It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Facebook, YouTube to face new rules under Canada online law
Randy Thanthong-Knight, Bloomberg News Feb 26, 2024
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government introduced an online safety law in Canada, joining European countries in trying to compel internet companies to actively regulate and remove harmful content.
The Online Harms Act, introduced in parliament on Monday, will make platforms responsible for reducing exposure to damaging content, including material that bullies or sexually victimizes children, or incites extremism, violence or hatred.
The law will cover companies that offer social media platforms, live-streamed video and user-uploaded adult content, as long as they meet a certain threshold of users, a figure that will be determined in later regulations. Firms such as Google’s YouTube and Meta Platforms Inc. are expected to be affected.
It will also create a regulatory body called the Digital Safety Commission to enforce rules, receive complaints and order removal of content. An independent digital safety ombudsperson will also support and advocate for users.
Canada is late in introducing online safety legislation compared with jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, European Union and Australia. During the 2021 federal election campaign, Trudeau’s Liberal Party promised to introduce a law that would “put a stop to harmful online content and hold platforms accountable.”
The bill would also create a new standalone hate crime offense that would apply to every other offense in the Criminal Code, allowing the conduct to be treated as a crime in itself rather than an aggravating factor in sentencing. It would allow for penalties of up to life in prison.
It would also establish a process for people to file complaints about online speech to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which could order the user to remove the content and compensate victims up to $20,000 (US$14,809).
The bill adds to a list of contentious internet regulations introduced by Trudeau’s government in recent years. Critics have raised concerns about the balance between protecting internet users and safeguarding rights and freedoms.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Trudeau’s main rival, called the bill an “attack on freedom of expression” before seeing the legislation.
Last year, the government passed two key laws targeting online platforms. The Online Streaming Act aims to force platforms such as Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., to fund local media and feature Canadian content. The Online News Act requires Alphabet Inc. to pay for news content.
In response to the latter, Meta has suspended all links to news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada to avoid making payments. The news block is battering news outlets that relied on Facebook to reach their communities, including small organizations that are sometimes the only providers of local news in rural areas.
Canada issues green bonds for first time since framework change
Chunzi Xu, Bloomberg News Feb 26, 2024
(Bloomberg) -- Canada sold C$4 billion ($3 billion) of debt Tuesday, its first issue under an amended framework for green bonds that allows the country to raise funds to support nuclear power.
The 10-year bonds have a 3.5% coupon and yield half a basis point less than Canadian government debt due in December 2033.
The new framework makes Canada the first sovereign to venture into nuclear power finance through its green bond sales, the government said in a statement. European Union lawmakers have voted to give certain nuclear projects a sustainable label, a decision that left its parliament deeply divided amid concerns about waste disposal, the potential for weapons proliferation and the risk of accidental radiation.
This deal will likely be followed by similar issuances from public and private companies involved in nuclear power generation, Jonathan Hackett, head of sustainable finance at Bank of Montreal, one of the firms that underwrote the security, said in an interview. The completed transaction should help potential issuers’ confidence that there will be capital available when they need to refinance, he said.
With the deal, “we have clear recognition that nuclear power is green,” Hackett said.
Air Transat will avoid strike after flight attendants approve collective agreement
The risk of a strike at Air Transat has lifted as flight attendants have voted in favour of a new collective agreement.
The 2,100 flight attendants voted 62.7 per cent in favour of the terms recommended by federal mediators.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees says the collective agreement, which is retroactive to Nov. 1, 2022, makes Air Transat flight attendants the highest paid in the industry.
The terms include total compound salary increases of 30 per cent over five years, the elimination of the two lowest salary tiers and other benefits like more vacation days.
Air Transat's chief people officer Julie Lamontagne says in a statement that following an "unprecedented process," the company is pleased to offer competitive working conditions.
Workers had been without a contract for more than 15 months and had twice rejected tentative agreements this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 26, 2024
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Video: New Carrier USS Kennedy Launches Cars Into the Water
Huntington Ingalls' Newport News Shipbuilding has begun testing the catapults aboard the carrier USS John F. Kennedy, the second Ford-class ship.
The carrier is built around a set of electromagnetically-powered launch catapults, which are fundamentally different from the steam-powered systems found aboard all previous CATOBAR carrier designs. The commissioning and testing of these brand new devices caused protracted delays for the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford, but they are now fulfilling their mission as designed, according to the Ford's crew.
Kennedy's installation benefits from Ford's earlier shakedown experience, and the topside testing for the catapults is now under way. Newport News' staff have completed no-load tests on the bow catapults, and the team is now in the process of "dead-load" testing - that is, throwing wheeled weights off the deck and into the James River.
Each test car weighs up to 80,000 pounds to simulate the loaded aircraft that Kennedy will one day send skyward. The cars can reach up to 150 miles an hour before flying off the bow and into the water. (At least one skipped off the surface before splashing down again.)
After each set of shots, the test weights are pulled back out of the river so that they can be relaunched. As the cars are a symbol of the carrier's near-completion, thousands of yard workers and their family members signed the weights with messages of congratulations, HII said.
"Reaching the dead load testing phase is a visual demonstration of how far we’ve come,” said Lucas Hicks, vice president for the Kennedy program.
Morocco-to-UK Cable Project Plans to Order its Own Cable-Layer
A British renewable-power company is on track to order a superlarge cable-lay vessel for installation of one of the world's longest subsea power cable projects.
The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project will be among longest power transmission links in the world, thanks to a circuitous route that hugs the coastlines of Portugal, Spain and France. The project requires four parallel HVDC cables to carry about 3.6 GW of power capacity in two 1.8 GW links. With a route length of 2,500 miles, the total length of wire comes to about 10,000 miles.
The power will come from an 11.5 GW solar/wind project in Morocco, buffered by a 22 GWh battery storage bank. The concept is to provide dispatchable power for up to eight percent of the UK's electricity demand, filling in gaps in Britain's local wind and solar generation. The big selling point is that as expensive as it will be - $25 billion all-in - it will still be far cheaper than a new nuclear power plant of equivalent capacity.
A sister company, XLCC, is building a cable manufacturing plant in Scotland to creat the massive quantities of HVDC cable required for the project. The same firm is planning to order a cable-layer with the capacity to install it, and the award to build it is expected later this year. It will be one of the largest vessels of its kind, and will be able to deploy two cables at a time as a bundled pair. In addition to deploying it for XLinks, XLCC plans to charter the vessel out to other developers on the global market.
Thanks to these supply chain investments, XLinks' backers are planning to complete the project by 2030-31.
"The real big bottleneck is supply chains. It's manufacturing the cable, and it's manufacturing converter stations. If it wasn't for those two things, we would be much, much earlier," XLinks founder and former CEO Simon Morrish told Recharge. (The company has recently appointed a former Shell executive, James Humfrey, to run the project as CEO.)
XLinks has the backing of Abu Dhabi's National Energy Company, French oil major TotalEnergies and UK-based utility Octopus Energy.
BOEM Releases Final Environmental Report as New England Wind Nears Approval
BOEM released its latest environmental impact study as it moves forward with the approval of offshore wind farms (file photo)
The U.S. offshore wind energy sector continues to develop momentum as the Biden administration continues forward with its clean energy agenda. In the latest development, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) completed its environmental review of the proposed New England Wind project offshore Massachusetts. This month, BOEM completed this review as well as approved the construction plan for Empire Wind, and defined the Oregon offshore wind area.
Today’s announcement highlights the time involved in the review process which several projects have now completed. The first lease for the site originally known as Vineyard Wind South was awarded in 2015 but in 2021 was transferred by Avangrid to Park City Wind and renamed New England Wind. The comment period on the draft environmental impact statement closed a year ago.
BOEM has completed the process and will publish the final statement at the end of this week. They note that they considered 776 comments received when developing the Final EIS for this project. The final environmental impact statement (Final EIS) analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the activities laid out in the New England Wind project’s construction and operations plan and reasonable alternatives.
The agency will now complete its final review and plans to issue a record of decision on whether to approve the project no earlier than April 2024. If the project is approved, the record of decision will also identify any conditions of approval.
The New England Wind project is located about 20 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and about 24 nautical miles southwest of Nantucket. BOEM estimates the proposed project would generate up to 2,600 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 900,000 homes. Park City, submitted a two-phased project plan that includes up to 129 wind turbines, with up to five offshore export cables that would transmit electricity to onshore transmission systems in the Town of Barnstable and Bristol County, Massachusetts.
Rhode Island in October 2023 approved the first phase of the project as a small portion of the export cable would pass through the state’s waters. The first phase calls for 804 MW provided from 84 turbines.
BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein emphasized that this release demonstrates the administration’s steady progress toward attaining its clean energy goals. The Department of the Interior has approved the nation's first six commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects with both South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind recently starting to generate power. BOEM has held four offshore wind lease auctions, including the first-ever sales offshore the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. BOEM also advanced the process to explore additional opportunities for offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of Mexico, and offshore Oregon and the Central Atlantic coast.
BOEM previously said it remains on track to complete reviews of at least 16 offshore wind energy project plans by 2025, representing more than 27 gigawatts of clean energy
Massachusetts and Crowley Move Forward with State’s Second Wind Port
Salem's wind port facility will open in 2026 and can support floating and fixed-bottom turbines (Crowley Wind Services)
Massachusetts in partnership with Crowley Wind Services is moving forward with the effort to redevelop an industrial site in Salem into the state’s second wind port. In addition to expanding capacity to support the development of the state’s wind programs, they envision it as a regional center that will be one of the few sites able to support the construction and installation of floating offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine.
Crowley purchased the property in the historic city of Salem in 2022 as part of the plan to transform the site of an oil- and coal-fired power plant into a wind port facility. They have been working since 2022 to transform the site of a former plant and lay the foundation to support the wind port development. The power plant closed in 2014.
Massachusetts’s state economic development agency dedicated to accelerating the growth of the clean energy sector, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) acquired 42 acres on Salem Harbor as the next phase in the development. Five acres, including the port’s existing deep-water berth, were transferred to the City of Salem.
“Adding the Salem Port to its portfolio, along with the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal and the Wind Technology Testing Center, will further elevate Massachusetts as a global leader in the offshore wind industry. This partnership with the City of Salem and Crowley will deliver another port built specifically for offshore wind,” said Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey.
Crowley’s Wind Services business unit will start construction in 2024, strengthening the site infrastructure to accommodate heavy machinery and equipment. The project also includes the construction of a second state-of-the-art ship berth and the upgrade of the city berth. They will also oversee the implementation of dredging activities to enhance the harbor channel. The port is projected to open in 2026.
Crowley will manage the site redevelopment and improvements and then serve as the terminal operator, entering into a lease agreement with MassCEC for the ongoing utilization of the property as an offshore wind marshaling port with priority for offshore wind projects serving Massachusetts. The City of Salem has leased the berth and its acreage for the same purpose. Besides operating vessels and terminals, Crowley will provide supply chain management, construction engineering, and project management services, and operations and maintenance solutions.
Massachusetts’s first dedicated offshore wind port is the New Bedford Wind Commerce Center, which is also owned and operated by MassCEC. The terminal is unique in that it is a multi-purpose facility designed to support the construction, assembly, and deployment of offshore wind projects, as well as handle bulk, break-bulk, container shipping, and large specialty marine cargo. It is currently leased to Vineyard Wind, one of the first large offshore wind farms under construction in the United States.
The MassCEC Wind Technology Testing Center, located in Charlestown, Massachusetts,?provides a full suite of certification tests for turbine blades up to 90 meters in length. It uses the latest wind turbine blade testing and prototype development methodologies to help the wind industry deploy the next generation of land-based and offshore wind turbine technologies.
Chinese Carmaker's Ro/Ro Arrives in EU, Delivering New Competition
Chart-topping Chinese EV manufacturer BYD has completed its first in-house ro/ro shipment to Europe. On Tuesday, the brand new BYD Explorer No. 1 arrived at a pier in Bremerhaven carrying 3,000 competitively-priced electric cars for the European market.
Explorer No. 1 is owned by Japan's Taihei Kaiun and operated by London-based Zodiac Maritime. The Chinese-built ship is LNG dual-fuel powered and can carry up to 7,000 cars at a time (though far less than that on its maiden voyage).
BYD is committed to solving a global bottleneck in ro/ro capacity by taking seaborne transport in-house. For the long term, it is creating a reduced-ro/ro supply chain by setting up car factories in the same regions as its customers. It is in various stages of planning for new manufacturing plants in Thailand, Hungary, Brazil and Mexico. If it launches a Mexican factory, it could be able to use the Trump-era United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to access the American market.
BYD is making a splash with tent-pole ultraluxury models, and the most expensive appear designed to compete more with Ferrari than with Cadillac. The BYD Yangwang brand's $230,000 supercar can go from 0-60 mph in 2.4 seconds, rivaling a top-end Tesla, and it has all the curves of a two-seat European supercar.
At the bottom rung, its cheapest electric commuter car sells for less than $14,000 new. It is designed to compete head-to-head with gasoline-fueled cars on price, and is selling well in overseas markets (370,000 sold last year). Auto industry analysts view BYD and its compatriots as an existential threat to North American carmakers, which have struggled to turn a profit on EVs.
Activist Investor Sues CMB Over “Misleading Information” in Euronav Offer
An activist shareholder filed suit in New York charging false information as the latest challenge in Alexander Saverys' effort to makeover Euronav (file photo)
An activist investor group filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in connection with CMB’s U.S. offer to purchase all outstanding ordinary shares of Euronav held by U.S. investors. The offer was launched two weeks ago as a mandatory step in the consolidation of Euronav as a company majority held by CMB after the completion of the settlement agreement with Frontline.
In brief statements, CMB and Euronav confirmed they had become aware of the suit filed by certain funds managed by FourWorld Capital Management. The group which is headquartered in the U.S. and has offices in Germany has been registered since 2016 as an advisor in the U.S. reporting on its regulatory filing in March 2023 that it advises 18 clients and has more than $800 million under management. The group describes itself as “focusing on event-driven investment opportunities with particular focus on tax, legal and regulatory catalysts,” and has a history of taking activist positions against corporations including during transactions such as the CMB is currently conducting with Euronav.
FourWorld alleges in the complaint that among other things, that CMB violated U.S. securities law by disseminating materially false and misleading offering materials relating to the U.S. offer. The complaint seeks, among other relief, an injunction restraining CMB from completing the U.S. offer, and an award of damages in an unspecified amount.
“CMB believes that the suit is without merit and intends to vigorously defend against the suit,” the group said in its statement while Euronav confirmed that it is not a party to the suit.
FourWorld appears to have made its investment or begun to increase its stake in Euronav from just under the 1 percent threshold for mandatory disclosure to 2.41 percent currently held. CMB believes the advisory firm acquired at least 3,133,334 shares for a total price of at least $55.8 million. They believe the share purchase was timed to after the closing of the CMB.TECH acquisition on February 8 and the launch of the share offering by CMB on February 14. The offering is running through March 15, with CMB encouraging investors who believe in its vision for decarbonization not to sell shares and to remain an investor.
CMB reiterated the merits of the agreement with Frontline which sold 24 tankers and ended the arbitration. After months of a stalemate over the management of the tanker company, CMB agreed to acquire the shares of Euronav held by Frontline and in exchange agreed to sell Frontline tankers from Euronav’s fleet. After completing the transaction, CMB held 49 percent of Euronav’s shares and under Belgian law was required to launch an offer at the same price for the remaining shares.
The Saverys family communicated a clear vision of diversification and decarbonization through a focus on ammonia and hydrogen for the future of Euronav. Further, they state CMB’s sale of CMB.TECH to Euronav was on “arms’ length terms and conditions” reviewed by the shareholders and the independent directors. “The sale prices were fair to Euronav and its shareholders,” CMB asserts.
In these types of activist shareholder lawsuits, the companies have the choice of settling, or in some cases, they proceed to court for a lengthy process.
A transatlantic solo rower has been found dead in his boat, days after falling ill mid-voyage.
Michael Holt, a Welshman with Type I diabetes, had undertaken the row for a charity challenge. Years before, he had injured both shoulders and had had extensive reconstructive surgery, making a long-distance row a unique personal challenge.
Holt departed Gran Canaria on January 27. On February 20, as he transited off the coast of Cape Verde, Holt told his support team on shore that he had fallen ill, perhaps from a reaction to antibiotics. He decided to abort his voyage and head for the nearest land - São Vicente in the Cape Verde Islands, 300 nautical miles to the south of his position. At that time, he intended to get to shore under his own power.
In the days that followed, he ceased communicating with his shore support team, and his family worked with authorities in Cape Verde to arrange for a rescue. It took time to find a good samaritan vessel that could divert to assist. The crew of the fishing vessel Noruego agreed to divert on February 24, but was about one days' sail away.
On arrival on the evening of February 25, the crew of the Noruego found Holt dead in his boat's cabin, the family said in a social media update.
"We have been working tirelessly to get help to Michael over the past four days but have found it incredibly difficult to do so," family members said in an online update.
In a statement, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said that it is supporting Holt's family and is in contact with authorities in Cape Verde.
The family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $25,000 for repatriating Holt's remains.
"As a type 1 diabetic, [his voyage] was both groundbreaking and incredibly inspiring. It also brought with it an increased element of risk. He took considerable measures to limit any issues (a 12v fridge built into his boat for his insulin, automatic blood monitoring in his arm, 24-hour telephone support, etc.), but the risk was such that he was uninsurable. When you operate in the most extreme end of the possible, this is common," the family explained.
Under the EU State aid rules on public service compensation, companies can receive a state grant for the extra cost of providing a public service. This enables member states to grant aid for the provision of public services, but the EU keeps tight controls to ensure the companies are not overcompensated and fair competition remains.
Corsica Linea, also a French company, was started in 2016 for service from Marseilles to Corsica, Algeria, and Tunisia. They currently run two ferries and six combination cargo vessels.
The EU Commission reports it wants to assess whether the public service compensation granted to the two companies is in line with EU State aid rules. They are requesting additional information looking at the provision of RoRo freight services to determine if as provided in the contracts it is justified as a public service under the rules. They are also looking at the availability of commercial services or the launch of commercial services from neighboring ports.
The investigation will seek to confirm the procurement process and that the contracts are justified by a public service need. France, as well as other interested parties, have the right to submit comments as part of the investigation process.
