Sunday, July 09, 2023

The response to Meta is distinct in Quebec, both in politics and business

A person stands in front of a Meta sign outside of the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, March 7, 2023. Canada's government has announced on Wednesday July 5, that it will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram in response to Meta’s decision to block access to news content on their social platforms as part of a temporary test. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Pierre Saint-Arnaud
The Canadian Press
Staff
Published July 8, 2023

The contrast between Quebec and the rest of Canada's response to the tug-of-war between Ottawa and Meta is striking, both in the political and business worlds.

This week, the federal and Quebec governments announced the withdrawal of their advertising from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to protest the web giant's decision to block links to Canadian news.

Meta aims to force the Trudeau government's hand by opposing Bill C-18, which would require web platforms to pay royalties to the news media.

Ottawa and Quebec City's decision to withdraw advertising was followed by several Quebec municipalities as well as some Quebec media outlets

FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL PARTIES DIVERGE

As far as political parties are concerned, however, the situation varies dramatically.

In Quebec, all parties have stopped advertising on Meta platforms.

Premier François Legault's office confirmed to The Canadian Press on Friday that the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), as well as all CAQ MNAs, have ended their Facebook ad buys.

The Quebec Liberal Party and Québec solidaire did not have any ads on the platform at the time of the controversy, and will not launch any until further notice.

The Parti québécois, for its part, had already decided to withdraw its advertising from Facebook at the end of June.

At the federal level, the opposite is true.

The Liberal Party of Canada has not followed in the footsteps of the government it leads.

Both the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP) have confirmed, in e-mails to The Canadian Press, that they are maintaining their advertising on Meta.

As for the Conservative Party, the question doesn't even arise, since the Conservatives are opposed to Bill C-18.

Only one federal party has withdrawn from Facebook: the Bloc Québécois.

REAL LEVERAGE?

According to analyses provided by Professor Jean-Hugues Roy of the Université du Québec à Montréal, Meta generated between $3.7 billion and $4 billion of advertising revenues in Canada in 2022.

With these numbers in mind, the ad withdrawals announced so far do not constitute a major loss; for example, Ottawa says it spends around $10 million a year on Facebook and Instagram.

The bulk of the money raised by Meta in Canada comes from private advertisers. The Quebec business community has begun to withdraw, at least in part, while little appears to be moving in this direction elsewhere in Canada.

MOBILIZATION OF AGENCIES AND ADVERTISERS

In addition to the withdrawal of Quebec state-owned companies such as Loto-Québec and the SAQ liquor retailer, the president of Montreal's Chamber of Commerce, Michel Leblanc, called on companies Thursday to boycott Meta's platforms completely.

Meanwhile, Quebec's association of advertising agencies (A2C) is relaunching its local media project, called Mouvement médias d'ici, first created three years ago.

The movement calls on companies to devote at least 25 per cent of their advertising budgets to local media.

"What we're saying is: realize that there are other options," said A2C president and CEO Dominique Villeneuve.

"We didn't want the target to be too big to reach, but for everyone to be able to make changes to their media plans and investment. What's changed is that we've created a public commitment."

"We're in discussions with several advertisers, and many agencies have already followed suit and signed up. We're very enthusiastic about the current response," she continued, adding that the names of the signatory companies should be announced next week.

STATUS QUO ON THE CANADIAN SIDE

A2C's Canadian counterpart, the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), has not called on its members to take action. In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, the association said it's "disappointed to learn that global platform giants are preparing to block news for Canadians."

Its president, Ron Lund, asserts that "blocking links to Canadian news is not fair to consumers or advertisers of online content."

But the ACA confines itself to encouraging Google and Meta "to continue to work with the government to find a win-win solution."

The only movement outside Quebec has come from major Canadian media outlets, which are stakeholders in the conflict by nature. Initially, the Toronto Star went at it alone, but the CBC, Postmedia and Bell Media joined the movement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on July 8, 2023.

New ferroelectric material could give robots muscles

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

Actuation of ferroelectric polymers — IMAGE: ACTUATION OF FERROELECTRIC POLYMERS DRIVEN BY JOULE HEATING. view more
CREDIT: QING WANG

UNVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new type of ferroelectric polymer that is exceptionally good at converting electrical energy into mechanical strain holds promise as a high-performance motion controller or “actuator” with great potential for applications in medical devices, advanced robotics, and precision positioning systems, according to a team of international researchers led by Penn State.

Mechanical strain, how a material changes shape when force is applied, is an important property for an actuator, which is any material that will change or deform when an external force such as electrical energy is applied. Traditionally, these actuator materials were rigid, but soft actuators such as ferrroelectric polymers display higher flexibility and environmental adaptability.

The research demonstrated the potential of ferroelectric polymer nanocomposites to overcome the limitations of traditional piezoelectric polymer composites, offering a promising avenue for the development of soft actuators with enhanced strain performance and mechanical energy density. Soft actuators are especially of interest to robotics researchers due to its strength, power and flexibility.

“Potentially we can now have a type of soft robotics that we refer to as artificial muscle,” said Qing Wang, Penn State professor of materials science and engineering and co-corresponding author of the study recently published in Nature Materials. “This would enable us to have soft matter that can carry a high load in addition to a large strain. So that material would then be more of a mimic of human muscle, one that is close to human muscle.”

However, there are a few obstacles to overcome before these materials can meet their promise, and potential solutions to these obstacles were proposed in the study. Ferroelectrics are a class of materials that demonstrate a spontaneous electric polarization when an external electric charge is applied and positive and negative charges in the materials head to different poles. Strain in these materials during the phase transition, in this case conversion of electrical energy to mechanical energy, can completely change properties such as its shape, making them useful as actuators.

A common application of a ferroelectric actuator is an inkjet printer, where electrical charge changes the shape of the actuator to precisely control the tiny nozzles that deposit ink on the paper to form text and images.

While many ferroelectric materials are ceramics, they also can be polymers, a class of natural and synthetic materials made of many similar units bonded together. For example, DNA is a polymer, as is nylon. An advantage of ferroelectric polymers is they exhibit a tremendous amount of the electric-field-induced strain needed for actuation. This strain is much higher than what is generated by other ferroelectric materials used for actuators, such as ceramics.

This property of ferroelectric materials, along with a high level of flexibility, reduced cost compared to other ferroelectric materials, and low weight, holds great interest for researchers in the growing field of soft robotics, the design of robots with flexible parts and electronics.

"In this study we proposed solutions to two major challenges in the soft material actuation field,” said Wang. "One is how to improve the force of soft materials. We know soft actuation materials that are polymers have the largest strain, but they generate much less force compared to piezoelectric ceramics.”

The second challenge is that a ferroelectric polymer actuator typically needs a very high driving field, which is a force that imposes a change in the system, such as the shape change in an actuator. In this case the high driving field is necessary to generate the shape change in the polymer required for the ferroelectric reaction needed to become an actuator.

The solution proposed to improve the performance of ferroelectric polymers was developing a percolative ferroelectric polymer nanocomposite — a kind of microscopic sticker attached to the polymer. By incorporating nanoparticles into a type of polymer, polyvinylidene fluoride, the researchers created an interconnected network of poles within the polymer.

This network enabled a ferroelectric phase transition to be induced at much lower electric fields than would normally be required. This was achieved via an electro-thermal method using Joule heating, which occurs when electric current passing through a conductor produces heat. Using the Joule heating to induce the phase transition in the nanocomposite polymer resulted in only requiring less than 10% of the strength of an electric field typically needed for ferroelectric phase change.

“Typically, this strain and force in ferroelectric materials are correlated with each other, in an inverse relationship,” Wang said. “Now we can integrate them together into one material, and we developed a new approach to drive it using the Joule heating. Since the driving field is going to be much lower, less than 10%, this is why this new material can be used for many applications that require a low driving field to be effective, such as medical devices, optical devices and soft robotics.”

Along with Wang, other researchers in the study include from Penn State Yao Zhou, postdoctoral scholar in materials science and engineering; Tiannan Yang, assistant research professor with the Materials Research Institute; Xin Chen, postdoctoral researcher in materials science and engineering; Li Li, research assistant in materials science and engineering; Zhubing Han, graduate research assistant in materials science and engineering; Ke Wang, associate research professor with the Materials Research Institute; and Long-Qing Chen, Hamer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. From North Carolina State University, other researchers in the study include Hancheng Qin, graduate research assistant in physics; Bing Zhang, graduate student in physics; Wenchang Lu, research professor in physics; and Jerry Bernholc, Drexel Professor in Physics. From Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, other researchers in the study include co-corresponding author Yang Liu, a former postdoctoral scholar in materials science and engineering at Penn State, now a professor of materials science and engineering.

The study was supported in part by the United States Department of Energy.

JOURNAL

Nature Materials

DOI

10.1038/s41563-023-01564-7

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Electro-thermal actuation in percolative ferroelectric polymer nanocomposites

RELEASED WITH BAIL CONDITIONS

After return from Syria, two Canadian women appear in Edmonton courtroom on Terrorism Peace Bond

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)
Jul 8, 2023 | 1:26 PM

Two Canadians who returned from Syria this week have been arrested.

The RCMP Federal Policing Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) arrested Helena Carson, 33, and Dina Kalouti, 42, upon their arrival to Montreal-Trudeau International Airport on July 7.

Mounties say that with the consent of the Attorney General of Canada, the RCMP commenced proceedings against the two individuals by way of a Terrorism Peace Bond, pursuant to Section 810.011 of the Criminal Code.

Carson and Kalouti were transported to Alberta and appeared in an Edmonton provincial courtroom for a bail hearing. They were then released and are subject to a number of bail conditions pending a hearing of the application.

Meantime, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) said in a July 6 statement on this matter that it had taken extraordinary steps to repatriate five people — the two women, plus three children. This was done through the Bring Our Loved Ones Home litigation.

“Canada remains steadfast in prioritizing the safety and security of its citizens, both at home and abroad, and has been particularly concerned about the health and well-being of Canadian children in northeastern Syria,” says GAC.

“Canada extends its gratitude to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria for its cooperation in conducting another operation under difficult security circumstances. We also thank the United States for its assistance in the repatriation of Canadians and for continuing to play a key role in resolving the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region.”

Canada remains steadfast in its commitment to the fight against Daesh, or ISIS, and global terrorism while vigorously defending human rights both domestically and abroad, GAC adds.

“Where there is sufficient evidence, law enforcement and public safety agencies will independently take the necessary steps to keep our communities safe,” it continues.

“We reiterate that it is a serious criminal offence for anyone to leave Canada to knowingly support a terrorist group and those who engage in these activities will face the full force of Canadian law. We remain committed to taking every possible step to ensure the safety and security of Canadians.”

Due to privacy considerations, GAC could not provide information about the repatriated individuals at the time of its statement, though RCMP later did name the adults. For operational security reasons, GAC can also not share details of the repatriation.

RCMP say that because the criminal investigation remains ongoing, there will be no further comment at this time.

They were asked, but could not confirm to rdnewsNOW where in Alberta the two women are from.

Edmontonians 'needn't worry' about peace bonds issued for detainees returning from Syrian camps

Kurdish forces patrol al-Hol camp, which houses families of members of the Islamic State group in Hasakeh province, Syria, Wednesday, April 19, 2023.

(AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)

Craig Ellingson
CTVNewsEdmonton.ca

Digital Producer
Updated July 7, 2023

The lawyer for two women and three children returning home to Edmonton on Friday after spending about five years in Syrian detention camps says despite a federal court ordering peace bonds for the adults, the public has nothing to fear.

While a peace bond is a protection order made by a Canadian court under the Criminal Code, it does not imply people placed under them are suspected of committing a crime.

Ottawa lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who represents the women and three others who returned to Canada in April, said people "needn't worry" that they would be a threat to public safety.

"What’s happened here is the rights of Canadians overseas have been violated for a period of five years, and now, they’re going to be brought home, be reunited with their families and integrated back into Canadian society," Greenspon said of the group, who had been held in the camps because they are wives, widows and children of foreigners suspected of joining the Islamic State during the Syrian civil war.

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The peace bond is a way of imposing conditions on them, such as mandatory use of electronic monitoring bracelets, curfews, and denial of access to the internet and social media, Greenspon said.

The sisters-in-law and the three children, whose mother is one of them, were part of a group of 19 Canadians that Global Affairs Canada agreed to bring home after they sued the federal government. A settlement was reached in January.

Fourteen of them arrived in Canada in April. The other five failed to show up for that flight, with neither their lawyers nor the Canadian government seemingly aware of what had happened to them for several days.

One of their lawyers later said that the women and children had been detained by Kurdish guards who would not allow them to travel and board the plane at that time.

On Thursday, the five returned to Canada. On Friday, the RCMP said the two women had been taken to Alberta and appeared in Provincial Court for a bail hearing in relation to Terrorism Peace Bond applications.

The women were released from custody, Mounties said, and are subject to a number of bail conditions pending the hearing of the application.

Global Affairs Canada said in a statement it could not provide information or details of the recent repatriation due to reasons of privacy and operational security.

"Canada remains steadfast in its commitment to the fight against Daesh and global terrorism while vigorously defending human rights both domestically and abroad," the federal agency said in a statement. "Where there is sufficient evidence, law enforcement and public safety agencies will independently take the necessary steps to keep our communities safe.

“We reiterate that it is a serious criminal offence for anyone to leave Canada to knowingly support a terrorist group and those who engage in these activities will face the full force of Canadian law. We remain committed to taking every possible step to ensure the safety and security of Canadians."

Greenspon called bringing the five repatriated Canadians home a "life-changing" milestone for them.

“These women and children have been in detention camps in horrible conditions for five years. They’re Canadians," he said. "The government has now seen fit, thankfully and finally, to bring them home … Clearly, the women and children are going to need some support. They’re going to need some counselling. Those things are already in place, ready to go.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Nahreman Issa, CTV National News correspondent Judy Trinh and The Canadian Press

EU envoy tours Jenin refugee camp, says IDF operation violated international law

Leading delegation, diplomat accuses Israel of disproportionate use of force, urges end to ‘cycle of violence’

By AGENCIES and TOI STAFF

8 July 2023

European Union representative to the Palestinian territories Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff speaks to reporters as he and a delegation of international envoys visit the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, on July 8, 2023. (Zain JAAFAR/AFP)

A European Union envoy criticized Israel Saturday over the “proportionality” of the force it used in its recent military operation in Jenin, and accused Jerusalem of violating international law, as envoys toured the refugee camp in the West Bank following this week’s raid.

His remarks echoed those of UN chief Antonio Guterres, who on Thursday told reporters “there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces” in its 48-hour operation, the largest Israel has staged in the Palestinian territory for years.

It included air strikes and armored bulldozers ripping up streets. Twelve Palestinians were killed, though Israel has asserted that all were combatants. Most have been claimed by terror groups. Some of the dozens of injured were non-combatants, the IDF said. One Israeli soldier was killed.

Jenin is a hotspot for the activities of multiple Palestinian terror groups, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the refugee camp a “terrorist nest.”

European Union representative to the Palestinian territories Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff made his comments as he led a delegation of UN officials and diplomats from 25 countries to the camp in the northern West Bank.

“We are concerned about the deployment of weaponry and weapons systems which question the proportionality of the military during the operation,” Kuehn von Burgsdorff said of the operation.

Members of an international delegation walk on a devastated road during a tour of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, on July 8, 2023. (Zain Jaafar/AFP)

Burgsdorff told reporters that the “painful” raid violated international law and urged Israel to bring an end to the conflict.

“This cycle of violence has to end, it cannot continue. If there is no political solution to the conflict, we are going to stand here in a week’s time, in a month’s time, in a year’s time, with nothing changed,” he added.

As the delegation toured the camp, residents peered out of holes left in the walls by Israeli rockets, and local authorities tested a new camp-wide alarm system to warn of future raids.

Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have been high across the West Bank for the past year and a half, with the military carrying out near-nightly raids, amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.

Since the beginning of this year, Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank have killed 25 people.

According to a tally by The Times of Israel, 148 West Bank Palestinians have been killed during that time — most of them during clashes with security forces or while carrying out attacks, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under unclear circumstances.

A convoy of army vehicles is seen during a military raid in the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold, in the West Bank, July 4, 2023.

(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

UN plea for funds

The Jenin camp has been the site of several large-scale raids by the Israeli military this year, but this week’s was the biggest such operation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada of the early 2000s.

The camp’s infrastructure was severely damaged during the raid, which Israel said was targeting terrorists who have repeatedly launched attacks throughout the West Bank in recent months.
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Eight kilometers (five miles) of water pipes and three kilometers (two miles) of sewage pipes were destroyed, the UN said. More than 100 houses were damaged and a number of schools were also lightly damaged.

The refugee camp is one of the poorest and most densely populated in the West Bank, with some 18,000 people living in just 0.43 square kilometers (0.16 of a square mile).

UN officials on Saturday made a plea for funds to help rebuild the camp.

“To restore services and scale up support to the children, we need cash… our appeal is desperately underfunded,” Leni Stenseth, deputy commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said.

“I would urge you to consider announcing your support for the work we are going to do here in Jenin camp in the coming weeks and months as soon as possible,” she added.

On Thursday, Algeria announced $30 million to “help rebuild the Palestinian city of Jenin after the barbaric and criminal attack” by Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, which normalized ties with Israel in 2020, said Wednesday it “will provide $15 million.”

France: Hundreds stage protests in Paris against police violence | Latest World News | WION

1:53

A week after violent riots in Paris were sparked by the assassination of a teenager in a suburb, hundreds of protesters disobeyed a city-wide ban on marches to decry police brutality and racial profiling. They assembled in downtown Paris for a memorial rally.

Delhi's earliest crimes revealed by 1800s police records

Image caption,
Some 30 police complaints filed between 1860-1900s Delhi have resurfaced

By Zoya Mateen

BBC News, Delhi

On a cold January night in 1876, two weary travellers knocked at Mohammed Khan's house in Delhi's Sabzi Mandi - a thriving labyrinth of narrow alleys in India's capital - and asked if they could stay the night.

Khan graciously decided to let the guests sleep in his room. But the next morning, he found that the men had disappeared. Also missing, was Khan's bedroll which he had given the men to rest. Khan had been robbed, he realised, in a way like no other.

Nearly 150 years on, the story of Khan's ordeal now features in a list of the earliest crimes reported in Delhi, records for which were uploaded on the city police's website last month.

The "antique FIRs" provide details into some 29 other similar cases that were registered at the city's five main police stations - Sabzi Mandi, Mehrauli, Kotwali, Sadar Bazar and Nangloi - between 1861 to the early 1900s. In Khan's case, the police caught the men and sent them to three months in jail on charges of theft.

Originally filed in the tenacious Urdu shikastah script - which also has words in Arabic and Persian - the FIRs were translated and complied by a team led by Assistant Commissioner of Delhi Police Rajendra Singh Kalkal, he also illustrated each of the cases himself.

Image caption,
Mohammed Khan lodged a police complaint against three men in 1876

Mr Kalkal told the BBC the records "spoke to him" because of the fascinating insights they offered into the lives of people in a city which has survived waves of conquests and change. "The files are a window to the past as well as the present," he says.

Most of the complaints involve petty crimes of theft - of stolen oranges, bedsheets and ice cream - and carry a comical lightness to them. There's a gang of men who ambushed a shepherd, slapped him and took away his 110 goats; a man who nearly stole a bedsheet but got caught "at a distance of 40 steps"; and the sad case of Darshan, the guardian of gunny bags, who gets beaten black and blue by thugs before they snatch his quilt and a shoe - just one of the pair - and run away.

For anyone familiar with India's past, this might seem odd given how the 1860s was a particularly grim period in Delhi's history. The Mughal rule had just ended after the British suppressed the revolt of 1857, often referred to as India's first war of independence. The city - once an idyll of pleasure gardens, Sufi devotion, arts and Mughal regalia - now laid in ferment, sacked and looted.

Image caption,
Mr Kalkal has made cartoons for all the cases

Artist and historian Mahmood Farooqi says that one possible reason why no serious crimes occurred at that time was that people had become deeply intimidated by the British, who continued to run a an iron-fisted rule in the years after the revolt.

Men, women and children were brutally massacred. Many were forced to leave Delhi forever and move to the surrounding countryside, where they lived the remaining years in abject poverty. And a few of those, who managed to remain within the city walls, had to live under the constant threat of getting shot or being hanged to the gallows. "This was a time of carnage. People were terrorised and brutalised so much that they bore its trauma for years."

The Indian peasants who fought British rule

Mr Farooqui adds that unlike other cities such as Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) where modern policing had already taken shape, Delhi continued to run on a unique, "a purana, or old" system of policing, laid under the Mughal rule, which was hard to dismantle and replace completely. "So discrepancies or gaps in records are not entirely out of question."

Image caption,
Indian soldiers of the British Army revolted against the Raj in 1857

The records, which lie in the Delhi Police Museum, were discovered sometime last year. Mr Kalkal, who was in-charge of the research and preservation of the museum's artefacts, said he found them while he was browsing through the musty old archives one fine day. "I saw hundreds of FIRs lying in obscurity. When I read them I realised how its format has remained unchanged even after 200 years."

Mr Kalkal says he too was struck by the innocuous nature of the offences, a time when stealing objects like cigars, pyjamas and oranges was "the worst imaginable thing".

But the fact that relatively benign crimes were being reported to the cops does not necessarily mean that a lot of heinous crime weren't already happening - Mr Kalal suspects the first case of homicide would've surfaced as early as 1861 itself, when an organised form of policing was established by the British under the Indian Police Act.

"Finding murder cases was not the focus of our research but I am sure they are there, somewhere," he says.

In many complaints, the outcome of the case is marked as "untraceable", suggesting that the culprit was never caught. But in several other, such as Khan's case, swift punishment appears to have been delivered with severity ranging from whippings, beating with canes to a few odd weeks or months of jail time.

Image caption,
The original files are kept in the Delhi Police Museum in the Indian capital

One such crime took place at the city's most graceful grande dame, the 233-room Imperial Hotel, in 1897. A chef from the hotel was sent to the Sabzi Mandi police station with a "complaint letter in English" stating that a band of thieves, in an act of unimaginable travesty, had nicked a liquor bottle and a pack of cigars from one of the rooms. The hotel announced a handsome reward of 10 rupees for catching the men. But the case turned cold and could never be solved.

"Today, crimes have become so sophisticated that it takes months and years to solve them. But life was much simpler back then, you either cracked a case or didn't," Mr Kalkal says.

Mr Kalkal's team couldn't be happier about the compilation but he says the initial process of translation was hardly delightful. The difficulty of reading the Urdu shikasta script wore him down on multiple occasions and for cracking that, his team had to seek the skill and persistence of Urdu and Persian scholars and maulvis brought in from every corner of the city.

"But we always knew the effort was worth it," he says.

He was particularly charmed by one passage which described a police officer's annoyance after he was forced to park his "vehicle" - his beloved horse - out in the heat while investigating a theft case.

"The details really make you wonder how far we've come, isn't it?"

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