How #Canadian-made robots are rooting out fraud.

#Robots at a #startup in Montreal are helping restore the legacy of world-renowned Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau.

A sprawling investigation into forgeries of Morrisseau’s paintings that have flooded the market for decades has uncovered what investigators have called the biggest case of art fraud in Canada, and some say, possibly in the history of the world.

The estate of the late artist has turned to AI and robots to help authenticate his paintings, in hopes of providing concrete empirical evidence for Canadian courts.

The process involves robotic arms that take paintbrushes, dip them in bright paint colours and execute complex strokes on a canvass to produce copies of paintings. This may evoke fears of robots taking over the art world, but those behind the technology say the paintings are not machine-created fakes to be passed off as a real Morrisseau, but replicas to train AI models to root out fraud.

“The better our work gets, the better the model has to get to detect the copies,” said Acrylic Robotics CEO Chloe Ryan. “This also allows us to refine our robotic techniques.”

Ryan is a former painter now armed with a degree in mechanical engineering, who set out on a mission to shake up the art world when she co-founded Acrylic Robotics.

“I have been painting and selling my work since I was a teenager, and I became very frustrated with how long it would take me to make a painting, and then I could sell that work of art once to one person,” they said. “I was making two dollars an hour, and I thought, ‘how can artists make a living selling their art?’”

Ryan says that led to a longer reflection on what she calls the “scarcity-driven art market.”

“The value of art is driven by how few people have access to it,” she said. “In the music or film industry, it is driven by how many people your art resonates with.”

Ryan set out to pioneer a model that would allow for the creation of copies of paintings that capture the same details as the original. She knows that is a scary proposition to some who are concerned robots could take over the work of human creativity, but she says this is based on using technology as a tool.

The model she is pitching is of artists consenting to copies of their paintings to be made, which would be clearly identified as copies, so that the human behind the art will be credited and compensated while also making their art more accessible.

“I am pioneering a new method of creation in fine art, one that is driven by how many people resonate with your work, and not one that is driven by how scarce it is,” said Ryan.
‘He made Canada look at itself’

But what caught the attention of the estate of the late Morrisseau is the technology’s potential to help in its fight against forgeries. Morrisseau, who died in 2007 at the age of 75, was a world-renowned painter known as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.

“Morrisseau was pivotal in sharing Indigenous culture, opening up markets and new pathways for other Indigenous artists,” said Cory Dingle, the executive director of Morrisseau’s estate. “But he also made Canada look at itself.

“All through the residential school trauma, the land displacement and all the racism against him, his art always spoke of love and unity,” adds Dingle. “(O)f interconnectivity and interdependency, and so it is important to restore his legacy.”

Morrisseau’s pieces sell in the millions, but thousands of fraudulent works of art have flooded the market since the late 1990’s, making it difficult to authenticate and sell his paintings. The estate says reporting fakes posed a challenge in the face of Canadian laws.

Acrylic Robotics works closely with the estate to create increasingly precise copies of Morrisseau paintings, which are used to train a computer program called Norval AI that was developed three years ago by professors to detect fakes.

That program produces heat maps showing spots where a copy differs from the original. Acryclic Robotics has been going back and forth with the estate for about a year, improving copy after copy.

For Morrisseau’s estate, this is part of a crucial mission.

“Restoring his legacy means that these institutions will study him, that the museum will display him, and we will be able to share this with the world,” said Dingle, sitting in front of a rarely seen Morrisseau.

But in the process, there will be more Morrisseau copies floating around. Robotic Acrylics says it is working with the estate to ensure that there are markings in the pieces to ensure that they could never be sold as originals.

Producing precise brush strokes involves much more than a few clicks of a mouse.

“There is a robotic challenge of how do I have a robot move in the same way as a human wrist, with the same delicate strokes,” said Ryan.

Achieving that may spark concerns about machines replacing humans, but the hope here is that this is a high-tech step in the age-old fight against art fraud.

The US imposed sanctions on what it said was a Houthi-linked petroleum smuggling and sanctions evasion network across #Yemen and the #UAE in fresh action targeting the Iran-backed militant group.

Wildfire kills 10 firefighters and rescue workers in Turkiye

#Medieval knight’s complete #skeleton discovered beneath Polish ice cream parlour.

Archeologists have discovered the remains of a medieval knight, buried under a shuttered ice cream parlour in the Polish city of Gdańsk.

Experts have been working at the site in the historic Śródmieście (city centre) district since 2023, and initially uncovered a medieval tombstone decorated with the carved image of a knight, according to a statement from Polish archaeology firm ArcheoScan, sent to CNN on Tuesday.

The tombstone was then lifted earlier in July, revealing the complete skeleton of an adult male, thought to have lived around the 13th or 14th century.

The find is of “exceptional significance” and “one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Poland in recent years,” Sylwia Kurzyńska, archeologist and director of ArcheoScan, said in the statement.

The tombstone is made from Gotland limestone, which was highly prized in the Middle Ages, and the relief depicts a knight sporting chainmail armor and mail leggings, with a sword and a shield.

The slab measures around 150 centimetres (4’ 11”) in length, and important details of the artwork can still be seen, despite the fact that it is partially damaged.

“The tombstone is remarkably well preserved, considering it was carved from soft limestone and lay underground for centuries,” said Kurzyńska.

“The knight is shown standing upright with an uplifted sword — a posture likely symbolizing authority and elevated social status,” she added.

This marks the tombstone out from the vast majority of late medieval sepulchral art, which tended to be limited to inscribed epitaphs, heraldic panels or Christian crosses, according to Kurzyńska.

“Only a small fraction included depictions of the deceased — and among these, most were simplified engravings on flat slabs designed for church floor use,” she added.

It is also unusual in that both the artwork and its archeological context remain intact.

After lifting the stone, archeologists found the remains of a man who stood 170-180 centimetres (5’ 7” - 5’ 11”) tall, far larger than the medieval average, according to Kurzyńska.

The bones were arranged naturally, confirming that the tombstone marked the original burial site, and preliminary analysis indicates “excellent preservation,” she said.

“Although no grave goods were found, all available evidence suggests that the deceased was a person of high social standing — most likely a knight or commander held in particularly high esteem and respect,” said Kurzyńska.

The grave was part of a cemetery housing almost 300 burials, which was attached to the oldest known church in Gdańsk.

The church was built from oak found to have been felled in 1140, and was located in an early medieval stronghold occupied from the late 11th century to the early 14th century, according to the statement.

“This was a place of power, faith, and burial — a space of symbolic and strategic significance in the history of Gdańsk,” said Kurzyńska.

The latest find “offers an invaluable source of knowledge about the lives and deaths of Gdańsk’s military elite in the 13th and 14th centuries, about medieval funerary traditions, and about cross-Baltic cultural connections,” she added.

Experts are now working on further analysis of both the tombstone and the skeleton.

The stone slab is being cleaned and stabilized so that it can be documented and 3D scanned to allow for the digital reconstruction of missing fragments, while the skeleton will undergo anthropological and genetic analysis to reveal more about the knight’s life, and a facial reconstruction will be made based on the skull.

By Jack Guy, #CNN

Some Air #India victims’ families in U.K. were sent wrong remains, lawyer says.

Authorities in India sent the wrong remains to some British families whose loved ones were killed in a plane crash last month, their lawyer has claimed, as relatives reckoned with the human cost of the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade.

At least two U.K. nationals were discovered to have been misidentified after they were repatriated, according to James Healy-Pratt, an international aviation lawyer who is representing some of the British relatives of victims.

In one case, a coroner in London discovered that the DNA of several bodies had been co-mingled in one of the caskets, Healy-Pratt told U.K. news agency PA Media.

Dr Fiona Shaw “picked up DNA anomalies” when the bodies were first repatriated, Healy-Pratt said.

“My understanding was that the co-mingling was at the very beginning, which alerted Dr Wilcox to the fact that she had to be 100% assiduous about checking the identification of the incoming remains,” the lawyer added.

“She was then able to determine that one particular loved one was not at all who the family thought they were,” said Healy-Pratt.

All but one of 242 passengers and crew members were killed on June 12, after an Air India jet lost momentum and hurtled into a densely populated neighborhood in Ahmedabad, western India.

The London-bound aircraft had barely left the runway of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport before it spun out of control and nosedived into the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel – also killing 19 people on the ground.

Authorities have not yet released the definitive cause of the crash, but a preliminary report suggested that the fuel control switches in the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had been flipped, depriving the engines of power.

In an audio recording from the black box, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he flipped the switches, according to the assessment by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau published last week. The other pilot responds that he did not.

Moments later, the switches were flipped to turn the fuel supply back on. Both engines relit and one began to “progress to recovery,” but it was too late to halt the plane’s tumultuous descent.

Of those killed on board, at least 169 were Indian nationals, seven were Portuguese and one was from Canada. The only survivor was Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, one of 53 U.K. passengers that day who told local media that he escaped by clinging onto a small space near the door by his seat.
‘Deeply troubled’

The relatives of three victims said they were “deeply troubled” by the revelations on Wednesday, calling on authorities to act with “care, co-ordination and respect.”

“Recent developments have only confirmed what many feared: that serious mistakes may have been made, and that the dignity and rights of victims and their families were not safeguarded as they should have been,” they said in a statement.

The relatives of Akeel Nanabawa, his wife Hannaa Vorajee and their four-year-old

daughter Sara Nanabawa added that while they are “confident” they received the “correct bodies” - they were still “deeply troubled by what this means for other families who may still be searching for certainty and closure.”

“This isn’t just a personal tragedy; it is a collective one.”

India’s foreign ministry had been “working closely with the U.K. side from the moment these concerns and issues” were raised, according to a spokesperson.

Authorities conducted identification of victims using “established protocols and technical requirements,” foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a post on X on Wednesday.

“All mortal remains were handled with the utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased,” Jaiswal added. “We are continuing to work with the U.K. authorities on addressing any concerns related to this issue.”

The case came on the heels of a meeting in London between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, as the two nations sign a landmark free trade agreement.

Healy-Pratt, who is demanding “financial justice” for the families, said he believes the allegations will be on the agenda for the talks this week.

U.S. #Olympic and Paralympic officials bar transgender women from competing in Olympic women’s #sports.

The new policy, announced Monday with a quiet change on the USOPC’s website and confirmed in a letter sent to national sport governing bodies, follows a similar step taken by the NCAA earlier this year.

The USOPC change is noted obliquely as a detail under “USOPC Athlete Safety Policy” and references Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” signed in February. That order, among other things, threatens to “rescind all funds” from organizations that allow transgender athlete participation in women’s sports.

U.S. Olympic officials told the national governing bodies they will need to follow suit, adding that “the USOPC has engaged in a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials” since Trump signed the order.

“As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,” USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland and President Gene Sykes wrote in a letter. “Our revised policy emphasizes the importance of ensuring fair and safe competition environments for women. All National Governing Bodies are required to update their applicable policies in alignment.”

The National Women’s Law Center put out a statement condemning the move.

“By giving into the political demands, the USOPC is sacrificing the needs and safety of its own athletes,” said that organization’s president and CEO, Fatima Goss Graves.

The USOPC oversees around 50 national governing bodies, most of which play a role in everything from the grassroots to elite levels of their sports. That raises the possibility that rules might need to be changed at local sports clubs to retain their memberships in the NGBs.

Some of those organizations -- for instance, USA Track and Field -- have long followed guidelines set by their own world federation. World Athletics is considering changes to its policies that would mostly fall in line with Trump’s order.

A USA Swimming spokesman said the federation had been made aware of the USOPC’s change and was consulting with the committee to figure out what changes it needs to make. USA Fencing changed its policy effective Aug. 1 to allow only “athletes who are of the female sex” in women’s competition and opening men’s events to “all athletes not eligible for the women’s category, including transgender women, transgender men, non-binary and intersex athletes and cisgender male athletes.”

The nationwide battle over transgender girls on girls’ and women’s sports teams has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans portray the issue as a fight for athletic fairness. More than two dozen states have enacted laws barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports competitions. Some policies have been blocked in court after critics challenged the policies as discriminatory, cruel and unnecessarily target a tiny niche of athletes.

The NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes to limit competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth. That change came a day after Trump signed the executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

Female eligibility is a key issue for the International Olympic Committee under its new president, Kirsty Coventry, who has signaled an effort to “protect the female category.” The IOC has allowed individual sports federations to set their own rules at the Olympics -- and some have already taken steps on the topic.

Stricter rules on transgender athletes -- barring from women’s events anyone who went through male puberty -- have been passed by swimming, cycling and track and field. Soccer is reviewing its eligibility rules for women and could set limits on testosterone.

Trump has said he wants the IOC to change everything “having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject.” Los Angeles will host the Summer Games in 2028.

During an interview on Monday’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” Soon-Shiong said the move would allow the Times “to be democratized and allow the public to have ownership of this paper.”

Soon-Shiong said he’s working with “an organization that’s putting that together right now.” He didn’t identify the organization or say whether the deal would involve an initial public offer to sell shares of the company or another investment arrangement.

“Whether you’re right, left, Democrat, Republican, you’re an American. So the opportunity for us to provide a paper that is the voices of the people, truly the voices of the people, is important,” he said.

Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire, acquired the Times as part of a $500 million deal, returning it to local ownership two decades after the Chandler family sold it to Tribune Co. Soon-Shiong’s purchase raised hopes after years of cutbacks, circulation declines and leadership changes.

But like much of the media industry, the Times has continued to face financial difficulties, losing money and subscribers. Last year the company said it would lay off at least 115 employees — more than 20% of the newsroom — in one of the largest staff cuts in the newspaper’s history.

At the time, the news organization said it had fallen well short of its digital subscriber goals and needed a revenue boost to sustain the newsroom and its digital operations.

In January 2024, executive editor Kevin Merida suddenly stepped down after a 2 1/2-year tenure at the newspaper that spanned the coronavirus pandemic and three Pulitzer Prizes, as well as a period of layoffs and contentious contract negotiations.

Then in October, the editorials editor resigned after Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review in an interview that she quit because the Times was remaining silent on the contest in “dangerous times.”

#Israeli far right discusses Gaza ‘riviera’ plans.

#JERUSALEM — Some Israeli far-right leaders held a public meeting on Tuesday to discuss redeveloping the Gaza Strip into a tourist-friendly “riviera”, as Palestinians face a worsening humanitarian crisis in the devastated territory.

The meeting, titled “The Riviera in Gaza: From Vision to Reality”, was held in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, under the auspices of some of its most hardline members.

It saw the participation of firebrand Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as well as activist Daniella Weiss, a vocal proponent of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, among others.

The name of the event evokes a proposal floated by US President Donald Trump in February to turn the war-ravaged territory into “the Riviera of the Middle East” after moving out its Palestinian residents and putting it under American control.

The idea drew swift condemnation from across the Arab world, and from Palestinians themselves, for whom any effort to force them off their land would recall the “Nakba”, or catastrophe -- the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.

Participants in Tuesday’s Knesset meeting discussed a “master plan” drafted by Weiss’s organisation to re-establish a permanent Jewish presence in Gaza.

The detailed plan foresees the construction of housing for 1.2 million new Jewish residents, and the development of industrial and agricultural zones, as well as tourism complexes on the coast.

Eight Israeli settlements located in various parts of the Gaza Strip were dismantled in 2005 as part of Israel’s unilateral decision to “disengage” from Gaza following years of violence between settlers, Palestinian armed groups and the army.

For the past two decades, a small but vocal section of Israeli society has urged the resettlement of the Strip.

Those voices have become louder after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, with advocates presenting resettlement as a way to maintain tighter security control over the area.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s ensuing military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,106 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in the Strip has reached catastrophic proportions after 21 months of conflict and a two-month aid blockade imposed by Israel.

Israel began easing the blockade in late May, but extreme scarcities of food and other essentials persist, and cases of malnutrition and starvation are becoming increasingly frequent, according to local authorities, NGOs and AFP journalists on the ground.

‘He will roll over us like a cement truck:’ Doug Ford says Canada must be prepared to match Trump’s 35 per cent #tariff.

Ford made the comment prior to a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney and other premiers in Huntsville, Ont. on Tuesday morning.

The face-to-face gathering comes with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to impose a higher 35 per cent tariff on many Canadian goods as of Aug. 1.

Most Canadian goods not covered by an existing North American free trade pact currently face a 25 per cent tariff at the U.S. border that took effect earlier this year.

“If President Trump increases tariffs and this is my personal opinion, I don’t speak on behalf of COTF (Council of the Federation), we need to make sure we match tariff-by-tariff and dollar-for-dollar and hit him (Trump) back as hard as we possibly can,” Ford said. “There is one thing President Trump understands. It is strength. He doesn’t understand or appreciate weakness. He will roll over us like a cement roller if you show an ounce of weakness with the president in my opinion.”

Carney told reporters last week that it was unlikely that any new trade deal with the U.S. would allow for the complete removal of all tariffs.

Speaking alongside the prime minister on Tuesday, Ford said that Canada’s premiers were eager to hear from him about “the status of the negotiations.”

He subsequently described that update as “very positive” in a media availability afterwards but said he wouldn’t “divulge everything” so as to not interfere with ongoing negotiations.

“Donald Trump is very, very hard to deal with just because it is so fluid, it is constantly moving but we have a strong plan moving forward and let’s see what happens on Aug. 1,” he offered.

During his remarks earlier in the day, Ford stressed that it was his “personal opinion” that Canada should increase tariffs on the United States should no trade deal be reached by Aug. 1 and the higher 35 per cent levy on many goods take effect.

Ford said that while the premiers are all “hoping for the best,” they are also “prepared to do their part” to make sure Trump understands the importance of the trading relationship with Canada.

“When he (Trump) goes out there and says ‘I don’t need Canada’ well I guess he doesn’t need (Alberta) Premier (Danielle) Smith’s oil or (Saskatchewan) Premier (Scott) Moe’s potash or uranium or Ontario’s high-grade nickel,” Ford said. “These are just a fraction of the items where he needs us.”

Ford then added that he is committed to “onshoring everything we possibly can” in Ontario amid the trade uncertainty," arguing that Ontario needs to send “a strong message” that “we don’t have to take a back seat to anyone in the world and we sure the heck don’t need to take a back seat to President Trump.”

“I am speaking for Ontario. We need to start producing (steel) I-beams here in Ontario. Toronto and the GTA has more cranes in the sky in a slow construction period than the top 10 cities in the U.S. and what do those cranes do, they carry U.S. I-beams or rebar,” he said. “Before this happened I didn’t realize we don’t make rebar or I-beams here but we are going to start making I-beams.”

A pilot made sharp turn to avoid a B-52 bomber over North Dakota, then took to the mic to explain.

The Friday incident is detailed in a video taken by a passenger and posted to social media as Delta Flight 3788 approached the Minot International Airport for landing. In the video, the SkyWest pilot can be heard over the plane’s intercom system explaining that he made the hard bank after spotting a B-52 bomber in his flight path.

“Sorry about the aggressive maneuver. It caught me by surprise,” the pilot can be heard saying on the video. “This is not normal at all. I don’t know why they didn’t give us a heads up.”

An Air Force spokesperson confirmed Monday that a B-52 bomber assigned to nearby Minot Air Force Base conducted a flyover Friday of the North Dakota State Fair, which is held in Minot. The Air Force is “looking into” the incident, the spokesman said.

The North Dakota incident comes nearly six months after a midair collision between an Army helicopter and a jetliner over Washington, D.C., that killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft. That collision and subsequent close calls with Army helicopters over the nation’s capital put the spotlight on the interaction between military and civilian flights. Officials have focused on improving communications between the two and making sure that air traffic controllers know where military aircraft are at all times because the Army helicopters around Washington were flying with a key locating device turned off.

SkyWest, a regional carrier for Delta and other large airlines, said the Friday flight had departed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and landed safely in Minot after performing a “go-around” maneuver when another aircraft became visible in the SkyWest plane’s flight path. Minot is 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital city, and about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Canadian border.

Minot Air Force Base is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Minot, North Dakota’s fourth-largest city. The base is home to 26 B-52 bombers, intercontinental ballistic missile operations and more than 5,400 military personnel.

In the video, the pilot noted that Minot’s small airport does not operate radar and directs flights visually. When the airport tower instructed the SkyWest flight to make a right turn upon approach, the pilot said he looked in that direction and saw the bomber in his flight path. He informed the tower and made a hard turn to avoid the bomber, he said.

“I don’t know how fast they were going, but they were a lot faster than us,” the pilot said of the bomber.

Passengers can be heard applauding as the pilot wrapped up his explanation.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a statement Monday morning simply saying it’s investigating the incident. By midafternoon, it had issued a second statement to note that air traffic services were provided by a private company that services the Minot air traffic control tower.

“These controllers are not FAA employees,” the agency said.

Some small airports like Minot’s don’t have their own radar systems on site. In fact, the vast majority of the nation’s airports don’t even have towers. But regional FAA radar facilities do oversee traffic all across the country and help direct planes in and out of airports like Minot. The Minot airport typically handles between 18 and 24 flights a day.

The pilot’s frustration is evident in the video.

“The Air Force base does have radar, and nobody said, ‘Hey, there’s a B-52 in the pattern,’” the pilot told passengers.

SkyWest said it is also investigating.

Jack Dura And Margery A. Beck, The Associated Press

Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska. AP writer Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha.