Sask reverts to former health-care payroll, scheduling system after new program faulty

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A new administrative system for managing payroll, scheduling, finance and the supply chain for Saskatchwan's health-care system has been taken down after complaints it's bug-ridden.

The Administrative Information Management System (AIMS) was meant to replace 80 existing systems and improve "data accuracy [and] reliability" while benefiting employees, clients, patients, residents and families, according to a website about the system.

In an email, Jennifer Arends, executive director of communications at 3sHealth, which provides human resource services to the Saskatchewan health-care system among other things, says the system was meant to provide a standardized system that would "support payroll, staff scheduling, human resources, finance and supply chain functions across the health sector."

That wasn't the case when it went live in late October.

On Friday, the province paused AIMS and reverted to the system process in place before its launch because of "challenges" with the program, according to the emailed statement, though it noted it anticipated some challenges "as with any large-scale system implementation."

The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) posted to its website on Nov. 2 that prior to the program launch it anticipated issues with the system and informed members of them.

"Since our initial communication, SUN has become aware that hundreds of members are experiencing significant issues with AIMS that are in breach of the application of many articles and practices outlined in the collective agreement," a post on the website dated Nov. 2 says.

It says members had issues with scheduling, leave requests and hours worked among other aspects of the systems.

The post says SUN also filed a provincial grievance.


Tracy Zambory, president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, says nurses were concerned of payroll and scheduling errors following the implementation of the AIMS program.© Matt Duguid/CBC

"Registered nurses are very fearful of payroll errors, and our members are not clear who they can reach out to for help (and) … are also worried about issues with scheduling, which could create gaps in patient care. AIMS is a stressful and costly endeavour," Tracy Zambory, SUN president, said in an emailed statement.

Arends's emailed statement says the pause to the program's implementation was "disappointing but necessary," but AIMS will return when they're confident its issues have been addressed.

On Twitter, opposition critic for health Vicki Mowat tweeted that the government failed to implement the program, which solved "a problem that didn't seem to exist."

"Very expensive software system for health-care employees has tanked within one week of launching," she wrote. mer health-care payroll, scheduling system after new program faulty

Labour board to rule on legality of Ontario education strike

TORONTO — A daylong demonstration is planned for Queen's Park Monday, as members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) continue to protest government legislation that imposed a contract on 55,000 provincial education workers and took away their right to strike.


Labour board to rule on legality of Ontario education strike© Provided by The Canadian Press

The protest comes as CUPE, the provincial government, parents and students await a decision by the Ontario Labour Relations Board on the legality of the strike that began Friday, when thousands of workers walked off the job.

The government is seeking a ruling that their walkout is illegal, while CUPE contends the job action is a form of legitimate political protest.

Related video: Ontario education workers launch strike in defiance of province's ban
Duration 2:56
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Board Chair Brian O'Byrne heard arguments over the course of 16 hours on Saturday and another eight hours on Sunday, before promising to come to a decision as quickly as possible.

CUPE has scheduled a news conference for Monday morning, where the union's national president will be joined by national and provincial labour leaders to discuss the pushback to Bill 28.

The strike closed numerous schools across the province Friday, with even more set to shut on Monday should the work stoppage continue.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2022.

The Canadian Press

Quebec's highest court to begin hearing appeals on provincial secularism law

MONTREAL — Quebec's highest court is set to begin hearing appeals on the constitutionality of the province's secularism law, known as Bill 21.

Quebec's highest court to begin hearing appeals on provincial secularism law© Provided by The Canadian Press

Both the Quebec government and groups opposing the law are challenging an April 2021 court decision that largely upheld the controversial religious symbols law, while striking down provisions that related to English-language school boards and a ban on members of the provincial legislature wearing face coverings

The law prohibits public sector workers who are deemed to be in positions of authority, including teachers, police officers and judges, from wearing symbols such as hijabs, kippas or turbans at work.

A Superior Court justice ruled last year that the law has "serious and negative'' impacts on people who wear religious symbols, but is largely legal and does not violate the constitution.

Efforts to challenge the law are complicated by the Quebec government's pre-emptive use of the charter's notwithstanding clause, which shields legislation from most court challenges over violations of fundamental rights.

The groups opposing the law filed arguments in December saying the bill goes against Canada's constitutional architecture and it infringes on federal jurisdiction.

"By thus excluding a group of people from several spheres of society because of their religion in an attempt to 'protect' a certain vision of social peace or fundamental social values, Law 21 contradicts the principle of religious inclusion stemming from our Constitution, and it represents an invalid attempt to legislate in an area of jurisdiction reserved for the federal legislator," read the legal arguments filed to the Court of Appeal in Dec. 2021.

Representatives from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims will address the media Monday morning ahead of the start of the hearings, which are expected to take place this week and next at the Court of Appeal in Montreal.

The Quebec government passed Bill 21 in 2019 and has repeatedly argued the law is moderate and supported by a majority of Quebecers.

Critics, on the other hand, have argued it targets racialized minorities who choose to practice their religion, especially Muslim women.

In his 2021 decision, Justice Marc-André Blanchard acknowledged that the law has "cruel" and "dehumanizing" consequences for those who wear religious symbols, many of whom would no longer be able to seek out new jobs in the public service without compromising their beliefs.

He noted the law "negatively impacts Muslim women first and foremost," and violates their freedom of expression and religion.

But he ruled the law was allowed to stand due to the government's invocation of the notwithstanding clause, which shields the legislation from most charter challenges.

Blanchard did strike down a portion of the law that applies to English school boards, as well as a section that banned members of the provincial legislature from wearing face coverings.

The Quebec government is appealing that ruling.

The federal government has said it is prepared to join the legal challenge to the law if it eventually ends up in the Supreme Court of Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2022.

The Canadian Press

A fired Twitter employee who's 6 months pregnant tells the company 'see you in court'

stabahriti@insider.com (Sam Tabahriti) - Yesterday 


Elon Musk has cut thousands of jobs at Twitter. Carina Johansen/Getty Images© Carina Johansen/Getty Images

A fired Twitter employee who's 6 months pregnant said there's "definitely discrimination here."
Shennan Lu, a data science manager, worked at Meta before joining Twitter in January.

A Twitter employee who's six months pregnant said she was among the thousands laid off and believes "discrimination" was involved in the decision to fire her.

Shennan Lu worked as a data science manager at Meta before joining Twitter in the same role in January.

She tweeted on Friday: "My Twitter journey has come to an end, I got laid off while I'm 6-month pregnant. It has been a pleasure to work with all of you. I'm very thankful to lead such an amazing DS team, it's been a fun ride. #LoveWhereYouWorked."

"There is definitely discrimination here. So I will fight. My performance has been tracking ahead (top 30%) for the last quarters, and I know for a fact that other male managers don't have this rating got stayed," Lu added, before signing off: "See you in the court."

—shennan Lu (@lu_shennan) November 4, 2022

Lu isn't the only pregnant woman affected by Elon Musk's decision to cut up to half of Twitter's workforce. An eight-months-pregnant woman realized she was also let go after getting locked out her work laptop on Thursday night.

Five former employees have filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that the proposed staff layoffs violated California and federal law.

The lawsuit is asking the court to make Twitter adhere to the WARN Act and stop it from asking staff to waive their right to take part in the litigation.

Twitter didn't respond to Insider's request for comment.

'I had a really like sickening feeling': A woman said she complained about how Air Canada treated her, then the airline penalized her mother, who works for the company

rhogg@insider.com (Ryan Hogg) - Yesterday 

An Air Canada Boeing 787. Taylor Rains/Insider© Provided by Business Insider

Air Canada revoked an employee's flying privileges after her daughter complained about a flight.

The daughter was upset her mother seemed to get punished over an issue between her and Air Canada.

The airline said the employee broke its code by allowing a family member to file a grievance.

A woman who complained about her treatment trying to board an Air Canada flight said the airline revoked her mother's employee-flying privileges afterward.

The woman, who asked not to be named citing concerns for her mother's job, told Insider she filed a complaint with the airline after what she deemed to be poor customer service by the gate staff. She had bought a ticket using flying privileges her mother gave her.

The woman emailed senior officials at the airline and copied in media outlets, which appeared to prompt the airline to retaliate by revoking her flying privileges for two years.

An email sent to the employee suggested her daughter had misrepresented herself as a revenue-generating customer.

The airline then disciplined her 62-year-old mother, who is an administrator, and issued her the same punishment.

An email seen by Insider shows a senior official telling the employee that she would not be allowed to fly standby for two years.

"I had a really like sickening feeling when my mother told me what they did to her," the woman said. "It's one thing for me to be reprimanded, but it's totally different for my actions impacting my mom."

Standby tickets allow airline employees to fly anywhere for a fraction of the normal cost and are one attraction of working for a long-established carrier such as Air Canada.

The woman told Insider that standby privileges were the main reason her mother, who is close to retirement, took the job. She is now worried she will lose her job if the situation escalates.

THE UNION HAS A 'DUTY' TO REPRESENT

The woman said her mother went to her union about the issue, but was told there was nothing it could do, and union representatives suggested she apologize to try to reduce her penalty.

In a statement to Insider, Air Canada said: "We deal with our employees directly on internal matters. However, we can confirm employee travel is a special privilege and a unique and generous perk of working for an airline that comes with responsibilities which the overwhelming majority of employees and families understand and value.

"We take feedback about our services seriously. In fact, we undertook an investigation into the complaint lodged, and subsequently found facts which did not align with what was presented." The airline did not elaborate further.

Italy accused of illegally rejecting migrants as anger mounts

Humanitarian groups on Sunday said Italy had broken international law by refusing to let in migrants plucked from the sea as a German rescue charity said it would take legal action against Rome.

Italy's new far-right government has vowed to crack down on boat migrants© Severine Kpoti


Italy let in only babies, pregnant women and other vulnerable migrants© Giovanni ISOLINO

As rescue ships in Catania waited for permission to disembark every last person, a migrant rescue hotline said some 500 others had run into difficulty on the perilous Mediterranean crossing.

A father carrying a baby in a purple beanie was among the first to get off Geo Barents, a ship run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

He was one of the lucky 357 people allowed off. Italy refused entry to 215 others.

Earlier in the day authorities accepted 144 people including children and the sick from the German-flagged Humanity 1, but rejected 35 adult male migrants, the charity SOS Humanity said.

The ship was then "ordered to leave the port of Catania", but its captain refused, it said.

The charity said Italian authorities had decided after a "brief medical examination" that the 35 adults were "healthy", but said there was "no translator present to assess their mental and physical condition, nor was there a psychological evaluation".



Those rescued waited days at sea and sent multiple requests for a safe port in Italy© Giovanni ISOLINO

"Furthermore, the 35 survivors have the right to apply for asylum, and to a formal asylum procedure, which can only be carried out on land".

- Legal action -

The organisation said it would be taking legal action and appeals against the government's policy would be submitted to courts in Rome and Catania on Monday.



In a Sicilian port, Italy accepts some migrants, not others as tensions rise© Provided by AFP

Amnesty International urged Italy to stop discriminating, saying "the law of the sea is clear; a rescue ends when all those rescued are disembarked in a place of safety".

In a Sicilian port, Italy accepts some migrants, not others as tensions rise
View on Watch

Italy was "violating its international obligations", the rights organisation said.

Those refused permission to leave the Humanity 1 were "extremely depressed", SOS Humanity's press officer Petra Krischok told AFP.

MSF said the "selective and partial disembarkation" was illegal and accused politicians of "playing with (migrants') lives".

The Humanity 1 and Geo Barents were two of four ships that had requested a safe port. The Ocean Viking and Rise Above are still off the coast of Sicily.

A photographer on the Ocean Viking said there was "tension among the survivors", who were rescued 16 days ago and faced yet another cold night on deck as the weather worsened.

As the vessels waited, Alarm Phone, a group running a hotline for migrants needing rescue, said it had been alerted to "a large boat carrying about 500 people in distress" in the Mediterranean.

- 'Leave territorial waters' -

Italy's new far-right government has vowed to crack down on migrants attempting the perilous boat crossing from North Africa to Europe.

Over 87,000 people have landed in Italy so far this year, according to the interior ministry -- though only 14 percent of those were rescued at sea and brought to safety by charity vessels.

Interior minister Matteo Piantedosi earlier said those who do not "qualify" would have to "leave territorial waters".

Sources close to transport minister Matteo Salvini, who controls the ports, said they would be "provided with the assistance necessary" to do so.

Member of parliament Aboubakar Soumahoro, who was present as those chosen from the Humanity 1 disembarked, slammed the "selection of shipwrecked migrants".

The main opposition party said Piantedosi should offer an explanation to parliament.

- 'Europe's responsibility' -

Piantedosi said Saturday those migrants not allowed into Italy would have to be "taken care of by the flag state" -- a reference to the national flags under which vessels sail.

The Humanity 1 and Mission Lifeline charity's Rise Above sail under the German flag.

The Geo Barents and SOS Mediterranee's Ocean Viking are registered in Norway.

The Norwegian foreign ministry said Thursday it bore "no responsibility" for those rescued by private Norwegian-flagged ships in the Mediterranean.

Germany insisted in a diplomatic message to Italy that the charities were "making an important contribution to saving human lives" and asked Rome "to help them as soon as possible".

Pope Francis weighed in Sunday, saying that Italy "can do nothing without Europe's agreement" and telling journalists that as far as migrant arrivals were concerned, "it is Europe's responsibility".

ide/lcm

Planet Earth: 8 billion humans and dwindling resources

by Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS

A crowded street is seen in the city of Changsha in China's Hunan province in September 

2020.

Are eight billion humans too many for planet Earth? As we reach this milestone on November 15, most experts say the bigger problem is the overconsumption of resources by the wealthiest residents.

"Eight billion people, it is a momentous milestone for humanity," said United Nations Population Fund chief Natalia Kanem, hailing an increase in life expectancy and fewer maternal and child deaths.

"Yet, I realize this moment might not be celebrated by all. Some express concerns that our world is overpopulated. I am here to say clearly that the sheer number of human lives is not a cause for fear."

So, are there too many of us for Earth to sustain?

Many experts say that this is the wrong question. Instead of the fear of overpopulation, we should focus on the overconsumption of the planet's resources by the wealthiest among us.

"Too many for whom, too many for what? If you ask me, am I too many? I don't think so," Joel Cohen of Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Populations told AFP.

He said the question of how many people Earth can support has two sides: natural limits and human choices.

'Stupid and greedy'

Our choices result in humans consuming far more biological resources, such as forests and land, than the planet can regenerate each year.

The overconsumption of fossil fuels, for example, leads to more carbon dioxide emissions, responsible for global warming.

We would need the biocapacity of 1.75 Earths to sustainably meet the needs of the current population, according to the Global Footprint Network and WWF NGOs.

The most recent UN climate report mentions population growth as one of the main drivers of an increase in greenhouse gases. However, it plays a smaller role than economic growth.

"We are stupid. We lacked foresight. We are greedy. We don't use the information we have. That's where the choices and the problems lie," said Cohen.

However, he rejects the idea that humans are a curse on the planet, saying people should be given better choices.

"Our impact on the planet is driven far more by our behavior than by our numbers," said Jennifer Sciubba, a researcher at the Wilson Center, a think tank.

"It's lazy and damaging to keep going back to overpopulation," she added, as this allows people in wealthy nations, who consume the most, to cast the blame for the planet's woes onto developing countries where population growth is highest.

"Really, it's us. It's me and you, the air conditioning I enjoy, the pool I have outside, and the meat I eat at night that causes so much more damage."

If everyone on the planet lived like a citizen of India, we would only need the capacity of 0.8 Earths a year, according to the Global Footprint Network and WWF. If we all consumed like a resident of the United States, we would need five Earths a year.

The United Nations estimates that our planet will be home to 9.7 billion people by 2050.

Women's rights

One of the trickiest questions that arise when discussing population is that of controlling fertility. Even those who believe we need to lower the Earth's population are adamant about protecting women's rights.

Robin Maynard, the executive director of the NGO Population Matters, says there needs to be a decrease in the population, but "only through positive, voluntary, rights-respecting means" and not "deplorable examples" of population control.

The NGO Project Drawdown lists education and family planning among the top 100 solutions to halt global warming.

"A smaller population with sustainable levels of consumption would reduce demands on energy, transportation, materials, food, and natural systems."

Vanessa Perez of the World Resources Institute agrees that "every person that is born on the planet puts additional stress on the planet."

"It is a very thorny issue," she said, adding that we should reject "this idea that the elite capture this narrative and say we need to cap population growth in the South."

She believes the most interesting debate is not about the number of people but "distribution and equity."

Cohen points out that even if we currently produce enough food for 8 billion people, there are still 800 million people who are "chronically undernourished."

"The concept of 'too many' avoids the much more difficult problem, which is: are we using what we know to make the human beings we have as healthy, productive, happy, peaceful, and prosperous as we could?"

© 2022 AFP

Alarm as Earth hits 'Overshoot Day' Thursday: NGOs

‘Why are we here?’: Climate activists shunted to COP27 sidelines


By AFP
PublishedNovember 6, 2022

'I was so happy when they announced that COP would be in Africa,' said Ugandan youth activist Nyombi Morris - Copyright AFP Mohammed ABED

Bassem Aboualabass

Ugandan youth activist Nyombi Morris arrived in Egypt for the UN’s COP27 climate summit with high hopes of being part of the campaign for environmental justice.

But it didn’t take long for Egypt’s stiff security measures to shatter his dreams, as rights groups warn the North African country has stifled protests with “dozens” of arrests.

“I was so happy when they announced that COP would be in Africa,” said Morris, who founded the Earth Volunteers youth organisation campaigning for “climate justice”.

“I thought maybe I would get a chance to be at the room where the negotiations are taking place.”

Instead, “with the questions we received at the airport, it will not be easy for us to continue with our plan”, the 24-year-old said.

In 2008, when Morris was 10, devastating flash floods hit Uganda’s eastern Butaleja district — an area where the illegal extraction of riverbank sand for construction was common. Some 400 people, including Morris’s family, lost their homes.

Morris, who has said the digging “exacerbated flooding already made worse by climate change”, said they had to move to the capital Kampala.

“I am here to represent my mother who lost a farm, who lost a home,” he said. “I am here to ask for compensation for my community.”

– ‘Abusive security measures’ –

Activists wanting to demonstrate at COP27, held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, must request accreditation 36 hours in advance, providing information such as the names of the protest organisers and details of the proposed march.

Approved demonstrations are only allowed during working hours, and in a specific purpose-built area.

That accreditation process is risky, Morris fears.

“When they started asking about our locations, where we will be staying, our passports, our names, we were worried,” he said.

“What if they follow one of us and (we) get arrested?”

He cited the case of Indian climate activist Ajit Rajagopal, who was arrested after setting off to march from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh. He was later released after an international outcry.

Human Rights Watch on Sunday warned that “dozens of people” calling for protests had been detained.

“Egypt’s government has no intention of easing its abusive security measures and allowing for free speech and assembly,” the watchdog said.

Rights groups say at least 138 people have been arrested ahead of a rally slated for November 11 — planned nationwide but not in Sharm el-Sheikh — against what they decry as repression and sharp increases in the cost of living.

– ‘Watching online’ –

Africa is home to some of the countries least responsible for planet-heating emissions but hardest hit by an onslaught of weather extremes.

On top of security restrictions, Morris lamented that activists like him were excluded from the talks.

“I am watching online because our ‘observers’ badges don’t allow us to enter,” he said.

“I’m like ‘so, why are we here?'”

He said his hopes have faded that having the summit in Africa might make a difference — including in demanding wealthy nations responsible for emissions pay their dues.

“It is not an African COP, it is a polluters’ COP — because it is polluters dominating,” he said.

“Haven’t you seen Coca-Cola here?” he added, referring to one of this year’s official sponsors.

Campaign group Greenpeace has called Egypt’s choice of the soft drink giant “appalling”, blaming the company for much of the “plastic pollution in the world”.

Last year, at the COP26 in Glasgow, tens of thousands of demonstrators from all over the world marched to demand “climate justice”.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is skipping COP27, slamming it as a forum for “greenwashing” and saying the “space for civil society this year is extremely limited”.

On Sunday, ignoring the restrictions, a handful of activists waved banners at the entrance to the summit hall.

“We are trying to promote the veganism to help save the planet from the greenhouse gases”, said Tom Modgmah, a follower of Vietnamese “Supreme Master Ching Hai”, alongside colleagues waving banners.

“Be vegan, make peace,” they read.

Vietnam struggles to break one of world's biggest coal addictions

Alice PHILIPSON
Sun, November 6, 2022 


Despite Vietnam's solar boom and ambitious climate targets, the fast-growing economy is struggling to quit dirty energy -- leaving one of the world's biggest coal power programmes largely intact.

During the COP26 climate summit last year, the government boldly promised to end the construction of new coal plants and phase out the dirtiest of those already running, even as energy demands soar in the manufacturing powerhouse.

"But this is not actually what Vietnam is doing at a national level," Nandini Das, an energy research and policy analyst at Climate Analytics, told AFP.

Vietnam pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but with coal and gas still a major part of its energy mix one year later, that commitment is on shaky ground, she said.


The authoritarian communist state has also jailed four green activists this year, including anti-coal campaigner Nguy Thi Khanh, alarming environmentalists who argue it will be even harder for Vietnam to banish dirty energy without them.


"With the climate leaders in prison I think there's grave doubt about the country's ability to achieve its goals," said Michael Sutton, director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation.

He said "leaders like Khanh are instrumental in building public support" for radical change to Vietnam's economy.
- Solar boom -

After China and India, Vietnam has the world's third-largest pipeline of new coal power projects.

But at COP27 this week, G7 countries could announce billions of dollars in funding to help steer Vietnam away from fossil fuels and the country could attract billions more in clean energy investment as part of the Just Energy Transition Partnership.

The rise of solar energy in the Southeast Asian nation has also been meteoric.


The share of electricity generated by solar saw the biggest rise in the world in 2021, jumping to 10 percent from two percent a year earlier, according to independent energy think tank Ember.

Last year, the country ranked in the top 10 globally for solar energy capacity.

In the Mekong Delta, farmer Doan Van Tien -- whose community is poor, remote and has little access to the national grid -- is one of those who benefited.

For most of his life, he relied on a costly oil generator, until the arrival of 14 solar power batteries funded by Green ID, the non-profit environmental group founded by activist Khanh.

"It changed my life a lot," he told AFP, gesturing to his lucrative avocado and mandarin crops.

"In the past we wanted to grow these fruit trees but we could not (afford to power) the water pump," he said. Now he waters his plants for free.

Others jumped on solar thanks to generous feed-in tariffs, but its success has hit a roadblock: infrastructure limitations mean transmission lines cannot handle supply spikes, forcing a limit on how much power operators can feed into the grid.
- Changing mindsets -

In other strides down a greener path, the environment ministry's latest climate targets, issued in July, are "clear and much more ambitious than previous" goals, according to Thang Do, a research fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.


The ministry's new strategy boosted the reduction target for greenhouse gases by 2030 from last year's goal of nine percent relative to business as usual, to 43.5 percent. Emissions are expected to peak in 2035 before falling to net-zero in 2050.

The problem, Das argued, is that the new policies have yet to be implemented.

"We'll give it six months to see," she said.

The arrests of climate campaigners have made Vietnam's energy intentions even more difficult to decipher.

Khanh worked closely with the government to find a way to reduce coal use, while Dang Dinh Bach, an NGO worker, made it his mission to inform residents about the health impacts of potential power plant projects.

He "offered advice to them so they understood their rights and could practice those rights", Bach's wife Tran Phuong Thao told AFP.

In 2017, Bach and his non-profit group Law & Policy of Sustainable Development helped push the government into a rare climbdown over a power plant in Binh Thuan province that it had permitted to sink a million cubic metres of coal sludge into the sea.

He was arrested in June 2021, and sentenced this year to five years in prison.


Although there is little time to waste for Vietnam, one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change due to its long and densely populated coastline, researcher Thang believes there is no choice but to be patient.

"The whole economy is now dependent on coal so that makes it very challenging to change," he said.

"It's not an easy decision to make to just close a coal power plant and tomorrow we'll open a solar and wind, it takes a lot of time and resources and also mindsets to be changed."

bur-aph/dva/dhc

Hackers targeted critics of Qatar World Cup, says British investigation

NEWS WIRES - Yesterday

An India-based computer hacking gang targeted critics of the Qatar World Cup, an investigation by British journalists said on Sunday, as the Qatari government furiously denied it had played any part in commissioning the eavesdropping.


Hackers targeted critics of Qatar World Cup, says British investigation© Karim Jaafar, AFP

A database leaked to Britain's Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed the hacking of a dozen lawyers, journalists and famous people from 2019 "commissioned by one particular client", the newspaper and the bureau said in a statement.

"This investigation points strongly to this client being the host of (the) World Cup: Qatar," it said, prompting the Qatari authorities to describe the allegation as "patently false and without merit".

Among those targeted was Michel Platini, the former head of European football.

Platini, who was hacked ahead of talks with French police about World Cup related graft claims, told AFP he was "surprised and deeply shocked" by the report.

He said he would be exploring all possible legal avenues over what appeared to be a serious "violation" of his privacy.

London-based consultant Ghanem Nuseibeh whose company Cornerstone produced a report on corruption relating to the World Cup was also targeted, the Sunday Times said in its report based on the joint investigation.

Others included Nathalie Goulet, a French senator and vocal critic of Qatar for allegedly financing "Islamic terrorism" and Mark Somos, a Germany-based lawyer, who had made a complaint about the Qatari royal family to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

More than 100 targeted

The controversy comes two weeks before the World Cup is due to kick off in the conservative Gulf state on November 20.

The newspaper alleged that the hacking was masterminded by a 31-year-old accountancy firm employee, who denies the claims.

Based in a suburb of the Indian tech city of Gurugram near Delhi, his network of computer hackers allegedly ensnared their targets using "phishing" techniques to gain access to their email inboxes, sometimes also deploying malicious software to take control of their computer cameras and microphones.

Hacking attacks were not limited, however, to those with an interest in the Qatar World Cup.

In total more than 100 victims had their private email accounts targeted by the gang "on behalf of investigators working for autocratic states, British lawyers and their wealthy clients", the report said.

These included politicians dealing with issues relating to Russia such as Britain's former finance minister Philip Hammond.

He was targeted during a period when he was dealing with the aftermath of the 2018 Novichok attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal which the UK has blamed on Russia.

The Swiss president and his deputy were also hacked days after the president met then British prime minister Boris Johnson to discuss Russian sanctions.

The gang also seized control of computers owned by Pakistani politicians and generals and had their conversations monitored, "apparently at the behest of the Indian secret services", the Sunday Times added.

'No evidence'

A Qatari official rejected the allegations, describing the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's (TBIJ) report as "littered with glaring inconsistencies and falsehoods that undermine the credibility of their organisation".

"The report relies on a single source who claims his ultimate client was Qatar, despite there being no evidence to prove it," the official told AFP in a statement.

"Numerous companies have also boasted of non-existent ties to Qatar in an attempt to boost their profile in the run up to the World Cup.

"TBIJ's decision to publish the report without a single piece of credible evidence to connect their allegations to Qatar raises serious concerns about their motives, which appear to be driven by political, rather than public interest, reasons," the official added.

(AFP)