PM BRIAN MULRONEY RIP

How Brian Mulroney benefitted Canada: Why he went from 'great success politically' to a 'slap in the face' for Canadian voters

A Canadian expert believes Mulroney spearheaded multiple policies that present Canada still relies on, but one incident left 'a really bad mark' he couldn't recover from

THE 'GREENEST' PM 

SIERRA CLUB

'BLEEDING HEART CONSERVATIVE'

THE ECONOMIST

A RED TORY

Joy Joshi
·Writer, Yahoo News Canada
Updated Fri, March 1, 2024

A Canadian politics and government expert believes former prime minister Brian Mulroney left an impressive list of achievements by the end of his tenure at the top job, but an isolated incident involving an envelope of cash during a 1993 hotel meeting botched his record.

The expert’s analysis of Brian Mulroney’s time in the office and the controversy after comes as tributes poured in following the sad announcement of the 18th Canadian prime minister’s death made by his daughter Caroline Mulroney on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Mulroney’s popularity during his tenure as prime minister from 1984 to 1993 went from “top to bottom” despite him introducing certain revolutionary policies which may have been contentious at the time but benefitted Canada in the long run, said Nelson Wiseman, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of Toronto, in an interview with Yahoo News Canada.

He was the first Conservative leader since the 1880’s who led his party to two consecutive majority governments. That hadn’t happened in a hundred years since John A. Macdonald. So that’s very significant. That shows great success politically.

Nelson Wiseman, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Toronto

“On the other hand, he also took his party down to defeat. In fact, after winning their most smashing victory in 1984 – no party had ever got 211 seats – his party ended up disappearing, swallowed up by the Reform Party so he went from top to bottom,” Wiseman added.

Canadian government and politics expert Nelson Wiseman weighs in on Brian Mulroney's legacy and his rating on the public popularity scale

Accolades: Free trade agreement, GST and resolving Canada’s acid rain problem

Between the record-breaking win in 1984 and his political party nearly “disappearing” starting almost 10 years later, lie the key decision making events that moved him up and down the public popularity graph among Canadians.

Mulroney negotiated free trade agreements with the United States and Mexico and introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) domestically, both of which were challenged at the time by various opposing interest groups but are now mainstays of the Canadian economy.

“He brought in the GST which was damaging electorally but it was the right thing to do because it got rid of a heavily distorting manufacturers sales tax,” the Free Press writer Rupa Subramanya notes in her online tribute to the late prime minister.

“People don’t like to pay taxes. So, they hated him for it but it was a good thing he did it. Because, look at how much money it generates. Can you imagine what the deficit of Canada would be now without the GST?” Wiseman shared with Yahoo News Canada.

On introducing the free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, Wiseman emphasized that while the majority of Canadians, including cultural communities – especially the unions and hospital workers –- who feared private American ownership taking over, were against it, the deal was “fabulous” for Canada.

Wiseman also stressed on the crucial role played by Mulroney in helping resolve Canada’s “acid rain” problem in the '80s which goes down as a major accomplishment on his record.

“If you're eating fresh vegetables and fruits in the winter, thank Mulroney,” Subramanya wrote in her post.

Mulroney’s downfall: Quebec failure, Airbus scandal and ‘deeply unpopular’

Mulroney’s downfall was “triggered” by the “disastrous” policy defeat of the Meech Lake Accord, a series of proposed amendments to the Constitution of Canada negotiated in 1987 by then-PM Mulroney and all 10 Canadian provincial premiers to bring his home province of Quebec on board, which ultimately failed.

“What he was trying to do there was to outdo Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau got the Charter of Rights and the constitution but Quebec hadn’t agreed to it,” Wiseman explained.

“Mulroney’s plan was I’m gonna bring Quebec in and win their agreement to all of this and give them something like recognizing a distinctive signing – got all the premiers to agree – but then we got some elections and had new premiers elected who insisted on changes. So Meech Lake never passed.”

One of Mulroney’s biggest ambitions to unify the country failed utterly with the efforts almost leading to its destruction as the saga almost left Quebec separated from the rest of Canada.

“That was a big slap in the face,” Wiseman concluded.

Airbus scandal was another 'bad mark' on Mulroney's legacy

Another nail in the coffin for Mulroney’s eroding popularity was the Airbus scandal that began in the late 1980s and concluded close to 2010 with the years in between presenting Mulroney with a tumultuous round of challenges.

Initially, it was alleged that Mulroney was bribed by a German-Canadian businessman to purchase the Airbus passenger aircraft for Air Canada (when it was a Crown corporation) during his prime ministership around 1988.

In his defence, Mulroney called the allegations part of a smear campaign and sued the federal government for millions of dollars with the RCMP leading the investigation and the case being settled out of court in 1997.

“It came in unmarked envelopes and he denied that he did anything with this guy, Karlheinz Schreiber, except have coffee,” Wiseman shared with Yahoo News Canada.

However, it was later determined that Mulroney received at least $225,000 in cash, which he admitted to a public inquiry but insisted that he was no longer the prime minister of Canada at the time accepting the “envelope of cash.”

“It wasn’t bribery. He wasn’t in government but he was lobbying for Air Canada to buy Airbus which they ended up doing. So that’s a really bad mark on him as a person,” Wiseman shared.

The Oliphant Commission, not mandated to determine whether civil or criminal laws had been broken, issued a final report in 2010, stating that Mulroney had acted inappropriately in not disclosing the funds.

By the time he quit from the top job and as the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, Mulroney was deeply unpopular, and along with his unpopularity came the aftermath which left his party in tatters.

Yahoo Canada live blog coverage: See a recap of events after Mulroney's death

Abortion is enshrined as a constitutional right in France after lawmakers approve an amendment

Mon, March 4, 2024



PARIS (AP) — French lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill that will enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in France's constitution, a historic move designed to prevent the kind of rollback of abortion rights seen in the United States in recent years.

In an exceptional joint session of parliament convened at the Palace of Versailles, the bill was approved in a 780-72 vote. Abortion enjoys wide support in France across most of the political spectrum, and has been legal since 1975.

The vote makes France the first country to have a constitutional right to abortion since the former Yugoslavia inscribed it in its 1974 constitution. Serbia’s 2006 constitution carries on that spirit, stating that “everyone has the right to decide on childbirth.”

Nearly the entire hall in France stood in a long standing ovation, and many female legislators in the hall smiled broadly as they cheered. There were jubilant scenes of celebrations all over France as women’s rights activists hailed the measure promised by President Emmanuel Macron immediately following the Dobbs ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.

Both houses of parliament, the National Assembly and the Senate, had already adopted a bill to amend Article 34 of the French Constitution to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.”

In the lead up to the historic vote, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal addressed the 925 lawmakers gathered for the joint session in Versailles, and called on them to make France a leader in women's rights and set an example in defense of women's rights for countries around the world.

“We have a moral debt to women,” Attal said. He paid tribute to Simone Veil, a prominent legislator, former health minister and key feminist who in 1975 championed the bill that decriminalized abortion in France.

“We have a chance to change history,” Attal said in a moving and determined speech. “Make Simone Veil proud," he said to a standing ovation.

The lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the proposal in January. The Senate adopted the bill on Wednesday, clearing a key hurdle for legislation promised by Macron's government, intended to make “a woman’s right to have an abortion irreversible.”

A three-fifths majority in the joint session was required for the measure to be approved

None of France’s major political parties represented in parliament have questioned the right to abortion, including Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party and the conservative Republicans. However, some lawmakers have voted against inscribing abortion right into the constitution in previous votes in both houses.

Le Pen, who won a record number of seats in the National Assembly two years ago, said on Monday that her party will vote in favor of the bill but added that “there is no need to make this a historic day.”

The right to an abortion has broad support among the French public. A recent poll showed support at more than 80%, consistent with previous surveys. The same poll also showed that a solid majority of people are in favor of enshrining it in the constitution.

There were scenes of celebrations around France even before the joint parliamentary session began.

Sarah Durocher, a leader in the Family Planning movement, said Monday's vote is “a victory for feminists and a defeat for the anti-choice activists.”

With the right to an abortion added to the constitution, it will be much harder to prevent women from voluntarily terminating a pregnancy in France, women’s rights and equality activists said.

“We increased the level of protection to this fundamental right,” said Anne-Cécile Mailfert of the Women’s Foundation. “It’s a guarantee for women today and in the future to have the right to abort in France.”

The government argued in its introduction to the bill that the right to abortion is threatened in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee it.

“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the French legislation says.

The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strip women of the right to abortion has reverberated across Europe’s political landscape, forcing the issue back into public debate in France at a time of political upheaval.

Mathilde Philip-Gay, a law professor and a specialist in French and American constitutional law, warned against easing the pressure on legislators for women's rights as far-right parties — determined to curtail women's rights — gain political influence and are elected to form governments around Europe and elsewhere.

"It may not be an issue in France, where a majority of people support abortion,” Philip-Gay said. “But those same people may one day vote for a far-right government, and what happened in the U.S. can happen elsewhere in Europe, including in France.”

Inscribing abortion into the French Constitution "will make it harder for abortion opponents of the future to challenge these rights, but it won't prevent them from doing it in the long run, with the right political strategy,” Philip-Gay added.

"It only takes a moment for everything we thought that we have achieved to fade away,” said Yael Braun-Pivet, the first female president of the French parliament, in her address to the joint session.

Amending the constitution is a laborious process and a rare event in France. Since it was enacted in 1958, the French Constitution has been amended 17 times. The last time was in 2008, when parliament was awarded more powers and French citizens were granted the right to bring their grievances to the Constitutional Court.

___

Barbara Surk reported from Nice.

Barbara Surk And Nicolas Garriga, The Associated Press



French lawmakers gather for a historic vote that will make abortion a constitutional right

BY BY BARBARA SURK, ASSOCIATED PRESS - 03/04/24 

A bill to enshrine a woman’s right to an abortion in the French constitution goes to a historic vote on Monday, as lawmakers gather for a joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles.

The measure was promised by President Emmanuel Macron following a rollback of abortion rights in court rulings in the United States.

Macron’s government wants Article 34 of the French constitution amended to specify that “the law determines the conditions by which is exercised the freedom of women to have recourse to an abortion, which is guaranteed.”

The lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the proposal in January. The Senate adopted the bill on Wednesday, clearing a key hurdle for legislation promised by Macron’s government, intended to make “a woman’s right to have an abortion irreversible.”

The measure must be approved by a three-fifths majority in the joint session.

None of France’s major political parties represented in parliament has questioned the right to abortion, which was decriminalized in 1975. With both houses of parliament having adopted the bill, Monday’s joint session at the Palace of Versailles is expected to be largely a formality.

The government argued in its introduction to the bill that the right to abortion is threatened in the United States, where the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned a 50-year-old ruling that used to guarantee it.

“Unfortunately, this event is not isolated: in many countries, even in Europe, there are currents of opinion that seek to hinder at any cost the freedom of women to terminate their pregnancy if they wish,” the introduction to the French legislation says.

France moves to make abortion a constitutional right amid rollbacks in US and Europe

The constitutional revision, backed by an overwhelming majority of the population, put conservatives and the far right in a tough spot.


The measure sailed through both chambers of the French parliament and is expected to pass | Mathilde Kaczkowksi/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

MARCH 4, 2024 
BY VICTOR GOURY-LAFFONT

PARIS — France is set to become the first country to enshrine the freedom to have an abortion in its constitution — an effort by President Emmanuel Macron to send a strong message of support for reproductive rights and, at the same time, score political points at the expense of a resurgent far right.

The amendment will be added to the French constitution if three-fifths of parliamentarians from the upper and lower houses approve the bill during an extraordinary voting session being held on Monday in Versailles.

The measure sailed through both chambers of the French parliament and is expected to pass.

Abortion rights are widely supported in France, and limiting them was not a publicly debated issue. While the French left has for years wanted to add a constitutional safeguard to an abortion, until 2022 most lawmakers believed such a move was unnecessary given the existing guarantees for women seeking an abortion.

Macron's government was spurred to action by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, giving individual states the green light to outlaw the procedure.

“It’s impossible to tell if abortion rights won’t come into question in the future in France,” Mathilde Panot, head of the left-wing France Unbowed group in the National Assembly, told POLITICO. “It’s important to capitalize when we have public on our side.”

She said that Macron only acted thanks to “the work of feminist organizations and parliamentarians.”

“He can boast, but it’s first and foremost our victory,” Panot said.

Splitting the right

While abortion is legal in most of the European Union, right-wing populists across the bloc have implemented policies designed to restrict or make more complicated access to the procedure. In Hungary, pregnant people are made to listen to the pulse of the fetus, sometimes described as a "fetal heartbeat," a term medical professionals reject, from the very first ultrasound. Poland outlawed abortion in most cases while the right-wing Law and Justice party was in power, though new Prime Minister Donald Tusk is working on overturning the ban.

Officially, the far-right National Rally supports the right to end a pregnancy, but abortion remains a divisive topic in its ranks. Of its 88 MPs, 46, including three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, voted in favor of the constitutional revision. Twelve voted against; 14 abstained.

The National Rally is currently surging in the polls ahead of the June European election. A recent poll showed the pro-Macron list for the European election 12 percentage points behind the French far-right standard bearer and only seven ahead of the Socialist-backed list led by Raphaël Glucksmann.

Macron's rightwards pivot on issues including immigration has led to concerns within his own camp of seeing the left-end of the president's voter base turning towards other options on the center-left

.

Macron's government was spurred to action by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, giving individual states the green light to outlaw the procedure | Kiran Ridley/AFP via Getty Images

By backing a hugely popular proposal a few months ahead of an election, Macron gave conservative and far-right leaders a headache while courting support from the left.

Enshrining abortion rights into the constitution was a way of "uniting against conservatives and reactionaries," Christopher Weissberg, an MP in the pro-Macron ranks told POLITICO. "It helped build consensus and show ourselves under a progressive light."

Weissberg, who represents French citizens living in Canada and the U.S. said he had seen concern among his stateside constituents after the Roe v. Wade reversal, with some even reconsidering their future in the country

Increasing polarization

An IFOP poll from 2022 showed 81 percent of respondents in favor of adding the right to have an abortion to the constitution, with majority support across party lines. Only 10 percent said they had a negative opinion on abortion being legal.

"When abortion was legalized [in 1975], the French population was split on the matter," Pierre-Hadrien Bartoli, an analyst for the OpinionWay polling institute, said, pointing to the much higher prevalence of religious practice then compared to the now widely secularized French society. "The opinion that it [abortion] should be banned in all cases has almost disappeared.”

The increasing polarization of France's politics occasionally led the issue to reappear in the public debate. CNews, a news channel owned by the devout Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré and often compared to America's Fox News, recently showed a graphic presenting abortion as the first cause of mortality worldwide. The channel later apologized for doing so.

The French conservative movement, Les Républicains, also had doubts. François-Xavier Bellamy, its lead candidate for the EU election, said in a 2019 interview he was "personally" against abortion and had taken part in anti-abortion protests in the past. Gérard Larcher, also a member of Les Républicains and the president of the conservative-controlled Senate, said he was against granting abortion a constitutional status, arguing that "abortion is not under threat in France."

Many opponents of the constitutional revision echoed his sentiments, stressing that their opposition was on legal or procedural grounds and that they did not seek to outlaw abortions.

"Macron forced Les Républicains to adopt a stance on an issue on which a wide array of opinions exist within the party," Bartoli said. For the far-right National Rally, the challenge is "keeping the image of a firm opponent" without alienating its base which, in majority, "will cheer on the proposed change," he added.

The Abandoned Luxury Towers That Graffiti Exposed


Corina Knoll
Updated Sun, March 3, 2024 

The heavily-graffiti’d upper floors of Oceanwide Plaza, a trio of skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles that have sat in limbo for 5 years, plagued by financial and legal issues, on Feb. 9, 2024. 

(Hunter Kerhart/The New York Times)

LOS ANGELES — It was a billion-dollar aspiration meant to transform a neighborhood.

A trio of shimmering skyscrapers would feature luxury condos, a five-star hotel and an open-air galleria with retailers and restaurants. Among the amenities: private screening rooms, a 2-acre park, pet grooming services and a rooftop pool. A celebrity fitness trainer would help curate a wellness lifestyle for residents.

The vision was called Oceanwide Plaza, and the CEO said it would “redefine the Los Angeles skyline.” An executive for the design firm said it would create “a vibrant streetscape.” The website said it would be a place of “rare and unexpected moments.”

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All these statements, some would say, proved to be true. Just not in the way originally imagined.

Funding for the venture quickly evaporated. The towers went up but were unfinished and empty. Plagued by financial and legal issues, the plaza was in a quiet limbo for five years.

Until, recently, an underground community pulled it into an unforeseen spotlight.

Now, those skyscrapers have become a symbol of street swagger, “bombed” with the work of dozens of graffiti writers and artists. Their aliases cover windows that rise more than 40 stories, visible from the nearby highways.

“Everybody’s talking about it, of course,” said Ceet Fouad, a French graffiti artist based in Hong Kong, known for his commissioned murals featuring cartoon chickens. “We said it’s amazing what’s happened — we dream to have a place like this. In the middle of Los Angeles? It’s the best promotion you can have.”

The sentiment is obviously not universal. Many Angelenos see the graffiti as unconscionable vandalism, encouraging waves of crime. Those who live near it say it has jarred their sense of safety. Civic leaders see it as an immediate hazard to the neighborhood as well as to trespassers, not to mention a worldwide embarrassment.

Others have admired the work, some traveling to see the embellished towers for themselves and ruminate on what they represent. Maybe it is the irony of a city desperate for housing. Or maybe it is a statement about greed and wasted opulence. Perhaps emblematic of a Los Angeles spiraling into chaos.

Most would agree that the takeover was cunningly bold.

Vandalism and trespassing had occurred at the plaza over the past few years, city leaders say. But things quickly escalated in late January. New graffiti appeared, and a subculture took note that no one was bothering to clean off the fresh paint.

“It’s pretty unheard-of to paint a skyscraper, so it was like, ‘Oh, man, let’s go take advantage of this and do it while it lasts,’” said Misteralek, one of five graffiti artists who described the scene inside the towers to The New York Times. They spoke on the condition that only their artist names be used because their activities were illegal.

Misteralek managed to get inside with the early wave. It took him about 40 minutes to leave his alias in red and silver.

“We were so happy to be there because I was like, ‘Tomorrow, they’re going to barricade the whole thing.’ But then people just kept doing it.”

Social media posts heightened the buzz. Few knew anything about the history of the towers. But getting into the place seemed strangely simple.

Crews were trudging up together, their backpacks rattling with spray paint. Some lugged up gallons of paint and roller brushes. Security guards on patrol were easy to evade.

Inside, they saw loose wires dangling from ceilings and rebar left exposed. Ladders and buckets littered the concrete floors. Bathtubs were full of rainwater.

“We got a little lost at first; it’s kind of like entering a little city,” said a graffiti artist who goes by Aker and managed to paint his alias twice. Although advice was passed around (bring water, the flight up is killer), he said there was no coordination among artists, just individual ambition.

“You either get in or you don’t,” Aker said, “and you don’t want to miss your chance.”

The names of artists and crews proliferated, the morning sun revealing new additions each day.

Comparisons were made to a former health care building that was “bombed” in December by graffiti artists in town for Art Basel in Miami Beach. But that was much smaller and reportedly slated for demolition.

There was far more global attention paid to the skyscrapers in Los Angeles, with news helicopters and drones broadcasting the staggering monuments of color.

It helped that the plaza was in prime territory — across the street from Crypto.com Arena, the home of the Lakers and the Clippers and the site of this year’s Grammy Awards.

A commercial district with a metro rail station, the area features upscale high-rises, an entertainment complex, a convention center and restaurants. On game nights, cars flood the parking lots and street vendors hawk bacon-wrapped hot dogs.

It is not unusual to see graffiti here as well as giant murals painted on the side of buildings — including one of Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard by street artist Mr. Brainwash. The painted skyscrapers have upstaged it all.

“The biggest conversation is that this has raised the bar — now you gotta do a whole building,” said Robert Provenzano, known as CES, an established graffiti artist from New York City.

CES was commissioned to do a digital art piece for the outside of the Sphere in Las Vegas that was displayed during the week of the Super Bowl. “I thought I was making some moves, but this eclipses that,” he said.

The plaza soon became an illicit playground for people to take photos, light campfires or paint the inside walls.

An Instagram video showed steaks frying on a portable stove inside the towers. Neighbors reported trucks ramming into the gates while thieves made off with copper wire. T-shirts with photos of the plaza sold out online.

Over the weeks, more than a couple dozen people were arrested on suspicion of trespassing. Four of those people were charged, according to the office of the Los Angeles city attorney.

“This is the problem of the city, people do whatever they want,” said Rodel Corletto, who built Aladdin Coffee Shop on a nearby corner four decades ago.

Corletto, 76, said that over the past 15 years, his windows have been broken, his chairs thrown into the street. He often feels like there is no recourse. The plaza, he said, was a larger example of downtown’s lawlessness.

For years, the gleaming yet incomplete towers were considered a business deal gone bust, something for the financiers and the lawyers to figure out while pedestrians wondered whether anything would come of the buildings.

By the time BASE jumpers managed to leap from the towers in mid-February, city leaders were scrambling to figure out their role in a private property gone wrong. They had a responsibility, they said, to keep people safe and set an ultimatum: The plaza owner, Oceanwide Holdings, a conglomerate headquartered in Beijing, was ordered to secure the property within a matter of days.

Messages to Oceanwide went unanswered, and the deadline passed without any action. Around that time, five companies that said they were collectively owed $4.3 million filed a petition to force Oceanwide into bankruptcy. The company has a history of troubled developments, including in New York City and San Francisco. It has been named in numerous lawsuits, including one involving a California construction company that said it is owed nearly $6 million. Oceanwide did not respond to a request for comment.

“For them to have just completely abandoned these properties speaks more volumes about their irresponsibleness as opposed to the graffiti artists,” said Kevin de León, the council member who represents the area.

The city earmarked $1.1 million to start to secure the property, including fencing. De León also said city leaders were looking into estimates for graffiti removal and putting a lien on the property.

“The taxpayers will be repaid,” de León insisted. He said his office has been furiously searching for investors and surmised it would take about $500 million to buy the plaza, along with settling other debts, and another $1 billion to finish it.

Some residents have openly wondered whether the funds might be better used to house the homeless. Or whether the trespassing will be curbed completely. On Wednesday, days after the city began work on the property, authorities announced two additional people had been arrested that morning.

Whatever happens, graffiti artists like Aker say the takeover magnified and transformed a company’s folly hiding in plain sight.

“They failed not just themselves but the city,” he said. “And this is what happens when things just get left — graffiti artists are like spiders. We’ll go out and put webs up there.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

CANADA
Apple to pay up to $14.4M in iPhone throttling settlement approved by B.C. judge


CBC
Mon, March 4, 2024 

An iPhone 6 and 7 are pictured on Jan. 29. A B.C. Supreme Court judge has approved a proposed $14.4 million settlement from Apple to eligible members of a class-action lawsuit that accused the company of deliberately providing software updates that slowed its iPhone 6 and 7 models. (Showwei Chu/CBC - image credit)

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has approved a proposed maximum $14.4 million settlement from Apple to eligible members of a class-action lawsuit that accused the company of deliberately providing software updates that slowed its iPhone 6 and 7 models.

Apple denies the allegations. The company had earlier agreed to pay between $11.1 million and $14.4 million as part of the settlement. It says the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing.

Depending on how many people apply for the settlement, claimants will receive between $17.50 and $150. They must provide a serial number for the impacted phone.

The settlement applies to residents in all provinces except for Quebec. Similar lawsuits were filed in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The judge ultimately decided that the proposed settlement was "fair, reasonable and in the best decision of the class," said class counsel Michael Peerless in an interview with CBC News.

"Apple did the right thing and came forward and, in a sense, stood behind their product without making a legal admission that they did anything wrong. And that's very normal" for a class action, Peerless said.

Apple customers who bought an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 7 or 7 Plus with iOS 10.2.1 or later (for iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, or SE) and/or iOS 11.2 or later (for iPhone 7 or 7 Plus) before Dec. 21, 2017 may be eligible for the settlement, according to a website representing the class action.

A similar case in the U.S. saw the company settle with iPhone users whose devices were throttled by software updates, diminishing the phones' performance and battery life.

The California case settlement range was between $310 million US and $500 million US.

CBC News has reached out to Apple for a statement.

Transparency concerns around software updates

Benjamin Tan, an assistant professor of electrical and software engineering at the University of Calgary, said that many companies have moved toward a new software update at least every month to fix bugs and add new features.

But those updates can include software which further degrades the phone, leading consumers to purchase a new model sooner than they would have otherwise.

"There's a lot in the digital world that we don't necessarily have full control over anymore, partly because the systems are really complicated," said Tan.

"In this particular case, though, what was I think cause for concern was that companies don't always make it very clear exactly what they're updating," he added.

"And when they don't really advertise in advance that these might be some of the side effects that happen to address battery issues or security flaws or something, that's usually [when] people say, 'Hang on, what's going on here? This wasn't really anticipated.'"

'Tucked away in the sock drawer'

Alex Sebastian, the co-founder and COO of Orchard, a Canadian company that resells used iPhones, said his customer service team noticed that there was an uptick in reported slowdowns among iPhone 6, 6S and 7 models after the iPhone 8 was introduced alongside iOS 11 in 2017.

"Customers were starting to call in to talk about their phone slowing down and asked what can be done about it, and the short answer is, there wasn't a lot that we could do to help them out there," Sebastian told CBC News.

"I think it's pretty conservative to estimate that 10 million Canadians bought one of those generations of phones, so that's 10 million potential claimants you have out there," he said.

Alex Sebastian, the co-founder and COO of Orchard, a Canadian company that buys and sells used devices.

'Customers were starting to call in to talk about their phone slowing down and asked what can be done about it,' said Alex Sebastian, the co-founder and COO of Orchard, a Canadian company that buys and sells used devices. (James Dunne/CBC)

At the time, iPhone users were upgrading their phones every 24 to 28 months on average, he said. Today, the turnover rate is more like 30 to 33 months.

Eligible claimants will be able to apply for a max of $150 from the settlement pool, which is more than the cost of replacing a battery on one of the impacted phone models today — and on par with what it would have cost to do so several years ago, according to Sebastian.

"I think there's a lot of outcomes where claimants are not receiving the full $150, because there is an upper limit of $14[.4] million dollars on the entire settlement," he said.

"I think that a lot of people probably have disposed of their phones by now. But there's certainly going to be a meaningful proportion who have tucked it away in the sock drawer, that can go find that phone and pull the serial number off and make a claim here."

MONOPOLY CAPPLETALI$M

Apple gets squeezed by antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic


Alexis Keenan
·Reporter
Mon, March 4, 2024 

Apple is getting squeezed by antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

Just as the tech giant braces for a sweeping lawsuit from the Justice Department in the US, it was hit Monday with a $2 billion European Commission (EC) fine for allegedly breaking competition laws overseas.

Apple intends to fight the decision from the European Union’s antitrust regulator. It also has been trying to convince Justice Department officials not to file their suit, according to media reports.

The company and its lawyers even met with Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter in late February to make a last-ditch argument, according to those reports.

Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images)

Apple (AAPL) has long avoided the government-induced antitrust headaches now plaguing Big Tech rivals like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Meta (META). But that is now changing.

Apple's stock was down nearly 3% during morning trading, following the decision by the European Commission.

The EC’s action was very specific: It fined the company for wielding its dominance to the detriment of its rivals in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps.

Those practices first came under investigation in the European Union in 2019 after Swedish music streaming giant Spotify (SPOT) filed a formal complaint about the store's rules.
The EC concluded that Apple drove up music streaming costs for iOS users for nearly a decade by prohibiting app developers from fully informing them about alternative ways to access and pay for streaming services outside of Apple’s proprietary app store.

Through provisions in Apple’s contracts, the EC said Apple illegally steered app purchases predominantly through the App Store, where Apple collects a 30% fee.

"Apple's conduct, which lasted for almost ten years, may have led many iOS users to pay significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions because of the high commission fee imposed by Apple on developers and passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription prices for the same service on the Apple App Store," the commission said in a summary of its findings.

In response, Apple criticized the EC, saying that its decision failed to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignored that the music streaming market is thriving, competitive, and fast-growing.

"The primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify," Apple said in a blog post. It went on to point out that Spotify had grown to become the largest music streaming app in the world while paying Apple nothing for its services.

An Apple store in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

"Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s," Apple said, attributing a major part of that success to the App Store.

Apple has previously characterized Spotify's complaint with the EC as an attempt to get "limitless access" to Apple's tools, free of charge.

The US antitrust investigation appears to be even more sweeping, according to media reports. Investigators are looking into whether the integration between the company’s suite of products — including iPhones, the App Store, Apple Watch, iMessage, and AirTags — blocks competition.

Any DOJ lawsuit seeking to dismantle Apple’s "walled garden" ecosystem would pose a major threat to the company's various revenue streams.

Apple generates the bulk of its cash through the sale of its wildly popular iPhone, which accounted for $200.6 billion of the company's $383.3 billion in total revenue in 2023. But Apple's services and hardware that tie into the iPhone are also incredibly lucrative.

The company's wearables, home, and accessories business, which includes its Apple Watch and AirPods sales, generated $39.8 billion last year, while its growing services business, which includes subscriptions for things like Apple Music+ and App Store sales, brought in $85.2 billion.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed.

CRIMINAL CAPPLETALI$M

Apple gets fined nearly $2 billion by the EU for hindering music streaming competition

Mon, March 4, 2024

EU Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager addresses the media Monday at EU headquarters in Brussels. 

(Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP Photo) 

LONDON (AP) — The European Union leveled its first antitrust penalty against Apple on Monday, fining the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service by forbidding rivals like Spotify from telling users how they could pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps.

Apple muzzled streaming services from telling users about payment options available through their websites, which would avoid the 30% fee charged when people pay through apps downloaded with the iOS App Store, said the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer.

“This is illegal. And it has impacted millions of European consumers who were not able to make a free choice as to where, how and at what price to buy music streaming subscriptions,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition commissioner, said at a news conference in Brussels.

Apple — which contests the decision — behaved this way for a decade, resulting in "millions of people who have paid two, three euros more per month for their music streaming service than they would otherwise have had to pay," she said.

It's the culmination of a bitter, yearslong feud between Apple and Spotify over music streaming supremacy. A complaint from the Swedish streaming service five years ago triggered the investigation that led to the 1.8 billion-euro ($1.95 billion) fine.

The decision comes the same week new rules take effect to prevent tech giants from cornering digital markets.

The EU has led global efforts to crack down on Big Tech companies, including three fines for Google totaling more than 8 billion euros, charging Meta with distorting the online classified ad market and forcing Amazon to change its business practices.

Apple's fine is so high because it includes an extra lump sum to deter it from offending again or other tech companies from carrying out similar offenses, the commission said.

It's not the only penalty that the tech giant could face: Apple is still trying to resolve a separate EU antitrust investigation into its mobile payments service by promising to open up its tap-and-go mobile payment system to rivals.

Apple hit back at the commission and Spotify, saying it would appeal Monday's fine.

“The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast,” the company said in a statement.

It said Spotify stood to benefit from the EU's move, asserting that the Swedish streaming giant met over 65 times with the commission during the investigation, holds a 56% share of Europe’s music streaming market and doesn’t pay Apple for using its App Store.

“Ironically, in the name of competition, today’s decision just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market’s runaway leader,” Apple said.

Spotify said it welcomed the EU fine, without addressing Apple's accusations.

“This decision sends a powerful message — no company, not even a monopoly like Apple, can wield power abusively to control how other companies interact with their customers,” Spotify said in a blog post.

The commission's investigation initially centered on two concerns. One was the iPhone maker's practice of forcing app developers selling digital content to use its in-house payment system, which charges a 30% commission on all subscriptions.

But the EU later dropped that to focus on how Apple prevents app makers from telling their users about cheaper ways to pay for subscriptions that don’t involve going through an app.

The investigation found that Apple banned streaming services from telling users about how much subscription offers cost outside of their apps, putting links in their apps to pay for alternative subscriptions or even emailing users to tell them about different pricing options.

“As a result, millions of European music streaming users were left in the dark about all available options,” Vestager said, adding that the commission's investigation found that just over 20% of consumers who would have signed up to Spotify's premium service didn't do so because of the restrictions.

The fine comes just before new EU rules are set to kick in that are aimed at preventing tech companies from dominating digital markets.

The Digital Markets Act, due to take effect Thursday, imposes a set of do's and don'ts on “gatekeeper” companies including Apple, Meta, Google parent Alphabet, and TikTok parent ByteDance — under threat of hefty fines.

The DMA's provisions are designed to prevent tech giants from the sort of behavior that's at the heart of the Apple investigation. Apple has already revealed how it will comply, including allowing iPhone users in Europe to use app stores other than its own and enabling developers to offer alternative payment systems.

Vestager warned that the commission would be carefully scrutinizing how Apple follows the new rules.

“Apple will have to open its gates to its ecosystem to allow users to easily find the apps they want, pay for them in any way they want and use them on any device that they want," she said.

Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

EU regulators slap £1.5bn fine on Apple after years-long spat with Spotify

August Graham, PA Business Reporter
Mon, March 4, 2024 

Tech giant Apple has been fined 1.8 billion euros (£1.5 billion) by regulators in Europe for not allowing music streaming apps like Spotify to tell customers they can subscribe for cheaper if they do not use Apple’s App Store.

The European Commission said that Apple had abused its dominant position in the market for distributing music streaming apps, and had broken EU antitrust rules in the process. Apple said it would appeal the decision.

The iPhone-maker said: “The decision was reached despite the Commission’s failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast.”

Swedish music giant Spotify filed a complaint to the EU in 2019 which claimed that Apple limits choice and competition by charging a 30% fee on purchases made through the App Store.

Spotify called this an unfair “tax” which benefits Apple Music, the tech giant’s own music platform which does not get charged the same fees.

Spotify also said that it is not allowed to tell customers there are cheaper ways to subscribe outside the App Store.

Apple said that it had a “key role supporting Spotify’s success” over the years.

“We’ve even flown our engineers to Stockholm to help Spotify’s teams in person,” it said.

But the European Commission appeared to agree with Spotify on Monday saying: “Apple bans music streaming app developers from fully informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app and from providing any instructions about how to subscribe to such offers.”

This could “negatively affect the interests of iOS users,” who will not be able to make informed decisions and may paid “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions”.

Competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: “For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store.

“They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem.

“This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over 1.8 billion euros.”

Apple said: “Apple has been a part of Europe for over 40 years, and today, we support more than 2.5 million jobs across the continent.

“We’ve helped markets thrive, promoting competition and innovation at every turn — and the App Store is an important part of that story.

“So while we respect the European Commission, the facts simply don’t support this decision. And as a result, Apple will appeal.”

EU fine wipes $78bn off Apple’s valuation

Chris Price
Mon, 4 March 2024


European Commission's competition chief Margrethe Vestager said Apple has 'abused its dominant position' - OLIVIER HOSLET/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

More than $78bn (£61bn) has been wiped off the value of Apple after it was fined €1.8bn (£1.6bn) by the European Union for breaking the bloc’s competition laws by favouring its own music streaming service over rivals.

The US tech giant’s shares have dropped 2.9pc after it was issued the penalty for raising the price iPhone users pay for music streaming by banning apps like Spotify from promoting cheaper alternatives.

Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s competition chief, said Apple had abused a dominant position for a decade, meaning that rivals to Apple Music found it more difficult to compete.


The fine is the first that the EU has imposed on the tech giant. The European Commission said Apple had imposed “anti-steering provisions” that prevented apps such as Spotify from directing users to cheaper subscriptions if users subscribed outside of its app.

The investigation into Apple’s practices was triggered after Spotify made a complaint five years ago.

Apple charges fees of up to 30pc for music subscriptions bought through apps, meaning many streaming companies have offered cheaper alternatives on their website, or stopped offering in-app subscriptions altogether.

Ms Vestager said: “For a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store. They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over €1.8bn.”

Apple said the Commission had failed “to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive and growing fast”.

It said Spotify had “co-ordinated” with the Commission, meeting 65 times over eight years, pointing out that the company is based in Sweden. The company said it would appeal.

Pope mandates retired judge to investigate Quebec City cardinal


CBC
Mon, March 4, 2024 

The investigation ordered by the Pope is not to determine guilt but rather, to evaluate whether Cardinal Gérald Lacroix should face a canonical trial, conducted by the church. (Steve Breton/Radio-Canada - image credit)

Pope Francis has tasked retired Quebec judge André Denis to investigate allegations of sexual assault against Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix, the Archbishop of Quebec, which could lead to a canonical trial.

The alleged incidents involving Lacroix took place between 1987 and 1988 in Quebec City when the plaintiff was 17. Lacroix is accused of touching her without her consent. The victim's lawyer, Alain Arsenault, said there was also fellation and penetration.

The allegations surfaced in January and are part of changes to a class-action lawsuit that targets the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec. Lacroix denies the allegations but on Jan. 26, 2024, stepped back from his functions "until the situation is cleared up."

Denis received the Pope's mandate on Feb. 8.

Denis said his job will be to determine whether the allegations are substantial enough to warrant a canonical trial, which is conducted by the church. The investigation will not determine whether Lacroix is guilty.

In his letter to Denis, the Pope said he recognizes "the necessity of conducting an investigation based on facts, circumstance and imputability of the alleged offence."

The plaintiff declined to participate in the investigation, according to a letter sent by her lawyer. He said investigations led by the church and canonical trials have "little credibility" and that clients of his who went through the process "came out of it bruised and battered."

"This process brought them nothing positive, to the contrary," said Arsenault. "Trust is non-existent at this time."

He said his clients who filed the lawsuit are suspicious of the church's motives in conducting the investigation into sexual abuse allegations, as it is "not independent and not credible."

"It's through the civil process that victims have the highest chance of getting reparations, not through the Catholic Church," said Arsenault.

Denis said he will finish his investigation nonetheless, but it's unclear what the process will look like.

Denis studied nearly 10,000 files of sexual abuse allegations in Quebec's Church dating from 1940 to 2021. He authored a report revealing that 87 employees had been the subject of confirmed or substantiated allegations of sexual abuse involving minors or vulnerable adults. He was also tasked by the Pope last year to investigate sexual abuse allegations against Inuit children in Nunavut.

Ottawa says it will bypass Quebec's immigration cap to speed up family reunification


CBC
Mon, March 4, 2024

Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller says he's ready to go against Quebec's policies to reunite loved ones in the province more quickly. 

(Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press - image credit)

After several months of asking the Quebec government in vain to increase its family reunification capacity, Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller says it's time for his government to pull rank.

Miller says his ministry will begin issuing permanent residence permits to those looking to unite with their loved ones in Quebec, regardless of the province's self-imposed cap on applicants, which he describes as "artificially low."

"We're talking about people who are husbands, wives, parents, grandparents, who are waiting unsuccessfully to be reunited with their families in Quebec," said Miller in an interview with Radio-Canada, calling the backlog a humanitarian crisis.

"For me … it's a question of social justice."

Quebec's family reunification envelope is capped at around 10,000 applicants per year — a threshold that falls far short of the demand.

Miller said he's been "begging" Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette for months to lift the cap and allow more people to enter the province, but now, he's tired of waiting.

In a letter sent to Fréchette on Sunday and obtained by Radio-Canada, Miller said he had "a moral duty to find a solution" to Quebec's "refusal to reunite families more quickly."

He has instructed his ministry to begin processing all applications for permanent residence from family reunification applicants who have received the proper documents from Quebec, his letter reads.

Miller said that amounts to approximately 20,500 applications, as of Jan. 31, 2024.

If the backlog continues to worsen, Miller said his ministry will continue to grant permanent residence to applicants within the usual timeframes, "even if it means exceeding the levels set by the [François] Legault government."

Wait for family reunification longest in Quebec

Ottawa's move could create further tensions with the Coalition Avenir Québec government, which is already the subject of a Superior Court lawsuit over the delays for family reunification.

Maxime Lapointe, the lawyer who is suing Fréchette, told Radio-Canada that he plans to drop his lawsuit if Ottawa actually moves forward with its plan.

As it stands, spousal sponsorship applicants in Quebec face a processing time of about 34 months to bring over their loved ones from abroad, compared to 12 months for other Canadians.

For a parent or grandparent of foreign origin, the wait is about 50 months, when other Canadians only need to wait an average of 24 months.

This difference is due in part to Quebec's annual cap on applicants.

Without saying what the ideal number of admissions would be, Miller says Quebec has everything to gain by raising the limit.

"I still think it's a humanitarian gain, but also a political gain for Quebec to have these people join their families and thrive in Quebec," he said.

"We have a lot of people threatening to leave Quebec so that their husbands, wives, parents and grandparents can join them elsewhere."

'A direct affront to Quebec's areas of jurisdiction'

Reacting to the news Monday morning, Fréchette's office said Miller's directive "is a direct affront to Quebec's areas of jurisdiction.'

"Quebec alone determines its permanent immigration targets. The federal government's approach does not respect the will of the Quebec nation. It is unacceptable," said Maude Méthot-Faniel, Fréchette's press secretary, in a statement to Radio-Canada.

Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Frechette responds to reporters questions before entering a cabinet meeting, Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at the legislature in Quebec City.

The office of Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette says it's not up to Ottawa to impose immigration thresholds on the province. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Méthot-Faniel said the government recognizes its delays for family reunification are significant, but it considers its approach to immigration "balanced" and says it's "not up to Ottawa" to impose thresholds on the province.

She added the government is sensitive to the situation faced by these families and said it's working on possible solutions.

An initial meeting with the Québec Réunifié collective, which fights for the reunification of Quebec families, was held in December to explore possible arrangements that "respect the prerogatives of the Quebec government."

Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, immigration critic for the Bloc Québécois, also called the federal government's move an encroachment into Quebec's jurisdiction.

"Rather than getting involved in matters that don't concern it, Ottawa should be looking after its own jurisdiction, starting by transferring to Quebec the sums involved in receiving asylum seekers," Brunelle-Duceppe said, referring to the $1 billion Quebec has asked Ottawa to reimburse.

Québec Solidaire's immigration critic, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, said both levels of government are "playing politics" while real families suffer.

He's asking Quebec to reconsider the threshold for family reunification applicants but adds it's not up to Ottawa to impose it.

Behind big pharma is big intelligence

Stephanie Cain
Mon, March 4, 2024 


A competitive advantage is necessary for success across industries, but maybe nowhere so much as pharmaceuticals, where companies spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours researching how to get their developments through clinical trials and onto the market before their competitors.

But they don’t do it alone.

Behind the top pharmaceutical companies, as well as smaller biotech firms, consulting agencies like Lifescience Dynamics provide third-party credibility from dozens of academic scholars and analysts and, more important, supply valuable tools to provide pharma companies with insights and recommendations to speed up the development of their products and gain FDA approval.

“Pharma is a data-driven business,” explains Hussein Jaafar, a senior consultant at Lifescience Dynamics, who has largely led the charge on the team’s adoption of artificial intelligence. “To be able to consult our clients, we need to have access to as much data as possible.”

The power from Lifescience Dynamics comes from its five main technology products, which incorporate elements of artificial intelligence—including machine learning, large language models, and generative AI—to compute large data sets, amass information, and make educated recommendations.

On average, it takes eight to 12 years to discover, develop, and ultimately launch a drug. Along the way, pharmaceutical teams make several decisions, often under “conflicting, limited, or patchy data,” explains Lifescience Dynamics founder and president Rafaat Rahmani. To minimize risk, pharma companies are required to seek third-party research firms to validate their data and decision-making. That’s why Rahmani, who previously worked for Eli Lilly and other health care consultancies, started Lifescience Dynamics two decades ago.

Until the past few years with the explosion of AI capabilities, many of this team’s tasks were still done by hand, amassing thousands of hours of labor each year each. With more than 130 clients that hail from the majority of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, that was a hefty task but also left more opportunities for human error, a major challenge for something as regulated as the pharma industry.

Now, with the assistance of AI, some tasks take just 10 minutes, and confidence in the task is often 100%. Though Rahmani has long considered Lifescience Dynamics a technology-savvy company, the real benefit of that mentality has shown in its use of AI.

The areas of business where Jaafar has seen the biggest impact are possibly less sexy but unparalleled in value to clients and his own team: data collection, data analysis, and data visualization. Critical to the pharmaceutical industry is the tracking of clinical trials, especially by competitors. Jaafar explains that the team used to have “giant” Excel spreadsheets that a team member would need to physically click through, read updates online, then update the sheet. In 2021, they rolled out a machine-learning model that does this for the team by pulling information automatically from online registries like clinicaltrials.gov and continuously adding updates. The live feed automation, he says, has been key to streamlining their processes and increasing their effectiveness in meeting client expectations.

Similarly, he spearheaded a project that scrapes valuable information about sessions and drug updates from the major medical industry conference. Many of these events draw in upwards of 70,000 people with sometimes more than 5,000 sessions. It was a beast for a team to consolidate and analyze data before AI; now, the Lifescience Dynamics model pulls abstracts and details automatically, even summarizing and recommending sessions for attendance.

The insights gathered by Lifescience Dynamics all live in a client portal, allowing clients at any time to log on for a full look at their competitive intelligence projects, clinical trial data, and drug data. Jaafar explains that they are currently building AI models on top of that data to help clients query using natural language better understand the results. It not only adds transparency in the client-consultant relationship, but saves the Lifescience team from fielding time-intensive, resource-intensive questions from their clients.

More recently, Jaafar and his team looked at the benefits of generative AI, specifically around online surveys built to allow independent physicians to weigh in with critiques and recommendations for a particular drug. An important component of the peer review process, pharmaceutical companies reach out to physicians for real-world, patient-facing opinions on potential drugs. For Jaafar, generative AI and large-language models have allowed him to produce survey templates for online discussions among physicians as well as identify relevant experts for a specific survey.

“This was previously done entirely manually and we would just have to use our own experience and expertise to pull something together,” Jaafar says. “But with AI, we’re able to give it the background of the discussion guide we’d like to have, and it produces a very useful template that has us 80% of the way to a finalized guide.”

The team manually works on the remaining 20%.

While the team celebrates the success they have had with AI, Jaafar and Rahmani know bigger challenges await. Jaafar would like to build their own models for AI specific to their craft. Though Lifescience Dynamics can pull from its own historical data, the real value would come in more shared data from the industry. Unfortunately, he explains, the regulatory nature of health care and patient confidentiality combined with the competitive nature of the pharmaceutical industry means companies hold their own data close for a variety of reasons. A fear is that companies will continue to silo in fields of development rather than share collective data globally so that AI can learn at an exponential rate. There is simply less shareable data than other fields.

Rahmani predicts it will take more years to settle debates in pharmaceuticals over AI. For all the euphoria and excitement, there are old promises and leaders who just aren’t for technology, he says. He, however, feels confident in the future of AI as a tool to the industry’s collective success.

“I can understand why they aren't willing to connect, but it limits the utility of AI,” Rahmani says. “Our clients engage us to give them the insight and convert insight into foresight, in the shortest time possible and in the least expensive way. These AI tools squeeze the most out of our data and bring that data alive.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

SPACE

Google-backed satellite to track global oil industry methane emissions

Mon, March 4, 2024 


By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new satellite backed by Alphabet Inc's Google and the Environmental Defense Fund group will launch from California on Monday with a mission to pinpoint oil and gas industry methane emissions from space.

The MethaneSAT sattelite will add to a growing fleet of spacecraft in orbit that are meant to help fight climate change by publishing data on emissions of the invisible but potent greenhouse gas.

While the European Space Agency and another satellite-based tracker called GHGSat are already providing methane emissions data, MethaneSAT will provide more detail and have a much wider field of view, its backers say.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said the data will bring accountability to the more than 50 oil and gas companies that pledged at the Dubai COP28 climate summit in December to zero out methane and eliminate routine gas flaring, and help those preparing to comply with forthcoming methane regulations in the EU and the U.S., including a methane pollution fee.

"We'll be able to see who the laggards are, but hopefully they will use that information in a constructive way to improve their performance," said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president for energy transition at EDF.

MethaneSAT was developed in conjunction with the New Zealand Space Agency and Harvard University, among others, and its data will be available to the public later this year, EDF said. Google Cloud will provide the computing capabilities to process the information.

Methane emissions - which come from oil and natural gas production, agricultural waste, and landfills - are many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Oil industry group the American Petroleum Institute said emissions data from third parties should not be used for regulatory purposes without verification.

"The environmental regulator is still going to be paramount here as the authority in terms of validating the data,” said Aaron Padilla, API vice president of corporate policy.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; additional reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Satellites burning up in our atmosphere may not be as harmless as first thought


Marianne Guenot
Sat, March 2, 2024 

An illustration of satellite re-entry next to a picture of polar stratospheric clouds.iStock / Getty Images Plus; Roy Rochlin/Getty Images; Insider

Spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere are leaving behind metal particles.


Scientists are racing to understand if that affects the climate.


One risk is that these particles may spark rainbow-colored clouds that damage the ozone layer.

Satellites and spacecraft burning up in our atmosphere are leaving metal particles in the stratosphere — and scientists are worried it could harm our planet.

About 10% of the particles floating around the stratosphere now come from the aerospace industry, and we don't know if this could impact the climate.

One risk is that these new particles could seed polar stratospheric clouds, which are spectacular rainbow-colored clouds that can damage the ozone layer, experts told Business Insider.

"This is a good demonstration of how important it is to have the basic research on the stratosphere," Daniel Murphy, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Science Lab, who led a survey of the particles, told BI.

"There is a whole phenomenon here that we didn't expect out and we don't fully understand the implications," he said.
Stratospheric particles can shape the ozone layer

Remember the ozone layer? If you were around in the 80s, that's likely the period you'd associated it with.

This crucial layer of the atmosphere, mostly contained in the stratosphere, protects us from ultraviolet radiation from the sun. It was frequently splashed across the headlines about 40 years ago when scientists raised the alarm about gaping holes growing over the poles made by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) rising up uncontrolled to the atmosphere.

The ozone hole, circa 2004.NASA

The ozone holes are not making the news quite so often today. Thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global agreement that set out a trajectory to phase out ozone-damaging gases, they have been steadily healing.

Still, they are not gone. In September 2023, the hole above the Antarctic grew to its sixth-biggest size ever observed before snapping back, likely because of the particles spewed by the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano eruption in 2022.

That's why it's important to keep an eye on particles in the stratosphere. These nanometer-sized flecks, which naturally come from meteors crashing into the planet, can dramatically change the stratosphere's chemistry.

Clouds don't usually tend to form in the stratosphere, because it's much drier than the troposphere, where most clouds are born.

By bringing in elements you wouldn't usually see in the sky, like metals, these particles can combine with the sulfuric acid naturally present in the stratosphere to create a chemical reaction that can suck up passing water vapor, creating an ice crystal.

That, in turn, can spark a chain reaction that creates rainbow-colored polar stratospheric clouds.

On their own, these stunning clouds are harmless, but they can be terrifying when mixed with human-made gases. The clouds' edges offer perfect conditions to turn damaging chlorines and bromides into their active, ozone-busting form.

Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are seen in the sky over Jukkasjarvi, northern Sweden, on December 17, 2023 in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden.Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Metal from satellites and spacecraft is vaporizing into the atmosphere

Murphy and his colleagues recently conducted a survey of the state of stratospheric particles over Alaska using a sensitive detector aboard NASA's WB-57 high-altitude research plane.

The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS in October 2023, revealed that about 10% of the stratospheric sulfuric acid particles they picked up could not be explained by natural causes.

"We weren't really looking for spacecraft, but it became apparent in the data that there were elements that couldn't be coming from the meteors," Murphy told BI.

The view from NASA's WB-57 cockpit during a SABRE high-altitude research flight.Thomas Parent, NASA

The particles contained "far too much aluminum, far too much lithium, far too much of a few other elements to be coming from meteors," he said.

Two elements found in the particles, niobium and hafnium, were particularly surprising, Murphy said.

These don't occur naturally, but have to be refined, the scientists said.

"The combination of aluminum and copper, plus niobium and hafnium, which are used in heat-resistant, high-performance alloys, pointed us to the aerospace industry," Murphy added.

A graphic illustrates where metal particles in the stratosphere could come from.Chelsea Thompson, NOAA

Right now, we simply don't know what these new particles could do. But scientists are eager to figure it out.

"This is a new problem and we're just beginning to understand it," said Murphy.

They may be able to spark polar stratospheric clouds. If so, this could be a big problem in the short term, Martin Chipperfield, a professor of atmospheric sciences from the University of Leeds, UK, told BI.

"The timescale for the ozone hole to disappear is about 2060 based on current predictions because the chlorine is going down very, very slowly," said Chipperfield, who was not involved in the study.

"So that still gives plenty of scope in the short term, if we greatly increase the burnout of space debris over next couple of decades, for the ozone hole get worse before it gets better," he said.

These new particles could also migrate to the troposphere, where they might influence the formation of feathery cirrus clouds. Unlike other clouds, cirrus clouds retain heat in our atmosphere, which could worsen the climate crisis.

It's also possible that the particles could create a completely new phenomenon. Or they could do nothing at all.

Their composition is unique, so it's unclear what to expect. Murphy said scientists will have to do experiments in the lab to test this out.

"It's very important to understand it because the space industry is growing so rapidly," Murphy told BI.

"If there are impacts, you'd rather understand it now before it grows than after it's already grown a lot."
We're realizing how little we know

With launch costs going down, the number of satellites orbiting the planet is only expected to grow to over 50,000 by 2030, up from about 8,000 now. Many of these satellites are expected to have a short lifetime.

"If you multiply those numbers out, a satellite will be reentering the atmosphere on average about once an hour," said Murphy.

Within the next few decades, Murphy and his co-authors estimate aerospace debris could make up 50% of the particles in the stratosphere, which makes the need to understand what they do even more pressing.

An illustration shows satellites around the Earth in 2019. Each dot represents one satellite, and is not scaled to size.NASA

Spacecraft decommissioning is only part of the equation, said Chipperfield.

"There's an increasing number of rocket launches for small satellites and tourism, which burn kerosene or other fuels that emissions in the atmosphere. Then some satellites and orbit have fuel like iodine that can come back to the atmosphere. And then the demise," he said.

"I think the whole life cycle of satellites is definitely one to watch, and this burn up is part of that," said Chipperfield.

Scientists are also seriously considering geoengineering the atmosphere to help shield our planet from the heat of the sun by sending billions of particles of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere.

For Murphy, this all goes to show just how little we know about how humans are affecting the stratosphere as more forays are reaching for the skies.

"That there was still a surprise in our understanding of the composition of particles in the stratosphere is relevant to conversations about adding more," said Murphy.