.
AMZN Stock and Latest Earnings

There’s no question investors reacted positively to the company’s fourth quarter 2021 earnings report released on Feb. 3. As a result, AMZN stock closed up more than 13.5% the next day, pushing it back over $3,000.

The big driver of growth in the quarter was a 40% jump in revenue at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s highly profitable cloud business. AWS is now generating $71 billion in annualized revenue. In fiscal 2021, AWS generated an operating profit of $18.5 billion on $62.2 billion, good for a 29.7% operating margin.

In addition, its advertising business had annual revenue of $31.2 billion in 2021, considerably higher than in 2020. As a result, the company is undoubtedly diversifying its revenue streams.

“Amazon has evolved into a true platform, as more than 50 per cent of its revenue now comes from areas outside of first-party retailing, such as cloud computing and advertising,” Deren Baker the CEO of Edge, a market research firm, said Thursday after the earnings report per Bloomberg‘s reporting.

It looks like I was wrong about the company’s future.

In March 2018, I said that Amazon.com, Inc. Will Own Your Home Sooner Than You Think. It turns out it will own your office, too.

But not everything was rosy about earnings. Its operating income at its North American e-commerce unit declined 16% year-over-year to $7.27 billion on an 18.4% increase in sales to $279.8 billion. Internationally, it lost $924 million on $127.8 billion in sales.

But, yes, for the most part, it’s hard to complain about the company’s performance in 2021.

If it didn’t have a successful year, there is no way employees would have gotten a sniff at a 119% increase in the base maximum pay.

The Elephant in the Room

While it’s great news if you work at one of Amazon’s corporate offices or are in the process of interviewing for a corporate gig in Seattle or elsewhere, it hardly absolves the company of its complete disregard for its frontline workers.

Sure, the company raised its hourly minimum wage from $15 to $18 in September 2021, but that pales compared to the 119% potential increase for white-collar workers. I say potential because that’s a maximum for base pay. Of course, not everyone will get that significant bump. But enough will, which is why Amazon is doing it. To provide a lucrative carrot for the best and brightest.

It doesn’t matter that the warehouse workers and Amazon drivers do the really heavy lifting at the company — both figuratively and literally.

When you have billions of dollars at your disposal — Amazon had $47.3 billion in net cash at the end of December — it’s easy to paint a pretty picture of your business. But, unfortunately, it’s far from perfect.

Amazon’s Workers Are Struggling

In fact, not only are frontline workers struggling, so too is its leadership. At least, that’s according to reports from Bloomberg contributor Brad Stone.

“According to media reports, the turnover rate inside the company is reaching crisis levels, and a record 50 vice presidents departed last year. ‘Like any company, we’re affected by macro trends, and what we’re seeing is in line with what’s happening across the industry,’ an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement,” Stone wrote on Jan. 24.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that Stone’s words were heard loud and clear in Seattle. Just days after reporting an Amazon “exodus” underway, management doubled the $160,000 cap.

Stone went on to say that the company’s promise to become the “World’s Best Employer” has gone by the wayside. Instead, it continues to push even corporate employees at a punishing rate.

At least if you’re a corporate employee, you have the potential to earn $350,000 or move somewhere that will treat you like a human being. But, unfortunately, frontline workers probably don’t.

The Bottom Line on AMZN Stock

As I’ve said many times in the past, if you can stomach the crappy way Amazon treats its employees, it remains an excellent stock to own.

I couldn’t. So, you won’t see me buying its stock no matter how much money it makes from advertising and AWS.

On the date of publication, Will Ashworth did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Will Ashworth has written about investments full-time since 2008. Publications where he’’ appeared include InvestorPlace, The Motley Fool Canada, Investopedia, Kiplinger, and several others in both the U.S. and Canada. He particularly enjoys creating model portfolios that stand the test of time. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Amazon rolls back mask mandate for some vaccinated warehouse workers

By Brian Fung, CNN Business - Yesterday

Amazon will no longer require its fully vaccinated warehouse employees to wear face masks at work in states that have eased up on mask mandates, the company said in an internal memo Thursday.

The announcement comes as a string of states, including California, Delaware and Oregon, have said they plan to end or scale back their mask mandates soon.

Under the new policy, those who are not yet fully vaccinated or whose states have not scaled back mask regulations must still wear face coverings in Amazon (AMZN) facilities.

"There has been a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases across the country over the past weeks," the memo said, a copy of which CNN obtained and whose authenticity was confirmed by Amazon. "Along with increasing vaccination rates across the country, this is a positive sign we can return to the path to normal operations."

Amazon declined to comment further.

In the same memo, the e-commerce giant also announced plans to restrict its offer of Covid-related paid leave.

Starting March 18, the memo said, only fully vaccinated employees will be eligible to receive Covid-19 paid leave in the United States. The restriction does not apply to those with medical or religious exemptions.

Unvaccinated employees that are not eligible for paid leave under the policy may still take up to one week of unpaid leave for Covid isolation or quarantine.

Young workers shed new light on life inside Amazon warehouses with viral videos

Ben Goggin - Yesterday

Quasar Brown, 26, said he and his co-workers were just looking to have some fun when they posted a TikTok video about working at an Amazon warehouse.

The video, recorded in an Oklahoma City facility and posted in July, showed Brown and two of his friends acting out a skit about getting “caught eating on the clock @amazon.” The video quickly went viral, bringing in over half a million likes and 4.5 million views.

Soon, other Amazon workers started commenting on the video. “I’m doing that right now 🤣 shhhh,” one user wrote.

The video is one of many that Amazon warehouse employees have posted to TikTok in the past year, offering brief but unvarnished glimpses into the facilities that power a significant chunk of the U.S. retail economy and have become the subject of labor organizing and political jostling.

NBC News spoke to six Amazon warehouse TikTokers about what has driven them to share on the app. They offered a mix of reasons: Some said they were bored, others wanted to demystify jobs they say are unfairly maligned, and still others wanted to promote jobs they enjoy. The videos are as varied as staged comedy skits about situations that happen on the job and mesmerizing recordings of boxes being packed up. The TikTok creators also detailed mixed reactions from the company to their posts — sometimes they faced swift consequences; other times they were mostly left alone.

TikTok has also become a place for employees to realize they’re not alone in their frustrations with Amazon. Brown, who said he was let go after he asked for bereavement time before he was rehired last year, said the TikTok comments helped him see that other Amazon workers were unhappy, too.

Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In the last several years, Amazon has faced intense scrutiny of its labor practices. The company employs more than 1.6 million people worldwide, according to a February filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it says it operates over 175 fulfillment centers. Workers have frequently shared their experiences at warehouses with the media and have organized union drives worldwide — although no U.S. warehouses have successfully unionized. In November, the National Labor Relations Board said a new unionization vote had to be held for an Amazon warehouse in Alabama after, it said, Amazon improperly interfered with the first election. Unionization efforts are underway at two Amazon warehouses in Staten Island, New York.

“This is not just this Amazon,” Brown said. “It’s Amazon, period.”

Brown went on to post nine more videos to TikTok, all with a similar tone: humorous but critical of Amazon. Later that month, Amazon suspended him and the other people who appeared in the videos. Brown said that he left the company and that the other employees kept their jobs after suspensions of nearly two weeks.

How Covid-19 changed Amazon warehouses

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon warehouse workers had few outlets to tell their stories.

Kari Magenheim, who has worked in Amazon warehouses since April 2017, said workers were required to go through metal detectors before they started work and weren’t allowed to bring cellphones — meaning they couldn’t easily create content for social media inside warehouses.

What did trickle out from the facilities and into news reports wasn’t great. Workers told journalists they were overworked and subject to a punishing internal system that closely tracks efficiency and time spent working. Images and videos from inside warehouses largely came from Amazon itself or pre-arranged media opportunities.

The current and former Amazon warehouse workers say Amazon’s pandemic policies have changed that, contributing to a surge in video taken inside Amazon warehouses and posted on TikTok.

When Covid-19 spread around the world, Amazon adjusted its phone policy to allow workers to keep their phones in case of emergency — although they aren’t supposed to use them on the warehouse floor. The policy has been extended indefinitely, an Amazon spokesperson told The Markup, after a tornado killed six people at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois in December and employees raised concerns to NBC News about not being able to have access to phones.

The policy has created confusion and inconsistencies across warehouses about what is and isn’t acceptable. At some warehouses, phone use and even viral TikTok videos aren’t really issues. At others, viral content shot on the warehouse floor has resulted in suspensions. Most workers who made viral TikTok videos on the job felt uneasy afterward, not knowing how their newfound social media fame would be received.

Magenheim said that at her warehouse, people generally won’t get caught using their phones if they’re discreet. “As long as you’re still doing your job, that’s all they really care about,” she said.

Magenheim has posted three generally positive videos from inside her Amazon warehouse, which have brought in tens of thousands of views.

“I think people really want to put out the truth about what it’s like to work in an Amazon warehouse,” she said. “Whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s funny.”
Some creators want to help Amazon’s reputation

Jonathan Lozada, 23, lives in New Jersey and works in a warehouse in the tri-state area. Lozada lost his job at Applebee’s because of Covid-19 closures and eventually found his way to Amazon.

Lozada said that he genuinely likes his job and that his first video was actually inspired by an Amazon ad he saw on TikTok. “Maybe I could make that better,” he thought.

In the video, which has over 3 million views, Lozada is in the warehouse goofing around with package scanners as a text-to-voice feature reads off his hours and how much money he makes.

Lozada said he hadn’t realized it had gone viral until he was approached by a co-worker who said he recognized him in the video. “I was like, ‘Oh, God, I’m going to get fired,’” Lozada said.

When Lozada’s manager and other leaders at the warehouse found out about the video, Lozada said, they didn’t seem to care. All he’s heard in an official capacity since the video went viral was a general reminder in a group meeting not to record on the warehouse floor. Lozada has posted over 50 videos featuring the warehouse since his first taste of virality.

“When I post something about Amazon, it starts blowing up,” he said.

Lozada isn’t alone in that observation. All six of the TikTok creators who spoke to NBC News experienced doses of virality from their Amazon warehouse videos and said Amazon warehouse videos in particular seem to do well. Most speculated that people can’t resist getting an inside look at the mysterious process that leads to packages’ arriving at their doorstep and the workers behind it.

Thepackman123, who asked NBC News not to publish his name for fear of retaliation, knows this better than anyone else. He’s one of the biggest Amazon warehouse creators, with 1.4 million followers, and he almost exclusively posts videos of himself packing up boxes.

Thepackman123 said he started recording his videos just to show his family what his job was like. He posted his first video to TikTok on a whim. It quickly brought in hundreds of thousands of views.

After that, he decided to take advantage of the attention and try to grow his following by posting more of the same type of videos. The videos, which thepackman123 calls “very satisfying,” all have thousands to millions of views, and he said they are most successful during the holiday season.

Ultimately, thepackman123 said, his goal is to work with the Amazon marketing or advertising team, which he believes should be interested in the massive positive attention his videos get. “That’s what my main goal was — to create an ad for Amazon. And this is actually a pretty good one, where people would see your shipments being packed,” he said.

Even so, thepackman123 said, his videos haven’t been received well by the company. He said he has been asked numerous times to stop making them. “HR initially had said that corporate told them to tell me to stop,” he said.

“They haven’t been clear on why I couldn’t record,” he said, but he said he believes that if recording restrictions were lifted for everyone, “a lot of Amazon workers in there would not use it for positive feedback on the company.”

Since his last reprimand, thepackman123 said, he has been posting videos that he has previously saved on his phone. His most recent video has over 347,000 views.

Joshua Freeman, a distinguished professor of history at the City University of New York who specializes in labor history, said Amazon's seeming aversion to the TikTok videos is part of a wider change in corporate outlook.

Corporate leaders used to take pride in their companies’ work, he said, showing off the inner workings of their factories.

"Everyone in America knew what it looked like to see a Model T being assembled," he said. "Now they're very concerned about proprietary information about both the products and the processes, and they are really, really worried about the exposé of labor or environmental abuses."

TikTok videos are recruiting workers

Alexis Barajas said she started working at a Nevada warehouse because of TikTok. “That looks easy,” she said of the videos she was seeing.

“It was just them, like, working and, like, putting, like, a random caption or, like, dancing to, like, some type of music,” she said. “So it didn’t seem so bad.”

When she arrived, however, the reality of the warehouse didn’t live up to the picture painted on TikTok. “I worked graveyard shift. So I would wake up at midnight and go in at 1:20 a.m. and get off at 11:50 a.m.,” she said. “It’s pretty draining.”

Barajas said she made her first TikTok video to break up the monotony of warehouse work. “I was bored,” she said. “It’ll give me something else to do.”

Her first video was about colleagues who asked for her social media handles in the warehouse. Barajas said Amazon’s human resources department had mentioned that asking for contact information like phone numbers or social media handles on the job could be an invasion of privacy or even part of harassing behavior.

The video quickly blew up and became the talk of Barajas’ warehouse.

Despite a public and private warning not to post TikTok videos after the video went viral, Barajas posted three others from inside the warehouse.

“Patiently waiting for VTO after 20 minutes of working,” she said in one. “VTO” stands for voluntary time off, which is unpaid time off Amazon workers can use to leave work early if they choose. In another video, she said workers were played bingo at the warehouse for VTO time.

Barajas said she’s still weighing whether she wants to continue working at the warehouse.

“I will give myself another month,” she said. “I cannot mix working at Amazon and school, because it’s like, harsh hours and graveyard.”

Raytheon says it is a 'target' of a DOJ probe into industry hiring practices

(Reuters) - Raytheon Technologies Corp said it is a target of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into hiring practices in the aerospace industry, the U.S. aerospace and defense firm said in a filing on Friday.

No criminal charge has been filed against the company or its affiliates, the company added.

Raytheon had received a subpoena in late 2019 focused on alleged hiring restrictions between Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of Raytheon, and some of its suppliers of outsourced engineering services. It also included requests regarding Collins Aerospace.

A former Pratt & Whitney employee and some other employees of outsourced engineering suppliers were charged in December for restricting the hiring and recruiting of engineers and skilled laborers in a way that violated antitrust laws.

"Raytheon Technologies is committed to complying with applicable state and federal laws and is cooperating fully with the government's inquiry," the company said in a statement.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)

A federal court ordered a New Jersey company and its co-managers to pay $712,000 to staff for deliberately denying overtime pay

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) - Yesterday

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. Alex Wong/Getty Images

A New Jersey company violated labor laws by not paying staff for the full hours they worked, the DOL said.
The firm also failed to keep accurate records of staff hours and wages, the DOL said in a lawsuit.
A federal court ordered the company and its co-managers to pay staff $712,000 in back wages and damages.

A federal court ordered a New Jersey company and its co-managers to pay $712,000 in back wages and damages after a Department of Labor investigation found it had deliberately denied overtime pay.

FTR Electrical & HVAC Services violated labor laws by capping staff pay at eight hours a day, no matter how long they actually worked, the Department of Labor (DOL) said in a lawsuit first filed in May 2020.

Employees regularly worked between 45 and 54 hours a week, but the company didn't pay staff extra for overtime, the DOL said.

The Union, NJ-based company, which provides electrical, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning services, also required staff to "work off the clock," and didn't keep accurate records of working hours and wage payments, the DOL said.

The company paid staff in cash for overtime hours and told them not to clock out "to conceal the fact that employees worked more than forty hours a week," per the lawsuit. In this way, the company and its co-mangers had "willfully violated the FLSA," the DOL said.

FTR Electrical & HVAC Services said that it had violated some sections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, including not paying staff for all the hours they worked, not paying staff a premium for overtime hours, and not keeping full records of hours and wages, per legal filings viewed by Insider.

The US District Court for the District of New Jersey ordered the company, a part-owner, and a vice-president to pay $355,846.92 in back wages for unpaid overtime and another $355,846.92 in liquidated damages to the 89 affected workers, per a February 3 legal filing. The company and co-managers also had to pay almost $3,000 in interest alongside a $16,450 fine.

The defendants had agreed to make the payments, per the filing by US Magistrate Judge Edward S. Kiel.

The company didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

"The company and its co-managers intentionally denied overtime wages to employees and deprived them of their basic right to the wages they earned for the hard work they provided," Paula Ruffin, district director of the DOL's Wage and Hour Division in Mountainside, New Jersey, said in a statement Tuesday.

How autonomous underwater robots can spot oil plumes after an ocean spill

Neil Bose, Vice President (Research)

and Professor, Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering,

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Jimin Hwang, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Tasmania -

Thursday

The Conversation

On April 20, 2010, the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded, burned, sank in the Gulf of Mexico and terrified the world. This horrific accident — recorded as the largest oil spill in history — killed 11 workers and released 210 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean

© (Shutterstock)Response teams often make assumptions about the way oil behaves in the ocean, but this means oil plumes can go undetected and get missed in the clean-up.

While about a half of the oil rose to the surface, the other half formed a suspended plume of many tiny oil droplets about 1,000 metres below the surface. Its extent and whereabouts couldn’t be determined from above.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are untethered marine robots that can explore the underwater world. AUVs were first used in oil probing missions when the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute rapidly deployed them to assess the extent of the submerged plume from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Since then, AUVs have been developed to accommodate a variety of payloads that are similar to the sensing organs of humans, such as underwater cameras, sonars and chemical and sniffing sensors that operate like our eyes, ears and noses. In our research, we equip the AUV with a scanning sonar to find distant oil plumes and other sensors to take measurements — such as particle size and petrochemical type — when it comes into contact with the plume.

Impacts of marine oil pollution

Although AUVs were used to identify oil plumes in the Deepwater Horizon spill, they are not yet in regular use. They have also been operated with several assumptions about the way oil behaves in the ocean after a spill. This means that clean-up operations may miss large portions of the oil, which can have severe consequences on marine habitats, fish and birds.

Even a small amount of oil can be fatal to a bird. Oil-coated feathers make flying impossible and damages their body insulation. During the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989, 250,000 seabirds were killed. The Deepwater Horizon spill killed 82,000 birds from 102 species, 6,165 sea turtles, 25,900 marine mammals and an incalculable number of fish.

© (AP Photo/Rich Matthews)Patches of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill are suspended in the water, in the Gulf of Mexico, south of Venice, La., on June 7, 2010, nearly two months after the drilling rig exploded and the leak was discovered. It took 87 days to stop the initial leak.

If we can find these plumes and clean them up, we might be able to save some of the animals in the event of a disastrous spill.

To date, in designing AUV missions, operators have assumed that underwater oil plumes are continuous with a smooth concentration gradient. Yet real oil plumes consist of patchy clouds made up of oil droplets.

A better approach is needed to effectively track real oil plumes by detecting the plume from a distance and recognizing their true patchy nature.
An ear in the sea

We developed an approach to search for and detect patches of oil droplets in the ocean using sonar. Sonar works well for this because of the difference between the density of oil droplets and that of water, and the strength of the sound reflections from these clouds of oil droplets.

Integrating sonar with the AUV allows the vehicle to continuously detect its surroundings without having to make contact with the oil droplets.

As the on-board computer collects the data and processes it in real-time, it draws conclusions about the location of a patch of oil droplets and then sends the AUV an updated set of directions to help it build a three-dimensional map of the oil plume

Memorial University's Explorer AUV is equipped with sonars that can detect oil plumes from a distance.

The on-board computer acts like a backseat driver, overriding and adapting the pre-programmed mission as needed. These override instructions allow the AUV to track around a patch of oil droplets at a distance of up to 50 meters, recording the size and position of the patch.

Once an oil plume has been identified and mapped out, the backseat driver can instruct the AUV to enter the patch and take readings using additional chemical sensors, or collect a water sample to understand more about the composition of the oil itself.
Into the depths

We’ve carried out several marine oil pollution search missions using proxies for the oil in a sheltered coastal environment in Holyrood Bay, N.L. One of these was to design a search pattern that maximized spatial coverage, and reduced the total search time and distance travelled needed to find an oil spill of interest. Another tested the effectiveness of the backseat driver control to direct the AUV.

The tracking missions have been successfully tested in computer simulations and will be deployed in coastal waters where micro-air bubbles will be used to represent the oil. In 2023, we plan to test these sonar-equipped AUVs near Scott Inlet in Baffin Bay, where there are several naturally occurring oil seeps.

While we’ve developed this approach to sense patches of oil droplets in seawater, the principle could also be used for other targets in the ocean, including identifying plastic and micro-plastic debris, studying schools of fish, plankton or other biological matter or mapping seabed topography and searching for hydrothermal vents.

Read more:

Scientists aim to build a detailed seafloor map by 2030 to reveal the ocean’s unknowns
Why scientists intentionally spilled oil into a Canadian lake

Neil Bose receives funding from Memorial University, NSERC and DFO Canada. DFO funds three projects under the Multi-Partner Research Initiative (MPRI) including Oil Spill Reconnaissance and Delineation through Robotic Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology in Open and Iced Waters and Inshore Trials of Robotic Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology for Oil Spill Reconnaissance and Delineation using an Environmentally Friendly Proxy. One of the NSERC grants is under their Alliance program, Characterization and delineation of oil-in-water at the Scott Inlet seeps through robotic autonomous underwater vehicle technology, and is in partnership with Fugro Canada and International Submarine Engineering, BC. Neil Bose is a co-chair of the not for profit group Panel on Underwater Robotics, Society for Underwater Technology, UK.

Jimin Hwang receives funding from Memorial University and Australian Research Council's Special Research Initiative through the Antarctic Gateway Partnership under Project SR140300001. This work is supported in part by DFO through the Multi-Parner Research Initiative (MPRI) 1.03: Oil Spill Reconnaissance and Delineation through Robotic Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology in Open and Iced Waters and in part by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Robot photos appear to show melted fuel at Fukushima reactor

TOKYO (AP) — A remote-controlled robot has captured images of what appears to be mounds of nuclear fuel that melted and fell to the bottom of the most damaged reactor at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, officials said Thursday.

© Provided by The Canadian PressRobot photos appear to show melted fuel at Fukushima reactor

A massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 damaged cooling systems at the power plant, causing the meltdown of three reactor cores. Most of their highly radioactive fuel fell to the bottom of their containment vessels, making its removal extremely difficult.

A previous attempt to send a small robot with cameras into the Unit 1 reactor failed, but images captured this week by a ROV-A robot show broken structures, pipes and mounds of what appears to be melted fuel and other debris submerged in cooling water, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said Thursday.

About 900 tons of melted nuclear fuel remain inside the plant’s three damaged reactors, including about 280 tons in Unit 1. Its removal is a daunting task that officials say will take 30-40 years. Critics say that’s overly optimistic.

The robot, carrying several tiny cameras, obtained the internal images of the reactor's primary containment vessel while on a mission to establish a path for subsequent probes, TEPCO said.

TEPCO spokesperson Kenichi Takahara said the piles of debris rose from the bottom of the container, including some inside the pedestal — a structure directly beneath the core — suggesting the mounds were melted fuel that fell in the area.

Takahara said further probes will be needed to confirm the objects in the images.

At one location, the robot measured a radiation level of 2 sievert, which is fatal for humans, Takahara said. The annual exposure limit for plant workers is set at 50 millisievert.

The robot probe of the Unit 1 reactor began Tuesday and was the first since 2017, when an earlier robot failed to obtain any images of melted fuel because of the extremely high radiation and interior structural damage.

The fuel at Unit 1 is submerged in highly radioactive water as deep as 2 meters (6.5 feet).

TEPCO said it will conduct additional probes after analyzing the data and images collected by the first robot.

Five other robots, co-developed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, a government-funded consortium, will be used in the investigation over the next several months.

The investigation at Unit 1 aims to measure the melted fuel mounds, map them in three dimensions, analyze isotopes and their radioactivity, and collect samples, TEPCO officials said.

Those are key to developing equipment and a strategy for the safe and efficient removal of the melted fuel, allowing the reactor's eventual decommissioning.

Details of how the highly radioactive material can be safely removed, stored and disposed of at the end of the cleanup have not been decided.

TEPCO hopes to use a robotic arm later this year to remove an initial scoop of melted fuel from Unit 2, where internal robotic probes have made the most progress.

Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

Olympian flashes 'No War in Ukraine' sign after competing

© Provided by The Canadian Press

BEIJING (AP) — A Ukrainian skeleton athlete flashed a small sign that read “ No War in Ukraine ” to the cameras as he finished a run at the Beijing Olympics on Friday night, a plea for peace at a time of rising tensions between his country and Russia.

Vladyslav Heraskevych's sign was printed on a blue-and-yellow piece of paper, matching the colors of his country's flag. He did not display the message after his second run of the night, which was his fourth and final run of the Olympics.

“It's my position. Like any normal people, I don't want war," Heraskevych said after he finished competing. “I want peace in my country, and I want peace in the world. It's my position, so I fight for that. I fight for peace."

The gesture came as Russia has amassed over 100,000 troops near Ukraine, stoking fears in the West that Moscow is planning an invasion. Russia insists it has no such designs but doesn't want Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to be allowed to join the western NATO alliance.

“In Ukraine, it's really nervous now," Heraskevych said. “A lot of news about guns, about weapons, what's to come in Ukraine, about some armies around Ukraine. It's not OK. Not in the 21st century. So I decided, before the Olympics, that I would show my position to the world."

Shortly after the race, the International Olympic Committee said there would be no repercussions for the athlete. There had been a question of whether the body might consider Heraskevych’s act a violation of Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter. That rule, in part, states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

“This was a general call for peace. For the IOC the matter is closed,” the Games’ governing body said Friday night.

Heraskevych earlier said he was not concerned about any possible repercussions.

“I hope the Olympics will (support) me in this situation. Nobody wants war," said Heraskevych, who was not a medal contender. “I hope it helps ... make peace in our country."

The IOC relaxed its rule against protests before the Tokyo Games, allowing athletes to express themselves politically before competitions start.

In the runup to these Games, many braced for potential protests against the host country, China, which has been accused of widespread abuses against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. It has also come under fire for its polices toward Tibet, its crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong and the near-total disappearance from public view of tennis player Peng Shuai after she accused a former Communist Party official of sexual assault.

Concerns over human rights abuses led some countries to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Games, while Chinese organizers warned foreign athletes that any statement that goes against Chinese law could be punished.

Meanwhile, the heightened tensions over Ukraine cast a pall over last week’s opening ceremony, when IOC President Thomas Bach implored participating countries to uphold the long-running Olympic Truce, which calls for a cessation of hostilities during the Games.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in attendance when Bach spoke, has drawn closer to China and some have suggested he may not want to invade Ukraine during the Olympics so as to avoid embarrassing his ally, Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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AP Sports Writer Graham Dunbar contributed to this report.

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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press

THUMBNAIL NO WAR PHOTO FROM KYIV, UKRAINE

The Ukraine-Russia standoff is a troubling watershed moment for NATO

Thomas Hughes,

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen's University, Ontario -

Thursday

The Conversation

The escalating tensions among Russia, Ukraine and its allies represents a monumental challenge for the international community while also creating a political environment that could violently upend the way security is approached.

The very real risk of warfare between the military forces of Russia and Ukraine is the primary focus. But for Canada and its allies, this conflict is not only about Ukrainian sovereignty, but also the structure of NATO and the viability of the rules that govern international activities.

If Russia conducts any activity that harms Ukraine or the Ukrainian government, it represents a very public failure of key NATO members to deter such action.

Furthermore, Russia attacking Ukraine — whether through a traditional military invasion or via cyber attacks or misinformation campaigns — would demonstrate the inadequacy of existing security-related international regulations. By escalating tensions, Russia would also exacerbate existing differences of opinion within NATO.

By threatening Ukraine, Russia has put pressure on NATO to either offer unequivocal support to Ukrainians and risk being pulled into a damaging conflict, or make concessions to the Russians.
NATO’s difficult position

These concessions could include NATO forces withdrawing further from Russia, a commitment not to allow Ukraine into NATO or the formal acknowledgement of Crimea as Russian territory.

This puts NATO in a difficult position. Such concessions would be seen as NATO bowing to Russian pressure, and potentially be perceived as abandoning its members on Russia’s borders.

Conversely, there are differences of opinion within NATO about the most effective and appropriate way of engaging with Russia. This was highlighted by the recent resignation of Germany’s Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach. He stepped down after saying Russian President Vladimir Putin “deserves” respect and that the Crimea Peninsula, former Ukrainian territory that was annexed by Russia in 2014, is “gone” and “will never” be part of Ukraine again.

The latter claim was in direct opposition to the public positions of the German government and its allies, who continue to express the belief that the annexation should be reversed.

Of course, Ukraine is not a NATO member, so there’s no absolute requirement for any other NATO member to come to its defence. Nevertheless, some key NATO members, including Canada, have been vociferous in their opposition to Russian activities.

Should Russia invade Ukraine, it will be very difficult for these NATO members not to respond forcefully. Other NATO allies would also be forced to decide whether they’ll provide support. Failing to do so, even though it may not technically represent an abdication of NATO responsibilities, would signify a considerable breach in the alliance.
The importance of predictability

Furthermore, for NATO members, stability in Europe is heavily based on ensuring that the actions of states in the region are predictable, which is partly achieved through openness and transparency.

In theory, if everyone is open about their activities and benefits — and the risks of their actions are clearly understood — then the likely course of future policy and activity can be predicted. This also makes it easier to prepare if another state’s actions appear to be threatening or aggressive.

If actions are predictable, the ability to act aggressively by surprising another state is reduced, and relationships between states are therefore stabilized.

A Ukrainian serviceman mans a heavy machine gun at a frontline position in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, in February 2022.

To a certain extent, this approach is based on being clear about the costs involved in acting aggressively. The publication of details about the material support given to Ukraine by NATO members, including the United States and the United Kingdom, is an example of how NATO has sought to use openness and predictability to create stability and deter Russia from attacking Ukraine.

By highlighting the improvement in Ukrainian military capability, it suggests that a higher number of Russian troops would be killed if they tried to invade. The intention here is not to surprise Russian troops with Ukrainian capability and defeat them in battle, but instead to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine by indicating a predictable increase in potential Russian casualties.

More fundamentally, predictability has stemmed from the agreement of regulations intended to govern behaviour. When such rules are established and followed, the “game” of international security is easier to play. All participants are aware of the rules and understand that adhering to them benefits everyone.
Rules under seige

These rules are now under huge stress. The possibility of a Russian invasion rips apart the basic tenets of international agreements that generally prohibit the use of force.

In addition, Russia may use force that doesn’t meet the threshold of war, such as launching more cyber attacks or, as the U.K. Foreign Office has suggested, leveraging political pressure that results in the installation of a pro-Russian politician as the head of the Ukrainian government.

These tactics suggest Russia and NATO members have a different understanding of the importance of international law, and that the existing rules provide insufficient guidance around the use of what’s known as “force-short-of-war.” Consequently, predictability is undermined, and NATO decision-making becomes much more difficult.

© (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)Flags flutter in the wind outside NATO headquarters in Brussels as international efforts to defuse the standoff over Ukraine intensified.

The situation marks an existential crisis for NATO. Low-level Russian action against Ukraine would have limited implications for NATO. However, if NATO cannot deter Russia from taking open military action against Ukraine or there’s broad international failure to respond robustly, faith in the rules and regulations that have underpinned international relations could be terminally undermined.

That would result in a re-evaluation of how to successfully establish security. It’s not likely that introspection would lead to greater international collaboration and more robust rules, but a return to more individualistic security policy shouldn’t be accepted lightly.

This situation is therefore a watershed moment. If diplomatic efforts cannot avert further conflict between Ukraine and Russia — whether it’s traditional warfare or activities that fall below this threshold — a dramatic shift in international relations could occur.

A loss of faith in the ability of existing rules and international organizations to ensure peace and stability could wrench apart NATO and result in costly and jarring reconfigurations of security policy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

Why church conflict in Ukraine reflects historic Russian-Ukrainian tensions

Russia has been at war with Ukraine for years – in cyberspace

Thomas Hughes has received funding from the Department of National Defence for a project not directly connected to this topic. Thomas is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen's University.

Prominent Myanmar filmmaker arrested after a year on the run

BANGKOK (AP) — An award-winning film director in Myanmar has been arrested almost a year after he was put on a wanted list for encouraging government employees to join in protests against military rule, a colleague and local media reported Thursday.

Htun Zaw Win, whose professional name is Wyne, was arrested Wednesday at his apartment in Yangon after spending most of the past year on the run, said the colleague, who is also a prominent figure in the entertainment industry. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of arrest.

Wyne has won multiple awards for best director and best screenplay from the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization. In addition to his popular feature films, he has also worked on movies and shorts dealing with political themes, including land-grabbing and censorship.

The colleague said the 48-year-old Wyne is believed to have gone home to receive medical treatment. He has not fully recovered from a stroke in 2019.

According to the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 12,059 people have been arrested since Myanmar’s military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1 last year. Of those, 9,056 remain detained.

The army takeover triggered widespread protests and the formation of a civil disobedience movement. Celebrities including film directors, actors, singers, artists, and models attended rallies against the military and used social media to express their support of the nationwide movement against army rule.

By the end of February, the military government began issuing arrest warrants for celebrities, charging them with incitement for “spreading news to affect state stability,” an offense punishable by up to three years in prison.

More than 100 celebrities who took part in the protests were sought and listed with their photos on state-run media.

At least 15 were arrested last year, about half of whom were convicted by special courts inside the country’s notorious Insein Prison in Yangon.

Last October, charges were dropped against 24 artists and 10 social media personalities under an amnesty order from Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the ruling military council.

However, the military government continues to issue new arrest warrants, and according to the state-run Myanma Alinn Daily newspaper, at least 187 people have been arrested by security forces since Jan. 27 this year.

The military suppression of peaceful protests gave rise to armed resistance, and a low-level insurgency is active in many parts of the country.

Grant Peck , The Associated Press

North Macedonia's President walks bullied 11-year-old girl with Down syndrome to school

By Allegra Goodwin, CNN - Yesterday

The President of North Macedonia walked an 11-year-old girl with Down syndrome to school after he heard she was being bullied.

President Stevo Pendarovski held Embla Ademi's hand as he walked her to her elementary school in the city of Gostivar on Monday.

Embla has experienced bullying at school due as a result of having Down syndrome -- a genetic condition that causes learning disabilities, health problems and distinctive facial characteristics -- a spokesperson for the President's office told CNN.

Pendarovski "talked to Embla's parents about the challenges she and her family face on a daily basis," and discussed solutions, his office said in a press release.

"The President said that the behavior of those who endanger children's rights is unacceptable, especially when it comes to children with atypical development," the statement said.

"They should not only enjoy the rights they deserve, but also feel equal and welcome in the school desks and schoolyard. It is our obligation, as a state, but also as individuals, and the key element in this common mission is empathy."

"It will help children like Embla, but it will also help us learn from them how to sincerely rejoice, share and be in solidarity," the president added."

In a video shared by Pendarovski's office, the President can be seen sitting down with Embla's family and giving her gifts.

He is also seen waving the 11-year-old off at the school gate as she walks into the building.

"We are all equal in this society. I came here to give my support and to raise awareness that inclusion is a basic principle", the press release quoted Pendarovski as saying.

The President said he "encouraged and supported" Embla's parents in their fight for the protection of the rights of children like their daughter.

"Prejudices in that context are the main obstacle to building an equal and just society for all," Pendarovski said, according to the press release.

He also stressed there was "a legal and moral obligation to provide inclusive education, in which the main focus is on developing skills and abilities in children with different developmental processes" and emphasized the need to raise public awareness of the issue.

Once part of Yugoslavia, North Macedonia is a small landlocked country in southeastern Europe with a population of around 2 million.

Pendarovski also sat down with Embla's family and gave her gifts, according to a video shared by his office.

Bulgaria has high expectations of its Canadian first couple

Special to National Post - Thursday

Linda McKenzie was born in Ottawa in 1979 and spent her teens in Courtenay, B.C., a small town halfway up Vancouver Island. Now Linda Petkova, she runs her own bakery and lives with her husband and two of their daughters; their third is off at university.

The Petkov family: Mom Linda McKenzie was born in Ottawa and now runs own bakery in Sofia, Bulgaria. Husband Kiril was minister of the economy before being elected prime minister. The youngest two of their daughters are still at home.

So far, so normal.

Except that the young man she met at the University of British Columbia and later married, a new Canadian named Kiril Petkov, has just been elected prime minister of Bulgaria.

Petkova had never left North America and she knew nothing about Bulgaria, a country of seven million in Eastern Europe, before she met Petkov at UBC in the late 1990s.

“He told me (Bulgaria) was north of Greece and I still wasn’t that sure,” says Petkova.

“But then I never thought I was going to move here, so it didn’t really matter. I just kind of liked him.”

© Courtesy of Linda PetkovaKiril and Linda on a casual day out.

Petkov and his family had immigrated to Victoria when he was 14. He became good friends with Petkova’s twin sister at UBC and he started dating Petkova when she transferred to UBC in her second year.

Life moved fast for the young couple. They married when they were 20 and had their first daughter, Vanessa, a week before they were to start their fourth year. After Petkov graduated with a commerce degree in the spring of 2001, the young family took a trip to Bulgaria, driving all around the country in his parents’ Lada over 10 weeks.

“(It was) like a honeymoon period — with my husband but also with the country,” says Petkova.

Petkov took a job with the Canadian company McCain Foods in Brussels, Belgium, and that was where Petkova finished the last semester of her economics degree after taking off the semester right after Vanessa’s birth.

The Petkovs spent two years in Brussels before Kiril was transferred to Toronto, and then another two years in Cambridge, Mass., where he studied for his MBA and she worked as a research assistant at Harvard University.

After two years in the U.S., the Petkovs thought they would try living in Bulgaria for a couple of years and then see where life would take them; Petkov had accepted a job in its capital city, Sofia, managing Bulgaria’s first large retail park. But first, Petkova moved briefly back to Vancouver Island.

“I wasn’t comfortable enough to give birth (in Bulgaria) so I actually … moved in with my parents for two months to have her,” she says with a laugh, referring to their second daughter, Emma. The family left Canada for Bulgaria when Emma was just five weeks old, as soon as her passport was issued.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomes Prime Minister of Bulgaria Kiril Petkov prior to their bilateral meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Jan. 27, 2022.

In 2007, most Bulgarians, especially older ones, didn’t speak English. But there weren’t many Bulgarian courses or resources available at the time. “(The language) was really difficult for me,” Petkova says.

Bulgarian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, the same script used to write Russian. But the alphabet wasn’t the main challenge for Petkova (or, in Bulgarian, Петкова).

“They have a lot more tenses than we do and they have the masculine and feminine, which I get wrong all the time…. I make a lot of mistakes still, but (Bulgarians) are so appreciative. They are so surprised that somebody from Canada can learn it.”

Petkova could soon talk to taxi drivers, who weren’t used to meeting people who had moved to Bulgaria. “Every taxi I got into was like, ‘Oh, do you know this guy, Ivan, from Toronto? He’s my cousin. It’s so funny that you’re here and he’s there!’”

It’s no wonder that taxi drivers were surprised. There has been a massive exodus from Bulgaria over the past 30 years, since the country’s borders opened after the fall of one-party communism.

Prime Minister Kiril Petkov (third from left) and his North Macedonia counterpart Dimitar Kovacevski walk by the Aleksander Nevski cathedral after an official welcoming ceremony in Sofia on Jan. 24, 2022.

So the Petkovs were bucking the trend when they moved there. After the retail park, Petkov started his own company, ProViotic, which produces the world’s first vegan probiotic from the snowdrop flower.

Financially independent from the success of ProViotic — a product recommended by both Oprah Winfrey and tennis great Novak Djokovic — Petkov turned his attention to the next generation.

He has taught Harvard-affiliated business and economics courses at Sofia University ever since he moved back, and for the past few years, he has also taught scientists to become entrepreneurs, all at no cost to the students.

The couple had their third daughter, Annie, in 2012. After arriving in Bulgaria, Petkova had done some volunteering, worked a bit for an NGO and then doing online sales for an American fashion company. Nothing quite fit; she was stuck in a rut and she wasn’t happy.

“I hadn’t had a full-time job in about seven years…. I wanted to quit and I didn’t know what else to do.”

In her spare time, Petkova baked. This was partly out of necessity, because a year after she arrived in Bulgaria, she says, “I found out that I had problems with my thyroid, which was due to gluten. And then, a couple years later, I realized all my daughters had the same problem. There were no resources here at all … so I just started making everything from scratch.”

On top of this, Emma, her middle daughter, was diabetic.

© Courtesy of Linda PetkovaFrom left: Kiril Petkov with his wife, Linda, and daughters Annie, Vanessa and Emma.

Petkova had some experience with these conditions — her mother, Margaret McKenzie, has celiac disease. A dietitian, she had developed her own flour mix.

“She was very much at the forefront of developing a lot of these gluten-free products and initiatives, even though she wasn’t commercial about it,” says Petkova.

She adapted recipes to be as gluten-free and as low-carb as possible for her daughters. Her friends started to ask her to bake for their kids’ birthdays and “everyone was telling me I should open a place.”

© Courtesy of Linda PetkovaThe couple, with baby Vanessa, on their first trip through Bulgaria, in 2001.

And three and a half years ago, “I opened a place!” They bought a little Belgian-chocolate shop, put in an industrial stainless steel kitchen “and we started making cake.”

This was the beginning of Amelie Sweet Shop, Bulgaria’s only gluten-free bakery. In addition to making goodies that her daughters can eat, Petkova offers baked goods to those following vegan, keto and raw food diets, too.

One day, a friend of a friend wrote to Petkova, saying that she was a fan of her cakes. Why not apply for MasterChef Bulgaria ? Petkova didn’t watch much TV and had never seen the Bulgarian version of the show before but thought — well, why not? At the least, it would be good advertising for her shop.

“It was just really fun, the whole thing, just because I didn’t take it very seriously…. Every time I went (I thought), ‘Oh my God, this is happening!’”

Petkova had a promising start to her MasterChef campaign in 2020, being fast-tracked to the Top 16 after preparing her signature dessert. But her journey was cut short by a pasta challenge; not eating gluten, she was at a disadvantage. Petkova finished 13th out of the 16 finalists.

But she did it all in Bulgarian and she got the advertising she wanted.

Former Bulgarian president Boyko Borisov was leader of the Bulgarian conservative GERB party. Here, he is at a polling station during the 2013 general election.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Sofia for weeks on end in 2020. They accused Boyko Borisov, the prime minister for most of the previous decade, of widespread corruption and the judicial system of protecting him.

In 2021, Bulgaria had two elections that ended without the party with the most votes being able to form a government. During this time, an independent caretaker government ruled the country, and it was in this government that Petkov held office for the first time when he was appointed minister of the economy.

Petkov’s friend and fellow Harvard alumnus, Assen Vassilev, with whom he had taught the Harvard-affiliated courses at Sofia University, was also appointed to this government as the minister of finance.

For last November’s new elections, Petkov and Vassilev decided to strike out and create their own party, We Continue the Change. They ran on an anti-corruption platform — in Petkov’s words, “zero tolerance for corruption — so not small, not limited, but zero” — and won the greatest number of seats.

Petkov and Vassilev negotiated with other parties to form a government and, in mid-December, Petkov was formally inaugurated as prime minister, with Vassilev returning as minister of finance.

Bulgarian Finance Minister Assen Vassilev became acquainted with Petkov at Harvard.

Bulgarians have high expectations for their new leaders.

“The positive interpretation, from the optimists, is that these are two Harvard-educated young men” who will fix what needs to be fixed in Bulgaria, says Robert Phillips Jr., an associate professor of politics and international studies at the American University of Bulgaria, who has lived in the country for almost 30 years.

Phillips says Petkov needs to address corruption and the rule of law, the health-care system and the education system. If he manages to improve these, then perhaps more Bulgarian expats will come home.

Bulgaria has high expectations of its Canadian first couple

Bulgaria’s constitution states that ministers cannot be dual citizens, so Petkov had to give up his Canadian citizenship when he became minister of the economy in 2021.

High school and university in B.C. “are some my fondest memories,” says Petkov. “This is, of course, where I met Linda. Every time I think about Canada, I have really positive memories about my early life and the start of my career…. My connection to Canada is still in my heart.

“For me, (giving up Canadian citizenship) was a choice I had to make. But since I really had a strong desire to change my country right now, that was a price I was willing to pay….

“It’s amazing to think that seven million people — that their lives could be better by your work. It’s an amazing opportunity and a huge responsibility.”

And Petkov is proud of his wife, who has unwittingly proven to be a political asset.

“One lady told me, ‘Do you know why I will vote for you? … Because I saw your wife making a cake with her own hands last Sunday. I haven’t seen ministers’ wives baking cakes in a small bakery like that before.’”

It’s now been 14 years, far longer in Bulgaria than the two years the Petkovs initially planned for. Bulgaria now feels more like home to Petkova than Canada does. It’s also given her a confidence she might not have even known she had.

“I miss my family … but I really feel foreign when I go (to Canada) just because it’s a different lifestyle,” says Petkova.

“In Bulgaria, there’s this sense of chaos and freedom that there isn’t in Canada…. I have Amelie, which is something I couldn’t have done in Canada or at least I don’t know how I would have…. I don’t know if I could have afforded to do it or if I would have had the courage to do it.”

But she did, and with Amelie, Petkov says, his wife is also a Bulgarian changemaker in her own right.