GRAIN DUST IS EXPLOSIVE

Silo blast in southern Brazil kills at least eight, one missing

Story by By Leonardo Benassatto and Ana Mano • Yesterday 

General view after a series of explosions at grain silos owned by agro-industrial cooperative C. Vale in the city of Palotina© Thomson Reuters

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -At least eight people have died, one was missing and nearly a dozen others wounded after a grain silo explosion on Wednesday at an agricultural co-operative in southern Brazil, the government of Parana state said in a statement on Thursday.

The blast occurred at the C.Vale co-operative in the small town of Palotina, about 600 kilometers (373 miles) from the state's capital Curitiba. Parana is one of Brazil's top grain producing states.

Experts say grain dust particles are highly combustible and can cause fires or explosions. The particles can be from wheat, oats, barley, or other types of grain that form layers or become airborne in an inclosed space.

For a grain dust explosion to occur, they say that four elements have to be present: fuel, oxygen, confinement and a source of ignition.

C.Vale did not immediately respond to questions about the circumstances of the incident or explain what the stored product was that exploded.

C.Vale, which stores grains in 125 units across five Brazilian states and in Paraguay, said in a separate statement that rescue workers were still scouring the rubble in search of the missing person on Thursday.

It noted that nearly a dozen people had been hospitalized, excluding the fatalities.

"I'm deeply saddened by what happened at C.Vale," Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro wrote on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter. "I express my condolences to the families of the victims."

Acting Parana Governor Darci Piana headed to Palotina, a city of some 35,000 people, alongside state secretaries to follow the rescue operations and provide support to the families, the government said.

(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto and Ana Mano; Writing by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Christina Fincher and Bernadette Baum)

Deep dive into Meta's algorithms shows that America's political polarization has no easy fix

WASHINGTON (AP) — The powerful algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram to deliver content to users have increasingly been blamed for amplifying misinformation and political polarization. But a series of groundbreaking studies published Thursday suggest addressing these challenges is not as simple as tweaking the platforms' software.

The four research papers, published in Science and Nature, also reveal the extent of political echo chambers on Facebook, where conservatives and liberals rely on divergent sources of information, interact with opposing groups and consume distinctly different amounts of misinformation.

Algorithms are the automated systems that social media platforms use to suggest content for users by making assumptions based on the groups, friends, topics and headlines a user has clicked on in the past. While they excel at keeping users engaged, algorithms have been criticized for amplifying misinformation and ideological content that has worsened the country's political divisions.

Proposals to regulate these systems are among the most discussed ideas for addressing social media's role in spreading misinformation and encouraging polarization. But when the researchers changed the algorithms for some users during the 2020 election, they saw little difference.

“We find that algorithms are extremely influential in people's on-platform experiences and there is significant ideological segregation in political news exposure,” said Talia Jomini Stroud, director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the leaders of the studies. "We also find that popular proposals to change social media algorithms did not sway political attitudes."

While political differences are a function of any healthy democracy, polarization occurs when those differences begin to pull citizens apart from each other and the societal bonds they share. It can undermine faith in democratic institutions and the free press.

Significant division can undermine confidence in democracy or democratic institutions and lead to “affective polarization,” when citizens begin to view each other more as enemies than legitimate opposition. It's a situation that can lead to violence, as it did when supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

To conduct the analysis, researchers obtained unprecedented access to Facebook and Instagram data from the 2020 election through a collaboration with Meta, the platforms' owners. The researchers say Meta exerted no control over their findings.

When they replaced the algorithm with a simple chronological listing of posts from friends — an option Facebook recently made available to users — it had no measurable impact on polarization. When they turned off Facebook's reshare option, which allows users to quickly share viral posts, users saw significantly less news from untrustworthy sources and less political news overall, but there were no significant changes to their political attitudes.

Likewise, reducing the content that Facebook users get from accounts with the same ideological alignment had no significant effect on polarization, susceptibility to misinformation or extremist views.

Together, the findings suggest that Facebook users seek out content that aligns with their views and that the algorithms help by “making it easier for people to do what they're inclined to do," according to David Lazer, a Northeastern University professor who worked on all four papers.

Eliminating the algorithm altogether drastically reduced the time users spent on either Facebook or Instagram while increasing their time on TikTok, YouTube or other sites, showing just how important these systems are to Meta in the increasingly crowded social media landscape.

In response to the papers, Meta's president for global affairs, Nick Clegg, said the findings showed “there is little evidence that key features of Meta's platforms alone cause harmful 'affective’ polarization or has any meaningful impact on key political attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.”

Katie Harbath, Facebook's former director of public policy, said they showed the need for greater research on social media and challenged assumptions about the role social media plays in American democracy. Harbath was not involved in the research.

“People want a simple solution and what these studies show is that it’s not simple,” said Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and the CEO of the tech and politics firm Anchor Change. “To me, it reinforces that when it comes to polarization, or people’s political beliefs, there’s a lot more that goes into this than social media.”

The work also revealed the extent of the ideological differences of Facebook users and the different ways that conservatives and liberals use the platform to get news and information about politics.

Conservative Facebook users are more likely to consume content that has been labeled misinformation by fact-checkers. They also have more sources to choose from. The analysis found that among the websites included in political Facebook posts, far more cater to conservatives than liberals.

Overall, 97% of the political news sources on Facebook identified by fact-checkers as having spread misinformation were more popular with conservatives than liberals.

The authors of the papers acknowledged some limitations to their work. While they found that changing Facebook's algorithms had little impact on polarization, they note that the study only covered a few months during the 2020 election, and therefore cannot assess the long-term impact that algorithms have had since their use began years ago.

They also noted that most people get their news and information from a variety of sources — television, radio, the internet and word-of-mouth — and that those interactions could affect people's opinions, too. Many in the United States blame the news media for worsening polarization.

To complete their analyses, the researchers pored over data from millions of users of Facebook and Instagram and surveyed specific users who agreed to participate. All identifying information about specific users was stripped out for privacy reasons.

Lazer, the Northeastern professor, said he was at first skeptical that Meta would give the researchers the access they needed, but was pleasantly surprised. He said the conditions imposed by the company were related to reasonable legal and privacy concerns. More studies from the collaboration will be released in coming months.

“There is no study like this,” he said of the research published Thursday. “There's been a lot of rhetoric about this, but in many ways the research has been quite limited.”

David Klepper, The Associated Press

Murray Mandryk: COVID-19 inquiry may explain why we can't pull together

Opinion by Murray Mandryk • Yesterday 

Did Saskatchewan bail on the COVID-19 crisis too early? 

A national pandemic inquiry might tell us that.

 Provided by Leader Post

We used to be pretty good in this country at coming together in a crisis … or so it seemed.

Every small Saskatchewan town or big Ontario city has a testimonial to this — usually, a First or Second World War memorial built by our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Such symbols remind us of our struggles, but mostly they proudly remind us of who we are and what we do so well.

We are modestly proud people. We may be more apologetic people than boastful, but we know how we have always defied distance, weather and inhospitable landscapes and have come together in times of crisis.

We have done so, regardless of whether the crisis was a natural or manmade one.

Wars. Economic collapse. Natural disasters beyond our power. Even our willingness to provide public health care that was as tough a fight as most.

We’ve always demonstrated a remarkable capacity to pull together in a crisis.

So why is it that we can’t seem to come together now as we face two of the biggest crises of our lifetime: COVID-19 and climate change?

In a series of editorials, including in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), some of the country’s top medical experts are calling on the federal government to hold a national inquiry into this country’s “major pandemic failures” that would examine our high pandemic death rates — especially in lower-income communities and nursing homes.

It could even address why none of the life-saving vaccine was developed and manufactured in Canada — a pertinent question, given that we should have had a leg up with the work of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) attached to the University of Saskatchewan.

All such issues are especially important here in Saskatchewan, where we suffered horribly from COVID-19 outbreaks in isolated and impoverished northern communities like La Loche and from the devastation in long-term care homes that required the government to step in.

Did decisions like Premier Scott Moe’s eagerness to be the first in the country to lift COVID-19 restrictions — the direct outcome of succumbing to anti-vaccine lobbyists who gained his ear — contribute to higher-than-reasonable deaths here? How did our handling of the crisis compare with elsewhere?

“We wouldn’t know because no pandemic inquiry has been established by (Canada’s) federal government,” an editorial stated. “This is a mistake.”

Sadly, we can’t even say with any certainty how many actual deaths there were in Saskatchewan, because we were also among the first to stop collecting detailed data on COVID-19 cases.

Conservative politicians here — federal, provincial, retired, active — were also among the biggest supporters of those who trucked to Ottawa in the so-called “Freedom Convoy” to wreak as much havoc as possible on the federal government, the people of that city and even international border crossings, where they blocked trade and travel.

Such protesters wrapped themselves in the Canadian flag — about the most un-Canadian thing imaginable.

It seemed the opposite of what we have always done so well, which is to pull together in times of crisis.

But one of the big problems right now is that we can’t say with certainty what went wrong during the pandemic. Worse, today’s politicians really don’t seem to want to find out.

As much as such an inquiry would likely be a major source of embarrassment for a federal Liberal government in constant election mode, it would not make the federal Conservative opposition or their allies running governments like the one in Saskatchewan look especially good, either.

This is becoming a sadly familiar story.

Like much of the climate change debate, the first calculation in today’s political discourse is the political advance.

We need to find out what we did wrong because we will very likely have a pandemic crisis again.

But, also like climate change, the first calculation should be how we all can get through a crisis together.

We’re not good at this anymore. We used to be great at it.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Related

Mandryk: Moe's removal of vaccine proof may not heal Sask's wounds

Will we ever learn? After a catastrophic first wave, COVID-19 is pummelling long-term care homes again

Georgia Judge gives deadline extension to organizers trying to stop 'Cop City' with signature campaign

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday significantly extended the deadline for Atlanta organizers who have been trying to gather more than 70,000 signatures to force a vote on the construction of a police and firefighter training center that critics call “ Cop City.”

U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen ruled that the city had imposed an unlawful requirement that those collecting signatures have to be residents of Atlanta. A group of people who live in DeKalb County just outside the city had sued — saying they should be allowed to join in the canvassing effort and noting that the planned site for the training center itself is in unincorporated DeKalb County, outside the city limits.

“Requiring signature gatherers to be residents of the city imposes a severe burden on core political speech and does little to protect the city’s interest in self-governance,” Cohen wrote, adding: “The city has offered no specifics as to why permitting nonresident plaintiffs to gather signatures ... will cause any disruption to the political process.”

Cohen said that the 60-day period for gathering signatures, which had put the deadline in mid-August, should be restarted. That means organizers will have until late September to gather the tens of thousands of signatures still needed for the proposed referendum to get on the ballot.

The effort is meant to allow voters to choose whether they want to repeal the ordinance that authorized the lease of the city-owned land upon which the project is set to be built.

As of Tuesday, organizers had gotten more than 30,000 residents to sign on to the effort, according to Paul Glaze, a spokesperson for the Vote to Stop Cop City Coalition.

Attorneys for the city and state had urged the judge to toss the entire referendum campaign, calling it “futile,” and “invalid,” but Cohen declined to rule on its legality, saying it was not up to him to decide that separate dispute.

“We are thrilled by Judge Cohen’s ruling, and the expansion of democracy to include our DeKalb neighbors, and levels the playing field for our coalition,” said Mary Hooks, a lead organizer for the coalition. “Cop City has been marred time and time again by the silencing of democratic input and repression of community participation, and since the launch of this campaign, we have been playing on a field tilted in the city of Atlanta’s favor."

Organizers have said they need to collect the signatures by Aug. 14 in order to make it onto the November ballot. If the signatures take longer to gather, that would push the referendum to March's ballot and potentially risk the city moving forward with constructing the facility in the meantime, though activists could seek a court order to prevent that from happening.

“We are focused on getting on the ballot, period,” Glaze told the Associated Press.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and others say the $90 million facility would replace inadequate training facilities, and would help address difficulties in hiring and retaining police officers that worsened after nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice three years ago.

But opponents, who have been joined by activists from around the country, say they fear it will lead to greater militarization of the police and that its construction will exacerbate environmental damage in a poor, majority-Black area. The “Stop Cop City” effort has gone on for more than two years and at times has veered into vandalism and violence.

Organizers have modeled the referendum campaign after a successful effort in coastal Georgia, where Camden County residents voted overwhelmingly last year to block county officials from building a launchpad for blasting commercial rockets into space.

The Georgia Supreme Court in February unanimously upheld the legality of the Camden County referendum, though it remains an open question whether citizens can veto decisions of city governments.

R.j. Rico, The Associated Press

Inside The Battle For A New Streaming Residuals Model: Data, Transparency & “A Fight For Power”

 Deadline

It’s been 87 days since the writers hit the picket lines and 14 days since the actors joined them, yet the divisions between the guilds and the studios remain as deep as ever. 

One of the biggest fights that remains is how performers and writers should be compensated for work they create for streaming services.

“The question is: Are you or are you not willing to share some of the revenue you generate from actors, and also from writers, directors and crew, with them or not? The answer needs to be yes. It is not okay anymore for companies to just bring in huge amounts of revenue from people’s work and not share it with them,” SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline.

Writers and actors do receive fixed residuals for their work on streaming services, but they are not tied directly to the success of a show, and even the most high-profile creatives have been known to receive pennies for some of their work.

But now, both guilds agree that a fixed residual is not enough to properly reflect their members’ contributions to the streaming services. In its proposal to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the WGA suggested a “viewership-based” residual model, in addition to the fixed residual already in place. That was rejected, according to the union. SAG-AFTRA took that suggestion one step further, proposing that performers receive a 2% share of the revenue generated from streaming content. That proposal was also flat-out rejected, according to the guild.

“We had this proposal on the table on day one of negotiations on June 7. To this very day, throughout that entire 35 days of bargaining and even since, the companies have never come back to us with any substantive response,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “Their answer was, ‘We aren’t interested in talking about it.’ So it’s going to be very hard to reach an agreement on something when the companies won’t even discuss it with you.”

The AMPTP tells a different story, saying that the 2% revenue share had come up “numerous times” and the studios expressed “fundamental objections” to the proposal. While they are willing to increase residuals made from streaming content, a blanket revenue share “creates a one-size-fits-all approach” that studio insiders say is “unworkable.”

It’s clear that both sides are far from an agreement on how to fairly compensate writers and actors on the backend. But the discourse has begged the question: Is a direct revenue share possible in the current streaming landscape and, if so, what could that look like?

Data Dogfight

Several experts stressed to Deadline that the central argument isn’t about whether there is infrastructure to support such a deal. It’s about getting the major studios, as well as the guilds, to agree on a measure of success that would make everyone happy. Which, it seems, might be an impossible exercise.

Any concession from the studios on this front would likely require some sort of data transparency. Thus far, streamers have kept all audience data close to the chest, occasionally self-reporting metrics as they see fit. Netflix is the only service that consistently self-reports viewership data, but does not provide full data transparency.

“Data transparency is related to power. This is a fight about power. Because right now, the streamers have power, and they don’t want to give it up,” David Offenberg, an associate professor of entertainment finance at Loyola Marymount University, told Deadline. “They have the data about how valuable things are and they’re exploiting it by not paying the creators as much as they’re worth for seasons two and three and four, because creators don’t know how much the show’s worth, because they don’t have the data.”

SAG-AFTRA has suggested using Parrot Analytics’ content valuation tool to determine the revenue generated by each piece of streaming content. The guild proposed that each quarter, producers would pay 2% of the quarterly “Revenue Contribution” for each series or film, and this would be divided pro rata among the principal cast “based on time and salary units or ratable distribution,” on top of the existing Streaming Revenue Sharing payment.

Unlike Nielsen or self-reported metrics from some of the studios, which use viewing time as their primary measurement, Parrot Analytics, a data analysis firm for the entertainment industry run by Wared Seger, which works with companies such as Sony, Lionsgate and Starz, uses other metrics such as Google searches and social media engagement. The goal is not to determine viewership but rather to understand the impact of a piece of content on a studio’s revenue. It uses quarterly earnings data as well as subscriptions and ad revenue to estimate that impact for each series or film on a platform.

The AMPTP, however, rejected this proposal, calling these metrics “opaque” and highlighted the fact that they are not available to anyone who doesn’t subscribe to Parrot. They also “lack any demonstrable link to the actual revenue received by the service in the form of new or retained subscribers.”

Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline that the guild thought Parrot’s approach “reflected a more broad-based and objective approach to evaluating that without the kind of insight data that the companies have been unwilling to share so far.”

Building A Metric

When it comes to success on streaming, there are two types of series or films — those that attract subscribers and those that retain them. For each title, a studio gathers a whole host of data including global/U.S. hours viewed, number of unique accounts that viewed a title, and completion rate for each account. They also seek to determine how much engagement a show drives and to what degree it was successful at reducing churn. 

While all of these could theoretically be used to determine the success of a show monetarily, they would likely all yield a different answer. Each studio is likely to value one more than the other, which would hinder any agreement on a single metric. 

It’s not just about getting the studios to agree, either. It’s also about finding a metric with which the guilds would be satisfied. Because data, while undeniable, can be used to tell any story.

“The challenge with the data is I don’t know which story you want to be told. … Do you want to know that you didn’t make a difference, that the algorithm was the difference maker?” Andrew Rosen, a former Viacom executive and the founder of streaming newsletter PARQOR, told Deadline. “If actors are open to being quantified for how they help with engagement and churn, if that’s true at all, that’s the conversation to have.”

That’s a “different business logic” than simply identifying which shows are hits and which are not, Rosen said. 

For what it’s worth, Crabtree-Ireland has repeatedly stressed that SAG-AFTRA is willing to at least discuss any metric the AMPTP is willing put forth. The guild simply wants its members to be fairly compensated for their work in streaming.

Ostensibly, the guild is harking to the days of broadcast television, where the creators and casts of shows such as Friends, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and Two and a Half Men would make tens of millions of dollars a year in residuals thanks to reruns and syndication (and, ironically, streaming). In fact, the last time writers and actors were on strike together, in 1960, residuals were a key part of those negotiations and led to a long-term payment structure that allowed creatives to share in a show’s success.

“What this is really about is recognizing how streaming has become such a central part of the platform for our members’ work, and these streaming platforms have been built on our members’ voices. The fact is, there’s not a percentage of that revenue that the streaming platforms are gaining that is shared with us or with directors or writers or any other creatives in that form,” Crabtree-Ireland added. “We’re not wedded to that aspect of the proposal. We’re wedded to the concept of — you’re bringing in a bunch of money [and] our members are the reason why it’s coming in and they ought to have at least a tiny little piece of that pie shared with them.”

Regardless of the metric, it will need to be translated into a hard dollar amount — which is where things get even more tricky.

“That is such a can of worms that [the studios and actors] don’t even want to open. I get [the actors’] motivation, but to do that math in a way that makes everybody happy is absolutely impossible. That would cause so much infighting within any union, because you have to make assumptions,” Offenberg said. “You have to build mathematical models that are estimating — not determining, just estimating — the amount of revenue each streaming show makes… there’s no way to make that work in a way that everybody thinks is fair.”

To be clear, the infrastructure is there to support a revenue share, especially with the introduction of ad tiers, because advertisers need audience data in order to be able to justify their ad spend. 

“It’s all in a paradigm that is broadly executed on the internet today, and the metrics and the underlying measurement capability does exist to support that kind of a deal,” said Jason Fairchild, co-founder and CEO of advertising platform tvScientific. “It’s a new concept for the studios. It’s not a new concept for content syndication.”

While the studios have bristled at the idea of using third-party data to try to quantify success, Fairchild argues that “if the streaming service, or whoever it is, is grading their own homework, that’s going to lead to some friction.”

“If you have a third party to validate, it’s a solution. That’s time tested across multiple industries,” he said. “It’s not an outrageous thought to have a third party verify.”

The question still remains how much to share with the creatives. While SAG-AFTRA has proposed 2%, experts said that any number will likely ruffle feathers, since streaming has drastically changed the way content is valued and will continue to do so as the industry leans more towards the medium.

“The problem is that the nature of the streaming model really makes it difficult to estimate what actors are entitled to from a show or a movie,” Rosen said. “The value of content has been changed so radically by this medium that it’s really unfortunate and sad to watch. An actor’s output is just very different and is valued very differently, both by the medium in which the content is distributed and by the audiences.”

The “Dirty Secret”

For Rosen, this key fight in the contract negotiations has illuminated an essential truth about streaming. When Netflix accelerated the race away from linear television, every studio followed suit in an attempt to keep up with the times. But the shift was too fast, and the studios’ business models couldn’t keep up. With the introduction of Apple and Amazon in the streaming wars, it puts the legacy studios like Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal at even more of a disadvantage.

“The dirty secret of streaming is nobody’s profitable, except for Netflix,” he said. “The problem with the guilds’ asks is that they’re saying, ‘Hey, you unprofitable business, one day, you’re going to be profitable. And you should share profits with us.’ Studios are saying, ‘Well, we’re unprofitable and based on what you’re asking, it’s going to be harder to become profitable. The less likely it is we’re going to become profitable, the less likely it is we want to stay in this business.’”

Although, it seems the studios are betting on streaming more and more by the day. If anything is clear, it’s that this new era will continue to be less lucrative for all involved. 

“None of these businesses are going to look like what linear used to look like. None of these businesses are going to deliver the types of revenue that syndication used to deliver to directors and actors,” Rosen said. “The difficult question for Hollywood right now is whether the leadership that’s in place, the guys who are really competent in managing studios and linear networks and theme parks, are the right people to solve that problem. I think that the uncomfortable truth that’s emerging from this standoff between the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild and the studios is that they may not be.”

More from Deadline

• Where Are My Residuals? Actors/Writers Share Horror Stories On Picket Line, Social Media
• SAG-AFTRA Strike Photos: Actors Hit The Picket Lines Including Mariska Hargitay, Jon Huertas, Colin Farrell, Mandy Moore & Beanie Feldstein
• Actors Riz Ahmed & Molly Gordon To Skip Locarno Due to SAG-AFTRA Strike

‘We carry on’: How Russia’s youth see their lives and their future

Story by Reuters • Yesterday 

How young people in Putin's Russia see their future as Ukraine conflict grinds on

MOSCOW (Reuters) - On a warm July day in the Russian capital, young couples stroll hand-in-hand along the Moskva river as pleasure boats drift lazily downstream, the towers of the Kremlin poking up from behind the treetops.

During Moscow's idyllic summer months, Reuters journalists interviewed four young Russians living there to hear how their lives have changed since the start of what the Kremlin calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.

All four were born around the turn of the millennium, when President Vladimir Putin ascended to power, and have known no other Russia than the one he controls.

Some spoke of study plans and jobs upended, others, of fear of an unknown and unpredictable future. But none of the four said there was much they could do to influence Russia's direction.

Instead, as one young man put it, there was nothing to do but adjust to a new reality and "carry on."


How young people in Putin's Russia see their future as Ukraine conflict grinds on© Thomson Reuters

The interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Sabina, 23, born in Moscow of Abkhaz ancestry, who studied data journalism at Moscow's Higher School of Economics

Before 2022 I had thoughts that I could go somewhere to study, enrol in а universitу (abroad). I wanted to enrol in a university in Finland but kept putting it off, though I wanted it so much.Now it seems that I should not go anywhere. Not without my family, at least. Because, OK, I might go away, but who knows what happens next. Something might happen to them if they don't leave the country with me.

It seems that now we are making a choice: on which side of the border we remain. You are either on one side or the other. And it's a final choice.

Maxim Lukyanenko, 20, a student from Krasnodar in southern Russia studying foreign languages and intercultural communication at the Higher School of Economics, and a founder of 'White Raven,' a patriotic, pro-military organisation




I have an optimistic point of view, so for me it's an opportunity to learn something new. Europe has closed down (for us), let's set our sights to Asia. There are lots of great things there.




I plan to study a master's course in China…I think they are very interesting people, an interesting nation. In general, Russia does need to strengthen ties with China. They are top blokes, we need to learn something from them. And to teach them something, of course.

Related video: How Russia's youth see their lives and future (Reuters)

Duration 3:17  View on Watch

Konstantin Konkov, 23, studied biology at Moscow State University, elected last year as an independent candidate to Moscow's municipal council

I'm mostly into public activism, for the most part politics and ecology… We set up neighbourhood clean-ups. We help animal shelters. We collect aid for refugees.

Of course, studying abroad to gain some knowledge and then put it into practice here is a rather tempting idea. But at the moment I feel that I'm needed here. And since I was elected a municipal deputy, for the next five years I plan to stay here, in my district, helping people as much as possible.

Since February last year, a lot of people I know, activists and others, have left Russia. It does have an impact on our campaigns and the quality of horizontal communication. Just think about it: the most active people, people who do care about what's going on in the country, have been ripped out of the country. Very few have stayed. In this situation it makes carrying out any campaigns, public or political, very difficult. But we carry on.Ivan Sokolov, 25, studied economics in Moscow and now works as a data analyst, left Russia briefly for Kazakhstan but has since returned to Moscow




(Talking about his first reaction to mobilisation in Russia) I was in a total state of shock for at least one day, absolutely numb. I didn't understand what it was and why and how to live with it.

The mobilisation was announced, I think, on Tuesday, and my friends and I flew away on Sunday. The route was long. At first we flew to Astrakhan (in southern Russia), then we hitchhiked to Atyrau in Kazakhstan. It took us two days to cross the border.

My plan of finding a job abroad failed…So I had to live on my savings, eating through them gradually.

Now I see that negative developments in geopolitics, for example, don’t have any impact on me. I'm totally cool about them.

My friends are here, my family is here. I was born and grew up in this country. I can't change and fix everything in the country, so I'm forced to come to terms with it, get used to it, and move forward.

(Reporting by Reuters, Editing by William Maclean)

 CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Canadian Supreme Court won't hear appeal of ex-construction boss convicted of corruption

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal from a former construction boss who was convicted of corruption, breach of trust and conspiracy to commit fraud. 

Tony Accurso was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 30 months and four years in 2018 in what a Quebec judge called one of the worst examples of municipal corruption to come before a Canadian court. 

A jury convicted Accurso of charges tied to a kickback scheme that saw companies receive lucrative public contracts in exchange for bribes to elected officials, including Gilles Vaillancourt, the former mayor of Laval, Que. 

The kickback and fraud scheme lasted between 1996 and 2010 and was run by Vaillancourt, who pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges and received a six-year sentence. 

The Quebec Court of Appeal upheld Accurso's conviction last year, and he was ordered to report to prison.

However, the Court of Appeal said it would not harm public trust in the justice system if Accurso were free on bail during his appeal to the Supreme Court.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 27, 2023.

The Canadian Press

B.C. judge allows cannabis 'fire sale' to stave off CRA destruction threat

Story by The Canadian Press 

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has approved the bulk sale of more than 1,200 kilograms of cannabis by a company after the Canada Revenue Agency threatened to destroy it. 

In a ruling released online this week, the court allowed Tantalus Labs Ltd. to move ahead with a hasty sale of its remaining inventory of cannabis flower after the CRA planned to destroy the product at its facility in Maple Ridge, B.C. 

The agency had earlier declined to renew the company's excise tax licence due to financial difficulties, which saw Tantalus shed the bulk of its employees at the end of June due to looming insolvency. 

Without the licence, the company would've been unable to sell its remaining inventory and potentially recover more for creditors, including its main lender and the CRA itself. 

As the date of its licence expiry approached, the company had to go to court for approval of the sale of its remaining inventory on what bankruptcy trustee Ernst & Young called a "fire sale basis."

Court documents say the company has more than $14 million in debt, mostly to lender Sungrown Mortgage Corp. and the CRA, and the company was forced to enter insolvency and sell off its remaining inventory under threat of destruction. 

Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick allowed the sale to move forward, but said in her ruling that the circumstances were "unusual" since Tantalus had only filed its insolvency notice less than two weeks before landing in court. 

Fitzpatrick's ruling said the "fire sale" circumstances were unfortunate, arising "somewhat inexplicably from the position of CRA, and CRA’s threat to enter Tantalus’ premises and destroy the inventory and/or its value."

In its report on Tantalus tied to the insolvency, Ernst & Young said an "orderly" sale of the company's remaining product could fetch around $2 million, while a fire sale would net about $300,000. 

Had the CRA renewed the company's licence, an orderly sale would've benefited the agency itself "as a result of the increased tax revenues rather than the reduced proceeds anticipated to be received in a forced liquidation or fire sale scenario," Ernst & Young's report said.

Tantalus CEO Dan Sutton said Wednesday that many cannabis companies are struggling under the weight of regulatory and tax burdens placed on the industry. 

Sutton said he couldn't reveal too much since the insolvency process is still ongoing, but called the CRA's actions "peculiar" because it would've benefited as a creditor had it granted Tantalus more time. 

"The judge was similarly confused," he said.

Sutton and many others have long complained about what he calls the "extreme and burdensome excise tax requirements on top of payroll tax and GST payments in the Canadian cannabis industry."

The CRA, he said, seems to have changed its tune at the beginning of the year and has stepped up efforts to recoup back taxes owed "with a more aggressive tone than it has historically."

Sutton said the ordeal has been "disappointing for everyone," including the city of Maple Ridge, where Tantalus employed nearly 80 people and hoped to create more jobs in the long term. 

"I hope that lessons like Tantalus and many other companies, especially small businesses that are suffering under this grossly miscalculated excise tax, will become a lesson to the federal government to amend these regulations," he said. "It doesn't seem to be a business that, or rather, a regulatory environment that validates small business participation at this time. (It's) super troubling."

The CRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 27, 2023.

The Canadian Press

Cori Bush yells at Steve Scalise on House floor: ‘Your bills are racist

 The Hill

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) yelled at House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on the House floor on Thursday, calling Republicans’ funding bills “racist,” after GOP lawmakers passed the first of 12 annual appropriations bills.

“Your bills are racist,” Bush yelled out, as Scalise touted the passage of the legislation allocating funding for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs and related agencies.

The comment was met with outcries from Republican lawmakers in the chamber and calls to strike Bush’s words from the official record.

However, the Missouri Democrat remained unapologetic about the outburst, tweeting, “I said what I said,” with a shrugging emoji shortly after the incident.

The Milcon-VA bill passed in a 219-211 vote Thursday, with every Democrat and two Republicans — Reps. Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Ken Buck (Colo.) — voting against the measure.

The House legislation is virtually dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where appropriators are marking up their own spending bills.

With Congress set to adjourn this week for its monthlong August recess, lawmakers are facing a tight deadline to pass legislation funding the government by Sept. 30 and avert a government shutdown.

The Hill.

SOLITARY IS TORTURE

House Democrats introduce bill to end solitary confinement

The Hill

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) led Democrats in introducing legislation Thursday to end solitary confinement in federal prisons, jails and detention centers. 

The End Solitary Confinement Act would cap the time incarcerated people and detainees are alone at four hours and require prison or jail staff to meet with the inmate within one hour. The separation would be used as a de-escalation tactic in an emergency situation as opposed to punishment. 

“Solitary confinement is a moral catastrophe,” said Bush, adding that the practice is “psychological torture.” 

“This practice is traumatic for people subjected to it, harmful to communities and isolating for loved ones,” she said. “Moreover, it is disproportionately inflicted on Black and brown folks, young people, LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities.”

Black and brown incarcerated people are more likely than white people to be placed in solitary confinement. In a 2016 study, Black men made up 40 percent of the total prison population in 43 jurisdictions but 45 percent of those in solitary confinement. Also, 21 percent of incarcerated people in solitary confinement were Latino, even though they made up only 20 percent of the total prison population. 

The United Nations has repeatedly condemned the use of solitary confinement — also referred to as segregation, secure housing, the hole or lockdown.

In 2015, the U.N. issued its Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, on prolonged isolation. Then, in 2020, one of the U.N.’s human rights experts expressed concern over the U.S.’s “excessive use” of solitary confinement in correctional facilities. 

Still, in May this year, a report found that more than 122,800 people in federal and state prisons and federal and local jails were placed in solitary confinement for 22 hours or more on any day in 2019.

Related video: Cori Bush introducing bill to end solitary confinement in federal prisons today 

(KTVI-TV St. Louis)   Duration 0:25   View on Watch

The End Solitary Confinement Act would require incarcerated people to have access to at least 14 hours of time out of their cells each day. Those 14 hours must include seven hours of programming meant to address mental health, substance abuse and violence prevention.

“Solitary confinement is torture, and torture should have no place in our society,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said. “It takes a devastating toll on mental health, heightens the risk of self-harm and suicide, increases recidivism and can lead to severe psychological trauma. We need to lead with restorative justice and recognize the human dignity of incarcerated people by abolishing this dehumanizing practice once and for all.”

There has been a trend over the last few years to end solitary confinement in some capacity. 

According to a report by the Unlock the Box Campaign, 500 bills in 44 states have been introduced over the last five years to address solitary confinement. Though some of these bills call for ending the practice in full, others are selective, with the focus on ending solitary confinement for young people, pregnant people, or people living with physical and mental disabilities.

“We know the clear, irreversible harm that solitary confinement causes to individuals, yet we continue to use this form of torture across the American criminal justice system,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) said. “These harms are well documented and lead to increased mental health risks and heightened rates of suicide. Solitary confinement is inhumane, and this form of torture should never be used, period.”

Studies have shown that time spent in solitary confinement shortens lives and has devastating effects on the mental health of incarcerated people.

Although people in solitary confinement make up only 6 percent to 8 percent of the total prison population, they account for nearly half of those who die by suicide, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

Research by Cornell University has also found that those who spent time in solitary confinement had an increased risk of committing more crimes after being released from prison. 

It also found that time spent in confinement could affect a returning citizen’s probability of employment, with the impact to mental health most likely being the driving cause of this trouble. 

Senate Democrats last fall introduced a similar bill that would reduce the use of solitary confinement in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, though Bush’s law would end the practice completely.

As part of his 2020 campaign, President Biden promised criminal justice reform, including “ending the practice of solitary confinement, with very limited exceptions.” 

“Someday, we will look back and ask why we ever subjected people to prolonged solitary confinement and expected anything other than trauma, violence and death as a response,” Bush said. 

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