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Toronto Sun
01-08-2025
- Business
- Toronto Sun
Musk's X accuses Britain of online safety 'overreach'
Elon Musk-owned social network X has introduced age checks as required in Britain designed to protect children from pornography but lashed out that 'oversight becomes overreach' that infinges on free expression Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP/File Paris (AFP) — Elon Musk-owned social network X on Friday accused Britain's government of 'overreach' with a new law designed to protect children from harmful online content such as pornography. The Online Safety Act's 'laudable intentions are at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach,' X said in a post to its Global Government Affairs account. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account 'A plan ostensibly intended to keep children safe is at risk of seriously infringing on the public's right to free expression,' it added, arguing that the impact 'shows what happens when oversight becomes overreach'. Beyond the law, X criticized a separate new code of conduct for online platforms as 'parallel and duplicative' as well questioning the free-speech impact of a new police unit tasked with monitoring social media. The social network nevertheless last week introduced formal systems for age verification in response to the British law as well as new rules in Ireland and the wider European Union. Its options range from estimating the age of a user based on the date their account was created or their email address, to requesting a selfie whose age would be determined by artificial intelligence, or uploading an official ID document. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Media regulator Ofcom says such age checks — required since July 25 — must be 'technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair'. Platforms failing to comply risk fines of up to 18 million pounds ($24 million) or 10 percent of their global revenue — whichever is larger. Serious infringers could be blocked from British territory. The fight over age verification to access sensitive content in Britain echoes months of debate in France over new rules requiring pornography sites to verify users' ages — a step also required by many US states. While hailed by child safety campaigners, opponents say such requirements risk compromising legitimate users' privacy — or even exposing them to scams such as identity theft if the personal details used to verify their age were to be hacked. Many people resort to virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around territorial restrictions on access to online content. The most popular free apps on Apple's UK download store since last week have been VPNs, with one, Proton, reporting earlier this week a 1,800 percent rise in downloads, according to British media. Toronto & GTA Columnists World Canada Sunshine Girls
Toronto Sun
28-07-2025
- Business
- Toronto Sun
EU accuses online giant Temu over sale of 'illegal' products
Published Jul 28, 2025 • 2 minute read E-commerce platform Temu has 93.7 million average monthly active users in the European Union. Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP/File Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) — The European Union accused Chinese-founded online shopping giant Temu on Monday of breaking the bloc's digital rules by not 'properly' assessing the risks of illegal products. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account EU regulators believe Temu is not doing enough to protect European consumers from dangerous products and that it may not be acting sufficiently to mitigate risks to users. 'Evidence showed that there is a high risk for consumers in the EU to encounter illegal products on the platform,' the European Commission said in its preliminary finding. It pointed to a mystery shopping exercise that found consumers were 'very likely to find non-compliant products among the offer, such as baby toys and small electronics'. Temu said only it would 'continue to cooperate fully with the commission'. Wildly popular in the European Union despite only having entered the continent's market in 2023, Temu has 93.7 million average monthly active users in the 27-country bloc. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The EU said Temu's October 2024 risk assessment was 'inaccurate and relying on general industry information rather than on specific details about its own marketplace'. Temu is under investigation as part of a mammoth law known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) that forces the world's largest tech firms to do more to protect European consumers online and better police content online. Temu will now be able to respond to the EU regulators' findings and defend itself, but there is no time limit on how long an investigation may last. If confirmed to be in breach, the EU can slap a fine on Temu. Fines under the DSA can go as high as six percent of a company's total worldwide annual turnover and force it to make changes to address violations. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Launched in October, the EU probe continues to investigate other suspected breaches including the use of addictive design features that could hurt users' physical and mental well-being and how Temu's systems recommend content and products. EU law under attack The DSA is part of the EU's reinforced legal weaponry to curb the excesses of Big Tech, with stricter rules for the world's biggest platforms. It has faced criticism from the US administration under President Donald Trump. The Republican-dominated judiciary committee of the US House of Representatives described the DSA in a scathing report as a 'foreign censorship threat' on Friday. Staunch President Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan, committee chair, met EU tech sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen in Brussels as part of a bipartisan delegation on Monday. 'We had a constructive discussion on how to promote digital innovation, AI and regulate this field smartly,' she said on X after the meeting. There are currently other DSA probes into Chinese online retailer AliExpress, social media platforms Facebook and Instagram and X as well as TikTok. The EU also wants to crack down on cheap packages that flood into the bloc each year, with a proposal under discussion for a two-euro flat fee per parcel. Last year, 4.6 billion such packages entered the EU — more than 145 per second — with 91 percent originating in China. The EU expects the numbers to increase. Wrestling Canada NHL Canada Editorial Cartoons
eNCA
26-07-2025
- Health
- eNCA
Belgian region grapples with forever chemical scandal
A water contamination scandal has gripped a leafy corner of southern Belgium, causing anxious residents to queue up for blood tests to confirm potential exposure to so-called forever chemicals. On an early summer afternoon about a dozen people waited to get their samples taken at a municipal building in Braine-le-Chateau, a picturesque town in the French-speaking Wallonia region. "Initially local authorities told us that measurements were reassuring, but in reality, they didn't have any and were simply trying to keep people calm as best they could," Douglas, a 35-year-old consultant who preferred only to give his first name, told AFP. "This kind of game has to stop," he said, adding he hoped the blood-sampling campaign launched in June would help shed light on the situation. Anger in the region first erupted in 2023 when an investigation by local broadcaster RTBF revealed the authorities had ignored longstanding warnings about high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called forever chemicals. It emerged that the US military, which has an airbase in the small city of Chievres, had warned the local water company in 2017 about high PFAS levels in drinking water, following an incident involving firefighting foam. The US base advised its personnel to drink bottled water -- but locals were left in the dark for years, even after the regional government was told of the issue in 2018. PFAS are a family of synthetic chemicals that take an extremely long time to break down. Chronic exposure to even low levels of the chemicals has been linked to liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses, low birth weights and several kinds of cancer. A group of more than 10,000 human-made chemicals that repel heat, water and oil, PFAS are used in nonstick pans, stain-proof carpets, and other products. But their use is increasingly being restricted across the world due to adverse health effects. In June an Italian court sentenced executives at a chemical plant to jail terms of up to 17 years for polluting water used by hundreds of thousands of people with the chemicals. - 'Putting out fires' - Water samples in Braine-le-Chateau last year revealed levels five to six times higher than a safety standard of 4 nanograms/litre (ng/L) for four PFAS recently agreed by Belgian authorities. The exact source of the pollution has not yet been confirmed and a judicial investigation is underway. AFP | Nicolas TUCAT Authorities have since ordered water distribution firms to install activated carbon filters -- a move they say has contained the issue. Large-scale blood testing was carried out in Chievres in early 2024 -- and later extended to nearby areas. Authorities said almost 1,300 people across about 10 municipalities had their blood samples taken to confirm exposure to the chemicals in recent weeks, as part of a fresh campaign launched in June. The results, which could lead to new health recommendations, are expected later this year. Wallonia's government, which took office last summer, has also decided to bring forward to 2025 new European Union rules requiring that drinking water must not exceed a total of 100 ng/L for 20 substances in the PFAS family. "We have taken radical measures and all our distributors are now complying with this standard," Yves Coppieters, the regional minister for health and the environment, told AFP. Nevertheless he acknowledged that "the population is very concerned", adding that without clarity on the source of the pollution, it might take decades to resolve the issue. "Telling people not to eat their home-grown eggs and vegetables, setting standards for sewage sludge... for now I'm just putting out fires," said Coppieters, who favours a ban on all products containing PFAS. Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have submitted a joint proposal for the EU to ban the production, sale, and use of almost all forever chemicals. And the European Commission has said it is looking to ban PFAS in everyday consumer products.
eNCA
20-07-2025
- Science
- eNCA
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
BRUSSELS - In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet's changing climate. Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth's atmosphere looked like back then. "We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future," said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank. Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometres of fresher ice and snow. But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive. A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million). To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible. - Blue ice - AFP | Nicolas TUCAT Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB. And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface. In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed. Named after their colouration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory. "Blue ice areas are very special," said Izeboud. Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters above sea level, around 60 kilometres from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained. A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totalling about 60 meters in length. These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June. Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialised labs in France and China for dating. Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old. - Climate 'treasure hunt' - This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize. AFP | Nicolas TUCAT "It's like a treasure hunt," Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for "Indiana Jones". "We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there," he said. "We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice." Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming. Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces. By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB. But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect. "We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today," Legrain said. His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. "The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past," he said. "It's really like magic when you feel it."
Observer
05-07-2025
- Climate
- Observer
Europe gets creative to beat the heat
From free museum tours to "climate oases" with cold drinks and air-con, European countries are searching for creative ways to beat the heatwave hitting the continent -- without forgetting our four-legged friends. Here is a look at some of the programmes put in place as record temperatures swept multiple countries. - Italy - Venice is offering free guided tours of air-conditioned museums and public buildings to people over 75, a demographic especially vulnerable to extreme heat. In Rome, city swimming pools are free of charge for those over 70. And hospitals such as the Ospedale dei Colli in Naples have set up dedicated heatstroke pathways to speed access to vital treatments including cold water immersion. - Netherlands - Schools in Rotterdam and across West Brabant province adopted "tropical schedules" on Tuesday, with shorter school hours -- 8:00 am to noon -- and additional water breaks. TOPSHOT - A polar bear cools off in the water at Pairi Daiza zoo in Brugelette on July 2, 2025, as a heatwave hits Europe. Withering conditions that have baked southern Europe for days crept northward, shutting some schools and daycare centres in France and the Netherlands, and sparking health warnings. (Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP) - Germany - Since the late 19th century, Germany has had "hitzefrei", or heat holidays. When temperatures get too hot -- 25 or 27 degrees Celsius (77 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit), for example, depending on the region -- schools close for the afternoon, a popular policy with pupils. - Spain - Spain launched a protocol to protect women at risk of domestic violence, which tends to increase when temperatures are hot. Authorities use computer algorithms to help identify those most vulnerable. "Summer is a particularly dangerous period... We know July and August are particularly tragic months," Equality Minister Ana Redondo said last week. More than 40 percent of femicides in 2023 and 2024 happened during the summer months, according to her ministry's figures. High temperatures "exacerbate crisis dynamics in human relations and increase the likelihood of aggressive behaviour", said the interior ministry. - Austria - Austria is offering 23 "climate oases" with air conditioning, snacks and drinks for those in need, sponsored by Catholic charity Caritas, which is also providing dedicated medical buses with volunteer doctors. A person practises wakeboarding at a water sports leisure centre in Basse-Ham, north-eastern France, on July 2, 2025, as a heatwave hits Europe. (Photo by Jean-Christophe VERHAEGEN / AFP) - France - France partially or completely closed 1,350 of its 45,000 schools on Tuesday. Some cities, such as Orleans, are also offering free access to museums. Marseille made its public pools free of charge for the duration of the heatwave. Paris meanwhile declared public parks and gardens would be open 24 hours a day, and extended hours for some pools until 10:00 pm. - Czech Republic - The Czech Republic's state veterinary administration tightened transport checks from Tuesday to protect animals being transported in the heat. —AFP A man wearing a hat walks near the iconic Puente Nuevo (New Bridge) in Ronda, southern Spain, on July 2, 2025, as high temperatures grip the country during the first summer heatwave. A punishing heatwave loosened its gripped on western Europe today and rolled eastwards, with Germany expected to record some of its hottest temperatures of the year so far. Meanwhile, residents in Spain and Italy may have to wait until the weekend before they experience a drop in temperatures. (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)
